First Impressions: Spotify

When Spotfy first launched in Malaysia, what really caught our attention was that it had rather a reasonable subscription plan. We signed up for the free account to give it a go, downloaded the app, and during lunchtime we realised we still preferred having the actual songs on our iPhone rather than stream it, for two reasons: we have limited data, and our battery takes a bigger hit.

A monthly data plan of 2GB doesn't really inspire confidence in us continually streaming music wherever we go, plus honestly data coverage isn't necessary great everywhere we are. Also, we can't plug in a pair of earphones and disconnect while in the office as we never know when someone may be calling us from across the room.

And so we made do with just a basic account, until the other day Spotify sent us an email with an offer for a Premium account subscription at RM2 per month, for three months.

Okay...that's tempting.

And so we decide, why not. And because we're trying, we tried to make an effort to use Spotify more, not only on our iPhone but also the PC version.

And now after 2 months, how do we find it? Well, while we do use it more than we did with a Basic account, but we're still using it less than we ought to. Mainly streaming music at work at very low volumes (unless no one else is in, like on the third day of Chinese New Year where we blasted the Opera radio throughout the day) through connected speakers, and on the classical/opera/instrumental genres (can't be blasting Combichrist's "What The F* Is Wrong With You?" now...).

Spotify's auto party playlists were great and came in handy during the New Year Eve's party and other meetups (and come to think of it why didn't we just let one of the easy listening playlists run at night when we're chilling in bed...).

We're also just realising we can use Spotify to preview albums to decide if their worth getting, especially since the last couple of albums we've preordered turned out to be...well, not that exciting.

Sure, there's loads of Spotify functionality we've yet to try out - discovering new music via their recommendations, the different radio stations...probably the only one we won't use is the Run function.

Our three months promo will be up by next month and we think we'll hold off continuing our Premium subscription for now...because there's Apple Music to also try out.

After that...see how.

Jelakjuice Time

So somewhere at the start of last year we decided to give protein powder supplements a try. We figure it would be cheaper than trying to have steak for dinner every night. So we headed out, asked for a bottle of protein powder suitable for the likes of us who are lactose intolerant, and came back with a big bottle of chocolate flavoured powder and a shaker.

The first time we tried it, it tasted ok.

After a few times, there's only one word for it.

JELAK.

Am so glad we have a word to fit this. It reminds us of the video of some people volunteering to try Soylent for a week and was already jelak of the thing by Day 2.

Still, we slogged through, tried packing it in small containers to take after workouts, tried blending it with yoghurt and fruits...and in the end we've settled to just taking the protein powder in the office before leaving and going for our workout - easier cleanup overall (this was why we never knew that there's a problem with people having smelly shakers where they never wash the shakers soon enough).

Once we finished our first bottle, we went back to the store only to find out that they don't have stock of what we took, and recommended a different brand.

This second brand had some hydrolysed beef protein isolate that, upon opening the bottle, offended our sinuses so bad we were tempted at times to throw the entire bottle away. We don't know how now that we managed to finish that bottle, the smell was so bad.

Now we're onto yet a third brand, and well the smell is acceptable, only that we're still super jelak of the thing and it gives us a mild headache after drinking it. The idea of steak dinners every night is rather enticing, if only we managed a decent dinner hour...

Oh well jelakjuice time.

First Impressions: Midori Traveler's Notebook

So this year we started off by getting ourself a Midori Traveler's Notebook after much contemplation last year. The ability to customise how you wanted the notebook to be was really what appealed to us in the first place.

Only...getting a notebook wasn't so easy, as we either had to try our luck at Kinokuniya (we haven't been inside to look for it yet...) or order it online from a local supplier like Pipit Zakka. Ok so it probably isn't as difficult as needing to order from Amazon and wait ages for it, but we're still pretty much the kind who prefers walking into a store and checking out the physical product.

But oh well. We placed our order with Pipit Zakka, it got posted to us soon enough (well packaged too we must say!), and now we are a proud owner of a Midori Traveler's Notebook as well.

With...only a blank notebook insert that came with the notebook, a lined notebook we bought, a zipper pocket...and that's pretty much it (it's so popular the online store was out of stock of half of the accessories).

Thankfully we've been watching some video reviews of the notebook and got some ideas from them. A particular useful one was on using rubber bands in place of the official bands meant to hold the notebook inserts together. Apparently the official bands aren't as hardy too and snap after a while. So we didn't bother with waiting for the online store to stock the bands, and went to Popular to get some rubber bands.

And since the choices of notebook inserts were rather limited to start with, we decided to find printable alternatives online and make our own. Found some pretty good ones to start off with at Wendaful so now we have a nice thick notebook to work with.

And we did hopped over to all three Muji branches to check out their stationery to see what we could get. Ended up with a 3-colour refillable pen and a pen holder, couldn't find any of their notebooks that fit what we wanted.

Let's see how well we adapt back to using a hard book compared to jotting everything down on our iPhone!

Resolutions 2016: AppRes/16/0105

Oh hey look, it's exactly a year since we've posted our last resolution!

And how did that turn out?

Well, we did tidy up our workspace - but admittedly only in December as a sort of 'spring cleaning'. Nevertheless it is now much more roomier at our wee cubicle and so let's look to this year's resolution:

Learn a new craft skill.

There's actually a bit more to that but we'll keep that under wraps for now.

Easily enough we already know what craft skill we are looking at - quilling. The inspiration for this came from 'Nic and LiL's wedding cards, which they made some 80 to 100 pieces by hand.

Pinterest definitely has a LOT of lovely quilling art, but we will start small or go crazy. We're starting with simple shapes with a definite eye on monogram quilling.

