Jack Neo Affair Scandal Press Conference I guess if you are a Singaporean (or living in Singapore), you would have heard of the Jack Neo affair scandal. It’s all over the news. Well, Jack Neo had a press conference yesterday morning. If you are interested, here is the video of the press conference. That’s the entire press conference. It ended in 3 minutes. I guess the press conference is necessary to “calm” the media. Lots of speculations are going around and there is a need to set things straight. But I think it’s a badly managed press conference. Don’t think it managed to calm anyone. The news report of the scandal keeps coming in. All the newspaper in Singapore are still reporting this. I find it funny that some people are saying that Jack Neo is insincere. But the thing is, does he need to be sincere to us? Does he owe us an apology? I don’t think so. This is his personal affairs. The only person Jack Neo need to be sincere now is to his wife. Which I presume he has been doing for the past few days. And yes, the press conference has been cut short. It didn’t explain anything to the public. But if you watch the video, Jack Neo’s wife was crying badly after she made her statement. After all, she has been thru a lot over the past few days. And she is not in the entertainment circle. She doesn’t know how to handle the media and all the camera flashlights. If Jack Neo continue with the press conference, people will say that he is a heartless person. If he cut short the press conference, people say he is insincere during the press conference. Both ways also wrong. Sometimes it’s tough being a human. Then there are people who say that Jack Neo shouldn’t bring his wife along. I do somewhat agree with that. But then, perhaps she is the one who wanted to attend the press conference with him to give him support? And if she didn’t attend, the media and public will speculate that the two of them have broken up. Again, both ways also wrong. The whole entire scandal is Jack Neo’s fault. I guess his career is now ruin and we won’t see any more film directed by him. He is fortunate to have a supporting wife. I think he doesn’t deserve to have such a good wife. This whole issue has become a media fanfare. And honestly, I’m pretty amused by all the woman who step out recently claiming that Jack Neo has attempted to woo them. Come on, attempting to woo you does not make you the number 2 or number 3 woman in this scandal. Stop trying to profit from this scandal. I know many fans are angry over the whole scandal. But who are we to comment if the wife has already forgiven him? I think the local media had over reported this scandal. It’s time we move on. There are bigger news out there. Like Jurong and Aljunied Town Council raising the S&C charges. Or the Romanian diplomat hit and run case. Or the budget debate. Or even the proposed change to the electoral system. It’s time the local media give Jack Neo and his wife a break. They have lots of fixing to do in this marriage. PS: It’s really a very badly managed press conference. The lighting should be brighter so that the reporters don’t need to use so much flashlights. There should also be a few security guard to stop the media from coming onto the stage and blocking the exit path. Been on Host Gator for more than a year and loving it I’ve been hosting my blog on Host Gator for more than a year already. And so far, I’m loving it. Host Gator isn’t my first webhost. I started on Dreamhost in the beginning. But it was more of a nightmare than a dream. I lost count of the number of downtimes. I still remember there was once when Dreamhost was down for 2 days. That was unacceptable. The downtime was so bad that I have their server status webpage on my bookmark. So I switched over to Host Gator more than a year ago and end my nightmare. Host Gator is pretty reliable. I only remember a couple of minor downtime which lasted a few hours. Other than that, everything is very reliable. I know that Host Gator has a website to check the status of the server, but I don’t remember the URL because I hardly need to check. And apart from their reliable uptime, their tech support is pretty good too. I remember sending them questions on how to do some setting. Instead of replying the instructions, they did the setting for me. 2 thumbs up. I don’t have much experience with web hosting. But if someone ask me to recommend a webhost, I will definitely say Host Gator. And I’m sure many other Host Gator customers will agree with me too. I’m very happy with Host Gator and I don’t foresee myself changing web host anytime soon. Review: X-Mini Happy Remember X-Mini 2 Capsule Speaker? It’s the winner for my 2009 Best Local Gadget. And you can imagine how excited I was when I went to their office to collect a review unit their latest creation, the X-Mini Happy. The X-Mini Happy, in short, is a X-Mini 2 Capsule Speaker with a SD card slot that converts it into a MP3 player. Or rather, the world’s smallest Boombox. The sound quality, to the non-audiophile me, is the same as