Taiwan Movie OSTs

In the recent years, Taiwan produces some great movies with equally nice original sound tracks. 

Here are 3 of them that I like, starting with this from 2011.

1. 那些年，我們一起追的女孩, 2011.

   The OST is 那些年，我們一起追的女孩 by 胡夏.

 

2. 我的少女时代, 2015.

   The OST is 小幸运 by 田馥甄.

3. 月老, 2021.

   The OST is 如果可以 by 韦礼安.

My Song of the Year - Homura by LiSA

J-Pop is Popular in the 90s

 I do not understand Japanese nor do I speak that.  But I do love Japanese Pop songs like many non Japanese speaking music lovers.

J-Pop was greatly popular in Singapore and Southeast Asia in the 90s before K-Pop (Korean Pop) took over.

I have not followed J-Pop for awhile until a year or so back as there are some really great Japanese songs.

Today, let's look at which song is one of the most popular J-Pop song today.

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train

This anime movie recently crossed the US$300m mark at the box office. I don't watch anime, but it's the song for the movie that caught my attention.

Homura by LiSA

The song for the movie is "Homura" by LiSA.  The music video was uploaded to YouTube 2 months ago and it has hit 100 million views at the beginning of this week. 

The rhythm of the song, the LiSA's excellent high notes and the music arrangement makes this song "The Song of the Year" for me.

The 100m Views Music Video

And so, here's the official music video:

[iOS Recipe] No. 2 - Handy Shortcuts

 

Very often, I'm seeing on iPhone screens of the people around me this small faint black square superimposed on top.

And so I learned that some are afraid of spoiling their home buttons if they are pressed too many times.

Such virtual button will minimise the use of the physical home button, thereby prolong its lifespan.

But this black square is too distracting to me, especially when I'm playing games.

It seems that there's a neat trick that does the same thing without having the black square appearing.

Since iOS 8, widgets are supported in the Notification Centre.

There are many apps in the App Store that allows user to create shortcuts icons that appears in the Notification Centre widgets.

One of them is AirLaunch.

 

The app allows the user to add shortcuts to contacts, web urls, apps and "System Actions".

 

 

The user can choose from a variety of System actions and one of which is the "Home Button".

When the Home Button is selected, it will appear as an icon in the Notification widget.

So, whenever you are in an opened app or game and you want to exit out to the home screen, you just have to swipe down to bring up the Notification Centre and click on the "Home" icon.

That will bring you to home screen without pressing the physical home button.

There are other similar apps such as Go Launcher, etc.

I love these apps a lot and use them on a daily basis.

<- Back to [iOS Recipe] No. 1

[iOS Recipe] My Post-PC Era Begins

I haven't updated this blog in about two years now.  I'm gonna start this series of "iOS Recipe" articles showing you guys how I make use of iOS and my iDevices in my daily life.

To start off, I'm gonna announce the beginning of my "Post-PC Era" in my daily life.

 

I've took the plunge and got the 12.9" iPad Pro.  As I foresee I'll be keeping lots of videos and images on it, I've got the 128GB model.

Of course, an iPad Pro alone does not effectively makes me Post-PC.  So, I've got a few accessories to go along with it.

Here they are as shown in the picture.

 

Let's list them down here:

1. iPad Pro 12.9" 128GB
2. Foldable leather casing
3. Magnetic Bluetooth full size keyboard that comes with the foldable leather casing
4. 2-in-1 stylus with ball point pen
5. Mini Bluetooth speaker
6. iFlash Lightning micro SD card adaptor
7. CloudFTP WIFI wireless USB device
8. iPhone SE

With the above accessories, my use cases and needs are satisfied.

Here's the list of my use cases:

1. Big screen display that shows more content on a single screen (the 12.9" iPad)
2. Ease of text input (the Bluetooth keyboard)
3. Precise interaction with the touch screen (the stylus)
4. Music listening at close distance when the iPad is charging at a distance (the mini Bluetooth speaker)
5. Reading large document and streaming videos from micro SD card (the iFlash Lightning micro SD card adaptor)
6. Backing up documents to micro SD card (the iFlash Lightning micro SD card adaptor)
7. Reading large document and streaming videos from USB thumbdrive (the CloudFTP WIFI wireless USB device)
8. Whatsapping from the big screen iPad (the iPhone SE)

So far, a few days into my usage, I did not touch my Acer Windows 10 laptop at all.

