November 17, 2006
Blogging on the move
I just ate my own word when I bought my latest mobile phone. I've bought mysellf an HTC TyTN/Hermes phone or as T-Mobile call it MDA Vario II. I have to say its been really usefull in the past few days since I dont have a computer nor Internet connection at home. In fact this post is done from my Vario II. Still not used to the mini thumb keyboard. Not being able to touch type is really disturbing. More blog posts will come once we get Internet sorted in my new place. Last weekend I moved to the new place in Wapping.
Update: added hyperlinks and fix spelling.
Posted by vhadiant at 06:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 09, 2006
Strongest mobile phone in the world?
I couldn't find my mobile phone at home this evening and after a quick search I thought I must have left it in the car. It happens quite often for me. My car is parked on the road as I don't have a garage, so I went out to my car and guess what I found. My mobile phone lying on the road next to my card. Damn it, it must have fallen from my pocket as I moved out from the car.
I picked it up and at a close inspection I couldn't believe what I saw. The damage on the phone couldn't possibly be caused by a simple fall from my pocket. I've dropped my mobile phone at a height much higher than my pocket and it doesn't do much damage on the body. All along the side of the phone there are deep scratches mark and over the front facia there are plenty of bitumen marks. I'm not kidding here, but I think a car must have run over it!
When I picked it up it was off and my first thought is a car run over it and totally blew it. It was in a really bad condition. It's kinda sucks that I only had that phone in less than a year. But I did try to turn the mobile phone on and couldn't be surprised more when it boot up. Wow! That was amazing. A quick check on the phone it seems all functionality is still working fine, and even the 2MP camera is still working.
All my friends know that I'm not good with mobile phone. All my phones (except 1) are always ended up dead because from the impact of numerous drops. Once I dropped my brand new phone from 2 stories high, and no it didn't survive.
This is currently my mobile-phone-drop-damage-record where the mobile phone survive. Amazing.
Posted by vhadiant at 08:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 29, 2005
The debacle with Citibank continues
And I'm continuing my rant about Citibank's crappy net banking service. FYI it's shite. It stalled again this morning when I tried to log in, grrhhh. What's the fucking point of having an Internet Banking if it doesn't work half the time you try to use it?
Posted by vhadiant at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 22, 2005
Big company, crappy Internet service
What's with big company and really crappy Internet access? It really pisses me off. Citibank is the biggest bank in the world (by Tier 1 capital), but by God they have worse Internet Banking than some backyard banks in Indonesia. I'm not exagerating here, but 1 out of 3 times that I logged in to their Internet Banking, it either stalled, returned an error or just didn't work. This is their Australian site I'm talking about, maybe it's not so much of a problem with their American site. Oh and the interface is crappy, but that's OK since what good is interface if I can't even access it.
Arrghh ... the only reason I stayed with them is that they have the best credit card deal for my usage, otherwise I would have gone a long time ago.
This is not just a rant, in the era where HSBC introduces security key for all their customers Citibank insistence in staying in the dark ages could not and should not be tolerated. If HSBC as the third biggest bank in the world, have a very small Australian operation can have a superb Internet banking access, why couldn't Citibank?
That's it, I'll give it 5 more months, if things don't improve I'm leaving, regardless how good a deal is with Citibank.
Posted by vhadiant at 05:20 PM | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
12Mbps!
Yay! Finally my exchange is upgraded to use iiNet DSLAM. The switch over happened just hours ago while I was away on a dinner. My brothers have reported downloads over 500KBps on BitTorrent.
It's not blazingly fast for web browsing, I certainly didn't notice any difference. However multitasking is the main benefit. Currently BitTorrent is uploading at 70KBps downloading at 150KBps, eMule is uploading at 8KBps (sadly downloading at only 5KBps), my brother is playing WoW with no lag and I'm browsing the web also without any lag.
