New York New York!

Went out with my sis for lunch at New York New York on Monday. Been going out with my sis a lot recently cos her promos have ended... It's kinda hurting our wallets tho... Like the other day I went to eat sakae buffet with yin n xl... Than last week we went sushi tei... Oh the minced tuna with negi n onsen tamago don was fantastic I tell you! And it was cheap! We had that an the salmon don... Went to the one at holland v. Food was pretty good, felt much better than the one i ate with my sis at taka years ago. We were exploring holland v cos the circle line jus opened so we went there... Not as much stuff to eat at holland v as compared to wat I remembered from the really old days of me working at ibn...

Anyway... Back to Monday... We had creamy mushroom soup, cheese fondue and mushroom mozerella bread chicken...

Some pics...

Felt cheated by the cheese fondue though... like 10 bucks for 3 deep fried mushrooms and 6 cucumbers... and salsa cheddar cheese sauce... cheese fondue??? come'on,  salsa cheese sauce =/= cheese fondue lah!

The rest were good tho, the chicken was really lovely in particular.

Ok... nothing else i feel like saying for now, except that the blogger app for iphone really sucks, doesn’t let me arrange the pics together with the text zzzzz... only good thing is that i can see all my past entries, something the blogpress app doesn’t let me do...

kk, nothing to write already... tata

iDrool

Been trying to convince my dad to get an iPhone 4S for himself... and than a Mac and an iPad too... than get iWork so we can use iCloud on our iDevice... XD

Yes... i really wanna use iCloud... most of the time that i'll be thinking abt my story is when i'm travelling on the bus or train so... gah... iCloud + iWork = iDrool. F> kind souls to sponsor me... iWork family pack is S$168 for 5 licenses... iWant! Shall wait for my dad to get his mac and than try to get him to buy that :P. At least he MUST get the Adobe pack for mac... i want Photoshop thank you very much!

The iWork set on iOS isnt that cheap tho, USD 9.99 a piece... it'll be better if dad gets an iPad too (instead of say a galaxy tab) and he can use the iWork set on the iPad... more worth it when more ppl get to use it yeah?

The most irritating thing for my dad is the screen size i guess... when ppl get old their eyesight isnt as good.. the galaxy s2 makes things really lucrative with its HUGE screen. For me tho... i find the s2 a bit too big to comfortably hold... or fit into my pockets. Diff age range, diff needs i guess.

Spent quite a lot of time the past few days helping out my dad with the iPad stuff. The sch loaned them as a trial to find ways to teach students using the device... he's gotta return it on tues already... so i was helping him to learn to use the programs, reset the device etc... i was pleasantly surprised when he gave me a bit more pocket money for my efforts XD Thanks dad!

Heard some ppl had problems with updating to iOS 5... overloaded Apple server... my friend took like 2 hours to update to the iOS 5 itself... nope that does not include the time for apps. Heh... at 1st i thought many ppl would rush to update it right away when the iOS got released.... i guess not than... most of the ppl would update a little later in the day or the following day... so being too eager and updating when i woke up at 4am in the middle of the night was a good choice XD

My sis's friend somehow managed to delete all the songs, contacts etc when updating her iOS... no idea what happened... My dad was saying that i was very 'brave' to update my phone to fast - his colleges using iPhone have not dared to upgrade to the new iOS yet ... like i was teaching him abt the iPad stuff and he said i was very tech savy... well i guess its just a hallmark of the younger generation. Probably not all of us are tech savy, but you'll find a greater proportion of us compared to the older generation. Plus, i'm really not THAT tech savy at all.... i know nuts about computers and programming.... (apart from the basic tech spec stuff...) I am fairly adequate at USING computers though... normal usage stuff yeah. Nothing special. Perhaps i can go offer iOS 5 upgrading services or something lol... nah, i think i was really lucky to have upgraded my phone early and managed to avoid all the problems ppl faced like missing contacts/iTunes library etc from an overloaded Apple server.

Speaking of the computers... i always set my cursor speed to the fastest speed available... something which my dad and my sis cannot stand... idk... i just want things to go faster... and i dislike having to move my hand so much... i can't stand it if the cursor speed is slow. Even if i'm using the sch comp i'll set the cursor fast to the fast... My sis also hates how i set the corners to Expose, space etc... well its not really the setting that shd hates per say, but the fast cursor speed together with the triggers in each corner that leads to frequent accidental activation of those shortcuts. In truth i frequently activated those accidentally at the start myself, but got used to it soon enough. The bad thing tho is when you sneeze when holding the mouse... the cursor goes all over the place and... you get the idea.



On a different note... i'm still waiting for AnShi SP subs for LAST sat to be out! Plus there was another SP yesterday... gosh god knows how long that will take to come out... well there is 1 miserable subbed vid for last sat's show, but its really... miserable... the video quality is really bad T.T. Holding out for a better quality, subbed video... but idk how long i can cont waiting for... If i really can't take it anymore i'll just watch the HD raw ones... my Japanese standard is really pathetic tho... most of what i learnt came from watching Arashi shows so... but still, i can only understand the commonly said stuff... so on the average is the whole show... i get the main gist of everything, but sometimes they make some random comments or jokes and i can't understand :'(. So yeah... with subs are better... else its really a chore to go back and watch the entire video again, takes too long esp when the special is 90mins long... There hasn’t been any Arashi show besides the two SP for like... a month already... gosh... the lack of stuff to watch is really killing me now... T.T

Get to work already...

Ok... so i finally settled down to work... read the lsit of fyp projects properly and picked out a whole bunch that i'm interested in. 2 mails sent out... i really hope they will reply me! thks to me for dragging it out and wasting 1 week, i only have 2 weeks left to select and meet up with the sups... not a lot of time indeed :(

Next up would be my written report for the mol evo and the presentation for omics. Presentation for omics is like on the 2nd of Nov, while the written report is due on the 4th Nov. Not a lot of time left....

Excuse me aunty?

During dinner just now i saw a bit of the tv program 'buffet buffet' or 永远吃不肥 in chinese. I just still sitting at the dining table so i watched for a bit... They were introducing this restaurant offering tea time buffet with this large 菲律宾 Lala... the guests on the show were commenting one by one about the lala... than this aunty said something that really made me go wow... it went something like this:

'我没有看过buffet有菲律宾lala所以我很惊讶。这个菲律宾lala很好吃，它的口感很好，一点也不输给oyster'

okok... as i'm typing i realised that i have indeed forgotten a big chunk of the dialogue. Nonetheless, she was saying that the lala is very chewy, and can the texture wont lose out at all to that of oysters. OYSTERS!?!?!? Oi aunty, u got eat oyster before one or not? What kind of oyster u eat? Or you overcook ur oysters one ah? How come ur oysters chewy one ah?

Like seriously...? Oysters are best eaten raw, where the texture is very smooth and soft. Nope, not chewy. Ppl always praise oysters for its sweetness... the fresh taste of the oyster, the saltiness of the sea... sorry, my vocab is kind of private limited lah... but chewy? Even when you eat the 蚝煎 where the oyster is cooked (but not over cooked!), the oyster is also soft and sweet (only sweet if its fresh). And NOT chewy...!

ok... maybe her chinese isnt good enough to express herself properly... oh maybe she isnt that much of a foodie (that why did they get her on the show o.o)

i don't like that show tho. very boring. they save cost and invite random guests to the show each time... yeah, they want to get opinion from ppl from all walks of life, but its really boring when they don't have a very good command of chinese and use very boring expressions to describe the food... and when all the program does is to show comment after comment by the guests, it makes the show really boring. all i can say is that it’s a... very low cost production? no host no nothing... just a commentator filling in the gaps... the rating system of 1-5 is also quite... shallow. generally the scores are ard 3 and 4 only. very helpful indeed... how did it end up like this? there are very few guests rating each time, and scale of 1-5 is too narrow. its unlikely that you will give something full marks since there's ALWAYS room for improvement no matter how good things get. So unless you are very lenient, or got extremely impressed, you most likely wont give a rating of 5. similarly, giving a rating of 1 seems a bit too mean/extreme... so most likely the scores will be 2, 3 and 4. Since someone actually recommended the restaurant, chances are that its not too bad, so the rating would be more like a 3 or a 4.... great... how informative can rankings be when everyone gets a similar/identical rank? totally defeats the purpose of the whole show imo... sighz.come on

guys, i'm sure u can come up with better programs than this right?

