The Elite Feeling

She's such a beauty
The aura she oozes
Her lines
And her curves
The feeling of lust grows in me
Prompted me to part with my Papillon
Thanks for the time together
Your love
And your affection
You shall always be my first
You shall live in my heart forever
I shall always remember
Viva la Papillon Mi Corazon
Je t'aime

Mark Gary

Microsoft vs Apple (The Battle of Retail Stores)

Got this off PCWorld and I think that it is quite a good and funny share with you all :-)

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1) Instead of Apple's sheer walls of glass, Microsoft's stores will have brushed steel walls dotted with holes -- reminiscent of Windows security.

2) The store will have six different entrances: Starter, Basic, Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. While all six doors will lead into the same store, the Ultimate door requires a fee of $100 for no apparent reason.

3) Instead of a "Genius Bar" (as Apple provides) Microsoft will offer an Excuse Bar. It will be staffed by Microsofties trained in the art of evading questions, directing you to complicated and obscure fixes, and explaining it's a problem with the hardware -- not a software bug.

4) The Windows Genuine Advantage team will run storefront security, assuming everybody is a thief until they can prove otherwise.

5) Store hours are undetermined. At any given time the store mysteriously shuts down instantaneously for no apparent reason. (No word yet on what happens to customers inside).

6) Stores will be named Microsoft Live Retail Store with PC Services for Digital Lifestyle Enthusiasts.

7) Fashioned after Microsoft's User Account Control (UAC) in Vista, sales personnel will ask you whether you're positive you want to purchase something at least twice.

8) Xbox 360 section of the store will be organized in a ring -- which will inexplicably go red occasionally.

9) DreamWorks will design a scary in-store theme park ride called "blue screen of death."

10) Store emergency exits will be unlocked at all times so people can get in anytime they want even if the front doors are locked.

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Cheers

Mental Health Vaccine

OK...this would be the third and last of the Mental Health Series (Part 1 and Part 2). Basically, some basic housekeeping rules that we need to keep in check to prevent our minds to stray to the dark side :-p

1) Sense of god/spirituality

- sense of belonging to your religion, something that you can fall back to and seek refuge if things don't work out the way they should

2) Sense of responsibility

- as we grow up (not older :-p), we need to understand that we bear heavier responsibilities and whatever that we do will have its consequences, be it at work or in our own family. And we must be responsible for what we do.

3) Sense of reality

- not everything that we hope for will just come out of thin air. We need to work hard for it and always hope for the best and expect the worst :-) We need to know that we are not living in Wonderland after all...

4) Common sense

- sometimes, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the things that are going on around us. In fact, most of the time, we just need to analyse and see things through with nothing other than our common senses. It's not really that difficult, really :-)

5) Sense of humour

- as has been stressed in the previous 2 series, having a sense of humour would seriously do our minds good. Having something to laugh about, no matter how ridiculous, man...it feels good :-)

So that's all folks. Hope that you benefited from these information as much as I did :-)

Cheers

The Geek War

Prior to 2007, I was a PC guy, working with Windows XP and beta-testing Vista before I started to get frust over the slowness of the Windows (both) while compiling my LaTeX codes for my postgraduate studies. That's when I started to switch to Linux, trying most of the famous distros out there, i.e. Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, gOS, PCLinuxOS etc.

And hence, I turned into a Linux guy. And honestly, I found that Linux is better than Windows in many ways, except for playing games. The system seldom hangs, there's Compiz-Fusion (now that's what I call Wow!!!), the fonts look nicer onscreen and most importantly, whenever I format the HD and reinstall the system, I don't have to spend like half a day to find and install all the drivers of the hardware that I have.

After 2 years of playing with Linux, I finally took the plunge and got myself a MacBook late last year. So I've been a Mac guy since (man... imagine the identity crisis that I, a geek had to go through :-p). So how does Mac compared to Linux? Well, in terms of stability and security, both are free most malicious stuff out there at the moment, so both are equal on this part. But for practicality and ease of use, Mac has a slight upperhand over Linux. For instance, getting Chinese input support in Linux is still not that easy to setup. And for newbies, working with the Terminal in Linux is quite cumbersome and is not something that most people would like doing. But overall, I still think that both are better than Windows, unless if you are talking bout playing games.

So here's my ranking list for the 3 OS'es (just my personal opinion, no pun intended :-) ):

1) Mac (Leopard)

2) Linux

a) gOS Space (the last that I used before switching to Mac)

b) gOS 3.0 Gadgets

c) PCLinuxOS 2007

d) Ubuntu

e) and the rest of the distros that I've tried in no specific order

3) Windows

a) XP...duh!!

b) 7 beta (better than Vista but still hanging)

c) 98 (the King before XP)

d) 95 Plus! (could still remember the hype back then)

e) 2000

f) Vista and Me (equally bad and frustrating to use to me)

