It was raining this morning, so I thought I'll just take bus to Clementi from my house (near Jurong East). It was 8.15 AM. The bus came before 8.20 AM, and in normal days, I should reach Clementi about 8.30 AM or worst case 8.35 AM. Unexpectedly, this morning, the traffic jam was so bad that it took the bus full twenty minutes for two bus stops!!! I reached Clementi at 9.25 AM!!! A horrendous one hour later for a journey from Toh Guan (near Jurong East) to Clementi. The MRT reached eight minutes after that, and I reached office well and truly late

Asking around, a colleague told me that there was an accident somewhere in AYE near Lower Delta Rd that causes the normal four-lane traffic to be congested into one-lane. Somehow, the jam over there propagates so far until Clementi and Jurong East. What a day, hopefully this doesn't happen often, and I do wish the person involved in the accident are okay

So, were you affected by the traffic jam this morning?

I was planning to go for ice skating after lunch time today, so we went for lunch at Pizza Hut then to Fuji Ice Palace ice skating rink in Jurong Entertainment Centre. To our surprise, instead of seeing amateur like me skating and falling, we saw about 20 pros skating around in ease with their huge outfit, helmets, and sticks. Apparently, they are warming up for the ice hockey match soon. We came in time to watch their warming up and the game from start to end, which lasted about an hour or so.


The equivalent of free kick in soccer

The guest team scored first early in the first half, but the home team equalized the score midway through the first half. It was really fun watching live game like this, the only drawback was there were no replay for the goals haha... In the second half, there were decent amount of chances for both side, notably the home team hitting the frame of the goal with a shot, but they were not to be denied moments later, as they summoned up a counter attack one minute before the end. One of their player took one touch to handle the clearance from his side of the rink, second touch to bring it forward one-on-one with the goalkeeper, third touch to move the "ball" wide to create space, and fourth to score the goal which ultimately proved to be the winner. Brilliant !!!

It was a pity I couldn't play at all, but nevertheless, I truly enjoyed my first moment of watching ice hockey game live

Windows Live Messenger (a.k.a MSN Messenger) is holding a initiative for a worthy cause, and everyone of us can be part of the them. Just by putting an emoticon on your nick name, every message that you send on your chat from now on, will help to raise some amount of money for charity organization of your choice. At first, it sounded like those chain emails that says I'll get millions dollars from Microsoft if I forward the email to 10 or 20 friends, but this one is a legitimate information.

How does it work?
1. Use Messenger 8.1
2. Add the i'm emoticon to your display name by entering the code of the cause you would like to support (hint: I suggest adding it at the end of your name so you still appear in the correct alphabetic order in your contacts list)
3. Send and receive IMs
4. A portion of the advertising revenue generated by your usage of Messenger will be donated to your cause. So the more IMs you send and receive the more money will be donated to your cause.

What are the i'm emoticon codes and causes?

• American Red Cross -- ready to help, code = *red+u
• Boys & Girls Clubs of America -- providing a positive place for kids, code = *bgca
• National AIDS Fund -- fighting AIDS, code = *naf
• National MS Society -- joining the MS movement, code = *mssoc
• ninemillion.org -- helping 9 million refugee kids, code = *9mil
• Sierra Club -- exploring and protecting the planet, code = *sierra
• StopGlobalWarming.org -- stopping global warming, code = *help
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure -- finding the cure, code = *komen
• UNICEF -- helping kids survive, code = *unicef

So, what are you waiting for, join in the initiative, and together, we can help to raise funds for the needy

i'm Home
i'm Initiative and FAQ

It has been quite a happening second week of March, it all started with earthquake in Sumatra, tremors felt twice in Singapore. I didn't feel the first one shortly before lunch break, although I was in 35th floor that time, I was sitting on a desk having some discussions. Probably it was because my feet were not on the floor. The second time was after lunch time, that one I felt. The following day, an airplane crashed in Indonesia after what they suspected to be the pilot fault who didn't reduce the speed enough for landing. It simply has been a disastrous start for Indonesia in 2007, as Asen said, 1 plane accident each month.