speaking of other programs... i really dislike that... love your neighbour or smthing drama... it not only degrades singaporeans, it's also degrading the new immigrants!!! isnt the show supposed to show the difficulties of the new immigrants and get singaporean to accept them? total gov propaganda which i do not approve of but... in no way is the show doing what it was intended to! 1st: you are ridiculing the new immigrants. i'm sure that would make them so happy to be in singapore... than: you portray singaporeans as being stupid, un-understanding, and... pfffftttt. lousy show indeed! making fun of everyone... love your neighbour? the show seems to be promoting otherwise...

iOS 5!

so its been like... 1.5 -2 days of using iOS 5 now. ok, not very long... but i discovered more new stuff among the 200+ things apple said they added to iOS 5. darn you apple, why can't u just nicely release a change log like ppl normally do? (ok, i'm assuming they do anyway...)

its IS quite fun to discover what's changed in the new OS tho. As for those who have jailbroken their phones or are planning to jailbreak ur phones... well if u've jailbroken already they u probably shd just wait till the new jailbreak for iOS 5 is out to continue using whatever u jailbroke ur phone for... if you're planning to jailbreak... heck it, just update to the new iOS  5 and jailbreak when it's out... the jailbreak shouldn’t take too long to come out right? right? i've not jailbroken my phone so i seriously have no clue... ><
EDIT: FYI, i found out that redsn0w jailbreak already works with iOS 5. so go ahead and enjoy all the new features of iOS 5. unless u prefer a diff jail breaking program... but that shdnt take very long either.

When you text message someone,  your messages are in green. 

You can see when someone else is typing in iMessage, so its pretty much like MSN now XD.  When you can send thru iMessage, everything is in blue. 

Finally understood what iMessage is about today. Well i read earlier that it'll be incorporated into the SMS system, but i only saw exactly how it works today. When you text someone who isnt using iOS 5, your send message button and sent message dialogue will be in GREEN. However, when you are texting someone with iMessage, the message field will not only show 'iMessage' instead of 'Text Message', the send button and dialogue text will be in BLUE. (See pics above, i censored the names with the touchup tool in iPhoto... really cool, didn’t expect it to work so well LOL). At 1st i just tot the changing of the send button from blue to green was just another one of their small aesthetic changes.... but now i know better! The great thing about iMessage is that it's all intergrated into the OS, so i don't have to open up a separate app like Whatsapp to sms ppl... and i DON'T have a habit of using Whatsapp... so i sms my friends normally rather than doing it the free way unless i'm texting my friend overseas. Some (or rather, one) of my friends don't have the habit of checking her Whatsapp either... since i'm don't SMS a lot to have a habit of using Whatsapp, iMessage is just the perfect solution to make use of the free wifi or 3G connection (my 12 GB data plan like never, ever runs out!). Yeah, i don't SMS much so i wont use up the free SMS either, but the good thing is that now i can MMS for free too. It'll be particularly nice if say my dad gets his iPhone and we can MMS each other or smthing... or if my sis gets an iPhone too... (my dad says she'll have to wait till she's 21 tho... aw...)

Another plus is if you have an iPod or iPad, you can use iMessage too... probably useful to contact some of my friends who own iPods but not iPhones, tho i'll have to get their email address or smthing to add their iDevice as a contact 1st.

iMessage is turned on on the iPhone by default, you can choose to turn it on or off under Settings > Messages
(ok, using iMessage now, its pretty cool, like MSN but in sms style... yeah its like whatsapp, but now its INTEGRATED. i kinda feel sorry for the devs of whatsapp and other similar apps... Gosh, i finally squeezed out a precious reply from ash after sending her a pic of her idol... now i know how to get a reply from ash tsk tsk!)

Now you can also swipe down to hide the keyboard in the messages app. Previously i tried a bunch of stuff to hide the keyboard when viewing my smses (so that i can have more space to see the SMS!) but the keyboard wont go down. I'm not sure if i was doing the wrong thing previously or smthing though...

Now you can swipe to delete songs!

Loads of small stuff that they have changed... like for example, now you can DELETE SONGS from the music player. YES, FINALLY! Previously i've searched the iPod high and low, videos can be deleted, but no way to delete songs! Which is rather stupid if you were to ask me... finally we can delete songs from the iPhone too.

Also, previously when i take photos of my games which run the landscape mode, the photos are not rotated when saved in the photo album - you have to rotate them manually later on. In iOS 5, the phone will help you rotate the picture on the correct orientation. A good improvement since i do take quite a lot of SSes of my games which run in landscape mode.

The notification centre shows widgets like stocks and weather... and of cos ur notifications. Go to Settings>Notifications to pick which app you want to see banner notifications with, which u want to show in the notification centre etc... a bit more complicated, but you get more control over what you see.

The notification centre is pretty neat. You can choose which apps are able to send notifications, and you can choose whether to show the weather widget. I'm wondering if it's possible to add in some custom widgets (like how we can download widgets in the dash board on mac?)... shall search ard and see if it's possible. Currently the default one is just Yahoo weather and Yahoo stocks... pretty boring isnt it? The thing about notifications though... is that if you want to delete them from the notification centre (w/o visiting the app), you can only delete the whole chunk of notifications from the same app at a go... you can't delete em one by one. Not too sure if this really affects things much though... Oh yes, in case you cannot figure out, swipe down from the home screen to see the notification centre

Press and hold the home button to activate. Voice control takes a few seconds to start up, you can only start speaking when there's a wavy line going across the screen... the phone will play a tone + vibrate once its ready to listen to yor commands (well its doesn’t take very long for the app to get ready, don't worry)

Tried the voice control a bit more last night. It seems like all we non iPhone 4S users can do is:
call [insert contact], play [insert album name], play song by [insert artist name], stop music, play music, pause music, next track, previous track, play more songs like this (haven tried this command though)

The problem with using voice control to call ppl is that... the program don't pronounce names the same way we do, so unless it’s a relatively simple name, the phone might get it wrong. Particularly for Chinese names... Things like 'Mummy' or 'Home' is not a problem though. Still, i find it weird to talk to my phone in public.... Oh yes, have i mentioned this before? Press and hold the home button to activate voice control (just like how you press and hold the home button to activate Siri in iPhone 4S)

Siri will definitely be more useful though, you'll be able to ask Siri what the weather is like and it'll do a search and read the results to you... you can get Siri to text message, or set reminders/alarms for you... oh well, i wont be getting Siri any soon though. I believe Siri has artificial intelligence so it'll learn your preferences as you use it too?

The home screen of the Vlingo app. One thing that might be a bit irritating though, is that you have to manually hit the stop button once you have finished saying your command. The app will not auto detect when you've stopped speaking.

The various applications Vlingo works with.  Unlike the android counterpart, there is no speak to memo/notes feature here :(

For non-iPhone 4S users, you can try the free app Vlingo (download it from the iTunes store nowXD). Downloaded it previously but didn’t use voice control and so i deleted it... since we were messing around with the iPhone and samsung galaxy S2 voice control yesterday... i went to re-dl it. Lets you use voice control to send sms, emails, google search, and even update ur fb or twitter status. In fact, if you look at the samsung voice recognition program closely, there's a small 'powered by Vlingo' wording at the bottom left of the app.... so yeah... Voice control would be useful when you are say, driving for example. Or maybe you wish to dictate a long text into the app. Typing on the iPhone is still quite slow compared to typing on the computer.... Otherwise, i think directly searching your phonebook to call XXX would be faster than attempting to get voice control to recognise the person you intend to call. (unless its simple names like mentioned earlier).

iCloud is cool, the photos get uploaded to photo stream really fast, and than it'll download them to iPhotos equally quickly. It works on the windows too, but i think it'll be something like dropbox... you'll get a folder on your desktop which shows all the pictures from photo stream. I've not gone to xp to try this yet though... not even sure if that's compatible with the XP. Unlike things like your contacts or documents, you cannot view your photo stream from the iCloud website... you need to use the folder thing in windows, or iPhoto (or Aperture) in the mac to view you photo stream (or you could use say, the Apple TV, or any of your other iDevices... basically its just that photo stream is not available on the web browser).

From the iCloud website, you can see your contacts, your documents, your calender, and activate the 'Find my phone' features (send a message to your phone/mac, remotely lock your device, or securely wipe out the data on your device).

