Cameron Highland - Parkview Apartment

There are several alternatives for you to decide where you want to overnight in Cameron Highland. If you have many friends or family which tagging along, you may consider renting an apartment. We came across this apartment - Parkview, which situated in Tanah Rata. Markets, banks, restaurant, and pub were just walking distance away.

Living room - filled with a set of sofa, a TV set with satellite TV (Astro)


Dinning room


Kitchen - Equipped with gas stove completes with an exhaust, basic cutlery, microwaves, and refridgerator. You would find most of the things you had in your kitchen back in your home.


Master room - Very spacious, consist of queen sized bed and 2 sofa chair, private balcony, and attached with private bathroom.


Medium room - Slightly smaller than master room but it is spacious too. Same as master room, it consist of a queen sized bed, private balcony, and attached with private bathroom.


Small room - 2 single bed and attached with a common bathroom.


Single room - 1 single bed


All bathroom comes with water heater as the water in Cameron Highland is extremely cold.


Given with the price of RM400 for 4 room unit, and RM300 for 3 room unit per night, I would say is quite worthy. It was clean and spacious too.




That's all for my short review.

Malaysia International Fireworks Competition is back

I guess most of us would still remember that last year, Malaysia had the International Fireworks Competition at Putrajaya Convention Centre in conjunction of Malaysia 50th National Day during the month of August. Good News to all is, it's back. The event would be started off on August 12, 2008 (Tuesday) which kickstarts by Team Malaysia. Unlike last year, there would be no competition being held on the 31st August. Hence I'm not sure if there would be any firework display on National Day or not. Also namely International Firework competition, from the list in their official webpage, there is only 4 countries that would be participating this competition including Malaysia. These are the schedules of the competition for this year :
12 August 2008 - Malaysia
16 August 2008 - China
20 August 2008 - Canada
24 August 2008 - Spain
29 August 2008 - Grand Finale

Putting the event apart, I would like to put some comment on the MIFC official webpage. I have no idea who design the page, and I am very confident that even college student can come out with better web design than them.


Obviously I've selected for HTML navigation (because I doubt they make good flash page from the first impression of the intro page) but I still get some flash content in the sites for retrieving informaiton.


It's so unbelievable that it can be so dull, unprofessional and I wonder if the webpage manage to tell the world "Hey, we are good in design, webpage, and I.T., please pour your resources to our cybercity - Cyberjaya".

Too see is to believe. Please see the link below :

http://www.mifc.com.my/ (Last accessed on : 28 August 2008 12:00AM GMT8+)

Secret Recipe Durian Durian Cake is Back

Just now, Nico and I went for dinner at Equine Park and decided to take a walk at Jusco there. Our main motive is to spend away all the Jusco vouchers that I've collected all year long from various of events organized by my company. After finish shopping there, we buy some cakes home for desert. We walked into Secret Recipe and I was scratching my head what cake should I buy as most of the cakes there are cheese cake. Then suddenly I saw a yellow cake which look cheezy, but when I looked closer, it was actually the limited time durian cake called "Durian Durian". The first question which came across my mind was "is that contains cheese?". Then Nico asked the salesgirl if the cake contains cheese. The salesgirl give us a strange look and replied "No!". Haha.. Lucky me.. Straight away I bought a slice of that and give it a try.

When we open the typical red-box that house the slice of cake, the durian aroma was pretty nice. It looks abit watery and I thought that it's sure ran out of the original taste. However when I take a bite, the durian taste is pretty strong as if you take a bite of durian and a bite of cake. It was really nice and is worth to try that piece of cake again. Personally give the cake 4.8 out of 5. :)

Microsoft BOB

Have you guys ever heard of Microsoft BOB? I doubt so as it was not even officially released to the market. Alrite, what's so special about Microsoft BOB? Hmm... a quick read on the article published in Wikipedia, this is what Microsoft BOB:

Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product, released in March 1995, which provided a new, nontechnical interface to desktop computing operations. Despite its ambitious nature, Bob failed to penetrate the market and was one of Microsoft’s more visible product failures. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer named Bob as one project "we [had] undertaken ... where we decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop

Alrite, lets put in Layman's term, Microsoft BOB was actually a software that let's you to have a very special user interface on your desktop. Imagine that you have this study/living room picture on your desktop, where you can see there's picture hanging on the wall, address boos on the table, and etc. Each of it are interactable where it launches applications when you clicked on it. You can also customize the items in there, for example hanging a painting of Mona Lisa on the wall can actually brings you the Adobe Photoshop application when the painting was clicked. When you right click on the painting, it actually allows you to resize the painting in order to fits the room's picture. Sounds cool?