Cheers

Cool Place to Hang Out

It's Sunday yesterday!! Yippiee!!! Was taking a break from my busy schedule and decided to try this new place outside my house, bout 2 mins drive from home :-) It's called "Victoria Bakery Cafe", a sorta pastry cafe with a cosy environment and some nice jazz music (and free WiFi too). Well, when I was there, they were playing some numbers by Louis Armstrong mah.... :-p

Overall, the food was not too bad too. At least, the price is cheaper than Secret Recipe and the more commercialised likes. I had an Iced Lemon Tea (RM2.80) and a piece of Opera cake (RM5.00). They even had a special Weekend Set which comprises a glass of Iced Lemon Tea and a Spaghetti for just RM7.90. But no Brownies :-(

So my dear Crappers' Gang, looks like we have a new place to 'Blow Water' now hehehe.... the only cons is that the cafe closes at 9.30pm, not a problem since I seldom stay out too at night often :-p

So let's have it there the next time we have our 'meeting' :-p Will try to post more pics of the cafe soon :-)

Cheers

iPhone OS 3.0: A Personal Review

Updated Belle to OS 3.0 recently and have been spending some time to testdrive it ever since. First impression wise, it's much faster than 2.2 before this (I didn't upgrade to 2.2.1). And most of all, not sure if I'm the only one with this experience, the battery lasts longer too, not that much, maybe bout 10% or so (that's 1-2 hours in my chart). But hey, it's better than nothing, rite? :-)

I think the first thing that you would notice on the Springboard of OS 3.0 is the new app called 'Voice Memos'. Basically, those voice recorders that are being sold on the AppStore can close shop now that Apple had made an official one being part of the core apps offered as default in OS 3.0.

The Voice Memos app on the Springboard with a very nice Mic icon

The main interface of the app

Tap the button on the left to record and the right button to view all saved voice clips. With your audio memos, there are few things that you can do. For instance, tapping onto the blue arrow beside your recording gives you options to trim your clip, throwing away the parts that you don't want.

The collection of saved memos

And of course, you can even share your audio clip, via email.

Not bad given that sometimes, it's faster and more efficient having voice memos rather than typing them out using Notes. Comes in real useful especially to record the minutes of a meeting.

OK...to the core applications now. First thing that you might notice is the landscape view support for the core apps, i.e. Mail, Stocks, Notes and SMS. Remember the time when almost every user find the landscape keyboard in Safari is so much easier to tap on compared to the portrait one? Well, now you got it. You can now key in your SMS-es, notes and emails on the landscape keyboard in 3.0.

A nice touch really. Not only that, Stocks can now be viewed in landscape mode, showing a fullscreen of the graph. And in Stocks too (portrait view), you can now access more info about the company of interest via the new section where the graph used to be. Swiping left or right now reveals more stats values as well as the latest news about the company.

New info at the bottom of the Stocks app

As for the camera app, there's a slight change in the interface, most notably is the thumbnail of the latest photo taken, located at the bottom left of the app. However, since Belle is an iPhone 2G, there's no video recording support :-( This looks quite ridiculous to me as I personally think that it's more of a software matter than a hardware one. If I could record video using Cycorder from Cydia, I don't see any reason why Apple can't make one for the 2G version as well.

OK...I shall rant no more. Now let's look at another upgrade found in OS 3.0, one that should have existed since 1.x IMHO - Cut, Copy and Paste (nope, I'm not ranting :-p).

Basically, this function lets you to cut, copy and paste text on the iPhone, and it's not just limited to one app at a time. You can copy a string of text in Safari and paste them into Mail, for example. So, it's applicable across all platforms, supposedly. Haven't tested it on all Cydia apps that I have yet.

But now that it has finally arrived on 3.0, I shall complain no more. To undo the changes, just give your iPhone a shake. That's it.

The other upgrades that I welcome with open arms were SMS forwarding and individual SMS deleting. In the SMS app, just tap onto the 'Edit' button on the top right and you can select whichever SMS that you would like to delete/forward. Again, these functions should have been there from the start, so I'm quite happy that they are here now at last.

And for those who make use of the Push notification on their apps, i.e. IM+ or Beejive, you can now access the setting under Settings > Notifications. Was testing with IM+ the other day, but the Push notifications didn't work for me. Maybe I was trying to Push through Gmail and not YahooMail...not sure. Gotta experiment further and see how it goes :-/

And lastly, the implementation of the famous Spotlight on Leopard into iPhone. On the Springboard, just swipe to the left of Page 1 and you'll find a page for the Spotlight. Tapping in the keywords to search for will return the results from all possible resources, i.e. Contacts, Mail, Notes, iPod etc. Not that you'll use it often, but then it does come in useful when you need it.

On top of that, not sure if this has been there since 2.x, whenever you scroll up in Mail or Notes, it has a Search spot for that particular app.

So what are my final verdict on the iPhone OS 3.0? Although the upgrades should've been there since the beginning of the birth of the iPhone, but I do welcome them happily and that has set my foot deeper into the Belle, just gotta love her more now :-p The only thing that can separate us at this moment would be none other than the iPhone 3GS hehehehe

Cheers