mrbrown.com

Shame on you, Thailand

For walking off the field in the second half like that. Unsporting and unprofessional. You deserved all the Boo's you got. Good thing we got our penalty and it gave us the second goal, and the win.

Go Singapore!

I even make aeroplane for you! Beat Thailand ok?

An open letter to Flickr

Dear Flickr,

I have been using your service since you were in Beta. In fact, I bought a Pro account even when you were in Beta. That was how much I liked your service. It is nice to have been in the early community that made Flickr so vibrant and exciting.

Then you got acquired by Yahoo. Fine. Good for you.

Now you are forcing me merge my Flickr account with my Yahoo account, which absolutely sucks. Now I may have to create a new Yahoo account which I don't use for email and such, just to continue using Flickr. And no, I do not like to merge my Yahoo account with my Flickr account. Call me old-fashioned but I just like to keep these two things separate.

I just renewed my Pro account a few days ago and then I get this email from you telling me to Flick Off. Merge it or lose it. Take it or leave it.

In your email, you say "if you're reading this, you've been around for a while and that means a lot to us".

I just don't feel the love at this time, man.



Yours unhappily, a Beta Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

mrbrown



Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We're making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in -- like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It's easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don't.

the mrbrown show: football cheers

Cheer the Singapore team correctly at the finals! Get the roar at mrbrownshow.com!

the mrbrown show: growing and winning

Be inspired by this song we found, sing with us at mrbrownshow.com!

the mrbrown show: china rocks

You cannot ownself throw ownself rocks at ownself camera one. Find out why at mrbrownshow.com

Why haven't start yet?

Says Aloy. Mike and I are dressed in our black trash bags (could not find our rain coats or ponchos lah) and ready to roar. The waves already started. And nobody wants to stand for the Malaysia anthem. But we stand because we respect mah.

Singapore vs Malaysia match tonight... sold out

Took Joy with Mommy to the stadium at 4pm to try to get tickets to the match tonight but we were greeted by the big Sold Out sign.

Good thing they were giving one free ticket to subscribers of the dunno what Lions fan club, so I used the wife's phone and mine to sign up for a pair of tix for my buddy Mike and me. Probably gonna unsubscribe later in the week, $5 a month leh.

Gonna wear my old red Man U tee because uncle don't have Lions merchandise. See you later at kick-off!

the mrbrown show: the dragnet

Time to deploy NEATO to take down these hardened criminals at mrbrownshow.com! Move out!

Malaysian bloggers sued by NSTP

To Malaysian bloggers Jeff Ooi and Rocky who are being sued by the New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, mrbrown.com walks with you.

Go to the Walk With Us blog for a read.

(Cartoon by a Screenshots reader)

What's on my desk?

Update: Adri also did a What's on my Desk over at her Flickr page, go look.

Just thought it would be fun to do this, a snapshot of my desk from time to time. You may wanna do this on your blog too. Let's see, from left to right:

-pile of paperwork (including notes for my current DOTA Dragon Knight build)
-a Lone Wolf and Cub novel
-Korean movie DVD "Memories of Murder"
-the book Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
-camera case for my workhorse Canon A75 camera
-my Sennheiser HD280 cans
-my used and abused Nokia N93
-Revoltech Patlabor AV-98 Ingram 1 and Ingram 2 figures
-Rokit RP5 studio monitors
-Fraser Direct desk calendar
-Behringer Xenyx 1002FX mixer
-my old 4G Clickwheel iPod 40gb
-Apple Remote (it is paired only with my Macbook to prevent it from turning on the other Macs in the studio)
-Creative Xmod USB sound card (I really like the improvement it makes on my music, surprisingly good)
-a USB hub (I have waaay too many USB devices)
-MacMice USB mic (for iChat and Skype sessions, excellent mic)
-my Macbook Intel Core Duo 2GHz with 2GB of ram, 120GB HDD and Superdrive (the small screen is driving me nuts, going to get an external monitor soon, I miss my 20-inch Intel iMac!)
-Ikea lamp
-Razer Copperhead mouse (love it!) on a Razer eXactMat
-my three external drives (named Galactica, Pegasus and Massive)

In the background, on Adri's desk:
-today's newspapers
-501st Legion insignia on a box of business cards
-Frisk Lime mints
-20-inch Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, 2.16GHz with 2GB of ram, 250GB HDD, and Superdrive hooked up a to 500GB firewire HDD (used to be mine, now for the team to use for editing work)

the mrbrown show: antique security system

Don't lose your valuable antiques, secure it with our Antique Security System at mrbrownshow.com.

the mrbrown show: credit card for the poor

Credit cards for all! Apply at mrbrownshow.com.

the mrbrown show: why Thailand was angry at Singapore

Find out the REAL reason the Thai gahmen is mad at Singapore gahmen at mrbrownshow.com.