This is your MS Bob'ed desktop.


This is one of the application that comes with Microsoft BOB and it can be launched by clicking on the $ folder which placed on table.


Variety of functions that available in the Financial Guide.

Looking at the history of Microsoft BOB, it was actually developed years ago since Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 era. However due to the negative response that they received from various party, Microsoft BOB was terminated even before Windows 98 released. Although it was terminated, it doesn't really dies. Some of it's member managed to survive and sneaked into Windows XP. Who? If you still remember the yellow dog called "Rover" when you launch Windows XP search page, it was one of the member in Microsoft BOB.


Alrite, I know most of you would ask the next question, where to get a copy of Microsoft BOB? Google would be the best answer, as it was illegal to distribute Microsoft BOB openly. Well it's targetted platform was Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I've tested it on Windows XP, it works fine without any issue, however it refuse to start in Windows Server 2008,(Longhorn server) due to Microsoft BOB dependency on some 16-Bits component. It was reported fail to runs in Vista too, however some of the people managed to get it runs in Windows Vista (Quick search on Youtube video tells that).

More information and detailed review of Microsoft BOB :
http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=1



Enjoy ;)

P1i First Review

After playing this baby for few days, I finally decides to sit down and write a proper review of it. Let's start with outer look of this baby. Well I can say that compared to my previous Nokia N70, P1i design was more classy and it doesn't have the cheap look (or should I say plastic look?). It appears to be more solid than Nokia N70. The only reason that I can find is that you can always change the housing of Nokia N70, but Sony Ericsson P1i, you can't. That's also one of the pain as you have to be very careful on P1i in order not to leave any permanent scars or marks on it. P1i has a fine brushed surface on its front which makes the whole phone appears elegant. The bad thing about this was the brushed surface actually very fragile to scratches. The brushed surface was actually very thin, and once it was scratched, what's left is only the black color which is the original plastic surface under the brushed surface. Besides the brushed surface, another fragile component was the chromed camera shutter button. The chrome will starts to fall off if you use the button too often. This is bad as the camera button of N70 was chromed too, but I had used it for almost 2years, it still in perfect condition.

 

Putting the outer shell aside, in terms of hardware of course P1i is way better than Nokia N70. P1i was not even half year since it was launched compared to N70 which was launched several years ago. It has a pretty decent 3.2 Megapixel camera that comes with auto focus, and the speaker able to produce quite a clear sound. The battery was quite strong compared to Nokia N70, as with my normal usage, 1 or 2 calls, medium amount of texting (around 50), few minutes of WiFi usage, the battery last me for 2days. That was pretty good, as my Nokia N70 average serves me around 1.5days before it gone flat. As for the key layout, I was getting hard time on typing using P1i rockers QWERTY keyboard. I would prefer the traditional keypad layout just like W960i. Till today, I still thought that I can just typing using the numbers key. Eg: 228 for CAT.

 

As for the software and the core Operating System, P1i uses Symbian UIQ3 and comparing to Nokia N70 S60 v2 platform, for me it's quite similar in terms of the way to get application installed. As in UIQ platform, it has the touch screen features, you have to do most of the things on screen instead of hitting the keys in the keypad. I still haven't fully suit myself into that kind of environment yet honestly. One simple example would be in S60 platform, we can do multiselection by holding the pen button down and choose what to select through the d-pad. However in UIQ, there is no pen button nor the D-pad. Furthermore the checkbox of the UIQ was really small so it test your aiming skills as well when you try to do multiselection.

 

One major things that turn off P1i as a great device was the UIQ3 itself. This OS has been put on market more than 1 year ago if I've not mistaken. However application development for this platform seems to be slow and unsuccessful. The best example would be Adobe Flashlite, which it was still not available for UIQ3 up till today. This makes P1i crippled to render flash files which embedded on the webpage even though P1i has the WiFi connection capability. It's quite annoying to see people that using Nokia N80 a 2 years old phone streaming youtube and yet a few months old P1i doesn't capable of doing that. We also know that P1i has an infrared port, where it can be used as universal remote control for house appliances such as aircond or television. However up till today, P1i still can't do that due to inavailability of such application that support UIQ3. There are more examples that you can find where great applications only developed for S60 but not for UIQ3.