So we've gotten ourself a starter kit, and instead of buying more quilling paper we bought a manual hand shredder from Muji and shall see if that will be cheaper in the long run. Admittedly the only issue we have with quilling is glue. We hate the messiness of normal glue, and have been experimenting with the Norino Plus honeycomb dot tape - not ideal but we'll work on it.

We actually did make birthday card with a quilling pattern in the front for LiL's birthday, but due to cruel irony we dropped the entire thing into the drain outside her house yesterday when we intended to deliver it.

That...may actually be a sign.

4,204,800 Minutes

All right. 2016 and it's time to recap the last year, however this time we don't have the convenience of checking back our Instagram what we've done every day as we kinda stopped the 'photo a day' thing (maybe we ought to start that back again this year, and do away with the editing the photo to place text in...).

But then again we've upgraded our iCloud account for the 200GB storage plan (one of the best things we've done, no more worries about our photos and videos hogging all the space on our iPhone), so that means we have all our photos on our iDevices for easy referencing!

2015 was a pretty great year - we felt as if there were more things happening. We made new friends and caught up with some very old friends, had lots of fun and games, got careless, got sloshed, got super busy (there were quite a number of near-overnights in the office)...

• Upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus. Stocks went out crazy fast then compared to the iPhone 6S Plus!
• The Chief brought us to Genting to celebrate our birthday, complete with the Genting Behind The Scenes Tour. Quick fun getaway!
• Boardgames galore, in terms of playing and purchasing! We bought Power Grid Deluxe, the Street Fighter Deck-Building Game, Dead of Winter, and 504 (which until now we've yet to bring out to see play!). Printed our own copy of the very beautiful PnP Dune: The Dice Game by Heiko Günther. Got to try a good number of games thanks to wingedman and meetups with our regular group at All Aboard, YCA and even McDonald's BU!
• And on the digital side of boardgaming, we've started playing multiplayer Ascension with nejustmo and hckerl. Honestly we find deckbuilding games to be better as a digital game - no need for shuffling and tabulating scores.
• Experimented taking protein powder. Limited by lactose intolerance. Too bad it gets kinda jelak drinking it, making it hard to take every day.
• After a couple of years with no broadband and cable tv (read: Astro) at Chateau le Chief, we finally signed up for Maxis Fibre Internet with Astro B.yond IPTV! Now instead of watching Chinese serial DVDs the Chief records Astro tv shows and movies for later viewing (we have almost used up the hard drive at one point).
• Bought Monster Hunter 4 from Kyo, who had a launch event at Tropicana City Mall. Went with the Chief and lad (although only lad and us plays), got our copies, bunked a while at Starbucks for a quick session. Biggest 3DS timesink of the year.
• Bought a new Mac Mini and iPad Mini 3 just before GST was implemented. The iPad Mini 3 replaced our iPad 2 and was definitely lighter to carry around, but at times we sorta wondered if we ought to have gotten a MacBook instead...there are times when we still lug our first Mac Mini around from one place to another (and quite glad that it's actually easy to lug a Mac Mini around to use in other places provided there's a monitor there to plug it into!).
• Bought the new Apple TV. Not really necessary, and heh we've not yet started gaming properly on it.
• Another trip to Bangkok! It has been three years since our last trip, and this trip we decided to end with a nice dinner at Sirocco @ Lebua. Awesome experience.
• And there was the day trip to Malacca as well! The last time we were there was possibly for savante's Christmas party eight years ago!
• Got our Pebble Time! No regrets here as we had no problem adjusting to wearing back a watch (especially one we have no problem sweating with and wearing into the shower), plus honestly the long battery life is a winner. We're also happy to have backed it on Kickstarter as it was cheaper (also before the exchange rate made things less enticing), hence we got one for the Chief too!
• Got a wax gun (pretty much like a glue gun) that definitely sped up the process of our card-sending! No more breathing in smoky fumes from a wax stick!
• Worked more on our calligraphy (not much improvement though), and finally found flexible nibs for copperplate handwriting!
• After half a year of not seriously joining the choir (our reason then was less of wanting to take a break and more of worrying that the performance date would clash with work), we joined for the Illuminations concert and the Illusion opening! It helped that this year's production had no choreography making it easier to join at a late time. We weren't interested in joining earlier for Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton and started our break by joining the Christmas concert only as part of the audience. This year? Still on the ropes.
• Sailor Moon Crystal ended. This reboot makes us cry sometimes due to the quality. Sigh.
• Terry Pratchett's 'The Shepherd's Crown' was released and devastated us.
• Went for Bon Jovi's concert! Exhilarating!
• Couple of weddings. Lad tied the knot, and we got to take another 'Il Divo' photo (although everyone's older and, if not wiser, then wider). Memorable in that us guys were not involved in the gatecrashing, and that during the wedding dinner there were lucky draws to keep the guests entertained. Fun! Then there was Zherrie's wedding, which was definitely a YKLS wedding with lots of singing and performing. Initially we meant to only sing Seasons of Love with the ensemble, then mubbles asked us to duet A Whole New World with her and that started the whole shiok sendiri fest (especially during Yaya's It's All Coming Back To Me Now).
• Managed to surprise the Chief with a slightly stressful birthday celebration as well as with a magic show dinner!
• Experienced our first fun run. Good to know we managed to finish it within a decent time.
• Got ourself a pair of Sketchers Go Walk 3 to replace our 9-year-old Off-Road Crocs. Truth be told our Crocs have been in need of replacing for years, considering how the treads have all worn bald making it a hazard on wet surfaces, but we've not found a suitable replacement till recently.
• Had a Christmas party at Chateau le Chief again after taking a break last year!

