Sony announces a lighter version of the current PSP during E3. It is not exactly PSP 2, it is more like PSP 1.5 (or that is what I will call it).

The lighter version still includes the 4.3″ LCD and UMD, but instead it is 33% lighter and 19% slimmer. Game loading time and battery life have also been improved. The only additional feature here is a video output where you can just plug into any television (preferably a 40″ LCD TV) and play instead of using the small 4.3″screen of the PSP.

» Images courtesy of Engadget
» Source: Sony’s new PSP is slimmer, includes video output
» Engadget’s PSP 1.5 Gallery

Die Hard 4.0
Caught this movie on Saturday. It was 150 minutes long and the movie was not that bad, slightly above average, as expected, it was an action packed film with actions almost through the whole movie. Maggie Q only lasted 1/2 way through the show maybe since she is an Asian and this is an American flim. LOL

Pasta De Waraku
Located at 2nd level in the newest shopping center in Singapore, The Central, Pasta De Waraku serves Japanese Pasta and it is by far the best pasta I have eaten and prices there are very reasonable, the price ranges between $12.80 and $16.80.

Pete’s Place
Celebrated my mom’s birthday at Pete’s Place. It is located at the basement in Hyatt Hotel. Pete’s Place serves Italian food and they have a very good buffet spread. This is the 3rd time I have been to there, prices for weekend lunch is about $45 per head and just by eating a single dish from the spread, is enough to fill your stomach.

CakePHP
I have been coding an in-house billing system for Frro.net for the past week and I am using CakePHP to do it. It is my first time using CakePHP and I am quite impressed by it. No wonder it is called “The Rapid Development Framework for PHP”. As a first timer to CakePHP, I am able to pick up things quite fast. When I first started coding, I am not really comfortable with it because I spend more time finding out how to do some stuff rather than coding. But as time goes by, I am more familiar with it and coding had never been easier as CakePHP will do most of your work.

David aka Zeus, Junyang and I have revived Frozened and now we are known as Frro.

Do check out our web hosting plans. We have already ordered our own server from Dell and we will be providing VPS solutions soon.

Thank you =)

Transformers
I am not really a fan of Transformers Cartoon or rather I did not watch much Transformers when I was young. But I love Transformers the movie, it is the best movie I had watched since Lord Of The Rings. The CG was fantastic, the storyline was good, the action was almost throughout the 140 minutes long movie. 2 thumbs up. Can’t wait for part 2 and 3.

iPhone
My uncle who is working in LA has a taste of iPhone and this is what he wrote to me. Just to share it with you guys

» They sold 525,000 phones since Apple launched on June 29, 2007 at 6:00 pm.
» I tried the phone and it’s quite impressive except the price US$499 for 42 GB and US$599 for 8GB.
» Everything is touchscreen and it’s visual display is beautiful just like a mini laptop computer.
» The cons is it gets heated up quickly after pro-longed use and gets hot and never very ergonomic to your hand. Speaker phone not great but ok in terms of sound level.
» A lot of people said it’s better to wait for the next generation because they probably will fine tune it. It’s not always good to buy a first generation gadgets because they bound to have little problems. But I must say, it’s pretty impressive

Premix/Remix 2007
Here are some more pictures from Premix/Remix 2007 taken by Nic and Leon.

Nokia N95 8Gb Edition
According to Just Another Mobile Phone Blog, Nokia N95 8Gb Edition was discovered within some text in the XML file on the Nokia site.

EDIT: Totally false:

ok people, it really is time to forget this thread, There is NO N95-8GB hard drive handset, Nokia Wont be doing this 100%, Its is another model in the work running under the n95 software profiles, UAPROF Developers have renamed the profile to keep to device name secret! So lets all still talk about N95 because its not going to change in spec! ok

Samsung K3
I have the Samsung K3 with me for about 1 week and here are some pros/cons I have discovered.

Pros
» Sound equalizer is a very good feature to have
» Sound quality is definitely better than iPod
» User interface is some what similar to iPod
» It is as thin/small as iPod Nano
» Uses drag and drop via Windows Explorer instead of some crappy applications *cough* iTunes *cough* SonicStage.

Cons
» Songs are listed by file names instead of by artists/albums/songs
» I think the headphone wire is a little to long for comfort.
» For some reasons, the file browser does not detect pictures or text files whereas when I use the main menu to access them I am able to do so.
» OLED screen not as sharp but power saving

Note: I have not tested the battery life yet.

Remix 07 is an event organized by Microsoft for Web Developers, Web Designers and Web Business. It is held at The Arts House @ The Old Parliament. It is a 1 day only event which is held yesterday (Friday, 29 June 2007).