Thursday was the start of the IT Show 2007, held at Suntec City. After looking at my calendar, I thought I couldn't go for the show, so I asked my housemate Eko to help me buy some stuffs. It was essentially all the stuffs that I need to replace since I brought them back to Jakarta during the last Chinese New Year holiday. First, it was a many-in-one card reader. I got a simple $7 card reader. The second one is a thumbdrive. It's a Sandisk Cruzer Micro U3 Smart - 4GB for a low $75 now. It certainly has a much better speed that Imation FlashGo! that was selling at $71, this Cruzer Micro managed to hit over 7MB/sec write speed and almost 14MB/sec read speed. Another great thing is, with U3 smart technologies, I can install lots of portable apps in my thumbdrive, and I will have those wherever I go. As of now, I have Portable Firefox for browsing, EditPad Lite for basic text editor, Trillian for chatting in MSN and Yahoo, OpenOffice for Office-related stuffs, Foxit Reader to read PDF files, IrfanView for image viewer, Avast Antivirus to ensure my thumbdrive is protected from virus and many more in my thumbdrive, such that I will all the important applications wherever I go. Superb!!! I was choosing between going IT Show 2007, tennis at Cashew Heights, or to watch 300. In the end, I went for tennis. I need to exercise, it has been a while hehe....

 
My new Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4GB, retractable somemore, made a great keychain


Its read speed almost hit 14MB/sec


Its write speed also not dissapointing at over 7MB/sec

My colleagues and I went to Tonkichi Japanese restaurant for lunch at Shaw House. I had a very nice Salmon Teriyaki Ju with a very very nice Mochi ice cream.  Friday evening was some more choices, either going for drinks with colleagues or going to IT Show. I chose the latter. After IT Show, we dropped by tcc for drinks. I had tcc Ice Minty Mocha. Nice!!!
 
Lots and lots of balloons that says "Childrens Week" in Orchard MRT on lunch time. They are all free to be taken.


Food at tcc and all the long words of tcc

To further elaborate what U3 Smart thumb drives are, as I'm sure, this will help many people realize that there are such technologies out there now. When you buy thumb drives that have logo on it, your thumb drive will have autorun feature, and it is so easy to run your favorite applications on the go, wherever you go, with all your files in it, if you need it. There are lots of applications in U3 Software Download Central that have been specifically packaged to run on U3 thumb drives, both free and for sale. If you store enough applications and files in it, theoretically speaking, as long as you can find a PC, you can have your favorite applications and files. It's a great idea, although how practical it turns out to be, we have to see


My U3 Launchpad

Start with filling in the following on what you have:

1. Mac or PC?
2. How big is your total hard drive space, excluding external drives? e.g. 80GB.
3. How much of those are used? e.g. ~50GB out of 80GB.
4. Do you have backup of what you have?

Recently, a friend had just lost his seven years worth of stuffs stored in his computer after his hard drive died on him. That got me thinking on my own computer backup. I have lots of stuffs in my home PC, 30GB of pictures, 13GB of musics, personal files, financial information, and other stuffs that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to restore should I lose it. Backing up 250GB hard drive to 4GB-each DVDs will require enormous amount of blank DVDs (Vista Backup and Restore Center says I need 40 blank DVDs!!!), not to mention that the time required to back those up, as well as my due diligence to remember to backup stuffs now and then. It's a chore, so that's out.

There are many alternatives that I am currently exploring, from RAID, External and Internal Hard Drive with their own pros, cons, and associated cost, but before plunging myself into one method, I would like to first survey and get some feedback from all of you for some ideas. I am looking into backing up my WHOLE computer periodicaly, so preferably, it should be cheap, reliable, easy, and doesn't require my intervention as much as possible (did i miss anything? :p) Backing up to DVDs is certainly out, so if you have backup routine for your computer, share on what you use, the hardware, as well as what software you use?

It's unavoidable, as I am using my computer, the more I use it, the more stuffs gets installed to it, and continuing from the list of applications I installed last month, there are few more applications that found it's way to my computer in the last month or so. Some are essential that I missed out, some are not-so-essential, and here they are in order of installation date.

