February 2007 Archives

Voice over IP trials in Second Life will begin in March, reports CNet. The beta stage will be free for all users. That's about where the good news ends, because you may need lots of money to continue using it thereafter, notes 21talks.

VoIP is a great thing to have, though I wonder about time lag, which may vary depending on your network. Also, Second Life has a more international outreach compared to other chat programs which are usually confined to more closed groups of contacts. I wonder if I will be able to make out other people's accents, and likewise for them. Typing also gives you time to think. You won't stutter in text chat and you can always edit what you've just written, before hitting the Submit button.

Still, having VoIP creates many more possibilities for all sorts of activities in Second Life - from lectures to live performances and debates, and even ... virtual sex with sound effects!?

Technorati Tags: Second+Life, VoIP

Met up with some old Bristol friends today and we had dinner at Shunjuu at Robertson Quay. We ordered lots of robatayaki (skewered foods) and other dishes.

My favourite was the tofu with century egg sauce topped with roe.

As a new fan of black pig meat (best experienced so far at Tom Ton restaurants in the form of katsu don), I tried the black pig robatayaki. The meat was tasty but drier and more chewy than the katsu version.

We tried the gingko nuts. They have a bitter taste when grilled.

We also had various beef and pork combinations. So the meat wouldn't feel too 'heavy' in the mouth, we also ate it along with the cabbage leaves provided.

I was pointing my camera at another plate of skewered meat, when suddenly a waitress came over and told me I was not allowed to take any more photos!

I was stunned but obediently turned off my camera, never to photograph their food again *sob* I took a few shots of my friends and that was about it.

But later on I wondered, WHY? Why can't the restaurant let its patrons take photos of its food?

It's not like it's the only robatayaki restaurant in Singapore and the recipes or presentation is so unique. I am not from a rival restaurant trying to copy their style. And seriously, it was just two pieces of skewered beef!

And in this modern age, if you see anyone sitting at their table not eating but taking photos of their food, you have a blogger in your midst! Be nice to them because they are probably planning to write a food review that very night and upload lots of pics of your food.

Now, if you know your food is good (and this restaurant does have a good reputation), you should have nothing to fear. If you see me hovering over a plate of food with a dead cockroach in it, that would be a different story.

If it's the former, you can safely assume I will write something positive, or at least neutral. And the sight of food photos along with the blog review will attract some readers who may then want to check out your restaurant!

So, restaurants with a no-photo policy, I strongly urge you to rethink your marketing strategy. You can pay lots of money advertising your restaurant, getting it listed in food directories, setting up your own website... but 'word of mouth' marketing is increasingly important as well. Don't stop your fans from writing good things about you.

I thought January was a busy month for me. Well, February has been even busier and shorter! Today, I made a 'cameo appearance' at a course on how to power search the internet.

The course attendees (from other Gahmen agencies) were asked to take a look at my blog. They were also asked to think of questions to ask me, if they could meet me. Then, ta-daah! I appeared at the doorway. At least they didn't look at me strangely. Pretty nice people (pretty AND nice, haha!).

I mentioned a bit of theory, told some blog anecdotes and shared my personal experiences. I shared that my annoyance at Dell products was tempered by the fact that their PR team was actually responding to my blog posts. My overall statement was that if you want to blog, just be yourself. Don't start a fake fan site like Wal-Mart did - the backlash will be great.

Also, blogging can be much more than just griping about things. I've gotten in touch with people all over the world just through my blog, and struck up some friendships along the way. My darling readers have also given me advice on wireless systems, hard disk backup solutions, the best place to buy Mac components... What more can I ask for?

Anyway, I did promise the class I would blog about it, and they could respond to me here. So here's my blog post!

Update - Here's a pic of me with the class and Deborah Abraham, the instructor:

It was a dream start, with 17 year-old Theo Walcott scoring his first senior goal for Arsenal. He put the ball past Petr Cech in his trademark clinical fashion, indicating that this is the start of many good things to come.

However, soon after that Didier Drogba put one back, past Manuel Almunia. In the second half, John Terry was accidentally kicked in the head by Abou Diaby, as both tried to reach the ball near Arsenal's goalmouth. It was touching to see the whole stadium - both Chelsea and Arsenal fans alike - rising to applaud the unconscious Chelsea captain as he was carried off the pitch on a stretcher.

It was not so nice to see missiles being thrown at Cesc Fabregas as he tried to take a corner. He managed to laugh it off then... but towards the end, after Drogba scored the second goal, Fabregas and Frank Lampard had a heated exchange which had a domino effect on some other teammates as well. Sadly, the match ended with three red cards.

