Despite what the Teh Tarik Drinker says about the majority of iPhone users being giggling teenagers, the iPhone remains one of the best phones I’ve ever used. Here’s the front page of my phone with my most frequently used apps:
A full list of apps after the jump!
Have you ever wished you could use Bittorrent on-the-go? Here’s a short guide how utilizing the magic of Dropbox!
Dropbox is a free service that grants you 2GB of online storage space. You can upgrade your account for more space if you wish, but in my experience, 2GB is more than enough. It’s just like having an online USB disk.
People who have computers running at home while they’re out in the office.
.torrent files with the ability to save .torrent files to Dropbox (Sorry, this won’t work on iPhones!).Typically, this process would involve installing the Dropbox application on both your home computer and your remote computer. However, if you do not have permission to do so, you can always use the Dropbox web interface to upload your torrent files.
My settings above are such that whenever uTorrent starts a new download, it deletes the original .torrent file. This gives me an indication that the Home computer has successfully picked up the .torrent file and has begun downloading.
And you’re done!
When you download a .torrent file and save it into the Dropbox/Torrent folder, it gets automatically synced your other Dropbox installed locations. So what happens is that your Home computer that runs uTorrent in this case automatically picks up the .torrent file and begins the download process.
Uploading the torrent file via the web interface isn’t that difficult either. Just go to www.dropbox.com and sign in. From there, just navigate to your Torrents folder and click upload.
Have fun!
Google Maps is brilliant. When it first launched, I thought it was pretty amazing. Then came Google Maps on the iPhone. It was then I lost (haha) the ability to get lost!
Let’s take for example, the simple task of finding out how to get from Taiwan to China.
Google Maps is even smart enough to tell you that a journey by car will involve a ferry and that you have to pay tolls!
But for some INSANE reason, check out step #24 of 165km!
Thinking this was a fluke, I tried an even longer journey: Driving from California to Japan.
You apparently need something extra for this one
Thanks Fadh for showing me this!
“So how much would you like me to put on the invoice?” asked the gentleman at the other end of the phone.
“What?” I replied in bewilderment.
The setting for the conversation was in my last year in high school. I was speaking to the vendor from a t-shirt printing company whom I was arranging for some t-shirts to be printed for my boarding house. A couple of weeks prior to the conversation, the housemaster had just approved the new design and I had just emailed the vendor the digital copy when I received the phone call. We were expecting delivery by the end of the week.
If you center the Gulf oil spill to KL (5 June), you’ll see that it stretches as far south as Melaka, as far east as Dungun, as far north as Cameron Highlands, and across the Straits of Malacca reaching Indonesia (ifitwasmyhome.com).
Deepwater Horizon @ KL, 5 June 2010
There is no doubt that what we have on our hands is an ecological disaster that was man-made, driven by energy policies that we as human beings, should have tried weaning ourselves out of as soon as we possibly could.
In any event, I think that sealife in the Gulf as we know is, for lack of a better word, fucked. Taking into account the upcoming hurricane season means that (1) any relief well drilling measures to stem the flow of oil isn’t going to be within 3 months; and (2) even more oil is going to be gushing to the surface. And with the gulfstream potentially taking the oil further east towards the eastern seaboard of the United States, then further north across the Atlantic into the North Sea and Meditteranean, don’t be surprised if you see patches of oil here in Asia in the next 2 years or so.
Mark my words: Deepwater Horizon may just the beginning of a dark epoch in mankind’s history.
So if you haven’t considered taking up diving, the next few years may be the best time to do so. The life you see 30 metres down today may be the last you’ll ever see of them.
Update:
I recently installed WordPress 3 RC1 on my local test server a.k.a. my MBP which really wasn’t too difficult to setup. This reminded me of the days when I brewed up a readme on how to install Apache, MySQL and PHP + WordPress on WinXP!
In any case, running a MAMP (Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP) test server and WordPress is really easy:
wp-database
users/myusername/wordpress folderPreferences > Apache and select the Document Root per Step 6.
http://localhost:8888/wordpress and you’ll be prompted to fill in a few details to install WordPress.
Here are a few other guides in case the instructions above weren’t clear enough:
At 5,830 words at present, Facebook’s privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution without amendments. So its no surprise then that you will probably need this map by the NYT that charts out the plethora of options available to you as a FB user to control the information that they have over you.
