Chatter Of The Squirrel

ASUS EeePC 4G 701

It’s been slightly over a year since the ASUS EeePC took geek-dom by storm. An ultra-portable little notebook, weighing under a kilogram, and petite enough to fit into a lady’s bag, or a man’s lunchbox. All for MYR1500 when it launched last year.

It’s brilliant. But even at such an attractive price, I don’t see myself getting MYR1500 worth of value out of something that I’ll treat as a toy. I don’t chug a lot of Starbucks. Nor am I so pretentious that I need the whole world to see me when I type, like some Hollywood wannabe. So, whilst I appreciate the EeePC’s beauty, it was not something that I’ll get. Not at that price.

Then last week, on an IT hunting expedition, I dropped by the store where a friend was working. I was looking to upgrade my LCD monitor, but my friend told me that the 22″ LG that was going at such a freaking bargain is already sold out. Tough. But while chitchatting, he also revealed that the store was doing a grand opening on the Saturday, and there’ll be limited units of EeePC going at MYR599.

Holy frack! At this price, even I can’t resist picking up the EeePC finally.

My friend assured me that with his inside pull, he can hold a unit for me. So Friday morning came, and I didn’t worry. Was thinking of making a trip during lunch and grabbing mine. But at 11:15am, it was all gone. The manager caught my friend reserving the unit and stopped him.

Tough luck. But there’s another 50units available on Saturday morning, and this time, my friend spoke to a colleague in the notebook department to hold a unit. So, there shouldn’t be a problem this time.

Saturday morning came, and I went to the store at 10am and found an orderly queue. And a long one at that. And a grand opening ceremony so the store will only open at 12pm.

Didn’t seem likely that I would get the EeePC again. But luckily that an HP friend of mine, has a sister who went to queue with her boyfriend, and she was able to get an extra EeePC for me!

Kindnesses from strangers I’ve never even met

Hurrah for making friends with random cat-lovers

Webhosting Rating

E-commerce isn’t only for big businesses anymore.

I frequently see random small entrepreneurs, usually with a niche hobby, who set up online businesses, then sell their wares on e-bay.

Prime example being Budget Boardgames, where I’ve just purchased my Agricola

Here’s a guy, probably with a passion for boardgames, who’s bringing in small quantities of popular games and selling them on ebay while promoting on blogspot. Without wanting to go to the hassle of putting up an e-commerce site proper, he was able to promote his wares just using a blog and with links to an e-bay store.

It’s simple.

But still… having a URL that ends in blogspot.com kinda kills the credibility a little. Without knowing the person behind the store, one might develop some preconceptions about the store. The ‘cheap’-ness of the set-up, while good for the bottomline, is also a negative point to a store that wants to do legitimate business. And with domain names so easy to buy nowadays, not getting your own dot.com might also suggest a lack of commitment.

I’m not being negative to this fine store. I bought my Agricola from them, and I’m very happy. But I’m merely using their URL as an example, and suggesting improvements.

It’s trivially EASY to get your own dot.com nowadays. I never once regretted my insanesquirrel.com.

But finding a decent webhoster, that’s harder.

There are tons of webhosts out there. Varying features, bandwidth, prices, operating systems etc. If you’re not IT savvy, this overload of information and choices will overwhelm you and deter you from making the leap to owning and hosting your own domain. I got lucky with my webhost. But one bad roll of the die, and you might end up with a server that’s down more often than up, and will give you a year of frustration until you can switch hosts… if you are up to the job of backing up everything you’ve built so far and then transfering it over to another host and cross your fingers again.

Here’s where you need a source that will rate the choices of webhosts out there. Distill the information down to what you need.

http://webhostingrating.com does just what it says. It rates the website hosting choices out there, and you can be better prepared and better informed before taking the plunge. Find something in your price range. Find a company with good buzz, so that you’ll be less apprehensive in this new adventure.

The articles are worth a read too.

Tech: Holux GPSlim236

Since I got such a sweet new phone, I’ve been shopping for accessories. One thing I looked for was a bluetooth GPS Receiver. Best place to shop for one cheaply will be to browse around Malsingmaps forums to look for people who upgraded their toys. They’re usually fellow geeks here, who take very good care of their toys.

Happened to find someone letting go of his Holux. This is one of the cheapest GPS receivers. Maybe rm250 new. I got for rm140. Pristine condition. It incorporates the SirfStar III chipset, which is actually faster and more accurate than the chip in my Garmin GPS60Cx. Supposed to work better in the urban jungle, compensating for radio waves scattering off building walls and such.

The Holux pairs with my Nokia 6120c. No problem. With the built in software, my phone can now give me the exact coordinates of my position…

Not that useful yet…

Need a software that can put a map on my phone. Figured that I can’t go wrong with Garmin Mobile XT. So I got the software here.

And I find out that the Garmin software will ONLY work with Garmin’s own brand of BT GPS receivers… They didn’t throw all that development money so that people can use their software without buying their shit.

But, they also give you the option to BUY the software, which will come inside a micro SD card, then you can use any brand of BT GPS receiver to work with GMXT. It’s the same program, but with an unlock code keyed to the SD card. So you can’t copy it out to another card and share it.