The commentators noted that Chelsea had been exploiting the weakest chink in young Arsenal's armour - Armand Traore. This became more obvious when Arjen Robben came in as a substitute and terrorised that flank. Traore slowly gained confidence, winning some good balls, but had to be substituted in the end.

I was not too surprised when Jeremy Aliadiere was substituted as well, by Emmanuel Adebayor. He had some good runs which ended with nothing. At one point he was almost one-on-one with Cech but hesitated and could not convert his opportunity into a goal. It is grossly unfair to say this, but if it had happened to Thierry Henry it could have ended differently. Aliadiere has yet to reach his full potential.

It was young Arsenal's night and while they all looked disappointed at coming in second best, they should remember that they are the 'B' team and most of them would have come on as substitutes in other situations. In fact they should be proud that they held their own against the A-list names in the Chelsea team, with only a 1 goal difference. Chelsea had Ricardo Carvalho and Cech to thank for many good saves and blocks, in fact.

Generally, the young Gunners have to control their tempers and mentally brace themselves for setbacks. Every argument leads to wasted time, which is not good for a team which is losing and needs to score an equaliser. Every fight leads to cards and sending-offs, which will result in a weakened team. They succumbed both times.

Fabregas was eager to score but was off-target. His corners and free kicks tended to find their way into Cech's safe hands. Overall, the young Gunners also need to improve their physical stamina, because they began brilliantly in the first and second halves, then ran out of steam. Chelsea's experience held out in the end.

But surely the young Gunners have also gained tremendous amounts of experience in this final. How often can a reserve youth team beat other top-flight clubs including trouncing Liverpool 6-3? How often can a 17 year-old score against one of the most expensive teams in the world?

Wenger is preparing this young team for greatness in the future, even if glory is elusive at the moment.

I read about how Google Reader has changed its reporting methods so that many Feedburner users have seen a spike in their number of subscribers. Before that happened, though, I had already noticed a gradual increase in subscribers over the past few months. Reading Technosailor's post prompted me to check on my own feed subscription rates. Previously I was bordering on the 90+ mark. On Saturday I had 111 subscribers. On Thursday I hit a high of 129.

According to the breakdown, there are now 27 people subscribing to my feed using Google Reader. That probably contributed to the jump from double to triple digits. Hurrah!

Incidentally, someone came up to me and commented, "Your blog has improved!". The person had not seen my blog for probably a few months.

I was thinking that perhaps the quality of my content had improved. Or perhaps it was the increased frequency of posts. Or maybe the use of more photos on my home page. On a more obscure line of thought, I wondered if it was due to the displaying of photographs of my visitors using MyBlogLog, which could give a sense of 'community' on my blog.

Apparently, what impressed the person was the Snap preview effect when you hover over a link. It's a feature that I installed on my blog in 2 minutes flat (from signing up to inserting the code in my template and republishing my blog).

Which shows there are different ways to hook readers. We just need to know what type of readers we want to attract.

A few weeks ago, another friend commented that she doesn't read my blog sometimes because it's too technical. A few years ago, yet another friend said I should have conversely been more 'esoteric'. I did not change then, and I'm not going to change now. This is how I think, and this is how I will write. You can't please everyone but you can be true to yourself.

Thank you to my 100+ subscribers. That means a lot to me.

[Update 26/2/07: 137 today!]

Dear readers, my domain name transfer problems have been resolved. Thanks for your concern and feedback on domain registration services.

Part of the delay was due to Gmail marking every automated email from my new registrar, Namecheap, as spam. Even after unmarking one email and moving it to my Inbox, a second email was still blocked when I re-requested for the transfer. It's quite a dangerous thing to happen especially as my domain was about to expire and I had to respond to each email to confirm I did want the transfer. Boy am I glad everything's been settled.

As promised, my new registrar did a manual transfer. I quite like the domain name control panel and they've also thrown in extra services, more than what I had with my previous registrar.

Just saw some unusual photos - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates having a conversation in public. Aww.

Possible captions

Bill: Hey Steve... er, about that iPhone ...

Some buildup before the Chelsea-Arsenal Carling Cup final in a few hours' time. It's been dubbed The Kids (Arsenal) versus The Cash (Chelsea) with bookies betting on a Chelsea win. Come on, young Guns, show the world that football is more than just about spending lots of money.

Arsenal's Adebayor and Henry in a lighthearted interview on future dance moves and who is the worst dancer in the team, among others

Jose Mourinho says Arsene Wenger is (not) a great manager, and feels Chelsea's youth policy (never heard of it before) is better than Arsenal's. How, then, has Arsenal made it to the finals with their youth team?

