8MP camera with f/2.0 aperture

The form factor is also sexy yet practical. Unlike Xperia S, which has quite a bit of wasted space, HTC One X screen maximises to the phone dimension. The concave display glass is aesthetically nice but may be impractical when you try to put on the screen protector. I am beginning to be sold on the concept of non-removable battery, as it helps to keep the phone body design simple. The body casing has a clean line that is only broken up by the power and volume buttons, a micro-sim tray and a micro-USB socket. My only gripe is that there’s lacking of micro-SD card expansion, not withstanding the presence of 32G internal storage.

Clean line

One of the software improvement is BEATS support for all players.

HTC One X vs Galaxy Nexus

HTC post sales support is a big letdown

Definitely not the ONE for me.

Training in this zone will develop your cardiovascular system. The body’s ability to transport oxygen to, and carbon dioxide away from, the working muscles can be developed and improved. As you become fitter and stronger from training in this zone it will be possible to run some of your long weekend runs at up to 75%, so getting the benefits of some fat burning and improved aerobic capacity.

This means monitoring my heartbeat and ensuring my running pace keeps my heartbeat stays within the aerobic zone. In theory it sounds easy but application is difficult, because I have to deliberately slow down even if I am still comfortable in running a faster pace. Then I receive a Runkeeper alert email after my usual Friday run.

500km milestone

Wow, I have covered 500km after 5 months of running! My new goal is to be able to complete a 15km distance run with a steady pace, by end July. As such, I am focusing on interval  and endurance (distance and duration) training while continue to keep my heartbeat at the aerobic zone. The pace may be a minute or two slower than previous, but I do find myself pacing better at each run.

While I am continuing my 3 times a week running routine, averaging a total distance of 25-30km/week,  I figure I need to alternate my running with something else, such as cycling. I can swim, but I just hate the idea of exercising in the water. So cycling comes naturally to my mind, and in fact I have been contemplating for the new exercise for the past 2 weeks. I began to research on possible cycling equipments I could use. To be honest, I have never owned a bicycle in my life. When I was a kid, my parents had always thought cycling was dangerous for me. The only times they would allow me to cycle were when we were at East Coast Park for picnic outings. I also remember that my first road cycling was when my junior college classmates and myself set up a round island cycling trip. I had to borrow a bicycle from my sister’s friend, and it was just a single-speed road bike! I still recall the jittery feeling when I first rode on the road after collecting the bike. While I was cycling to the school to meet my classmates, I actually lost balance and fell off from the bike ! I have been keeping that incident under wraps so to avoid unnecessary nagging (or parental escalation) but guess now the truth is out … Ha Ha!

Brompton .. made in England

I explored various options; road bike, mountain bike, hybrid, etc. There are simply too many variants, too many brands and models to choose from. I was confused and lost until a good friend casually suggested that I could look at folding bike. It is a brilliant suggestion because I can bring the folding bike to train, and therefore I can also cycle and train ride to work. He offered me to try out his Strida folding bicycle (which by the way, I thought was neatly designed and engineered with a high tech look) but mentally I was not ready to take up his offer. I don’t like the idea of trying out something if I have not made up my mind!

Two weeks later and now, I decide I should just get the folding bicycle, and before I could go back to my friend to do a trial run (or cycle), I chance upon an online forum thread that is discussing about Brompton bicycle. Very quickly, I am sold with the Brompton folding bicycle, supposedly the “Rolls Royce of folding bicycle”. But I am put off by its expensive price tag. As if it is fated, somebody notices my interest, and make a quick offer to sell his and his wife’s Brompton bicycles to me. The bikes are only 5-6 months old, and have clocked less than 100km each. At $400 discount off for each bike, it has definitely helped to accelerate my decision making process.  So before I know, we are proud owners of these gems.

Brompton M6R Raw Lacquer (Foreground) and M6R (Pink in background)

I am very excited now. Now I have another new mantra, which is “Cycle for Food”. For now, I have completed 503.66km (of running) through 83 running activities. Here’s a wish for many more years for Running for Food … oh and Cycling too!

Ganbatte!  がんばって！

I had wanted to try out Windows Phone. I think Microsoft has finally got their formula right this time round, after failing to gain a foothold in the mobile market with their Windows CE and Windows Mobile products  since 2000. The tiled interface is as evolutionary and refreshing as Apple’s multi touch interface. Fragmentation, which appeared to the biggest culprit in Microsoft’s previous failures in mobile market, is to some extent addressed by Microsoft’s attempt to put in restriction in how manufacturers and developers build and develop their handsets and applications respectively. The end result is a consistent interface, and much tighter control on how applications are being executed and rendered. The key draw back for me is the hardware, as the display and camera functions are not inspiring. I thought I would just get a cheap Windows Phone (since all Windows Phone looks and function the same!) as an interim, but eventually settled with Google Galaxy Nexus because I have always wanted to try out the pure Google experience.

Galaxy Nexus

Google Galaxy Nexus, manufactured by Samsung, runs on the latest Android operating system, i.e. Ice-Cream Sandwich (ICS) . With Google’s ICS, they seemed to have finally fixed the memory management issues and streamlined the user experience. I have to say it is a product, out of the box (because with Android being a open source, it doesn’t take a genius to do magic wonder in order to improve its usability), that would seriously compete with the likes of current Windows Phone and iOS. It may seemed like Google’s past desserts (Cupcake, Eclair, Frosted Yorgurt, etc) were a failure, or at best an alpha/beta of their operating system. However, if you trace through Android history, from the first public release (Cupcake) in 2009 to now, versus how long Microsoft put their act together, it is actually quite a remarkable progress. One might argue that Apple did it right in the first iPhone product,  but remember Apple was clever in its product release strategy. It had deliberately omitted key phone function features, and progressively released these missing functions as it rolled out its iPhone roadmap over the course of 5 years.

Galaxy Nexus is made by Samsung

Back to Galaxy Nexus, I am not quite impressed by its form factor. It looks as if Samsung has deliberately short changed its development just to make sure it does not cannibalised its own flagship products, i.e. Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note. The 1280×720 screen is nothing to shout about, until you put it on the brightest setting.  That said, when I put it side by side with Galaxy S2 or Lumia 800 (both of which have the same resolution of 800×480 pixels), it does look as good, if not better, given its higher resolution display. The back battery cover feels plasticky,  almost becoming a classic trademark of Samsung products. Camera is mediocre, as it fares badly when taken under dim lighting condition or trying to capture a fast moving object. How I miss my Xperia S for that matter! Don’t get me wrong, Galaxy Nexus has a decent hardware specification, but my take is that it is a jack of all trades, master of none. That said, I do like the ICS soft keys in the Galaxy Nexus with its backlit implementation. Beneath the soft keys, a multicolored notification LED is featured which glows on selected event such as a missed call or unread message. You can download the app Light Flow to customize your LED configuration, in terms of the events to be notified, colour of the LED notification, or even the rate of the LED pulse!

ICS compliant application will now have all menus at the top corner, freeing up the bottom screen from the cluttered menu

Inside Galaxy Nexus however, the user experience is superb given that it is running on the Ice-Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately, at the point when I got the phone, it was still running on 4.0.3, not 4.0.4 which offers an even more optimal performance. (Nothing stopping me from upgrading it to 4.0.4 though) Regardless, I understand that 4.0.4 was shortly released “OTA” after a few weeks. On the positive notes, the user interface is polished and uncluttered. The multi tasking of applications does not has any slight adverse effect on the overall phone performance. The UI navigation experience is as “buttery” smooth as you can imagine. With a pure Google experience, it also means I do not have those bloated applications that offer bells and whistles at the expense of performance. Given that I have most of my resources resided in Google (mails, contacts, calendar appointments, photos, etc), I have immediate access to every of my content and information the moment I signed into my Google account. No hassle of synchronising or data migration!

But it did not take me too long to switch to another phone. Not because Galaxy Nexus is bad, but because I have been eyeing on HTC One X after hearing how HTC had improved its camera function over the year. That has been my biggest gripe of HTC products (amongst others). That said, after using HTC One X for two weeks now, there were and are times where I still miss Galaxy Nexus for its clean ICS implementation!

Nathan Speed 2 Fuel Belt

So I decided that I should get a fuel belt, as it was so cumbersome to hand carry a bottle of water during a run. Eventually, I got this Nathan Speed 2 Waistpack with two 10 ounce flasks from a sports shop at Changi Point. It was not cheap, but luckily the mall was running a mall-wide promotion so I got 20% off the retail price, and I think it costs me around $48.

I put this into good use today on 26th April, when I try to attempt “something further” than 11km run.  After my night conference at 12.30am, I change up to get ready for the run, just as I had done at this hour previously. Little do I realize that it is a mistake since I no longer just do a 30 mins interval run. My last 11km run was carried out at 11pm. By the time I finish the run, it is close to 02:30am! In fact, along the journey, I did feel a little sleepy at times.

Finishing a 12km run

The good thing about the run though is that I did not feel as tired as before, as I replenished myself with water every 15-20 minutes. At one point, I do feel tough running, especially in the 10th and 11th kilometres, as my ankles seem to be weakening. My injury stricken ankles are really my weakest link in my stamina building exercise. Nevertheless, I manage to overcome the physical pain, interestingly by strengthening my mental desire to finish the run. In the last 2 km, I could comfortably pick up the pace and finish the run with 12km covered. It is a milestone for me since it is a step closer to my goal of finishing a 15km run by end July.

New Balance Minimus Zero

Simon, myself and Karsoon

Our first interaction started way back in 2003. We have a common passion in cars. I was driving a Volkswagen and he driving an Audi. We love to “personalise” our ride. We hit it off immediately with something common and he is always there whenever you need his help or advise, especially with his calm composure and analytical balance thinking. Our friendship took a cooling off as we have our own priorities, but we continue to stay in contact via email and subsequently via Facebook. We met for a lunch a few years ago, we had a good catch up, reminiscing the past and talk about the current.  I promised that we should do it more often, but the next meeting did not materialize.

Just last week, I read some of his Facebook updates, and have wanted to tell him that he looks good and we should have a catch up soon. But not knowing when I can commit the meet up, I procrastinated and now I regret.

12 years ago, when another dear friend was called home by God, I told myself how we cannot take things for granted, and we need to cherish the people around us. I have obviously not learnt that lesson, and am now blaming myself for not taking that step forward. It is a darn shitty feeling. Words cannot describe how I feel now, and more importantly, the loss of a good friend.

All I can only do now, is to quietly pray for his glorious journey home.

Rest in peace, Simon.

So I try to complete at least one 10km run every week. Earlier this week, I was hoping to push myself to do a 11km run, although mentally I merely conditioned myself up for just a 10km run. Eventually I could only complete 10.5km distance, which goes to show how (lack of) mental strength can influence one’s ability to complete a task.

15km goal

Then two days ago, I decided I would stick to a 60 minute run but with a relatively faster pace (anything less than 7 min/km for a 60 minute run is considered fast at this moment for me ) It was  a good workout, as I managed to maintain an average pace of 6.49min/km (excluding the first 5 minute of slow warm up jogging). Probably one of the fastest pace I had, if not fastest, for the distance I was going through.

Today, I decide to try for the 11km distance again. I plan my route carefully so that it will be mostly flat ground for most part of the run, and also keep the run within East Coast Park as much as possible.

I start the run at a decent pace (7:08 min/km) but gradually slow down to an average of 7:25-7:30min/km as I know I cannot afford to “puncture” at the early stage of the run. The 4km run to East Coast Park en route Mountbatten and Tanjong Rhu Road is therefore easy. Physically I feel I am still in splendid condition so the entire 4km run along East Coast Park remains relaxed. (In retrospect, I could have increased my pace to 7:10-7:15min/km …)  Nevertheless, I do start to feel the strain coming on my two ankles as I reach the 6-7km, despite wearing a Phiten Titanium ankle brace on my left ankle. Thankfully, the strains remain to be just a small niggling pain and do not interrupt the run.

The 8th km is a difficult one though, particularly because I have to run across the highway via the overhead bridge.  Every time I reach the other side of the highway, my heart beat would usually jump up by 10, given the elevation I have to go through.

With just 2-3km away from my planned destination, it does spur me forward. Sometimes, you just need to constantly find the right motivation to keep you going. In the last 2km, I pick up my pace and accelerate gradually. I find that I am not struggling despite the acceleration, so now my challenge is to extend such accelerated pace for another 1km in my subsequent runs! Finally, by the time I hit my planned destination mark, I complete the entire 11.01km route. Another milestone to my 15km goal has attained!

T.G.I. Friday's Jack Daniel's Grilled Baby Back Ribs

After all, that’s the whole motivation behind each run — “Run for Food”  :)

Music over Cloud

Apart from downloading the Android App (from here), I need to install and run a Java-based software in my NAS. The prerequisite of this is therefore a Java Runtime executable available in my NAS. For a long while, this is the biggest stumbling block, as there is little support for ARM5 platform for Java, and I begin to regret not getting the x86-based 439 NAS. But it appears that Oracle has started the support for ARM5 platform, and here’s how I installed Bubble UPNP software in my NAS

1. Download Java SE for embedded from here. You need to fill up the feedback form from Oracle though.
2. Place the downloaded file (ejre-7-fcs-b147-linux-arm-sflt-headless-27_jun_2011.tar.gz) in the NAS’s /share/Public directory
3. Download the JRE 1.7.0 package for QNAP from here
4. Install the QPKG (QNAP Package) via the QPKG centre, accessible from the NAS administrator panel.
5. Download Bubble UPNP server from here and follow the installation/execution instruction from here.

Viola, with a quick configuration on both the server (accessible via browser) and the Android client, I can now start accessing my mp3 over the internet, any time, anywhere!

10 km Goal Setting

Since I have been running 8-9 km frequently in recent runs, I thought I should set a goal, to push myself. So I set myself to target a 10km distance completion, by end May. It turns out within a week, I accomplish my goal, albeit unexpectedly.

On 4th April, I start with the intent to complete a 9km workout. Having ran through Mountbatten area in the previous run, I decide to stretch myself with a new route where I will run to Katong Park, before heading back via East Coast Park. I start the run a little too aggressive though, with the first km’s pace at 6.29min/km, and maintaining between 6.40min/km to 7.05min/km over the next 3km. I know this is not sustainable, so I begin to slow down my pace, but still average around 7.20min/km. By then, I am already running along East Coast Park, and the fresh air and park serenity help to keep the run going.

Running enroute Katong Park and East Coast Park

By the time I reach the defunct East Coast Mc’Donald, I have covered 8km. I know if I were to run all the way home from here, I stand a very good chance of  hitting the 10km mark! Cautiously, I slow down my pace in the 9th km, keeping at the pace of 7.38min/km. It is a calculated move that pays off. In the last 1km, I steadily and progressively increase my pace, averaging at 6.32min/km. The thoughts that I’ll be finishing the run and that I may reach my goal way in advance, motivates me to accelerate in the last km. Amazingly, by the time I reach the door step of my home, the distance covered is 10.01km!  There you go, meeting my goal within a week of setting. The reality is up until now, I have never thought I will ever cover a 10km distance, certainly not with my condition 3 months ago.

Achieving my goal, 4 weeks in advance!

By now, I have completed 64 running activities, covering a distance 325.97km, since 15th Dec 2011.  ”Run for food” continues  Yaaaaaahooooo!

I would have thought my first run in December last year must be the worst run of the decade. After all, I can only run 500m before dropping to a walk to catch my breathe. But no, after the run on 19th March, I have to say that has to be the worst run. Granted, I ran slightly earlier than usual, at 4pm. It would be hotter than usual, and indeed the heat was a killer. I also felt a strain on both my feet. But it was my mental condition that failed me miserably in that run. 3km into the run, my mind started psycho’ing me that the weather is too hot, my feet are breaking, etc. I gave in eventually, disrupted the run and walked for almost 3km. I picked up my pace again in the last 1km, covering a total distance of 7.41km,  but the fact I surrendered myself totally during the run, was unforgiving.

In the same week later, I stretched myself further to complete a 9km run, the furthest distance I have covered to-date. The run was not entirely easy, although the first 6km was quite comfortable, but perhaps I had over estimated myself and did not pace myself well enough. On the 7th km, I was struggling with my pace that any slower I would be just doing a brisk walking. Fortunately, I regrouped myself again in the last 2km, and managed to finish the run as planned.

a 9km running log

By now, I’ve completed 58 activities, 280.73km and I am just few kilometres away from hitting my month’s 100km mark

Xperia

First, there’s Galaxy Nexus, a Google-branded phone made by Samsung. I have always wanted to try “Out of the Box” or “Vanilla” Android phone. Then there’s Sony’s Xperia S, Sony’s first product after their break up with Ericsson. I wonder if the DNA of Xperia S will be “Sony inspired”, or inheriting the mediocre Sony Ericsson genes.

Galaxy Nexus was first released to the market. But the lure of what is considered as Sony’s first Android product in Xperia S, especially upon hearing a reliable news that it’ll be  released 2 weeks later, made me decide to wait for the latter instead. On the first day when Xperia S was sold in the retail,  I went to the outlet and bought a set without even waiting for other customers’ feedbacks.

The first impression of the minimalist-design hardware gives me a mixed feeling. I like the cool looking clear bar at the bottom of the screen. It reminds me of the design found in Sony’s LCD  TV products. However, it is just  bells and whistles, as it just display the icons of the  touch panel functions above it, and nothing else (edit: I was told it could also act as light notification, but am not sure about it).  I wonder what goes behind the mind of the designer. As I figure out eventually, the design is probably meant to align with the new  UI design in Google ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Google Android OS platform). Still, given that the bar takes up a good chunk of the phone form factor, I thought it is a bad design.

Sleeky but not functional Light Bar

The phone feels thicker and heavier than the sleek Sony Ericsson Arc I had used previously. So perhaps it is a sign of Sony trying to get rid of its SonyEricsson DNA, albeit not in the direction I would have expected from a consumer company like Sony. The back battery cover is removable, even though the battery is not and there is no removable storage space. On the other hand, the battery cover fitment is not perfect, leaving an uneven gap all around. In nut shell, the phone does not wow me like the Arc did on first physical encounter.

But I have to say, the phone grows on me after a while, primarily by its superior screen and camera function. First on the screen. The BRAVIA HD technology, along with its high 1280×720 resolution, renders rich colour saturation and image sharpness. The photos and videos look amazingly stunning with the colour vibrants and black deep. While it looks stunning on photos and video playback, I thought in some applications, the screen display looks a bit wash out, perhaps by the brightness and contrast level that is tuned towards HD video playback.

Sony Screen with Bravia HD engine

The camera, powered by Sony’s Exmor R for mobile CMOS sensor, reaffirms my belief that Sony produces one of the best, if not best phone camera in the market. A friend of mine did tell me that Apple’s  iPhone 4S has the best optic lens in the mobile market, but I think Sony’s Xperia S is not far behind, if not the best. Pitting the camera function of Samsung Galaxy S II against that of Xperia S, makes me realize how Samsung has stagnated in its innovation. I remembered I was most impressed by Samsung Galaxy S’s camera function, thinking on how it had the best mobile camera capability in the market then. Perhaps the DNA of the two consumer giants (Sony and Samsung), plays a big part in this gulf.

Ravishing screen and sublime photographing capability aside, Xperia S still has some unfinished work to do in order to be the leader of its pack. Although none of the phone manufacturers has yet launched an ICS out-of-the-box product, it is still disappointing to see Sony releasing a Gingerbread based Xperia S. The phone still experiences random moments of lags, slight enough for me to notice it, and the Sony’s home launcher force-closes on me a few times. That said, Sony’s home launcher and widgets have gone through some significant improvement, both visually and functionally. But I think they could have channelled their time and resources on improving the overall user experience, instead of bridging the gaps of Gingerbread.

Sony phone with the old Sony Ericsson Logo.

Unfortunately, the deal breaker for me is the Sony Xperia S’s security management. The issue is how the phone handles the “IdleTimeoutFrequencyValue” parameter, part of the security policy enforced by my company’s Exchange Server. Based on my knowledge, the parameter, configurable only by exchange server administrator, implies the longest acceptable time that the device can idle before the phone needs to be locked.  I know my company’s administrator had initially set as “1 minute”  before settled for “40 minutes”, as many employees felt that the policy was “too strict”. Xperia S takes this parameter literally, and will only lock my phone after 40 minutes of idle. There is no way I can force a lock; For all the previous phones that I have used, I could either set a shorter time-out myself, or force a lock by pressing the power button. With this “bug”, I have to bear the risk of leaving my phone unprotected for as long as 40 minutes. A few years ago, this is probably not a big deal for me. However, ever since I experience the loss of my phone within 5 minutes after misplacing it in a public place, I become more conscious about mobile security, especially with more confidential and/or sensitive information stored in our mobile devices these days.

So it is a “Short eXperience” for me, perhaps that’s what Xperia S stands for me. But if you don’t have a strict company exchange server administrator like mine (that configures every parameters of the policy), can live with some of the niggling issues highlighted above, I am sure it’ll be a “Splendid eXperience” for you.

Since my last blog post, there were a couple of magic “8″ moments.

On 18th Feb, for the first time, my weight went below 90, and is 80-something now.

Eighty-Something for the first time!

Then on 5th march, for the first time again, I have completed more than 8km of running route.

First 8km attempt

At this time, I have completed 55 running activities, completed 245.33km. Notably, in February, I have covered 92.6km, despite having 5 fewer runs than in month of January. The motivation “Run for Food” continues.

6.06km route

Despite a hectic week with all the night conference calls every day, I manage to find time to run before or after the meetings (which would usually be 12 or 1am). 2 sessions after, I decide to extend my endurance run from 40mins to 45mins. Given that I am stretching the duration, I start slow, at pace of 8.07min/km for the first 5 minute. Subsequently I pick up the pace, and maintain a steady but still relatively comfortable pace, at 7.20~7.50min/km. In the last 7min of the run, I feel that I have enough energy to push myself further, so I accelerate to an average pace of about 6.20min/km (and as fast as 5.30min/km at one point). Surprisingly, I do not feel any trace of struggle, and I reckon it is due to the body already very well conditioned after the last 5km of running. It is also due to the fact that I am running under a very cooling weather since I started the run at 12.40am. Heartbeat is also averaging at a decent 146 bpm.  By the time I finish the 45min run, I have completed a distance of 6.06km.

Another milestone achieved. By now, I have completed 42 running activities, covering a distance of 161km.

Treadmill could detect my Polar Heartbeat monitoring device

My biological clock wakes me up at 4.30am on Tuesday (7th Feb), after a good 6 hours of sleep.  Yes, I seem to relish the opportunity of being able to sleep and wake up early whenever I am in US. After a quick wash up, I head over to the hotel’s gym. My first treadmill run ends with just a struggling 4.02km as I have a hard time trying to adjust the treadmill’s speed, since I am too used to tracking my pace (rather than speed) and in km  (rather than miles). Struggling as it was, however, I manage to keep my heart rate level below 150 for the first time, averaging at 140.

And it is as though I have addicted to running,  I continue to run daily for the remaining week. By now I am familiar with my pace and speed in imperial units, I carry out my interval training with some deliberate control over my pace. The good thing about treadmill running is that you consciously know and keep to the desire pace. So you cannot afford to slack unless you cheat. On the third treadmill running, I follow a gradual but aggressive pace over the 3 legs  interval training (8 minutes of run with 2 mins of walk or slow jog).  The run ends with the longest distance covered at the fastest pace I have ever achieved — 4.64km at 6.28 min/km.

For my fifth (and last) running supposedly on Friday while in Cupertino, I feel I may not have enough time since I will have to pack my luggage in the morning for the hotel check-out. So following my run on the Thursday morning (8th Feb), I decide to complete the fifth run on the same day evening. At 11pm, I am back in the gym again. Thinking of doing something different instead of the usual 30 minute interval training, I proceed with a 40 minutes long endurance run. Since it is not an interval training, I have to find a pace that I am comfortable to last the entire 40 minutes. So I start with a slow pace at around 7.5 min/km. By the halfway mark, I increase the pace to 7 min/km since I think I still have more than half the energy to continue for another 20 minutes. Eventually, I manage to complete the 40 minutes run, finishing a distance of 5.36km. It is not a pace that I can brag about (average of 7.27 min/km), but certainly to complete a 5.36km run, at a decent heartbeat rate of 145, is something I have never imagined 2 months ago.

So another milestone — the 5km milestone, completed. In total, 39 running activities completed, 145.03km covered.

It then occurs to me I should continue to run while I am in US. There is no reason why I should not. Without any hesitation, I pack my running gear with me and off I go (or “fly”) for my meeting in Cupertino at California. When I touch down and check into the hotel at noon, I decide I should run before the sun set so as to familiarize with the route. That was just the “Kiasee” side of me. It is anyway a very sunny but cooling Sunday, with temperature probably around 16-18 degree Celsius.

The run turns out to be a tiring one despite the cool weather. I think much of it is due to the flight fatigue. But it is still a good run, after all, this is my first oversea run, while on business trip.

My first "Oversea" running route

By the end of the run, I have completed 35 running activities, covering 126.67km. More importantly, will I continue to run while I am here at Cupertino this week? Or will I just fizzle out and give the “intense meeting” reasons again?

Since it is going to be a 30 minute long run, I start the run with a slow but steady pace.  Since the aim of the run is to keep running without stopping, I have to regulate my pace between 7min/km to 7.30min/km at regular interval. Perhaps I could have push myself further, but the run turns out to be a relaxing one. That said, I have to stop at 29th minute due to some logistic constraints.

Most importantly, I have completed a 4km run without stopping. The systematic training that I have been through in the past 6 weeks, which saw 30 running activities, has finally paid off.

100km

It has been slightly more than a month since I started my maiden run. Today (27th Jan), it’s a milestone as I complete another run. I have run 29 times, covering 100.64km. How many more 100km will I run again?

Drenched after the 2.2 run

I remembered 6 weeks ago I had to stop every 400-600km just to catch my breathe. Thus, I aim to complete the run without any stop. The increasing intensity of the rain does help to spur me to achieve this goal, and I am glad I accomplish it eventually! The pace of the run was steady from start till the end. There were moments where I felt I could be struggling, but managed to overcome through controlling my breathing and consequently maintaining the breathing efficiency. By the time I complete my 2.2km run, the timer clock shows a timing of 13.38 min. While it is still far cry from my 12 min target (first goal), it still shows a vast leap from my earlier 14-15 minute timings. Most importantly, I completed the run in a harsh condition (with the rain pouring towards the end of the run) without stopping at all.

Running statistic for period 15th Dec 11 to 22nd Jan 12

With the 2.2km run, on the 22nd of Jan,  I have thus far completed 22 run with total of 70.76km.  Another new milestone achieved for me.

