Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, also known as ADHD, is characterized by a persistent pattern of impulsiveness and inattention, with or without a component of hyperactivity. It is a chronic disorder with instances of individuals diagnosed in childhood continuing to have symptoms into adulthood.

Symptoms include:

• Impulsiveness: acting before thinking of consequences, jumping from one activity to another, disorganization, tendency to interrupt other peoples' conversations.
  
  
• Hyperactivity: restlessness, often characterized by an inability to sit still, fidgeting, squirminess, climbing on things, restless sleep.
  
  
• Inattention: easily distracted, day-dreaming, not finishing work, difficulty listening.

This is what I gathered from Wikipedia here. Why did I mention about this? This is because I recently read an article that indicates the Internet might be affecting the children's brain, causing more children to be treated for ADHD. It seems that the constant bombardment of media and information online may permanently alter our brains and trigger some disorder.

I guess this means that our children should not be online for too long a period. Heck, I think this even applies to adults, since this disorder seems to affect them too. The traditional games should still have a place in everyone's childhood. Board games, sports, reading a good old-fashioned book, etc.

The standard rule applies. Too much of a good thing can be bad. Anything should be done in moderation.

I had it with the slowness!

That's it. I had it! I'm re-arranging my layout again to quicken the loading speed of the blog. The speed is ridiculous. I've shifted some things so that it will only appear when you click on a blog post. Now the loading speed should be faster.

清明 horror again

If you're looking for spooky stories, sorry. You got the wrong post.

My horror is the traffic jam "horror" that I see almost every year at the Lim Chu Kang cemetery. This year is even more ridiculous. Singaporeans are either blind, or they are illiterate. The no entry sign was so big and red, and yet people came in from the opposite direction, causing a massive traffic jam.

This happens year after year, and it's a wonder that there isn't any accident. It's very easy to resolve this issue. Just post someone with a notebook, and a camera at the exit, to make sure no one goes against the traffic on Sat and Sun for this period of time. If the government can afford to send officers to catch cars going into the bus lanes, why not some officers to see that the traffic rules are being observed for 清明节?

Or must an accident happen first before anyone does anything about it? Well, if that is so, it'll be soon, judging from those reckless drivers I saw. I already saw an accident that almost happened in the cemetery. Sooner or later...

This reminds me of the child seat belts incident for buses.

Anything more for iPhone 3.0?

After reading about the iPhone 3.0 last week and summarizing in this post here, I have a feeling that there will be more surprises for this coming WWDC 2009 held from June 8 to June 12.

Well, first of all, very little is said about tethering. It means connecting the iPhone to the desktop for the purpose of Internet access. Most handphones in the market supports tethering. There was only a short mention of it during the private conference held last week, mainly because someone asked about it. I feel that for iPhone 3.0, this is going to be one of the features, with Bluetooth, and maybe even Bonjour support.

Next, I really hope that the iPhone would be sold direct from the Apple store, without contract. There are already rumours that AT&T is preparing for this. Some says that it's to clear old stock for the upcoming new iPhone. In a way, I believe that this is partly the reason. The next reason is that I feel that it makes practically no sense for Apple to restrict the iPhone to certain carriers. Apple can always list out a list of carriers that is compatible with the iPhone, but there is no reason why Apple should restrict it to the selective carriers. The customers should have a choice if they wish to get the device, and just pop in any 3G SIM card.

Last but not least, the iPhone hardware. Unlike some of the rumours on the net, I do not believe that they are going to release a new iPhone based on some new chip that they are developing. Why? There is one very good reason. iPhone 3.0 is available on the 1st and 2nd generation iPhone. As a product developer, you would want to only concentrate on 1 particular platform, especially when you're a new player, and you're adding new features that customers have been bugging for a year. Although the new chip rumoured is also ARM compatible, I do not think that Apple may risk it to launch the hardware with only 1 year of work. It took Apple more than 1 year to plan and migrate from PowerPC to Intel.

