It has been a great ride reader. I doubt that I have any regular readers, yet I know some posts have been helpful for some. That is the reason why I choose to let this blog be as it is and not remove it entirely.

Thank you and God bless!

I have been thinking and considering the benefits and virtues of getting an ultra-mobile personal computer in recent days. The truth is that work can be done in a more leisurely environment without the necessities of tables & power sockets, which is something commonly needed by laptop users. However, the pool of UMPC devices that excites me is really small. I wish to have one with full physical qwerty keyboard. But the latest devices seem to do away with this while relying solely on virtual keyboards. The best OS for productivity is still Windows IMHO. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one that is reasonably priced. Just the other month, I stumbled upon this device (please refer to picture) at our local Courts Mammoth. It is called Windpad by MSI. For its price it is definitely not worth it. The whole performance was sluggish at best! Typing was horrible and to me, that’s the deal breaker… If you cannot type smoothly and fast using a particular tablet, then it’s not the right one for you. However, if you can pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard then that might be different. But one thing about Windows tablets is the need for a real digitizer or a stylus… For nothing beats the note taking ease & scribbling stuff at the spur of the moment.

For me, the hunt for the perfect UMP still goes on…

A phone is a phone, and should be a phone first. Which is why I am starting to appreciate Nokia recently. They are slow in innovation and in applications, etc. But I never find myself questioning them on the areas that many are compromising on. Phones are now a toy for many. You get to play with it in many ways. But I hope people do think about the basic thing it ought to be first: a phone. Lives may depend on it.

Anyway, for those who really miss the writer and reviewer of the said site, you can follow him now in his new site (I am sure of it, based on writing style, tone & also other social-media tell-tale signs), which is at http://www.hornygeek.net/. But be warned. This is really an independent, no holds barred, site. The language is blunt and vulgar at times. Otherwise, it is not much different from the previous. Update: (21/6/2011), as of today, having occasionally visited the site for a week, I would have to re-word my earlier statement. The language is (in my opinion) obscene, unnecessary and has a tinge of narcissism. If you like reading opinions that are littered by an uncontrolled tongue to vent off their ‘rage’ (for a lack of word), then by all means, it is an ideal place for you. However, for myself, I think I will have to find my daily dose elsewhere (somewhere tamer, like maybe soyacincau or another). As I mentioned in the comments of this post, if you do not like what is written in any websites/blogs, just don’t read. Simple as that.

Update (6/8/2011):

I have stopped visiting the site and noticed that the traffic there is more or less dead. I can more or less posit what is the problem with the new site; it is folly to think that vulgarity would really mean ‘truly independent’ on any level. I’m visiting soyacincau now. The majority of people would prefer a site that has proper moderation and control in its postings rather than a flood of uncalled for vulgarities. Anyway, that’s my opinion and my own verdict on this. Sad. Oh, how the mighty has fallen.

I once made it a point to do three biographies a year for Youth Fellowship in my church. That did not go as it planned as I have been very busy with the regular series that I was doing (there were three of them). Nevertheless, at least one is delivered over the past two years during the annual church conference held locally in our local churches. So far, the list has been John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon. This year, it will be George Whitefield. Certainly, Whitefield has been a favourite of mine for many reasons that I am not inclined to put down here. However, during my preparations, I have come to see that there are many Biblical persons whose biography are equally, if not more, compelling to be delivered. This year, I am looking at the prophet Moses. I have not heard a biography given of him before (based on my own experience). Yet, I find Moses to be a very fascinating person. Someone the person on the street is able to relate to. Let’s see how this year goes.

The symptom is this:

Whenever I press the ‘upgrades’ for either WordPress, plugins or themes, I come to the FTP login page. I fill it up and press “Upgrade” only to find that it does nothing at all… it seems to be loading, but it will not refresh or change at all.

It happens no matter what ‘fix’ I employ.

Fix:

I found that I have to use Active FTP connection rather than Passive. What is the difference? I have no idea, for now (feel free to comment if you do know). What you need to do is make an amendment, very slight one as follows to this file: class-wp-filesystem-ftpext.php that is located in wordpress\wp-admin\includes

the original will have

@ftp_pasv( $this->link, true );

Change the “true” to “false” like below and re-upload the file to the appropriate directory on your ftp.

@ftp_pasv( $this->link, false );

Overwrite the previous file and try upgrading again.

Warning:

This works for me. Pretty easy, however, take note that if you do an Upgrade of WordPress, you will need to re-modify the new class-wp-filesystem-ftpext.php file again since the upgrade would replace the modified one. That is a minor annoyance.

All the best

One of the things that do a lot is typing. I type an average of 7,500 – 8,500 words weekly in the year 2010. It was a very exhausting work. Mind you that in uni days, having an assignment of 4,500 words would have taken the better part of the semester. Circumstances change, and for me, I am typing much more. What registered in my mind just this evening, as I was trolling the Digital Mall near my area, was this: do I need a more comfortable keyboard for work? Honestly speaking, after that self directed question, I found myself thinking hard on the occasions when I am doing what I am at this very minute doing: typing. Am I comfortable with the keyboard currently in use? What are some of the issues I have with this keyboard or what are the things I look for in a keyboard? I guess it is obvious to the reader that I have not been thinking much about these things, though they are important aspects of my work life.

As I perused through the many different models from Logitech and the nicely designed keyboard by Microsoft, I cannot help but wonder whether my typing and writing has always been affected in some manner by the keyboard in use. Honestly speaking, I am now feeling the weight of the keys and the resistance it gives me as I hammer down the keys with my fingers. Should I get a keyboard that allows my hands to rest upon a curved gradient design? Or should I just get one that is wireless, that gives me freedom to reposition the keyboard any way I want?

In the end, I did not get any of the sophisticatedly designed keyboards. Not because there is no use in getting one, but because I simply have not been paying attention on what I am looking for. Typing has been so natural and second nature to me that I have not cared much about the equipment used in writing. I should, because the comfort and tiredness of the hands come from all these small factors that are hardly raised up in the world. The way we input things have been taken for granted.

This will have an impact on us; especially in the age where companies are doing away with the physical keyboard and adopting the virtual one. No one has studied the impact such virtual ones would have upon us in the long run. Will the hammering against glass panels be more harmful than the pressing of physical ones that provide real tactile feedback, which would regulate the amount of pressure we put in typing? Only time would tell, but a total reliance on virtual typing would be foolish (yes, that applies to the new onslaught of Tablets).

Until I am a bit more certain of my own preferences, I will have to delay in upgrading or replacing my current ‘Prolink’ branded keyboard.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 67,000 times in 2010. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would have performed about 3 times.

In 2010, there were 23 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 467 posts. There were 85 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 57mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was September 29th with 724 views. The most popular post that day was Quick Review: CSL’s Spice Mi700 DroidPad (Updated).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were forum.xda-developers.com, carrypad.com, forum.lowyat.net, mytechnews.info, and umpcportal.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for pacman, tuesdays with morrie, darkseid, arm cortex a8 vs snapdragon, and cortex a8 vs snapdragon.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Quick Review: CSL’s Spice Mi700 DroidPad (Updated) September 2010
30 comments

ARM Cortex A8 vs QUALCOMM Snapdragon vs NVIDIA Tegra November 2009

Rooting HTC Dream (Singtel) June 2009
182 comments

Upgrading O2 XDA Stealth to Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM May 2009
75 comments

Of Pac Man and of Spam July 2008
1 comment

Connectivity

• GSM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Near Field Communication (NFC)
• Assisted GPS (A-GPS)
• microUSB 2.0

Comments:

While the inclusion of wifi (N) is expected, especially so late in 2010, it seems that the rest are just the mundane specs from early 2010. Sure the NFC seems like a new technology for the general masses outside of Japan, but according to one, http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/12/07/nfc-in-gingerbread-is-crippled-its-one-way-only-and-not-the-way-we-want/, it is only a one way communication (with no transmitter from the device itself), and that is just bad. It makes the device, a glorified tag/bar-code scanner. Bluetooth 3.0 has been supported in recent high-end smartphones from Samsung, which makes it saddening to note the lack of it here. Galaxy S scores points here over the Nexus S.

