Waiting on T-Mobile

I am still waiting for the T-Mobile store to get a new batch of h6315 for me to exchange. It sucks to have a fancy gadget and yet can't realize its full potential. I can't even use the PDA part of it because I would have to wipe out all data when I return this unit.

NetFront and Gmail

Gmail still doesn't work on NetFront 3.1. This is not final, as I haven't tweaked NetFront's user-agent string. I will try again when I am more free.

Cellphone "saga"

I haven't been posting anything here for the last few days because I was busy playing with my new cellphones. Yes, I got the spanking new HP h6315 on Friday, one day after its official release!

That was the good news. Now the bad.

• I can't get a signal in my apartment. :( The reception is okay, but not spectacular, outside the building and on third floor, but nothing on the first floor where my apartment is on.
• My h6315 is defective. It won't connect to any Wi-Fi network, even T-Mobile's own hotspot. I am exchanging it the moment the store has one in stock.

Because my old cellphone crapped out on me and because I don't like non-GSM carriers, I am switching to a different carrier regardless. With T-Mobile's reception problem, I thought about going with ATT Wireless instead. Unfortunately ATT doesn't have a decent PDA phone and their data plan is more expensive. I guess I will stick with T-Mobile and forward calls to my home number if the cellphones are out of range.

Paperformers

When I was young I used to be a huge fan of Transformers, both the cartoon and its affiliated toys. At that time I couldn't afford to buy those sparkling new toys, so I tried to make my own transformable robots out of paper. :) I attempted to "build" my robot as close to the design from TV as possible, not knowing that the robots and their transformations are not exactly WYSIWYG. Surprisingly my paper robot actually resembled both a robot and a flying saucer, its designated transformation - I modeled my robot after the flying saucer "female" from "Gobots".

Fast forward 15 years, and here we have something I would have been crazy about 15 years ago: pre-designed paper transformers in ready-to-print PDF files!

Treo 650 pictures

The new Treo 650 sure looks nice! Too bad it's a Palm.

h6315 on Amazon

Just yesterday an Amazon search for "h6315" would turned up nothing, but today this entry came up along with some accessories. It is "out of stock" right now, but I think that will change come tomorrow when h6315 is officially released by T-Mobile. I can't wait to see how much Amazon, which normally has generous cellphone rebates, will charge for the phone with activation.

Followup: Oh, it is also now officially listed on T-Mobile's website.

Make $ from AdSense

It's too bad I don't have many readers for this blog, otherwise I could actually try to make some income by using AdSense - basically I put Google ads on my blog page and I get a cut of the money. Oh well...

No Gmail on PDAs

Looks like there is no straight forward way to access Gmail on a PDA. That's sad...

XP SP2 install failure

Today the XP on my notebook signaled me to install SP2. Guess what, it turned out I don't have enough disk space in C:\ drive to proceed, after downloading the 75MB file. Guess I will try to clear up some space another time.

Rabbits

On my walk home this evening I got to see three wild (though a bit fat) rabbits run across the undeveloped ground next to the city hall. I wouldn't have seen something like this if I had driven home.

有精神

昨晚我终于睡了一个好觉，今天感觉好爽,好有精神。

但说不定到下午就又不行了。 :P

Update: 到下午（三点左右）真的就不行了。

HP h6315 whipped

According to this benchmark, the h6315 is almost dead last compared to old and new PocketPC PDAs. I suppose that's what you pay for long battery life.

New cube

Today is my first day at my new window-facing cube. I definitely like the view, although I find myself not looking out as often as I should - the "work", aka Internet, is much more captivating. It's pretty quiet here and I get a sense of seclusion as I no longer see people walking around the corridors.

Now the bad thing is that someone has goofed up on transferring my phone line over. Currently my phone doesn't work at all.

JSF and JSP

I finally got down to continuing with the homework and right away I got into some trouble with JSF and JSP. How I wish I can find some documentation on best practices when mixing these two around.

Frosty seen through a camera phone

Posted by Hello

HP h6365 by SingTel

Looks like the HP h6315 will be released by SingTel as h6365 for S$980. That's about US$576, quite comparable to the price here before subsidy. SingTel also announced new data plans intended for its h6365. At least if I was in Singapore I would see more use for the WiFi hotspots.

