Colin Charles Agenda

We haven’t seen Abdullah since we left high school. He scooted of on a plane in no time, after the main graduation party. It was fun catching up with him, listening to all the great stories he had to tell us, about life, and how he’s touching hearts, even as a doctor in training. It is a pity he came by for a few days – at least he fit us into his schedule!

Anne and Serhan. Cute, aren’t they? Anne’s a really smart cookie, doing a biotech degree, and considering furthering her studies. She seems to always be stressed about weekly tests, but we’ve assured her they don’t last forever.

Don’t hesitate, to see the rest of the gang, attempting to inhale shisha (apparently, also known as hookah). Originated in India, but popular in the Arab world. Impressive. Oh, the rest of the gang – clicky clicky.

Before Aria, I was not really kid-friendly. I never carried them, I never played with them, I generally didn’t like them. I’m guessing I still don’t, but Aria is the exception :)

I’ve been getting closer and closer to her, and I can now say, that she really does light up my life!

I notice I drive really slowly when she’s in the car. I even turn the headlights on, in broad daylight. Playing with her, I truly get the meaning of a bundle of joy.

Today, she was on my lap, while I was reading a magazine, and attempting to proof-read it. It was serene.

P/S: More and more pictures to be uploaded in due time… My backlog from November 2007, is still around… iFail

This is interesting. Google’s Street View. Yes, I’ve seen a lot about it on the blogosphere, but I decided to finally try it out. The photo is of the house, where I used to live. Zooming in, now I can tell you that to the left of that, is where my dodgy landlord still lives ;)

Actually, more to the point. These pictures were definitely taken this year. I know this because I had the room in front, upstairs, and there were things sticking out between the shutters and the window. This picture is too serene, so must’ve been after November 2007.

I see good potential in Street View. Think about mashups with a site that focuses on you finding rental properties. Now people can comment on the property, look at the surrounding neighbourhood, and basically help you make a better choice at renting.

The real estate industry has moved online (in Australia, I can think of Ray White, LJ Hooker, at the top of my head), but its not really been disrupted. No, domain.com.au isn’t disruption – look who owns it?

I was mildly surprised to find out about HomeSpace.sg from the e27 unconference I attended a few weeks back. Its focus currently is only for homes that are for sale, but they focus on the important aspects – like is it near an MRT, what kind of shopping malls are nearby, if you’re buying a property and have kids in mind, what zone to head to and so on.

They’re mashing it up with Google Maps. Pity there isn’t Street View in Singapore, huh?

Street View does 360° views as well. Nifty, if you ask me. See the surrounds. Does anyone know of a real estate disruptor in Australia, yet? Otherwise, there’s definitely room to start coding one…

I think YouTube has arrived. MTV, Channel V, and the rest should start worrying. Why?

I have Channel V and MTV on cable TV. I mostly use cable for the news channels, and music, but lately, these music channels are showing more and more “reality TV” shows, news features and other garbage. Yes, Punkd/Jackass is funny (as is the one where a bunch of guys go on dates, do stupid things for cash), but the whole purpose of a music channel is to show me music videos…

I notice that in the States, there’s VH1, which seems to be mostly music centric. VH1 is interesting as a channel… every music video they have, tacks on a little advert for Rhapsody. I’ve never had the privilege of trying Rhapsody, because they’re US only, but its a smart move.

Now why has YouTube arrived for me? Shitty consumer DSL link (1mbps/512kbps) is allowing me to stream music videos in realtime. If I tether a PC to the TV (MythTV maybe? Apple TV?) I’ve got an MTV replacement right there.

Playlist creation is something I think can be improved with YouTube. Maybe a mechanism to cache FLV files locally afterward (does Squid do this?), so that eventually I build up a music video library all thanks to YouTube.

All in all, ways to make cable TV more and more irrelevant (for example, I haven’t bothered with HBO after Sex & The City ended).

Good times ahead. Maybe I should just build that Myth box… Wonder how current Mikal+Stewart’s MythTV book still is… (and if there’s coverage on building your MTV killer).

This is funny. I was trying to type an MSN message, and was thinking of saying “i heart melbourne”. I wanted to find out how to replace “heart” with a logo. I Google’ed and since it took me a few minutes (slow night?), I came up with this:

I  melbourne

Without realising that I was searching for the Apple logo, and not the MSN heart symbol. Oops.

Anyway:

• Shift+Option+K =  (apple logo)
• (L) = MSN Heart sign

For the last few days, I’ve longed to make FriendFeed useful, by attempting to remove my Tumblr and Jaiku feeds.

Apparently, I succeeded but the feeds would still show up. These feeds refused to die! Annoyed, I sent them some feedback.

Today I got a reply from Ana Yang at FriendFeed. It is acknowledged as a known bug, and they’re looking into it right away. Kudos.

So, here’s to FriendFeed fixing themselves. Great job, Chief Miscellaneous Officer :)

And to the rest following my feed, many apologies for the current duplication in content. Hopefully the shared items make up for it!