September 2005 Archives

It isn't a tragedy of Nano proportions (oxymoron intended), but VanPod II already has superficial scratches. The one that bugs me the most is the single hairline scratch, shaped like an eyelash, at the top left corner of my display. Yes, why couldn't it have been anywhere else BUT the display. Strangely, rubbing at it with my fingers, seems to have made it better. Or maybe it's just obscured by finger grease.

I have no idea how that odd scratch occured, because VanPod II resides almost exclusively inside a pouch which I took home as a wedding favour at my friends' recent dinner. However, the pouch was meant to carry a normal-sized mobile phone, meaning it was a bit of a tight squeeze fitting in a 60gb iPod. There are now more, very fine vertical lines all over the iPod. So fine, you wouldn't notice them unless I told you. But I know they're there, and that makes me sulky.

I am also slightly annoyed with the AppleCentre Orchard salesman who assured me that my old 40gb iPod was the same thickness as the new 60gb photo iPod I was planning to purchase (I thought the 60gb model was thicker, but thought that Apple salesmen would know better). Thus, he said I could re-use my old dock instead of purchasing a new one. That meant that I would also be able to use the new iPod with my Bose SoundDock, which did not come with a 60gb 4th-generation iPod slot (the largest slot provided was the 40gb 3rd-generation one).

Hence, believing that VanPod II could fit, I pushed it into both docks. At first, I didn't see any scratches around VanPod II's base (front and back). However, after a few days of usage, somehow it did get scratched. Bah. I should be less forceful when synchronising VanPod II. I have also decided to REMOVE my old iPod dock - VanPod II shall now connect to my Mac directly by cable, resting on its pouch.

[Update: Bose's Singapore agent, Atlas Hi-Fi, has informed me that I can collect a complimentary 60gb iPod slot, upon presenting my receipt to them. I am very pleased to hear that. Do pass the word around to your friends who also own SoundDocks and are planning to get new iPods. ps: AppleCentre staff, take a few pointers and give this tip to your customers next time, so they don't force-feed their SoundDocks. ]

And speaking of pouch, it's time to start looking for a proper-fitting one. Or a protective film. Aw heck, maybe both.

VanPod II needs clothes.

[Update 2: Bose's complimentary 60gb iPod slot works fine. A bit loose though - but shouldn't be a problem. View pics of iPod in its new slot. ]

I've never been tagged before, and am rather late in responding to Monoceros' request. But here goes:

List three random facts about yourself that your friends might not know. And then tag five other friends to do it.

1. When I was young, I used to play with the garden hose. One day I decided to spray the fence. I kept at it, even though there was an old man standing behind the fence who was ducking from my spurts in vain. My grandmother apologised on my behalf. Fortunately they both found it rather funny. (Also, I was cute then, so easily forgiven)
2. When I was slightly older, I used to pretend to feel nauseous, just so that I had an excuse to drink a tablespoon (actually, closer to half a cup) of gripe water. At the time, gripe water did contain alcohol but I had no idea what was inside that tasted so good - I just wanted more!
3. This one is a little more embarassing. I used to be utterly fascinated with the story, The Three Musketeers (and the same-titled movie as well as its sequel, 'The Four Muskeeteers'). So I lined up all my younger cousins and gave code-named them after Musketeers. They also had to follow my marching orders, or face confinement in a play-pen.

I tried to tidy up my Flickr badge but realised that the default script tags that we're given, actually produces code which doesn't validate. A quick Google search indicates that other web-standards aware users are facing similar issues.

I did all I could - added the 'amp;'s to the '&'s and stripped out all the extra code they added on to it. I even accepted the fact that a table had to be used - though some of us know very well that we could control the layout more easily using styles. As of this time of writing, I've trimmed it down to 2 validation errors.

When there's more time, I might actually get my hands dirty with Flickr API, or modify a script someone's written. I see a small industry in Flickr API mods coming up. Take a look at what's listed on SourceForge already.

[I've decided to use this post to add further insights and external links related to Mighty Mouse.]

The Mighty Mouse feels great! I did expect a more robust grip for the 4-directional wheel, something like the rubber scrollers you get on other mice. However, Apple is Apple and they've leapfrogged over the competition in design and functionality.

