4 posts tagged “technology”

I have come to the conclusion that just because you like to eat at a restaurant doesn't mean you should go into the kitchen. I used to absolutely love reading magazines. It was my monthly treat to myself, walking out of Kinokuniya with a sack of mags, anticipating the quiet evenings in the comfort of my bed flipping through the glossy pages.

Now though, I look through them with a critical eye, breaking down the sections, the layout, how the articles are written and so forth. Whatever joy I used to have about them has been sucked away. On the bright side, that saves me a lot of money. Well, that, and the fact that if it's published by us, I get it free anyway. That, and it frees me up to read other things, like books.

One of the unfortunate side effects of being in the business is that you realise it is a business. As with any publication, we have to offer our advertisers a little something extra because they are the ones who pay us. Six dollars does not even cover the price of paper, ink and glue that makes up the magazine; we get our money from the ads you see in them. It's not so bad if your advertisers have things worth talking about, but when it's just plain shit, I find myself hard pressed to even come up with two sentences.

The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that non-advertisers get shunted aside. Violently. The harsh reality is that every inch of space in a magazine is precious publicity we can't just give away to someone who doesn't advertise, unless the product or service is that remarkably special. And face it, for my section, it takes a lot to stand out.

Being the newest of the new, I have the unenviable task of writing snippets, those short little write ups about what's new in the market. I also do other things, but that's my monthly bugbear. It feels like I'm trying to fit a watermelon through a donut hole. Every month, the sheer amount of new stuff, press releases, product launches and so on is unbelievable. I am about as neat and organised as it gets and even then my workspace looks like a beauty company just exploded all over it. So the cruel cruel fact is, the advertisers get featured, the ones that don't wait their turn. I do play favourites, pushing the ones I like higher up the list, but even then, they may not make it if there's no space.

Which is why I've decided to put the ones I love here. I don't see why I can't, since I've tried them personally, found them amazing, and can't write about them for work. Actually, I'm going to shift over to Blogger for that, because who knows, I might be able to make it bigger than just a hobby and Vox isn't the most customisable blog engine. I'll still write here about other things, but for all the beauty stuff, go over there.

At work, I am a little different from my usual self. I'm not as loud, not as outspoken, not as enthusiastic. I find that my normal level of enthusiasm doesn't seem as welcome, since they seem to enjoy affecting a cynical nonchalance towards all things. I do feel a little bit like Ugly Betty, sans braces and suspect fashion sense. I seem to get along almost everyone at work, but of course, I don't know what they Meebo their friends about me. Colleagues are like family; you can't really choose who they are, and you're stuck with them even if you can't stand them. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes you become really efficient at your work so you can get out ASAFP.

But as the Channel 8 scriptwriters will tell you, any family will have its evil elements. Kym had the misfortune to encounter one of them.

Now, before I go on, I must explain that Kym comes across to most women as a threat. She's beautiful, with generous assets and cat-like eyes that give her a (sorry girl, but it's true) slightly bitchy appearance. If you don't know her, you may think she's one of those bitchy women who steal boyfriends and husbands for sport. The truth is, she couldn't be further from that; she can't help being born looking like a bombshell.

To be honest, when I first met Kym, I didn't expect that we'd be friends, mainly because she was hanging out with this girl who I disliked on sight. Things took a change a couple of months into training (we met at our old job), and we started being friends. Looks aside, she is a very sweet person who couldn't steal a free brochure to save her life. The only worry you could possibly have about her around your guy is your guy hitting on her, not the other way round. She values friendship so much she still keeps around some really toxic friends who keep slyly putting her down and making her feel bad about herself. The only vice she has is the fact that she loves gossip, though she doesn't go around spreading malicious lies.

Which is why I found it absolutely baffling that one of her colleagues hates her guts enough to send evil messages about her to others. I find it even more baffling that she managed to send that message to Kym. That takes skill.

And I have no clue why she would dislike Kym that much. She's been nothing but nice to that girl, even helping her to photocopy their course notes and whatnot. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the situation to comment further, but I am pretty riled up that some bitch out there is talking shit about my friend.

What I do know is that that girl is seriously insecure. Truly, it takes one heck of a childhood trauma to hate someone when they've offered you nothing but kindness and friendship. Having checked out her Facebook page, I'm even more convinced that Kym is just a convenient target for her to take her self-esteem issues out on.

