4DOF Motion Car simulator

There's just this question of what happens if the car flips, lol

costs around USD 25K which is around SGD 30K. Ouch... but nice... but still ouch...

We're Moving! (Later)

Or rather I'm moving. My sister has been inactive for months. But it wont be for another 3 months due to school. I have been searching to host my own blog mainly so that I can do the following:

1. Combine my old blog with this one.
   As a publishing platform, Wordpress and Blogger have differences. I wanted Wordpress because they have backtracks instead of backlinks. A matter of preference. They also have better site statistics and better interface or organization of tags (known as labels in Blogger) and categories (no such thing. Use the damn labels). After using Wordpress, Blogger has been painful. I'm not the only one that feels this way.
2. Be able to freely design
   My old blog was at Blogsome and although it uses Wordpress as a publishing platform and allows flexibility in design, it is actually somewhat limited because it uses the Smarty templating system which is just as restrictive in site design like Blogger. Others such as Wordpress.com required a $30 monthly fee for the restriction to be lifted.

I found the hosting your own site can be pretty traumatizing from what I read. Sometimes the host just fails too frequently in terms of your site's speed and uptime. Sometimes the support is just horrible when performance or security problems occur, even if its "only" once in a white moon. Other times they undercut the promised refund amount should they fail to deliver. Or it takes you 3 to 6 months of continual chasing to get the money. Maybe they're hoping you'll give up and go away. They're a lot more but these few are enough to make me give up. I trawled though review sites for 3 whole days and still I can't find a reliable host.

Then I found tumblr. It looked promising. It gives me nice stats, tags and categories and allows me to use my own domain if I so choose. Zemata supports it as well. I looked at the documentation regarding site design and from what I see, it looks pretty liberating. I already parked a site address that's empty right now. In 6 months time, after I'm free of school work and assignments, I'll move everything over and give it a new look. Or I might just move before the 6 months is up but use their templates first.

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• Blogger sucks more (strikingthoughts.wordpress.com)

Sharp AQUOS Hybrid 007SH - The world's first clamshell Andriod phone

I went to stare at photos of my (for now) dream phone again. Sharp hasn’t made any move in Singapore. Not that I expect it to in the near future. Our population (and therefore market power) is kind of pathetic. Not to mention, we have an overwhelming large number of iPhone fanatics that would go to the extent of splurging on a iPhone 4 just because it's white when iPhone 5 is near release.

For now, I will make myself happy by surfing the net for news for the world’s first (yeah first, it’s ridiculous) clamshell phone.

The reason why I haven’t owned a smartphone myself is because firstly I can do without one even though it is inconvenient and annoying at times (GPS ftw).

Secondly, I am particular about a phone’s form factor. It must be either clamshell or slider type.

Thirdly, I must have buttons and additionally, it must have buttons arranged in the candybar form since I cannot stand qwerty phones.

A fourth strong but admittedly non-essential factor is the quality of a phone’s camera. Sharp phones are also known for their camera technology which is incorporated into this phone.

This phone is the phone for me.

Not to mention, it’s such a beauty -sigh-

Solution to "Disk in the destination drive is full" error - when there is actually enough space

When copying files to your thumbdrive or portable hard disk, you see the following, wondering how much space did you actually use so far.

You've double checked to make sure that you do have free space. Yet this error shows. More often than not, there is really nothing wrong with your disk. This happens often on thumbdrives or portable hard disks because of the default filesystem that they use - FAT32. Intrinsically, FAT and FAT32 is unable to handle files of large sizes (max. limit of 4GB) and a misleading error message is shown. What you need to do is to convert it to a more modern file system such as NTFS. Should you really throw away FAT32 in favour of NTFS? There are other sites that document and discuss the two file systems such as this but if you're too lazy to read, the bottom line is, FAT32 is too outdated but required for backward compatibility on -really- old systems and to other systems most regular users wouldn't use

1. Run Command Prompt

   Click Start -> Run -> Type cmd in the box -> Press enter.

2. One of the steps in the actual conversion requires you to type in the volume label name of the target drive. So we'll need to find that out and note that down first.
   

   VOL [drive letter]:
   
   e.g. VOL F:
   where F is the name of the target drive
   
   You should see the following:
   
   In my case, the volume label name is "FREECOM-FYO". Note down on a piece of paper or notepad what yours says. You'll need to retype it exactly later.
   If it says "has no label" then you'll need to go through this guide first to set a label name.

