Never would I ever imagine having a pet at home, even more so for dog. But ever since Cody, our Corgi-breed puppy join us 3 weeks ago, our lifestyle has changed dramatically (although part of it has to do with my father’s stroke incident).
Internet Scam
Internet Scam is really prevalent everywhere, and just these few days I came across two when doing some research in the internet.
First, I was trying to find out more about the breed of my Cody, and came across this site trainpetdog.com, which appears to have wealth of information on how to specially train Corgi dogs. As I read further, I see the type of sales tactic very similiar to those TV commercial advertisements that try to sell products or services at a exceptional special discount. You know those that says something like, “Normally it cost $100, but for limited time, we are offering it at $50 instead, and if you call within the next hour, it’ll be yours for $29.90, and you get extra free gift…”
The same thing for TrainPetdog.com … They said, and I quote,
Now, given that the best professional trainers will charge you nothing less than $1200 to train your Dog, given how much frustration and stress our membership site is going to save you from, given how much peace of mind our membership site is going to provide you, and given how much time and money our membership site is going to save you, we could have easily charged you at least $197 for access to our membership site. But we are not going to!
Why?
Because the ebooks will be presented to you as online content, we will not have to incur any printing and fulfillment costs. And we want to pass on those benefits to you.
So, we slashed down the price to $97. But, even at $97, we know that not many Dog owners are going to be able to afford to get access to our membership site…
We absolutely adore Dogs and we want as many Dog owners as possible to benefit from the secret tips and techniques described in our new membership site…
So, we have decided.. on a much more affordable discounted price…
If you order anytime by midnight, tonight Friday, May 28, 2010 11:59:59 pm
you will get the Membership at only $37However, please note that the price of $37 is a discounted price. We fully intend to increase the price to $97 very soon as there is no way we can afford to keep the price at $37 for too long…So, if you order now, you can save $60!
But, if you decide not to order now, and in case we withdraw our discounted price of $37, you will have to pay the much higher price of $97
As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably so. So I google searched and found this site that talks about how this site is being a scam site. Somebody even bothered to setup a domain and a site just to expose the scam. So apparently, one get nothings at all after paying that $37, despite a few pages worth of promises described by the Nancy Richards @ TrainPetdog.com. I decided to do a test and subscribed to the same mailing list using another name and email address, and I get the exact same email respond, except the deadline of the special offer is now a day later! Whatever the case, its clear this is a scam site that tries to take advantage of human’s greed, in this case, hoping to pay just that $37 for something that’s worth $197 (or $1200 depending on what you believe in)
On separate note, I was looking at ways to watch the coming South Africa World Cup football online, in a legitimate way. No way I am going to pay $70 just to watch that 64 matches live, and its not as if I have the time and energy to watch every single match. Then I came across Free-Football.tv, which promises to watch unlimited number of football matches (World Cup, Barclay Premier League, etc,) just for $19.90. Alittle skeptic with the (good) deal, I decided to google again on the legitimacy of this service. Turns out this is yet another scam site, as the google result reveals that the site is basically selling something that’s free on the internet. I have emailed the owner of the site, and we shall see what came out from those correspondences.
Some statistics about Merlion NG v 1.70
379 downloads, 729 clicks.
That’s the statistic of the latest Merlion NG 1.70. And Merlion NG v 1.80 should be out soon.
Long week
This week must be one of those long unforgettable weeks in my life.
We got a puppy Corgi last weekend, on the 9th May, and had thought that our weeks ahead will be filled with taking care of the puppy. How I wish it was just that, even if it meant cleaning the puppy’s poo twice a day.
On 11th May, Tuesday morning, dad suffered a stroke and he was in a daze sitting on the floor, presumably fell after the stroke took place. We called the ambulance, rushed him to the nearest hospital, and after hours of resuscitation and observations, he was finally put into the acute stroke unit ward for further treatment & observation. He went through a couple of scans, and doctors confirmed that he had a large stroke, damaging his front left hemisphere of his brain. Consequently, the ischemic stroke had affected the mobility of his right body, and his speech ability.
We were worried, and at some point, frightened by the incident. Dad had always been very independent and self proclaimed to be healthy, so his stroke incident really took us by surprised. On hindsight, we could have taken some cue from some slowness in his actions & slurred speech over the last few days, but we had somewhat dismissed them thinking that its part of his aging process. So to some extent, I felt guilty of his current condition, and just pray and hope that he would recover well enough so that he can continue a normal life routine, albeit with some form of assistance like walking stick and such.
As anything, we have to look at things positively, and so I like to think that the incident has brought our family closer than before. Personally, I learnt to be even more appreciative of people around me, and never take them from granted, especially with my family members. May God bless him and wish him a speedy recovery …
Merlion NG v1.61 creates its own milestone
Ever since I started building the new series of Merlion Leo ROM, I started to see more interest probably because it’s based on the new Windows Mobile 6.5 platform. Lately, I have updated the ROM with newer version of drivers and the necessary configurations, and that was a huge performance booster!
There must be some correlation between the number of clicks the ROM download link got, versus the performance of the ROM. Within 2 days of release, it got more than 200 of clicks. Okay, not a great deal for the mainstream ROMs like Miri or Energy, or the actual download is approximately just 3/4 of of the clicks. Regardless,that’s a significant milestone for Merlion NG series in my humble opinion.
