QotD: What My Name Means

What does your name mean and why did your parents choose it for you? 
Submitted by mommy2two.

My Chinese name is 怡因 (I-Yin). The first character, 怡, means joy or happiness. The second character, 因, means reason or cause. So I'm supposed to be the reason for happiness? Whose happiness?

As for Carol, it came about later… started off with my mom loving the name / word "Coral". But, ah, I didn't want to be thought of as wriggly sea creatures, and Carol has the musical connotation which I liked, so that's how I ended up with it…

I also found a couple old posts on how to pronounce my chinese name and how cybette came about.

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Vox Hunt: Coffee Table Book

Book:  Show us a great coffee table book.

Steinway

Ronald Ratcliffe

This is what we currently have on our coffee table (amidst a bunch of stuff / mess etc… so it’s actually hidden from view right now…)

I think we got it from from the Steinway Hall of Dallas. I also have a poster of the book cover picture, sent and autographed by the producer / photographer himself.

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Vox Hunt: And All The Colors

Show us a rainbow.
Submitted by Amy – Sister Brown Hair Surprise.

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First impressions of the iPhone

Well, yeah, it has been 6 weeks since the launch of the iPhone. Lots have been written about it, but honestly I haven't been reading much about it if I could help it. Plus I have been quite preoccupied with some work and personal stuff. So today when my sis and I were walking around in Willow Bend Mall, I saw the Apple Store and dragged her into it. I've seen the iPhone in person before this, even held one (albeit a broken one) for a few seconds. But today, I got to play with it for about 10 minutes. Ok, it's not long enough for me to give a thorough review, but that's not my intention here anyway.

First, what did my sister think of it? She's not a geek like me, i.e. not always lusting after the latest gadgets (unless they are pink, in which case she might be interested). She didn't even know the Nokia phone she had was an N73 running S60 3rd Edition. "It is interesting, but… I'm not sure if I can get used to it (touch only). It might take me a long while… I'm just so comfortable with the Nokia interface (she's probably had about 7-9 Nokias before… although the N73 is her first S60 phone). And it doesn't really respond well to my touch (she had sweaty palms from the hot Dallas heat), I have no idea what to press, it's not intuitive, and it's kinda big even though it's thin. Looks kinda fragile too."

I laughed hard at the last part. Because while I'm quite clumsy and drop my phones occasionally, she has a habit of dropping them all the time! We always joke that she'll make a great tester for the sturdiness and durability of our devices. The store employees must have sensed our inclination to phone dropping coz they watched us like hawks while we were playing with the iPhones.

Hmm, i'm getting too long winded for a supposedly short post on first impressions. Ok, my honest-to-god first thoughts running through my mind: DAMN the UI is speedy and spiffy. Why can't S60 do that? Touch is cool! Oh dear my finger prints are all over this thing. Should I find out if one drop is all it takes? Let me try to type something on the onscreen keyboard…. Rhw… no… Thr… no… The… there we go. One freaking word after three tries. Let's try a sentence now…. (thoughts censored as I tapped away at the screen). Why are those Apple guys staring at me? Yeah my fingernails are getting kinda long and i'm poking the iPhone screen with them. How does it look next to my E62 and N95? Wow, a lot thinner. But is that a good thing? I put my phones in my back jean pockets sometimes. Ha, I can almost hear the iPhone cracking against my butt….  ok nevermind.

The GOOD: beautiful screen, fast UI, great music playback.

The BAD: too fragile, touch only (no physical keys), weak camera (might as well have no camera).

I won't lie. I was impressed, even wow-ed, for the first couple of minutes. But the honeymoon period was short lived. Especially after I discovered how difficult it was to type on that thing. I got quite frustrated quite quickly. Sure, I've heard that some people got used to it after a few days or weeks and ended up typing fairly fast on the iPhone. I don't know… I had the N800 for a month, my first onscreen keyboard experience wasn't too bad, it had a much bigger screen, and yet I decided not to keep it. I thought I'd be using it quite a bit for IM chats and blogging, but ended up mainly for listening to music, web surfing and reading pdf docs on the go.

It really boils down to what you use your phones for. If I wanted a flashy devices for showing off and listening to music, yeah, I might get the iPhone, although an iPod might suffice as well. But taking a look at what I use most on my E62 (Jaiku, messaging, email, web-browsing) and N95 (camera, gallery, Fring, web-browsing), the iPhone is not for me. Really. Even if Nokia made it.