The first run, guided through the formal schedule, was motivating. The run is essentially made up of 5 repetitive shorter run, with short walk break in between to overcome the huff and puff. Thus, the 30 minutes session was never anywhere breathless and draggy as before. By the 2nd week of the formal training, I move to the next stage of the schedule, i.e. “3 minute run with 3 minute walk”. It’s also the first time I break the 4km mark (although with walk break in between). That spurred me on further. By the end of the 2 weeks running schedule, I progress to the 3rd stage, which is “4 minute run with 2 minute walk”. In those runs, I was constantly pushing myself to run 4.2 to 4.5km, but I learn later that this is actually counter-productive to my running plan. (More about this later)

Running Statistics (15 Dec 2011 - 14 Jan 2012)

On 14th Jan 2012,  I completed 4.14km, at a pace of 7.32 min/km. That marks the completion of 17 runs, or 51.85km since 15th Dec 2011. A month has gone, and I do feel much lighter than when I first started. I was joking about this; If I felt like I was carrying a fullpack then (given my weight at that point), I must be running with SBO now. Certainly, I feel fitter as well, although probably just 5% of my fittness level 20 years ago. The question now is, will I continue this running habit, or will it be shelved a side once my hectic work schedule is back.

I told myself, think about the food. Hopefully the run continues

Polar RS300X

Polar RS300X comes with a trademark Wearlink+ heart rate monitoring technology chest strap, a transmitter, and a watch that receives and records the data from the transmitter. As I discovered later, while RS300X monitors  the heart beat constantly, it does not log all the raw data, but only aggregated data. What it means I would not be able to plot out how my heart rate fluctuates throughout my run, although I can tell my maximum and average heart rate, and the heart rate zone I am in during the run. It is not a big deal for me, at least for now, but for serious runner, I think a Polar RS400 or higher model range might be more suitable.

My first run with a heart rate monitoring device was revealing, and shockingly as well. My heart rate was at one point pumping at 180 beats-per-minute(above 90%), and average at 173. Running has become more scientific indeed (as when I was younger, I would just run and run). I noted that I was running at an unhealthy heart rate zone. Not only I am running close to my maximum heart rate (which is 185 beats-per-minute), it’s in a maximal or red line zone where I won’t benefit much as far as fat-burning is concerned.

By now (29th December 2011), I have completed 18.53km, over 8 runs. I knew the distance is nothing to shout about, particular to regular runners. But for someone who had not run for the last 10 years (or maybe even more), this is an amazing start, at least for me.

Ops .. zero heart beat.

Running gear

On day 10, I decided to time my run. By then, I already could feel the improvements in my breathing control and I would require fewer stops to complete the course. But the runs were getting  monotonous, so perhaps timing could help to motivate further. I ended using “Runkeeper” Android app to time my run, while at the same time listen to music using my 5 years old Motorola S9 bluetooth headset. My first official timing? 2.17km in 14:54 mins, or average pace of 6.53min/km. Obviously a far cry from my official personal best record (8:05 mins for 2.4km), but compared to my maiden run ten days ago, this is a big leap.

Since I left as a civilian, I had not been maintaining my fitness level so  it plunged and crashed. At one point, I did spend a couple of months reshaping my fitness, but got seriously injured along the way. And the rest is history.

Fast forward to today, I could not walked briskly for 100m without huffing and puffing, let along complete a 2.4km run.  My fitness level was at the valley, while my weight was unthinkable. I seemed to fall sick easily too. As I approached the 40 years old mark, I told myself my lifestyle needs a makeover. For the last 18 months, we have been walking regularly as we would bring our Corgi furkid for a daily neighborhood walk or a weekend walk at the park . Then came the resolution recently that I need to pick up my running again.

So I dropped by Adidas store to get myself a pair of running shoes (I’m a sucker for the 3 stripes, tbh). I told myself I need to run at least once a week. But lo and behold, it turned out to be more than that.

On 15th December 2011, I started my maiden run since 2000. It was around 11pm, as I wanted to make sure the weather is cool and air is fresh.  Despite that, the run was a torture one. It took me more than 18 minutes (did not time, so no exact timing) just to complete a 2.2km. I had to stop my run multiple times during the course, just to catch my breathe and recover the fatigue. By the time I completed my session, I felt like as if I had done a marathon. That was how pathetic I was. Strangely, it did not demotivate me, and instead propelled me to increase the frequency of the run (strangely as well!).  And this is just the beginning …

When I was young, I would have signed up for any art competition I came across, whether it was through my school, community center, or from newspaper. I remembered there was once I actually made my own way to the competition venue (and I was just 8-9 years old), on a Sunday morning.

When I was young, I had never attended any formal art classes, at least not that I could remember. So I cannot comprehend how I could apply different techniques of drawing and painting on my work. I found out that I was best in drawing landscape, and figured out my own ways of how to have vibrant colors on my work using crayons (and that’s by overlaying the different tones and colors of the crayons on the subjects)

A Caricature work of my class in varsity

When I was young, I knew I could draw a tad better than my peers. I remembered when I was in kindergarten (that was when I was just 5 or 6 years old), my teacher asked the class if anyone knew how Merlion looked like. Many of my friends went up to the drawing board, but their drawing just has little resemblance to the Singapore icon. I clearly remembered that all of them had drawn the tail of the Merlion flipping out!  After all the commotions, I slowly but calmly walked up to the board, and drew up a very perfect Merlion picture (including its proper tail )

That was when I was young …

Note: Trying to create a series of “When I was young”. So this is just the first of many series I hope to blog in future

I don’t like to move those huge files to a local mail folder for a couple of reasons. So I came up with a method of manually save and delete the attachments, before inserting the links of the attachments into the original email. It worked well, but it is very manual. Outlook 2010 does help to simplify some of these steps, but the ‘solution’ was still very manual. I had always wanted to do a quick macro programming to simplify these steps, but too lazy to move my butt.

A message with the option to archive the attachments

Earlier, I was again spending my Saturday afternoon clearing up my mailbox. I thought enough is enough so I went to google some samples, and existing solutions so that I can get this problem nailed once and for all. (Power of internet!)

There isn’t one solution that fits my need entirely, but suffice to say, I have enough information from the net to build a version 1.0 of what I need within minutes. Here’s a quick re-collection of what I have done;

1. First of all, I need to enable macro in my Microsoft Outlook. Customize Quick Access Toolbar > Customize Ribbon > Enable “Developer” tab under “Main Tabs”
2. At the Developer Tab (in the main application screen), Create a new macro by navigating to Macros > Enter a new name > Create
3. In the macro program, I create a subroutine that will loop through the the attachments in the email, archive each of them by exporting and deleting, and finally insert the exported attachment links into the message body of the original email. The code, which is leveraged from the net with some modification, can be found at the end of this blog post.
4. Then I add the macro shortcut to the message window’s “Ribbon Bar”, so that I can “run” it immediately any time while reading an email.
1. Open the message window by clicking on any of the emails.
2. Go to Customize Quick Access Toolbar > Customize Ribbon
3. Under “Choose commands from”, select Macros. The newly created macro should be in the list
4. Under “Customize Ribbon”, Select Main Tabs.
5. Create a new tab, and under the new tab that I have just created, create a new group. The new macro command has to be added under this new group. Rename the tab and the group where appropriate. I name them as “My Tab” and “Quick Stuff” respectively.
6. Select the newly created macro and add it to the new group. I named the macro “Save & Link Attachment”
5. Once I have done all the above, I can now open any email with an attachment, Click on “My Tab” and then “Save & Link Attachment” (or whatever you named it earlier in 4(vi)), the attachment will be saved, deleted and subsequently linked in the email automatically!

How a message looks like after the macro processing

Sub SaveAttachment()

Dim objOL As Outlook.Application
Dim objMsg As Outlook.MailItem 'Object
Dim objAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
Dim objSelection As Outlook.Selection
Dim i As Long
Dim lngCount As Long
Dim strFile As String
Dim strFolderpath As Variant
Dim strDeletedFiles As String

    ' Get the path to your My Documents folder
    'strFolderpath = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders(16)
    'On Error Resume Next
    ' Instantiate an Outlook Application object.
    Set objOL = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
    ' Get the collection of selected objects.
    Set objSelection = objOL.ActiveExplorer.Selection
    ' Set the Attachment folder.
    'strFolderpath = strFolderpath & "\OLAttachments\"
    'Use the MsgBox command to troubleshoot. Remove it from the final code.

    strFolderpath = "C:\"  

    Dim MyPath As Variant
    MyPath = BrowseForFolder(strFolderpath)
    If VarType(MyPath) = 11 Then
      If Not MyPath Then
        GoTo ExitSub
      End If
    End If
    strFolderpath = MyPath

    ' Check each selected item for attachments. If attachments exist,
    ' save them to the Temp folder and strip them from the item.
    For Each objMsg In objSelection
    ' This code only strips attachments from mail items.
    ' If objMsg.class=olMail Then
    ' Get the Attachments collection of the item.
     Set objAttachments = objMsg.Attachments
     lngCount = objAttachments.Count
    'Use the MsgBox command to troubleshoot. Remove it from the final code.
    'MsgBox objAttachments.Count
     If lngCount > 0 Then
    ' We need to use a count down loop for removing items
    ' from a collection. Otherwise, the loop counter gets
    ' confused and only every other item is removed.
        For i = lngCount To 1 Step -1
        ' Save attachment before deleting from item.
        ' Get the file name.
        strFile = objAttachments.Item(i).FileName
        ' Combine with the path to the Temp folder.
        strFile = strFolderpath & "\" & strFile

        'MsgBox strFile

        ' Save the attachment as a file.
        objAttachments.Item(i).SaveAsFile strFile
        ' Delete the attachment.
        objAttachments.Item(i).Delete
        'write the save as path to a string to add to the message
        'check for html and use html tags in link
        If objMsg.BodyFormat <> olFormatHTML Then
            strDeletedFiles = strDeletedFiles & vbCrLf & "<file:>"
            Else
            strDeletedFiles = strDeletedFiles & "<br>" & "<a href='file://" & _
            strFile & "'>" & strFile & "</a>"
        End If
        'Use the MsgBox command to troubleshoot. Remove it from the final code.
        'MsgBox strDeletedFiles
        Next i
    End If
    ' Adds the filename string to the message body and save it
    ' Check for HTML body
    If objMsg.BodyFormat <> olFormatHTML Then
        objMsg.Body = "The file(s) were saved to " & strDeletedFiles & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & objMsg.Body
    Else
        objMsg.HTMLBody = "<p><p>The file(s) were saved to " & strDeletedFiles & "</p></p>" & objMsg.HTMLBody
    End If
       objMsg.Save
    'End If
    Next
ExitSub:
Set objAttachments = Nothing
Set objMsg = Nothing
Set objSelection = Nothing
Set objOL = Nothing

End Sub

I also added a function to select the folder where I want the attachment(s) to be saved in and referenced from (the message)

Function BrowseForFolder(Optional OpenAt As Variant) As Variant
     'Function purpose:  To Browser for a user selected folder.
     'If the "OpenAt" path is provided, open the browser at that directory
     'NOTE:  If invalid, it will open at the Desktop level

    Dim ShellApp As Object

    'Create a file browser window at the default folder
    Set ShellApp = CreateObject("Shell.Application"). _
    BrowseForFolder(0, "Please choose a folder to save the attachment(s)", 0, OpenAt)

     'Set the folder to that selected.  (On error in case cancelled)
    On Error Resume Next
    BrowseForFolder = ShellApp.self.Path
    On Error GoTo 0

     'Destroy the Shell Application
    Set ShellApp = Nothing

     'Check for invalid or non-entries and send to the Invalid error
     'handler if found
     'Valid selections can begin L: (where L is a letter) or
     '\\ (as in \\servername\sharename.  All others are invalid
    Select Case Mid(BrowseForFolder, 2, 1)
    Case Is = ":"
        If Left(BrowseForFolder, 1) = ":" Then GoTo Invalid
    Case Is = "\"
        If Not Left(BrowseForFolder, 1) = "\" Then GoTo Invalid
    Case Else
        GoTo Invalid
    End Select

    Exit Function

Invalid:
     'If it was determined that the selection was invalid, set to False
    BrowseForFolder = False

End Function

WebOS-powered TouchPad

I am a big fan of Palm products. Those days it was cool to carry a Palm PDA, and if my memory did not fail me, my first Palm product was a Palm Pilot series. Palm gave me the impression of building nifty products but not a world shaker one. However when the webOS was first unveiled in 2009, I thought it is the mobile platform to go, with Windows and Linux both dominating the desktop market. The thoughts of web connected device, taking advantage of the Web 2.0 technologies, was just salivating.

Since then, a handful of Palm devices were launched sporting WebOS. I love the simple interface but the form factor never grew on me. With the products mostly focused in the US market, strangely if I may add, I never got to own one until now.  Then HP acquired Palm, and it got me lighted up. A PC giant (or a ex PDA big player in Jornado and iPAQ), and an promising next generation mobile OS maker, perfect marriage or a disastrous divorce in making?

Unboxing TouchPad

Fast forward to last month, the first webOS tablet with HP DNA was launched. As I was in the market for a tablet, it didn’t take me too much of deliberation before I placed a pre-order. I didn’t even have the chance to test run the product even though a demo unit was available during the pre-order event. I admit I was a tad disappointed by the form factor (again!) once I caught a quick glance on the demo unit. But I thought I will be wowed over by the implanted webOS, or at least I was looking forward to that.

The TouchPad was finally delivered to me yesterday. As I un-boxed the unit enthusiastically, I realized I was no longer bothered by its form factor, despite it being thicker and heavier than the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 and iPad 2. Perhaps the nagging concern of form factor had worn off. The 9.7inch gorilla glass is tightly fitted and enclosed with a piano finish housing, defusing a sense of refine touch and quality feel. The clean design blends well with  two slim, chrome-looking buttons (power and volume). The microphone, headphone socket and the home button are so discreet, it will not be surprise if anyone were to hold the tablet upside down. The clean line design however is interrupted by the speakers’ positions, as the Beat-by-Dre speakers sit too deep into the tablet. Unfortunately, the “not flushed with the housing” design make the unit looks like a manufacturing defect.

Highly Polished & Piano Finish Housing

Power on the Touchpad, I was greeted by the HP logo. It took awhile before the first setup wizard screen appeared, but since this was just one time, I had no complains. The setup process required me to connect to a WIFI hotspot so this requirement needs to be taken note of to potential buyers. (This is afterall a Web gadget). Otherwise the whole setup process was simple and a breeze, another tell tale sign that HP wants to keep the whole experience simple. The 1024×768 screen resolution looks a bit low on the otherwise decent display. The display looked gorgeous until I placed it side by side against my favorite Samsung Galaxy S2. The color appeared marginally pale and lack of “punch”.  On the other hand, the touch sensitivity is great and while I like the ripple effect I suspect it is designed with a reason behind. More on that later.

Holding TouchPad with one hand can be challenging

On the webOS, I love the concept and the implementation of the application cards. It is not new but I think in webOS 3.02 it is more polished now, perhaps with the help of bigger screen estate. I like the idea of glancing all the active applications like a deck of cards, and ability to stack them up or side by side. To close the application, a swipe up gesture is good enough. No worries of whether the application has exited or not, or which button or menu to press to quit the application. Simple and consistent gesture.

The JustType proves to be very useful for me as it not only provides context search, but also brings all the possible search to you in one place. A keyword search will give me a comprehensive list of available search options. I can trigger a google search, or I can search against the application catalog or wiki. I can even post a status about the keyword(s) in Facebook.  Google and Apple should take note of this (and the simple card style launcher), but I suspect they would be too proud to acknowledge such conveniences.

Multi-tasking is another selling point although I have to say it looks like webOS 3.0 might have fallen into the same “speed trap” as Android during its Eclair and Froyo days. The tablet seems to show signs of lagging when I opened many applications. So I do make a point to swipe out applications I do not need (in case you still have not internalize this, it means I quit the app). Perhaps a reminder from HP that human being can only do so much of multi-tasking.

Apart from the cards concept, the system UI layout is clean with just a status bar at the top, displaying active notifications and system status. The home button will lit up in a subtle blinking mode whenever there is new notification,which is functionally and aesthetically pleasing. For a content intensive application, the content could be organised in multiple pages which can be swiped and layered neatly within the application window, or opened up as a new card. Again, simple and consistent navigation experience.

TouchPad is slim and sexy if you compare them against a Desktop

Life is never perfect, so are electronic gadgets. There are some petty annoyances such as dummy Wifi status icon that does not show the wireless strength. The main gripes I have with TouchPad is the occasional lags, and the lack of applications. I should be forgiven if I have mistaken that the ripple effect (which animates for every screen touch) is designed to assure user that there is nothing wrong with the touch accuracy and sensitivity. The lag should and needs to be fixed in the next release of software update. It can be frustrating when the tablet takes a few seconds to wake up (which I suspect happens when there’s a new notification in the background while the tablet is in deep sleep) , or the application takes its time to load up.

As for the meager application catalog, I believe it is a matter of time developers will jump onto the bandwagon, so long HP doubles up its release of webOS devices and appliances to the market. This will in turn build more demands for the developers. After all, if Rovio, the Angrybird “farmer”, chose to release its game at the same time as the TouchPad’s launch, it does say something about how keen the developers in general are to join in the fun. (The last I remembered Rovio took a while before they release the Windows Phone version of their birds and pigs game). It is a chicken and egg situation (with no pun intended)  but the ball (or is it the egg?) is apparently in HP’s court.

Regardless, there are some applications which I think should be part of the default application offering. For example, there is no application for YouTube, one which is so synonymous to Web that excluding it from a Web-oriented device is like taking a steering wheel away from a car. It may well be a case of HP wanting to prove a point that they have Flash support, as the workaround (of a missing YouTube app) is to playback the videos from YouTube’s desktop version site directly. Even a Youtube video search from JustType fires up the YouTube web page directly. I have to say though, the playback is as good as what you would experience from a desktop, buttery smooth without stuttering.

As a matter of fact, for every of the web sites I surfed, the web browser will always open the site in desktop format (not mobile) automatically, and you won’t feel any dysfunctional or crippled navigation as you would experienced sometimes from a smartphone. Perhaps, there is an underlying message HP wants to send out here. That Touchpad is a desktop in a tablet form, and a simple one too. Now, my TouchPad is starting to look more sleek and slim, oh yeah!

Ministry of National Development had recently set up an online survey, to collate public feedback on pet ownership and stray management policies. If you have not already done so ( in giving your feedback), it’s high time you do so, whether you are a pet lovers or not. At least, the authority would be able to tweak their policies so to protect the innocent animals while making sure all the ‘troublesome’ human-beings happy (Note: I am referring to both pet and non-pet lovers, as I think human beings are always the problematic one, not the animals themselves)

For me, I think the stray issues need to be dealt with a multi-pronged approach;

1. Pet Homing policies to curb the overcrowding situation in the animal shelters.

The HDB policy on pet ownership should be revisited, so that it would be more supportive in homing of medium dogs. In helping to re-home the stray animals which a significant number of them do not meet HDB guidelines, whether it’s an “all inclusive” or “by exception” policy, it will go a long way to address or mitigate the overcrowding challenge that the animal shelters are facing today. This will also give some hope to the poor homeless, abandoned animals as they deserve better than what they are receiving today.

2. AVA policies to protect the puppies who are helplessly mishandled by the unethical pet commercial entities

OK, not all pet shops or farms are unethical. But that does not mean there is none in this “dark” industry as they disregard the welfare of the baby animals. We do not expect any pet commercial entities to run like an animal welfare association. But at minimum they should and must be pet lovers. A pet lover would not have done what some of us had encountered ourselves, which I had recently blogged in a true revelation of a pet warehouse and the feedbacks I had gathered from the like-minded pet lovers.

The authority could do more to keep such irresponsible entities in check. Do not believe on what some of the companies would say in their “PR-tically” right statements, as some of them are just wolf wearing the skin of a sheep. They might project themselves to be animal lovers, but in reality they are just taking the poor animals as a mere commodity.

We need AVA help to weed out such socially irresponsible dog breeders/sellers, so we do not have a situation of animal ill treatment.  We would also be able to minimize the number of stray dogs. Many of these dogs were abandoned partly due to these scrupulous commercial entities. They will hard-sell their “commodities” to potential pet owners who are not ready yet for pets.The end result? Abandoned animals.

3. Educate potential pet owners about the responsibility of being one

The saying goes, it takes two hands to clap, and the stray situation is no different. If all potential pet owners were to do their homework, on what their duties are in owning a pet, then we would know the pet will be in the goods hand of a responsible owner. The unfortunate truth is a lot of potential pet owners do not. They would therefore be easily swayed by the sweet-talk of the sales people, and the cute-innocent look of the puppies. By the time they bring their “toy” back home, they will realize that the life of a pet owner is not as easy as one have made it out to be. Issues of strays and/or mistreatment by pet owners are brewed as a result.

4. Execute, and execute wisely and properly.

With all the policies in place, it’ll be useless if they are not governed or executed well. A case in point is a recent incident involving a restaurant suspected of selling dog meat. The officers made a first trip to the restaurant for preliminary check, and then subsequently made a second trip to the restaurant again to obtain meat samples. Perhaps they were just following the protocols, but for heaven sake, exercise some common sense because what they had done was just plain meaningless. The restaurant could have gotten sufficient lead time to cover up their bad deeds, if they were indeed guilty. Do more mystery or surprise audit check on these commercial entities where there’s suspect of cruelty treatment of animals, I am sure one will see a different story, and one that matches the reality.

And it is not just with the authorities that should get their acts together, the society needs to play its part as well. As pet owners, we need to do what is necessary to keep our pets clean and happy, but not forgetting to stay in harmony with our fellow neighbors and friends who may not necessary a pet lover. For non pet lovers, let’s exercise some graciousness, for I am sure there are other things you like to do which others may not. But more importantly, if we all exercise our capability as human being in doing what we can to protect the innocent animals, we would not have seen the proliferation of the “pet warehouse” in the recent years.

So let’s take the first step. Let’s give our feedback to MND

A few days ago, I blogged about my experience with what I called a “Pet Warehouse”, on how they carried out the sales, and equally if not more importantly, how my Corgi puppy had seemingly traumatized by the short stay at the “warehouse” (but thankfully he had since recovered)

I received a few responses, and was shocked by how other had experienced the same with the said “Pet Warehouse”, with some even worst. I thought I would share some of these responses, so you can see the severity of the issue we are facing today.

last mth i went to pasir ris dog farm and walk into EPW and saw this beautiful boxer.. and ask them how much is the price… they told me he is cost 9.5k.. so i back off once they try to force selling the puppy.. and just walk away… that very same day i went to nex PS, they too have a boxer and cost cheaper to half price of the price at EPW.. i was so shock… and one of my friend GT just died after bring him home 5 days from EPW… but cos he did not pay the so called insurance thing.. so he get nothing back but a word of so sorry to hear that…

- Maureen

We got our corgi from there too!!!

The standing guy with dyed hair sold him to us. His change in attitude was equally horrifying when he realized that we only bought a few of the food he STRONGLY suggested. I can’t remember how much we got our corgi but it was around 3k plus. (My brother settled the payment.) We brought him home immediately and when he arrived home, he slurped 4bowls of water nonstop! Gosh, he was so thirsty!

After that, he came down with demodex but thankfully he recovered after medication. Now we feed the best vitamins we can for him to boost him immune system.

One of the reasons we got him because he looked pretty quiet and lonely in the cubicle.. But he was never once like this since we bought him home. He is extremely playful and active. Hmm.

- Eunice

Oh dear.. I heard of alot of bad rumours about them but this is the furst time I read about a 1st hand experience! Luckily cody is with you guys.. If not some weak minded individual might have gotten hom on impulse!

My Estee was from Ericsson by her previous owner too.. When I adopted her over, She contracted Lymphoma at the age of 3 and it is an extremely rare case.

From what I read from the web, lymphoma is a genetic diseases so maybe her parents were not of good health but made to breed and breed.

- Lynn

thanks for sharing the article… Lucky you got Cody home in time and taken good care.. My 1st dog from the ”Warehouse” was not so lucky.. I can share a few pics with you of my 1st dog that i bought home then at nite got very sick and died the next morning..

The vet said was amoeba virus, then i brought her back to EPW the next morning, she died there after EPW’s vet came over to look.

Alot of us strongly believed she was put to sleep…
Hence why i strongly urge people in here not to buy from them because I do not want anyone to suffer what i had been through while getting my 1st dog… My tears even flow now when i type this coz this is the worst 1st experience anyone can get when getting a dog and bring home dead the next day…

Hmm, was abit surprised to see this topic here. I agree that EPW is a horrible place to get pets, the living conditions there before how they currently look like now was really bad. And there have been many sick cases from the puppies and often leave the owners very helpless.

i do advice my friends who want to get pets, not to go there though – all along! But the dogs and cats there are really poor thing..sigh

- Felicia

This has been going on for long times. I had the same experience with Jeffery and that was 16 years ago. It just happened every now and than but their business still grow strong. The poor little corgi puppy stayed one nite in my hse and 7 days in hospital than passed away. Till now did’t know what was the cause but I later found out the same batch of puppies( all other breeds) that came together , many died too. i always remember that puppy, he was so smart and obedient. He can do sit stay and wait without lease, the only day happy memory we spend together enough for me to reminisc for life.

- Amy

 i got koji from EPW too… he cost close to 4k… n like described, about insurance, pedigree cert n all, i was faced with the same thing!

- Alicia

We din go back to them regards to Miko’s demodex Mites. But there was once, we happened to passby there for the dog run , Miko stayed very still in my arms , could feel her trembling, she looked ard in fear and she tot we were returning her back to the horrible place of her life …

- Val

It has been more than a year since we have gotten Cody from a “pet farm” located somewhere in Singapore. I figured I should shared our story (about our dealings with the farm) so that more people will be more aware about the dark side of the pet industry. I first blogged about our experience privately, sharing with a small group of pet owners. The responses can be categorized into two camps. One camp was shocked by the experience, although most if not all had heard similar unethical practices, just that they did not hear it from somebody who had experienced it first hand. The other camp could relate to our experience because they had undergone similar trauma with the same said farm! There was no doubters, and the responses propelled me to publicize our story, for greater exposure of such unscrupulous practices.

Firstly, I shall name the farm “E” Pet Warehouse, or EPW. E is just an alphabet chosen arbitrarily as the name of the pet farm in question, for easier reference and for anonymity sake. As for the term “Warehouse” I thought it is a more suitable descriptor than the word “Farm”, just purely based on my encounter with them. The remaining part of this post is a mere re-production of the original blog entry from here. (sorry it’s still protected!)