Kym is, literally, attractive. When we go out together, I harbour no illusions that the guys are checking me out; my appeal sinks in a little later after I've had time to unleash my witty charm. I have a feeling that girl doesn't like playing second banana. If that doesn't make it irritating enough for her, Kym's just a naturally friendly person who gets along with most people, and from her looks, that girl seems incredibly uptight. There's even a really good one of her frowning, that'll fit perfectly next to the dictionary entry for PMS. Ah, the wonders of Facebook.

Normally I'd go on, but I'm trying to cut down on negativity. I get enough of it as it is.

I think that's probably why I started loving pink a while back. I can't remember exactly when it started, but I find that surrounding myself with pink things puts me in a happier mode. And people encountering my wall of pink usually react in two ways; they smile or they gawk. Either way, they sort of forget what they were pissed off about for a while.

And now I've added another new pink gadget. I traded in my stupid ass HTC Touch Diamond for my new LG KF350, otherwise known as the Ice Cream phone.

First, what was so stupid about the Diamond? Despite being such an "intelligent" phone that apparently allows you to do everything, it doesn't allow you to do some very basic things, which I've ranted at length before, so go read the archives. For that price tag, I shouldn't have to trawl the net for third party software to message groups of people at a time. It hung, constantly, it was quite buggy, it required more steps than an advanced tap dancing class to do basic things like call someone from your address book or to send a message. All that, for a supposed business phone. And, AND, they wasted valuable tab space on things like weather reports. Yes, because I live in Singapore, country of ever-changing seasons.

Technically, I downgraded getting the Ice Cream, but it fits so much better with my life and functions so well, it feels like an improvement. LG used to have retarded OS that was about as user friendly as an instant detonation grenade. But the Ice Cream's OS is a drastic improvement. It's like the bastard child of Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung, taking the best of each. It's like Sony Ericsson in terms of the menu layout, Nokia in its SMS functions, and Samsung in its cutesy display and sounds. Everything is customisable, including the external LED light display, which you can design by picking out the dots under the settings.

It's not as high-powered in that it doesn't have 3G or WIFI, but I can't remember the last time I made a video call or linked up to a WIFI signal outside of my house. It has a 3mp camera, no flash, unfortunately, but that's what cameras are for. It has an expandable memory using micro SD cards, supports MP3 playback, has an FM radio and supports Java games, so you can download and put them on.

But what I really really like about it is the design. It's very much like those clamshells that Docomo produces, very slim with a nice big 2.2 inch screen inside and a keypad with big tactile keys that make messaging so much easier. I am vehemently against touchscreen phones; they make messaging hell. I got the one in pink, obviously, and it's this lovely pastel shade like strawberry ice cream. The inside is white, with silver trimmings, and the keypad lights up in pink.

And the reason why I started using PDA phones in the first place - to put in appointments with greater ease - is completely satisfied by the Ice Cream. Sony Ericsson has quite a lengthy page-by-page process for this (at least, the older phones did), but its so easy on the Ice Cream, I may just do away with the planner I bought. Or not.

I got it for $338 WITHOUT a contract at the Singtel retailer at Rivervale Mall. It's similarly affordable at other places, but I went there because they gave me a good trade in price for my Diamond. Heck, I even got money back.

See, pink does make people feel happier.

I have an unabashed love for gadgets. And no, they don't have to be pink for me to gush all over them, although that helps.

Recently I've been thinking of changing phones. For one thing, my current job uses Lotus Notes on a Mac, which translates into I can't be arsed to even try plugging in my HTC Diamond (running on Windows Mobile 6) to see what happens. That, and I am outraged by how this supposedly high tech phone can do practically everything, EXCEPT let you customize the bloody alarm clock tone. Or the SMS alert tone, but that's not so bad, since I usually have my earphones in and the vibration tips me off.

Let me explain how crucial it is for me to wake up the way I prefer. I hold grudges. Fact. It's not nice, it's not mature, and it's not good for my health. Little things set me off, and it doesn't have to be a personal attack, it just needs to piss me off, then I ride the pissed off wave for a loooong time.

So when I can't wake up to a soothing tune, I spend the rest of the day being pissed off. And there's nothing soothing about the default tones the Diamond has for its alarm. I spent a long time cursing the goddamned Taiwanese company, until I realized its not their fault; Windows Mobile is retarded.

