Last Updated: 13-02-2013 - Patch version 6.1



Just last week when Maxis announced that they would be releasing the new iPhone 5 (new by so-called Malaysian standards), I was ecstatic and I quickly signed up my interest on their website. What I didn't expect that the sign-up rate was so great (30,000 sign ups) that Maxis closed it down the following day.

When I was confirmed that I would be eligible to get the iPhone 5, I was quite happy to state that I would line up for the first time in my life to get the iPhone 5 on the launch night. This meant that I would need to start queuing up at night and await for the official launch at 12 midnight 15th December. I guess another excuse I wanted was to get interviewed by my friend Melissa who was a TV presenter at NTV7. Talk about ulterior motives.

The night arrived and I was extremely excited. I was definitely lacking sleep as I had to wake up early for an 8am teleconference call, run around KL for meetings and then finally back to PJ to collect my car from the service center. After taking a short nap from 8pm-9pm, I headed to CAPSQUARE and started queuing at 10pm. That was a bad idea because I was already greeted by hundreds of other people.



It was a good thing that Maxis gave out free donuts and apples as well as hot milo, white coffee and water to the folks queuing up. After queueing for about 2 hours, I managed to get my few seconds of fame on NTV7. After watching it, I think I sounded like a crazed geek (prior to my interview, they also interviewed the guy who was first in queue who had started lining up since 10am that day and it was also his birthday).



So to cut the long story short, it took me over 4 hours to queue up and get my phone and finally back at home into bed.

Now after having lived with the iPhone 5 for the past couple of days, here are some of the things I loved about it as well as the things that I hate about it.

Love:

• It's beautiful form factor


• How light the phone is (comparing with my current iPhone 4)


• How fast it is and how apps respond  so quickly


• The extra space on the screen (being able to see more icons on the 1st screen)

Hate:

• Battery life. In short, it sucks! Sucks battery juice that is. I have to charge it at least up to twice a day. Lots of complaints about it here at the Apple forums (here, here, here and here). With the iOS 6.1 update as well as trying out several tips such as deleting general settings and network settings, the battery life has improved but I still have to charge my iPhone twice a day (pre 6.1 I used to charge around 1pm and post 6.1, I usually charge around 4pm).


• Maps, still always an issue and I know Apple is in the midst of getting it fixed. Until they do, it still sucks.


• Having to use the new lightning connector (the cable is RM69 whilst the adapter is >RM100). Now I have two set of cables lying around and to carry around, one for my iPad and one for the iPhone.

There were some issues regarding the phone as well but it seemed more from a carrier perspective. Here are some of the issues that has been reported.

• Able to make calls but not able to receive them (Maxis issue which has now been resolved)


• Showing wrong data usage and data available for each user (affecting iValue 2 users)


• Losing 3G, Edge and GPRS signal and not recovering back from it again. Post iOS 6.1 patch, this issue seemed to have started up again. Several folks mentioned it was a Maxis problem but it does occur for other networks as well. A tip which I followed was to reset my iPhone's Network Settings and it did manage to resolve it. 

I will definitely update this post as I go along. At the time of writing, these love hate relationship points were based on the iPhone 5 running on iOS 6.0.1. There is a new patch that was just released but I haven't tried it out yet.

If you know of any other issues, do post it here in the comments section and I shall add it up.

Updates - 13-02-2013 (iOS 6.1)

• Battery life has improved a little bit (lasts around 2-3 hours longer)


• Dropping of 3G signal seem to have reappeared but now it doesn't happen anymore. Some people have reported that Maxis was upgrading their network hence the cause of it but I followed a tip which was to reset the phone's network settings and it did seem to work.

Updates - 21-12-2012 (iOS 6.0.2)

• Cases have been reported that the new patch does indeed drain the iPhone 5's battery life. Read in a couple of forums including the Apple Support forums and found that one of the solutions is to reset your phone settings, Settings>General>Reset> Reset All Settings


• This does not wipe out your media and data 


• Currently testing this method now and so far, after almost 2 hours, I have only used 6% of battery. This is with service locations on for certain apps, mails set to fetch, wifi and bluetooth on.

