See what I mean about Vanessa being a gym kind of person? I went to the “fitness corner” (it really is in a corner…) with Vanessa. There was a proper pull-up bar for me, and while I was doing my own pull-ups, Vanessa copied. No need for coaxing or any prompting. She just pulled up on some other bar that she could reach. Alright, she isn’t pulling yet, but she can hang from the bar and swing quite well.

I’m learning to do pull-ups again. Yes. Finally, I’m trying to do it the over-graft method. The way that Vanessa was very naturally grasping the bar on her own without any instruction from me. But it’s not easy to switch, particularly after having been pulling the under-graft method all the time and still not being very good about it. The theory is that the over-graft method has more muscles to use, so it should be easier. I suppose that’s provided the muscles have been developed to begin with. So, well, they aren’t yet. It’s going to be IPPT time soon. I hope the over-graft will work out in time.

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Vanessa had her last dance class today. At least for now. We’re not continuing her class because she doesn’t seem very keen about it. In fact, most of the time, she simply doesn’t follow the class at all, except for the one or two activities which involve something that she likes. Running, and jumping, for example. Stomping her feet with her tap shoes too. But even then, she makes up her own variations of the routines. It’s a difficult time accompanying her for the class when she doesn’t want to listen.

But Vanessa is quite okay about going to the dance class. She doesn’t protest about going to dance class, unlike how she did about going to child care at the start of this year. I suppose it’s still an outing. She gets time to play with me. She gets to order iced milo, Yakun soft-boiled egg, ham and cheese sandwich, XXL fried chicken, etc. Oh and the last week, M&M chocolates from a dispenser. Maybe, the dance class is just too serious for her. The other kids generally seem to be quite serious about the class too.

Seeing her fondness in running and jumping, I think she might be a gym kind of person. But right now, she’s not terribly confident with playground contraptions. Shallow slides are okay, but the other day at a more complicated playground, she avoided anything that was just slightly challenging. I suppose it’s a good thing to be cautious. At least she wouldn’t be attempting dangerous stunts when we’re not looking.

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We were going to be at Lucky Plaza this morning, and I was looking forward to the Nasi Lemak there. It was the famed River Valley Nasi Lemak located in the basement of Lucky Plaza. It has been there for quite some time actually, and I’ve eaten there several times previously. It was quite good. But it seems standards have dropped tremendously since. The rice wasn’t fragrant. The egg was dry and hard. The chicken was tough. The fish was was tasteless. There was not enough ikan bilis (the peanuts were plentiful but the ikan bilis were a rarity). Even the chilli wasn’t nice either.

Perhaps about the only thing that barely “pass” was the otah. But Nasi Lemak is supposed to be a lot more than otah. I think this was a great disappointment.

I think my current favourite Nasi Lemak is the one at Dover Market and Food Centre. They aren’t very famous, so I thought I’d just mention them. The rice is super fragrant, and generally everything is good. They tend to run out of the Nasi Lemak items before mid-day IIRC (they sell other things too). Unfortunately, the whole area, including the market and food centre, is due to be demolished soon.

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Sounds impossible. But it is. That’s if you have about US$60K to spend on a PC. Yup, just one PC. Patriot built a PC with 40 TorqX SSDs and demonstrated copying a Blu-ray rip in 0.9 seconds. That’s really super fast. This is probably the year that SSD is going to come of age in consumer devices. It has been around, first becoming quite well known with its introduction as an option to the MacBook Air. It was too costly. The price has come down a lot. Perhaps by the end of this year, it might become competitively priced against a traditional rotating hard disk.

Then, rotating hard disks are going to get demoted in the storage hierarchy, to be used for backups, offline storage, external drives, etc. It’s like how hard disks have become so cheap that they are already replacing tape backups in data centres.

SSDs will have the important benefit of being more robust and shock resistant, important features for components used in a mobile device. It should also consume less power, although real world results are somewhat varied at this time. But when they do sort out the power efficiency matters, it will mean longer run time for mobile devices too, without having to be tethered to a power supply. Notebooks, netbooks and whatever-pads are going to get a lot more useful than it has ever been.

