Microsoft Windows Phone 7

Although I've owned a couple of devices made by Microsoft, so far my experience with these portable device from Microsoft has not been good. Now Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is the updated version of the Windows Mobile Operating System platform which was an update from Microsoft Pocket PC which was an update from Windows CE. And my first encounter with Windows CE way back then wasn't really great and the shortlive smartphone I had with O2 mobile phone running on Windows Mobile just didn't cut it either.

Just because you have been living and working with a desktop or laptop with a Microsoft Windows interface didn't mean you should do the same with a portable mobile device. It just ain't the same. Heck, the way Microsoft Phone work is rather clunky in comparison with other mobile phone O/S
platform is just way suck.

So I doubt the rebranded Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and repackaged mobile won't do much to entice me to get one or recommend it to anyone real soon. In fact it shall be contrary.

The way the software works by segregating the memory between apps and data makes for memory bloat. Not to mention software bloat as well. In order to run the bloat, a powerful CPU and higher memory is required to run Windows based mobile phone. Making a phone look so nice is really a CPU killer.

I noticed other platform like Symbian, Palm and now Android phones, do not require as much heavy duty hardware to run as compared with Windows Phone 7.

And of course, to make a mobile phone to be really useful is the availability of software apps. With the free to low cost software available for Palm and Android phones makes these phones very attractive indeed.

So I guess in the end Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is going to have a very hard time trying to regain back their market share. Besides Microsoft has botched their marketing and development. Take for instance their failed Microsoft Kin mobile phone aiming at the youth market which took them 2 years to develop and after launching and selling it for 48 days, they pulled the plug on it. Granted they got lots of mullahs, but no company can botch up their marketing so many times and there is repercussion on so many failed attempts that you may just avoid buying their items in case of failed products that would not have as much support from the market such as 3rd party apps and that would mean wasting your hard earn money.

baby is not well

baby is not well. Lena's mom's nanny services has several child including baby's cousin sister down with flu and cough. and when young children and infant are not well their appetite is poor and well my baby was grumpier with much crying.

i think i may have to take him to the doctors even though it is mild. perhaps the last weekend immunization shot has weaken him a little to catch infection from other kids.

wedding dinner in mentakab

Eivenn has grown and now wedding bells are ringing. Many years ago Lena's mom was baby sitting her in Mentakab town. Now she's all grown up and getting married. Our journey was quick traveling from KL to Mentakab using the new east-west highway and exiting at the Termeloh toll. Took us about 1-1/2 hours which was faster than those days when I use to come here using the old Karak trunk road highway. The double lane of the new highway plus a speedy limit of 110 kph was so much better than the Karak road which requires lots of patience overtaking slow trunks and slow small town cars.

One thing about wedding dinner in small town they tend to start early unlike big city like KL. So I hope to get off early as we still needed to visit a relative and later make the long drive back to KL.

Another thing about small town wedding dinner, they really love Karaoke! It's noisy and boisterous but I guess it enhances the celebration mood! Though it is rather grating the ears especially the choice of songs are like Hokkien oldies which I don't understand a word and not too much of my style either.

Anyway, it is a time for celebration and a chance for Lena's parent meet up with old friends and aquantances.

So congratulations to Zai and Eivenn and hope you have many happy returns on your wedding day!

10.10.10

just realised today's date is 10.10.10 though it doesn't hold much significance just that the number lined up nicely. Ten is nice coz it might just mean pefect ten. A decimal number system is easy on our brain and thus so is the Metric measurement system.

The day passes quickly and before you know it is almost over. Enjoying the last hour of 10.10.10 by reading the papers and winding down the day. Tomorrow will be another busy day having to settle many matters. That's how it goes, another day, another situation and hopefully another buck and something else more significant.

Expiry date of LPG Gas Cylinder Myth

I bet some of you would have receive a message from your friends and family members about Expiry date of LPG Gas Cylinder, well turn out to be a hoax started out from someone who has malicious intent to deceive and cause panic in the Wild West World (hence WWW.domain.com, hehe) of internet world.

