Comex 2007

I realised that I haven't posted the photos I took during Comex 2007, which was way back in beginning of Sep. SITEX is coming soon beginning of Dec. Maybe I'll take some photos then too.

Some of the interesting stuff I saw includes this set of hard disk enclosures from Ranger. I think girls will like them. It makes carrying hard disks around less "geeky", I guess.


And of course, my current "toy" in a new colour. HTC Touch Wasabi Green:


We signed up for this WowTV at one of the booths. WowTV is a Internet TV website, with some free channels, and some channels that you need to pay to watch. Although we signed up for it, we haven't really looked at the shows. I browsed through it roughly and didn't find anything really nice in the free channels. And I'm not about to pay for watching the other shows:


Other than the gadgets, the other highlight of IT shows must be the IT show girls, so here are some of the other IT show girls:

These are not all the photos I took. I'm just feeling too lazy to post more up, and I don't really want to bombard you with photos.

If you happen to be one of the people featured in the photos I took and would like me to remove your photo for whatever reason, just contact me. Or perhaps if you would like to get the original copy of the photo without the watermark, or you believe that I must have taken a photo of you that day and would like to get the photo, you can contact me too. Just click on my name under the Contributors section (on the right under the Blog Archive) and you'll find my email address there.

Photos of the burnt hard disk

Some photos of the mentioned burnt hard disk...

Hard disk went up in Flames. Don't buy Powerlogic

Unbelievable. It seems that the stupid power supply is the main culprit of my motherboard spoiling and even spoilt my hard disk. After my old power supply died, I got a new casing. With the new casing came this Powerlogic power supply. Within a week of using the power supply, my motherboard died yesterday.

Today, I went down to the service centre to change my motherboard, and the people there advised me to change my power supply, so I went down to Sim Lim to change it. The regular sales person who always attends to me at Bell Systems told me that Powerlogic is very sucky. And boy, is it sucky or what. After I installed the new power supply (that costed me $77), I smelled smoke coming from my computer. I quickly switched it off, and tested each component. When it came to my secondary hard disk, I actually saw orange flames coming out of the hard disk! The hard disk seemed to have short-circuited and caused the flames, which was likely to have happened yesterday together with the motherboard (which also short-circuited).

So, from now on, the minimum standard for power supplies I'll settle is probably Acbel. Cheap and decent standard. My new Acbel even has a 5 years warranty. Expensive, but it'll probably save money in the long run. And I condemn Powerlogic. In my 8 years of setting up computers, this is the first power supply that has such problems. Sigh... Well... I should be comforted that it's my secondary hard disk, so what I lost are my games and quite some misc stuff. Luckily my main hard disk with my school work etc is still OK. But it has only minimal space left, thanks to my photos. So I'll probably have to get a hard disk as well.

Stupid Powerlogic. Made me lose so much money.

Computer Woes

Dunno wat's up with my computer nowadays. First, the power supply died. Then now, the motherboard died. I'm already so busy with my school projects, and such things just have to happen. I'm spending so much time on my computer. Sigh... N w/o my computer, I can't do much of my work! This is so sickening. I have so little time and so much to do...

Starhub Internet Woes

For some reason, I've been getting very slow connections on my Starhub connection nowadays. Is my favourite Internet provider going down? Will I end up switching to SingNet after my contract ends with Starhub this Dec? Anyone else facing the same problem?

Fireworks Festival

Some of you might remember that there was this Fireworks Festival not long after National Day at the Marina Bay area. Gladys and I went down to watch the Fireworks Festival on one of the days (18th Aug). It was supposed to start at 9pm, and we went down at 7pm to try to get some space. I thought that 7pm was quite early and we should be able to get some good space. I was wrong. By 7pm, it was very crowded already. We were quite lucky that a married couple made some space for us and we were able to a good space along the coast just outside Esplanade. We were right beside this big balloon that was used for NDP:


Right across the river, we could see a crowd around the Merlion. I guess that's actually the best place to be for viewing the fireworks. But I think if we want to get a good viewing space there, we would probably have to reach at 5pm?


There were a lot of people along the bridge as well.


