Samsung Galaxy 5 I5503

This looks like the cheapest Android Phone that I've come across. The Samsung Galaxy 5 I5503 going for RM699 (US$227) sold by PDA Expert Mobility in Digital Mall sec 14 Petaling Jaya. Even at this price it got GPS and WIFI.

No chance to look at the android phone as I was just passing through and just grabbing their price list to see what is their latest PDA phone offering of Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android phone, and Java phones.

Ok, found some specs and it goes something like:
Samsung Galaxy 5(I5503) will come packed with a standard 2.8 inch QVGA touch sensitive display, a 2MP camera, Samsung’s unique Touch Wiz UI 3.0, 3G connectivity , Wi-Fi, GPS, a 600MHz CPU , a standard 3.5mm audio output jack, and an expandable MicroSD card support.

Here's a nice little picture of it.

Personal Blogs with Posterous

With Vox closing down its service, it gave some suggestion where you could set up free personal blog and one mention was Posterous.com. Curious I gave it a spin and found intriguing feature.

The personal blog concept from Posterous is slightly different from other free blog sites like typepad, blogger, xanga, livejournal, wordpress, etc. Their idea was that many of us are not always behind the desktop PC and might be on the go, so they espouse the idea of posting your personal blog via email. It gives a common email address that user of posterous uses. The idea was so that you don't have a funny secret individual nonsensical email address to remember when you make a post. The catch however, your post must be from the email address that you signed up with.

Anyway one nice feature is that I could A record my subdomain to it (and yet again! Haha) and thus making my ever burgeoning website bigger! Of course you could just set up a domain solely for it too if you prefer.

And another nice feature from Posterous is the ability to repost to other sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Drupal, Blogger, Flickr, etc. However it can't pull post though.

Will be trying Posterous for personal blogs out for awhile and see how it goes. 

Causes of Migranes

Causes of Migranes

The most common dietary offenders of migrane include sulfites, red wine or other alcoholic beverages (hangovers), nuts, aspartame, monosodium glutamate (MSG), caffeine intake or withdrawals (tea, cocoa products), tyramine (some cheeses), nitrites / nitrates (salami, hot dogs, spinach, radishes, lettuce, celery, cabbage) & others.

Non-dietary causes of headaches include those resulting from eye strain, lack of sleep or sleeping too long, carbon monoxide poisoning, very low / high blood pressure, altitude changes (air travel), bright or flashing lights, loud or low frequency noises, electromagnetic fields (cell or portable phone), fluorescent-energy-saving light bulbs, emotional stress or trauma, strong odors (including news print), pet allergies & others.

/ SEMPOI
Free Lifestyle News

Causes of Acne

Causes of Acne

1. Diet

Carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, which cause glucose and insulin levels to spike, may influence the severity of acne. Conversely, a diet high in protein and carbohydrates with a low glycemic index improves acne breakouts.

2. Stress

When under stress, the body produces more sebum oil. Overly oily skin may result in clogged pores and cause acne to appear.

3. Vitamin deficiency

Deficiency of vitamins A, B, C, E, Chromium, and Zinc may most likely trigger acne.

/ SEMPOI
Free Lifestyle News

The Trick to Glossy Hair

The Trick to Glossy Hair

One's food intake is crucial to hair. Healthy hair requires sticking to a diet rich in fresh fruit & vegetables. Hair is 75% protein and requires regular top-ups of protein-rich foods to stay strong and healthy-looking. For a long term shine, is good for one to wash hair daily. Hair picks up dirt & grime, just like skin, & looks its healthiest when it has just been washed.

One should choose the right shampoo for hair type and use a conditioner, particularly for those with dry hair. The more hydrated one's hair is, the glossier it will look. Rinsing hair with cold water does not promote shine. In fact, hot water is more efficient at dislodging pollutants. / SEMPOI

Free Lifestyle News

Road rage

Never thought I experience road rage in Malaysia. Although I made some mistakes but there was no cause for the other driver to get so riled up. I may have tried to rushed out a little but I stop and let the other car pass. But he got so angry he slowed and blocked my way so i overtook him and he has to show his finger. After overtaking him he sped his car after me but all i wanted to do was get to Tesco. So while trying to get my car park ticket the mad driver got out and slammed his fist on my boot and yelled at me saying something about he got a baby in his car. I think he just simply lost it!