• .Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - free
  I installed, trialled, and uninstalled lots of software, but I want my current Windows Vista to be as clean as possible, meaning no crapware is allowed to get installed into my Windows. The more software I get installed and uninstalled on my machine, the more unstable my Windows is, not to mention it'll get slower by the weeks and months, so I installed free Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and installed a copy of Windows XP inside. Whenever I feel like trying out new software, or simply comparing few applications to see which one is better to be installed on my Windows, I'll just use this Virtual PC to try out. Only good stuffs gets into my Windows Vista install
  
  
• .Sony USB Driver - free
  I need to connect a Sony miniDV handycam to my Windows Vista for video capture. My family got tons of miniDV cassettes (50 is my last count), and as my family self-declared IT guy, as my home project, I need to convert all these cassettes into DVDs that my dad, my mom, or my grandma can play on their DVD player.
  
  
• ..WinAVI Video Capture 2.0 - free FULL version for limited time
  This usually $29.95 software is currently free (go get it while it's still free!!), used to capture video played from my Sony handycam into an MPEG-2 movie. After all these videos have been captured, I can simply use built-in Windows DVD Maker (only available in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate) to convert all those MPEG files into DVDs that can be played in normal DVD players.
  
  
• .Acronis TrueImage Home - $49.99
  The best backup and imaging software. In-line with my current plan of having routine backup of my computer, I have to find a great software to do the job, and Acronis TrueImage does just that. I have been using Acronis TrueImage since version 8, and now it's at version 10, it's certified for Windows Vista.
  I have been looking at the built-in Backup and Restore Center in Windows Vista, it only can do backup of whole drive. I can't select which folders that I want to backup.
  
  
• .avast! Antivirus v4 Home Edition - free
  There are two free antivirus that community seems to recommend to be used in Windows Vista, AVG Anti-Virus Free v7.5 or avast! Antivirus v4 Home Edition which is free for home use. I chose the latter because it seems like more people recommend avast to AVG. Also, according to Antivirus review, avast caught more virus compared to AVG.
  
  
• .Raxco PerfectDisk for Home - $39.99
  After usage of computer, harddrive gets fragmented, and as a result, computer gets slower. Windows all-along has built-in disk defragmenter that does a basic job, but PerfectDisk does a much better job in improving the performance of your hard drive. Here's the comparison between PerfectDisk and Windows Defragmenter.
  
  
• .Switcher - free
  Mac OS X has Expose. Switcher brings this feature to Windows Vista. Press F9, and all open windows are scaled small enough such that ALL windows fits in your screen, make it easier to find a window you want in the stack of opened windows.

It was almost midnight, I was in MRT on my way back home from City Hall to Jurong East. It was raining, I didn't bring an umbrella, so walking back from Jurong East home would have been a challenge. The only choice to reach home without being drenched was to take bus from Clementi, either 52, 105, or 183, but I was not even sure that any of the bus would still be available at that time. Come to rescue was the new iris (Integrated Route Information System) from SBS Transit. Now, we can check the bus timing in every bus stop in Singapore for any SBS Transit-operated buses. We only need the bus number as well as 5-digit unique bus stop number. For example, the one in Clementi is 17171. The one at my home is 28641.


How to know what is the 5-digit bus stop number

So, when I almost reached Dover, I browsed to mobile iris website from my handphone, and checked the timing for each of the buses. 52 next bus was coming in 3 mins, subsequent bus would be coming in 26 mins, so that's out. 105 next bus was arriving (according to experience, that meant the bus is already about 1 bus stop away), and subsequent bus would be coming in 2 mins. That too was out, because I can't possibly reach Clementi in 2 mins time. The subsequent bus for 105 was like 30 mins after that. I tried 183. Usually I don't like 183 because it's taking the longer route and hence longer time to reach home. To my delight, the next 183 was coming in 6 mins time and I would have reached Clementi in 4 mins by then. True to its "prediction", when I reached Clementi, I only waited less than 2 mins, 183 bus came. I reached home dry with the fastest and cheapest possible way, and the cost of making informed-decision was to pay Starhub GPRS charges of about 15 cents.