Ironically, having two wide-screen Macs means that I will seldom have the opportunity of using horizontal scrolling.

Externals

Steermouse - Shareware that tweaks your Mighty Mouse so it can do more things than Apple taught it to.

Cons

Bummer, I realised there was an Apple software CD for Mighty Mouse, so I popped it in and was told that additional functionalities could only be installed on Tiger. Geeze.

After one night without VanPod's music, and half a day of working in silence, I went out and bought the 4th generation 60gb iPod (Photo).

And the new Apple mouse.

I needed to console myself.

And you probably don't believe that.

Saturday - played piano for church wedding of couple who got married. The couple that God brought together and told me about. Slept very little after preparing chord charts for each song. Attended wedding dinner, got home around midnight. Knocked out.

Sunday - after church, spent whole day running errands and getting house ready for family party to welcome relatives from the US.

Monday morning - Cleaned up the house after the party. About to sleep. Very tired. Swamped with a backlog of work. Will not bother replying or reading most personal emails.

Eric Meyer's latest article on how he improved on Alistapart's print styles, is an excellent read for those interested in the technical aspects of printable web pages.

When designing our organisation's online newsletter, I decided to create a print stylesheet but kept it simple - display:none for the logo, nav bar, and mastheads. The only images I retained for print were one-off photographs included within each article. However, little did I know that some colleagues wanted to print the newsletter to keep as records, and were surprised to find that it did not look like the screen version at all. In the end I had to reinstate some elements so it looked more like the screen version. (I took it as flattery, that they liked my design! :-)

For the screen stylesheet, I also made text resizeable - which I thought was a very useful feature since (and I do lament repeatedly), we aren't allowed to install Firefox or any other browser on our systems, and our version of Internet Explorer (6) is unable to resize text if you use fixed font sizes.

However, once again I received a complaint - this time, from an editorial team-mate who had unknowingly reset his browser to magnify text. At first, the rest of us were baffled by his emails and assured him that the web pages looked fine to us, on our own computers. Then it occurred to me that his browser settings were involved. He confirmed it, but added that to avoid this problem in future, I should fix all font sizes!

I told him that we had other colleagues who were visually impaired and it would not be fair if we prevented them from resizing text in their browser, so they could read our newsletter properly. Fortunately, that argument held.

All in all, it was an interesting lesson in managing expectations. Apart from those initial teething problems, the newsletter website loads fast, is easy to click through, and doesn't waste employees' time with clunky navigation. It's also easy to change the look (for instance, we began early in the year with a 'blue' theme, and during summer I switched to 'red-hot') by simply updating one CSS file. I just wish more local web design companies took stylesheets and web standards more seriously.

I generally agree with much of what web usability guru Jakob Nielsen says, but get the impression he's pretty stubborn about applying his principles to his own website. Wouldn't it be great if he could demonstrate how usable websites can still be beautiful?

And I didn't get the impression he was very forthcoming about suggestions, despite other people's attempts to give him a makeover (however, I like this post about spicing up useit.com with more semantic markup).

[Side note: I had a prototype for this 2000 redesign competition, reUSEIT, but didn't enter in the end. I only just visited the site again, to find that no entries were submitted! Dang. Now I wonder where I saved my old design! In 2003 there was a more successful redesign competition, endorsed by Nielsen himself. Unfortunately, nothing was adopted for his site. ]

And the other thing is - why doesn't he have RSS feeds? I'd see that as a form of 'usability' in the sense that I don't have to go to his website to see if any new articles are up. Of course, I could still subscribe to his e-mail newsletters, but my mailbox is already jammed and I'm unlikely to read it - at most, just skim through it.

But thanks to this post from Boing Boing, someone's kindly scraped the content into a bootleg RSS feed. Thank you, kind soul.

Hmm ... not practising what he preaches all the time ... not wanting to improve the look of his own site ... not blogging or providing his own RSS feeds. Getting a little bit out of touch? Time to stop resting on laurels and get 'with it'!

[Update: Check out youzit.com, a spoof of useit.com. Yes, it's in Flash. ]

[Update: Shaun's fixed the bug. It was something I hadn't configured properly. Mint is working fine now. As I'm typing I'm refreshing the lovely stats window and noticed that in 10 minutes, 3 unique visitors (not counting myself) have come to this site. Welcome.]

