FoxTwo's Ramblings

My New Toys

2009-07-05T21:48:00.002+08:00

If you stop and take a minute to think about it, there was a shitload of things happening last week. Most obvious, is of course, the death of Michael Jackson, and a lesser known death - Farrah Fawcett.

Man, 2 of my childhood stars, dead. I'm gettin' old.

Don't worry, this entry won't be talking about them. There's enough ruckus in the Internet about those 2.

Instead, it's about my new toys. First of all, HP had a mini-roadshow thing at my company, and had this incredible offer on a 21 inch widescreen monitor at only $199. I fought my inner devils, trying not to spend money, but in the end, I lost. I forked out $199 and got the monitor - HP 2159m Widescreen.

When I got it all set up, I was surprised to realise that it had built-in speakers. I plugged the cable in and tried out the speakers - they ain't too shabby either! Almost as good as the desktop ones I have. The only reason why I'm not using the built-in speakers full-time is due to the lack of bass. Since I play games, explosions and gunfire won't feel as "frantic" with weak bass coming from the monitor.

The second reason is that the stereo separation isn't wide enough - left and right speakers sound like coming directly in front of me from the monitor.

HOWEVER, should my desktop speakers ever die on me (hah!), I'd have no problems plugging the monitor straight to the soundcard, and probably hold off buying new speakers till a pair of good ones come along.

The first thing I had to do when I got going with the new monitor was - to increase my mouse acceleration. I couldn't reach the sides of the screen with the old settings *grin*. Yeah, the new monitor had a resolution of 1920x1080, heaps higher than the old 1280x1024 - 700 pixels more to traverse with the same wrist-flick.

The next thing I noticed with this monitor is that now, my games look blocky on their previous settings of 1280x1024 (which was the max on my older LCD monitor). I finally settled on 1280x720 instead of going higher, because my current graphics card will start to stutter. *sigh*. I should have gotten the ATI 4850 instead. No I will not get a new graphics card, this one still works fine. I just have to set the resolution to 1280x720 and things will be pretty smooth most times.

My second new toy is a 1 Terabyte harddisk. Yes, that's 1,000 Gigabytes. 4 times bigger than a 250GB drive. Yeah I was running out of space all the time on my old 250GB drive. Yes I know, PC Show was just here in June. No I didn't go squeeze with the rest of Singapore. Besides, prices can't be that much lower in PC Show than in Sim Lim, and I don't mind paying $5 more to avoid the crowds.

So, with the new disk, I moved all my data and games out to the new 1TB drive, and re-partitioned the old 250GB drive into 2 equal 125GB partitions - 1 for OS, and 1 for "temp files". You know, those junk you download and for the internet cache.

Yeah, this is basically what I've been doing the past week - just mucking around with new hardware.

Is Microsoft Finally Losing The Browser Wars?

2009-06-19T11:40:00.004+08:00

Image via Wikipedia

I was amused this morning, when I came across this website. In summary, Microsoft is giving away money to get people to use Internet Explorer 8.

Why amused? Because for all their dirty underhanded tactics, they are still losing ground. Back in 1995 when they first introduced Internet Explorer on Windows 95, the king of browsers back then was Netscape Navigator. Microsoft tried to de-throne it through forced-bundling of IE with the OS, through strong-arm tactics of resellers and hardware manufacturers. Many class action suits have been filed against them. I don't need to go into details since the history can be found on the Internet.

Microsoft also fought a war on the web itself - making ActiveX pages, hoping to attract users since ActiveX was more "interactive" and "engaging" at the time. In today's world, Flash and Java have already unseated ActiveX. There's hardly any non-Microsoft websites using ActiveX nowadays.

Microsoft tried again with "Silverlight", to go head to head with Java and Flash on the Interactive Content arena. Apparently they still lost, since I have hardly heard of anyone, tech guys included, who are won over by it.

So now, we finally have them making a series of web pages that DENY all other browsers except Internet Explorer 8 to view it, in the form of this contest.

Now, I don't want to go into the morality of this move, but personally, I think that Microsoft has made a bad call - you can't simply deny a group of people access to your content just because they do not use what you want them to use. If you want to practice this kind of restrictions, an INTRANET would be the appropriate place, but not out here on the INTERnet. Then again, that's just my opinion.

Somehow this smacks of the Browser Wars of the 90's, brewing again. Except this time I think perhaps Microsoft might actually lose. Back in the 90's, there weren't many choices for browsers. Users had no idea how and where to go to get one. Microsoft conveniently provided them with one. The only reason IE rose to prominence was the convenience of its availability.

Users then started to use the freely provided IE to download a different browser of their choice (be it FireFox, Opera, Safari etc) and stopped using IE. Microsoft recognised that their strong-arm tactics of forcing IE onto desktops was had in fact, backfired.

Back in the 90s we had a slew of web pages "best viewed in Internet Explorer". Those pages would use many IE-specific code and only IE could view those pages correctly. The intention was to "support" IE, and "encourage" people to use IE. Remember what happened next? There was an outcry, and the pages were made compatible with industry-standard code.

This "contest" is just a different way of doing the same thing as was done back in the 90s. Will it work this time around? It may. I personally don't think so. A person might switch to IE for now, to attempt to get the US$10,000. If he failed, he would probably switch back to whatever he was using.

Personally, I have never used IE on a regular basis. It's sitting there on my desktop but I don't click on it. My browser of choice has always been a competitor - Netscape Navigator in the 90s, and FireFox in 2000s. If so inclined, I might just click on IE, just for the sole purpose of trying my luck for the contest. Whether I win or not, I can guarantee you I'd be back on Firefox once this is all over.

If I were so inclined.

But I'm not :)

The best summary I can think of, is the video below. It shows what users perceive the Internet as, today. It's no longer "Firefox", or "Internet Explorer" or "Safari". The software used by the user today is, I guess, no longer important.

Bad Experiences With Banks

2009-06-02T16:11:00.005+08:00

How did this post originate? Well there was a plurk thread here and then people were curious why I was so adamant about not supporting the particular bank mentioned.

These are 2 long stories, so be prepared if you are kaypoh enough to want to know more.

Bad Experience 1 - Standard Chartered Bank

Years ago, I was using Standard Chartered for personal credit as well as credit card facilities. They have a weird billing cycle - 22nd of each month. At the time, I was working at a company where the payday was 25th of every month. Due to the efficiency of Standard Chartered's banking systems, I was slapped with a late charge for payment by the time I make a transfer payment via Internet banking, and for the payment to clear by around 27th or 28th of the month.

After speaking to them numerous times about just moving the date forward a couple of days so I won't be penalised with a late charge, one particular officer told me that the best way was to go down PERSONALLY to the counter EVERY MONTH to make payments. Alternatively I could call in every month to have them waive the late charge.

Where is the logic of that? The whole point of us having Internet banking is so that we can pay bills and do our finances without having to rush to be stuck in a queue for hours!

Even going up the chain to the supervisor and department head made no difference. Everyone was apologetic but said the date had to stay at 22nd due to system limitations, and they would bill me a late charge by 25th automatically if payment is not received by then.

Eventually when Standard Chartered refused to budge, I canceled all accounts with them and swore never to use them again. Yes, since then I have never entertained a single call about a Standard Chartered promotion.

Bad Experience 2 - OCBC Bank

This one is more recent, as recent as May 2009. This one is indeed a long story.

Many years ago, I had a personal credit account with Keppel-Tat Lee Bank. They got bought eventually by OCBC, and thus my account just got "absorbed" by OCBC. Hence, I am clarifying I did not choose them on my own.

This account was to be my "emergency funds" account, for times when I needed extra cash really bad. For years this was a "dormant account" and I paid the annual fee of $60 without complaints to keep it alive.

This "emergency" really did come, around May 2008. A family situation called for funds, which I took from this credit line, being the sole purpose of its existence. When the crisis was over, I made full payment, over the counter, at Raffles Place branch, on 29th Aug 2008.

Now, as usual, I expected that when I pay in full, the account will be $0 owing to the bank. Hence I never bothered to check the monthly "statements" since it's always been $0 for the past like 6 or 7 years when I have never used it.

So, I was surprised to receive a call from OCBC in December 2008, about owing them over $130 in this account still. After I had explained that I paid in full, eventually the customer service officer said that she would waive all the penalties and fees, if I made a payment of $10.93 by 5pm that very same day via AXS, to settle the "original amount owing". I did that. A couple of days later I called the OCBC hotline to reconfirm the account was showing $0 owing to the bank.

Again, since the account was $0, I never bothered to check the statements from OCBC.

A rude shock awaited me in Feb or early March 2009. Another call came from OCBC, telling me I still owed them $175! Again, after explanations, the officer said he would waive all other charges if I made a payment of $70. I did that.

By this time, I was a little fed up, and called the OCBC Hotline again and asked why they kept charging me for money I never borrowed. I was told the account was a "daily interest" one, and that as long as there was a "leftover amount" in the account, the minimum amount of $5 finance charge would be levied. Hence my $175 was due to a $5 "fee" being laid on a couple of cents leftover from December's $10.93 interest, before payment. And since I never checked the statements, they levied late charges, and interest charges on the late charges, and so on and it snowballed to $175.

