Sunday, June 29, 2008

the great confetti search

was anticipating my facial this morning. After i knew my face might be red after the wash, i was rather scared. But had no chance to see the result today because da jie was unwell. Hey, when you recover we shall go ok =D

then i crashed back on my bed. Have been tired easily for past few days.

met jem and 2 ladies. The great confetti search began in bugis, and we amazingly walked to dohby ghaut. Power man...

Wong Kok Cha Chan Teng


Milk tea


Price search


Mango blend not available - blender spoilt -.-"


The other picture?


Handsome pooh!


Dined here

the pin si restaurant at Yishun was fully booked for a wedding dinner. But had nice laksa and chicken wings at the nearby kopitiam. Thumbs up la, thanks gy.

After looking at the Samsung Omnia, i think i'm loving my Diamond more.
No offence to Omnia owners =)

so tired. I think i'm going back to my bed now. Good night.

work + toy fair + ndp + nuss

morning was work. Wanted to cab down, but in the end better not. Having this habit is dangerous... and harder to fall asleep too. Took the usual vehicles, and reached there 5 minutes later only. But the contractors came only an hour later. Aiyo... anyway turned on the music in one of the lab and proceeded to give all the rodents a good scrub.

anthony came by today. He was bored after the confinement in BMT, so brought his stockpile of candies for his classmate colleague. Very good lah; i still recall when i first booked out the first thing was to find her and go shopping. Good old memories...

i promised to meet him later at the toy fair at 3pm, but at the time i just finished my meal at cwp. Oops, we shall meet again my friend. Anyway went home, washed up and dined at my usual place at Simlim Sq. Then made my way down to the toy fair.

no keroro! Bandai, why never bring in!!!

Tofu! I saw one blank tofu, actually i'd be interested to get that.


Who don't know these? Maybe 199x peeps...


Heard he's the original author of a particular comic.


Weekends from now to Aug at Esplanade area will be fun


Black knights


Went round the CBD


The cloud of Love - 1


The cloud of Love - 2


The cloud of Love - 3


We are going down!!!


Some water programme. I feel it's a waste of fuel though...
those servicemen were idling on the water.


Really need a tripod for night shots meh? Can don't want?

met up with SY, one new friend from NUSS. She gave me valuable advice on career options, i thank her for that. I think i have to recognise i'm leaving NUS soon, it's time to sit down and plan my career options proper. Of course, i wouldn't want to idle around in school by failing modules (again). Better to be out in the field as soon as i can.

time to do some networking and publish my CV. Should i setup a website for this alone?

Friday, June 27, 2008

chinese on htc diamond

yesterday night had another breakthrough - installed pocketmusic and had good (not as great as my iriver) quality music through my Sony Ericsson DS980. And i dropped a chinese font in without installing the problematic CE-star. What nice achievements... lol.

Pocketmusic 5.1


Nice chinese fonts lah.


Was late for duty... didn't even know i had one.


This phone is up for sale!

sold my Samsung U600 away at 10% of the original price. Heart pain, but better to sell it off. Now polishing my HTC Touch for 2nd sale.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

the phone

was spending the past few nights understanding the phone. Now that it's done, it's time to show the pictures.

before showing the pictures, a short discussion on the market situation might be useful.

market side of things
recently, the True Number Portability system was implemented (13 June 2008). As anticipated there were aggressive marketing campaigns from the 3 major telcos to attract new customers through promotions, such as free 6 months subscription from Starhub. Singtel followed. M1 introduced a new product, which is the DIY plan. However on closer look, it's not really for me since the base cost is already $16.05 with only 50 minutes outgoing airtime and 150 sms/mms.

how about existing customers? There wasn't much to do, except to offer handsets at great prices to tempt customers to stay with them for another 2 years. And offering combo plans that seemed to be attractive to consumers.