Email hoax

This came in my email today. The image is exactly what the hoaxter used, followed by a link that doesn't even work. Talk about a half-hearted attempt.
Posted by Hello

Slow

Man, the full compile is excruciatingly slow. It's already been going on since yesterday afternoon.

Super bored right now...

Gmail Notifier

Google now has its own Gmail notifier. It's in beta, just like Gmail itself. I probably won't install it since I don't have that many emails in my account, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

Olympics and money

Over the years I have become less and less interested in Olympics due to all the negative stories and scandals. Now here is one more for version 28:

We've already talked about how the Olympics forced certain radio stations to pull their internet streams because they weren't approved for internet broadcasts of the Olympics, and now comes the news that no athletes participating in the games are allowed to talk about their experiences on websites.

...

As for those who dare to disobey and actually talk about their experiences online? The Olympics are threatening to remove their credentials or possibly "take legal action for any monetary damages." Monetary damages? From posting your thoughts on the games? Seems pretty clear just how focused the Olympic organizers are on money instead of the athletes and the contests.

PPC web browser?

Now that h6315 release is emminent, I started thinking about web surfing on a PocketPC - Pocket IE just sucks. There are two alternatives: NetFront and ThunderHawk. NetFront is just a more feature-rich web browser, while ThunderHawk is a subscription-based system that depends on a server to reformat the HTML page. I would probably go with NetFront.

开火

某某人告诉我，在福建话里“开灯”叫做“开火”。Hmm...

h6315 set to be launched Aug 26

Woo hoo! Looks like the h6315 will actually be released on schedule. In fact some one has already bought one, although technically that's not permitted.

T-Mobile horror story

T-Mobile might have the best gadget phones around, but their service may not match up to the hardware. To be fair, it's a problem with many companies that treat their individual customers as expendable, e.g. my experience with AOL. It's just a company culture thing. This ultimately leads to the individual support personnels - they simply don't give a hoot because they just work at the company 9 to 5. They will happily do whatever it takes to get you off their phone line.

Here is a quote from the article:

... She calculated the refund, with tax, told me the amount, answered a couple more questions for me, and we hung up. I had just spent an hour of prime news-posting time dealing with something that should have been fixed three months ago, but I had finally gotten everything taken care of.

Until I tried to use my phone. It was still off, so I called T-Mobile again, not twenty minutes after hanging up with Patty the first time. Long story longer? There was no notes from Patty about giving me a credit. She lied to me. The refund - the one she calculated the taxes for - was a lie. She even made notes on my account indicating that she'd tried to placate me, but ultimately I was inconsolable.

Nice photo

Courtesy of PhotographyBLOG.

Empowerment

Sometimes you just get that feeling of empowerment at work. It's an incredible feeling, you feel you are in the flow and in charge, and that you can overcome any obstacles.

Unfortunately this kind of feeling doesn't last forever. Something is bound to come along and trip you up.

Trouble in Nepal

I have a soft spot for Nepal - it was the first country I really toured. Things seemed so peaceful when I was there in November 1996. There was no signs of disturbances. The people I talked to had genuine high regards for the royal family and typically disliked the "Red China" due to the Tibet conflicts.

Later in 2001 I read about the palace bloodshed where the prince was accused of murdering his parents. That was the first Nepal shocker since my trip, and I couldn't believe such political turmoil was possible in such a peaceful land.

And now we have this blockade of Kathmandu. I guess there is no place on Earth that is truly in political harmony.

HP rw6100

For the past two days there has been rampant rumors on the HP rw6100. I resisted on posting about it because I am just not too interested in a CDMA phone. But I must admit, it does look better (physically) than the announced h6315.

“踢”一边去

要想心情好有时非得学会关闭自己，把别人“踢”一边去吃屎.

我没事，自己发发感想而以。

Sniper for dummies

This sniper rifle has much gadgetry designed to make it easier to kill from afar. Sorta like sniper for dummies. Just what we need...

HP h6315 delayed?

Shoot, there has been rumors that the h6315 will be delayed until mid-September. Heck, the hx4700 is already delayed, so the rumor might certainly be true. More waiting game I suppose...

So sleepy

For whatever reason I feel so sleepy today...could barely keep my eyes open. This is even after the 40-minute nap I took during the company meeting this afternoon.

Human vs animals

Today I received another donation request from an animal "charity" group I had previously donated to. It provoked my thoughts on helping animals versus helping humans - who or what should I help with my donation, if any. With all the recent humanoid bastards and disappointments I have encountered, this round goes to the animals.

