Bill Hung's Mini Photo Feed: 2010

2010-12-24

Christmas Eve at my local Supermarket

Sainsbury 2010-12-24

2010-12-22

Rasa Sayang Express Newly Open in London

At Oxford Street, London today. Rasa Sayang Express had an opening party and wasn't serving people during lunch today.

2010-12-21

2010-12-20

2010-12-18

After calling Sky to complain about the speed of 402ms ping, 1.74Mbps down, 0.26Mbps Up.
http://billhung.blogspot.com/2010/12/sky-dsl-at-home.html
This is my new DSL broadband speed:
89ms ping, 7.37Mbps down, 0.54Mbps up.

2010-12-17

Well Hung Hammocks

At Camden Lock Market, via Kev.

2010-12-16

Free Famitsu iPhone App

Screenshot from the free Famitsu iPhone App. The content is the same
as the 7.60 pound paper Famitsu I bought (with omission).
Note, the original Famitsu is only 390 yen. Much much cheaper.

Sky DSL at home

Just got DSL installed. Is this what I have to live with for the next
year?! D=
402ms ping, 1.74Mbps down, 0.26Mbps Up.

Sony Christmas Turkey Lunch 2010

With Daniel Jeffery and Harry French at 10 GMS Canteen

2010-12-15

Samsung Galaxy S

Since the launch of the original iPhone 2G, to iPhone 3GS, it has been
3 years already. I was the original iPhone fanboy. Farewell Apple.
Hello Android!

Update: I managed to crash the phone on the 2nd day with Android Market,
and on the 4th day with Pocket Legend (a 3D World of Warcraft wanna-be)

Famitsu iPhone App

Require Apple Japan store account.
*downloading*

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on Famitsu

The latest issue of Famitsu is more expensive, 7.60 pound instead of
7.20 pound, because of the amazing 2 million first week sales of
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. The magazine has many pages of MonHun 3
this week.

JP-Books Import

Didn't know JP-Books at Mitsukoshi offers no charge to import Japanese
book. Maybe will use this to import some Monster Hunter Portable 3rd
Capcom books. Last time I used address forwarding from Japan and was
quite expensive.

2010-12-14

Langue De Chat Biscuit

東京白いお台場 Japanese: Tokyo White Odaiba
ホワイトチョコラングドシャ Japanese: White Chocolate Langue De Chat
Langue De Chat Odaiba French: Tongue of Cat Odaiba

Meanings of GK

A game contest has a question about what Fanboys are called in Japan slang.

My Japanese friends didn't even know this.

It turns out, GK, is 2ch.net slang for Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) employee, according to Yahoo Japan's search result #1.

If you scroll down, it says GK is also Gatekeeper (ゲートキーパー), =fanboys in 2ch.net slang.

Proof: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%91%E3%83%BC

2010-12-13

Youku.com is not servicing me in UK

Uploading a video from London now give me a message saying:
"Sorry, but this video is currently available to be streamed within China only."
And this is AFTER the 3.3 billion USD Youku.com stock IPO
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/ipo-youku-3-3-billion-more-than-aol/

IamMoving.com

Signed up for iammoving.com more than 2 weeks ago before moving to my new flat. Got a phone call today and they helped me switch from the British Gas Prepared Meter to E-on, and claim a 7% cheaper rate, and the money goes to my Tesco Club Card.

Pretty satisfied so far.
They signed me up for E-ON electricity for prepaid metre, claiming 7% saving, switching from British Gas. E-ON offers 9.54 pence per kwh + £133.64 every year standing charge + 5% VAT (Value Added Tax). Compared to my British Gas bill of 12-15 pence per kwh + VAT, and with my 1500kwh+ usage every-3-month, I agree it's (a bit) cheaper.

Home made Mince Pie from Garvin

From Garvin Haslett at office

2010-12-12

Why block my Internet Tethering?

My iPhone is one of those unlocked ones officially from Hong Kong. All
iPhone from Hong Kong are unlocked. Somehow I have restricted access
for Internet Tethering, and get pointed to this O2 page for 7.5 pound
bot on. But I am with Tesco Mobile! iPhone still can't recognize Tesco
Mobile SIM, and I should not be restricted for Internet Tethering. I
need Internet now because I won't get DSL until next week. Come on, on
Nokia phone, anyone can tether easily, I just did that yesterday! Hmm... Maybe it's about time to convert to Android.

360 Anitivirus

360 Antivirus from 360.cn was way better than AVG or Avira Antivir according to my experience.

The antivirus software does not occupy much PC resources, can be easily turned off for gaming mode, and has native dual CPU support.

Even the downloader uses peer-to-peer.

2010-12-08

Bootup Screen of Mac Mini

It actually says Regents of the University of California at boot

2010-12-04

Days with Mobile Broadband

No Flash or Images to save bandwidth.
With T-mobile "unlimited" mobile broadband, you have 1GB fair use limit, if you go over, you will not be able to download files or videos between 4pm-11:59pm. No extra charge.
T-mobile mobile broadband is the, so-call, best mobile data network in UK.

Update: 2GB of data was used up in 3 weeks, by 3 people with laptops (excluding me).

2010-12-03

Billmac is Back!

Just got my mac mini, Billmac back from Apple repair. The Apple Genius bar appointment at Regent St made me waited 40 min, even I had an appointment. They told me the repair would take 4 weeks, but it's back in 2 days. I was using Billmac for video editing and music composing. Will use Billmac as a router for t-mobile mobile broadband and also use it as an autobuild server.

Update: Billmac is back to Apple Repair straight away.
All I did was installing the t-mobile mobile broadband software from the official disc. It was booting and all before install, and simply installing one official software can cause it not to boot. Orz.

Update: Billmac was fixed very quickly
So I sent Billmac back to Apple Repair on 2010-12-08, and I just got a phone call today 2010-12-15 from an Apple Engineer. He found out, correctly, that the problem was caused by the t-mobile software. He also found out it's the official t-mobile software disk replacing the crucial libcurl file named libcurl4 (library file for URL related work, used everywhere) of the OS X 10.6 was replaced by the official t-mobile CD. He managed to revert this and make Billmac works again.
He also told me I can pick up Billmac from Regent Street, London today. Wow, one week repair was impressive, especially it's right before Christmas.
Still, a network library caused a mac not to boot is just bad.
One "Like" for Apple today. =]

Billmac was born late 2009, and joined my family in May 2010.

Google Hotpot

Trying this new feature out.

2010-12-02

Council Tax Valuation Band

Somehow my new flat is valuated as Band C, whatever that means.

Linux books

Two cool books about Linux kernel 2.4. Included history of Linus's Unix(Linux), GNU's Not Unix(Recursive Acronym), and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).

Coors Light

First time to have this type of beer called Coors Light. It's pretty sweet. I don't mind drinking this. So my list of beer has Foster and Coors Light now.

2010-12-01

Mouse Trap

Humane one and non-humane one

2010-11-30

First Snow this Winter

It's a DLR (light rail) at the back

Love Hina Manga for Free

Just couple day after launch, J-comi already got 1.5 million download.
I owned the whole series of Love Hina Manga and Anime (currently still in the US). And I used to read this manga in Japanese. The manga was originally published from 1999-2002, and it's currently out-of-print.
The original author, Akamatsu Ken, decided to start his own website and offer the Love Hina series for free. I can see the PDF manga has some advertisement between the manga, but the manga is otherwise free.
http://www.j-comi.jp/
I might just read the whole manga again.

2010-11-29

My First Swiss Army Knife

From Victorinox, CyberTool 34, 47.90 pound

Apple Repair

My mac mini won't boot, it's forever stuck at the loading screen.

And I like this green check mark on Repair.

2010-11-28

Ricola, original Swiss Herb Drop

My friend insisted to buy this natural swiss cough candy. I remember Ricola had a funny tv advert filmed in Hong Kong.

Light Bulbs

New place need that many light bulbs. You are seeing 7 light bulbs. I need at least 2 more.

2010-11-27

New Place DSL Internet Speed

DSL line speed wasn't too bad. British Telecom, E1 0AQ London.

Samsung: Design that performs

I like how it says "Design that perfor,s/Un design performant" on the box

2010-11-26

The Best Mobile Internet in London - T-mobile Broadband

My email to my new flatmates. Bought the 15 pound 30-day package for those 15 days without internet.
------
We are switching from BT broadband to Sky broadband. BT Internet service will terminate on Nov 30th, and Sky broadband starts on Dec 16th (I couldn't get it any earlier, damn Sky).

So from Dec 1st to Dec 15th, I have arranged "the best mobile broadband in London"! The 7Mbps T-mobile mobile broadband service. In other words, my Mac mini will be your router for 2 weeks (or 15 days).
--------------------------------------
Notice the 30-day "unlimited" mobile broadband plan from t-mobile (15 pound) comes with fair use policy:
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-broadband/pay-per-day/
And I quote, "The fair use policy amounts for pay per day are 500MB for one day, 1GB for one week and 2GB for one month. Watching videos and downloading files will use up your allowance really quickly. We won't charge you extra if you go over but we may restrict your use."
------------------
So, I suggest we all turn off image loading for 2 weeks, no youtube, and just check emails or do light web browsing. Even if you load images, the images are compressed on the server side (so they don't look as good, will look like low quality JPEG).
-----------------
And once we go over the fair use limit, this will happen:
"between 4pm and midnight you won't be able to do other heavy usage activities such as watching videos or downloading files. Before 4pm and after 12 midnight your Mobile Broadband service will continue to run as normal."
-----------------
The full term of the fair use policy is here:
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/uk/fairuse/#MobileBroadbandPayPerDay
This page tells us what happen once we go over the fair use limit
http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-support/index?page=support&cat=FAIR_USE_POLICY&tab=0&id=FA1137

Bill Hung

2010-11-24

Microwave at Work

So you can cook Chinese by pressing #2.

QQ Weibo

QQ, from Tencent, has twitter function called weibo.
It's interesting how a lot of stuff were handled. There' s mobile client for S60 device as well, and of course, iPhone and android.
The most popular one now is liuxiang's tweets, he just won 3 gold at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China. He's tweeting through his iPhone, which I assume is iPhone 4.

GT5 Finally Out

After 5 years, GT5 is suddenly and quietly out

Quickies Nail Varnish

I like the name of this

Koya Udon noodles

Near London Chinatown, Japanese Udon shop Koya. 8.50 pound for pork and miso udon.

2010-11-23

Think London is Brilliant?

I like how the top line says "Know the best dim sum in Chinatown?"
Well, I guess that's the very meaning of living in London, lol.

Look, there's a 2X speed button on YouTube

Ah~ finally, a 2X speed button!
I was checking out Webm video on YouTube with HTML5 (Firefox 4 Beta 7). Notice the artifact behind the girl. This particular video was bad with webm encoding, the flash h.264 version was fine.
JPEG can't capture the artifact, but PNG can.
Update: Looks like the artifact was from my GPU driver...

2010-11-22

London Olympics 2012

The ticket is on sale already

Moving Home

Invited my mates to "trash my place" on the last weekend at my camden flat. In the end, everyone ended up carrying trash out for me instead. Here's us posing with the garbage dump.

2010-11-21

Ubuntu Server Speed

2.4MB/s, wow, looks like my broadband is fast enough to play OnLive (which needs 700kB/s according to here)