Diary of a Singaporean now living in Rome, Italy
I saw a contest being hosted by Tech65 and for fun, I thought I’d enter too.
Here is my submission .. Hope I win! 
What do you think of it? 
Sidenote : Gosh, I’m so rusty in animation! Moreover with the new changes in Flash in CS4, it took me a very long time to re-learn how to do a motion tween again! Freaking heck!
Also : Check out Tech65 in 2007, they’ve gone a long way!
I absolutely adore whatsapp. Its one of the most convenient and possibly also the cheapest way to text with friends and family and there is no need for additional sign ups and passwords and other gobledygook since all your contacts are already in your Sim card or your phone.
It used to be only for iPhones but now its available for Symbian, Android and Blackberry! So we could all enjoy the whatsapp goodness. I cannot believe how a simple app can be so elegant and yet make it so easy to keep in touch with friends *eyes shining*
Anyway, here is a short video I did, with Daphne having a guest spot in the demo section
Have you used whatsapp before? 
Do you lurrrrvee it as much as I do? Comment below!
It’s always sad when someone, excited about an idea tries to nurture it, but doesn’t work out in the end. What’s even sadder is when you’ve built a community, and they will lose another form of communication and another way to keep their memories with them. A couple of examples that I can think at the top of my head are Geocities, yahoo galleries, There.com and ecircles just to name a few.
And in a couple of days, 12seconds.tv will be closing their doors.
How shall I describe 12seconds? I guess it was kind of like twitter, but instead of texts, it uses short videos. And you can ramble about anything you like, and it’s fine because well, it was just 12 seconds and you don’t feel like you’ve wasted too much time 
I joined 12seconds a couple of years back when Jerrick recommended me to join. This was my first video back in November 2008 :
I still remember the moment recording it. I was just back from my yoga session and sitting in my old room in Singapore. There were loads of decorated boxes around me, personally handmade by me for the upcoming wedding ceremony in about a month time. There was even a gluegun on top of my touchsmart computer that was to be shipped to Italy!
And seeing all that just made me reminisce.
One of the things that I quite like 12seconds is mainly because I could upload anything I wanted by webcam, uploading from a camera or from the mobile phone. The community in there were civil and non judgemental, so we were all feel free to be silly and we didn’t really care. Indeed, I’ve never seen any flamings at all!
At the beginning of this year, I tried to be a little more active in participating. And like foursquare, 12seconds had a ladder that when you reach it, you get a badge. These are some of the badges that I’ve unlocked. I tried to unlock the consequence video badge. I almost reached the 48 days, but I missed one day and went back to zero and then I just couldn’t be bothered to continue any-more
But one of the easiest way to get a badge was to post videos regularly and it wasnt difficult to do, especially when they have daily challenge questions. The site will pose a question, and you give your response and if other viewers liked it, they could vote for you. It was actually quite fun to participate.
And while you could think of and upload videos with topics you want to talk about, it was nice to have this 12erator which generated interesting questions too in case you cannot think of anything. Many of them make pretty good blog topics and here were a couple of them :
And one of the things that I appreciated from 12seconds what that it allowed embedded videos that can be viewed directly on my site. I’ve been using that on my sidebar to replace my rss image widget update from my posterous account. It worked for a while, but since December 2009, it just stopped working.
But what a shame that all of these won’t last because 12seconds is closing on this Friday, the 22nd November. I’m in seesmic at the moment, but its just not the same!
12seconds.tv, its been fun and thank you for all the memories. Take care and best of luck, Sol Lipman and David Beach 
Sidenote : By the way, did anyone realise that today is 20102010? :p
I’m a happy Ubuntu user for over a year now and I was really looking forward to installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix version 10.10 on my Lenovo S10 Netbook last Sunday. The latest version was said to have a very fast load up time and happily, I did my backup and whatnots before finally upgrading.
This is the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Interface
In no time at all, the download was done and installed. So I restarted. Unfortunately, something funky happened and the top toolbar was missing, as well as the icons looked messed up.
Then I thought, okay, lets try reformatting the bugger and do a clean install. But the only thing is, that when I slot the USB with the installer, nothing happened because Ubuntu was already installed. No option to reinstall program whatsoever. Hmm!
I’m not that savvy enough to muck around with Sudo but I had an idea that I would just install another distro and after that, THEN reinstall Ubuntu. Probably not the most clear cut idea, but it might work!
So I chose from the list of distros that the Universal USB Installer had and I chose jolicloud pretty much because of the cute name it had. Joli-joli-jolicloud!
At first I had a stumbling block with an odd and very unfriendly “No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!” message. But after a quick search online, I found a fix and it was smooth going from there. I was directed to a live-demo. A live demo means that you can try out the functions of how the software is like without having to install anything yet.
