thesngs

After missing out on the HTC Diamond, I’ve been holding out for the next phone upgrade. I was tempted by the Diamond 2, but it seemed too expensive, and HTC still stubbornly refuses to put in a 3.5mm audio socket. Then the Omnia II was announced, and caught my eye. Specs-wise it looked great, and when Singtel finally launched it, the price was great too. But I still had to wait a while till my 21-month contract ended, before I finally made the upgrade.

Some impressions after about a week or so of use…

The good:

• Fantastic-looking screen! AMOLED technology is awesome - without the bright backlight that washes out the colours on a typical LCD screen, blacks look blacker, and colours look deeper and richer. Photos actually look better on the phone than on a laptop LCD screen. And the WVGA resolution means crazy-sharp text and images with no visible laggies/pixelation.
• GPS lock is super fast. Other GPS-equipped phones, or even standalone Bluetooth GPS receivers I tried before were simply no match for the Omnia II, which locked in a fix in seconds each time I tried it.
• Some nice bundled software. Midomi is cool, and NAVFone comes with seemingly up-to-date maps for both Singapore and West Malaysia.
• Camera is pretty good. At least, much better than on the phones I’ve had before.
• Video playback is great, based on the sample videos. Somehow, it’s got problems playing back the .m4v files I have though.
• 8GB of internal storage is more than enough for me now. And when that get’s filled up, there’s always the MicroSD slot.

The not-so-good:

• The default TouchWiz Widget home screen was too sluggish, and lacked some basic essential (at least to me) functionality, like displaying a list of my upcoming appointments. One of the first pieces of software I downloaded and installed was PointUI. With PointUI replacing the widget home screen, I have everything I want, and it is silky smooth.
• The glossy black body isn’t to my liking - it just feels too slick and oily. I would have preferred something matt. Or something that feels like the soft, rubbery body of the Touch Dual. Or matt metallic would be great.
• No threaded messaging! The customized, ‘TouchWizzed’ messaging app was dog slow when accessing my inbox of a couple of thousands SMSs. Thankfully, after I switched to PointUI, PointUI launches what seems to be the default Windows Mobile messaging app, which is much more responsive, if plain-looking. However, even this default messaging app wasn’t left untouched - the message listing looks the same, but when you click on a message in the list, it launches Samsung’s own app to view the message (and subsequently, for replying as well). The problem is, this customized message viewer doesn’t handled threaded messages, so even when I tweaked the registry to turn on threaded messaging, the message list shows the threads correctly, but when you click on a thread, Samsung’s app only shows the most recent message in the thread. In short, no threaded messaging, whether you are using Samsung’s messaging app, or the ‘default’ Windows Mobile one.

That’s what I can think of for now. All in all, I’m quite pleased with the device. The not-so-good points aren’t that critical that I can’t enjoy the device for what’s good about it. Samsung has promised that the device is upgradeable to WM 6.5 - let’s hope this will only make it better. And I certainly hope the update will be directly obtainable from Samsung, without Singtel’s interference.

I met up with an old ex-colleague recently, after the Army Half Marathon (he finished 10+ minutes ahead of me…), for a chat. We got back in contact through Facebook, and when I found out that he was also into running, and also participating in the AHM, arranged to meet after the event.

We had a good chat over tea & toast, and I found out that for a number of years now, he has been running a one-man-show company doing business software solutions for local SMEs - stuff like order processing, etc. While the initial starting-up period was tough, things have since gotten quite nicely on track - he has regular business from existing customers for things like maintenance or enhancements, and these satisfied customers also refer new prospects to him.

It’s hard to describe, but I somehow felt very comforted, very at ease, knowing how nicely things are going for him. As I thought about it more, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something very *right* about what he was doing. He works hard, doing what he is good at, treats his customers decently, and from this, he enjoys fully the fruits of his labour.