The message said goes something like:
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You may want to let your wife, friends or maids know as well when they receive the gas cylinder from the vendor next time. This is really very good information for all of us to remember.

Please check your household gas tank cylinder as soon as possible. Knowing the uncouth characters we have to deal with, you should never be surprised that they will continue to use old tanks, though they will also tell you that they get their supplies in the tanks now sold to us. Insist on newer tanks!

Do you know that LPG gas cylinders have expiry dates?

Expired LPG cylinders are not safe for use and may cause accidents. In this regard,
please be cautious at the time of accepting any LPG cylinder from your vendor.

Here is how we can check on the expiry of LPG cylinders:

On one of three side stems of the cylinder, the expiry date is coded alpha numerically as follows:
A or B or C or D and some two digit number following this, e.g. D06.

The alphabets stand for quarters -
1. A for March (first quarter),
2. B for June (second quarter),
3. C for September (third quarter), &
4. D for December (fourth quarter).

The digits stand for the year till it is valid. Hence D06 would mean December quarter of 2006. Please return back the cylinder that you get with an expired date. They are prone to leaks and other hazards .

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Took me awhile to search as almost everybody repost the message in their blog but I found this info from Indian Oil Corporation which explains the exact meaning of those dates. So after reading this, there is no need to get miffed and terrified about such chain mail myths and hoax circulating in the wild!

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Q.Is it possible to know when a particular cylinder is scheduled for testing?

Ans: On one of three vertical stay plates (side stems) of the LPG cylinder, the date is coded alpha numerically as A or B or C or D and a two-digit number following this e.g. D10. The alphabets stand for quarters - A for Qtr. ending March (First Qtr), B - Qtr. ending June (Second Qtr), C-Qtr. ending Sept (Third Qtr), & D for Qtr. ending December (Fourth Qtr). The digits stand for the year when the cylinder is due for Statutory testing as explained above. Hence D10 would mean that the particular cylinder is to be taken for the next Statutory Testing by December 2010.

In any case, this is not the date of EXPIRY of PHYSICAL LIFE of the CYLINDER

It is further clarified that, during service, every empty LPG cylinder when it comes from the Distributor to the Bottling Plant for filling, is checked for its condition including the marked date for Statutory Testing due. Cylinders due for testing are segregated and sent for testing.

Every cylinder after its filling with LPG is checked for correctness of its weight and soundness, before despatch to the Distributors. Every care is taken to ensure that cylinders which are safe for use are only sent to our Distributors for further distribution. It means if a customer gets a cylinder in June 2010 with marking as B10, it does not indicate that the physical life of the cylinder has expired. It only means that this cylinder is due for Statutory testing by end June 2010.

source: http://www.iocl.com/Products/LiquefiedPetroleumGasFAQ.aspx

Expiry date of LPG Gas Cylinder Myth

Faulty Kingston DT mini 10 USB drive

Looks like it was just pure bad luck when I redeemed the Kingston DataTraveler mini 10 USB thumb drive from Bonuslink. I redeemed two DTmini 10 8GB thumbdrive, one for me, and one for my sister-in-law. I was fortunate that mine had no issues at all and currently now using it to store my MP3 to be played in my car's Red Fox MP3 FM Modulator player. My sis-in-law on the other hand seemed to get into the 5%-10% fault range of most defective digital device. Just a matter of probability, a 50-50 chance between mine and hers and of course a 5-10% defect rate and hers was it.

If you thought a 5-10% defect rate was high, think again. Most computer devices are getting ever tinier that if a speck of dust gets in, the digital device will not function well. Though the manufacturer will try to use class 100 clean room for their production, you never know some dust could be introduced in their manufacturing process by accident. Looking at some of my digital devices that failure rate seemed fairly consistent at about 5-10% defect rate. This rate feels high and if you are one of the few unlucky ones that tend to get the defective item like my brother-in-law who felt he always get faulty digital devices like digital cameras and such, well there you go, Murphy's Law at work!

So now is a matter of claiming the warranty and since my sis-in-law didn't test it till recently (lapse about a few months), we can't send back to Bonuslink to exchange, instead we have to send it directly to the vendor to claim warranty.

