Blogsy On My iPad

So I was looking for a journaling app to load onto my iPad. Then it struck me that my blog has pretty much been dead and that it might be a good idea to kill 2 birds with one stone by downloading a blogging app instead to journal on my blog.

And that is how I came across Blogsy and paid $2.99 for it at the US iTunes store. Here's Blogsy in action.

My New Domain Blog

My posts on this blog has stopped for a while as I have been busy, and have designed a new site to put up my posts. It is a little more serious and professional than this site, but carry interesting articles as well.

If you would like to visit, the URL is: www.ivytan-online.com. The site is best viewed using the latest version of Safari and IE 7. Registering yourself is something even better than you can do as it allows you to add comments, view private posts, and corrects the layout if you're using an older version of browsers.

Recent articles include:
Willy Wonka under "Around Town"
Bohemian Manifesto under "Bookworm"
Secrets of Emperor Qin's Tomb (Part 1-5 videos) under "Goggles"
Japanese Puffer Fish (video) under "Goggles"
How Spiderman 3 Should Have Ended (video) under "Goggles"
Skin Care / Safety of Herbs (audio podcast) under "Looking Good"
Choosing Natural Solutions for Optimum Health (podcast) under "Looking Good"
How to Turn on the Multi Language Function on a Mac under "My Idiot's Guide"
How to Capture a Screenshot on a Mac Computer under "My Idiot's Guide"
天堂, Paradise by Michael Wong under "Sonic Hedgehog"
楓, 彩虹天堂 Maple Leaf and Rainbow Paradise under "Sonic Hedgehog"
童話 Fairy Tale under "Sonic Hedgehog"
My Social Network Profile under "Web News"
What Other People Accomplished at Your Age under "Web News"
Circumnavigation in 13 Years under "Web News"
The Mango Heist Affair under "Web News"
My Favourite Things under "Web News"

Enjoy.

Nude Woman Buys Cigarettes at German Gas Station

Read all about it here.

All I can say is, smoking's definitely bad for your health. And, what? They allow you to buy cigarettes at petrol stations? Cigarettes => fire + gas fumes = EXPLOSION.

A 14 Million Dollar Picture

Bad Fortune or Bad Cookie??

Part 1:

So last night I had a group of friends over at my place. The new renovations are in place, I just do not have my sofa, dining table and bookshelves in yet. But it was a cozy affair, and someone brought salad and lasagne. I had orange cake, and someone else brought eclairs and cherries for dessert. It was a great party, the jazz music was playing on my ipod speakers, and we talked about life, God, the most memorable presents we ever had, played draw and guess, etc.

It was a great evening, with fun and some really wonderful people. This of course put me in a good mood for today (not to mention that it is Friday!) and after having a really nice lunch at a Korean restaurant I accidentally stumbled into, I decided to take a bit of time from lunch to do some web reading.

The most recent entry of one of the blogs I read regularly was about fortune cookies. Following the links from that post, it led me to this site called badcookie.com. For a laugh, I decided to click for a new fortune today, and got this message:



It was hilarious. I wonder what my mates from last night would have to say about this?

Part 2:

The "fortune" I got was so hilarious that my curiousity got the better of me, and I clicked on the cookie again for another "reading". This is what I got:



I have a tripped planned to Tibet come early to mid August and will be spending my time there with a bunch of nomads living in tents. This will be out there in the open plains, with no bathrooms or toilets (Tibetans apparently bathe only once in their entire lifetime - when they are born, I think). We will be living in tents and drinking Butter milk and consuming yak meat, with no modern amenities whatsoever. This is a national geographic trip, my adventure trip... is it an omen???

Ok, so I'm not superstitious. I believe that they probably took the most common activities that people do and made up "bad fortune" for them as a joke. I mean, how often do you have people come over to your place, or have the urge to do something adventurous?? All the time is my guess. But still, it was fun - to a point. Now I'll just move on to my next post.

The Power of Krispy Kremes

Never underestimate the power of a brand. I had read various brand stories on Coke, SIA, etc. but not had any personal encounters - until last night. AND 3 encounters at that.

It all started when my colleague from Sydney asked if I wanted any Krispy Kremes. He often flew into Singapore for meetings and would ask some of us whom he knew had a sweet tooth if we would like him to get some Krispy Kremes for us.

Well this wasn't the first time that he has done so, but was the first time I didn't have a carier to bring it home in.

I had a dinner appointment before heading home and had to carry the box of Krispy Kremes by resting it on my lower arm and gripping it from the side. As such, the Krispy Kreme logo was in plain view.