 

Yes that's right! According to my colleagues and some of my friends, I have been deemed an Apple fanboy in their eyes. Little do they know that I just favour convenience over style (of course style matters a lot). Anyway, who says I am an Apple fan boy? I use an iPhone 4 on a daily basis, I have my iPad 3 with me which I absolutely adore because I watch movies on it when I travel, I connect to my PLEX server at home and I read all my Manga on it. I also have a 2008 Macbook Pro which is sort of dying and soon to become a permanent home server for me and a couple of iPods which I won last time. Who says I am an Apple fan boy?

So when I managed to convince my friend (he was currently using the Note 1) to get the new Samsung Note 2 after catching Tiger Woods at the CIMB Classics last weekend (Maxis had a booth offering the Note 2 for RM999 for Maxis One Club members), I only managed to get my hands dirty with it a couple of days ago (sorry mate, my hands wasn't exactly dirty and I know you put your phone next to your face). And boy, was I completely blown away. Mostly with the beautiful size of the screen, as much as a retina display supporter I am, the larger screen of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 was just awesome.

Of course there were certain drawbacks. The phone was huge! Could barely fit into my tight work pants but definitely in my casual shorts. The phone was surprisingly light! But the OS interface seems a little messy and I feel that there are just way too many features which I think clutters up the whole screen. But that is just an initial feel, I felt the same way when I moved over to iOS.

I was quite convinced, the few apps which I use quite often are available there (mostly mainstream ones such as Facebook, WhatsApp, LINE, etc,etc,etc). Other than the cheaper price, I know the iPhone 5 would cost a lot more when it launches as well as not having a larger screen (compared to the Note 2), the pull of the dark side was really really strong! But seriously guys, why do you call yourselves the dark side anyway? Apple seems like the empire to me right now and since Disney bought over the Star Wars franchise, I can just imagine Storm troopers breaking out in song just before firing upon the rebels.

Anyway, back to my current itch. It was the 31st of October, the very last day of the offer by Maxis, I was still contemplating whether or not should I go for the Note 2. I am currently not bound on any Maxis contract and the last phone I purchased from Maxis was the iPhone 3Gs. Whilst sitting at my desk in my office located at KLCC, the Maxis store beneath Menara Maxis was but a 5 minute walk and I was comparing the current plans that I had versus the new 2 year plan I would need to sign up.

About 80% convinced, I shared this with some of my colleagues who kept on pushing me to go for it (especially those who are currently using the Android platform). Of course those who were true to Apple would still tell me to wait for the iPhone 5 which hasn't had had any indication on when it will be released in Malaysia.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it is currently my project's cutover period. Cutover is a word used to articulate how busy an IT person might be and is constantly one of the key and most stressful times of an IT project. Hopefully that gives an idea of how hectic it has been here at work where I was running from multiple meetings and discussions until I noticed my watch and it was already 9.00pm and I have missed out on the offer.

Oh well, I think my iPhone 4 (which I am officially borrowing from my mum) still rocks. Somewhat.

I feel like I am opening up a large can of worms here.

Thought the image above does show a very funny side of things especially when it relates to the Apple Store employees. This is actually referring to the context of this piece by the NY Times in regards to how Apple employees at their stores are faring against their peer groups in other retailers. I do encourage you all to read that piece as it was very well written and investigated and does bring an interesting insight to the life of an Apple employee who works at the retail stores.

 

In 2008, I purchased a MacBook Pro laptop to help me with my photography editing to replace to old PC which I had since I was in university which was dated back to 2004. The Macbook Pro has served me well and it still does till today. So well that I am writing this blog post using this Mac.

Why am I writing this on my Mac when I have a nice spanking PC that I bought last year to replace my old one to play games such as Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 but up until 2 hours ago, it just died on me. It refuses to start up and boot up so I am really hoping that the hard disk is ok. Its so frustrating dealing with PC's, constantly have to figure out whats wrong with it, frequently crashes (mind you I am running on Windows 7 and I don't overclock the PC at all).

Anyhow I am just venting my frustrations online now because I can't play my usual dosage of Starcraft 2 and perhaps put in a couple of Warden/Butcher runs in Diablo 3 (I kinda suck at Diablo 3 and I am now stuck in Act 1 in Inferno). Hopefully when I bring my PC into C-Zone tomorrow at Digital Mall, I should be able to get it fixed fast enough so I can also head over to Sunway for a talk by ATP Motorsports.