I received an invitation from Nic Fillingham from Microsoft Asia Pacific to attend both the Premix 07 and Remix 07. I am really grateful to him for getting me the tickets for Remix 07 for free as it is a paid event and has been sold out quite early.

Premix 07
This is a bloggers event held the night before Remix 07. It is held at Geek Terminal which is located at 55 Market Street (Ex Keppel TatLee Bank HQ).

I met Estee from The Digital movement a group (I think that should be the right word to use) which is into Web 2.0. I am so looking forward to going to this type of events.

I met Leon Brown also from Microsoft Asia Pacific. He is a funny guy =D

Anyway back to topic, the Premix 07 is like a preview of Remix 07 which feature 2 speakers like:

Beau Ambur: CEO from Metalliq which demonstrated on what Microsoft Silverlight can do and that really took my breath away when he showed us Top Banana Silverlight Application where you can edit video on the fly and on the web using just by using your web browser.

Lee Brimelow: Sr Design Technologist from Frog Design showed us a couple of applications done using Windows Presentation Format (WPF). Imagine frameless applications with 3D that does not lag your computer and of course animations. That also took my breath away.

I won myself a XBOX360 game. But the best thing is that I do not have an XBOX 360!!!

The Minestrone soup from the buffet was good

Premix Stage

Leon Brown & I @ Premix

Nic Fillingham & I @ Premix

Remix 07
Conference started at 8.30am and I was there early but Nic was even earlier. I met Lucian Teo who was the Head of Web Management from MOE who was also from Web Standards Group Singapore. I thought it is hard to find people which is also into Web Standards in Singapore, but that proved me wrong. LOL.

The conference was split into 3 tracks mainly Web Designers, Web Developers and Web Business. I attended the Web Developers session and they mainly thought about Silverlight 1.0 beta, Silverlight 1.1 alpha , ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET Futures, Expression, Visual Studio 2008 “Orcas”.

I was so amazed by ASP.NET and the amount of code needed to produced the same thing on PHP is like 10:1 or even more. But I have to admit that I hate it when developing websites becomes so easy as it was never easy for us as we coded every single line through notepad instead of an IDE where you just press tab and the IDE knows exactly what you want and fill the remaining line for you.

I was more interested in Silverlight than ASP.NET because I think it is more relevant to PHP (that is what I do). All i have to do is to include a silverlight.js which is around 16kb (I think it should be uncompressed), and have another Javascript to init the silverlight object and ensure that my silverlight object reference to the .xaml file correctly and I am good to go. I am really amazed on what the little XAML file can do. You can have gradient and animations inside it and best of all it is all text. Imagine that.

I hope they will have it again next year! It was excellent and really an eye opener. I am very impressed by the talents they have at Microsoft.

Remix Stage

My Badge

I have added some pictures from Remix07 to my galley: Remix07 @ The Art House

I think you can read more about Remix07 at:
» Nic’s Blog
» Web Standards Group Singapore’s Blog
» Peter Du’s Blog
» Ong Jiin Joo’s Blog

If you guys blog about Remix07, feel free to post in my comments so that I can add it here.

I have changed the width of this site from 600px to 800px.

Back in 2003 when I designed this layout, 800×600 is still quite the normal resolution for most computers so in order to make this site layout compatible with 800px in width, I chose 600px as the width.

Come 4 years later, where LCD became cheaper and cheaper and the native resolution for a 15″ LCD is 1024×768, I have decided to change the width to 800px, so that i can incorporate some pictures into the post as I think a post with all text will makes it looks pretty dull and furthermore it is a multimedia era.

But I will be changing to a new layout soon, once i can get the design senses in me to design the header and some free time to port over the content.

I will be starting off by posting some Microsoft Remix 2007 event photos in the next blog post.

Kindly do a force refresh on this site by holding Shift and pressing F5.

Thai Glico Dinner
Had the annual Thai Glico Dinner at Wan Hao: Chinese Restaurant which is located at Marriott Hotel. The boss seems to like Wan Hao a lot and I think this is the 4th of 5th consecutive times we have eaten there. A $1000 per table (they always booked 2 tables) dinner and free flow of whatever drinks you like is just too good to resist. Food is more than great, it is excellent. In regards to pricing, it is very expensive =(

Samsung YP-K3
I want to thank Kelvin Lee, Delicia Tan from Edelman and Serene Chan from Samsung for the great lunch at Carnivore and of course the sponsored Samsung YP-K3 MP3 Player. Thank you guys so much! I will feedback you guys about the MP3 player and help spread the word. See you all soon at WCG this August.