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. Unlike gOS (Not to be confused with Google Chrome OS) which I tried earlier. That gave me a huge headache because I had issues with it not being able to detect the wifi connection thus almost every widget failed to work.
On the other hand, jolicloud was able to detect the wifi with no issues at all. Probably the only thing to set up was to register for an account with jolicloud and in a while, you reach the main interface, everything looks so clean and elegant.
Here are a few of the things that I use on a regular basis.
Although I’m not sure why there is a need to make so many “Apps” for the main screen because I could just go to the Chromium browser and access each page, like Facebook and Gmail from there. It makes it seem quite redundant. Kind of like the EEE PC interface.
Opening the apps are amazingly fast. I click on any of them and it opens in a split second unlike Ubuntu which takes a few seconds to start up.
Apart from the web applications, there were also installers like Cheese, Thunderbird and Pidgin as well as others you could download and install from the left top green add button
There was also a stream function although I am not too sure what the function is for. Since I don’t see any way how I could chat or make friends with these people. I didn’t really dabble with it much.
But apart from Web apps, I could also save files in my netbook, so I don’t feel so crippled even if there was no internet connection available on the jolicloud. I’d usually watch movies on my netbook, and listen to music and jolicloud did the job just well.
I was so enamoured at this point of time, that within a few minutes I had a clean install, overriding everything else.
And once that was done, I spent time playing with it for the entire day neglecting my wifely duties. But I didn’t care! It was a very charming little distro. It was speedy fast – booting up in less than 30 seconds and I could get surfing quickly. Even the screensaver was freaking cute.
And because of it, I haven’t gotten to re-installing Ubuntu 10.10. For now I’m quite happy with my jolicloud and looking forward to the 1.1 version coming soon in November 🙂
If you haven’t tried a linux distro, give it a try. It really isn’t as difficult and scary as what people think! Why not try it on an old or spare computer? I promise that it’ll give them a new breath of life and the best part is that they are all free!
Check out the ones that I’ve played with so far 🙂
Ever since I had my first webcam, I found that I actually enjoyed making videos. Later on I got for myself a 2GB SD card for my camera that could also shoot videos. and that was the start of my videoblogging.
I love the mekap and the big hair I got for this picture 🙂
Videoblogging to me was pretty easy. First was to record myself. Which is not a problem for me since I look good and have a sexeh voice. And then I transferred the video into the computer and started up Microsoft Movie Maker. Click here. Click there. And then render it into the final video. The final step was to upload it on youtube and wait for it to be ready for viewing.
All in all, it didn’t take such a long time. Depending on the length of the project, it could take about 1 to 5 hours.
And it was a lot of fun for me!
In time, I upgraded to a better camera, higher capacity SD cards and then to Adobe premiere elements where I had fun exploring different video techniques.
So last last year, while browsing through youtube, I noticed that there was an increase in videos posted in High Definition. I was very excited to see the quality of these videos.They definitely looked bigger and clearer. I was floored. And jealous since these videos are posted by regular joes like you and me.
I want to do that too! I was really keen on editing in HD again.
I got to play with the Canon HF10 Camcorder some while back. It was a really fantastic toy, and coupled with Adobe Premiere elements, it was an awesome duo.
But while I was really impressed by the quality of the video and the audio of the camcorder, its not really for me. I’m more of an amateur videographer so I dont really need all of its functions hence I don’t really want to make the investment. I prefer the convenience of a point and shoot camera which is compact and is able to take pictures and decent video at the same time.
I didn’t think that HD recording would be available for point and shoot cameras so soon. But some months after that, attending a couple of camera launches, point and shoots and even SLR’s are getting the HD recording feature. Oooh!
Hence, after a bit of research, I got for myself, the Canon Ixus 200 IS camera and Cyberlink Powerdirector 8 for editing the video.
By the way, if you are in Singapore, dont ever buy anything in the first two levels in Sim Lim Square.
Isn’t my camera a cutie? 😀
I wish that the camera was green, there was none, but its not a big deal. On the other hand, it was interesting to see the new fuctions such as the touchscreen for navigation. We also found out that we can flick it to navigate to the different pictures.
And there were a few new image features too like the creative light effect that lets me take shots like this :
Which is cute I guess but not really something that I’d be using on a regular basis.
Anyway!
Editing on the Powerdirector was fine enough. Initially it took a bit of a learning curve since I’m more used to the Premiere Elements interface. Simple things like fading to black, the sticky magnet connector (I don’t know if I’m making sense here) and even trying to make multiple text layers was a challenge.
So it took a while for me to figure out how to do the same things that I used to just click here, click here in Premiere Elements.
