David Archuleta Fans, Thank You!

I was really surprised by the overwhelming response to my photographs of David Archuleta who performed here in Kuala Lumpur last week. It all started when I uploaded 4 of them to Flickr yesterday. I managed to capture one where David stood right in front of a spotlight, creating a nice effect.

David Archuleta

Less than 36 hours after posting, I got a comment from archuletafansgermany in Flickr who thought that it was the best photo of David in concert that he/she? had ever seen. Archuletafansgermany proceeded to write a review about the photo in www.archuletafansgermany.com and on www.snarkyarchies.com.

What happened in the next 6 hours was surreal. The story was picked up by www.fansofdavid.com and www.thedavidchronicles.com with links to the above photo. Subsequently, my average Flickr daily views picked up from an average of 180+ per day to an all time record high of 1292 yesterday in a matter of hours!

My Flickr Stats Page

Stats of Photos Viewed

It goes to show the popularity of David Archuleta and the global appeal that he possessed that endeared him to his legion of loyal and highly passionate fans. Seeing him perform first hand, I was really impressed with his voice and his ability to work the audience. He has a natural shy boy charisma that would continue to capture the hearts and minds of swooning young girls (and boys) all over the world.

Thank you David Archuleta for the pose and thank you David Archuleta fans for your kind comments!

Hainan Island, China

   

Chairman Mao, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.

Due to the ridiculously low prices of AirAsia tickets during one of their infamous sales, we ended up in Hainan, an island located at the southernmost part of China.

Renown as a local tourist hot spot, I was extremely disappointed at the lack of attractions that people have come to associate China with: high quality pirated goods, mouth-watering delicacies and spectacular sights.

More pictures on my Flickr page

New iPhone by June 2009

I know that I may sound biased but this is really not the right time to get a Maxis iPhone.

This is not because there are a lot of complaints coming from the blogs that the cost of ownership for a “legit” iPhone 3G in Malaysia is extremely prohibitive (which it is).

It is also not because the iPhone can’t do a lot of the things that we had taken for granted that even a low end phone can do like forwarding SMS, sending and receiveing MMS, doing video calls, copy and pasting.

Nope.

The reason why people should wait is because a newer, 3rd generation (not 3G which is the 2nd), iPhone is going to be launched by June this year.

First off, AT&T spilled the beans like a drolling cowboy in a campfire.

Secondly, geeks without a life painstakingly went through every line in the new Firmware 3.0 like ants on heat to reveal hidden references in the source codes to new phone models.

Thirdly, Paul (not-the-Steve-Jobs) Schiller, the senior VP of Product Marketing of The Apple over at the holy land of Cupertino illuminated the masses (via his chosen vessel, David Pogue of the New York Times) by explaining that June is the traditional cycle of iPhone product launches.

And finally, Apple has a WWDC on June 8-12, 2009. All of the pent up cool things that they are planning to announce could be climatically ejaculated during this time to the mass elation of Apple fan boys (and the gadget-lusting Christmas shoppers).

One can almost join all of the dots to savely conclude that the new iPhone is slated for June 2009 and it is going to be hot, hot, hot!

Official Star Trek Posters

The following (final) Star Trek posters had been leaked via the Internet! There are 5 variants, though there is no clear indication yet on which is going to be the official official poster.

Star Trek (UK- Alternate)

Star Trek (Spanish)

Star Trek (German)

Star Trek

(click for full size)

It is quite perplexing why they had released so many different posters apart from the possibility that they are monitoring the response from die-hard fans and general population before deciding on one.

In all 4 versions, McCoy is noticeably absent, replaced by a young and sexy Uhura. Of course, this is a fan boy’s reaction but overall the posters are not bad but not terribly exciting.

This, however, hasn’t done anything to taper any of my excitement for the movie. After watching the latest cinematic and TV trailers, my expectations are already running so high that I’m afraid to be disappointed if the movie turns out to be less than spectacular.

100,967

I’ve been religiously keeping a close watch on my Flickr stats page this week because I am nearing the 100k views landmark.

As of today, I officially did.

flickr

Wow…100,967 unique people from around the world actually viewed my photos, collections or sets.

Spotify on the iPhone?

I’ve been using Spotify for a couple of months now and I have to say that is one of the best music service out there, bar none. Of course, when I said bar none, I meant bar none if you happened to live in the UK.

Unfortunately, customers outside the UK can only select from a limited number of content due to licensing restrictions. This has severely impacted the user experience of the service. I created an account (don’t ask me how) and was presented with an impressive collection of songs. After a few days, the server prompted me that it detected that I was “roaming” and asked if I wanted to change my country in my Spotify user settings.

I did that and I came to regret it as it removed more than 3/4 of the songs that I had put in my playlist. Drats!!!!

But I digress because the reason I’m writing this is because of this:-

Could it really be that Spotify is coming to the iPhone? How about latency over EDGE? Will it work the same way as the desktop client (ie. download music file to local harddisk and then obtain DRM play key from server for every play)? So many questions, so little facts.

Wow…I really can’t wait (even with the limited content now)