saitosphere

Be kind, rewind

2010-02-08T16:56:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: be kind rewind,jack black,comedy,video tapes,jazz pianist,fats waller

From the title I was lost, trying to figure out what it means or if it makes any sense and soon to get a clearer picture that it was actually referring to a video rental store in a movie. It really is either you thought of a tape player or a video tape player, of course both of them work on a similar concept through the use of magnetic tapes to store data.

Jack Black is one of my favorite comedian actors, he always does or act in funny movies and “Be kind, rewind” is just one them. Among others, I am sure you are familiar with “School of Rock”, “The Pick of Destiny” or the remake of “Kong” for a more serious acting. Not intending to spoil the movie for you but as a rather brief synopsis, the movie “Be kind, rewind” is about this guy who got magnetized and erased the contents of the entire video tapes by accident. He and his friend ended up making their own videos to replace the contents, somewhat like short parodies. This movie is categorized under the comedy and drama genre.

Speaking of video tapes or video cassettes, do you remember what movie and when was the last time you watch any movies on them? I can’t really remember mine. Taking a wild guess, I think that would at least be in the mid or late nineties when VCDs or Video Compact Discs were first introduced. As for the movie, perhaps it was more like a music video of Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert or Yngwie Malmsteen performing in a rock concert. They’re musicians (guitarists) if you’re wondering. Coming along subsequently at that time was the mpeg one format. I recalled having to use software called Xing Mpeg Player to view movies in VCD format.

Back then the movie industry globally, were beginning to face a threat on piracies and copyright infringements as original video tapes can be copied and duplicated with ease. Same goes to the VCD era as well as DVD era which came in much later. Oh hang on; there were also Laser Discs or LDs which was not as popular as the rest. The size of one LD itself is like a vinyl record, weights heavier and shinier. Now this reminds me of storage mediums during my computing studies.

I forgot one other thing; the movie is also about a famous Jazz Pianist by the name of Fats Wallace. I have zero knowledge on Jazz History so I had to Google and search for some information. There is a Jazz Pianist known as Fats Waller but not Wallace. Besides funny in a silly way, the movie is also nostalgic. I kind of like the concept because it’s different from what I have seen before. Not entirely a new movie as it was released in 2008 but it was worth watching in my opinion. About 3.5 over 5 from me.

Zodiac and Toyol

2010-02-04T03:10:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: movie,zodiac,toyol,jinn,freaky,freaked out,ritual,funny

Just watched a movie called “Zodiac”. It was released a few years ago and it’s about an investigation on a mysterious serial killer. Although there was plenty of drama or too much talking going on, I managed to survive the 70s settings, somewhat agreeing that the movie has a compelling storyline. It’s based on a true story if I am not mistaken. Mini synopsis aside and opinion wise, the movie gets about 3 over 5 from me.

Apart from the movie, topic for this post as I scratched my head, thinking and fighting off this aggravating writers block, is about the experience of getting freaked out. When I come to think of it, I could roughly remember about a few events that had freaked me out once upon a time back then.

First, it would be a creepy ritual made during my time when I was a music student in my early twenties. At that time, I was in a group of students of the same batch if I remembered correctly and we were up for a ritual to catch a glimpse of “Toyol”, a green little creature about the height of a table similar to that of a golem in The Lord of The Rings movie or goblins I suppose. We were gathered by our seniors (or event organizers if I may) in a small studio practice room. It was at night to make things worse. All of us who participated were blindfolded and sat on the floor with our backs against one another.

There were other materials used such as candles for the ritual and prayers. As we were still blindfolded, prayers were recited and just after a short silence we heard a rather horrifying or creepy voice followed by sounds as if the creature ran all over the room, running or crawling along the walls or so. As a safety measure, our faces were drawn with some form of liquid substance to prevent being possessed by the creature. Later after the grumbling voice tapered away, our blindfolds were taken off and we were asked to look into a mirror in order to see the creature. When I was asked whether I did or not see the creature, taking the rituals seriously, I said no but the truth was my face were painted with oil or coal. The whole thing was a joke and we actually had a trick played on us. The ritual ended with everyone laughing so hard because it was really funny to see us freaked out.