And that's just recapping from photos we have on our iPhone.

Run For Fun

So the Chief noticed a particular charity run and was interested in joining. As it was a 5km fun run, we thought, okay, why not, let's support the Chief and run together even though we never found could see what was so fun about a run.

Less than two months before the run, we'd some preparations to make: mental preparation was one thing, we had to start training a bit to make sure we could survive a 5km run!

Our first time on the treadmill to see how well we fared walking/jogging a single kilometre showed just how bad our stamina was. So we figured, all right, it's time for the treadmill every day where possible till we can ensure we finish 5km under an hour.

Well motivation wasn't easy and we soon started feeling our age, or more like feeling our knees.

We never did get to finish 5km on the treadmill but did find we could average a kilometre in around 10 minutes, so we thought we should be fine (for our expectations).

Come run day itself, thank goodness the Chief is the early bird as we had to get up around just before 6am to make sure we could reach the venue before the run started at 7am. It's tough when you're not a morning person and not even a running person, but there's always a first time for everything (it's the following times that will see more resistance).

And so the run started, and we walked/jogged/ran and yes, managed 5km in...checks website...45 minutes 40 seconds! It was easier to run on the road (plus we set our own pace rather than trying to keep up with the treadmill's speed of 10km/h) and having some goal to set made it easier (let's jog until we reach that 3km u-turn checkpoint, ok walk uphill then jog to the next junction etc).

The Chief finished in 40 minutes 5 seconds and looked no worse to wear, unlike us.

Some observations:

- the water station painted a bad picture of runners: cups were everywhere littered after the station. On the main road within a housing area. Given this is a charity run, we're not sure if the people manning the water station were volunteers or not, and even so we don't think it's expected of them to be cleaners as well. True, there weren't many litter bins set up but honestly it just painted a bad picture of runners that day.

- there were kids who finished faster than us. Hey, start exercise early in life, you won't regret it...

- there was a mother who had to carry her child while wearing a knapsack because the kid was too tired already. Salute.

- the field where the event was held was muddy. And with everyone walking on it to reach the registration booth or luggage drop/pick-up, we ended up with mud seeping through our shoes and was walking around with mud soaking our socks!

- if it wasn't for the fact that the gym was nearby and we could shower after the run, we may not have opted to join.

- yes, there is that sense of accomplishment from having completed the run within our expected time frame. No...it probably isn't enough for us to consider joining more runs.

- our legs didn't hurt badly during the following days (but then again we were too busy to notice).

So. We now have our first finisher's medal for a 5km run. Would we do something more serious like a 10km run? Possibly not. Because...why???

The Chief has already signed up for another run (reason for joining partly because there's a very nice medal design), and it being a night run we may possibly drive beside the lot and cheer.

Apple TV 2015

So we couldn't resist, and ended up getting the new Apple TV.

Even though the price has doubled from the previous model and, what with us being in Malaysia and thus not having convenient access to services such as Hulu and Netflix and BBC iPlayer, there really isn't any convincing need to upgrade from our current Apple TVs, really.

Although, ever since we've moved the Apple TV at Chateau le Chief from the living room to the bedroom...we must say that that particular TV has seen less use due to earlier bedtimes (although finally being able to stream videos directly has made nighttime movie watching a far more comfortable experience!). The living room could do with another Apple TV...

Anyways. We probably wouldn't have bought the new Apple TV if we hadn't someone planning to buy one of our current ones.

Bought it via the Apple Online Store, it showed up 2 days later, and setup was amazingly fast. With the previous Apple TV we were used to using the Remote App on our iDevices, so the new remote felt familiar - except that instead of tapping the surface we had to click it down. Back to the setup - just holding our iPad close to the Apple TV and letting it set up the network connections and all that was just so easy.

We got ourself the 32GB model because we don't think we will be storing that many things on it - the odd game or so (so far we've Crossy Road, Alto's Adventure, Oceanhorn and Rayman), YouTube and Ted. For everything else, we'll let Apple TV stream it off our Mac Mini.

What's to like? Siri's limited but gosh scrubbing feels so unnecessary now. That's all for Siri (again, Malaysia). The remote is so much more handier (still need to get used to there being a Home button) especially with volume controls. Games we already own are free on tvOS. Holding the Home button for a few seconds brings up the option to put the Apple TV to sleep, which also turns off the telly.

What's not to like? The on-screen keyboard is a nightmare - with this glass surface remote why didn't they stick to the grid keyboard and instead made this single row? Also, Remote app on iDevices not compatible anymore and honestly that was the only way to type stuff (especially searching through YouTube). Oh well here's hoping typing gets easier one way or another.

 Next up, a MFi controller so we can play Oceanhorn.

Boardgames Haunts

This couple of years have seen us getting back ever so slightly more into the boardgaming scene because there are choir members who are also keen on gaming, as well as the occasional gaming with wingedman (who hoo boy is pretty up to date without being a distributor!).

Not to mention it's much easier when there's a new gaming joint nearby (hello, All Aboard!) if we don't end up playing games at YCA.

So this Halloween we so happened to be free and was just keen to do something (it was one of those nights were we just wanted to go somewhere do something rather than stay at home), and while initially nejustmo suggested we head to Alexis Ampang for drinks and listen to Mia Palencia, the sudden storm that started just as we were about to make our way to KL dampened our plans.