I still cannot get FB to stop publicly showing my ‘Likes’. I am seriously considering “unliking” all my pages to stop this feature. Either that, or the “Only Me” selector is broken!
My journey began on Friday evening with the 10pm bus to Kuantan from Lavender bus station. Despite Mersing being half-way between JB and Kuantan, Transnasional still makes you pay the full fare for the trip (SGD29.10). As far as I know, this is the only direct bus from Singapore to Mersing that doesn’t involve changing buses at Larkin Bus Terminal in JB.
I then found myself in Mersing town at 1:30am with no hotel with only my dive gear for company. No worries. I didn’t plan on getting accommodation anyway since my scheduled ferry was at 5 o’clock in the morning. Plus, it was time to call upon my fully leveled-up skill of Sleep Anywhere ™. A bench by the ferry ticket booth would pose no challenge for the Sleep Beast!
By the way, Transnational drops you off in the middle of Mersing town at the Shell station. From there, the jetty is about a 10 minute walk away by taking 12 o’clock turn at the roundabout and walking straight past the stadium and police station on your right.
Aside 1: Ungodly places I’ve slept include: a fountain in Prague city center, resting on a lamp post at MOZAC, a log on Sipadan beach and standing up at the KTJ lunch queue holding a tray.
When the Bluewater ticket counter finally opened at 4am I was shocked to find out that: (a) my name wasn’t anywhere on the “reserve” list, (b) my contact in Mersing had his phone turned off and (c) the 5am ferry to Salang which had now auto-magically transformed into the 6am ferry was FULL! I was *this* close to calling it quits and making my way back to Singapore. Luckily enough I managed to convince… err… beg my way onto the ferry and thus began the 2.5 hour ride to Tioman island.
Aside 2: If you’re taking the Bluewater ferry, do bring along a warm jacket or jumper. Your shorts and t-shirt may be suited for the island, but on the boat, it can get pretty chilly. Igloo cold. Also, the Bluewater ferry company (the rightmost counter at the jetty) is essentially a monopoly for all island-related transportation so it is advised that you make your travel arrangements way in advance to avoid disappointment with the potentially large weekend crowds. To my knowledge, they operate only 2 ferries a day (6am and 2pm) from Mersing to Tioman depending on the tide schedule and at the anecdotal arbitrary whims of the company. Be warned!
Salang Dreamz restaurant (Rozanna’s BBFly)
Upon my arrival, I made my way towards Azmi Dive where I would be diving with the rest of the gang. The dive center is just to the right of the jetty complex and it’s the first dive shop you encounter after passing Salang Pusaka on your left. Azmi has a pretty relaxed Dive Center setup, typical of one you’d find anywhere on any island with a shady area on both ends of the wooden platform for divers to chill.
My only grouses are that:
Firstly, there aren’t any “proper” places to keep your gear. Whilst the boat boys do lockup your gear at night, I did not feel secure leaving my gear lying around. Perhaps it was a function of the location being a pretty busy with human-traffic. Rozanna and I think that there should either be proper heavy duty hangars for the BCDs and regs — labeled and numbered if possible — or boxes/baskets to keep gear in.
Secondly, it’s quite a walk (~50m or so) from the dive center where you setup your gear to where the speedboats are moored. Whilst I didn’t have that much of a problem with the trek, I can be quite tiring having to drag your tank and gear all the way across the sand with the hot afternoon sun in your face. While there’s nothing wrong with needing to carry your own gear, after the impeccable service we received in Kapalai and Lembeh (where they even strap on your fins for you — I’m not kidding), the service at Azmi was quite disappointing, but not at all something they cannot improve on. A solution could be to have the boat boys bring the tanks to the boat and the setup of your diving gear to occur on the boat itself.
One cute Bullocki (G10 w/YS110a strobe)
Because this trip was so short, I only managed to do 3 dives this time around. Overall visibility was OK ~15m or so, but according to Rozanna, the previous day’s visibility was much better. Nevertheless, the dive at Labas did not disappoint and neither did Sea-fan Canyon. My only regret was not taking more photos to experiment more and to get comments from Richard Ng of Scubafrenz himself.
