Shifting My Documents away from C Drive

There are various reasons why you do not want to put your "My Documents" in the default C Drive. These are the various reasons I can think of:

• Your documents are less frequently written over. Therefore, putting it in another "data partition" will reduce the risk of losing all your documents in the event of harddisk failure.
• Some applications are not created properly and by default install into C drive. This might result in harddisk space constraints. Moving the Documents folder will clear some of your harddisk space.
• Your documents are more likely to keep growing due to photos, videos, CDs, etc. Therefore, putting in a separate data partition will allow the defrag application to optimize your C Drive system files, thus increasing performance.

Just follow these steps to either change your "My Documents" location, or move it:

1. Open Windows Explorer by Winkey E
2. On the left pane, right-click on "My Documents" and click on Properties
3. Change the directory path under the Target folder location to your "data drive"
4. Click on Move if you wish to move all the documents from your present location to the new directory specified.
5. Click on OK

That's all to it.

Forgiveness

I quote from the Slice of Life:

People who focus on revenge don't allow their wounds to heal. They never quite recover from the transgression, because in order to fan the flame of revenge, they have to keep their wounds open? better still, make them bigger and allow them to fester. Old hurts tend to become more and more grievous when we allow them to bubble and boil in our cauldron of resentment.

People with a strong desire for revenge miss out on many good things in life. They often only see the ugly, the unjust, and the irredeemable. They add to the anger and hatred in the world, of which, if you haven't already noticed, we have in great abundance.

Usually, one does not purposely act to anger another. Usually its through ignorance or just some self-preservation mechanism. However, nursing these grudges could be detrimental to one's health.

I would say that this is easy to say, but hard to do. Even if you do not purposely harbor the grudge, what has been done will be somewhere in the back of your mind, and it will affect your thinking.

Bottom line... Try to resolve all problems amicably with one another. Sometimes, things very often will come back to haunt you later on. Forgiveness is one, but it must come with "education". Educating that what was done was wrong. One's patience is finite.

Like what I say last time... Growing up sucks.

Potpourri on Strings

Updated 19 Feb 2008: Snippets of the concert
Updated 1 Mar 2008: More snippets of the concert

NUS Guitar Ensemble (GENUS) and Expose!
Singapore
13 Jan 08, Sun, 3pm,
Concert Hall (Free)

Esplanade Presents

Have a Beautiful Sunday with soothing guitar music! Hailing from the National University of Singapore, the guitar ensembles Expose! and GENUS are proud to present a diverse repertoire accessible to all.

From J. Barnes’ lovely Impressions of Japan, to Joe Hisashi’s (film score composer for Spirited Away) inspiring Anime Medley, Tinsagunu Hana, Lecuona’s sensual Malaguena, Piazolla’s spirited Michelangelo 70, J. Garland’s In the Mood, and entertaining music from animated feature, The Prince of Eygpt, Expose! and GENUS promise an enjoyable afternoon of music and an unforgettable experience.

Founded in 1981 by Alex Abisheganaden, the NUS Guitar Ensemble (GENUS) is a 50-member strong ensemble comprising undergraduates and alumni. GENUS is the region's first Niibori guitar ensemble and the pioneer group in Singapore to use Niibori guitars. GENUS won first prize (ensemble) at the Singapore Guitar Festival and was fourth in the 2nd International Festival and Competition for Guitar Orchestra in Rheine, Germany. Formed in 2005, Expose! is a guitar ensemble mainly made up of alumni members from GENUS.

(60mins, no intermission)

Link to Esplanade

Snippets of the concert:

Anime Medley


Prince of Egypt


Malaguena


Michaelangelo 70


Tinsagunu no hana

Motorola Q9H a winner?

For Everyday, Work and Thrills. The newest smart phone from Motorola, the Motorola Q9H.

Basically, it uses Windows Mobile 6, has a qwerty keyboard, HSDPA (3.5G) connection, a 2.0MP camera with digital zoom and LED photo indicator light, and a microSD memory slot.

Judging from the pictures I saw from http://asia.motorola.com/q9/, it seems to be quite small. In fact, the width of the phone looks comparable to the latest iPhone. Motorola is famous for its V3, which I'm still using now. According to the Motorola's website, the dimension is only 118 x 66.7 x 11.8mm! Look at the picture below:

Looking at the qwerty keyboard, it seems to have one key access to the calendar, contacts, music, camera and speaker phone. One thing I like about the Motorola V3 is that I could customize short cut keys to basically almost any application I want. According to what I have researched on the Q9H, it seems to support this customization too.

I do not wish to go into the details of what Windows Mobile 6 provides. However, there is one key thing to take note. It seems to offer a pre-installed Opera browser! I have always been a fan of Opera browser on the handphone because of its functionalities, and now this comes free!

Most important to all will be the battery life. According to what I have researched on the internet, it seems that Q9H can last from 1 day to 3 days, depending on which battery pack. There seems to be a bigger battery pack which can last up to 3 days. A little unsure because I do not have the phone. I have tested a Dopod D810 before, which I have recommended to a customer, and based on my usage, it lasted 3 days. I guess it depends on one's habits. I won't know until I start using one.

According to the specifications, it seems to have dual stereo speakers! Wow... Translated, that means the speaker phone should be quite good.

After reading through the specifications, I realised that there's one thing missing though. There's no Wifi. I guess the Motorola people are focusing more on 3G and 3.5G.

I have always been wondering if I can get a smartphone which battery can last relatively the same as a normal phone. Maybe this is the answer? It does seems that Tuzki, the bunny you see on top is enjoying the phone. :)

Now, if only I can get my hands on this phone...

New ways to sleep so it counts

I quote from the Reader's Digest January 2008 edition:

1. Let go of your worries (Relax)
   
2. Redo your bedroom (Sleep friendly)
3. Cut the light at night (1-2 hours before bedtime)
4. Follow the 20 minute rule (Do something until you are drowsy)

I suggest getting the magazine to read the full details. I usually do not have problems falling asleep though because my work usually makes me quite tired.

Nevertheless, I seem to follow rule no. 4 more. Do not play any computer games before sleeping. It will make your brain more active. Reading a textbook usually does the trick. :D

Stupid Office 2003 SP3 disables old document formats

This is stupid. Whenever patches are updated, there is always a list that states that what patches are being applied and the impact. This is standard, and yet Microsoft can disable the old document formats without a special mention on it. In the end, those who installed the updates had trouble reading the old formats. Worse still, they have also disabled some rival document formats and blame them for insecure code. This tops the icing on the cake. The insecure code came from them, not the rival document formats! In fact, Microsoft document formats have always been famous for being "untidy" (I use OpenOffice now).

For those who wants to undo the block, Microsoft has released a KB article to re-enable the old Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Corel files.

Microsoft better buck up with their PR. They are getting from bad to worse.

Disable the NTFS Last Accessed Feature

Do you know that the default NTFS system for WinXP actually updates each file on when it was last accessed? Frankly, I can only see that it is useful if you wish to compress files which are not accessed frequently. Harddisks nowadays are quite cheap and I find this feature annoying.

Just imagine everytime you wish to open a file, it will always update the file property on when it was last accessed. Not only does it encourage frequent writing to the harddisk, I'm sure there is an impact on performance whenever files are opened, or even searched.

Do the following to disable this last access feature:

1. Goto Start > Run
2. Type cmd
3. Type fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

You will need to be in the administrator account in order to do this. That is all to it. To re-enable it, just type fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0.

Note that fsutil is quite a useful command prompt utility. It can also do quota management.

Stupid Advertlets

This is one of the stupidest mistakes I ever seen. If you're running an online advertisement company, the least you should do is to ensure your domain does not expire. Yet, they did not keep track of the domain and it expired.

As a result, my blog could not be accessed because it kept being redirected to the domain registrar! Anyway, I'm removing all my advertlets for now. Worst still is that there is something wrong with blogger and I could not update my template! At least something is right today. Right after this post, the template problem was resolved. Oh well...

To top it all off, I'm sick!!!

$520psf average for Boon Keng

I refer to the news article about the pricing of the DBSS@Boon Keng flats. This is purely from the debt management point of view. More information about Boon Keng in this previous post.

3 room: $349,000 to 394,000
4 room: $523,000 to 597,000
5 room: $536,000 to $727,000

Note that HDB has a household income cap of $8,000 / month. Using this amount, with a 35% limit on the repayment amount based on the gross salary, you can loan up to a maximum of $617,000+ for 90% loan over a period of 25 years with a 2.6% interest rate (CPF Housing Loan), according to the CPF website calculator.

That would put you at the range of getting a mid-range 5 room flat. However, there are some assumptions:

1. For the next 25 years, you have no problems with maintaining or even increasing your $8,000 household income
2. You need to top up your mortgage payment with cash
3. As you reach a certain age band, your CPF contribution will drop so you will need to be prepared to pay more cash.
   

This is based on the assumption of getting a CPF loan. If it is any other loan, the loan amount will be lesser, and one might not get a 90% loan.

Of course people might ask why limit yourself to 35% repayment. The reason is very simple. Based on your gross salary, a total of 34.5% of your gross salary is being paid into your CPF. 20% from your gross salary, and 14.5% by your employer. Out of that, only 23% is into your CPF Ordinary Account, which is the main account used for payment of properties. Therefore using a 35% limit, one is already paying 12% of the mortgage payment by cash every month. To raise the limit further will result in you forking out more cash per month to fund your housing purchase. This cash payment would have to last for 25 years based on the example given above.

That's also a cap of $4,500 for the calculation of the CPF contribution. That means that even if you earn $5,000 per month, they will only calculate your CPF contribution using $4,500. Therefore, the maximum amount of CPF contribution for everyone into the CPF ordinary account will only be $1,035.

Let's also not forget that as one grows older, the CPF contribution rate will drop! That means you have to fork out more cash payment as you grow older.

I understand if someone will pay this kind of money for a condo with good facilities, big area, freehold, etc... But for a HDB flat with a 99 year old lease??? I quote one of HDB's mission: "We provide affordable homes of quality and value.". I can say that I know it was possible to get a 2,000 sqft + freehold condo for $800+k last year (central location). Now they are pricing $700+k for a 99 year leasehold HDB? I don't see this as being affordable.

Let's say I do not want to pay cash to top up my mortgage payment. I limit the repayment amount to 23%. Using the same example above, I am only able to loan about $405,000 according to the CPF website calculator. That would put someone with a $8,000 monthly household income only in the range of the most expensive 3 room HDB flat! Even then, this is with the assumption you can maintain your salary for 25 years consecutive, every month without fail if you do not wish to top up your payment using cash.

I could only say that HDB should be changing its mission statement because it is no longer following its core mission. I would understand if this is for some freehold property, condo or landed property. For a HDB flat however, I personally will never pay that much for it. It doesn't even have any facilities. What on earth are we paying for? The furnishings? We're paying almost a million dollars in total, including interest for a HDB flat?

Your Inner Voice Determines Your Happiness

I quote from the Slice of Life:

What you (Inner Voice) tell yourself about yourself shapes your life. Happy and successful people talk lovingly and positively to themselves. Nurture your inner voice to speak with love, respect, optimism and gentleness, and you're on your way to greater happiness.


Learn to control the inner voice. Your life will be miserable if your inner voice is always negative. Life is too short to waste. Live happily...