Apologies to my non Muslim friends, as a side note or thinking of that matter as of now, I still believe that toyol exists. It is one of many forms in which jinns are able to represent themselves (granted by Allah SWT) so that they are visible to the humans. As humans, we simply can’t see jinns in their true forms. After all, believing in the existence of angels (jinns are part of the “ghaib” or unseen or unknown matter) is one of the pillars of Iman in Islam.

I admit that I was really freaked out during that ritual. It could be coming from the fear of the unknown, maybe too skeptical on what or how it would be like to be possessed and beyond control. I might end up murdering everyone who was there for all you know. Hahaha. Okay, I know. Too much movies. Nevertheless, it was indeed freaky but funny.

Talking about music

2010-02-01T04:03:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: music,rap,singing,film scoring,music production,motion pictures,rants,art

About fifteen years ago I embarked on a journey to become a recording artiste. At a younger age, I was so obsessed with rap music and was convinced that I could come up with my own album back then. I formed a rap group consisting of four persons – me and another guy as the main MCs and another two as breakers or simply dancers. The first audition tape was recorded at my music school and it was all I could think of without proper musical equipment. Making rap music on a Yamaha Electone Organ is somewhat laughable as of now.

During my journey, I ended up learning how to sing so much for the commercial appeal for the music scene back then. An attempt to do a full one hundred percent rap album wasn’t advisable and reluctantly I had to give and take by mixing singing and rapping elements in an album. It was a good start although making great music was far from perfect. Seriously I don’t see myself as a singer back then. As I delved deeper into the real aspects of music production, songwriting and becoming an artiste, I saw that my true potential was in songwriting and music production – somewhat more of a behind the scene activity rather than up on the stage. I’m so glad I realized that.

Growing older and with maturity setting in, my passion expands with film scoring. I just love how music is used as an element to complement a video or motion pictures. Right now to go on the right track is another process which I think would take me some time to be more experienced and focused. As a listener and as far as singing is involved, my choice for now really is to a select few artistes or albums both locally and internationally. From my experience and in a weird way, there’s nothing more fulfilling than to get a goose bump when a singer sings with soul and passion – singing from the heart. Singing itself without the artistic expression or passion feels like riding a bus to school, as opposed to be driven in a limo ride.

I recalled reading this from somewhere, saying that “music is an art and art is always subjective”. It goes along that line or something like that. There’s always a dichotomy, in my opinion, in such a way that as of today, music is created either for the artistic appreciation or for the massive consumption as an end product. What seems to be in demand is simplicity that would capture the hearts of many, in the sense that a piece of music or a song can be enjoyed by people from different walks of life rather than focused on a specific group of listeners. Certainly there’s always music for everyone. The point is, what matters to you is the music that drives you.

Given with many choices, I would try as much as possible to have both aspects in a musical creation – something for the artistic appreciation combined with a reasonable degree of simplicity so as to have a balanced work of art. It really bogs down to making music for my own satisfaction and for commercial or monetary purposes.

The Waiting Game

2010-01-31T19:56:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: the waiting game,saying no,opinion,rational,well-being,self help,decision making,analytical

How do you say “no” respectfully or politely without offending? Although this might sound easy for most people but for me, it really depends. I mean, to someone you don’t know it can be an easy answer but for those whom you know it might encourage you to be more indecisive in the future. Meaning that at some point of time, you might just juggle between yes, no and maybe. So eventually it becomes a waiting game.

On the contrary and in my opinion, sometimes it’s worth to consider by asking for more information or details before committing to an answer. This would certainly help you to decide better as you get to analyze options that are available. Perhaps one of the reasons that fail this right away is the preconceived idea that can be made based on presumption. Say for instance that someone would want to work with you on a new project, but knowing or predicting the outcome based on commentaries made by your fellow colleagues or referees, you declined instantly before the details of the project were discussed in greater details. Here comes the infamous quotation “you never try, you never know”. On top of that you can also opt for “I will try once”. In addition, think about “once bitten, twice shy”.

As subjective the process of saying “no” can be, you are bound to at least provide an answer so both parties would be happy or come to a mutual agreement or understanding. Nowadays, it’s relatively easy to say “sorry, I am not interested” along with a smile without offending anyone. I believe that’s professional enough so to speak. I mean, come on, grown ups should be able to handle rejection with ease.