So I decided enough was enough, and I canceled the account on March 30, a Monday. Before I did that, I called the hotline up again at 11.29am, and reconfirmed once and for all, the account was showing $0 outstanding owing to the bank. I was assured that it was.

I headed to Ang Mo Kio Hub branch during lunch, and got into queue. When it was my turn, it was 12.18pm. The counter girl who processed my cancellation request told me I still had $1.07 outstanding, owed to the bank. At this point I was already more than slightly miffed. I told her that just 45 mins ago, they told me it was $0. Where did the $1.07 come from?

The girl disappeared into the offices behind for about 10 minutes, and appeared later and told me she would proceed to close the account, and that the $1.07 would be waived. Yes they should, because if they told me to pay it, I'd refuse to.

Anyway, I thought that once I had cancelled the account, that was the end of that.

Sometime in April, again I got a call from OCBC. This time, it was the "Retentions Department" that was calling me, attempting to dissuade me from canceling. In other words, according to their system, my account was still ACTIVE.

I told them of my frustrations at not being able to pay up in full and zero the account, they said they would investigate and call me back.

This happened 2 or 3 more times from April to May 2009.

Take note, during all this time, my account was still "active" and hence, being slapped with a $5 on the $1.07 they were supposed to "waive" but never did, and $40 for "late charges" on the non-payment of the $1.07 +$5+interest. Remember to double this amount, for the months of April and May which they spent trying to persuade me to stay.

At one of the final few conversation with the Retentions Officer, she happened to mumble that she would "waive" the outstanding charges on my account if I decided to stay with them, to which I interjected - "See? I closed it in March, your counter girl said you will waive the $1.07, and yet now you tell me I have amounts outstanding?"

Again, she would "investigate and call back".

At the final conversation around beginning of May with yet another Retentions Officer, she assured me the account was finally showing $0 owed, and persuaded me to retain my account. After much persuasion, I finally relented, with a condition - if I checked the following month's bill and if it said I owe them any amount, I would NOT be paying for it. She agreed, gave me her name and office number and invited me to contact her should this happen.

Again, I thought that was the end of the whole incident. Little did I know one more surprise was to await me 2 weeks later.

I got yet another call from OCBC, and this time the officer told me "Sir, I am sorry to inform you that your application for personal credit has been rejected".

I was laughing. Rejected? For keeping my account active?

I sure as hell didn't "apply" for it. They spent 2 months persuading me to stay! Eventually when I said YES, they REJECTED me! It's really hilarious, since this achieved the same goal I had on 30 March when I went to close the account in the first place!

I told the officer it was ok, and I was glad they did. That definitely ended my frustrating saga with OCBC bank, which dragged on for MONTHS.

If I didn't know better, they were acting like kids.. I cannot be the one to reject them, they must get in the last word and reject me.

Guess what, OCBC? I don't really care, as long as you don't get any more of my money through your subterfuge charges.

The Difference Between DVD+R and DVD-R

2009-05-23T19:04:00.002+08:00

Recently I have been testing out different burning software, and in the process I burnt a few video to DVDs, both as video files on a data disk, as well as making a DVD-Video disk playable in DVD players.

What I have come to realise is that, there is a fundamental difference between the 2 formats - DVD+R and DVD-R, when it comes to producing a DVD-Video disk (those that you can play on a DVD player).

For the most part, and for most uses, there is functionally no difference between the 2 formats.

However, on my BENQ 1670 drive, the formats made a big difference when burning a DVD-Video disk. Those that are burnt on a DVD+R disk, even at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x speed, does not play well on my DVD player. Midway through a movie, it would start to stall, and skip minutes of the movie due to the stalling. Sometimes it would introduce visual artifacts onto the screen. This made me worry that I might have a dirty lens and I cleaned it. It didn't help

However on a DVD-R disk, the video plays smooth, even at 16x burn speed. You can bet I was surprised, since functionally, there should be NO DIFFRENCE to an end-user.

Looking up tech websites, it apparently confirmed whatI thought, because it is supposed to be 100% compatible to DVD players!

I have always used Imation disks, both -R and +Rs, and they have always given me 100% reliability in terms of data storage. However when it comes to video disks, apparently -R's work better than +R's.

Yes my DVD player is a newer one, bought in 2006 or so. Yes I know +R disks don't work in older players. Mine is supposed to.

Since I don't want to have to keep 2 different formats around, I guess from now on I will only be buying -R disks, since they work for everything that I want to do.

Great Freeware DVD Burning Software

2009-05-18T22:57:00.000+08:00

**Warning - Long post ahead, and rather techie in some parts.**

Ok I know how the title of this post must sound like, but trust me, this is not an advertisement for any of the products that I will mention later.

One fine day, I just sat back and had a thought. This was kind of triggered by the fact that Vista now sprinkles "Burn to DVD" options liberally throughout their windows. Open Explorer up and see a list of files, and you can see the option to "Burn to DVD". In fact, there's a "Windows DVD Maker" (to create DVD-Video), built right into Vista!

So I was thinking, do specialised burning software like Roxio and Nero still have a place on your harddisk? The short answer is - YES. Simple reason - Vista only burns in UDF format. There are still times you will need ISO9660 format. Case in point - bootable CD/DVD. You can't make a boot disk off of a UDF disk. Just do right-click with an RW disk in your drive, and see the formatting options - everything's in UDF.

The only exception is of course, "Windows DVD Maker", which burns in DVD-Video format, ie ISO9660 Mode 1. However, the wizard is very linear and you can only burn DVD-Video from it, nothing else.

As I was thinking, I was asking myself too - are the free alternatives any good now? A few years ago, the free alternatives were nowhere near as good as Roxio or Nero were. However, the story is different now.

As a typical user, what do you use a burning software for? Burn data, burn music, burn a video disk here and there, and maybe, just maybe, create a bootable recovery disk. All these tasks can now be done with freeware alternatives, and you don't need to rely on the big-name burners anymore.

So, I sat myself down one weekend, and went through every freeware CD/DVD burner I could lay my hands on, and tested them out. My criteria for testing were:

Create a multisession data disk
Create a single-session data disk (Disk-At-Once)
Create a video disk - DVD-Video, VCD, Super VCD
Create a bootable disk
Burn an ISO/Bin/Cue image

In my experience, I use these 5 functions most of the time, out of all other functions the software might offer. So, if a freeware can satisfy these 5 criterias, I'm sold. Um, yeah I don't burn music CDs. I listen to MP3's, and I have them stored on my CDs as data disks.

I also don't have a Blu-Ray drive, so I didn't test this part of their functions. All software I tried below are supposed to be able to burn Blu-Ray disks as well.

Burnaware Free

First up, I tried Burnaware Free. It was good, had almost everything I wanted. It does NOT burn VCD nor Super VCD. It is also unable to create an ISO image from a disk. However it does everything else pretty well.

To create a boot CD/DVD, I had to grab an .IMG file from All Boot Disks and save it somewhere on my hard disk. After all, my current PC no longer has a floppy drive, and I doubt my floppy disks are still readable after all these years even if I had one. Also, I thought the way to create a boot disk was pretty clunky. I had to go into options and point to the IMG file, before I start to burn the disk with other utilities I might want.

What I liked about Burnaware is that it shows you the actual write speed during the burn. Yes, you might set the burn speed to 16x, but it will tell you the current write speed is 6.7x, or 9.1x etc during the burn, second by second. As an aside, even thought my drive is supposed to be able to burn at 16x, it topped out around 14x or so. Never seen it come closer than that to 16x.

CDBurner XP

I saw the number of awards it had on the homepage, and was impressed. I thought it would be a no-brainer that I would probably end up keeping this one.

However, I was sorely mistaken. It does not support any form of video disk output at all. Yes it has a "DVD-Video layout", but it didn't seem to work. I even fiddled with the format, trying ISO9660, ISO9660+Joliet etc, but every time the disk comes out, it does not play on my player.

Upon failing this portion, I stopped testing and uninstalled this.

Infra Recorder

Infra Recorder, at first glance, appeared very impressive. The video above shows you the cool part if you're running Vista and using the Aero skin - there's smoke wafting out from the window to show you that it's burning a disk.

However, cosmetics aside, I am afraid this is a disappointment to me. For one thing, when I first tried to erase an RW disk, and selected QUICK FORMAT, it somehow did a full reformat and took like 15 mins to do so. Nevermind, I thought. I would try to burn stuff and test it.

Second disappointment - no matter whether I stuck an empty RW disk into the drive or not, it would ALWAYS prompt me saying that the disk was not empty and asked whether I wanted to erase it before I burn.

Next, the "finalize" option here is known as "fixate", so it might throw you off a bit if you can't locate the finalize option. Also, some people might get thrown off, but it ALWAYS builds an image (ISO?) of the disk to be burned on the harddisk first, before it actually burns anything to your actual disk. You can avoid this by ticking the "On The Fly" option before you burn.

Third disappointment - when I tried to burn a bootable disk, it didn't work. The burn would complete successfully, but when rebooting, the system would boot halfway and keep telling me the disk was unreadable. This was regardless of which emulation I chose. If I chose "none", the PC just hung and stopped working during the POST boot up, right when it was reading the disk. Again, like Burnaware, I had to go to Project Properties to add the boot IMG file in before I burn, which I thought was not intuitive.

I was so hoping that I would keep Infra Recorder, because it was an open-source project. However, it does appear that it needs more work.

