Recently my LG Viewty's screen is getting from bad to worse. Touches seemed to be barely registering at all. I had to change to a more usable phone. There are 2 considerations for me in getting a phone at this point in time. Firstly is $$$, I've just renewed my contract to get a iPhone for my dad so carrier subsidies are out of the question. If I wanted to get a new phone now, I'll have to pay 100%  of the phone's price. Secondly it isn't wise to get a phone with a camera for me now. What's the point of getting one if I have to change phones half year later when I go NS? So to sum it up, what I needed is a cameraless smartphone. Sounds like an oxymoron nowadays. It's very rare to see smartphones that does not have cameras today. Heck, even the low end phones have cameras! Before I set out to search, there are several criteria that I've defined.

• No camera
• QWERTY keyboard (Email and text)
• Email client (Preferably push via IMAP-IDLE)
• J2ME (Opera Mini web browser)

Other considerations will be availability of new batteries and phone OS. It seems like gsmarena.com have one  of the most comprehensive mobile phone database around. and  the result... Looks oooooold.... Most of the phones listed are already out of production so the only way to get them is to buy preowned second-hand ones. Finally, I was considering between Nokia E61 and Sony Ericsson M600i. These 2 phones become final candidates because they are more mainstream when compared to blackberries. This means more and cheaper aftermarket "spare parts" such as batteries. Good luck trying to find replacement batteries for old blackberries. Deciding what device to get and actually acquiring it is different. Most of the these devices are already out of production especially both the Nokia E61 and Sony Ericsson M600i. In the end I found a M600i for sale at a mobile phone store at Boon Lay. The previous owner is a NS men, so i'd guess that this phone is certified for NS. I traded in LG for this by topping up $100.

This is a simple tutorial about differential system in cars. It might look complex and people that are not interested in mechanical systems might just "switch off" immediately. But take a look the video, this is the best [technical] tutorial video ever! What's amazing about this tutorial besides the excellent explanation is when this video is produced. This is produced in the 30's. There is no fancy graphics, powerpoint slides, no computer animation. How did they managed to teach such a complex idea in such a elegant and efficient manner, without any modern 3d graphics and powerpoint slides? The video seems to be spilt into 2 parts, getting the viewer to recognize the problem (using the cheesy intro) and showing the viewer how to derive at the solution. The latter part is especially interesting. If you noticed carefully, in the beginning of the model. The presenter simply used a straight rod to push both wheels, then he quickly changed and improved the design slightly to using a clamp to hold the rod in place instead of using his hands, so that the viewer can easily relate from the past "version" to the present "version". There is no big jumps along the way that the viewer cannot catch up. He keeps doing it till he arrives at something that looks like a modern differential.  Does the way he present sounds familiar? Does it sounds like iteration based test driven design? Does it feels like programming? I think what this video shows is that test driven design does not only apply in conventional development but it can and should also be used in presentation and allow the audience better understand.  In developing a piece of code especially proof of concept code, the development pattern is almost always the same. Firstly develop a version 1 of the code then test it out to see how well it solves the problem. If it's not good enough, make changes to produce version 2 and so on till you produce version x. When the time comes to presenting your code to somebody, all the developer think about is version x, the most recent version that he/she worked on. Most probably, he/she will start explaining from version x. Talking about all the features, benefits and how well it solves the problem.  When comparing this approach of explanation to explaining the differential, its akin to taking the complete differential system right off the assembly line and chopping it in half to reveal all the internal parts, gears and stuff and to teach using that. Does this is sounds familiar? Isn't this what we always see in encyclopedias and textbooks, cut-away diagrams with lots of labels. This approach leaves the viewer to fill-in-the-gaps, to figure out how those gears fit together and how the motion of one gear affect another all without having a prior simpler model in mind. This is the big jump and this is usually where students get lost in. Unfortunately, through out my years in school, most of the time. The teachers are explaining, ideas, concepts and systems backwards, from version x, what we currently have right now. So you have to make the big jump and fill-in-the-gaps to understand.