Had been testing the camera out lately, and I am say I am quite impressed by the N95 8GB camera, the starting up takes a modest 3 seconds which is so much better than my previous HP rw6828 which can easily take 10 seconds. While the HP rw6828 takes 2 minutes to save a 2 Megapixel image, the N95 8GB takes, processes and saves 5 Megapixel images in hardly over 2-3 seconds, ok mind me if I had my standard really low or nothing better else to compare too, but I am actually blown by the Zeiss Camera, it’s very markable indeed!

Indoor without flash

Sunny outdoors

Shaded outdoors

I personally had not tested the burst function, but I think that’s not something I might actually use unless catching formula one maybe later this year.
The photos provided for here are resized and slightly compressed for web, but otherwise the contrast, brightness etc are all the same to allow you to gauge the rough quality of the photos. Though the phone is nothing compared to a dedicated Digital Camera, the quality for the N95 8GB is exceptional for an all-in-one device and something which I can easily substitute with carrying a digital camera for casual outings and gatherings with friends. In fact I might not even bother to bring a digital camera out now!

Cloudy outdoors

Skyline detailstext

Night dark

Its not like skynet global which is impossible to surf in or Singnet@wireless for only singtel/net subscribers, apparently there had been few mobile internet stations roaming round Singapore- Boarded service 147 today and hey it’s wi-fi enabled! Got up on my phone and hooked up to my mail inbox and mobile MSN messenger for the trip. Though I had it with me during the trip, I did not use my laptop on board as I personally could not go for more than 100m meters on the bus without feeling dizzy when reading or working off-screen, so thats definately out for me.

The system is presumably hooked up to a 3.5G HSDPA and router within the bus itself with the antenna logically placed in the center of the bus (or the midspan of the 1st floor roof), you will notice the bus as a blue double decker (Volvo B9TL) with a Nokia 6110 advertisement on it, saying “Wi-fi hotspot bus”.

So if you spot one, yes there is really free fast internet, board it, stick near it when it stops by your bus stop or chase it in your car. You can access it without having the need to login at all, just open the splash page accept a few terms and you are off! Speeds average and feels like about a descent 512kps connection- plenty of bandwidth to play around for regular surfing or checking of email. Also considering the average Singaporean commuter not caring much of wi-fi on buses either you more or less (or I can say most of the time) have all the bus bandwidth to yourself, now wait till they have it on all our MRT trains like what they do in the MTR in Hong Kong. Will that rock!

Had not been running alot for the past one week, as I wanted to fully recover from my minor sore throat that had been irritating me for days. It’s not exactly serious, a very mild one in fact which I can completely mask with fisherman’s friend or woods cough drops, but its just simply bugging me and won’t go away!

Moreover, it seems that many people I know around me are either sick or down with some form of a viral related sore throat of cough is it the weather? My project mate wasn’t quite in the pick of health today either, working away from school and leaving the team down to 2 people today. I just hope I do not catch any more viruses or worsen my condition as I am really looking forward to my marathon this coming weekend. And dang do my parents will bar me from running the event at the slightest sense of a sickness, I just hope it won’t be like my 2005 marathon…

My running plans for this year is to hit a total running mileage above 1000km, 1200km is optimal with about 200km more to go- provided if I do not actually miss any of my planned runs, which I already did with 2 the previous week. Mmmm and there is only 1 more month to go with more projects piling around, looks like 1000km is more realistic.

Didn’t run at all for this week to date so recapping the mileage I forgot to add last week. Think of it as a form of glucose loading prior the expenditure this weekend, more pasta to come!

After using my N95 8GB for a few days, finally got the hang of numeric pad SMSing again, it had been almost 5 over years since I used a phone with a proper numeric keypad… no more funny side keypads with my old SX1 or having the need to use a stylus with my HP rw6828. I can actually SMS with one hand now! LoL, but WOW! Ok go ahead and laugh….

