Product reviews, food, travel,... etc: 2008

Lucky - by Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat

My favourite song at the moment :)

Lyrics (Source: http://lyricwiki.org/Jason_Mraz:Lucky)

Do you hear me? I'm talking to you

Across the water across the deep blue ocean
Under the open sky oh my, baby I'm trying
Boy I hear you in my dreams
I feel your whisper across the sea
I keep you with me in my heart
You make it easier when life gets hard

Lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again

They don't know how long it takes
Waiting for a love like this
Every time we say goodbye
I wish we had one more kiss
I wait for you I promise you I will

Lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again
Lucky we're in love in every way
Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed
Lucky to be coming home someday

And so I'm sailing through the sea
To an island where we'll meet
You'll hear the music, fill the air
I'll put a flower in your hair
And though the breeze is through the trees

Move so pretty you're all I see
As the world keeps spinning round
You hold me right here right now

Lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again
Lucky we're in love every way
Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed
Lucky to be coming home someday

White hibiscus

Bunurong Marine National Park (a.k.a. Eagle's Nest), Victoria, Australia

(Source: Park Victoria)
The Bunurong Marine National Park extends along approximately 5 km of coastline from 2.5 km east of Cape Patterson in Southern Gippsland to the eastern end of Eagles Nest Beach (about 6 kilometres south-west of Inverloch), and offshore for approximately three nautical miles to the limit of Victorian waters, encompassing a total of approximately 2,100 hectares

The Bunurong coast is special - a coast full of striking rock formations, attractive sandy coves, rugged sandstone cliffs and prominent headlands. The coastal waters also contain a remarkable range of habitats that support abundant marine life, nurtured by an unusual set of environmental conditions. The name "Bunurong" refers to the local Aboriginal group that have lived in this area for thousands of years and have used the coast extensively for food gathering.

Eagle's Nest beach, Victoria, Australia

It's a little wonder how Eagle's Nest got its name ;) - the rocky surface, earthy colours + the interesting contrast between the sky, clear water & landscape: Magnificent coastal scenery!

The park contains extensive intertidal platforms and subtidal rocky reefs that are uncommon along the Victorian coast. These sandstone areas provide numerous microhabitats and contribute to the area having a very high diversity of intertidal and shallow subtidal invertebrates. There is a mixed assemblage of brown algae and seagrass, supporting a high proportion of Victoria's marine invertebrates, including brittle stars, sea cucumbers, barnacles, sea anemones and chitons.

Things to do
The most common activity at Bunurong Marine National Park is observational rockpooling, about 22 per cent of tourists visiting the rockpools at some stage in their visit. Other activities include sunbathing, beach activities, swimming, surfing, cliff-top sight seeing, observational SCUBA diving and boating, as well as education and research.

The major tourism activities are focused around the township of Cape Patterson, situated to the west of the Marine National Park.

The battle between the Geeks and the Pros

While browsing through the internet for computer services, I came across a company known as Call The Geeks...

and its disdainful rival... the Computer Repair Pros that has the tagline "Why Call a GEEK when you can have PRO!"

Just kidding ;)

Actually, both companies provide totally different services. Call the Geeks is a support service provider while Computer Repair Pros is a Wisconsin-based computer repair shop, located nearby beautiful Lake Monona.

Lake Monona is a freshwater drainage lake in Dane County, Wisconsin surrounded on three sides by the city of Madison, Wisconsin and on the south side by the city of Monona, Wisconsin. It is the second-largest of a chain of four lakes along the Yahara River (also including Mendota, Kegonsa, and Waubesa) in the area and forms the south shore of the isthmus that forms downtown Madison. The name 'Monona' is a Chippewa word believed to mean 'beautiful', although the lake was originally named by the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) 'Tchee-ho-bo-kee-xa-te-la' or 'Teepee Lake'.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Social network sites

I've been experimenting with 20 social network sites between July – October 2008 and here's a list of my favorite ones :)

1) MyBlogLog gets my top vote because it's not just another Facebook/MySpace! :)

MBL comes equipped with awesome tools for you to get instant reports on the most read pages on your website, and also how your visitors found out about you
- whether they found you via search engine, Google images, MySpace, forums, online groups, or via other blog sites :) Absolutely wonderful!