We should theoretically on 12Mbps/1Mbps link but we're a bit far from the Cremorne exchange, so most likely we will not get the full 12Mbps, however BitTorrent at 500KBps is a record in this household! Fantastic, I think we're going to run out that 40GB limit pretty damn quick :)
Posted by vhadiant at 10:48 PM | TrackBack
October 13, 2005
Apple got it right
While Sony is still clueless, this is a rant about Sony mainly. Apple just struck a deal that allow iPod Video owners to download $2 TV shows. Although downloading TV shows is pretty much what a lot of people have been doing in the past few years after the coming of BitTorrent - albeit illegally - this new direction by Apple is showing that this is the future.
I suspect the download will be pretty low quality suitable only for iPod minuscule screen size, and only available in US but this is a good direction regardless.
This is yet another setback to Sony, which with their superior PSP screen quality (wide-screen & bigger) still clueless how to capitalise their advantage. They should have moved quicker to secure the deal, but their paranoia with DRM (remember ATTRAC3 and the MP3 players that don't play err MP3 :) is really holding them back.
Sony now has been beaten in almost every single new product segments. Flat screen TV? Totally toasted by Sharp, Samsung, LG and Fujitsu. Mobile music player? iPod rules and the market is already crowded with the like of Creative, BenQ and the horde of Chinese made MP3 players. Music download? Yep they owned one of the big four recording companies, should have seen it coming and beaten by iTunes. Movie/TV download? Beaten by Apple, yet again. Laptop? Man they should really consider quitting the market, who in their right mind would buy VAIO? Unless you're loaded you really don't need to pay the "Sony" premium. Digital camera? They are still making some money from this one, but I only have 1 friend with Sony camera now. 90% of my friends and family own a Canon (or two) and the rest are an assortment of Kodak, Konica - Minolta, Fuji and even Casio. Their insistence of using the ultra expensive Memory Stick is really hurting them.
Console gaming? Microsoft XBOX 360 is looming. Although the advanced preview didn't impress a lot of journalists, I have no doubt that Microsoft will do a much better job in XBOX Live component than Sony rather sad attempt in online gaming. And online gaming is becoming a much important component in the gaming world. It's a pity I know, I'm a long time fans of PlayStation and will still buy PS3 (and Revolution) instead of Microsoft's XBOX but I can see Sony's demise will be much sooner than expected.
Sony is toast. PS3, the crown jewel of Sony Corporation, is under heavy attack by Microsoft. This is their Game division which account 51% of their profit in 2004. Sony is actually expecting an operating lost this year, the first in a decade. They've just appointed Howard Stringer as the first non-Japanese CEO, but I reckon the need someone like Carlos Ghosn, no less.
Posted by vhadiant at 11:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 07, 2005
K750i pics
I took my K750i for a test drive yesterday. Snapped a couple of pics around Manly just before I went for a surf. The result is pretty bloody amazing for a mobile phone.
I also uploaded a couple of other miscellaneous K750i shots that I've taken in the past few days (just fooling around).
Posted by vhadiant at 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2005
Submarine cable map
Pretty amazing huh for all these cables running around the world
Posted by vhadiant at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 20, 2005
Automatic Computing Science Paper Generator
[Via Australian IT]
This is just too funny :) Automatic generator for CS papers. Well lemme see, since discovering this website I have a couple of papers 'generated':
Tongs: A Methodology for the Simulation of Vacuum Tubes
Victor Hadianto
On the references:
Hadianto, V., and Zhou, X. Improving interrupts using robust algorithms. Journal of Stable, Decentralized Algorithms 28 (Dec. 1996), 1-14.
Hartmanis, J., Wu, G., and Hadianto, V. Hierarchical databases no longer considered harmful. Journal of Event-Driven Archetypes 72 (Dec. 2004), 76-88.
TearfulTairn: Improvement of Cache Coherence
Victor Hadianto
On the references:
Hadianto, V. Exploring robots using wireless communication. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (Sept. 2005).
