As usual, I am so busy with school, as said previously, I got assignment due every single week since the 3rd week of school. It is now mid October. My last day of school is 14th November 2008. I got 3 exams on the 22nd, 25th and 27th of November 2008. The confirmation date for my Taiwan trip is getting closer each day, it is now mid December 2008. I think I should be able to get the exact date at the end of this month or latest by early November 2008.

Last Friday, Li Xiang has no school, so I skipped my lecture (the lecture is quite useless as that module is not examinable) and we spend some quality time together. I sent her to school to loan her Canon 20D DSLR camera for her photography assignment and then we went to Singapore Botanical Gardens to re-take some of her shots for her photography assignment.

After spending an hour there, we proceed on to Orchard Road to catch a movie, we caught Big Stan. It is the first movie directed by Rob Schneider and the movie was good. Personally, I love movies starring Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler as I have not been disappointed in any movies with them in it yet.

On Sunday, we went for Tim Sum at Crystal Jade Dining at VivoCity as our Thailand friends are leaving, they are here on a business trip to discuss something with my mom. 3 years ago when we visited Thailand, they really took good care of us! I will definitely be going to Thailand again when it is more stable over there. After the Tim Sum, Li Xiang and I headed home to catch some sleep while my mom and brother went to Takashimaya as they are having a storewide 15% discount because of their 15th anniversary in Singapore.

At night, they went to Serangoon Gardens because my mom’s cousin baby is one month old while Li Xiang and I headed to Central for the famous Ma-Rutama’s Ramen. They are opening a branch soon in Liang Court on the 1st November 2008. We walked around Clark Quay and Liang Court and took some pictures along the way. Last weekend was the best weekend I had since school starts.

Our 4th anniversary is coming on the 24th October 2008, going to bake her a chocolate Chiffon cake. It is my VERY FIRST attempt in baking a cake, hopefully it does not fail. I think it is easier for me to do programming than baking. LOL

Red Dot Design Museum

This is the 2nd and final part to the Nokia Remix 2008 event. The party starts at 7pm and is held at Red Dot Design Museum. I was there with Li Xiang. We have a blogger meeting at Pacific Coffee also at 7pm where we get to play with the Nokia XpressMusic 5800 for quite a long time. I took a video of the Internet surfing experience and the gaming experience using accelerometer and will be uploading to YouTube.

About 8pm, we proceed on for the buffet dinner and followed by the Music Performance. By the way, the food catered by Nokia is as usual very good. Thumbs up for that.

There are a total of 4 music performances namely, Plain Sunset, Astreal, Andrew Macdonald and Lifehouse. The first 2 bands are from Singapore, the Andrew Macdonald is from Australia and the last band Lifehouse need no further introduction. And of course it is Lifehouse which gets the party going and I think Lifehouse has put up the best performance of the night. They will be performing at St James Power Station later on in the day (it has past 12mn). The MCs for the day is The Muttons featuring Justin Ang and Vernon A from 987FM. I think they did a great job at hosting the event and their jokes are awesome! Thumbs up!

Here is the video of the XpressMusic 5800 Internet Surfing/Browsing:

Here is the video of the XpressMusic 5800 Gaming:

Here are some of the pictures that I took:

Nokia Remix 2008 Singapore was held today at 9am at Odeon Towers, Supper Club. Supper Club is a beautiful place the huge sofa chairs are so comfortable that I almost fell asleep. I knew pretty much everything that Nokia is going to announce thanks to the pre-media briefing yesterday.

My Media Pass

I have finally got the chance to take a video of the user interface of the XpressMusic 5800 and I have uploaded it to YouTube. Nothing is new here, for more information, you can check out the post below this or check the specifications at http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/5800_XpressMusic.

Here is the video of the XpressMusic 5800 User Interface:

As usual, sorry for the out of focus digital camera video recording, but I don’t mind a sponsor for a dedicated HD video recording camcorder, any takers?

“Nokia Come With Music” service is also announced. Let me summarize it in points so that it is easier to digest.

• It is a pre-paid service that is bundled to Nokia mobile phones. Currently on the 5310 XpressMusic, N95 8GB and 5800 XpressMusic.
• You need to pay a little bit more for the bundled phone. Price for Singapore is still unknown at the moment.
• You get 1 year of unlimited music downloads through Nokia Music Store. 18 months option are coming in 2009.
• The music you downloaded, you get to keep it after the 1 year. Nokia spokesperson keep emphasising this.
• Like it or not it is DRMed.
• If I am not wrong, the format is WMA and not MP3.