No problem - an alternative suggestion for a game of Mansions of Madness to celebrate Halloween was put forward. We don't really recall if we played Mansions of Madness (we rather think we've played it once at least with our brother-in-law) but we were game for it. At least it was something to do (to be honest we don't really recall much of what we do on Halloween, the only memorable Halloween we can ever recall immediately is that one year where we were at the Curve and they were giving out free tickets for the screening of The Covenant (and we didn't even plan for that).

So. Mansions of Madness. Venue? McDonald's Bandar Utama, because it's open 24 hours. And while we were setting up at one end of a long table, another group of guys were setting up for MtG on the other end.

Without spoiling the scenario (even the prologue was pretty vague, as investigators we were all in a bar and was shown a dismembered finger still wriggling alive in a box by the bartender, and so was to head to the cemetery in search of some fellow to learn more about it but heck as players we all just wanted to get into the house and search for loot) we all got in, picked up loads of stuff, fought monsters, and won against the Game Master! To be honest we (the investigators) thought we were doomed and was fighting to draw to a stalemate as apparently the GM couldn't win too.

Met up at 10.15pm, game setup and rules briefing til 10.45pm, game til nearly 2am. Turns out to be quite a good Halloween night in the end.

Write Something

We guess it started with letter writing.

There was a time when we decided to write letters when we were staying in hotels using said hotel's provided stationery to the Chief (if we were on our own) or to others. We wrote to Alex at one point, and one fine day he sent a picture message of the Lamy Joy pen he bought to write back.

The Lamy Joy. An italic nib pen meant for italic or blackletter calligraphic writing. Since calligraphy demands practice to obtain pretty penmanship, we never ever got that letter from Alex.

Well, it was Alex who introduced said pen to us anyways, and somewhere not too long back we finally bought the same pen. It was great fun (although we didn't put it to much use ourself). and since it was our first attempt at using an italic nib, we decided to play safe and picked the 1.5 mm nib to practise with.

Not too long later we bought the 1.1 mm nib as well, swapping between the two depending on which we felt like writing with. Personally we're finding the 1.1 mm nib very comfortable to write with, even for normal day-to-day writing.

Then a friend saw what we were doing and caught the calligraphy bug herself, and next thing you know we finally found out about flex nibs - we were too lazy to search them up before and never knew the actual term to call them, instead describing them as 'nibs for copperplate writing' and also probably asking in the wrong places.

Also, to be honest we weren't to enthusiastic to invest more into flex nibs and oblique holders and such because they require a lot of effort to get good penmanship and isn't really all that practical. At least with the Lamy Joy we can do some rather nice uncial fonts asides from italic text when we send greeting cards or write birthday cards or something.

It was only after we started checking out the price of flex nibs and such that it didn't seem too expensive to try it out. And so...we got ourself some nibs (the Nikko G for beginners), a normal nib holder, ink and some pretty thick paper, and we're now practising calligraphy.

Right now we're learning to get used to the nib and all, so our penmanship ain't pretty, and soon we'll have to get back to basics and practise drawing lines and curves until we're consistent (right now just trying it out freehand our letters are all in different angles and heights and spacing it's a nightmare really).

Good grief, so much work. WHY.

Because it's pretty. Much prettier than using an italic nib. So let's see if we can stick to it.

Chief Celebrations 2015: Big Birthday Bash

Early on this year we'd already decided that we wanted to have a big celebration for the Chief instead of the usual separate group parties we hold every year. And so as usual we told ourself we would start planning a month in advance (meaning about August).

And as usual that meant we only started planning in September.

The Chief by now pretty much knows that we never let on what we plan for the birthday parties, except for the dates (it takes a lot more coordination to pull off an actual surprise birthday party so we will keep that as a rare surprise if we can), and so the Chief also made sure to let us know which dates were no good.

This turned out to be almost every single weekend in September. The good news is now we do have a whole month to prepare (phew)!

Right.

So...venue, guests, food, cake, and activities.

We decided that this year we wanted to book an entire venue and have everyone attend in a single party. So we needed to get a venue that could fit...around 40 adult and some kids. Which also means we need somewhere kid-friendly. We started by asking the previous YKLS Cast Party organisers about costs and all so we had a rough budget to work on, and then it was time to start hunting.

First choice we found online was the Greyhouse Bangsar. The corner bungalow in Bangsar looked to be suitably located, big enough for our needs we could have food catered outside and the rooms inside to chill.

The problem was that we were told that it wasn't available as it was undergoing renovation. And there was that added factor that there wouldn't be sufficient parking space... So we opted to take a look at their other choices: the Canvas (a smaller space) and the Penthouse (a much larger space).

We were quite keen on the Penthouse after taking a view. Large space, wifi, sound system, a pool table, foosball table and even a ping pong table...we could have quite a party! Given the space of the Penthouse, we could invite more than just the usual birthday groups - we were already planning to extend the invitation to choir members who knew the Chief. Given how the Penthouse could accommodate a hundred people or so, we could even invite the recent choir members as our guests to the party!

However, someone did suggest Marmalade to us so we decided to take a look there as well and got them to give us a menu choice and quotation.

And in the end, we decided on Marmalade. We liked the fact that not only they gave us a choice of 4 menu selections, but we could pick and mix from the different menus as well. We guess we didn't want to spend too much time picking a caterer if we did go with the Penthouse. Also, Marmalade seemed large enough to fit the number of guests we were aiming for.

With the venue settled and the date confirmed, the last thing to do was to send out the invitations via email and create a Facebook event so we could keep tabs on the headcount of those attending.

Note to self: do not take for granted that sending an invitation via Facebook event would mean the invitee actually is aware of it. We had quite a number of people unaware of it until a few days before the party because we texted them to check. Must say we ourself were to blame for not checking sooner too.

