A serious and sometimes not so serious personal blog
“Something is technically wrong.”
Got this page when I clicked on a ‘We’re on Twitter’ link from a web page. I’d never seen it before and thought it was really cool. I love all of the characters that new web services are coming out with. Case in point is Brizzly’s mascot, as well as the various iconic mascots from Twitter, like its bird and fail whale.
Usually, getting an error page irritates me, but when I get error pages and see cool stuff like this I can’t help but be entertained.
I saw this posted and it was so funny that I had to laugh. This is great advertising and is sure to catch the eye. I thought it was a missing child report when I first saw it.
I left the number visible because the person who posted this deserves the added exposure for being so creative!
This is some seriously funny stuff. I wasn’t sure about it at first, and you really have to pay attention to understand what’s being said, but you’ll be laughing by the end. You’ll have to understand something about Singapore culture and language to fully appreciate it, I think, but watch it anyhow.
(If you’re looking at this in Facebook, click the “View Original Post” just above the comments section to view the videos at the original blog.)
(Found the videos on Singapore Agnes Tan)
Are you serious? In this day and age a web service is still requiring a mail in form to verify age? In fact, I’ve never heard of that before. The closest I’ve ever seen was being required by Funcom to mail in a scanned copy of my driver’s license and the credit card I used to verify my identity when opening an Age of Conan account. Ya, I fell victim to that failed attempt at a game, but that’s another story…
Anyhow, in an attempt to put my content out in a few more places to draw people in to my main blog I figured… ‘Xanga… why not?’ and posted some stuff there. I surfed around a bit and wound up clicking on a profile image in a comment section (I admit it, I was drawn in by the picture of the butt) and I was asked to verify my age. So, I clicked Verify, and instead of just accepting what I said like most web services do, Xanga then prompted me to actually physically print a form out and mail it to them.
Honestly, I was stunned.
What do you think about this policy? Is it a step backwards and a way to alienate users, or is it a surefire way to ensure that you won’t be sued? (Because we all know that you won’t mail in a copy of your older friend’s driver’s license).
Often considered the “national dish” of Singapore, this is a food that’s widely loved by Singaporeans and visitors alike. Also, it’s one of the few local dishes served on Singapore Airlines, giving you the opportunity to get a taste of Singapore before you’re even in Singapore.
Here’s a quick history of the dish (the links in this quote will all go to Wikipedia pages):
Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of Chinese origin most commonly associated with Singaporean cuisine or Malaysian cuisine, although it is also commonly sold in neighbouring Thailand, and found in Hainan, China itself. So-called due to its roots in Hainan cuisine and its adoption by the Hainanese overseas Chinese population in the Nanyang area (present-day Singapore), the version found in Singapore region combines elements of Hainanese and Cantonese cuisines along with culinary preferences in the Southeast Asian region. The dish was popularised in the 1950s by Moh Lee Twee, whose Swee Kee Chicken Rice Restaurant operated from 1947 to 1997. [1]
You can find at least one stall at every food center selling chicken rice, as it’s usually called here. Typically you can get it either roasted or steamed. I prefer the roasted, but my wife loves the steamed version, which is probably why she loves Mr. Chicken Rice so much (shown in the top picture).
Mr. Chicken Rice is a restaurant in E-Hub, Pasir Ris in the Downtown East area that sells a specific type of steamed chicken rice. I don’t recall the whole back-story, but the chef that got that location going used to work for a five star hotel in downtown Singapore. Eventually, I think the restaurant decided they didn’t need him anymore, so he went out on his own and started up his own business. The restaurant at E-Hub is always jam packed, and even though I don’t generally like the steamed version it’s damn good!
To me, chicken rice is the staple dish of Singapore. It’s also my ‘safe’ dish. When I’m wandering back and forth in the food court and I can’t figure out what I want, or I’m scared to try something new, I always settle on the chicken rice. I know it’s good and I know it’s safe. The recipe is more or less the same wherever you go. All you have to worry about with chicken rice is whether the guy behind the counter gives you a bad cut of meat (too many bones) or not.