From a different or extended perspective, problems could also arise when you speculate too far of what would happen if you say “no”. To some, it would be adequate to regard the outcome as none of their problems but to some others, they are pretty much too concerned with everything. I think it’s alright to be skeptical but within a reasonable limit. It calls for a case to case basis and shouldn’t be the guideline to do everything in life.

Not to point fingers at anyone, but as a mere opinion that I think is worth sharing. I do get some of this coming and believe me; sometimes saying “no” is not an easy thing to do. It gets worse and leaving me miserable at times especially when repetitively pestered. I know exactly how that feels my friend. You’re not alone. As much as I wanted to avoid being greatly misunderstood, I know I had to think of this positively for a better well-being. I would rather not bluntly say no and would reason with you if you’re up for it.

Till then, signing off with peace in mind and rational judgment. Oh yeah, sorry I am not interested. :)

Goodbye Avast, Hello Avira!

2009-10-26T04:29:00.002+08:00

Technorati Tags: antivirus,avast,avira,insomnia,pc world,rant,software

Gazing at the clock on the system’s tray, the last digit involuntarily paced to the number eight, while the number three and one preceded it in that order. Remaining static next to it as of now is the abbreviation AM. So what do we get here? Three eighth teen after midnight and blame it on the body clock but not insomnia for heaven’s sake. Go ahead and smile if you’re as crazy as I am or if you find this amusing. Leave as you wish, I bid you farewell and here’s a cookie.

Way before that, the entire process was decelerated by the fact that the Avira antivirus software was running a thorough scan in the background. It felt sluggish as I was having a tough time typing the first sentence in this post and waiting for it to appear complete with the first character converted to uppercase as I hit the spacebar going on with the next word. All this while I was using Avast but somehow something has influenced me today to go ahead and give Avira a shot. At least this spares me some experience.

It all began with my brother who wanted me to put some stuff into his new laptop, in another word for the computer brain, install some applications. My brother in law suggested Avira and so I downloaded the free version and have it installed on my brother’s laptop and later on my system. Along the way, I searched on the Internet for reviews on the top five free antivirus software and it seemed that AVG was the choice of many, not until I came to a review made by PC World. The former reviews were somewhat too general and lacking of the tech geek feel to it. Not implying that PC World was the other way round but the detailed review was excellent and it got me interested.

Long story short, it’s about time for me to go on and forget about Avast’s mp3 player interface. Yes, it was confusing the first time I use it so stop the music and let’s get on with something else shall we? For a moment, I thought it was somewhat creative to have a music player’s interface for antivirus software but apparently, simplicity went the wrong way here. The need for simplicity, ease of use and efficiency rang a louder bell than Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. I know it doesn’t make any sense but you get what I mean.

As of now, the entire virus scan is still progressing at about twenty-one percent; you can imagine the junk that I have loafing in my hard drive. “Hey how’s it going? Running a little slow on that bus huh? You want a pimped ride with NOS let us know yeah?” I could imagine those files laughing at the scanner. Madness aside, I found a post about how to get rid of the annoying pop-up ads since it’s a free version. Not sure if it works for me since I haven’t rebooted my computer for the settings to work. Time will tell, but if you’re interested and of course if you’re using Avira too, head on here to check it out.

All right, it’s four in the morning now. Luke Filewalker, you seriously need more than just a futuristic space ship and a light saber!

Twitter Tweet Tweet

2009-10-14T03:50:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: internet marketing,random,rants,social networking tools,stalking,tweet,twitter

For no reason or specific intentions, my mind echoed an urge to blog about anything today, and attempting to foster a blend of nonsense into the picture. At least something, that would make sense to me or to anyone who had been ignited to read on even if it is momentarily. Meanwhile, do leave some comments because I know my grammar needs some correction!

As for the most of us, I am pretty sure that you have heard of a social networking tool known as “Twitter”. If you haven’t, then follow this link to go straight to the site.

I remembered the first time I encountered Twitter. Initially, I have no clue of what Twitter was and by looking at its logo and name; it would seemed like a little bird that tweets. The concept is like a bird that goes from one flock to another, as it tweets, talking or communicating in its language to other birds. On Twitter, one needs to “follow” another person in order to “tune in” or to receive that person’s tweets (message). Each tweet is typically short, at about 140 characters or so.