Sunday was spent lazing around whilst waiting for the 12pm… 4:30pm… 1:30pm ferry (see what I told you about Bluewater’s erratic/arbitrary schedule?). When we finally got to the mainland, I managed to secure a taxi for RM160 to Larkin (private 7-seater MPVs to Singapore go for about SGD200) where I then boarded the yellow Causeway Express CW1 to Queen St. at Bugis for RM2.50. You buy your tickets from the bus driver and retain your stub until you cross over but if you lose your stub, you’ll have to buy a brand new one each time you board the bus.
More 1Malaysia: Posing with the Scubafrenz gang! (Photo by Serina)
All in all, it was an entertaining trip made even better with friends who always have something witty, funny or fishy to talk about. Congratulations are also in order to Serina who is now a qualified open water diver thanks to DM Richard’s tutoring!
***
Disclosure: For this trip, Reza stayed at Tioman Island’s Salang Pusaka (2d1n) and dived with Azmi Dive (ala-carte). This trip was organized by Scubafrenz and you can find them on Facebook!
As the waves lapped the side of the boat, I gave the “OK” sign to my dive buddy, waited for her nod of approval that there was noone behind me, and leaned back; one hand clutching the front of my mask and the other on the weight belt clasped at my waist. My tilted head splashed into the warm 29 degree water and I took my first deep breath of compressed air, soothing my lungs like some sort of high. I took a short peek into the blue before resurfacing again from my shallow dip. The viz was perfect. I then thought to myself: this was going to be one kick-ass dive.
***
Those who know me will know that I am a firm believer that married couples should have “his” hobbies, “her” hobbies and “our” hobbies. Magic was mine. Photography was hers. And diving was “ours”.
So what then began as a honeymoon project has now turned into one of our favourite pastimes. 3 years later, we now laugh at the fact that our very first chalet on Tioman was rather rickety hut complete with a plastic-bag stuffed hole in the wall. Those days could not be more different than the incredible upgrade the water chalets at Kapalai were when we resided there last year.
But aside from the clownfish who mercilessly try to shoo you away from their anemonae abodes, the sharks whom you are ever so apprehensive about seeing for the very first time; and the other flora and fauna at the bottom of the ocean floor, what my wife and I have really learned to treasure are the friends we’ve made along the way. We’re seen old friendships rekindled, new ones forged, jokes aplenty and a non-stop source of camaraderie and humour. So if anybody were to ask me what “dive culture” was all about, I’d say its about friendship more than anything else. After all, seeing all the fish in the ocean counts for nothing if you can’t share that experience meaningfully with anyone.
***
My dive comp beeped exactly 30 minutes into the dive. That was cue to check my Frog air gauge… 140 bar. That should last me awhile. My first few 45 minute dives had me finish at 30 bar or so. These days I hardly seldom break 100psi.
A few seconds later, we turned a corner at a big boulder with the coral on our right and the sandy ocean bed on the opposite side. The visibility at 20 meters was fantastic… almost as good as it was at Tiger Reef in the morning.
Then somewhere at the corner of my eye, I saw the faint silhouette of a particularly large sand ray. Sashi (of Scubafrenz) spotted it too, and immediately made his way out towards the creature lugging his video camera and its 2 strobes with him. The ray was resting about 5 meters out from the large boulder we just passed, presumably having a nap. Sashi circled the creature from the back, swimming slowly as to not alert the animal of our presence whilst the rest of us slowly swam towards it to take a closer look.
As Rozanna joined Sashi to snap photos of the ray, I hung about at the boulder to see if there was anything else interesting that I could take photos of. These boulders in the middle of nowhere were an endless source of subjects to take photos of. It was not uncommon to see a group of two to three nudibranches bunched up together that could potentially translate into a fabulous macro shot opportunity.
So as I was busy trying to spot nudibranches, Vijay pointed out a banded sea snake, weaving its way through the nooks and crannies of the boulder, looking for food to eat. As it swam (snakes don’t slither underwater) pretty close to me, I took a few steps back (OK, humans don’t walk underwater either, but I think you know what I mean!). After all, this was a highly poisonous creature! The venom from a sea-snake has been known to kill a man, but like many poisonous creatures, will not attack unless provoked.
I resisted the urge to continue photographing the krait and backed off to observe it as it continued on its quest foraging for food. Meanwhile, Rozanna and Sashi were still enjoying the company of the rather photogenic ray we saw earlier whilst the rest of our contingent hung about. It was almost as if the ray was quite happy to be a rather obedient photography subject and remain still as it was when we first saw it. It had now happily parked itself under a small rocky crag where it was sheltered from our bright strobe flashes.
