goodbye june, hello july...

well, it's the end of june already. can't believe we're already halfway through 2009. how time flies. tomorrow we'll be going into the second half of the year and there's still a lot to be done!!

since last friday, it seems the whole world is fixated on the death of the king of pop and it's practically in every newspaper, blog, facebook, twitter, etc. you name it! despite a whole lot of controversies, allegations, speculations and such surrounding his life *when he was alive* it is undeniable that he had made a significant mark in the music industry globally. they didn't call him the king of pop for nothing. he was idolized by millions and it didn't really matter if you were a fan of the man or not, you have to admit that he was one of a kind and help shape and inspire a whole lot of today's artists. personally i wasn't quite a fan of the whole thriller-billy jean-beat it phase. i've always been more of a ballad person i guess. haha. mushy. my personal faves were "i want you back", "ben", "heal the world", "you are not alone".. haha. you catch my drift. obviously his demised stunned the world and even today there are controversies surrounding his passing. drug addiction and what really caused his death. in my humble opinion, we should just let him rest in peace. remember him for the good things and not for wacko jacko.

although i've never actually watched the original charlie's angels series, i'm sure folks of that generation are not only saddened by the passing of the king of pop, but also of farah fawcett. once a beautiful angel on the small screen whose sense of style and fashion were emulated just as jennifer aniston was in the friends era. she passed at the age of 62 after her 3 year long battle with cancer.

last sunday my family and i manage to make it to the cinemas for transformers 2: revenge of the fallen. it's been awhile since we've been out to the movies. hehe. being an 80s kid, i absolutely loved transformers. back then the graphics were still hand drawn *compared to today's computer drawn versions* and then eventually evolved to beast wars *seeing optimus prime as a purple ape/gorilla*. the first movie was entertaining. filled with all the action associated with transformers. and then came the sophomore movie which got a lot of hype *even during filming* with box offices pushing eager audiences to later showings cos all the earlier shows were full. growball had at least 4 cinemas dedicated to the movie with 24 shows a day and 1borneo's gsc had 3 cinemas showing the much anticipated movie *all packed*. so what did i thought of the movie? i've heard a lot of peeps raving about the movie and of course those who think that it was a bit over-rated. personally? i LOVED it. i HEART transformers. haha. seriously, i didn't even notice that i'd been in the cinema for 2.5 hours. shia was hot, megan was hot, josh duhamel was hot. ooo. and of course optimus prime and bumble bee were uber HOT! haha. my mum said maybe i should get the optimus prime and bumble bee figurine from toys r us and put it in my room so i can look at it all day. *haha. funny mum*

so anyways, i haven't been able to add more stuff to trove these couple of weeks but i'm planning on getting more stuff uploaded this week. lots of things to do. with another project in the making, i'm excited all over again. haha! did i mention trove is on facebook as well?


my babe, mama girl, will be dropping by this weekend for her company family day. haven't seen her since... since... since... sometime in the 2nd half of last year?!?!?! or was it the 1st half??! well, it's been way too long. hopefully will be able to meet up when she's in town. yay!! the little miss nyn is planning on coming back so that's exciting as well. shimz hunny, when are you coming here?!? hehe. miss them all!!

happy fathers day!!!

the 3rd sunday of june has come around again. and with that we celebrate another fathers day. clueless *and busy* me had no idea what to do this year for fathers day. no idea for the card either *that came pretty much at the 11th hour* and so i decided to try my hands at the famous cupcakes.

my first attempt at cupcake making

playing around with tips & icing with the leftover cupcakes

(1 cupcake missing -- eaten by my bro before i took a photo)

again, i got excited using my mum's new icing tips. haha. designs? i was stumped!!! all i had in my head were the wordings "happy fathers day 2009 bapa" and that was it. silly me forgot to go get some more colours from the store. hence the pink-green deco you see in the photos. *haha* now the original cupcakes were supposed to be 2" in diameter. again, silly me didn't check to see if we had the moulds that size to fit in the cups for them cuppies. fortunately we still had the 1" cups from my mum's cupcake adventure some time back. so i ended up with these tiny cupcakes.