I swear to God, I Googled "windows mobile alarm mp3" and variations thereof till the sun came up (no, literally, then again, I started at like 3am) when I first got the phone. There were a couple of third party softwares out there that promised to allow MP3s as your wakeup call except they insisted I pay, sometimes stupid amounts, or they didn't work. Not much luck, much cursing ensued, and I was suddenly grateful that my job had irregular hours on alternate days, so I didn't have to set my alarm that much.

Most importantly, I didn't have to wake up in the morning. Consistently. Day after day. If you can't tell, I'm not a morning person. Except staying up for the beginnings of it and sleeping straight through the rest.

So now that I've started at this pseudo-office job, waking up everyday is tough enough without having either an inaudible or a banshee-esque alarm tone making it harder. I came thisclose to trading in my phone for a Sony Ericsson slider Walkman phone. And to be honest, the only reason I didn't was because I can't really go back to that level of n00bness anymore. I would get the Xperia X1, but it's a lot chunkier than my current phone and I really don't like slide-out Qwerty keypads. Messaging with one hand is impossible unless you have ridiculously long thumbs.

Figuring I can't just give up without one last fight, I Googled again. And found it.

It being SpoonAlarm v2.0 by the Spoontools. It's a small app, pretty simple, but it works. And it's free. Of course, it would be nice to donate a little something something to the guy via Paypal; if everyone who got the app gave him a dollar, that would still count for something.

And because I'm so damned happy, I'm going to make a donation. Once I verify my Paypal account.

Make sure you get v2.0 though. I downloaded the earlier version before I found v2.0 and it didn't work all that well. For one thing, when selecting your alarm tone, it didn't differentiate between picture files and music files and showed you every single bloody thing you have on your phone. For another, it didn't allow for recurring alarms, so you had to set it every day. The new version fixes all of that. If the first thing that goes off is your Windows Mobile notification sound, go switch it off under sounds and notifications. Of course, this might annoy you if you use reminders. I don't. So I'm happy.

So now my phone is more or less complete.

I did another search and supposedly, you can sync Lotus to a Windows Mobile phone via third party software. But to be honest, it's just too irritating having to use Lotus to begin with (it's really not the prettiest thing around, is it?) for me to attempt to fiddle with it. That, and the fact that it's running on a Mac just brings on a wave of despair. Besides, I use Gmail and Google Calendar (this lovely thing called mail forwarding) and my phone has WIFI and 3G and Opera, so I just get online and browse.

I was going to end off this part of the post with, "And now all that remains is fixing the fact that I can't create contact groups so sending SMSes to multiple people is a bitch", except I did a quick search and fixed it.

Get Group SMS is a freeware that just adds an additional option to the menu bar for you to select a group. The tricky thing is, you need to sort your contacts (or the ones you'll be SMSing en masse all the time) into "categories" first. I find it a lot easier to do this on your PC with Outlook first (just select the people, click Edit, then Category, then select the category. Go to the Master Category List to make up your own), then sync it to your phone. From there, if you're adding new contacts, just edit the category portion to save yourself pain in the future.

This is why, at times, I feel like I'm really a guy.

One of the things about my job is that there are times I'm not in the office at all. PR people constantly cajole us out for press conferences or events to launch something or another, or we need to go out and interview people or review places, things like that. It's not a bad thing, generally, because there's usually free food or goodie bags or some sort of a treat, like champagne at 10am, free flow, mind you. Oh, such a hard life.

But it can be quite a pain when your deadline is a couple of days away, the event is a big hoo hah over one small thing that you're not going to use for the article that's due anyway, and you have enough events that day that it makes no sense to go back to the office, but you've got an hour or two to kill in between them.

Which is why I'm contemplating getting myself a netbook. They're small, they're cheap, they let me go online supposedly anywhere, and they give me word processing power on the go. I know Sitex is on now, but braving the bargain hunting crowd is a little too much for me. (Singaporeans love their IT fairs. And their food fairs. In fact, a fair of any kind usually sees a pretty good turn out, unless there's admission fee.) Besides, they're cheap to begin with; I'd rather keep my dignity and fork out a little more then go squash with hoi polloi on my precious weekend.