After a few moments, the snake had now made its way down the boulder, its black and grey stripes now contrasted against the soft white sand. Whilst I managed to get a few more shots of it, the speed in which the creature moved was a bit too fast for my G10 to capture satisfactorily. But then all movement, both human and animal, stopped seconds later.
There it was: A snake vs. ray face-off.
This 100th dive was turning out to be kick-ass indeed.
And a 10-year reunion
Overfloor. I once stayed here!
Over fifteen years ago, I was dropped off by my parents at a boarding school at the sleepy town of Kuala Kangsar. Now other than the fact that Kuala Kangsar and Kuala Lumpur share a word in their names, the two towns could not be more different. I was an ‘urban boy’ of sorts (not to be confused with the Koleq connotation of being an urban boy — a story for another day), having come from the city and having been raised there since young. The College or Koleq, affectionately called by the students, was an intimidating place. There were boys from all over the country speaking various dialects, some of which I had to strain to understand at first. Despite the early trepidation however, most of it was allayed by the fact that my very own father once went to very same school, himself an old boy of the Malay College Kuala Kangsar.
The early days in College could not be more different from my life back home. 5:30am cold showers, common rooms a.k.a. institutionalized “indoctrination” sessions, Saturday inspection & detention class were all part of the routine. I remember the weekend when I told my parents about what we had to go through. When my dad responded, “Would you like me to take you out?” I looked at him and I realised that I really did not want to leave.
And so I stayed on.
L-R: Lebo, Me & Cikun after the polo game. 8-8 tie!
Five years later I left the school with many memories. I was the English debate team captain, a school prefect, the head of the College Magazine editorial board, a school water polo player and I played in the school marching band. Koleq opened doors to many things… one of which was my scholarship to eventually study abroad. Heck, being a budak Koleq even opened doors up to girls! I recall writing to “friends” from other schools asking for their exam papers in preparation for the SPM. Being a Malay College student sure had its plus points!
But in those five years, one memory stands out. I remember helping to proof read my father’s CV one day and I asked him why he still listed out his years in Koleq when his future employer would probably not have give it a second thought given his other qualifications.
His answer was simple: Koleq made me the person I am today. Now that’s a sentiment I can truly get behind.
My batch celebrated our 10 year anniversary since leaving Koleq this year. A whopping 95 of us made it for the trip back to Kuala Kangsar and it was a hoot! Because of work and study commitments, I could only drive up to Kuala Kangsar with my buddies on the Saturday morning of the 3 day event. That road trip alone harkened back to younger days when Megat, Vedder and I would carpool back to Kuala Kangsar with our respective parents taking turns playing the role of chauffer.
A picturesque Overfloor photo taken during the football game
The reunion itself was a riot. Some of the early birds who managed to return to Kuala Kangsar earlier even hosted a dinner for the teachers thanking them for their contributions back when were naive students who really, didn’t know any better. The various borak sessions were a riot of course… it simply did not matter that some jokes were over 10 years old, everybody still laughed like the memories happened yesterday.
The school has indeed changed compared to the days when we were back in Koleq, some say for the worse rather than for the better. But I guess each budak Koleq has their own personal five-year story to tell. To compare notes would be an exercise in futility! But as I walked through the various walkways and past the classrooms and dorms, I could not fathom why on earth anybody would want to send their 12 year old son to study in such a dilapidated and dingy place. I kept on thinking to myself, how did I ever survive this place? The school was a mess and I can only assume that the food could not have improved from the toxic sludge back in the day (OK, I am exaggerating but it really was THAT bad. I draw the line when I see maggots in the kangkong).
Amenities aside though, Koleq will forever remain a special place in all of our hearts. It may not have had the best of academic results to boast of, but the consensus view whilst reminiscing the past was this: Koleq builds character. Koleq builds bonds. And Koleq forges a cammaderie amongst brothers through the fact that we all slept under the same roof, shared the same crappy food, shared the same showers (although not at the same time I can assure you!) and shared the same memories of a wonderful royal town, 255 kilometers north of KL that we can all go back to and proudly claim that we all once called it home.
9600 OBW2010
Tak ku lupakan jasa-jasamu,
Oh Kolej Melayu
Addendum [13 April 10]
Other batchmate’s accounts and tributes to the 10-year event:
