Our peace of mind

is there miracle in this world?

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Last Monday, just as I checked into the hotel at Geneva, I was saddened by the news reports broadcasted by the likes of CNN and BBC channels.

An Air France Airbus jet, En route  to Paris, disappeared 4 hours after it took off from Rio de Janerio. It appeared that the jet had sent some automated electrical fault messages to the control tower before vanishing in the air. The storm had appeared to cause some electrical failure, and consequently endangered the flight operation.

As I first heard this shocking news, I was hoping that it’s just a case of plane losing radio contact with the control tower temporarily, was circling around the stormy weather, etc. Anything but a crash. There was hope for some miracles, and I am sure every human being on this earth would have prayed for that.

When the rescue team found out that the debris and oil slick  discovered earlier are not related to the Airbus jet, suddenly there’s hope again. But yesterday, with the rescue team finally confirmed that the recovered seat’s serial number belongs to the lost jet, and two bodies were found, all hopes were dashed completely.

Is there really miracle in this world? I don’t know.

old flower eyes

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yeez gave me a small printed card showing the Hong Kong’s MTR network. I was squinting my eyes, trying to identify the MTR station that yeez was pointing to. My mind was wondering what the hell would a company print such illegible card. Then I realised something might be amiss, and the moment I took off my specatcle, lo and behold! Those tiny nano-centimeter-sized words were suddenly magnified by 10 times!

Must be the sign of aging eyes, I can’t imagine the days I have to constantly flip up my spectacles now, just to read the small prints. Certainly not prescribing to a set of “old flower spectacles”!

Week 22 snippets

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I usually don’t track week by their number. But as I was building and releasing the new version of Calendar applet for PointUI, I was made aware that it was week 22 last week, as I blog about events over the weekend.

 

Firstly, of course it’s the new calendar applet I have released over the weekend. Not exactly an “official” release, but more of a release candidate, so that I can validate the applet’s device compatibility especially with non wide vga devices.

screenshot-v20-2  screenshot-v20-3  screenshot-v20-1

There’s a breakthrough in this major version release, as I have built an external program to query the PIM database in Windows Mobile, so that I can display the busy status for each day in the calendar’s month view. While this is possible in PointUI scripting engine, but it’ll result in a big performance hit. Since this is the first time I have ventured into POOM (pocket outlook object model) , I thought it was a personal breakthrough for me as well 😉

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Miracles do happen

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two weeks ago, my tablet pc went bonkers. first my smart card reader couldn’t read my smart card. Then my mouse touchpad and trackpad, stopped working right after that. then my tablet runs excessively hot, as if the fan has stopped working. It was so hot that I bet I can fry an egg on it, but I reckon it’ll be messy after that.

fast forward, two weeks later, i.e. now, suddenly my mouse touch/track pad is working, on its own, without me interventing (in fact, I tried to re-install drivers earlier on but no avail).

The cpus are also working less hot now, so much cooler that I can hold the laptop with my hand without being scalded 😉

Miracles do happen, and I hope more will come over the next few weeks 😎

moving again

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I moved again. I was referring to my blog.

In the last 10 years, I have been switching between blog hosting service  like blog-city.com and web hosting service, for at least 3 times. This time round, I have switched to free blog hosting @ wordpress.com. Well, not exactly free, since I have to purchase $10 credit to have my domain linked to the free blog.

It’s mainly driven by the fact that my web + email hosting subscription is expiring soon, and it will cost me $50USD a year to renew. Considering that I could get my email hosting service @ Google Apps free, I have decided to stop all these paying service.

Time has changed in the last decade, where value-added hosting service has become more prevalent, and as a result, offer much more rich service. Hopefully this time round, the switch is going to stay for long.

Long time no blog

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It’s been long awhile since I last blog.

Have been very very busy with work, just imagine having teleconference till 2am and then in few hours time, have to wake up to tele-meet again at 8am. To say that it’s a hectic life is a gross understatement!