The thing is, as most of us would want to believe that the purpose of Twitter is to update our friends (or stalkers) for instance, on what we are currently doing and where we’re at, to some it’s also somewhat a “hidden” powerful Internet marketing tool. It’s rather simple; just have your followers follow you on Twitter. To get a person to follow you is another task and not necessarily an easy one unless you’re a star or simply because that person is your friend or probably that person just like you.

Instead of just tweeting on what you are doing and where you are, you could actually twist your tweet a bit by including a shortened (usually non self-explanatory) link to a landing page, typically a sales pitch page or a monetized blog post. To make it more appealing or to have the real agenda further hidden, have the landing page occupied with a very interesting or funny video. That might just do the trick.

In my opinion, it feels like a mixture of a few things bogged down into a dichotomy of being public or private as far as tweets are concerned. If you want everyone in the world to know where you are going for lunch and you wouldn’t mind that freaky admirer stalking you, then Twitter fits the purpose perfectly. Even having your tweets published as private would render pointless, as the same stalker would use a different username. All right, so a stalker or stalkers are fine, what about criminals?

There’s nothing interesting going on with me for every minute or hour and for that reason, I don’t use Twitter. I did try for a while and unfortunately, I’d rather pick up the phone and say, “what’s up?” or rather chat online. Twitter is good for Internet marketing nonetheless. Off course, the tweet spamming activity sometimes can be annoying. It’s your choice to “unfollow”.

Raya and Deathly Hallows

2009-10-04T02:44:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: Avada Kedavra,Deathly Hallows,Eid Fitri,Harry Potter,JK Rowling,John Williams,Ramadhan,Raya,Syawal,Voldemort

Yea I know that it has been a while since I last blogged about anything so this post ought to be something to catch up with in the saitosphere. The holy month Ramadhan's gone for this year and now Syawal's here. One month of fasting and another for the Eid Fitri festive. But over here it lasted just like a week or so. It seemed to me that the excitement really was during the eve and for the first four days or so where one could actually hear the sound of various firecrackers and fireworks thundering the sky. For a moment, it made me felt as if I was in a world war scenario. Too much video games?

On the other hand, unbelievably I actually read Harry Potter's e-book, "Deathly Hallows". I figured that it will take a while for the movie producers to film the last two sequels for the series. In the beginning suffice to say that I'm not that much of a Harry Potter fan but the compelling storyline about magic has somehow gotten me. In addition, as for the film score, John William's work on the first two or three series were superb. No wonder I felt the sudden turn when the fourth series onwards were unexpectedly morphed into the dark side, as clearly made audible by their film scores and somewhat visible by movie plots. Reading the book is the only way for the mysteries to unfold unless the last two films have something else to offer. We'll just wait and see then.

I hope JK Rowling would make another awesome series or perhaps a different continuation but this time around not with Voldemort who only knows Avada Kedavra in order to kill Harry.

Microsoft Email Hoax

2009-09-06T20:52:00.003+08:00

Technorati Tags: AOL,data mining,email hoax,funny,google,microsoft,rants,spam,viral marketing

So, another chain mail arrived at the door of my inbox. In the subject it says "Please read this coz it's real!". Okay, so what is "coz"? Your cousin? My cousin? Is it a mathematical trigonometry - cosines? Let me try to rephrase that. "Please read this cousin it's real" or "Please read this cosines it's real". Haha. That'd be funny. I'm just being silly. I know it means "because". Sometimes shortcuts make people lazy and could be misinterpreted don't you think so?

I have no idea how this forwarded email managed to escape the spam folder. This issue I shall scrutinize later. The moment I got this email, I knew it's going to be another fairy tale or at least something that is further enhanced or manipulated so convincingly that people would love to take part and contribute to this data mining like process. Among other famous techniques employed would be the infamous "forward this to your friends...bla bla" otherwise "yada yada... will happen". Okay I am very frightened now.

So what is this Microsoft Email Hoax all about? Well, if you do read the email similar to what I received it says Microsoft is merging with AOL and Bill Gates wants to share his fortune. All you have to do is forward the email received to other recipients and in due time, Microsoft will contact you and issue you a huge amount of check. Wow! Fortunately my eyes are dollar sign proof and my logics are still intact.

