Roomie
I've short-listed these two solutions as the best way to automate your home's complex entertainment system and Phillips HUE lighting system.
Also you may want to read up on home automation
More research coming up.....
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Wednesday, May 7, 2014
A remote to rule them all
Logitech Harmony Ultimate or
Roomie
Roomie Review here.
I've short-listed these two solutions as the best way to automate your home's complex entertainment system and Phillips HUE lighting system.
Also you may want to read up on home automation
More research coming up.....
Roomie
I've short-listed these two solutions as the best way to automate your home's complex entertainment system and Phillips HUE lighting system.
Also you may want to read up on home automation
More research coming up.....
UberX Singapore
UberX has arrived to the Merlion garden city. Finally, a competition for our monopolized taxi industry.
You can download and install the app into your smartphone, and register for an account - a credit card is required to complete the process.
Standard Chartered Priority Banking Visa Infinite Cardholders get promo codes. See here.
I saw a website with some promo codes - not sure if any of them will work in Singapore I also tried the word "uber" as promo code, and got a $10 discount from Gina - again, unsure if it will actually work.
I understand that UberX is a flat-fee service, but essentially, they use S$3.50 as base fee, and S$0.70 per km. There is no on-call fee like other taxi providers in Singapore, which makes it a good service during peak hours where taxis are hard to find. Other charges like ERP toll still applies.
Please share your experience if you have used the service in Singapore before !!
You can download and install the app into your smartphone, and register for an account - a credit card is required to complete the process.
Standard Chartered Priority Banking Visa Infinite Cardholders get promo codes. See here.
I saw a website with some promo codes - not sure if any of them will work in Singapore I also tried the word "uber" as promo code, and got a $10 discount from Gina - again, unsure if it will actually work.
I understand that UberX is a flat-fee service, but essentially, they use S$3.50 as base fee, and S$0.70 per km. There is no on-call fee like other taxi providers in Singapore, which makes it a good service during peak hours where taxis are hard to find. Other charges like ERP toll still applies.
Please share your experience if you have used the service in Singapore before !!
Monday, May 5, 2014
The saga of the Audio Video Receiver
My friends gave me a Denon AVR-4306 Audio/Video Receiver. I have not worked with an AVR for decades and thought it would be a piece of cake.
To my surprise, the AVR comes with a 147 pages manual. And hooking up a passive Subwoofer is not a straight forward task, and may not even be recommended. The manual can be found at
http://usa.denon.com/us/downloads/pages/instructionmanual.aspx Look under Archieved Products.
Firmware upgrades for Denon equipment can be found at http://firmware.denon.eu/. Be sure you have the serial # handy to get into the site.
The unit is very heavy and biased to the left side. The HDMI ports are fairly easy to connect. So are the left and right speakers. The problem I had is that there are no terminals to connect a sub-woofer to. (those red and black terminals - you can see two rows at the bottom right)
Apparently, sub-woofer requires more energy/power to drive, and hence, an Active Sub-woofer is assumed to be used with a typical AVR. So to connect an active sub-woofer, the speaker is connected to the Pre-Out connector labelled with "SW"
I only have a passive sub-woofer, and two very small bookshelf speakers, which I had from a previous legacy system (eg. think cassette era). The bookshelf-speakers were already hooked up, and I also added a center speaker (but due to the size, it is put somewhat to the right side of the TV)
The Ethernet cable for LAN, the FM radio antennae as well as the AM antennae were all self-explanatory and easy to install.
This is as far as I have gotten, and will report in the next article and my saga to power up the AVR.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Calico - the new age of anti-ageing !
From Larry Page on 18 Sept 2013
"I’m excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer.
OK … so you’re probably thinking wow! That’s a lot different from what Google does today. And you’re right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives. So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.
Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness. These issues affect us all—from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families. And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.
Our press release has a few more details though it’s still very early days so there’s not much more to share yet. Of course when Art has something more substantial to communicate (and that will likely take time), he’ll provide an update. Finally, thanks to Bill Maris for helping bring this idea to life and getting Art involved, and to Sergey Brin for consistently supporting 10X thinking like this. It’s hard for many companies to make long term investments. So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project. Now for the hard work!"
"I’m excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer.
OK … so you’re probably thinking wow! That’s a lot different from what Google does today. And you’re right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives. So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.
Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness. These issues affect us all—from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families. And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.
Our press release has a few more details though it’s still very early days so there’s not much more to share yet. Of course when Art has something more substantial to communicate (and that will likely take time), he’ll provide an update. Finally, thanks to Bill Maris for helping bring this idea to life and getting Art involved, and to Sergey Brin for consistently supporting 10X thinking like this. It’s hard for many companies to make long term investments. So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project. Now for the hard work!"
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