Starburn

The "black horse" in this line up has got to be Starburn. I was half-expecting to be disappointed, but I was pleasantly surprised.

For one thing it met ALL my criterias, and then some! Like Nero, during the burn dialogs, it would ask if you wanted to make this disk bootable, and all you had to do was supply the path to the boot IMG file. All other settings would be set for you automatically. No need to guess emulation or burn format.

If you wanted to burn SVCD or other formats, the wizard handles it all, much like Nero. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is the "freeware version of Nero".

Starburn also comes with a neat feature - it is also able to create a virtual drive, so that you can mount an ISO image without burning it to disk first!

There's only 1 bug which I found so far though - during the burn dialog for a DVD-Video, I changed the disk label. However, after the burn, the label defaulted to "STARBURN", and it's not a show-stopper.

What I didn't like about Starburn, were:

Clicking the "x" in the corner just minimizes to System Tray, not exit the program
No visual cues on your recorder buffer
No visual feedback on burning speed
Copying a disk is 2 step - grab an image to harddisk, then burn this image to a disk.

Conclusion

After a whole day of testing and burning RW disks as well as normal disks, it seemed that Starburn is the clear winner. It's now the only burning software sitting on my PC, and compared to Roxio or Nero, it's much smaller - 1/10th the size of their big-name counterparts.

If you find Starburn too daunting, have no fear! Try Burnaware Free. It gets basic jobs done really well.

Star Trek - The Beginning.... AGAIN

2009-05-08T12:34:00.001+08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Spoiler Alert!

This post MAY contain spoilers about the new movie, so if you do not like spoilers, STOP READING NOW!

Thank you.

I just watched this movie at the 7.15pm screening at Orchard Cineleisure last night. As a Trekker, I was waiting with bated breath for the new movie to be released. It has been a few years since the last one, and with an all-new cast, I was curious to see what director JJ Abrams can do with the Trek universe.

What I can say is, after the whole movie was over, we felt a sense of loss. The whole Trek universe has been turned upside down. What we knew as "canon" may no longer be.

Small inconsistencies aside, such as Kirk being in Starfleet after the majority of his crew (including Pavel Chekov, who is only 17 in the movie), the movie had this feeling of "emptiness". No real story other than "The Bad Guy Must Be Stopped!". There is no underlying story to make you go "hmmm" after you walk out of the cinema. The whole movie feels more like Mission Impossible in the 23rd Century.

There are of course, references to canon Trek, like Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test (quite funny actually). Other funny parts - Sulu forgetting to "release the handbrake" (in this case, activating inertial dampeners) before going to warp, Chekov trying to speak a password into the computer and the computer rejecting him due to him pronouncing "V" like "W", a Red Shirt dying (as expected) after jumping onto the drilling platform, and Scotty's (new) cute companion, to name a few.

Actor Karl Uban, who portrays McCoy, did an outstanding job. As my friend said, we recognised him immediately the moment McCoy came on-screen. Same speech patterns, same fears, same everything! Personally, I liked that I finally know how he got his nickname - "Bones". I think Karl Uban might have spent a lot of time watching the old TOS episodes to learn how DeForest Kelley performed as McCoy, and to copy it over to the movie.

And, when he said "I'm a doctor, not a ....", my friend and I were nudging each other and smiling. Yep, that was his signature line.

In stark contrast, we didn't recognise Kirk at all, until the final scene when he finally wore the Captain's uniform. THAT was when he moved and talked like Kirk, the Kirk we knew.

Zachary Quinto, better known as Sylar from Heroes, did an admirable job as Spock. Just enough conflict within him, the human and the Vulcan half. If you've never seen a Vulcan get angry before, Zachary Quinto's Spock will make you think twice before you provoke a Vulcan.

As a Trekker, my eyes light up whenever I see or hear something familiar. The chirp of the communicator, the whine of the transporter, the bridge sounds. They took what was familiar and improved on them. The transporter effects are impressive, with swirls around the entire body as opposed to just a sparkly effect on all Trek episodes and movies before this. The "jump to warp" sequence is breathtaking too, and looks more "logical" on screen this time around. The engine builds up power while the ship is stationary, then it starts to shudder, then an immediate "bang!" and the ship leaps into warp. You really have to see it! Even in warp, the effects are much better than anything before this movie.

Here's something notable - when Spock ("old Spock") appeared on the screen and saw a young James T Kirk, Spock smiled. I have not seen Spock smile since the original pilot back in the 60's. Further along in the movie, Old Spock spoke to Young Spock. That scene was pretty touching, I admit.

As for the story, not much to tell other than as mentioned before - good guys must stop the bad guys. The problem is, in the process, they destroyed the planet Vulcan. Spock is now part of "an endangered species", to quote him from the movie. With the destruction of Vulcan, the majority of what was canon in Trek, is no longer going to happen. The most obvious one is of course, the attempted reunification of Romulus and Vulcan in TNG, and Ambassador Spock was the one facilitating these talks.

Yeah, the whole Trek universe had been turned upside down. What we used to know as Trek, may no longer be. Since Old Spock appears to be "trapped" in this timeline, it is even more reason to believe that the original timeline will probably not be restored, and from here on out, the future is unknown and new.

Hence, the feeling of loss, but also curiosity about what will come next.

Don't get me wrong. The movie is good. It is probably going to earn alot of money at the box office. It's just that the Trek universe we all know, is gone. It's not like other "reboots" like Battlestar Galactica, where they started everything from scratch. This time around, they made it canon - people from the future (original timeline) coming back in time and causing havoc, and at the end of the movie, the timeline is not restored.

Wa Si Teochew Nang!

2009-03-23T11:45:00.002+08:00

Ok here's my take on the recent debacle over what our "Mother Tongue" is supposed to be.

For anyone who still doesn't know, here's what was written in the newspapers:

Foolish to advocate the learning of dialects

I REFER to yesterday’s article by Ms Jalelah Abu Baker (’One generation - that’s all it takes ‘for a language to die”). It mentioned a quote from Dr Ng Bee Chin, acting head of Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies: ‘Although Singaporeans are still multilingual, 40 years ago, we were even more multilingual. Young children are not speaking some of these languages at all any more.’

To keep a language alive, it has to be used regularly. Using one language more frequently means less time for other languages. Hence, the more languages a person learns, the greater the difficulties of retaining them at a high level of fluency.

There are linguistically gifted individuals who can handle multiple languages, but Singapore’s experience over 50 years of implementing the bilingual education policy has shown that most people find it extremely difficult to cope with two languages when they are as diverse as English and Mandarin.

This is why we have discouraged the use of dialects. It interferes with the learning of Mandarin and English. Singaporeans have to master English. It is our common working language and the language which connects us with the world.

We also emphasised the learning of Mandarin, to make it the mother tongue for all Chinese Singaporeans, regardless of their dialect groups. This is the common language of the 1.3 billion people in China. To engage China, overseas Chinese and foreigners are learning Mandarin and not the dialects of the different Chinese provinces.

We have achieved progress with our bilingual education in the past few decades. Many Singaporeans are now fluent in both English and Mandarin. It would be stupid for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin.

That was the reason the Government stopped all dialect programmes on radio and television after 1979. Not to give conflicting signals, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew also stopped making speeches in Hokkien, which he had become fluent in after frequent use since 1961.

Chee Hong Tat
Principal Private Secretary
to the Minister Mentor

I have highlighted 2 portions in bold italics, because I totally disagree with the statement. First of all, dialects do not "interfere" with learning other languages. Personal interests do. If you have no interest in Mandarin, you will NEVER learn it, even if you speak only ONE language. I will illustrate with a personal example.

When I was younger, I was an avid hacker and programmer. I learnt BASIC, and went on to Assembly, Forth, Pascal, C, C++, Java, Javascript, HTML, XML, and a whole slew of computer languages. But, I could never master COBOL. Yes, surprsied eh? COBOL is supposed to be one of the most human-like language of all, and one of the easiest to learn - yet I still suck at it. In fact, I think I just managed to scrape a passing mark in class for that.

Why? Because I didn't like it. If I don't like it, I don't want to learn it.

So, why do you think that English is a stumbling block for the majority of Singaporeans? In my experience, it's because it's too different from Mandarin. The majority of the people think in Chinese (dialects or Mandarin) and translate that into English. That's how Singlish was born. Seriously. In other countries, this would be called "Chinglish", or, Chinese-English.

When they encounter an unfamiliar word in English, they stop. They don't know how it's pronounced, much less what it means. This is the typical way a Chinese-language speaker thinks, because in Chinese, when you encounter an unfamiliar character, there is no way to know how it's pronounced.

In English, however, we have phonetics. If you know the basics of it, you can break a word up into its component vowels and consonants, and pronounce it. Conversely, if you hear a word being spoken but don't recognise it, you can actually spell it out from the way it's pronounced. This is how phonetics work.

But I digress. In my family, before I went to school, we spoke English and Teochew at home, and Malay and English at my grandparents' place. My mom could have spoken Mandarin to us, but she didn't. She thought it was important that we spoke Teochew since we're all "Teochew nang", albeit Peranakan Teochews.