We had MJ make cupcakes for the party, given his talented skills at making pretty confectionery.

Deciding that planning activities weren't necessary, we decided to provide wine instead after checking with Marmalade on corkage. Finally, more balloons (we just can't resist getting helium balloons).

Fast forward to the day itself, and the Chief's face upon realising we'd booked the entire restaurant for the night (and the implication of why the entire restaurant was booked), the initial stress the Chief had upon realising how many people would be coming, the extra stress and awkwardness when there were guests coming in that the Chief didn't know at all (our choir guests)...well, that made us feel that yeah, we could still surprise the Chief even after 7 years of celebrations. Of course, once most of the guests arrived and the Chief had eaten, stress gave way to entertaining friends at different tables and it was all good.

But we were pretty much happy that most could make it to celebrate the Chief's birthday (so much so that we couldn't get from one end of the restaurant to the other during the cake ceremony). We were too busy running around (because we were itchy enough to want to print photos for guests to sign) that we didn't have much of an appetite to eat (even though we were starving as we were driving to the venue!), and regretfully we didn't take as many photos with everyone as we would have liked to.

Playing host at the birthday party did remind us how our past Christmas parties went...and the Christmas party to come. Gosh.

Once more, a big thank you to all who came and made it the big happy party that it was. A big thank you for your thoughtful presents (even to those who don't know the Chief!). We're sorry we didn't get to spend more time catching up with everyone who came. We hope you had great fun and had good food!

Clan Chief Capers

So the other night was dinner with the Clan Chief again, and the Chief's youngest nephew is now old enough to speak and is less shy in public.

Once we were seated, said nephew (who arrived earlier) started greeting the family members that just arrived...

Nephew starts with the Chief's aunty and works his way down the line...

...greeting Chief's mum...

...greeting Chief's dad...

...greeting the Chief...

...and then draws a blank when he comes to us.

Yes well it was too be expected.

Resolutions 2015: AppRes/15/0105

We've not been doing any resolutions because: it never gets resolved by year end.

And apparently when we do plan for resolutions it turns out to be for stuff that requires organizing ie album art, scanning photos to digital copies. As it is these kinda of organising work never ends. When we think of how we want to reorganize our photos from our iPhone to our Mac, renaming them and then moving them to separate folders...we're not fully sold onto iPhoto (not to mention how iPhoto isn't getting any more love with Yosemite and iOS8).

So. Let's try for this year.

We are aware that we're quite the hoarder: memorabilia and souvenirs are one thing but having that mentality of 'we should keep this, we should be able to repurpose this in the future' meant we have lots of used papers (to re-use as rough notepaper), ribbons from presents (for future presents if the ribbons match the wrapping and is long enough), the packages of things we've bought (we're staring at our hard drive boxes as we type this), pamphlets and magazines and reading materials and...gah. Our tabletops never really get to enjoy being left clear of things.

We are aware as to why we hoard: we're aware our memory isn't the clearest and so we tend to keep lots of stuff to remind us of things we've done, places we've been to, things to do...

Only, we're never great at clearing away stuff that can be cleared away once we don't need it any more. We were holding on to brochures and marketing aids about oral contraceptives from 9 years ago, for goodness sake! Every time we think, oh, we should read this up again one day, and yeah that day never did came.

And that's a topic that was brought up in Marie Kondo's book: not knowing how to let go off stuff you don't use any more. Better yet is how it also mentions about how some of these stuff, instead of being discarded, gets given away to someone else (who may not want it either) to dispel some of that notion that you are being wasteful by getting rid of something still useful. So when it comes to cleaning now we have a slight awareness that we really ought to just throw away stuff that we know we would keep but would never use. If we need it rarely (or if ever) we can just get a new one then. We shouldn't need to thank every single thing for its purpose before discarding, because we don't want to anthropomorphize everything in our life.

Thus our resolution this year would be to tidy up our workspace. Because we really do spend a lot of time at our table and honestly it would be nice if we have the space to wrap stuff again without having to shift the mess about.

It's just too bad that there's no way we can get rid of everything that doesn't spark joy from our worktable.

3,679,200 Minutes

It's 2015! Time really flies near the end of the year, and honestly we really felt the final quarter of 2014 just zip past.

Last year we tried something new, following the footsteps of marsyparsy (who's done this for 2 years now) and alakzen (who only tried it for 2013 and decided it was enough) and post a photo a day on Instagram. Except we weren't satisfied with just posting a photo and using the caption to state the date, we had to find extra work for ourself by:

1. Editing the photo to place text, specifically a hashtag and the day;

2. Publishing first on Tumblr;

3. Getting the Tumblr link, then only publishing on Instagram.

Thank goodness for IFTT and Instagram having the option to post directly to Facebook, otherwise we would have given up sooner or later with all that trouble we found ourself.

So, for 2014, we've captured a moment every day in pictures. Most days were mundane, some days couldn't be captured in just a photo. But the idea there was just to jot down: here, look, today was an experience, don't forget it, don't let the day just go by. Blogging used to be how we kept our memories of what happened (well, this blog has survived up to now) and is probably still one of our best repositories of what we've done. Facebook? Endless scrolling and scrutinising posts if we ever wanted to find something from years past - it's great for the present, not the past (unless you've specifically made a photo album of it). Instagram would be slightly easier provided you've used an unique hashtag to categorise your own photos, and thumbnails are easier to scan compared to blog titles.