To conclude, I can say I can very much depend totally on the iPad Pro and accessories to archive my daily PC tasks that I used to do with my Acer laptop.

But, I being a Software Engineer that does occasional coding stuff with Visual Studio for C# and Netbeans for Java programs, I will still need to fall back to my Acer laptop for those.

Here are the individual shots of the various accessories:

 

 

 

 

As for battery consumption:

I'm able to get 9 hours plus of usage after full charge with 23% of battery juice left.

Not bad at all.

 

 

That's it for my first post on [iOS Recipe].

Watch out this space for more tips and tricks that I've encountered and used in my daily life routine.

Note: This blog article is full written using the iPad Pro with the stylus and physically keyboard.

My Most Memorable Brands

The good old days when English soccer matches on TV were free; Local school boys were groomed to become future soccer stars; Division 1 was the top of the leagues; Sharp and Crown Paints became my most memorable brands.

Red Hot Wallpaper on my iPhone 6

Sporting a red hot wallpaper on my 6 today!

My Favourite Less Well-Known 90s Singers' Songs

Here's the list of some of my favourite songs from four 90s female singers.

陶晶莹, while famous as a host, wasn't that super popular as a singer.

陶晶莹 - 天空不要为我掉眼泪 （1990）

徐雯倩 - 美丽的预谋 （1991）

陈冠蒨 - 你若爱我请你说出口 （1994）

侯湘婷 - 两个冬天 （2001）

I'm Recharged

Listening to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbscQj5AV6M

by the playground on a 26 degrees Sunday morning + 放空 = Total Recharge.

Haw Par Villa Revisited (21st March 2014)

Here I am at Singapore's Haw Par Villa after 20-odd years!

This is the first trip here for my daughters and the last time I was here I was about their age!

Other names for Haw Par Villa are Tiger Balm Gardens and 虎豹別墅.

The entrance stands majestically in the middle for a gentle slope.

Seems like they have maintained the structure well over the years.

The car park area at the foot of the hill just before the entrance.  Parking lots are not a lot but as the visitors here are not a lot as well, it's easy to get a vacant parking space.  Parking fee is $5 per entry.

The sign board that greeted us right after the entrance looks new and nice.

There are quite a number of outdoors displays.  Many are nice for taking pictures with them.

Here are more pictures of the outdoor displays:

Many displays come with description sign boards that explain the moral of the stories behind them.

There are nice sceneries to immerse oneself in also.

And finally, we arrived at the iconic attraction of Haw Par Villa - The 10 Courts of Hell.

Inside are the displays of what sufferings one will go through after death. The level of sufferings depend on how bad one's deeds that one has done before one's death.

The scenes are just too gruesome to mention here. I will leave it to your interpretation and imagination.

With the tenth court of hell seen, we made our way down the slope and exit out to pick up our car.

It's a memorable and educational trip for the kids while it's down memory lane for the adults.

iOS Timer Apps

I've used a few "timer" apps that allow multiple concurrent timers setting.

But I goes back to the stock Clock app for the timer because it's integrated into the lockscreen, showing the time left before the alarm sounds.

Just hope that iOS 8 opens up the lockscreen API to allow third party timer apps to display such info.

Software Project Code Names - Android vs Linux

Modern software projects like to use code names for their various versions.
You might be familiar with the ones for Android.

Just when you think that Android project code names are tasty... (and the latest Kit Kat is tempting..), Linux project code names are no less attractive than the Android desserts.

Here's a listing of all the code names used for the various Android versions:

• Android 1.0 - unnamed
• Android 1.1 - unnamed
• Android 1.5 - Cupcake
• Android 1.6 - Donut
• Android 2.0 - EClair
• Android 2.2 - Froyo
• Android 2.3 - Gingerbread
• Android 3.0 - Honeycomb
• Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich
• Android 4.1 - Jelly Bean
• Android 4.4 - Kit Kat

Yummy ...
What's interesting is that the names are in alphabetically order.
Interesting...