the X-Mini 2 Capsule Speaker. The controls are fairly easy and straight forward. The jog dial basically does all the controlling. Press and hold the jog dial for On/Off. Press the jog dial for Play/Pause. Scroll the jog dial left/right for previous/next track. Scroll and hold the jog dial left/right to decrease/increase the volume. It’s a pity that the X-Mini doesn’t comes with a shuffle mode. Since there is only 1 speaker, music coming out from the X-Mini Happy speaker is in mono. Like the X-Mini 2, the X-Mini Happy also comes with a Buddy Jack for you to add more speakers. Or if you want to enjoy the music alone, you can plug in a headphone and press the mute button. This sorts of convert your boombox into a personal stereo MP3 player. Earphones are provided in the retail package. What is lacking from the retail package is a lanyard for you to hang the X-Mini Happy on your neck and use it as a MP3 player. But no worries, there is a hole for you to hook your own lanyard. The X-Mini Happy can also function as a normal Capsule Speaker when you remove the SD Card. Like the X-Mini 2, I like the way the cables coils around the speakers nicely. The X-Mini Happy has a non-removable build in battery that can be charged using the MiniUSB port. Battery life is pretty decent with 5 to 6 hours of MP3 playback or 11 hours of speaker usage. As a whole, I love the X-Mini Happy. My only complaint is that it always revert to the default volume after you turn off the power. This can be quite a problem because the default volume is pretty high. I find myself having to quickly reduce the volume whenever I turn on the power. The X-Mini Happy also doesn’t remember the exact spot where you stop your MP3. Instead, it always start from the beginning of the song that you stopped previously. The X-Mini Happy will make it’s debut at the coming IT Show (11 – 14 March 2010). Original retail price is S$119. First 100 units at the IT Show will be sold at a special price of S$99. In short: Same good X-mini 2 Capsule Speaker, now with built-in MP3 player Likes: Amazing sound quality Easy to use Portable Dislikes: Doesn’t remember previous volume setting No Shuffle mode Who voted this Ong Ah Heng into Parliament? I read with great disbelief that Mr Ong Ah Heng, a Singapore Member of Parliament, actually said this in Parliament during the budget debate. “I know of one family who complain the cleaners in their precinct are lazy and too old. They don’t want local workers who are old, they want young foreign workers. To satisfy the demand, I changed the local workers to foreign workers. Foreign workers are not a burden to us. Their presence here is not negative. Without foreign workers, things will be worse,” Mr Ong Ah Heng should be ashamed of himself for making such statement in Parliament. Has he ever questioned why the senior citizen have to work as cleaners instead of enjoying their retirement? Does he know that these senior citizen have contributed to the development of Singapore when they were younger? Why isn’t the country taking care of them when they are old? Is this how the Government treat it’s citizens who had contributed to the country? Replace them with foreign workers when they grow old. And he is doing this because of ONE complaint? So what if one day someone from his constituency complaint that the MP is too old and want a young foreign one? Is he going to sack himself and hire a foreigner to take over his job? I think Singapore is really a very unique country. Our Member of Parliament are actually taking care of the foreigners more than its own citizen. What kind of rubbish is this? Fire the older locals and hire younger foreigners? Did he check what went wrong before replacing them with foreign workers? Could he had improve the working environment so that the senior citizen could do their work better? If the senior citizen is really not performing in his/her job, could he replaced him/her with another local instead of a foreigner? Why is there a need to change all to foreign workers? Why label all senior citizen as burden just because of 1 complaint? Are older local worker really a burden to us? And most importantly, can we afford to carry this burden? Remember: We used to be THEIR burden when they were younger. Utterly disgusted that we have this kind of MP in Singapore. Has he forgotten about PM Lee’s New Year message for 2010 where he emphasized that Singaporeans are top priority for the Government. Seriously, who voted for this fellow? Ben & Jerry Free Cone Day is back!!! It’s the time of the year when everyone gets free Ben & Jerry!!! Interestingly, this year’s Free Cone Day is on 23 March. I thought usually is somewhere mid or late April? Oh well, who cares? So long as there is free Ben & Jerry!!! Woohoo! Actually hor, I also don’t know why I so excited about Free Cone Day every year. I never queue up for Free Ben & Jerry. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of Ben & Jerry Ice Cream. It’s just that I lazy to queue up. I rather pay for my own Ice Cream and enjoy it without long queues. A step backward for free speech I guess for those who follow blogs closely, especially political blogs, you would have seen the blog entry by this fellow by the name Gopalan Nair claiming that some top level Minister suffers a massive heart attack. I will not go into details here because it is a distasteful hoax and would stain my blog. In fact, the mere mention of his name makes me feel dirty. (I’ll go wash my hands after I finish typing this blog entry. My advice to you is to wash your eyes after reading) The hoax came at a very bad timing. This is a time when the new media is trying to establish its reputation as a trustworthy news source. Gopalan Nair is a moron to create such hoax and discredit the new media. Not only did he cast a bad light on the new media, he also cast a bad light on the opposition parties. I can’t believe the Worker’s Party actually field him during the 1988 and 1991 elections. But luckily for us, he is no longer in the opposition party and I’m pretty sure all creditable political parties would disassociate themselves with him. It’s a step backwards for free speech. And if you know Singapore, you know that we already aren’t that forward in terms of freedom of speech. Well done Gopalan. Look what you have done. Seriously, if you have nothing better to do, maybe you should just Go-Pa-Lan. Ask your hokkien friends if you don’t know what that means. I can already imagine how someone will quote this one freaking incident and use it to justify that Singapore new media cannot be trusted. But let’s make this clear. Gopalan is no longer a Singaporean. Whatever he do has nothing to do with the Singapore blogosphere. Do not associate his childish action to Singapore bloggers. Singapore 2010 Odyssey Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC) launched the Singapore 2010 Odyssey last Saturday at Orchard Cineleisure. The Odyssey is the first virtual world developed based on an Olympic event. Users will be able to create their own avatars, compete in games, learn more about the Olympic Games and socialize with other users. I had the opportunity to roam around Odyssey few days before the official launch. The place sort of reminds me of Second Life. When I first heard of the project, I was wondering why didn’t they just use Second Life which is a tried and tested platform. But after looking at the targeted age group and the things they are doing, it make sense for them to have their own controlled platform instead of using the open Second Life. Like Second Life, users can walk around the 3D world using your arrow control. If you are tired of walking, you can fly by pressing the F key. But unlike Second Life, you can’t choose how high to fly. Users can also perform some actions like Dance, Wave, Sit, Lie Down, Laugh by right clicking on yourself. Basic avatar customization is also available. There are several mini-games which users can compete with each other and earn points. Currently, only Archery, Swimming, Shooting, Hurdle and Basketball is available. More games will be rolled out before the start of the Youth Olympic Games. The games involve just a few buttons are very easy to play. Wish that it could be more challenging. But then, maybe it’s more suited for the targeted age group. There are also quest which users can try to complete. Like the mini-games, the quest are also very easy to complete. Perhaps the best part of the Odyssey is the social networking element. The Odyssey provides an excellent platform for YOG participants and supporters to meet each other virtually. Users can communicate via public or private chat. They can also explore the 3D virtual landmarks in Odyssey. Venue like Youth Olympic Village, Singapore Sport School, Marina Barrage and The Float @ Marina Bay are carefully modeled in 3D. More venues will be roll out before the start of Youth Olympic Games. Odyssey is not a web apps. You need to download the application to run on your PC. The only problem with Odyssey is that it does not support MacOS. Or rather, only Windows is supported. With MacOS growing in popularity among the youth, the MacOS users will be left out. As a whole, the Odyssey is a great platform. But the platform is nothing without users. Let’s hope that as we approach YOG, more and more users will sign up and join Odyssey. Register at www.singapore2010.sg/o now. Look me up when you are there. My nick is DeeKay. How to “cut” an Ethernet cable in data center? Here’s a interesting prank you can play on a sysadmin. Get a magician and “cut” an ethernet cable infront of him. Then magically joins it back. Visit Isilon Systems to see how it was being done. Actually, I sort of guessed it already. Quite a common trick. Playing iBomber in the toilet I was at Jurong point few days ago when I heard some familiar music coming out from one of the cubicle. It sound like from one of the iPhone game that I played recently. Interestingly, the game is call iBomber. I kid you not. Someone is playing iBomber while bombing the toilet bowl. Which sort of reminds me