Friday, February 29, 2008
15:45 by FoxTwo ... I'm sick of hearing about the escaped Limping Terrorist on the different blogs out there. Also, stop with Edison Chen already, ok? Pictures were leaked, people saw, people have already said whatever they want to say.
So, I hereby change the topic to something totally different.
Ok what's the point then? The point is about the way Singaporeans use English. This time, I'm not going to nit-pick on the spoken version. Instead I'm going to ramble about the written variety.
What triggered this off was that I was told to sign a prepared letter for my impending "ROD", ie end of contract and to officially state my intention not to renew the contract.
After reading just past the "Dear Sir/Madam" part, I gawked.
The very next line was "I hereby tender my....."
First of all, I am no royalty. I am not the President, I am not a commander of any large armed force. I am in no position to make any proclamations. Yes dear readers, "HEREBY" is used by people in positions of authority to issue commands or proclamations. I see so many people writing official company letters using all these weird phrases that should not be used.
Like writing a cover letter for a resume. "I hereby enclose my resume for your perusal"? Gawds. If I were the HR Manager, this guy automatically gets disqualified, without needing to read more.
On a related note, another common mistake I see in written communications is the phrase "cope up with", especially when relating to work or stress. You can only "cope with". However, you "catch up with" things or people though. Yeah I know, English is weird.
Then there's another one - "vent out your frustrations". When you vent, you're already letting everything OUT. So you "vent your frustrations", the "out" is already implied. If you want to "vent out", you're redundant :)
Ok back to the prepared letter I was told to sign this morning. Further along the same line as the "hereby" one, it says "... giving one month notice....".
I paused.
Hey man, I'm serving out my full contract man. I am not "resigning". You guys should know when my contract ends, don't you? Since you're my employer? What, you don't know? So how come you knew when to renew my contract last year without needing a letter?
Further along, the letter ends with "Yours Sincerely,"
I shook my head.
When you're writing official letters, it's "Yours faithfully," and the 2nd word must be in SMALL letters.
Needless to say, I didn't sign the letter. I threw it back to them and told them I didn't understand what they are trying to make me say (by signing it). I will only sign the next "prepared letter" if they get everything right.
They'd better hire a better secretary soon. Daphne might be a good candidate. Too bad she's already got a job.
15:45 by FoxTwo ... I'm sick of hearing about the escaped Limping Terrorist on the different blogs out there. Also, stop with Edison Chen already, ok? Pictures were leaked, people saw, people have already said whatever they want to say.
So, I hereby change the topic to something totally different.
Ok what's the point then? The point is about the way Singaporeans use English. This time, I'm not going to nit-pick on the spoken version. Instead I'm going to ramble about the written variety.
What triggered this off was that I was told to sign a prepared letter for my impending "ROD", ie end of contract and to officially state my intention not to renew the contract.
After reading just past the "Dear Sir/Madam" part, I gawked.
The very next line was "I hereby tender my....."
First of all, I am no royalty. I am not the President, I am not a commander of any large armed force. I am in no position to make any proclamations. Yes dear readers, "HEREBY" is used by people in positions of authority to issue commands or proclamations. I see so many people writing official company letters using all these weird phrases that should not be used.
Like writing a cover letter for a resume. "I hereby enclose my resume for your perusal"? Gawds. If I were the HR Manager, this guy automatically gets disqualified, without needing to read more.
On a related note, another common mistake I see in written communications is the phrase "cope up with", especially when relating to work or stress. You can only "cope with". However, you "catch up with" things or people though. Yeah I know, English is weird.
Then there's another one - "vent out your frustrations". When you vent, you're already letting everything OUT. So you "vent your frustrations", the "out" is already implied. If you want to "vent out", you're redundant :)
Ok back to the prepared letter I was told to sign this morning. Further along the same line as the "hereby" one, it says "... giving one month notice....".
I paused.
Hey man, I'm serving out my full contract man. I am not "resigning". You guys should know when my contract ends, don't you? Since you're my employer? What, you don't know? So how come you knew when to renew my contract last year without needing a letter?
Further along, the letter ends with "Yours Sincerely,"
I shook my head.
When you're writing official letters, it's "Yours faithfully," and the 2nd word must be in SMALL letters.
Needless to say, I didn't sign the letter. I threw it back to them and told them I didn't understand what they are trying to make me say (by signing it). I will only sign the next "prepared letter" if they get everything right.
They'd better hire a better secretary soon. Daphne might be a good candidate. Too bad she's already got a job.
Labels: quirks, Rant, Singaporeans
00:01 by FoxTwo I had a nice romantic dinner date with Daphne and xinyun slated for tonight. Then, xizor volunteered to be the bright spotlight, so he came along too.
Hahah ok I'm kidding. We met for dinner, cos xinyun wanted to show me a nice place with great brownies (I know I know, fattening!). The food is not too bad, and the price, pretty darn cheap, considering its location. The price printed on the menu is what you pay for the food. No extras, no cess, no service charge, nada.
Ok, enough about my dinner with 2 amazing ladies and one spotlight.
The interesting thing is that we noticed an upside-down goldfish swimming in a fishtank near the restaurant. It's not dead, it's not dying. It's just upside down. Proof? Watch the short video below:
Sorry for the lousy quality of the video. I didn't bring my real camera out, and only had my handphone with me. Yeah I know, 3GP videos on handphones suck. Well, at least the goldfish is visibly upside down and alive.
xinyun was saying that she'd seen this a month or so ago, and it was also upside down back then. So either the fish came from Australia, or from India (since heroes in Indian movies take a heck of a long time to die).
Ok, I'll see if it's still alive next month or so, if I ever pass by that place again.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
14:45 by FoxTwo Today, my colleague decided to drive to Changi Vilage for lunch.
Remembering the (failed?) outing from the ping.sg forums, I decided to see if I could locate the Ayam Penyet ("flattened chicken") place and check it out. It wasn't hard to locate it.
Yeah, I think this is the place (Edit - ok Daphne just confirmed that this is NOT the place where the pingsters wanted to go for the gathering). It's the only prominent Ayam Penyet place in Changi Village, so I hope I got it right. We all trooped in after looking at the menu, and picked a nice spacious spot inside the air-conditioned interior.
We ordered after looking at the menu, and drinks came first. I ordered a Chendol:
and, my Ayam Penyet arrived soon after:
Looks good eh?
There were a couple of surprises for us though. For example, rice doesn't come with the dishes. They are "extra-orders" at 50 cents each. A couple of my colleagues were grumbling about it.
However, they gave us complimentary fruits after the meal, which I guess makes it a little more bearable for the surprise of having to pay for rice.