By chance and by fate, we met Cody on a Saturday afternoon at EPW. We didn’t go to EPW shopping for a pet. But we saw Cody, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, lying quietly in his own ‘window cubicle’, self entertaining. He was not trying to catch anybody attention, unlike other puppies in EPW. We were instantly attracted to him, not just because of his adorable look, but also by his personality, and equally curious by his breed. To be honest, we had initially thought he was a mutated breed, a mix of German Sherperd and Terrier? But I had digressed.

We were told about his breed by the sales manager, and while he shared with us more about the breed, in retrospective, I cannot recalled any of what he had said drew any parallel to what I had learnt from the internet so far. The sales manager was repeatedly trying to convince us in “buying” Cody, despite the oath that was printed on almost every of their office pillars. I can’t exactly remember the details of the oath, but it was about how pet is for life and not a commodity.

We were very close on getting Cody, but the logical side of me told us we need “cooling off period” and not purchase on emotional impulse. It was ironical that EPW had the oath printed everywhere but yet they were quite hard selling (although they concealed the “hard-selling” very well, under the name of the oath) . Eventually we decided to walk off, not just to cool off for a more sensible decision, but also we thought we need to know more about the breed itself, before committing ourselves to this new relationship, one which we had never experienced before.

We drove back to my parents place, which is just a stone’s throw away.  Thanks to Google, we learnt more about Corgis in general, and the difference between Cardigan and Pembroke. We learnt about Corgis temperament in general, specifically their intelligence and stubbornness and that they are herding dogs by nature.  We also educated ourselves with their general health, their history, etc. We absorbed a lot of knowledge about Corgis, than what the sales manager had tried to brain-washed us. Regardless, we liked what we had discovered. We also consulted a friend of us, who works in the Pet Industry, about the general dealing practice with such pet shops, including the “general valuation” of Corgis. (We were told it is between $2K to $3K)

We decided to go back to EPW after a few hours to see if we would still see Cody. There he was still lying quietly in his cubicle, but this time round playing with his fellow tri-coloured Corgi buddy/sibling.  The sales manager upon seeing us, pounced on us like an eagle preying his target. He knew we were keen on bring him home, so he wasted no time in quoting a rocket sky price to us.

Sales Manager (EPW): Corgis are more expensive than others, because they are “premium” and they (pointing to Cody and his buddy/sibling) are pedigrees.

US: Ok, if we can afford him, we will like to bring him home

EPW: $5500

US: *hesitating* Oh, sorry I don’t think we can afford him. But it’s okay, we don’t want to bargain. I hope he will have better fate with the next potential owner.

EPW: Don’t worry! You can apply for 12 months free interest payment …

US: Oh, like we said …

EPW: *intercepting us*  Ok, let me offer you $5000

US: But …

EPW: *taking out his calculator* I tell you what, I can give you discount, final price $4000

US: It is still beyond our budgt …

EPW: I tell you what, $3500 without GST, and you have to pay the GST.

US: I tell you what instead, I really hope him (Cody) can find a better owner who can afford him and give him a good life

EPW: Why don’t you tell me what’s your budget?

US: *Hesitating* (Even I know about the “General Market Valuation” of Corgis, I don’t want to tell him the lowest of the bracket I know, as I am not into bargaining)  eh… looking not more than $3000

EPW: *Tap Tap on his calculator again* Okay, I can quote you $3000, but you really have to pay GST.

US: No, like I say, we can’t ….

EPW: Ok, lets do a deal now. $3000. You okay?

At this point, we had let our guards down totally, and our minds were already on how we are going to forge a life long relationship with Cody. We promptly accepted the offer. We asked if we could let Cody stayed with them for a few nights, while we tried to get the necessary logistic ready to welcome Cody home. (Another big mistake of ours!). We paid up, completed the necessary paper documents, and left EPW.

We decided to call our friend for further advise. He advised us to bring Cody home as soon as possible but he didn’t elaborate on why. That very night, we googled EPW. We read horror stories about the EPW, how some of the puppies ended up with poor health, etc. We were freaked out, so we made up our mind to go back to EPW the next day, to bring Cody home.

We approached the same friend of ours for assistance, since we were so new to all these procedures, and we wanted to be sure we would not continue to be taken for a ride. It is always good to have somebody experience to guide you along. And boy, were we glad we did.

Our friend followed us with his own mobile dog carriage. The sales manager was quite surprised to see us that very day. We told him about our intention, and he immediately retorted back, claiming that there’s a regulation from AVA where Cody was mandated to stay with them for at least 4 days before he could leave with us. For the record, according to the quarantine paper documents, Cody arrived at EPW on 6th,  and we were trying to collect him on the 9th (a day after we paid up). Regardless, we were not convinced by the so-called AVA policy, and insisted that Cody to be taken out. There was a bit of argument there, and eventually the sales manager relented to our request unwillingly. I thought it was more because of his mind being preoccupied with trying to close other sales (it was a busy Sunday afternoon!).

Then came another astonishing question.

EPW: Do you want to pay this additional $200 *pointing to a document with some terms & conditions*. This is to protect you in case of anything happen to the dog, he died or has problem you don’t like, we will replace him with a dog with similar value.

US: Eh…

EPW: If you don’t want to pay $200, then at least pay $50 (I can’t remember, but it’s significantly lesser) so if you bring him to see Vet in the first 7 days for unforseen circumstances, we will reimburse you for the medical fee.

US: No we decided not to have it. It doesn’t sound right (even if we could see this as an insurance)

EPW: Okay, nevermind, I will get my man to advise you what food or accessories you should buy for your (Cody).

My friend whispered to me. He told us we should not commit ourselves with those recommendation, especially given what he and us had seen. The assigned sales person walked us through their food and accessories shelves. He would stopped at certain brands, and would tell us how Cody had been eating them, and how we should continue the same diet for his own good. The key point here is most of the recommended items are not cheap, ranging from $50 to $300 (for the supplements). We respectfully rejected all his advises, although we decided to play nice by buying one packet of Eagles kibbles. (which wasn’t the original recommendation from the sales person). We were doing some mental calculation, that it would probably cost us more than $1000 if we had acceded to every recommendation the sales person gave.

When the sales person took the empty basket over from us (with just that one packet of Eagles kibbles) to the sales counter, he had a short chat with the sales manager. Immediately we saw a black face transformed instantly like a Chinese Sichuan opera face performer doing a face-changing act. From that moment onwards, it looked as if our transaction had fallen to the lowest priority of the queue. It took them much longer to process the sales transaction (of that one packet of kibbles), than they did a day ago on Cody’s transaction. Enough said!

Then my friend reminded me about the pedigree certificate. We asked, and again it took us a while before we could catch hold of the sales manager’s attention. He was rather impatient by then, and without any hesitation quoted us $1000 for the certificate. We were taken by surprised, including my friend who has never heard about a pedigree certificate had to be paid separately, and for such a exorbitant amount. Seeing that the argument was not going any where, we decided to cut short the conversation, and left EPW hastily. That was the last time we step in their shop, and we don’t think we are going back again based on the kind of experience we had undergone.

What’s your experience with this said warehouse?

Take the category of smartphone as an example. I would rate HTC for its famed Sense experience, which help to ramp up a newbie experience with Android (and Windows Mobile previously). On the other hand I see SonyEricsson being in the leader in its camera functionality having used its Xperia Arc and compared it with all the Galaxy S series. That said, HTC Sense is getting too complicated as the company tries to be sophisticated for its products to be ‘smart’. But I have digressed.

So when I read reports that raved the new Samsung Galaxy S II as the best Android smartphone to date I thought it is a bold statement. Don’t get me wrong as I think it is yet another fine product by the Korean company but that statement needs to be contextualized.

Improvement wise there’re plenty to talk about, whether we are pitting it against its predecessor (Samsung Galaxy S) or its competitors. The setup experience is more seamless now, mostly with the help of Android Gingerbread OS. All my previously installed apps were restored once I signed in my Google account. The only gripe I have on the restoration process is that the user data were not reinstated which means i have to rely back on backup apps like titanium backup. In any case, this is a default Google (Gingerbread) feature so I can’t fault Samsung for this.

The other significant improvement is its home launcher. The infamous TouchWiz, labelled as iPhone wannabe previously, may have some traces of iPhone footprint in the latest version. It may not be the best home launcher in the market today, but it definitely (and finally) has its own DNA with neat features such as its nifty widget management functionality. Hopefully the Korean continues to build on the success of its software, just as it has demonstrated for its hardware. After all, the marriage of software and hardware is what makes the phone (or any electronic gadget for that matter) smarter

The biggest improvement, as both techies and newbies will attest to unanimously,  is the speed. While the newbies may likely pay tribute to the obvious dual core processor, the more knowledgeable one would point out the plenty of RAM memory available (about 400MB). Talk to the techie, especially those who had previously owned the lag-troubled SGS,  you will be enlightened that the (other) key contributor of the performance boost is the choice of file system used in the new SGS II. No more crappy RFS, Samsung’s version of FAT file system. Samsung has finally embraced the EXT4 file system wholly, and in that light, it is a testament that they do listen to its customers feedback, especially the voices of xda-developers.

Having used HTC Desire HD and Sony Ericsson Xperia earlier (not forgetting SGS), I personally prefer the new Samsung Galaxy S II over the former two. It doesn’t mean SGS II beats both phones hands down.(eh, although the bias side of me may say that, especially against HTC Desire HD). No matter how complicated HTC has transformed its Sense experience into, it is clearly still the leader in this space at this moment with its rich features (widget offering, remote phone management, etc). New Android users, especially those jump-camping from iPhone camp, will appreciate this. What left me with a sour note on HTC products is its mediocre hardware offering, particularly its LCD display and camera. The LCD display differentiator, lies not about how many pixels the manufacturer can squeeze into that 3-4 inch of physical screen (retina display anyone?), but how it renders the color of the images (still or motion), as close to the reality as possible. The same goes for the camera compartment. This is where Xperia Arc’s BRAVIA® Engine (for its reality display) and Exmor R™ for mobile CMOS sensor easily thrash HTC Desire HD. Xperia Arc however disappointed me with its measly storage and memory (I ran out of internal storage space after restoring all my apps, and my available RAM is always less than 100MB!). Coupled that with a “fat” bloatware installation footprint, it is a recipe for disasterous performance.

Video Sample of SGS II, 720P mode

As an advanced user, I can definitely overcome most, if not all, of these software deficiencies in SGS II, vis-a-visa HTC Desire HD (and probably all the HTC products as well). SGS II’s Super AMOLED+ is a worthy competitor to SonyEricsson’s BRAVIA® Engine, so it is hard to call out who is the world-beater here, at least to my naked eyes. On the other hand, SonyErcisson’s Exmor R™ CMOS sensor is the clear winner to me for its exceptional low-light sensitivity. However, SGS II camera sensor is no pushover (except for taking photos in poor lighting condition). Thus, it was a close fight between Arc and SGS II for me, but the latter eventually won me over for its extravagant storage and memory,  dual core for future proofing, not forgetting a wider base of xda-developers support.

In a nutshell, is SGS II a perfect (Android) smartphone? No unless you set the right context. That said, if somebody were to ask me, I would rate SGS II and Xperia Arc highly with SGS II taking the lead over Arc by a hairline margin. As for HTC Desire HD (and probably Sensation), probably a distant 3rd.

Note: Don’t take the last statement too seriously, I am just utterly disappointed by HTC products after all these years of owning the likes of HD, HD2,  Desire, Desire HD

Other Interesting reads

• Samsung Galaxy S II Torn Down, Analyzed, and Found To Be Top Tier
• Camera showdown: Samsung Galaxy S II versus Xperia arc

Close up of the vacuum check valve

This morning, as I was driving, I experienced some shuddering when the car slowed down. At idling, the shuddering was more obvious. It was as though the car was trying to find the right gear, or misfired. The initial thought was it might be a coil pack problem, for which I had a spare part as a back up. But as I googled to confirm the root cause of the problem, it looked more likely to be a vacuum line leak as coil pack problem usually causes misfiring at higher rpm (and my engine shuddered at low rpm or idle)

Popping up the bonnet, I inspected the lines and true enough, I found the vacuum check valve broken. Hopefully there is no other leaks, and we will find out more as I bring the car to the workshop tomorrow.

Location of the vacuum check valve

A couple of years ago, when SonyEricsson decided to re-invent their new flagship mobile product in Xperia X1, I bought their vision, literally. The phone, despite running on Windows Mobile platform, wowed me with their sleek design and their UI panel concept. Hey, I even contributed to their vision by developing a navigation panel. The quality of the phone was far from perfect, and I promptly returned the phone back to the service centre when they offered a buy-back proposal to appease my dissatisfaction. That was my last impression of a Xperia product.

Then SonyEricsson ventured into the Android segment, I had a close look at X10. I loved the big screen, but got turned off by its Eclair-Android platform when its competitors were already beginning to release Froyo-based phones. In fairness to them, X10 was launched around the same time (or just after) Froyo was announced by Google . Not wanting to take any chance, I had to give it a pass, and went on the rendezvous with the likes of Desire Series and Galaxy S.

When I switched from Samsung Galaxy S for the HTC Desire HD, I find myself constantly frustrated by the latter’s multimedia capability. The screen display looked so pale when pitted beside the Galaxy S; Photos and video capture function was (and still is) so bad that I have given up using my phone to snap candid photos and videos.

So when Samsung first announced the Galaxy S II earlier this year,  my mind was immediately fixated on the Galaxy S successor. Just as I thought I have to endure another month or two, came the new SonyEricsson X10 successor. I was originally invited for the Xperia Arc product launch event but I had to give it a miss due to my busy work schedule. Opportunity usually does not knock on your door twice, but for Xperia Arc, it sure did. The whole select, browse and purchase experience seemed to be predestined. I was casually reminded to give the phone a second thought. By chance I happened to walk pass a SonyEricsson outlet so I went in to have a close look on Xperia Arc, although I was attracted to the Xperia Play instead. It finally ended with a deal put forth to me by an associate, which was too good for me to give it a miss. Within 14 days, I finally had my hands on the new Xperia Arc.

The unboxing experience was pleasant. I got a misty silver Arc, and as I inspected the phone before powering it on, I thought the silver look finishing does add a tint of elegant feel to its sexy appeal.  With the new Arc, SonyEricsson seems to have perfected its sleek arc design since the Xperia X1 days. Opening of the battery cover was easy although I was so worried I might just break it with the prying. Thanks to its light-weight casing, the phone feels so much lighter than my Desire HD, and made me realised how much of weight I have been carrying all these while since Galaxy S days. Upon powering up the phone, I was greeted by a vibrant colour, high contrast display. It just reminded me the feasts my eyes have been missing in the last 6 months with the dull-looking Desire HD screen. Having said that, the jury is still out (at least for me, until I see for myself), on how the Bravia Engine display would fare against the new Super AMOLed Plus in Galaxy S2.

On the other hand, I am not a big fan of “bling bling” chrome trimming, and the 3 long chrome buttons at the bottom of the screen. If the misty silver finish adds to the classy look, the chrome trimming and buttons minus it off. The 3 system buttons (back, home and menu) are not backlit, even though SonyEricsson tried to use two tiny led points to indicate the positions of the buttons. While I can appreciate the tactile feels that only a physical button can offer, i thought the size and layout of the three system buttons spoil the otherwise sexy and classy design of Arc.

Once powered up, I was greeted by a very well thought-through setup wizard process. Setting up my office and personal accounts and having all my emails, contacts and calendars synchronised into the phone was a breeze, although I would attribute that largely due to Google Android platform. Within seconds, I could start using the phone productively, no need to worry about phone content migration. The key missing feature I found in Arc is the Market app restoration. I had thought it is a Gingerbread feature, as I had experienced in my Desire HD where the market actually restores applications when I upgraded the phone to Gingerbread.  So the call for rooting the phone, and thanks to Chainfire’s Gingerbreak, I got it rooted fairly quickly and uses TitaniumBackup to restore all my applications and data.

The operating of the phone feels smooth and fast overall. There are some momentary lags here and there, and most of the time the lags happen when there is multi-tasking going on (e.g. running an app while another app is being installed). The boost in speed is also largely attributed to Gingerbread, which I thought has addressed some of the memory management and multi-tasking issues in Froyo and Eclair. The challenge I think most OEM face is how their software development effort can be seamlessly integrated into Android platform, and I thought SonyEricsson did very well here. The home launcher may not be as sophisticated as HTC’s sense, but it sure has its own DNA unlike the Samsung’s home interface. Perhaps because of its lightweight, the launcher operates with almost zero lag as one switches from one home screen to another, with live widgets and wallpapers running in the background.  That said, I thought SonyEricsson suffered from its own success. While it has set a very high bar on its user interface with a lot of bells and whistles (e.g. animated navigation actions), it seems to have lost sight on how to make its application usable from the content experience point of view. The concept of Timescape is good. HTC has similar concept in Friendstream,  Motorola has MotoBlur (I think) and Samsung has SocialHub, but I thought Timescape has a more complete concept around content aggregation and syndication. The navigation and interface is sleek too, I love the animation of messaging cards stacking up on each other. But will I be able to productively use it to share and review all the social media messages and updates? I’m not sure, and so the answer is probably not.

Camera wise, Xperia Arc beats Desire HD hands down. Thanks to the Exmor R for mobile, a Cmos sensor supposedly leveraged from that  found in Sony’s full-fledged camera series, Arc could really take good photos in poor lighting condition. There were already reviews on carrying out real life comparison between Arc and other mobile devices (e.g.  here and here), so I would not want to repeat myself here. The video capturing capability is as good, if not better, than Galaxy S, and definitely put all the HTC devices to shame. If anybody really cares about camera feature or visual display, HTC phones should not be in their shopping consideration at all. Arc has a simple video editor pre-installed, good and easy to use tool if you just want to save a section of the captured video. Any more sophisticated needs beyond that, you should look for a proper video editing app or transfer it to your desktop for further editing.

No matter how good the device is, there is always shortcomings, and Xperia Arc is no different. Apart from the poor chrome trimming and buttons layouts, the doubt over Timescape’s practicality, there are some nagging concerns on the Wifi performance, occasional lags and the “bloat wares”. But my main gripe with the phone *so far* is lack of community-based development work. No doubt there is work-in-progress on CM7 porting, some modification on UI and bootloaders, but the results are insignificant when you compare them against the development widespread in the HTC community. I think it is time for developers to realise there are better phones out there in the market.  On the other hand, the manufacturers need to be more open on how the developers can gain access to their products, to entice them to develop useful applications. That is why HTC remains to be so popular in the xda-developers community, despite some of its mediocre offerings that can be found even their flagship products. Fortunately, SonyEricsson is beginning to think likewise to engage the developers, with their attempt to reach out  in xda-developers forum, and officially sharing how to unlock their signed bootloaders so that developers can try out different custom ROMs on their phones. Having said that, not all mobile users would be bothered by such factor, but I think there must be a fine balance which manufacturers need to handle. For now, I can only hope for a better change, and for a start, I am looking forward to the Gingerbread 2.3.3 upgrade in the next 2 weeks.

Recently, I have been meddling with Android theme resources to modify the theme for my Android-based Galaxy Tab. It was yet another great learning process,  which involves manipulating the graphic resources, replacing the de-compiled XMLs that control the layouts and styling of the interface, etc. Just as I thought I had enough of them, I fumbled on a theming problem which seemed so impossible to fix. I pinpointed the offending code, created the right “answer” to the problem,  but it just didn’t work!

Almost giving up, I decided to trace the source code of the module. It turns out that the code explicitly sets the color of the text (the theming “bug”), and thus all the layout and style modification attempts would not have any effect at all.

   if (entry.label != null) {

            holder.appName.setText(entry.label);
            holder.appName.setTextColor(getResources().getColorStateList(

            entry.info.enabled ? android.R.color.primary_text_dark : android.R.color.secondary_text_dark));

   }

Instead of going back to source codes for changes, I contemplated reverse-engineering. Thankfully with the help of smali, an assembler/disassembler tool for Android apk,  I could correct the problem on the executable directly. Addictive Tips  gave a good overview of an Android application in ODEX and DEODEX format,

WHAT IS AN ODEX FILE?

In Android file system, applications come in packages with the extension .apk. These application packages, or APKs contain certain .odex files whose supposed function is to save space. These ‘odex’ files are actually collections of parts of an application that are optimized before booting. Doing so speeds up the boot process, as it preloads part of an application. On the other hand, it also makes hacking those applications difficult because a part of the coding has already been extracted to another location before execution.

THEN COMES DEODEX

Deodexing is basically repackaging of these APKs in a certain way, such that they are reassembled intoclasses.dex files. By doing that, all pieces of an application package are put together back in one place, thus eliminating the worry of a modified APK conflicting with some separate odexed parts.

In summary, Deodexed ROMs (or APKs) have all their application packages put back together in one place, allowing for easy modification such as theming. Since no pieces of code are coming from any external location, custom ROMs or APKs are always deodexed to ensure integrity.

So before I could attempt the “hack”, the application must be DEODEX’ed, so that we have the complete executable for disassembly. The executable in Android system is in .dex format, or Dalvik Executable, and is stored as classes.dex within the Android Package (.apk) along with other application resources (graphic resources, layout binaries, etc). I extracted out the classes.dex, and do a disassembly.

java -jar baksmali.jar -o out  classes.dex

This will disassemble the executable classes.dex into assembly codes in the folder named out. This step can be skipped if you have previously used APK Tool to decompile Android package to access to the XML codes. The latter however would not assemble the assembly codes when you compile using the tool, so the subsequent steps would still be required if you have made changes to the assembly code.

In my case, the offending code is ManageApplications$ApplicationsAdapter, and the section of the code matches the

    invoke-virtual {v3, v4}, Landroid/content/res/Resources;->getColorStateList(I)Landroid/content/res/ColorStateList;

    move-result-object v3

    invoke-virtual {v2, v3}, Landroid/widget/TextView;->setTextColor(Landroid/content/res/ColorStateList;)V

I simply commented off the third line in the above section of the code, which effectively eliminates the set color instruction. I proceeded to re-assemble the codes,

 java -jar smali.jar -o  classes.dex  out

The output of the assembler is a modified classes.dex, which I then re-package it to the original APK (Settings.apk).

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I have been experimenting on the Android UI theme work in the last 2 weeks. Last weekend I thought I made the most progress in terms of establishing a deeper understanding of the Android UI framework, and in the process overcame one of the theming roadblock that I have not been able to google a satisfactory answer for.

I have compiled the summary of my theming experiment, and updated that in the previous blog post. In that update, not only I have summarised the key steps to de-compile and re-compile the UI framework, I have also outlined the key components of the de-compiled source where the changes being made and the general effect the change achieved consequently. I could have missed a couple of components, as I did the summary based on my memory re-collection, and as you know, my memory has appeared to be falling lately.

I hope this helps anybody who is interested to theme an Android phone. Feel free to drop your questions or comments if you need help, clarification or correction to what have been shared. I will try my best to answer in the limited capacity I have.

一瞬间，我已经一脚踏入中年者的世界。人生过了一大半，再加上大选的来临，我决定放慢我的脚步，反省一番。

中学时上了两年的儒家思想教育，虽然不是个圣人，也不敢自称是个君子，但儒家所提倡的道理，我不时地去参考。其中，曾子说过：“吾日三省吾身”， 意思就是要我们不断检查自己的言行，使自己修善成完美的理想人格。我不时地提醒我自己，每一件事情的发生，必须先反省自己的不足，而不是只怪他人的不是。

这届的大选，最让我刮目相看的不是新媒体的兴起，而是周围朋友们对国家政府执政的怨言。所谓，公说公有理，婆说婆有理 （对一些朋友来说，“公说公有理，婆说没道理”　可能会比较贴切吧！），我只想在我的博客里发表我的感言。友人所针对的一些国家和社会课题，从策划和政策角度来看，无可否认有许多不足之处。是不是彻底的失败，见仁见智。但以怀着自省的心态来思考，我们必须客观的问：难道这些完全是政府的过失吗？我不以为然。

拿交通诸塞的问题来说，不管我们有再好的路陆制度和设施，只要我们有“临时插车”的坏习惯，别指望有“通行无阻”的现象。如果驾车人士没有礼让精神，就算有再高的巴士频率，还不是不能把搭客准时地载送到他们的目的地？

组屋高价，难道国人没有渴望以高价出售其安乐窝，来换取心目中梦想公寓的欲望吗？如果新公屋的价格得到人民相望的控制，难道就真的天大欢喜吗？人民难道不会乘机“劳他一笔”，剥夺真正需要公屋的市民吗？当然，这些不应该是修改政策的绊脚石，但如果人民没有反省的意识，我相信组屋的问题将会持久下去。

日常费用高涨，工资压制，确实不好受。但国人有没有反省一下，过去五，十年，有没有认真的策划自己事业未来的发展呢？以前一个月赚个两千元，十年后，月资的涨幅度，有一大半在于公司对职员价值观的评估，到底是个“庸才”，还是“人才”呢。如果国人没有积极的自我增值，埋怨“阿公”（政府）的疏忽是公平的吗？说到工资与受雇前景，本人对此课题有特别的感触。十年前，公司为了节减开支，裁了好多在美国总公司和欧洲分公司工作的同事，一律把他们的工作转移到低工资的国家，其中包括了新加坡。十年后，以相同的工作质量来相比，新加坡已经变成了中等工资城市，公司也因此开始在马来西亚，中国，印度等国家招兵买马，在那里成立了许多开发小组，对我国的就业机会前景虎视眈眈。国人在外界经济与就业的压力，应该有什么回应呢？孟子说：“穷则独善其身．达则兼善天下”。虽然孟子所指的“穷”与“达”并没有经济的含义，但是我却认为此名言的原本精神是值得参考的。

青奥运的超支，Ｆ１赛车的交通安排，确实给国人不少的不便和不满。但国人有没有从其他的角度来评估呢？当我们的学生们在跟其他国家的选手较量时，我们有没有为他们加油打气呢？还是在网上做个“网络英雄”，冷嘲热讽呢？如果说我们已经在金钱的诱惑下失去了我们的灵魂，那我们在这方面不必付上一点责任吗？　再来，青奥运和Ｆ１赛车为国家的旅游业打了兴奋剂，好让在相关行亚服务的国人有一番作为，我们是不是那么的自私，为了自己的方便，剥夺了他们的就业或生意扩展的机会呢？

在反省之于，我相信还是离不开政府“失策”的地方。本人认为政府最不足的地方不是他们执政的过失，而是他们治国的方式。孔子对治理政 事的看法是：“足食、足兵，民信之矣。”　这里孔子 把繁荣的经济、强大的军备和取得百姓信任三个要素 作为立国之本。而这三者中，孔子认为“足食”、“足 兵”二者可去，“自古皆有死，民无信不立”，“民信”是 万万不能丢的。这就要求任何统治者在治政的过程 中，都要重视民众的作用，把取得百姓的信任摆在第 一位，如果百姓对政府缺乏信任，统治者是站不住脚 的。

现任政府的执政能力，是不可厚非的。它所缺少的是，一份仁者之心。曾子说：“先治其国；欲治其国者，先齐其家；欲齐其家者，先修其身；欲修其身者，先正其心；心正而后身修，身修而后家齐，家齐而后国治，国治而后天下平”。简单来说，一个治国者必需先从自己开始， 心正后修身，才有能力理一个家和家人的关系， 如过连家都不能理好， 如何能治一个国哪？如果每个参与政党的议员，能体会修身之道，又有执政的实践经验，相信这才是真正的世界级政府。这也是我们所需要的，而不是所谓的“世界级国会”。

新加坡在过去四十多年来的发展，大家是有目共睹的。虽然有不少的第一代政党为了执政而不择手段的谣言，不管是真，是假，是对，是错，我们眼前的繁荣，是不可抹黑的。可能，我们可以在繁荣之间，还可以有“国性”多一点。但相反的，我们也可能还停顿在二十年甚至三十年的过去。所以，当我们在批评各政党至于，不要忘记“国家繁荣，人人有责”的道理。俗语说得好；创业难，守业跟难。同胞们，请珍惜眼前“国”吧！

A while back I ventured into kernel programming when I tried to meddle with the kernel for my Samsung Galaxy S.  (although in reality, it’s more of modifying the kernel)  I thought I would have stopped my venturing but I guess (geek) habit dies hard. Having spent some time recently to modify the otherwise boring UI of my Galaxy Tablet, I had thought about doing a write up, on  how Android manages its UI resources, i.e. framework-res.apk.