of this T-Shirt from Threadless. Actually, you can silent the phone while playing the game. How to manually calculate leap year? The recent leap year bug in the PS3 reminds me of a basic programming exercise I did when I was in poly year 1. For the exercise, we were told to write an algorithm to validate dates. It is fairly straight forward for all the month except February because of the leap year. The Gregorian calendar, which most of the countries are currently using, has this leap year thing which confuses some programmers. Leap year is a year when February has 29 days instead of 28 days. Actually, the logic is very simple. If the year is divisible by 4, it is a leap year. But if the year can be divisible by 100, it will not be a leap year unless it can also be divisible by 400. Which means the year 2000 is a leap year. But 1900 and 2100 are not leap year. 2008 and 2012 are leap year. By the way, anyone got any idea how to validate Chinese Lunar Calendar? I think the lunar calendar is much more complicated. There are some years when they repeat the entire month. Update: Just notice that the Singtel mioTV glitch also happened on 1st March. Could it be the leap year bug also? Amazing Rube Goldberg machines by OK Go Remember Ok Go? The guys that bought us the Treadmill video on Youtube? Well, they are back with another amazing video. This time, it’s a Rube Goldberg machines. COOL! OK Go – This Too Shall Pass Rip out your F1 button and throw it away Attention all Windows XP users! Do not press the F1 button when you encounter a website telling you to press the F1 button. In fact, don’t ever press the F1 button. At least not until Microsoft fix this vulnerability. Apparently, there is a vulnerability in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer. If a malicious Web site displayed a specially crafted dialog box and a user pressed the F1 key, arbitrary code could be executed in the security context of the currently logged-on user. This vulnerability affects Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 running IE6, IE7 or IE8. (Basically all version of Internet Explorer) There is no news on when this vulnerability will be fixed. Microsoft advise users to avoid pressing F1 on dialogs presented from Web pages or other Internet content. My advice to everyone is, rip out your F1 button and throw it away. Or you can change to Chrome or Firefox. Noise Singapore 2010 Noise Singapore is back for the 5th time. If you remember, I blogged about Noise Singapore last year. Noise Singapore is an initiative by the National Arts Council dedicated to creating noise about the creative talents of youths below the age of 35 in the fields of Art & Design, Music, and Photography. It aims to unearth new talent and inspire groundbreaking content from Singaporean youths, giving them the necessary exposure and skills to succeed, and providing Singaporeans from all walks of life the opportunity to actively participate in the arts instead of merely being passive audiences. From now till 10 March 2010, Raffles City exhibition space at level 3 will host the final projects from Noise Singapore’s The Apprenticeship Programme (TAP), where 25 promising young talents showcase their works. I was there last week and am pretty impressed with the works. I think it’s better than last year’s display. One art work that caught my attention was a Singapore Flag made with names of local athletes. Besides the showcase at Raffles City, the best musical talents of Noise Singapore 2010 will be performing at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre and Concourse from 5-7 March 2010. Don’t miss it! Not So Secret Lives: Crossroads I was invited to attend the blogger preview of Not So Secret Lives: Crossroads. Not So Secret Lives (NSSL) tells a story of 2 youths, Trey and Jesse, and the friends around them using a blog. The story is fictional but the issues are real. Through their blog, Trey and Jesse will talk about often taboo subjects like sex, HIV and STI. It’s like a TV drama but happening on a blog instead of TV. Cool huh? Not So Secret Lives: Crossroad is a continuation of the successful season 1 last year. But not to worry if you didn’t follow season 1. You won’t be lost when following the story in season 2. But if you are interested, you can also read about what happen in Season 1 at the website. The new season begins with Trey finding himself awake the next day morning in a hotel room, naked. And there is a strand of black hair. Ah, I guess it’s pretty obvious what happened last night. Let’s see how things turns out between Trey and Jesse. Check out Not So Secret Lives: Crossroad as the story slowly unfolds. (Warning: Heavily Flashed website with auto-play background music) You can also join their facebook group here. Sony BRAVIA Full HD 3D TV coming to Singapore this summer Sony Singapore debuts its first ever Full HD 3D TV for the home recently. As you all know, 3D TV is the hottest product for CES 2010. I guess Singapore is not spared from the 3D TV wave. Expect to see more 3D TV