Marina’s Bloggariffic

Somewhile back in August, there was a contest whereby readers give their thoughts about the touchsmart and the judges pick comments based on their creativity. The judges were impressed by Jurlique’s entry in my HP post. And that made the both of us to win a HP Touchsmart each!

It was so unreal that it took us some time to the information to sink in. I really thought that Claudia was pulling my leg when she sms’ed me her congratulations.

But in the end, we finally saw the official email. Jurlique and I were both grinning from ear to ear when we finally hand the touchsmart in our hands.

And very recently, I was at the Samsung Innov8 event and participated in their photo taking contest whereby contestants were to take pictures with the theme of what inspires me about the phone.

Thus, I was walking around with Wishbone and I asked for her help as I re-enact some scenarios. In my mind, I already knew what type of shots I wanted to get.

Even though I was not confident of winning anything, I thought I’d give it my best shot anyways. I even told Wishbone, “If I win (which I know I wouldn’t) I’ll split this phone into two with you.”

There were heaps of picture display which I took time to admire. In particular, I like Leonard’s picture of him with one eye shut with a silly grin - as the Innov8 had the smile shot and anti-blink function.

After we’ve done our presentation, we waited with in anticipation at the results and turns out that I was one of the winners for the Samsung Innov8!

I was most excited, surprised and happy that my hair started to magically curl.

Looks like I have to split the phone into two now :P

But before I split it into two, I’ll post a review about it. I’ve been using it for about a week now and so far I’m liking it a lot.

Whee!

Sidenote : Actually, there isn’t really a point to this blogpost. I just wanted to share the good news. Feel free to come over and play with my new toys :)

For a change, I thought I’d dress Cart up in a songkok! Doesn’t he look smashing in them? :)

Anyways, I spend the last days cleaning my room (and found something interesting) as well as helping out in the kitchen.

With all the onion chopping and the chili blending, my hands feels as if it is on fire!

Regardless, on this Hari Raya, I would like to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, maaf zahir batin! Forgiveness for our wrongdoings and words which are uttered accidentally :)

Related links

• What Hari Raya Aidilfitri is about
• I’m always a sap when watching the petronas raya ad.

And as always, come listen to this ultra classic raya song :)

Forget about the F1.

I prefer to be a speed demon myself rather than watching other people race :P

In any case, this is a montage of the scooter charity aid 2008 that I joined in on the 13th September. This is the 4th year for the convoy to raise funds for the Tabung Amal Aidilfitri for the needy.

Scooter Charity Ride 2008 from rinaz on Vimeo.

What do you think?

Related link :

• Charity Ride 2007

Personally, I’ve always had an affinity to Nokia - My past 3 phones itself being the 3310, the 7260 and currently I’m using the 7390 of the L’Amore series.

Thus, when I was given the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet on loan for a some weeks thanks to Supriya of Text100, I took to it like fish to water.

At first glance, its a really beautiful gadget with its grey blue exterior. Switching it on, it did not take too long to get used to the interface. Even though it uses a linux operating system, it was pretty easy that anyone who knows how to use a handphone would be able to handle it.

Being pocket sized, I find myself carrying this gadget often and especially to events when I could do live microblogging using twitter or plurk.

It has to be clarified though, that the N810 is not a handphone. There is no slot for a sim card. Thus I was perplexed on how to connect to the internet on demand. But I am pretty sure that it was possible, as I’ve seen youtube clips of people being able to connect to gprs maps using the device.

Hence, the only way that I could connect during this review was to rely on wifi connections. But so far it hasn’t been much of a problem for me as I have wireless connection at home and fortunately for me, wiress@sg was rather reliable at the places that I patronized.

And though the N810 is sometimes compared to the popular UMPCs, I feel that it would be like comparing it apples to oranges as they are both in different leagues.

One of the notable part of the N810 is that it shares a developers website where you could download softwares coded by people who uses the maemo platform, which the N810 uses. I love open source! It was a nice touch to be able to find additional softwares like games as well as applications like pidgin so that I was able to chat on msn and gtalk.

However, one bugboo to take note of is that at this point of writing, N810’s latest operating system - The Diablo OS2008 does not support Pidgin. Personally, I find it a shame as instant messaging was a function that I use very frequently.

And another thing that bugged me was that although it played youtube videos well, trying to play clips on the more graphics intensive vimeo was laggy, making it uncomfortable to view.

Regardless what I liked best about the N810 was the sound quality. Both the speakers and microphone was excellent as I could hear and speak with no problem at all. Thus it was a joy for me to use the skype function on the N810, which probably what will make me miss the N810 the most.

What would make it better would be if there were a video-conference function in skype. And at this point of time, there is none and I don’t think that there will be in the future.

The device being small, I could just chuck it next to me and lie down comfortably on the bed while talking to Cartcart. His voice was comforting that inevitably, I’d be fast asleep a few minutes into the conversation.

I haven’t been doing any late night skyping anymore since returning the review unit. Its not easy to lug my desktop to bed!

Anyways below is a quick overview on the interface as well as its different functions :

An overview of the Nokia N810 from rinaz on Vimeo.