However, time is not at my end, as recent office workload shifts have basically stolen all my  time from my hobby. So I am just going to share what I have created (only applicable for Samsung Galaxy Tablet), and if there is anybody who want to know I do it, I can always try to capture bits by bits of what I have learnt and share whatever I know.

It took me awhile to figure out the intricacies of the framework-res, so I hope you will appreciate/like the latest work!

The mod can be downloaded from this xda thread. The remaining of this article will be updated as and when I have the time, and questions I get about the resource framework.

Steps to modify Framework-res.apk

1. Decompile the Framework using APKTool.JAR. The command to execute a decompilation is     java -jar apktool.jar d framework-res.apk  <directory-where-decompiled-resources-reside>
   
2. Modify the XML resources and/or replace the PNG resource files as you wish
3. Compile the Framework using APKTool.JAR again. The command to  java -jar apktool.jar b <directory-where-decompiled-resources-reside>
   
4. Once the resource is compiled, the newly compiled APK can be found in the dist folder of the framework-res
5. Before replacing the framework-res.apk in your android device with the newly compiled apk, you need to make sure the newly compiled apk has the META-INF folder and that the AndroidManifest.xml is replaced with the original version. Failure to do so will result in “bootloop”!
6. For other system apps APK (e.g. Settings.apk), the steps are similiar (i.e. step 1 to 4), except that you do the reverse in step 5.  Instead of copying META-INF folder to your newly compiled APK, copy the res folder and file resource.arsc from the newly compiled APK to the source or original APK. Make sure you copy w/o compressing the files/folder  (i.e. using store mode if you are using WinRAR)

Structure of Res folder in Framework-res.apk

Drawable – controls how the graphics should be rendered under event such as an animation

•  progress_horizontal.xml - Modify all the color elements to reflect the progress bar
• stat_sys_battery - Modify the elements to reflect the battery level
• stat_sys_battery - Modify the elements to reflect the animation of the battery

Drawable-hdpi – Replace the PNGs accordingly for the desirable theme look and feel

• btn_check_* – for all check buttons design
• btn_* – for all other type of buttons design
• ic_* – for all icons used in system wide UI such as menu, etc.
• menu_* – for the theme design of the menu
• progressbar_* – to show the indeterminate state of the progress (e.g. in Market, trying to estimate the download size)
• spinner_* – for the animation of the wait cursor
• stat_sys_battery* – for the animation and status of battery level
• stat_sys_* – for icons used in status bar to show status of system services such as signal, wifi, etc
• stat_* – for all the other icons used in the status bar
• statusbar_background.9 – for the background theme of the status bar (it’s a .9 png, which means you need to have 1 px border around the original design)
• status_* – for the interface of the notification window (drop down from the status bar)
• zzzz_quickpanel_brightness* – for the design of the brightness setting in the quick panel
• zzzz_quickpanel_icon* – for the design of the icons on the quick panel shortcuts.

Layout – Controls the layout of the UI controls used in Android system wide.

• preference.xml – Modify the text color of the TextView control, particularly to address the theming needs of the Account Sync screen in “Account & Sync” Settings
• zzzz_quickpanel_brightness_settings.xml – Modify the text color of the CheckBox control

Values – Configures theme setting such as Colors, Styles, etc 

•  Styles.xml – Modify the styles to reflect the black theme
• Theme – “inverse” the color of text
• Theme.Icon – change the color of the divider (set to dark for dark background)
• Widget.IconMenu – change the color of the text
• Widget.TextView.ListSeparator – change the color of the text and background in the separator
• Theme.ExpandedMenu – change the color of the menu in “More”
• textColorTertiary – inverse the color

Structure of Res folder in Settings.apk

Drawable-hdpi – Replace the PNGs accordingly for the desirable theme look and feel 

• ic_settings* – Replace the icons in the setting window according to the desire theme look and feel.
• ic_wifi* – Replace the icons in the wifi setting window according to the desired theme look and feel

Layout – Controls the layout of the UI controls used in Android system wide.

• preference_dialog_brightness.xml – change the color of the text in the dialog box (for brightness, contrast and color density setting dialog box)

Values – Configures theme setting such as Colors, Styles, etc

• style.xml – Modify the whitestyle to use normal or Black theme.

Structure of Res folder in Phone.apk

Values – Configures theme setting such as Colors, Styles, etc

• style.xml – Modify the whitestyle to use normal or Black theme.

Structure of Res folder in AccountAndSyncSettings.apk

Drawable-hdpi – Replace the PNGs accordingly for the desirable theme look and feel

• ic_list* – Replace the icons in the setting window according to the desire theme look and feel.

Layout – Controls the layout of the UI controls used in Android system wide.

• title.xml – change the text color of the Account type and title in “Account Sync Screen”
• account_sync_screen.xml – change the background of the ListView control (background + colorhintcache)

Values – Configures theme setting such as Colors, Styles, etc

• style.xml – Modify the whitestyle to use normal or Black theme.

Keyboard keys filled with oil stains

If you are reading this blog, chances are you have the same pet peeve as I have. A greasy keyboard. Despite restraining myself from using my laptop whenever I snack, I still end up finding my keyboard buttons with grease stains.

On my new HP Envy 14, the grease made the sexy looking gadget a major turn off. I googled the net, and found some ideas but none of them looks like a sure cure solution.

"magic eraser"

Then I recalled that my mum had given me a sponge-like cleaning material. On paper, it claims to be able to clean any stubborn stains on ceramic tile, or any metal and plastic materials.

I cut out a small piece, moist the “eraser” as instructed, and rubbed it over the greasy spots. Slowly but clearly I see that the oily surface began to fade off!

A cleaned keyboard. Where's the stain?

So it looked like the “magic eraser” has indeed done the job that not even the MaMa Lemon dish detergent could do?

Have you tried this? If not, try it and let me know if it works for you.

HTC Desire HD

When I first had my hands on the Desire HD, I actually thought I fell in love with it. The overall quality is just what you would have expected from HTC; The use of good quality material (over some cheap plastic material assembly), the polished user interface including the initial set up process. The phone feels heavy but it makes you think of the good solid material instead of the negative aspect of the weight. The tactile feedback on the screen gives a “tight, controlled mechanical” response you would expect from a high quality haptic technology based components. The initial take of the phone then was this should be what HTC Desire was 6 months ago. But it turned out to be more than 6 months gap.

Like all romances, love at first sight is never definitive, and with Desire HD it is a good classic example of that. The quality one can expect from HTC is not just about the positive ones. There were still alignment issues with the housing and casing covers, and the stability of the HTC applications that were bundled with the phone remained questionable, just to name a few. Before this blog entry degenerates into rants, let me just highlight three key areas that had subdued my enthusiasm about this phone.

With all the fantastic technical specifications that Desire HD is carrying, the phone fails miserably in the screen display and camera department (of course in my humble opinion). If Samsung Galaxy S had changed my perception about what a mobile phone can do as far as video recording and playback are concerned, Desire HD proved why the former is the best selling Android phone in the marketplace today. That is despite all the great things you can find about the phone itself. At a first glance, Desire HD screen display looked fabulous. The Super LCD screen appeared to have match the bar set by Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen. But when I placed my Desire HD and Galaxy S side by side,  my jaws dropped and I was almost screaming, “What is so super about the SLCD!?”.

From the video below, the display on Desire HD is simply washed out. The display colors looked faded and flat, whereas in the Samsung devices they looked vibrant. Looked at the contrast and brightness!   The conclusion I got?  I would never want to watch any movie on my Desire HD, if I happen to spot somebody around me carrying a Samsung Galaxy S.

Moving on to the video recording capability. Despite the specification of being able to take 720p video, Desire HD  was never able to match the video recording capability I had experienced in Galaxy S. The ghostly motion effect is still there, especially if the video is taken in an indoor setup (flash is a moot point because I could record a smooth video indoor with Galaxy S). If that was not bad enough, there was a severe bug in Desire HD, that resulted in video recorded with random stuttering effect. So when you are trying to take a HD video, this bug becomes a big joke. Incidentally this bug occurred only when I set the video camera mode to 720p. Essentially, the phone had problem recording at 30 frames per second in high definition. There are “dirty” workarounds, but I was never happy with this video recording function since day one.

a sample of video recording using Desire HD. Notice the freeze in 0:16 frame.

Then comes the software aspect of the phone. I remembered when I first got HTC HD2 more than a year ago, I had to endure the buggy SMS application for more than 2 months. If text messaging is an essential mobile function for you, that bug effectively rendered the phone unusable. Despite the bad experience, I remained hopeful when Desire HD was first launched in the market.  HTC development team must have learnt a big lesson out from that saga and delivered a better quality product this time round.

How wrong was I again! One of the selling point of Desire HD is that it is “smarter” than before with its Htcsense.com.  The latter is essentially a service based feature which enables the phone owner to locate and control the phone remotely. Theoretically one can locate the phone with the help of GPS, or initiate a ringing on the phone so you can locate its presence acoustically. One can even initiate remotely, to redirect phone calls and text messages, or wipe out data in case of emergency. Sounds great isn’t it? And of course I said that is in theory, because until last month, I could do nothing of these, even though these were advertised features. The  HTC support acknowledged that the performance stricken services (or applications) in htcsense.com were buggy and the development team was working on it. Being an IT-trained professional, I can understand how software can never be perfectly free of bug. However, the line should be clear between a software in alpha stage versus one that is go-to-market ready. HTCsense.com was clearly at a former stage, so it baffled me why the product was being launched in the first place. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given the pressure to launch in the market, but it looked like somebody in HTC had done his maths. That the market share gain (through early product launch) will take care of the market share loss (due to the product quality problem).

A web-based service that looks good but not functional at all

On the otherhand, the HTCsense.com could also be more smarter than it is. As of now the services become useless when the phone battery get depleted. Imagine you discover that you have left your phone at home when you reach the office.   You want to remotely redirect your phone calls and/or text messages, only to find out that your phone is “uncontactable” because it runs out of battery. But I digress.

In all my correspondences with HTC support, it was clear to me that they could not commit a time to fix the problems. I gave up, and was looking to sell away the phone, or to do something about the phone myself. With xda-developers.com, I could save a hell lot of my time from building my own ROM or optimizing my kernel which I did for my previous phones. I found Leedroid custom ROM and kernel, flashed it, and the phone finally became what it should really be in the first place. However, there are things that do not change, such as  the hardware limiting issues (i.e. screen display). In other cases, such as the overall product and customer experience with HTC,  it is almost like a carbon copy of the previous one when I had HD2.

It is a déjà vu again.

So we were on our way to bring Cody for his obedience class last Saturday.  At the  Benjamin Sheares Bridge around 3.45pm, the traffic was heavy but moving. I had a rude shock when the car in front of me did an emergency-brake. To make thing worst, the road was wet due to the  rain. My instant reaction was to slam hard on the brake pedal. Fortunately, with my Brembo big brake kit and wet-performance Goodyear tires, I could just stop with a couple of feet to spare, albeit with the ABS activated. The cars  in front of me and behind me, were just not so lucky, so resulting in a chain accident. It was a blessing in disguise for the the car behind me though,  as his car was just lightly bumping onto my rear bumper, creating some scratches as a consequence.

As I stepped out of my car, I saw a man walking briskly from the tail end of the chain collision to the front. He would stopped by at each car to ask if the driver or passenger was ok.

He came forward,  popped a question to me while gesturing a thumb up.

“Bro, everything okay?”

Momentarily, I told myself, wow this driver was so nice for showering his concerns to his fellow road users.

After exchanging contact information with the driver who hit my car, we decided that we will settle the incident privately. Just when I was about to drive off, the same “kind” man knocked on my window and ask me if I need any help with repair or insurance claim! He was persistent in offering his help, and even try to shove his name card to me as I wind up the window.

I ignored him and just drove on. On hindsight, I should have taken his name card, and expose his name in the net.

Some peeps had told me this might not necessary be a scam, i.e. the accident may not necessary be deliberated. These “kind souls” however were most likely freelancing for some workshops, who would in turn give them a cut for every successful repair referral they made. These “touts” will usually station themselves in sweet spots — locations where accidents frequently occur.

For me, I admit I was damn lucky to be sparred from all hefty repair and insurance costs. For the record, I had decided not to repair nor to pursue any claim against the driver who knocked my car. Hopefully, good karma will come as a result

Samsung Galaxy Tab

I have never had a desire to get a tablet, even when Apple introduced their iPad earlier this year. Lately, I got a Kindle for my e-reading needs. It had all I need for reading purposes except that when it comes to reading magazine, it becomes dull and boring. So when the news of 7″-sized Creative ZiiO and Samsung Galaxy Tab were released, I began to evaluate them with earnest, hoping to find one that could supplement Kindle. iPad was still out of the question because it’s supposedly “cutting-edge” size turns out to be the biggest inhibitor to be an effective e-reader.

I ended up with Galaxy Tab, which is 2.7″ smaller than an iPad (thus easier to hold as an e-book) and nearly half the weight of iPad (wouldn’t feel tired even with one hand holding the Tab).  I admit I am a sucker for latest (and greatest) technologies. Creative ZiiO, despite being competent as e-reader and general tablet purposes, did not win me over with their less impressive touch display. And with Samsung Galaxy Tab’s Super AMOLED display, the Tab was just calling for me.

Unboxing the Tab

The first un-boxing impression was not as spectacular as thought, probably because I was staring at the tablet as an oversized Galaxy S smartphone that I owned before. But the tablet won me over shortly after a initial usage. The quality of the tablet exterior is top notched, and would put HTC phones to shame really (more on that later when I blog HTC Desire HD). The white piano finishing at the back housing makes one wonder why Samsung did not do the same for its little sibling (i.e. Galaxy S) which has a black “plasticky” casing.  If I had to nit-pick, it will be the black trimming which breaks the seamless white tablet design.

Galaxy Tab is fast and responsive

Functionally, the tablet is responsive, in contrast to some of the lag claims alleged in the net. The navigation experience is smooth and snappy, the applications are lag-free and responsive. But as with Galaxy S, I could not stand the i-Phone like home screen interface, and thus wasted no time in replacing it with Launcher Pro Plus.   Even though I bought the tablet with the e-reading as the primary function, I was keen to ensure it remains competent in other aspect of tablet features, and that it is not just an expensive e-reader. Setting up google and exchange account sync was a breeze, and I could access my both personal and work emails/contacts/appointments with ease. In comparing with  my “SSD enabled, 6G DDR3 super-charged, almost instant-on” HP Envy laptop or my “depending on the time of the year” smartphone, I admit using my Tab for a quick ad-hoc email read/reply has become a natural and preferred choice these days.

Tab on Viva Casing

Switching gear to the entertainment aspect, the Tab serves well as a gaming machine and a media player. Apart from the ‘mindless game’ like Angry Bird or Farm Story (which is the only reason my wife would seize my Tab for) the Tab demonstrated its gaming ability in graphic intensive games such as EA Mobile’s Need for Speed and Gameloft’s Sandstorm.  Perhaps a 10″ tablet would be more visually pleasing in such circumstances, but frankly, if I need a bigger screen I would have gone with my Ps3 and 46″ Samsung 3D LED Full HD TV. A 7″ tablet has indeed brought the mobile gaming experience to a new level, as games were previously played in a 2.8″ to 4.3″ screen displays.

When it comes to media playing ability, the feature can and should be assessed in two folds. At the very basic, a media playing device should have hardware capable of playing most if not all HD media format, such as DivX, Xvid, AVCH. No doubt there are applications like VPlayer and RockPlayer which could play most of these formats, but you would get better quality playback with hardware decoding, especially if you are playing HD videos. Samsung, being a home entertainment specialist,  just does it so well in this aspect with the Tab, something that HTC fails to deliver even with their latest flagship product. At the next level, one should look at the gadget’s media streaming capability. If playing a local HD media well is now established as a basic function, sharing  HD media to/from a remote media player/server would be the advance feature you could look at. However, once you experienced it, I bet you would want to make sure your next gadget would retain such functionality.

While services such as YouTube or Blinkx Beat had kick started the craze in video sharing through the internet, I still stand by my opinion that Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certified devices will be the one that digitise how we would capture, stored and shared our precious moments with our loved ones. DLNA defines the standards and technologies on which consumer appliances would connect with another for the purpose of sharing musics, videos and photos. I first came across this concept more than half a decade ago, and it is only recent that it caught the general consumer awareness. Unfortunately, the AllShare app found in the Tab is buggy and less functional than that found in other Samsung devices. Fortunately, it is a software-related feature, and we can therefore find software alternatives, as long as we have the hardware-dependent basic function (i.e. media player).

A quick explanation on this point;  DLNA-certified devices enable one to discover or share media content with one another. Once the media content is discovered, identified for sharing/playing, it is back to the device itself to stream (possibly transcode during the process)  or render  (to decode the format and playback) the content in question. The former can be achieved via software, whereas the latter is best accomplished with the help of hardware. For what is worth, Apple does not support DLNA, and uses its own “Air-play” to share media in “Apple universe”.

So far, I find UPnPlayer (downloadable from Android Market) the most complete software as far as DLNA feature is concerned. It is the only DLNA player that could support all type of media content (i.e. music, photo and video). The key shortcoming would be its unpolished user interface, but functionally, it is one of the best, if not the best out there.  There are other good DLNA players, such as 2Player, but they would either support only 1 type of media sharing or have certain features broken.

Kindle for Android on Tab

Coming back to my original intent of getting the tablet, e-Reading, I was so pleased when Amazon recently updated their Kindle for Android app to support both magazine and newspaper. If you recall,  magazine and newspaper e-reading was my main reason for getting a tablet to compliment my Kindle device. I was shocked when I first found out that the older version of Kindle for Android app could only support e-books (i.e. not magazine or newspapers). So the update was very timely, at the time when I got the Tab. With a 7″ Tab, a perfect size for e-reader in my opinion, I can now enjoy reading The Economist and Herald Tribune on my Tab, in full color — but only when my wife is not playing her Angry Bird and the likes.

While Galaxy Tab has met or exceed most of my expectations, it is still not a perfect gadget to say the least. There are many irritants; Battery life is probably a couple of hours weaker than what an iPad can offer; Inserting or Removal of SIM card will require the tablet to reboot (probably a Android/Froyo problem) , and it is a tad too big to be used as a voice phone. While I had subscribed a new line for the Tab, and am using it as a phone with the help of bluetooth headset (in avoidance of pressing the big screen against my face during a phone call),  it is still not a phone you would bring in every occasion. But as the saying goes, if there exists a perfect device, that will mark the end of the hunt for one.  And when that happens, it will be a miserable day for a gadget fan like me. So I would be more than happy to let the pursuit continues!

Green (StarHub) vs Orange (M1)

Despite being a long time customer with StarHub, I have decided to sign up a new line with M1, for my Galaxy Tab. I could have just subscribed a second sim card from StarHub, instead of a second line. But a recent incident with StarHub triggered my resolution to look at other options. Signing up M1 gives me the opportunity to evaluate their mobile services. Having lived with a mediocre mobile broadband service from StarHub, I was looking forward to M1′s offering, after all had been said about their services.

Here is the video of the comparison test. Test was carried out by running the speedtest application. I did not perform practical test such as timing of web page loading so that might be the next thing I could do. The outcome of the test was least surprising; On average, M1′s download/upload speed were rated at 1.7Mbps and 2Mbps respectively. StarHub, on the otherhand, scored a measly speed of 250kbps (download) and 125kbps (upload)!  The result was consistent with my frustrating experience all these years, where I even had to convince Starhub about the poor data coverage in areas where I normally surf using my mobile.

So it is high time we exercise our rights as an informed customer;  No more management escalation or contract termination threats. We have to act on our talk. The message (to the poor performing vendor) could not have been clearer when we bring our business somewhere else. In this case, it’s bye bye to Starhub if they continue to slack and do not buck up. Adios!

I had the opportunity over the weekend to have close look on Galaxy Tab and Desire HD. I will be blogging about these two wonderful gadgets separately, but I did a quick video playback comparison, together with my trusty over-clocked Galaxy S. Here’s the video. Enjoyed!

PS: Please let me know if there is anything else you want to see as comparison between the phones. I will try to incorporate your request where possible.

ZiiO 7" Tablet

Earlier this week, I was privileged to have my hands on Creative ZiiO 7″ tablet, even though it was just a development unit. Given that (that it was just a development unit), the exterior finishing was not expected to be polished. The tablet was however loaded with the latest firmware that would supposedly shipped for production, so the hands on experience will still be close to that of a retail unit.

For a tablet, what draws to one’s attention is usually its form factor and its screen display. Admittedly, the first impression was a mixed feeling. The size of the tablet, defined by a 7″ wide screen, coupled with its all-white outfit, would definitely catch an enthusiast’s attention. This is especially so for somone like me who had already experienced a 6″ Kindle and a 10″ iPad, the two extreme end of a tablet-type devices. Of course, Kindle belongs to a different league altogether, given that it is a dedicated e-reading device. However, the size and weight of these devices should give a tablet-shopping buyer a good reference of what he needs to look out for, for there is no one perfect tablet in the market that fits all the needs.

Holding ZiiO 7" with one hand is convenient

Once ZiiO 7″ catches your attention, the screen display might possibly drops yours. I was definitely disappointed by the screen display, especially after having used to colour vibrancy that Super AMOLED display offers, in my Galaxy S and recently Galaxy Tab. The colour is a little flat, and further impacted by the viewing angle. If there is anyway to describe the visual impact, it feels like a 3M privacy screen filter fitted on it, albeit a little exaggerated. Ziio sports a resistive screen. While it is probably one of the most sensitive resistive screen in the market today, Creative’s decision to stick with it sets me scratching my head given that capacitive screen has becoming a norm these days.  But I was quickly reminded that Ziio 7″ is Creative’s entry model for their Android tablet product line, and costs just 1/3 of Samsung Galaxy Tab’s price tag. Fair enough, but unless you are a budget-conscious shopper, or one who is about to buy the China-made i-Pad lookalikes, wow will be the last thing you would say when you power on the Creative’s ZiiO.

Usability wise, Creative ZiiO is very capable, despite having to navigate over the resistive screen.  The screen was responsive, so were the applications. I was told that ZiiO uses its own processor, ZiiLABS ZMS-08 HD Media-Rich Applications Processor. While I have not benchmarked its processor in the 7″, I tried on ZiiO 10″ which uses the same processor, and the result was astonishingly good, scoring a 3000 over points in CPU. To give some context, my over-clocked Galaxy S could only manage half of what ZiiO has achieved. ZiiO has a stereo speaker, but I could not make out its quality given that I was in a cafeteria at the point of testing ; Just not a conducive environment to test sound quality.

Creative Zii applications

ZiiO is still running the older Android Eclair (2.1) as we speak, even for the retail units. However, I was told that Froyo (2.2) should be released for upgrade very soon.  As I unlocked ZiiO 7″ tablet, I was greeted by Creative’s own simplified lock screen and home launcher. Neat, I told myself. At least the company is going to the right direction in developing its own DNA. On the application front,  Creative have a few customised applications, ZiiMusic, ZiiVideo and ZiiPhoto. Given Creative’s specialty, I have no complaints with their multimedia playback software, although ZiiMusic did hang on me once before I had to reboot the tablet to solve it.

ZiiO's Kindle

Having used Kindle for a while, I naturally tend to compare ZiiO with the former, as an e-reader. ZiiO, with its weight almost twice that of the Kindle 3 (400g vs 241g), definitely feels heavy if one were to read over a prolong period of time. For a quick read, I would think it is definitely capable. What I was impressed is ZiiO’s night mode feature, which not only dim the backlit display, but also also toggle the display foreground and background color, so that the screen would not be too glaring. Although it can’t beat e-ink technology, the night mode feature is the most welcome feature, if you always like to read at night.

In a nut shell, for $359 SGD, I think it gives the China-made A-Pad a run for their money (go support Singapore products!). Looking from another perspective, if you are planning to spend $200-300 for a digital photo frame, grab this Creative ZiiO for its value for money, since it could do what a digital photo frame does, and more. But when pitted side by side with the bigger brothers, I could sense that Creative ZiiO 7″ is shouting out for his super-brother (not ZiiO 10″! fwiw) for reinforcement. I heard it will be coming …

Snap shot video of the hands-on (in a noisy cafeteria)

So I know it is time for me to rekindle my reading hobby (if there was one in the first place ), and Amazon Kindle did that very well for me. As I glance through the range of ebook reader options in the market today, it boils down to whether I would get a dedicated ebook reader, or a computing device with an ebook reader software. The latter has to be a tablet, as I could not imagine anybody reading a book on a laptop or even a netbook, for more than 15 minutes, let alone for an hour.

At the time when I was scouting for a ebook reader, Apple iPad was the only noticeable tablet in the market that got into my eReader shortlist.  Unfortunately, it’s a tad too big (10″ screen), consequently too heavy, to be really relaxing for long reading. The much hype “retina” backlit display, no matter how alluring it is, is just not conducive to my pair of old flowery eyes for reading. Samsung Galaxy Tab, an Android-based tablet, was not available at the point of consideration. Pity as it could make a good eReader option given its light weight and 7″ screen (am going to blog about that soon anyway, so more on that later)  Plus, I thought having an iPad or Galaxy Tab,  would probably end up  me getting distracted into games and net surfing. I don’t need such distraction.

