I know it’s been a while since I last updated this blog with some substantial content, but I’ve been rather busy with work and catching up with past dramas/variety shows, so I apologize for neglecting the handful of loyal readers that I have.

Just as a brief update, I’ve been messing around with other social networking sites recently, such as the likes of Tumblr and Sina’s wei bo (微博). I’ve been using the former for posting short, adhoc thoughts that may be a little too short for this blog and too long for Twitter/Plurk. The latter is  China’s equivalent of Twitter, and I generally use it to keep track of updates from my favorite celebrities from Taiwan/China. Speaking of Twitter, please note that the big whale currently has a bug where as an owner of a private profile, I’m unable to access follower requests. So if you’ve requested to follow me on Twitter but has yet to be accepted, please be patient and do not spam my mailbox with repeated requests.  The big whale is currently working on a solution, so let’s cross our fingers that a fix will come soon.

I’ve also been playing with AudioBoo, since they now have an Android app that I can use on my new phone. Currently there’s only one entry, which is my test boo. I hope to utilize this more often in future, but for now, I have to first get used to hearing my recorded voice and stop tripping over myself during recording.

To make up for the lack of activity here, I thought perhaps I can port some of the posts I’ve been doing recently on Tumblr on a weekly basis. Currently, I’m doing this manually as I haven’t found a while to automatically update WordPress from Tumblr, so if you have any solutions/suggestions, please let me know. Here are my Tumblr from the past week. God willing, I hope to find some time to do a couple of reviews of some of the Android apps I’ve been using.

Wed Aug 4

time..

must be the scarcest resource on this universe in this life..

waking up..

is hard to do..

Mon Aug 2

similarities..

are abundant between 2 good friends who share the same birthday..

similar outlook on life..
similar struggles with the z-monster and procrastination..
similar freedom from Monday blues..
similar interests in technology and gadgets..
not forgetting our similar appearances (glasses)..
and similar sounding Chinese names..

no wonder people used to believe us when we told them we’re twins

“ Nothing endures but change. Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Sat Jul 31

热…

热血青春? 非也…
热恋激情? 非也、非也…
是这酷热的天气
真是难耐啊!

Fri Jul 30

无奈…

是当你想要完成,
却不知从何开始,
而在你挣扎、思考的过程中,
一切却早已匆匆的过去了…

laughter..

when it makes everyone sigh in disgust, it’s no longer funny..

taking the tumble..

inspired by some friends who’ve recently started their own tumblr blogs, I decided to toss away my procrastination (for now at least), gather some thoughts, and take the tumble..

posts here will most likely be rather random, not just in theme, but also in choice of language. So sit tight and enjoy the tumbling ride!

Tags: musings, Personal, rant, tumble thots

Another year slipped by, and before I knew it, time did a “++” operation on my _Age variable. Given that it’s been more than 3 decades since I did my “hello world” routine, I decided to just keep things simple.

Mom and I spent Sunday the usual way, hanging out and eating out. But instead of the usual fare, we treated ourselves to something we haven’t had in a while, Korean BBQ. Yummy!

The next day, I took the day off to have some “me” time. I had originally made arrangements to meet my BFF for lunch, but she had to cancel the appointment at the last-minute as she wasn’t feeling well. (Hope you’re feeling better now Maril!) I ended up making a “journey to the east” to Changi Airport. It’s been a while since I last set foot here, and boy have things changed!

There’s now a 3rd terminal, which, frankly to me, resembles a shopping mall more than an airport terminal. I noticed that buildings nowadays like to use lots of natural lighting. This generally makes the entire building look bright and welcoming, and it helps conserve energy, but it’s not so good for people like with a phone that has a not-so-fantastic camera that cannot handle all the brightness. I did get a few shots of the orchid corner at T3 and a couple of sculptures near the sky-train platform.

I then moved on to the other terminals. Terminal 1 looked pretty much the same as I’d remembered it. Most of it was under retro-fitting though, so I didn’t stop for long. I quickly took the sky-train to Terminal 2. Terminal has changed some-what over the years. I remember it as being the “newly added” wing of Changi Airport when I last visited it during a school excursion, almost 20 years ago. Now it’s starting to show its age, especially when you compare it to T3. But it’s still rather new in comparison to T1. Much like me at this age, where I obviously look more mature than teenagers, but still have much to catch up on when compared to our elders. Interesting analogy, I know.

I headed straight for the viewing gallery, since there wasn’t one at T1 (if there was one I couldn’t find it), and the one at T3 was under renovation. And as soon as I was there, the lyrics “Time.. I’ve been passing time watching [planes] go by.. all of my life..” starting flashing pass my mind. Ahh.. now I know why students like coming here to study. Watching planes take off and land does have a calming effect.

Feeling hungry, I started looking for food nearby. I ended up at a Japanese fusion pasta outlet, Pasta de Waraku. There were some lunch specials available, so I picked the Seafood Pasta in Curry Soup from the lunch menu, and top-up the meal with a frozen Mango Shortcake. Yummy!

It was time to leave and get back to town. Before that, I decided to do more testing of my Sony Ericsson X10 Mini‘s camera. This time on the little floral corner of the Departure Hall at T2.

As I walked towards the bus terminal, I passed by the Arrival Hall of T2. Apparently a flight had just landed, and I saw many friends/relatives waiting in anticipation for their loved ones. It was a heart-warming sight. The sight of having someone/something to come home to must be one of the most comforting things in the world.