I'm glad Google is my friend. It wasn't hard to type "microsoft email hoax" and to press Enter on the keyboard. Next thing you know is to read and digest the results. See if they make any sense or otherwise. The results do tally with what I had in mind earlier when the email arrived at my inbox. Yup! It's another email hoax. Actually I did receive this way back like a couple of months ago. This would be my second time. Read more about this email hoax here and here.

Okay so what happens to us now? Well, in my case my time was wasted but no big deal. I took the liberty to blog about it and share so we all could learn something. Did you notice the number of email addresses you can get within the email that you received? Do you foresee that that much of email addresses can be used for viral marketing? Have you wondered why you keep getting junk emails? Surprisingly this one got through today.

The person who started all this must be really happy by now that he or she could spam our inbox even more without us knowing as we happily agree to forward the hoax and "attach" our email address to the whole ever expanding email list. Oh wait! I forgot to forward the email. Nah!

Into The Wild

2009-08-28T04:45:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: adventure,alaska,biography,chris mccandless,drama,emile hirsch,fred,into the wild,movie

No, I am not in the wild while I am blogging this. It's the title of a movie that I just recently watched. How do you watch a movie completely from the start till the end in a shorter amount of time even though the movie is really boring? I did. When the movie gets boring, hit the fast forward button so long as you could hear the audio. Yes, it's going to be like Fred on YouTube or The Chipmunks but guess what, the boring movie becomes funnier to watch and yet you'd finish the movie off without missing any part.

Back to the wild - so this movie somehow reminds me of Cast Away which was starred by Tom Hanks. It has plenty of that tranquility or serene atmosphere where the whole screen is mainly acted by one person. Into The Wild is not for you if you're seeking full fledge action movie. In short, Emile Hirsch who acted as Chris McCandless gave up his savings to a charity and embarked on a journey to Alaska into the wild to experience what life has to offer and to seek himself, away from social norm and complexities.

In my opinion, the good thing about this movie lies in the relationship Chris made when he met with a number of people while he was on the way to Alaska. That and also the breath taking scenery. Kudos to the film makers. The movie was released in 2007, yes that was like 2 years back but if you haven't watch it then go ahead. Into The Wild falls into the adventure, biography and drama genre. My rating: 4/5 stars.

Ramadhan and my Omnirax Clone

2009-08-22T20:52:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: fasting month,krk rp5,omnirax,ramadhan,workstation furniture

Ramadhan has always been one of my favorite month of the year. What more could you ask when all the bad guys whispering and luring you to your evil thoughts and intentions are kept imprisoned for 30 days? Wouldn't it be nice if they get locked forever? Yes, but the game of life won't be that fun anymore, though I lost most of the times. I'm not preaching, just a thought to embrace the arrival of the holy month.

I finally got myself a custom made desktop workstation furniture and now waiting for the arrival of my little KRK RP5 friend. That might be on Monday or Tuesday. I hope so. Probably would put up a picture of them together when everyone's here. I knew I had to do something with the positioning of my keyboard and music gears all this while. Now it seems neater and easier to work about. The custom made table is actually a modified copy of the Omnirax Force 12 Professional Workstation (image above) and I'm glad it didn't cost me a bomb. I am just loving it as of now. Yay!

I just realized I got a weird hobby of collecting dust and junks. Do you? Or am I the only freak here? Haha. Took almost the whole afternoon to clean up and reorganize my room in order to get the space ready for the Omnirax clone to be assembled. The result is an awful body ache but I am satisfied with my current bedroom studio setup which is workable for pre-production tasks. Still feeling tired and I need a good massage soon. Sigh!

I have done music creation at work while fasting before. It didn't work quite well. It gets tiring very fast after repetitive listening. Hope to be able to write some stuff at night then. Anyone can share me some soundproofing tips?

One Fat Day...

2009-08-20T20:47:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: calories,chicken,fat,food,Kevin James,KFC,Secret Recipe

"You're fat and I'm fat. See you in the kitchen in 10 minutes!" that was what Kevin James said to his wife in one of his routines for his stand up comedy shows. One of them in particular is "Sweat The Small Stuff" of which you could have seen before. Awesome comedian!