Currently we are writing using a Bluetooth keyboard paired to our iPad, which means it isn't easy linking words to events that happened (we guess in this case linking to our Tumblr posts) like we used to do (three years ago). But it would still be good to list down highlights for the year (we'll just update this post later once we refer back to our photos):

To start, we'd stayed on with the Young KL Singers for the third year (since joining back in 2012 for the 10th anniversary production), with the start of the year seeing us perform 2013's production, YKLS.Period, in PenangPac in January, before starting our new production: Incantations. Boardgaming made its way back with a higher frequency when the occasional Fridays saw some members of YKLS coming to YCA for the occasional gaming session. In more choir-related happenings, a bunch of us got together to sing an a capella version of Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie. A bunch of us got into the Shake 'n Take craze. Performed and experienced the Yayasan Sime Darby Arts Festival at KLPac, which was a great eye-opener. Followed a bunch of choirmates to the Henessey Artistry event. YKLS then performed in DPAC before heading up to PenangPac a few weeks later to perform, which was an awesome experience with more members driving up this time (and it being a more intensive food trip)! To round up the choir year, we managed to join all the carolling sessions this year at 1 Utama.

We decided to start watching Doctor Who, starting from Series 5, working our way to Series 7 before going back to Series 1-4 to tide us over while we waited for Series 8. Then started Being Human after that, both the BBC and US remake (although only for the first couple of seasons in both cases. Sailor Moon Crystal finally started showing much to our excitment. The Hobbit trilogy finishes and we're left feeling it would have been better off as a two-parter instead.

Chinese New Year this time we experienced our first pun choi. It's been agreed among the TTDIans that birthdays should now be just a makan celebration without the stressful part of pooling and getting presents, and while we managed to avoid celebrating with the January babies (on account on being sick), we celebrated a belated version with the March babies instead. As for the Chief's birthday, we were slightly slow at planning it but managed to pull it off starting with a joint celebration with the TTDIan's, then a quiet date at Way Modern Chinois trying out their truffle roast duck, and pulling off a surprise party with the guys (featuring lots of spinach). There were also a couple of weddings, leaving only a handful of collegemates and schoolmates that haven't tied the knot (and speeches warning said folks that the hengdais are no longer as young and active as they used to be so don't take too long). More friends are also now proud parents although this year we couldn't make it for the full moon celebrations. The Chief also brought us along to attend the gala dinner event of A Journey Through Time.

Played Diablo III (again, only as far as the storyline was concerned). Attended the Professor Layton vs Pheonix Wright launch at Berjaya Times Square. Dropped our portable hard drive containing our iTunes media, and lost most of our recent music and videos (thank goodness our photos were backed up to the laptop instead). Got our first Mac Mini and started moving over to the Mac. Bought not just one, but two Logitech bluetooth keyboards (they are so worth it). Won a Lenovo Yoga tablet running Android OS. Finally found Ultra Street Fighter 4 on sale on Steam.

Made a couple more trips to Penang and a number of trips to Singapore! Finally made full use of our Universal Studios Singapore season pass before it expired. Also, experienced Guangzhou for the first time and once again walked for hours due to excellent weather.

Finally ended the year on a quieter note as we didn't have a Christmas party this year (due to a hectic December), and a simple New Year's Eve with friends for dinner and games.

Gosh. We must say that the photo a day project does help in reminding us of the many things that did happen in 2014! Here's hoping there's plenty more in store for 2015!

Backing Up

So it finally happened: one of our external hard drives have gone bust.

We happened to drop one day last week, and didn't notice that we couldn't read the disk because we were busy playing Diablo III: Reaper Of Souls it wasn't plugged into our laptop. This particular hard drive contains our iTunes media, and over the years (gosh, eight and a half years now!) we've not only piled on loads of music, but also videos, podcasts and apps!

Overall we figure we've about 500 gigs of iTunes stuff now stuck in an external hard drive that we cannot read.

That's 500 gigs of combined music and videos that we have not only looked for cover art, but also loads of other details such as the year said media was released, genre, lyrics and goodness knows what other info we put in when we were in a rather OCD mood.

So we've sent the hard drive to a shop to see if they can access the files or, better yet, work their magic and make the hard drive readable again. If the hard drive works then we can immediately get iTunes to work instantly with little effort, otherwise we'll get them to copy all the files out and we'll have to (shudder) re-associate all the files from iTunes.

If not, well, we're not sure yet if we'd rather just delete all our files from iTunes and start from scratch, or really try and get the store to retrieve as many of our files they can. After all, we still have our physical CDs (for some of the music), and thankfully we have a pretty decent internet connection to redownload everything else again from iTunes.

Still, just thinking of the amount of work awaiting us...fingers crossed!

Everything Is A(cappella)wesome!

So a few of weeks back alakazen proposed the idea to do an a cappella version of "Everything Is Awesome" after he'd watched the movie 'cos he found the music super catchy couldn't get it out of his head thought it was awesome really liked it. A bunch of us at YKLS were ok to do this, alakazen brought in another friend of his for the beatboxing bits and eloneth came up with the a cappella score, and next thing you know we were at YCA rehearsing around four times a week.

Initially alakazen wanted to get it recorded and uploaded to YouTube within a week (get it out early!) but in the end it was decided to would be better if we better prepared before we recorded and uploaded it.

Two weeks and some eight rehearsals and a recording session later, and we've the finished product!

Kudos to eloneth for the arrangement, alakazen for the gung-ho-ness in getting everyone for the project as well as editing the video and Shy Tim for some awesome beatboxing!

iPhonography

Ok so when the iPhone 5 was about to launch in KL, we were having thoughts to get that to replace our point-and-shoot Canon iXus. After all, the iXus was a 5 megapixel camera while the iPhone took photos at 8mpx and we could immediately edit and share it too! Another plus point is now we have one gadget less to carry, and considering our size, lugging along loads of heavy gadgets don't go down well with us (we're already feeling the aches from having lug around an iPad 2, a 3DS and our chargers on our trips).

