Category: Geekiness

Suzuki Swift Test Drive

So I finally walked into a Suzuki showroom today to check out the 2011 Suzuki Swift (GLX). Right after the drive, there were a few things evident:

The Swift is a really nice car. In person, it’s got a number of security features I like. Instead of having to dig out your keys, all you need is the key to be in your pocket, and you can open the car by pressing on the buttons on the door handles. Even better, you can open only the door you need, so if I’m driving alone, I can press once to open just the driver’s door instead of the entire car. Considering the scariness of Malaysian crime these days, it’s an advantage. Oh, and that single door thing applies to the boot as well. When I’m near the car, I can open just the boot instead of the whole car. It’s a pretty neat feature.

The boot space was surprisingly roomy and deep. I’m thinking that maybe it’d be big enough for a few bags. Note though, that it’s definitely smaller than my current Proton Iswara hatchback. It’s deeper yes, but it’s not longer. That means if I’m carrying longer stuff, the seats will definitely have to come down.

The seats were firm. Driving the car reminded me of getting my first Android smart phone; SO MANY NEW FEATURES TO PLAY WITH! I should have really taken my time to play with the car. The nervousness of going for the test drive meant that I didn’t spend as much time as I should to familiarise myself. The first thing that I did notice though were that I had a much wider range of view compared to my own car.

The side view mirrors were controlled by what looks like a joystick; twist left and right for their respective mirrors, then move it up, down, left and right for the angles. Nice. To start the car, press the brake and the Engine Start/Stop button simultaneously. The car jumped to life with a pleasant roar. Then it was time to actually drive.

The Swift has a 4-wheel brake disc instead of the usual rear brake disc, and it shows. The few times I pressed on the brake, it was actually rather hard and sudden. Definitely an improvement from my current car. Turning and pickup was quite good. The sound system was quite ok, by my standards. I’m not an audiophile, so as long as it plays music I think it’s good. The sound system supposedly has USB connectivity, and while I did notice it I didn’t get to use it. The USB connector was located under the audio buttons in a fairly sizeable recess behind the gear.

Which brings me to another point; unlike other cars I’ve driven before, there’s no indicator on the gear box to show you which gear you’re in. The displays are on the dashboard, where the odometer was. It was very disconcerting. However, this was offset by the fact that the gear hid the recess to dump your keys and wallet and mp3 player, so I might take it as an acceptable trade-off.

Mileage seems to be far better than my current car (well, the present ride is about 20 years old) at 500km per full tank, which works out to about RM60-RM70 (note: RON 95). The salesperson did warn me that the Swift doesn’t do as well as bigger cars when driving outstation, which was something I already expected. For in-town driving though, it handles well.

However, I did not really take the opportunity to really lean back and enjoy the seats. At first sit they’re hard and nice, while the steering fits well in my hand, but I’m still on the fence on that.

Price was about RM77,888 for the base model, which is what I would have gotten anyway (spending RM5,000 on the body kit which was basically all decoration is not my cup of tea) with a downpayment of RM8,000. I’m still thinking of this though, and I want to give the Ford Fiesta a try. We shall see.

[Geekiness] Unusual IRC blockage

If you’re in Malaysia, on Unifi, and find that you can’t use clients like X-chat, mIRC, or even Chatzilla, give this solution a try:

/server irc.nameofserver.domain [number]

Which would look something like

/server irc.beyondirc.net 5531

If it works, then it would be safe to say that port 6667 has been blocked. I say this because I know that I’m not the only person who has found that port to be blocked when trying to connect to an IRC network. Interestingly, accessing IRC via web browser works, just not the standalone clients, which led me to believe that the IRC port was blocked (6667 is the most popular port, after all).

Please let me know in the comments if this works for you.

Note to self:
Unifi’s tech support hotline is 1-300-88-1221
The frontliners do not know what IRC is. I feel old.

[Geekiness] So.cl, Microsoft’s answer to Google+

Right now in the tech industry, there are several giants; Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Apple. These are the household names, the ones that most non-tech-savvy users know.

Of these five, only Apple, as far as I know, has resisted creating a Social Media site, mainly because they feel they don’t need it. Facebook and Twitter are what I consider the most popular social networks today, and Google added a Plus to their stable of products to bring a social dimension to their search.

Yes, you read it right. Microsoft has also gotten into the social game. Specifically, their social initiative is “an experiment in open search. That means your searches on So.cl are viewable by other So.cl users and will also be available to third parties.”