While I am here sitting at home being frustrated, I just wonder, since the games I play are also available on the Mac, it would have been the wiser choice to just use a fully Mac environment at home. Host my Plex server on a Mac (which is a lot more stable than my PC) and combine all my gaming and photo editing on a single platform. I was thinking an iMac but personally, I feel that the iMac can't deliver the power I might want especially on a  nice and large 27" sized monitor. But hey, an iMac is pretty pricey and since I just bought my PC not too long ago, so I will have to make do with what I have left.

Ah, it reminds me of the days when I was overclocking my PC and letting the cool 5 degrees celcius air of Sheffield cool my PC down. Now it is just a real bother to take my PC out and try to figure out and trouble shoot the errors.

Maybe I am just getting too old for this shit and all I want is convenience.

Over the past couple of months I started on a new project which brought me to a location where access to certain social media sites are blocked as well as the need for me to have more of my data with me when I go for meetings. In my previous project I managed that by using my iPad 1 and logging on to the wifi network. Now I have no wifi network to connect to so I've gotten a data plan for my iPad. Maxis came into my mind first because there was a Maxis store located so nearby. After a couple of minutes of signup and inserting in the new sim card, I was good to go. It did take Maxis around 30minutes before the service is activated.

Now a lot of people asked me why not I just tether the data from my iPhone and I did try that out for a month and realized that it was extremely unreliable as well as it drained my battery way too fast hence I decided against that method. It is a heck of a lot more convenient and a lot faster to search for data on the fly instead of quickly turning on my personal hotspot, trying to detect the phone with the iPad, restarting the wifi and then cursing why personal hotspot is so unreliable.

A good feature which I also enjoyed on my new iPad is the ability to take pictures with it. Definitely so much easier to take photos with it and then straight upload it to Facebook. It's really handy being mobile and with the iPad I find that I don't need to bring my laptop around so often. Just two weeks ago when I was at training, I loaded up movies into my iPad and the hotel provided a facility where I could just plug in my iPad via a HDMI cable and I could stream movies from my iPad on the hotel room's 42-inch LCD TV. Another good feature is to be able to present presentation slides using my iPad. Now I just can't wait for Microsoft to launch their MS Office for the iPad later this year.

Since I have been using the iPad quite a fair bit now on a daily basis, I feel that I need a keyboard to complement it and to enhance my note taking skills. Saw a couple of them I liked online but it's not available here yet.

The one above is a sleek keyboard which also acts like a cover. It connects the same way the Apple smart covers do via the magnets.

The other case is a little bulkier but it doesn't use any batteries but it is solar powered. Both these keyboard cases are made by Logitech and are quite new in the market. Hence I guess the lack of it's availability in our local stores.

I really can't seem to make up my mind.

As clueless I was, I didn't know that iOS 5 came out with this new feature, which was the ability to update your iPhone's/iPad's iOS version via Wifi without the need to plug-in to iTunes. It's very easy to do it, just follow the following steps.

1. Go to your iPhone's "Settings" option


2. Select "General"


3.  Then select "Software Update"


4. The phone will search the servers for the latest patch

Select "download and install"

Make sure that your phone is also plugged into a power source

Wait for the download to complete and voila, your iOS device is now updated.

BERSIH came twice with protests on the streets and garnered a huge publicity. Upheavals in the Middle East brought down governments and don't even get me started on the countless of revolutions which happened over the past hundreds of years. Riots and panic caused a lot of damage and even death to some of the people caught in the stampede. Most of this time, it all takes a bit of spark to set off the mob mentality.

Nowadays, we take that very same mentality to the internet. First we had the case where a video of a guy punishing his poodle and that was publicized on all social media networks from Facebook to Youtube to blogs and even news portals. Then came many more rantings and created that mob mentality online. It all just takes a spark and the whole internet community became enraged.

The problem is that, as much as we say that facts are sometimes turned around on our news and mainstream media, I tend to see the same thing happening on the internet as well.