For those who has GPRS-enabled mobile plan and handphone, bookmark this URL: http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/mobileiris/. You never knew when you'll ever need this

I always like Marina Square It's always very nice

If you are stressed out and can do with laughters, go and watch Mr. Bean's Holiday I would rate it

Singapore, the majority of us live in Highly Dangerous Buildings (HDB), And most people have already got used to Paying and Paying (PAP) ..... Not only do you have to pay, you Pay Until Bankrupt (PUB). If that's not enough, somebody still Purposely Wants to Dig (PWD) and get more from you. So what more can you do when you are in the Money Only Environment (MOE)? With the current Mad Accounting System (MAS), you are forced to Pay the Sum Ahead (PSA), Which will leave some people Permanently Owing Some Banks (POSB).
And forced to live on the Loan Techniques Always (LTA) system. When you fall sick and happen to be admitted to a Money Operating Hospital (MOH), You might be able to use your Cash Prior to Funeral (CPF) fund. If you are out of luck, you may meet doctors who Never Use Heart (NUH) to treat you, And you will be Sure to Give up Hope (SGH). To help ease the traffic, motorists have to pay Cash On Expressway (COE). If that doesn't help, they can always Eternally Raise Prices (ERP) on the roads. If you don't own a car, you can always make a Mad Rush to the Train (MRT), OR get squashed in a bus Side By Side (SBS) ..... Lastly, under all these pressures, there are not many places we can relax, Not even the good old place we used to go because it has become So Expensive and Nothing To See Actually (SENTOSA)!!!

Hotmail has what? 2GB? Gmail? 2.8GB? Yahoo plans to offer UNLIMITED email storage for its users. Now, that cool, UNLIMITED!!!! You can't help but feel that Hotmail and Gmail will follow suit, very very soon So, you got 10MB photos, send it to my email address, you got lots of songs to share? send it to my email address, and don't bother to ZIP them up, heck, I don't care about my email getting full anymore :p

Now, if only they remove the 10MB-per-email restriction, that'll be best!!! or at least up it to 100MB per email?

Read the complete story in Yahoo! News.

Today was another "expensive" lunch as my colleagues and I went to Garibaldi Italian Restaurant and Bar at Purvis Street, just opposite of National Library Bugis. We shared Carpaccio Di Manzo Wagyu which is Wagyu Beef Carpaccio with Parmigiano Cheese and Rucola - $28 for starters, it was very nice. Wagyu beef is one of the best beef you can taste, as according to what I was told, they treated the cow specially, they bring the cow for walk, massage them, and all kind of nice treatment, such that the beef meat from those cows will taste great. It was

Next follow was the main course. I ordered Frutti Di Mare (a.k.a Stewed Scampi, Prawns, Scallops, and Cod Fish with Asparagus & Tomato Oregano Sauce) - $42. Scampi is a kind of shrimp that has two very long front legs, recently starred in Mr. Bean's Holiday movie :p The portion was okay only, but the taste was superb. It has been a while since I had very very nice seafood For a special occassion, I would heartedly recommend Garibaldi, you can bring your other half there for a romantic dinner, or bring your business partner or associates for a treat there. You won't regret that!

To complete the lunch was dessert. After reading through the desserts menu, I finally decided to get Tiramisu with Homemade Lady-finger Biscuit and Espresso Chocolate Hearth - $12. Inside the center of it was liquor wrapped in chocolate. It was simply the best Tiramisu I ever tested, nuff said!!!


Tiramisu, hmmmmm...... very very very very nice!!!!

Truly enjoyed my lunch - priceless.

One of the way to backup your files are using online backups. Sure, Yahoo and Gmail are fine, but dedicated site that are meant for backups should be better. After reading through some recommendations, I am trying online backup from Mozy. For a start, they provide free 2GB space for you to upload whatever you need to backup from your computer. It may not be enough to backup my 20+GB photos, but it'll be more than enough to backup my other documents.

If you sign up now, use this link https://mozy.com/?ref=62J3Z2 or enter 62J3Z2 for the referral code to me. If you enter my code as a referral, the moment you start backing up, I will get extra 256MB for free, and so will you The more people I refer that sign up and use their service, I'll get extra 256MB, as well as that person You can then further refer more friends who need online backups

Start using it, and let me know how it is. I'm just starting too