January 02
2006 has gone and past with fond memories archived for posterity, looking forward to a brighter and boisterous new year ahead. Christmas celebration here in Dubai was not quite as I expected it to be, with decors, music and mood captured to a certain extent, definitively the spirit of the season is apparent in this middle eastern city of gold. We invited a few friends over for potluck dinner on Christmas day, prepared my usual potato soup and glazed Chinese ribs and fried chicken. The event was a blast, only realized that we sorely lack chairs for a bigger affair. Thoughtfully surprised by my wife’s gift for me which she had shipped in from Manila (that goes directly to my toy collection). New year celebrations and revelry is totally different, if you have money to spend, you may well get to have good view of the fireworks display from Burj Al Arab, which is highly anticipated by a lot of people here (from what I gather, it took at least two hours for some people to get home after the fireworks display because of the huge gathered crowd). As soon as 2007 came in, fireworks display started somewhere in the Emirates Hills area, followed by 2 three more visible displays from our balcony. Unfortunately, we only got to see almost half of the fireworks because of a newly erected building blocking our view of the Burj. My wife and I turned in afterwards and spent a relatively quiet New years day. – Arvie
December 21
It has been a while, been busy retooling all our computer resources here at home. Also, finalized my setup for my mobile computer so, i guess i’ll be sticking with dual boot Windows XP/Fedora Core 6. On a lighter note, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that our wedding last April was featured in WeddingsAtWork as one of the best weddings of 2006 in the Philippines. Aside from that, we just finished decorating our place to feel a bit like Christmas, probably post some pictures in a while. Been raining the past few days in Dubai a
nd the weather is quite pleasant, with the DSF (Dubai Shopping Festival) kick-off yesterday, we hope to get some great discounts on stuff in the malls. Also added another glass display case for our toys and re-arraged all the chogokins to inclulde their stands. Speaking of chogokins, the Camp Big Falcon (yep Voltes 5’s home base) is now available in the Philippines, must get me one of those. – ARVIE
December 01
Been busy for a while, espcecially with a bunch of new toys that i have just acquired recently so expect a deluge of stuff in the coming days. In the meantime, i just need to resolve some issues with my Linux install on the Dell XPS M1710. That’s right got me one of those mean machines. Be back in a few. – Arvie
November 22
Spent the whole day in Dubai World Trade Center, just got back home and my feet are killing me right now. My mind is still in a state of daze, however, ths show must go on. A lot of LCD and plasma displays can be found on the floor, evidently bigger and larger, one outdoing the other in specifications and features. Now, where would I put a 103″ LCD pure HD 1080p TV, imagine playing Uno on this thing would be awesome (kidding aside, drooling of the possibilities). HD-DVD (along with a bunch of titles) and Blu-Ray players were present, however, they wont be available till early next year. Sony featured a demo of the Playstation 3 however, it was more like a walkthrough and we were not allowed to actually play with the console. During the demo though, the PS3 looked slick and felt like the HDD navigation was responsive, the picture slideshow timestamp fea
ture looked promising, however it was 
dissapointing to see the familair Sony PS2 video and music playback OSD. The game demo was not very impressive either (didin’t even bother to ask which game that was but it hink it was motorstorm ). PS3 will be launched officially March 2007. LG featured a 3D LCD monitor and it really looked great, took a picture of the units displayed but it did not do justice to the technology so i wont bother posting it. The depth was surreal, but I’m skeptical to the practical application of the 3D display. Samsung booth looked great, played around with their UMPC, was not impressed with the size and capabilites, however check out the small DLP projector working in tand
em with 
the Q1 UMPC (picture somewhere in the blog). Oh oh, Asus was there with their G1 and G2 line, of course it is not yet avaibale for sale locally, dissapointed to see a grainy screen display, but the RF1 Tablet PC and R2H looked promising (actually want a R2H). Talk to a lot of network and security companies regarding new technologies which I wont bore you with. Gitex gave away a lot of stuff from LCD TV’s, MP3 players, mobile phones, didn’t win any of the stuff, just went home with a bunch of bags and a few SWAGs. Could not find the Dell booth to inquire about (or hope to see) the elusive XPS M1710. So , Gitex 2006 has gone and past, more of the same old thing and it seems like the foot traffic was not the same as 2005, then again its just a feeling, still THE event for IT. – Arvie
Today would be day 2 of Gitex shopper and Day 3 for Gitex proper, Lorelie and I went to Gitex shopper to shop for our new notebook. Parking was torture and traffic to the Airport Expo was slow but moving (an accident involving a car and a truck did not make things any better, and then it began to drizzle). After paying the mandatory fee , we were greeted by a familiar Gitex shopper scene, lots of foot traffic and lots of stalls with all of the computing goodness. One thing noticeable is that most of the major retailers are selling the same major brands (with a few exceptions here and th
ere). We were on the look for a Dell M1710, with lots of Dell resellers we started asking about the unit, however to our surprise the Dell M1710 was noticeably absent from their inventory. We started digging around for information regarding the Dell M1710 and found out that a lot of inquiries were made about this product and it was supposed to arrive the next day, other shops we asked told us that it may never even arrive during Gitex. Sigh, we are stil hopefully and pro bably go back on Friday (which is the last day). At any rate, I looked for an alternative just in case the Dell M1710 is just too big for me or does not arrive altogether, number one on my alternate list is the
Dell XPS M1210 (Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo, 1.83Ghz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD), 2) Fujistsu Lifebook T4210 Tablet PC (Intel Centrino Duo 2.0Ghz) 3) Toshiba Qosimo G30 -148 (Intel Centrino Core Duo 2.Ghz, 1GB RAM, 200GB HDD) 4) Acer Travelmate 6465 (Intel
Core 2 Duo 2.GHz, 2GB RAM, 160 HDD). Hope the Dell M1710 arrives soon. Was disappointed that Asus did not bring over the G1 and G2 notebooks over, would have considered them instead of the M1710. Saw an awesome water cooling solution for the PC, might get me one of those, also bought a CCD sensor cleaning kit, my D70 has a bit of lint that is driving me crazy (happy to report that i got the sucker off just before i wrote this blog) Oh well, life goes on, also, we got busted for parking on top of a curb, great way to end the day. –
Arvie
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