Just a couple of Beeks....

Thinking of starting anew

Mar 20, 2009
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I've been listening to Leo Laporte's network of podcasts for the past two years.......or at least it feels that long......and lately he's been plugging SquareSpace. SquareSpace is supposedly the latest and greatest in content management and publishing. Simply put, it's a cool website that allows you to design, manage and publish a website or blog.

So anyway, this got me thinking that maybe I should start writing on the blog again just to get back in the habit of writing. I do recall that I used to think and look at things differently when I wrote regularly as I was constantly evaluating whether the things I went through in daily life were worth mentioning online.

Yesterday I signed up for a SquareSpace account since they offer a 14 day trail before making you decide to take up one of their payment plans. My initial impression of it was that it's similar to Vox in the sense that all the composing and designing is done online via the website, but it offers a vast array of configuration, design and management options for the more web savvy user. Vox is kinda like the platform for novice user who just wants to write something online and have an easy way to setup the overall look and feel of the blog.

What makes SquareSpace a more compelling option compared to Vox? Here's a rundown of what I've noticed so far:

SquareSpace offers the ability to export and backup your blog entries. This is critical for someone who's investing so much time and effort to create content. Vox has been saying that they're gonna offer an option for users to backup their stuff since 2007 and it's still yet to surface. I guess that's the price you pay for a "free" blogging platform.
SquareSpace offers me the ability to make money off your blog by placing ads on it. Vox currently runs their own ads on my blog, which makes them money to cover the cost of my free blog.....I guess.
SquareSpace has some cool management tools that gives statistics of visitors, referrals, etc. We don't get any of these here at Vox.
There are many more options to manage the overall look, feel and layout of the blog. Some of which are even beyond what I know......and I'm supposed to be from the IT industry.
SquareSpace allows me to use my own domain name on my blog, if I had one. This is available on their Pro plan though.
There's much for freedom in terms of allowing me to embed widgets on the blog. Vox is kinda restrictive in that sense.

So why am I still posting here on Vox? Well, the price tag that's associated to a SquareSpace account is what's holding me back from pulling the trigger. Their basic account costs US$8 per month, which is like SG$12.40 per month. An annual subscription would get me a 10% discount and Leo's promo code another 10%. I guess I could look at it from the angle that it costs roughly 30 cents a day for the blog. Hopefully the ad generation from it can cover that.

I've looked up other options like Wordpress, TypePad and Moveable Type. Each have some elements of similarity to SquareSpace but you'd also have to end up paying to get the features that are being offered by SquareSpace.

I guess the most irritating thing out of this whole process is that there is no way to export all the posts here on Vox and migrate them over to SquareSpace.....short of hiring a student to do it for me.

Anyone out there in the Intertubes have an opinion on whether to move to SquareSpace......or any other blogging platform for that matter?

Colours and more colours

Dec 17, 2007
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Warning: Totally geeky post below......might cause reader to doze off!

I got a new Macbook about a month ago and immediately moved all my main computing activities there. Lately, I've been trying to figure out why all the photos that I took looked great in iPhoto and in Preview, but when uploaded to Flickr.......it looked like shit. By shit, I mean the colours were dull and unsaturated.

Initially I thought it was a problem with Flickr, so I did some Googling around and found that there were others who also noticed the same thing. A couple of discussions on the Flickr forums on how it could have been caused by the different colour profiles used on the Mac, and how thats interpreted by Flickr when the picture is uploaded. Some even suggested changing the colour profile in the Mac to sRGB to fix the problem. I didn't want to go that because I don't know squat about colour profiles and might risk screwing up my display.

A bit more digging around and I found another thread which said that Apple's Safari browser was rendering pictures that were more saturated then Firefox or Opera. I launched both browsers and confirmed that to be the case as shown by the picture below:

Colour differences between Firefox 3 (left) and Safari 3 (right)

To my eyes, it sure seemed that Safari was rendering the picture alot closer to how I remember seeing them in iPhoto. So a little more digging around the Web and I found out that Safari 3 has the ability to identify and render pictures that have other colour profiles embedded in them. Most browsers like IE and Firefox (v2.x) are only able to render pictures using the sRGB colour profiles.

It seemed that the latest version of Firefox, v3.0b1, also had the ability to support multiple profiles of colours but this "feature" is turned off by default. I have no idea why the guys at Mozilla chose to do this. Anyway, enabling the colour management feature in Firefox is easy enough. Just open a new tab and type "about:config" and then search for the "gfx.color_management.enabled" property and change value from "false" to "true". You'll need to restart Firefox after doing this.

about:config in Firefox 3

After I did this, I opened pulled up the same picture on Firefox 3 and Safari 3 and they both looked closer to the real thing, although I still feel that the picture in Safari 3 appears more saturated then it really is. Heck, at least I know now that it's not a problem with my camera or the way I was taking photos. All the pictures I uploaded looked so pale and dull before I found out about this thing.

At last it now looks better in Firefox 3

There's a website that you can point your browser at to check if your browser supports all the various types of colour profiles out there. Head on over to http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter and theres a picture there thats separated into 4 sections, each using a different colour profile. If your browser supports all the profiles, then the picture should look evenly coloured. If not, the picture will look really rad.

Learn something new everyday.

My very first homemade birthday cake!

Dec 14, 2007
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Yen made me a banana cake for my birthday

I turned 29 a few days ago. The good wife, who's become a baking monster lately, took the trouble to make me my very own birthday cake. It's the first time I've ever had a cake made for my birthday and it was gonna be a banana cake. Yen got the recipe off some other baking nut's blog.

Yummy yummy banana cake......didn't last long though

The cake turned out beautifully.......thanks to some guidance from our friend, Thelma. We were so eager to taste it that we forgot to do the candles thingy. Oh well.....maybe next year. Thanks for the cake, Yen. Love you.

%&^#$%^@ Nintendo Wii

Dec 14, 2007
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Just don't try to get it to go online

I bought a Nintendo Wii a couple of months ago after some good brainwashing sessions by my colleague on how much fun it was. She was telling me how addictive it was and how her arms felt like falling of after a weekend of flailing her arms around like some insane lunatic. So I finally succumbed and marched down to Challenger in Funan to get one. Apparently these things are supposed to be hard to come by in the US, but they seem to be in good supply here in Singapore.

Anyway, one of the features that I read about the Wii was it's ability to surf the Web right from the console. Now how cool is that! Just think of being able to browse your favourite sites on your TV without having to boot up your PC. And to top it all off, it had built in wifi......so not need to pull cables all over the house like how I did in my previous apartment.

So a couple of days ago, I finally got round to trying to get this thing online. I'm configured many wifi connections for PCs so this shouldn't be any different. Pull up the Wii settings menu, go to "Internet" and then "Search for an access point". It managed to find my wifi router......great!......."Testing connection"........"Error code 52230 - please contact support.nintendo.com" or some shit like that. WTF!

I tried to manually set the wifi configuration, but still no luck. Three night of trawling through numerous Wii forums and gaming sites provided me with some comfort that I wasn't the only sap facing this problem. Some suggestions on how to solve this problem included disabling my wifi encryption......no way. Others suggested disabling my firewall or changing my wifi channel. Both of which didn't work. However one post was interesting in that it highlighted that the Wii could only do 802.11b and not g. So I set the wifi router to mixed mode so that it could handle both b & g connections........still no luck. "Error code 52230 - please contact support.nintendo.com". At this point, I was seriously considering a Xbox 360.

In the end, I came across this forum post on GameAxis where some other people in Singapore were also facing the same error. It seems that the solution was to use Singnet's proxy server to get the Wii online. I was like "What the hell?!!". I've never needed to use the proxy for anything to get online so what made the Wii so special that it had to use it? So I put in the proxy server settings and.......whaddaya know.....the bloody thing is able to connect and download the latest firmware update. I shake my head in disbelief.

But this was only just the beginning. I then tried to search for the browser to surf the Web but couldn't find it . More investigation on the Wii forums revealed that the browser, made by Opera, had to be purchased for 500 Wii points through the online WiiShop. ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH! **Bangs head on wall**

OK.....no problem.....I worked out that 500 Wii points came up to around SGD$7. Ok-lah.....try for fun. Navigate to the WiiShop channel on the main menu and what do I get? "WiiConnect24 is not available in your country".

I give up. Want to give them money also cannot. Sigh. Maybe should have gotten the PS3 or Xbox 360 instead.

At least the Wii is good at generating these sort of photo opportunities

"This is your idea of sports?"

This is getting addictive...

Oct 27, 2007
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One happy girl

Something for the weekend

Oct 13, 2007
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Crappy weather and a tired Mommy meant that I had to keep an eye on Her Royal Majesty for a couple of hours this afternoon. Here's what I managed to catch on my phone with Her Royal Highness in her playpen.

Come and get it

At least we now have proof that this girl knows how to set her sights on something and get it.

Six months onwards

Aug 18, 2007
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Erin turned 6 months old yesterday and according to the book (don't ask me which one), she's supposed to be ready for her first try at solid food.

Over the past few weeks Yen and I suspected that she's reaching the stage where she's ready for solid food, mainly because her normal feeds from Mummy doesn't keep her full as long as it used to.

Anyway, today Erin took her first step towards becoming a big girl.....and here are the results.

We also officially gave her water, although I suspect she's previously helped herself to one or move servings during her baths in the tub.

In all, I thought her first feed went quite well. She didn't hurl any of the rice cereal back up, nor did she attempt to repaint the walls with it. Lets see how we do again tomorrow.

I'm still alive.....

Aug 12, 2007
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I've been hibernating

OK......so it's been a decent 6 months since I've posted anything worthwhile here. One would have figured that I would have truck loads to write about since Erin came around.........and the truth is, there is a mountain load to write about.

However, the truth is also the fact that I've been having a heck of a lot of fun being a Dad to the most adorable thing I've ever had in my entire life. No toy or gadget could ever give me the sense of joy and pride that this little girl has given me since she appeared 6 months ago.

Anyway, I guess it's only fair that I get off my lazy ass and start writing some of it down all these remarkable events become hazy in my mind over time. I've got a new addition to my family, a new life and a new job. So it's time to start blogging again.