coming your way soon. Anyway, the 3D BRAVIA LX900 looks pretty good. Like watching 3D TV in the theaters, you need to wear a 3D glasses. Each BRAVIA 3D TV comes with 2 3D glasses and additional 3D glasses can be purchased separately. The 3D glasses are made in such a way that you can put it over your normal glasses. Sony is using Active shutter glasses technology for their 3D TV, therefore the glasses needs battery to operate. Don’t worry about the weight, it’s using just a flat battery that you commonly find in watches. The battery should be able to last for 10 hours before you need to replace it. This might be a show stopper for some. But when you see the effects of the 3D TV, you will find that all these are worth it. We had a preview on watch Movie, Documentary, Sport and Games with 3D glasses. I must say that I’m pretty impressed when watching documentary. It feels as if the TV is the Polar Bear enclosure window. Very realistic. Wasn’t impressed when watching soccer match with 3D glasses. Yes, you can see the depth, but that’s all. Hisham said he saw the ball flying towards him. I didn’t see that part. But even so, we need to remember that this is a preview. How many times do you think the camera will be able to capture such shot during live broadcast? The thing that I feel will help kick start 3D TV is gaming. We had a preview of a car racing game (Sorry, forgot the name of the game) and I love it. Can totally see myself hooked to the TV for hours playing 3D games. And Sony told us that their PS3 is able to support 3D gaming. Nice. PS: That’s what you see on the TV without 3D glasses. The movie industry is starting to roll out more and more 3D content. Last year, we saw Avatar by James Cameron. For 2010, we can expect more than 20 movies, including Alice in Wonderland, to be shot in 3D. Sony pictures also announced that the sequel of Spiderman series will be in 3D and released on 3 July 2012. Apart from the 3D TV, Sony also showcase their new BRAVIA series with internet widgets and content like Youtube, Yahoo! and Style.com. Sony will be showcasing the new 3D BRAVIA TV at their booth for this coming IT Show (11 – 14 March 2010). The Sony BRAVIA Full HD 3D TV will be available in Singapore this coming summer. I was kidding with them that with the hot weather these days, it should be considered summer already. Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Poken The folks from Poken Island, newly appointed Authorized Poken Reseller for Singapore, send me 3 Poken last week. Since I already have a Poken, why not give it out to 3 lucky blog readers instead? The design for this giveaway are Vodoo, Caveman and Bee. If you don’t know what is a Poken, check out my blog entry. 1 Poken per winner. Don’t fight lah. How to apply: Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Poken”. Closing date is this coming Thursday, 4 Mar 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details. Please also state which design you prefer to receive (or if you have no preference). I will try my best to give you the design you like. If more than 1 winner request for the same design, I will give priority to the person that I draw first. Update: Closed Nokia N97 V2 firmware is now available in Singapore FINALLY! After waiting until my neck long long, Nokia Singapore finally release the V2 firmware for Nokia N97. Or to be exact, version 21.0.045. Seems like we skipped 20.0.019. The biggest change for the new firmware is the kinetic scrolling. You can now scroll smoothly by flicking anywhere on the screen. No more dragging the tiny scroll bar at the side. Actually, this feature was already available in 20.0.019 when it was released sometime in October 09. But Singapore didn’t get that firmware update. Well, better late than never. You can only upgrade the firmware using computer via Nokia Software Updater. Can’t do it over the air. It is advisable to backup your phone before upgrading. The firmware file size is around 150mb. Oh, and after upgrading to the new firmware, go to SW update to download the latest Ovi Map. The one with free turn by turn navigation. Don’t know why Nokia didn’t include it inside the new firmware instead. What are you waiting for? Update your N97 firmware now. The S League don’t know what League Cup I was channel surfing last friday evening (Yes, I do watch TV every once in a while) when I found out that they were showing some live telecast of the S League Cup match between Tampines Rovers and Woodlands Wellington. Since there is nothing to watch on other channel, I decided to stay on that channel for a while to check out how our S League is doing. I must say it is quite bad. I’m not a soccer fan. I don’t usually watch the English Premier League like my friends. But I do watch the matches once in a while when I’m in pub or coffeeshop. And like most people of my age, I do watch the Malaysia Cup when Singapore back in the early 90s. Those were the best days of Singapore soccer. Everyone knew who is Fandi Ahmad, Malek Awab, V. Sundramoorthy, Abbas Saad, Nazri