i still can make roses though. or maybe we just don't have the correct tip for that yet. LOL! nevermind. in due time. my next attempt i'll prolly try a different cake recipe. this one just didn't cut it. fortunately due to it's tiny size *and delish buttercream* the somewhat hard texture of the supposed to be sponge cake batter drowned in it *yay!*. my baby brother loved these tiny cuppies and couldn't get enough of them simply i think for his love of icing. still need practice though but i'm happy it didn't come out as bad as i expected it would be. lol!!! and i can't believe i managed to pull it off single-handedly all in the middle of the night through morning. talk about last minute there.

so to every father out there, have a wonderful fathers day with your family!!

upgrade to os3.0...

to everyone who owns an iphone or ipod touch, OS3.0 is out today!!! Of course, I was privileged enough to update my iphone on monday *one of the perks of the company i work for* ahead of the release date.


there's been a lot of hype from apple that OS3.0 will be a major upgrade from their OS2.x. so what exactly is there to be excited about? for starters, the iphone supports mms integrated into their message app. oddly enough apple left out this feature in it's previous release *who knows why* and to think that even the lower end phones in the market have mms support in-built. the 3.0 also supports cut, copy and paste (as well as select and select all) which works across apps and has been a very convenient feature. used to use this feature on my omnia too *windows mobile os*. apart from that, there's a landscape keyboard that works with a host of apps, spotlight search that searches throughout the phone and voice memos!


hhmm.. what else? improvements to the the calendar, safari, app store, notes syncing, internet tethering, stereo bluetooth, automatic wi-fi login, enhanced stocks app, parental controls, shake to shuffle and new languages. new app features too: push notifications, peer-to-peer games, more integration with external hardware and more.

here's what you need to do to update:

1. make sure you have itunes software v8.2


2. connect your iphone/ipod touch to your pc


3. your device will show up in itunes (it will automatically launch itunes and sync with your device)
   
4. right click on your device and select "backup" *important step!!*


5. once that's done, in the device summary click on the "check for updates" button


6. click download and install *do not disconnect your device!!*


7. after the phone reboots, check to see if your previous data and apps are still there. if they're missing, click on the "restore" button on the device summary page and restore from backup. *don't disconnect device until syncing is completed*


8. you're good to go

wonder what other apps are worth downloading. i'm pretty much hoarding them free apps now. haha!! addicted to frozen lexicon and scramble. haha. typical dorky me.

can't wait for OS3.0...

since my mum has gotten loads of time on her hand these days, she's been getting back to her long lost hobbies (i.e. baking, re-organizing the home docs, etc). just the other day we were baking choc chip cookies *which my lil bro ate up all by himself* and made a couple of moist choc cake. my mum just bought a set of tips which i got so excited about and started testing out piping icing and stuff. had a lot of fun learning new things and playing around with the icing on the 2 cakes we baked. *muahahahahhaha*

moist choc cake with choc glaze and choc buttercream border
made for my aunty

moist choc cake with choc buttercream icing

made for mainly my lil bro *who can't keep his hands off choc*

of course the much anticipated iphone 3g is finally in my possession. *muahahahah* i know, i know. i still love the omnia but you've got to admit, the iphone does have it's perks despite it's numerous inadequacy so to speak. haven't quite downloaded that much apps yet and i haven't even transferred music to the in-built ipod though. being a geek and word game fan, i'm stuck on games like frozen lexicon and scramble *just realized i've played scramble on facebook too*. tap tap revenge 2 is fun too. kinda like guitar hero *which reminds me, the wii is sooo underutilized.. must play wii*. and i've got sudoku!! *haha. i'm such a dork!!* now can't wait for os3.0 to be available next week. *hhmm.. wonder what other apps i can download free*

my new baby!!

a lot of hype has been going round about the latest iphone, the 3g s. "s" supposedly stands for speed. apple is saying that in addition to it having the os3.0 in it, it's also going to be up to 2x faster than the current model with a 3mp auto focus camera with video recording function *currently it has a 2mp fixed focus camera* where you can edit the videos straight from the iphone and it also comes with a magnetic compass which can also be used to show direction in the maps app plus it comes in 16gb and 32gb capacities. camera function isn't any phone's strong suit. so i've hardly relied on my phone camera anyways. my lil bros are the ones making use of the video function on the phones i've ever owned. *haha* i have my trusty camera with me most of the time anyways.

ooo.. can't wait for my babe, girl, to come down ere to visit. she woke me up with some ecstatic news this morning. sooooo happy for her!! she's totally stoked about it.

now, can't wait to get trove up and running. i'm aiming to launch it by next week. *excited!!*