Thankfully with Google maps and my blackberry I can pretty much map up my route from and to anywhere in the island. Of course this is doable in other smartphones as well that supports Google maps, including but not limited to iPhones and any phone with android OS.

without you my life would be so much harder…

Anyway, it surprises me how so many people are not aware of google maps for their phones yet. So I took a few screenshots the other day when I was bored. Mapping your way is very easy with the map application, just like their web Google maps.

Use their “get direction” option and fill in a start point and end point like usual. Don’t forget to change your “travel by” option to Public transit.

Google will then give you a few options to choose from and estimated travel time. keep in mind they will also take into account rush hour traffic so you can change the date and time option to get the closest travel time estimate.

It will also give you a step by step guide on how to get to your destination. They are ridiculously accurate most of the time, but of course take their walking direction with a grain of salt. don’t be like that woman who got hit by a car because she listened to google’s suggestion to cross the road without proper crossing place.

If you click “show on maps”, it will draw you the route. Singaporeans can probably guess where this is =P

One of the feature i LOVE the most is their real time GPS, which again is ridiculously accurate most of the time (unless your network is messing up and you get slow connection). From there you could see where you are and the direction you are traveling to. I find this useful when I travel to a place I’ve never been to and I don’t know when to get off the bus! It also works when you’re walking, so I never get lost!

Also if you hover any bus stop icon on the map…

A little pop up will come up and tell you the name of that stop. You can then click on it to view more info and select transits that are available in that stop:

Like so! It will even tell you the approximate time each line will get to that very stop. HOW AMAZING IS THAT!

THANK YOU for making my life so much easier, Google!!

Here’s a quick picture of my desk:

The wallpaper has since changed to an FFX wallpaper that spans through both screens. i’m not exactly too fond of FFX (I played the version with english dub… ’nuff said), but it’s the best dual screen wallpaper I could find at the moment. It’s the one with Yuna and Tidus in the water. If you’re even remotely familiar with the Final Fantasy franchise, you’d know what i’m babbling about.

Also, in attempt to make this blog cleaner I’ve consolidated all of my failed attempt at the 365 project into one post. You know, all the seven pictures i managed to take earlier this year. You can view the post here.

Thanks to Web Design Ledger for featuring my website on their article here. It’s an honor, though I really need to re-design the site.. it’s almost 3 years old now :x

Yeah, I know, it should be simple enough but when you have vista and are forced to restart your computer five times within an hour, it wasn’t so easy. i guess it also didn’t help that i refused to read any guide since i believed it should be simple enough. and it was, if you know what you’re doing..

Anyway, quite ironically, I’m writing a step by step guide for future reference and to help anyone who might be having the same trouble. Note that this is only for transferring media files (pictures, songs, videos, etc) via bluetooth, not syncing your data. Also note that your computer might come with a different Bluetooth manager program, so I can’t be sure if everything will be exactly the same.

1) Turn on your blackberry bluetooth and set it to “discoverable” under bluetooth option. This should be pretty straightforward.

2) On your computer, double click on the Bluetooth manager. In my case they are automatically loaded on start up so I always have the bluetooth icon on the lower right hand corner of my screen.

“APOLLO” is my laptop’s name :P

3) On your laptop’s Bluetooth manager, select “New Connection” to pair up your blackberry to your computer

Select custom mode and click “next”

Your laptop find your blackberry, whatever you’ve decided to name it (mine is “ichaberry”). Click next.

On the next screen, choose the one called “BlackBerry Bypass Service”. I dunno what it means, but I’ve tried the other two and they gave me weird responses. Dial-up would always ask for password upon connecting (which i don’t have) and the second one would make your berry’s screen turn white. I think it’s supposed to be used with a software from RIM.

At some point it will ask for a pin number on your berry (but i forget on which screen). When that happens just enter some random number and then enter that same number on your computer when prompted. You won’t need this number again after.

4) Your device should now show up in the Bluetooth manager window.

I chose that moon icon, so yours might be different. If it hasn’t already done so, connect the device to each other by double clicking on your berry from the bluetooth manager.

5) After your device is connected (you also have to confirm connection on your berry), go to the Wireless File Transfer of your bluetooth.

6) The Wireless FTP will then pop up and search for your device again. When that’s done you can start adding files to be transfered over to your berry! Don’t forget to put a check mark next to your device.

Yes, I like her new song… =) she’s a cutie pie!

7) Before you hit “send” on your laptop, go to your blackberry’s Media and select “Receive from bluetooth” from the main menu. This is important!

8) Click “Send” and watch it go!

ta-da! your blackberry should be receiving music / picture / whatever else you’re sending. :)

Like I said, it’s pretty simple and intuitive enough (except step 7, i guess.. i found that on accident while playing around with the berry), but my laptop has this weird habit where sometimes the Bluetooth manager refuses to connect to any device and I would have to restart my laptop for it to work normally again. No idea why… but i’ll just blame it on the fact that my laptop runs Vista.

Thankfully after just a few google searches I came across this post which offers an acceptable work around to this problem, but the author’s RSS reader of choice differs from mine – I prefer to use google homepage rather than google reader.

Thankfully (again) the work around for creating the same bookmarklet is quite easy, i only had to modify the javascript a little bit to create this nifty little button:

When you drag this button to your bookmark bar (just follow the instruction from the post i linked above), it will let you choose whether you want to add an RSS feed to google homepage or google reader.

