Google SSL
Think somebody is looking at your search terms? Try Google SSL. I think everybody should use it so much so that it should replace you default search on Google Chrome.
GTS 250
Well my 8800 GT finally died last week and I ordered my brother to get something equivalent to replace it. It haven't been keeping track of graphics card development for the past 2 years. Model numbers is very misleading and they don't really tell you about the performance of the card. The best way to get a sense of the performance of current gen graphics card is to look at benchmarks. In the end, I chose Nvidia GTX 250 to replace 8800GT. I told my brother to get the "cheapest GTS 250" he can find. I don't really care about brand this time round. Brands that charge more != better quality.
Surprise, surprise... This is not the cheapest one, its actually the second cheapest because the cheapest one is out of stock LOL. When I took it out from the box, I was stunned for a moment. Look at the size, it takes up 2 slots... But I guess that's not really surprising because official reference designs from Nvidia also takes up 2 slots after all. I was shocked at the HUGE fan on its heat sink. What the hell does black even stands for? After some googling, the "black series" is supposed to be overclocked versions. That explains that fan. Just hope that this will last.
EDIT: Oh I forgot to mention the price is S$165
Bad Company 2 - Heartbeat monitors
"No no no... he will just send some special ops douche bags with pussy ass heartbeat monitors on their guns instead of us"
LOL they are making fun of COD: Modern Warfare 2
Opera on App Store
Impossible! How did Opera got accepted into App Store? I think I have a theory. The reason why most believed that Opera Mini will never be approved by Apple is because of "duplication of functionality" clause in the ToS. People see Opera as a web browser as "duplicating the functionality" of Safari on the iPhone OS. Therefore Apple would never approve of the app.
But think of it this way. Technically, Opera Mini is not a web browser. It does not connect directly to the web servers to grab HTML, parses and renders it. It is just a thin client that sends URL request to Opera's servers and receives something that looks like web pages back in a form of OBML, Opera's proprietary protocol. It is the server that is fetching and processing the site as well as compressing the results before sending it back to your device. In the end, Opera Mini is technically a thin client that accesses a service provided by Opera in a way like RDP/VNC client apps accessing Windows machines. So now since Opera has proven that "thin client style" browser apps can exist on iPhone OS. The next mobile browser I would like to see on the iPhone OS is Skyfire. Skyfire also works the same way as Opera Mini except that its server is able to stream flash, java silverlight content directly to your device. Skyfire is currently on Windows mobile and Symbian S60. Although, I think that third party browsers will not be as slick as native mobile Safari. But they are very useful sometimes. How many times have you visited a site using mobile Safari during an emergency trying just to get some little pieces of info, only to realise that the info is trapped in a flash container that requires flash plugin to view it?Old Polaroid
I still remember my dad used to have a polaroid instant camera. I went to the store room to dig around and guess what, I found it! I went online to look for polaroid 600 film. Its really expensive. I saw Amazon selling twin pack of polaroid 600 film for $63.58. That's something I find it hard to accept especially now in this day and age where every mobile phone have built in camera, photography seemed to be free other than equipment cost.
What is this?
Saw this on the dinner table today
closer look...
looks like bread?
Yes its really bread
CHARCOAL Bread! WTF!
Color Accent Mode
Original:
Color Accent:
This produced by the scene mode "color accent". Gimmicky? Yes. Looks cool? Yes. Will I use it frequently? No. It sure helps to keep your eyes on the tissue paper box rather then the background.
Canon S90 and IT Show 2009
Today is really a crazy day. I planned to get a Canon S90 this weekend at the IT Show. Met JH and RS at City Hall station. I thought I should check with some traditional camera store to see how much S90 sells, so that I have some price point to compare before I enter IT Show. We went to Cathay Photo at MS. They quoted me $690 (actually cheaper after some bargaining) for S90. We continued on to IT Show Cannon booth. They quoted me $749 for the same S90. IT Show is actually expensive! But I must say that they tried to sweeten the deal by giving more free gifts. But those "free gifts" they offer is useless (eg. USB SD card reader) and definitely cannot justify the difference they are charging over what Cathay is asking for just next street. IT Show used to mean cheap and lots of bargains. It seems like that's not always the case anymore.
After getting my S90 at Cathay Photo. Before we take this camera for a test drive, we paid Pris a "visit" at Candy Empire. Halfway, as we were walking, it rained! We were forced to go to Singapore flyer to seek shelter. That;s where this camera took its first photo. I'm not familiar with the controls, even I've used Canon PowerShot before in the past, S90 have so much more controls than the previous Canon P&S. Totally overwhelmed by the controls, I kicked it into auto mode and shot all the photos in auto for the rest of the day.After the rain stopped, we walked to the Esplanade. There is a jazz band playing today and I figured that this would be a great time to test the limits of this camera since its quite dark there. This is shot in full auto mode, 22mm equivalent, f4.9, 1/20 sec and ISO 1600! I've never seen a P&S camera produce something this clean at ISO 1600. Sure there is definitely noise in the shadows and the image is very soft due to noise reduction algorithms. In the end, I still ended up with a photo that looks ok enough to post here.
After this test shot we decided to go home. We took the usual route walking through City LInk, and halfway through, A MASSIVE human jam! I've certainly never seen City Link jammed up so serious like that before, not even when there is IT Show going on. Something must be wrong somewhere. Even I'm quite tall I can't see through the crowd. I tipped toed and held the camera high up to take a shot. Can you see where it ends? This is really crazy!
See the HMV store to the right? We decided we could take a shortcut through HMV. Guess what, we managed to squeeze into HMV and after a while. The the HMV gate behind us was closed!
But why? They closed the gate because the anti-theft detectors at the gates is sounding off like crazy ALL THE TIME! People are taking advantage of the situation to STEAL! Great, now we are trapped. We walked around, looking at DVD's for a while before deciding that we should join the crowd to leave HMV
The worst part is after joining the crowd and exited to the main corridor, the rear gate opened. =.= We eventually walked to Raffles station and took MRT from there. When JH and I boarded the train headed towards Boon Lay, it was not packed at all! I wonder is City Link still jammed.
Walked past NTUC building and took a shot. Converted to B&W in Aperture 3.
Usually I'm not a big fan of preset scene modes on camera. But while playing around with the camera while I'm eating, I came across the Nostalgic mode, I especially like its B&W mode. It simulates old film cameras graininess and high contrast. Straight from the camera, no processing done in Aperture.