Nasir, Jang Jung, Steven Tan etc etc. I can still remember the cheer I heard from my house whenever the Lions scored. It is louder than the cheers I heard from the English Premier League. Everyone is watching the matches, be it live at the stadium or TV. But things are completely different now. If I didn’t blog about this, I guess most of you won’t know that there is a League Cup going on now. And I can bet most of you can’t name any players currently in the S League. In fact, I guess most of you can’t name all the teams. Singaporeans aren’t watching S League anymore. When it comes to Soccer, Singapore becomes a British colony like what what we used to be back in the 1800s. We support English clubs like Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal more than we support local Football Club. And I can totally understand why just by watching the League Cup for a couple of minutes. The S League is in a pathetic state. I was wondering. What are the 22 men doing in the field? Are they there to put the ball in the opponent’s goal and prevent their opponent from putting the ball into their goal? Or are they in the field for the sake of being there? I can’t help but feel that it’s the latter. I feel like they are there because it’s their job. There is no passion. No eagerness to create opportunities to score a goal. I think watching the school kids play soccer is more exciting than watching the S League. But the whole entire S League’s pathetic state is not just because of the Football Clubs. There is no support for the teams. The match was being played in a small stadium. And even so, the stadium is still very empty. Luckily there are more spectators than players in the stadium. But I would credit that to Singapore Pools. If there is no betting, I don’t know, maybe there might be more players than spectators. Who watches S League nowadays other than the betters? And the live telecast was pretty badly done. OK, it’s good that Channel 5 decides to support the S League by showing live telecast of selected matches. But the commentary was horrible. I almost fell asleep watching the commentary. I can’t help but wonder if the commenter are there because it’s his job just like the players. And yes, I know that is the League Cup and there must be a winner for the night. He keep repeating that. Or maybe perhaps there is nothing he could say. Afterall, it’s not like the English Premier League where there are action happening every seconds. The cameraman is also doing a bad job. I was watching the highlights of the first half when I notice that the cameraman have difficulties chasing the ball. There are several times when the player tries to shoot at the goal or do a fast pass and the camera loses sight of the ball for a while. And I wonder how many cameras are there in the Stadium. Most of the time, we are watching from one camera. There is no close up of the action or views from other angle. I don’t even see the face of the players. That is how pathetic state the whole S League, together with the spectators, commenters and cameraman, is. Luckily for me, I managed to stay awake to switch channel. Well, I rather watch the chinese drama which tell us that gambling is bad. Perhaps they should do one on soccer too. There is a saying that you can easily gather 11 men from any neighborhood soccer field, pit them against the S League all star team and still win. I think it would be a great challenge. I wonder if the folks at S League would accept this. We can do this friendly match during the off season. I’m sure it would be able to fill the entire National Stadium (if they still haven’t found enough money to tear it down). (Mas) Selamat two year toilet break anniversary Two year ago, at this timing, Mas Selamat Kastari, leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre. It was the largest manhunt in Singapore involving the police and army. 15 months later, he was re-captured in Johor, Malaysia. It was reported that Mas Selamat swam across the Straits of Johor using an ‘improvised flotation device’ soon after his escape. Up till now, it still amazed me that he is able to swim across the Straits when the security has been heighten. Mas Selamat is currently detained by the Malaysian authorities. No news on whether will he be send back to Singapore. “What to do, it’s happened.” Is it Goreng Pisang or Pisang Goreng? Saw this interesting blog entry by Rinaz. How do you say Banana Fritters in Malay? Is it Goreng Pisang or Pisang Goreng? Watch the video for the answer. Interesting. She has a point. Mee Goreng, Nasi Goreng, Ayam Goreng and Kway Teow Goreng all have the word Goreng behind. Which makes me wonder, who started calling it Goreng Pisang first? Hmmm….. I got this feeling that it’s direct translation from Mandarin. Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Egg Story Digital Arts School Seminar Series TWO Tickets worth $480 Visited Egg Story Digital Arts School recently and had a sneak peek at their facilities. Pretty impressed with their student’s work. The school also invest heavily on equipments. They have 1 of those 3D TV which does not require the 3D glasses. (Which is quite expensive) Seen some of the 3D works done by them. Pretty good. Egg Story Digital Arts School is having a 3 days Seminar next week which takes a closer look at Stereoscopic 3D technology. Well-known speakers such as Peter Hillman from Weta Digital who worked on Avatar and Jim Heji from Electronic Arts will be present. The Seminar also has AK Madhavan from Crest Communications expand on the business of 3D animation, Enrique Criado expand on the art of stereographic cinematography, perception and creativity while John Dillon (of Powerpuff girls and Astro boy fame) explain how to bring characters to life in 3D. Clyde De Souza and Jimmy Wong, entrepreneurs and experts in their respective fields, complete the line-up. The three full-day seminar will be followed by Q&A sessions and opportunity to network. This is the perfect platform for people within the industry, and those aspiring for a career in animation and new media to come together. Egg Story Digital Arts School is kind enough to offer me 1 ticket for the 3 day seminar to give out. The usual price of the ticket is $480.00 (50% discount for Singaporeans/PRs) Event: Egg Story Digital Arts School Seminar Series TWO Date: 3 to 5 March 2010 Time: 10am to 4pm (daily) Venue: Red Dot Traffic Museum, Gallery 1 and 2 How to apply: Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Egg Story Digital Arts School Seminar Series TWO”. Closing date is this coming Sunday, 28 Feb 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details. Or if you don’t want to try your luck on the giveaway, you can always buy the tickets here. Thanks to Egg Story Digital Arts School for making this giveaway possible. Update: Closed Happy 2nd Birthday Dee Kay Dot As Gee I’ve been blogging on this domain for 2 year already. Woohoo! Happy 2nd Birthday Dee Kay Dot As Gee! Wishing you many more good blogging years to come. Cheers! How to skip the trailers on an original DVD? Saw this interesting chart on facebook about why people pirate DVD. I must say that it brought up an interesting and valid point. It’s like DRM music. Why punish the paying customers? But actually, do you know that you can skip all these “unskipable” warning message and trailers? I heard it on the Cnet podcast recently. When the trailers are playing, press STOP, STOP then PLAY on the DVD player. That should skip those crap and go straight to the menu. It should work for all DVD players. I haven’t got the chance to try it out yet. Let me know if it works. But then, it still doesn’t give the DVD makers the excuse to put all those crap on the DVD. How many people actually knows about how to skip them? Not many, I would say. What’s the point of putting all those anti-piracy advertisements and message when the person had already paid for the DVD? Those message should be on the pirated DVD instead. Apple increase iPhone 3G download cap to 20mb This came as a surprise. Apple increase the iPhone 3G download cap to 20mb recently. It is good that Apple decided to increase the cap. But honestly, I think the cap is crap and we should be allow to download any file size we want on 3G. We paid for the data and the phone, so why can’t we use it the way we want? If you remember, I blogged about th iPhone 10mb 3G download cap previously and mentioned how stupid it was. One more reason on why you shouldn’t create your website entirely on flash I’ve blogged about 10 reason why you shouldn’t make your website entirely on flash previously. If you are a website designer, please read them. In case you are still not convinced, here is another: 11. Adobe have yet to fix a bug that crashes the browser which was reported in September 2008. (Warning: The site contains a flash that will crash all flash running on your browser, regardless which tab they are running on. Although it doesn’t crash the browser entirely, it is advisable for you to save everything before you click on it) I know this applies to all Flash, not just website that is built entirely on Flash. But imagine if your entire website crash because of this bug. School should teach students to stop designing website entirely on Flash. It’s ok to have snippets of flash on your site. But never ever build a website entirely on Flash. Or have too much Flash. PS: I feel like compiling a list of all the websites that are built entirely on Flash and point out all their flaws so that the website developers will wake up their ideas. Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: $40 OverEasy Voucher Here is a pair of $20 OverEasy Vouchers that I got from Patlaw’s blog birthday party. But since I’m too old to chiong nowadays, I decide to give it out to 1 lucky reader before it expires. In case you don’t know, OverEasy is a bar and diner at One Fullerton. The issue date is 27 Jan 2010 and it is valid for 3 months. There is no mention if the 2 vouchers can be used concurrently on a single receipt, so please check before ordering. How to apply: Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: $40 OverEasy Voucher”. Closing date is this coming Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details. PS: I understand that the Minister for Finance, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, is delivering the Singapore Budget 2010 at the same moment as this blog entry is published. Let’s hope he has a better giveaway than me. Update: Closed. By the way, some people said that my giveaway is better than Mr Tharman’s. Haha. First Look: BlackBerry Storm 2 When I heard that RIM is sticking with their tactile feedback touchscreen for their BlackBerry Storm 2, I though that they never learn their lesson from BlackBerry Storm 1. When I reviewed the Storm 1, the biggest problem is the tactile feedback touchscreen. It is first of it kind and like all things that are the first generation, it comes with problems. The touchscreen is just hard to use. But I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried the BlackBerry Storm 2. RIM fixed the dreaded tactile feedback touchscreen problem. And I’m pretty impressed with it now. Before I got my hands on the Storm 2, I thought tactile feedback touchscreen will never work. Well, RIM proved me wrong and now I’m beginning to see the future of this technology. Those who are used to the normal touchscreen will need sometime to get used to the tactile feedback. That’s because on a normal touchscreen, you just need to tap on the screen to click on an item. For tactile feedback screen, you need to “push” the screen down in order to click on the item. Tapping will only select the item. I think it just need a while to get used to this new method of input. I guess the primary reason why RIM used tactile feedback screen for their touchscreen phone is because most of their customers are used to physical Qwerty keyboard. The tactile feedback screen mimic a physical keyboard pretty well. I guess it would be the best way to get someone who love a physical keyboard to hop on the touchscreen. But 1 thing that RIM didn’t fix is the virtual keyboard. When you placed your finger on top of a letter, the letter does not show up at the top or side of your finger. This makes it hard to tell which letter you are pressing. I wonder if the BlackBerry API allows 3rd party developers to do a new virtual keyboard. As a whole, I love the newly improved BlackBerry Storm 2. Played with it for around 10 minutes and didn’t find any problems other than the virtual keyboard. The improved tactile feedback screen is pretty well done and I don’t mind typing long emails with it now. The BlackBerry App World is getting better and better. Now, if only we can buy application in Singapore. That will be even better. ShadyURL Check out this website that convert your URL into something very suspicious looking. I’ve just tried it on my blog and this is the URL it gave me. http://5z8.info/38–start.spamBot–this-ip–_e8h0m_autoinstall Would you dare to click this sort of link? Killer heels Agyness Deyn, English model and singer, fell down twice while on the runway during Naomi Campbell’s Fashion For Relief-Haiti Show at Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week. I keep saying that some of the fashion on runway are just not feasible. If the professionals can’t walk a short distance without falling in those heels, I wonder are how the average mortals going to wear it. In case you are wondering, that’s a Burberry heels. While some people are criticizing Agyness Deyn, I wonder why nobody questioned the designer of the heels. I must say that I admire how she laugh at herself when on her knees. Her courage to pick herself up after the 2nd fall, remove the heels and carry on with the show deserve a standing ovation. She even tweet about it after the show. How many of us are able to remain so calm when you fall down on infront of the world? Quote from Carrie in Sex And The City Season 4: I had a choice. I could slink off the runway and let my inner model die of shame, or I could pick myself up, flaws and all, and finish. And that’s just what I did. Because when real people fall down in life, they get right back up, and keep on walking. If you think PDF files are safe, think again If you think PDF files are safe, think again. Recent reports shows that rogue PDFs account for 80% of all exploits in Q4 2009. That’s a huge jump from Q1 of 2009 where malicious PDF files account for 56% of all exploits tracked by ScanSafe. Interesting results. I’ve heard about PDF exploits for quite some time but never expect such a huge percentage. I was actually expecting websites or browser exploits to top the chart. Perhaps one of the reason why PDF exploits are up is because of the wide adoptions of PDF and the mentality that PDF files are safe. Afterall, they are just PDF files. What damage can they do? Right? Well, actually quite a lot. Like allowing arbitrary code execution or change security settings. As usual, it is best to practice safety rules when you are online. Remember to always keep your softwares up to date.