Absolutely must have Android Apps for Shoyo HTC desire

OK! If you google top android apps I pretty sure that it will generated huge list of web site from top 5, top 10, even top 50 apps!!! So what’s so difference with my? For my case, here are some of the apps that is ABSOLUTELY must have!!! If I gonna flash my phone, or format my phone or ever will I upgrade my phone, I pretty sure I will install all this apps into my phone (not unless I found any new and better one) As for now, I present to you the absolutely must have Android Apps for Shoyo HTC Desire!

Not in any particular order, all with QR code

1. Apps Organizer

Why? If you ever struggle with trying to put more program short cut, apps into your home screen. You will appreciate apps organizer, it allow you to tag your apps into custom categories and then putting it as widget. Just imagine creating multiple folders and putting your program short cut inside. With this, I can categories all my apps in one home pages, then use the rest of the home pages for other widgets.

2. Bar code scanner

This has been feature in multiple site, and it is also one of my personal favourite. It is basically a barcode scanner program that allow you to scan barcode or QR code, then it will try to search the products / website / android apps / contact etc from the web. It also can generate QR code for your existing apps / contact / web site and share it with others. Never fail to amaze my colleagues or friends.

3. ES File explorer

A file explorer program that allow me to access my LAN share folders through WI FI and copy / paste to my phone or pc. What more I need to say?

4. Funky expenses

If you are a person that very good in keeping your finances or expenses then this program is not for me. Else for people like me sometime just don’t know where my money go, Funky expenses provide me the ability to keep track my expenses while include my Bank and credit card account in check. You need to do a bit of debit & credit though.

5. GDocs

The ability to sync with my Google Docs while allowing me to edit those documents with a free price tag!!! Can I have an excel version also? >w<

6. Google Googles

I don’t really use this app very often, but the ability to scan a physical items and able to search the matching item is really really impressive!!! iPhone users gonna have this app really soon, so show this off to them before they get it!!!

7. GStrings

Please!!! Whatever is in your mind, this app is not what you are thinking about!!! Basically this is a guitar tuner programs to tune your guitar, and it is pretty accurate!

8. Handy Calc

A calculator that provide not just basic mathematic calculation, but scientific calculator, unit converter, variable and function and and and currency converter that actually include Brunei Currency!!!

9. Led Desire Light

If you already updated your Desire to Froyo 2.2, then you may not need this. Or else, an app that make use of your LED flash as torch light, or use it to generate morse code for fun. It is an app that you will appreciate when you need it.

10. Rock Player

The problems with Android is the inability to play multiple video format. As far as I am aware, default android player still have problems to play some div / avi files. So rock player is here for the rescue if you want to play other format. So far I have no problem with avi, div, flv format, playing 720p mkv will lag which is a bit disappointing for me, since those are most of the video format I have.

11. Bible

If you are a Christian and don’t mind to use your data plan or WI FI for Bible reading. This is by far the best online Bible I have come across. Support multiple format include NIV, NLT, and other popular format. What’s the price? Free!!!

12. MSN Talk

If you only use windows live account for chatting, which happen to most users in this region (or Brunei) and absolutely can’t wait for windows live to exist in Google phone (will they?) MSN talk is one of the best MSN chat clients I used, while Fring and others come second.

Is this all I have? Of course Not! I have lot’s more apps & games that I have installed to my phone are worth mentioning. But I feel that this are some of the programs that I just can’t go without it! The other apps like Facebook, twitter are default apps that you will have, and evernote / drop box has been mentioned all the time. I may blog about my choices of Android games in the future depends on the outcome. So continue to stay tune with me :)