The 2.8″ screen is very big and nice, even bigger than my HP pocket pc. The rotating menus are very cool, too bad they are not part of the main IU navigation. The thing which really shines in this phone is the camera, the pictures are really nice and clear, not to mention the video at 30fps as well, too bad the camera settings cannot be saved and the you can change the camera shutter to 4 different capture sounds except OFF, weird…

Strangely, I can get my phone one-touch paired to my A2DP Motorola bluetooth head stereo headset, but the played music always simply skips whenever I play it, dang. Good thing I can use the 3.5mm jack with my own headphones without the need for an adapter. My biggest complain is with the N95 is particularly that of nature of series 60 3rd edition phones as well- Unlike the old s60 phones I’ve previously owned- you need to go through some redundantly dumb certificate signing, which serves no other purpose but just a barrier to install 3rd party applications. Sure extra security you can call it, but I can just simply sign all the software myself using my developer’s account at symbiansigned.com, anyone can do that and once you get the hang of it, you can practically install most compatible software. I simply see what’s the need for the signing feature.

After spending the whole of yesterday installing countless number of applications, it’s disappointing I can’t install all my old s60 applications I brought for old SX1 previously- they all simply cannot be used with the new Symbian OS at all, just great. Now I have to get a new irRemote control software (for coffee shop TV channel changes and school air-con adjustment), Bluetooth presenter and the CORE video player to play Dixv, Xvid, WMV files as the phone is unable to do so out of the box. Wonder are there any freeware alternatives I can use.

Maybe I could have excited the phone alittle more than usual the last few days, but the battery life is kinda short, I had to charge almost everyday, with some music, Wi-fi for emails, MSN, some SMSing, short chatting and few photos for my blog, the most it can last is one day+. I doubt the phone can last a full day photo-hunt marathon on the streets.

Got my spanking new N95 8GB today! Would be setting my newest phone addition to charge overnight, in the meantime, I can post of what you can expect in the box in the traditional “unboxing ritual”. Will get to play more of it tomorrow.

Its all over the box!

Greeting upon opening lid

Thats all in the box

As you can see, the included package is rather basic, just the program/software DVD, AV/sync cable, headset, the new mini Nokia charger, the BL-6F 1200Mah battery and quite many booklet/manuals (six) to go through inside a cardboard envelope.

There is no slip case or leather case in the package as seen with the classic N95. Notably even for the classic N95, the slip case only came with units sold in Singapore and not anywhere else in the world (to the dismay of many N95 around the rest of the world). My phone is the Singapore variant of the N95 8GB, which means it’s not a parallel imported model, etc, you can check the country codes here.

Being a fan of all-in-one devices, this phone will be replacing most of my gadgets I have, namely my old 4MP A80 Powershot digital camera + video recorder, and will supplement my existing HP rw6828 pocket PC phone.

N95 8GB overview

Phone back

Camera Lens

Singtel Xmas fair at Ngee Ann City
Yup, that’s where I got my phone today, if you don’t notice the big white tent with 2 bobbing balloons by the side at Ngee Ann City civic plaza, you definitely can’t miss out on the Ads in today’s Straits Times, not to mention those the day before in the new paper, today, etc as well. All these means something rather special, indeed. The N95 8GB I’ve been eyeing and price monitoring have it’s contract prices down to $638 with a 21 month contract- $160 lower than their rates last week and $410 lower than getting it without contract from external handphone shops.

Wanted to trade in an old but fully working Motorola V3 phone which had always been lying around the house as a spare phone, which fetches a $60 trade-in value (CO2 Corp does the trade in and dishes ST discount vouchers for your handset purchase), but was put down $10 due an old end-of-life battery, that’s including charger, box everything (yea I brought the whole package). I must be a retard to sell all of those for only $10, so I turned down the ridiculous trade-in offer.

The thing I found crazy there was the queues, I got a queue number at 4.30pm and was only able to be served about 4 hours later at 8.30pm+ despite being on the Singtel Priority express customer line (wonder how the rest on the normal lines are doing).

But there was an SMS alert system though, so you can literally run all around Singapore in the meantime when the queue runs and be alerted when its approaching yours- which what I did and missed my queue number by the time I returned. Despite that, I was quickly tended in less than 5mins to upon approaching the staff, I guess I have mainly the friendly and very helpful staff (consisting of mostly Singtel staff from all over Singapore and few part time helper students) who helped me not only but several separate occasions and breezed through the crowds with ease.