Shaun Inman will be checking my server today, to help figure out why Mint isn't working properly.

I don't expect the rest of my site (including this blog) to be affected in any way, because he's the maestro. I just wanted you to know, that after months of experiencing ignorance (huh? what CSS) and apathy (we don't do Firefox) with some local web developers, this is certainly a refreshing change.

I honestly can't wait to see how Mint will look like on my system!

But it's time to sleep ... the blogging conference awaits. [BTW to others who are thinking of attending the conference or workshop (if there are places left, and you have the moolah), the venue's been changed to Furama City Centre hotel. The PDF programme on the official website/blog, lists the old venue. ]

This is my third weblog post about Mint. Read my previous post about Mint.

I'll be attending the first Asian Corporate Blogging conference today. Guest stars: The author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, and the President of the Professional Bloggers Association (no, it isn't Jason Kottke but Paul Chaney). Participants will get a free signed copy of the Dummies book, hurrah!

I'm glad my organisation is open-minded enough to send me to this conference. Of course we'll still have to assess whether blogging is applicable to our programmes or corporate profile. We won't blog for the sake of blogging, just as we shouldn't use technology just for the sake of using it. We think blogs will work better with certain target groups such as children, teenagers and young adults.

But I feel corporate blogs need to break away from being just a mouthpiece, reporting press releases and company 'propaganda'. It has to be real, personal, spontaneous and friendly. If posting a new entry requires prior approval by a committee, for instance, that would hamper the free nature of blogging. In this aspect, I feel there is some conflict between the words 'corporate' and 'blogging'. But it also depends on the personality of the organisation. Some software companies have blogs that are easy to follow, advertising their latest products in an appealing manner. Netnewswire's blog informs readers of related news and products. Sixapart, makers of my favourite weblogging software, MovableType, has Mena's Corner.

And speaking of 'genuine', I also think the NTUC Income chief's doing a good job on his blog. He speaks his mind on issues outside of his work, and this creates a more personal feel that is usually lacking when you think of other CEOs in big companies. Most of them seem distant, inaccessible, and so politically correct you don't really get to know who they really are and what they stand for. Not so much in this blog.

Anyway, I'll be at the conference for the first day. We'll see how it goes!

[Update: I just got back from the conference and it was great. Tell you more about it later ... ]

A couple of programming-related incidents happened today, but it also boils down to the mentality of 'just enough is enough, I'm not doing any extra for you'. It's disturbing because it's a mentality I still notice in Singapore, and we have a lot to learn from counterparts in the US.

It's decent news, at least to me anyway. Liverpool drew with Man U, and Newcastle have finally won! On an away match! And the Shearer-Owen strike partnership seems to be finally taking shape. I'm happy for the Magpies.

And I'm appalled that top-notch goalkeeper Casillas of Real Madrid is only getting 7,000 quid a week. I mean, he's playing with Galacticos who make that much in a day. It's ridiculous. Join Arsenal. Come on, Wenger, we only bought Hleb and we sold Vieira, so we need at least another big name signing. Boot out the erratic Lehmann and patch up our defence! We've got lots of catching up to do with Chelsea, who have the most impregnable defence in the Premier League.

To Mac users out there - have you ever had third-party USB devices causing your whole system to hang?

I seem to be having lots of problem with my Sandisk 6-in-1 reader. I found similar problems posted in this discussion group. I can select a few files in my SD card (using Finder), and then suddenly Finder quits totally. The icons on my Desktop disappear, and appear again (like being refreshed). Then I try to do the same thing again, select the same files, and everything disappears once more.

It's really bizarre and I'm tired of rebooting my system continuously. Any solutions?

Remember that old joke about the world going topsy-turvy? When the best golfer in the world was black (Tiger Woods). When the best rapper in the world was white (Eminem). When the best female tennis players in the world, were black (Williams sisters).

Well, the football world is definitely upside down because the USA is now four whopping places ahead of England in the rankings. The US dropped from 6th place to 7th, but England dropped from 7th to 11th after their dismal showing against Northern Ireland. The Transatlantic gap is widening, so to speak.