Kitaro, are you ready? By CreativeMelancholic

Who's up for Japanese food today? Well apparently, we all were last Sunday. We've been hearing positive reviews for Kitaro Restaurant located behind Centrepoint, Gadong; what more, the amazing deal they're having for their Sungkai specials. It was $22 bnd for every adult, with an ALL YOU CAN EAT spread. So we decided to take an opportunity to visit the place for ourselves. We reserved a table for a group of friends, and arrived there exactly 7.30pm. But we didn't get a table until 8pm, because the main VIP room was still occupied by guests. So we took over the teppanyaki room, but I especially do not recommend this if you have a huge group of people joining for dinner for the difficulty in passing food from one end to the other. Anyway, initially it was a mess, we were all loud and causing such a ruckus as to what to eat, and asking for saucers and wasabi, but eventually we all settled down as soon as the first glorious plate of sake(salmon) sashimi arrived. And what glorious sashimi it was! Sam, our (un)official photographer of that night, managed to take one snapshot before it was devoured by us hungry beasts! Either I hadn't had a bite of salmon sashimi for ages, or it was really mouth-trembling-good! It was fresh, and it melts in your mouth with such tender sweetness. After that, we ordered about 3-4 more plates to satisfy our salmon cravings. But that's not all that we had. I'm not sure what this piece is called, but it was a pass-able meal, with really soft, literally-melts-in-your-mouth tofu, and scrambled egg on a hot plate. After that, my tamago sushi arrived. I always order this every time I enter a Japanese restaurant without fail. It was obviously gobbled up by our friends in lightning speed, leaving this little fella alone on the plate, but enough time to give Sam a quick snap of it. Again, it tastes standard, but good enough to eat. Here's a cousin from the above tofu clan, but I did not catch what this was called. It was just as soft, and the sauce really complimented it. Our friend Esther, ordered the soba, but I didn't try it, so I guess I can't really comment. I'm not a fan of cold noodles to begin with anyway. (Or was it hot?) Then there's the fish that got pregnant mid-cooking. Okay, I'm kidding, but we ordered a plate of pregnant fishies and that was satisfactory. Then came the sushi clan. We ordered quite a different number of sushi, including the ever popular california maki, but unfortunately it disappeared before Sam could shoot it, so nyeh, you'll have to make do with these photos below. Absolutely delicious, especially the ones with salmon. There were also raw tuna, cuttlefish and eel; and Sam just loves his Tamago Unagi sushi. Delicious, and extremely heavenly each time you pop one into your mouth. Then here comes the main course. This salmon head dish is for you, especially if you love fish eyes. But not for me. I prefer the meaty part. The grilled beef is delicious and lip smacking. It was grilled to almost perfection! And lastly, the idako. A must- have for every japanese dinner. It was fresh and chewy and oh-so-good! I think if I'm not mistaken, for a small bowl, you'll be able to find 4-5 baby octopuses. I wish they'd add more! Now for a food rating, drumroll please......................................... Food: 4/5 (Fresh and delicious!) Service: 4/5 (They were quick, and friendly.) Environment: 3.5/5 (Quite small and narrow, but it has the japanese vibe!) Appetite: 5/5 (Tummy was content) Price: 5/5 (Totally worth it, in terms of the current (Sungkai) promotional value) Overall: 4/5 Now if you were to ask me, which is better? There's no doubt about it, the ever popular Excapade Restaurant got themselves some competition! A lot of people commented that their salmon sashimi was better than Excapade, but I didn't go to the latter for a long time, so I can't really make a comparison right now. But I am quite content with Kitaro, and if they keep the great job up, there's no reason why they can't be at the top of their league. All hail Japanese food! Thank you for reading this fool's review and I would like to thank Sam for allowing me to write a guest blog as well as taking all of the photos you see above. This is my first post regarding food, but do expect more to come. Till then, have a Yummy day! Kitaro Japanese Restaurant All you can eat buffet (ranging from starters & sushi to sashimi & teppanyaki) Tel: +673 245 7373 Adult: $22 (Sungkai Promotion) creativemelancholic

Thanks Amy aka CreativeMelancholic for a well written food reviews ^w^

My camera main dialler is faulty!!! TwT

Just found out that my faithful Canon Eos 30D decided to break down when I was excited to take a full rainbow shoot when I was on my way home. . . .