Arsene Wenger says you can either have a great national team or a great league. To a certain extent I agree. Not all the best players in the world are English. If clubs want the best players for their teams, they should not be forced to choose only English players if they really are not the best. If all the good English players are very expensive, it is harder for (relatively) poorer clubs to attract them.

Reading the BBC Forum on this match has made me note a few points.

• There seem to be more Arsenal fans worldwide, than for Chelsea.
• Overall, logic says Chelsea will win but some hope that the Young Guns will spring a surprise.
• The Man U fans all want Arsenal to win :)

[Update: Another pre-match blog post from SG Gooner]

After a hiatus I'm finally back in the studio again. As previously reported, Mac's wireless keyboard had died so I was unable work on any music. Then because there was no activity for so long, inertia creeped in. Only yesterday, during my jazz piano lesson when my teacher insisted I had to perform one of my own compositions at our school concert in June, did I shake off my sluggishness and start attempting to write music. Three recordings were made over the last day. No, I have not joined COMPASS yet, so no music will be uploaded.

I doubt I can produce much more music this weekend, though. Because we were out of the country last week, we have not done any visiting for Chinese New Year. The rest of today will be taken up by visiting. I also have two presentations this week to prepare for, and a church website meeting. There are ongoing projects all due soon. And I haven't packed for my trip to LA/Austin next Saturday.

What's going to give? The usual - email replies which are not deadly urgent. I won't have time to meet up with most friends. I won't be reading or responding to many people's blogs either.

We just watched Paris, Je T'aime, a French movie that recently featured in the Cannes Film Festival. It was delightful, and romantic as you can expect, but there were scenes that were quite out of the ordinary.

The whole movie is actually made up of 'short stories' from various districts, or Arrondissements, in Paris. Each district has its own personality, along with the people based there.

There are stories of lonely people who do find love, eventually, in Paris. Some involve couples who are renewing their romance. Some fear they are losing their loved ones - in more ways than one. Some make you guess what's going on, then you realise it's not quite what you think. I shan't elaborate more because this will become a real spoiler.

Popping up every now and then are more well-known actors such as Elijah Wood (who does come across as a bit Hobbit-like, with his backpack), Natalie Portman (who plays an actress in love with a blind young Frenchman), and Gérard Depardieu who is the manager of a restaurant where an American couple are discussing their impending divorce. Rufus Sewell looked a bit like Jude Law but after checking his filmography on IMDB I realise why he looked familiar. It was nice to see a 'guest appearance' by Oscar Wilde, who teaches Sewell's character to be more charming towards his fiancee.

The film touches issues such as racism, bullying, homosexual love, working class versus upper class, love across religious lines, extramarital affairs, crime and aspirations. Not every story has an entirely happy ending. Actually it feels very much like the other movie 'Love, Actually' in the sense that it's a combination of stories around the theme of love.

If you're watching this in Singapore, there are subtitles in English and Mandarin, but it helps if you know a bit of French. For instance, in one short story, a lonely, middle-aged American woman narrates her experiences in Paris in poorly-pronounced French. If you read the subtitles alone, you wouldn't find it funny at all. However if you know how words should be pronounced in French, you will realise she mispronounced many of them with an American accent, sometimes completely switching back to her natural vocabulary.

Obviously the audience around me were quite familiar with the French language. There were a number of Caucasian students in the audience but the locals also understood the nuances of the language. I bet we were all French language students at one point or another. Looking at everyone's faces as we emerged from the cinema hall, we all enjoyed the movie.

My overall rating: Tres bien!

More info on Wikipedia and trailers on Youtube.

While waiting to watch a French movie at Orchard Cineleisure earlier this evening, I popped by the iShop run by Club 21, and picked up two accessories: A silicone cover for my new wired Apple keyboard, and the Griffin iKaraoke.

The clear XSKN cover was a real pain to extricate from its tightly sealed, hard plastic casing. However, the moment my hand made contact with the product, I realised the actual 'skin' was very, very soft. It fit perfectly onto my keyboard and I'm able to type on it. I'm doing it now in this blog post, in fact.

Only thing is I wished the silicone cover had markings representing each key, as its opacity makes the markings on my keyboard harder to make out. Apparently their newer 'Pro' models, which are also more expensive, have markings on each key. Costs nearly double the price, in fact.

I have yet to try the iKaraoke... that alone will deserve an entry on its own ;-)

I tried to transfer my domain name a couple weeks ago, from Enom (via my old web host Addaction), to Namecheap.