The iCloud website has a pretty minimalist feel to it... yes... the iWork is basically Apple's version of Office... and since i picked msoft office previously over the Apple iWork suite... i'm kind of regretting it now. Well the iOS versions of the iWork (Keynote, Numbers and Pages - i.e. Apple's Power Point, Excel and Word) don't come cheap at USD $9.99 each, (the mac version isnt very cheap either...) but the auto sync ah... its really very useful! Started writing some stories/fanfics, and i really want to edit or re-read my writing on the bus or MRT sometimes...! I got the compositions app last time, but it’s a minimalist writing software (some writers prefer it that way, but i don't ><) that don't even allow you to bold or italics your text. When writing stories i try to express what the characters are thinking and i want to put those in italics to differentiate between normal conversation and their thoughts so... also since it uses dropbox, the syncing is not automatic and there was once when a conflict arose that did not get resolved properly - i ended up losing a big chunk of my text :(. Main problem still, is that 1) the syncing is not automatic and 2) the writing app isnt powerful enough.

Sighz... such a shopping maniac... iCloud is really really tempting me to buy iWork. Dad - go buy a Macbook pro... and an iPad (rather than a samsung galaxy tab) and buy iWork please... i want the darn syncing feature!!!! Sad thing too that i bought the Office^2 app only to see Apple bring out its own Keynote, Numbers and Pages to the iOS later on... those 3 combined are a ton more expensive than the Office^2 though... hopefully other devs will come up with ways to properly utilise iCloud... still, things are most likely better when its by Apple since they are the manufacturers of the Mac and the iDevices afterall...

e

See that small cute wireless icon there? it shows that those photos are online... Those photos in the 'Oct 11 Photo Stream' Event don't have this icon.

Oh yes, photo stream and iPhoto... the default setting in iPhoto will be to automatically dl any new photos from your photo stream. You can turn this off under Preferences > Photo Stream. When downloaded the photos will be automatically kept in an event called 'Oct 11 Photo Stream' (well they'll make a new event every month i guess). At 1st i was wondering if the photos in that new event are really stored on the computer (mostly i was worried cos of the way they auto named the event, plus, i'm still a newbie iPhoto user)... than i realised there's a small wireless icon at the bottom left hand corner of each picture when you are viewing the photo stream, indicating that those pictures are viewed wirelessly... and that icon is not there when you are in the XX Photo Stream event... ok, so my worries have been resolved XD. The photo stream update and download happens really fast. Like... within the minute it'll download the new photos... not like some programs where the auto download only check if there are new updates every 5 or 10minutes... this one is really almost instantaneous... oh another note, you cannot edit photos in the photo stream, you have to download and save it locally 1st. you also can upload photos you take with other cameras (or even photos you took off the net etc) into photo stream. All you have to do is to add it into your photo album in the iDevice, or upload it into Aperture or iPhoto, or put it into the Photo stream folder on your desktop if u're using a windows. (yeah, you can find this info on their help pages)

Some other features i noticed:
Last time you have to wait till the 1st app is downloaded and installed finish before it moves on to work on the next app. Now it continues to download the next app even when the previous one is installing, potentially saving a lot of time when installing tons of apps.

When you go to Settings>General>Usage, it shows how much space you have left on your phone (and how much is used up). Also breaks down the information to show you how much storage space each app uses. Previously you can only see this info from iTunes. (i guess w/o this feature, you can't really call the iOS 5 mac/pc free right?)

Yeah... i think i'll get back to the fanfic writing now... i'll update the post or make a new post when i discover more stuff/think of more stuff to write XD Edit: yeah right, in the end i'm still editing this post!

Edit: ok, i'll be hardworking and update the post with some pictures/screenshots... since photo stream makes things much more convenient now... XD

okay, i think that's all the pics i'll be uploading in this post... opps... could have picked a larger size when i was exporting the pics from iPhoto to photobucket... i'll try and remember that the next time round :P

my macbook is old T.T

Yes... my mac is old. It can't get the update of iPhoto for free cos it's too old... purchased iPhoto 9.2 from the app store at 15USD... its installing now... sighz... you sly apple! in the end i still had to pay to get my full iCloud features :(

my debit card account is getting broke... i shd deposit some $$$ in it soon...

Lion is updated already... but nothing that i really wanna try syncing now besides the photo stream... sighz...

iOS 5 done, next up - Lion!

I actually fall asleep last night waiting for iOS 5 to come out... in the end i woke up at like 4am, and than it took me about 20-30mins to dl iOS 5... after all the hassle, everything's finally set now...

Apple made the installation of iOS 5 to be like a factory restore, probably cos they had to go right down to upgrade even the firmware - something i didn’t notice happening in the previous iOS 4 update... so yeah, all the apps will be gone. Since i didn’t sync my apps ever since i moved to the mac (cos otherwise i had to slowly re-arrange all the icons)... it was a hell of a time for me to re-install and re-download all the new apps i've had since than. That took a HOURS to do. Probably 4-5 hours or even more? Over 10 GB worth of apps to install, and loads of them needed updating so yeah... >< well... at least my apps are finally being synced on my iTunes too...

Thankfully, the new iOS lets you USE the phone when syncing with your comp, so i could use my phone to rearrange some apps and look ard while even more apps where being downloaded and installed into my phone. That's a mighty good upgrade if you were to ask me...

So far so good, amazingly all the application data was kept even though the apps had to be re-installed. No that i know how those appplication data stuff really works... but yeah... stuff like my game achievements, my documents on Office2... they were all there.

Some minor changes - the iPod icon has changed to a music icon with a different look... kinda miss the one button... but i guess i'll get used to it in due time. The reason they changed that to say Music is cos Videos are now house separately... not much of a diff to me... i rarely watch the videos downloading on my phone yeah...

The 'on-off' toggle button in the settings are now... erm... oval shaped? Instead of the old rectangle, they now have a rounded off side. No diff to me really.

The camera button on lock screen... it only schows up when you double click the home button... just like how the music player will only show up when you double click the home button. Makes sense... prevents accidental clicks.

Swipe down at the home screen to reveal the notifications center. Haven had much notifications yet, just one sms so didn’t have much opportunity to test it out.

Photo stream - haven exactly tried it yet. I mean, it's enabled on my phone, but i've got to update my Lion OS to be able to use iCloud - something which i'm doing now (dang, shd have done it earlier! The Lion Recovery Update needs another 33mins more to download... i'm not sure how long it'll take to download the 2nd one!). Can't wait to try out iCloud properly! Okay... the photo i took earlier is up on photo stream already... still a long way to go before my Lion downloads finish tho... hope it can finish before i have to leave the hours... gotta leave at like 12:30pm for my cell bio lecture...

Supposedly able to sync bookmarks from mac to iphone... but i guess that'll only come when my Lion gets updated too. No Lion, no iCloud.

So far i've used 1.3 GB of my storage space in iCloud. It's basically used to save my application data right now... like Tap Tap 4 and Office2... Tap Tap 4 is using the most iCloud storage space in my phone right now lol... all the songs i've bought/downloaded previously... (yeah, amazingly i didn’t have to re-download any of the songs after re-downloading the app too)

Oh yes... voice control. I guess Siri is the AI that you can talk to, and it'll talk back to you. Non-4S phones will only gets the normal voice control i guess. Pressing and holding the home button activates the service... I said 'Play music' and it got it amazingly got it right... I tried something more adventurous and said 'play Arashi' and the 1st time it called ashley, the 2nd time it just said it couldn’t recognise it... aw... not sure if it'll work if i try other artist or smthing... i need like... a list of the commands it'll recognise lol. 'Next song/track' works too, though its kinda stupid to use voice control for that, since it takes way long to hold down the home button till voice control activiates than for you to go hit the next song button in the Music app (or on the lock screen, on ur earpiece etc). The idea of talking to my phone is still... really weird though.

Ah... it downloading Mac OS X update now. 12mins left... okay, that's all for now, till next time! :)

let's talk iPhone

ok, since i have really nothing better to do while waiting for iOS 5 to come out - or rather, i have no mood to do anything else... let me talk about why i'm so excited for the new iOS 5.

News is that the iOS 5 will be out at 1am... that's like 2hr 40mins more as of now... sighz...

Notification center
Aye... with all my tons of games, straits times etc etc... i wake up each morning with many notifications, many of which DISAPPEAR before i even get to see it. They are just gone the moment i unlock my phone... also, since i play quite a lot of games on my phone, the pop up notifications get freaking annoying.... especially when you play games like tiny towers and you get a notification every few minutes (you could turn notifications for the game off completely, but if i do that, i probably wont visit the game altogether so i leave it on).


