Notes to Myself

Perfect Night

You know, I never really socialise in my own town. If I meet people, I always travel into the centre of London; people rarely come to visit this area. But with the right company and just a little knowledge of the area, you can have a great time here.

With my spanking-new Orange phone, I used the Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 cinema ticket offer for the first time yesterday. Being a Wednesday and not in the centre of London, the cinema was practically empty - a cinema practically all to yourself!

We went to see Crash. On the whole, the film was good. Although I've never been to America, I would guess that the racial issues brought up were a little exaggerated - does every American have so many issues...? In any case, the film raises interesting and serious points, while in other parts there is quite a lot of humour.

Though my mum has given negative reviews on the restaurant, we had a delicious Thai dinner. The waitresses wear cute red and pink dresses and the decor is both welcoming and relaxing. Was the beautiful candlelit table was a lovely touch.

Before going home, I thought it would be nice to take a stroll down by the river, which is not too far away. I love sitting on the bridge, overlooking the winding river. After such a boiling day in London, the cool and gentle river breeze was so refreshing. On the horizon to the West, orange lightning streaked and lit up the sky. It could have been quite a romantic moment.

The rain reached our bridge and the heavy droplets forced us to run for cover. It didn't last for long, however. Five minutes along the river, looking back at the beautifully lit bridge, it felt like the perfect night.

The Good Life

Following a late night out and a 3 hour sleep, I was up early on Saturday. About 6 or 7 coffees during the day battled to keep my eyelids propped up. I was so glad to get to sleep at midnight that night and when I woke on Sunday, I felt like I was on top of the world. Leaving my friends' house I walked along the road at 7 in the morning. The crisp cool air filled my lungs and a beautiful blue sky with scattered whispy clouds stunned my renewed eyes. One of those 'good to be alive' moments.

Chinese Magic

The Chinese themed posts continue today with an incredibly odd experience. During the afternoon there was a knock at the door. My parents were downstairs, so I ignored the knock and thought no more about it.

Some time later, my Dad came up looking for a Chinese-English dictionary. At the time I didn't make the connection, but it turned out that we had a Mandarin Chinese speaking visitor. Actually, this Chinese lady came with a family friend. This family friend, who we shall call "M", comes from Malaysia and speaks Mandarin pretty well.

My sister came along and said, 'Darren, you should see what is happening downstairs!' I didn't think it would be all that interesting and it wasn't until much later that I actually went down. When I did go down, it was only to prepare a drink and pack some shoes, because I was just about to leave for a game of tennis.

A middle-aged Chinese woman with Chanel sunglasses was sitting in the living room. Much to my surprise, my Dad was speaking to her in Mandarin. 'Oh, hello,' I greeted her, before going into the kitchen.

Mum was talking to M about the situation. I asked M about my dad's Mandarin and she said he can speak about 10% Mandarin, whatever that means. In any case, they were communicating, when I thought his Mandarin was close to non-existent. He knows all these languages and yet never taught me anything! Arghh.

Anyway, my dad has bad legs, and apparently this lady was treating him by wrapping towels sprayed with some kind of surgical spirit around his legs, before setting fire to them! Well, this only lasts a short time, before extinguishing the flames with a separate wet towel.

Unfortunately, I missed out on witnessing all of this. Mum told me that the lady was only one of a few of her kind in the whole of China, and that her had family had passed down this knowledge to her. 'How can she be one of only a few out of the billions of Chinese people in the world that can do this treatment?' I thought. We were lucky that she should be was visiting us.

After being persuaded that there were entertaining events happening in the living room, I went to have a quick peek, but the treatment had obviously finished. My dad had beautiful red quilted Chinese material wrapped around his legs.

When the lady saw me, she stood up and started talking to me in Chinese. M was there and translated for me. Apparently, in the two seconds in which I had stood there, she had figured out that my stomach had problems, that I have poor circulation causing cold feet and hands, that I'm over-tired and that I dream a lot in my sleep. Impressive.

Chinese Craving

This follows the comments to my last post, about having Chinese family and yet not being able to understand any Chinese. I've been thinking quite a bit about learning a little Chinese again, probably Cantonese, as my family speak Cantonese more often than Mandarin. I say again as, during university I pestered my Cantonese speaking friends to teach me as much as they could. However, I was terrible at it... really horrendous.