Ambience-wise, it's kinda like a little Haagan-Daaz shop, nice and cozy, would be a great place for a chat. But, I doubt a ping.sg outing would be a good idea to the place - too small to accomodate more than 15 or 20 people inside, and maybe another 10 outside.
The Ayam Penyet itself isn't too bad, but the chilli is incredibly hot! Even the Malay colleagues were perspiring while they were eating. To the outlet's credit, they DO offer a "mild" version of their chilli, only if we had asked for it. By default, they give the strong one :)
14:45 by FoxTwo Today, my colleague decided to drive to Changi Vilage for lunch.
Remembering the (failed?) outing from the ping.sg forums, I decided to see if I could locate the Ayam Penyet ("flattened chicken") place and check it out. It wasn't hard to locate it.
Yeah, I think this is the place (Edit - ok Daphne just confirmed that this is NOT the place where the pingsters wanted to go for the gathering). It's the only prominent Ayam Penyet place in Changi Village, so I hope I got it right. We all trooped in after looking at the menu, and picked a nice spacious spot inside the air-conditioned interior.
We ordered after looking at the menu, and drinks came first. I ordered a Chendol:
and, my Ayam Penyet arrived soon after:
Looks good eh?
There were a couple of surprises for us though. For example, rice doesn't come with the dishes. They are "extra-orders" at 50 cents each. A couple of my colleagues were grumbling about it.
However, they gave us complimentary fruits after the meal, which I guess makes it a little more bearable for the surprise of having to pay for rice.
Ambience-wise, it's kinda like a little Haagan-Daaz shop, nice and cozy, would be a great place for a chat. But, I doubt a ping.sg outing would be a good idea to the place - too small to accomodate more than 15 or 20 people inside, and maybe another 10 outside.
The Ayam Penyet itself isn't too bad, but the chilli is incredibly hot! Even the Malay colleagues were perspiring while they were eating. To the outlet's credit, they DO offer a "mild" version of their chilli, only if we had asked for it. By default, they give the strong one :)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
10:02 by FoxTwo
Remember, back then, broadband speeds were just like about 512Kbps to 1Mps at most. DivX was released, and for the first time, videos can be compressed with it like songs can be compressed into MP3s. Finally, videos can be shared among friends because the files no longer need to be 500MBs or more. To give you an example - a raw capture video file of about 2 minutes might take up 2GBs of harddisk space. DivX can easily compress it down to about 20MBs without much loss of quality. In other words, the 20MB version will look very close to the original 2GB version.
That was indeed a breakthrough.
Video sharing sites started to sprout up. Youtube was among the first, and is now the most popular of all. However, to "stream" videos, the files needed to be even smaller (remember, broadband speeds were slow back then), so Youtube compressed it further, and resized it downwards. While videos might look blocky and blurry on Youtube, users are impressed because we can now watch live, streaming videos.
Stage6 was a brainchild of DivX actually. They wanted to prove a point back then - that it was possible to stream videos in high-quality, using their own DivX codec. Slowly but surely, it started to gain popularity, because yes, it was indeed possible to stream high-quality videos over the Internet.
The second thing that made it popular was that you can DOWNLOAD the videos off the site onto your harddisk, and play it back with your standard Windows Media Player if you choose to.
The third thing is, Stage6 is the place for me to go if I wanted to watch a TV series that isn't shown in Singapore - like Andromeda, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape etc (yes I know, it's all sci-fi series listed here). You can find contemporary shows there too like Lost, Prison Break, West Wing etc too.
All in "high-definition".
Before even "high-def" TVs were even heard of by most Singaporeans.
And, unlike Youtube (yes, don't be surprised. These shows are available via Youtube too), they aren't blocky, or pixellated, and NOT broken down into 10 minute parts (unlike Youtube's weird policy), ie, no need to watch "1 of 4" then search for the same episode part 2 of 4 etc to continue the show.
Fast forward 5 or 6 years to present day. This morning I just got an email from Stage6, where they announced they are going to shut down the service effective 28 Feb 2008 (yes you read it right, 28 Feb 2008, not 29 Feb). To me, it's an end of an era.
Here's an excerpt from the email:
Yes, Stage6 is free. It doesn't have advertising. It's only a matter of time before the service shuts down. I am only amazed it lasted this long without external sources of funding. In the meantime, I have been enjoying TV series like Lexx on Stage6 in "high-definition" in the past few years.
Thank you Stage6, for all the good times.
Now, I guess I have Vimeo, which can also stream in high-quality. It's not as popular as Youtube, but then again, this post isn't about Youtube or Vimeo.
10:02 by FoxTwo
Pioneer Video Sharing Site Stage6 To Shut Down
Remember, back then, broadband speeds were just like about 512Kbps to 1Mps at most. DivX was released, and for the first time, videos can be compressed with it like songs can be compressed into MP3s. Finally, videos can be shared among friends because the files no longer need to be 500MBs or more. To give you an example - a raw capture video file of about 2 minutes might take up 2GBs of harddisk space. DivX can easily compress it down to about 20MBs without much loss of quality. In other words, the 20MB version will look very close to the original 2GB version.
That was indeed a breakthrough.
Video sharing sites started to sprout up. Youtube was among the first, and is now the most popular of all. However, to "stream" videos, the files needed to be even smaller (remember, broadband speeds were slow back then), so Youtube compressed it further, and resized it downwards. While videos might look blocky and blurry on Youtube, users are impressed because we can now watch live, streaming videos.
Stage6 was a brainchild of DivX actually. They wanted to prove a point back then - that it was possible to stream videos in high-quality, using their own DivX codec. Slowly but surely, it started to gain popularity, because yes, it was indeed possible to stream high-quality videos over the Internet.
The second thing that made it popular was that you can DOWNLOAD the videos off the site onto your harddisk, and play it back with your standard Windows Media Player if you choose to.
The third thing is, Stage6 is the place for me to go if I wanted to watch a TV series that isn't shown in Singapore - like Andromeda, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape etc (yes I know, it's all sci-fi series listed here). You can find contemporary shows there too like Lost, Prison Break, West Wing etc too.
All in "high-definition".
Before even "high-def" TVs were even heard of by most Singaporeans.
And, unlike Youtube (yes, don't be surprised. These shows are available via Youtube too), they aren't blocky, or pixellated, and NOT broken down into 10 minute parts (unlike Youtube's weird policy), ie, no need to watch "1 of 4" then search for the same episode part 2 of 4 etc to continue the show.
Fast forward 5 or 6 years to present day. This morning I just got an email from Stage6, where they announced they are going to shut down the service effective 28 Feb 2008 (yes you read it right, 28 Feb 2008, not 29 Feb). To me, it's an end of an era.
Here's an excerpt from the email:
As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn't continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.