“So based on the crowds here you are working till midnight?” we asked “No I think 2am!” said the staff! - The roadshow response was so great, the event doors are closed from 8pm onwards (requiring your queue number to enter), reassuring customers inside that once you’ve taken you queue number, we will tend to you by today no matter what. I guess gross the takings for Singtel today can easily exceed the $2 million range, despite Starhub’s bleak attempt to station a small kiosk near the event itself.

Collected my Standard Chartered Marathon (SCM) race pack today, as usual for every year, collection is fast and a breeze, hardly took 10mins to collect my bag which included custom items such as my race bib + champion chip and singlet of my size choice in as well. Just like every year, I collected my pack without any race confirmation, just my IC, haha works every time, I can see mostly only the new runners going with the hassle of printing the race confirmation slips with them. For those who know the system, well it’s had always been free and easy!

The queues for the pasta party and the shuttle bus tickets took a little while longer with only one counter allocated for it, but that took about another 10 minutes nevertheless. I am going for the shuttle service this year (4.30am at delta sports complex if ya runners wanna meet up) as I did not wanted to trouble my dad, also I personally find it dangerous to drive after running a marathon- won’t be as sharp to do so, anyway the best way to go back after a marathon is being chauffeured, either on a taxi or on a bus!

For those who find the need to allocate a whole exhibition hall for race pack collection a waste of space (just as last year), I could say “maybe” I mean despite my third year collecting the race pack I never even saw any queues at all, it’s like the the 20-30 tier snaking queue lines were never utilized at all, despite being on a peak crowded Saturday weekend afternoon.

Sports Expo at Suntec
The sports expo is always held concurrently with the SCM racepack collection, (or the other way round as most would think). There’s and even dose of footwear, indoor rock climbing and court games, not to mention inline skating and hockey tournaments. Me tup with few SGrunners there who are pacing this year’s marathon, lol they got to be there like 3.30am-4am long before any shuttle bus service, pity them. Chatted with few of the Polar Electro staff there, they have their new SX725 triathlon watch on showcase, strangely, despite being an update of the 625, it’s still using the S1 footpod and not the newer S3, so the old technology is still better? figures

SCM 2007 Racepack

Racepack items

Racepack items closeup

In the this year’s SCM race pack we have, in a nutshell:

• 2007 Gym Bag (Seems better built than the 2006 one)
• Race bib+champion chip
• Adidas dry-fit Singlet of your size choice
• Garment/Baggage drawstring bag
• Adidas “Reason to run bib”
• Filiz pasta pack
• Berocca Samples (they are good, trust me)
• Deepheat sample
• Runner’s event manual
• Warming up and stretching guide
• Misc vouchers + coupons + brochures
• Shuttle bus ticket (if you brought it)

Would be looking forward to my medal and Adidas Finisher tee when I complete the marathon!

Wishing all runners the best in your race next week!

There had not been any talk or bugfixes regarding this bug, so I why not share this.

For those who are running the rather good spam filter “Spam Karma” on your blogs and have not actually upgraded for sometime, there are some incompatibility the existing code have with PHP 5.0 and particularly MySQL 5.0.12 on the admin management page “get recent comments”, sprouting the following error:

Solution, in your wordpress plugin folder (wp-content/plugin/etc…) look within the file “spam_karma_2_plugin.php” at line#500, you will find:

Replace the following with:

The fix mainly put the whole FROM query item in brackets before the LEFT JOIN, so that SQL can recognized the FROM query in one block and not spilling into the other.

:: Singapore Changi T3 Airport Report Page 3/3

Gate holding rooms
A380 aerobridges come ready with a third arm to facilitate boarding and disembarking of both levels of the jumbo craft a the same time. There are even paired gated hold rooms with mezzanine levels in some of them.

The passenger holding area, though vast, leads to 4 B independent gates in the transit hall we’ve visited (B1-B4), each capable to take on an A380 itself.

However, at full capacity, the holding area will be a very crowded place if 2 or more planes were to be boarded simulatenously, given the limited space in comparison to the large A380 passenger carrying capabilities. Given do, there are however ample sanitation facilities, nice views and entertainment to keep waiting travelers occupied.

