Apple has just refreshed its entire iPod lineup during the Apple Event “Let’s Rock” which ended a few minutes ago. The last refresh was on 6th September 2008.

iPod Touch

iPod Touch (2nd Generation)

This is the 2nd generation of iPod Touch which features a stainless steel design, volume control on the side and built-in speakers. It comes preloaded with iPod Touch Firmware 2.1.

• 8GB = USD$229.00 / SGD$388
• 16GB = USD$299.00 / SGD$498
• 32GB = USD$399.00 / SGD$648
• View iPod Touch
• View iPod Touch Specification

iPod Nano

iPod Nano (4th Generation)

This is the 4th generation iPod Nano which goes back to the good old days of the tall iPod Nano. The 3rd generation iPod Nano is fat but now the 4th generation iPod Nano has lost some weight and grew taller. Now it has 9 colors for you to choose from. Not forgetting that now it comes packed with the built-in accelerometer and note the new curved aluminum and glass design.

• 8GB = USD$149.00 / SGD$248
• 16GB = USD$199.00 / SGD$328
• View iPod Nano
• View iPod Nano Specification

iPod Classic

iPod Classic (6th Generation)

The iPod Classic has not much changes, the 80GB (thinner one) has been bumped up to 120GB and the 160GB (thicker one) has been phrased out. The color option still remain the same, silver and black.

• 120GB = USD$249 / SGD$398
• View iPod Classic
• View iPod Classic Specification

iPod Shuffle

iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation)

Nothing much have changed except for the colors. The colors are now brighter as compared to its previous color.

• 1GB = USD$49.00 / SGD$78
• 2GB = USD$69.00 / SGD$108
• View iPod Shuffle
• View iPod Shuffle Specification

I think this Apple Event has the most accurate leaked news ever.

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

Google has hoped on to the web browser bandwagon. Google Chrome is an open source web browser developed by Google using the WebKit rendering engine.

• An address bar with auto-completion features called “omnibox.”
• The V8 JavaScript Virtual Machine.
• A privacy mode.
• Web applications can be launched in their own browser window without an address bar and toolbar.
• Chrome includes an automatically updated phishing and malware blacklist using the Google Safe Browsing API.
• Uses the WebKit Rendering Engine.
• Puts individual tabs and plug-ins into separate processes.
• Integration of Gears.

The beta should be available tomorrow (Singapore time). Wonder how well it will stand against Mozilla Firefox.

Source: Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser
Taken From: Wikipedia: Google Chrome
More Information: Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project

August 2008 Total Traffic

• Total Hits: 9,922,623
• Total Files: 9,019,489
• Total Pages: 791,515
• Total Visits: 164,135
• Total KBytes: 35,659,614
• Total Unique Sites: 129,710
• Total Unique URLs: 15,995
• Total Unique Referrers: 18,962
• Total Unique User Agents: 5,286

August 2008 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 320,084 – Max: 413,876
• Files per Day: Average: 290,951 – Max: 367,253
• Pages per Day: Average: 25,532 – Max: 31,541
• Visits per Day: Average: 5,294 – Max: 6,369
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,150,310 – Max: 1,572,558

Note: Green denotes increase and Red denotes decrease when compared with July 2008.

Previous month site traffic: July 2008

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.