Yes, Stage6 is free. It doesn't have advertising. It's only a matter of time before the service shuts down. I am only amazed it lasted this long without external sources of funding. In the meantime, I have been enjoying TV series like Lexx on Stage6 in "high-definition" in the past few years.
Thank you Stage6, for all the good times.
Now, I guess I have Vimeo, which can also stream in high-quality. It's not as popular as Youtube, but then again, this post isn't about Youtube or Vimeo.
Monday, February 25, 2008
10:13 by FoxTwo
When you FORCE them to send invites to 5 or 10 or 15 etc friends before you allow the "results" to be shown. Yes, many will spam their friends just to see the "results", but if your app is useless, it only gets spammed ONCE. Then people remove it and block it.
For once, go take a look at successful apps. Apps like Friends For Sale for example. You don't need to tell us to spam invites... we'll invite on our own because, we get $ when we do, and we can't buy people who don't have the apps installed unless they're on our friends list. You BET we'll invite, even without the need to force us to!
Not only that, people will continue to use/play with your apps if it's FUN and ENGAGING. Make 'em fun and the app will become popular. Force us to spam invites, it stays in our profiles only until we find time to remove it. And remove we WILL.
Forcing people to spam invites makes your app a "virus". That's how viruses spread - by forcing themselves onto others. Chances are, you know that if you don't force people to do it, nobody will come back to your app a second time eh? What a low tactic.
Giving incentives to invite people is another thing - more money, more points, whatever. As long as it's our concious decision to say "hey this app is fun, I want to invite my friends to come play it", it's fine.
10:13 by FoxTwo
To Facebook Apps Developers....
When you FORCE them to send invites to 5 or 10 or 15 etc friends before you allow the "results" to be shown. Yes, many will spam their friends just to see the "results", but if your app is useless, it only gets spammed ONCE. Then people remove it and block it.
For once, go take a look at successful apps. Apps like Friends For Sale for example. You don't need to tell us to spam invites... we'll invite on our own because, we get $ when we do, and we can't buy people who don't have the apps installed unless they're on our friends list. You BET we'll invite, even without the need to force us to!
Not only that, people will continue to use/play with your apps if it's FUN and ENGAGING. Make 'em fun and the app will become popular. Force us to spam invites, it stays in our profiles only until we find time to remove it. And remove we WILL.
Forcing people to spam invites makes your app a "virus". That's how viruses spread - by forcing themselves onto others. Chances are, you know that if you don't force people to do it, nobody will come back to your app a second time eh? What a low tactic.
Giving incentives to invite people is another thing - more money, more points, whatever. As long as it's our concious decision to say "hey this app is fun, I want to invite my friends to come play it", it's fine.
Labels: facebook, internet, Rant
Sunday, February 24, 2008
11:58 by FoxTwo Those of us who were around and coherent back in the 1980's will remember the show, Knight Rider. The story is about a lone wolf, driving a tricked out computer-controlled car, running around the USA keeping law and order. Think of it as "The modern Lone Ranger", minus Tonto.
In 2008, NBC resurrected the show, and now, we can expect a whole new TV series sporting the same name! Yay!
Before we go on, here's a trailer I found on Youtube:
I managed to watch the 1 hour 20 min (give or take) pilot episode, which premiered in the USA on Feb 17, and I couldn't help but feel something is missing.
First of all, KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) the car, is now a Mustang, instead of a cool looking Trans Am. In the show, KITT is now the Knight Industries THREE Thousand, ie a new incarnation of the old KITT. It still sports the "cylon eye" thing though, and I thought Val Kilmer who was cast as the voice of KITT, seemed.... out of place.
The series isn't really a remake, per se. It's actually a continuation of the old series. There are numerous references to the people and events made in the pilot episode, about the old series. However, if you're too young to have watched the old series, fear not. You don't need to have watched the old series to enjoy the new one. What you're going to lose out on is just watching a cool Trans Am as KITT instead of the new (bulky) Mustang.
With modern computer CGI, the special effects are Matrix-like. Like when bullets hit the car, we no longer just see "sparks" but actual animations of the bullets being flattened, for example. That's cool. Actually even now, if you go and watch the old series, it doesn't look that dated. The buttons and computers shown back then seem pretty much modern. With that said, the hi-tech stuff shown right now isn't too "high tech", ie very believeable. You can actually believe that computers CAN (and they actually can) do most of the stuff shown in the pilot. Well, except the thinking for itself part. Even speech synthesis has made advances in the 20 odd years since the old series, and now we have almost-natural sounding speech synthesis available to us on our home PCs.
Two cool things about the new KITT: first, it has adaptive camouflage! You know, you've first seen it (somewhat) in James Bond movies, where the car changes its own colours and shape. Yep, with modern computer effects, KITT has camouflage now. Secondly, the new KITT is so fast, when it goes at full speed, you can actually see contrails flowing out of the spoilers at the back of the car!
Yes David Hasselhoff made an appearance in the pilot, but just to give a pep talk, nothing much. It's nice to see him again, but the new series will have a new lead actor. I guess having him appear is to "hand the reins over" to the new guy for the new series.
All in all, while the pilot might not be great, I think I will be trying to follow this series as well. At the very least, for nostalgic reasons.
For more pictures and writeup, check out IMDB here.
11:58 by FoxTwo Those of us who were around and coherent back in the 1980's will remember the show, Knight Rider. The story is about a lone wolf, driving a tricked out computer-controlled car, running around the USA keeping law and order. Think of it as "The modern Lone Ranger", minus Tonto.
In 2008, NBC resurrected the show, and now, we can expect a whole new TV series sporting the same name! Yay!
Before we go on, here's a trailer I found on Youtube:
I managed to watch the 1 hour 20 min (give or take) pilot episode, which premiered in the USA on Feb 17, and I couldn't help but feel something is missing.
First of all, KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) the car, is now a Mustang, instead of a cool looking Trans Am. In the show, KITT is now the Knight Industries THREE Thousand, ie a new incarnation of the old KITT. It still sports the "cylon eye" thing though, and I thought Val Kilmer who was cast as the voice of KITT, seemed.... out of place.
The series isn't really a remake, per se. It's actually a continuation of the old series. There are numerous references to the people and events made in the pilot episode, about the old series. However, if you're too young to have watched the old series, fear not. You don't need to have watched the old series to enjoy the new one. What you're going to lose out on is just watching a cool Trans Am as KITT instead of the new (bulky) Mustang.