Another of my friends is also interested in studying Cantonese and we've even got some Learn Cantonese audio CDs. Will we actually put them to use?

A while back I said that I'd only start learning Chinese after getting to a relatively high level of Japanese. Now, I'm starting to wonder what to do... Hmm.

Asian Snooker

Some Japanese friends invited me to play snooker at a club down at King's Cross. One of them had been into the club to see what it was like and talked to a member of staff. This lady had said that membership was free for Asians, but £10 otherwise.

I found that a little hard to believe, but sure enough, when we went in, the same lady had to cheek to only ask me for the £10 membership fee. What blatant racial discrimination - or racial favouritism, if that's a term. That can't be legal. Anyway, I pointed to my surname on the application form I'd filled in and said,

'Look, I'm half Chinese.'
'But you don't even look Asian,' she responded.
'Please...' I pleaded.

Luckily I didn't have to use my trump card - having lived in Asia for a few years - but she gave in and handed over a membership card!

The owner must be Chinese. I've never seen so many Chinese people playing snooker in London before. Cantonese boomed from the table next to us. It would seem to be cool to hook your mobile phone to your belt, having your hands free kit running under your shirt and then into your ear, even when you are not using the phone. Stylish.

W800i Photos

Following yesterday's post about the Sony Ericsson W800i, I thought I'd take some more test photos. The actual camera interface is similar to the CyberShot series' and there are a surprising number of options. Below are three pictures: the first, a view from my back window, the second a panoramic shot of the same view, in which the camera guides you on taking three linked pictures (via a cool ghosting effect); and lastly, a macro mode shot. The pictures have been unaltered on the PC, except for rotation.

1632x1224, 471KB	1224x1632, 367KB
1648x432, 236KB

Sony W800i

The Sony Ericsson W800i was released only last week and is as cutting-edge as phone technology appears to come in the UK. Obviously building on the K750i, this is one beautiful phone.

The features which impress the most are the 2 megapixel camera with autofocus, taking images of up to 1632x1224px - finally decent quality photos; video clips; and the Walkman features. Below you can see a test image (although I forgot to set macro mode and I think photos look better in sunlight):

The Walkman is great! A real mp3 player (no converting to ATRAC or anything like that) with USB cable to easily move music files to the W800i (and vice-versa for pictures/videos etc). With the supplied 512MB Memory Stick Duo this is a nice little mp3 player and the supplied earphones are great. I was suitably impressed walking down the road listening to music on this device of happiness. This could delay my iPod Mini purchase... Oh, and did I forget to mention the built in radio?

Sony Ericsson W800i Test Image (567KB)

Needless to say this phone wipes the floor with my 2 month old T630. One feature I did like about both phones was the bluetooth connectivity. It was incredibly easy to send all of my contact details from the T630 to the W800i - and even pictures to boot.

Well, I could probably go on all night but I'm shattered. Quickly, here are some of the features:

• 2 megapixel camera with autofocus, 4x digital zoom & photo light
• Video camera & sound recorder
• Display: 262k colours, 176 x 220 pixels
• Music player
• FM radio
• Speakerphone, voice controls, voice mail
• Messaging: SMS (with predictive text), EMS, MMS, Instant messaging, email
• Java games (embedded & downloadable)
• Animated wallpaper
• Picture editor and effects
• QuickShare™
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB, Infra-red
• WAP 2.0, GPRS
• Memory: 34 Mbytes plus 512 Mbyte Memory Stick Duo™
• Triband
• Size: 100 x 46 x 21 mm

> Sony Ericsson W800i Reviews
> Orange - Sony Ericsson W800i - Features

Lucky Day

'Enough is enough,' I thought. My Sony Ericsson phone has a couple of niggling features that I can't really get used to. And such a downgrade from my Japanese Vodafone was a hard pill to swallow. To get the phone I wanted I needed to get a monthly contract - who would fork out £200-300 for a pay as you go phone?

On Thursday I asked at my local Orange shop about the phone I was after. As it has just been released the assistant said that practically all stores were already sold out. She advised me that only the top Orange shops would have any in stock and to try the Oxford Street branch.