I never learnt Mandarin till I was 7 years old, when it was taught in school. I was doing fine till Primary 6, where I had a very fierce and very strict male Chinese teacher. He made classes intimidating, and thus I lost all interest in it. I scraped by every exam eversince, getting a C6 (or borderline pass) till I was in JC. During the final year, I failed Chinese simply because I was getting left too far behind due to lack of interest in the earlier years, and no teachers ever since had been "outstanding" enough to make learning Mandarin fun.

Now, learning dialects is probably less destructive on Mandarin than on English, simply because written dialects are generally the same as written Mandarin. Seriously. In most common dialects found in Singapore, like Hokkien and Teochew, if you were to write what you said in Hokkien down on paper, someone else can pick this piece of paper up and read it out loud in Mandarin. The only difference is just in pronunciation. Sentence structures are essentially the same.

So, if you're pushing to learn Mandarin, what is the harm to learn a dialect while you're at it? It's just a pronunciation change.

I learnt Hokkien this way actually. Since Hokkien and Teochew are similar, all I needed to remember were the different ways (and tone inflexions) to pronounce a Teochew word, to convert it to Hokkien. For example, "sweet" as in "it tastes sweet" is pronounced as "tiam" in Teochew, but "tee" in Hokkien. Just a slight change. In most cases, Teochew and Hokkien words are pronounced the same way, with just a change of inflexions of certain words.

I learnt Cantonese at 4 years old because my next-door neighbour was a Cantonese, and her kid spoke Cantonese and English, and, she was my playmate. Notice that I learnt it because it was FUN to learn, and I was HAVING FUN while doing it. If there was a Cantonese phrase or word I didn't understand, she would explain it to me in English.

So instead of saying that it's "stupid" to advocate learning dialects, try making learning English and Mandarin fun first.

Or is it "stupid" to have fun in class?

Is The Old Facebook Layout Coming Back?

2009-03-19T13:24:00.001+08:00

During lunch hour today, I was just lazily surfing through the usual websites. One of them is Facebook.

Due to habit, I click refresh to see the latest updates from my friends, on the Home Page. Lo and Behold, what do I see?

Click to enlarge

Yes indeed, it seems that the former Facebook layout is coming back! However, right now it's kind of a hit-and-miss thing. Sometimes when I click refresh, I get the old layout. Other times, the new.

What I can speculate is that perhaps, the Facebook Team is rolling back the changes they made, and they are now synchronising all the servers to update them all. That would explain the randomly alternating between the old and new layouts.

Or perhaps Facebook is experiencing a server or database problem and their engineers are fixing it..

Well I sure hope the old layout is coming back!!

Facebook, Stop Messing With Layouts!

2009-03-16T15:23:00.000+08:00

Image via CrunchBase

First of all, let me just say that I don't normally "hang out" at Facebook. I visit it maybe 3 to 4 times a week, each visit probably lasting no more than 15 mins at most.

Even so, I don't mind it so much when Facebook changed their homepages or layouts to "improve" things. In fact, when other people have been screaming blue murder about the latest changes, all I did was to just "get used to it", and learn how the new layout works.

The one just before the current one is, in my opinion, the best offering they've had so far. I get a running newsfeed of what my friends did, who got tagged in which photos, and so on. In fact I have found a few friends this way - a friend got tagged by another friend, whom I also know. Then I'd send a friend request and we link up.

I also liked how all your invites were in the right sidebar - you can see how many of which types of invites you had.

However, the latest one blows. In fact, I'd say that the latest incarnation of the layout just broke everything. People were just getting used to the "new" layout and then they decided to change it again. Yes, it looks amazingly sparse. Kinda like Twitter in fact. Basically, the majority of what's there on the homepage after you log in is basically just status updates from your friends. That's it. You can't see if they've joined a group, or uploaded a new pic, or commented on a picture. In short, all the stuff that used to be there on this page.

The thing I find most frustrating with the latest layout is that my "Invites Box" went missing (or so I thought). Try as I might, I could not locate my latest slew of useless invites to games I will never play or install. However, that doesn't mean I don't want to see them - there might be an invite to an event or a game I might actually be interested in!

After asking around a bit on Plurk, some friends finally told me where to look for it. I present it in the picture below:

Click image to enlarge

Ok if I didn't show you this picture, would you have noticed that single line I circled in red? You'd be hunting left and right to see where your invite notifications are, wouldn't you? After all, it USED to be on the right sidebar.

There's really too many things dropped in this new layouts. I even tried to fiddle with the newsfeed options, but guess what? I couldn't find it. I remember that it existed before, because I remember the slider bars which I can pic to choose which type of event(s) I wanted to see from which specific friend. I remember sliding them around to "See More Of" and "See Less Of" the various types of events of my friends, to tweak them to my personal preference.

Now, all I see are status updates 90% of the time., which is essentially like Plurk (more than Twitter) because you can comment on the status just like how we chat in Plurk. In fact, if this is what Facebook is trying to emulate, then Plurk is already "there". We're all using it, and Plurk has the advantage of having a scrollable timeline. We just drag the timeline around to see older "status updates". With Facebook we have to click on "older posts" and wait for the page to change.

So, Facebook, stop trying to emulate others. Just be yourself - Facebook. That's why we're here. Otherwise, we might as well be at the website(s) you were trying to emulate.

Quirky Singaporeans - Weird Ministers

2009-02-06T13:03:00.001+08:00

Ok people who know me, know that I generally don't bother about 2 things - politics and religion. One, I have no interest in. The other, I don't believe in. Let's not get into those, eh?

Now, recently, 2 ministers made public statements and actually prompted me to write something here on them. Now, let me just say, generally I have no problem with the government of Singapore. It's only on rare occasions like this that I feel I need to write about the people inside the government.

First off - Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew. He was commenting on the incident of how Yio Chu Kang MP Seng Han Thong was attacked by an irate constituent. An online poll showed that more people were sympathetic to the attacker, ie the unhappy constituent, than for the victim, in this case, MP Seng Han Thong. He noted that many comments were made and most were "unhelpful, a significant number were unkind, a small number were downright outrageous". Then he went on to say "...I do not think the community itself have done enough to rebut some of these unhelpful comments delivered by fellow netizens"

Only one thing comes to mind when I read that - he does not appear to accept that people DO have differing opinions from "the norm", or perhaps in this case, him. Yes of course, the poll showed that more people sympathised with the attacker rather than the victim, and I think he thinks it should be the other way round.

Next, we are not so free to flame forum trolls. If we did, our bosses will think we are not working, and give us more work to do. When we reach home after work, do you think the majority of people will sit down and face the computer? As many people I have worked with in the past have said - "you look at computer all day in office, go home still see more ah? Crazy ah?". Yup, you can discount this bunch of people. Once they go home, they don't even go online.

Another reason why we don't flame them back - like maybe perhaps they MIGHT have a good point?

Besides, any veteran "netizen" would have known not to feed the trolls. All they want is just attention. The more you "debunk" or "denounce" them, the bigger the flames get.

By not feeding the trolls we are already "self-regulating". We have already decided not to help increase the "damage".

Or perhaps Mr Lui considers "self regulation" as "defending a government official". Or perhaps Mr Lui never considered that people are more sympathetic to the attacker simply because the attacker actually deserved the sympathy? Or that the victim, actually had done something wrong (meaning the attacker might actually have a reason)?

I believe the term "self regulation" has been mis-used here. I hold the opinion that self-regulation means we don't do things that are against the law, be it written or unwritten. For example, we don't set up porn sites, we don't distribute pirated software. We don't set up a website to degrade religions or race. We don't libel or slander people on the net. It does not mean we surf forums and defend everything that mentions an MP and an angry online mob.

One last thing - doesn't the government already have people surfing the net to try to defend the government in online forums and such, already?? If not, perhaps it's time they do. If you leave this up to the netizens, they WILL speak their minds (and it's usually the truth) - and if they choose to sympathise with the attacker rather than the victim, that's just how the wind blows. You can't be upset because the majority of the people think the attacker deserves more sympathy than the victim!

Next, Nominated MP Loo Choon Yong and his comment on people not making enough babies even though we are on a 5-day work week.

I believe no one can provide a retort better than this guy here.

Basically, just because we're not making babies doesn't mean you need to overload us with work. What, has it become a "Fuck or Work, choose one" kind of deal now?

What I believe has missed his grasp completely, is that if we do succeed and produce more mouths to feed at home, it is only natural that we will need more $$$. To get more $$$, don't you think some of us will "work harder"? Doesn't this contribute to "productivity"?

Well at least those in the older generation like Mr Loo will think that way. The younger generation know that having multiple sources of income means LESS WORK, MORE MONEY (the basis of every Internet scam). They don't work hard more. They actually work less and get more money.

Perhaps it's time people wake up and realise that "working hard" doesn't always equate to higher productivity. Same as longer time spent in office doesn't mean higher productivity. People are now mobile, and can work anywhere, anytime. Technically we should not even need a 5-day work week anymore, nor even an "office"! When there's really work to be done, people WILL do it. When there's no work to be done (eg no clients), no point forcing them to sit in the office and surf the net.

Speaking of that, might as well cut off Internet. Historically speaking, Internet usage in the office has traditionally been the highest productivity killer than anything else. Facebook, anyone? So, should we work 7 days a week since Internet came to Singapore and productivity has fallen?

Yeah right.

Offline Gmail - What Is The Point?