Chicken rice is also something that people apparently get really passionate about. For example, recently the Malaysian government tried to claim chicken rice (“”We cannot continue to let other countries hijack our food. Chili crab is Malaysian. Hainanese chicken rice is Malaysian,” in The Star newspaper.”) as a native Malay dish, which is kinda ridiculous. Even the name says Hainanese. Singaporeans were outraged by the idea, but I don’t see why either side is fighting so hard over where chicken rice belongs. The current status or love of the dish in either country doesn’t matter much when you realize that it’s originally, and factually, from Hainan in China. The dish doesn’t belong to Singapore or Malaysia. It belongs to China. It’s simply been imported to the two countries along with other cultural and culinary traditions. That’s one of the drawbacks of being a multicultural society of immigrants like Singapore, Malaysia and my own country (US) are. The only traditions you can claim as actually being your own are the ones that develop in the area. Previous traditions that you bring with you don’t really count. Also, it’s worth it to note that 44 years ago Singapore was a part of Malaysia, rather than an independent nation.
Regardless of where it came from, or who it ‘belongs’ to, chicken rice is a dish that I’ve come to love greatly and will come to miss greatly if I can’t find it when I leave this country. My loss on that one.
A recent article in The Straits Times is advising citizens to act quickly to reserve their dosage of H1N1 vaccine. The Ministry of Health is currently surveying clinics to see how many doses will be needed to satisfy demand. So, clinics are compiling lists of clients who are interested in getting their shot this year, at a cost of 20 to 40 SGD, depending on your doctor and clinic.
An excerpt from the article:
Singapore will receive all 1 million doses it bought from British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline by Christmas, Mr Khaw said on Sunday at a brisk-walking event organised by the North West Community Development Council held at the Republic Polytechnic.
About 20 per cent of the vaccines will be reserved for essential personnel such as health-care workers and the police. The remaining 800,000 doses will be distributed at cost to hospitals, polyclinics and GPs in private practice.
Mr Khaw also sought to allay fears that Singapore will face a shortage of vaccines like what the United States may soon be experiencing with the traditional winter flu season approaching.
Having the swine flu is a horrible … horrible… horrible… experience. I had it myself, a few months ago. It’s weird too. I woke up at a regular time that day. I sat around doing my regular things. Then at around 5 PM I washed up and went to Century Square in Tampines to meet my wife for dinner and a night out. Only, things didn’t go quite as planned. When I got out of the taxi I felt a little tired, which was weird since I’d had about 10 hours sleep the night before. I thought maybe I’d just slept too much so I shrugged it off and went into the mall. It was a cool night outside because it was overcast and had been raining so when I walked into the mall I wasn’t at all surprised to feel the blast of icy cool air.
It was after I’d been standing inside for a few minutes that I realized something was a bit off. It felt too cold, like I was standing outside in the Fall in New York City. I didn’t just feel cool or cold. It felt icy, to the point that I was shivering. I was really tired too. I really wanted to sit down, so I went back outside to the taxi stand area and sat on the railing. It felt better outside and it was nice to sit down for a while. When my wife showed up we went to eat in the food court, but I just couldn’t manage to enjoy my meal. I felt really cold and my appetite was starting to disappear. We grabbed a few things from the grocery store and then took a cab home. My wife could tell I wasn’t feeling well. I normally devour that beef pepper rice!
We got home around 7 PM. By 9 PM I was laying in bed, feverish. By 1 AM my fever had risen to 38.5C / 101.3F and the following morning at 7 AM it was 39.5C / 103.1F. I spent the next two days in and out of consciousness. Usually, when I had fevers I knew I could only tell by the thermometer. This time even I could notice the heat coming from my face and head. A cool towel and a fan helped that. I did a lot of sleeping… and I remember my cats sitting next to me while I was struggling. That was nice of them, to come check on me. And of course, my wife took care of me by feeding me, making sure I took meds, and frequently checking my temperature.