M1 and Starhub held roadshows after the PC Show 2008, to capitalize on the spending habits of our locals. And they are rather successful, i would say. As for the incumbent Singtel, it has not organised a similar roadshow thereafter - maybe it is depending on iPhone 3G to help increase sales later.

evolution in PDA phones
as some geeks may realise, the PDA phone market is getting hot since Apple's introduction of iPhone into the market segment. I'm not a fan of Apple's products, thus i can only say iPhone did what it did - shake up the segment.

because of the shakeup, we saw certain brands weakening; O2 (now MWg) and HP. Asus is trying hard to penetrate the segment with a variety of products. HTC/Dopod became the dominant player in the segment since it had much experience in the design and manufacturing of phones for O2, HP, Dopod itself, etc. Apple is gaining foothold due to its positive branding and intuitiveness of the iPhone.

many months ago, HTC came out with the Touch product line, with Touch and Touch Enhanced being introduced. It was meant to provide an alternative to the iPhone, since it provided the TouchFLO add-on to Windows Mobile. Then Cruise followed, and now Diamond. Diamond features the TouchFLO 3D, which takes over the Today screen completely. There are many things the user can do with this application - view calendar items, flip photos, listen to music, etc. There is almost no need to purchase expensive applications, making things much easier for the general consumers at large.

Samsung has been making WM phones for some time, however their products were intended more for business users. It recently introduced the Omnia i900, which looks very much like iPhone, except that it runs on WM.

the competition, of course is between HTC Diamond and Samsung Omnia. I feel both products shouldn't be compared, though.

future trends of segment
HTC is set to introduce more products under the Touch product line, which includes the Touch Pro, which appears to be a supercharged Diamond with QWERTY keyboard.

Sony Ericsson is jumping into the fray, although rather late, with the Xperia X1. HTC is the actual manufacturer for SEX1.

Apple is of course introducing iPhone 3G through Singtel in 3 months time. Thus in September, expect another price war between the planned products from the 3 and maybe few more makers.

The box


Piano black box


Free software


MapKing 2007 foc


Martin Fields screen protected


Piano black back - fingerprint magnet


4GB internal storage, no external slot


The TouchFLO 3D interface


Home tab - nice clock, alarm. Allows you to view missed calls too


See your favourite contacts with their photos here


SMS


Email, synced from MS Outlook


Opera built-into the ROM, supports touch features


3.2mp camera is finally autofocus and of decent quality


MP3


This Weather tab is rather buggy. HTC needs to fix it.


Adjustment of settings here


Shortcuts to programs


Classic Today screen without TouchFLO 3D


Comparison of graphics quality between Diamond and Touch Enhanced


TouchFLO 3D
do note for novice users - the application is actually an item in the Today screen. When you show it in Today screen, the rest of the items are removed. Essentially, it's a nice looking skin over the Windows Mobile operating system that provides linkages to the various components, such as calendar, messages, photos, music, etc.

since it's the first version of the TF3D, the latter is not customisable as yet. For example, the tabs cannot be shifted or removed. The calendar listing cannot be customised, such as showing next X days. Replying of the sms is not done in TF3D as well.

it's also a resource guzzler. In the first ROM version, the Diamond was struggling despite a speedy 500MHz class processor, and going through the tabs was laggy and time consuming. Many registry "tweaks" had to be done in order for the device to be usable. In the second ROM version 1.37, the situation improved, although there are still problems. Such as...

- upon incoming SMS and the device is in standby mode, there won't be any notification, except for a message tone. The message tone wasn't even there in the first batch release. The screen stays off, vibration turned off by default. You need to turn the device on, then the alert is shown. A registry tweak is still required to wake the device up upon incoming SMS.

more info of the second ROM here.

- upon full charge, i turned on the phone hoping to see my Today screen. Only to see the bootup screen.... *pout*

cons
i would touch on the cons first, since any product has their shortcomings.

- battery life. Some people detest short battery lives, and i'm one of them. I dislike the idea of the battery going from 100% to 5-10% at the end of the day. It distorts the usability of the device - it's supposed to play music, chat on the phone, surf net with comfortable uptime. If the device dies with only a moderate workload in a day, it's not worth to buy. And Diamond sadly has this problem because of the meagre battery rating of 900mah.