Reminders, To-Dos lists etc... all in one calendar app
Yes, i have many to-do lists and reminder apps now. Which is precisely the problem. There are too many of them, and I've downloaded too many of them. In the end i don't know which to use, and end up not using any at all. Something integrated into the system would be nice.

iCloud and wireless updates/backups etc
I guess this is the main draw for many, and it is for me too. I found out just how irritating it was when I wanted to get a photo i just took on my phone to my comp in sch the other day. The cheap, retractable usb cable i bought from Daiso lets me charge my phone through USB, but it doesn’t properly connect my phone to the lappy, so it is not recognised in iTunes or iPhoto. Bravo. I really wished i ALREADY HAD iOS 5 + iCloud there and than. Even at home i'll have to purposely connect my phone to the lappy, since usually i change it with the power point by my bedside (nightly routine of mine is to play games on my bed till i'm really tired, then plug in the phone w/o me having to get up from the bed, then go to sleep).

Automatic backups every night when your phone is connected to a power source would be really good for ppl like me who charge their phone every single night. Call me kiasu or whatever, but i really dislike it when my phone is low on battery. I like to see my battery icon FULL... partly why i bring the retractable wire to charge my phone in school i guess. Since nowadays i leave the router on 24/7, i'll be able to use this feature to its fullest. (Somehow there's barely any 3G connectivity in my home).

Every iOS 5 and OS X Lion user will get a free iCloud account with 5GB of storage space... Not a lot though... hopefully they will increase the storage space in the future. I might not get it to sync my songs or smthing, since my songs already take up 3.2GB of space, leaving me with barely room to store anything else on the iCloud.



hmm, the above 3 are the first things that comes to my mind when i think of iOS 5. hmm, siri is still quite a mystery to me. Didn’t watch the keynote presentation... but i've read a few things from other webpages. Some say that siri is completely not available for non-iPhone 4S users, others say that owners of the older models will be a much less powerful siri that works in very limited areas. Either way, i'm still not too convinced on the idea of talking to my phone... i'm not a very articulate person by nature really. So siri... we'll see what i get in like 3 hours time.

hmm what other features is there? Nothing much else? Quite a lot of the stuff is for iPad, which i don't have. Like the multi finger gestures and the swiping to navigate between apps... will we get that on the iPhone too? o.o I remember the website saying that it's only for the iPad or smthing...

hmm, maybe i should go read the apple page on iOS 5 yet another time since i have nothing better to do anyway...

For the Nth time today:

This version of the iPhone software (4.3.5) is the current version.

oh yes, iMessage... doesn’t affect me much since i don't have that many friends using iPhone. okay... my jc clique are all using iPhone now, but we al have Whatsapp already AND i don't use that much either...

Twitter integration... will probably encourage me to tweet a little more... now really hardly tweet anything unless i'm very bored or purposely make an effort to...

Camera on the lock screen, and take photo using the volume up button... good additions, now i wont have to stupidly scroll around looking for my camera button but i really need to take a picture. i don't take pictures that often normally though... but still it’s a good feature to have, especially when you are on holiday overseas or on a trip somewhere with your friends and family (basically on an occasion where there's an opportunity to photo whore). Well, the volume up button to take picture would be EXTREMELY useful actually... else having to finger around and jab the screen is really hard especially when you are trying to take a photo of something say really high up and you are already stretching you hands out with the phone as far as you can go...

 (blogging is really a good way to pass the time, i've already spent like 30mins on this post so far)

hmm... there's the enhanced photo apps which lets you do some rotation, cropping etc, basically stuff OTHER apps have been allowing you to do all the while. Well, i've already go TONS of apps that can do those for me so... nah, this isnt an exciting feature. Next!

Safari... tabbed browsing, for iPad only... sighz. Reading mode and reading list thing... i'm not too sure if i'll use it much. I probably wont...


Calendar... the auto syncing with my iCal through iCloud is definitely something i'm looking forward to. The new calendar layout looks much nicer than the current one too.


bummer, that's about all i guess? i've ran out of things to say and there's still like 2 hours of waiting left to go... hopefully the download wont take TOO long. I'm sure there are TONS of iDevice users camping and waiting to download the new OS the second it gets released... yeah, i know, i'm one of them... i wasn’t even this excited for iOS 4. hmm what did iOS 4 bring us? Pretty much all i can remember are: the option to choose a different picture for your home screen and lock screen... and folders to put your apps... really can't remember anything else. ><

okays... 2hr 15mins more... let me find something else to occupy my time with... sighz...

iOS 5... where are u?

Waiting and waiting for iOS 5 to be released... guess it'll probably come AFTER the 12th of Oct for sg... sighz.

FYP project list is out, some ppl already mailed and visited profs, but the pathetic me still have not found an interesting project yet. sighz.

2 presentations done, 1 more to go... as well as a mol evo report to do. sighz. its time to get down to proper work...

still waiting for my iOS 5 to come.

school and apples

Ok, let's start with school 1st... two presentations today, one for cell bio and one of biz law... luckily for me i wont be presenting for cell bio tho XD

muscles test on monday was... wasn’t as bad as i expected but i didn’t ace it either. i unfortunately didn’t pay enough attention to the structure of sarcomere so that's a 5 marks out of 30 gone case for me. the questions was pretty direct... i was quite amazed that i could recall quite a lot of stuff to write. made me quite happy for a while... like 'yay i didn’t flunk it' kind of thing.

stay up on tues night to read the live blogging of apple's press conference. sadly they didn’t do a live broadcast, else i would have just watched it. no iphone 5 is really... iphone 4Sianz as mrbrown puts it. not that i'll be changing a phone, my iphone 3gs is still going strong.... in fact, apart from the fact that i've stuffed it full of apps, its as good as new. no signs of aging like my dad's htc (or maybe its just the windows OS that's really screwed up). my dad has been eagerly hoping for an iphone 5 tho... hoping especially for a bigger screen since he's not very young anymore. now he's not too sure weather to get an iphone 4s or get a samsung galaxy s2 (which is much cheaper now + has a huge screen, my mum is using that now)

they are really pushing it out fast, official launch on the 14th, and sg will get it two weeks later on the 28th oct. unlike the beginning when it takes months for the new product to hit the stores here, this time they are pushing out the phone worldwide by december.

while one of the big features of iphone 4s is siri, the idea of speaking to my phone is still rather weird to me. sadly iphone 3gs wont get the full features of siri that's available on the 4s... there's speculation that if it works out well on the 4s, they'll push the feature to other devices like the computers and ipods. makes sense afterall - those devices have more than enough hardware capability of supporting siri. i'm not too sure how well siri will work in sg though. i tried the google voice recognition feature once and it really sucked. it doesn’t understand the singapore accent :(

still... even tho there's no iphone 5, i'm very excited for the iOS 5 that'll be released on the 12th of oct. yes yes, they have annouced the iOS 5 features a long time ago... i've read them at least twice on the official apple website... but that makes it all the more exciting that we're finally getting it right? the notifications especially.... its very irritating how it can only hold one notification at a time kind of thing. if during the night there's like 4-5 notifications that pop up, some notifications will just disappear before i get to see them, while others may appear in quick succession such that i can't respond to them properly (like i press view for one, the next appears, if i dismiss it i may forget abt it later on, but if i click view, it'll exit the app i JUST launched and....).

iCloud will also be an interesting feature... 5GB of free storage to all iOS 5 and Lion users, and i'll be both come 12th of october XD

not sure what i'll use it for tho... sync my music? sync my contacts? my contacts don't change that much anyway... oh wells... we'll see.


woke up this morning to see a news notification on my phone (presumably from straits times) that co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs has passed away. didn’t quite believe it to be true till i saw news reports on times and other websites... and finally on the apple website itself. very sad news indeed. all the products he pushed out in the last decade or so were truly revolutionary. from the ipod to the mac to the ipad... even if you are not a fan of apple you have to admit apple changed how the world and the rest of the companies work. look at all the ideas microsoft took from apple... and samsung too (tsk... to me its just blatantly, whole sale copying of the iphone design! can't u guys be more original and come up with something new and better rather than be a copy cat?) sure, samsung has pushed out better specs on their phone than apple, but hey if apple didn’t come up with the iphone, you can bet ur bottom dollar that samsung would never have made its galaxy s2 the way it is now.

its really a waste that such a talented man passed away at the age of 56 (that's really young!)... i wonder how apple will continue to develop in the future. hope that things will only get better... in this fast paced industry, one day u're in, and the next, you're out...

...

my dad went to get my mum the samsung galaxy s2 yest cos there's an offer now. they also signed up for nio home and stuff... dunnoe... now they angry cos my mum keeps her phone numbers stored in the sim card, and when my dad unknowing ask the saleperson to help them xfer the phone no.s from the phone to the sim card, all the no.s originally in the sim card got wiped out zzzzzzzz. mum goes: my phone no.s. always stored in the sim card and nothing went wrong b4! dad: why didnt u stop me yesterday when i purposely ask the guy to help us xfer? how i know the phone dont have ur numbers (my mum using my old phone, which was too, used by my sis, so all the no.s inside are from my sis)

sighz.

anyway...