This is certainly interesting, as it’s a ratchet up from what happened last week.

You see, on May 15, 2012, Bing rolled out Social Search, adding a social component to its usual search engines. According to PC World via Forbes, Bing now lets users ask their Facebook friends from within a search results page questions, so you’d get advice from friends to supplement whatever the search engine spit out. If you’ve used Google Search Plus Your World, it certainly looked like Microsoft had lifted the concept, though not the execution, from Google.

The next day, on May 16, 2012, Google announced that it was rolling out Google Knowledge Graph, adding a side bar that presents bite-sized information about your search items. It works for books (try A Series of Unfortunate events), places (see: Taj Mahal) and even people (e.g. Gina Trapani and Tom Merritt). Note though, that they are still in the process of rolling it out, and some computers may not see the Graph (I can see it on my home computer but not the office. Weird).

And it just gets better. Today, May 22, 2012, about a week after launching Bing Social Search, Microsoft has opened so.cl to public sign-ups. If you log in via your Windows Live account you’ll get in immediately. If you log in via Facebook, you’ll need to wait a bit (this was tested by a friend who used the Facebook login and got the notice that he was on the waiting list whereas I signed in on Windows Live about 2 hours and got in immediately).

So what does So.cl look like?

Spammy.

I’m not following anyone yet, but I’m seeing, in general, everyone’s search results. I also did a search for geminianeyes, and I got far more than I expected. Assuming that So.cl searches are powered by Bing, I’ve realised that it doesn’t just search for keywords; it looks for links as well, so among the things that were turning up in my search reults were places where I had commented and left my http://geminianeyes.com as the website in the comment field.

Um. No. If this is what other people will see when they search for me on Bing, I want no part in it. I would prefer my comments to appear to me, and not to any third party.

So.cl also has a feature called “Video Parties”, where you can watch “videos” with your friends. This seems to be a direct lift from Google Plus’ Hangouts feature, which lets you watch videos from YouTube. Hilariously, the first thing I see in the Video Parties is Youtube. However, there doesn’t seem to be any voice/video camera chat, only text chat, so it’s more reminiscent of those SMS chat while watching TV schemes you see on Astro and local Malaysian TV,

The only thing Bing is doing differently is that it’s showing off your search results to everyone logged into the network. Once you’ve done your search, you can click on stuff to add it to your post, which then gets posted to the stream. You can switch this feature off by clicking the Globe in your search bar to switch it to private.

What you search in Bing and other search engines are still private, but So.cl basically works on the basis that you want everyone to know what you’re searching for.

Um. No.

[Geekiness] Lowerin the temperature

So for the past few months I’ve been sweltering in the heat of my room. It’s been unbearably warm, and at first I thought it was because my room had poor ventilation AND the hot weather. Only after I realised that my computer itself was very warm that it hit me.

The cause of the heat could be my NVIDIA graphics card. A download and launch of SpeedFan reported that my graphics card was running at 61°C consistently, which would explain the heat. No wonder I was sweating like mad! The side of my computer’s case is open for better ventilation, so the heat came out from the computer and into the room, more or less steaming me alive.

So yesterday when I came home, I took out the graphics card and proceeded to give it a gentle “scrub” with some cotton buds. The amount of dust that came out was staggering. There was still quite a bit of dust when I was done, but I would need to get a pressurised air can to deal with those.

I plugged the card back in and checked the temperature; 51°C. And it more or less stayed that way. When I woke up in the morning, I was NOT, in a long time, sweaty.

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend!

Stuff I am learning so far

Spending at least 30 minutes a day learning something new. Usually this is Japanese with Byki (flashcard software) but I am discovering Skritter, Anki and Surviving Japanese are better.

Today was CSS day, and damn, now I know why people are into CSS. Sexy!

Sleepytime!

[Geekiness] Facebook and Instagram

So Facebook has dropped about USD1 billion for Instagram.

Facebook is, arguably, the number one social media network in the world today. Instagram is one of the top photo sharing and editing apps on mobiles today. If you have an iPhone, chances are you have Instagram (and most likely you’d have it on your phone too if you’re an Android user).

The interesting bit about Facebook buying Instagram is that they plan to keep the services separate for now (one may assume that Zuckerberg has learnt from the Spotify fiasco that not everyone wants their Facebook friends to know what they are listening to all the time). The New York Times has speculated that FB wants Instagram because of the latter’s strong presence in mobile.

I would agree but the NYT stops short of pointing out that Instagram doesn’t just give FB the leverage it needs to compete in mobile.