Yes you can see how blogging have long given way to other social media sites, especially when you're just a casual blogger with no focus on what your blog is all about...

Anyways we were using our iPhone 3GS during our trip to Philippines, when we accidentally left our iPhone in the cab. So we had a reason to get the iPhone 5 after all instead of holding out for yet another year, heh. And happily we started snapping photos, and Instagramming loads more, and next thing you know we've filled up half the space on our 64GB iPhone with photos and videos.

We definitely need to find time to sit down, copy out the photos and videos we can do without from the iPhone and clear up space already. Photos and videos from random happenings at YKLS, from our trips, from random snappings...

And better still? We just got ourself an Olloclip Quick-Flip Case on an impulse buy (while shopping for a present for the office Christmas present exchange, no less), and now we're itchy to get the Olloclip 4-in-1 lens as well as a Gorillapod Original tripod.

Heaven help us when the iPhone 6 rolls out and we may have to get new accessories.

CNN's 20 Biggest Travel Mistakes

We came across this article today, and admit to making mistake number 2:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/02/travel/20-travel-mistakes/index.html?c&page=4

2. Not buying something you like as soon as you see it.You think you're gonna circle back to that shop.
You think you'll see a cheaper, better version somewhere else.
You won't.
That evocative street painting or those Metallica nesting dolls you didn't buy? Now not having them will haunt you for the rest of your life.
When you see something you like, just buy it and live without regret.

Ah well. Happens to us a lot, especially when visiting some place for the first time. Like our last trip, which was to Japan.

While we were the one to plan the itinerary for this trip, and have made it such that we'd only cover different areas every day, and yet we still find ourself going, "Oh that looks nice. OK, we'll KIV that to get later on our way back."

When we ought to have realised that we usually never, ever, go back by the same way, or we would have forgotten all about it much later on.

Not always because we worry we might be paying too much for whatever caught our eye (that one may be so when we are shopping in a street market or something, like when in Chatuchak) but more because we worry we may quickly overspend and end up not having enough cash much later on, and then if we see something we want then, we can't afford to buy it.

Especially when in Japan where, hoo boy, there are loads of things one can buy. Cutesy stuff, gadgets galore, souvenirs...it's like the first time we walked into Daiso when it first opened, but on a far larger scale.

And the funny thing is...while we know we always say, "We'll come back for it later," (and don't), we can't help but to keep doing it. Even when the Chief points it out to us (whether to prevent us lamenting about it much later on or to egg us on to buying more things), it doesn't necessarily push us over the edge to buy it.

But we guess it was rather prudent to hold back when in Japan - there were too many things we could have fancied getting (what more when walking into Tokyu Hands!), and the KIV measure does help us in a way: if we don't remember to get it, it's probably a fleeting impulse and not that important to us.

Or we could have just forgotten to get it. Ahhhhh!

Prince Of Persia: The Shadow & The Flame

So last Thursday the old-new Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame was released! Just in time for the long weekend.

POP2 on MS-DOS in the 90s was both fun and frustrating but it certainly was memorable for us, so we were rather keen to see how this remake stood up especially since it was stated that the levels were all redesigned.

Logging onto the iTunes App Store, what impressed us first was that the app was under 50MB. Considering how the first remake, Prince Of Persia Classic, is over 200MB (we bought the HD version), and even Prince Of Persia Retro is nearly 80MB, so one that doesn't require any wait to download is rather welcome (also makes us wonder how the content fares compared to the earlier games).

Next thing that made us happy? The app is universal. Great because we find, while it's much more accessible for us to play this on the go on the iPhone, the graphics are best enjoyed on the iPad.

So what can we say about this remake? We, unfortunately, can't help but compare this to the original (but then again, that was the reason why we bought this game).

Visuals are stunning. The Prince does sport his look from the Trilogy, changing depending on how far you've progressed. Only...for the storytelling, we think graphics actually do not present the story well when compared to the storyboard of the older game. Otherwise we like how the perspective means that you don't only see the left wall but not the right like in the old games.

Music could have been better. We were lucky to have played the old POP2 with a Soundblaster sound card, and in addition to sound effect and speech, the stages had background music that reflected the area rather well. Now, there isn't any BGM except for during battles and specific encounters (with a BGM being a throwback to the Rope Bridge encounter!). Oh well, maybe that's why the app size is under 50MB.

Controls work superbly well for swipe controls! We opted for the virtual keypad at first due to habit, thinking buttons would offer slightly more precise controls when it came to timing that jump etc. However, the swipe controls work perfectly for movement, so we never really had those tense moments where we had to time a jump or edge carefully to a ledge. We soon learn that combat has been simplified to a timing game, which sorts of suits the touch interface because button mashing a touchscreen really makes for a lousy gaming experience.

Gameplay was shorter than remembered, possibly because the Prince moves much more fluid than before and because the game isn't as punishing as the old one - the death traps are very visible so you don't accidentally run into a spiked wall or fall into a pit where a wall grinds closer to crush you with no escape. It's less frustrating and more fun, and that's why it's short. The older game had us replaying the stages over and over as we kept dying as we figured out how to get to the exits (often rage quitting too), and it took months (and that was after we got hold of a guidebook, shy) while this new game was done in 3 days (sooner if we weren't concerned at how fast our battery dropped while playing).