As I was going into the West End anyway, I followed her advice and found to my suprise that the phone was in stock. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough ID on me to get the phone - somehow a provisional licence isn't as good as a full driver's licence, which is rediculous as you need a passport to get even the provisional. Anyway, a little frustrated, especially as I felt they could sell out soon, I decided to go back the following morning.

So yesterday, I woke up early (as I have been doing anyway of late) and was on my way to Oxford Street at 9 in the morning. Arriving at the shop, just above Bond Street station I was evidently the first customer.

There was only one member of staff on the shop floor. I pointed to a display phone from which music was blaring and I asked if he had any in stock. He went off to check and when he returned he had one in his hand. 'This is the last one we have in stock!' he said. Phew.

While filling in the paperwork, not 15 minutes had passed until another customer came in asking about the same phone. 'Sorry mate, this is the last one,' said the shop assistant. 'Today must be my lucky day,' I said. I've probably got one of the last available in London! Stay tuned to hear my comments on the state of the art Sony Ericsson W800i.

Java Revision

Today I rumaged through the shed in the garden and found all my uni notes. I was interested in my software engineering notes, especially object oriented programming and Java. As I looked through them it all started coming back. As far as programming languages go, I always found Java easy to understand.

Anyway, after a quick look I answered a short Java test just to see how I'd do. Old terminology started popping into my mind. The test focussed on inheritance, casting, constructors, static functions and even had a little Java Swing at the end. In the end it wasn't all that bad and I quite enjoyed the challenge.

Man, now that I look, my posts have been so techy lately. Am I boring you??

Spyware

Have you ever heard of spyware? If I may be so bold as to quote:

"Spyware is a broad category of malicious software intended to intercept or take partial control of a computer's operation without the user's informed consent. While the term taken literally suggests software that surreptitiously monitors the user, it has come to refer more broadly to software that subverts the computer's operation for the benefit of a third party."

As my PC operations (what exactly does that mean?) have moved to my old desktop PC owing to my now defunct laptop, I have been installing the various apps I use day-to-day. I came across and installed some spyware removal tools I had downloaded recently, namely, Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

Incredibly Ad-Aware (pictured top-left) found 230 suspect files and SpyBot (pictured right), which I ran afterwards, found an additional 25!

> Ad-Aware
> SpyBot
> Windows AntiSpyware (beta)

PC Pace

In terms of computer hardware, it's almost as if I was in a time warp during my 3 years in Japan. I didn't really keep up with the latest in processors, graphics cards, hard disks... With thoughts of upgrading my old desktop PC I thought I'd do a bit of catching up, and wow, have things changed.

Processor speeds were bound to be much faster so that's no surprise. Still the old AMD vs Intel battle, too, huh? But other things have changed which I wasn't expecting: hard disks now have a new connection in the form of SATA and AGP slots are dying out in favour of a new standard called PCIe.

My overclocked Athlon XP 1800+ system handles Windows XP easily and with only 256MB of RAM. On top of that, I have decided not to return to the world of PC gaming (will that last?), so do I even need to upgrade?

At the moment I don't plan on doing anything to demanding, though I would like more speed loading up Photoshop CS2, Flash MX 2004 and the like. Also, I'd like to put a value system together from scratch again, partly to refamiliarise myself with current PCs and partly so as not to forget how to build a PC!

Touch Me

There's a great exhibition on at the V&A in London called 'Touch Me - Design & Sensation' which runs until August 29. It's a really entertaining hands-on experience where you can touch and interact with all sorts of things.

My favourite part was the room where you could play a special version of table tennis, pac-man and pong. On the table tennis table, when the ball bouces a pool of light ripples from the point of impact. Pac-man is a huge version for two players. One player jumps on pads to control up/down while the other play controls left/right. Finally, adult pong involves being tortured upon losing with heat, being whipped and electric shocks!

JET Distance

The JET experience (teaching English in Japan programme) can be fantastic and you meet a lot of people. You are likely to make JET friends and hopefully Japanese friends, too.

As a JET you often hang out with other JET 'friends', but this is often more out of convenience than anything else. If you were a JET, how many people do you still keep in touch with now? In my case, I had 3 particularly good JET friends: two Americans and one Australian. One of the hardest things about being a JET is saying goodbye.