With modern computer CGI, the special effects are Matrix-like. Like when bullets hit the car, we no longer just see "sparks" but actual animations of the bullets being flattened, for example. That's cool. Actually even now, if you go and watch the old series, it doesn't look that dated. The buttons and computers shown back then seem pretty much modern. With that said, the hi-tech stuff shown right now isn't too "high tech", ie very believeable. You can actually believe that computers CAN (and they actually can) do most of the stuff shown in the pilot. Well, except the thinking for itself part. Even speech synthesis has made advances in the 20 odd years since the old series, and now we have almost-natural sounding speech synthesis available to us on our home PCs.
Two cool things about the new KITT: first, it has adaptive camouflage! You know, you've first seen it (somewhat) in James Bond movies, where the car changes its own colours and shape. Yep, with modern computer effects, KITT has camouflage now. Secondly, the new KITT is so fast, when it goes at full speed, you can actually see contrails flowing out of the spoilers at the back of the car!
Yes David Hasselhoff made an appearance in the pilot, but just to give a pep talk, nothing much. It's nice to see him again, but the new series will have a new lead actor. I guess having him appear is to "hand the reins over" to the new guy for the new series.
All in all, while the pilot might not be great, I think I will be trying to follow this series as well. At the very least, for nostalgic reasons.
For more pictures and writeup, check out IMDB here.
Labels: TV shows
Friday, February 22, 2008
09:45 by FoxTwo
After seeing just 1 day of statistics, I have come to a conclusion.
Blogrush should have been named "TrafficJam", and TrafficJam should be renamed as "Blogrush". Honestly, the results these sites deliver are in total opposite of what their names imply. When I first joined Blogrush, I was expecting a flood of incoming traffic. That never happened. In fact, a couple of blogger friends of mine even thought about removing the Blogrush widget.
Then, seeing the statistics from just yesterday alone, Traffic Jam sent close to 400 hits to my LOWEST-TRAFFIC blog (I'm Such A Loser - my fitness blog). Normally that blog gets between 10 to 20 hits a day at most.
The only other service that even comes close to sending this much traffic is Entrecard, but unfortunately that blog isn't on Entrecard because I haven't figured out if I can add additional blogs to Entrecard.
The only downside I can see to the TrafficJam service is this - your blog entries must get listed in their "top 10". If it's not visible, you won't get any traffic. My fitness blog had an entry listed at number 5 across the whole network, and all hits to my fitness blog was headed for that #5 ranked entry.
I am forseeing that what happened on the old ping.sg will happen on Traffic Jam, ie a lot of people will be trying to come up with catchy, racy, raunchy etc titles to get people to click on it. Blogrush works like how the old ping.sg worked - as soon as someone clicked on your link, it's counted. Get enough clicks, your entry shows up in the top 10 list of Traffic Jam. When it shows up in the top 10 list, you get even more clicks.
09:45 by FoxTwo
Blogrush and TrafficJam Need To Be Renamed
After seeing just 1 day of statistics, I have come to a conclusion.
Blogrush should have been named "TrafficJam", and TrafficJam should be renamed as "Blogrush". Honestly, the results these sites deliver are in total opposite of what their names imply. When I first joined Blogrush, I was expecting a flood of incoming traffic. That never happened. In fact, a couple of blogger friends of mine even thought about removing the Blogrush widget.
Then, seeing the statistics from just yesterday alone, Traffic Jam sent close to 400 hits to my LOWEST-TRAFFIC blog (I'm Such A Loser - my fitness blog). Normally that blog gets between 10 to 20 hits a day at most.
The only other service that even comes close to sending this much traffic is Entrecard, but unfortunately that blog isn't on Entrecard because I haven't figured out if I can add additional blogs to Entrecard.
The only downside I can see to the TrafficJam service is this - your blog entries must get listed in their "top 10". If it's not visible, you won't get any traffic. My fitness blog had an entry listed at number 5 across the whole network, and all hits to my fitness blog was headed for that #5 ranked entry.
I am forseeing that what happened on the old ping.sg will happen on Traffic Jam, ie a lot of people will be trying to come up with catchy, racy, raunchy etc titles to get people to click on it. Blogrush works like how the old ping.sg worked - as soon as someone clicked on your link, it's counted. Get enough clicks, your entry shows up in the top 10 list of Traffic Jam. When it shows up in the top 10 list, you get even more clicks.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
16:22 by FoxTwo
It's weird, if you think about it. First, they tell you that your blogs will "rush" around. Now they tell you that your blogs will get caught in a "jam". Kinda extreme.
It's similar to Technorati or ping.sg, but this time the website is pulling data from across the Blogrush network. That means that if you want your blog to be featured, you need to join Blogrush first.
Here's a screenshot of the new website.
What actually surprised me was that I actually saw one of my blog entries listed in their Top 20 blog entries. I'm flattered that it's ranked #5 in the entire Blogrush network!
That entry is taken from my other blog, a very LOW-TRAFFIC one at that. Man, I never knew the people on Blogrush were reading my fitness blog....
Again, as a reminder, if you want to get in on the action, you need to join Blogrush.
16:22 by FoxTwo
Traffic Jam On The Blogosphere
It's weird, if you think about it. First, they tell you that your blogs will "rush" around. Now they tell you that your blogs will get caught in a "jam". Kinda extreme.
It's similar to Technorati or ping.sg, but this time the website is pulling data from across the Blogrush network. That means that if you want your blog to be featured, you need to join Blogrush first.
Here's a screenshot of the new website.
What actually surprised me was that I actually saw one of my blog entries listed in their Top 20 blog entries. I'm flattered that it's ranked #5 in the entire Blogrush network!
That entry is taken from my other blog, a very LOW-TRAFFIC one at that. Man, I never knew the people on Blogrush were reading my fitness blog....
Again, as a reminder, if you want to get in on the action, you need to join Blogrush.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
11:23 by FoxTwo I think someone up there is trying to give me a big hint. A hint that I am not fated to own any Sony Ericsson device.
Some time back, I misplaced my bluetooth earpiece, which was a Motorola model H500. So, I had to go get a new one. A colleague managed to convince me (at the time) that getting a same-brand bluetooth earpiece is very much more preferable to me getting a Motorola again, justifying that since the devices came from the same manufacturer there should be zero compatibility problems etc etc.
So I went and got a Sony Ericsson HBH-PV702 bluetooth earpiece. Initially, I was wondering why it would "disconnect" by itself from the phone. It didn't happen too often, so I didn't really give it much thought.
Yesterday I had to send my SE phone in for servicing. So, I broke out my old Nokia 6280 to use as a backup phone, and I paired the Sony Ericsson HBH-PV702 bluetooth earpiece to the Nokia. It connected.
Then, it disconnected in less than 10 mins.
I reconnected, and again it disconnected some minutes later. This kept happening in a short space of time. The length of time it stayed connected is variable - could be as little as 10 mins, or as long as 3 or 4 hours.