Compare this to someone who slogs in some big faceless corporation, contributing to some CEO’s multi-million salary, all the while wondering whether his efforts will be appreciated by the company or recognized by his boss, or even whether he will still have a job the next day. I guess I’ve gotten quite disillusioned with big corporations lately, seeing the kind of things happening around the world during the economic crisis: executives in the US flying in private jets to ask for tax-payers’ dollars to bail their companies out; the big boss in my own wife’s company having the sheer lack of shame to justify why he needs his company to maintain a private jet for his use, while just having retrenched thousands.

Looking at it one way, it is about decency - there are decent ways to make a living, and there are ways that are not. My old friend is making a decent living, and it makes me happy to know that.

It is also about getting an honest reward, for an honest day’s work. My friend has that, and it makes me happy to know that as well. My wife, who works ridiculous hours due to the people spread around the globe that she needs to be in touch with, doesn’t, and that saddens me.

It should have been easy - not a stroll in the park, of course, but I’ve done it a few times prior to this, each time with an improved timing, so I had actually come to expect the same this time.

Well, sometimes, things just don’t line up the way you want them. Sure, with training (done right), you can increase the chances that they will, but there’s no 100% guarantee. Perhaps I didn’t eat enough before the race, or drank the wrong thing, or maybe my ankle (strained from a run the week before) needed more time to heal. In any case, things started falling apart about 3/4 of the way into the 21km. Legs hurting, energy sapped, and aching in places I wasn’t expecting would ache, I took way more walking breaks than I had planned to, and ended up finishing more than 10mins off what I was arrogantly expecting. With a painful ankle. And a humbled ego.

In most sporting events, only the top participants get medals. But in mass runs like this one, everyone who finishes gets one. It’s the exact same medal for everyone, but it means different things to each finisher. This time, mine is special - it is not a symbol of victory like medals typically are, but a reminder of my caving in when I was expecting a triumphant PR. And that’s why it is more precious than the others I’ve gotten.

I guess it’s such things that makes this whole running thing intriguing - there are lessons to be learnt, goals to set and work towards, and like in this case, opportunities to reflect after falling short. Do I keep running after this? Guess I’d better - there’s a bigger race coming in December that I’m already signed up for.

Just exceeded 1000km on Nike+ after my last long run on Saturday. The running’s been good lately - nice and smooth, not hurting anywhere, and I think I’m getting better at pacing myself. The last long run, I ran down to the park connector (which seems to connect nowhere…) along Sungei Serangoon. This week again, for the second Saturday in a row, I spotted the pair of eagles(?), and this time they flew from the trees on the forested bank opposite and went right overhead. That was a good run

The Army Half Marathon is the weekend after next. I should be able to at least maintain a similar time to my last half, which was last Dec’s Standard Chartered. I also just signed up today for the full marathon at this year’s Standard Chartered. Must train seriously; while I think I should be able to finish it, I don’t think I want to finish by walking the whole of the last 10km and taking 7 hours to finish. Not to take anything away from my colleague who did that last year - I’m sure covering 42km on foot, however you do it, isn’t easy - but I really want in my first full marathon to finish with somewhat strongly. So I’ll need a training plan. The typical ones I’ve seen are 16-week long, which means that I’ll have to start right after the Army Half!

Just came out from a 4-hour lab session with a group of students. It was supposed to be a 3-hour session, but I made a few stay back until they had completed what I wanted. And I refused to just show them the solution - I wanted them to see how weak they were.

It was supposed to have been fun - they should have been learning about creating phone apps that can send and receive SMS. But instead, they spent most of their time mired in itsy-bitsy little details, which they should not be struggling with at all by now. They are second-year students, and have already spent more than a year learning programming. And still, they struggle with things like incrementing a variable, storing values in variables, syntax for calling a method, etc. It was supposed to have been fun, but their own struggles with these things took all the fun out of it.

And it’s always like this with programming - students take 2 steps forward in one module, then once it’s over, it’s 2 steps back again. When they never progress beyond these fundamentals, they can never move on to enjoy the fun things you can do, at more advanced levels. If they were learning to cycle, it would be like they were perpetually clunking along on training wheels, never getting to appreciate the joy and freedom of racing along on a proper bike with the wind in your face.