Take this story about a bartender in the US of A, she waited on a couple one night at the bar and lo and behold, when the couple left and paid for their drinks, they didn't leave a tip. That might seem normal here especially in Malaysia where service charge is already charged into our bills but in the states, it is deemed as rude not to leave a tip.

A normal tip usually ranges from 15-20% and whenever I travelled to the states, I made sure I used an app on my iPhone to help me calculate my bill when eating out (which I do anyway since I was travelling).

The worse part for that bartender was that, the couple also wrote a small note on the receipt.

p.s. You could stand to loose a few pounds

Image source: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/

By the way, that's "lose" instead of "loose".

Anyway, she became enraged and posted this receipt on her Facebook page and the thing just went viral. She gotten tonnes of support from people and they even started researching for this alleged person who left the note and the no tip and when they found the guy, a whole hate smear campaign onslaught went on.

The problem with the whole entire episode was that the bartender, gotten the wrong guy! I guess with "gwailo" fellas, a first and a last name such as John Smith (just an example, the guy's name wasn't John Smith) would be extremely common.

I can just imagine that one day just waking up and finding out that half the internet community is knocking on your social media door asking for comments or just plain bashing you in.

Of course the news site have then issued apologies here, here and here. But the damage has been done already. So the next time you decide to start an online vigilante campaign, just make sure that you do your own proper research and homework before hitting out on innocent folks out there.

There are times when you are just stuck in queues and have to wait for your turn. I think society in general tends to make us think that we are in a uber fast paced world but only to hit you back to reality with long queues and lines. Traffic jams are a norm these days and long queues at most outlets such as "ChaTime" or the immigration department seems to be one of these norms.



Anyway, the other day, I sent my car in to the service center and while I was waiting for my car to be serviced, I tapped into the free wi-fi and started trying to figure out some site online to fill my time. Of course in this digital world, emails are one of my key communication tools so I logged in to my email accounts. First mail I read was an automated email from my email administrator informing me that I was reaching the limit for my mailbox size.

I guess I still am not used to having a 150MB limit especially ever since I have been using Gmail. So being the usual curious guy, I went to my Gmail account to check how much space I have actually used.



Yikes! 51% usage for my Gmail account and increasing! The first thing I did like every other normal Outlook user would do, was to try to figure out how to sort my emails by size. And only by then can I select the largest sized ones and delete them. Apparently that didn't work because based on Google's Gmail theory, you don't need to sort your mails with Gmail.

After mucking through the search results, I chanced upon this site, https://www.findbigmail.com/

What it basically does is to help you scan through your Gmail account and then provides you with an email which provides several pie charts to visualize the emails you have archived.



The image above shows the scan results of my Gmail and the top 20 emails are all more than 20Mb in size. Most of them are me sending images about and after clearing them, I have managed to free up quite a fair bit of space within my mailbox.

As a result of the scan, it also creates 3 categories or 3 labels in your Gmail account and labels the emails accordingly.



By clicking on these labels, it pulls out emails that are either larger than 2Mb, somewhere between 500kb to 2Mb and finally any emails that are larger than 100kb.

Personally this tool is somewhat useful, mainly because Gmail does provide us with so much storage space that it would take a lot of emails to delete before seeing large space savings. Any how if you are running out of space on your Gmail account, do try out this tool. You never know how handy it might turn out to be. Best of all, this service is free!

 

In the midst of searching and poking about with a new theme for the blog. Thanks to dictator Tan, he informed me that my old theme was sort of broken hence I do need to do a bit of poking about to see whats wrong. It the mean time, I am trying out this free theme for the moment. No time yet to make those minor tweaks.  Will be back soon!

One of the many questions people ask me is what do I use my iPad for? Well I would love to say I use it to wow my clients and also showcase not just my presentation skills but also some of my photography work as well. And I managed to do just that using a very nifty software called Dropbox.

You see, I have a number of laptops and PCs and a Mac about, each of them having a specific purpose individually. So when I want to share files and work with some files, it is rather cumbersome to keep on using a thumbdrive to transfer the files and after a while I ended up overwriting the wrong versions of documents and this caused a huge nightmare for me.