Another thing you can do though, is find a keygen. Then you can write your own unlock code and put it in your own SD card.

Well, obviously I used the most expedient way to get my Holux working with the phone. Who’s got 2hrs to research all this stuff and dig around for an obscure keygen?? Buy the Garmin software here.

Anyways, managed to get everything working beautifully.

Pay Per Post

Came across this website while I was just surfing around.

Being able to make money blogging doesn’t sound like a bad idea. If it works, that is. And if you believe testimonials, then it really is working for a great number of people.

I’m going to give it a spin, and see how much money I can get out of it. Will keep everyone posted. They promise to pay USD$20 just for this first post on my blog telling people about this. It’s a nice neat number, and I just so HAPPEN to need $20 of Paypal right now to buy something from http://miniaturementor.com

Earning opportunities will be relative to the popularity, and Google Ranking for the website. So far, I think my Google rank is still 0. I may have a dozen readers, but very few people linking to my website.

I wonder if I can elevate the ranking by hosting Edison Chen’s photo album…

Advertisers will give PayPerPost the details of what they want. And if your site meets their requirements, mostly your rankings, then you can take advantage of that opportunity. Book it. Write something about the product that the advertiser is trying to push. And then get paid.

Such opportunities can pay anywhere between $5 -$150+. That I’ve seen anyway…

Nokia 6120 Classic

Woke up before dawn and drove to KLIA on Thursday morning.

My aunt was transiting there, and had a package from my sister. A Nokia 6120 classic. Unlocked at last!!

My sis got it free for renewing a 2yr contract with 3-Network. She brought it to me last month, and I failed to unlock it myself. Nor could anyone at LowYat. So she had to bring it back to Melbourne, and luckily the company was willing to unlock the phone for no charge.

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

A new phone after 4+ years of using my Siemens S65.

OLD

NEW

Step 1: Transfer Contacts data from the Siemens to the Nokia.

Not as easy as it SHOULD be…

I’ve been saving phone data on the phone’s addressbook itself. Not in the SIM card. I store multiple numbers for each person, birthdays, addresses, and sometimes their car license plate number (so I know what car to look out for when a friend is supposed to pick me up). Can’t do all that on the SIM card. So, I somehow have to back up the contacts data on the Siemens.

Should have been easy enough. I still have my Siemens data cable. Bought it cheap off Lelong.com years ago, when I flashed the firmware of my S65 with the more updated version of the S6C firmware, the Chinese version, which had given me a more stable phone with Chinese text input to boot.

Then I need the software. Siemens should have a Mobile Phone Manager. Which I can’t find on their website. Siemens sold off their cellphone business to Benq several years ago. And thus no longer host the software. And on Benq’s website, despite having taken over these products years ago, have yet to host the software either.

Took me ages trawling through forums etc to find a copy hidden in a forum somewhere. Softpedia has a copy with a corrupt zip file.

And after all that. The software doesn’t detect my phone. Maybe something’s wrong with the data cable. Haven’t used nor touch it in 4yrs and it just dies like that??

I should just send the Contacts data from the Siemens to the Nokia one by one via Bluetooth. (Bulk sending doesn’t work). One by one for almost 200 numbers.

But what kind of a programmer will I be if I did that? A programmer is someone who, when given a 1 hour job, will spend 59 minutes to find a way to do it in 1 minute.

There happens to be a PC-Fair today. So I head out. Good excuse to drop by Petaling St for my favourite wantan mee.

The PC Fair was rather meh. The only thing special was a booth selling a never before heard Jap brand UMPC (Ultra Mobile). About the same size as an EEEPC, twice the price, but with a slim DVD drive.

Picked up a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle. And a 4GB micro-SD for my new pretty phone.

On the way back, I met up with a random guy near Ikea, and bought some second-hand bike stuff. More details to follow another time…

Back home, with the Bluetooth device… Still not working.

Downloaded some other phone backup software. Nada.

Until… I downloaded the latest BlueSoleil Bluetooth driver/software, which also works on x64 Windows. (And the necessary crack from Astalavista.)

Then I started making some progress. Screw the Siemens software. A most useful alternative is Mobtime Cell Phone Manager. With this, I could finally connect to my Siemens. Also managed to pull out my SMS archive, of a few hundred SMS that was ‘keep-worthy’.

Now, it should be as simple as connecting my NEW 6120 to the same software via Bluetooth also…

BUT NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Mobtime CPM doesn’t support the 6120 yet!! S.F.D.!!!

But there’s another way… I can export my contacts list into Outlook Express. This feature is only available in the registered version of Mobtime CPM. Then I save those exported contacts into a .vcf file. Load these contacts into my Outlook Express Addressbook.
Install the Nokia Phone Suite for my 6120. Let it hunt for contacts from my Express Addressbook.

And it’s done.

Finally.

At 2am.

Step 2: Finally explore all the other cool things I can do with this phone.

Like listening to Third Eye Blind on it.

It even comes with Realplayer. And the first video I converted and uploaded into my phone?

This.

Why wouldn’t I want a video of an alien girl on a Vespa smacking people’s head with an electric guitar?