Month: November 2010

General

Swype For Symbian

By on Saturday, November 13, 2010

The other day, Leslie told me about Swype for Symbian. Swype is an alternative input method for touchscreen devices where you swipe your finger from letter to letter onthe virtual keyboard without taking your finger off to spell a word. It’s all the rage in Android virtual keyboards.

Unfortunately, it’s only available for the Nokia 5230, 5800, N97, N97 Mini, X6, and C6-00. I tried it on Michelle’s 5800 and it was great. The nicest thing is that it provides a new keyboard for both portrait and landscape orientations. The new keyboards are way better-looking than the built-in keyboards. The portrait qwerty keyboard even shows the interface of the app you are working with instead of taking up the whole screen. As a bonus, regular key tap input still works.

UPDATE: Today, I found out it’s now available at the Ovi store for the N8. Does it fix one of the N8’s biggest problems? Not quite. The portrait qwerty keyboard is not available on the N8 version so you’re still stuck with the regular phone keypad. Still, you get Swype and that already quite an improvement.

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General

Manual Mode

By on Thursday, November 11, 2010

The car was banned from the road yesterday because of the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP) aka number coding. Since I was attending my grand aunt’s funeral, I figured I’ll ride with James. But he turned out to be sick and couldn’t attend. So I had to borrow and drive his car which is a stick. It’s not that I don’t drive stick but it’s been quite long time since I have driven one. Interestingly, I’ve driven a whole bunch of other cars and they’re ALL sticks. The only auto I’ve ever driven was my car. But fortunately, it seems I haven’t forgotten the basics and I was able to drive around albeit with some jerkiness and quite a few engine stalls. At the end of the day, though my left leg was aching, I was glad I can still do manual mode.

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General

A Visit To The Cemetery

By on Wednesday, November 10, 2010

My grand aunt passed away after a long battle with cancer. She was 80 years old. Although my knowledge of her life is far from comprehensive, from the eulogy of the Mother General, she has no doubt lived it to the fullest serving God. She was a nun for 56 years and, as my uncle said in his eulogy, was impeccably holy. That’s something many of us can only hope for come time to go.

And so just over a week after the day in the year when cemeteries become a crowded mess, I found myself in one. You wouldn’t have believed it had been crowded just a few days previously. It was reasonably clean and there was a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. The way it should be.

The funeral itself was a solemn occasion. Because of the wide dispersion of the family, there was only about a dozen of us representing but her sisters of the cloth were in force. Interestingly, they seemed to be used to these things.  Everything was well planned and went along quite smoothly. It was as if it was just business as usual.  And maybe it is. Maybe to them, passing away from this life is just going into another better life. And I do agree.

RIP Lola Danday. You’re in a better place.

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General

Globe Subscriber Discrimination

By on Friday, November 5, 2010

Yesterday, I got reminded again how much I dislike Globe. I was trying to find a less expensive way of going online and I saw SUPERSURF 50. Unlimited Internet for a whole day for P50. I tried registering for it. Prepaid only. I tried the next one SUPERSURF 220, unlimited Internet for 5 days for P220. No luck, also prepaid only. Do I try SUPERSURF 1200, unlimited Internet for 1 month for P1200? No, I just need one day. Clearly there is an intentional discrimination against postpaid subscribers.

Almost to the day last year, I found out that roaming charges for prepaid is less than that for postpaid. At least that’s how I was charged. There are published rates for prepaid on their website, but there is none for postpaid. The CSR I talked to  said it is dependent on the International partner. Some may have higher charges, and some may be lower. Still, prepaid would still depend on those same partners, don’t they?

It’s funny since Globe keeps insisting that they are leading in postpaid subscribers. Maybe right now it’s unclear who really is leading. But what is clear is that just a few years ago, Globe was definitely leading. Now it’s not so clear anymore. And the way Globe is doing things, it clearly won’t be.

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