The performance only started at about 9:15pm. A lot of us were anticipating the fireworks to start at 9pm. We could just feel the anticipation of the crowd. In fact, the firing of the fireworks did not start at 9:15pm. There were some performances first. When the fireworks started, the crowd just went "Wow... Wah... Wah... Wow..."

Here are just some of the many pictures of the fireworks















This is my personal favourite:


After the fireworks was over (about 20 mins), came the confusion and difficulty of leaving the place to go home. In fact, we decided to go to Carrefour first. We only went home at about 11+, so as to avoid the crowd. In the end, because we reached her place so late, I had to take a cab home since there were no more buses running.

We waited for 2+ hours with the crowd for just 20 mins of fireworks, and I had to take
a cab home. Was it worth it? Well... It was really a good experience. I guess if given a choice, I might have done it again. I was telling Gladys that next time when we have kids, we'll need to think of some way to entertain them while waiting, as we actually saw some families waiting since 7pm as well. The kids were impatient, of course. But I'm sure everyone enjoyed the show.

More than a month ago, on 11th Aug, we were at Vivocity. We walked past this Japanese buffet restaurant on the 1st floor called Aji by Hanabi. Gladys had been craving for Jap food for quite some time and we were tempted to try. Although it was quite expensive, costing about $50 per person, we decided to just give it a try. The food was really good. The presentation etc... wow... I don't see how I can settle for any of those Suki buffet etc next time.

Even the utensils look really nice.



We ordered Sashimi first.




This is the menu which has about 70+ dishes listed.


Sushi was next. It looked really good compared to those we see in Edo or Sakae.


Thick pieces of Unagi.

Other than the usual sashimi and unagi, there were also other cooked food.







Doesn't the food make you want to eat them? It was an expensive but satisfying buffet dinner.

My first blood donation

I finally went for my first blood donation today. The only reason why I hadn't been donating blood was that I've always thought that because I was G6PD deficient, I can't donate blood. It's only not so recently that I found out that actually I can. Gladys and I went to the Blood Bank, but she was not able to donate because she was undergoing Hep B vaccination.

The process was much shorter than I thought. I thought it would take about 20-30 mins, but I think it only took about 10 mins? Maybe because they only drew 300ml of blood from me. They said that since I was under 50kg, they draw only 300ml. They usually draw 450ml from those above 50kg. The process of finding my veins was not easy. The big, obvious vein was too soft. And the one that they were going to draw from was very small. So they had difficulties locating the vein, and I had to keep pumping. The pumping action actually made my arm quite uncomfortable. Luckily the whole process was short.

That was me sitting at the cafe after the donation. After donation, they would give each donor a card to exchange for some pastry and a drink. They also gave iron tablets. The next time I can donate blood again is 12 weeks later, on 5th Dec, and I'm definitely going to donate again. In fact, I'll probably be a regular there. Anyone wants to join me?

My HTC Touch

OK. I know I haven't been updating for a long time now. I just didn't really seem to have the time. Anyway, I don't even know if anyone is reading this blog anymore (so if you are, do drop me a comment to let me know. Haha.)

I'll try to post a bit of updates here and there. Firstly, something that I'm very proud of. My HTC Touch! I love my new phone/gadget. HTC is the company that has been producing Dopods and iPacs and O2s, but I think O2s are now produced by another company (and has been getting bad reviews since then). Recently they bought over Dopod and decided to come out to the forefront with their own branding. HTC Touch is their first phone under their own brand name. Although some Dopod phones before the HTC Touch also bear HTC code names.

HTC Touch is the 1st Pocket PC that runs on Windows Mobile 6. And it's the cheapest Pocket PC phone around. I bought it for just S$468 under the M1 2 years contract promotion. It's quite slow though, running on just a 201Mhz processor, but it serves me well enough. It has WiFi, so I can surf the net at home, in school and in places with Wireless@SG with the phone. Of course, I've installed a number of games on it. Haha.

Here are two photos I've taken of it before I took it out of the box:





If anyone of you are thinking of getting a PDA phone and can't afford an iPhone (like me), I'll definitely recommend this phone to you.

Another thing I'm going to introduce in my future posts: the watermark. Just in case anyone takes my photos and use them elsewhere, I've included the watermark in my photos. If any of you wants the photo without the watermark, please request from me.