It doesn't matter anyway, since I will probably hold back any donations in the near future - I need the $$$.

IE sucks

I just discovered that due to my previous post my blog had been messed up when displayed in IE. It's been somewhat fixed, but it's still not perfect. It was all the while fine in Firefox due to how it handles CSS better. Just another reason to go Mozilla!

Still highly competitive

I feel much more competitive after scanning throught this article:

More than one-fifth of U.S. science and engineering workers have less than a bachelor's degree, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation.

"Search This Blog" retired

I have retired my own "search this blog" script now that Blogger has replaced the top ads with a navigation bar which includes the search function.

Instructor replies

This morning an email reply from the instructor awaited me in my mail box. It is of course regarding my question which I sent yesterday. The short answer is to abandon the filter and just use <jsp:include>. I didn't want to do this because using banner/footer filters were emphasized as good-practice. Well, at least for everything in the past except JSF. With that said, the long answer is that he couldn't answer in detail because he was outside and was also getting ready to travel abroad. He will be back in two weeks and would then discuss this in detail.

JSF question

Got yet another problem on my JSF homework. The following is from the email I sent to the instructor:

The general question is: what is the best way to setup JSF views and forms in the 3 jsp pages (banner, main, and footer)?

I use a filter to generate banner and footers for pages. The java code is like this:
   bannerRd.include(request, response);
   chain.doFilter(request, response);
   footerRd.include(request, response);

Currently in my banner.jsp I have something like this:
   <f:view>
   <h:form id="xxx">
   ...
   <h:commandLink...><f:verbatim>Community </f:verbatim> </h:commandLink>
   ...
   </h:form>
   </f:view>

In my login.jsp page I have:
   <f:view>
   <h:form id="yyy">
   ...
   <table><tr><td>
   ...
   <h:outputText value="#{Message.labels_login}" styleClass="fieldname" />:
   ...
   </td></tr></table>
   </h:form>
   </f:view>
I used a table to format the login form.

The actual login works fine in the application except that for the login.jsp, the JSF components are displayed outside the table. So I have the form labels (also displayed using JSF tags) and fields by separated out by themselves followed by the table HTML and the ":" characters. I don't want to surround the HTML elements with tags.

I hope the instructor answers my question even though he might not care for the class anymore.

JSF bean and handler

I was stuck the last time I worked on my JSF homework. I was trying to use separate classes for data bean and handler. That didn't go well, the data bean for the second request somehow became null. I really liked to do it this way as I could then reuse the data bean class I already have.

Tonight I experimented a bit and got it to work by combining the data bean and handler into one class, just like all the JSF examples out there used. Not my favorite approach, but it works. Perhaps I will just go this route as I am tired of running into walls.

How can I afford to procrastinate my homework for so long? That's because the director who organized the training has already left the company himself. Besides, everyone was tired of the long and tedious homework. Furthermore we didn't get much feedback for our earlier assignments, so what is the point? For me I still intend to finish this last one for closure and self-learning.

Herd of One

Whenever she "walks", the horizontally-challenged female upstairs just pounds the floor, making lives difficult for us downstairs. Can you imagine the constant bass plus vibrations produced? Now if she is considerate to others it wouldn't be a problem. Oh no, she is bossy and self-centered. We tried to communicate our concerns politely to her, no accusations, just facts, but instead received quite some bitching. You know the kind, everyone and everything else is wrong and making things difficult for her. Yes yes, we know, the society owes you big. I think she honestly believes that her mass warrants her enough gravity to be the center of the universe.

And yes, the gorrila steps continue, without any care in the world...

Yahoo! Finance Special Editions

I never realized Yahoo Finance has this special editions page. I will probably read the Forbes: Buying Your First Home section.

Sleep away the good and the bad

I think I had mentioned before that I have the ability to sleep away my worries, i.e. I am able to stop worrying after a night of sleep. Unfortunately, it works both ways, including ridding of my joy from yesterday's good news. Apparently this morning when I woke up I was no longer ecstatic. I was still happy, just not ecstatic.

Paradigm shift

The "7 Habits" course says that we are supposed to shift our paradigms in order to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. Well, I still can't help seeing those annoying people as annoying.