Then it dawned on me - it must be the earpiece that's at fault, because I have NEVER had any sort of disconnects with the Motorola H500 before. NEVER. With any phone.
So in addition to not beeping me like how the Motorola would if it detected out of coverage, low batt, incoming SMS etc, SE earpieces suck at staying connected via bluetooth, EVEN TO A SE PHONE. And, the sound quality isn't anything to shout about either - I hear static when using it to talk, and yes it has "static" too when it was connected to the SE phone.
Ok that's it, I'm taking the hint and not getting anymore SE stuff.
When the phone comes back from repairs, I'll still use it till it dies a natural death (or when I get sick of it and get a new phone next year or something, whichever comes first). However, I'm definitely going to get a Motorola H500 earpiece again.
Good grief.
ps - today, the earpiece has auto-disconnected 4 times already, and it isn't even noon yet.
11:23 by FoxTwo I think someone up there is trying to give me a big hint. A hint that I am not fated to own any Sony Ericsson device.
Some time back, I misplaced my bluetooth earpiece, which was a Motorola model H500. So, I had to go get a new one. A colleague managed to convince me (at the time) that getting a same-brand bluetooth earpiece is very much more preferable to me getting a Motorola again, justifying that since the devices came from the same manufacturer there should be zero compatibility problems etc etc.
So I went and got a Sony Ericsson HBH-PV702 bluetooth earpiece. Initially, I was wondering why it would "disconnect" by itself from the phone. It didn't happen too often, so I didn't really give it much thought.
Yesterday I had to send my SE phone in for servicing. So, I broke out my old Nokia 6280 to use as a backup phone, and I paired the Sony Ericsson HBH-PV702 bluetooth earpiece to the Nokia. It connected.
Then, it disconnected in less than 10 mins.
I reconnected, and again it disconnected some minutes later. This kept happening in a short space of time. The length of time it stayed connected is variable - could be as little as 10 mins, or as long as 3 or 4 hours.
Then it dawned on me - it must be the earpiece that's at fault, because I have NEVER had any sort of disconnects with the Motorola H500 before. NEVER. With any phone.
So in addition to not beeping me like how the Motorola would if it detected out of coverage, low batt, incoming SMS etc, SE earpieces suck at staying connected via bluetooth, EVEN TO A SE PHONE. And, the sound quality isn't anything to shout about either - I hear static when using it to talk, and yes it has "static" too when it was connected to the SE phone.
Ok that's it, I'm taking the hint and not getting anymore SE stuff.
When the phone comes back from repairs, I'll still use it till it dies a natural death (or when I get sick of it and get a new phone next year or something, whichever comes first). However, I'm definitely going to get a Motorola H500 earpiece again.
Good grief.
ps - today, the earpiece has auto-disconnected 4 times already, and it isn't even noon yet.
Labels: bluetooth, cell phones, mobile phones
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
14:37 by FoxTwo Ooooo I can hear the outcry from SE loyalists from here already.
Yeah I've been a Nokia user for the longest time. So far all my phones have always been Nokias. However, last year when I wanted to get a new phone, I decided against Nokia (finally). Nokia had nothing really fantastic out at the time. All the phones they'd release up to that point had been buggy. Many friends of mine said their Nokia phones would "hang" or "auto-reboot" etc. One particular friend of mine even told me his N80 would auto reboot after every call, and also as soon as he took a picture with it.
Many friends around me keep persuading me to forget Nokia and go with Sony Ericsson because "the quality is better". So I succumbed (and also due to lack of interesting and reliable models from Nokia) and went for a Sony Ericsson K810i.
Initially I was pretty pleased with it. It performed flawlessly. No hangs, no reboots. Everything worked as advertised. I was wondering why I never got around to owning a Sony Ericsson until then.
Fast-forward 6 months later - present day. The keys on the number pad would quit working intermittently. Sometimes the volume buttons don't work too. THIS time, I really had to send it in to the "Sony Ericsson Hospital".
That got me thinking - technically speaking, Sony Ericsson's quality is worse than Nokia's. Every Nokia that I have ever owned, never had a single technical fault (other than buggy OS). I have never had to send any of my Nokia phones in for any sort of servicing.
Now, I own my first Sony Ericsson, and it decided to get sick and require a hospital visit in just 6 short months. To me, that shows Sony Ericsson make sucky phones, man.
Well I guess the next phone I own will not be a Sony Ericsson anymore. I'll just go see what's in the market at the time when I want to get a new phone. Sending phones in for repairs is very inconvenient - I have to break out my old sets, transfer data all over etc etc. Not to mention, getting used to the old functions again. Even now, when I SMS, I press the wrong keys because Sony Ericsson decided to swap the shift, space and punctuation keys around and completely different from Nokia's.
14:37 by FoxTwo Ooooo I can hear the outcry from SE loyalists from here already.
Yeah I've been a Nokia user for the longest time. So far all my phones have always been Nokias. However, last year when I wanted to get a new phone, I decided against Nokia (finally). Nokia had nothing really fantastic out at the time. All the phones they'd release up to that point had been buggy. Many friends of mine said their Nokia phones would "hang" or "auto-reboot" etc. One particular friend of mine even told me his N80 would auto reboot after every call, and also as soon as he took a picture with it.
Many friends around me keep persuading me to forget Nokia and go with Sony Ericsson because "the quality is better". So I succumbed (and also due to lack of interesting and reliable models from Nokia) and went for a Sony Ericsson K810i.
Initially I was pretty pleased with it. It performed flawlessly. No hangs, no reboots. Everything worked as advertised. I was wondering why I never got around to owning a Sony Ericsson until then.
Fast-forward 6 months later - present day. The keys on the number pad would quit working intermittently. Sometimes the volume buttons don't work too. THIS time, I really had to send it in to the "Sony Ericsson Hospital".
That got me thinking - technically speaking, Sony Ericsson's quality is worse than Nokia's. Every Nokia that I have ever owned, never had a single technical fault (other than buggy OS). I have never had to send any of my Nokia phones in for any sort of servicing.
Now, I own my first Sony Ericsson, and it decided to get sick and require a hospital visit in just 6 short months. To me, that shows Sony Ericsson make sucky phones, man.
Well I guess the next phone I own will not be a Sony Ericsson anymore. I'll just go see what's in the market at the time when I want to get a new phone. Sending phones in for repairs is very inconvenient - I have to break out my old sets, transfer data all over etc etc. Not to mention, getting used to the old functions again. Even now, when I SMS, I press the wrong keys because Sony Ericsson decided to swap the shift, space and punctuation keys around and completely different from Nokia's.
Labels: cell phones, mobile phones
Friday, February 15, 2008
11:58 by FoxTwo
I was busy making a new machinima, based again on MissLoi's new story. Also, cendrine's question here prompted me to write this entry, to perhaps give some info to people who may be interested in taking up this art form. Yes, making machinima is an art-form.
