Dee Kay Dot As Gee

I was at Jurong point few days ago when I heard some familiar music coming out from one of the cubicle. It sound like from one of the iPhone game that I played recently. Interestingly, the game is call iBomber. I kid you not. Someone is playing iBomber while bombing the toilet bowl.

Which sort of reminds me of this T-Shirt from Threadless.

Actually, you can silent the phone while playing the game.

The recent leap year bug in the PS3 reminds me of a basic programming exercise I did when I was in poly year 1. For the exercise, we were told to write an algorithm to validate dates. It is fairly straight forward for all the month except February because of the leap year.

The Gregorian calendar, which most of the countries are currently using, has this leap year thing which confuses some programmers. Leap year is a year when February has 29 days instead of 28 days.

Actually, the logic is very simple. If the year is divisible by 4, it is a leap year. But if the year can be divisible by 100, it will not be a leap year unless it can also be divisible by 400.

Which means the year 2000 is a leap year. But 1900 and 2100 are not leap year. 2008 and 2012 are leap year.

By the way, anyone got any idea how to validate Chinese Lunar Calendar? I think the lunar calendar is much more complicated. There are some years when they repeat the entire month.

Update: Just notice that the Singtel mioTV glitch also happened on 1st March. Could it be the leap year bug also?

Remember Ok Go? The guys that bought us the Treadmill video on Youtube? Well, they are back with another amazing video. This time, it’s a Rube Goldberg machines. COOL!

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass

Attention all Windows XP users! Do not press the F1 button when you encounter a website telling you to press the F1 button. In fact, don’t ever press the F1 button. At least not until Microsoft fix this vulnerability.

Apparently, there is a vulnerability in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer. If a malicious Web site displayed a specially crafted dialog box and a user pressed the F1 key, arbitrary code could be executed in the security context of the currently logged-on user.

This vulnerability affects Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 running IE6, IE7 or IE8. (Basically all version of Internet Explorer)

There is no news on when this vulnerability will be fixed. Microsoft advise users to avoid pressing F1 on dialogs presented from Web pages or other Internet content.

My advice to everyone is, rip out your F1 button and throw it away. Or you can change to Chrome or Firefox.

Noise Singapore is back for the 5th time. If you remember, I blogged about Noise Singapore last year. Noise Singapore is an initiative by the National Arts Council dedicated to creating noise about the creative talents of youths below the age of 35 in the fields of Art & Design, Music, and Photography. It aims to unearth new talent and inspire groundbreaking content from Singaporean youths, giving them the necessary exposure and skills to succeed, and providing Singaporeans from all walks of life the opportunity to actively participate in the arts instead of merely being passive audiences.

From now till 10 March 2010, Raffles City exhibition space at level 3 will host the final projects from Noise Singapore’s The Apprenticeship Programme (TAP), where 25 promising young talents showcase their works. I was there last week and am pretty impressed with the works. I think it’s better than last year’s display. One art work that caught my attention was a Singapore Flag made with names of local athletes.

Besides the showcase at Raffles City, the best musical talents of Noise Singapore 2010 will be performing at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre and Concourse from 5-7 March 2010. Don’t miss it!

I was invited to attend the blogger preview of Not So Secret Lives: Crossroads. Not So Secret Lives (NSSL) tells a story of 2 youths, Trey and Jesse, and the friends around them using a blog. The story is fictional but the issues are real. Through their blog, Trey and Jesse will talk about often taboo subjects like sex, HIV and STI. It’s like a TV drama but happening on a blog instead of TV. Cool huh?

Not So Secret Lives: Crossroad is a continuation of the successful season 1 last year. But not to worry if you didn’t follow season 1. You won’t be lost when following the story in season 2. But if you are interested, you can also read about what happen in Season 1 at the website.

The new season begins with Trey finding himself awake the next day morning in a hotel room, naked. And there is a strand of black hair. Ah, I guess it’s pretty obvious what happened last night. Let’s see how things turns out between Trey and Jesse.

Check out Not So Secret Lives: Crossroad as the story slowly unfolds. (Warning: Heavily Flashed website with auto-play background music) You can also join their facebook group here.

Sony Singapore debuts its first ever Full HD 3D TV for the home recently. As you all know, 3D TV is the hottest product for CES 2010. I guess Singapore is not spared from the 3D TV wave. Expect to see more 3D TV coming your way soon.

Anyway, the 3D BRAVIA LX900 looks pretty good. Like watching 3D TV in the theaters, you need to wear a 3D glasses. Each BRAVIA 3D TV comes with 2 3D glasses and additional 3D glasses can be purchased separately. The 3D glasses are made in such a way that you can put it over your normal glasses. Sony is using Active shutter glasses technology for their 3D TV, therefore the glasses needs battery to operate. Don’t worry about the weight, it’s using just a flat battery that you commonly find in watches. The battery should be able to last for 10 hours before you need to replace it. This might be a show stopper for some. But when you see the effects of the 3D TV, you will find that all these are worth it.

We had a preview on watch Movie, Documentary, Sport and Games with 3D glasses. I must say that I’m pretty impressed when watching documentary. It feels as if the TV is the Polar Bear enclosure window. Very realistic. Wasn’t impressed when watching soccer match with 3D glasses. Yes, you can see the depth, but that’s all. Hisham said he saw the ball flying towards him. I didn’t see that part. But even so, we need to remember that this is a preview. How many times do you think the camera will be able to capture such shot during live broadcast?

The thing that I feel will help kick start 3D TV is gaming. We had a preview of a car racing game (Sorry, forgot the name of the game) and I love it. Can totally see myself hooked to the TV for hours playing 3D games. And Sony told us that their PS3 is able to support 3D gaming. Nice.