Personally I’ve seen transit areas overseas much larger than this, despite being built for targeted planes smaller than the A380, it is a disappointment of what we lack to serve the jumbos. But I see this as a small stumbling block which encourages passengers to linger around more around the transit mall area and board the plane straightaway rather than waiting in the transit holding rooms.

Together with few major air carriers, SIA will be the main carrier and occupant of the new Terminal 3, taking only the best (like what they did from T1 to T2 and so on). Destinations of Terminal 3 will mainly include direct long haul flight to major cities around the world. Have a direct flight to London, Paris or Los Angeles ? Be expected to board your flight at Terminal 3.

Terminal 3 also offers many ways to pamper first class passengers. After checking in the First class check in-row (Row 1), you will be welcomed to the special dedicated first class lounges with so many facilities, you will be pampered to the core. It is situated at the far left of the terminal to only to those who feel they deserve the best.

Central Immigration/Welcome Hall
Terminal 3 takes every attention to detail in welcoming their visitors in the most breathtaking and spectacular way as possible. Exit your fight through the aerogates, make your way following the arrival signages and be greeted by the vast open immigration hall with more than 10 counters to boot.

Immigration Hall

Green wall & baggage collection area

Rapid baggage carousels

The Green Wall
The immigration hall is also the start of one end of the Terminal’s most prominent object - the 300m green wall. Complimentary and going hand-in-hand with the skylight system, this living vertical garden sits at 300m wide and 7 floors high and is home this is home to 25 different species of climbing plants draped in a neat, orderly and non-intrusive fashion, offering the best of greeny real estate in the most breathtaking and space conservative manner ever.

As mentioned, the wall runs whole length wise of the terminal, only terminating at the center departure entrance and continuing on for the remaining length of the terminal. This wall and can be mainly seen only at the departure area and the luggage collection area, where you are able to fully appreciate it.

Luggage collection system
Changi Airport prides itself as the world’s busiest airport, therefore the need of an highly efficient high-speed baggage system. Terminal 3 utilizes a computerised high speed baggage system handling system which is also networked and linked between the 2 existing terminals. This system is able to send luggage between terminals in less than 10mins, traveling on conveyors at a rate of 7 meter per second on average (25.2 km/h).

Sandstone art wall
Discreetly tucked under the green wall is the hand sculpted sandstone art wall, with elaborately crafted images of waves, animals and welcome messages written in various languages throughout. With this wall, there will definitely be no language barriers to welcome any traveler with open arms.

Arrival/Greeter’s Hall
The Arrival/Greeter’s Hall is situated on the ground floor of the terminal with many transport options for travelers to move on from the terminal. There are indoor air-conditioned taxi queues on top of a vast coach waiting area. Need specialized transport services? car rentals? city limos? no problem just make an inquiry at the transport booth situated right within the arrival hall itself.

Skytrain system
Last but not least, I will touch on the Changi Airport’s $173 inter terminal skytrain system. Built to replace the few decade old Bombardier CX-100 Cars, (previously jointly built by Westinghouse and Adtranz) with ending services few years ago in 2002. The new Mitsubishi Crystal Mover-based skytrains will serve the link between all 3 Terminals on top of dedicated gate for Aerogates A15-A21. A full list of stations serving between terminals are listed below:

Here is a video of the Skytrain ride from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2:

There are 16 dual-train cars in total for terminal service, each with a capacity for 97 passengers. On top of inter-terminal transit, the skytrains will also serve as an inter-terminal shuttle service within Terminal 3 to the A aerogates.

Mitsubishi Skytrain system

Trains serving T1 & T2

See you on Jan 9th 2008!

With that in hand, that is all I have about Terminal 3 given my short weekend visit, do note that despite the terminal itself being up and running already, there are still many facilities and locations still largely under construction, so the final experience might be different, but otherwise not far off from what to expect based of this report.

As a picture speaks a thousand words, I’ve compiled humorous a 202 photo album of shots taken during my stay there. Going through it will benefit you better and visualise more places not mentioned in this report, allowing you to grasp a better understanding of what to expect of the terminal when it opens come January 9th 2008.

Last but not least, I have largely the CAAS staff to thank for providing such a wonderful open house and guide around Singapore’s up and coming premier airport terminal.
Thank you!