Happy Birthday Ash! when are we going out to eat????

sianz. exams tmr and two presentation on thurs. glad i'm only presenting in one of them..  the other one i'm still doing QnA part of cos... it's a group effort afterall.

What's my age now? o.o

got my fb wall spammed with bday wishes yesterday... the amazing things abt social media lol... ppl whom i'm not meet in ages... ppl whom i've not talked to in ages... its nice to have a reminder like this saying that they hopefully do remember you. than there are also those ppl who just saw the notification that XXX bday is today and they just join in the fun and wishh you happy bday too. thks, even tho i dont know who you are... i was quite surprised that even my jc teacher wished me haha. guess she's quite a fb addict, happily sharing pics of her newborn on fb all the time :)

lunch yest = crab, as expected :) but ah the crab was fantastic yesterday... my dad will buy from the stall at tiong bahru... nvr haggle price... heck, he dont even ask stuff like how much per kg etc... its like just a mutual understanding btw stall holder and customer - he knows that we know about crabs, and we want the good ones. we dont care abt the price, just give us the good ones. the uncle will always dig out the crabs from the boxes hidden at the back of his stall for us... other ppl just get the lousier ones on display at the front of the stall. my parents always say those he's hiding are probably for sale to restaurants and all. *shrugs* i'm just happy we get the nice crabs XD. steamed... that's how crabs ought to be eaten XD not butter or chilli or pepper crabs....

ah.... bday present... my sis obviously didnt get my anything. she just pulled an all nighter last thurs over PW... and her promos are starting tmr. my parents got me... they got me two shirts, and a mouse. i was really quite surprised that my dad bought me a mouse... i guess it cos he just got one at the IT show, and found the logitech wireless mouse to be very good, so he got me one as well DESPITE me constantly saying that i do not like wireless mouse (and mouse with at least an additional back and forward button). so he did get me a mouse with back and forward buttons... but its wireless.... logitech + the battery life is supposed to last 3 years... quite pricey too... i'll take their word for it when they say the batteries will last... but i'm not too keen to use the mouse cos... its freaking heavy! the wired mouse that i just bought a few months back is super light, so i'm kind of used to the light weight already... plus the logitech mouse is SUPER heavy, esp with two AA batteries stuffed in. previously all the wireless mouse i came across uses two AAA, smaller, lighter batteries... this logitech mouse uses the big ones... -.-''' no wonder its so heavy!

response is also a bit jerky at times, doesnt feel as good... i wish there was an option to change the dpi too... still, the main issue is the weight. my dad loves heavy stuff so yeah... he wont quite understand... but my wrist started aching after a few hours of using the new mouse last night T.T so much so that i switched back to the old mouse. bah. i really dont like finding fault about gifts from others, esp when it costs so much (like i could have bought 3 of the wired mouse i'm using now!)... but i really wont be using the new mouse much cos of the supreme weight! T.T haiz. wat to do?

1 week recess break starts today... muscles test coming up on monday haiz...

What's my age again?

i'm seriously living in the past. last night at 12midnight my sis talked to me on msn and wished me happy bday. i was like seriously wth? she blur blur and talk to the wrong person isit? cos previously my mum keep complaining that my sis very blur these days and send smses to my mum's friend instead of whoever my sis wanted to sms to. than it slowly dawned upon me that it's probably the 25th of sept already. wth! time pass by so fast! i nvr really look at the dates these day cos there's barely any written assignments so i dont have to like, look at my watch and write down the date on my worksheets... i remember the last time i took note of the date was at the start of the week and i was looking at the SBS time table... but i only remember it say from 19th sept to XXX week. so yeah... guess i was still thinking its 1X of sept or smthing. totally... didnt realise time passed by so fast.

did i say this before? i think i did blog abt it sometime earlier. i totally fail at keeping track of bdays. even my own apparently. its just another day to me... just that i know my parents would go buy crab since its the crab season during my bday + my whole family loves crabs. crabs on my/my dad's bday is kind of a tradition i guess. <3 crabs :)

went lunch with my friend on fri, and my parents were like asking if its for somebody's bday or wat... and i was thinking 'heh, tbh i dont even know when's my friend's bday!' i dont think she knows mine either tho, she nvr asked and why would i mention it? you dont really go ard announcing ur bday do u? embarrassing but true... tho we went on a trip to world expo together last year... i nvr bothered to ask her bday haha. i'll forget abt it anyway, so it makes my less guilty if i just dont know abt it. i dont even know when's the bday of any of my (uni) classmates. ><

hmm... since its my bday today, that means ash's is coming next sun! me n ash are really cool, our bdays are exactly a week apart... and her IC no. if just right after mine! haha, wat a coincidence! unlike me tho, ash always remembers my bday and she'd sms me right after midnight and is almost always the 1st to wish me! she got beaten to by my sis last night tho... not cos she forgot, but cos her relatives stayed in her house till super late! so she only sms me when they left... still  i <3 u gal! when are you ever omg free to meet up???? YOU ARE FOREVER BUSY! ITS BEEN HALF A SEMESTER AND I ONLY GOT TO CATCH A GLIMPSE OF YOU YESTERDAY! MY SIS WANTS AN OUTING AFTER HER PROMOS ON THE 3RD OCT OK! WE DEMAND TO SEE YOU! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME WE EVEN TALKED????

went to disturb ash in sch yest and got the biz law tb from her... cmi lah... presentation after recess week so need the tb to find the case laws and stuff... i would have gone to raid her hse if she wasnt in sch yest haha. i totally didnt recognise her cos she plaited her hair... -.- was so extra + embarressing for me to walk in an out of the LT so many times ><.

hmm... on the other hand... my writing wise... its really pathetic, very limited sentence structures... always writing/saying the same thing over and over. plus i think i'm too long winded.... and too many details and kinks in the story that i need to work out. my sis drew a nice picture for my story last night... the drawing is still incomplete though, cos my story is incomplete! still have not introduced all my characters yet... and totally clueless abt how to bring in the last character... than i still need to formulate the background for each of them before i can proceed on properly with my main story.... i think now its 10+ pages long and i've still not actually STARTED the action. just character background, and intro to the whole story. gosh, at this rate it'll really become a book... IF i can get enough ideas to continue writing. the thing about it is that there's too much stuff that i have to fabricate... too much details to take care of for this novice writer to handle properly. i need a lot more time and inspiration to come up with ideas...

i came up with another story that's modified from my long time bed-time dream/story... that one has the skeleton completed from start to finish, but when i attempt to start writing that 1st the other day, i was stumped at how to began. having a skeleton/outline =/= having a story... still have quite some bit of details that i need to firm up... than there's the choice of scenario, the chose of style and words (tho its quite limited by my lack of writing prowess in my case)... loads of things to consider when you having start typing...

ok, time for lunch. till next time.

Holidays are never long enough, exams always comes too fast

As per title... Next week is recess week already gosh! And then I've got a test coming up the week after! Too fast too furious! Doesn't help that I'm feeling totally lost in class gosh.

This sem is just whizzing by without me even noticing. I still have 3 more presentations coming up. One is just a casual presentation in tut, but the other two are more formal lecture presentations. Got more group work coming up for cell bio, as well as an individual report for mol evo due on 4th Nov. Dateline s are still far for now, but before I realise everything would be due already.

oh wells, I've not been very good at updating this blog of mine... But its not to bad right? At least I didn't leave the blog to rot for months haha.

tried my hand at writing some fanfiction. My lack of vocab and poor sentence construction skills really sticks out like a sore thumb. Doesn't help that the last time I wrote fiction was like when I was in pri sch or lower sec. I always prefer to write argumentative, and my sch stopped giving us fiction for English essays really soon. Then in the recent years I've sort of changed my writing style to something more like scientific writing(except say when I'm blogging, than I'll just write watever that comes to mind). especially after the class on scientific writing, I prefer to keep my sentences short and sweet, something that doesn't go really well when you can writing fiction... In either case, I'm writing the story really slowly... It'll be going through tons of edits before I can finally call it decent. Right now it's still in bits and pieces, and I guess not even 5% of the final story has been written so far. Talk abt procrastination haha.

Ok, can't think of anything else to type now so I'll just end here.

lol..and it drags on

wanted to make on post on mon abt the mooncake festival, but got tired and didn’t finish my post... and now its wedn!

haven celebrated mooncake festival since we shifted house when i was ine like pri 5. last time i used to go through TONS of candles, like 10-20 packs still aren't enough during mooncake festival. all i do the whole night is light and set up the candles on rocks in the park in front of my old house. contributing to environmental pollution yeah... but of cos i didn’t know better than.

having a cool class on pheromones now. the module is supposed to be on clinical applications of omics... but the guest lecturer seems to have gone a bit off track with all the talk abt pheromones and insect behaviour... but im really enjoying the lect anyway, who cares if its off topic? wonder what our lecturer who's sitting right in front of me right now thinks abt it tho... is it thinking abt how it's kinda going off track too or? idk... but i do like the topic.

she showed us this cool video earlier on the bolas spider. COOL. didn’t think of looking for these kind of videos on youtube. it’s the same guy who narrated in all the plant videos that i've seen in class in like sec, jc, and uni... didn’t know he did other documentaries too... all the stuff he did is really interesting/cool IMO. pardon my severe lack of vocab....

i hate it when the video adding and photo adding keeps malfunctioning in firefox! forces me to open up the site in chrome just to add the photo/vid! zzzzzzzz

didn’t really celebrate my dad's bday last fri, tho we had a nice family day together. my dad took leave and he fetched me to sch, and cos my class on fri ends before lunch, he fetch me and we went to orchard where my sis had been having a sept hol 1 week math crash course... had lunch at hot tomato at somerset 313. good food, and at a great price too. the sirlion steak was super good, very jucy. we asked for it cooked medium rare and we GOT medium rare. many of the restaurants give u like medium well or smthing when you ask for medium rare -.-''' like hey dude, why bother asking when you're gonna over cook it anyway -.-'''. the last time i had nice medium rare beef outside was at some restaurant in vivo city really long ago. can't rem the name of the shop already... but the beef was very juicy too. i ordered whipped potatoe side (i think you can pick like rice also) to go with it and the combi was just great... you can use the whip potatoe to mop up the juice that's oozing out from the beef.

gave my dad the pen me n my sis got from bugis after dinner... he likes the color... which is good. he got all excited and brought out the pens he bought over the years... and we had fun writing with the pens. after a while it turned onto a 'guess the tradition chinese character' game... like my dad n mum would write some traditional chineses character and than become absolutely amazed when me or my sis (actually most of the time its my sis, i don't watch as much taiwanese programs/read taiwan stuff as much as her, and my chinese has always been poorer than her, plus i got slow reaction) knows the word. some words are actually quite natural to me, probably cos i've been watching too much japanese stuff (and i completely don't read the chinese newspapers or anything else in chinese). like i'd recognise the word in trad chinese straight away, w/o realising that its actually NOT the simplified chinese... like some words i erm.. forgot what it looks like in simplified chinese even. bravo... >< haiz.

dad got an ipad loan from his sch cos they wanted him to develop some method to use the device for teaching... will be an experimental thing next sem but man... the sch sure is stingy. they'll only get to use the device for 1 month, after which the same few devices will be taken from the lecturers and put in the classrooms for the students to use. so when they are teaching, they wont have an ipad to show the students with. o.o. than 3-4 students will have to share 1 cos the sch bought very few of the devices... very stingy even for a trial teaching method. still, i had to spend a few days teaching my dad how to use stuff like the app store, how to check his mail etc... setting up some apps... how to sync with itunes etc... yeah... was quite lengthy and he always manages to ask qns which i nvr cross my mind when i used my itoy... his way of thinking is just quite diff from mine at time.

oh... i went daiso the other day and managed to find a sleek looking and slim ALUMINUM casing mechanical pencil. immediately grabbed two of it to use as casing to make my idevice stylus... been searching for writing utensils with metal casing in popular (in various locations) for quite a long time to no avail. they all come in plastic these days... totally didn’t expect to find it in Daiso... (^.^)V

here's the finished product...

Opps. Wanted to post this on wedn, but didn't have the pic. Now I'm posting it with the pic from the iPhone blogger app...

hmmm

its my dad's bday tmr! went out with my sis yest and we got him a pen... that's like the 1st time i got my dad anything in... years... its like the bdays would  just roll ard and i wouldn’t even notice it till... the day itself. i just suck at keeping track of bdays. be if my sis's, my dad's, my mum's or my friends... i happily remembered abt mich's bday a few days before the actual date... but the next time i remembered abt it was erm... a few days AFTER her bday... sighz. i know i suck. its like... all these little things will just slip my mind. just like how my mum would call and ask me to buy newspaper or something on my way back. i'd forget more than half the time...

Installing XP on Lion and more...

hmmm... quite a lot of things happened over the past... 2 weeks?

last weekend we had a nice long 4 day weekend break... i took the opportunity to reinstall XP on my mac and allocated more space this time round. It took me a freaking 1 and a half days to get things right... party because i forgot that to install the bootcamp drivers on XP you have to basically insert the snow leopard disk into the disk drive when erm... you are logged in to windows -.-''' stupidest thing ever of me to forget that... and i spent a long time trying to figure that out. also... it turns out that to get the entire bootcamp driver to work, you just have to keep reinstalling the drivers from the disk. so i've managed to get ALL the bootcamp drivers to work... like i can use all the function keys, i can see my files on the mac drive, i can use 2 finger scrolling, 2 finger tapping as double click etc.... previously it worked only for a day or so, before the bootcamp drivers just went burst... now its been a week and still working fine *nods*

another thing which wasted a lot of my time was the realisation that Lion no longer supports XP. i.e. bootcamp 4.0 only supports Win 7 now. I tried to find ways to downgrade bootcamp... to no avail. well you still can use bootcamp to partition a space for windows, and you still can use bootcamp to delete the partition. the thing is that to actually INSTALL XP, you have to reboot, hold down the option key at startup, and select the disk and do the installation from there. the side effect to using this walkabout is that when you start up to windows, it asks you which OS you want to use... the XP, or an unknown. I Guess the unknown is for the Win 7 which they expect you to install... anyway... the XP is working fine for me, so i don't really care about the screen asking you to pick the OS each time. I'm NOT gonna fork out $$$ for an OS just to erm.... play my games.... until the day those games no longer support XP... but maybe i'll stop playing by then. However, if you DO NOT have the Snow Leopard disk, than its.... not quite possible to get XP working, since you need the bootcamp drivers... else you can't even use the wifi...


went IT show today... yest dad went during his lunch break and got a new router. The downside is that... our home doesn’t yet have optic fiber cables, so we still need a modem -.-'''... and the router my dad got is erm... w/o modem. sighz. so now the router is hooked up to our old router + modem. Already the internet speed is much better, and the wifi signal is no longer intermittent. Went and got a new lappy for my sis today. Her old acer is gonna die any day now, so my dad decided to get her the asus lappy on offer... less than 800bucks. A super good deal really. We got it from the digital arts ASUS store on lvl 4... from my dad's 'research' on fri, that store gives the best offer. Dad also got himself a wireless logitech mouse... his colleague claims that he used his for more than half a year w/o needing to change the battery so... yeah... my dad decided to give it a go too. For me... i still prefer wired mouse... plus i require my mouse to have 'back' and 'forward' buttons - i.e. they must have at least 5 buttons. My mouse all seems to spoil rather fast tho, each one lasting about a year... so i just get a decent priced, 5 button mouse and be done with it... apart from the 5 buttons... yeah... the shape is impt... its gonna fit my hand snugly and be comfortable to hold. Other than that... i'm not toooo picky. i don't need a super good mouse like those Razors mouse for gaming... since i get a bad headache from playing those 3D games ><

My dad's been talking abt getting a macbook/iMac for ages already... in the end he decided to hold (once more)... oh wells... that's how he is. It'll take him forever to buy smthing for himself, but an instant to buy smthing for us. <3 u dad! speaking of which... his bday is next fri, and i still have no idea wat to do for him... maybe try n cook smthing nice? hmm but wat... ><

drawings...

recently went to dig out the freestyle (by ohno satoshi) book from the boxes at the top of my sis's book shelves.. there's this seahorse drawing that i really really like... but sadly the small pic in the book isnt very clear. felt they could have done a better job with the photo but oh wells.




instead... the pic on the following page is very nice and clear...


using that as my phone lock screen wall paper now and absolutely loving it!