After that sort of experience I never want to have swine flu again. Just like with any virus, there are different strains of it, and having one doesn’t mean you’re safe from all of them. On the other hand, more people die each year from the regular flu than from swine flu. I suppose the media frenzy was just their way of cashing in on people’s fears over a new virus. First it was bird flu, then swine flu. What’s next? Dog flu? So, I’m not exactly frothing at the mouth to be the first in line for a swine flu shot. Plus, there’s data to suggest that the swine flu shot may in fact be dangerous and may make you more likely to become sick with the swine flu.
From an article on Mercola.com, a health and wellness site:
A series of studies suggests that people who got a seasonal flu shot last year are about twice as likely to catch swine flu as people who didn’t.
And then there’s this news report of a case of dystonia that was potentially caused by receiving a swine flu vaccine:
So, I think I’ll just take my chances. I survived the swine flu once. I’m sure I can do it again. And there are plenty of people that don’t take swine flu shots that don’t get the flu.
Yesterday when I was heading to Tampines I noticed this cat hanging out on the sidewalk. I was shocked, because I thought it was my cat and that she had somehow escaped and gotten ahead of me. It didn’t make sense, because she’s usually a scaredy cat, but… well, see the photos for yourself.
The cat I saw:
And here’s my cat:
Well, when I got a better look at the cat outside I realized that it could be Dapper’s twin. It even had a bobbed tail, just like Dapper. The cat was smaller though. It looked like it was about 7 months old.
I wonder how Thumper would react if I had brought that cat upstairs, washed it and set it loose? Would she have been able to tell the difference?
Most people today have multiple social networking profiles. Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, Plurk, blogs, etc. That makes for a pretty open flow of information, but shouldn’t there be boundaries?
What I mean is, do you open your accounts to anyone that wants to view your content? For services like Twitter, Plurk and blogs (generally) the whole point is to have transparency and openness in your communication. It’s to put ideas out there, to share content with other people, and to express yourself. So, there’s no real reason to put a limit on what people can see. But in services like MySpace, Friendster, or Facebook I think people are taking the wrong approach.
Once upon a time these services were meant to be mostly private profiles, where your content was shared with people you know by adding them as ‘friends’, or contacts. Somewhere along the line things went wrong. I blame MySpace.
During MySpace’s boom people started what I like to call the ‘friend game’. It didn’t matter if you knew the person or not, you just added them in an attempt to have the highest ‘friend’ count. To me, the idea is ridiculous. These particular social networks were made for maintaining existing relationships and creating new relationships with people. Can you really have meaningful relationships with over 1000 people? How often do you have time to really ‘speak’ to those people on your social networks? Between Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk I would say there are 80 people or so that I communicate with regularly and that’s pretty time consuming. Not to say it’s not worth it, or rewarding, but if having a real relationship with 80 people is time consuming, how do you do it with hundreds or thousands?
You see where I’m going with this? Once you get beyond a certain point you’re no longer doing it for friends, or for networking with people you actually know. You’re playing the ‘friend game’. It’s like an extension of the high school popularity contest mentality. It’s sad though, because those relationships aren’t meaningful and really don’t mean anything at all.
That being said, I use different social services for different levels of privacy. I reserve Facebook for my real friends and for my family, extended family and on occasion trusted friends of the family. I don’t invite just anyone to view what’s in my profile. It’s private and should stay that way. My Twitter, Plurk, and blog are open and I post content on those platforms accordingly.
I wonder how other people manage their social profiles? Do they just invite anyone, or do they think about what they’re sharing and then manage their fans into different platforms depending on how much they want that person to know about them?
Like the title says, Redux is all about entertainment. It does it well too. It’s currently in a private beta, but I signed up for and received an invitation. I’m not sure how limited the invites are, having picked mine up through a Mashable link, but it’s still a small community. That small community is pretty dedicated though. You see people’s avatars popping up all over the place, commenting and giving “props” on people’s shares.