Display

4.0″ WVGA (480×800)
Contour Display with curved glass screen
Super AMOLED
235 ppi
Capacitive touch sensor
Anti-fingerprint display coating

Comments:

It is understandable that Samsung is still determined to enforce their view that SuperAMOLED is much better than the Retina Display of the iPhone. Granted that is the case, but why then would they put out the PPI as one of its features if it will not match or be anywhere close to the iPhone’s RD PPI score of 330? It would have been a real game changer if Samsung had pulled a higher resolution display, like Sharp’s tablet. It is not something that is unachievable given that they own the manufacturing plants. The contour display is an interesting design; I suspect it provides better viewing angles that normal displays cannot deliver well (plus, it is attractive physically).

Size and weight

63mm x 123.9mm x 10.88mm
129g

Comments:

Very thin and very light for a 4 inch display phone Plus point indeed.

Hardware

Haptic feedback vibration
Three-axis gyroscope
Accelerometer
Digital compass
Proximity sensor
Light sensor

Comments:

These are the standard for current high end phones, so no complains, just a bit of a yawn, since it does not push any boundaries that already existed. The gaming ‘gyroscope’ of course is imported from the iPhone 4. I wonder whether Google/Samsung is merely being a ‘follower’ in this? They could have incorporated some 3D display or maybe even utilising the front camera for gesturing (ala, mini Kinect), or something. It seems too standard for my liking.

Processor and memory

1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor
16GB iNAND flash memory

Comments:

Here is the biggest disappointment; the same processor used by the iPhone (of course the iPhone’s is a modified form, re-modified by A4 in-house) and used by the Galaxy S and Wave. It is fast, but I doubt that it is faster than Texas Instrument’s processor used in the Droid X. An A9 processor would have blown everyone out of the water. My only reason (my assumption) would be the fine tuning of A9 to Android at the moment, which is not completed as yet. We see that problem in some of the released Tegra 2 tablet systems. This would have re-booted the gaming capabilities of Android, and to really ensure that the developer community would be charged up to try new things not only on the iPhone but on Android too. I have not much complain with the internal memory of 16GB, except that many are unhappy due to the problems of flashing (given that Android phones are mostly flashable and flash friendly). I personally think people are making too much of a complaint on something that is not important. How many of us totally use up the 16GB memory besides as a storage tool for our massive digital music library? In fact, the space saved could have been used for something else. Could have. Sigh.

Cameras and multimedia

Back-facing: 5 megapixels (2560×1920)
720 x 480 video resolution
H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording
Auto focus
Flash
Front-facing: VGA (640×480)
3.5mm, 4-conductor headset jack
(stereo audio plus microphone)
Earpiece and microphone
Software noise-cancellation

Comments:

Droid X’s three microphones was game changing and definitely was intriguing for people to consider  the need for good audio quality for calls and video recording. However, Nexus S seems like the standard fare; it gives of the, this is just for developers and not consumer use. An 8 megapixel camera would have been brilliant considering that Samsung’s lenses are some of the best in the industry. It is also telling when the best resolution for the video recording is only 720*480. The front facing is not surprising given that many Samsung Galaxy S models (in Malaysia at least) has the secondary camera.

Battery

1500 mAH Lithum Ion

Comments:

Good size. Wireless charging would be a good addition, considering how often one would charge their smartphones nowadays.