On the other hand, what draws me to dedicated ebook reader, is the adoption of  e-ink technology (watch this video for the feature of e-ink). It is probably the best invention on earth, next to paper and ink. It enables display to look more like printed, physical ink and paper, and easily readable even in direct sunlight. Apart from the missing act of physically flipping a page, reading through a e-ink based digital reader provides the exact same, if not better, experience than reading a hard copy book. The experience is further enhanced by the convenience to shop and read a book anytime, anywhere instantaneously and the ability to annotate, bookmark or share your reading insight through the social networking sites.

With some advice from friends, I eventually bought Amazon Kindle. The first impression I had when I unboxed the Kindle, was how could the screen change as I switched it on. It turned out that I had mistaken the screen display as a sticker label, those overlaying screen cover  you would normally see on  brand new electronic displays. Very deceiving indeed!

After using it for a few days, I can only say the Kindle lives up to its reputation very well! As a matter of fact, I finish 8 chapters of book leisurely while I was in the plane earlier this week. Kindle is so light and with the e-ink display , you don’t feel tired physically (for holding the book) or visually (for staring at the digital screen). I love the bookmark and note feature, as I could highlight section of text, add my comments, and share it via Twitter or Facebook!  Very useful feature for me, because sometimes when you read a book or a news article, you want to share your thoughts with your friends and family members quickly without losing your thoughts. Kindle makes it so simple since everything is in digital form. I also love the ease of  looking up the dictionary for meaning of a word, as I read. It is like carrying and holding two books at one go; one big Oxford dictionary and one reading book.

Yesterday, I dropped by Staple, to have a closer look at other ebook readers. I laid my hands on the new Nook (by Barnes & Noble) and Sony eReader. All I can say I am glad I have made the right choice with Kindle. Nook has a very nice touch colored display at the bottom of the e-ink screen, for navigation control. I find that distracting to be honest and the e-ink display looks wash out when compared side by side with Kindle.  On Sony eReader, it has a touch e-ink screen which is nice but the overall navigation experience feels short of something. In both digital readers, I found the bookmark/notes and dictionary look up features less integrated than the Kindle. Otherwise, it is hard for me to comment any further since my usage on Kindle is preliminary in the first place. I also tried the Kindle DX briefly, a bigger version of Kindle with 9.7″ e-ink screen. The screen proves to be too big for me, although reading a book or magazine with very complicated chart or diagram would be less taxing on the eyes.

In a nutshell, for $139, Kindle is one of the best, if not the best value for money toy I got.  And to wrap it all, the buying and customer support experience with Amazon is just simply amazing. More on that later as well.  For now, it’s back to reading time

It is easy to brush off such violences by placing the blame squarely on the gangsters. They are after all, society menaces, in the eyes of the public. But the recent cases revealed more than that. The attackers involved were mostly in their late teens age, with even one of them reportedly to be just 8 years old.

On paper, they may be part of the gang, or even a secret society. In reality, they could be just teens who have misplaced loyalty for criminal but yet stupidity, rash acts. Do these teens really get involved in those illegal activities such as drug trafficking, loan sharking, etc? I don’t think they do, or if they do, they might be doing just to show off to their peers how ‘strong’ and ‘influential’ they are.

Confucius once said,

少未定，壮而刚，老而衰 的是血气；戒于色，戒于斗，戒于得的是志气。君子养其志气，故 不为血气所动

In a nutshell, one needs to manage his own aspiration from young, restrain from all the negative influences, so that the excessive energy, especially when you are young, will not be channeled into some foolish consequences.

With cooking, you master the science of key culinary skills, and then with some creativity,  you venture into dishing out different cuisine. I am not a food connoisseur, so you don’t expect me to go into details on this, but you should get the point.

Now, turning over to software programming (oh my, I suddenly feel so at ease), there is alot of similarities. You need to master the fundamental programming techniques, and you exposed into different type of programming; UI programming, Web programming, Data integration programming, Kernel programming .

And yes, recently I had ventured into kernel programming, something I have never imagined in the past. The reality though is that I was just meddling around with the Linux kernel source, thanks to  Opensource.

So I looked at the various kernel source codes published by various xda-developers, each of which addresses different aspect of kernel improvements. I decided to make a kernel that takes the best of all. The end product is one kernel that incorporates sztupy‘s Universal Lagfix, supercurio‘s Voodoo display tweak (Gamma and Sharpness enhancement), raspdeep‘s overclock and undervolt, and hardcore/ykk_five 341MB memory hack.

Universal Lagfix addresses the poor performance  inherent in Samsung’s original RFS-based storage. The fix is about reformatting specific data partitions into Linux ext4 format, and by doing that, you can expect 200-300% of improvement. The applications no longer run with intermittent freezes (caused by the lag in the file system access), and responses are therefore almost instantaneously.

So one would think, with a 200-300% improvement in performance, what is there to optimise further?

Now Samsung Galaxy S comes with 512MB of RAM, as you would expect from a top tier smart phones in the market. The problem with Galaxy S, is that the amount of RAM available for end user, is only 304MB. There are more than 200MB of RAM reserved for the system, such as video, android OS, etc. It didn’t help when Android has a bad habit of loading installed applications and widgets on start up, which means by the time your phone boots up successfully, you would be lucky to have 80MB RAM free for use. Now in Froyo, the memory management is far more robust than Eclair, but still, with a limited amount of free memory, you end up having frequent memory clean up performed by the OS, resulting in unnecessary instability in the system.  Both ykk_five and hardcore researched and figured out the kernel configuration for reserved memory. With some trial and error (as eliminating memory reservation causes problem with certain applications such as video recording or 3G video call), the folks in xda-developers established the optimal memory configuration. The result is 341MB of available memory (as compared to 304MB). That ensures some stability much needed in the Samsung Galaxy S.

And you would think by now; Samsung must have done something wrong if any more tweaks can be uncovered. You bet! The question now is how much have we optimised the  Cortex A8  processor, i.e. the brain of Galaxy S.  When looking at the kernel source code, folks have figured out that there are compiler flags we could use to compile the kernel to take advantage of the A8 Cortex CPU architecture. Not only that, the team has figured that the CPU can be over-clocked, just like how the PC geeks would have done to their desktop processors.  Additionally, the CPU is currently running at a voltage level that can be further tweaked, i.e. reducing the voltage consumption value  for each CPU frequency step. The end result, is a turbo-charged but super “air-cooled” (and efficient)  Galaxy-S. Unfortunately, there is no real tool out there to measure CPU voltage consumption scientifically, so one can only rely on feel (e.g. lower temperature) and experience (battery consumption level). That said, the under-volt tweak is still being refined as we speak, just to determine the optimal level of voltage that is low enough but not at the expense of CPU running reliably at the desired frequency.

The final installment of the tweak is display. supercurio had definitely done far more research than anybody in xda-developers, and probably even in Samsung development team, to improve on the display gamma and sharpness. More explanation can be found in his web-site, so I wouldn’t regurgitate what has already been documented.

And of course, there are some minor tweaks I did along the way, as I touched the source code for the above tweaks. However, these are experimental at this point, it’s probably not smart for me to disclose until I can conclusively determine the value of such tweaks.

Did I mention the code name of the kernel I have customised? Yet Another Optimised Kernel (YA OK!) … So go flash this kernel  if you happen to own a Galaxy S (sorry only for Europe and Asia Galaxy S owners) and want to turbo charge your phone. You will be surprise how buttery smooth your phone is, and it is definitely much faster than the Voodoo’ed Galaxy S I had awhile back.

Here’s a quick video capture of my Galaxy S running on YA OK Kernel. Enjoy.

When Microsoft first launched their Application Marketplace, the number of applications are so limited that you feel like entering a boutique shop selling or showcasing limited edition products.

After 3 years (or is it 4?), Apple (and their loyal fans) always like to boast about the high volume of applications available in their Appstore. The last I read they claimed to have 200,000 applications available for download. But in reality, how many of them are really useful, and how many of them would really catch your attention for a download? Apple Appstore therefore is like a big superstore or hypermarket, not just  because there’s a wide variety of products you can choose from, but more importantly you are either clueless what exactly you need, or you are just bored that you want to shop around.

Now Google had recently claimed that they have reached the milestone of 75000 apps in their Android market. With just 1/3 of what Apple Appstore has,  Android market is just like a farmer’s market (or in local context, a wet market), provides all the essential and necessity goods without the bells and whistles.  Android Market is just that for the current moment. But like a typical wet market, it’ll transform overtime, and I will not be surprised that Android Market becomes a “superstore” in near future.

So the point being? Application store in terms of application counts is no longer relevant anymore. What  matters more will be the quality of the applications available, and that is not just about the user interface, but also the functionalities the application provides. Strip away the useless apps in Apple Appstore for example, you probably only have 1/3 (I am being conservative here) of them that’s worthy for download and use. So keep an open mind (myself included), ask yourself what applications you need, and shop around to see which platform offers the best application that best meets your need, not how many you can download.

Built by Billy Shanks,
Destroyed by Silly Yanks.
They’re gone, a new era is born.
Oh dear, here’s our saviour!
John Henry,
it’s not the fricking money lenny (G&H)
Get the Hell out,
Cos’ the fans of Liverpool shout,
YOU WILL ALWAYS WALK ALONE.
YNWA.

It has been 3.5 years since I took my current job position. And it has been that long since I work under odd hours, having to engage my colleagues in all 3 regions across the globe. At times, I works round the clock, 4 hours in the morning at the office, rest for 2 hours before 3 hours of conference call with the Europeans  in the afternoon. The day unfortunately doesn’t end there. A couple of hours break in the evening before a series of long night calls till 2-3am. I do find that it has been more physically very demanding these days for me to attend the night calls. Few days ago, I attended 2 nights of meetings (from 11pm to 8am, for what’s worth), and I took two days to recuperate. I wonder how long can such insane routine last.

Over the weekend, my car refused to start. Initially suspected of a flat battery, it turned out that the likely cause is a fuel pump failure. It was a Sunday morning, so I had to have it towed to the workshop and by Monday, we shall know what and how much will be the damage.

The week ended with my favorite club, Liverpool, lost to a minor club, Blackpool at home. Seriously, this is really f**ked up, and I hope Roy gets the booting soon. There’s a good reason why he spent his 30 over years of managerial positions with lesser clubs and winning nothing. Resume does not lie, there is so much you can sweet coat it.

End of…

儒家文化的细解

儒家文化具体包括“仁、义、礼、智、信、忠、孝、悌、节、恕、勇、让”十二个字，这12个字就是儒家的核心，能真正做到这些就足够了。儒家文化不但不应该被抛弃的，而且应该与时俱进，发展光大。

仁
仁：爱人。孔子思想体系的理论核心。它是孔子社会政治、伦理道德的最高理想和标准，也反映他的哲学观点，对后世影响亦甚深远。仁体现在教育思想和实践上是”有教无类”，春秋时代学在官府，孔子首开私学，弟子不问出身贵贱敏钝，均可来受教。仁体现在政治上是强调”德冶”，德冶的基本精神实质是泛爱众和博施济众，孔子把仁引入礼中，变传统” 礼治”为”德治”，他并没有否定”礼治”，他的”德治”无疑是对”礼治”的继承和改造。爱人既为仁的实质和基本内容，而此种爱人又是推己及人，由亲亲而扩大到泛众。

义
义：原指”宜”，即行为适合于”礼”。孔子以”义”作为评判人们的思想、行为的道德原则。

礼
礼：孔子及儒家的政治与伦理范畴。在长期的历史发展中，”礼”作为中国封建社会的道德规范和生活准则，对中华民族精神素质的培养起了重要作用，但随着社会的变革和发展，特别是封建社会后期，它越来越成为束缚人们思想、行为的绳索，影响了社会的进步和发展。

智
智：同”知”，孔子的认识论和伦理学的基本范畴。指知道、了解、见解、知识、聪明、智慧等。内涵主要涉及知的性质、知的来源、知的内容、知的效果等几方面。关于知的性质，孔子认为，知是一个道德范畴，是一种人的行为规范知识。

信
信：指待人处事的诚实不欺，言行一致的态度。为儒家的”五常”之一。孔子将”信”作为”仁”的重要体现，是贤者必备的品德，凡在言论和行为上做到真实无妄，便能取得他人的信任，当权者讲信用，百姓也会以真情相待而不欺上。

恕
恕：己所不欲，勿施于人，包含有宽恕、容人之意。忠

忠：己欲立而立人，己欲达而达人。孔子认为忠乃表现于与人交往中的忠诚老实。

孝
孝：孔子认为孝悌是仁的基础，孝不仅限于对父母的赡养，而应着重对父母和长辈的尊重，认为如缺乏孝敬之心，赡养父母也就视同于饲养犬，乃大逆不孝。孔子还认为父母可能有过失，儿女应该婉言规劝，力求其改正，并非对父母绝对服从。这些思想正是中国古代道德文明的体现。然而孔子论孝，还讲”父母在，不远游”， “三年无改于父之道，可谓孝矣”，表现了其时代的局限性。孝被后世之儒定为繁琐仪式，《礼记》中规定父母死后”水浆不入口，三日不举火”，”哭泣无数”以至”身病体羸”变成精神和肉体的自我摧残。宋明时代把孝道作为道德论中最重要的范畴之一，理学家朱熹提倡父权绝对化。孝观念，在不同历史时期的演变中，剔除宣扬封建主义糟粕外，也有一些合理因素，提倡子女对父母的”尊”、”敬”、”养老”，将孝亲与忠于民族大义相结合，主张死后薄葬节用等。

悌
悌：指对兄长的敬爱之情。孔子非常重视悌的品德，其弟子有若根据他的思想，把悌与孝并称，视之”为仁之本”。

节
气节和节操。1、社会指一个人在政治上、道德上的坚定性。对内，气节表示对一定的政治制度、政治理想和道德理想的坚定信仰。对外，气节则指在国家和民族遭到外敌侵犯时，能挺身而出，以国家民族利益为重，坚持斗争。乃至献出个人生命。《荀子.君子》：“节者，死生此者也。”2、又称“贞节”。为封建时代约束妇女的道德规范。即要求妇女谨守闺门，不与男子接触，婚后要“从一而终”，夫死不得再嫁，要为丈夫终身守节，甚至殉夫。《二程遗书》卷二二下：“然饿死事极小，失节事极大。”鲁迅《坟.我之节烈观》：“我依据以上的事实和理由，要断定节烈这事是：极难，极苦，不愿身受。然而不利自他，无益社会国家，于人生将来又毫无意义的行为，现在已经失了存在的生命和价值。”

恕
中国古代的伦理道德观念。“恕”要求推己及人，自己不想做的事，不强加给别人。在孔子的有关伦理学说中，“忠”与“恕”是并列的。因“恕”而得 “忠”，为“忠”以行“恕”。“忠恕”是实行“仁”的方法，是“仁”的内容。同时又是孔子思想的一贯之道。《论语.里仁》：“子曰：‘参乎！吾道一以贯之。’曾子曰：‘唯！’子出，门人问曰：‘何谓也？’曾子曰：‘夫子之道，忠恕而已矣。’”朱熹集注：“尽己之谓忠，推己之谓恕。而已矣者，竭尽而无余之辞也。”又《卫灵公》：“子贡问曰：‘有”一言而可以终身行之者乎？’子曰：‘其恕乎。己所不欲，勿施于人。’”

勇
儒家的伦理范畴。指果断、勇敢。孔子把“勇”作为施“仁”的条件之一。“勇”必须符合“仁、义、礼、智”，而且不能“疾贫”，才能成其为勇。《论语.宪问》：“仁者必有勇。”又《阳货》：“君子有勇而无义为乱。”又《子罕》：“知者不惑，仁者不忧，勇者不惧。”

让
指谦让、礼让。对人的谦让是中华民族的一种传统美德。《孟子.公孙丑上》：“无恻隐之心，非人也；无羞恶之心，非人也；无辞让之心，非人也；无是非之心，非人也。恻隐之心，仁之端也；羞恶之心，义之端也；辞让之心，礼之端也；是非之心，智之端也。

The article exerpt is taken from this site

I had previously encountered problems syncing calendar appointments from exchange server to my Android phone. I had brushed them off because I could resolved them somehow, though most of the time it’s through factory reset (which in retrospect, is a silly resolution mechanism)

It got worsen recently. Despite umpteen times of factory reset and exchange account settings, I just could not get the calendar appointments to download into my phone.  I noted that the sync did occur, albeit just one-way; Appointments created in the phone are synchronised automatically into Exchange server, but not the other way round.

Googling for help was not easy. For most part of the google search results, it was more of an affirmation that there are people around that experienced the same problem as I did, than a resolution to the problem itself.

Just as when I almost wanted to give up, I came across a post in xda-developers.com, about how the sync issue could be attributed by a corrupted calendar entry.

It sounded silly to me, but I recalled it did happen to me before, back then when I was using Windows Mobile phones. The Windows Mobile Activesync would however highlight the cause of the problem, whereas in the case of Android, nothing is reported and the sync process just start and stop within second, quietly.

Given that I have already exhausted all possible solutions, I figured out there is no harm looking at this possibility. So I moved all my calendar entries in exchange server to a temporary offline folder, before copy them back in batches to narrow down the offending entry that causes the whole synchronisation to fail. Lo and behold!  I managed to find the offending entry, deleted it and the calendar synchronisation process resumed back to normal!

Hopefully this blog would provide some help to folks who encounter similar problem. At least doing google search would yield some results that offer resolution rather than just problem reporting.

Cheers!

Young Lion Cubs celebrating their goal - taken by unknown reporter

Earlier this evening, I went down to Jalan Besar stadium, to witness an exhilarating 3rd/4th playoff match between Singapore and Montenegro. The boys had earlier beaten Montenegro during the group stage, so like the Haiti match, they walked onto the pitch as a favourite. But I believe they have learnt the lesson of humility by now, given how they remained focus this time round to give a convincing 4-1 win over Montenegro boys. Their opponents are physically stronger and taller than them, but the Young Lion Cubs were unfazed with their trademark slick passing and technical skills.

What rolled my eye this time round is not Montenegro team, not the match officials, and definitely not the fans that were present in the stadium, who were great by the way. It is how some of our fellow Singaporeans think about the game. and I hope they are just minorities.  Here are some excerpts from the Yahoo! YOG Blog

Just what are we celebrating? Where’s Germany? Spain? Holland? Korea? Japan? The cubs line up against Papua New Guinea, Montenegro, Haiti…are these power houses of soccer? I think not. Yet, they choke against Haiti.

Give yourselves a pat on the back, for Haiti lost 9-0 to Bolivia and yet you couldn’t contain them. It could’ve been a blessing in disguise. Had you triumphed over Haiti, who knows what sort of trashing awaits you against Bolivia?

Lets hope you keep your feet on the ground. This medal means nothing given that soccer-strong nations were noticably missing to begin with.“

and then there’s another one

… Anywhere, there is nothing to shout about. There are only six teams in the Youth Olympic and Bolivia is the only outstandinng team with their good technical passes. There are no Brazil, no Argentina, no England, no Italy, no Germany, no France, no Spain, no Holland, no Uruguay, no Mexico, no Portugal and even Asian giant Korea and Japan are no in the line up. If all these team are in the Youth Olympic, where would Singapore stand???

Having read some of the criticisms about Singapore Youth Olympic, to be honest, I was expecting cynics and pessimists to spoil the party. But I can’t help thinking that some of these comments are a tad too much to stomach, let alone to be digested by a team of spirited boys.  There seems to be a group of Singaporeans who would only complain and criticize at every opportunity they can find, and appear to gain joy just by doing so.

To “critics” who want to compare us with the likes of England, Brazil or Spain;

The fact is, we are a young nation. When England won their first (and only) world cup (in 1966 fwiw), we were just barely few days away from celebrating our first independence day. When we think Spain as a powerhouse today, think about the struggle and challenges they faced in the last few decades (up till 2008).

If the boys had the same mentality as some of these “critics”, i.e.there’s no powerhouse (and therefore there’s no pride in winning the tournament), where would they be today? They would probably just “go through the motion” with a half hearted belief,  and ended up crashing out at the group stage. They might then do all the self-pity consoling stuffs, giving all sort of reasons why they cannot win.

But I’m glad the boys did not, and  hold on to the positive mindset, which the party-poopers are clearly not capable of. That they managed to overcome the Haiti setback to have a convincing win against Montenegro tonight, is even more commendable.

My parting words to the Young Lion Cubs, never stop believing and dreaming, as long as you work hard for it. If they do, we should applaud them for their sacrifice and determination, no matter whether they are successful in the end or not at the international level.

Majulah Singapura!

As the saying goes, in football, anything can happen. And true enough, Singapore was stunned with a 2-0 defeat, thanks to a goalkeeping blunder, and a controversial penalty converted in the last minute of playing time.

Well, the Young cubs, as the Singapore boys are better known as, should hold their chin up despite the defeat, for they have come so far, and had proven their worth with the skills and grits they have displayed in their journey to the semi final. They had earlier beaten Zimbabwe 3-1 despite the latter boasting a prediction of 5-0 thrashing during a  pre-game interview.  They managed to overcome Montenegro 3-2  after falling from behind in the game, to eventually top the group.

Perhaps the young cubs are not used to the media attention that was showered on them, after their amazing run in the qualifying round. They struggled against a very physical team in Haiti, whom I rate to be even more physical than Montenegro.

Surely the credits have to be given to the Haiti team for their ability to take the opportunity where it counts,  taking advantage of the goal keeper mistake, and protect the slim 1 goal lead very well until the very last minute.

What I dislike, and do not want to give credit for, is the manner on how  they protect their lead. Every single touch on their players, always end up with the player falling on the field, grasping in pain only to get up when the medical team and their stretcher rushed to them. Of course, one can say this is part and parcel of the football practice today, with professional players like Ronaldo and Robben doing all sort of play diving acts on the fields. One cannot fault the kids, having these professional players as their idols, to follow suite.

But to do it on every other minute, is a tad too much. The Haiti goalkeeper even had the audacity to showboat while preparing for goal kick.  He was seen sarcastically clapping his hands when the Hungarian referee showed him a yellow card for time wasting.  In the spirit of Olympic, which is about friendship, solidarity and fair play, surely what the Haiti boys had done should not be condoned. But if the adults (in this case, the professional footballers) do not show a good role example, what can and should we expect boys that’s under 15 year of age to behave?

The team manager of Haiti brushed away any accusation of his team’s play-acting, claiming that they are just kids. However, I hope he would instill the right value to his boys in the dressing room, for its inconceivable to imagine these boys will grow up to be professional players only to resort to such dirty tricks to get their goals.

Well, I thought my recently acquired Galaxy S was bricked yesterday.  It’s almost unthinkable that a surreal phone sitting in front of me was staring at me like a brick. I had previously flash a corrupted kernel or interrupted the flash process, in all cases, the phone will just show a broken flash icon when I tried to power up the phone. The phone was recoverable in every incident, since I could bring the phone back to the “download mode” (i.e. bootloader mode),  which allows me to re-initiate a firmware flash.

But not yesterday. I updated one part of the firmware, the flash process was successfully executed as indicated by the Odin flash application, and the phone was expectedly rebooted. But lo and behold,  the phone did not wake up at all after the reboot. It stayed powered down, no display, no sound, no sign of phone trying to “breath”. Not even an icon on the screen that says corrupted firmware. The phone did not even react when I attempted to put it back to the “download mode”.

Thinking that the phone has just coincidentally run out of battery, I decided to put the phone on charge but but it was still no go after few minutes. As I tried to recap what I have done, I realised that I had done something a noob would not have done. I had ticked on “re-partition” option prior to the flash process in Odin. Coupled with the fact that I was flashing the CSC image (one part of firmware that provides operator specific configuration and/or software).  Consequently, the phone had its entire system storage re-partitioned and end up with just that CSC code, without the remaining code, not even the kernel.

It was 1.30am at that particular moment, I reckon my sleepy head must be the reason behind this stupid action of mine.  What I couldn’t comprehend, is how can this screw up impact the bootloader, which is responsible for controlling the phone action during the boot up. One thing certain though is that I had completely woken up as a result.

For a good 15 minutes, I have been thinking all possible remedies, including removing the battery (albeit doing it very quicky) and putting it back to restart the phone.

I was almost resigned to the fact that my phone has become a $950 paper weight. But being a stubborn person (or one who perseveres, depending on how you look at it), I did not like the idea of throwing in the towel. I remembered how my father would spend the entire night till morning, just to fix some simple computer glitches when I was a young boy. I think I might be like him for that night.

Then I was enlightened. I observed that in those attempts when I was trying to put the phone into the “download-mode”, the phone might already be in panic-boot mode. While I had removed the battery and put it back to restart the phone, it was done so quickly that the state of the memory may not have totally erased.

So there I went, took out the battery, left the phone for a minute, put back the battery, and powered on the phone into “download mode” right away. Lo and behold again, phone is alive again! I almost yelled with joy .

And the moral of the story?

Never do any “not for weak heart” tasks, and firmware flashing for that matter, in the wee hours of the day. You would end up staying wide awake for the whole night, regardless of whether the end result is positive or not.

On a lighter note, it appears that it’s impossible for Galaxy S to end up as brick. Not unless you literally make it to be so.

I have been asked a number of times which phone is better, Samsung Galaxy S, or HTC Desire, both of which I had done some review on in the previous blog posts.

Here’s my thought.

At the end of the day, the choice is very personal, there’s no good or bad device, it’s more like if its right choice for you, based on your requirements.

For me, Samsung triumphs in the hardware department (except for maybe the lack of camera flash), whereas Desire wins hand down in the software aspect.

For me, you can address software gap with workaround (sometimes better, sometimes not as good, but its a good workaround), but you can’t say the same for hardware.

For e.g. I was blown away by Samsung camera capability, whereas HTC Sense mesmerized me without a shadow of doubt. I can emulate HTC sense in Samsung Galaxy S via Launcherpro (much better than Sense imho!) and widgets like fancy widget (not as functionally complete but its a good bridge), but I can’t emulate the video taking capability *anywhere near* Samsung Galaxy S in HTC Desire.

In my short 20 minutes hands on, I was deeply impressed by its form factor and its captivating Super Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (Super AMOLED) screen. First of all, it’s thin with a 4″ wide screen, a size that I feel more comfortable after having used to HTC HD and HTC HD2, which have screen size of 3.8″ and 4.3″ respectively. I just find the 3.7″ screen in the HTC Desire, a tad too small for me.  The Galaxy S has  just the right size, and to top it all, it is only 9.9mm slim and weighs only 118g. My only gripe is its piano-finishing battery cover, which is going to be a fingerprint magnet. The fact that the battery cover is made of polyurethanes material, doesn’t make it any more “cheap plasticky”, as I thought the overall build quality is solid.