I guess you can call this post “How to add RSS feeds to your Google Homepage / Reader with Google Chrome” but that title was too long for me to put on the blog title :P I know this is hardly a ground breaking discovery, but if it helps me i’m sure it will help someone out there!

Well, guess who made the switch to Chrome?

I know two months ago I said I would not switch to chrome due to their lack of full PNG support, but after seeing just how much faster websites load in chrome, i am convinced. I’ll make the sacrifice of seeing jagged-y images:

The image above shows Firefox on the left and Chrome on the right. note how the buttons are smooth on firefox. (white spacing is not handled differently in both browsers, i just took the chrome screenshot after i had saved my draft so there is that extra space below the buttons)

Chrome also does not support the firefox extension that I largely depend on when debugging: the famous Web Developer extension. but for this one i can always just switch over to FF whenever i need that extension! :P

In conclusion, my feedback for chrome: A+++ WOULD USE EVERYDAY

anyway, the first one i learned about is how to utilize the custom fields. i’ve always known about this feature, but i didn’t really have a reason to use it until one of my clients requested it on his blog template. now i love it and it totally opened up a whole world of possibilities! will incorporate this somehow to my next blog layout!

second one is how to tweak wordpress so that i can display posts in a page other than the main page. there are really two ways of going about it, but i like one better than the other. also learned how to make custom templates for different pages in the process.

anyway, i went home early today because i was feeling sick. i’ve been sick since yesterday, but i got up today feeling better… except that halfway through the day i realized i’m still sick. so i went home and slept for another two hours, woke up with migraines and tried to distract myself by watching Gossip Girl and House while lying around in bed. now i am feeling much better! and doing work to make up some of the lost time.

it was pretty much love at first sight. LOVE the button, the simplicity of the tabs & menus, the way it works with Vista’s aero theme… everything! sadly, i quickly discovered they don’t seem to support PNG transparency yet :( i can’t live seeing these imperfect jaggedy images on the net!

anyway, can’t wait until google chrome reaches perfection. i’ll be the first to download it.

while trying to find out what the hell it is that smashing magazine author uses (at first i thought it was firefox with some sort of custom theme) i came across an FF theme that somewhat simulates the look and feel of chrome. it’s called Chromifox, and that’s what i’m using on my FF!

I hadn’t expected it to be an April Fools joke since it’s about a day early for that, so I read the article with delight and “oooh”‘s and “aaah”‘s for the excellent-sounding browser from Microsoft (!). I thought, “wow, Microsoft finally did something about their crap of a browser? AND they actually thought about us designers / developers who have to deal with cross-browser compatibility? surely this cannot be real!” but believed it anyway, cause hey… it’s Smashing Magazine!

it wasn’t until i read further down in the comments that I discovered the article was a hoax. and along with it comes my hope crumbling down for IE ever being a browser of choice for me.

ANYWAY! GREEK has started their new season!! i’m quite excited :D it’s my only guilty pleasure other than Gossip Girl, so don’t hate. i’ve missed Casey, Cappie and the rest of the crew

i found this useful article on how to get rid of the hack, and i’m changing all my passwords just in case. i don’t think anything were compromised… but even if it was, the passwords i used on this domain is thankfully my generic password, which does not work on my “important” stuff.

as you can see, everything is now fixed. i think i’ve removed everything mentioned on the article. i’ll also upgrade my wordpress version since obviously the one i am using right now (2.6) isn’t very safe!

anyway, what have i been up to lately? i have tons of pics to put up. here’s a quick preview:

• Went to Sarah Brightman concert with N on Dec 20th. LOTS OF PICS to come! she was awesome :)
• Went to a couple holiday parties, also with N and my family (honestly, from now on whenever i do stuff you can safely assume it’s with N and/or my family. i’ve been a hermit. i haven’t even seen Kat since my NYC trip, which was like.. what, two weeks ago?!)
• Was sick this week. yes, even on christmas
• splurged on karmaloop.com sale! was pissed when i found out today they raised the discount to 60% off. i bought stuff when it was 50% off >:( anyway, i have a repcode if anyone wants to shop there! it’s ME6639
• Went to Christmas eve mass with family, then off to spend x-mas with N’s family. they got me gifts! :) so thoughtful! saw a couple of movies: Slumdog Millionaire, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 7 pounds and Religuous (a documentary by Bill Masher). all were a worth while watch.

anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!! i hope yours were as great as mine :)

(for anyone who doesn’t know, Apollo is my white Sony VAIO CR laptop)

turns out it was super easy. i just opened the base of my laptop, located the memory slots right away and popped one of the sticks out. i did have a bit of a trouble popping the new memory stick in. i didn’t read the manual because, as i mentioned, i was very excited. i booted up the laptop and noticed that i only had 512mb (vista runs extremely slow on 512mb by the way) which means the 2GB stick was not properly installed. so i opened Apollo up again, read the manual and installed it correctly this time. turns out i had to insert the memory at an angle and then push it back until it snaps in with a “click” sound. then i booted up the laptop for the second time, and it worked wonderfully without any more trouble. my baby detected the new memory right away :D

currently have 2.5GB cause i’m greedy and didn’t wanna take out the other 512mb stick i already have in there :) the difference is crazy! Apollo boots up in under a minute now :D :D i love my baby even more :D

anyway.. here’s some random pics i forgot to upload from a couple weeks back

me getting very very excited to eat salmon :P it wasn’t very good actually

YUMMY margarita from chili’s!! :D omg it was so good. it’s the tropical one (i forgot the actual real name). pricey even at happy hour though