First of all, to get started, you need:
Hardware
You need a gaming-capable PC/laptop. What that means, is your PC must be more than a "typical" one which people use to surf the Internet and type a couple of reports. It must be able to run GAMES, and we're not talking about "Maple Story" type. As a general guideline, you need at least a Pentium4 2.4Ghz single-CPU machine with about 1GB RAM and a pretty decent graphics card like a nVidia 7600 to record the game's actions relatively jerk-free.
And, you need HEAPS of harddisk space. RAW footage typically takes about 4GBs per about 2 or 3 mins of real time action. Normally what I'd do is once I finish a scene, I'll compress all the raw footage down into DivX or Xvid format
That's just about the bare minimum.
Software
A typical sequence of events will be this.
Post Production
You take all these raw footage and edit them in your video editing software. If you need to add in voice dialogs, that is where the audio editor comes in - you record your spoken dialogs there, cut/edit/trim all the audio files there, before you import them into the video editing software. The video editing software is your "central console" where you string the scenes together, add audio, cut out bloopers, overlay subtitles etc. Everything to make your movie "ready" to show the world.
Once you've made all the final edits, EXPORT YOUR MOVIE! Most movie editing software will not "save" the movie into any useable format, ie you can't play the movie in your Windows Media Player unless you export it. Choose your format and quality wisely. Higher quality means a bigger resulting file. Lower quality may make shooting at high resolutions pointless and pixellates everything, but your filesize will be very much smaller.
After exporting, run the resulting file through VirtualDub to encode and compress them for release onto the Internet. Some video editors like Adobe Premiere, can actually export the movie already compressed in DivX or Xvid format, so you can skip VirtualDub.
Release
Upload your video to a sharing site like Vimeo (I recommend Vimeo over Youtube anyday), because Vimeo has higher quality video streams. If you shoot your movie in high resolution, your video will be High-Def in Vimeo (ie DVD quality or better). Vimeo also doesn't have that stupid 10-minute limit on your videos, so your movie can be 1 hour long if you want.
Besides, Youtube just mashes everybody's video into dinky 320x240 VCD quality videos. It looks sucky, trust me.
Other sites you might want to try are metacafe and videoegg.
Conclusion
That's basically it. Notice I did not attempt to teach you how to use your software. Your software choice is up to you, and you need to learn how to use them. Making machinima is simple to understand but difficult to execute.
For total beginners I recommend you get the game The Movies. This game comes with almost everything you need up to the point of "Release" as mentioned above. You can shoot, edit, and do simple post-production on your movies right inside the game itself. You don't even need FRAPS to record your movie!
For me, my current "project" still requires me to do post-production outside of the game because I need to add and edit something else, which can't be done from inside the game.
11:58 by FoxTwo
What You Need To Make Machinima
I was busy making a new machinima, based again on MissLoi's new story. Also, cendrine's question here prompted me to write this entry, to perhaps give some info to people who may be interested in taking up this art form. Yes, making machinima is an art-form.
First of all, to get started, you need:
Hardware
You need a gaming-capable PC/laptop. What that means, is your PC must be more than a "typical" one which people use to surf the Internet and type a couple of reports. It must be able to run GAMES, and we're not talking about "Maple Story" type. As a general guideline, you need at least a Pentium4 2.4Ghz single-CPU machine with about 1GB RAM and a pretty decent graphics card like a nVidia 7600 to record the game's actions relatively jerk-free.
And, you need HEAPS of harddisk space. RAW footage typically takes about 4GBs per about 2 or 3 mins of real time action. Normally what I'd do is once I finish a scene, I'll compress all the raw footage down into DivX or Xvid format
That's just about the bare minimum.
Software
- A machinima-friendly game. That usually means First Person Shooter games, such as Half Life, Battlefield, Call of Duty etc. However it's not a hard and fast rule. People have made machinima with games like The Sims 2, The Movies, or even MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, City of Heroes etc.
- A video recording software. Most machinima makers use FRAPS. It's one of the most recognised names in and out of the machinima circles.
- A video editing software. If you're just starting out, you can use the free, built-in Windows Movie Maker that comes with XP itself.
- An audio editing software. I use Audacity. However, as long as you have something that can let you edit and re-shape sounds, it's ok.
- Video compressing software, like VirtualDub. VirtualDub also lets you make minor editing to your movie, and has various filters and options for cutting and joining clips.
- Video codecs to encode your video so that you don't have to upload a 500MB file. Very popular are Xvid and DivX which would cut your 500MB file down to about 50MB without much loss in quality.
A typical sequence of events will be this.
- You write a story out on paper first
- You choose a game to "film" this story in
- If the characters in the game need special movements not normally found in the game, you need to locate mods or scripts to control the characters to make them do what you want them to do
- Record the action
- Rinse and repeat until scene is done
Post Production
You take all these raw footage and edit them in your video editing software. If you need to add in voice dialogs, that is where the audio editor comes in - you record your spoken dialogs there, cut/edit/trim all the audio files there, before you import them into the video editing software. The video editing software is your "central console" where you string the scenes together, add audio, cut out bloopers, overlay subtitles etc. Everything to make your movie "ready" to show the world.
Once you've made all the final edits, EXPORT YOUR MOVIE! Most movie editing software will not "save" the movie into any useable format, ie you can't play the movie in your Windows Media Player unless you export it. Choose your format and quality wisely. Higher quality means a bigger resulting file. Lower quality may make shooting at high resolutions pointless and pixellates everything, but your filesize will be very much smaller.
After exporting, run the resulting file through VirtualDub to encode and compress them for release onto the Internet. Some video editors like Adobe Premiere, can actually export the movie already compressed in DivX or Xvid format, so you can skip VirtualDub.
Release
Upload your video to a sharing site like Vimeo (I recommend Vimeo over Youtube anyday), because Vimeo has higher quality video streams. If you shoot your movie in high resolution, your video will be High-Def in Vimeo (ie DVD quality or better). Vimeo also doesn't have that stupid 10-minute limit on your videos, so your movie can be 1 hour long if you want.
Besides, Youtube just mashes everybody's video into dinky 320x240 VCD quality videos. It looks sucky, trust me.
Other sites you might want to try are metacafe and videoegg.
Conclusion
That's basically it. Notice I did not attempt to teach you how to use your software. Your software choice is up to you, and you need to learn how to use them. Making machinima is simple to understand but difficult to execute.
For total beginners I recommend you get the game The Movies. This game comes with almost everything you need up to the point of "Release" as mentioned above. You can shoot, edit, and do simple post-production on your movies right inside the game itself. You don't even need FRAPS to record your movie!