Now the screen; it looks  stunning to the naked eyes, but once I put it side by side against HTC Desire, with the brightness level maximised for both devices, I find the difference is marginal, if any. I suspect the main reason behind this nano difference, is Samsung’s decision to maintain similiar brightness level, so as to maximize the power consumption efficiency. Afterall, a Super AMOLED screen is statistically capable of achieving 20% better brightness at 20% lesser power consumption level, in comparison to a AMOLED screen.  So if Galaxy S is designed and manufactured at the same brightness specification  as the AMOLED screen, then mathematically one can achieve 33% reduction in the power consumption. Not bad!  (Note: I did observed that the power consumption in Galaxy S much better than that in Desire. It’s not scientifically proven though that it is due to the above mentioned theory, but if anybody can confirm that, please let me know)

In the end, the brief experience was enough to lure me into the Samsung Galaxy S camp. So I got a set a few days later, and begin my Android journey, ehm,  officially. Afterall, the HTC Desire is technically a “T-loan” unit from yeez, and my other Android experience was really Android Cupcake half baked into my old HTC HD.

Having used the phone for the last few days, my conclusion of Galaxy S and Desire comparison is basically  hardware versus software. It is without a shadow of doubt that Galaxy S just shines in almost every aspect of hardware departments, except maybe the flash-less camera (and if I want to be nitpick, lack of LED notification light). I can however forgive the lack of flash, for its superb video taking capability. On paper, it can take 720p video at 30 frame per seconds,  but what counts at the end of the day is the actual quality of the video captured in reality. And I have to say it is almighty impressive, as it  could take a good video without any ghosting effect. Probably the best video capture capability I have come across for a smart phone.

Now, when it comes to software arena, HTC Desire is the clear winner by a mile. HTC sense  and its  home screen widgets,  spice up the otherwise default boring android home screen. One can draw the similarity from the  Windows Mobile devices; that without the Windows Mobile version of HTC sense, it is ladened by a functional but very dated Today screen. HTC has established itself as a smartphone leader, not because of its superior hardware specification, but its ability to mate the hardware and software (regardless of Android or Windows Mobile platform) to address the different needs of various mobile market segments. Samsung, on the other hand, has tried too hard to emulate iPhone, loosing it s own DNA. Its  TouchWiz user interface and the bubble style conversation for text messagin, are just some examples of that. Thankfully, there are applications like  LauncherPro, which can reinstate the iPhone wannabe back to the real android Galaxy S where it should be.

I have always have the desire to learn about (mobile) life beyond Windows Mobile,  after having owned numerous Windows Mobile devices for the past 5 years. Then came iPhone, in 2008. But despite its edge cutting user experience and its hundreds of thousands of (useless) applications, it didn’t wow me over. I admit I’m not a big fan of Apple, but that has nothing to do with me not joining the fruity camp. I think it’s a great mobile product to start with, and had redefined the usability of mobile devices. It forces telco to sell data plan as a mainstream service. There’s many good things about the consumer focused phone, but just not enough to replace the likes of my trusty Xperia, Touch HD and subsequently HD2 as a productivity phone.

Then few months ago, I had a taste of Android on my Touch HD, albeit booted from Windows Mobile using haret (just think of it as a PC that can dual boot between Windows and Linux). I thought Android was an unpolished product then, with a great potential to woo over die hard Windows Mobile users.

In the past 6 months, many Android based phones had launched, but they were either too small for my fat fingers, or did not look appealing to me. Most importantly, until Android 2.1 (or Eclair) was released, there was no good way to integrate Android with Exchange Server backend.

Last month, a couple of new Android Eclair phones were launched, and one of them caught my attention. The phone “Desire” is so aptly named. Sporting a screen of 3.7″ size, running HTC sense and most importantly has support for Exchange Server integration,  it looks like a good phone to replace my HD2, which had been on steriod for the past few months.

So when Yeez decides to renew her telco contract, I shamelessly offer her my professional service to set up her HTC Desire, and in the process, for her to experience the steroid boosted HD2 and for me to test-play her HTC Desire for the next few weeks. 

But it took me 2 weeks before I could lay my hands on the desirable phone, as the phone was out of stock island-wide since day 1 due to its overwhelming demand and conservative supplies from HTC (as I understood HTC allocated only 100 units to each telco on day one of its release). Fast forward to yesterday, upon first powered up,  I was first greeted by the familiar shell interface, HTC Sense, which has been around in other HTC Android and Windows Mobile phones. The Android version of the HTC Sense supports a wide variety of widgets, and I believed it is based on Android App Widgets framework. This is a big contrast to the Windows Mobile version of HTC Sense, which has been developed from ground up, based on Lua scripting language. Ok, it sounds little too techie here, but bottomline, you should be able to customise the Android version of HTC sense with other non HTC-sense widgets easily. In the Windows Mobile camp, you would need skilled developers to custom build additional “home tabs” which will only run on HTC-sense powered Windows Mobile devices. That said, I am alittle annoyed with the fact that I can only have 7 “widget screens”, even though I could work around that “limitation” by choosing different “Scene” (each scene has its own set of home widget screens configured).

Installation of third party applications into HTC Desire, like any other Android phones (and iPhone if I’ve to be politically correct), is seamless through Android Market.  I installed a few applications, including big installation packages such as NDrive.  There are some installed applications such as SMS widget counter, File explorer,  Bluetooth transfer app, etc which I deemed basic and should be part of the Android base system. Or maybe I have been spoilt by Windows Mobile for the last few years. On the otherhand,  there are good applications such as Tapatalk which I had been hoping for during  the Windows Mobile  days, and I reckon the lack of “easy to use” UI SDK as the main reason why developers are slow in porting their applications to Windows Mobile.

Applications aside, setting up HTC Desire was a breeze, in particular setting up Exchange Server account for my push mail needs. In a few minutes, all my company mails, calendars and contacts were downloaded to the phone. While the PIM features in Desire (or Android phones for that matter) is not as extensive as that in Windows Mobile, it’s  more than adequate for one to connect to workplace, e.g. scheduling a meeting with a list of  invitees,  setting out of office,looking up company’s global address book, etc. And because I had setup my HD2 favorite people previously, the Desire’s favorite widget screen shows the same list of favorite contacts after synchronising with the exchange server. Neat!

Now here comes my biggest gripe(s),  to date. I always pin-secured my phones, and its no different for HTC desire. The problem with HTC Desire, and possibly for any other Android phones, is that if I choose to have numeric pin, I would still face a full qwerty keyboard to enter the pin when I try to slide unlock the phone. It may sounds like nitpicking, but just imagine you have to tap 8 key codes quickly every time you turn on the phone to make a call or do a quick read of new messages. It didn’t help that Android phones (or at least for HTC Desire) seem to have only one single power management mode; regardless of whether the phone is on external power source or battery, or whether the phone is idle or running some active services.

Apart from these gripes, there are other small nags such as occasional screen lags, inability to have full access to application configurations (probably require rooting). Still, I think it has been a refreshing experience, and is the smart phone that is capable of replacing my HD2. This is even more so with the next version of Android, Froyo,  rumoured to be available for HTC Desire in a couple of weeks time, and reportedly to be 5 times as fast as Eclair. Of course, since its made by HTC, one can easily head over to xda-developers to satisfy ones desire for the dark side.

Never would I ever imagine having a pet at home, even more so for dog. But ever since Cody, our Corgi-breed puppy join us 3 weeks ago, our lifestyle has changed dramatically (although part of it has to do with my father’s stroke incident).

First, I was trying to find out more about the breed of my Cody, and came across this site trainpetdog.com,  which appears to have wealth of information on how to specially train Corgi dogs.  As I read further, I see the type of sales tactic very similiar to those  TV commercial advertisements that try to sell products or services at a exceptional special discount. You know those that says something like, “Normally it cost $100, but for limited time, we are offering it at $50 instead, and if you call within the next hour, it’ll be yours for $29.90, and you get extra free gift…“

The same thing for TrainPetdog.com …  They said, and I quote,

Now, given that the best professional trainers will charge you nothing less than $1200 to train your Dog, given how much frustration and stress our membership site is going to save you from, given how much peace of mind our membership site is going to provide you, and given how much time and money our membership site is going to save you, we could have easily charged you at least $197 for access to our membership site. But we are not going to!

Why?

Because the ebooks will be presented to you as online content, we will not have to incur any printing and fulfillment costs. And we want to pass on those benefits to you.

So, we slashed down the price to $97. But, even at $97, we know that not many Dog owners are going to be able to afford to get access to our membership site…

We absolutely adore Dogs and we want as many Dog owners as possible to benefit from the secret tips and techniques described in our new membership site…

So, we have decided.. on a much more affordable discounted price…

If you order anytime by midnight, tonight Friday, May 28, 2010 11:59:59 pm
you will get the Membership at only $37

However, please note that the price of $37 is a discounted price. We fully intend to increase the price to $97 very soon as there is no way we can afford to keep the price at $37 for too long…So, if you order now, you can save $60!

But, if you decide not to order now, and in case we withdraw our discounted price of $37, you will have to pay the much higher price of $97

As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably so. So I google searched and found this site that talks about how this site is being a scam site. Somebody even bothered to setup a domain and a site just to expose the scam. So apparently, one get nothings at all after paying that $37, despite a few pages worth of promises described by the Nancy Richards @  TrainPetdog.com. I decided to do a test and subscribed to the same mailing list using another name and email address, and I get the exact same email respond, except the deadline of the special offer is now a day later! Whatever the case, its clear this is a scam site that tries to take advantage of human’s greed, in this case, hoping to pay just that $37 for something that’s worth $197 (or $1200 depending on what you believe in)

On separate note, I was looking at ways to watch the coming South Africa World Cup football online, in a legitimate way. No way I am going to pay $70 just to watch that 64 matches live, and its not as if I have the time and energy to watch every single match. Then I came across Free-Football.tv, which promises to watch unlimited number of football matches (World Cup, Barclay Premier League, etc,) just for $19.90. Alittle skeptic with the (good) deal, I decided to google again on the legitimacy of this service. Turns out this is yet another scam site, as the google result reveals that the site is basically selling something that’s free on the internet. I have emailed the owner of the site, and we shall see what came out from those correspondences.

That’s the statistic of the latest Merlion NG 1.70. And Merlion NG v 1.80 should be out soon.

On 11th May, Tuesday morning, dad suffered a stroke and he was in a daze sitting on the floor, presumably fell after the stroke took place. We called the ambulance, rushed him to the nearest hospital, and after hours of resuscitation and observations, he was finally put into the acute stroke unit ward for further treatment & observation. He went through a couple of scans, and doctors confirmed that he had a large stroke, damaging his front left hemisphere of his brain. Consequently, the ischemic stroke  had affected the mobility of his right body, and his speech ability.

There must be some correlation between the number of clicks the ROM download link got, versus the performance of the ROM. Within 2 days of release, it got more than 200 of clicks. Okay, not a great deal for the mainstream  ROMs like Miri or Energy, or the actual download is approximately just 3/4 of of the clicks. Regardless,that’s a significant milestone for Merlion NG series in my humble opinion.

The demographic of my user base is pretty much expected. Since I have build the Chinese Simplified Input/Display support, I would naturally anticipate most of the users to come from a Chinese populated location. So users from Singapore & China made up close to 60% of Merlion NG series total user base. What’s interesting is I do have users from the Europe & Middle East countries.

If you have not flashed the latest Merlion NG series ROM (v1.65), you should because you never know what you have been missing until you have tried it. Some had even described the ROM to be on steroid,  or on drug cocktail!  Don’t believe? See the below performance chart of the NG series ROM performance.

If the chart above does not give you much context, just imagine this. A stock (i.e. official) ROM would only achieve a total SPB benchmark index of 1590. In comparison to the latest release of Merlion NG series, the latter is 2 times faster! Even for the first generation of Merlion series, v2.68 is generally one of the better performing ROM among the rest of HD2 custom ROMs, so I will not be surprised, if we were to put a ranking table to compare the performance of all the custom ROMS in xda-developers or htcpedia, Merlion NG series should be in the top ranks, if not right at the top

Nevertheless, putting on the analytical hat, here’s my analysis of what could happen, ideal and yet realistic.

Spurs has 3 games remaining, against Bolton (Home) ,  City (Away) and finally Burnley (Away)

Manchester City has 3 games remaining too, against Aston Villa (Home), Spurs (Home), and finally West Ham (Away)

Aston Villa has 2 games remaining, just like us, and they will be playing against City (Away) and Blackburn (Home)

We have to play Chelsea at home, and wrapping the season by playing against Hull away.

With soccer, anything is possible, but if we consider just a pragmatic idea situation as follow

• Spurs draw with Bolton and  Man City, beat Burnley. Gains5 points as a result, aggregating a final total of 69 points.
• City draw with Villa and Spurs, beat West Ham. Gains 5 points in total, aggregating a final total of 68 points.
• Villa draw with City, and draw Blackburn. Gain 4 points in total, aggregating a final total of 68 points.
• We win the rest of our 2 matches, against Chelsea and Hull, and we have a final aggregated points of 68.

So you see, Spurs is the likely winner of the last Champions league spot.  It’s hard to imagine Spurs dropping points against Burnley, but hopefully they do against Bolton. If they win this coming weekend match against Bolton, then its a lost cause for us.

For us to win against Chelsea, it’s also an unimaginable task, although considering that we have won the double against them in previous season.

So cross our fingers and toes, and may the best team gets the coveted spot.

The cooking process was smooth sailing and the result is quite satisfactory. Please head over to the XDA developer thread to follow the development progress, if you are keen to try it on your HD2.

Welcome to Universal Studio Singapore

Having been to the Universal Studio in Los Angeles  10 years ago, I was very excited when I heard that Universal Studio will be opening one in Singapore. For me, it’s the theme park for adults (although I’m sure the kids especially the teenages will like it) and would prefer Universal Studio over DisneyWorld anytime. So naturally I went with alot of high expectations and anticipations.

The park is made up of 7 themes (or zones). They are Far Far Away Land, Ancient Egypt, The Lost World, Madagascar, Sci-fi City, Hollywood, New York, in the order of fun and entertainment factor, in my opinion of course.  Madagascar and Sci-fi City, would be more interesting if not for the closed or in-construction rides. The Madagascar dance was very entertaining though. The closure of  Battlestar Galatica is a big bummer, especially when there’s nothing left in Sci-fi City except for a lame “Accelerator” ride, which is nothing more than just spinning and spinning in a cup.

One of the streets in New York

Between Hollywood and New York, I would prefer New York, but not by miles. The Lights! Camera! Action! in New York zone showcase some of the special effects made in Steven Spielberg’s movies, in a filming stage. Otherwise, there is really very little action in these two zones, mainly just merchandise and food & beverages shops.

Experience the fun and excitement in Jurassic Park

So really, the action and fun-filled activities are really contained around the remaining 3 zones, at least until the rides in Madagascar and Sci-fit City become available or re-open again. Among the three, I would say The Lost World has the most (number of) fun-packed activities. The Canopy Flier is one breathtaking ride, that’s if one imagine himself riding over the “real” Jurassic Park The gliding coaster does make one feel like flying across the jungle over the tree top.  The disappointment bit is the short ride time. I didn’t time it, but it felt like a few second ride! It didn’t help that we have to queue for more than 40 minutes just to get the ride, and I reckon it will be even longer when the theme park fully opens in future.

Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure is literally the most wet ride in the park. That said, other than the last section of the ride where the raft actually plunges down from a height, I am really not impressed by the ride. A word of warning though, be prepared to get very wet, if you do not intend to wear a poncho while taking the ride. I had my head, body and feet totally soaked with water. Disposable ponchos are available for $1.50 each, but many had opted not to buy, only to end up buying T-shirt at the Jurassic merchandise shop, which is located just beside the ride station exit. Brilliant business strategy I think.

My overall average impression of the The Lost World park may be swayed (somewhat negatively) by the fact that I have watched the same show Water World before, while I was at Universal Studio LA.Or at least that was what I thought. For first timer, he/she might be impressed. There are just too many similarity between the two shows in term of the stage, the story line, the scenes, the props, etc. I think the only thing that’s different, are the weather and the actors/actresses involved in the show!

The door to Revenge of The Mummy

I have a mixed bag of feelings when it comes to the next zone Ancient Egypt. It has the most lame ride in the park (although Accelerator in Sci-Fi City can easily be the other candidate for this “honorable” award) in Treasure Hunter. I am not sure if anybody would appreciate the ride, although this might be the only ride that senior visitors could take in the park .

The other end of the excitement  spectrum, at least until Battlestar Galatica is available, can be found in this zone. Revenge of the Mummy is a high speed thrill ride with sharp turns and fast reverse, all while in the total darkness. The queue to the ride was also elaborately designed with interactive artifacts to blend in with the theme of the ride. The entire atmosphere really captures that found in the movie, dark and mysterious. The ride itself,  starts with an excursion of the tomb which establishes the ride’s plot. Once the action (and I mean real action) begins, expect high speed launches, startling drops, sudden reverses. Or should I say expect the unexpected, since all these happens while in the dark, and that creates the feel that  the whole ride is “out of control”!  While I didn’t experience any weightless, g-force drop type of roll as one would expect in those roller coaster ride like Battlestar Galatica, and according to Universal Studio, Revenge of Mummy is supposed to be a family ride, with tame top speed of 45mph, it offers a different type of thrills that would easily matches the latter in terms of fear and excitement factors.

Donkey in action

Far Far Away Land is a zone where I experienced the most unexpected, good or not so good. Upon entering the Shrek 4D theatre, I had expected to watch a breathtaking 4-dimension show. It is essentially a 3D movie with the 4th dimension where one physically feels the effect of the actions. The 3D effect was not the best I have seen, and the 4th dimension (with the spray of water, streaming of cold air and moving seat, etc) did not wow me, especially when I had experienced something similiar elsewhere. It does bring out a whole new experience for movie watching though;  Just imagine a stream of water sprayed on your face when Donkey sneezed at you.

Anyway, as we walked over to the next attraction point, Donkey Musical, I had somewhat expected nothing more than just a musical show, by Donkey of course. Perhaps Shrek 4D had reset my expectation, because I was blown away by what I have experienced in the Donkey Musical. It is a simple musical show, but a very interactive one, where Donkey will actually interact with the audience, and I assume there’s somebody at the backstage controlling the animated Donkey, be it the voice or action responses during the interaction. I am pretty sure there are some technologies involved behind the simple show, but in the end, what impresses me is how much of engagement the show has with the audience. It would be even better if the audience is less shy, but then again, it is not uncommon in Singapore. Lastly, the enchanted airway is just a smaller scaled, teenage version of the roller coaster. Very suitable for kids or adults who are afraid to try out weightless g-force roll type of roller coaster rides.

One of the rides that were not opened

By the time we finished the rides, and ready to leave the park, it was close to 5.30pm. Considering the size of the park (as compared to other parks in other parts of the world), I was quite surprised to see that we actually spent almost a full day in the theme park. For a park that’s still in its soft opening period, I must say that the experience was very positive. I hope with the addition of the new rides like Battlestar Galatica and A Crate Adventure that would complete the experience. Will I return and visit the theme park again? Definitely a resounding yes, at least to check out these unavailable rides!

I always thought twitter is just another facebook, or as a micro-blogging tool, I never knew the significance of it until I started twitting recently.

The power of twitter, is its simplicity. SMS is a simple yet powerful communication. And twitter is just an internet version of SMS.

I never know why would anybody follow a twitt. Even more so I could not comprehend why somebody would ever follow my twitt. But now I know why, and have got quite a few since I ‘officially’ twitt a month ago.

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Introduction to cooking

We are all very familiar with setting up a new operating system in our PC or notebook. Doing so on our Windows mobile device, is however, not so straight forward. The only way is to setup the operating system, along with the desired applications, into an image, which will then be flashed into the mobile device. The process of building the image, is also known as cooking.  The person who involves in cooking, is known as chef.

Ins and Outs of a Windows Mobile ROM

An ROMimage contains 1 or more image chunks, such as Radio, Splash, Bootloader, OS, etc. In this blog, I would be focusing on OS image, which is made up of 4 sections, namely XIP, SYS, OEM and EXT.

XIP, which stands for “Execute in Place”, is a method of executing programs directly from the persistent storage, instead of copying it to and running it from RAM. The files in this section, are essentially the kernel of the OS, and it follows very closely to the version & build of the Windows Mobile operating system that you are planning to build upon. You should not be trying to exclude any of the files in this section, although in some cases, you may need to modify the NK.EXE file to customize the version number to be displayed on your device’s splash screen.

SYS, is where you would find the rest of the default Windows Mobile operating system files, including all the default WM software and the resource files such as images or data files. This is the section, where you can disable some of the applications and their corresponding resources to reduce the OS footprint. For example. you can disable “Autoupdate” since we almost would not be getting any update from Microsoft over the air (OTA). Another example, if you do not use CHome, the new Windows Mobile home interface, you can disable it.

OEM section, contains all the drivers and configurations developed by the phone manufacturer for the specific device. Please careful of using a different driver set (possibly from another device) as it may render your device unbootable if the driver conflicts. In the OEM section, there is one file known as “initflashfiles.dat”, usually found in OEM_Lang_XXXX folder (where XXXX is the language identifier represented in numeric term), which is used to define how the files will be copied to the phone after a hard reset. By default, a file cooked in a ROM goes to \Windows folder, and the initflashfiles.dat will copy it (not move) to a different folder, such as “\Program Files\XXX”

Lastly, the EXT refers to the set of application packages that are added usually by the phone manufacturer to fulfill certain functionalities of the phone. If you would like an application to be setup automatically after each hard reset, this is the section where you add the application package.

Tools you need to cook

We all know a kitchen is where a chef would whip up some nice crusine dishes. Similiarly, in order for one to cook the rom, he would need a set of utility tools which are also known as kitchen. In the early days of cooking era, chefs (i.e. those who cook) had to build their ROM image via command line utility. These days, we have developers building visual kitchen, which makes the whole cooking process much easier and convenient. There are a few visual kitchens (Ervius, Vistang, etc) floating around in the xda-developers, and they are mostly based on Bepe’s platformbuilder tool. For the remaining of this guide, I would be using visual kitchen to describe the process. For beginner, I find Vistang‘s kitchen pretty much idiot proof, whereas Ervius have more comprehensive features.

• Ervius Kitchen
• Vistang Kitchen

Process of cooking

Firstly, look for a kitchen that has all the 4 sections (i.e. XIP, OEM, EXT, SYS) pre configured. This way, you have a good base to start with. Then you can easily select or  unselect packages that you would like to include/exclude to the rom that you eventually create. If you have to create the kitchen from scratch, you would then need to extract the applications and files from the official ROM (see step 1).

1. Extracting packages from official ROM

The easiest way is to use the kitchen tool, to interactively dump the files out from the original ROM image. Ervius Kitchen would have this feature.  Otherwise, you need a set of command line utilities to break the original ROM image (nbh format) into several chunk (nb format), and then further extract the application files from the nb files. You can find the detail of the tools you need from this link

2. Remove or Add/Update packages in OEM, SYS or EXT

Once you have all the files in your kitchen, you can start configuring your ROM according to your preference. I find this tutorial very useful, in guiding, from start to end, on the various configurations that can happen on your ROM. If you have new application that you want to add to the ROM, and they are not part of the existing package, you need to ensure that you create a package for it, which this link has described very well on how you do so. In some kitchens like Vistang, all you need to do is to create a folder and have the files stored in the sub folder named “files”, without the need to create the dsm or rgu configuration files.  If there’s any need to update the registry, you can create a registry file “app.reg” in the folder. The most effective way to get familiarised is to look at some of the existing packages.

Lastly, if you would like to include new build of the Windows Mobile to your kitchen, you need to ensure that you have the SYS and ROM folder updated.

Once you are done with the file dump, make sure all the files are placed in the appropiate section of your kitchen. Different kitchens may have different folder structure, but by and large, they are organised by the 4 sections which I have described earlier.

3. Customise the shortcuts and other file initialisation

Since all the cooked files are by default copied to \Windows directory, you need to configure initflashfiles.dat if you need to copy the files to other folder such as Start Menu or Program Files. The syntax of the command in initflashfiles.dat are basically as follow;

• Directory(“\Windows”):-Directory(“Help”)

Creates a new sub folder “Help” in “\Windows” directory

• Directory(“\My Documents\My Pictures”):-File(“Destination.jpg”,”\Windows\Source.jpg”)

Copy a new file named “Destination.jpg” from “\Windows\Source.jpg” to “\My Documents\My Pictures” directory.

The initflashfiles.dat only create new sub folder or copy files from one place to another. If you need to delete a file outside of \Windows directory, you need to use the Configuration Service Provider to execute the deletion command. The configurations are maintained in provisioning xml file (or known as provxml file)  You can also use this method to set up other items such as your Activesync configuration, Registry update, etc.

4. Build & Flash your ROM

If you want to ensure that your ROM version is reflected correctly in the RUU utility program, you may need to modify htcrtproj in the Tools folder of the kitchen. For Ervius kitchen, the file is Leo.htcrtproj (for Leo kitchen) and for Vistang, it’s os.htcrtproj

For some kitchen, such as Vistang’s kitchen, you can also include other part of the ROM image, such as radio image, to your final cook ROM. Usually these features require you to have a registered copy of the kitchen software though.

Now that you have your ROM built, you can then start flashing it to your device.

Useful Links

• Sous-Chef’s Guide to Da_G’s Ervius Visual Kitchen 9.7
• sparkienl Comprehensive Kitchen Guide & Useful links
• Standard Leo Package Listing & the dependencies
• How to create OEM package and OEM package listing
• Da_G’s listing of standard Windows Mobile packages (description & dependencies)

Despite holding a non-development responsibility in my IT professional job, I still have a soft spot for software programming, and therefore, I have been developing software during my free time, and some of them were showcased in my own blog

The year of 2010, is a new era for me, as I have “progressed” beyond software development, and ventured into Windows Mobile operating system image development, or better known as “ROM cooking”, and greatly helped by the availability of easy-to-use tools.

dZenkinZ © Merlion Leo is my first attempt of the ROM building venture, for HTC HD2 Leo. The primary objective of the effort is to have a customized ROM based on my personal needs, with the emphasis on striking a balance between performance and nice user interface. So you may find that some of the included/excluded features not something you would expect of a “public ROM”. Nevertheless, recognising that this is probably the first Leo ROM that’s based on WWE (WorldWide Edition, i.e. English ROM) with Simplified Chinese display & input support, I have decided to share my work with you so that this provides an alternative to rest of the ROMS out in xda-developers.