However, I do believe that there is new iPhone hardware, and I believe that it should be video call. Yes, that means a camera facing both inwards and outwards. There might be a slight increase in the MP, but I'm not really looking for it. Yes, that means that video may also be enabled for the iPhone, other than just simply taking pictures using the camera.

Actually there is one thing that I learnt from the iPhone 3.0 conference last week. That is although something might appear very simple to the users, it can be very very difficult to do when you're on the other side of the fence. Example, cut copy and paste.

For those people who did ask me, I told them it's going to be quite difficult for Apple to do cut copy and paste on the iPhone based on my experience on the same feature in XCode. If you tried to do copy and paste for the Mac desktop applications, you will understand the difficulty for Apple to port it to the iPhone. The other difficult part is how do you enable this throughout all the applications already deployed, without much coding. Apple managed to nail it after a year. I particularly like the way they handle the copying portion. Kudous to them.

Morale of the story? Do not look down on "simple" features. It might appear very simple to the user, but it may take months of hard work, and a supporting team to make it a reality. Another example will be the Yahoo Mail User Interface (UI). Do you know that it was out in beta since 2005, and it was only launched last year in 2008? I only said beta. How long it was in development? More than 4 years of development to launch a UI that mimics the desktop mail client. Simple UI enhancement? I don't think so.

Well coming back to the iPhone, I hope they can port this cut,copy and paste from the iPhone SDK back to the Mac XCode SDK. This looks like a useful API. :)

Difference between Disinflation and Deflation

I think many times I've have mentioned the word deflation while elsewhere, they are actually using the term disinflation. They are different terms.


Disinflation means a decline in the rate of increase of the consumer price index (CPI). For e.g., Year x inflation is 3%. Year x+1 inflation is 2%. Year x+2 inflation is 1%.

Deflation means a sustained decrease of the CPI, where the annual change in the CPI is negative year on year. For e.g., Year x inflation is -0.1%. Year x+1 inflation is -1%. Year x+2 inflation is -2%.


Disinflation is already very obvious since last year. I really meant deflation, at least for Singapore. Reason is that I do not believe the global financial sector is going to pick itself by this year. I see this as a 3-4 years of consolidation and "cleaning up" for the financial sector. This means that credit will be tight while this is on-going. If credit is tight, how could the economy be booming? Highly unlikely. Demand will be down sharply.

Currently, I still see at least 2 years of negative CPI, which is the reason why I kept mentioning deflation. Singapore is too dependent on the US and EU and unfortunately, both have too much excess that will take a long time to clear.

IE8? The final push to other browsers

Very rarely do you see a product being launched, that pushes users to the rival's product. The way I see for IE8, this might be a final push for more users to join the Firefox/Chrome/Safari crowd. Was there any difference to IE8 since my last post here? I do not think so.

According to all the news on the web about IE8, it's suppose to be the most standard compliant browser out in the market. That was what it's being "advertised" in the grapevine. Well, how do you explain this wikipedia article stating that the Acid3 test for IE8 is only 20/100? For your information, the Acid3 test is to test the browser's compatibility with the Document Object Model, CSS3 and Javascript standards for browsers.

Another issue with IE8? The IE7 compatibility mode is not really IE7. According to news from the grapevine again, what works in IE7 may not work in the IE7 compatibility mode. IE8 broke Jira, and even the IE7 compatibility mode does not work. So what did the guy do? He downloaded Firefox. No problems at all.

IE8 is suppose to be standards compliant. My question is whose standards is it based on? All the web developers out there is going to curse and swear again. Another weird browser to add to their development woes. IE7, IE7 compatibility mode, and IE8. Thank you very much...

This reminds me of an ad that I was being told about. It speaks for itself:

Making mistakes are normal

I quote from Albert Einstein:

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.


Trying something new is what makes life interesting. We are not born to be able to do anything that is thrown at us, and we are bound to make mistakes. The key point is to learn from your mistakes. If we start the blaming game, we'll be moving backwards and rest assured, you will find yourself in the same situation again, and again.