Flew over to Geneva, Switzerland last week for a business meeting. The pre-trip was a dramatic one. Found out that I had misplaced my passport as I was packing for the trip just 5 hours before the flight time.  Started to get panick when I could not locate my passport one hour later, and decided to just drive down to ICA and try my luck if I could get my passport replaced. Amazingly, beyond my belief, I got it in 30 minutes, after explaining to the officers in charge and filing a lost report. Had video conferencing while in Geneva.

Took some video and photos but decided not to post here since it can be very personal. But there’s a similiar video in youtube, that capture the exact experience.

Xperia Xperience

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I confess, the temptation of new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is too much for me to resist.

That said, my first impression of the phone, was not exactly a “love on first sight” kind of feeling, as I dropped by Sony Ericsson concept store to check out the the phone. The phone does look cool on first look (so was the cute sales executive), but my primary concern has always been the keyboard and therefore I spend quite alot trying to experience the keyboard rather than fiddling around its other uber cool features.
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thinking aloud … takes and rants

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One of the good thing about my latest IT gadget acquisition (read: HTC Touch Pro) is that I could take good/decent quality photos anytime, anywhere, unless I happen to be phone-less which is rather rare.  And, picture tells a thousand words, and I thought I would share some of the interesting photos I took in my last Houston business trip, which by the way, is horri-gi-ble. Taking 27 hours of flight journey to and 28 hrs back, and cramping in an economy flight, is no joke. Anyway, enough of rant, and here’s some photos I captured.

First off, I was reading USA Today on the plane, and come across this comic, which is so hilarious (at least to me), mocking the current global economic crisis

 If you can’t view the comic properly, it says Ornithological Guide to Mortage News; Predatory Lenders are just like Buzzard, Wall street execs are just like Turkey, Regulators are like Ostrich, Pols (I think they are referring to Politician) are no different from Peacock, and investors are just Chicken. Funny, no?

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Travelling this week …

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Thanks to the company’s travel policy, I have to travel the lowest fare flight available (ok, to be fair, any flight that’s no more than $300 than the cheapest available flight) and in the end, I have to take United Airline, stop over at Hong Kong and Chicago, before arriving at Houston, 27 hours after I left Singapore!

At Chicago, I decided to turn on my Touch Pro quickly to check out the BPL result. Thank goodness, Liverpool won 3-2 away against Manchester City, after being 2-0 down on half-time. That made my day anytime, and the flight fatigue was overshadowed by the joyous feeling.

At Houston, I went over to Hertz to collect the rented car. No “Never Lost” system this time round, again courtesy of company’s travel policy. Well, I was never prepared to ‘study’ the route to the hotel, especially considering how tired I will be after a long flight journey. I am sure my brain will need some guidance, and hence I had brought along my travelling car kit comprises of phone charger and cradle. After setting them up, and positioning my Touch Pro, I turned on the Garmin Mobile XT installed on my Touch Pro, and crossed my finger that I could get acquistion fix, fast. It didn’t disappoint me, thanks to the Quick GPS, as Garmin Mobile XT received the fix within a minute, and I manage to get my way to the hotel within 30 mins, with the usual familiar navigation guidance voice.

Touch Pro to my rescue again, thankfully.

Reminiscence of the old days

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Time flies. All it takes is for one to pause for a moment, to realize that.

I had wanted to convert all the hard copies of my old film photos into digital form, for a long time.  All this while I had been dragging my feet on this, because I know it will be a tedious scanning process given hundreds of photos I had on hand. Yesterday, I decided to start the conversion process, as I know it is just a matter of time, and sometimes you just need that cranked start …

Then I come across some of the photos taken in 1999. Taken just slightly less than a decade, I realize we appeared to be much more happier then. And looking at some of the photos, I rediscover a lot of things, why Kang has always been my favorite nephew, why I was attracted to yeez, etc.

Those were the days.

 

 Photos scanned into the album 1999 Family and Friends Gathering Album