After putting in my request, Namecheap sent the usual notification emails and told me to get an 'EPP' code. Addaction sent the code to me without making things too difficult, which I must give them credit for. I entered the code and was told that things were in progress. I thought all was well and decided to give it a few more days for the transfer to be completed.

Until I came back from my holiday, checked my Gmail an hour ago and discovered that Namecheap had sent me an email just 2 hours before, telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled!!!

This was apparently because I had not responded to a 'verification email'. Thinking that my Gmail spam blocker had filtered that email out, I did a search but couldn't find any recent emails from 'Namecheap'. I logged into the Namecheap website to view my message inbox, but there were no new messages - apart from the same email telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled. The previous message was one requesting for my EPP code, 1-2 weeks ago. There was nothing else, in between.

What's alarming is that my domain name's going to expire in a few days' time. I just tried to re-request for the domain name transfer to Namecheap, but was told that as my domain was going to expire in less than 7 days, it cannot be transferred anymore. WTF! I did request to transfer my domain name with weeks to spare. I sent them all the info they required, and now my request has been cancelled because I didn't respond to a nonexistent verification email??

I sent Namecheap an email explaining my situation. I hope they do something about it. If not, I have no choice but to renew my domain at a higher price, back with Enom.

If you aren't able to access this blog from Feb 26, you can safely assume it's a problem with my domain renewal. As far as I can help it, I'm going to post updates about this boo-boo on my blog, so you know what to be careful of if you ever want to transfer your domain name.

[Update 1: Namecheap has replied very promptly to my email, assuring me that while I can no longer request for a transfer via their website, they can still attempt a manual transfer. I have thanked them for their quick response and confirmed that I still want to attempt this transfer before my domain expires.

As for the missing verification email, it was apparently sent to an 'Admin contact'. I'm trying to find out what this mysterious email address is. I definitely asked my old/current registrar to update my email address records a long time ago, so am wondering why it wasn't done thoroughly. ]

Hi folks, yes I was in Chiang Mai during this Chinese New Year. Belated greetings to my Chinese readers! I was so busy packing (several hours before the flight) and finishing up my work, I actually forgot to put a notice on my blog.

I took about 4 gigabytes of videos and photos and will be processing them over the next week or so.

What glorious news - my favourite football team will be meeting the Queen. Funny that she will be meeting more Frenchmen than Englishmen, though :)

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: "The Queen was disappointed about not being able to officially open the new Arsenal stadium due to her back strain, especially as so much effort had been put in by so many people behind the scenes. "Her Majesty therefore decided to host a tea at Buckingham Palace to thank those involved in the project for all their hard work and to have a chance to meet some of those she would have seen on the day."

In just as fabulous news, we beat Bolton 1-3. Which shows that we can overcome the physical game as well as keep on scoring late winners. Well done, Gunners!

My Dell laptop has been behaving better the past week. However, one thing which has constantly annoyed me, has been the fact that as I type, my hand sweeps against the trackpad, accidentally selecting a body of text, and then wiping it out with my next keystroke.

For most applications this can be easily remedied by clicking 'undo'. However, for Lotus Notes (version 6.5 at least), it only has one level of 'undo'. I do send a lot of emails using Lotus Notes. I'm sure many other enterprise users do, too.

Being a post-Grade 8 pianist who has played vigorous pieces like Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo, I type rather fast. Which means that I hit several keys within 1 or 2 seconds. Which means that the 'undo' button in Lotus Notes is almost useless, because I would have erased my previous paragraph several keystrokes before that.

Another distraction is the fact that as I'm typing on a web page that has many fields (such as this Movable Type powered blog), and the mouse cursor is hovering over another section of the page, any heavier pressure from the base of my palm on the trackpad, results in a shift from one field to another (where the cursor is). Or, if the mouse cursor is hovering above a blank portion of the page, the last several keys I've hit, don't get registered anywhere.

All this happens because the trackpad cannot be deactivated - even if I plug in a mouse. I couldn't find the command to disable the trackpad, so I Googled for help and found a few links. One site advised me to look for the company producing that trackpad component, and download the driver which would allow me to customise my trackpad settings. I was pointed back to the Dell Support website which had specific info on each laptop model.

For my laptop, the Dell Latitude D620, I learnt that the trackpad and stickpointer were manufactured by a company called Alps. Happily, the enhancement coming with the driver read as follows:

"Adds the feature where the touchpad/stick is disabled when a USB mouse is plugged in. This feature is disabled by default but can be enabled via a checkbox on the Devices tab in the Touchpad. When a USB mouse is plugged in a pop up message informs the user that a USB mouse has been detected and that the touchpad/stick has been disabled. A red 'X' appears over the touchpad icon in the systray when it is disabled."