 

That's my first review on P1i. I will write into more details on the review when I have more time. J

 

Kopitiam Station @ Berjaya Times Square

I seldom do review for restaurant or coffee shop but this outlet managed to make me sit down and write a real nice review on them. Alrite, this evening Nico and I went to this outlet for a late lunch. Initially we wanted to had our lunch at Wong Kok Tea house, but we decided to try the other outlet. So we end up in Kopitiam Station.

Well, we sat on the table #1, and there is a wireless service call button which you can call for the waiter when you need their service. We are really hungry at that moment, so the moment we sat down, we press the call for service. We waited there patiently for about 1 minute however there is no waiter approching us. We thought that maybe they forgot about the call or too busy at the moment, so we call once again. However it still the same, so we just shout for the waiter to come here. To my surprise the waitress come here empty handed even though the menu was just right beside her. Even a primary school kid knows that we wanted to order for something. Alright, fine.. we calm down and ask for the menu politely. Then it takes her 1 more mintues to get the damn menu which is just few steps away.

After we get the menu, and we settled with the food we want we press the call again in order for us to order the food. As usual, no one was entertaining us. I've seen the waiter and waitress was busy walking here and there and assemble at the counter as if they were very busy. In fact at that time there was only a few table of customers. Is really annoying, and finally another waitress came and took our order.

Again we waited for a long time in order for our food to come. The waiter who serves our drinks accidentally drop the straw on the floor. Then he apologize and never came back, which I thought he would get another straw for us. What the..... Ok.. I asked another waiter for a new straw and the food finally come. Guess what? the waitress put the food and goes away. That's it. We waited for few minutes and no one gives us the fork and spoon. What? They expect me to eat tomyam using my hand? calm down and eat our food. The food was not really nice and for me, I felt that mamak stall at the road side taste even better than that. Maybe it was due to the service they provide, not really the food's fault.

Then we still naively believe that actually the button still serves it purpose, and we press it in order to call for bill. I guess you guys know what happen next right? Ya.. we waited for around 5-10minutes, there is no waiter or waitress walk to our place. Then out of no choice, we have to shout for the waiter to bill. The waiter told us to wait and he walks away. Again never comes back, so we have to shout for waiter again, and another waiter comes. We ask for the bill again, and he says ok then walk away. It takes them more than 5minutes to generate the damn bill and takes another 5minutes to produce the change back to us.

What a great outlet. For me I would never ever go to the outlet again and for you, is up to you to decide whether you still prefer to give them a visit after reading my review.

:)

N70 Music Edition Firmware Review

I just update my firmware again from the normal N70 firmware to real music edition firmware. Well, it has no significant difference between the standard v5.0638.3.0.1 with the music edition one.


Changes made
The first difference is that Music Edition fresh boot in the green theme which like what you've seen in all of the Music Edition adverts instead of the standard blue theme.

Of course, the media key now becomes the dedicated music keys. It is not customizable compared to the standard edition firmware. A short press would activate the music player and a long press would activate the radio.

Well, in standard edition, the long press of the # key would bring the line switch prompt which switch between line1 and line2. For me, I don't even need the line switching shortcut. In older N-Series firmware, a long press of # key would switch profiles between silent and general. This is more useful than line switching shortcut for most of us, I believe. Luckily in the Music Edition firmware, long press of # still switch between profiles instead of active line. :)

A long press of # key activates the Silent Profile in Music Edition

Music Player
This new firmware for both standard and music edition now supports the AD-41 music adapter flawlessly. I just simply love it. However the default music player has no improvement at all compared to the previous firmware. I don't understand the needs of scanning whole Memory Card to get all your MP3 into the list everytime you open the player. Not only this, when you access the playlist, it again read all the ID3 tags each time the playlist was accessed. I had around 150 mp3's in that playlist and everytime it took me nearly 1minute to get my playlist accessed. Is this a smart way of Nokia's Music Player managing the song information? Its forgiveable for the standard edition firmware music player to behave such way as it's not really tailored for music purposes.

Yet in Music Edition, no imporvement was made. The player is still same as the old N70 firmware. A music player which takes ages to load the playlist, no function to edit the ID3 tags, it does not store your previous configurations such as Shuffle and Repeat, it does not resume the songs which last played (A cheap china brand mp3 player also know to resume perfectly), and no equalizer. You call this a Music Player in a Music Edition phone?

Is sad to say Sony Ericsson Walkman series or even K-series which don't focus on music capability has the better player than this Music Edition series of Nokia.