Personally, I am not in favour of DRM and WMA. I don’t mind paying a little more for non-DRM and MP3.

Here are some of the pictures that I took:

I have been so busy with my school lately, despite having a 1 week holiday last week. I used to complete my never ending assignments. It seems that every week, there is an assignment due and it is all report writing, and reporting writing is basically testing your Googling, paraphrasing and smoking skills. There is 0 programming for me this semester and perhaps the next semester as well.

I have not been going to the movies for about 1 month or more!!! But anyway, time flies, half the semester has gone. 10 more weeks till end of exams and then I can enjoy my Taiwan trip!

Out of topic, I would like to show off my iPhone 3G Springboard!

My iPhone 3G Springboard

I have Jailbroken it using Windows QuickPwn 2.1 in less than 10 minutes.

The theme is based on Damino by Anjuna, the wallpaper is Seasons - Winter by Kol and the font is Silkscreen by Kottke.

This theme requires WinterBoard application and Five Icon Dock modification, both by Saurik.

I ROFL at these questions.

• If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?
• Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?
• If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
• If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes?
• Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
• Why the man who invests all your money called a broker?
• If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?
• Why is it called building when it is already built?
• If a book about failures doesn’t sell, is it a success?
• If you’re not supposed to drink and drive, then why do bars have parking lots?
• If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?
• If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?? Human ??

Source: Hardware Zone Forums

Bought the SwitchEasy Capsule Neo (black) case for my iPhone 3G for SGD$49.90 from GizmoSquare which is located at 102 Tanjong Pagar Road. I like the online store because I can pay by PayPal and then collect it at the physical store itself.

The opening hours on weekdays is from 12pm to 9pm, I went there at 5pm on Wednesday and I got a shocked that the store is closed. Before hand I emailed Curtis (the boss of GizmoSquare) and he told me to come before 7pm as he need to close early for the day and I did, I reached there at 5pm which is indeed before 7pm.

I saw the number pasted on the glass door, it was a normal land line number. I called the number hoping it get diverted to the mobile phone instead and indeed it gets diverted. Curtis picked up the call (I am assuming it is him) and told me that he will ask his neighbour to pass it to me. I was quite puzzled by the term neighbour. After 5 minutes, a man from the next shop which is a bridal shop came out and open the door of GizmoSquare. I took the Capsule Neo off the shelf and place it on the counter. The man made a call to confirm that it is the one that I bought and after that I got what I came for. Before leaving the shop, I ask the man are they affiliated and the man is actually the father of Curtis.

It did not leave a very good first impression to be honest.

I received an email after that from Curtis apologizing for the shop not being open. It is actually his girlfriend birthday and so happen that another staff is on MC as well and hence the shop is not open. This email erased the “not very good first impression” I have on GizmoSquare.

Came off and spend like 30 minutes to put on the Capsule Neo on my iPhone 3G. It is really a chore! In the process, the bottom part of the super thin silicon membrane was slightly torn as the plastic edge of the case was pretty sharp. Do note that the silicon membrane is so thin that there are 2 silicons included in the package just in case people tore it. Nevertheless, I managed to fit the Capsule Neo almost perfectly (covering the chrome edges is the hardest) which I am quite satisfied with.

Package Contents

Back View Of The Capsule Neo On My iPhone 3G

You can view the rest of the pictures that I posted in HWZ Forums.

On Friday went to the Singapore Chinese Garden for the Lantern Festival 2008. This year theme is “F8 – Hello Kitty Go Races!”. I have no idea why is it called F8. I am thinking that it is the 8th month (mooncake month) of the lunar calendar and hence the name F8. As you might have guessed, you will get to see Hello Kitty lanterns in a racing setup.

Peak days ticket prices (Friday to Sunday, including eve of and public holidays):

• Adult: SGD$15
• Child: SGD$10

Non-peak days ticket prices (Monday to Thursday):

• Adult: SGD$12
• Child: SGD$8

Other information:

• Opening Hours: 6pm to 11pm daily
• From: 29th August to 28th September 2008

There are plenty of carpark lots available and it is SGD$3.00 per entry for the parking fee.

My brother went there last year and he complained that there are lots of mosquitoes. However, Li Xiang and I did not even get a single mosquito bite because we use the Freshening Insect Repellent Wipe which my mom is selling. It is proven and tested by us.