For me, my current "project" still requires me to do post-production outside of the game because I need to add and edit something else, which can't be done from inside the game.
Labels: machinima
Thursday, February 14, 2008
16:00 by FoxTwo
Ok, first off, the usual ramblings and rules.
Now, with that out of the way, here goes....
Now, I spread this misery to the following people:
16:00 by FoxTwo
Will Anybody Even Be Interested In These?
Ok, first off, the usual ramblings and rules.
- # Link to the person who tagged you
- # Post the rules on your blog.
- # Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
- # Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
- # Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.
Now, with that out of the way, here goes....
- I love animals... they're yummy
- Hamsters especially
- 90% of the time I don't use condiments on my food. That means, no chilli, no ketchup etc. If the food comes with them already inside, I don't add more.
- I cook without using oil. Purely "roasting over the fire" type, or steaming, or boiling (cuz I'm lazy ok?)
- I prefer solitude to partying
- I'm a first generation gamer - I was there when "graphics" meant square blocky pixels in black and white (or green, if you're using a green monitor).
- I hang out at the ping.sg shoutbox all day cuz my (current) company blocked all IM applications
Now, I spread this misery to the following people:
- xizor2000
- xinyun
- Hello Kitty
- Wishbone
- The Sexy Maths 'Cher
- Merdurian
- Horny Ang Moh (yeah he seriously is!)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
17:18 by FoxTwo
The blog Business+Directory, is organising this contest. They are doing this as part of their launch and promotion efforts.
The rules to join are very simple:
Think about it. 500 smackeroos in US currency is about S$710, going by current exchange rates. Since they said the money will be paid via Paypal, you need to have an account there too. If you want to hold the amount there until the exchange rates are better to cash out, by all means. Me, I don't know what I'll do yet. Maybe cash out, maybe leave it in Paypal.
Er, that is, assuming I win.
Yeah, you can bet that there's going to be alot of blogs joining this contest. They're going to use a randomizer software to pick the winning blog. If Missloi were here, she'll use Probabilities Theory to tell you just how much of a chance you got :)
Incidentally, as of this writing, there's about 70 blogs in the contest, so, 1 in 70 chance of winning :) Much better odds than Toto or 4D, wouldn't you say? Well, unless Missloi smacks me and tell me I suck at math (which I do actually) and my numbers are all wrong...
In any case, I think this is a much better chance than trying to get a Payperpost ad. Most of the time, Asia, let alone Singapore, is usually disqualified from the "opportunities". Most times I go in, all the currently available opportunities are all RED, ie unavailable. As I said, most of the time it's because they wanted only US or Europe territories to write.
Anyway, here's wishing myself luck!
17:18 by FoxTwo
Win US$500.00 In A Blog Contest!
The blog Business+Directory, is organising this contest. They are doing this as part of their launch and promotion efforts.
The rules to join are very simple:
- Link to this contest page so that others will know how to join.
- Link to Business+Directory telling your readers about the February promotion.
- Original post must come from your blog so that we know who to send the money to. Post should be at least 250 words using your own unique writing style, please don’t cut and paste from this post.
Think about it. 500 smackeroos in US currency is about S$710, going by current exchange rates. Since they said the money will be paid via Paypal, you need to have an account there too. If you want to hold the amount there until the exchange rates are better to cash out, by all means. Me, I don't know what I'll do yet. Maybe cash out, maybe leave it in Paypal.
Er, that is, assuming I win.
Yeah, you can bet that there's going to be alot of blogs joining this contest. They're going to use a randomizer software to pick the winning blog. If Missloi were here, she'll use Probabilities Theory to tell you just how much of a chance you got :)
Incidentally, as of this writing, there's about 70 blogs in the contest, so, 1 in 70 chance of winning :) Much better odds than Toto or 4D, wouldn't you say? Well, unless Missloi smacks me and tell me I suck at math (which I do actually) and my numbers are all wrong...
In any case, I think this is a much better chance than trying to get a Payperpost ad. Most of the time, Asia, let alone Singapore, is usually disqualified from the "opportunities". Most times I go in, all the currently available opportunities are all RED, ie unavailable. As I said, most of the time it's because they wanted only US or Europe territories to write.
Anyway, here's wishing myself luck!
Labels: blog, contest, internet
Monday, February 11, 2008
09:49 by FoxTwo Wow it's been almost a week since I last wrote in here.
As usual, Chinese New Year Day 1 was the usual gluttony day. Bah Kwa, pineapple tarts, love letters, all manner of traditional junk food were consumed. The problem is compounded by the night before - the "Reunion Dinner". This year my brother decided to host it at a restaurant instead, so we got an 8-course dinner instead of the usual stuff my mom would have made.
One thing I can say though - having "Reunion Dinner" at a restaurant isn't my thing. It's just me I guess, since from young, it's always mom making the Reunion Dinner, and we have never ever had it at a restaurant. I hate crowds, and I hate queues. Yeah you can imagine the hordes of people there at the restaurant. Gotta queue to get in, and gotta wait for waiters to be "freed up" so they can get the next dish for us.
The following days were spent relatively peacefully. Reinstalled Windows XP again, and finally installed The Movies, which means I can make machinimas again! Previously I've only used MMORPGs to make machinimas. This will be my first time attempting to make one using The Movies. The game itself isn't too bad too, although not really "my type" of games. Too much micro-managing to be "fun" to me.
This being the first Monday after Chinese New Year, we have people "missing" from the office, as expected. I should have been one of those too dammit. Alas, I can't, since the boss already gave us a day off last Wednesday in addition to the 2 days holiday.
Dangit I wanna be home!
09:49 by FoxTwo Wow it's been almost a week since I last wrote in here.
As usual, Chinese New Year Day 1 was the usual gluttony day. Bah Kwa, pineapple tarts, love letters, all manner of traditional junk food were consumed. The problem is compounded by the night before - the "Reunion Dinner". This year my brother decided to host it at a restaurant instead, so we got an 8-course dinner instead of the usual stuff my mom would have made.
One thing I can say though - having "Reunion Dinner" at a restaurant isn't my thing. It's just me I guess, since from young, it's always mom making the Reunion Dinner, and we have never ever had it at a restaurant. I hate crowds, and I hate queues. Yeah you can imagine the hordes of people there at the restaurant. Gotta queue to get in, and gotta wait for waiters to be "freed up" so they can get the next dish for us.
The following days were spent relatively peacefully. Reinstalled Windows XP again, and finally installed The Movies, which means I can make machinimas again! Previously I've only used MMORPGs to make machinimas. This will be my first time attempting to make one using The Movies. The game itself isn't too bad too, although not really "my type" of games. Too much micro-managing to be "fun" to me.