Speaking of fat, today is one hell of a fattening day for me. Not because that I am not supposed to be eating during the fasting month that I should eat till I die today. Suffice to say that I was just going with the flow. Don't get me wrong, I don't eat what I had today regularly. It's really a once in a while thing for me and I'm not an all that food and health conscious person. Two hundred pounds and go figure.

At least breakfast wasn't that bad. Had a bowl of rice porridge, half of a boiled egg and some fried anchovies to go along with it. Nutritional facts can wait, you do the math for that and for the coming menus. Breakfast was pretty much like a late one and just like three hours after that, lunch was waiting.

So I went out and had lunch with one of my buddies at Secret Recipe. There came a Chicken Chop with Mushroom sauce / gravy, rice and salads with a soft drink for the main course. No appetizers needed and the simple menu ended with a slice of Chocolate Indulgence cake for desert. I swear the slice of cake itself could have stuffed me for lunch.

Back home after going here and there, accompanying my buddy doing his errands and I am still stuffed that I could last a few more hours without feeling hungry. What's next? A Zinger burger and fried chicken from KFC. To make matters worse, I ate those in less than three hours after I got back while still feeling full.

For once in a blue moon, still that is considered too much to consume. But I don't eat like this everyday. So I guess it should be alright. I get that Supersize Me stuff playing in my head as of now. Where's that weighing scale?

The Future of Music

2009-08-11T11:32:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: the future of music,manifesto for the digital music revolution,music book,music reading,david kusek,gerd leonhard

Recently I just finished reading a book titled "The Future of Music - Manifesto For The Digital Music Revolution" authored by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard. I am not really that much of a bookworm but I do read stuff that interests me, sometimes. I am not really that active in songwriting in regards to the local music industry so I reckoned this book is a good read to assess what's going on with the music industry both locally and globally.

To my surprise, it was rather painful to accept the points and facts mentioned and elaborated by the authors. The real issue of illegal music download seemed to affect the "recording industry" more rather than the "music industry" in terms of sales. It has affect the mechanical royalties for artistes and songwriters too but the one mostly at stake is the record and music publishing industry. Artistes survived or actually earned more from ticket sales of live shows / performances and the act of downloading their songs illegally were like the best free approach to marketing. Pretty ironic but the power of massive file sharing and word of mouth seemed to help increase the artistes popularity and public recognition as well.

There is a theory that music in the future will be ubiquitous so some great measures should be taken into consideration to satisfy everyone involved in the making, distributing, marketing, buying and listening to music. It all began with live performances back in the days and later these live performances were recorded into vinyl which then evolved into cassette tapes, audio compact discs and digital mp3 as of today. In short, music may be synonymous to water and electricity bills in the future. If you're looking for a good read in relation to music, this book might be good for you.

Two things that I'd conclude after reading this book. Firstly, I felt like the whole picture is going to go back to square one where music at large is going to be performed live which is pretty much biased to the experience of "live entertainment". Secondly, having music bills like water bills is a degradation, far from music appreciation which would jeopardize musicians who depend on prerecorded music to earn a living.

Funny People

2009-08-09T04:35:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: adam sandler,comedy,funny people,jonah hill,movie,seth rogen

With actors and comedians such as Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill I would expect the movie "Funny People" to be hilarious without going much further into the detailed synopsis of the movie on IMDB. But it was cool to get to see a mixture of comedy and drama in the movie. Typically I would assume that it would be insanely hilarious or at least laughable (for some) just like "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" starred by Adam Sandler.

Without the intention of creating a spoiler if you haven't watched this movie yet, suffice to say that "Funny People" doesn't necessarily imply that the movie is funny (literally?). The truth is, it is about the life of a comedian, George Simmons (acted by Adam Sandler), who was suffering from an illness, a slight variation of leukemia and how his life changed because of that.

From IMDB, "When seasoned comedian George Simmons learns of his terminal, inoperable health condition, his desire to form a genuine friendship cause him to take a relatively green performer under his wing as his opening act."

Pretty awesome to watch I would say. I'd give it a 4 out of 5.

Apple iPhone 3Gs 32GB vs HTC Touch HD - a tough decision...

