Tune in to Yourself, Tune out the World

Just saw this neat piece of animated GIF getting re-blogged by somebody on the daily articles update on http://headliner.fm.

It's a fun image :)

What do you think of when you see this?

I can think of a few:

- just shut up, I don't need to hear your talk

- don't listen to what people say, believe in yourself

- broadcast (or the media) makes the world a smaller place (brings people together)

The first thing that came to mind, for me, is the title of this blog: 

When you tune in to yourself, you tune the world out

Sure we all need to get in touch with ourselves some time. Be honest with ourselves, sort out our feelings -- have a little "me time", as I once heard a friend say.

However, there are some people who are constantly plugged-in to themselves, and the result is that they tune out what's happening to the people around them, and the world around them. In the end they get so self absorbed with their own issues that they get left behind and disconnected with reality.

Another image from the same page:

This is part of a huge collection of images called "y u no [xxx]" visit http://knowyourmeme.com for more details

I am guilty of this more times than I am willing to admit. I believe many of us are not even aware when it happens. Of course we may burn out when we become tired or when we care too much. Thats when we need a break, go to a place where its just me and myself.

Then of course there are the people who just don't bother. It is an attitude, a way of life for them. So what does that make them? Permanently disconnected? I am sure some of these people are aware of things happening. That does not make them disconnected, but most of the time they simply choose not to respond to them, and just withdraw into their own world.

I pray that I will not develop an attitude of indifference and a hardened heart. That does not make the world a better place, I am only a single person. But it will make things better for people around me. Then I can reach out to the world.

I am... Captain Woo

 

When I was coming to London in June this year, I had the chance to sign up and credit my KrisFlyer account. I made a mistake in the Salutation section, and now I am known to them as Captain Woo!

I noticed my mistake immediately after I made it, but I've clicked "next" in the particulars sign-up page, and I found no way to amend it thereafter (yes, I really did try to change it back!)

TedTalk

http://www.ted.com/

This was introduced to my by Tiffany a month ago. This site is a huge treasury of people giving inspirational talks, and people in the peak of their careers sharing their precious insights. All these video clips now available to us, to stream over the internet. Amazing!

I shared it with my sister and now she's hooked

These are a few of the clips I've watched so far:

and this:

New Follower to my Blog!

My sister just became the follower of this seldom read blog! :)

Looks like she is impressed by all the strange, incoherent and random stuff that I wrote. She is now thinking whether or not to start one of her own.

All the best sis!

FL Studio Fruity Edition

I've finally done it. For the first time ever, I've purchased an original music creation software all by myself.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a software pirate. :)

I've owned music creation software before. But those are either lite editions, packaged in a bundle with other things (like a hardware MIDI interface); or educational versions that somebody passed to me. I've also owned  (and still own) Sibelius, which was an educational version jointly acquired (and co-owned) between 5 people from church. Church use is considered to fall under acedemic licensing. 

In the end it was about 84 Euros after tax, and I ended up paying about £73 after tax.

Of course with the software I can do more music, and have posting access to the forums on the Image-Online website.

Arrival of Another Purchase

Another of my purchases arrived today.

I bought this together with the Klipsch Image S4 from ebay.co.uk. This was a  case for the Klipsch. I am going to use that to house my Klipsch Pro-Media ear-phones now that I've sold the Image S4. Anyway the Image S4 came with its own tin case, so I was going to use it  on the Pro-Media anyway.

The amazing thing about this guy is that it costs only £1.65. When I bought it, they were shipping it from Hongkong, China. They said to give it about 11-26 days for delivery. Now it is in my hands, on time. I am wondering how much it costs for them to make this together with the delivery. It does not seem that it is worth the effort to price this item at £1.65. They must be making some money.

Of course I am not complaining, but it is still amazing, how low they must have produced stuff like that.

A Stella Surprise

I never ordered this!

Today's Monday, start of the week.

I arrived at my table to a huge surprise!

I thought it was someone else using my table as a temporary storage, or someone's stuff wrongly delivered to my desk.

Then there's a note:

A personal note from "Le President"

Wow. In all those times I was conscientiously "checking-in" to Foursquare places, (to the irritation of my wife), I never thought anything like that would come out of the illogical obsession of tapping and declaring your location.

Here are the rest of the pictures I took, a closer examination of the surprise gift!

This is very new to me, that product branding would make use of the new social media to publicise their brand. I can tell you it certainly works, because I cannot see myself drinking all 7 bottles of cider. So I've given them out to my room-mates at work. That's certainly spreading the joy and the good name of the product! 