Brilliant. Just what I want. Updates to follow...

[Update: It works! Woo hoo. Now when my mouse is plugged in, the trackpad will be disabled. No more accidental erasures.]

Technorati Tags: Dell, trackpad

Things I have to do:

1. Pack for my Chinese New Year trip to Chiangmai
2. Call up the travel agent to ask why I have an extra stopover en route to SXSW
3. Call up the Apple Store to find out how come my Apple Keyboard and iPod radio controller haven't arrived, despite the online records saying it was delivered 2 days ago (I suspect dodgy delivery or untrustworthy neighbours)
4. Upload all the photos sitting in my camera (once I get a new keyboard for my G5 Mac)
5. Upgrade to Mint 2.0
6. Upgrade to MT 3.34
7. Finish reading all the marketing and trends books I've been reading halfway
8. Clean up my desk further (both at home and at work)

For the first time, I met a whole lot of Singaporean Second Lifers in real life. The local branch of Idea Factory (Nicholas and Eng Kiat) organised this gathering and it was nice to see people I've known online, via Second Life (SL) itself or also through their blogs.

I arrived late due to work commitments so I figured that everyone else had already introduced themselves. Announcing my real life name, I sat down at the next available chair and listened in on the discussion. Then I started to play my own little guessing game, identifying people from their Avatars.

Rinaz was the first person I identified. The guy next to her was Benjamin. I haven't met him in SL but have seen his emails in our common mailing list and have also read his blog. Then I realised the guy next to him was Alvin, our SL Singapore group leader. I knew the folks sitting behind me as well, particularly Ivan ;-)

Together we had a brainstorming session, coming up with ideas for our next real-life gathering, which could possibly involve Cory Ondrejka, Chief Technology Officer of Linden Labs. He may be returning in March and June (not confirmed). I hope I can meet him after I come back from my SXSW conference in mid-March. Things could be moving pretty fast in Singapore soon. Watch out for Linden Lab job ads here. Hopefully we'll have a workshop or Barcamp where we can learn from each other.

One thing we all agreed on, was that scripting could not be ... scripted. In the sense that things shouldn't be too contrived but should be allowed to develop naturally. That was one common theme throughout our discussion.

Nicholas suggested that at our next real life meetup, we could look like our Avatars. I turned to Ivan and said, "You need lots of blue paint." Sorry, couldn't resist that. If we did have to dress like our Avatars, I would need to dye my hair blonde, get a boob upgrade (by transferring the fat from my hips and thighs and tummy to my chest), and grow several inches taller.

After the discussion ended, many went off for supper together. A few of us had other plans, including myself... In any case, I bet there'll be several other blog posts on this soon.

Technorati Tags: Second+Life, Linden+Labs, Idea+Factory

I have a confession to make.

For the last 1-2 months, my parents and I have been drinking Gunners at various clubs and pubs around town. We do that on the night of an Arsenal match, before the game takes place.

I can proudly say that after downing 3 gunners, on almost every occasion Arsenal have won with three goals (be it 3-0 or 3-1). That includes the recent match where we beat Tottering Hotspur 3-1.

However, after that miraculous run of form, our momentum was broken by drinking gunners while watching the Singapore-Thailand match. While Singapore won, Arsenal drew 1-1 away at Middlesborough. Ever since then, our cocktail combination has become a bit less 'molotov' against our opponents. However, as long as Arsenal keep on winning, I'm happy.

And we'll continue drinking to the Gunners!

Now for a bit of match analysis of the Arsenal-Wigan match before I go to sleep. I missed most of the first half as I was too engrossed tweaking the code on this blog (hover above my yellow masthead to see what I did to improve accessibility). However, the BBC blow-by-blow account indicated that the match was not going swimmingly well for Arsenal despite their superior possession. Walcott sadly did not seem to be making the impact he used to make. He and Hoyte, the two Englishmen (is Arsene Wenger preparing himself for a change in the regulations?) were replaced by Frenchmen Flamini and the ever-improving Aliadiere (whom I think is quite cute, actually). Walcott looked pretty disappointed when he walked off the pitch. But things moved along after that.

Finally, the equaliser and winners were scored - in the last 10 minutes, what else. It's almost as though Arsenal have a built-in alarm clock. I'm pleased that the edgy Rosicky finally scored his first Premiership goal. We all know how hard he's been trying to do that.