2009-01-30T12:17:00.000+08:00

Image via CrunchBase

Almost everyone nowadays use a web-based mail service of some sort. Many people don't even know that email can be "downloaded" to their own computers and then read/replied at their own leisure without being online and connected to the Internet in the first place. Mention the word "email" today and many people immediately think of "Hotmail" or "Yahoo" or "Gmail" or whatever. Yes all of these are web-based email services.

In the old days, we wanted to do our mails offline because the cost of Internet connection was high - many places charge by either the amount of data downloaded or the amount of time you spent online. The more you use, the more you pay. Hence, it made sense to download all your mails quickly, reply them offline at leisure, connect again and send your replies quickly.

Compare that to today's age of broadband - everyone's "always on", and it makes very little difference how long they spend online get their email. Many people no longer are on the pay-by-amount-of-data plans. Most ISPs offer "unlimited connections" or close to it.

So, when I came across this article - "Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Offline Gmail", I was wondering, has everything come full circle? Do people now want a way to read their mail offline, again?

Now Gmail is offering an "offline" function to assist people with "spotty network connections". To do that, you need to install a small bit of software from Google to allow it to detect the state of network connection on your computer.

I find this redundant because we already have software that can do the same thing for years upon years. Heck, you may even know it, because one of them is called "Outlook". Yes, Outlook (like most other email software) can download your mail to your PC and let you read and reply at your leisure! Amazing isn't it?

Not only can Outlook do it, so can Thunderbird, or Pegasus, or whatever. Just go to any software library site like CNet's Download.com, Softpedia, or Tucows and do a search on them. You will find a whole slew of them!

If you use IMAP on these email software, you are simulating the web-based experience only via a new GUI - your email software's. Everything you do when on an IMAP connection is real-time, just as if you're on the actual web page.

All these email software will download your mail by using a protocol called POP3. That is the traditional method. This is also the method that Google is mimicking to download a copy to your local PC.

Personally I've always used an email software, even if I may be using a web-based mail service. The advantage is, all my email accounts from the various services are contained within ONE software. For example, in Thunderbird, I can configure a mix of POP3 and IMAP services as I please, depending on how I wanted to get my mails. I am sure it will be the same in Outlook or whatever other modern email software that you do decide to use.

The caveat is - if your primary email service is HOTMAIL, you may have no choice but to use the latest versions of Outlook. Only MS Outlook can download emails from your Hotmail account.

Since this entry is talking about Gmail, you can relax. Google has wisely allowed both POP3 and IMAP protocols to be activated on your account, so you can easily configure an email software to access your Gmail emails via either protocols.

So I'm still puzzled - why's everyone going gaga over this "feature"? I've had it for YEARS :)

Why Do You Throw Up After Drinking Too Much?

2009-01-22T16:23:00.000+08:00

Every drinker knows this. Even non-drinkers have heard about this.

If you drink too much, you throw up.

Question is, why?

Well the video shown here explains it PERFECTLY :)

It's friggin' scary that it's soooo true.. except that usually it's vodka instead of Tequila that went in last...

Bartop Dancing In 2009

2009-01-05T13:40:00.000+08:00

Yay first post!

Hah ok yeah so I'm 5 days late. I've been busy ok?

On New Year's Eve, 31 Dec 2008, I was with Endoh, Xizor, and Xinyun. You can see a pic of the celebration here at xinyun's blog.

I just want to show the video of the whole scene a few mins after the picture taken by xy :)

Heh nice eh?

Let's Talk About Accuracy In Watches

2008-12-12T00:53:00.001+08:00

Image via WikipediaLong long time ago, when man finally made a miniature clock small enough to put into the pocket, the watch industry was created. Through the years, the Swiss made a name for themselves in their craftsmanship in making watches.

Fast forward to modern day, the 21st century.

Now we have watches with tiny pieces of rocks inside it, called "quartz watches". They are supposed to keep very accurate time. Because quartz's (quartzes? quartzi?) need a current to be passed through them to cause them to vibrate and keep time, our watches no longer are just mechanical. Now, they have a power source, and are electrically powered! Witness the advent of Casio, Seiko, Citizen and a whole slew of other non-swiss watchmakers. The quartz truly did revolutionise the industry!

With this spawned a whole breed of humans, who are known as watch fanatics (or "fan" for short). Like any other fans, be it sounds (audiophiles), cars, bikes, planes etc. These people know everything there is to know about their favourite topic.

One particular argument that keeps popping up with watches and fans is the debate about "accuracy". Swiss or Japan? Which is more accurate?

Some people don't mind the watch being off by a few seconds a day. Some people are anal-retentive about their watches being off by even 1 second a week. Yes, even with a quartz, watches DO gain or lose time. Like all things man-made, it's not perfect. A quartz vibrates at a frequency that enables time to be kept more accurately than say, a pendulum, or water drips from a water clock. However, it still isn't "perfect". Perhaps the vibration is off by a few hundred beats a second, and the makers think that these few hundred beats equate to less than a few millionth of a second, so it's "ok" to ignore it.

It's just like 22/7 is a rough approximation of pi. It's close, but not a match.

Personally I don't mind that the watch loses or gains a few seconds a MONTH. However, I do adjust the watches I have every month to sync with atomic time. Why? It's just something I enjoy doing - to correct the time on my watches every month.

Eventually I learned that my Casios are the "least accurate" of all my watches. My oldest Casio G-shock can gain as much as 40 seconds a month. The most accurate was a Victorinox watch given to me by good old SAF to thank me for my years of Reservist training. That watch was only out 1 second every TWO MONTHS. Unfortunately, this particular watch died an early death. I replaced the battery on it one day, and then it died. Getting it fixed would cost me almost $100. I decided to not fix it. I may as well go out there and buy a new watch. If I added up all the costs of replacing all my watch batteries, I'd have spent like $50 every couple of years just to keep all of them running.

Hence, I have decided to stop buying watches that require battery replacements. That meant kinetics or solar powered watches. There's really only 1 brand that does kinetic watches - Seiko. Yes I own one of those. Not really the most accurate - it gains 1 second every 2 days. In other words, it'll be always 15 seconds too fast every month.

(No, an "automatic" is technically not a "kinetic", even if both use the body movements to generate power. An automatic watch is purely mechanical. Gears and springs make it work. A Kinetic watch uses electricity and a quartz crystal to keep time)

As for my solar powered watches - I have a cheap Casio. That one loses 1 second every 3 days. In other words, it's 10 seconds slow every month. Well it's cheap - only $50. What is ironic, is that my $50 Casio is "more accurate" than my $600 Seiko Kinetic (15 seconds fast every month). It also points something out - even if the watch is made by the same maker, it's not a given that it has the same kind of accuracy in every watch that it makes. Note my earlier reference to a Casio G-shock watch that is out 40 seconds a month which I bought way back in 1994 or so.

My Timex is also solar powered, and thus far it's more accurate that any watches I have that is still working. This is only my 2nd week owning it, and so far it's lost 2 seconds. Extrapolating, it will be 4 seconds slow every month. Not bad for a "cheap" $120 watch. But it still hurts to think my $600 watch is not the most "accurate".

Why all these talk about accuracy, especially when it's only mere seconds "off"?

No, it's not because my life is ruled by time down to the last second. It's just the watch geek in me that would like to have bragging rights about the watches I own. Unless someone owns a working atomic watch here in Singapore (such as one of those in the Waveceptor series by Casio), there is no way to automatically adjust the time-keeping function of a watch.

So I guess, "accuracy" is relative. Compared to the early 19th century watches, what we have today are highly accurate. Our watches are just mere seconds "off" every month.

ps: the clocks in your computer is also not accurate. It uses the CPU frequency to regulate time, and thus, computers do not need a quartz crystal. That is why we have clock-sync software to sync your computer time with atomic clocks on the Internet. If you pay attention to your computer clock, you will notice that on some days, it loses more seconds per day than other days. Why? Because different software you run, stresses your CPU differently. Running CPU-intensive apps will slow your computer clock down, because CPU time is taken away from updating the clock.

pps: the clocks on your mobile phones work on the same priciple too - your phone has a CPU, and the time is regulated the same way. Unless your telco is able to send clock-sync signals to your phone, your phone will be "off" every month by a few seconds too.

Great Service From Gain City

2008-12-07T13:08:00.000+08:00

Some time back, I needed to get a new air conditioner unit for my place. As usual, what does a geek do? Yeah surf the net and compare prices and do research. After a while, I have a general price point I wanted, and roughly the type of air conditioner too, although no specific brands have been decided.

So off I went, to Harvey Norman, Best Denki, Courts et al, to check prices and see if there were any promotional items or free gifts, since this is after all, Christmas period.

Courts staff need more training. Seriously. Their service was the most appalling among all the electrical retail stores I have visited. I have already done SOME research, I already knew roughly the kind of air conditioner units I wanted. Yet this promoter or sales person kept pushing me to a "special offer" of "only $2999", because the unit has been discounted from $3600. She kept repeating "You save $600!" and "You get what you pay for" when I said $3K was out of my pricepoint. Besides, it was a System 3, and I wanted a System 2. I don't wanna do up a 3rd room just to "save $600"!

It got so irritating that I almost said "Look, I might save $600 on this if I buy, but if I don't buy I save $3600, understand?". I had already told her I was looking for something in the range of $1500 to $2500 max. No higher. In any case, I finally said "Look, thanks for your time, but apparently Courts does not have anything that I would be interested in" and left.

However the story was vastly different in Gain City. When I entered, I asked to look at something about $1.5K. He showed me some models. When I said I wanted an invertor unit, he looked at me apologetically and said "Sorry sir, but the cheapest invertor unit is about $2000. I am afraid we don't have anything you might want.", which impressed me.

As we talked, the Gain City personnel was honest and very helpful. He laid out the pros and cons of various units, as well as some advice on their maintenance and upkeep. He even calculated "contingency costs", for example, when I wasn't sure if my window could accomodate the compressor unit, or whether I had a spare power box for the aircon.

When I asked, just for the hell of it, for a System 3 unit, he did a quick calculation and showed me the result, and said "if you want to stick to your budget, a System 3 is out".

Eventually, through his helpful and honest opinions and advice, I actually went above my budget and got a unit plus installation plus extended warranty et al, for $2994. Plus, it is a "4-tick" unit as opposed to a "3-tick" one I was ready to buy.

Yeah, I could have spent $3K if I wanted to. I just didn't want to at Courts. As a matter of fact, the Gain City personnel didn't even persuade me to go above my budget at all. All he did was dispense honest advice, and calculated costs to show the customer. He let the customer do all the deciding.

Yeah and that is what I purchased.

My New Timex Solar Dual Tech Watch

2008-11-29T13:53:00.002+08:00

I don't know if you're like me, but I have a pretty wide selection of watches collected from my youth till now. Plenty of Casios, Seikos, Citizens etc. Most of them are Casios though, because when we were going through the army (and reservsist later), the only watches that are "cheap enough" to be throwaway watches are Casios.

Problem is, Casios can last pretty damn long. I still have the original $20 Casio watch I bought when I was a young strapping lad of 19 going into the army. After numerous battery changes through the years, I decided to stop spending money on that watch to change the battery back in 2005 when it ran out. Since then, I've stopped replacing batteries for my watches when they run out, one by one.

So yeah, now I'm left with a drawer full of watches with dead batteries.

Nowadays though, I'm more eco-friendly. I only buy watches that are solar-powered or kinetic powered. In other words, no need for battery changes. Um ok I admit, it's more like I'm lazy to bring the watch in for battery replacements :)

So anyway, currently I own a Seiko Kinetic watch, and a Casio Tough Solar watch (not a G-shock). Both of these are "dress watches", suitable for office. Recently though, I was thinking that I wanted a third watch, for weekend and rough wear. Casio, through the years, have steadily increased their prices till they are no longer the "cheap" and "throwaway" watch brand anymore. Also, the G-Shock range have very limited solar-powered watches in the lineup which I like. Even if I do like the watch, I don't like the price.

Thus I went hunting for the next best alternative - Timex Ironman series. Yes they are the "G-Shock" of the Timex line. Timex have typically been cheaper than Casio, and thus I found what I wanted - a rugged solar-powered weekend rough-wear watch, the Timex Solar Dual Tech T5G7019J. Checking around in Singapore, my jaw dropped at the asking prices - typically in excess of S$250!

Now, converting the RRP of US$110 listed on the Timex webpage, it should cost no more than about S$170 even with a conservative exchange rate. After rummaging through the Internet for abit, I realised that watches can be bought very much cheaper from the Internet, than I could by going to a watch store like City Chain.

I located a US company that sells the model I wanted, for only US$60. Yes, only US$60! Even after adding shipping to it, it was US$80. That means I pay only like S$120 or so. Yup, I went ahead and ordered it. No it wasn't on ebay :) Truth to tell, the people selling them on ebay was asking for more than US$60 for it anyway. So yeah, ebay is not always the cheapest place to buy things.

Amazingly, the watch arrived in only 5 business days. Less than a week! I'm impressed!

Now, being a Casio user for most of my life, owning a Timex watch is similar to suddenly switching from a Nokia to a Sony Ericsson phone. While the buttons and functions might be similar, the way to operate and set the watch is ever-so-slightly different. For example, you need to press-and-hold the button to reset or perform some operations. Also, for the stopwatch function, the start and stop buttons are 2 separate buttons instead of the same button. That threw me off slightly, because I'm so used to pressing the same button for start and stop.

The other thing is that the word "SOLAR" which you can see in the picture, is actually printed on the watch glass, at the 9 o'clock position. That means that if it's 9 o'clock, you can't see the hands, or at least not the hour hand. It's hidden behind that printing. It also means that at any hour and 45 mins, you also can't see the minute hand.

That irritated me slightly. Timex shouldn't have made such a boo-boo on a watch this way. Why have hands when it's going to be obscured by printing?

What I do like about the watch is that when it's being charged (which is nearly all the time), and the battery isn't full, you can see a blinking battery icon, so you know that it's being charged. If it isn't blinking, ie not being charged, it shows the battery power level, like on a mobile phone. This is better than on my Casio, which only shows "Hi, Med, Lo" for the battery power level, and does nothing to indicate when the watch is charging the battery up.

Yeah to charge the watch, just face it to a light source, like an open window, or towards a light bulb.

Coincidentally, the Timex uses the same rechargeable battery as the Casio - ML2016.

I'd probably have to replace the batteries on the watch some time in the future, but I'm thinking it won't be anytime soon. Rechargeable batteries can last for a pretty long time, even decades.

Having A Run Of Bad Luck

2008-11-28T10:04:00.000+08:00

Ok something's definitely not right recently for me.

I seem to be running into problem after problem in my life, and on hindsight, it appears I'm having a streak of bad luck. I can't say it's "poor planning" because all these are beyond my control.

Bad luck #1 - I decided to sign up with Skype for "unlimited phone calls" to Singapore, my caller-ID wouldn't work correctly. After submitting a ticket for assistance, Skype Support is still unable, as yet, to fix this problem, and it's been a month. This is not a big problem, I can still use Skype to call OUT to phones in Singapore. It's just a minor irritation that I know a number of people whom I call, do NOT pick up "Private Numbers" or "Withheld" calls, and I can't blame them completely.

I was like that once, too.

I even have a couple of friends who run phone "firewalls" to bar unknown numbers from calling them. If you're not calling from a number they have in their phonebook, your call automatically gets dropped.

Bad luck #2 - So after running into this problem, I found a better solution - I signed up with pfingo. pfingo offers a free Singapore number, so caller-ID became a non-issue with them. My problem with pfingo however, is very weird. Even I cannot explain it, and I bet the tech support people there are scratching their heads about my problem too. Every so often, quite randomly in fact, incoming calls to my pfingo number will have no sound. So even if I pick up the call and answer it, both me and the caller can't hear anything. I have submitted a ticket for this problem, and pfingo support is still actively working on it.

Bad luck #3 - Recently I purchased an item on the internet, after looking around Singapore and finding exhorbitant prices being asked for that item here as compared to the Internet. After going ahead to purchase it, and getting a confirmation that the item has been shipped, I am unable to track it. Even on the website where I bought it, their system couldn't find the ORDER NUMBER too! Have written to their customer support, but have received no replies yet.

The only "good" thing about this is that my credit card is not charged for the amount yet.

Well, if you want to avoid having bad luck, don't hang around me for the moment. My bad luck might rub off on you!

A New Video Hosting Site - Wegame

2008-11-22T13:14:00.001+08:00

Recently I was "foreceably removed" from a video sharing site, Vimeo. The crime? Nothing more than "uploading gameplay videos". They didn't care that I had non-gameplay videos too on the account.

What that taught me was that I should never stick to just 1 site to host my videos. I had to slowly, and painfully, re-upload all my videos to a new site. Upload speed, as you know, is pathetic on Singapore's broadband plans. 256K, 512K, 1MB at best.

Anyway right now I have hosted my non-gameplay videos at Viddler. However, more importantly, I found a game-oriented site to host my gameplay videos - Wegame. My gaming videos can be seen here.

It's a new site, started only in 2007. The thing I like about it, is that the video quality rivals that of Vimeo, perhaps even better! The only drawback is that it doesn't have a High-Definition format. Also, encoding videos on wegame is really quick. My videos were all converted and ready almost as fast as I could upload them!

In fact I watched my own videos in amazement as I uploaded them - they looked almost as good as the original file I uploaded! Even on Vimeo, I could see some "degrading" when they convert my videos into FLV format for use on the web. However on Wegame, I almost couldn't tell the difference if I didn't have the original video with me. As an aside though, Viddler really sucks at converting my videos. They immediately become all chunky and blocky.

On Wegame, we can upload up to 1GB per file. That beats Vimeo's 500MB per week quota. The downside is, they also have a rule that the video shouldn't be more than 20 minutes long. I have no idea why though - if you encode a video file correctly, even 1 hour can be squeezed into about 400MB without much loss of quality.

The reason why I didn't upload non-gameplay videos there was because I didn't want to take the risk of running afoul of thier TOS. Now, the thing is, Vimeo also never had a rule against gameplay videos, but they changed the rules halfway through and never informed their userbase. I hope Wegame takes note of this and inform their userbase should their rules change mid-way.

Anyway guess I found a new home for hosting my gameplay videos!

Boycott Vimeo!