Cheers, Stella Artois :)

To end this on a mysterious note, there is one thing quite puzzling about it all. I am currently the mayor of my own office at Double Negative, but I am also the mayor of the Golden Gate Dessert House across the street. On top of that, I am also the mayor of the 3 mobile store down the street beside Curzon cinema. So how did they know I was working at Double Negative and not at the other places where I also have mayor-ship in?

Perhaps they did travel to all the places dishing out complementary cider to mayors who happen to really be the resident employees or mayors who happened to be the on-site, at the location they frequent. So they just walk up to the reception and asked for my name. If the reception finds me in the staff list, then they know they've got the right person. If not, they move on to the next location.

There is another chilling possibility. They could have gotten my details from somewhere else. I've linked the Foursquare account to Facebook. They could have checked my details on Facebook and "tracked" me down too. Well maybe I am just thinking too much. Haha.

If you are really new to Foursquare and don't know what it's about, read up on the Foursquare site! In short, it's a mobile application that lets you tell your phone where you are, and "check-in". Its like making a mark that says you were here. 

So wherever you go, whenever you check-in, your check-ins are remembered by Foursquare. Every check-in earns you points. You can add friends from Facebook or from other Foursquare users. There's a ranking chart that compares your points to your friends'. This resets every week. 

If you check into a place more often than anyone else, you become the Mayor. If you stopped checking in after a while and somebody over-takes you in the frequency of check-ins, he/she becomes the new mayor.

Also, there are badges (or achievements) to unlock and collect. Just using these non-accurate examples, if you check in enough times at pubbing spots, maybe you'll unlock the drinking badge, if you check-in at work on weekends a certain number of times, you'll unlock the workaholic badge, so on and so forth.

Sometimes this year, new features appeared in the application in the form of "nearby offers". These are shops that tie-up with Foursquare and give certain discounts or freebies when you show them you are checked-in there, or if you show them you are the mayor of their shop (which means you hang out there really frequently).

I was really active in  Foursquare, in Singapore. I checked in without fail. Of course there were many of my friends who are checking in faster and more furious than myself. There's this chart that shows the ranking between you and your friends. A few friends like Sherwin and Caleb are consistently in the lead. I wonder how they do it.

When I came over to London, I started checking-in on places here. Slowly I began to lose Mayor-ship of places back home, but I gained Mayor-ship of quite a few places here. 

It seems to me that people from Singapore are more hard-core in their frequency of Foursquare Check-ins. Here in London I can grab a mayorship by just checking in few days in a row. In Singapore it would take weeks of consistent check-ins.

I've slowed down my check-ins in the recent month. I still do it when I remember. but not very much now.

 

A Tribute to Steve Jobs from Dyn

Since the announcement of Apple co-founder Steve Job's death on 5-10-2011 at age 56, there has been a huge wave of media coverage. I've received and read loads of links from many different sources. Some were articles, some were videos.

All of them about Steve passing away and his great contribution to the betterment of our society, the enabling of technology that affect our lives, including the way it's shaping the society and bringing people closer to each other, and, his contributions to the animated feature films and music industries.

http://dyn.com/steve-jobs-1955-2011-our-employees-pay-tribute/

This morning, (it's a Sunday!), from the Facebook page of Dyn (Dynamic Network Services), my free web host service provider, I came across an article where their employees pay tribute to Steve Jobs. It was full of sincere admiration and appreciation for the man who has a great part of his life trying to make our world a better place.

It is something else, because these tech guys actually know what they're talking about, and they actually see the influence and change from a professional perspective, and it sounds so different from the general public and media.

It also helps us see Steve Job's from yet another perspective and understand him just a little bit more.

Give it a read if you have time. :)

Klipsch Reply to my Query

Yesterday I sent an email to query Klipsch if they can do some service and parts replacement to my Pro-Media earphones.


It is a valentine's day gift from my wife earlier this year. Cost about $159 (read my blog here). About 2 months ago, I accidentally left the earphones in my jeans pocket while I put it in the washing machine to wash.


After it came out from the wash, the phones were still working, to my amazement. The play-button that triggers the music player on my phone works too! The down side is that the mic had stopped working. The rubber that cushions the cable entering the body of the earphone has also split on the left side.

Therere I wrote to Klipsch international to ask if it was possible for them to do a parts replacement or maintenace for me, they gave me a short and absolute email saying they do not have repair set up for these.

I will go back to Singapore and enquire from their service centre again, see if I can get a different response from them.