Personally I think that the $15 is quite worth it for both of us as Li Xiang and I went there at about 7.30pm and stayed all the way till they close which is about 11.15pm. We took lots of photographs with my Canon iXUS 860IS and Li Xiang’s school camera, Canon EOS20. We think we will probably go again next year.

I wanted to bring Li Xiang to the lantern festival since last year but due to our busy school work, we missed it, so this year I promised to bring her there and I managed to keep my promise. lol

Singapore Chinese Garden Entrance

Hello Kitty Trophy

Hello Kitty Winner

Li Xiang has uploaded most of the photos to Facebook (you need to be logged in into Facebook), you can check it out here:

• Chinese Garden Lantern Festival 2008 - 01
• Chinese Garden Lantern Festival 2008 - 02
• Chinese Garden Lantern Festival 2008 - 03

I hate Facebook gallery because they limit 60 photographs to each album which is a pain to upload lots of photographs. I think only Li Xiang has patience to do it.

Official Website: Lantern Festival 2008

More Information: Visit Singapore

Comex 2008
Comex 2008 was held in Suntec City Convention Center from the 28th August 2008 to the 31st August 2008. I hooted the following:

For My Mom:

• Canon Color Ink For Canon Printer MX700 - SGD$50 (Free SGD$10 NTUC Vouchers)
• 2x Canon Black Ink For Canon Printer MX700 - SGD$44 (Free SGD$5 NTUC Vouchers)

For Li Xiang:

• Canon Color Ink Value Pack Canon Printer MP160 - SGD$55 (Free SGD$5 NTUC Vouchers)
• Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse - SGD$19.90

For Myself:

• D-Link DNS-323 - SGD$199 (Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell selling for SGD$235)

D-Link DNS-323
I have been aiming for the DNS-323 for quite a couple of weeks, Fuwell is selling for $235 which is a little steep. I am quite surprise Comex is only selling for $199 as from what I heard PC Show 2008 which is held back in June is selling for $189. But nevertheless, it is still cheaper than $235. I went to Comex on Thursday, 28th August 2008, and at 12pm sharp, when the doors are open, I headed straight to the D-Link booth. I have already did my homework on where the booth is located. Once I am at the booth, I told the temp staff I want the DNS-323 and he got stun for a few seconds as I think he didn’t expect me to buy it so fast, if I am not wrong, I am the first customer of the booth.

2 weeks before Comex 2008, I have already went to Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell to buy Western Digital Caviar Green Power (GP) 1TB for SGD$220. At that time I did not want to run RAID 1 and hence I only bought 1 HDD. But after getting the DNS-323 and playing it on Friday, I decided to try RAID 1 and hence the next day I went to Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell to get the exact same hard drive which I bought 2 weeks ago. The price is still the same.

Western Digital Green Power hard drive is fantastic, it is very quiet, even when I put the 2 hard drives into the DNS-323, overall it is still quiet. The only irritating thing is the blue LED lights which is so bright when all the lights are off.

I got a major problem when running RAID 1 on the DNS-323, the formatting of drives always get stuck at 94% and after lots of goggling, I realized that it is a firmware bug. I downgraded to 1.04 (currently is 1.05) and set the inactivity timer to 90mins instead of the default value and that seems to solve the problem.

D-Link DNS-323 Box

D-Link DNS-323 Box Contents

Western Digital Caviar Green Power (GP) 1TB

Space Chimps
Caught Space Chimps a couple of weeks ago and the movie was just average, the funniest part of the movie are all in the trailer.

Death Race
Caught Death Race last week, starring Jason Statham, Joan Allen and Ian McShane. It is directed by Paul WS Anderson. The movie was good and basically it is a action packed movie almost throughout the whole movie.

WALL-E
WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class and EVE stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. I have been wanting to watch this movie since the trailer aired in Singapore quite a number of months ago. Managed to catch it at GV Max on Friday midnight show. The show was good in terms of both storyline and humor. Go and catch it.

I saw the toy selling for SGD$19.90 for both WALL-E and EVE. So tempted to get it but in the end didn’t get it. You can view the toys here.

Dad’s Back For 4 Days
My dad came back on Saturday for 4 days and will be leaving on Tuesday, 2nd September 2008. Vietnam has a public holiday and his company give them another day off and my dad just need to take 1 day leave and he can come back for 4 days.

We have been bringing him around eating and eating as Hanoi food is not suitable for him. He lost about 2kg and now I can see his 6-pack.

The next time he will be back shall be in December 2008 where his contract ends. He might renew his contact if the offer is good.