If he truly was concerned about the welfare of his child he should just have let it go when he horn his car and I stopped from rushing out. So who is more wrong here? A person itching to fight is letting his emotion controlling him.

Anyway there is now a nice little dent in my boot and left me with a bad after taste in my mouth. Now thinking about it, very likely he must have been stressed out taking care of his baby. But to show his road rage and anger tells volume that he is likely unfit to teach good moral to his kid. I shudder to think that such bad behaviour gives a very bad example to his child when the child grows up.

To show that might is right is totally wrong and letting anger to lead to sin is such a gross violation to good morals.

Sigh! What is this world becoming? Perhaps the Discovery channel about end of the world by year 2012 would come to pass when you look at the anger and intolerance in this world today with each faction claiming their way is right and to enforce it so with such violence and suicide bombers and such makes you wonder this is really the end of days scenario as foretold by biblical prophecies playing itself out to its final armageddon outcome. Also made me want to train up more on my self-defence fighting skills but usually the best defense is to run or diffuse the situation and avoid getting hurt.

Wish I took a picture of that mad person or took down his car plate number and report him to the police. That would really prevent him from doing such road rage in the future. Unfortunately I was rather not keen to come out from my car and face an unstable mind.

One of my facebook friends mentioned that, he notice most guys with cars that have the "baby on board" decal or car sticker are the ones that drive like mad person. As though having that "baby on board" sign gives them the license to drive recklessly and the right to vent their road rage on other road users. Sigh! Such is the violent world today.

Baby Play Time

Sometimes you just need something simple for baby play time. No need to spend a mini sum on expensive toys to entertain your baby although you may still want to buy some colourful toys to attract baby attention. Sometimes simple items will suffice. All you need is a good dose of creativity and imagination.

My 4 month old son likes to be kept entertained and usually that meant carrying him around sitting front face forward. And this is one carrying position that is very tiring on my arms.

So if I got the chance to do some other way to distract baby and still allows for cognitive development without carrying him around I would do so.

Laying him on the bed I thought I just the nappy cloth for some peekaboo game. Raising the cloth and hiding my face behind it and then lowering it to reveal my face makes for an interesting game to play with baby. Sometimes I will brush the nappy cloth just barely touching baby body and face to provide a gentle feeling for touch sensitivity and light breeze all done to improve baby sense of touch and mental ability.

Such a simple game and yet inexpensive and with so many benefit. Baby just laughs and giggles with glee. Ah, the sound of laughter is simply priceless!  

Blogger Droid not so good idea

Switching over from my Palm Centro phone to my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android phone, I found a little nifty software called Blogger Droid by Anders Hedström from the Android Market. I thought it was great to do some mobile blogging on the go but turn out using this piece of software wasn't as great as I thought it would.

Although it has some nice function like shrinking the mobile photos before you post it up thereby saving you some precious data charges especially since I signed up the minimum Maxis 100MB data plan you can't just go blasting away as though you got a lot of data transfer.

However this software is still very buggy and found out that I lost 3 set of posts when I tried to do some mobile blogging. Initially when I tried Blogger Droid it was pretty ok, save for the irritating ads which took up a fair bit of display asset on my Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 mini pro Android phone. I thought I just bear with the advertisement if it could serve my mobile blogging needs.

But the lost posts was really frustrating and wasting my time composing anything that got lost along the way. It should save a copy in the Android Phone memory so that even if it was not able to post successfully it should still keep a copy in the Android phone memory. It only kept the draft copy, and after you have made a post it erases the stored memory. So the potential for lost post after an unsuccessful post is very high. This gets the thumbs down from me for this Android application. I decided to find another alternative way of posting blogs on the go and found way finally!

By using an image shrinking software to resize my photos, and using the Android phone's Gmail I could actually post my blogs. Pretty much how I did it with my Palm Centro. So looks like bye-bye sayonara to Blogger Droid app.