All the hype about iPhone is going to end soon when it officially launch in US on Friday 29th July 2007. My brother is very keen on the phone, while I am not even interested in buying one.

Here are some reasons why iPhone will suck:

» The mobile version of OS X or whatever it is the iPhone runs takes up 700MB of the device’s capacity. Damn son!
» There’s no way to cut, copy, or paste text! WHOA! Big, big mistake.
» No A2DP support. That, friends, is such a huge bummer right there.
» Sorry, music can’t be used as a ringtone — even if it’s just a raw MP3. No additional ringtones will be sold at launch.
» On a PC the iPhone syncs with Outlook for calendars AND addresses! Noice.
» t supports Exchange in some capacity, according to Walt, but he doesn’t exactly say how.
» Pogue again confirms document file reading — but not editing — for PDF, Word, and Excel (only).
» Adobe Flash support is officially out. It’s just not in the browser. Neither is there any other kind of embedded video support. Sorry everybody, that’s that.
» It will take snaps, but won’t record video. How can Apple love YouTube as much as it does and not realize cellphone-shot movies make up a sizeable chunk of the crazy crap you find on there?
» Oh, and no MMS. And sorry, no voice dialing, either.
» Contact groups can’t be emailed as contact lists.
» Apple sez between 300-400 charges the iPhone will lose battery capacity — you’ll send it in and get the cell replaced for a fee. Meh. We knew this would be the case, but still, meh.
» Apple can (and supposedly will) be rolling out periodic updates — no surprise there.
» Battery life is, somehow, almost as mind-blowingly good as Apple claims for calls, music, and movies.
» As we suspected, users are prompted with lists of WiFi networks if you’re not nearby a trusted hotspot. We’ve seen this on other phones, and we’re afraid this would get friggin annoying.
» It’s said to be very scratch resistant. The facade both front and rear apparently just doesn’t pick up marring like regular iPods do.
» Voice quality is said to be good — not great.

Source: iPhone facts from the first reviews

Even the features of the cheaper/cheapest Nokia/Sony Ericsson/Samsung phones can win most of the features of an iPhone, what iPhone has over other phones is just the coolness factor. But then again, how often is your mobile phone in your hands compared to being in your bag or pocket?

Surf’s Up
Caught this show out of a sudden today at GV Marina. The show was quite boring, but the CG is good, especially the water effects and animations. Respect goes out to all the CG artists.

WP-DownloadManager
If anyone of you is wondering what plugin/script I am using for my Downloads Page, it is called WP-DownloadManager (I just named it) and it is available for download. This WordPress plugin is still in beta stages.

For more information, check out WP-DownloadManager 1.00 Beta.

Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer
Caught this movie last Sunday at GV VivoCity, it was a 12:00pm show, been a long time since I caught a afternoon show, and they were LOTS of kids in the cinema and as usual with kids come noises, but when the show starts, they kept quiet, looks like their parents did their job well.

The show was average, storyline does not follow the comics and the special effects was disappointing. I will not elaborate much as I afraid I will be the spoiler.

Communicasia 2007
Went to Communicasia 2007 today to take a look at handphones. Sony Ericsson announce several new handphones on the 14th June 2007 and all the new handphones can be found there. I played around with K850i and W960i and I am quite disappointed with both of them.

K850i - The phone is thick and it lags, maybe primary due to lots of animations being added to the phone. The media gallery is revamped to make it look like PSP interface. But it lags when scrolling through and selecting media objects. It took me quite a while to find out where are the select, menu and cancel buttons because the buttons are not there! Instead these 3 top buttons are touch screen and there is only a thin white bar representing the area where I am suppose to touch! Is either I am noob of the UI failed for first time users of the phone. Nevertheless, the camera is the best thing about this phone, clear, crisp and sharp. Not much significant updates from K 800i/K810i besides the stuff mentioned above.

W960i - I was impressed by the thickness of this phone, it is very thin, I think the K850i is twice the thickness of this phone. I am not used to this UI either maybe because it is using UIQ. The stylus for this phone is going to be a very negative point because it is made of some cheap plastic which I think breaks easier and when you hold it, you can feel the plastic is bending. The keypad provided is pretty useless besides using it to call and sms. All the menu selection have to be done by touching the screen. Nevertheless the thickness and the internal 8GB memory for this phone is a plus point.

LG Shine/ Samsung - Tried some phones from LG and Samsung, but I can’t remember the model number as I am not really into LG and Samsung, I am more of a Nokia/Sony Ericsson person. Basically the only thing I don’t like about LG shine is the scroll button because it looks flimsy.