Speaking of which, while there are less emphasis for perfect timing and such, there're also less puzzles to figure out in this game. There's only one puzzle and that had to do with what looks like the Chief Priest in the Temple Of The Flame. Other than that, there's not much to figure out although the game has a focus on exploration. Even the 4-Gate puzzle in the Temple because a pretty much linear progression romp in this new version instead of the multistorey maze it used to be. Granted, they've also done away with the more mind-bending ones like the Rope Bridge and what to do when you reach the Sacred Flame...

The storyline is...well, while the story never changed, the presentation this time is rather lacking. The previous one did a great job immersing you into what was going on with the Prince, Jaffar and Princess, so from the start when the Prince jumps out the window you know why and what to do. The 'ooh' moment in the intro when the Prince was magically replaced by Jaffar in disguise is gone. There used to be a sense of accomplishment when you manage to ride the magic carpet/horse, watching the cinematic that follows was rather rewarding, but not this time. Then again, we rather hoped the story could have improved, as Jordan Mechner's POP2 bible had quite a fair bit more info. It's never really been explained how the Temple Of The Flame was involved, though. Well, the gist of the storyline of POP2 is still there but doesn't build any connection to the player, we feel - you don't care about the Prince, nor the Princess dying, or even Jaffar.

Then we remember how the game is under 50MB and we gloss over this fact - we can always replay back the DOS version if we wanted to watch the story.

As for the store where you spend in-game coins...well, just get the combo upgrades. You'll probably get enough to upgrade two out of three in the first run-through of the entire game. The others don't matter unless you're out for achievements.

All in all we found the game fun and think it was good to have re-designed the levels, although the game only lasted 3 days instead of 3 weeks (well, we're still replaying for the sake of getting all the achievements before removing the app!). Perhaps we can also have back the old levels as a separate challenge?

iOS Cardgaming

Christmas must have come early: Magic: The Gathering: Duels Of The Planeswalkers 2014 came out last Tuesday, which saw us scrabbling to clear out some space on our meagre 16GB iPad so we have space to install the new game while still hanging on to Duels 2013 because we haven't finished the game yet (also, if they put the expansions on sale we can finally get then).

Now there are cards that have dynamic moving artwork similar to the trailers Wizards do for the expansion launches!

Then on Thursday night, Ascension gets an update and the Immortal Heroes expansion. This one cheaper at $2.99 and available in the same app (Duels cost $9.99 for the complete game!). And we spend lots more time on Ascension than we do on Duels!

We love how you can mix and match whichever expansions you like.

Unfortunately for us, both apps are disk space, battery and time sappers. Even more than before!

How we really need more hours in a day...also, a higher capacity iPad Mini might not go amiss...

iOS7...Coming This Fall

While it's always exciting to follow the WWDC to see what's coming in the next iOS, we always forget how we're then set up for another long wait for the actual iOS to be available.

And after 6 iOS versions with the same UI, we can't wait for the fresh new look. We do agree that the UI is polarising, given the colour scheme, but overall what the new UI means for us is the amount of time we'll spend Macturbating once more. From the photobox-like parallax effect, to browsing moments and collections in the Photo app (although, given that memory space is still limited, those photos won't be permanently on the iPhone), to rearranging apps into different pages in a folder...hoo yeah, iOS 7 should keep us occupied until next year when iOS 8 will come out.

It's a shame iOS 7 still doesn't allow us to manually place app icons anywhere on the grid but still auto-arranges it from top to bottom, left to right. Personalisation still not fully there yet.

After the initial excitement at the iOS 7 video and the brand new 'pop'-ish look, what are we looking forward to in the new iOS? When iOS 2 came out, we happily paid up USD10 to upgrade our iPod Touch and have a look through the App Store - although we held out from paying for any apps for a long time. When iOS 3 came out, there was cut, copy, paste, video recording and MMS to finally made the iPhone a decent phone to consider (when compared to the Nokias then that already had all these features...).

iOS 4 had multitasking and folders (woo less home screen pages!) and iOS 5 brought the Notification Centre (finally), iCloud and iMessage. Stuff that we would definitely use every day on the iPhone.

With iOS 6...probably the only thing we were really interested in was Facebook integration. Not Maps - we don't use the Maps feature every day. What's more, Flyover wasn't a global feature, only for select places (and even then, we can expect Singapore and Bangkok to get those features first, like Street View on Google Maps or even 3D buildings). And Facebook integration - well, the only plus point really was being able to see birthdays from the Notification Centre. Otherwise it pretty much screwed up our Contact List by renaming them to their Facebook profile names (and this after we spend time unifying facebook contacts to those in our address book) even though we specifically chose the Address Book name to be displayed instead. There was also an instance when, instead of texting a contact, an email was sent to his Facebook email instead.

Gave up on Facebook integration (at least, integration with our contacts). And with MAS the only app using Passbook...pfft.
For us, iOS 6 didn't have that 'standout feature' to get us excited to upgrade immediately (not to mention, many held off upgrading because of Google Maps which weren't available in the Malaysian App Store).

So. iOS 7! Control Centre is definitely welcomed (Android!). The new look of the Photos app is great, too - finally some sort of organised look to all the photos! New look to multitasking (WebOS!) and an easier 'flick to close' gesture. AirDrop...well, until everyone uses an iPhone 5, we'll still be sending this via iMessage or email (and capped at 5 photos per email still?) while others go around the room bumping their phones with others. Don't think we'll be making use of iTunes Radio (data and battery life!) much if at all, too.
So...really, we guess the feature we'd be looking out for most of all in iOS 7? The new look and feel. That's it, heh. Simple expectations.