And why Merlion as the name of my ROM? Since this is possibly the first made-in-Singapore Leo ROM, and Merlion is a well recognised icon for Singapore, I thought why not? It surely beats using some other geeky or cheesy name, isn’t it?

If you like to use my ROM, you can head over to xda-developers for the download link and discussion.

If you like my iconset, please consider . Thank you!

ShowTraffic SG has been updated to release 1.2. It fixes some bugs, and introduce a new feature to support Google Map Traffic, which enables one to go directly to Google Map from Show Traffic application.

You can download from here Update on 28th Jan: version 1.3 has been released to fix a bug and also added two new camera points.

This afternoon, as I drove out of petrol kiosk after the gas fill up, the “Check Engine Light” (CEL) on my main instrumental cluster came on. Immediately made an appointment with the dealer to bring the car for a check tomorrow.

So in the meantime, I googled for the possible  and common cause of the problem, and interestingly top in the search list pointed me to the fuel cap not tightened properly. I wasn’t convinced by the explanation, but then I was telling myself, no harm trying since it is not difficult remediation to apply.

I went to the car, open the fuel cap door, and found that I could tighten the fuel cap further by one turn!  I then reset the ECU by taking out fuse #2 and #4 and restarted the car. The CEL no longer appeared, although I was experiencing some rough engine idling. I thought it was just a case of ECU adapting after a reset, and true enough, the engine idle speed stabilised shortly after awhile. I drove the car out for a test spin, the CEL did not light up even as I “boost” the car.

So the problem was finally solved! Reflecting back, I realised the problem probably had occurred at the petrol kiosk. The petrol station attendant did not tighten the fuel cap after the fill up, resulting in the CEL. Nevertheless, it was a good inexpensive lesson learnt, and again it’s internet and google that came to my rescue!

My sister-in-law bought HP mini netbook recently, and I helped her to setup over the weekend.

I was pleasantly surprised to see HP InstantWeb application pre-installed in the netbook. Firstly, I have read about the application from the internet but this is the first time I have seen it in person. Next, I thought it’s cool for HP to custom build this small application that enables user to quickly access email or web surfing without having to wait for a long boot time. Although Windows 7 has improved the boot up time significantly (works out to be around 40s on my laptop running on 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate) , it’s still considerably slow for a mini netbook.

However, there’s one area of topics I like to blog moving forward, is a chronological recount of the car maintenance activities I have carried out on my Saab 93 Sports Sedan. I thought with the blog, I could build a knowledge base out of it, for future reference purposes, be it on my current or future ride.

And we shall start with what had happened over the weekend, as I was driving in a hot afternoon (my scangauge told me that the ambient temperature was somewhere between 36-37 °C)

A very familiar warning beep chimed off . The car SID (Saab Information Display) displayed a intimidating  “A/C off due to high engine temperature” message.  My instant reaction was to look at the water temperature gauge on the car’s electronic instrument cluster. The gauge needle was already at the 3/4 mark, close to the ‘Red’ danger mark. I glanced through my scangauge, the exact reading of the water temperature was 125°C, and then subsequently hovered between 126°C to 128°C.

My first thought was that the cooling fan must have given way, as I had experienced similar anomaly in my previous car. I thought I could at least keep the temperature down by cruising on the highway as the result of the onrushing air, which worked the previous incident. This time however, it didn’t work at all and I was starting to sweat over the thoughts of driving the car under this condition.

After some experimenting, the problem not only did not go away, and I got a new SID message “Hot engine. Make a safe stop. Run engine on idle“. If the previous warning message did not get into me, this one surely had. I had no choice but to call a tow truck, and had it towed to a SAAB workshop.

When we were at the workshop, the mechanics was able to quickly confirmed that the radiator fan at the driver side (i.e. right fan) had malfunctioned.  I was advised to have the fan relay replaced as well, so eventually we had both items (fan and relay) changed. It was a relatively quick job for the mechanics. And as I thought we had the problem fixed, I shortly found out it was not as I drove the car out for a spin. The water temperate escalated from 60°C to 120°C within minutes, and I had to drive the car back to the workshop again to have the problem reassessed.

The mechanics instantly determined that we should take alook at the coolant thermostat, just as they were giving me a heads up as I drove the car for a test drive. Sure enough, when they took out the thermostat, the solenoid was closed, which means that the coolant had never flow through the radiator system to cool the engine down. And this explains the reason for the escalating temperature, even with a functional radiator fan. You see, the coolant fluid is the one that actually conducts the heat away from the engine, so no prize for guessing what happen when the coolant fluid does not flow through the radiator system!

So a new thermostat was replaced, along with the radiator pressure cap, which got brittle by the extreme heat. To be doubly sure, the mechanics put the car on stress test by turning on the heater, and constantly depressed the accelerator pedal for 5 minutes to keep the engine running at 3000rpm. The temperature rose as expected, but stabilized at 85°C, so it was promising.  So it was a job finally well done, and the problem finally got resolved.

Finally, the damage for the parts

1. Radiator Fan – $699
2. Radiator Fan control/relay – $299
3. Coolant Thermostat – $90
4. Radiator Cap – $20

Touch HD Starting Up

Android on Touch HD  Part I – Text messaging, Google App, Web browsing, etc

Android on Touch HD Part II – Google mail, MP3 playback, Settings

Whoever says that competition is good is really just tweaking the words to his world of advantage. This is a competition but definitely not in the interest of consumers. When it comes to competing for exclusivity, how can exclusivity be good for consumers? Exclusivity = Monopoly. It’s worst when exclusivity is obtained via money instead of through its product innovation. Utter crap !

Last weekend, I managed to reverse engineer this feature and included it in my latest Show Traffic application. Check out the video, and you know what I’m talking about!

You can download the latest version from this link. Version 1.1 is now “skinable” (yay! my first skinable appy) and is compatible to both Q(W)VGA and (W)VGA Windows Mobile devices.

To skin the application, you have to modify the following image files

1. BG_selector background image of the item
2. BG_highlight background image of the selected item
3. BG_spacer background image of the spacer between items
4. BG_title background image of the title bar (at the top of the application)

Additionally, if your skin is a white/light-color based theme, then you need to change the foreground and background colour so that the text can be readable on your light-color based theme. This setting can be found in the registry path (HKCU\Software\Zenyee\ShowTraffic) You can download this zip file for a sample light-based skin with the appropiate registry.

However, other than a more intuitive interface as a result of the iPhone UI, there isn’t really a breakthrough functionality that can’t be offered outside of iPhone. The live traffic, is afterall taken from the local authority website (OneMotoring), and I decided to bring this capability to Windows Mobile world.

That said, the Windows Mobile SDK doesn’t really offer gesture-based interface, unless you work in the native C++ environment. Since this application is meant to be a “quicky” one (as I cannot afford to burn my weekend just for this) so I have to design and build based on what compact .NET framework could allow me. This is built in less than half a day, including creating the graphics and the testing of the links, so please pardon this appy for its very basic interface.

Note:  Traffic images and contents are sourced from Intelligent Transport System Centre of LTA (Land Transport Authority). You may go to this OneMotoring link for the online version.

You can download the beta from here (only WVGA/VGA supported at the moment)

So I did some investigation, and found out a way to disable HTC messaging app, and revert back to the original Windows messaging application, i.e. pocket outlook, for text messaging. Technically speaking, it’s a combination of registry tweak and a small patch utility I wrote to overcome a bug/problem as a result of disabling HTC messaging application.

Installation process will automatically apply the hack and install the patch utility

You need to restart your device to have the changes effect

Uninstallation will undo the hack automatically

You can download from here

Then today I was curious about a problem on google analytics service which I encountered 3 months ago. Google analytics is one of the free services offered by Google (duh!), which enables one to analyse the web traffic to one’s web site.  It started off well when I first subscribed to the service, but a month later, all of sudden the service registered zero web traffic (or at most 5 visits per week type of traffic), and I made a report to Google’s “self service help desk” only to find out that I’m not the only one encountering this problem. After few correspondences, it didn’t look like I’m getting any attention of Google staff to make any good progress, so I gave up, thinking that the problem might resolved by itself somehow if given some time. Fast forward to now, at least 3-4 months after the problem occured, I logged into my analytics account, and found out that the problem remains unresolved. Well, what do you expect from a free service?  And the ironical thing is that the tracking web site is actually a Google-hosted site, subscribed via their free google site service.

There’s no free lunch in this world.

“Back FavPeople Up!” is the latest software I have created for Windows Mobile devices that sport HTC’s touchflo 3d user interface. Basically it is a backup utility tool to manage the  favorite contacts found in the touchflo’s “People” tab. The challenge here is not so much about building the application itself (as I have found out building using managed code speed up the development cycle tremendously). It is really the effort to find out how and where HTC embeds its favorite contact information. After scanning through the entire windows registry and hundreds of manila files (HTC’s custom xml files), I figured out that it must be in the PIM database, where all the contacts, appointments, etc are stored.

The hack requires some understanding of the POOM (Pocket Outlook Object Model), and contact is one of the objects in the model. After some trial and error, I finally found out that the information are saved under the property set in the contact object

For download of the utility, you can go to xda-develoeprs to download

Few days ago, a fellow forumer in Xda-developers had requested for a feature in my Rotate Screen utility, which was created some 8 months ago while I was developing the navigation panel for Xperia. So I decided that I should just add that in today.

Rotate Screen essentially is a small footprint utility that enables you to rotate your Windows Mobile screen. It supports rotation via user interface or command line. Using command line method, you can rotate your screen via toggle mode (toggle between two orientation modes), set mode (set your screen to a specific orientation mode) or cycle mode (rotate your screen to the next available orientation mode, from 0 to 270 degree)

More information can be found in this XDA-developers thread

Last Sunday was a Kop day for us. While to some people, it may be just a friendly match between Liverpool and Singapore, to us Reds fanatic fans, it’s a great opportunity to get immersed in the ‘simulated’ Anfield atmostphere.

Thanks to a colleague of mine, we managed to get tickets at the Kop stand, essentially the East stand of National Stadium, specially allocated for Reds fans. Yeez, myself and Kan & Ray together with their parents, were all there ready by 5pm to cheer our favorite players, even though the match was supposed to start only at 7pm.

In between, we were entertained by some incidents, such as this Manchester United fan who had deliberately tried to provoke the fans in the Kop stand by wearing his ManU jersey and walk around. The Reds fans were obviously not welcoming him, and jeering him with chants like “ManU Sucks”

When the game started, the usual familiar Liverpool anthem “You will never walk alone” was played as all the fans stood up and sang along with the scarf holding high up. No doubt it’ll never be the same as Anfield, as some fans commented in the forum, but hey, for Singaporeans, in its most uptight and regimental society, I thought the atmosphere was great.

The game ended up with a 5-0. Took quite alot of photos, as I rented a 100-400mm telephoto lens just for this event.

The celebration started with a whipping buffet at Kushinbu Great World, followed by an Ice-Age movie screening. What a night!

A decade and a half later, I got the opportunity to install Obuntu, one of many variants of Linux operating system, in my old tablet (TC4400). Prior to this, I had trouble with the tablet’s bootup, even from the external cdrom. Apparently there was some power problem with the motherboard. Fed up with the problem, I decided to boot up using a Obuntu cd that I got over the internet (first yay!), and ended up installing the operating system into my tablet. The power issue never surfaced with a Linux-based system, so I’m happy (second yay!). Within 30 minutes, I got the system setup, and ready for use! (third yay!)

More impressively, I had the system boot up and ready to surf within a minute! (fourth yay). Now I am contemplated to ubuntu-ised my mini-1000 netbook as well…

Modified "Squeak-less" Battery Cover

One of them is performance. After flashing my HD with Dutty’s V3.9 XT Turbo ROM, I felt as if I have gotten a new toy. But the moment I hold up the phone, the squeak on the battery cover put a big dent on the otherwise wonderful HD experience. As I depress on either side of the battery cover, the squeaks just remind me on the squeak and rattles I experienced in my old Volkswagen Bora.

I decided that I have  to do something about it (and give me one less excuse to change my phone!)

Upon inspecting the area where the squeak happens, I identified spots where the plastic on the battery cover is pressing against the phone housing.

All it took for me is a pair of scissor, masking tape, and a small screw driver (or any tool such as tweezers that can be used to position and press the tape on the squeaking area, or just your fingers if you do not have fat thumbs like I do). Stick the tape at the offending area, and you are done literally within a minute!

DIY Tools to mask the squeak

The left hand side of the battery cover

Right hand side of the battery cover; NB: The area above the tape needs to be masked as well

Finally, my HD feels like a gadget with a solid built quality. Maybe it was, but the squeay cover certainly suggests otherwise.

So it looks like I have to wait longer (for an excuse) to ditch my HD. Maybe a HTC Hero might be the one.

Unfortunately, the procedure to flash a custom ROM can be a nervy experience, even for an IT-trained individual. While  the actual flashing process will take no more than 10 minutes, one might get lost just by reading through the documentation of the procedure.

So here’s an attempt to do a video blog of the flashing process, to compliment  the detailed documentation created by the developers in xda-developers forum. In this video blog, I’ll be flashing custom ROM using USPL, instead of Hard-SPL method. Read here to know more about USPL versus Hard-SPL. For me, USPL is the least intrusive method, and I can flash stock ROM to my device anytime straight away without any additional procedure.

Files you need to download

First thing first, you need to ensure you have the following files downloaded;

1. Stock SPL for Blackstone (version 1.54)
2. HSPL Wrapper for Blackstone (version 1.56)
3. USPL (version 2.5)
4. A 1.56+ based ROM (I use Dutty’s XT 3.9 ROM)
5. RUU Wrapper for Blackstone (if you download Dutty’s XT ROM, this RUU wrapper is provided in the zip file)

Unzip each of the downloaded files, and organised them under a central folder, e.g. “Touch-HD-Rom-Stuff”, for easy access.

Key Steps required to flash the custom ROM

1. Back up your phone. I strongly recommend that you just back up your data instead of backing up your programs and their settings. Going with the latter might introduce system conflicts when you restore everything back to the new ROM. If you just need to back up your PIM data (i.e. your appointments, text message, contacts, etc), my personal preference would be PIM Backup.

2. Put your phone into bootloader mode. With your phone in power off mode, depressed the volume-down button and power button simultaneously, and you should see the device boot up with a tri-colour screen like the one shown below.  (note: if for some reason you want to exit this step without any further flashing, just take out the battery and put it back to restart)

Touch HD at Bootloader mode

3. Update your phone’s SPL to stock SPL version 1.54. You can skip this step if your bootloader screen shows that you are already on version 1.54 (or above). The video below shows how you can upgrade your phone’s stock SPL to version 1.54. In the video, you would see that I will put my phone in USPL mode first. According to xda-developers, there is not need to put your phone in USPL mode first and you can upgrade the SPL directly (i.e. skip step 3a).  In some circumstances (e.g. if you have accidentally carried out step 4 before step 3) you may need to perform step 3a first prior to flashing stock spl. If you are not sure, just carry out step 3a since it is a very straight forward step;

(a) With your phone connected to your PC via USB cable, open up a command window and run the command “blac_uspl.exe“. This will put your phone in USPL mode. If you are not successful in getting your phone into USPL mode, please refer to this link to update your USB driver.

(b) Run the HSPL Wrapper by double-clicking the program HSPLWrapper_Blackstone_1560OliNex.exe. Do not click on anything when the window pops up

(c) Copy the stock SPL image RUU_Signed.nbh to the folder where HSPL Wrapper resides. Choose to overwrite the file if you are prompted.

(d) Continue the steps as advised by HSPL Wrapper Window, to complete the flashing of stock SPL version 1.54 into your phone.

4. Upgrade your phone with a 1.56+ based custom ROM. In this example, I use Dutty’s XT version 3.9, which is also based on stock ROM 1.56. You need to put your phone back in bootloader mode again, as the SPL upgrade you have carried out in step 3 would reboot your phone into Windows Mobile operating environment. Repeat step 3a to put your phone into USPL mode. Once your phone is in USPL mode, then run the executable BlackstoneRUUWrapper.exe. Follow the steps as advised by the RUU (Rom Update Utility) window, and in less than 10 minutes you should see a successful flash of the custom ROM image into your phone! The video below illustrates the entire flashing procedure.

Note: If you are not successful in getting your phone into USPL mode, please refer to this link to update your USB driver.

I recalled reading Steve Job’s argument on why 3G is not bundled in its 2G iPhone product; He said that 3G consumes more battery juice than its predecessor. Yes it does and so does WIFI which can be found in its first generation of iPhone.

Fast forwarding to now, the new iPhone 3G S is touted as a turbo charged iphone 3G with its HSDPA technology. Again it’s a technology found in my Dopod c730 two years ago. Anybody who wants to argue that Apple always does thing better than its competitors should really question how better is it for this context? That we are able to have 3.5G broadband at fraction of power consumption? I don’t think so.

Then BGR has reported undesirable high pitch noise when iPhone 3G S plays some sound files. One site blamed it on the bluetooth headset, and claimed that he had no problem with another. Surely we can infer a more objective conclusion from all these can we?

Posted from my Touch-HD

So  4 weeks ago when I sent in my X1 to the service center to have the keyboard and some parts repaired,  never would I had expected that would be my last Xperia experience.  It has to do with the infamous crack plastic housing that I requested to be replaced, but I shall not digress further. Fast forward to now,  I ended up selling my X1 back to the service center, and gotten a black stone, a code name for HTC Touch HD.

First unboxing impression

HTC always does a great job in marketing their products, including their product packaging. Touch HD is not an exception. Upon opening up the box, the phone is sitting tightly on the velvet case, radiating a class of sparkles as if it is really a black gem stone. The phone itself is very well built, with a glass finishing on the front, and plastic with rubber texture finishing on its back. The 3.8″ screen size is a big welcome for me after enduring the small 2.8″ (or 3.0″ for X1) screen for the last few years. It was the same feeling I got when I upgraded my 29″ CRT with a 42″ plasma TV few years ago. No kidding! With a bigger screen, something has to give in, as it becomes wider to hold and may not be one-hand-friendly especially for ladies. Luckily the overall form factor is not at all compromised, as HTC designs the phone as a gemstone, not a brick. Perhaps I had my own taste of iPAQ 6300/6500/6900, I find it comfortable holding HD despite its wider screen.

Setup experience

The setup experience was somehow less desirable though. After going through the usual screen calibration and time setting, my first task was to set up Activesync Exchange connectivity, so that I can restore my contacts, email and appointments as I would always do when I get a new Windows Mobile phone. This is where my patience was seriously tested. For some reason, the sync download was slow (ok, blame it on the 3G connection I have), and at the half way mark, the device reported that service.exe has crashed and the sync got into a limbo stage. It took me a soft reset, to complete the sync, even then, the sync was painfully slow. It appears as if there is something running in the background, that slows down the whole sync process.

Stock Performance

Unlike what the HTC sales manager had claimed 6 months ago during a Touch HD product introduction, the phone does not feel like it has been optimized for its performance. In fact, if there’s any indication that HTC has partnered with StarHub (Singapore telco that has exclusivity in Touch HD launch) to customize the ROM, it’s probably the StarHub logo display on the home page of TouchFlo interface.

Comparing to my previous X1, the Touch HD performance is just decent, and that’s after some tweaking using Schap’s Advanced Config Tool. The battery performance is far from what was promised. Sure, battery performance is subjective and depends on individual’s usage pattern. HTC had however, quite bullishly, claimed that watching TV (via StarHub TV mobile) on Touch HD would be much better than doing the same on other devices, as Touch HD would “intelligently turn off some services” to save battery power when one watches the TV online. It sounded like a complete sales “waste of male cow” (i.e. BS) but I gave the sales manager a benefit of doubt since I was not able to play with the phone until now. And my skeptic is finally backed by my own finding; after 1 hour of watching live soccer match on HD, the battery depleted by 25%. Hey I think my X1 can do a better job than this.

Second Life with Turbo-charging

So at the verge of selling the phone, and get something else (with Touch Pro 2 looming around), I decided to give HD a second chance by flashing a custom ROM (thanks to a mate’s suggestion). The steps to flash a custom ROM can be quite taunting. The last time I touched a custom ROM was when I had my iPAQ 6515, where we manipulated the ROM image with hex editor just to “hack” the storage management. With Touch HD and xda developers, the flashing process has been simplified dramatically. Within 15 minutes, I had turbo-charged my Touch HD, and I was wowed by the speed and memory management performance this time round. Set up was a breeze, the interface was even more refreshing (leveraging from Rhodium’s platform) and the screen was sensitive as usual without any trace of lag. If anybody were to ask for my advice, I would say custom ROM is the way to go, at least for Touch HD, if you really want to maximise your experience with the black stone.

I always think each has its own forte, and shortcomings. There is no perfect phone in this world, you have to look at your own requirements in terms of what do you really use the phone for. Hey, even a $50 phone would be a perfect phone for some, that should say something, isn’t it?

What I would like to blog about, is the software model of iPhone versus Windows Mobile, specifically on the development and distribution of the software, that would enrich the features of the phone.

I know in iPhone, software has to be downloaded from the Apple iTune store, whether it’s for a small token or free. The model works well for the developers, because if they would like to get rewarded for their hardwork, other than just a pat over the shoulder (well, perhaps not physically), having a marketplace like iTune store would provide the necessary infrastructure to regulate, tracking and monetize the downloads. As my colleague has told me, it takes 1000 people to pay $1 for a download, and you get $1000 richer instantly.

It is not that difficult to attract 1000 downloads within a week or two. I have experienced that before when I developed my calendar and home applet for PointUI shell platform. Within 2 weeks, I have gotten close to 800 of downloads for each applets, and to date, it has definitely hit beyond 1000. Did I get $1000 for my hardwork? No, in fact, 0 cent since I, like many individual Windows Mobile developers often than not put out our work for free, or for a donation token. Donation-ware, while it sounds attractive in an ideal society, does not work in reality. Many applications I have come across, were innovative and useful, but the developers hardly attract donors, for the number of user base they have created, based on the download counts. I came across one application where it has a download count of more than 5000, but the developer only has a handful of donors, probably a dozen at most. So that means that’s less than 1% of the users have donated to show their appreciation in monetary form.

The question then is, why wouldn’t we put our software for sale then? Why even put up the “Donate” sign when we clearly know it won’t work? Something to ponder about, and something that I would blog about in a short while.

An Air France Airbus jet, En route  to Paris, disappeared 4 hours after it took off from Rio de Janerio. It appeared that the jet had sent some automated electrical fault messages to the control tower before vanishing in the air. The storm had appeared to cause some electrical failure, and consequently endangered the flight operation.

As I first heard this shocking news, I was hoping that it’s just a case of plane losing radio contact with the control tower temporarily, was circling around the stormy weather, etc. Anything but a crash. There was hope for some miracles, and I am sure every human being on this earth would have prayed for that.

When the rescue team found out that the debris and oil slick  discovered earlier are not related to the Airbus jet, suddenly there’s hope again. But yesterday, with the rescue team finally confirmed that the recovered seat’s serial number belongs to the lost jet, and two bodies were found, all hopes were dashed completely.

Is there really miracle in this world? I don’t know.

Must be the sign of aging eyes, I can’t imagine the days I have to constantly flip up my spectacles now, just to read the small prints. Certainly not prescribing to a set of “old flower spectacles”!

Firstly, of course it’s the new calendar applet I have released over the weekend. Not exactly an “official” release, but more of a release candidate, so that I can validate the applet’s device compatibility especially with non wide vga devices.

There’s a breakthrough in this major version release, as I have built an external program to query the PIM database in Windows Mobile, so that I can display the busy status for each day in the calendar’s month view. While this is possible in PointUI scripting engine, but it’ll result in a big performance hit. Since this is the first time I have ventured into POOM (pocket outlook object model) , I thought it was a personal breakthrough for me as well

Anyway, it’s a near but not a finished product yet, you can find more information about the applet and its development from this thread

Then, the weekend started brilliantly with the boys (my nephews) participating a half day 5-a-side soccer tournament, organised by their soccer coaching school, and held at Tampinese SAFRA club. It was scorching hot and I admire the boys perserverance  to withstand the heat to compete in this tournament. Before the game, we had a casual bet with Ray that he would have to score 6 goals, since he scored the only goal in the last tournament, which unfortunately was an own goal. Kang had a jibe on the bet, saying that it’ll be a 6 own goals. Eventually, Ray bagged 7 goals, in 6 games, helping his team to win the cup final. And no, they are all well taken shots, not own goals! Arguably the top goal scorer in his age group (under-8), and certainly he had grown alot  from footballing perspective, as evident from his performance in his games. Inspite of his achievement, Ray was not over the top, and instead gave credits to Kang, for shaping him to be such a prolific goal poacher! Kang did well too, scoring two goals, and a couple of assists which landed his team a plate champion. The boys however, were disappointed of the lack of trophies, as the organiser decided to pack candies as prizes to the cup winners! What a bummer!

Then I had the chance to meddle with the PSP firmware. It all started when Kang’s PSP firmware had upgraded to official firmware accidentally, and it means he couldn’t play the games he used to be able to play. I tried to have a go on upgrading his psp, and it turns out, as I have realised from reading the internet forums, that I need to have a “pandora” battery along with the custom firmware installers in the memory stick. The latter isn’t a problem, it’s the “pandora” battery that’s a breaker. Apparently, the battery has a function to instruct PSP to boot from the device’s ROM, where the official firmware is contained. In order to overwrite the original firmware, the PSP needs to boot from the memory card, and the only way to do so is to use the pandora battery so that it can instruct PSP to boot appropiately. The difference, in terms of hardware design, between a “pandora” battery, and normal PSP battery, is that the pin #5 in the battery circuit, is de-soldered (or removed) so that the instruction (to boot from the device ROM) is by-passed. 

In the end, it wasn’t a fruitless attempt, as I have upgraded yeez’s PSP (as she already had the custom firmware installed). Certainly there’s a feel good factor, although I’m going to experiment with the “pandora” battery later

Over the weekend, my Saab 93′s pinch protection system went out of calibration. The driver’s window would not wind up fully as a result. I went through the driver’s manual, and all it says was how could one temporarily override the pinch protection.

So I thought maybe I should just google for an answer, but as usual, there’s alot of irrelevant search results, plus some of the solutions posted were not effective.

In the end, it took a combination of google search plus some intelligence (erh-hm)  to get the issue fixed.

1. First remove the fuse to the door control model (for the door where the window is problematic). The fuse can be accessible either from the side of the dashboard (for driver and front passenger doors) or  rear boot (for the rear passenger doors). In my case, it’s the driver door, and it’s the fuse #15 I need to take out.

2. Wait for a minute or so before plugging the fuse back. This is to ensure that the memory of the control module is totally erased. Otherwise, you will find that the pinch protection remains out of calibrated.