And did we actually have 4 strikers playing at the same time? Henry, Adebayor, Baptista and Aliadiere... at the rate things were going, Wenger might even have thrown in Van Persie if he hadn't injured himself in a wild post-goal celebration. Speaking of which, Rosicky got booked for his own first goal celebration - what a shame. Goalkeeper Lehmann was booked for time-wasting after the 2 Arsenal goals were scored, whereas his Wigan counterpart was not, earlier on in the match. I feel no player should be indulging in time-wasting, even if they think they're winning. Man U tried doing that with Arsenal when they were 0-1 up, and then Arsenal scored 2. Deja vu with Wigan today, eh?

Overall, it was not a pretty game, with too many fouls and bookings especially from the Arsenal side. I'm not feeling very high about this match, but at least we won.

Technorati Tags: Arsenal

Exciting news broken by ZDNet - Barack Obama has readily embraced the potential of Web 2.0 and set up a social networking website where supporters can create their own blogs, keep track of campaign events and funding, and get in touch with each other. Go to my.barackobama.com.

Though I am not American, I signed up for an account out of a combination of curiosity, a long-standing interest in US politics and the fact that Obama's speech during the previous presidential campaign (in support of John Kerry) was the only one that brought tears to my eyes.

What is intriguing and will perhaps evoke a good mix of cynicism and grudging respect is the fundraiser tool which lets you set a goal of how much money you want to raise for Obama. Very clever. Let's see how this works out - if Obama's team is willing to release any figures later on. My only feedback for this is that if a supporter already has a well-established blog, there's no point creating a separate one just to raise funds for Obama. Instead, the website should let supporters copy and paste HTML widget code to be displayed on their own blogs.

Another tool on the website that lets supporters invite friends to join the cause, could be improved further. At the moment it requires supporters to manually fill in names and email addresses. The website should make things more convenient by allowing users to import email addresses from Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail as well as common text formats like CSV.

You also have to give it to Obama's team for getting onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon fast and furious. You can check him out on Facebook and Flickr, and watch his official videos on Youtube.

Of course there will be talk of whether Obama's net-savviness to date is similar to that of Howard Dean's, a previous Democrat front-runner who looked like a serious contender for the presidency, until he ran out of steam.

For now, you have to give it to Obama for leveraging on the power of Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Web2.0, presidentialelections

There will be a real-life Second Life Singapore meetup this coming Monday evening. Limited places available. For more information, log into Second Life. If you're a member of the SL Singapore group you should have received a message on this.

Around the same time, the New Media Consortium will be conducting a media arts symposium.

I've never been an exercise junkie. Getting a 'Gold' rating for my physical fitness in my second year at Junior College was much the exception to the norm, as I was normally too lazy to exercise. As a geek I'd rather sit at my computer, surf websites and blog (like what I'm doing now).

Until Nike and Apple got together and decided to do something special. I bought my Nike+ shoes and kit, followed by a red Nano (the AIDS edition). I started exercising again because I was so impressed with the way the two companies had integrated their services together.

However I initially had trouble logging in on my G5 mac (it can't access any https sites as well as the Nikeplus.com site). So tonight I decided to sync my Nano to this Dell laptop instead. It managed to connect to the Flash-based Nikeplus.com website.

It showed me a summary of all my runs so far. Well actually I ran once around a lake at the Botanical Gardens, but that was about it. Everything else was brisk walking at best. And in crowded areas it's difficult to walk fast.

This is a detailed analysis of my walk and run at the Botanical Gardens. You can tell I stopped moving at a certain point. I think this was when we all got caught in the rain and were standing under a shelter. Incidentally, after I had completed and saved my workout, NeilLance Armstrong's voice came in through my headphones, congratulating me on my 'longest workout yet'. How cool is that?!?! That made me want to break my new record so I might hear another Nike+ celebrity, like Maria Sharapova.

So all in all, it's a kit worth having especially if you're a geek. This is because 1) at least you'll know how to use all these gadgets , 2) and you probably aren't exercising enough right now, anyway.

In the midst of the madness while juggling as many projects as I have fingers, I thought there was at least one thing I could do in advance: Start preparing for SXSW 2007!

Since I may be liaising with the home office during my US trip, I've created a timesheet in Excel format, which tells me what time it is in Austin, Singapore and Los Angeles. It was interesting learning how to use a new formula to add a specific number of hours. I relied on Timeanddate.com for the time zone differences.