So close to hitting it with a frying pan
Eventually, I got to find out about the workarounds to my problems and in the end, it wasn’t such a painful transition.
But what I didn’t expect was this.
2 hours and a half to produce my video? Woah!
And the program took virtually all of my computer resources that I couldn’t even msn or surf the web without it lagging on me. And I’m working on a 4GB Ram computer mind you. So rather than sit aimlessly at the table, I could multitask and go off to cook or shower or take a nap.
And at length when the video finally rendered, I start to upload it to youtube only to be stunned by this.
Oh my Pisang Goreng. Another hour and a half! And after that, roughly another hour for the video to be digitalised and finally be ready for viewing.
Half a day for a 2 minute video? Half a day?!
You must be crazy.
As much as I love the quality of HD, I’m not too sure if its all worth the hassle.
Is it worth the hassle? Would you care if it is a high definition or standard definition video? 
Sidenote : Did you check out youtube lately? They have this new function called the ‘Caption Action’ where the software tries to analyze the audio and add subtitles.
Suffice to say, it works for some but its mostly not accurate. What the heck is an itunes chicken? Amusing 😛
After being jealous for the longest time that there is streetview for Rome, Google Streetview is now available for Singapore! I just realised it this morning as DK was twittering about it.
It’s really easy to navigate :
First you go to google maps and then type in the destination that you want to see.
And then you drag out the yellow man icon on the top left corner into the said street
And then you’ll see your destination in 3D. Wonderful! Here is one of my favourite places to shop in Singapore.
I love streetview, it really helps a lot when you’re not familiar with a place and want to get a feel of the direction. For more, you might want to check out this post by the folks of Tech65.
I spent probably a full half an hour just looking at my neighbourhood in Jurong. Remembering the roads that I used to roam at. Remembering the bus rides. Somehow it eases the homesickeness a little bit.
Just in case you were wondering what my table looks like, this is what I work with.
From left to right :
Looks pretty spiffy right? 
I’ll go through them one by one.
Lenovo S10
My Lenovo S10 is a netbook – the hardware is not as fast as a regular computer, but it’s more portable than a laptop. I really like it when I’m on the go, for emails and catching up on social media sites.
I blogged about my Lenovo S10 some months back, however, my fingers were itchy and I decided to install Ubuntu in it.
I am liking Ubuntu so far, I see applications running significantly faster despite the fact that I did not upgrade my netbook. It was surprising to me that I could run graphics intensive sites like Pet Society and many HD quality videos on YouTube because it was sluggish on the XP operating system.
My big issue though, is that due to technical issues between S10 and Ubuntu, I cannot do video streaming on ustream.tv. Also the internal microphone does not function! I guess no skyping for me for now.
But since I mostly use my netbook to surf. I reckon its not so crucial. Oh well.
HP Touchsmart
My HP Touchsmart is my main computer for editing pictures, videos as well as the occasional gaming.
I love my HP Touchsmart! With 4 GB ram, its a lot more speedier than my old desktop. Hence, I could render my videos a lot more faster. Also with the internal graphics card, sceneries in Secondlife and Granado Espada looks so much lovelier.
It’s probably not such a big deal to most, but seeing realistic looking water ripples and the various sun reflections is a breakthrough to Virtual Worlds. We’ve come a long long way since the first VRML world was created.
I use Adobe Photoshop CS for editing my pictures.
At this point of time, Adobe CS 4 has been released, but I don’t think I’ll upgrade for now. At $700 USD, CS 4 is a tad bit too pricey. Moreover, new versions are always memory intensive. I think I can manage with my version for now.
For video editing, I use Premiere Elements 4. And I love it since the first time I used it.
It makes it easy for video dummies like me to use. Clicking here and there is all there is to it. Also it’s more affordable compared to many of the video editing software that I’ve come across.
As for the pictures in this blog, I use the Canon Ixus 870is.
Most of the pictures that you see in this blog from November 2008 onwards are snapped with it. What was originally meant as a review unit sent by Canon, I found that I liked it so much that I went to buy one for myself.
Its quite trusty. And functions relatively well in less stable hands. One small issue is that it does not do time lapse video like this video I did with the Ixus 80is
But now I’m quite keen on trying out HD Videos so I’m really jones-ing for a camera that does that. What that means is that I’d have to upgrade to a new video editor too.
And finally, my samsung Innov8 which I use for mobile blogging and live updates.
If I see anything interesting along my journeys, I snap a picture and send it via email and in a few seconds, it will appear in the sidebar in rinaz.net. Live updates like these even have a term called Citizen Journalism.
Indeed, I have a spiffy workspace. Now all I need now is actual work.