:: Singapore Changi T3 Airport Report Page 2/3

Departure Hall & Skylights
You will be greeted by sunlight upon entering the 2nd floor departure hall area, which the benchmark set by Japan on their “floating airport”, this is no exception given the favorable sunny conditions of Singapore.

Scale model of whole terminal

The computerised skylight system

The emigration counters

The terminal upper levels are all luminated purely by sunlight in the day. 919 skylights fitted with automatic computer controlled reflectors angle light into the terminal as the time passes or given ambient and cloud conditions, reducing the need for artificial lighting and saving power as well.

Shopping Galore
Go past the departure gates and be greeted by the Crossroad compact events area, housing Fullerton Hotel’s Post Bar and general events area between boarding gates A (to the left) and B (to the right).

The skylight is everywhere! (close up)

The internal duty free shopping areas

Transit area koi ponds

Though currently in the mist of renovations, T3 will feature a world class mall with more than 40 F&B outlets and over 20 service outlets in both public areas and the transit mall itself on top of the usual Cable TV lounges and internet stations littered all around for traveler’s conveniences. 580 Plasma screens are utilized throughout the whole terminal providing timely flight information in the transit and public areas on top of providing entertainment to travelers as well.

Traveler Facilities
Besides spotting 56 toilets in the whole terminal, theres even powder/ dressing/ make-up rooms on top of snoozing and shower facilities for all travelers. Executives can make the most of the transit time in the lounges meeting rooms and business facilities. Staying for a long transit? need a place to stay overnight? Check into the 4 star Airport Crowne Plaza hotel after clearing immigration and customs.

Transit Koi Pond & Butterfly Garden
Lined along the far end of the traveler’s transit area is a long 3 floor high viewing deck allowing passengers to catch a full view of the Terminal’s taxiway and runways. Running the whole length of this observation deck is a zen themed koi pond complete with life trees and bridges to complete the scene of tranquility.

Spend time by the koi pond for a quiet interlude with nature- lined throughout the transit viewing area are exquisite koi ponds with bridges and indoor greenery to boot. What’s more theres even a butterfly garden themed to Singapore’s tropical setting with a given animated tropics retreat.

Getting around Transit area
With a total of 51 escalators, 36 lifts to boot, not to mention dedicated transit express skytrains serving the “A gate” aerogates, Terminal 3 will definitely have no problem getting travelers to their destination not only in time, but in style as well.

These facilities however, can only be accessed after walking a considerable distance from the departure gates and upon reaching the first gate, (which means having to go through the crossroads mall) area, so do be prepared for quite some walking if need be.

There are plenty of push carts and resting sofa for those who need a rest, but from experience, you won’t feel the heat given the myriad of Duty-free shopping opportunities and surprises at every corner, otherwise though not quite a welcome to those who need to get to their gates in a hurry.

Travelators to end gates

The vast open spaces

And A340 docked at an A380 aerogate

Vast open spaces
Noticeably, one of the trademarks of Terminal 3 are the vastly large carpeted open spaces which dominate many areas of the transit walkway and mall area. The choice of muted carpet hues add to the luxury yet conservative look of the terminal, with ample waiting/seating places for the budding traveler together with many corners for tour groups to gather.

We had a demo A340 docked at an A380 gate during our visit, showing the capabilites of the 3-armed aerogate designed to take on the A380 with ease. Next off I cover the aerogates and gate holding rooms

Got a firsthand experience of Terminal 3 today before the scheduled grand opening on 9th Jan 2008. Went around with a guided tour courtesy of CAAS staff not only covering the general public accessible area, but the restricted departure and immigration areas as well. For those who want to see and know more about the 1.75 billion dollar facility before most people do, read on!

Welcome to terminal 3!

Main 2nd floor area

Departure Hall

Background
Singapore had long maintained it’s pride and honor as having the best airport in the whole, however, with newer airports sprouting all over East Asia, Advanced Japan and increasing pressure from Hongkong International Airport, the Terminal 3 is our answer into pushing the benchmark further and catering to an expected annual blooming traffic of 22 million passengers. This is so given the light to cater for the traffic brought about by our integrated resorts built by Last Vegas Sands, Universal Studios Singapore at Resort world Sentosa and our Annual Formula 1 races.