Get moving...

wahaha... i have finally got my lazy butt/fingers moving and plotted out my sch time table nicely in excel. and printed it out. and emailed it out yo my friend/sis... and pasted it into the default mac aurora desktop pic so that my time table appears in the middle... my desktop was soooo cluttered, all the icons were completely blocking my time table! its alright now that i've cleared up everything tho! previously when i was mass downloading PVs and stuff... just dumped them randomly on the desktop... now they've got their own little folder tho XD

also bought this new app for my mac... dragzone... its really cool, i can just drag a pic on my desktop to upload it etc... very convenient. best thing is you can write your own scripts for the program too.... (tho i fail at scripting... or more like, i've nvr learned scripting b4 T.T) there are quite a few user written scripts available for download... lets you say twit pictures, shorten urls etc.

downloaded pymol for students. feel so stupid... been searching for molecular visualiser downloads but i didn’t try the education thingy on their website cos i tot you'll needa pay... turns out that they kindly let ppl download an old but free version. which is exactly wat i need to finish up my assignment for mol evo... which is due tmr as usual. wanted to finish it off fast but ended up getting distracted with dragzone (attempted to make a script, got things wrong and it didn’t work out...) and other stuffs and now its... 30mins to midnight and i still haven finished the assignments... whee! no dragon nest or maple today... oh wells... doesn’t matter.

okays, i've gotta go finish up that evernote hw. got this particularly... tough/philosophical qn on whether half human cyborgs of the future will be a stable species or will they be taken over by machines... and got more qns that require the use of pymol. quite tough/killer qns...

i wonder if anyone is regretting their decision to take mol evo now. like if there are any ppl that joined cos they heard the 1st lesson was very slack. well... the 2nd lecture was really tough. well actually tho i said we were given a total of 3 breaks in the 1st lecture, i pretty much used all the breaks to complete the assignments given... and in the 2nd lecture... he didn’t give us any breaks at all. unless you were stoning in class during the times when we were supposed to work on the assignments. no breaks at all for the whole 3 hours! i took a self declared toilet break but IMO that was one of the most intensive 3 hours i had in a long time... cos those assignments aren't very easy, and most of the time i couldn’t finish even finish half of the assignment within the time given >< so its like you've gotta listen to him, than you've gotta read up, maybe do some googling... than you've gotta do the assignments given.

BUT in spite of it all i really loved it. yeah sometimes you feel lazy to do the assignments, but you have to do it anyway so ya might as well try hard to finish it in class... this class is a challenge and i love it. its been a while since i got challenges like this and its really fun...! ok, i must be off to do my challenge. cya!

another week goes by...

indeed... there wasnt any biz law tut today... oh wells... kinda wasted my time waiting in sch. early class tmr... mol evo heh. wonder how much he'll cover tmr. like those lect 1 stuff that we didnt manage to cover last lesson. will he cover them tmr (or rather, today)... or? since he said we dont need to do those exercises that he didnt go thru in class, in a way it kinda means that he doesnt expect us to read the rest of the lect parts... well some of the exercises cant be done out of class anyway. like the one that needs pymol. i had a iMol program that opens up those pdb file on mac, but it doesnt work anymore after updating to lion zzzzzzz. not sure what other programs (free ones) there are for mac... hmphs. -.-'''

gonna meet my friend for lunch tmr. she's got stuff on so we'll only have like 1+ hour to chat + eat :(

meeting ash next fri since her class ends really late tmr/today... might still end up gng out with my sis + her friend tho... oh wells... we'll see how tmr...

sch buzzzzzzzz

waiting for biz law tut now and wondering if there IS tut at all.

biz law sure got off to a rocky start...

1st the lecturer insisted on having lect on national day, only to be forced to cancel it cos of sch policies.

then on the 2nd week, the lect had to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances... and unfortunately for us students he didn’t manage to find the time to put up an announcement/email ahead of time to tell us (even tho he managed to sent out like 3 messages in the 1st week)...

then a friend taking the module but in a diff tut class said that they waiting for the tut to start for over 30mins... and most of the class left after the tutor failed to turn up... so yeah, i'm wondering if there's tut today. schedules say's there's supposed to have class today, but the schedule didn’t say that the lect this week would be canceled -.-'''

either way, i'm stuck with taking this class since i NEED to clear that biz module. and yeah, i'm counting my lucky stars that i wasn’t as unfortunate as my friend. she signed up for an AHSS module... but the lecturer didn’t turn up on the 1st lecture. the following day, they got an email saying that the module is canceled as the lecturer has left the school. o.o guess stuff like this would happen from time to time, but still... its rare to see such drama going on.

on some unrelated note... the sch is increasing their intake drastically... and the effect is that the canteens are super crowded. it used to be that the canteens are only really crowded around 12noon... nowadays, even at 11:30 its super crowded -.-''' sighz.

mrt train frequency seems to be decreasing despite the opening of the new track at jurong east interchange. was waiting for the train at 8:30 yest... 1st train came 4/5mins later, packed to the brim. next train was another 4/5mins later... thankfully not as packed as before. i thought they were trying to increase the train frequency... 8:30am is past the peak hour already? :S i'm not sure... but i do know that the new platform at jurong east is in operation till 9:30am... ah and the new platform... more trouble for me who's heading to the boon lay side. either i wait for the next train (instead of taking the one that goes to platform D), or i have to run down the stairs and back up to the platform that heads to boon lay.

oh wells, its abt time to head to biz law class. i wonder if there's even class at all ><

Fyp

Had a totally 'wonderful' time in sch yest wasting time. Only had a two hr lect till 11:30 but had to stay till 5:45 for a briefing on fyp. Kinda looking forward to see wat kind of topics there will be. Im fine with doing a projevt at sch or anywhere else (in sg that is, not that i mind gng overseas, but its kida troublesome yeah). Hoping i can get a project at some outside lab so i get a diff experience. Decided not to go back to the same group... Wanna experience more stuff + new stuff.

I'm certainly excited abt doing fyp. A bit worried on whether I can meet expectations and whether I will slack off and all, but I sure am looking forward to it. Still, gotta get thru this sem 1st. It'll be quite a hectic period when selecting the projects tho, since I gotta go visit all the profs/PI and all... That'll be ard sept if I haven rem wrongly. Well either sept or oct. Coming real soon yeah

K, gonna turn in now. Nite nite.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Bukit Batok East Avenue 5,,Singapore

Cooling Off

The weather is super hot recently... tho it means extra nice durians... the heat is really too much to bear.

 

my parents bought this water sprayer thing from the patrol station... its quite cute, you pump air into the device so when you press the button to release the water, you can get a long, continuous spray of mist as opposed to short sprays of mist/water like in the traditional spray cans (like those you use for gardening for e.g.)

Got these USA strawberries from NTUC... looks red and nice don't they? looks are deceiving tho... these guys are really sour and boy i hate sour strawberries...

I put the berries in the freezer in an attempt to remedy the situation... it tasted better when the berries where frozen hard tho... kinda like sherbet... but once it starts de-frosting, its just as bad as before >< the sour taste is back once more and... the berries become soft and weird textured as freezing destroys the cell integrity. sighz. i still managed forced myself to finish them in the end tho...

School whee... an update!

Yeah.... so 1st week of sch is over. yes... an update... maybe i WILL be able to keep my promise of blogging even during the term (and not just during hols) after all.

No more 4 day week for me, i switched on of my wednesday class on virology and microbiology for a monday class on muscles. decided to make the switch after finding out that there's 3 assignments for viro/microbio (and there's group project too) + falling asleep epicly in the 1st class + not finding the lecture material very interesting.... well the pull factor was the many reassurances of my friends that muscles is very factual and easy to understand... and the exams are really straightforward, and there aren't any of the assignments or presentations like in other courses. i think there'll be quite a lot of stuff to remember in that course tho, as with cell bio... but viro didn’t feel any much better either... plus the assignments... i've already got assignments and presentations a plenty in ALL the other core electives i'm taking... a course w/o any of those for a change is certainly welcomed. With that change i think my time table is more of less set... though it’s a 5 day week now, the good thing is that i've mostly 1 class/lecture a day with the exception of 2 lects on tuesday and 3 tuts on thurs. 1 lect a day means that i'm less likely to sleep in class... which certainly is a good thing. (bad thing of course, is that i have to pay more for my bus/mrt fare and waste more time on traveling. Esp wedn when i will be spending 2 hours on transport [2 ways] for a 2 hour lect -.-''')

So here's my current and hopefully final course combination:
BS 3016 Molecular Evolution
BS 4008 Clinical Application of Omics
BS 405 Current Topics in Muscular Biology and Neuromuscular Diseases
BS 406 Current Topics in Cell Biology
BS 3016 Molecular Evolution
BU 8301 Fundamentals of Business Law

Need to take 1 biz module for clear my electives... that's also the LAST thing elective that i'll need to clear. Haven had a single class of cell bio and muscles yet... well at least my friends said muscles is ok.. wonder how cell bio will be.