Training

I was away on training for the past 3 days. The course itself is not necessarily related to my everyday work, but I signed up for it to take a break from my cube life and hopefully to pick up something useful. The course is on "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". It's actually a best seller (somewhere). The 7 habits are:

• Habit 1: Be Proactive
• Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
• Habit 3: Put First Things First
• Habit 4: Think Win/Win
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
• Habit 6: Synergize
• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

This is all common sense, but the training drills down in more details and sorts things out logically.
 

I was pretty alert and interested on the first 1.5 days, but afterwards I got bored from some of the discussions and activities. And getting up earlier than usual to attend the lessons did not help me to stay awake. Sad to say that in conclusion, I am still as "effective" as I was before the training.

Good news realized

It's a great day today. The potential good news I mentioned a few days ago has been realized, plus an additional pleasant surprise.

Yap, I am happy today.

Bluetooth ActiveSync Guide for XP SP2

Reminder to self, read this article before upgrading to XP SP2. This is supposedly to make sure Bluetooth ActiveSync still works after the upgrade.

Tagboard

Should I get a tagboard for this blog? I certainly don't need one as not many people visit my blog. The only reason for me to get one is to have fun configuring and setting it up.

Neh, maybe not...

Found a nice blog

I just came across a nice blog at BlogSpot. The site is very well designed, with nice graphics and an elegant layout. Everything just fits together and is well balanced. The author, a Singapore Secondary school student, even has similar preference as me over some software such as Firefox and Bloglines.

Pending good news

There might be some good news for me soon in the future. I don't want to be spell it out here right away for the fear that something, no matter how unlikely, may go awry. Or I might jinx it by blogging about it too early.

My fingers are crossed.

Hero

The movie HERO has been available on DVD for at least a year, and it's only coming to US theaters in August 2004?!

讨厌的人

不同的人见得越多，讨厌的人也不可避免地遇到不少。

Lake Shasta trip pictures

This is only 60% of what we chunked into the car for the short trip.

Me pretending to barbecue.

Of all places Frosty must sit to guard the tent, why must it be the dirt?!

So much for the "guard" dog.

Oh the dirt!! :(

A view from the Shasta Dam, the second largest dam in US.

The camping portion of the trip was fun, but I suppose Lake Shasta won't be famous for its beautiful scenery. People mostly go there for the water sports, so just about everyone towed some kind of boats there, e.g. speed boats and jet skis. We were the nimble, poor type with only the car and nothing else.

Cheaper PocketPC phone - Yakumo Omikron

What the hey, I just want to read up on anything PocketPC phone related since I am into the h6315 right now.

Self note: Finish reading this later. Too sleepy now.

Crime to link

Well, perhaps I had blogged to soon - it could be a crime to link to other web sites. Man, lawyers are just having their field day, aren't they?

HP censorship

Now I understand the lack of product reviews when h6315 was first announced about 2 weeks ago: HP censorship. The lack of reviews is in deep contrast to last year when HP announced the 2215, which I promptly bought after reading some great reviews. Perhaps in an attempt to muffle negative reviews of their new lackluster PocketPC products, HP has been sending some new Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) to enthusiast Sites:

Here is the skinny. On June 18, 2004 I received an email invitation from HP.(see below) It was asking us to moderate our users posts to delete references of the "rumored" models...Anyhow, there were other things HP was asking me to do related to "rumors". They wanted us to discontinue posting leaked info as well. I was willing to do this. What were we getting out of this deal? Early evaluation units of new products 1-60 days pre-launch (at HP's discretion and dependent on availability) and a few other info related benefits that, in my opinion, should be available to media without selling out...

Two PocketPC enthusiastic sites posted about this NDA and generated tons of negative discussion on HP. I didn't post on those forums, being a shy shadowy lurker, but hey, this is my blog, I don't think HP can censor my tiny web existence for linking to these stories, can they? :-P

• Pocket PC Thoughts :: View topic - HP's New Rules for Enthusiast Sites - And Why I Resigned from the Program
• Ipaq HQ Forums - No review for you!

Great to be back

It's great to be back in the cyberworld. We have completed our yearly stint of giving back to nature - we fed our precious blood to the mosquitoes for 2 full days and nights. I think I am 95% city slicker (slick is an exaggeration) and only 5% outdoors man (actually not that outdoorsy either).

Packing

We have been packing the whole night, and for what, a 2-day trip? Luckily we have a SUV. I don't see how we could dump everything in a normal sedan otherwise. Yeah, we are going car camping. Backpacking is out of the question the way we are bringing everything including the kitchen sink. :)

Earlier in the evening I took a picture of about 60% of the stuff we meant to bring. If I remember I will post it here after we come back.