The only thing is, I can't quite decide how low to go with my netbook. I'm not willing to spend more than $700, but it's got to have at least 80GBs memory, and be fast enough that I won't start tapping my fingernails on it (which is something I constantly do with the Mac at work, driving people nuts, no doubt. Maybe if I do it enough, they'll mob the IT guys and make them change my computer). I can do without silly things like a built in camera (yes, because I'm going to video call who, exactly?), but I KNOW for a fact that I'll be tempted by little nifty stuff like that.

Why can't I have a cheaper obsession?

Elton, in an act of complete and utter sweetness, bought me a present today. After the initial joy of fiddling with it, I had to call Kym to ask her one very important question, "Hey girl, how do I blow ah?" 

Lest you think I was researching on a way to show my appreciation for the present and before you start pitying Elton for the lack of certain activities, THAT'S not what I was asking Kym for. And...that'll be the end of the topic; it's really up to Elton to brag about it. Don't want people to think I got a big head by blowing my own trumpet.

Ok, ok, enough.

After reading post after post of me pining for a DS Lite, he bought me one. Hmm. Hang on.

ELTON BOUGHT ME A DS LITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, that's more like it. But yes. It was especially sweet because the next special event is Christmas, which is months away, but he decided to buy me one because he wanted to cheer me up.

If you're wondering, "What the hell does she have to be depressed about? She's not working! But not poor!" Well, I have no bloody idea myself. All I can say is that past month or so has been an emotional shitstorm. There was good, there was bad, then there was abyssal. Maybe a lot of bad karma decided to come back all at once, I don't know.

With Elton's help, I made it through the worst of it all. To top it all off, he got me a brand new toy. By sticking with me through all that nonsense, that's love right there. Getting me the expensive new gadget, really, it's just, I don't know what to say.

Oh yah, it's called a distraction tactic.

Kidding, kidding. It's love all right. But distraction too. It gives me something to do, takes my mind off things. Lets him play Assassin's Creed while I chop things up on Cooking Mama.

I'm perfectly fine with it. In fact, I kinda like it. If I had to rank what I like to do as together time and keep the list PG, it'll be cuddling and chatting about random stuff, cuddling and watching shows on his computer, literally just sleeping together (which oddly works better on his super single bed than on my queen sized one), sitting in the same room and doing our own stuff, going out, and going out to meet other people. Pretty much in that order. It does depend on mood, of course, sometimes going out ranks higher on the list if I'm feeling active. But yeah, being in the same room with him just makes me happy. He'll be gaming on his computer and I'll be reading a book (or playing with my DS Lite!) and it's just nice to look over at him and occasionally plant a kiss on his head as I pass him to go to the loo. And since his monitor is one of those big ass things, it's sometimes quite entertaining to watch him play too, except for when he does the save, play, reload, play, reload, play thing.

I felt quite guilty though, as he brought me to the shop and asked me to pick out the colour of the set and the cover for it (we're both quite anal about protection. In more ways than one). They have two shades of pink, but the one I wanted, Noble Pink (and which member of royalty would that be? Princess Barbie?) was $25 more expensive, because they didn't have it for the parallel import sets anymore. Elton, The Man, did the no big deal shrug, "Just go for it, babe."

(The other shade was Metallic Pink, which is really more purple.)

So he got me the set, the other essential accoutrements (hint hint nudge nudge), and the case for it (Hello Kitty, of course, in pink). And I was making happy squeals, amusing the bengs in the shop to no end.
ME: (totally engrossed in chopping an onion) "Look, Mama says I did it perfect!" 
ELTON: (aside to the bengs) "Can you guess what her favourite colour is?"

And while I was ridiculously happy with my new toy, I felt uneasy about it. I'm just not used to getting expensive presents, when there's no event behind it, and especially if I'd sort of asked for it to begin with. I feel kinda bad about it, like I manipulated him to get it for me. I swear to you, the extent of whining for it was limited to blogging and pointing the DS Lite out to him on two occasions (what? In case he got the wrong console; Nintendo got quite a few ok?). I did NOT drag him into the shop and body tackle him while I threw his wallet to the cashier in a overhead pass.