Right after I changed my lens to UWA, started up my camera, point my camera to the rainbow, my index finger move to the main dialler trying to adjust the aperture setting. Instantly I know something isn’t right. . . after a few testing trying to roll the dialler, I knew very well that my camera dialler is faulty and in need of repair. . . my heart sink, and my excitement drop to the bottom pit. So I simply snap a few shoot and decided to call it off. . . .

For those who got no idea what a main dialler is just look at the pictures.

Depends on the camera mode you use, it is one of the essential roller to control your camera setting like aperture, shutter speeds and etc. Since I mainly use aperture mode, so I use if really often to control my settings. In fact, this is my 2nd most used button other than the shutter buttons.

So I definitely need to send this to Canon show room for repair, hopefully this will not burn a big hole to my wallet TwT

Steps by steps of rooting HTC Desire and upgrade to Froyo version by Shoyo

After I acquire my HTC Desire for over a month, more and more I realize why so many peoples is into rooting Android device. I wouldn’t explain why you should root your phone and the benefit of it, since it is easily available when you google it. But I want to do is give a step by steps approach of rooting the device, this is the process that actually took me quite a while to find a methods that actually work for me. This methods work for me as I am using a unbrand and unlock Brunei version (which I believe is similar to Singapore set), so my methods may not work for you.

First of all, to make your life easier please backup all your stuffs in your HTC device before hand, and have your installer, updater downloaded and ready.

Steps 1:

1. Install HTC sync to your computer first, you can find the installer from the SD card that came with your HTC device, or you can download it from official HTC website.

2. Download unrevoked recovery and flash tools from this site. http://unrevoked.com/recovery/

After that you can follow the instruction on how to flash and root your device from this here. http://rootmydroid.co.uk/guides/desire/howto-root-your-htc-desire/ I basically follow his first steps to successfully root my HTC desire.

Once you root your device, then option on what to do with your HTC desire will open up tremendously. You can either keep it with Android 2.1 and start downloading some of the apps that only work with rooting device. Like market enabler from http://bit.ly/dpUKQP where it allow you to buy apps from Android market.

Steps 2:

This steps is assume that you want to prepare your SD card for A2SD+ or similar programs where you have to format and partition your SD Card to ext3 and Fat32 format. This are the easier 2 options that I found on internet. If you are not interested proceed to steps 3.

1. Download Rom Manager from Android market, then within the program you will have options to partition your SD Card. This one somehow didn’t work for me, so if this doesn’t work for you. Go to step 2.

2. Download Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 (Personal Edition) http://bit.ly/aiapSb and of course install it to your pc. Run the programs, then partition your card to 2 sections, first is your fat32 depends on your card size and 2nd partition for ext3. I will recommend to partition your ext3 to 512mb or maximum 1 gig, anything more than that is a waste, then the rest for your Fat32.

Steps 3:

Now, once you done with the first 2 steps, you will need to download the updated radio ROM (assume you want to flash your Desire to the latest Froyo 2.2) You can get official HTC Froyo ROM and radio ROM from http://bit.ly/8XKRan 

Download and install ROM Manager from Android Market if you haven’t done so, copy the radio ROM from your pc to your SD card (don’t put it into any folder within your SD card), restart your phone using the recovery function within the ROM manager option. It will go into recovery mode which is a black screen with some green text. Navigate to install .zip from SD card and look for the file you downloaded. Restart your phone after successfully update your Radio ROM.

Steps 4:

Finally, you are free to choose which ever custom ROM you want from the internet, XDA developer http://bit.ly/byx7oO have plenty of option for you. Personally I use Official Froyo 2.2 with A2SD+ support by ieftm http://bit.ly/b5ek2z

Download the ROM you want and copy it to your SD card, restart your phone using ROM Manager and navigate to install .zip from SD Card and flash it and enjoy your Froyo 2.2 and give a pat on your shoulder for a great well done job!