I checked my passport to make sure it hadn't expired yet. Out of curiosity I decided to find out exactly what needs to be done to renew a passport. This MFA web page has all the info. And I never knew that the system you use to apply for new Singapore passports, is called APPLEs! You have to give them some credit for making the letters fit the acronym :)

I looked up the list of SXSW Interactive registrants and discovered two other 'Tans' in the list! Hmm, maybe I should drop them a line and have a clan gathering in Austin. Gosh, there are so many registrants from Yahoo! There are many registrants working at Adaptive Path too. There are a handful of Microsoft registrants. My web heroes Jeffrey Zeldman (whose books and websites I read) and Shaun Inman (whose Mint I use) will be there, too. Absent so far are names like Scoble and Kottke. Still, there are 2,888 registrants and counting. It's time to upload a nice photo of myself.

I discovered that the Los Angeles airport (LAX), where I will be waiting for nearly 5 hours in between flights, has no free internet access. Darn! However, I am glad to hear that the crime rate in LAX has dropped by 6.4% between 2004 and 2006. There were only 2,520 crimes committed in 2006 compared to 2,694 in 2004, making LAX 'one of the safest airports in the world, and one of the safest areas in all of Southern California', according to their press release. That means there were only 6.9 crimes committed per day in that airport, in 2006. That's an average of 1 crime committed every 3.5 hours.

How long did I say I'd be in the airport, again?

I just installed version 1.3.5 of Performancing for Firefox. All's well so far. No hanging, hooray.

OK, here come the tags...

Technorati Tags: technorati, performancing, firefox, tagging

I've tweaked the formatting for tags. Let's try again.

In the words of Cartman, "Respect mah authority!"

 

[OK, removing all the tag formatting has led to a 'server error'. I don't think I like this program. I may go back to adding tags manually.]

Based on an old recommendation by Steve Rubel, I decided to try out Ecto. Since I tag some of my posts manually I thought why not try some software that tags things for you.

Previously I used a Firefox extension called Performancing, but it kept on hanging my system, so I uninstalled it. Anyway it didn't handle break and paragraph tags accurately.

So far, what I do not like in Ecto is the fact that it could let users switch to any font in their system, rather than limit them to using web-friendly fonts. Also, the program took ages to start. I'll see how it goes and whether it generates any code bloat on my blog. Anyway it's just a 20-day trial.

OK, time to end this post and get some sleep. Here are some test tags! I hope they appear in the right places.

Technorati Tags: blogging, Ecto, software, tagging

(Hmm I'm back on Firefox and logged into Movable Type. What's good: Ecto cleverly switched into no-HTML mode so that my paragraph tags didn't get doubled up. What's not so good: Ecto decided to format my Technorati tags in a certain way, as you can see above. Well I don't like smaller font sizes and an alignment to the right. At least I can tweak the settings for this.)

My G5 PowerMac's been going on strong despite some hiccups. I can't say the same for its peripherals.

As the PowerMac sits in my little music studio at home, I bought the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse to cut down on wire tangle (they run on Bluetooth). The mouse required more frequent battery changes and I eventually replaced it with a Microsoft mouse which has been running more efficiently.

The keyboard fared much better. It was running fine until last month, when it kept on dying. I figured my super-heavy-duty Energizer e2 batteries had finally died after 2.5 years, so I replaced them. I didn't have the same powerful batteries to spare, so I put in some cheap ones. The keyboard worked for a while but kept on dying. At least there was a bit of light in the indicator switch.

I swopped the batteries for rechargeable ones. I made sure they were fully charged before inserting them into the keyboard. No response - not a flicker of light. I thought maybe the dirt got to the keyboard. I shook the keyboard, knocked out the dirt and gave it a good wipe.

The keyboard remained as lifeless as Optimus Prime after his epic battle with Megatron.

I finally bought the same special batteries that cost several times more than normal ones, in the faint hope that the Wireless Keyboard was a fussy eater and that by some miracle it would resurrect itself. However, the new batteries had no effect whatsoever on it. I thereby pronounced it clinically dead.

Then I checked the Apple Forums to see what people said about the product. Darn! Pretty mixed reviews and those who were unhappy, were REALLY unhappy. Well I've become one of them. Previously I'd have rated the keyboard 4 out of 5... now that it's died on me I can't say much about its durability.

I made a mistake when I went to Mustafa's department store and bought a keyboard which claimed to be Mac compatible. Firstly, it had the 'Windows' icon not the 'Apple' icon on its keys. Secondly, it wasn't even a USB keyboard! And my G5 doesn't have oldish serial ports! How could I have missed that!

So it really looks like I have to buy a proper Mac keyboard. And it's probably going to be the wired one.

While chilling out at Thinc Cafe in Second Life (SL), I had the privilege of meeting the creator of the isle, as well as his team members. Turns out that Thinc is a real-life ad agency in Singapore. They're part of the ICG group.