Here's a snapshot of a blog statistics report ;) -

2) Ping.fm is another unique web app that's worth checking out:)

Ping.fm is a centralised Web service to update all the status messages on Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and quite a few other "social networks".

With Ping.fm, you just need to log in once and update as many of your social network accounts simultaneously

3) Gravatar
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites :)

Example:

4) BlogCatalog

If you have a MyBlogLog account, you needn't sign up for BC.
BlogCatalog is a less sophisticated version of MyBlogLog clone
- less features
(eg., no report/statistics generation tool)

Nevertheless, I like BC :) and will continue using it simply because I like connecting with my readers.

Here's a snapshot of the BC dashboard

5) Ning.com allows you to create your very own social network. Isn't that sweet :)
But I have yet to be a proud owner of a social network because the names that I like were all taken

Here's a list of my not-so-favorite social network apps:-

1) Friendster
I recently joined Friendster to reconnect with my old schoolmates. The down side to Friendster is that you can't add your friends - unless you know their e-mail addresses or last name.

:( dang

2) Yelp
Yelp allows you to share restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, rate products/services (eg, your local dental clinic, car dealers...). I have been looking forward to join Yelp

But unfortunately, the site has not been properly maintained and even after my 20th attempt at signing up at Yelp (over the past 3 weeks), I still get this message:-
"Opps, Yelp is overworked right now"

3) Koornk
Koornk is just another Twitter. There's nothing particularly special about Koornk apart from the cute logo (which I really, really love :) )

(more to come later. stay tuned ;) out for a sinful choc & cheesecake session)

Dr Patrick Dixon, Global Change

This is a video by one of my favourites speakers - Dr Patrick Dixon -a business thinker and futurist.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Dixon)

His Web TV site has more than 11 million unique users. He is Chairman of Global Change Ltd., author of twelve books (485,000 printed in 23 languages) including Futurewise and Building a Better Business, has spoken to audiences in 50 nations, has given hundreds of radio and TV interviews on major issues and trends, and has been ranked as one of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive today.

Dr Patrick's YouTube link

Title: Industry trends - management, marketing, customers, lifestyles, motivation, change management and leadership development

Medical Career

Patrick Dixon studied Medical Sciences at King's College, Cambridge and continued medical training at Charing Cross Hospital, London. In 1978, while a medical student he took a sabbatical (the first of many) after founding the IT startup Medicom, selling medical software solutions in the UK and the Middle East, based on early personal computers. After qualifying as a physician he cared for those dying of cancer at St Joseph's Hospice and then as part of the Community Care Team based at University College Hospital, London, while also continuing IT consulting part-time.

Intellectual Capital

Patrick Dixon is well known for his relaxed attitude to his own intellectual capital, choosing to give almost all of it away online in the spirit of Wikipedia. Hundreds of recent presentations are available for free access, together with hundreds of articles, over 200 videos of which some are an hour long, and the entire text of six books—more than a million chapters downloaded.

Nice Web Templates at Web-Kreation

http://web-kreation.com/index.php/freebies/

Ruby on Rails Tutorial

Came across a really good Ruby on Rails tutorial by Armando Fox, University of Berkeley :)

Work

Dear all,
I'll be very tied up with work this week + friends visiting in KL :) :).
Will take a short break from blogging...

Pic: At the Government Portal launch ceremony in Putrajaya International Convention Center

Inside the cable car - on our way to the top of the Genting Highlands

Be back soon!:-)

Walhalla (Victoria, Australia)

Walhalla is a small town in Victoria, Australia, founded as a gold-mining community in early 1863 and at its peak home to around 3,000 residents. Today, the town has a population of less than 20 permanent residents, though it attracts large numbers of tourists and is a major focus of the regional tourism industry. The town's name is taken from an early gold mine in the area, named for the German hall of fame, the Walhalla temple (Valhalla from Norse legend).

(Source: Wikipedia)