Inflation is up 1.9%

These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2009:
January: 2.9%
February: 1.9%

Food and Housing is leading the charge, rising by 4.3% and 6.6% respectively year on year. Inflation has been treading downwards, where the biggest change is actually in the transport & communication, down by a hefty 5%. Food and housing have also moderated downwards compared to last month. Healthcare costs are still very resilient, with no change from last month.

The peak of inflation was reached in April last year. Co-incidentally, this year April is also the month where there will be a 4.6% reduction of transport fares. Most probably, there will also be a reduction in electricity tariffs in that month. It's highly possible that inflation will be below 1% from April onwards, and may continue for at least 3 months.

That's provided that property values are not revalued. Currently, the only areas that are holding inflation up is mainly housing due to the revaluation. Otherwise, deflation will be a possibility.

Opposing for the sake of opposition

Recently the problems at US leads me into thinking of the effectiveness of opposition parties in the government.

Many people look at the main problem at hand, which is currently the bonus of AIG executives. The public outcry is understandable. However, I'm unsure why the outcry is against the present government. Has everyone forgotten? Under whose administration was the bail-out money first given to AIG, and the banks? Who started the no conditions attached bail-out money?

The Republicans are saying that the current recovery plan is no good, but they neglected to give a solution. More of what the Republicans were doing for the past 10 years? More wars? Well, the only assurance for that solution is that the US economy will continue down the Great Depression path for the next 5 years. Then guess what? It's elections time again, and who has the upper hand now?

Sometimes, I think politics are really a big waste of time. Some people opposing ideas for the sake of opposing them, and neglecting to give any solutions of their own. Worst still are those people who just outright oppose the idea without even giving any solution. They just give the generic reply. "It will not work". So the question is, what will? In this current situation, remaining status quo is worst than doing nothing.

In my opinion, what President Obama is doing is that he is trying to force innovation to happen within the next 5 years. If innovation does happen, there will be an explosive growth that will propel US to the fore front, and at the same time lead to more money for the US government in terms of taxes. The target areas seems to be all related to innovation. Education, new research areas, healthcare, etc.

And from what I read from the news, it seems that the opposition is not asking any useful questions, but just putting road blocks at every junction.

The old school will think the only way to decrease the deficits is to increase taxes. They are forgetting the other side of the story. How about increasing the number of businesses in-corporated in the US? Won't that increase the amount of tax collected? Won't increasing the inflow of talent into US increase the amount of tax collected? This brings out my other grouse against politicians who have no knowledge of basic economics.

I wish President Obama the best of luck.

Comparing an iPhone 3G Photo and W595 Photo

There has been many complaints on why the iPhone 3G camera is only 2 Megapixels (MP) and that it is inferior to the other phones out in the market.

Just recently I had a chance to try out the camera. I needed some information which requires me to run back and forth from my colleagues desk to my desk. So I took a picture of the information (on screen) using the SE W595 3.2MP camera. I reasoned that since it has higher MP, it should be clearer. I was wrong.

Due to the low light, I could not make out the words that I was taking. After that, I tried using the iPhone 3G for fun. Surprisingly, I was able to take the picture more clearly than the 3.2MP camera. The words could be more clearly seen. Unfortunately, I am unable to post the pictures.

Sometimes, I feel that the normal users are just too hyped up over all these numbers. I'm sure most users do not know that a simple 2MP camera is able to take a picture of resolution 1600 x 1200 pixels. Clarity wise does not depend on the MP but more on the lens and image processor.

That is why recently, one of the SLR makers said that they are no longer upping the megapixels because as most professional photographers know, megapixels now have not much effect on the quality of the picture.

Likewise for computers. All those numbers like 2 GHZ, 2.2 GHZ, etc. Will the user be able to tell the difference between 2 GHZ and 2.2 GHZ? The answer is no.

In my opinion though, if you want to take pictures, get a compact camera. Most compact cameras out there can beat a phone's camera hands down without even breaking a sweat.