PS: That’s what you see on the TV without 3D glasses.

The movie industry is starting to roll out more and more 3D content. Last year, we saw Avatar by James Cameron. For 2010, we can expect more than 20 movies, including Alice in Wonderland, to be shot in 3D. Sony pictures also announced that the sequel of Spiderman series will be in 3D and released on 3 July 2012.

Apart from the 3D TV, Sony also showcase their new BRAVIA series with internet widgets and content like Youtube, Yahoo! and Style.com.

Sony will be showcasing the new 3D BRAVIA TV at their booth for this coming IT Show (11 – 14 March 2010). The Sony BRAVIA Full HD 3D TV will be available in Singapore this coming summer. I was kidding with them that with the hot weather these days, it should be considered summer already.

The folks from Poken Island, newly appointed Authorized Poken Reseller for Singapore, send me 3 Poken last week. Since I already have a Poken, why not give it out to 3 lucky blog readers instead?

The design for this giveaway are Vodoo, Caveman and Bee. If you don’t know what is a Poken, check out my blog entry. 1 Poken per winner. Don’t fight lah.

How to apply:
Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Poken”. Closing date is this coming Thursday, 4 Mar 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details.

Please also state which design you prefer to receive (or if you have no preference). I will try my best to give you the design you like. If more than 1 winner request for the same design, I will give priority to the person that I draw first.

Update: Closed

FINALLY! After waiting until my neck long long, Nokia Singapore finally release the V2 firmware for Nokia N97. Or to be exact, version 21.0.045. Seems like we skipped 20.0.019.

The biggest change for the new firmware is the kinetic scrolling. You can now scroll smoothly by flicking anywhere on the screen. No more dragging the tiny scroll bar at the side. Actually, this feature was already available in 20.0.019 when it was released sometime in October 09. But Singapore didn’t get that firmware update. Well, better late than never.

You can only upgrade the firmware using computer via Nokia Software Updater. Can’t do it over the air. It is advisable to backup your phone before upgrading. The firmware file size is around 150mb.

Oh, and after upgrading to the new firmware, go to SW update to download the latest Ovi Map. The one with free turn by turn navigation. Don’t know why Nokia didn’t include it inside the new firmware instead.

What are you waiting for? Update your N97 firmware now.

I was channel surfing last friday evening (Yes, I do watch TV every once in a while) when I found out that they were showing some live telecast of the S League Cup match between Tampines Rovers and Woodlands Wellington. Since there is nothing to watch on other channel, I decided to stay on that channel for a while to check out how our S League is doing. I must say it is quite bad.

I’m not a soccer fan. I don’t usually watch the English Premier League like my friends. But I do watch the matches once in a while when I’m in pub or coffeeshop. And like most people of my age, I do watch the Malaysia Cup when Singapore back in the early 90s. Those were the best days of Singapore soccer. Everyone knew who is Fandi Ahmad, Malek Awab, V. Sundramoorthy, Abbas Saad, Nazri Nasir, Jang Jung, Steven Tan etc etc. I can still remember the cheer I heard from my house whenever the Lions scored. It is louder than the cheers I heard from the English Premier League. Everyone is watching the matches, be it live at the stadium or TV.

But things are completely different now. If I didn’t blog about this, I guess most of you won’t know that there is a League Cup going on now. And I can bet most of you can’t name any players currently in the S League. In fact, I guess most of you can’t name all the teams. Singaporeans aren’t watching S League anymore. When it comes to Soccer, Singapore becomes a British colony like what what we used to be back in the 1800s. We support English clubs like Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal more than we support local Football Club. And I can totally understand why just by watching the League Cup for a couple of minutes. The S League is in a pathetic state.

I was wondering. What are the 22 men doing in the field? Are they there to put the ball in the opponent’s goal and prevent their opponent from putting the ball into their goal? Or are they in the field for the sake of being there? I can’t help but feel that it’s the latter. I feel like they are there because it’s their job. There is no passion. No eagerness to create opportunities to score a goal. I think watching the school kids play soccer is more exciting than watching the S League.

But the whole entire S League’s pathetic state is not just because of the Football Clubs. There is no support for the teams. The match was being played in a small stadium. And even so, the stadium is still very empty. Luckily there are more spectators than players in the stadium. But I would credit that to Singapore Pools. If there is no betting, I don’t know, maybe there might be more players than spectators. Who watches S League nowadays other than the betters?

And the live telecast was pretty badly done. OK, it’s good that Channel 5 decides to support the S League by showing live telecast of selected matches. But the commentary was horrible. I almost fell asleep watching the commentary. I can’t help but wonder if the commenter are there because it’s his job just like the players. And yes, I know that is the League Cup and there must be a winner for the night. He keep repeating that. Or maybe perhaps there is nothing he could say. Afterall, it’s not like the English Premier League where there are action happening every seconds.

The cameraman is also doing a bad job. I was watching the highlights of the first half when I notice that the cameraman have difficulties chasing the ball. There are several times when the player tries to shoot at the goal or do a fast pass and the camera loses sight of the ball for a while. And I wonder how many cameras are there in the Stadium. Most of the time, we are watching from one camera. There is no close up of the action or views from other angle. I don’t even see the face of the players.

That is how pathetic state the whole S League, together with the spectators, commenters and cameraman, is. Luckily for me, I managed to stay awake to switch channel. Well, I rather watch the chinese drama which tell us that gambling is bad. Perhaps they should do one on soccer too.

There is a saying that you can easily gather 11 men from any neighborhood soccer field, pit them against the S League all star team and still win. I think it would be a great challenge. I wonder if the folks at S League would accept this. We can do this friendly match during the off season. I’m sure it would be able to fill the entire National Stadium (if they still haven’t found enough money to tear it down).