This is probably a good thing, for Elton at least, since flat out asking him to buy me stuff isn't something I even think about doing. Usually. I did go on and on about it on my blog to hint to him in a highly subtle manner what I'd like to get for Christmas. I didn't expect him to bring me to Sim Lim to get me something special today.

So in a failed attempt to assuage my guilt, I bought him the new expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2. Ok, so my present was 10 percent the cost of his present. It's the thought that counts. That, and I'm not sure what he wants, so I just beat him to the cashier when he picked up the game. Tragic, yes. That man needs to blog lah.

Since he wasn't feeling well today (and hasn't been for the past few days), I decided for him that he shouldn't spend the day running his Dark Ages game (he feels responsible for it and would have turned up, so I decided to play the bad guy and take it off his shoulders). He had problems holding a conversation with me without hacking up a lung. One whole day of talking might do him in. So after he got me the DS Lite, we went to his place and gamed. He on Assassin's Creed, me on Cooking Mama. Very very different in terms of complexity and skill, but hey, we're happy.

Oh yah, the blowing thing. Kym has a DS Lite too, and she's been extolling the joys of Cooking Mama, so when I got stuck at this recipe where I'm supposed to blow on the stew, I called her, naturally. And this is why the DS Lite is so bloody cool; beyond the traditional controls of the directional keys and the buttons and the tabs, you get to use the stylus on the touchscreen, AND there's also this mic for voice controls. So when Mama says blow, it means to literally blow into the mic. Blow, mind you, not spit. Kym's congratulatory message: "Yeh! U did e blow job!"

"-_- indeed...

So I spent most of my day (supposed to be another family bonding day) tweaking my pictures with Photoshop after last night's amazing discovery. And now, I feel an extreme need to lose weight around my face.

If you've been following this blog or know me in real life, you know I have chubby cheeks. Depending on how well you know me, you'll also know that my entire clan has chubby cheeked women (well, Mom's side anyway; Dad's side actually has prettier women, although a bit short. Then again, both clans are short, so I would think I'm a swapped baby, but the cheeks and teeth make it clear that wah si wah bu eh kia.)

So the cheeks got targeted with the magical Liquify filter with a vengeance. And the hairline. One steward told me I had no reason to fear ghosts, what with my giant shiny forehead.

Speaking of ghosts, Seventh Month coming again. Dammit all to hell!

Of course, things didn't go so well with the first photo I tweaked, which was one of Elton and I on our fifth anniversary (yay!). I somehow didn't realize I made us look like aliens and sent the pictures off to Elton with joy, expecting him to deluge me with requests to edit all his photos. In typical me fashion, I shan't paste the photos here (also because unlike me, he's a very private person. There's a reason why I don't blog much about him, or us.), but leave you to imagine two faces with really sucked in cheeks and bulbous eyes (Bloat tool OD).

Over the course of the afternoon, I edited a few more photos and got better at it. Even did one of my mom.

By the end of the session, I realized I wanted to be a vampire. More specifically, a Tzimisce vampire with many many dots in Vicissitude and the corresponding Abilities and Attributes (because you don't want an amateur sculpting your body parts). For the non-geeks, Vicissitude is this ability that vampires from the Tzimisce clan have that allows them to literally sculpt bodies, theirs or other people's. Like Liquify in real life. How fucking cool is that? Ate a little too much? Just literally take it off. Or push it up into your boobs. No pain, no cutting, no swelling and recovery period. I want.

But although I now sported the tiny gua zi lian that Kym keeps going on about in a few of my photos, I realized I looked very very different from my actual self and not in a good way either. Just because I can have Mary Kate Olsen's face shape didn't mean it suited me. I needed the chubby cheeks to look like myself. Just maybe a shade less.

And I also need to do something about this hair cut of mine...not exactly flattering at the moment.

Since this is a ridiculously short post (for me, anyway), I'd like to guide other buyers of the HTC Touch Diamond to Google Maps. Download it for your mobile phone and never get lost again, so long you have a Sunsurf subscription or whatever the other two telcos call their mobile internet thing.

Yes, download. You can technically just go to the Google Maps website on your browser, but I find it takes too long to load and sometimes trying to click on the damned buttons on the webpage is very trying. It's free too, and compatible with most, if not all phones. If you're using a Nokia there's Nokia Maps. But if you're like me, bought a GPS enabled phone that came with no map software installed/included, there's Google Maps.