3. Once the fuse is put back, the memory of the door control module should be erased by now. So now it’s time to re-calibrate the door window again.

4. To calibrate the door window, press the window button to roll down the window completely, before rolling up the window again. Repeat again, and you should be able to hear a faint chime, indicating that the recalibration is successful.

One of the things I had wanted to include is a better flip clock animation. Coding was rather straight forward, although graphic wise it was abit of challenge and in the end, I decided to reuse the graphics rendered by the original Flipclock applet developer. 

The other feature I like to include in the Home applet is the ability to provide a quick glance of the various system resource status, such as phone signal, and battery level.  This would enable me to set “full screen” mode in Home2. Instead of writing individual piece of codes for each system control, I have decided to build classes so that I can reuse for every system control that I would like to track.  One new idea I have brought to this applet, is the concept of “Icon Ribbon”. This enables one to scroll through a row of system icons, even if the screen could not hold all these icons within a single row. The end result is a scrollable “Icon Ribbon” as shown in the video below.

More work is required to polish up the applet before it can be released to public. I just can’t wait for weekend to come

Version 1.6 is finally released. Here’s a quick summary of the fixes, enhancements and added features.

April-21: version 1.6 beta-1 download link for VGA/WVGA and QVGA/WQVGA

• Fix: Today indicator and text does not automatically get updated (when a new Today occurs)
• Fix: Bug in the appointment area which always default to year 2009
• Enhance: Optimize performance esply when you switch from month to month
• Enhance: Improved UI for All Appointment/Day view
• Added: Variable size applet support (applet now make use of the available applet space, based on your setting such as full screen, search button, etc)
• Added: Landscape support (for wvga screen, the appointments will show on the right hand side of the calendar)
• Added: Year view to select and jump to the month calendar view
• Installation Prerequisite: Home2 0.30b must be installed
• Installation Note: Install the CAB and add the calendar applet from the applet screen. The loading time of the applet could take a few seconds but this is only when you first add the applet, or when PointUI is starting up. Copy theTheme.XML file to your active theme folder for optimal display

calendar main screen (month-view)

Calendar Day View

Calendar Year View

Calendar Year View (landscape)

• Fix: Today indicator and “Today”/”Tomorrow” text not updated after a day
• Feature Added: Animation while loading calendar and displaying appointment summary on main screen
• Feature Added: Tapping on the appointment date (under the calendar) brings up screen that shows all the appointments for the selected date. The appointments are paginated (4 per screen) and you can swipe left/right to navigate from screen to screen.
• limited support for VGA/QVGA device
• Installation Note: Backup/Remove the calendar folder, Run Calendar-1.5-b1.CAB in your device’s file explorer. Copy Theme.xml to your active theme folder

Download Links

QVGA and WQVGA devices: Download

VGA and WVGA devices: Download

The best treatment to the disappointment, I think is to continue to be buried by work, and perhaps my other past-ime work.

Speaking of which, I did quite abit of enhancement to my pointui calendar applet, and hopefully I can release it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, take alook at the preview of the next release.

About a month back, PointUI finally announced their release of Home2 software, a Windows Mobile shell application that replaces the boring but functional Today screen. It was impressive to say the least, in terms of its performance and potential. However, the lack of applets means it’s all show and nothing beyond  in terms of making the phone device more productive.

That said, within weeks, there are  more and more third party developers began to create and release new applets to complete the usability of the shell program. Clock,  Messaging, Weather, Stock Ticker, Task, Appointment, etc are just some of the applets released by the developer community. Yours truly, shamelessly join in the bandwagon, and created a calendar and appointment applet, which can be found here

fast forward, two weeks later, i.e. now, suddenly my mouse touch/track pad is working, on its own, without me interventing (in fact, I tried to re-install drivers earlier on but no avail).

The cpus are also working less hot now, so much cooler that I can hold the laptop with my hand without being scalded

Miracles do happen, and I hope more will come over the next few weeks

I moved again. I was referring to my blog.

In the last 10 years, I have been switching between blog hosting service  like blog-city.com and web hosting service, for at least 3 times. This time round, I have switched to free blog hosting @ wordpress.com. Well, not exactly free, since I have to purchase $10 credit to have my domain linked to the free blog.

It’s mainly driven by the fact that my web + email hosting subscription is expiring soon, and it will cost me $50USD a year to renew. Considering that I could get my email hosting service @ Google Apps free, I have decided to stop all these paying service.

Time has changed in the last decade, where value-added hosting service has become more prevalent, and as a result, offer much more rich service. Hopefully this time round, the switch is going to stay for long.

Have been very very busy with work, just imagine having teleconference till 2am and then in few hours time, have to wake up to tele-meet again at 8am. To say that it’s a hectic life is a gross understatement!

Flew over to Geneva, Switzerland last week for a business meeting. The pre-trip was a dramatic one. Found out that I had misplaced my passport as I was packing for the trip just 5 hours before the flight time.  Started to get panick when I could not locate my passport one hour later, and decided to just drive down to ICA and try my luck if I could get my passport replaced. Amazingly, beyond my belief, I got it in 30 minutes, after explaining to the officers in charge and filing a lost report. Had video conferencing while in Geneva.

Took some video and photos but decided not to post here since it can be very personal. But there’s a similiar video in youtube, that capture the exact experience.

Perhaps it’s the hype of Xperia, I felt so compelled to experience it when Sony Ericsson finally launched it on 1st November, 9 months after it was first announced.  So I drove down to the Sony Ericsson concept store, on its launch day. My first impression of the phone, was not exactly a “love on first sight” kind of feeling. The phone does look cool on first look (so was the cute sales executive), but my primary concern (as with any other phones) has always been the keyboard and therefore I spent quite a lot testing the keyboard rather than fiddling around its other uber cool features.

I had a bit of trouble typing a proper sentence to be honest. I always hit the wrong key (due to wider spacing and the staggered qwerty keys) and my thumbs often get in the way of the edge of the panel when I try to access the top row of the keys.

I left the shop with quite a disappointment, and went to do some grocery shopping at the supermarket with my mind still wandering at the concept store. I decided to go back to the store again after my grocery errand, and give the keyboard one more chance.

This time, I make sure I keep the keyboard layout in mind (important for Touch Pro user) while at the same time, observed the best thumb position when typing the top row of keyboard. It did not take me too long to finally get used to the keyboard. Once I adapted well to the keyboard,  texting using the keyboard is actually better than Touch Pro, which often than not, feels alittle hard and less fluid when composing sentences.

With the keyboard passing my test, I went on to scrutinize the physical design and build quality of the handset. It is no doubt a well made phone, although the expectation is there  given that it is suppose to be Sony Ericsson’s flagship model. The arc-sliding mechanism enables the keyboard to be slided out smoothly with a light thud sound, demonstrating that a designer product can be functional too.

At that moment, I made up my mind instantaneously, and wasted no time driving down to Starhub at Plaza Singapura to bring this chic product home!

Upon unboxing the unit, the initial impression was that the phone itself, is trailblazing as acclaimed. The programs launch almost instantly for programs like pocket outlook or internet explorer. As I set up the activesync pushmail, I observed the PIM information (i.e. contacts, emails and calendars) was downloaded at a speed that is so much faster than when I was using Touch Pro or i780. Maybe my heart has taken control of my eyes and my brain.

Finger gesturing is also quite good given the high sensitivity of the screen. A flick up or down on most of the screen will scroll the list as expected, although at the end of the day this is still dependent on the program’s gesture support. Still, once the program supports the finger gesture, the navigation is actually quite smooth and hiccup-less.

After using it for 2 weeks, I am glad that I have traded my Touch Pro for Xperia. My take is that both have its own strength and shortcoming. What I observed since I use Xperia, is that I watching TV and movie more, while my business usage of the phone does not changed or compromised. If a picture speaks a thousand words, I had taken a few videos of the handset, to sum up my review here.

Video of TouchFlo as one of the panel in X1

Using Xperia to watch live TV (mobile streaming Starhub TV channels)

GPS navigating and MP3 playback concurrently using Xperia

Surfing internet and staying connected in Facebook using Xperia

Watching Xvid encoded Wall-E movie on Xperia

Comparing Xperia and Sony PSP on video playback

Photos of Xperia

If you are a peanut butter lover like me, you absolutely must not miss the chance to getting yourself this (sorry if you can’t read Chinese) if you ever travel to Taiwan. The peanut butter is the most smooth and silky one I have ever tried. Just to prove a point how obsessed I am with this brand of peanut butter. I first bought a bottle when I travel to Taiwan more than 10 years ago for my reservist oversea stint. Last year, when I made a holiday trip to Taiwan again, I made a point that one of my holiday destinations was 新竹 so that I could get it.

But it can be quite a PITA to get one from outside of Taiwan. And recently, I found out an alternative option, which you can easily get hold locally. Just President butter and Jiff peanut butter. The combination rocks!

I confess, the temptation of new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is too much for me to resist.

That said, my first impression of the phone, was not exactly a “love on first sight” kind of feeling, as I dropped by Sony Ericsson concept store to check out the the phone. The phone does look cool on first look (so was the cute sales executive), but my primary concern has always been the keyboard and therefore I spend quite alot trying to experience the keyboard rather than fiddling around its other uber cool features.

I had a bit of trouble typing a proper sentence to be honest. I always hit the wrong key (due to wider spacing and the staggered qwerty keys) and my thumbs often got in the way of the edge of the panel when I tried to access the top row of the keyboard.

I left the store with quite a disappointment, and went to do some grocery shopping at the supermarket with my mind still wandering at the concept store. I decided to go back to the store again after my grocery errand, just to give the keyboard another chance.

This time, I made sure I keep the keyboard layout in mind while at the same time, observed the best thumb position when typing the top row of keyboard. Surprisingly, it did not take me too long to get used to the keyboard and find that the messaging using the keyboard can actually be better than Touch Pro. Change management is a must, especially if you are a Touch Pro user, as the Touch Pro has an “unconventional” QWERTY keyboard layout.

Made up my mind eventually, and wasted no time as I drove down to Starhub Plaza Singapura, to get the phone.(The enquire and buy experience with Starhub is yet another dramatic one, but I shall not digress)

Have not try to surf yet or play with the phone extensively yet, so I will comment on the performance more later. However, the initial impression was that the phone itself, is blazingly fast as acclaimed. The programs launch almost instantly for programs like pocket outlook or internet explorer. As I set up the activesync pushmail, I can see the contacts, emails and calendars were downloaded very quickly, much faster than when I was setting up using Touch Pro or i780. Psychological?

Finger gesturing is also quite good considering how sensitive the screen is. A flick up or down on most of the screen will scroll the list as expected, although at the end of the day this is still dependent on the program’s gesture support. Still, once the program supports the finger gesture, the navigation experience can actually be very smooth and “hiccup-less”.

That’s all I have at the moment, will blog about my takeaways of X1 versus Touch Pro after using it for a few more days.

Some photos with X1 and Touch Pro side by side

Notif Blinker has an update in August but I  realised I didn’t blog about it until now!

Improvements/Changes made to the latest release (version 0.0809a);

1. Functionalities and Bug fix found in version 0.0802 which includes

• Reminder notification support (New)
  
• Configuration UI tool (New)
• Fix a bug that causes notification dismissal not detected (Bug fix)

2. Enhanced code to eliminate any remote chance of erratic LED blinking (hopefully). Newer code is now more robust (99.99% ) and efficient now in managing LED blinking according to the status of the notification bubble messages.

3. Added user prompt to quit or continue the run of Notif Blinker when it’s run second time

4. Small enhancement on user interface for the configuration tool. 

You can download Notif Blinker v0.3 (build 0809a) from here

Discussion of this utility can be found in this thread or you can simply drop your comment in this blog!

to see if the gadget lives up to its name as a truly convergent device, a device that simply allows you to do more than the usual telephony and PIM (Personal Information Management) stuffs you normally find on a typical phone and pda separately and respectively. So the golden questions are …

• Can it replace my notebook so that I can use it to write a blog post, surf the net extensively without feeling frustrated by the browser limitation that usually comes with a mobile phone.

• Can I use it to snap photos while I travel and yet does not need to resort to downsizing the photo into a 200×150 so as to hide the poor resolution quality?

• Can I rely on it as my life savior by guiding me through a city that I had never spent my life in?

• How about responding to email and sms on the road, on demand? (This should be a no brainer, since I am already impressed with the combination of exchanger server and Windows mobile device in delivering the push mail utility.)

• Lastly, can I use it to wow my friends and colleagues, a rather important feature for an egoist man like me

And the answers to all the above are pretty encouraging, and here’s why.

First off, starting from the last question, the built in Touch Flo 3D user experience simply change my impression 180°, that a “Winmo” device can be so cool. HTC has gone a long way in developing their Touch Flo capability; I remembered writing off their first version as no more than an empty shell cover on top of the rather dated Windows Mobile interface. Boy, I was proven wrong big time now with their latest 3D version of Touch Flo, and I can understand why now it had created a strong following when HTC launched Diamond a while back.  Its flagship model sported the same interface. Well the Iphone critics might say this is really elementary when compared to their multi-touch interface. But when you put an intuitive interface, never mind it is not any further radical or innovative than that of an iPhone, on a Windows mobile platform that offers the richness in its functional offering, it is a perfect match made by heaven. It is like a nerdy man that had just went through a major makeover in his appearance and social skills. Thumbs up, for the brilliant interface, and bigger thumbs up, for giving me the “show off” chance.

Then, I recalled three weeks ago when I was at Houston. After 27 hours of long flight,  the last thing I would want to do is to remember the route details to the hotel. I was concerned that it will take eons while to get acquisition fix, as the whole process (the process where GPS device receives signal from various satellites to compute its location) can get trickier when you travel to the other side of the hemisphere. Once I stepped out of Hertz car rental site, within a minute, I got a fix! Ok I did cheat, I downloaded the almanac and ephemeris via the Q-GPS function. The Garmin Mobile XT that was installed in my Touch Pro, gracefully and accurately guided me to the hotel. No more worries about getting lost in a totally unfamiliar city. That said, it was a case of meeting, rather than exceeding, my expectation. I was pleased, but not wowed, so thumbs stay down for this.

Despite being a frequent business traveler, I hardly take any photos while on business trip.  I find it inconvenient to lug my digital SLR camera or even my compact camera around. After all, I travelled for a business purpose, not holidaying. Furthermore, I never bothered to take photos using my phone’s camera. The quality of the photos taken are usually washed out, or at best average. However, with my Touch Pro’s 3M pixel camera, I find myself taking quite a few photos in the last Houston and Bangalore trips. One advantage of holding a good phone camera, as I found out in the last two trips, you are always holding it, or keeping it in your trouser pocket, so the camera is always at your disposure to take instant candid photos. But camera phones still have their short comings. Case in point; While I was in Bangalore city on the way back to hotel, I chanced upon a cattle walking by the road. I quickly took out my phone, and was in position to snap this interesting moment. However, by the time the camera was ready to shoot, the cattle was already far behind me… So there’s still a value in investing in SLR or compact camera, but for business trips travel and daily usage, a camera like the one in Touch Pro, serves its purpose. Another thumbs up for this.

Last but not least, how did HTC Touch Pro fare as I used it to pen down this blog post? With Touch Pro’s vibrant display, Opera’s pan and zoom feature, blazing 3G speed, I thought I could do the job with ease just as I had been surfing the web without any glitches. In all honesty, I did not complete the blog entry as I got stumbled at the 5th paragraph. I was happily blogging away, but I decided I should save my work just in case something cropped up unexpectedly. And something did crop up  ironically. The wordpress editing tool did not allow me to continue, due to some javascript compatibility issues with the Opera browser. Luckily for me, the earlier effort was intact, just that I couldn’t continue my blogging. But not to be fooled by this negative example. The experience of navigating through most desktop-targetted web sites remains to be a seamless and positive one. In fact, I probably surf more using my Touch Pro, as compared to the total time I had spent online using all my previous mobile gadgets. Two big thumbs up for this!

My final verdict? The phone itself is more impressive than its already impressive paper spec. I am probably not exaggerating if I call Touch Pro the king of qwerty phone. Well at least for now. Until the likes of Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia starts showing up in our shore, it is hard not to be linked with this “pro” phone. As my little nephew will always exclaimed when he sees something extraordinary… this is Pro …

You can download from this link

First off, I was reading USA Today on the plane, and come across this comic, which is so hilarious (at least to me), mocking the current global economic crisis

 If you can’t view the comic properly, it says Ornithological Guide to Mortage News; Predatory Lenders are just like Buzzard, Wall street execs are just like Turkey, Regulators are like Ostrich, Pols (I think they are referring to Politician) are no different from Peacock, and investors are just Chicken. Funny, no?

Then, I find it amusing that while cost cutting is really in every company’s agenda, I didn’t realise that United Airline goes to the extend of using a cheapo $1 earphone for their passenger ‘flight entertainment’ needs (well, if there’s one in the first place). Time for me to get a proper headset with noise cancelling feature, especially if travelling is not going to stop in the near future.

 Lastly, I’m not sure about you, but I’m not very optimistic of any decent bonus this coming year end. But this paper cup did cheer me up alittle as I gobbled Mc’donald’s double quarter pound burger … I hope it’s a sign of something positive in the making;

Since I developed Stay Unlock two years ago, it had received numerous feedback. I had also started the habit or was it a hobby, of developing small software utilities to do stuff that default Windows Mobile does not provide, e.g. Bluetooth Notification hack, and most recently LED notification. From applying my knowledge of Windows Programming acquired 10 years ago in Windows Mobile development, I have also finally decided to take the opportunity to explore C# and .NET programming. For sure, these development toolkits make development life of a Windows Programmer much easier, as compared to say 10 years ago. You always learn something new but it is also important that you know the fundamentals!Anyway, inspired by the comments from Stay Unlock users, I have decided to pull forward the upgrade effort which I had originally planned for during my year  end vacation (now it looks like I can take a good break in December!). It took me a day, and I’m hoping that it will be useful for existing users of Stay Unlock, although I know during the last one year, many variant of Stay Unlock had surfaced. Anyway, here’s what you can expect from the new version of Stay Unlock

1. Supports both Smartphone and Pocket PC Phone platform (WM5.0, WM6.0, WM6.1)
2. Stay Unlock will always run in silent mode, and will never prompt. A log file is created instead.
3. Stay Unlock now has a separate configuration tool, to support the following options
   1. Turn on/off Stay Unlock, i.e. override security policy enforced by your Exchange IT admin
   2. Always Stay Unlock
   3. Overriding Timeout setting
   4. Once you save your setting, the tool will prompt you if you want your running instance of Stay Unlock to reload this setting
4. Stay Unlock will also allow override of time out value enforced by Exchange Server. This will address situation whereby users wants the device lock function but prefer a longer time out threshold value than what’s defined by their IT admin
5. Stay Unlock will also default the timeout to 24 hours, when you set “Always Stay Unlock. There are technical and security reasons behind this implementation, instead of completely disabling device lock function. However, you can still turn off device lock by going to Settings > Personal > Lock, and turn off the checkbox “Prompt if unused for”. Stay Unlock is not responsible for your action to unsecure your device!

Stay Unlock Download Links

Click Here for WM5 PocketPC Phone, WM6 and WM6.1 Professional platform

Click Here for WM5 Smartphone, WM6 and WM6.1 Standard platform

If you appreciate my work, please feel free to donate your token of appreciation by clicking the icon below

you can download here

Came across iRobot Roomba many years back, and were impressed by its ability then. Had recommended to many friends but I had been procrastinating to get one myself. Finally, I got it last week, while on business trip to Houston. Told myself, I need to be incentivised myself despite the 28 hours flight trip, so I bidded one at ebay for $260 USD, hand carried it back home!

Got abit of problem getting it charged initially though. Due to the difference in the power supply in US versus Asia, I had bought a compatible power supply unit with output rating of 24V/1A. Although it had worked on my friends’ Roomba, it didn’t work on mine. Either it’s because my battery was totally flat out (after playing with it when I first unboxed the item) or there’s compatibility issue with the newer 500 series model. From what I read in the forums, it appeared that the charging voltage varies between 18V to 22.5V especially when the battery is flat out. Decided to use the step down voltage converter in the meantime, but will be exploring a proper 220/240V PSU at the same time.

After more than 16  hours of charging for the first time, I had Roomba carry out its maiden cleaning in our house, and witnessed it entangled a few times. A minor house furnishing re-arrangement is needed to make it more friendly for the robot to clean the house, and this is definitely worthwhile. Hey, you do expect to do the same for a human cleaner, don’t you?

Roomba started up for the first time

Roomba docking home

Some photos taken

Widget #1

Widget #2

Widget #3

At Chicago, I decided to turn on my Touch Pro quickly to check out the BPL result. Thank goodness, Liverpool won 3-2 away against Manchester City, after being 2-0 down on half-time. That made my day anytime, and the flight fatigue was overshadowed by the joyous feeling.

At Houston, I went over to Hertz to collect the rented car. No “Never Lost” system this time round, again courtesy of company’s travel policy. Well, I was never prepared to ‘study’ the route to the hotel, especially considering how tired I will be after a long flight journey. I am sure my brain will need some guidance, and hence I had brought along my travelling car kit comprises of phone charger and cradle. After setting them up, and positioning my Touch Pro, I turned on the Garmin Mobile XT installed on my Touch Pro, and crossed my finger that I could get acquistion fix, fast. It didn’t disappoint me, thanks to the Quick GPS, as Garmin Mobile XT received the fix within a minute, and I manage to get my way to the hotel within 30 mins, with the usual familiar navigation guidance voice.

Touch Pro to my rescue again, thankfully.

And my favorite haunt for this delicacy? A stall in a coffee shop located at Blk 92 Toa Payoh Lor 4. They used to operate from the hawker centre right beside the coffee shop though.

Braised Pork, Egg, Pig Skin Bean Curd and Egg

 Braise Pig Intestine Head

Braise Pig Intestine

Completes with Flat Rice Noodle

Facebook, may be just yet another social networking site, like Friendster, Multiply, etc to many people. Yet it had recently done something wonder for me. Through Facebook’s friends of friend, I found out one of my friends’ friend is my primary school buddy! Simply amazing!

Thanks to Jong Hai and Lay Ai,  we got access to the day one of 2008 F1 Singtel Singapore Grand Prix. We had planned to “park and ride”, to avoid the traffic congestion. To our surprise, the traffic was pretty light as we cruised from Kallang to Bugis MRT stations. Each time we drove nearer to our ‘park and ride’ stop, we were encouraged to drive further. Eventually we ended up at Funan Digital Mall, which is just a few stone throw away from the race circuit. But lo and behold, we were greeted by a sign board put up just right at the entrance of the car park. The parking rate; $2 per hour, and $8 per hour after the 4th hour. A classic example of how businesses are trying to profit from this multi millions sporting event.

Getting into the circuit was rather hassle free. We entered via gate 4, and was greeted by a long but orderly queue for security check. Once we were in the GP village, we could immediately feel the atmosphere, felt like in a carnival as people were crowding at the various merchandising booths, and munching in some of Singapore famous local hawker food, while waiting for the practice race to start (won’t say it’s one of the best, as we all know where to find the best local hawker food, just not at Padang). As we walked around, we couldn’t help but feel proud as Singaporean. The impressive infrastructure was completed at such high quality in less than a year, and it was no wonder the organiser had won praises from Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 supremo. Singapore has all the while been well recognised for its efficiency and orderly, and you can’t ask for more to advertise Singapore to the world through this spectacular motorsport event.

Once the practice session started, the roar of the F1 engines and explosive sound of the exhausts, got everybody excited like a kid. Everybody were just furiously firing their cameras when the F1 cars were in sight, despite being overwhelmed by the engine’s deafening noise. It was so loud that we could feel enormous pressure on our ear drums, if not for the ear plugs. Sitting on the grand stand could be abit boring after awhile. After all, you see the F1 cars flashing past in split seconds, kind of like “now you see, now you don’t”. We ended up walking round the circuit later, and it was amazing to see how people tried to get the best view of the actions.

In all honesty, Yeez and myself are not really F1 fans, at least not until now. However, like a lot of Singaporeans, I think the hosting of Grand Prix in Singapore created all the actions to wow us, and we are definitely paying more attention to this sport event from now onwards. Nevertheless, it was a memorable night for us to experience this gala event; The 120 decibel engine note that sounds like music note to all F1 fans, the smell of the fuel and burning tires that would have most people clip their noses on normal days, the sight of the million-dollars mean machine flashing past at a third of speed of sound, the carnival-like atmosphere feeling, etc. I’m now starting to look forward for the final race on Sunday

Here’s just one of many video clips that we had captured, hopefully you can feel the event too…

The rest of the album can be found here

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But this has nothing to do with  that. In fact, the title may be irrelevant to what I am trying to share in this blog post. It just happened that recently, my nephew had commented that my blog is getting boring, it’s all about mobile phones, and nothing interesting.

Generation gap?

The truth is, few things I like to share next has to do with gadgets, again! Firstly, I had just sold my Samsung i780, in anticipation for the cool HTC Touch pro. Never in my life would I have imagined getting HTC product, as I sweared after seeing how horrible their after sales service were. In all honesty, those ‘ugly’ incidents were in the past, and HTC seems to have improved on their after sales service recently. But the deciding point has to be the coolness factor found in its latest flagship models. I’m still waiting, rather impatiently I must add, for Starhub to have it available on their shop, while its competitors like Singtel are already selling the model like hotcakes over the weekend  Where art thou, Starhub?

Next, I have earlier created a utility to set the “ShowSim” registry so that the SIM card contacts will not appear in WM6 phones. Upon initial feedbacks, I have enhanced it so that it will always run in the background, as it was noted that some users had experienced that the setting got reset back after a period of usage. To stop it from running, just re-run the program again, and it will stop

You may download this beta version through this link

Disclaimer: I have no physical WM phone with me to test out this version, but had been relying on emulator. 

Was bored again, and perhaps irritated. Irritated by the fact that my Windows Mobile device always shows the sim card contacts (who store contacts on SIM card these days?) each time I soft reset the phone, despite carrying out the necessary registry edit to disable the display function. So end up, I created this small utility that will run at every start up, to turn off the “Show Sim” feature. Only applicable to Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional I think, since I don’t encountered such issue when using a Windows Mobile 6.0 standard.

Here’s the Hide Sim Utility

A new version of Hide Sim Utility is updated to allow you to run the program with a time argument. The argument parameter is to denote the program to wait for a certain number of minutes before executing the “hide sim” function. The default time out is 10 sec, but if you find that after a soft reset, you are still seeing the SIM card contacts, you can try to extend the time to 20 sec.

More review of the phone and the service in a short while, have too many teleconferences to attend this week!