This being the first Monday after Chinese New Year, we have people "missing" from the office, as expected. I should have been one of those too dammit. Alas, I can't, since the boss already gave us a day off last Wednesday in addition to the 2 days holiday.
Dangit I wanna be home!
Labels: random
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
13:02 by FoxTwo
Let me just wish everyone reading this a happy Chinese New Year with a video clip:
Cute huh?
13:02 by FoxTwo
Wishing One And All A Happy Lunar New Year
Let me just wish everyone reading this a happy Chinese New Year with a video clip:
Cute huh?
Happy Chinese New Year!
Labels: festive season
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
14:20 by FoxTwo Thanks to Uzyn's superhuman efforts, the NEW Ping.Sg is finally live about 2pm today!
Here's a screenshot:
Notice the top 10?
Yes, nice and clean now. The most often asked feature - the ability to flag posts as inappropriate by the community, has been implemented! We have ping.sg back and not pr0n.sg anymore! Yay!
There are other neat features like "un-ponging" and "poofing", but I'll let the ping.sg blog explain it to you (when Uzyn gets around to blogging about it, that is).
Oh yes, now we can see who ponged which post ok? So now we know who are all you humsup lou's! *big grin*
14:20 by FoxTwo Thanks to Uzyn's superhuman efforts, the NEW Ping.Sg is finally live about 2pm today!
Here's a screenshot:
Notice the top 10?
Yes, nice and clean now. The most often asked feature - the ability to flag posts as inappropriate by the community, has been implemented! We have ping.sg back and not pr0n.sg anymore! Yay!
There are other neat features like "un-ponging" and "poofing", but I'll let the ping.sg blog explain it to you (when Uzyn gets around to blogging about it, that is).
Oh yes, now we can see who ponged which post ok? So now we know who are all you humsup lou's! *big grin*
08:50 by FoxTwo
Cute Life Partner Wanted. Apply Within
Wanted, cute female partner. Apply by leaving comments
Must Haves:
- Nice furry coat
- Good teeth
- Energetic
Must Not Haves:
- Lousy sense of smell
- Fussy about food
Don't Mind If Have:
- Kids from a previous partner, as long as they aren't with her now
Don't Mind if Don't Have:
- Money
- Car
- Credit Card
- Own cage
- Personalised peeing spot
Uh yeah, this want-ad is for my hamster.... what'd you think it was?!
Sunday, February 03, 2008
23:59 by FoxTwo
23:59 by FoxTwo
I Discovered Windows Live Writer
Ok, not really "discovered", but more like "finally got around to it". Yeah, I knew about it even when it was in beta. Then, when it came out of beta, I still didn't get around to installing it. I finally "found time" to install it after my recent reformat.
As proof, I'm actually writing this post via Windows Live Writer. See the screenshot below:
That's the latest version that is available from Microsoft's Live.com. If you get it, you actually just download a "stub" installer file. From there you pick what you want and just wait for it to get the rest from the Internet, which I actually hate. I would really prefer to get the whole thing in one shot, be it a 20MB or even a 100MB file. Why? Simply because if I ever reformat and have to re-install stuff, I'd have to go through the whole "download it all from the Internet" process again, which wastes time.
I did a couple of test posts first, and this is what Windows Live Writer looks like:
It is actually quite impressive that a FREE blog editor supports so many platforms. I don't even have to configure my blogs - it automatically detected all the required settings from just the URL which I typed into the wizards. Naturally you can fine-tune it further if you go into the options panel.
There's built-in support for Blogger's "tags" system, which is picked up by blog services such as Technorati, MyBloglog and Blogcatalog, to name a few. You can see it in the screenshot above, right at the bottom, the line that says "Set Catergories". If your blog is not recognised by Windows Live Writer at setup, you can actually click "Insert Tags" from the right-hand sidebar and select the kind of tags you want. Services like Technorati, Flickr, IceRocket etc are supported.
WLW opens by default into the WYSIWYG interface, or "Web Layout" mode as it's now more commonly known. You can go into the HTML view if you choose, too. As a coder myself, I can tell you that Microsoft never fails to insert bloat-code into their stuff. Frontpage did it, now WLW does it too. Useless <p> tags everywhere, useless non-HTML whitespaces, etc.... sigh!
It takes some getting used to, though. I am actually more comfortable writing my posts from the web interface at Blogger instead of through a blog editor.
If you're hunting for a blog editor, give Windows Live Writer a try. It's pretty neat, and if you're not picky about "clean codes", it'll fill your bill quite nicely.
Friday, February 01, 2008
11:54 by FoxTwo First Of Feb.
First day of a new month.
First day of a new beginning.
I'm no longer boozing. All bottles ran out. I'm no longer gonna hit the pubs on Friday nights. Maybe it's time I finally read that thick book I bought in 2004 but haven't touched yet. Or watch DVDs. Nah, I'll go read that book.
After my workout of course.
My PC at home is also starting to act up. Maybe this weekend is a good time to reformat.
Incidentally, Facebook made a new "ignore all" button for your overwhelming number of requests, but they could have gone a little further and added a checkbox beside each request, so that you can select it and click a "Ignore selected requests" button. There ARE some requests I do not want to ignore, you know.
Also, Facebook app developers need to be tied up and shot. I hate apps that tell you to invite 20 friends before you can see your results. Those get the immediate boot from me, and I will never install them again.
I also wish there'll be a blacklist somewhere on Facebook where the next time the app you blacklisted get sent to you as a request, it's an automatic ignore. And, tell the idiot who sent it to you that you ignored it.
Yeah I'm gonna get onto Facebook and rant at them.
11:54 by FoxTwo First Of Feb.
First day of a new month.
First day of a new beginning.
I'm no longer boozing. All bottles ran out. I'm no longer gonna hit the pubs on Friday nights. Maybe it's time I finally read that thick book I bought in 2004 but haven't touched yet. Or watch DVDs. Nah, I'll go read that book.
After my workout of course.
My PC at home is also starting to act up. Maybe this weekend is a good time to reformat.
Incidentally, Facebook made a new "ignore all" button for your overwhelming number of requests, but they could have gone a little further and added a checkbox beside each request, so that you can select it and click a "Ignore selected requests" button. There ARE some requests I do not want to ignore, you know.
Also, Facebook app developers need to be tied up and shot. I hate apps that tell you to invite 20 friends before you can see your results. Those get the immediate boot from me, and I will never install them again.
I also wish there'll be a blacklist somewhere on Facebook where the next time the app you blacklisted get sent to you as a request, it's an automatic ignore. And, tell the idiot who sent it to you that you ignored it.
Yeah I'm gonna get onto Facebook and rant at them.
Labels: random