My apologies for the quality of the video. It was 4am at the time of recording and I was plagued with the flu. But such a sexeh voice I have there! :P

Have you used an internet tablet before? What do you think of it?

Links :

• The Nokia N810 official webpage
• Maemo developer’s site

Like tech? You may also enjoy my video reviews of :

• Premiere Elements
• The Eee PC
• Vimeo
• Logitech Quickcam

I was a completely well adjusted young adult till recently I’ve gone completely bonkers!

It all started innocently with Wishbone was recommending some cosmetics samples from Pure Luxe. I did some research on it, there were many good comments about it - especially this Rainbow Eyeshadow Tutorial, which impressed me.

I picked up the courage to order just a few items online. And this was what came in the mailbox some while after :

Later on, Sylvia posted about some links about free minerals sample kits which intrigued me. I ordered a sample kit from Everyday Minerals.

After using it for a while, I found out that I enjoyed using them - my skin took it well and I liked how natural it looked on me. And before I knew it, I started to click on the purchase button. And look at what came to me some weeks later.

Goodness!

And on top of that, I’ve discovered livejournal sprees! And I immediately got fascinated by this very colourful 88 Eyeshadow Palette.

The day I got the palette, even though I was not skilled at eye make up, I had a blast of a time trying out different eye looks. It was so exciting to me! I was like a little girl given with a lot of colours to play with!

And for some reason, I was itching to try something new. I decided that I wanted a neutral palette this time. However, the one at Coastal Scents were a tad too expensive when I calculated the dollar conversion as well as the shipping charges.

It was only when I stumbled upon this seller from ebay. Based in Hong Kong, she was said to be the manufacturer of the palette. So I’m getting it direct!

This is my new 28 neutral eyeshadow palette. Isn’t this absolutely gorgeous? I love playing with all of my new colours! Its so much fun!

In particular, at this point of time, some of my loves would be Pureluxe’s Nymph Blush as well as the Nymph-o-mania lip colour for its healthy, natural, yet sexeh colour :-)

Unfortunately now, I have so much mekap now that my side table could hardly contain all of them that its spilling to the floor! No more mekap for me for now.

At least not until my next obsession.

It was an experience to remember being in the HBO office!

I was invited by Sumin of the PR agency text100 for a preview of HBO’s comedy. Having enjoyed HBO’s shows, notably, Sex and the City, I was happily confirmed.

It was a long ride all the way to the HBO office. We recognized the building when we spotted the large satellites on top of the tall building. When we reached the floor, we were welcomed warmly by Sumin. It was hard not to miss the HBO-ness of the place. There were loads of televisions everywhere. My eyes were attracted by the numerous shows that was playing simultaneously.

Our hosts brought us, as well as the other invited bloggers on a tour around the office where we explored the different departments. There was a green room, where one of the guests acted out and one of the engineers keyed in a background to the footage. There was a sound room where Jerrick’s voice was used as a sample sound for a tv commercial. And we were also brought to the control room where the there was one staff there that was manning the broadcast, LIVE!

Being someone who likes watching as well as editing videos myself, it was fascinating to me to watch the different processes. Unfortunately, due to security reasons, I cant publish any images from the production area. Regardless, there are loads of information on the internet about this.

After the tour, we were seated in a screening room where were previewed an upcoming comedy series called, “Flight of the Concords”. Apparently, the show roused quite an interest in the US.

Thats Jermaine on the left and Bret on the right

It is a little hard to describe how the show is. In a nutshell, its a quirky show where the show revolves around two artists who sings parodies of their day to day situation. The story seems to remind me a little of the gem of a show by MTV called, 2gether which parodies the obsession of boybands during the 90’s.

It was a little hard to get what the actors were saying, due to their New Zealand accent. But once you’ve gotten a hang of it, Flight of the concords was very very silly indeed. There was a scene where Bret refused to play in a gig with Jermaine. Eventually, he got replaced with a cassette tape.

Or this scene where Jermaine wanted some of his money back from his manager :

Jemaine: Murray, we need some money.

Murray: This box cost six.

And there was one actress in particular, that struck me -Kristen Schaal, who also acted in the immensely funny internet series, Horrible People - a parody of soap operas.

I sure am looking forward to just plonk down and zone out in front of the telley to watch the next episodes of Flight of the Concords. Hehehe … with that, I’ll leave you to one of my favourite music clip by Flight of the Concords - Foux da fafa :

And no, foux da fa fa doesnt mean anything!

Related links :

• Flight of the Concords on HBO
• Join the FOTC Video Contest to win a Macbook!
• FOTC Blog

If you have a scooter, do come and join us on the 13th of September, this Saturday for the Scooter Charity Ride convoy to the Malay Heritage Center.

I’ll be there, as well as the Vesporeans and other various scooter organizations in Singapore. No scooter? Not a problem. You can be my pillion!

Convoying is heaps of fun! We’ll be convoying to Taman Warisan, and after that, we can explore the musuem as well as the stalls around it. Do join me! Really hope to see you there! :)

Links

• More about the itinerary here
• My blog entry on the charity ride 2007