Pros about Blogger Droid:
- ability to shrink photos for posting
- review your previous posts
Cons about Blogger Droid:
- advertisement gets in the way
- biggest drawback is losing post when posting was unsuccessful, thus wasting your time and effort. This shouldn't have happened but it made me find a better way for mobile posting on the go.

The version that caused it was Blogger Droid version 1.59, perhaps version 1.60 may have solved the issue but this is a case of once bitten twice shy.

Oh, wow! Super duper traffic jam at USJ

Finally nearing home but there is a case of so near yet so far! Upon exit of USJ toll found that there a super duper traffic jam. Now the traffic is unmoving and i could write a little blog about it on my little Android phone. Just texted my wife and she asked me to sing along with the music in the car. Well looks like a long, long wait.

It is fortunate I'm alone and not with visitors as I could blast away the music. Visitors from the far east tend to be stiff necks and don't like their employees mixing work with pleasure. However they do practice double standards like they can play golf but use up your personal time to ferry them around. Sigh!

Them the breaks when you work for others. It is after all their rule or else go find another place to get your pay.

Anyway, today is Friday so traffic is very likely to be extreme. Coupled with a slight drizzle meaning the traffic cops may not be around to help direct the traffic and ease the congestion. Won't know if there is one till i reach the traffic light junction.

Almost reaching tthe end of my post and the traffic is still unmoving, just have to sit tight...

[update]
Enough is enough! I see many cars escaping this hell of a traffic congestion by making a u-turn through a gap in the road divider. I decided to do the same. I've been stuck here for 50 minutes and if I don't follow suite I'll probably be stuck here for another 50 minutes!

The U-turn leads me back to the Elite highway. Heading back to KLIA direction I will exit at the Putra Heights toll exit. The toll rate was RM1.10, rather steep for a short trip but better than sitting fuming at the traffic jam wasting time. The route from Putra Heights is big round trip round the hill of Putra Heights and leads back to the Puchong - Shah Alam Hicom road. From there it actually joins back to that frustration traffic light junction from the USJ toll exit. Before that junction I could turn to the USJ road that leads back to the USJ housing area. It may be a longer route but absolutely much faster!

All it took me was about 10 minutes drive rather than waiting and fuming at that ill conceive traffic light junction which might take me another 50 minutes of waiting time. I guess Malaysia is like that. Talk about poor town planning as well as bad road design.

Business trip to Muar

It's been a long day travelling down to Muar to visit a supplier. Along the way I hop in to Melaka for some R'n'R to catch a meal and take a break. So looks like this is going to a long day for me coz I'm still sitting in McDonald at Air Keroh having my afternoon break having tried another route from Muar. The usual way to Muar would have been to use the Tangkak entry or the Jasin entry to the North-South Highway. Well it is always good to explore alternative route since I'm not in a rush so looks like I will end up returning home later than expected. Well that's what happens what you try to use a short cut but end taking what you call the scenic route, ie it takes longer then you would thought shorter! No matter I take it as a learning experience especially if I want to learn new routes. Melaka is a little easier to navigate now. Just by following the signage and learning new landmarks. I hope to understand some of the many confusing one way streets. So far only learning how to drive the main popular areas only. I think it should be adequate for now.

Verifying RSS Feed for Digg

Looks like Kevin Rose has added some new features to Digg.com. Digg is now able to pull in RSS feed but of course they want to make sure the RSS feed URL is yours and not anyone's else so this requires verification. In order to verify, I have to paste the verify code and make a post. So this will have to be it!

And once the feed is verified by Digg I should be able to see my post show in my Digg account.

To view some of my diggs, visit digg.com/janleow

I think this should do it!
bda00d0bab944b8093d05b44ff83c952

Happy Mid Autumn Festival

Happy Mid Autumn Festival!

 

Today is fifteenth on the Chinese Lunar Calendar. This is when the Chinese celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival with lanterns at night and of course eating mooncakes and such. Just yesterday met up with a client and said today was a big holiday and they would be having an off day and I was scratching my head when I checked the regular calendar and there wasn't a public holiday in Malaysia till he mentioned the Chinese Lunar Calendar. Well not all Chinese celebrate it especially if our Chinese tradition is not well grounded during our school years.