Screenshots of N70 Music Edition interface


Nokia (The classic blue theme)




Theme1 (The green theme)




Theme2 (The red theme)



Walkman Theme by Alantis (Custom installed theme for reference purpose)

Turn Nokia N70 into Music Edition

This is the standard/normal N70 which you can seen it everywhere.


and this is the newly launched N70 Music Edition.


Well, the difference between the standard N70 and Music Edition N70 are, Music Edition (ME) comes with the all black housing, media pack consist of (Nokia AD-41 and HS-21 headset, Nokia 1GB Mobile MMC). The standard N70 package only comes with a stereo headset, and 64MB mobile MMC.

HS21 HS20 Headset

AD-41 Adapter

Nokia AD-41 is special because it has media remote control, and it also converts Nokia standard Pop-port to the standard 3.5mm audio jack which allows you to enjoy your music using your own earphone. Compared to Nokia AD-15 which comes with the 3rd Generation N-Series, Nokia AD-41 has integrated microphone and remote control.

After the basic introduction and explaination about the difference between standard N70 and Music Edition N70, now lets see how we turn our existing N70 into Music Edition N-Series.
In summary, the difference would be:
1. The black housing
2. Nokia AD-41 adapter
3. 1GB DVRSMMC
4. The latest N70 music edition firmware which comes with the Green Theme



Let us starts with the 1st item in the list, you can actually gets the full black grade AAA housing from the internet which cost you around RM30-RM50 depends on the quality. If you don't like the grade AAA housing, you can always opt for the original housing from Nokia Personal Care centres.

Then, for the Nokia AD-41 adapter you can find some dealers which sells it at the lower price than NPC. In my situation, I manage to get it at the price of RM95 inclusive postage. The NPC sells the same adapter at the price of RM145 if I still remember it correctly.

The third item, 1GB DVRSMMC (Mobile MMC) you can get it anywhere which roughly cost you around RM80-RM90.

Lastly is the more technical part where you need to flash or upgrade your existing firmware by yourself. The targetted new firmware are v5.0638.3.0.1. The older firmware would not be able to support AD-41 adapter and you won't be able to listen to the radio through AD-41 adapter. Of course the targetted firmware solves both of this problem. It also provides new theme which green in color, and now the default Music Player and Radio background would be paint according to your theme instead of the blue color background. In case you don't know how to check your firmware version, you can check it by entering *#0000# in your phone during standby mode.



Steps of upgrade your firmware
Before you start, you must clearly understand that this process is considered quite risky. If you don't follow the steps correctly, you might damage your phone severely.

1. Get NNS (Nemesis Service Suite Beta) from this websites http://www.b-phreaks.co.uk/software.htm (Scroll to the bottom most and there's a zip file sized around 4.75MB)

2. After finish download it, install the NSS into your computer. During installation, you would be prompt to choose the service which you want to used. In this case, choose Virtual USB Devices

3. Then finish the installation, and now download the Nokia Sofware Updater from the Nokia Official Websites. http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4226014 Choose your model which is N70.

4. After finish download, install the Updater as well.

5. Connect your phone to your PC. In this case makes sure you had your PC-Suite installed. Makes sure your cable connection is stable and don't touch your cable anymore unless instructed. Cable that you can use are : CA-51 which originally bundled in N70 package, or you DKU2 which tend to be more stable.

6. After your phone is connected to your pc, starts the NSS. You can see theres a discovery icon at right top corner there. Click it to let NSS detect device information. After those information generated, click on phone info (which is the second icon from left). Key in the product code and check the enable checkbox. The product key varies depends on what kind of firmware you wish to update. If you want pure Music Edition firmware which not support chinese language, enter your product code (0543026) or (0543027). If you need chinese language support, I suggest you update to the latest standard N70 firmware. The product code would be (0524115) or (0524116).

*N70 Music Edition APAC (English, Simplified Chinese) - 0539266

added on 17Dec2006

7. After entered your product code, click write and wait it updates complete, then click on read button to verify your product code again.

* Some people having problem to verify the product code by click on the read button. Don't worry, you can verify it by click on the FLASH button, then click on the scan button at the very next tab. It can reveal your new product code too. :)

- added on 1 Jan 2007

Then exit the NSS, and open the NSU.

8. Follow the instructions given inside the NSU closely and do not touch the cable until whole update process is completed.

9. After finish the update, your phone now is N70 Music Edition or Compatible. You would notice theres two extra theme which is the Green theme or the Red theme. Both are exclusively designed for Music Edition series. :)

In the end, here you are sucessfully turn your normal N70 into a music series N70. Enjoy ya.