The Bonuslink Kingston vendor contact is different from the Kingston Vendor contact that I got from All IT Digital Mall. Anyway we will just follow the directions of Bonuslink vendor instead since it was them who supplied to Bonuslink:

Hit On Sdn Bhd
No 8, Jalan LP 2A/2,
Taman Lestari Perdana,
43300 Seri Kembangan,
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Phone No : +603-8943 4193

The ALL IT Digital Mall Kingston vendor is:

Able Action
401D, Level4 Tower D, Uptown 5
No. 5 Jalan SS21/39
Damansara Uptown
47400 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7665 3939

Hmm.., looks like there are two Kingston suppliers in the Klang Valley.

[update: 20/1/2012]

Recently I bought some higher capacity USB flash drive, and decided to use my older workhorse SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB for my Red Fox MP3 player. Initially I reassigned my Kingston DT Mini 10 for watching HD movies on my Sharp LCD TV. But turned out to be a bad idea. The slimmer connection style of USB-A type, lacking an outer case meant the connection can be rather loose on some USB port. Thus it was very difficult for the LCD TV to detect this Kingston DT Mini 10.

My sis-in-law felt that slim type connection was not so good because:
a) Difficult to figure out which way was the correct way to insert into USB port
b) Even if inserted correctly the USB port has difficulty to detect it as the slim USB-A connector without the casing makes it difficult for the connector to connect to each other

I should think so too, never really quite liked this slim styled USB-A connector, though it did make USB flash drive much smaller than the usual standard flash drives.

So I decided to use this as DT Mini 10 as Readyboost device for my Windows 7 instead. If you plan to totally use the 8GB capacity for readyboost, you should reformat it to NTFS or exFAT, since FAT32 has filesize capacity limit of 4GB max. For me, I decided to keep its original FAT32 format and use the balance 4GB space for file storage.

[update: 15/10/2020]

Finally this Kingston DTmini10 gave up on me. I suppose it wasn't hardy enough to withstand the constant readyboost duty. And of course the poor design of the connector points could also be at fault. After testing it on my other PCs, confirmed that the electronics was fried. Still I was able to use it for about 10 years which was not too bad. As the years went by, USB flash memory gets cheaper and cheaper. Now I have a bunch of them and many of my older and smaller capacity flash drives were relegated to readyboost duty for the older PCs and laptop or used as USB boot drive for Linux, Cloudready Chrome OS live CD / installer. Newer PCs and laptops were blazingly fast and didn't require readyboost to help speed up.

Google's WebP graphic format

Looks like Google is pushing for a new graphic format for website called WebP (pronounced "weppy". /(wĕpˈē)/). It is supposed to compress a picture further with a better average of 30% reduction in size in comparison with JPEG using a lossy compression format. Since many websites employ graphics to spice up the website content as well as illustration to explain a point, having a reduced size graphic would help speed up somewhat the loading time of a website and create a better user experience. Sort of reducing the World Wide Wait for a web page or website to load up.

Would it really matter? Granted I do have many graphic plastered around my website, but that little bit of extra loading time won't really make much difference because many a times I noticed the loading lag is not due from pictures but mostly from the JavaScript that trying to load up to show what's not like advertisement, analytics, flash, and various other website codes. That little extra won't mean much in terms of overall load time of your webpage, although if you take a grand view of the entire World Wide Web then of course the grand scale would be significant, just like saving a drop of clean water usage wouldn't matter much to you as an individual but would matter a lot if you look at the consumption of a community as whole.

If you really want a website to load up double quick or triple quick even, strip everything and just leave good ol' plain text! Now we will have a really super duper fast loading website without the overheads. Perhaps we should all revert to text browser like Lynx!

In the meantime, there is no need to rush headlong to convert your current crop of JPEG photos and pictures to WebP though you could experiment with this new format on your own PC. A wait and see would be good to see whether there will be a wider adoption of this new graphic format. You will need support from all the current browsers or your website would not be usable to everybody.