Although I didn’t have any elaborate birthday celebrations, but it was a thought-provoking one, and that made it another meaningful birthday. Thank you God for creating this beautiful universe, and for giving us wisdom and a rational mind to appreciate and enjoy what we have.

Tags: musings, Personal

Most of you probably already know I love cats. Some of you may know that I enjoy catching up with World Cup news. Here’s how to put a balance between my favorite animal and one of my favorite sports:

Tags: cats, Humor, lolcats, soccer, sports, videos, world cup

As mentioned in my previous post, I recently bought a new Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini that’s powered by Google’s Android OS. I’ve had it a little over a week now, and I’ve been discovering more and more new stuff to play with!

Like Apple iPhone’s iTunes App Store, there’s also an Android Market available on the phone, where I can search for and download apps. Currently, only selected free apps are supported in the Singapore version, which is fine since I’m a bit of a cheap-skate who prefers free than paid. But certain premium apps that I’d like to own permanently is only available as time-limited free trials in the Android Market, which gets frustrating sometimes. Luckily, with the sudden surge in manufacturers putting out new Android phones, and more and more people taking notice of the Android OS, more and more developers are producing fun and cool apps for this relatively new mobile platform. Here’s some of the apps I have on my phone right now.

I’ll like to highlight some of my favorite apps here, but I’ll probably have to do it in parts since, as you can see, I’ve got quite a few.

Today’s main focus will be on touchscreen keyboards for Android. We’re all used to the traditional T9 and QWERTY keyboard layouts on the phone, but typing on the phone is still quite a challenge when you’re using the touchscreen instead of a physical keyboard, particularly on the QWERTY layout, where the keys are much more cramped. Recently, there has been a new trend of keyboards where all you have to do is to slide or swipe your finger from one letter to another without lifting it up to form a complete word. The more common and popular ones which I’ll list here are the SlideIT keyboard, the ShapeWriter keyboard and the Swype keyboard. Something to note here is that these keyboards are not exclusive to the Android platform alone, most if not all of them are available for the iPhone and Windows Mobile as well.

SlideIT keyboard

This is the first “slide” keyboard I’ve tried and I took to it like fish to water. I loved it! It’s snappy and smart enough to figure out words from the doodles that I draw on the screen, even very long and complicated words. I found myself typing much faster with this than on the default T9 keyboard. There’s even a Graffiti feature that let’s you draw numbers and special symbols. Pretty cool! Here’s a video of the SlideIT keyboard in action.

The only couple of gripes I have with it is that the capitalization isn’t too smart. It also a bit of a hassle to input numbers and special characters as I’ll have to touch one of the shortcut keys to switch to the numeric/special character layout.

The free version available on the Android Market is time-limited to 30 days, and like I’m unable to get the paid version anywhere. The guys from Dasur, the company behind the SlideIT product have said in reply to my query, that the Android paid version will be available for sale on the website soon.

ShapeWriter keyboard

Since I couldn’t get a paid version of SlideIT, I decided to search for other options out there. I discovered ShapeWriter, which is a free alternative. The look and feel is similar, but ShapeWriter has smarter capitalization, and the number pad is much cuter. Entering special characters on ShapeWriter is also much easier as all you need to do is to long touch the key to access the special character behind. I’ve read about some complains about ShapeWriter’s accuracy on some forums, but I have no issues with it so far. Here’s a video of ShapeWriter in action.

ShapeWriter has announced that they plan to take the ShapeWriter keyboard off the Android Market on June 20th 2010 for an indefinite period of time. Users are strongly urged to download the latest Version 3.0.9, which does not expire. So if you have an Android device and are thinking of finding a free alternative to replace your current touchscreen keyboard, now is the time!

Swype keyboard

This 3rd and last keyboard that I’m featuring here is a little special, because it is the only which I’ve not had a chance to try hands-on. I signed up for the close beta on their website, and was  invited. However, I was unable to install the keyboard ultimately as it says that the screen size of my X10 Mini is not supported. How disappointing.

Nonetheless, this is by far the most popular slide/swipe keyboard out in the market today. Here’s a video of Swype in action.

I hope you’ve found this short review helpful. More next time!

Tags: android, apps, keyboards, Reviews, ShapeWriter, SlideIT, Swype, technology, touchscreen, videos, youtube

image courtesy of Sony Ericsson

I’m typing this post from my brand new X10 Mini. I’ve had it for 2 days and I’m totally loving it! This is the miniature version of Sony Ericsson’s flagship Android phone, the Xperia X10. It currently runs on Android 1.6, an older version of Google’s popular phone operating system. Although it’s 2 versions behind the latest version 2.2, this phone still packs punches.

Like Apple’s iPhone, the X10 Mini is fully touch-screen and features tons of apps to keep one entertained, most of which a downloadable from the Android Market, Google’s equivalent of Apple’s iTunes App Store. Although there aren’t as many apps developed for Android as compared to the iPhone, most of the essential stuff (for me at least) are there. One of these essentials is this WordPress app that I’m typing this post in. Pretty cool huh?

Well, that’s all for now. More on my new phone another day, when I find time to sit in front of the computer. Bye!

Tags: android, Reviews, sony ericsson, technology, X10, X10 Mini, Xperia