Good Blogger, good

Of all the free blogging services I have tried, I really like Blogger for its configurability. The blog's entire HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is at our disposal. You just can't do this with any other free blogging sites, at least not the ones I have toyed with. So far I have already successfully integrated "Search This Blog", "On the Side", and "Blogrolling" with this blog.

Furthermore there are many third party addons that greatly enhance Blogger's usability. I am using Hello! to post pictures, and when I get a camera phone I intend to make use of Flickr! for moblogging.

Side blog

I am experimenting with a side blog which will mainly contain links to articles elsewhere. Those articles would be of some interest to me and yet not enough to warrant a full post here.

I first tried SideBlog but quickly abandoned that approach as I didn't want to maintain too many blog accounts (I already have way too many). I settled on creating another BlogSpot account (under my current screen name) and using Feed2JS to convert the feed into the format I wanted. The only bad thing (for me) I observe is that Feed2JS caches RSS feeds, so the latest side blog posts might not appear here immediately.

Dog or pig?

A Picture Share! - Originally uploaded by doctor paradox.

This dog's snout is really outstanding. :)

Blogger's new Quick Edit links

Want to quickly edit your previous Blogger posts? Here is the easy way. I am happy with Blogger's continuous improvements.

First post-reorg team meeting

This afternoon we just had our first team meeting after the reorg. It's sad to see only four people in the room when we used to have up to 14.

Some pics of h6315

Just some pics of h6315.

Asus A730 pictures

Just some Asus A730 pictures to wet our appetite (not mine really).

Wired News: Porn Blogs Manipulate Google

...an outfit called CyberQuest has recently set up a few dozen cross-linked, porn-themed Blogspot blogs (powered by Blogger), all of which link to three of its for-profit porn sites. According to a couple of experienced bloggers, the purpose behind the cross-linking strategy is to artificially raise the Google rankings of the three porn sites.

Yeah, I have seen these sites in Blogger's Recently Updated list.

Pet networking sites

This article is actually about networking sites with million+ members, but the information I want to mention is the pet networking sites it listed:

• Backwash for Pets
• Dogster
• HAMSTERster
• KissyKat
• Neopets

Kyla Pratt

Kyla Pratt appeared in tonight's "Becker" rerun. For some reason I just don't like her. Nothing personal, I just don't like most of the characters she has played, including "The Parkers" and "One on One".

Update: For whatever reason the image cannot be loaded. This is not that important a post for me to bother fixing.

Frosty与吃

Frosty每分每秒都在想吃的，一看到食物就摇头摆尾。

Product delays

I guess nowadays it is a marketing norm for companies to announce a product way early in order to stir up consumer interests. Numerous delays would of course follow. Case in point: Asus MyPal A730.

I do NOT like this norm.

Update: Oops, I forgot that sometimes product information is leaked out accidentally.

Black HTML background

I find it straining to read web pages with large amounts of light text on black backgrounds. After looking at such pages for a prolonged period of time I would experience burnt-in effects in my eyes similar to that of a computer screen. I then have to squint my eyes in order to recover, just like activating screen savers. It's kind of funny as my initial personal web pages employed such white-on-black design themes. It's not until someone told me the problem that I started to experience it myself.

Ingenious cellphone design

The QWERTY keyboard design on the new Siemens SK65 is the most elegant I have seen.

MPx only in 2005?

According to this report, the MPx won't be available until 2005. So long MPx, guess I will probably be getting the HP h6315 (provided that T-Mobile coverage isn't terrible in my area).

Update: It might still be available in Nov 2004. Not sure if that means available to cellphone carriers or to the general public.

Discussion forum for PDA phones

Just found another site dedicated to PDA phones. The news section is alright, but I really like their discussion forums. I managed to find some tidbits on the h6315.

MPx review in French

Here is a review of a pre-production MPx. It's in French, but you can use Babelfish to translate it into English. There are some pictures to offset the language issue.

The unit still looks interesting, but I am now leaning more towards the HP h6315 as you can tell from my past blog entries. The MPx is going to be just as slow as the h6315 (they use similar CPUs), but the MPx won't be available anytime soon, it is going to cost far more, and it is tri-band. I think I have just about dug out every little detail currently available on the h6315.

Life center

My life evolves around Frosty.