At the end of the first year, one of my American friends (east coast) decided to leave and head home. It was pretty sad, and our little group of four was reduced to three. Then, at the end of the second year, my Australian friend decided it was time to leave: we were down to two. It really was hard to see these people leave. It's not likely that you will be able to see them again any time soon.

So in the third year, I was close to my last true JET friend. Though I had predicted my departure would be long after hers, as it turned out, I was wrong. The support she gave me through my final months in Japan was unforgettable - I'm not sure I would've coped otherwise (thanks love :) ).

As I sat on the Tube, I suddenly realised that she was leaving Japan that very day (two days ago). I wonder how she managed - I'm sure it was emotional.

So now, the four of us are in totally different places across the world. It's not quite as easy anymore to meet up for a quick Japanese curry and a doughnut. I hope we'll manage to keep in touch.

Boot Sector

This follows on from the previous post. The latest news is: I was lucky enough that XP actually booted once or twice which enabled me to back up my data. However, now I am back to the blue screen on bootup and thought I'd try reinstalling Windows XP.

However, first I thought I'd play around with Partition Magic. I've always been scared to go near it but as I've backed up my files it's a good opportunity to play with it. I was amazed by what it could do, even from within Windows!

In any case, several blue screens later I decided to use the VAIO recovery disks to reinstall Windows. However, it failed upon trying to repartition the hard drive.

I booted from the Partition Magic floppies and loaded up the GUI (very swish it is, too). I set new partition sizes and clicked on 'apply'. It failed, saying 'Unable to write boot sector. Virus protection may be running.' There is no virus protection running in the BIOS etc. Fdisk /mbr provided on the Partition Magic boot disk also fails.

So next I tried the recovery console again. It still doesn't ask me to logon to Windows. I used both fixmbr and fixboot - both failed. The errors returned were, 'The new mater boot record could not be written. The disk may be damaged' and 'The boot sector cannot be fixed.'

So is there anything you can do when your boot sector is corrupt and not even the recovery console can fix it? Is it time to admit defeat and buy a new hard drive?

VIAO Death

It happened apparently at random whilst my PC was left unattended, downloading something. When I returned to my room, my VIAO greeted with a blue screen of death.

After restarting the it Windows XP again decided to throw the blue screen before even reaching windows, giving an 'Unmountable Boot Volume' error message - alarm bells started ringing. Every time I restart I get a blue screen before I can do anything: this means I can't even run in safe mode or access system restore from the hard drive.

I thought I'd try booting from an English version Windows XP SP2 CD. The computer eventually booted from CD and there were 3 choices:

Setup,
Recovery Console,
Quit

Recovery Console seemed like the only applicable option - I had hoped I could use the CD for system restore. I'd never seen the recovery console before. It's basically a command prompt where you can:

...obtain limited access to the NTFS file system, FAT, and FAT32 volumes without starting the Windows graphical user interface (GUI).

Interestingly, I didn't have to logon - worrying? I used chkdsk drive /r on both the partitions of my hard drive, c: and d:, but both stopped mid-scan, claiming 'The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.' Just great. Has my hard drive have suddenly have given up the will to live? It's unrelated that I'm using the English Windows disk for a Japanese Windows installation isn't it? Surely chkdsk is not concerned with which version of Windows is installed?

Mac Desire

What on earth is happening? Last night I dreamt of talking to a Apple Mac owning friend of mine. Totally intrigued, I found myself really wanting one. We walked around a shop looking at Macs and their ethernet ports - I was asking if you could plug one directly into my router at home. When I woke up this wanting crave persisted.

My very first computer was a Mac. It was a tough decision but because my school had a fair number of Macs it seemed like a wise choice. I bought a Performa 630 and spent hours on it, tweaking this and that, trying to get it to run as fast as it could. Now, I know next to nothing about how to use Macs.

It wasn't until I started university that I bought a Windows based PC - I haven't looked back. Is it time to think about returning to Macs?

Tip Troubles

A certain 'green' restaurant in London's Chinatown used to be one of my favourites. Lately, however, I have been less than impressed. The waiters are either way too friendly, or just plain rude. Are they trying to match the reputation of Wong Keis, a few doors down?