3. Now it's time to run the actual conversion
   
   convert [drive letter]: /fs:ntfs
   
   e.g. convert F: /fs:ntfs
   where F is the name of the drive you want to convert
   

4. Enter the volume label that was noted down previously in step 2.
   

5. When you see the screen below, you can go grab yourself a cup of coffee and come back. It shouldn't take long and there shouldn't be any problems.

6. When you see the following screen after your coffee break, it's done. NTFS requires a certain amount of free space to do the conversion so if it doesn't work, just free up enough space on the disk to satisfy the reported space it needs and repeat from step 3 again.
   

Congratulations, you are now free to use the disk to store huge files and the misleading error message of having full disks is no more!

Dropbox announces partnership with Softbank and Sony Ericsson

This is such sweet news! I'm currently waiting for Sharp to bring their phones to our sunny island's shores but if that doesn't happen fast enough, I was actually eyeing SE's Xperia mini pro. Sharp is under Softbank and SE is well... under SE. Those eyeing phones offered by these companies, rejoice!

Hi everyone! Two months ago, we kicked off our internationalization effort by launching Dropbox in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The launch is off to an incredible start, and we’re happy to welcome our new users from all around the world.

But we’re not quite finished yet. All you international users will now have one more thing to cheer about– we’re excited to announce our very first partnership, with Sony Ericsson and Softbank!

Beginning today, Sony Ericsson will sell Dropbox-powered Android phones in ten countries including the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and Italy. These phones include the shiny new Arc and Play. (Sorry Verizoners, we’re working on it!)

Also, starting in early June, Dropbox will come pre-installed on several Android phones for Softbank customers in Japan, including a brand new 3D phone from Sharp. But Softbank users get a special bonus– you’ll be getting an extra 1GB in addition to the 2GB you normally get from a free account!

With these partnerships, we hope to continue the awesome momentum of our internalization effort by putting Dropbox in the hands of people around the globe. We hope to offer you more juicy mobile news in the future too!

Until then, how’s your Dropbox mobile app been treating you these days?

Source: Dropbox

Seriously Sharp, make your phones come to Singapore faster!

How to get Japanese phones in Singapore

It's that time again! My 21month recontract period for the phone is up, so it's high time to start looking around for a brand new shiny phone!

Turns out that the recent ones are all pretty ugly. I have a few requirements that phones like iPhone will not satisfy. In desperation, I turned to looking at overseas phones for the first time and Japanese phones look damn good indeed. Okay, so maybe I'm bias. I only liked the Japanese designs so far.

And it seems that there's a lot of people looking for these phones as well. So if you're new to this, how do you start your research and get these elusive phones?

First of all, if money is an issue, it's time to stop looking. Currently, a price offer of $700 is not uncommon. That being said...

Here's a few helpful resources I came across:

DarkMirage's Post - Importing a Japanese Phone

Summary: There's a lot of insightful background information there. Always bear in mind that some of the information is outdated when reading (It's a 2006 post) but it gives a rough background of the situation of phones in Japan and how they make their way here.

Hardwarezone SubForum

Summary: If you're in Singapore, the blogger also recommends a person called "Kuro" on HWZ in the "Exotic & Other Phones" subforum as a reliable dealer for such phones. As of this writing, I don't see much trading going on with him though. I haven't contacted him either since I'm still undecided on what phone I want. I see other dealers there that have some mention of successful good trades and a ton of information worth sifting through.

Softbank Mobile Phones

Summary: On hardwarezone, there are two main brands - Docomo and Softbank. Bear in mind though that not all phones models displayed can be used outside of Japan. It's a nice site to go "window shopping" and note those you like and then research further on from there.

There's one piece of good news I found if Sharp phones are what you are eyeing - models ending with SH. They have released an official statement on their corporate site that confirms their plan of releasing their phones globally. Exactly where and when is not stated. China was the only one mentioned in that statement. Their phones have already made it to US so far. This news was released in 20 May 2011 and there have been no further details since.

Alright that's all for the informative part. I myself am eyeing a Sharp AQUOS Hybrid 007SH which is a very new release. No mention of it (or any other Sharp phones) in Singapore so far... The hype is all in the US -sigh- Personally, my SE Aino is doing fine and I like it so I think I can wait pretty long to see how this plan of Sharp plays out.

This is the white model of the Sharp AQUOS Hybrid 007SH =)

Let's hope Japan picks us as one of the privileged countries!