We all hung around the beach for a long chat. I checked out their website and learnt that they work near me. So we can actually meet for lunch one day. Now how's that for building a real community ;-)

After a while, they invited me to a shooting range. As a first-timer, I kept out of their way! They seemed to have a lot of fun. I'd want to try it myself but wasn't feeling particularly violent at the time.

View all my Flickr pics tagged Thinc Cafe for an idea of what I did with the advertising folks.

Technorati Tags: Second+Life, Thinc

'Watched Pan's Labyrinth at Vivocity today. I had been warned that it had elements of horror and fantasy, and that it was set during the Spanish Civil War.

Prior to this movie, my only exposure to the Spanish Civil War was going to the Musee Nationale Picasso in Paris half a year ago and looking at abstract paintings depicting the conflict, usually in a scene of desolation. I gathered the war had evoked a lot of anguish among the artistic community.

The show begins in a way that indicates what the ending will be - or does it? It then goes back to the beginning, when the girl and her mother travel to live with her new stepfather, a Fascist captain who could very much be equated to Hitler. Along the way, the little girl discovers an alternative world living parallel to the cruel, real world. She believes she has to perform a few missions to go back permanently to her fantasy world.

In real life, the rebels are consistently portrayed as the 'good guys' who can't quite seem to get their act together most of the time. The fascists don't come across as all evil as that seems to be the main occupation of their captain. Among the adults there is the constant theme of betrayal, a refusal to believe in miracles, and a sense of defeatism on both sides. For the child, there is the feeling of loneliness, helplessness, wanting to go back to her original home, and being unable to communicate her exact feelings to the adults.

In the fantasy world, she grapples with a huge, slimy frog and a monster with eyeballs in his palms who behaves like the beast in Jeepers Creepers. At some points I was thinking, "You foolish child! Why did you take the bait?" But then I realised everyone falls prey to the simplest of temptations. In fact the things that seems the most harmless and easy to get away with, are the most insidious of all.

I kind of expected what the ending would be like. Even with the violence, though, you would feel justice has been done.

This movie's up for 6 Academy Awards. I don't think it will sweep everything but perhaps it could be a strong contender for Best Foreign Film. It is not totally fantasy, like Lord of the Rings. It could be a 'period drama' but in the most recent sense, so I'm not sure how it will do in the Best Makeup and Art Direction categories. Best Original Score is a possibility as the main theme is very memorable, though that's all I can remember. The cinematography was fine but there weren't huge, vast landscapes because everyone was enclosed in a forest or labryinthe. As far as I could recall, there were no wide-angle shots (if that's an important criteria).

It felt very much like Cave of the Golden Rose as it captured the fighting spirit, innocence and fragility of youth, in a fantasy world where you couldn't be entirely sure who your allies were. In such desolate moments, you can't blame her for escaping into her fantasy world and imagining 'life is beautiful'.

Now, excuse me while I go and play some Second Life ;-)

Technorati Tags: Pan's Labryinth

I enjoyed Tinkertailor's earlier post on how 'viral marketing' has become contrived and misused in discussions. Even if you call it viral, creating buzz for a product or service that has little substance will probably fizzle out the campaign.

I brought up that post because I just viewed all the Democratic presidential candidates' videos announcing their intentions to run for President. The IHT article I've linked to, BTW, notes that today's politicians are relying on internet video to disseminate their messages more widely. I thought John Edwards made the best move by putting it on Youtube, the most popular site for videos.

Now, I still strongly admire Barack Obama, but don't think he meant for things to look this way in his video:

This is a very minor issue and perhaps most of you won't care what the page title says, or notice it at all. And this page title is probably displayed for all other videos uploaded to Brightcove.com. But to those who are more aware of marketing techniques, it could look contrived.

It just reminds me that when doing something high profile or sensitive, we have to choose the medium carefully. Even if our marketing and PR people have the messaging down to pat, all we need is one oversight to knock a bit of wind out of the campaign. What would be seen as a technical error or typo on a normal website could be blown out of proportion on a high-profile website.

For instance, I think I've seen e-mail campaigns where the HTML web page version ("Can't view this email? Click here") takes me to a URL with the word 'viral' in the folder path. To most people, it may not matter, but to me it gives the sense that it's contrived.

Currently, I tend to say something like, "This sounds very catchy and people are likely to forward the message. Let's hope it has a viral effect."

The producer of the message does not have the final say on whether something is 'viral'/buzzworthy or not. You, the audience, have that privilege.

Technorati Tags: viral marketing

Just found this on the HP Singapore website, one click away from the home page:

I'm chuckling. Haven't seen this kind of thing on a commercial website in ages.