Here is a recent experience I had. When my food came, the waiter practically shouted the name of the dish and slapped it down on the table. 'Yeah?' He says.

After asking for the bill, we paid and waited for our change. Now, recently I've realised that there is a 10% service charge included on the bill - isn't that a bit sneaky, as you are likely to tip on top of this 10%? Anyway, the change didn't show up for about ten minutes. I decided to remind one of the waiters.

'You paid 15 pounds, right?' He replied.
'I don't remember, but it was more than the bill.'
'Yeah, you paid 15 pounds, so the change is 20p, right?'
'Er, I don't remember.' I say.
'20p, right? He repeats, making me feel stupid asking for such small change.
'Yes, OK.' I agree.

He brings back the 20p - although now I realise he owed us slightly more than that - I pocketed it and left.

I can't believe that kind of service. True, 20p is nothing, but you can't assume that you can just keep it as a tip, can you? Surely it is up to the discretion of the customer? With that kind of attitude why should I give him even a penny extra?

Sketch

Though the likeness isn't great, this isn't a bad effort considering I haven't done a real sketch in years. Now, if only I could paint like my sister...

I'm thinking of putting together a portfolio website for my sister's work. Does anyone have an recommendations for gallery software/product platforms? This project could give me the motivation to learn Flash. Or should I stick with an HTML/scripting implementation? I'd like to put together a site which would prove easy for her to update without any coding. Can Flash do dynamic page creation from databases/files in a directory?

Fantastic

'Fantastic' may be going a little overboard, but after recent films I was more than happy with Fantastic 4. The fairly straightforward storyline won't tax your brain too much, but what did you expect? In part it was saved by the beautiful women =) All in all, it made for a great evening.

Police Presence

Out and about in London it's hard not to notice the extra police presence, especially at Tube stations. At most stations there are teams of 2 or 3 police - including relatively small stations. Even on the platforms there are a number of police.

In a way it's resassuring in a way but on the other hand, how many thousands of unchecked people slip in and out of the Underground system each day? How many of them carry back-packs?

Great news! The Piccadilly Line is scheduled to reopen today, four weeks after the bombs caused it's closure. This is one of the major lines I use and it's been such a hassle with it being out of action.

> Massive Police Presence in London (BBC)
> Piccadilly Line Returns

Imperial Front

Wow! When I went passed Imperial College the other day I was amazed. The boards which had surrounded the Tanaka Business School for so many months when I used to work in the area have gone and the result is quite impressive, I have to admit. Still, the surrounding buildings are still so drab and unstylish that it doesn't quite feel like a complete re-design.

PNG Rendering

For some bizarre reason IE didn't seem to be rendering my PNG banner in the correct colours. I noticed this when I used someone else's computer - I don't normally use IE. Other browsers including Opera and Firefox do not produce this strange result.

In my image editor I can see the colours of the original graphic and the PNG file which match up fine. But when I view the PNG through IE it's colours change slightly. This results in a different coloured border behind the image. Has anyone else experienced this?

I have fixed the problem by reverting back to a JPG file, but still I'd like to know why IE acts so strangely.

Plant Hair

This guy caught my attention for two reasons: one, he was carrying a plant, and two, that rather fetching hair cut.

Chance Meetings

At a friend of a friend's pub party we sat outside in the garden. It was the day of Live Aid and it was playing on a TV inside the pub.

I knew not a soul except the friend who'd invited me. Tell a lie, I had met one of the people there before, another ex-JET. Anyway, there were lots of new faces and many people I didn't talk to, including the girl I was sitting opposite. After a certain time has lapsed it gets to the point where suddenly saying 'hi' would be just plain odd.

About a week later, I was standing outside the Odeon cinema on Tottenham Court Rd. Then, who should walk past but the girl from the pub. I saw her go into the cinema and thought it might be awkward if she noticed me. Would she even recognise me?

5 minutes later she came out and walked directly towards me and my friends. I seemed to catch her eye and I could tell that she recognised me. I had to say, 'hello.' even though we'd never even exchanged greetings at the pub. She gave me one of those nods of recognition and that was it.

Just before the film started the same girl came in and sat almost directly in front of us! I wonder if she realised. What a freaky set of coincidences.