The last problem with mobile devices will be power. When will we get wireless power?

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One of the worst things about driving in Singapore (and perhaps many other cities in the world) is getting stuck in traffic jams. It’ll be really nice if we could all somehow have detailed realtime traffic information about all the major roads in Singapore. The Traffic Watch announcements on radio doesn’t work out very well. You can’t get the information when you want it, because you have to depend on the deejay of your chosen radio station to read off the information. Checking on the Internet isn’t always very convenient, particularly when you are already on the road.

I think the way Google Maps shows traffic information is probably the most convenient interface. Combined with location information, the map can automatically zoom in on your current location and show you traffic conditions around you. You can also easily browse over the areas where you plan to travel through.

Right now, Google Maps show colour coded roads that indicate the traffic condition. Simple and concise. There are just two problems with it, imho.

1. The accuracy of the information. I suppose the data being fed into Google Maps just isn’t accurate enough.
2. I’m sure if there is some description of what red, yellow and green means. I know, red is worse than yellow, which in turn is worse than green. But can we translate that into more definitive terms? Maybe even show the average travel speed on that stretch of road.

I’m sure all these will be very handy inputs to route planning, particularly when drive navigation is introduced for Google Maps in Singapore.

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It’s Sakae Sushi’s latest special. At least at the outlet in Junction 8. Warm Sushi. We dropped by this evening for dinner and were surprised by their new sushi servings. First it was one plate that we plucked off the conveyor belt. Our teeth felt a warm sensation as they sank themselves into the sushi. Hmm. The second plate we plucked off the conveyor belt had the same warmness. We weren’t the least pleased with the new sushi. I wonder, had the sushi been going around the conveyor belt since lunch time?

Even the hand roll we ordered came slightly warm and the seaweed wasn’t fresh and crisp. What is going on with Sakae Sushi today?

Well, we had our shortest dinner at Sakae Sushi ever. We just had three plates and we were done.

ps: You’re probably going to notice that pictures on my blog are going to be not-so-up-to-standard. Yeah, that’s because the new Nexus One’s camera isn’t quite as good the the N97’s camera.

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I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It’s a big buffet with plenty of food.

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I figure that anyone who uses a smartphone like the Nexus One is going to have a 3G data plan, so being able to hook onto a wireless network isn’t going to be so important. But anyhow, I thought I’d just make a small little community contribution by sharing how to configure the Nexus One phone (I suppose just about any Android 2.0/2.1 phone will work the same) to connect to the NUS wireless network in, well, NUS. But first, credit goes to the information posted in Answers@Comp. The GUI isn’t enough to get the config done.

Ok. What do you need? For folks who have not rooted your phone, you are out of luck. You will have to. As mentioned, the GUI doesn’t do what is needed. We need to get beneath the hood. So, before you go on, check that:

• Your phone is rooted.
• You have the adb tool (from the Android SDK).
• Your phone has USB Debugging turned on (under Settings, Applications, Development).
• You are comfortable with “vi”.

So here goes. It’s really quite simple. (I think the difficult part is really in the above.)

1. Connect to your phone over USB and run the adb shell (adb shell).
2. Edit the file in /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf and append the text from the block below. Put in your NUSNET userid and password in the identity and password lines. Save the file.
3. Stop and start wifi.

network={
        ssid="NUS"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
        eap=PEAP
        identity="<nusnetid>"
        password="<password>"
        phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
        priority=2
}

You should be able to connect to the NUS wireless (NUS SSID) network now. This NUS SSID is encrypted so your communication can’t be easily eavesdropped by other wireless users. You have the added benefit of auto-login. (The NUSOPEN SSID requires web-based captive portal logon, and the communication is also unencrypted.)

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I’ve used the Nexus One for a little over a week now. I think the biggest thing I will miss with my previous Nokia N97 is its camera. It’s quite capable of taking some really nice photos, like this shot of the Nexus One (as well as that in the previous post). This is one area that the Nexus One is trumped by the N97. Both phones sport 5 megapixel camera sensors, auto-focus, and LED flash (dual LED on the N97). But the bunch of photos I’ve taken with the Nexus One have been unimpressive, at least in terms of quality. The Nexus One is fast, though.

