Pre register for Michael Jackson ticket

MJ's 10 nights concert at the O2 Arena starting on July 8th. Ticket price range from £75 / £65 / £50, with booking fees, you can pre-register for ticket here.

Panasonic announced Lumix GH1 at PMA 09

Panasonic done a great job by putting HD video recording to Lumix G1 and resulted GH1. It distinct from its competitor by having Auto focus advantage during video recording. That's a thumb up for point and shoot user who is planning to upgrade to dslr. The Micro Four Thirds body form promise a smaller and lighter body weight compare to the ordinary DSLR. This one sure look promising. Well done Panasonic!

Got my Asus Nova P20 TV Dock

I got my Asus Nova TV dock last Friday, it was shipped to me from Australia. Many thanks to JYing. Having the only person in UK to own 1 of this tv dock, I have no one to share my joy except those geeks in Australia. :) Okay, this tv dock is what I expected except the expandable HDD enclosure. A 2.5" HDD can be mount to the base of the TV dock. Brilliant!

2.5" HDD enclosure for expansion

The back of the DVB-T TV dock

Front of the TV connector. SD + card reader, and 3 usb ports

Asus Nova P20 + TV Dock

Freecom 320GB Mobile Drive XXS

I bought a 320GB external HDD fom Amazon for £63, which is the world smallest 2.5" external drive so far. I'm not after the design, but it is the cheapest among WD, Seagate and Maxtor. And the reason? I'm making a duplicate of my photo collection since 2001 in case the original storage failed, which is priceless.

10% off ebay item

Hurray, this code will expire on 12/2/09 night. Buy an item from ebay using code CUKVGH4 and pay by Paypal to entitle 10% off.

Get £5 every month with Halifax Rewards Current Account

Halifax has introduced a new current account, Rewards Current Account that give you £5 net per month if you fund the account £1,000 per month. That's a good deal based on article from easier.com

"A customer earning 0.1% credit interest would need to maintain a balance of £75,000 throughout the month to earn the equivalent amount of net interest."

Swindon is covered with snow

UK is experiencing the greatest snow fall for past 16 years. It is nice to see snow out of the window, but if snow continue to fall for the next few days as per forecast, Swindon motorists will be in trouble since the salt used to grit the road in Swindon is low, and is using the reserve at the moment.

Preorder Sony Vaio P series in Singapore

Saw an advertisement in Best Denki today at Vivo city where you can pre order Vaio P13 fpr SGD1299, 660 pounds equivalent or SGD1699 for P15.

Zinwell Zin-5003: standalone rmvb player and more

Zin-5003 is the only device in the market support HDMI output, standard video output format (avi, wmv, mp4) plus rm, rmvb, and subtitle avi+srt format. It also play standard audio format (mp3, wma,..) and picture files (bmp, jpg,...). It is a bittorent server as well. Just plug it to your home network or you can directly connect an external HDD to the usb port to play the content.


For more details, see here.

Supported format as below:

Sony Vaio P series in Taiwan

I saw this Sony Vaio P series in taiwan 2 days ago at Ximen. There are 2 models:

VGN-P13TH selling for 26,800 taiwan dollar. about 670 pounds. Based on the spec, it comes with

• Inetl Atom Z520 1.33GHz
• Windows Vista
• 8" screen with 1600x768 resolution
• 2GB Ram
• 60GB HDD
• Wifi, Bluetooth, MS/SD card reader
• Intel GMA 500 graphic chip
• 620g weight

VGN-P15T is selling for 36800 taiwan dollar, about 920 pound. From what I can see, the spec is almost similar except it is using Intel Atom Z530 1.60GHz and 64GB SSD. It weight 590g.

My laptop from Heathrow Terminal 3

On 24/12, the day I return to KL, I saw a slim Samsung NP-X360 laptop selling for 1275 at DixonsTaxFree. It comes with SU9300 Processor, 3GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 13.3" TFT screen and Vista Business. It claimed as lightest as it doesn't come with a cd drive. This is an overprice laptop since it used an integrated video card.


Then comes Sony Vaio VGN-Z11MN for a jaw dropping 750. It is very light at 1.5kg with 13.1" Screen, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GZ, 4GB DDR3 ram, dedicated nVidia 9300M GS graphic, 200GB HDD, wifi draft n, and DVD drive. This model is no longer selling at high street as Sony is pushing VGN-Z20 series that comes with better spec and HSPDA module for double the price. Frankly speaking, you can't find such a good Sony Vaio spec for this price. It is easy to maintain as it doesn't have a glossy surface, hence no finger price problem.