2009-08-08T22:07:00.001+08:00

Technorati Tags: Apple iPhone 3Gs 32GB,HTC Touch HD,Samsung Omnia,BlackBerry Bold

Despite the endless battles between Apple iPhone's fanboys and those who would relentlessly be labeled as "haters", I'm seeing myself stuck in between the two. You just can't have the best of both into one single device, not as of yet. Each comes with the pro and cons to it. I don't want to be biased to any of the devices as much as I can but the followings are my findings and comparison between two amazing devices that caught my attention: Apple iPhone 3Gs 32GB and HTC Touch HD.

Lets have them in tabular format so it would be easier to digest what's cool and what's not for both of the devices.

	Apple iPhone 3Gs 32GB	HTC Touch HD	Favorably
Processor	ARM Cortex A8 600MHz & PowerVR SGX Graphics	Qualcomm MSM 7201A 532MHz CPU	iPhone
Operating System	iPhone Mac OS	Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional	Both
Display	3.5 inch 16M colors	3.8 inch 65K colors	HTC
Handwriting Recognition	No	Yes	HTC
Memory	32GB storage	micro SD	iPhone
Camera	3.15 mega pixels	5 mega pixels	HTC
Secondary Video Call Camera	No	Yes	HTC
Radio	No	Yes	HTC
Java and Flash	No	Yes	HTC

Most of the other features of both are pretty much the same and not really that worth to mention in my opinion. From the table it would seem that HTC is more favorable so far. In terms of speed, iPhone has 600MHz which is fast. The use of internal storage of 8/16/32GBs helps as well. The only competitors in terms of processor speed I found out so far is Samsung Omnia which uses Marvell PXA312 624MHz CPU and BlackBerry Bold which uses 624MHz CPU as well.

Probably the reason I would get an iPhone is because of the graphics. I kept getting this notion that iPhone is over hyped due to the massive media promotion but as a whole the device is very appealing needless to say. If you like the iPhone's interface, I've seen that one done on a HTC. Watch the YouTube video below. It does look impressive.

Pidgin... a pigeon? Not really...

2009-08-07T11:11:00.004+08:00

Something that is pretty nifty you might want to consider after that long exhale when starting multiple chat applications, logging into each one of them and eventually coming to an abstract resemblance of multiple chat windows...is a universal chat client called "Pidgin". Look it up on Google and you should be able to see it first on the SERP's (Search Engine Result Page) list.

Just what the hell am I talking about? In my previous post I mentioned about Flock, a web browser that integrates various social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. "Pidgin" is somewhat similar but on the other hand, it organizes chat applications such as Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN, Google Chat and even Facebook's IM into one simple but effective application. I'd like to make a shout out to Chris for mentioning this cool application.

Well, currently I am still trying out this application and I think it deserves to be known and to be more popular in the future. It's an open source chat client which is free to download and use. Although not as fancy or graphically stunning as applications like Yahoo Messenger or MSN, it does the job of maintaining multiple accounts from different chat platforms and keeping things simple and workable. The user interface is simple and easy to use. Try it out, you might not be amazed by the "look" but the functionality is worthy to be tried out.

Pidgin's tagline says it all... "IM all your friends in one place"

So in short, my two cents on Pidgin...

Simple and easy to use
Some cool plugins to check out (Facebook plugin is there too... yay)
Not that really easy to install as you need to know how to get around and look for the right installer file
The chat client's look and interface needs a lot of enhancement to be done
Might be buggy (but more fixes coming up on a regular basis)

I'd give it a 3.8 over 5 stars! :)

More about Pidgin chat client here - http://www.pidgin.im

Catchin up and Flock 2.5

2009-06-03T00:39:00.002+08:00

Wow! I haven't been blogging for quite a long while. This is merely a test post that in the hope that it will be fairly workable with this Flock 2.5 browser that I am trying out in like less than 2 hours ago. So far it's good but really overwhelming at first. There's so much to try out and to discover. I'd say the learning curve is somewhat on a medium difficulty.

Well, anyway, Flock 2.5 is a browser which is based on Firefox's 3 technology. It's pretty much similar to Firefox but on top of that, you get to use and integrate various social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. I think Flock is quite interesting, fun and pretty much useful if you wanna keep everything in one place.

Meanwhile, I need to explore more about this Flock 2.5 thingy...

Blogged with the Flock Browser