It misses the point that Instagram’s filters means it’s one-upped Google in posting photos; Google’s Picasa and Google+ Creative Kits lets users add effects to their photos, something that you could not do from within the browser for Facebook photos. I think this integration will be a big one, when it hits. Buying Instagram doesn’t just give Facebook the expert advice it needs to succeed in the iPhone app store (Instagram’s Android version leaves MUCH to be desired), but it’ll also give Facebook an advantage when competing against Google+.

And no, I’m not even counting Pinterest in this article. It’s not quite there yet.

[Geekiness] A tech boutique

I was reading a tech article today about Apple and the writer commented that Steve Jobs had taken Apple from a tech boutique to what is essentially the biggest gadget company today.

It took me several hours later to realise that on the surface, Apple is basically the Louis Vuitton of the tech industry. They’re expensive, a status symbol and horrendously, to all perceptions, exclusive. Yet they are also very well-made and have the distinction of being different enough to be a household brand name.

After all, you can always tell a LV bag from a distance, and until the Samsung Galaxy series, an iPhone too. A luxury brand indeed.

[Geekiness] BRB Headdesking

The geniuses at the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Committee) has decided that the Malaysian Tech Industry needs to be regulated. In fact, they’ve decided to draft a Computing Professionals Bill that requires a computing professional to not just register with them, but that registration will depend heavily on the Board’s whims. (Did I mention that you had to pay to be registered?)

The Bill also has a clause that states you cannot offer skills in which you have not declared for. In other words, if you have registered and declared yourself competent in C++, you cannot then turn around and offer PHP/Java skills, even if you were self taught. You’d have to go back to the Board and re-declare. Thereby more monies!

Erna has a more succinct reading of the Bill here.

To oppose it, Meling Mudin has posted details of the first review of this inane draft. If you can make it, please do. If you cannot make it, poke and prod your MP/ADUN and tell them you are opposed to this Bill.

Thanks to Bytebot for bringing this to everyone’s attention.

PS: Dear Pakatan MPs, DO NOT WALK OUT ON THIS BILL. Even if it’s going to be passed anyway, I would like to ask that you register your vote, so that at least there’s a record on Hansaard that you have opposed this Bill!

[Geekiness] A few quick notes

MINECRAFT FOR ANDROID IS JUST 10 US CENTS (about 50 cents Malaysian!). WOOHOO!

Paypal. I knew Paypal was an ass (trying to enforce censorship on Dreamwidth and removing the option to send payment without paying an interest without warning), Paypal decided to tell someone that you can use the Paypal Donate button to donate to a sick cat… but not a poor person. Paypal has since apologised, but their excuse rings hollow.

Also, because one of the trademarks of being a geek is by how much you shorten the time to do things, I listen to Tech News Today to catch up on news I might have missed (unlike Google News, a lot of their news are NOT about Apple!). :D

[Geekiness] LIBERATE THE DATA!

A few days ago, I was listening to This Week In Google. One of the topics they covered was data liberation, or how Google allows you to bring your data with you if you choose to leave their services. Of course, the data is missing one very important function:

It presents your data in the rawest format possible. For the average user, the kind that doesn’t know how to code, or possibly doesn’t care about it, this is counter productive, because often they can’t access their data in a format that’s easily understandable.

However, as pointed out by some people on the panel, those who are geeks or who really want to display that data are likely to either be more than capable to write the software on their own to make sense of the data or possibly hire someone to do that for them. It didn’t hit me until today that there is a name for such a system:

CMS, or Content Management System.

The thing about data is that when you export it, it’s in its rawest form. In other words, when you export your masterpiece of Google data, it comes to you as a mess of uncooked vegetables, meat and eggs. What a person who exports their data from Google is possibly looking for something that is half-cooked at the very least. In other words I’m looking at that needs only a proper container to be displayed, or for me to finish the last stage of cooking before serving.

I’d be thinking that possibly what would be the MOST ideal scenario is that when I export my data from Google, the food is already cooked. What I would need to do is transfer and make the food fit into a container. Google doesn’t have to do that with my data, that’s my responsibility, but damn wouldn’t I prefer my food to be served to me already cooked, I just need to decide how to present it.

This is where a CMS comes in. I was thinking that perhaps the data could be formatted into several common fields:

Photos
Status Updates
Links
Documents
etc etc

And all you would need is possibly some kind of CMS that would understand that basic structure and then allow you to drag and drop your data/stuff into folders that would be easy for you to understand. Hmm…