Cool .. I wish they're around when I was at Uni ha!
Posted by vhadiant at 11:26 PM | TrackBack
April 17, 2005
Update on GMail as your spam filter
Browsing through the GMail user help news group shows that I'm not the only have that has this idea. A couple of other people have done this and reporting good result.
I haven't experienced this myself, but apparently some people have problem with the spam filter, they reckon it's a bit flakey, whatever it is hopefully it'll be sorted out during this beta period.
I've came across 1 false negative and 2 false positive. I don't think the false positive is so much of a problem sicne both of them are newsletters, I can understand why GMail may consider them as spams.
One more thing worth noting, since GMail store your "sent mails" as part of the conversation in the Inbox, when you POP your emails, you'll download your all your sent emails as well (the one that you composed over the web interface), nice ...
Posted by vhadiant at 09:45 AM | TrackBack
April 14, 2005
Cat fight - aaNet vs Exetel
[Thursday 14/04/2005 10AM]
Reps from both ISP now have been barred from posting in the other ISP forum by the Whirlpool masters. Both Annette and Cat said that the other ISP is the one to blame on this fiasco.
Annette said that aaNet owe Exetel 300 grand, while Cat posted that Exetel is the one that owe aaNet 6 figures sum. Who's telling the truth? Hard to tell at the moment.
Annette Linton (with John Linton) is the owner of Exetel and there's an allegation (and more here) that Cat is Lorraine Rose, owner of aaNet. Now this gets interesting hehehe :)
[Later on the day ....]
At about 1:15PM the first batch of Exetel disconnected customers have been reconnected (presumably using Telstra now).
And there's an offer from Veridas to rescue Exetel. Also the carrion eaters are out, Wild offering free churn and free 3 months for Exetel customers.
[Exetel rebuttal]
Later in the afternoon here is Exetel rebuttal claiming that there is no 5 months negotiations claimed by aaNet. So far there's no official statment from aaNet.
[aaNet seeking insolvency order]
Later Cat/Lorraine posted in WP that aaNet is seeking insolvency order against Exetel. The plot thickens ...
[aaNet official response]
Oops apparently there is an official response from aaNet.
Until the time of this posting (around 8PM) accusations and allegations are still aplenty between the two ISPs fanbois in WP, just check out WP for the full battle :)
Posted by vhadiant at 08:01 PM | TrackBack
April 07, 2005
GMail as your spam filter
I’ve been using SpamBayes for a while and while it’s good, I found it that I have to keep retraining it since I have a massive amount of spams compared to the valid emails. My current training database is already my second database, and I’m not looking forward to do another SpamBayes training. Lately more and more mails have been classified as Junk Suspect rather than Junk Emails, this is getting annoying. At the moment on my SpamBayes training database I have 3 times the number of spam than valid emails, SpamBayes recommend that you have about the same amount of data on both category, this is just simply impossible (well for me at least).
My hosting provider also provides a free spam filtering service where they put *** SPAM *** on each email that they identify as spam, but it doesn’t work very well. On average I got about 30 - 40 spams a day and only about 2 or 3 marked as spams, sux.
Now I’m thinking, since all the free emails (Hotmail, Yahoo!, GMail)do a damn good job in classifying the spams, why don’t I just use them as my spam filter? So to do this all I have to do is automatically forward all emails from victor@hadianto.net to vhadiant@gmail.com and let GMail does it job. Whala!
On top of that since GMail offer free POP (unlike Hotmail and Yahoo! where you have to pay for the POP access .. boohoo) I just POP it back using my Outlook client, and bang problem solved!
Well I’ve just activated it now and send a test message from my ISP email account to victor@hadianto.net and it arrives successfully at vhadiant@gmail.com. So the jury is still out on how effective this going to be, but I’m pretty confident that this is going to work.
PS: This will only work if can configure your email forwarding rule on your mail server.
Posted by vhadiant at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
