Tofu Shake?

The weather is really hot these few weeks and since it's the end of the month and also the last day of Chinese New Year, I would like to share with you an ancient family secret - BERRY TOFU SHAKE! Just kidding. This is what strange weather can do to your mind.

But wait, my mind is not playing tricks on me! This berry tofu shake really does exist and here's the simple and easy-to-do recipe:

Ingredients:
8 ounces silken tofu
4 cups almond milk
3 tablespoons honey
3 cups mixed berries

Method:
Combine all ingredients in a blender and pulse until thoroughly liquefied. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servingsI've not tried this before so please, if anyone did, let me know. :D

via planet green.

Smartphones, Dumb Thoughts 4 - Dumb Dumb Humans

I can't help but feel that as mobile phones get smarter, we humans become dumb and dumber. This enlightening thought came today when I am supposedly to be on-leave but people from work (mostly contractors) kept calling, disturbing my peace. I am still waiting for my one phone that will rule them all and am just using a basic slider phone - a Sony Ericsson T303 but the whole day of the ringing phone got me really irritated (especially when I tried to nap and all three times I tried, someone had to call me) and negative thoughts about having a smartphone start to form:

1. SMSes are no longer enough, we get e-mails in smartphones so that our bosses could send e-mails that they deem urgent during our bedtime - and still expect an immediate reply.
2. As if e-mails are not enough, we get task lists, calendars and reminders in even my current phone - reminder of work when we are not working.
   
3. We will be enslaved by the internet because we will be online all the time with today's smartphones and almost always on internet connections.
4. Men will have lesser sperm counts, while everyone will be having headaches because phones now have WIFI, 3G, EDGE, GPRS, GSM, CDMA, FM, Bluetooth and soon WIMAX, LTE and who knows what else?
5. Our bosses will work with Microsoft to hack into our phones' GPS system so that they know our every move.
   
6. Callers will form a new alliance where they will track what we do and only start calling during our most inconvenient times such as while we are driving, in the shower, taking a leak, having dinner, etc.
7. I'm sure there are plenty more cons out there but I can't think of any right now. My home WIFI is blocking my thoughts.
   

But alas, whatever it is, I am still getting my smartphone and shall willingly give in to all those stress (except for #1, #2 and #5... HMPH!) because... because... why? I also don't know.

The Sony TX5 Touchscreen Water, Shock, Dust and Freeze Proof Digital Camera

I used to think of owning a waterproof digital camera... during the earlier days when only Pentax and Olympus were the only companies that produce those. Nowadays, almost all major companies that manufacture digital cameras have at least one model so I lost interest in all of them until I saw this one by Sony.

By design, these kinds of digital cameras have minimal movable mechanical parts but this DSC-TX5 seemed to have a complete slide down front cover. That caught my attention. In addition to that, it also has a touchscreen that is usable underwater! How cool is that? And I would normally not blog about Sony digital cameras but since the company now includes SD memory card support, well yeah!

Other notable features for this camera: Panorama sweep (just hold the shutter button and sweep across the scene and the camera will do the stitching automatically), optical image stabilisation, touch focus, 10.2 megapixels "Exmor R" CMOS sensor, 720p video recording and a 25-100mm equivalent Carl Zeiss lens. The camera appears to cost US$350.

via Photography Blog.

Windows 7 RC to Expire in 12 days...

...according to this notice:

But we all already know. The every 2 hours shutdown shall begin 1 March 2010. So should I revert back to Windows Vista (WTF!??!!?) or go forward and purchase the expensive 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium?

Handphone Hunt #8 - HTC Desire

A very desirable smartphone... or superphone, the HTC Desire is pretty similar to the Google Nexus One. Since the latter doesn't appear to be coming here to Malaysia, we can now hope that the HTC one will. Running on the same Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon, it's got a optical track pad in place of the Nexus One's trackball. The Desire also has HTC's newly improved Sense UI running on top of the latest Android 2.1. Check out the videos below for more:

video via Phone Arena.

video via GSM Arena.

Standing Fish

A rather unusual dish being that the remains of the fish were deep fried and left standing vertically on the plate. The rest of the fish is on the plate, cooked with other stuff.

Had this at the Oriental Pavillion at Jaya 33.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

Gong Xi Fa Cai, people!

Handphone Hunt #7 - Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Autofocus 8 megapixels digital camera with LED flash (potential torchlight here!), 360x640 pixels resolution 3.2" screen, full connectivity (Bluetooth, Wifi 802.11b/g, HSPA, (recently) open source Symbian^1 OS means lots of ready apps (though outdated OS), 720 MHz (!?!?!?) CPU with PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator, mini USB, micro USB SD support, 3.5" headphone jack and Flash support seem like a phone for me to lust for. Other secondary goodies (for me, that is) are 720p video recording, touch focus, smile and face detection and A-GPS that helps to geotag photos taken with the camera. Some worrying turnoffs are the resistive touchscreen which may be a problem under sunlight and the rather vague (and misleading?) 75MB of RAM. Missing from various websites are the real world battery life and price.

16 Panda Cubs in China and Tai Shan in the USA

16 panda cubs pose on their first day at nursery school...
while Tai Shan prepares to head home to China.
from Mail Online via Digg.

Out of Gas

Our very own International Trade and Industries Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamad announced that 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day will be redistributed to non-power industries until 2011 BUT none will be allocated for new manufacturers. I suppose this is the latest addition to the list of why Malaysia no longer attracts foreign investors.

via The Malaysian Insider.

Memories of Firestar

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends used to be one of my favourite cartoons during my childhood to teen years. Lets recall a bit... there's my favourite the web crawler, there's Iceman and there's the rose among the thorns... a very hot one - Firestar!
Firestar memory triggered by Ryan Dunlavey.

I fell in love with you as soon as I saw your picture!

Damn you spammers!

Smartphones, Dumb Thoughts 3 - Rise of Cobra

Oh, I've still not watched that G. I. Joe movie but suddenly, that cobra rising title seemed appropriate here. My Sony Ericsson T303 went kaput a few days... maybe weeks back because after turning it on and leaving it idle for awhile, calls and SMSes could not come in. I would need to turn it off and on again and this process repeated itself over and over and over... it is as though the phone has a standby mode that switches off the receiver or something.

Occasionally, I would become worse - I can't turn off the phone. I had to remove the battery... then I had to reset the time and date... grrrr... Finally yesterday, I took out my ancient Nokia 6210 - one of the smartest phones during its time - and inserted my SIM card and sent my T303 in for warranty repair just now.

Now my tough and smart Nokia 6210 rises again, returning back to its original glory where I can have 1,000 phone entries versus 500 for the T303. HMPH!

Epilogue
While I was at an authorised Sony Ericsson service centre, I asked the dude if he knew when Rachael is coming to town. His replied was a big maybe in March. Hmmm...