- infancy stage of TF3D. The TouchFLO 3D is expected to be improved by HTC, since this is the first phone featuring it. HTC should be able to deliver a better version in the upcoming Touch Pro, so for those "waiters" there's no harm waiting!

- no external storage. 4GB internal storage is sufficient for me, but i'd prefer expandable storage. For example, i can swap out the external storage and insert it into a card reader for usage at my PC. Samsung's Omnia wins a big margin by offering a 16GB internal storage + microSD slot here.

pros
now some pleasing stuff.

- form factor. The Samsung Omnia is not even close to being lightweight, not even comparable to the ultra-slim series of their product line. Thus the 2 products shouldn't be compared, because the size sets them apart. The Diamond packs a great deal of functionalities into a deadly slim form factor.

- improved camera. Compared to Touch, the 3.2mp offers AF, although there's no flashlight. But the quality has greatly improved. Of course, Samsung Omnia has 5mp!

- VGA screen. The 640x480 graphics is rather brilliant. Look at the comparison photo between Diamond and Touch Enhanced and you get my meaning. If you really have to compare Samsung's Omnia (240x400), yup the latter still loses in this department.

verdict? I'm on the whole happy with the Diamond, and especially since after i removed TouchFLO 3D from the Today screen. It is a decent performer with everything i need now.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

what a day

was interested in switching my mobile operator. So decided on StarHub, since there is a good offer for a particular phone. Made an appointment with X to accompany me at 10am, i thought i was going to be really on time this time when something just had to happen -

fallen tree at Woodlands Rd, blocking all lanes towards Bt Panjang.

in the end, took a bus in the opposite direction back to Kranji, then took the same route (but diverted to skip fallen tree section). The bus driver ran out of time as a result, thereafter he floored the accelerator and gave the engine a good push until he reached Bugis. Reached Suntec safely, but 45 minutes later.

queued for a good 4 hours and got what i want. Got a free Nokia handset as well.

when i was claiming my free handset, saw Joyce manning the counter! lol..

shall reveal the phone when i get a screen protector for it...

Saturday, June 21, 2008

starhub mobile broadband

thanks to HK who passed me his data sim.

got a modem separately. Come to think of it, not very worth it. Should have signed up with singtel for their 1mbps plan at $11/month and get the free Huawei E169 modem.

3G broadband is here


An irony, using Singtel labeled Huawei E220 modem

the speed is decent an hour ago. Not sure how it will perform in the evening.

Friday, June 20, 2008

SAP test

finally!

finally!

finally!

it's officially done and over!

we thought our outcomes sure chui, will definitely waste $400. On the SAP website, the course is listed at a cost of $7900. I think they are posting the un-discounted price, lah. Anyway it's structured in a way that if you study, shouldn't fail.

spent wednesday and thurs studying 12 hours each day, really underprepared. Amazing i would say...

i don't know how they total up everything...


Nice hor (you know my meaning)?


just sent some items to my brother at his camp. This brother is so fortunate, i didn't ask him to come Tuas last time. lol...

Suddenly fell in love with yong tau foo



Kelly is getting married! Very touching...

Thursday, June 19, 2008

sidoarjo's man-made mud flow / volcano

i came across pictures of this mud flow. It was created 2 years ago, on 28 May 2006 due to faulty drilling procedures. If you think the mud flow is a small hole in the ground, read this: that crater has the ability to extricate 50-60 olympic swimming pools worth of mud in a day! Mind you, it's not mud at room temperature - hot sizzling mud with some stench. They tried dropping concrete balls to stop the flow. Stopped for 30 minutes on a particular day, then it resumed since, It continues to ooze mud as you read.



asked I, and yes, it seems it's a menace to the environment. Near her place too.

shall beef this posting up after my test on friday. Meanwhile, 3 links for your reading pleasure:

- Sidoarjo mud flow (Wiki)
- Impressive and powerful images of the impact (Boston.com)
- Recent satellite images of mud flow (NUS CRISP)