The demographic of my user base is pretty much expected. Since I have build the Chinese Simplified Input/Display support, I would naturally anticipate most of the users to come from a Chinese populated location. So users from Singapore & China made up close to 60% of Merlion NG series total user base. What’s interesting is I do have users from the Europe & Middle East countries.
If you have not flashed the latest Merlion NG series ROM (v1.65), you should because you never know what you have been missing until you have tried it. Some had even described the ROM to be on steroid, or on drug cocktail! Don’t believe? See the below performance chart of the NG series ROM performance.
If the chart above does not give you much context, just imagine this. A stock (i.e. official) ROM would only achieve a total SPB benchmark index of 1590. In comparison to the latest release of Merlion NG series, the latter is 2 times faster! Even for the first generation of Merlion series, v2.68 is generally one of the better performing ROM among the rest of HD2 custom ROMs, so I will not be surprised, if we were to put a ranking table to compare the performance of all the custom ROMS in xda-developers or htcpedia, Merlion NG series should be in the top ranks, if not right at the top 😉
what’s Liverpool chance?
Being a Liverpool fan, I say we shot ourselves in the foot for not bagging the 4 points in the recent matches against the hamsters ( Birmingham and Fulham) having drew in both matches. Otherwise, we would in driving seat by now, having 2 points clear above Spurs, albeit with a game in hand. As a matter of fact, we have lost too many points throughout the whole season, that honestly speaking, to clinch a 4th spot, not only is an impossible task, it’s also not what we deserved.
Nevertheless, putting on the analytical hat, here’s my analysis of what could happen, ideal and yet realistic.
Spurs has 3 games remaining, against Bolton (Home) , City (Away) and finally Burnley (Away)
Manchester City has 3 games remaining too, against Aston Villa (Home), Spurs (Home), and finally West Ham (Away)
Aston Villa has 2 games remaining, just like us, and they will be playing against City (Away) and Blackburn (Home)
We have to play Chelsea at home, and wrapping the season by playing against Hull away.
With soccer, anything is possible, but if we consider just a pragmatic idea situation as follow
- Spurs draw with Bolton and Man City, beat Burnley. Gains5 points as a result, aggregating a final total of 69 points.
- City draw with Villa and Spurs, beat West Ham. Gains 5 points in total, aggregating a final total of 68 points.
- Villa draw with City, and draw Blackburn. Gain 4 points in total, aggregating a final total of 68 points.
- We win the rest of our 2 matches, against Chelsea and Hull, and we have a final aggregated points of 68.
So you see, Spurs is the likely winner of the last Champions league spot. It’s hard to imagine Spurs dropping points against Burnley, but hopefully they do against Bolton. If they win this coming weekend match against Bolton, then its a lost cause for us.
For us to win against Chelsea, it’s also an unimaginable task, although considering that we have won the double against them in previous season.
So cross our fingers and toes, and may the best team gets the coveted spot.
Merlion Leo goes next gen
After a week of burying under work, I finally begin my long weekend by building my Leo ROM using the latest Windows Mobile 6.5 COM5 platform (build 23554)
The cooking process was smooth sailing and the result is quite satisfactory. Please head over to the XDA developer thread to follow the development progress, if you are keen to try it on your HD2.
A day at Universal Studio Singapore
Over the weekend, we went to the newly opened Universal Studio Singapore, located at Resort World Sentosa. We bought the tickets at full price ($72 for adults, $52 for kids below 12, and $36 for seniors above 65) but because it’s still in the soft opening period, we were given $15 of rebates in form of vouchers ($10 meal voucher, $5 retail voucher).
Welcome to Universal Studio Singapore
Having been to the Universal Studio in Los Angeles 10 years ago, I was very excited when I heard that Universal Studio will be opening one in Singapore. For me, it’s the theme park for adults (although I’m sure the kids especially the teenages will like it) and would prefer Universal Studio over DisneyWorld anytime. So naturally I went with alot of high expectations and anticipations.
The park is made up of 7 themes (or zones). They are Far Far Away Land, Ancient Egypt, The Lost World, Madagascar, Sci-fi City, Hollywood, New York, in the order of fun and entertainment factor, in my opinion of course. Madagascar and Sci-fi City, would be more interesting if not for the closed or in-construction rides. The Madagascar dance was very entertaining though. The closure of Battlestar Galatica is a big bummer, especially when there’s nothing left in Sci-fi City except for a lame “Accelerator” ride, which is nothing more than just spinning and spinning in a cup. Continue reading
Follow the Tweet Tweet
Ever since I ventured into ROM cooking, I thought I would use twitter to communicate the release of my ROM.
I always thought twitter is just another facebook, or as a micro-blogging tool, I never knew the significance of it until I started twitting recently.
The power of twitter, is its simplicity. SMS is a simple yet powerful communication. And twitter is just an internet version of SMS.
I never know why would anybody follow a twitt. Even more so I could not comprehend why somebody would ever follow my twitt. But now I know why, and have got quite a few since I ‘officially’ twitt a month ago.
Tweet Tweet.
zen online journal 