The Undeletable Cyberspace

The recent Amy event have re-enforced the reality that delete does not exist in cyberspace.

Once something is posted/uploaded and seen, whether its on forums, twitter, facebook, blogs, etc, it can be reproduced and will stay in cyberspace. It might fade with time and eventually forgotten but making it disappear totally is very near impossible.

Hence it is up to each individual one of us to be responsible for what we share and post. There is a price for sharing and that is once shared, you lost control of it and cannot take back.

Many a times we do not realise the danger of sharing too much. A simple and innocent example is like sharing your kid's birthday. We as parent post and share photos and blog post to celebrate the joy. But Date Of Birth is one of the questions banks use to "authenticate" their customers who calls in. So years down the road, this information might still be lingering in cyberspace. Did we just do a dis-service to our kid and make his bank access more vulnerable? Food for thoughts.

On the contrary, I just set up a twitter account after so many years. Look for me @roamingglass.

Roomba 770 - Automated Cleaning

We finally gave in and bought the iRobot Roomba 770.

We toyed with the idea of getting one for some time already but the high cost was the thing that held us back. Lilian cleans the floor every alternate day in the wee hours of the morning and she was just lamenting the other day about feeling tired and drained with all these chores on hand.

So I revisited the topic on iRobot and she was very keen. And the geeky side of me goes woohoo! So I surfed around and decided to contact Autovacstore.com. They were helpful with the queries and information I needed but I still couldn't decide on the model to get. So they were kind enough to bring down the models I have shortlisted namely the iRobot Roomba 560, 770 and 780.

You can get more information about the models at their website or their blog. We settled for the Roomba 770 because it has all the same technology and features of the top of the line 780 and its cheaper. Its missing some bells and whistles like touchscreen and lighthouse function and has less accessories, but we can live with that.

Here's the top and bottom of the Roomba 770.

The Roomba 770 cleans in a random manner. It has sensors to help it navigate around the house and has bumpers on the front. As we intend to use it when we are not at home, the randomness would not bother us. And it should eventually cover the house evenly over the week. Noise level wise, its not as loud as a normal vacuum cleaner but its not quiet either. Here a 3 minute video of it at the start of its cleaning circle for my house.


Here's the dust collected after 5 mins and after 4 days.

We have used it for a week now and so far it has only fail to return to the charging base on its own once. I found it on top of the base of the room standing fan. And it has been able to navigate itself out of the tight spots, weird angles and chair legs. There is some preparation that needs to be done before using it, like removing loose items from the floor but its the same prep work as normal vacuum.

We love it. In fact we were thinking why had we not bought it earlier? And it seems like a prefect time to get it as its Mother's day. Maybe next up is a dishwasher with bottle washing function for Father's Day? Ha.

Filco Yellow - Adding Sunshine to My Desk

Just replaced my keyboard with a dose of sunshine to brighten up my desk.

Filco Yellow Limited Edition. It's still the same Cherry MX Brown switch mechanical keyboard but with sunshine yellow keycaps. The LEDs are yellow too and the Filco logo is gold in colour. I feel so bright and cheery using it now.

Mechanical Keyboards

After contemplating for a long time, I finally got myself a mechanical keyboard. What the hell is that?? Well it's like going back to the old PC days when each keys under the keyboard has a key switch.

So what difference does it make? I was been told it suppose to improve the typing feel, since you do not need to "bottom out" each key to register them, allowing your fingers to "dance" while typing. I'm still getting use to it but it does feel better to type on. Maybe it just physiological. Maybe it will make me type and blog more.

Seems like the only readily available key switches are made by this German company call Cherry. There are a number of switches available from them, colour-named as blue, brown, black, red, etc. Each switch has it's own characteristically like clicky/non clicky (think typewriter sound), tactile/non tactile, and the force need to actuate (register the key).

This Mechanical Keyboard Guide contains very useful information about mechanical keyboards and the VR-Forum has a easy to understand table to help you decide which switch is suitable for you. However the best way to know which to get is to actually try out the keyboards with different switches.

The other really cool thing about mechanical keyboards is that you can change the individual keycaps and customise the way you want your keyboard to look. Of course not as power (or over!) the Optimus Maximus keyboard but good enough for me to have some fun spicing up the dull keyboard. Below is my first. :)

Google Translate

My personal feel about Google is that they are trying to be the first contact of everything on the Net. Meaning if you want to do anything on the Net, they want you to go to them first. Hence they been introducing loads of stuff.