What you might not know is that a few years before Android came out in 2008, Linux Operating System was already adopting an alphabetically-ordered project code names.  That was 2006.

Here's the listing for the Linux project codename:

• 1.0 - Ada
• 2.0 - Barbara
• 2.1 - Bea
• 2.2 - Bianca
• 3.0 - Cassandra
• 3.1 - Celena
• 4.0 - Daryna
• 5.0 - Elyssa
• 6.0 - Felicia
• 7.0 - Gloria
• 8.0 - Helena
• 9.0 - Isadora
• 10 - Julia
• 11 - Katya
• 12 - Lisa
• 13 - Maya
• 14 - Nadia
• 15 - Olivia
• 16 - Petra

So there you are.
Now, do you prefer dessert's names or lady's names?

What is Innovation?

With the advent of mass consumer smartphone technology, phone manufacturers compete aggressively in becoming a more, if not most "innovative" company.

Apple, being the company that brought to the world a game-changing, life-changing revolutionary smartphone, is being challenged aggressively in this area.

How do I define innovation?

In my view, innovation involves having a new concept.  It can be evolved from old ideas.

The most important factor for it to be claimed as real innovative is that competitors try to follow suit and start copying.

Here's one that I consider an innovation.  Back in the days of resistive touch screen smartphones and PDAs, PalmOne was the leader.  However, there was a major issue in all those devices.  When they went out of battery juice, the data will be gone. A restart of the device by recharging will not bring back the data. You can only restore from the desktop.

Figure: The Palm Tunsten T2 with Resistive Screen

To resolve such shortcoming, PalmOne introduced a new way of making the data persistent even when the battery is flat.  They introduced NVFS, "Non Volatile File System" and implemented in their then flagship Palm Tunsten T5 PDA in 2005.

All was good. And competitors saw it succeed and copying began.

And sure enough, Microsoft followed not long later and came out the "Persistent Storage" in their Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

And all devices following that have persistent storage that stay beyond battery flat.

This is innovation.

And then in 2007.  Apple introduced a new way of interacting with the phone and the copying begins.

This is innovation.

Now, most recently, a certain smartphone company came out with many new features.

One of them allows you to pause your video by looking away from the screen.  Another one allows you to scroll your screen without touching the screen.  And then they tried to bring back the "stylus" from the dead.

What seem to others as innovation for the above three features do not fall under my definition of innovation.  They obviously did not arouse enough interest or mass market appeal for their competitors to copy these features.

2014 is a year which I really think new innovations are imminent.

Most Memorable Album Arts

Music in the 80s/90s really belong S.A.W (Stock Aitken Waterman), who have produced successful artistes like Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Rick Astley.

Here are 3 album arts of the cassette albums of them that I've bought.

Unlike the digital album art of today's music, those printed cassette album photos are so memorable.

I Love Chinese Rock

I love English rock ballads and Chinese rock songs. While my favourite Chinese rock singer is 姚可杰 of 东方快车, 信 is another power house I like.

Here's a string of good Chinese rock oldies that he sang live.

Nice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RdzkJ3dMcI

Another Widget for my iPhone

The jailbreak for iOS 7 has been released for near a month now. New tweaks keep pouring in.

One of the latest tweaks which I love a lot is "Live Weather Icon".

It changes the static icon picture of the stock Weather app into a live animated update of the weather condition of the current location.

It shows three information:

1) the weather condition, eg Cloudy

2) an animated image such as raining droplets and moving cloud, etc

3) the temperature

It's particularly useful for me as the workplace that I work in doesn't have windows and I've no vision to whether it's raining or now.

And when I put this icon beside the stock live Clock on the first home page, it feels right at home!

Love the iOS 7 Control Centre

So I've returned to iPhone after a disastrous experience with the HTC One.

Love the translucent overlay of the Control Centre over the background image.

This particular one is nice!

iPhone Photography at the Neighbourhood Park

I was having a relaxing time in the neighbourhood park on a cooling Sunday morning and decided to start a "iPhone Photography" post to share some nice pictures I've taken there.

Here's a close up shot of a nice flower:

And another one showing some big red ants having their morning work routine: