Category: Life

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I finally have time

Sinn Box

I’ve not worn a watch ever since i carried my first born. The whole carry baby with a metallic object on the wrist just does not work for me.

Now 7 years later i’ve been shopping for a watch and finally, my wife got me a wonderful watch which i really liked, its the Sinn 656.

Sinn 656

nickpan's Sinn 656

This watch might look simple, but there are so many things i like about it.

  • Automatic movement
  • Clear and easy to read numbers / uncluttered
  • The white parts on the face turns Luminous in the dark. I love this low tech feature.
  • Small date function (which is at the 4:30 location and not 3)
  • 100m water resistance, suitable for swimming
  • Anti-magnetic (the symbol is so faint, just above the 6)
  • The person i love most bought it for me

I believe maybe 20 years later, i will look back at this post and compare how the years would have worn out the watch, but i believe the watch will still be working as it is suppose to when i got it out from the box. If it serves me well, i will pass it on to my son in the future. Opps i don’t have a son (yet).

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Busy Hands


LOL!!! The sound effects just make me laugh.

Now I got an appropriate video to show my kids why they should not be leaning on lift walls. They should so show this in every school.

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data.gov.sg

Actually there is no such site data.gov.sg right now, but it would be good for Singapore to have one at some point. *looks at IDA*

Under the Obama administration, the US Federal CIO Council recently launched Data.gov.

“A primary goal of Data.gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Data.gov strives to make government more transparent and is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen our Nation’s democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” from Data.gov

It might seem like just another site, but its implication is HUGE, especially when i recently read Wired’s Road Map for Financial Recovery: Radical Transparency Now!

“Keeping the rest of us safe can no longer fall to government regulators alone. But if we enable a system in which everyone is a regulator, there just might be enough eyes, enough checks and balances, enough promising DIY economists out there to make sure the financial world doesn’t innovate the real world into depression ever again.” from Wired.

Having attended the recent WebSG Meetup, the issue about opening up government data to the general public was also touched on. I so hope to see Singaporeans stepping forward with innovative ideas on how government data can be used / presented / analysed so as to achieve happiness, prosperity & progress for our nation.

If you have ideas, pls share.

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Yesterday.sg

Yesterday.sg

Convertium consulted, designed, migrated and implemented the most popular heritage blog in Singapore Yesterday.sg. You can read more about the site on here. I think it might even be one of the best websites in its category and maybe even in the world. I really think so.

The site is powered by the very popular WordPress blog engine and the timing was perfect as development started just after WP 2.7 “Coltrane” was announced.

This project was done in about 10 weeks and i have to say its one of the proudest project i have worked on. I lead the project as a project manager and had the best team possible to support me in terms of design and development.

Yesterday.sg

A few interesting things from behind the scenes.

We wanted the retain the Yesterday.sg logo, but as it was just the standard Mistral font, we thought that its kinda dry, hence I came up with the idea to put the clock hands at the “a”. Our designer animated it & it simply looks perfect.

There are quite a number of custom WordPress plugins developed by our engineer and from the backend, it works seamlessly with the core engine. Very well done.

We migrated 2700+ users from Expressions Engine & almost 1000 photos from the old gallery. The tricky thing was that there was no available script out there to export user DB from EE to WP, hence our engineer wrote one himself! woot! The script also randomly assigned a strong password to all users via a nice welcome to new website email.

The website work with Google Map API and Youtube API.

A job well done guys.

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No Can Do Condo

Clié loves the pool

The kids always wanted a home with a pool downstairs. They simply love just playing in the water. We bring them to Sentosa sometimes, we also go to Chinese Swimming Club, sometimes to our friends condo, the newest being Sengkang Swimming Complex, however nothing beats having a pool in your own residential compound.

Cleo loves the pool too

Quartz condo was the best location for us currently and its literally just beside Buangkok MRT.

Claire Wong was our housing agent and she helped us to get our 5 room flat evaluated and even made appointment with potential buyers to view our house. She does things very fast and very professionally. One of the couples who came to the house apparently do read our kids blogs lol… It was quite a suprise.

Claire was also super helpful in bringing us to the condo for viewing.

While we were going thru the details of the sale of our flat and purchase of the new condo, the girls had fun in the super shallow kids play pool. They walked around and promised not to get wet. But guess what, we did bring along an extra set of clothes and they had to change before they got into the car.

Quartz @ Buangkok

Claire helped us do the maths and explained to us the risks involved which we deeply appreciate. But eventually we decided not to do it. Abit “pai-seh” also as Claire really did alot for us and was super honest and at the same time professional in her advise and comments.

If you need a housing agent, Calire Wong  8183 2288, claire_wong (at) hotmail dot com is the person to look for.

It seems like just yesterday that we moved into our current home in Punggol, but it does also feel like we stayed here all our life.

I think as parents we always want to provide more for our family, but yah… we first need to spend enough time with them first, the rest are all secondary.