Comments on Other things:

The main emphasis of the Nexus S seems to be this: An average phone that shows what Google’s Android can do with average components. I am sure this will succeed (if indeed this is their emphasis) because the focus is more on Gingerbread (Android 2.3) then on the hardware itself. Which is a real pity since Samsung is a well established company and Google is already getting into the groove of what works and what does not. They should have also focused on the hardware component like how HTC HD2 was the ultimate HTC-Microsoft design which is able to compete with many current generation phones even though it is more than a year old in design. That is what is needed in this industry that is changing TOO rapidly; a product that has a more significant life cycle. The first Nexus was something like this; many still use it and are loyal to it (see XDA forums for most active devices to note this). Instead, we find Android 2.3 fragmented in some ways already; the gaming parts are geared more for the upcoming PSP phone by Sony Ericsson. It would have been nice to see Nexus S incorporate that right out of the box, maybe with some physical buttons for gaming. We can only hope. Every time Android seems to be making headway, iPhone comes out just slightly ahead. Google has the resources, I am sure, it’s more of the risk-taking aspect which they seem not willing to take.

User Focus:

Picture above: Dell’s Stage UI, Sony Ericsson’s Timescape – all are lacking in user customization though it is miles better than iPhone’s offering.

I find that the best thing that Android has to offer for consumers like me is the ability to customize the phone at the software level. Tweaking the user interface at the moment is quite a challenge for the uninitiated. There seems to be many ready 3rd party developers there, but not enough traction to make it more acceptable for even new smartphone users. The age of users being forced to conform to one UI design needs to be thrown away. Personalisation is one of the key things that many power users would definitely want, which new users would be terrified of trying. Something of course cannot change, like for example, the way users select applications (by pressing a button regardless of how the apps are ordered, whether from a drawer or something else). There is much also that can be offered for Tablet design.

I personally find the iPad layout to be limiting and unfriendly (wasting too much space). We have barely scratched what is the best UI and most usable UI for the tablet medium, and so also for the smartphones. I think OS providers should provide means for the users (not just 3rd party developers) to extend their customisations beyond widgets, wallpapers, and see how a person may change their preferences depending on the device type and size. I would be very interested in dabble in this area given time and resources. UI design, speed, efficiency and utility is one of the most unexplored area in the apps development industry. Android, though it is more open than others, still do not grant users that freedom or liberty to the basic user. Let the user decide. Let them explore without fear of harming the experience (cloud syncing could be an option or preview modes or demo modes). This is the way to go in 2011 and 2012, as I foresee it.

It is an interesting premise… granted I am not usually impressed with modern songs, since there are little by way of surprises. However, the lyrics to Tegami by Angela Aki stirs up an interesting premise that is of course hypothetical: what would a conversation with your younger (or even older) self be, if you could have it?

There are many things in retrospect which were foolish (and even some may put it as stupid) and the temptation would be to warn the recipient self, but would we really learn from what is avoided? Of course, there are no ways to bend time and space to inject a future thought to the past… nevertheless, it is important to reflect upon what we have learnt and what it could have mean to our younger/older self.

Certainly I would want to question my older self, as to how he managed to go through the next 15 years. I would want to know what are the heartaches (to prepare myself) and also the sweet portions of that journey. We are just so fearful of the future that is not that clear in our eyes. Man may plan, of course, but it is God who decides. Humbling notion indeed that we really have nothing to rely on except upon the regulation of our Creator.

Why fight over the fallible and release our grip on the unchanging eternal?

Would I tell my younger self to trust himself (as in the music Tegami?) in spite of what comes? I would think not, knowing that it is always because of self that brings trouble upon self. Rather, my advice would be – submit to the Lord in all our ways, and He will make it straight. It is better to plead upon the grace and mercy of our Lord than to submit to the fickleness and temporal sight of our own.

Preaching to one self is never easy, especially if we have never done so in the light of the Word. Sure we preach constantly the desires of self, but it is the Word that strikes home and exposes what man truly is composed and made up of.

May God have mercy on us. He who is the master of Past, Present and Future, is the only who knows what is the best. May He provide us with much grace which brings boldness in our pitiful life.