Once again, download all the files that you want to use before you proceed to rooting. If you necessary must keep all your apps, SMS, call logs and whatever, Google and download which ever backup option that suit you.

Beware that rooting device may void your warranty and I can’t held responsible for bricking your device. Furthermore, all credit should give to the creator to which ever site I link it from; I just merely put together the steps that work for me and hopefully work for you.

Feel free to share this to others if you find it useful and drop a comment if you can, enjoy ^w^

bruneiclassified.com has been hacked!!! Who is this iBlackHat?

  Just saw this when I try to check out some deal in bruneiclassified.com and I quickly grab a screenshot of this! Noted that I actually trying to go to the camera sessions. But if you trying to access www.bruneiclassified.com it will link you to this.

 

Though I not sure how long this has happen, but I really interested to see how long it take for bruneiclassified IT dept to fix this issues. I think this is one of the very first time that major site in Brunei has been hacked and show in to public, should be a good enough hammering for local to put some awareness into IT security? Or they need some more? BTW, if you check the screen shoot carefully, you will know that it was hacked by iblackhat. Of course you wouldn’t be able to find much info on this anonymous hacker, but if you got more info to let me know :)

What to do when you are bore with the same old thing? Twist it!!!

Personally I believe that whatever you can think of, somebody sure have either already thought about it or already done it. But that doesn’t mean that you should stop you for trying something new.

When it come to photography, I always amazed with their skill with composing, technique or PP (photo processing) while I got myself stuck with the same old things. Then I read online on how some of them got stuck with the same old locations while amazed with their local photographer, I know that I wasn’t the only one. Recently I have a chances to go Berakas foresty, honestly I have been there quite a few times and have shoot quite a few sunset shoot over there; so I was really puzzle how should I go with it this time.

For the photo above, I will usually either stick with the original colour while enhance the contrast and saturations. For this case I decided to change the colour temperature to a cooler colour and make it look lonely.

 

I also decided to go with cooler colour for the photo on the left, I always like some of the photographer portraits  with those old ages blue hue look. Still can’t replicate that kind of style and colour yet :\

The one on the right all I did was using a flash on my left and flash it onto the water and enhance the colour saturation and contrast.

Nothing much need to say about the last one should I? >W<

Landscape where nobody bother

Once in a while I passed by this areas and every time when I passed by this area I always wanted to snap some photo of it. It is a swarm where water are darks and dirty, where you can hardly spot any life and insects, where trees no longer green; yet I find it an interesting subject to shoot. I especially like how it mirror the reflections with amazing clarity. I also realized this place is hardly posted since most wouldn’t bother or didn’t know about this places. So hopefully more local photographer will explore more unique places for more opportunity for fellow photographers.

Consumer Fair Part 6 2010

Consumer Fair has been the one of the major event that managed by Sunlit and approved by the Brunei gov’t, where it allow various companies to set up a booth in order to sell / market their products. You can check out my previous post on Consumer fair part 5 if you want.

This time round, they decided to host it on Bridex Halls at Jerudong.

Amy was really pump up when she saw the cat foods package, she was like jumping up & down and asking me to take a photo of it; the logo was designed by her so is understandable.

As the events organiser, Sunlit staffs still have to work even during late sunday night. Or are they happy go lucky around the booth? Hmmmm. . . . . . >w<

So how’s consumer fair this time? I was chit chatting with some of the trading companies, and all of them mentioned that it wasn’t as good as the previous one, all of them comment that it didn’t have as much peoples as last time. I think one of the reasons was that since Bridex is bigger than ICC, and the booth was very well apart to create enough space for peoples to walk; in a way it give a subconscious of being very empty, especially on some of the least popular booth. Another reasons I think is Bridex Jerudong is just too far for some of the peoples where they didn’t bother to give it a go.

Personally, I think Bridex location is pretty alright, but somehow due to the space I do feel the this time round is a bit empty and not having gaming or bands or others competition to spices things up do contribute to the overall atmosphere. Of course, do take my words for as gain of salt since I only attended the last day of the events.