I guess I’ve had enough of the N97’s slowness. The handful of firmware updates across the months have certainly improved things. But the Nexus One is a whole lot faster, not just in its camera application, but in just about everything. It is like upgrading to a new generation of PC. Nokia made some strategic choices with its hardware specifications which did not pan out well for me. I suppose if anyone wants to label a phone as being a multimedia computer, they ought to make sure it will perform like one.

The other joy about the Nexus One is the size. Finally, after years with a couple of N-series phones from Nokia, I’m now holding something that actually qualifies as sleek and compact. It’s reasonably light too. The Nexus One doesn’t even feel bulky when contained in its neoprene pouch. It feels really solid too, particularly since it has no moving parts at all.

Then, while I had not expected to see improvements in terms of voice call quality, but I think the Nexus One does perform better than the N97. I’d have thought that Nokia would get basic voice call functionality working superbly. However, the Nexus One has the advantage of active noise cancellation from an extra microphone. The benefit of the activate noise cancellation is really at the other end of the call, so I don’t really know myself, but I’ve heard and read a lot about how it works beautifully.

But I think the most fascinating thing is, perhaps, that the Nexus One is more like a PC than any other phone that I ever had. More so than Nokia’s multimedia computers. I rooted the Nexus One within a few hours of receiving it, and I’m still discovering how much like a PC the smart phones have become. (Well, it’s not like I didn’t already know, but when you actually play with it yourself, you experience the things that you could only have read about previously.)

I have other “issues” with the Nexus One, but I’ll save those for another posting some other time.

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When Google announced the Nexus One last month, I felt it was an interesting development that has begun to change what an Android phone can represent. Some people will know that I have been, until then, rather anti-Android. There were two reasons: unimpressive hardware features (and uninteresting design too), as well as an open source development environment that I felt didn’t quite live up to the spirit of what open source was supposed to stand for. But, the first reason was beginning to fall apart with the launch of the Motorola Droid in end 2009, and now somewhat invalidated by the Nexus One. Finally, this is an Android phone that boasts features and hardware specifications expected of any decent smart phone of 2009 and what will come in 2010.

Despite what many other reviewers have said, I don’t think the Nexus One is the nicest looking phone. But it is certainly the best looking of any Android phone to date. (No, I don’t like how the iPhone looks either.) The fact that it now has really decent hardware, such as a superbly fast CPU, plenty of RAM, GPS, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, etc, makes it a whole lot more attractive as a serious competition to modern smart phones. Yes, I’m not going to be sold on to any Android phone simply because it is Android powered. The Nexus One also has, finally, a decent 5 megapixel camera that has been sorely lacking in other Android phones (save for the recent Motorola Droid), and although I never believed it would outdo the likes of any modern Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Samsung camera phone, I think it will be “passable”.

So, I became interested to see if the Nexus One will work for me. It helped that there were some real Nexus One at work that I can touch and play with. The Nexus One’s camera is surely a downgrade for me. But I think, overall, it had enough pull factors to turn the decision in its favour. I also like the fact that the phone is branded and sold by Google directly, with “stock” but yet cutting-edge software that hasn’t gotten mutilated and maimed by any phone manufacturer.

I’m still not very trusting of Google. But I think they won’t turn evil in the next couple of years, or at least not for the lifetime of this phone. So I decided to take the plunge to try out living in Google world. I’ve not been much of a Google-citizen before this.

The other day, I wanted to sync my data, and Google was “down” (well, basically the network broke somewhere between my working network and Google’s network). I think this cloud business is rather smokey. But this cloudy business seems to be very popular, so I’ll go along with it for now.

Probably another attraction for me is the fact that the Nexus One was like a computer. Yes, Nokia has been telling us their phones are multimedia computers. But the Nexus One runs really like a Linux PC. This will definitely be interesting to people who like to poke their fingers into operating systems. It’s time for me to catch up on some new recent technology.

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