 

Typically in Malaysia we seem to have two sets of Chinese, one that is brought up with the Chinese tradition and customs and follows them and another group like me who tended to follow the Western culture as our parents were English educated during the British colonial rule and thus the Chinese tradition and customs are less grounded in our background. For us, we seldom follow the Chinese holidays too much except the main ones like Chinese New Year. Others are more like a passing note and celebrated because of media blitz that reminds us of such activities are being done.

 

My wife side on the other, my mother-in-law is rather more traditional and she would follow the various Chinese celebration based on the Lunar calendar including the birthdays based on the Chinese Lunar calendar! So twice a year they will celebrate their birthday, one for the Western based calendar and one for the Chinese Lunar calendar!

Bluehost down time again?

Now this is getting to be to frequent. I'm getting very sporadic website uptime. Something better be done about bluehost down time. Or they might just find I will be one of the many disgruntled user who may just consider migrating to another web hosting company.

Bluehost is down due to power outage

OMG! This is the worst case experience I have with the Bluehost webhosting service I had for years. It is probably unfortunate that Utah in USA had a power blackout. My main website domain has been down for several hours already. Fortunately my website setup is rather complicated as apart from my usual blogging on Wordpress I also setup blogging using Google's Blogger as well as other website like Yola, Bravenet, Google Site, Tumblr for experimentation. So some section of my website is still functioning. Strangely I don't know why the DNS was affected causing my other addon domain in IPserverone to go down as well. Which means all my forwarding email from that server would have ground to a halt!

It's been several hours already and my website on Bluehost is still down. Guess it is going to take longer before getting restored. I found out about Bluehost status from Twitter, so looks like Twitter is quite a good source of quick information. Much faster than news release to be search on Search Engines.

Finally Bluehost also made some announcement in their helpdesk website:

helpdesk.bluehost.com

The Bluehost Helpdesk is currently unavailable and will be back soon.

There is a complete power outage effecting one of the Bluehost data centers, expected ETA is roughly 1:00 AM Mountain Standard Time.

Provo Power has requested that we shut down power while the transformer is being replaced. They are allowing us to use UPS power for the phone system. The other data center is unaffected by this outage.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Bluehost should consider setting up some kind of UPS as backup plan. Likewise in Malaysia where we often experience power blackout every once in awhile especially on a hot day where all the air-conditioner would be powered on at full blast, that put quite a strain on the power producers and usually very likely result in a power outage.

For mission critical task and services, a UPS power backup is a must. Hopefully Bluehost should consider implementing such UPS power backup as part of their overall webhosting strategy rather than letting their users in a lurch when such power outages happen.

Looks like I can't do anything to my main blog as well as several of my other website hosted on Bluehost including access to my cpanel control panel till the power outage is resolved in Utah.

[update]
Yes! My site is up and running again! Took a long while, the twitter updates from Bluehost says it is booting up their servers one by one and about 90% is onstream. Soon shall be 100%.

Baby Play Time

Day by day, baby is getting stronger. Neck muscles are strengthening so less support is required while lifting baby but still need to be careful. Every so often we will place baby on a prone position so he can attempt to lift his head and upper body. His arms are still weak so he can't do it for long, but I noticed for motivation if the TV is on especially with colorful children program he seems to have more incentive to lift his head up!

And boy, does he likes Astro channel 613! I guess the bright colorful and cheerful characters really catch his attention!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Funny Boss Day Saying Why You...

Funny boss day saying why you make appointment so late that after meeting over you go home directly. Duh? And what is wrong with that? It is up to customer to determine the time and it is not always you can get earlier appointment all the time. Also in addition is the workaholic culture so inefficient that for the sake of boss imposing their rule they are contributing to the increase carbon footprint of the world. By making the appointment later (which is also sometimes on request by customer) I worked an extra hour in the office which is extra productivity for the company and saves me an extra hour on the commute back to office which contribute to waste of petrol and spewing CO2 to the atmosphere just to show my face and say, "Hey, boss I'm back!" without doing anything else, go back to car and take the hour long drive home. This goes to show what Peter Drucker (quote, "a manager is promoted to a position of incompetancy") says is true all along and it is what is on most employees mind about middle level bosses way of thinking in enforcing policy whether the policy is made up by them or laid down by predecessor or higher up who has a narrow view of things. Duh? Let's see what other funny boss day saying that boss can come up with.