2008-11-17T11:28:00.000+08:00

Some months ago, I moved my videos from Youtube to Vimeo. At the time, Vimeo was an up-and-coming startup, and it offered some features which I liked. For example, no 10 minute limit, weekly 500MB uploads, and your videos can be in High Definition!

All these made me choose Vimeo over other sites like Viddler or metacafe or veoh.

However, just today, I got a short and terse email from Vimeo:

"Your account has been removed. Reason: Gameplay videos not allowed"

Um wha~~!? I've been uploading gameplay videos since Jan or Feb 2008 and nobody said anything about it. In fact I don't even remember reading anything about their usage policy saying that we can't upload videogame captures! Besides, I distinctly remember seeing other gameplay videos from other people on Vimeo too!

Now, if the rules changed mid-way, shouldn't a site like Vimeo send an email out to all members to tell them to click on ACCEPT on the new Terms Of Service? Well no such email came. No blinking "we updated our terms of service, please read" words appeared on my dashboard or whatever whenever I logged in to upload videos.

In other words, I didn't know.

Also, I don't only have gameplay videos on Vimeo. I have machinimas too (stated on their new terms of use as being allowed) as well as non-gameplay videos like videos of my friends in funny situations.

They removed my account without warning. NONE. Just a short, terse, "your account has been removed" email.

So how does a user take steps to remedy a situation before account removal happens? No chance to even delete/remove them on my own accord to keep my account.

So if you are looking for a video sharing site, do NOT use Vimeo! No, not even if your videos are non-gameplay videos. The way they do things is not .... reasonable.

I guess I'm switching AGAIN... maybe Veoh, maybe Dailymotion. Who knows?

Are Your Mobile Phone Bills Killing You?

2008-11-04T13:27:00.002+08:00

Seriously, are they?

Well as far as I'm concerned, they almost were. Lately my talk times have increased almost 100%. My usual mobile phone plan comes with 300 mins and costs $48.15 a month. However, recently I have been clocking as high as 700 mins a month. For every 60 mins over the "free" bundled minutes, I pay almost $10 (16 cents a min x 60 mins). So, you can roughly guess how much my phone bills were.

Now you might be thinking, 300 mins (which is 5 hours) of talk time should be enough. Not really. If you actually calculate, it means you can only talk for 10 mins a day, for 30 days, before all your minutes are used up. A few months ago, 300 mins was enough for me. Recently though, 300 mins barely lasts me 2 weeks.

Luckily, since I recently got a new mobile phone, the Nokia E51, it is touted as a VOIP-enabled phone. As such I started exploring possibilities that I can leverage VOIP on the phone to cut my costs down.

My current problem is simple - I do not have enough "minutes" in my mobile plan, and I don't want to go up to the next higher plan as that would mean I spend $82 a month instead of $48.15. That's almost $30 more a month, every month.

After hunting around a while, I came upon 2 very potential solutions. One is by Skype, and the other by pfingo (incidentally, pfingo is not a "new startup". It's actually Starhub).

Skype has a subscription mode that seems very suitable to me. I pay US$5.95 (approx S$9) a month, and I get to call a selected country for "free". The word "free" is quoted because the small print says "up to 10,000 mins". They did not give any specifics, so I'm naturally wary. The "selected country" for me of course, is Singapore. Luckily too, that Singapore is in their list of being able to call both MOBILE and LANDLINES for free. This subscription has no "fixed" period. You can subscribe for as little as 1 month, or let Skype continue to charge your credit card every month if you choose to stay with them.

pfingo's offering is slightly different. First off, if you subscribe to pfingo, not only can you call Singapore numbers free (both mobile and landlines), you also get your very own number, free too! In other words, should you use pfingo to call your friend, he/she will see your new pfingo number on his phone instead of "withheld" or "private number". This is of some influence in my decision, as I know some of my friends will refuse outright to pickup any incoming calls that are "withheld" or "private numbers". Why? Because most of the time, these numbers are telemarketers calling to sell you something.

The downside to pfingo's offerings is the higher price per-month ($13 compared to approx $9 for Skype), as well as the minimum period to subscribe is 3 months. Thus, if you are not too sure, like I was, you can't just "try them out" for 1 month. However, if you try them via the usual way - buying $10 of credits and calling out first and deciding if they are good enough, then once you subscribe to pfingo for 3, 6 or 12 months, you can literally have the peace of mind that:

You can call out to Singapore numbers for free for the next 3, 6 or 12 months
You have a number appearing on the other side so that people can actually see who's calling.
If your friend didn't answer your call, ie a missed call, he can actually call you back on that number!

Needless to say, both have solutions for mobile phones too, so that you can use either GPRS or Wifi to make VOIP calls.

Currently I am trying out Skype for a month. I did activate a Caller ID with Skype too, but it doesn't seem to work. Opening a support ticket elicited no response. With pfingo's offering so tempting, it is very tempting to switch over to pfingo.

In a sense it's a lot more convenient for me using VOIP phones since I do not have a desk phone, and if I want to make calls out to vendors I would need to use my mobile phone. Now that I have Skype on my laptop, it's like having a phone with me too! Oh yes, my laptop easily connects with my bluetooh earpiece for my mobile phone, so there's no need to have any extra "headsets".

Conclusion:
$48.15 a month for mobile plan
$9 for Skype's subscription

Total = $57 a month for almost unlimited talktime.

Of course if you have a cheaper mobile plan than mine (ie those with 100 mins), then your costs are lowered significantly too.

You should consider VOIP to supplement your mobile plans, if you have a modern enough phone. You should seriously consider VOIP especially when your phone has WLAN capabilities ("wifi").

The End Of Blogrush

2008-10-30T13:59:00.000+08:00

Back in 2007, a new blog traffic tool appeared on the Internet - Blogrush.

1 year later, I received an email saying that Blogrush is shutting down. That would of course, include the shutdown of Traffic Jam too.

Now, I've written about how mis-named the 2 sites are. Blogrush didn't, it crawled. Traffic Jam wasn't, too. An avalanche of traffic poured in instead. Now, both are shut down.

I wouldn't really say that I miss them though. Blogrush was a nice idea but it didn't work that well. There are a ton of other traffic-exchange sites out there to help you with your blog (and mine). Right now, though, all I am doing is just to remove the Blogrush code from my blog. I'll eventually get around to looking for another traffic-exchange site but not right now.

In any case, I haven't really been updating my blog here anywhere near a "consistent" basis. Lately it's been pretty ad-hoc. In the past I'd update once every couple of days at least. Now, a week can go by before I find time to write something down.

Goodbye Blogrush! It was good having you around!

Happy Birthday To Me!

2008-10-20T10:08:00.000+08:00

Ok ok technically it's not my birthday.

It's the first anniversary of this domain - foxtwo.org. I registered this one year ago at the recommendation of xinyun during a conversation.

Incidentally, today is also xinyun's 1st anniversary of her own domain too.

Happy Birthday To FoxTwo.Org!

*pops champagne*

Starhub Gets My Money, Goodbye Singtel!

2008-10-19T02:02:00.002+08:00

Image by sean dreilinger via Flickr With recent announcements of price increases from Singtel on their fixed line subscriptions, I just had to stop and review the situation. Now, adding 0.1 cent per 30 secs (or 60 secs off peak) is a very very small amount. Tiny, in fact. In total it's just $10 per year, the price of one pack of cigarettes.

Being the lazy-assed bum that I am, I was going to just "leave it alone". It's just $10 more.

However, my recent mobile bills have been climbing too. Part of the increase is due to work. The other part, a more major part, is due to personal stuff. It is also fortunate that I am currently contract-less in the mobile department - I can "jump ship" anytime I wanted to. My contract ran out in May actually, and the only reason I stayed with Singtel is because I've been such a loyal and faithful customer since the 80's (OMG is it 20 years already?!)

Also, suddenly work requirements stipulated that I need to enter several sensitive (and hence, "high security") areas on a frequent basis, and hence phones with cameras are disallowed. Now, I personally think that this is a stupid rule. If I truly had bad intentions, I'd have no problems sketching out whatever I need using a pen and some paper. Having a camera just makes it more convenient to plan dastardly deeds, that's all. Disallowing cameras just makes it a tad harder, but not prevent it.

In any case, my first thoughts are - how many modern phones today come without a camera? A quick search through CNet showed only a handful. Choices are truly limited. Personally I don't mind a phone without a camera. What I do mind is that I can't get the phone(s) I really want because they come with a camera. Phone manufacturers should really make more camera-free versions of their phones!

Also, my Sony Ericsson phone has just decided to introduce me to yet another hidden feature - auto-poweroff-at-random-times. Yeah, in my opinion, Sony Ericsson stuff suck really bad. And, I don't mean just their phones.

So, this really provided me the push I needed to evaluate my position with Singtel. Since I needed a new, non-camera-enabled phone, that would mean signing a contract with a provider just to get the phone I am limited to, for free or almost free.

After reviewing my choices, M1 seemed to have the best combination of perks vs price. Starhub was a close second. The only thing Singtel got going was that I'd get the phone free if I signed a contract with them. The thing that made me consider Starhub over M1 was simple - price. While I may need to pay an amount for the phone (under $50), I'll get something like 30% discount off my bill because once I subscribe to Starhub, I automatically become a "Hubber" since my Cable TV and Internet connection are all under Starhub. Besides, my work areas are usually in town anyway, so Starhub's rumoured "sucky coverage" in Jurong is irrelevent to me.