One of the sites I like was the Google Map which I post earlier. The other which I find very useful is the Google Translate. Now you may ask, what's so great about Google Translate? Well I been using other translation sites for ages (love Japanese sites and also sometimes need to translate English to Chinese) and I have to say Google Translate is the best I have used so far.

It can essentially translate a phrase, the whole website or documents. It translate phrases on the fly and has many alternative words are available (especially when translating from English to Chinese). Go on, try it. And let em know what you like or dislike about it.

Planning for Penang with Google Maps

View Penang Trip 2010 in a larger map

I been dying to go on a holiday ever since our last holiday to Japan (Osaka/Tokyo) in 2008 when Lilian was about 4-5 months pregnant. We been toying with plans to go USA (just can't forget the awesome outlet shopping especially with USD so low now), Japan (I love Japan, period), nearby Clubmed resorts with childcare services and Australia.

However, Finance Minister (aka Lilian) rejected the proposals mainly due to financial priorities needed for Xavier. Anyway will do another post later on our cost of bringing up Xavier. Back to today's topic, so I proposed Penang. Its a short low cost flight, somewhere we haven't been to as a couple, has lots of yummy food and the total cost is manageable.

Having booked the flights and hotel, I'm now gathering information on where to go in Penang and what to do. I like planning for my own trips as I have the flexibility of going where I want to, seeing what I like to and eating what I love to. And given today's abundance of information on the Net (sometimes too much), its not hard. However, this time, I found a great tool, Google Maps.

I was looking for information on yummy Penang food when I came upon this Penang food blog call What2See by CK Lam. This site is very informative on Penang food and I got most of my leads from her blog posts. Besides great food photos and reviews, she also gives the map location via Google Maps.

Upon exploring the functions with Google Maps, I realise I can actually create my own map, eg a map for my Penang trip, and put in places I want to go on this map. And when sites like What2See has a map location link, I can easily add that yummy food locations onto my own Penang map. This makes trip planning easy and fun.

So how do you use it? Firstly, create a Google account if you do not already have one (if you already have a Gmail account, the login is the same). Next, search for the area you want your map are to be, in my case Penang. I then zoom into the area (my scroll button work wonders with the zoom function). You can also click and hold while dragging the map around to cover the area you want to.

Next, click my "My Maps" on the left and "Create new map". I name my map Penang 2010 in my case as I'm using it for our trip to Penang this year. Done? So now you have your own map of the area you want to. You can now either place your own "placemarks" or use placemarks set up by others.

For example, I like to try the grill chicken wings on What2See's "Which is your favourite Hawker Food stall in New Lane, Penang?" post. Right at the bottom of the post before the last photo she put a "map location" link. If you click on it, it will bring you to Google Maps where CK Lam has placed a placemark on the map. So what you could do if just click on the placemark and click on "Save to...". You can then select your map you have created earlier and it will be added there. Easy right?

So let's say you want to put your own placemarks, how to? At your map page, click the "Edit" button on the left column. You will then see three icons appear on the top left of the map, the second being "Add a placemark". Click that and you can now drop the placemark anywhere on the map. After that, you can name the placemark, change the icon if you want and add a description to it. After adding all the placemarks you want, just the "Done" button on the left column and that's it.

And before your trip, just click the "Print" button on the top right and it will print the map area you have selected and at the bottom list all the placemarks and the description you have put in. You might need to use different placemarks to differentiate the different places or just number them after printing out.

I wish we could have the map and details on my iPhone so it will be more convenient but seem like Google Maps run the mobile version with no function of "My Maps" and we will probably incur high internet cost overseas. The next best thing would probably a function to save a scrollable and zoom-able version on the iPhone.

If anyone has great must-go Penang places or must-do activities to suggest, please let me know. I still doing my planning for the June trip. Thanks.

Handyman Xavier finds iPhone fun

We were are Uncle Jeffrey's place and Xavier got dressed up as a handyman complete with helmet and spanner. So cute, Lilian had to take a picture for memories.

Anyway as many of you may know by now, the supposedly Apple iPhone 4G was leaked out by an Apple employee who unintentionally left behind the prototype in a bar. One year ago, I was still snubbing iPhones and wondering why people are going crazy over it. Well I now a happy iPhone user and I can't stop telling people how good and easy it is to use. If I had known how good they were one year ago, I would have bought Apple shares. It was about USD120/share one year ago and its now over USD260/share.

An example of how easy it is to use iPhone?

It's so easy that even Xavier can browse the photos on Lilian's iPhone with ease. So will I ever go back to a normal phone? No. I'm an iPhone convert now.