So when I started looking around for a cloud storage software, I found out about Dropbox. First of all, why I chose Dropbox was because it was free! Yes, absolutely free for 2Gb worth of space. Now if you are thinking of using it for large files then I would suggest another alternative but if it is to sync some of your important documents, 2Gb is more than enough. Of course, if you want more than 2Gb of files then you have to pay for the service.

So how does it work?

Dropbox functions as a specific folder that resides on your PC/Mac which syncs directly with the cloud. It looks exactly like a folder in your PC and you need to do is just treat it as your folder! So you can copy and paste files into it, create sub-folders according to your own liking and drop files into that folder.



Another cool feature about it which I learned about it recently is that Dropbox allows users to share their folders with other people! How cool is that? When I was submitting my photos to be included into The Nut Graph's article (I blogged about it here and view the article here), I worked with Jo-Ann by sharing my photos via Dropbox. This also included me making some changes to the photos as well as include in captions explaining what the photos meant. Now this was extremely helpful for us both as I am sitting here in Cyberjaya while she is all the way in KL.

Now earlier I mentioned that I had a more elaborate setup, well it isn't too complicated as Dropbox makes it so much easier now. So I decided to create this diagram to show you all what I really mean when I use it extensively.



In my work environment, I would also assume that most of our work laptops have certain limitations as to what we can install on our laptops and one of them is iTunes. So thanks to that, I can't really sync my iPad with it and hence I can't really sync files with it. Thanks to Dropbox, that is all in the past. Note that with the iPad, I can't edit files in my Dropbox folder but I can view them. Tip, for best viewing pleasure such as presentations, I would save my presentations as PDF files so that the formatting doesn't run.

Anyway, if you are really interested with Dropbox, you can head over here and sign up for a free 2Gb account now!

I recently learned how to actually take screenshots of my iPhone screen and thanks to that, I can actually post up a post which has been lingering in my mind lately but I just was too darn lazy to actually capture screenies on my phone using my camera!

Anyway before I proceed with the actual post, here is a short tutotial on how to take a screenshot of your iPhone screen. Just click on the two buttons simultaneously as shown on the screenshot below and if your phone is not set to vibrate only, you will hear a shutter click sound (fake shutter of course) and your screen temporarily turning white and fading off.



So thanks to this new trick which I learned (by the way, the image above is definitely not a screenshot!), I happily took some screenshots of my phone.

First one up is the main screen of my phone.



Pretty much everything is standard here except for one application on the bottom right of the screen. To be honest it is not an application but it's actually a link to Google's To-Do list which is integrated in Gmail. What it is, is that its an online to-do list. I have always been trying to have a fully integrated to-do list and this seems to be a useful tool which I am currently experimenting.

Next on my iPhone screen would be my list of applications.



The two most commonly used application I use would be Facebook as well as Twitterfon. Totally ignore that myMaxis link there as it is totally USELESS, why? Because it just brings you to their site where you can "subscribe" to more of their "services" only to pay them more money. It is a total WASTE of time.

I like Facebook because I can actually keep up to date with it on the go.



As well as allow me to take photos with my phone and then upload it directly! Here is a picture of a blurry keyboard I tried taking with my phone.



It totally got blurry when I tried to take a snapshop of me taking a shot.

The other application is Twitterfon. I have become a Twitter addict lately hence the obsessive need to read tweets as well as tweet wherever I am.



If you do have a Twitter account, do add me in here.

Now on to the 3rd page on my phone. As you can see below, its mainly my games page with the except of Skype which is a newly added application.



Previously before this, I never had a Skype account so the only person I have on my Skype list is Ian. Do let me know what your Skype accounts are and I will gladly add you in :)

p.s. I am way too embarrassed to show my Skype list hahahaha

My favourite games would be Simcity and Bejeweled 2 followed by Hells Kitchen. I am already quite bored with the rest as well but I am still in love with Simcity, my city is still halfway built though but its generating enough cash on its own.

Last but not least, it's my blog on Safari. I installed an iPhone plugin which automatically transform this blog into an iPhone friendly site. Check it out below.



And here is a shot of an individual post with an image in it.



Anyway, before signing off, I would like to ask the readers a simple question. What is on your iPhone as well? I would definitely love to find out what are some of the cool (and free!) applications about.

Its not uncommon for many companies to backup their data and nowadays it is the norm to do that especially since there are always many risks that can occur to wipe out all of your important data. Normally in larger type systems, having a backup and then having a DR (disaster recovery) backup of that backup seems to be a way to ensure that important data is never lost.

At the meantime, I don't have the budget of what most larger companies have hence I just went ahead with my own backup strategy. Previously I had always procastinated on getting extra external hard disks as I was always wonder what size I would get. Yesterday I took the bullet and bought two external 500Gb hard disks.



As you can see above, its the Western Digital Mybook Essential Edition. Both of these hard drives will be identical in terms of data meaning that one will store my photos and the other one will be a backup. Unfortunately I haven't devised a true DR backup strategy yet where I should have another backup somewhere at least 100km away from the original.

Previously I used Acronis True Image to backup my work but at the moment I wanted the files to be available even from the backup side so I decided to try this software called Allway Sync which allows me to synchronize both my drives with a click of a button. Best of all, it is free :)

Getting these two additional external hard disks allows me to free up more space on my desktop as well as use my other external hard disk to be a backup for my personal laptop.

Other than that, I decided to beef up my desktop at home with more RAM.



Yup that is two sticks of 2Gb of DDR2 RAM for my desktop. Yes I also do know that my 32-bit Vista machine can only take in 3.5Gb but its cheaper to just get two sticks of 2Gb RAM. Cheaper than that I paid for my MacBook Pro.

And finally, I managed to sell of my older MB-D200 to fund for a MB-D10. In case you were wondering what these are, they are actually battery grips which fits to the bottom of my two cameras, the Nikon D200 and the Nikon D300 respectively. And yes, the D200 and D300 are actually cameras and not some secret government code which is meant to be kept a secret (mind the pun as I just watched the Bourne Identity recently).



With this I have actually switched my shooting strategy, which is to have the D200 use the wide angle lens I bought the other day and the D300 to use either the 50mm f/1.4 or the 85mm f/1.8 lens.

Late last night after my meeting, I managed to catch Eugene's site on this bit of news. Today I found the site that reportedly published the Nikon D700 and the new SB-900 (new flash unit) will be out at the end of July.



Mind you, its in a different language (German if you can understand it) but its Google translation to the rescue!

Translated bits:

After Nikon with the full-format camera D3 in August 2007 is the first Nikon model with full small image sensor-Formar 24x36 mm that was now follows is not entirely unexpected, the D700. Derselbe 12-Megapixel-Sensor, augenscheinlich dasselbe 51-Punkt-Autofokussystem, etwas geringere Serienbildgeschwindigkeit (5 B/s statt 9 B/s - allerdings kann das mit Batterieteil auf 8 B/s gesteigert werden), Sucherbildfeld 95 statt 100 Prozent, dafür aber ein eingebauter Blitz (auch zur Drahtlos-Blitzsteuerung), ein Sensor-Reinigungssystem (dazu morgen mehr) und ein interessantes Preisschild: knapp 2600 Euro soll die Neue kosten und ab Ende Juli 2008 erhältlich sein. The same 12-megapixel sensor, apparently the same 51-point autofocus system, slightly lower image speed serial (5 B / s instead of 9 B / - however, the battery part to 8 B / s increase), the viewfinder field of 95 instead of 100 percent, but but a built-in flash (also for wireless flash control), a sensor-cleaning system (more about this tomorrow) and an interesting price tag: just under 2,600 euro, the new costs and from the end of July 2008 will be available.

Next is a flash Nikon SB-900 as a successor model of the SB-800, whose zoom reflector should be directed to focal lengths from 17-200 mm and in DX and FX sensors recruits, and in which the user firmware updates for the first time in a Nikon Lightning can even aufspielen.

Now, the first thing in people's mind would be, "Is this another rumour?". Well rumours tend to be true most of the time but upon closer inspect of the image on the magazine, you can see that one of the newer characteristics of the D700 is the viewfinder. Seems different from all of the other DX range of cameras.

So this is the best piece of news since they even mentioned that it will be out late July, perhaps a pre-empt strike against the upcoming Canon 5D MkII? Who knows but for one thing, everyone is waiting for the release of this baby.