While we were waiting to get a cab, I heard this delighted shriek behind me: "KRISPY KREMES!" I turned around and saw 3 caucasians walking toward me, one of whom was the shrieker. They walked toward me all smiles and asked me where I got it from. Turned out they were from Sydney, Australia and that it was the favourite of Ms delighted shrieks. After a short exchange they continued on their way with parting words like 'Lucky Girl!' and 'Enjoy'.

As we weren't as lucky with getting a cab, we decided to walk down to City Hall to take the train. When we were almost there, waiting at a traffic junction for the little green man to appear, I heard a voice shout out 'Can we have one?!' Surprised I turned and saw a small car packed full of muscular, sporty guys who looked like they were still in college. At that time the little green man appeared and I hurriedly made my way across the road while my friend shouted out 'No!'

I finally said goodbye to my friend and got into the train station. While waiting at the gates for the train to arrive, I decided to blog about my 2 encounters for the night on my Palm Treo 680. Barely 2 minutes into blogging, the guy beside me who had been staring at the Krispy Kreme box for a while suddenly sprang to life and walked up to me. "Excuse me, did you get the Krispy Kremes here?" Taken aback as I was deep into my blogging, I looked up and saw a guy probably in his late 20s or early 30s, looking like he had been hit by a truck, with hope written over his face, and said ' Sorry, a colleague brought them over from Sydney for me.' He was immediately crestfallen and said 'Oh well, I've had a lot of bad news today so this is just one more. One more doesn't make much diff.' Then he went on to tell me that he's a Taiwanese working here in Singapore, but had studied in the States and ate Krispy Kremes all the time. 'I really miss it a lot' he repeated twice forlornly.

'Well I would have given you one if we were not at train station" I said guiltily.

"Oh please don't get me wrong! I'm not begging for one, just that I miss it so much but it wasn't with the intention to get one from you."

I smiled and then the train arrived, thanfully. we parted ways after which I saw him making calls on his mobile with a tense, angry countenance of one under great pressure. When I got off the train at my stop, still holding my Krispy Kremes, I felt like a princess walking home with a prized trophy...

Normsoft Email

My email to Normsoft, developer of hblogger:

Hi, does the current version of hblogger support "subject" so that I can add a title to my blogger post already?

Also, will the labels feature be included in the next upgrade?

Normsoft's reply to me:
Hi,

Currently the subject field is not supported but that is something we are looking at adding. Also we may add support for labels as well. We have a company policy not to publish the release dates for feature enhancements so I can't tell you if/when you might see them added, but they are definitely under consideration.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Take care,
NormSoft Support Team
NormSoft, Inc.
www.normsoft.com

Thanks. Not too happy about your non date disclosure as it could be a couple of years before the new feature kicks in...

Unwise Spending

I realised that the only way I could keep up with my blogging was from my Palm Treo, when I'm traveling from one place to another. I was doing ok on hblogger though it had a few irritating bugs like not having subject header i.e. no title, and not being able to post images for posting to beta blogger. as I was on trial version of the software, I naively thought that these problems would disappear with the purchased version. as they say, desperation makes a fool of the best of us.

Well, I just made the purchase of hblogger at USD14.95, and sadly, the problems didn't go away. I also found out that I would need an FTP server if I wanted to post images to my blog! I checked their website at Normsoft, and the last update by the company was in 2004 which states the same bugs I was experiencing with the program. Given that its already 2007, I don't think I will be seeing version 3 anytime soon.

I was baffled why there was such a lack of good mobile blogging software. Annoyed actually. And the fact that I couldn't photoblog from my PDA was too irritating to leave it as it was. So I got to work and did some thinking and logical projections.

Which was the most popular online photo publishing site I had an account with? Flickr. As blogger allowed you to claim FTP sites so that your photos automatically got posted on your blog when you upload it to your FTP server, I wanted to investigate if it accepted the Flickr server (as opposed to paying for an FTP server juz to upload photos!).

Kudos to Flickr, they allow you to add blogger to your Flickr account which allows you to post a photo blog through Flickr using email! Best part is that you can opt to include email text in the post. I did a test and it worked beautifully - see the previous blog entitled test photo? That was sent via email from my PDA phone to a designated Flickr email which automatically got posted to my feather starfish account. Neat eh?

So what does it mean? That I could have saved myself USD14.95 if I had discovered this alternative solution earlier. Well, you learn something new everyday. If I saved you 14.95 through this post and you happen to be in town, you should really think about buying me coffee.

Test photo

Test photo

Peter pretending to be a boozie during at East Coast food centre.