So far, the one sub i like best is Mol evo. really really fun. We have our lectures in the comp lab... all the lectures... how's that for a start? pretty cool eh? no? i really love the lecturer's style of teaching... his style really fits my way of learning things... really got me all excited abt the class, smthing that i've not felt in a long time. very very long time... since the time in rgs perhaps? now that's like 6 or so years ago... he's set up a site for the course... this guy prefers to use the website as a teaching tool rather than powerpoint... he's got all the links on the site so we can go read up on our own... and than there's on mini assignments/exercises on the site that we have to work on in class (hence the venue). He's really cool, made us use Evernote to write the mini exercises answers and share the notebook with him so he can see our progress. Which means that we are also free to work on those exercises anytime outside of class when we are free. He also puts up the course material about 1 week ahead of time, so if you're interested you can go read up and do those stuff as you wish... I find it quite cool that he picked Evernote, since i've already installed that program on my mac and iphone quite some times ago and tried playing around with it a bit. I'm not really used to using notes and stuff tho, hence i didn’t use Evernote much than... now i WILL have to use it a lot though lol. That means that i can browse any course notes with ease on my phone too, either on the website or my own notes. COOL. he's got me sooo pumped up about the class.

The lecturer is really a sucker for new technologies... he's also making use of this new SMS feedback system that the sch installed. We can SMS in comments and it'll show up in a program on his comp screen... so that gives us another avenue to ask qns... polls can be done with the system too... now is this cool or not? haha. yup, really glad that i took this class... not only do i already love the lecture material to began with (took a somewat similar class in... erm... sec 4), his style of teaching is really fun and exciting. The whole thing about putting the lect in the comp lab also makes things feel more casual, and it makes me a lot more inclined to ask qns... something which i erm... never ever did in lects before. till friday. record breaking eh...

Gonna visit my jc teacher tmr with my classmates... wonder how it'll turn out. pretty much stopped coming in contact with all my jc classmates except for my troopers...  been so long since we last meet... hmm... i wonder how it'll be there...

ok, high time to sleep, nite nite all.

School's Back!

Sighz... school's starting tmr (or rather, today)... i dont have any classes tmr, but i decided to drop by a lect in the afternoon just to see if its interesting, just in case i decide to change any of my modules i signed up for later on...

The biz law elective i signed up for (no choice, gotta clear a biz module -.-''') starts the 1st lecture on national day. Yes, NATIONAL DAY. 2:30 to 4pm... -.-''' the course coordinator wrote us an extremely long welcome message, with an extremely long winded explanation of why lect on tues goes on as usual... smthing abt sch schedule packed, darn hard to book LTs and all... oh wells... not that it really matters to me. Haven been finding the national day parades an extremely interesting affair for quite some time already... still remember when i'd be enthusiastically singing the songs while watching tv when i was in kindergarten... that was such a long time ago... hmm when did i stop being enthusiastic? it was probably the time when i got into a quarrel with my mum and she disallowed me to watch the tv till quite some time after the parade starts. of cos i was in no mood to watch it anymore... think i wasnt very keen on watching the NDP from than on. that was probably when i want pri 3 or pri 4? cos i rem it happening at my old house. wow, that's even before pri 5 when i got the watch the NDP rehearsals with the sch... (which was my 1st and last time so far seeing the NDP, rehearsals or otherwise, live). I wonder if jlf is still up for dinner outing on NDP... really hope she's willing+free to have dinner with me :P

still have no met up with ash darling after SOOOOO long. current i've got an 'appointment' with her on the 19th. please tell me you are free on that day ash!

my j2 form teacher just got a little baby... my class peeps are planning to visit her on sat... i'm not really close to my jc classmates in general but well... i guess i shd go. at least mich says she's gng too so i wont be alone. i need someone to remind me tho... else i'll  end up like last time, only realising that the event was on that day when my friend smsed me asking if i was gng... ><

okays, that's all for now, tata!

Cakes

Hmm... finally decided to upload some pics... here's the fruit tarts i ate with my sis at somerset 313 some time back... ok, that was really a ways back... oh wells. that just goes to show how lazy i am. well actually its cos that time i was still mapling and didn’t on mac much...

erm, the half eaten strawberry tart... we didn’t remember to take a pic till when the banana one came much later. the waiter didn’t hear/left out our 2nd pie order... -.-''''

been going out for deserts quite a lot recently. last sat i went out with jlf and we had dinner at sakae, followed by deserts at bakerzin... sadly didn’t take any pics. the cakes were really good, expensive but good... got too sweet in the end but still... my friend had the mango one with i got some... chocolate one... it was the look that attracted me towards the cake tho,  it had layers of chocolate, cream, and biscuits... too bad no pics.

went out with my sis for lunch + dinner yest at imm... ate at long johns than went secret recipe for cake... the cheese cake was really good, but the chocolate fudge i got was just soso... that one got really too sweet in the end when i was eating the sides where there was chocolate bits stuck to the cream... i think it’s the chocobits that were too sweet...

the chocolate fudge cake...

and here's the classic cheese cake:

i still have YET to go out with ash, the super super busy and impossible to find women! even tho its been like... a whole month (or more?) since she came back from korea... tsh! got so much to talk abt with her lah! Paging for ash........!

FB friends sorting...

Just kinda finished sorting my fb gigantic friends list. added a lot of friends for games (which i have stopped playing almost all of it) last time, so added all those peeps to a list with lesser access to wat i post. well the thing is that i hardly post stuff on FB, and those stuff that i do post, were already posted with the intention of letting ppl see... so privacy isnt THAT much of an issue for me on fb (fb stands for facebook in case u haven figured)... probably missed out a few peeps here and there etc... but from the way i'm using facebook so far, i think its not too much of an issue... i think... i feel... for now anyway.

hmm, not sure what kind of direction i shd bring this blog to be.... not sure if i'll even keep up with the blogging when sch starts. oh wells. only time will tell... watever will be will be...

Random stuff

Last few days of slack... before sch starts. the time time still aint out yet... and i still don't know which elective i'm taking... gah...

presidential electives date set for the 27th aug. i still barely know a single thing abt the candidates -.-''' man i don't even know how many have submitted the forms so far... gah... guess i've got some reading up to do before i head to the polls.

recently there's a couple of english songs i'm kinda addicted to. considering how i've been listening to arashi songs (japanese) for the longest time... its been a really long time since i last added any new englis songs to my list. well there was grenade by bruno mars a while back, but recently Airplanes by B.o.B. and price tag by Jessie J really caught my attention. came across airplanes when i went shopping with my family in msia (yes the one with the roast duck and all i blogged abt a while back)... finally got round to downloading the song a while back and been listening to it a lot since than. i normally try and caught a few phrases/sentences of the song, write it down in my phone, than go find the song when i remember later on...

well i don't think the PV is really nice... doesn’t really get me into the mood of the song... but well that's the nice thing abt western world VS JE... they happily post their official PVs on youtube for everyone to watch, share, and spread... whereas JE takes down videos from youtube as soon as they can find them :(

i heard price tag when my sis showed me a cute arashi fan vid... found the song addicting and when to dl it. the fanvid is really good tho (except the poor quality i'd prefer it not to be in b/w)... as in, the scenes fitted nicely with the song lyrics, and made the whole song look and sound fun... fits the mood of the song really well IMO. so yeah... here's the vid that i really liked. the best part is probably the 'everybody look to the left/right' part... really amusing lol.

yesterday i went on a crazy rampage of dl-ing high quality arashi song PVs and music station performances. maybe i'm spoiled by JE's type of PVs... maybe cos i've been a fan of arashi for a while... didn’t really like many of the US made PVs... grenade pv was really quite... meaning less to me... the storyline was really weird and it just didn’t... entice me to listen to the song. maybe its just a total different mindset... like from my friends who prefer western pop to me who erm... prefer arashi songs (i wont even say jpop, since i pretty much only listen to arashi songs... for now). its like after watching those PVs i wish i'd just listen to the song on its own, w/o ever looking for its PV. meh... but since i generally don't like those PVs, i didn’t watch many of them so maybe it just so happened that i'm unlucky...?

meh... i wonder wat my friends (i've got some to absolutely love musicals, glee etc) would think if they see arashi's PVs... some of the dance (they didn’t dance in all PVs, depends on the song etc...), outfits, and settings are just so darn freaking cool. truth and monster is cool, troublemaker had a cute and fun PV... very much like the song's title... now i'm in love with mada minu sekai e dance in music station. they jumped around a lot and yes they sang live. maybe i shd try n get my friends into arashi... than at least i wont feel so left out when they discuss on and on abt all the western music scene...

heh. nothing else to say... or rather, too many things to say, but not sure how to put it out in words. that's all for now.