I was interviewed by Kenny Chee of My Paper (我报) regarding IT fairs in Singapore.

my paper (我报) is Singapore’s first free chinese newspaper, launched on 1 June 2006, is designed for bilingual, young adults aged 20-40, who have been exposed to Western and Chinese cultures and want their voices to be heard.

Here is a snippet of the interview within the article:

“IT fairs have better promotions at times, compared to stores, and they tend to bundle more gifts,” said Mr Chan,who has also worked as a web developer.

You can read the full article here (my picture is included).

Thank you Kenny if you are reading this.

Had an informal gathering with Nokia, Text100 and several bloggers at The Straits which is located at 31 Pekin Street, Far East Square. At first when I heard of The Straits, it was referring to the The Straits Kitchen located at Hyatt Hotel. Luckily the full address is given, if not I will be going to the wrong place. The last informal Nokia event was held on the 13th June 2008. How time flies, 2 months just passed like that.

We get to play with the Nokia N79, N85 as well as the long due N96. I would like to say that my views are PURELY based on the prototypes as N79 and N85 will not be launching that soon. For the N96, it is quite closed to the final as it will shipping next month (September 2008) and the RRP for it is SGD$1258.

Nokia N79
The first phone that I got to play with is the N79 and it is the successor of N78. It is the smallest Nseries device that is built by Nokia so far and indeed it is small. The build quality of it is solid, similar to that of my N82.

As you all may know, the Xpress-on cover is back. I have not heard of that term for a long time. This time instead of paying separately for the covers, Nokia has decided to bundle 2 other colors cover within the package. 2 colors of the N79 will be available, Canvas White as well as the Seal Grey. The Canvas White will come with the the cover color of “Olive Green” as well as “Light Sea Blue” and the Seal Grey will come with the cover color of “Coral Red” and “White”. Both sets of the N79 will come with a default cover color which is Espresso Brown.

I am quite impressed by the Xpress-on cover. For example, if you change the cover to Olive Green, your S60 OS’s theme will also change to Olive Green. There is a chip located below at the back of the cover that does the magic.

The shutter speed for the N79 has been increased and hence it takes lesser time to snap a photograph an hence when taking a slow moving object, it will not be that distorted anymore.

Nokia also added Nokia’s Widsets to the phone. WidSets is a clever service that brings the Internet to your cell phone. You can have your Twitter, Friendster, Flikr, Digg, Wikipedia, etc services within the application.

The N79 also has an accelerometer and this time it can rotate any screen within the OS itself (even the main menu). Just rotate the phone, and the screen will be rotated as well. It is much better than my N82 when they first introduce the accelerometer where it can only rotate certain screens.

The N79 will have the common stuff such as 5 megapixels camera, dual LED lights as well as GPS.

The only thing I do not like about N79 is the menu key as well as the clear key. The left and right screen key as well as the answer/hang-up key are “popup” but on the other hand the menu key as well as the clear key are flat and hence it is a little harder to press the menu and the clear key or worst still you will press the wrong key like me. I tested it and when clearing my message, instead of pressing the clear key, I pressed onto the right screen key.

Nokia N85
The Nokia N85 is the direct successor of N81 and N81 8GB. It is built for playing N-Gage games similar to the N81. The N81 is a normal sliding phone but the N85 is a dual slider phone.

The N85 spot a new OLED screen never seen before in the Nseries. With this screen, whatever is displayed on the screen is brighter, sharper and consume lesser power. You can definitely notice the difference.

The keypad on the N85 is very flat and hence it is very difficult for me to press. I have to press the menu key quite hard for it to recognize my action.

Similar to the N79, it also have faster shutter speed, Nokia’s Widsets, accelerometer, 5 megapixels camera, dual LED lights as well as GPS.

A lot of people are saying N85 is the N96 killer as N85 has better screen and much better battery life. You can read about the comparison here.

Nothing to say much about the N96 as I have discuss it many times. I personally think that it is a long due phone since February 2008, it has been more than 6 months and finally it will be launched next month. If Nokia were to launched it before June 2008, I think it would be good as I think that the N85 will eat into the market share of N96 as they are very similar and DVB-H is not ready in Singapore.

Nokia N79 and N85 will launched sometime in October 2008.

Once again, do note my views are still based on early prototypes and some of this problems may get solved before the actual release.

PS: I forgot to bring my Canon iXUS 860IS as well as my Nokia N82 and hence when I use my iPhone to take the pictures of the phones, it turns out to be crap and hence I did not upload it. iPhone camera really not up to standard.