[update 3/1/2013]

Well out with the old, in with the new, and not any better. The old boss passeth the baton over to the new one. Altogether I've experience 4 expat bosses each with their own idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. However I do have a better feeling after each changes with the worst one with the 2nd boss, and now on the 4th with a much likable personality. However, he was still answerable to HQ, so there changes and implementation that were still not much to be desired. Instead of recording the incoming time by one of the staff, we now use a punch in / out timer recorder.


I don't know what's wrong with my HQ who insist on such devices on all staffs. If you were admin and there is overtime pay involve, ok, it makes sense. But if you are doing sales and marketing where your in / out time cannot be measured, the recorder did not make any sense. So for those times you came in late due to appointment, or leave early or not able to punch out as you could not make it back to office, you need to submit application form (preferably before doing it, but how do I know whether I can or cannot make it back to office?). And really, if you have to go outstation on business trip, you can't even punch in/out either, so submit a form too. Thus making more paperwork for everyone concerned.

When they wanted to implement the time recorder, they thought they could make an excuse or a reason to implement it. They thought that without a timer recorder, the insurance company would only pay compensation for during your working hours in the office. But when we informed that the insurance coverage was 24 hours irregardless of where you were, they were dumbfounded. Anyway, HQ already want to implement the time recorder for a very long time. No need to find excuses to slowly break it in to staff. Anyway which way you want to gently break in the time recorder still would not go well with us staff anyway.

For a small branch outfit with so many constraints do make working rather difficult. If the office has many staffs, of course a timer recorder would be required, but it should exclude the sales staff (which I know many companies do not enforce it on their sales staff)

Anyway, just have to live within their rules and bend it where possible otherwise, it would certainly be tough to follow rules to the letter. It was said, "rules were meant to be broken". This was probably one of the situation.

Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG Hoax

Here we go again, received another chainmail urban legend plying around, this time the hoax is about Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate). This urban legend came about in the wild 2005 and was collected by Snopes around 2008. They call it the date rape drug but of course it won't work.

 

Although MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate) may cause drowsiness, rapid heart rate, chest pain, nausea, weakness, difficulty in breathing, to certain people susceptible and sensitive to MSG, for the symptoms manifest for the unfavourable individuals large quantities of MSG amounting to about 3 grams or more need to be ingested. (A typical serving MSG treated food is less than 0.5 grams of MSG). However not all people are affected and only a small percentage are affected by MSG.

 

So regarding Canny Ong abduction, rape and murder case (13/June 2003), she was taken at knife point from Bangsar Shopping Centre basement car park and not from a spike drink. Besides, who would in the right mind accept a free drink offer from a stranger? A forced demand with a dangerous weapon such as a knife or gun is far more effective than trying to persuade a victim to take a spiked drink.

 

Source: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/msg.asp

 

Anyway, I know friends are trying to mean well when they forward messages warning about this and that, but some of this has no truths behind it and some far too improbable that all you need to do is do quick check on the internet and  you would know it is just a hoax started by somebody who thought it would be funny to scare the wits out of individuals who either didn't bother to verify the information or thought it sounded plausible but in fact just a bunch of baloney floating around cyberspace.

 

Perhaps he/she just wanted to see his urban legend creation get listed together with the rest of other urban legend for some anonymous hall of fame or what. This people really need something better to do if they got so much time in their hand to craft such urban legends like this Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG hoax.

Picking Up Baby Routine

With baby around our schedule revolves around baby. In the morning Lena will send baby to her mom's house for babysitting. In the evening after work I go over to fetch baby back. Sort of sharing our travel load to travel from our house to Lena's mom house and work place. It's a little tiring but workable for now. Lena has to wake up rather early as Subang is notorious for traffic jam in the morning, while I fetch baby coz I leave my office earlier than Lena. Beside my workplace enforce a strict arrival to work while my wife's has flexy working hours. For now due to Ramadhan month the traffic is still light so it is sort of like a trial run. Once the Hari Raya festivities are over then the real traffic challenge will come. Hope we will be able to cope!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.8

Xperia X10 Android 2.1 Update coming soon

My current Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro is running on Android phone version 1.6. Heard about the update/upgrade to Android phone version 2.1 will be released on week 38 or end of Q3. Somewhat earlier than the Q4 released mentioned.

