Author: bt

Was in Shanghai last week and had my first taste of the new Magnetic Levitation train that linked Pudong Airport with the city (well, not really the city, you still need to take a taxi to get to the Puxi part of the city). The stop in Shanghai is at Long Yang Rd, which is about the 4th or 5th metro station in Pudong after crossing the river. Continue reading “Maglev train from Pudong Airport”

Bought a Shuttle barebones system today to replace my old Pentium II 266MHz. The Shuttle system essentially comes with just the casing, motherboard, sound and video built in, all the networking you need (ok just gigabit ethernet) and a nice sexy casing.
So I compared a few shops over here in Kuala Lumpur’s Low Yat, and finally bought a Shuttle SB83G5 which is an Intel system with the 915G chipset (supports PCI Express, onboard video and the new (at the time of writing anyway) Socket 775 Pentium 4.
Continue reading “Shuttle PC”

Another few more days before the start of my 2004 holidays. spent some time today trying to charge all my batteries to make sure that they all work well. I’ve got batteries for 2 cameras, 1 handycam, some AA batteries to charge as well. If they all took about 2 hours to charge each, its still going to take a few days to charge them (if I dontleave them to charge overnight, which I dont like to do)
Got to remember to bring my GPS, my Suunto Observer without the strap (new strap waiting for me in Boston), allt he CF cards I own, some DV tapes and alol the bags I need (mobility is important, and so’s the need not to look like a tourist. Not too interested in attracting snatch thieves during holiday)

As I was checking the internet and news recently, I came across an event that was happening in Putrajaya here in Malaysia. It seems that the F1 Powerboat race is in Malaysia this weekend. I quickly packed up my bags with my camera and ran over to Putrajaya from KL and reached in the middle of the race at about 2:40pm.

Continue reading “2004 F1 Powerboat Malaysia”

Beginning to like gmail… click on an option and it appears. Click on the shortcuts on your keyboard (usually 1 key like ‘c’ for composing a new mail) and it appears just like that. Dont have to wait for it to take 10 seconds to load like other email systems. I’ve not used my search function (which is probably why it was created anyways) becuase I still dont have a lot of mails archived in it.
You have a function to create your own labels and to label each email as well. Which I find quite useful. I have labels for “office”, “useful” and others.

Its got other features like importing address books from outlook and yahoo mail, which I tried to use but wasn’t working so far. Otherwise, all the mails you send out will automatically be inside the address book (the email address of the destination party, of course) and all you have to do is to go into the contacts page and add some names to it.

So far, its simple, its fast and its fun to use. The only problem is now I maintain 3 different email accounts which are accessible on the web… which one to retain!?!?!?

Got my invitation to Gmail last night. Too bad most of the account names I want has been taken (after a few months of its introduction, account names with first names are probably all taken already). So had to stick with dufffader(at)gmail(dot)com.
What do I think so far? Loved the instant reply function. THere’s also keyboard shortcuts (like ‘r’ for reply) but I’ve not used it yet although I have enabled it. TOo used to the usual mouse clicks. Will try and make full use of it and maybe I’ll have som comments about it soon. 1Gb is sweet!

Going to spend this whole week at home recovering from an eye infection. While walking on the streets the last weekend, some bug flew into my eye and although I got it out (or at least that’s what I thought) something remained inside or maybe it could be because of me rubbing my eyes too much. Anyways, the next day I’ve got swollen/red eyes… was surprised when the doctor game me a whole week off, thought it’ll just take a day or two to recover and then I’ll be back in the office already. 2 days have past and though its not as swollen as it was before, I still look funny with 1 red eye. Too bad then, stay out of the office and continue doing what I woud do as if I was on holiday! Doctor’s orders…

Was in singapore last weekend. Bought a 52-67mm step up ring from Cathay Photo since they have it in stock. Another thing that was in stock was a 77mm 010 B+W UV filter. That’s the MRC version. The last week when I emailed them it was supposed to be out of stock, but its in already this week. The service there is quite alright as well. The original quoted price was $10 more than what I got on email, but even without bringing a copy over, the manager of the store gave me that price after some explanation. Continue reading “Shopping in Singapore”