Considering that England have at least in recent times won at rugby and now in cricket, you'd think they'd try to do something about their tennis and football. It seems you can still beat the English at their own games - at least, some of the time.

Another geek post, because I am in a geek mood. What's your favourite project management software?

I used PhpCollab sporadically, creating different accounts for different clients while I was freelancing. However I didn't really end up using most of their features.

Then I tried out Basecamp, which is good for basics but somehow I felt it wasn't powerful enough. It is the prettiest that I've come across so far, though.

I just discovered Dotproject. Their demo looks more interesting - close to how Microsoft Project works, but less complex.

Would you recommend any other good open source products?

Just a little update about Mint. I decided I was OK with the licence and purchased a copy for my site. (Textism's Refer has been rendered 99.9% useless due to referrer spam which I've given up trying to block manually.)

However, after setting up the database, username and configuring the appropriate file, then uploading all files in the correct modes, all I got was a blank page. A lemon. A different sort of tingling sensation in my mouth that I wasn't expecting.

Fortunately, some other Mint users also have the same, or similar, problems. I've run the server compatibility suite, which replaces the single PHP file previously used to indicate if our servers could run Mint. The more comprehensive suite got my mySQL version wrong, though it did confirm that my database was set up properly.

Anyway, Mint users were asked to post their server config details in the Forum. Hopefully this information will help Shaun pinpoint exactly why some installations aren't working the way they should. Don't get me wrong, I love Shaun's work and I'm sure he'll fix the problem soon.

This is just a friendly warning that, even with some tweaks to Mint 1.0 (at present it's 1.07) it may not be hunky dory for everybody. At least, not just yet.

This is my second post about Mint. Read the first post.

The local blogging community would have heard by now about the two Singaporean bloggers who were arrested under the Sedition Act. Read the news report.

The two blogs mentioned in this Tomorrow.sg post, are no more. I suppose you could scour the Google caches if you really wanted.

But if this was one of the racist posts I came across a few months back, I recall it was pretty offensive. Though I think many of us didn't expect anything to happen to these bloggers. Now we need to re-assess our boundaries.

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings, George Bush wasted precious minutes sitting pretty at an elementary school (watch the video).

While New Orleans flooded, Bush again took his time to react, strumming his guitar, talking about medicare and celebrating John McCain's 69th birthday (see the contrast in pictures). When he finally addressed the floods, he claimed he didn't know about the potential dangers of flooding, despite warnings from FEMA and the odd blogger.

After looking at the great divide between HQ and Ground Zero, the soaring gas prices and the occupation of Iraq sapping resources, I ask this question: What took Americans so long to realise they voted the wrong guy into office?

Apple launched this behind our backs. But I don't mind being surprised. This is beautiful. (Goodbye, iPod mini.)

And iTunes 5 should be promising. Let's see how the folders in Playlists work out.

I have actually been ill for the past week. It started as a sore throat on Saturday night, a fever on Sunday, and lots of phlegm ever since. Tomorrow I will attempt to take part in a mass walk, and am not entirely sure if I'm up to it.

I'm not used to being sick. I've taken 2.5 days of medical leave in the last 5 years of my working life, and I would really not like to fall that ill to warrant a note from the doctor again. I'm actually WILLING myself, imagining the germs in my body being blasted away, like in some computer game. Or like Magneto drawing bits of metal out of everywhere, I'd extract all the phlegm in my lungs and vomit it all out. I believe staying healthy is partly psychological.

The thing is, I don't believe in taking medication for minor illnesses which the body can overcome on its own. Overdosing on medication creates the superbugs that have been hitting everybody else. We have antibodies. Use them.

I'm quite tired of getting so much referrer spam. Maybe it's time I paid for a Mint. That's Shaun Inman's latest project, and it sure looks fresh and pretty.

Anybody had a Mint yet? Tell me if it's good for you.

[Addition: Another nice flavour's out, Vanilla for forums.]

There's an ongoing discussion in the Straits Times Forum section, on customer service. Some Singaporeans complained that white people get better treatment. However, two white men wrote in separately to say that they treat sales staff with respect unlike the locals, and they also get charged more. Touche.

