Wil Tan

Here’s a pic of the information panel on a train a took in Tokyo while heading towards Shinjuku:

Notice how the words “suspension”, “service”, “trouble” (and the partially visible “Shinkansen”) were brutally split at arbitrary boundaries without any use of hyphen. While this is common practice for the Japanese language, it certainly makes it hard for English readers to scan the information being presented.

I can only vaguely remember early computing systems where editors didn’t do word wrapping (anybody care to refresh my memory?)

Just received a Singapore Airlines newsletter announcing the discontinuation of the in-flight broadband service – Connexion by Boeing, affectionately called CBB. For those in the industry, this may not be news but the following might be welcoming news for those belonging to the Too Frequent Flyer Club (of which thankfully I’m not a member): the service will be free of charge from now until the end of the year when the service will be withdrawn.

I’ve always found it thrilling to be IM’ing and checking emails mid-air, and to imagine the packets travelling all over the skies. I might have the chance to make use of the generous offer when we make the move to Sterling at the end of the year ;-P

Continuing the tradition of using skewed representation of commemorative object to celebrate an occasion, here’s my birthday cake:

I bought a 17″ LCD Monitor (a Samsung SyncMaster 740N) from Kingsford yesterday for $325. Came home, set it up and started happily using it. Went to sleep, woke up with a stiff neck. I did not make the connection to the LCD monitor immediately, attributed it to my sleeping position. After brunch, I got back to work and sat down in front of the lapper and realize that I had to strain my neck to look at the LCD on the left. Then the light bulb went off, I should’ve put it on the right of my lapper!

Look at how far the mouse is from the LCD – which means I have to keep my right hand holding the mouse while turning my head to the left to face the LCD monitor.

A little lesson learnt, this is much better…

Also caught a nice rainbow over Kingsford yesterday for your viewing pleasure.

Warm orange glow over the skyline at dusk..

This camera doesn’t do them justice of course.