Despite being put off after some considerable long delay, the new terminal is up and ready to place Singapore ahead as pole the airport for many years to come.

Read More by expanding this post or check out the full photo gallery! (202 photos)

In comparison, though not the biggest in the world, Terminal 3 is naturally our biggest Airport terminal we’ve built till date, and there are no stopping of what might come up next!

As shown on the map plan, Terminal 1 (aka T1) sits in at T1 280,000 sqm, T2 at 358,000. T3 is no exception at 380,000 sqm or the land area of 63 football fields.

Getting around
To orientate yourself to the new surroundings, Terminal 3 (Red) runs parallel & is directly opposite Terminal 2 (Yellow). Terminal 1 (Blue) fills the gap between the 2 terminals forming a “U” shaped connection between all three.

Integrated Island-wide subway system
The Airport MRT system is situated directly underground and between Terminal 2 & 3 offering passengers no-frills direct access to anywhere in Singapore through the island network of MRT lines, the MRT gantry gates are supersized to allow large baggage to pass through with ease as well.

The Airport train station also functions as an underpass between T2 and T3 as well. Our landmark “microphone” control tower sits in the center of the three terminals flanked by a network of roads and interlinking fly overs and bridges transporting passengers directly to the 2nd floor departure booth areas of each terminal.

Got quite a bit of the “heaty” lately but kept that down very well with more intake of water (not to mention toilet visits) and cooling “liang” tea brewed by mum. For those who know, I have quite a high metabolism rate and have to go with almost a full Med bottle of water every 2 hours to avoid feeling thirsty (or onset of dehydration). Anything less for a prolonged period and a may come down with a slight fever. A runner’s curse? maybe.

It could be the present demanding pace of school now or the year-end freelance projects piling up which always kept me on the edge now, not to mention stressful. I think I have to replan my lifestyle as I find it kinda bad to be always overloaded and sleeping late. Though I’ve seen worst during my last semester exams I think it’s the negligence on my side which resulted in my now present inefficient sickly-ness. I should take more care of myself.

Training
Ended last Friday’s school with my usual weekly workout at the school gym, only that strangely it was very crowded by the time I reached there not like the past weeks. Had to even queue up for some of the machines there. Then there was this guy in SP dragon boat attire who kept looking and trailing me, he even approached me to help him assist his shoulder press, later he like followed me some few stations as I was finishing my sets. That felt weird as we do not know each other at all and ain’t SP Track & Field and Dragon boat like “Enemys?” haha (I was happen to be training in my SP athletics track & field attire then). Benched my last sets and left the place thereafter.

Nevertheless, got about my run at my usual Ulu Pandan canal yesterday afternoon for pre-marathon mileage, despite having a slight sore throat. I just hope I don’t fall sick before my marathon, not like what happened for my 2005 one. I am really looking forward to my 2nd Dec 42km.

FYP
FYP-wise our simulator frame is almost done and finalizing the little design fixtures and details here and there. And yes, we had exceeded our project budget, so we are very thrifty in what we buy now.

Academic
Got a letter from the MM director’s office sometime last week about attending the student final year assembly and prize presentation, same as the one last year to receive a book prize on XXXX module which they didn’t mention - so it’s like “stay tuned for more” dang… Few of my usual kaki’s didn’t receive their letter this year, and they wished their lecturer had forgotten to pass it to them!

Earned a small tidy sum after running some advertisements on the site for about 2 months. Will be able to pay for the site’s hosting for about 3 years or subsidize a considerable chunk of my upcoming Nokia N95 8GB which I might get by year end when the price is “just-so I-wish it will-be so-right”.

Would be touring Terminal 3 tomorrow, woot!

QR codes had been around for sometime, but I guess since with the wave of talk about it and the use of it in advertisements not only in the papers but busstops as well, guess I will just talk about this little Japanese wonder which succeeds it’s older brother, the barcode.

Quote from wikipedia:

If you have a handphone or pocket PC with internet access, simply zap the codes below to jump onto the site straightaway… or you can click the link below the QR-codes. Lol if the codes are too small to pick up, simply click on it to enlarge. Theres a secret last QR-code!

Free online QR-code generator

Reader software for mobile devices

Secret QR Code!