Anyway, I'm sure we've all had our vexing moments with sales staff in Singapore.

Some Flickr users were up in arms when Yahoo! bought over Flickr's parent company Ludicorp.

Off a tangent: Whenever I hear 'Ludicorp' I think 'ludicrous'. And why is the co-founder's last name 'Fake'? Imagine when she's quoted in the article.

"We care deeply about our community, and their worries are ours," Ms Fake told the BBC News website.

But joking aside... Since I do have a Yahoo! account I decided to merge the two. After looking at the 'marriage certificate' I was about to submit, though, I hesitated.

Ready to merge your accounts? The accounts you've chosen:

Yahoo! Vanessa Tan [emailaddress1]
Flickr vantan [emailaddress2]

What it means (aka READ THIS)

1. You will need to sign in to Flickr via Yahoo! from now on. [Why? I prefer Flickr's interface. And frankly, I hardly ever use Yahoo for anything. I use Google for searching and Bloglines for reading feeds. Seriously I don't want to log into Yahoo. ]

2. Any Flickry applications you've downloaded (like the Flickr uploaders or some of the kewl API applications other Flickr members have built) may not work anymore because your account details have changed. [How inconvenient is that? OK, it's not like I have to change my operating system. But again, the user has to do the work. Why can't the system accept there may be two different email addresses for each user, and leave it at that? ]

3. If that's the case, you will need to get fresh copies and set them up again. (It may be that your favorite applications haven't updated yet, so check with the developers before you merge.) [ In which case, I don't want to merge until everything stabilises. ]

Despite recent hoo-ha about the acquisition and change of policy, Flickr proved useful in helping to identify this subway flasher dude. That should really see the jerk off. I mean, see him off ... to jail.

And on the plus side, Flickr's top-notch user interface will hopefully replace Yahoo!'s existing photo album section.

Yikes. I noticed that new posts using MT3.2, didn't get published as individual archive pages, but only as news feeds and on the home page.

So please excuse the broken links while I try to fix this - or get my web host to help.

[Update: Web host says it's a problem with the .htaccess. Still, problem's not fixed.]

[UPdate 2: I think everything's gone back to normal. Not sure what the web host did but hopefully the errors won't happen again! ]

Those of you on AppleCentre Orchard's mailing list must be amused lately by the messages from other recipients who thought that "replying to all" would somehow get them off the mailing list. One reply started the chain, and to date I have counted at least 4 more replies to all. One lady was fed up enough to reply to all, telling everyone NOT to reply to all! However, that didn't stop more replies from coming in. (Doh!)

If these people had only noticed there were links at the bottom of each e-mail newsletter, and if they clicked on them they'd be taken to a page where they could administer their account and even unsubscribe from the mailing list, life would be much easier.

However, in their defence, the system isn't so obviously user-friendly. If the links at the bottom of each newsletter had actually said 'Unsubscribe or administer your account', these mass-mails wouldn't have occurred. However, AppleCentre Orchard's newsletters simply list two URLs, with no explanation of what they signify. Maybe only kaypoh geeks like me would bother clicking on them and administering my account through Mailman.

Another solution would be for AppleCentre Orchard's administrator to send an email to everyone (oh no, not again) to tell or remind them of how to administer their accounts. They could also configure the system so that other people on the mailing list cannot send emails to the group (this isn't a forum, anyway).

Whatever the case - if I see another "Please take me off the mailing list" again, I'm going to send a firm note to the administrator. Surely people who sell Apple products will understand usability and simplicity.

As a Priority member of Acmabooks.com (at least for the next few months), I was invited yesterday to Moonfish Restaurant at Milennia Walk, to meet the Acma account managers and sample the restaurant's forthcoming, new menu. The great thing was I got to invite 3 other friends along - so I did! You can start viewing the pics from here.

Then I learnt that the restaurant and acmabooks were related companies. Quite clever, getting our feedback on both the book service as well as the new dishes. Anyway, it was really lovely catching up with the girls and sipping chilled wine with our meal. We really had a lot to eat. The Acma people were quite hospitable and friendly, despite a few of them having had to eat the same dishes twice a week!

I must say I'm pretty impressed overall. I mean, which other local book company has ever wined and dined their best customers?