Quick search found the SE blog about the upcoming release for Xperia X10 not just for the X10, but for the entire X10 series, the X10 mini pro and X10 mini.

Ran through the Sony Ericsson website and it seems I can upgrade the X10 Android phone software by ourselves instead of handing it over to the SE service center. If so that would save time but I wonder what are the caveats of doing my own software upgrade?

IOI Mall Parking system needs revamp

IOI Mall parking system in Puchong really needs revamp. they dont have enough parking machines plus the info counter people also don't want to work so late. so when it comes to closing time the payment queue ended up pretty long. to make matters worst, of the 2 parking machines only one is working. it takes at least 20 minutes to settle the parking. the management is oblivious to such inconvenience. they should do something about rather than let shopper have a poor impression about IOI Mall.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.8

Chicken Lime Recipe Traditional Cure for Diabetes

Received this message in my inbox outlining a Chicken Lime Recipe traditional cure for diabetes. Whether it works or not is anybody's guess, since I'm unable to find any documented information about this traditional chicken lime recipe cure for diabetes.

So if you do try it and if it works or don't work do drop a comment.

----- Inbox Message -----

For those most part, our daily meal consist of many sugars, or glucose that shoots straight into our bloodstream, and our pancreas would produce the insulin to get rid of the glucose quickly because it overshoots the normal working level. We need the glucose for energy and if it falls to low we will become hypo, which would result in lack of energy or worst. And if it is too high, our pancreas and kidney would become overworked from trying to remove the excess glucose.

The trick is to go for complex carbohydrate so that we won't get the sugar rush as it takes longer for the complex carbohydrates to breakdown in the digestive system to be absorb by the body while at the same time avoid the craving for food from sugar crash in the body system.

According to my doctor, diabetes is a lifestyle disease and to control it we need to watch what we eat and when we eat. Perhaps smaller meal at more frequent intervals to avoid the sugar rush and sugar crash situation.

Anyway, for those who reached the stage of becoming diabetic, see if this Chicken Lime Recipe will cure or it could just be another one of those urban legend myth circulating around the internet.



LIME 是青擰檬

My diabetes cured using this traditional recipe

Then I was 55 years old, one day suddenly I felt constant thirst and had the urge to drink more water, I also felt constant hunger even just after taking a meal, my legs often cramp and had severe cold sweat I went for a check up and the doctor diagnosed Diabetes, sometimes it reached 250 and it worried me so much. Doctor prescribed some medication and I was on medication for 2.5 years.




My brother who was staying in Malaysia was very concerned, he was a successful businessman. I went to visit my brother and sister when I was 57 yrs old and my brother told me he was given a traditional treatment recipe for diabetes which was claimed to be very effective. As a Hokkienese who suffered Diabetes for 25 years, previously his had complication and was unable to walk, but now he was cured.

Here's the Recipe :

Steam 4 limes (green lime) together with 1 chicken without head and tail), cut limes into half, add some salts and water level just to cover the chicken. I was given this 4 times during my stay in Malaysia .
The taste was not very good but i still took it in hope of curing the disease. I took me 1 week to finish a chicken (1 recipe), sometimes i drank it as a soup or for supper.

After 2 months I returned to Taiwan and had a medical check up again, the doctor advised me to stop my Diabetes medication as the blood sugar plunged to below the standard count. He couldn't believe it when I told him what I took. From then on I did constant blood check and it was normal. So for prevention, sometimes I still had it once in a while. Lime was not available in Taiwan at that time and my brother sent them to me from Malaysia .

I am now 71 years old, and there's no recurrence. During this time I have been staying in Canada , the USA and I have been healthy diet and the chicken lime recipe once in a while which saves my life.

As the ingredients are all natural, there's no harm at all to have a try and please spread this to your friends or whoever needs it.

----- End of Message -----

Please do your own further research whether the above actually works or doesn't.