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%.