8 July 2011, Monday

Life in London - Take Two - Shopping at Oxford Street

We went for Lunch today, buying food at Yoshino, a Japanese takeaway store that offers a large variety of sushi, and some hot Japanese food as well. I bought a 8-pieces pack of Mackerel Sushi from there.

We then went to St. Anne's Churchyard to consume our lunch.

My mackerel Sushi! Quite filling actually :)

After the food, we went to buy the cheapest coffee we know, from a very authentic Algerian coffee place that mainly deals with coffee beans and makes coffee too!

After work (and carrying my laptop in Raymond's bag), we went for dinner at Oodle Noodles. The food was not too bad, but it was more expensive than the food we always go for weekday lunch and dinner. Francis and Raymond did not find their food amazingly tasty. YC observed that the food was not as well done as it was when he was last in London.

That's me on the phone with my wifey!

Raymond decided to go for a drink with George, while Francis, YC and me took a stroll down Oxford Street. I "helped" Raymond carry his bag home (so I can start setting up my Dell laptop). We went to get a PC game from a store called Game. We bought Hunter: Demon's Forge. It was going for £29.90, but now had a special price of £14.98. We were thinking of selling it to a second-hand game shop after we're done playing.

The sales guy at the Game shop was really nice and chatty. He asked if I had higher than average hardware to play the game. I told him I just got a new laptop so it should not be a problem. He began to sound worried, and asked what kind of specifications my laptop was (because most laptops cannot compare to desktops in terms of processing and graphics processing power). I told him it was a Dell Studio XPS 15, which is a desktop replaecment. He said "Ok I will stop talking now, seems you know what you are doing". :)

I saw the game being assembled right in front of my eyes. The guy took an empty casing with the label, went somehwere else to grab the actual disc, and from elsewhere he grabbed the booklet that should come with the game, and then he closed the box and sealed the box with the special seal that comes with games. When YC and I opened the box at home to inspect the disc, we found that the surface was scratched. We suspected it was a second hand copy. But then again the game came with some one-time activation code for downloadable content, so it might not be second hand after all.

All the while we were in the Game shop, Francis was eager to move on to look for the Disney store. He was talking about the one at Covent Garden. But I remembered that there was one along Oxford Street. So we headed for the Disney store along Oxford Street. 

This toy really has strawberry scent if you push your nose to it :) Just like in the movie!

Life-size Captain Jack Sparrow! :)

After Disney we went to Primark to do some shopping! I bought a "Superman" wallet under the "Off season" section, for £2. I think it used to be £5 or £8.

Took this photo on my bed, when I got home

Yes, yes I know its childish but at £2, who could resist? ;)

I also bought a hoodie for.... £3!! It used to be £7, then it was £5, and now finally it's £3!

No Brighton bear, you can't fit into that hoodie.

8 July 2011, Monday

Life in London - Take Two - Arrival of my Dell XPS 15 Laptop

My Dell Laptop arrived at the security downstairs at Shaftesbury Avenue. Security signed for it and Raymond informed me that security has it. Interestingly, there was another Mr Patrick Woo from the Bank of China which shares the space with Double Negative. Security contacted him and he told them he was not expecting a laptop. ;)

I went down to collect it. It was a pretty big box, enough to hold the 15" laptop. I put it with YC until the end of the day. After work, YC took it to the lobby on the second floor, and I opened it up.

Raymond agreed to let me put the laptop in his bag.

This little guy's configuration consists an Intel i7 processor, 6GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 517GB Hard disk, Nvidia GeForce GT540M display AND an Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics processor on board. It has a JBL subwoofer built into the body and a more sophisticated audio control panel driving the audio chip by Realtek. Instead of the factory default 6-cell battery, this unit has an upgraded 9-cell battery instead. 

I paid £520 for all this, which is a very good deal. It was on sale at the Dell Outlet online store, which is a place to find refurbished Dell sets. Some of them have cosmetic defects like minor scratches, or had the orders cancelled after the units were built. My set has a chip at the lower right corner of the set, but it is almost unobservable. 

Since Dell systems are built to order, the refurbished sets are put on the Dell Outlets as they are. Customers cannot do further customisation to them. There were quite a few refurbished sets of XPS 15 for sale, all slightly different from each other in their configuration (and each having a slightly different price tag as well). 

With a brand new system of similar configuration, it will easily cost over £1000. Similarly, if I were to buy a brand new set from Dell Singapore would cost about SG$2000 or more (Dell Outlet Singapore does not have any stock for XPS laptops).

YC has an XPS 15 which he uses as a desktop replacement. I came to London with just an Asus 900 series netbook, that is almost 3 years old. When I decided to buy a laptop, YC was promoting his notebook and trying to get me to buy the same as his. In the end, I did. Our notebook specs are exactly the same, except for his 15" display, which displays full HD (1920x1080) and has colours calibrated to conform to Adobe RGB colour profile. This he upgraded for $180. From the UK Dell website, they do the same upgrade (on new XPS laptops) for £180!

The Ancestry of Polar Bears

Ain't he cute? This bear sure knows about camouflage

Recently I came across this article from the BBC News website: Polar Bears have Maternal Irish Brown Bear Ancestors

It says that the maternal ancestry of modern polar bears from Ireland were Irish brown bears, from analysing the teeth and skeletons of 17 irish polar bears.

7 July 2011, Monday
Life in London - Take Two - Arrival of my Monitor Colour Calibrator


I ordered a Huey Pro display calibrator from Pantone. It arrived today. :) It was selling on Amazon UK for about £60+. There was a pro version and a regular version.


It arrived in a bubble wrap package. This is my second visit to the runners office two days in a  row. (Yesterday was hard disk collection).

After work I went home and unwrapped the package. Only after I opened it pack and read the front of the box, I realise that the regular version was only for CRT displays, and the Pro version can be applied on LCD displays as well. :)

I used it on YC's laptop, and my own Asus netbook. It works very well.There's a continual ambient light monitoring mode, where you leave the colourmeter beside your display, so it reads samples the ambient light, and adjusts your display so the colours stay the same even when the environmental lighting changes. You can also configure how often the colourmeter samples the environment light.

The cheapest that you can get for a similar monitor calibrator back in Singapore would cost at least $300+, and I know Spyder and Spyder2 and Spyder3 Pro from DataColor would be in the range of SG$300-SG$500+. I am very happy with the Huey Pro because it gets the job done. :)


I have been transferring all my files from the dying 500GB harddisk to the new 2TB Seagate drive. Most of the files have been transferred, except for a good chunk of my video tutorial files. I'll keep it going tonight. I hope the 500GB doesn't die before the night is over.

6 July 2011, Monday

Life in London - Take Two - Arrival of my New Hard Drive


I ordered a Seagate Hard disk last Friday, and it finally arrived today. It is a 2 TB one. From the picture at Amazon.co.uk, I thought it read portable USB hard drive. The same looked exactly like the 2.5" portable USB hard drives. It cost me £65, excluding transport.


However, it came in a huge box and the weight didn't make you think it was a portable USB powered hard disk. True enough, upon opening the box at home, I realised it was an external  hard drive. The shape is exactly the same as the small one I have, but the size is much bigger, and its heavier too.

The warranty on the box is 2 years. I doubt it is international, so it will not matter to me after I go back to Singapore.

The Seagate 2TB external HDD and the Seagate 320GB pocket HDD 

Big brother and little brother

My 500GB external hard disk is dying. That's why I bought a 2TB drive to replace it before it retires for good. I am still satisfied that I get the extra storage now, and happy that my photos and data would be safe and sound. I can always use the portable Seagate hard drive on the go, and use the external 2TB for non-portable storage and archive.