With full Number Portability, there isn't really much incentive to stick with Singtel. Nobody needed to be informed of my "new number" since it'll still be the same. The second thing is that Starhub has a dataplan that is cheaper than Singtel's, meaning it has an "in-between" plan that Singtel doesn't. I'm not a lite user (10MB?! Who the hell surfs as little as 20 web pages in a month?), but I'm not always on the mobile broadband to require a 50GB limit a month and a speed of 1 or 2 or even 3Mbps. Yeah Singtel's plans only go up to 3mbps.

Starhub's "in-between" plan which I am currently on, called the "MaxMobile Value", has no speed limits. It'll go as fast as your phone is capable of (and on my new NOKIA camera-less phone, that's 7.2mbps if I am hooked onto a 3.5G GPRS connection). Although the "free bundled data" is just $30 (or 10MB) worth, the subscription is only $5. Besides, even if I do exceed the "free bundled data", the plan caps it all at about $36. Yes, even if I do exceed like crazy, like maybe downloading stuff or whatever and using up 200GB, they'll just bill me for $36. Yes I confirmed this with Starhub, both on the hotline as well as in person at the counter when I was signing up a new line with them.

As a clarification, the MaxMobile Surflite plan may be "unlimited", but it's a constant $38 a month. Plus, according to them, you can't have it on your phone. You need to get a USB device. The helpdesk has no answers to this, because I told them technically this was POSSIBLE since it's also using the GPRS network. All they can say is that company policy requires the subscriber to pick up a USB device and it won't be activated on a phone. So if you want an unlimited plan on a phone, you need to get the MaxMobile Ultimate which will set you back $72 a month.

Since I needed it on the phone, I dropped one level down to the MaxMobile Value plan. Besides, even if I exceed the provided 10MB "free data" like crazy it's still capped at $36. That's still $2 cheaper :) That's like having an unlimited data plan for $36 instead of $38. This plan also means that I don't pay $36 every month, because the amount is variable depending on whether I exceed by a lot or very little.

With all these "plus" factors, Starhub gets my money. And I got a new Nokia phone off them too. Yeah, no more Sony Ericssons for me! Oh yeah, I am also swapping my Singtel fixed line phone over to Starhub's Digital Voice. Now, I am completely Singtel-free!

Is Singapore Really Safe?

2008-10-10T09:29:00.001+08:00

Many times, it has been said that Singapore has a very low crime rate. Foreign workers come here and commented at how safe they feel at night, being able to go out at 3am and yet not get mugged on the streets. Women here generally feel safe enough to be out and about alone at nights.

But, how safe is Singapore, really?

I was reading an article here, where some people decided to "test" how safe their city is. The test is simple - put an unlocked, unchained bicycle out on a street, and see how long before it gets stolen. In the article, they found that it is a fallacy that the bicycle will get stolen in seconds if left out in a "poor neighbourhood". Here's an excerpt from the article:

In the latest video posted, a bike lasted an hour without being stolen in the unsavory Constitucion neighborhood. But on the upscale shopping street of Santa Fe, a bike lasted a few short minutes before it was stolen.

Since Singapore is usually compared to an "upscale shopping street", does that mean a bicycle left out in the open here will get stolen within minutes?

Incidentally this reminds me of an incident I witnessed some time last year. I was walking home, past a railing where people chain their bicycles to (a common sight in HDB estates). It wasn't that late at night, probably about 10.30pm or so.

I saw 2 men of Indian ethnicity, loitering around a bicycle. One of them had this huge wire cutter thing which he had hidden under his sarong. He brought it out and proceeded to cut the 3 chains that were locking their target bicycle. His companion who wasn't the one cutting the chains (ie, the "lookout"), had looked around and seen me looking at them.

Instead of fleeing, they nonchalantly continued their act and released the chains from the bicycle. Then, the "lookout" got onto the bicycle and rode it off, quite cool. The guy with the cutters walked behind him.

Now I am not sure what this means. It looked like they were stealing the bicycle. Or, it could be that the bicycle really belonged to the "lookout" and he may have lost his keys to the chains. All 3 of them. Unlikely I know, but it is not impossible.

Anyway, does anybody want to put this to the test? :)

Time To Consider VOIP

2008-10-08T13:47:00.000+08:00

Image via WikipediaThe recent price increase by Singtel on landlines sparked off a wave of protest around my friends, and many bloggers. On the surface, if you look at it, the increase isn't really that much. Only 0.01 cent more per minute, and a total of $10 more per YEAR.

And yet, people protest and grumble.

I think, the problem isn't the amount of the increase. It's that everything has been increasing and yet we see no improvements. As a matter of fact, bus fare, MRT fares, and taxi fare increases have not done a thing to help us - MRTs are still packed like sardines, and we pay to be packed like sardines. Bus fare increases only help to put stupid TVMobile boxes into the buses, which do nothing to "entertain us" while we are in a "standing-room-only" packed bus.

The Singtel price increase is probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Nowadays, almost everyone has some sort of broadband connection at home. It's high time we take note of VOIP technology (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and use it as a telephone. VOIP is not exactly a new technology. It has been around for at least 10 years if not more. Back then, the major application for VOIP technology was games. No seriously, it was used for games! Picture this - you're frantically fighting off a horde of monsters. Is it faster to shout "HELP!" or to click the screen, bring up the chat box, and then type HELP (in the meantime the monsters would still be pummeling you)? Even then, would your friends be looking at the chatbox on the screen, or would they also be busy fending off the monsters?

Over the years, VOIP grew from a game-only application into what it is today - ready for mainstream. As an illustration, Starhub already offers it as a commercial product - their Digital Voice products. Yes, Starhub leverages on the cables which they have already laid into your HDB homes meant for their internet and cable TV services to carry voice as well.

Why VOIP?

Because, it's dirt-cheap. You already have an internet connection. You're already paying for it. If you use VOIP to call someone also using VOIP from the same service provider, it is almost guaranteed that the call will be free. Another illustration - on MSN, call your buddy and TALK to him with a mic. That conversation is free. Yes, you hear voice. Yes you can see video (if you both have webcams). Yet, that session is free.

VOIP comes into its own when it comes to calling your friends and loved ones who are in a different country. If you actually sat down and compared IDD rates with VOIP global calling rates, the VOIP rates would typically be at least 40% to 70% cheaper! Seriously. About a year or so ago, I called a friend up in Hong Kong and had a 1 hour 30 minute conversation with her. The price? S$2.00.

No you didn't read that wrong. It cost me US$1.80 for a 90 minute call (2 cents a minute). US$1.80 is about S$2.00 or so. If you think about it, it was cheaper to call overseas at 2 cents a minute, for 90 minutes, than to call your buddy in Singapore up on the mobile phone (16 cents a minute) and talk to him for 15 minutes!

If you are worried about the "call quality", and whether there will be "drop outs" etc, you can rest easy. My overseas friends whom I have called, keep telling me I sounded so clear, it was just like standing next to them. Well it's actually not that surprising since the microphones you own/have is probably better than those on the phones.

Skype is a popular and well-known VOIP provider. Many people I know also have skype accounts. Even the company I work in now encourages Skype usage if you are not physically in the company network. In the company itself, the entire PABX system is all VOIP. To dial anybody up in the world, all you need is just a 5 digit number - first digit represents country, the other 4 digits for the extension. The "overseas call" is thus, free too. Why? Because we are using the company internal network, which is already laid for the LAN and WAN networks for the computers.

With costs so low and dirt cheap, it is little wonder VOIP isn't very well known outside of the IT industry. Telephone companies such as Singtel will definitely not want to lose their "golden goose". Without the masses paying for their high rates (16 cents a minute for mobile calls, 0.16 cents a min for landline calls), they'd lose a huge chunk of their revenue.

Some VOIP services like Gizmo and pfingo even have mobile clients ("software for your phone") that allows you to use your phone to call overseas using their cheap rates, as long as you have an Internet connection. Modern phones probably come with wifi as one of the connectivity options and thus you can just use your phone and "log in" to your own home wireless network, and call using VOIP.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to mobile broadband plans which are definitely cheaper than mobile phone plans. For about $22 a month you can get mobile broadband services on your phone with 50GB of bundled free transfers. 50GB is definitely more than enough for you to make VOIP calls. As an illustration, a typical user only consumes 20GB to 30GBs a month even if he watches youtube videos regularly

So, effectively, you can downgrade your mobile phone plan to the cheapest one available and get mobile broadband to use cheaper call rates (2 cents a min to call any number in Singapore).

If you use the pfingo service, they even have a callback function! Simply go to the internet on any computer, phone or PDA, key in a callback number for you (home or mobile phone), then the destination number. Your phone will ring, a message will tell you to hold, and soon your friend (overseas or local) will be on the other end. So you don't even have to be "on the internet" to use their VOIP service!

In a similar vein, Skype offers an "unlimited country call". Meaning for about S$8 a month you can call any number in Singapore (or your choice of country) free. Downside of course, is that you have to use the Skype client on the desktop or mobile phone, or own a skype-fone. If you go for the Global option, you pay about S$18.00 a month and call Singapore plus 35 other countries FOR FREE.

Now if this blog post hasn't spurred you on to at least do some research into the VOIP technology and how it may be able to help you save some money, nothing else will :)