And my sister's earlier comment made me wonder… how well does the touchscreen work when wet? what if I was caught in the rain somewhere and needed to make an emergency call? or maybe if i want to drunk jaiku on it while in a jacuzzi?

10 minutes was more than enough to satisfy my curiosity on the iPhone. The next gadget i really have my eyes on now is the Panasonic FZ-18… time to upgrade my 3-year-old FZ-20??

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No time to blog, so just share a link

070829

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QotD: My Strongest Summer Memory

What will you remember most about this summer?

My trip to Finland.

But summer is not over yet. Hopefully there'll be more memories to be made.

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Beautiful town of Porvoo

Had a chance to relax and hang out with R2, Henrikki, and Stefan last weekend. Porvoo is a one-hour bus ride east of Helsinki. Aside from some hardware issues (ok, me wearing the wrong shoes…) I had a lovely time. Parts of my memory was erased by the combination of beer, cider, wine and sauna. From what I remember, I had a lovely time. LOL. Anyway, some pics to jog my memory…

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Work and food (työskennellä ja ruoka)

Pretty much the theme of my first week here. I think all 4 pics were taken on July 4th.

(1) My temporary office for these couple of weeks. Been shuffling between the two buildings.

(2) More Nokia buildings across the parking lot. Didn't visit them this time but have been to the one on the right in a previous trip iirc. Pics taken from bus stop while waiting for the bus.

(3) Back at hotel, around 10pm. Having a drink while waiting for dinner. Enjoying the breeze from the window seat and marveling at the brightness given the time of day (night).

(4) Dinner arrived! Salmon Chapel sandwich. Nami nami.

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From Helsinki to Tampere

The flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki was uneventful. I had the window seat again, and in the middle seat next to me was a pretty blond little girl. There was a gentleman in the aisle seat but he wasn’t related to the girl. I wondered if she was travelling with someone and it turned out her mom had the middle seat in the row behind us. So I swapped seats with the mom so they could be together. Since all I did was nap-eat-nap on that flight, I didn’t mind the middle seat.

Anyway, touchdown Helsinki! I don’t know why even though this was my third time in Helsinki airport (well ok fifth time since there are two on each trip), I don’t remember much of it. Maybe because the previous two trips I was travelling with other co-workers and we were probably either chatting or rushing. When I’m by myself I tend to slow down and observe more.

(1) Like this wooden sculpture thing in the airport terminal towards the exits. I never noticed it before.

(2) My work is at the Tampere office, so I had to take a train from Helsingin rautatieasema. This pic was taken from a seat on the Pendolino train leaving from Platform 7 that would take me there in less than 1.5 hrs! (usually close to 2 hrs)

(3) Tampereen rautatieasema (railway station). The hotel I’m staying at is right across the street from it. This was taken at MIDNIGHT on my second day here. No, I didn’t turn on night shot mode. Yes, it was still quite bright out!

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On the way to Finland

Gosh this is long overdue. I've already been here for almost 2 weeks. Oh well. Better late than never, right? Or is it the other way around?

Before I go on, guess who else is in Finland? Hehe… this is probably old news already considering the speed they travel on the Internet. Stefan surprised (to say the least) the mobile blogosphere with his one-way-ticket to Finland, and made many of us envious (yes even those of us who work for Nokia… or at least me) with his visit to Nokia Headquarters. This guy has guts, and apparently lots of determination and luck. Stefan my friend, I really admire you for what you're doing.

I, on the other hand, am here on a much less grand scale for an integration camp for work. And it's really WORK. Which might explain why I haven't blogged for a while. So anyway, back to the photo story…

(1) Good morning Europe! First light of the day. Beautiful view out my window seat. I think we're approaching Ireland at this point.

(2) Passport control in Frankfurt. It was a crazy, and I mean CRAZY connection. Remember, the flight into Frankfurt was delayed. Plus the connection time was only an hour. Running from one terminal to another, going through security with two laptops… not fun. Tried to capture a video of my journey through the terminals, but I was panting so hard I sounded like…. never mind. Wanted to take more pictures, but they basically came out like the next one:

(3) Blurry! Image stabilization probably won't have helped. Note to self: next time don't wear high heeled boots for short/tight connections. They look great with short tight skirts however.

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