The way Redux works is that it acts as a link sharing center for videos, pictures, and web address links. If you look at the image above, you can see that across the top of the page there’s a share box. Whatever you share can be added to your profile as well as to any “channels” you’ve joined. There are a couple different channels and there’s the option to create your own channel if you want. (See the screenshot below).
If you look at the left sidebar in the image above you can see that I have my Twitter and Facebook feeds linked into Redux. This works in two ways. One is that if I click on one of those options, I can see the content that my Twitter friends are sharing in one long stream, inline. Even web page links get a thumbnail. The same goes for Facebook. I can see links and content shared by Facebook friends right in Redux. The other way that works is that if I like something I see in Redux I can click the Twitter or Facebook icon to share it directly to my Facebook page or Twitter stream. That’s pretty nifty.
The interface is pretty nice. You can select to see (like I said above) just your Twitter friends’ content, just Facebook, both together along with content from the “channels” you’ve joined under My Network, or if you’re really feeling frisky you can just click “Everyone” and see everything that’s on Redux mashed together into one stream.
I think one of the defining characteristics of Redux is its TV mode. It works similarly to YouTube’s full screen mode, except it’s continuous play. You can set TV mode on a particular channel, the Everyone or My Network sections. It’s pretty versatile, and it’s highly entertaining. In fact, I would say that once you get it going it’s hard to pull yourself away. From the full screen mode you can skip back and forth and give “props” to the video. Unfortunately you can’t comment on it yet, but when I mentioned that via the feedback form I was informed that they were actually discussing implementing that feature and would take my feedback under advisement. The team seems pretty cool too. I mean, how often do you get a feedback form from a company that starts off with “Yo Brad, …”?
So, why should you bother to use Redux when you’re already getting this content in other places? Well, that’s a good question and the answer is that it’s easier. First off, you can check one place instead of two. Second you have easy sharing options built in and you can watch it in TV mode. Another great thing about Redux is that the content you find there is what people feel is worth sharing, which means you’re going to get to skip past most of the frivolous crap. There are still things there that aren’t going to suit your taste, but that’s why there are descriptions and thumbnails. You can get an idea of whether or not you actually want to see what’s behind the link. Also, Redux is another community and another way to meet and engage other people interested in sharing good content.
Oh, and did I mention it looks good? It didn’t take long for me to figure out the interface and it’s got some great built in backgrounds to choose from:
The only thing I would caution people on is that you shouldn’t run Redux if your laptop isn’t in a cool place. Watching in TV mode puts the fans on high after a real short amount of time. Most internet video seems to be like that though.
If you want to give Redux a try I have 5 invites available. Let me know in the comment section or send me a Tweet at @BradleyF81 and I’ll pass one your way.
A post about birds doesn’t sound exciting, but when I say there are birds in the trees, I mean there are birds in the trees on the scale of Alfred Hitchcock’s old movie, The Birds.
“Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in 1:40”
As you walk down Orchard Road you can hear them up there. It sounds as if there are hundreds, if not a thousand or more of them, roosting in the trees, squawking continuously at each other. I suppose for citizens and long-time residents it sounds like background noise. The first time I was down there, by Cineleisure Orchard, I thought something weird was going on. They were so loud, and if you sit and watch long enough you’ll see them moving from tree to tree in groups of a dozen or more.
The most bizarre part of it all is that despite there being so many trees, and so many birds in those trees, I have yet to see a sizable quantity of bird crap on the sidewalks or road. Orchard Road is a tourist area though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there are workers out there at night spraying the area clean. That’s probably a good idea regardless. An excessive amount of bird feces could be hazardous to your health. That reminds me of a story from when I was in Iraq, but that can wait til another time.
If you’re reading this from outside Singapore and you happen to find yourself on Orchard Road, especially in the Cineleisure Orchard area, keep your ears peeled and you’re sure to hear them. After being in Singapore for a while those birds feel more like part of the scenery and make the area more interesting. I can’t imagine being down there and not hearing them chirping en masse.
Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog 