Monthly Archives: February 2012

Travel — No Comments
28
Feb 12

Bali is not in Thailand

We found that out when we started planning our trip. Bali is actually an Indonesian island, lying between Java and Lombok. I’m so looking forward to the one week in Bali. Slightly less than a year ago, I visited Vietnam. Slightly less than a year away, I’m planning to visit Canada. Life is good.

Most of our flights and accommodation have been sorted out. We haven’t really planned what to do while we are there but it’ll definitely involve chilling out and food.

I’ve just bought more souvenirs for when we go back to our hometowns. We’ve got food, health products, and beauty products. I’m still not convinced New Zealand chocolates will survive the trip. Anyway, weird shaped chocolates will still taste just as sweet.

Photography — No Comments
26
Feb 12

What to do with all the photos?

Over the past 5 years, I have built up a 50 GB collection of photos. I have just set up a new Flickr account as part of my rebranding exercise, for backing up my photo collection and showing off the few nice photos I’ve taken. There is no point taking photos if they are just going to take up space on a hard drive.

For the past few days, I’ve been going through the photos, deleting any bad ones in the process. I’ve also deleted some of the duplicates shots and meaningless photos. Some of the photos bring back memories; one of the primary reason I got into photography. My girlfriend will gladly testify that I’m a real Dory.

I’m also keen to improve my photography skills to a point where I can make a secondary income off it. Now, this is a lot more challenging. The single canvas print I’ve been putting up on TradeMe isn’t getting much interest. I’ve also been too slack to start on my Shutterstock portfolio. To be honest, microstock isn’t really where I want to be heading anyway. I really should be returning to the basics; go out and take lots of photos.

Technology — No Comments
23
Feb 12

Gorilla Glass

I first learnt of Gorilla Glass when the iPhone 4 first came out. I don’t own an iPhone 4 but my HTC Sensation also features a Gorilla Glass touch display. Gorilla Glass is claimed to be scratch resistant. When I made the decision to forgo the screen protector, it felt like I was taking a huge gamble. I’ve been using my HTC Sensation for nearly a year now and have accidentally put a few scratches on the casing, which is to be expected when you drop a phone; but so far the screen has managed to stay scratch free. I do keep my phone in a pouch normally but I reckon Gorilla Glass has delivered on its claim.

Random — No Comments
21
Feb 12

The red italic lowercase Georgia v

One thing I find myself spending too much time on is branding. I have been reinventing myself every few years. In the past, I tried to keep my online persona separate from my real life. That is beneficial from a security perspective as it provides anonymity, but I find it hard to maintain a clean separation. The real life always seem to spill over into the digital world somehow, revealing my real identity. Therefore, I have decided to embrace my real identity, which makes things much easier to maintain.

I love the simplicity of the red italic lowercase Georgia v.

Technology — No Comments
20
Feb 12

iPod software update – 777.8 MB

It seems to be a trend these days to package software updates into ridiculously huge packages. I do see the benefits in some cases; but most of the time, it just forces users to download lots of components that they don’t actually need nor want. It wastes both time and bandwidth.

The better solution with large packages, is to provide a small web installer application that enables the user to choose the components that they would like to install. The web installer then downloads only the components that the user have chosen. A nice feature that I would like to see in web installer is the ability to save the downloaded components. Often, there is no easy way for users to save these components; which is handy when they need to reinstall the application.