How can we get them to move on, to make lasting progress? *sigh*

I’m turning off comments for now, coz for ages these bloody fucked up vermin spammers have been spamming me with shit postings selling viagra and other trash. These assholes ought to be shot and hung out to rot. Maybe one day I’ll install one of those Captcha plugins, but for now, no more comments.

Now, that’s a phrase people would use only to describe athletes like Usain Bolt or Haile Gebrselassie. I just read this article on Wired, however, which focuses on the design of our toes to say that the human physiology seems to be designed for distance running.

That led me to recall a documentary I happened to catch, where David Attenborough spoke of an African tribe that practised something called ‘persistence hunting‘. Essentially this is a form of hunting big, fast game (such as antelope), rarely practised today, where the hunter essentially tracks and chases the prey down to exhaustion, often in the hot sun. Basically, these animals, while capable of fast running for short distances, are unable to regulate their body temperatures effectively to maintain prolonged running. So by repeatedly chasing the prey, which runs away, then quickly tracking it down before it has rested sufficiently to recover, and chasing it again, the animal eventually collapses from exhaustion and is there for the killing. Of course, this requires of the hunter much endurance running, and is also helped by his ability to keep cool by sweating, and hydrated by carrying or extracting water from the surrounding vegetation. Some archaeologists/anthropologist theorise that this might have been one of the earliest ways in which our ancestors hunted - being slower and weaker than these animals, and not having invented projectile weapons like the spear or the bow and arrow, our only physiological advantage was our ability to sweat, and also our ingenuity in taking advantage of our surroundings.

Somehow, I find the knowledge of all this extremely satisfying. It makes me feel that when I go for a run, I’m getting in touch with a very primitive and fundamental part of myself, discovering a side of God’s design in all people that unfortunately non-runners do not see or appreciate. I may not be a great runner among other runners, but all humans are built to run, and run long.

It amazes me, the lengths to which people can voluntarily blind themselves when it comes to Apple, in particular their iPhone. Let’s see: out of the box it can’t cut/paste, shoot video, do MMS, act as a wireless modem for your laptop, do A2DP, … And when it gets cold in winter, and the iPhone lover needs to keep his hands & fingers warm in gloves, he needs to get special gloves, like these here, so the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone can recognize your fingers.

But hey, the damn thing’s from Apple, so all is forgiven. And never mind that one of them makes your hand look like NightCrawler. It’s good to know many human beings can be so forgiving.

Damn. I was hoping the price of the Diamond would drop, but all along it stayed at $488 from Singtel. Then one day, I saw on singtelshop.com that it was listed at $288! I was overjoyed - nothing was stopping me from getting it now. So I logged in and tried to recontract for the Diamond, and saw that dreaded ‘Out of Stock’ image overlaid on the phone. Subsequently, I’ve shopped around at a couple of brick-and-mortar Hello shops and dealers, and all of them are out of Diamonds. Sheesh, there goes my object of desire. Now maybe I’ll just have to hand on to my Dual, and see if anything nice comes up from HTC in the coming months…

*Sigh*. Haven’t been running for… 3 weeks plus now, since the SCSM. The week of SCSM, legs were aching, and so I rested for some days. Not long after that, I foolishly shared a drink with the wife who was not fully recovered from an infection, and that was it - I’m still out of action, after more than 2 weeks. I’ve always suffered especially badly from this phlegmy cough that can take ages to go away, and which I just hate.

I’ve read that the immune system is weakened right after a bout of hard, strenuous effort, like running a marathon. OK, for me, it was ‘just’ a half-marathon, but I guess for me that’s strenuous enough. I remember reading in some book about the Tour de France, of how paranoid the cyclist are about hygiene and keeping the germs away. For them, when they ride in the TdF, their immune systems are probably in this compromised state for the entire 3 weeks, and the stakes are high - one stupid bug can cause a year’s training to go down the drain.

This lack of running the past few weeks seems to be affecting me… I’m lethargic, grouchy, etc. Hmm, or maybe it’s just having to go back to normal work after all the short weeks and holidays? Anyway, hope to be back on the road again soon!

Note to self: Be especially watchful of personal hygiene after a race, and after long runs.