"The Best Firefox Yet" screams the title on the page of Mozilla's latest offering to their web browser, Firefox 3. With features such as 15,000 improvements and also faster surfing, everyone is of course interested in finding out just how fast the improvements are and what are the newer features.



Being available for download a week ago, I decided to put hold on this blog post about Firefox 3 until I have tried it for a while before writing this post.

To me, its just another browser which I do hope that it is more reliable and more secure as I do plenty of online activities such as buying cinema tickets online as well as my personal banking activities. Although I haven't really had the time to test them out, there are a lot of new tips and tricks with this new version of the browser.

At the mean time, I haven't really noticed much improvement in terms of sites loading because of my erratic internet connection back home where sometimes its blazing fast and sometimes its just crawling. Also I can't really test it out at work as the connection speeds here are very fast and its not easy to just perform some tests (thought I would like but I can't install anything on my work laptop).

The one thing which I thought was an improvement is that the fact the "Back" button is bigger, hence I can easily press back faster. Other than that, the one thing I like about the new browser is that when I sort my bookmarks by name, it actually groups RSS links and normal links separately. Previously I would have a folder in my bookmark with all the RSS links and some random links here and there. Whenever I did a sort by name on that folder, it just sorts everything by name. Now it separates them which is better!



Anyway, if you are already a Firefox user, this upgrade will be worthwhile. Else if you are still using Safari on a Mac, there are reports that Java still loads faster on Safari as compared to Firefox 3. The article goes on to say that if you are already comfortable with Safari, maybe it might not be a push to migrate over to Firefox.

p.s. I just installed Firefox 3 on all my PC's at home lest for one more.

As much I would love to keep all of my own desires deep within my heart, slowly trying to bury it in such a way that it takes forever to claw its way out into my nervous system, especially the ones that make me buy impulsively, sooner or later, they keep clawing free! I need something new to release all that built up tension of cravings!

Of course it doesn't help that I read gadget and tech news daily but there are these few things that keep haunting me to purchase. But so far, I have been able to resist well enough and saved a little bit of cash as well (even after spending in my last trip). Anyway here are some of the items that constantly get shot about my brains.

#1 - A spiffing new Nikkor zoom lens (Nikon Nikkor 70-200mm AF-S VR F/2.8 lens)

This baby costs a whopping RM5,900 and I still can't justify it's cost yet. I need to get at least 6 confirmed wedding shoots first before getting one of these bad boys.

#2 - iPhone 3G

This baby was recently released by Apple and being a new Apple fan and having tested out the hyped-up HTC Touch Diamond yesterday (I wasn't impressed at all by the lousy touch interface and slow moving graphics), this is the phone to be lusting over. It's interface is to die for and it is still slim and sleek. No news of it being officially released yet in Malaysia but priced at USD$199, it is so cheap for a phone packed with so much features.

#3 - Nikon D700

The last craving I had for a camera body was the awesome Nikon D3. Now this camera cost RM14,500 alone just for the body but it was one of the best high ISO performer in the market. The latest round of rumours appeared to be the upcoming Nikon D700 and it is supposedly the cheaper variant of the D3. Still in the rumourmills, I am awaiting for Photokina in September for Nikon to either say that its just another hoax or something they would launch to rival that of Canon's 5D Mark II. Expected price for this baby is RM9,000 and its still within reach!

#4 - Drobo (My own storage robot)

I have been contemplating about getting Western Digital's Mybook and setting up a backup storage device for all of my work and photos until I set my eyes on Drobo. It is meant to be a highly intelligent backup device which checks the integrity of the physical hard disks inside it. Priced at USD$449, its not something cheap but how can you put a price on all the work that you have worked on, right?

Anyway I think I have had enough of my gadget lustings, looks like its time to get back to the real world and where money doesn't come in easily. Hopefully one day I might be able to afford these beauties but realistically, when that time comes, it will already be obsolete!

I recently found out that I accidentally deleted some important photos that I had taken in some of my older assignments and workshops. Frankly, this sucks as now I can't get them back anymore (well I can if I try) but I definitely need to be more mindful of that already.