Since I couldn't resist the features and price, I bought it as a perfect Xmas gift for myself.

OfferStation, HotUKDeals alike for MYS & SG

For deal lover in Malaysia and Singapore, OfferStation offers 1-stop-up-to-date deals, saving you RM and SGD before you shop at the high street. I'd browsed it and find the deals are very recent. Definately worth your time if you are ready to spend.

£ depreciating since September 08

British Pound £ set a new low against Euro today at 1:1.12, while depreciate in value against major foreign currencies since September.

Bypass Company Firewall with JoikuSpot

This morning I found out my company has blocked remote access via TeamViewer. What a bummer! I loss the ability to remote control my HTPC to download stuff from rapidshare, megaupload and so on. I tried LogMeIn via O2 free GPRS. I find it is not very friendly when comes to key input as the text is out of sight, and impossible to put a complete url.

Luckily, my new addition to my powerful N95 save the day. With JoikuSpot, my phone is now a wifi access point, by sharing the free O2 GPRS data allocates to my mobile. What a good idea that is. I have no problem using TeamViewer now as I can surf via Joiku to bypass the company proxy server :)

Online Remote Control: LogMeIn vs TeamViewer 4

I've been using TeamViewer 3 for remote desktop control for several months, and it is the only way to control my HTPC in office since OpenVPN, OpenSSH, LogMeIn etc all blocked. Recently TeamViewer release version 4, where you can remote control over web browser. I'd tested yesterday, and I like the fact I still have all the functions as I control via desktop version. But I don' like the display resolution of my HTPC as I couldn't zoom in/out the desktop. To counter that, you can enable auto panning when mouse over the edge of the remote screen.

LogMeIn has been well known for remote control over web browser long before TeamViewer. I like the auto fit remote desktop resolution feature that is missing in TeamViewer. Since it is a free account, I'm unable to remote transfer files as in TeamViewer (althought TV is free).

Browsing from my N95, LogMeIn works perfectly over the internet. I can control the display zoom by setting my prefer %. It is not working from mobile when browsing TeamViewer web login page. When I'm at home, I use VNC+ instead.

This is a brief comparison between TeamViewer 4 and LogMeIn. I've both installed in my HTPC to benefit from both product.

Netgear DG834N touch down

I got my DG834N eventually as I discovered the 2nd floor bedrooms are getting bad wifi coverage with the DG834G router. I'd patched the firmware with DGTeam and it works fine.

Getting a draft N router, it is part of my wishlist to upgrade my home networking for better coverage and future proof. As I might get a Slingbox SOLO and a Mini 1000 netbook from HP next year, the router will serve me well when slinging the Sky+ box (or Freesat) over wifi to my netbook. Just a thought.

Asus Nova P20 Docking Station

I was surfing for comment on upgrading P20's processor to E7300 before I saw the new docking station at Asus homepage. It comes with card reader, usb ports and tv tuner. But since I planned to get a Slingbox SOLO as part of my wishlist for 08/09, the reason I might get it is for the card reader.

One of the OZ web site is selling it for $75.

Update: 12/12 - Apparently P20 is not popular in Singapore as compare to Australia. I got an email from the Asus distributor in Singapore that the docking station will not be available in SG.

Update: 30/12: Thanks to jying, I got my TV Dock for AUD$131.75 inclusive of sea postage to UK.

Patched my Netgear DG834Gv3 with DGTeam firmware

A few days back, I posted a new release of DGTeam custom firmware for Netgear. Since then I'd been trying to get dgteam's firmware to work but without success until a revised firmware 0849 released early today. Internet and wifi connection are fixed in this minor release.I've tested the WOL function and it works as expected. Cheers for that! Hence I can turn off my HTPC and wake up in office whenever I need to download stuffs :)

O2 GPRS Speed Test

My O2 monthly plan come with free 1GB GPRS data. So I was testing my company internet speed using ZDNet SpeedTest, I thought I can run the same test using my mobile. The result shown 49kbps.

Bank of England drop interest rate to 2%

Today Bank of England has announced a drop in its interest rate from 3% to 2%, lowest since 1951. Continue read here.