Even with the prices of harddisks going down, it is rather unacceptable for me to do that so my next purchase would be a 500Gb hard disk for me to store all of my work as well as an additional 500Gb hard disk to act as a storage backup. I won't be getting them anytime soon at the moment (until my current hard disks are full) but I am really running on a risk here as I do not have any backup solutions available at the moment.

Anyone heading to Lowyat anytime soon? Let me know what are the current prices for 500Gb sized hard disks and an external exclosure for the hard disk. Preferbly in the 3.5" size. I know that the PC Fair is going on this weekend but I will be in Penang attending a workshop (mentioned here) hence I will be missing the fair completely.

Feeling a little impatient lately as things are not going as fast as I would hoped for it to be as I am currently awaiting a new piece of equipment to arrive. At the mean time, I do hope to negotiate more wedding photography jobs. Praying that I do get those jobs (one in May, one in October and finally one more in December). God has been good recently and indeed, He is awesome.

How many of you out there have been using your laptops on your laps while working? Well frankly, I have been using that method often and back in my uni days, I used it to keep myself warm during winter and played championship manager with my laptop on my lap.

Little did I know that I was courting disaster! (Heres why and why)

Finally after lots and lots of procastination, I finally bought a laptop cooler. It so happened that I was in Sunway Pyramid the other day having dinner with my colleagues and planning to go bowling after that. It was then that I spied an interesting cooler which was appealing and yet versatile enough to cool my laptops. Well technically, they are not really my laptops, just the ones my company gave me to use (it crashes way too often!).


Image source: Cooler Master Notepal Infinite


Now isn't that just a thing of beauty? Now that is one way to prevent being infertile in yet such a stylish method!

For those techy people out there, here are some of the features of this notebook cooler.

• Innovative and optimized airflow structure increases cooling area by 150% and efficiently controls noise level, compared to traditional coolers


• Metal mesh surface for great cooling performance and stylish design


• Ultimate thermal solution to cool down your notebook; up to 17 degrees C


• Adjustable fan speed to accommodate your working environment


• Ergonomic design for best comfort


• Special design of the intake at rear side allows convenient usage anywhere, on sofa or in bed, without blocking airflow


• 4 strips of anti-slip rubbers prevents the notebook from sliding


• Unique design for easy cable management (hook and slot) at the rear side


• Accommodates most notebook dimensions and especially for the wide screen

The title says it all but what it doesn't say is that Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has teamed up with IDEO to come up with the ULTIMATE cubicle, for Dilbert, that is. Anyway I thought it was rather cool, I looked at my own cubicle at work and wished it was this funky.



Image source: http://www.ideo.com/dilbert/index.htm

Personally I have sat in 3 different types of cubicles in my career. The first one was based off an open office concept where by I wasn't surrounded by any partitions but the amount of electronic reading equipments (oscilloscopes, spectrum meter, etc.) ended up being the partition instead. The 2nd one I sat in was the best, Herman Miller chairs were available and a never-ending supply of wonderful coffee and an incredible view to boot.

My current cubicle is the largest of the 3, a not so comfortable chair and plenty of space for me to make a mess. Although the only problem is that the central air-conditioning system doesn't seem to reach my area of the office so I am rather warm most of the time.

Head over to this site and check out it's cool features.

A while back I wrote a piece on "Smooth Interfaces" describing a user interface which works with any Windows Mobile 5/6 device which allows you to have a smooth navigation of your usual options and programs. The exciting thing about this was that the interface was so smooth and flawless that it rivals that of the iPhone. Since this application is a freeware and I am sure we are always hoping for more eye candy to appear and better functionality, Sony on the other hand has announced a new experience in the form of Experia.



Well from the image above it looks like any other smartphone but coming into the forray of smartphones and PDA phones, Sony has decided to enter in with a big bang. With much hype from the many many many first looks and reviews, this phone is the next most anticipated item on the mobile market. Why is that? Look at the video below and it should answer your queries.



Now, doesn't that interface look sweet? I just pray that it doesn't crash as much as it would be. With all of these newer front end applications replacing the standard Windows Mobile UI, I hope Microsoft might just take a wee bit more time concentrating on aspects like this. But I guess since WM has already sold 14.3 million worldwide, Microsoft would probably be busy trying to relaunch their bid again on Yahoo.Related links:

• Sony Ericsson Experia Site


• Neowin