Broken

Faith loves her little Elmo's World Boombox. It's like a mini-boombox with just one red button. She likes it so much, she would keep playing the songs in it till it drives us crazy. There is only this much "Elmo's World" you can listen to before you want to punch someone in the nose. Even baby Joy can mouth the "La-la, La-la" part now.

At age 5 going on to 6, Faith is still playing with toys meant for 1 to 2-year-olds. We've gotten used to this quirk of her autism and developmental delay. At the very least, she can share the same toys with her youngest sister, Joy, now 14 months.

Interestingly, I have seen this toy adapted for special needs kids, with a plug at the back to accommodate a standard 1/8" special needs switch, so it must be quite popular with special needs kids elsewhere too.

Faith may adore it but not knowing that things break when sent hurling a long distance, she hurled it a long distance. Vertically.

After I retrieved it, Elmo didn't sing anymore. And Faith kept pressing the big red button to no avail. She looked to me for a solution because somehow she felt Papa could fix things. I felt a little helpless despite her faith in my toy repair skills.

Desperate, she dragged me by my finger, and made me press the big red button.

"Wai ya wai ya wai ya," she babbled in her own simple language that only she understood, making me press the big red button again and again. But you knew what that meant: "Make it work again, Papa, make it work."

I tried to explain that it was broken. And that Papa will try to get a new one for her. But I'm not sure how much she understood but was happy she was even trying to communicate with me.

In the evening, while the kids were at the in-laws, I went over to the nearby mall to look for a replacement. They had every Elmo toy but that one. In the end, I picked out a toy Cookie Monster saxophone for her.

When we got home, Faith looked for her Elmo toy again where she last saw it (her memory of these things amazes me) but I had already put it out of sight. No point letting her be disappointed with a broken toy.

The Cookie Monster saxophone kept playing in my backpack, when the buttons were depressed by accident, and she went over to investigate. I let her have it, and she seemed quite pleased with it. But then Isaac came along and decided it looked fun, and took it away, pretending to blow into it like a real saxophone. I made him return it to his older sister, but by then, she was already playing with something else. A small plastic ball, which she threw around the living room.

I picked her plastic ball up and threw it back at her. "Throw to Papa, Faith!" I said.

And she threw it back my way. And we played ball for a while.

Later, I realised we were engaged in social play and turn taking. A very rare thing to see in autistic kids who prefer to play alone.

Sometimes your favourite things get broken. Sometimes even Papa cannot fix it. But you accept what's broken, fix what you can, and adapt to what you can't, and in doing so, you discover new joys in simpler things. Like playing ball.

It's amazing what your kid can teach you.

the mrbrown show: the iphone comes to Singapore

You can get your iPhone from this guy at mrbrownshow.com.

Wonder

Wonder.

I saw it in my Isaac's eyes.

It is a little past his bedtime, and Isaac is acting out the scene where Greg the Yellow Wiggle does a disappearing ball magic trick. It is from one of our Wiggles DVDs.

Mommy and I just got back from dinner, both of us bloody knackered from work, but as I watch him perform the Wiggles scene to me, I cannot resist showing him my silly version of the magic trick.

You can see the look of awe and bewilderment in his eyes as his old man does a very lame disappearing trick with the ball. I drop it in the sofa to hide it, and then pick it up secretly again. Then ball still hidden in my hand, I pretend to whip it out of his pajama pocket. Or from behind his right ear. Or from inside a box of tissues.

It is a trick he will probably figure out very soon. Kids learn very fast especially if their Papa sucks at magic tricks.

For now, he is totally impressed, giving me a wide-eyed look and whispering a soft, long "Woooow.", each time I make the ball disappear and reappear. He looks inside his pajama pockets immediately after the ball disappears from my hands. He checks inside the tissue box too. You can almost see his eyes asking "How does Papa do that?"

I know he will learn how his father does this trick soon. But I am going to enjoy his sense of wonder for as long as I can. In fact, I watch his reaction with my own wonder, humbled that I am able to have a glimpse of his delight, admiration and curiosity.

"Is it magic?" I tease him. He replies, "Ya!"

I think so too.

the mrbrown show: a great way to ride

Catch a new kind of ride at mrbrownshow.com!

Thou shalt not steal (unsecured) wifi

Interesting overseas views about Singapore charging a teenager for mooching. He was freeloading off his neighbour's unsecured wireless network, and was sentenced to a nine-month stay at Bukit Batok Hostel and 80 hours of community service, and banned from using the Internet for 18 months (No Burning Crusade for you, dude!).

Techdirt and Engadget covers the story.

An interesting comment from KevinG79 on Techdirt:

*Rolls Eyes* We're talking about a kid connecting to an UNSECURED ROUTER to check his e-mail. He didn't hack into their home network and plant a virus on the connected PCs. He didn't copy personal data.. he just used the connection for 15k of e-mail and IM traffic. Was it morally wrong to go on someone else's network? Sure. But I don't think the damn government has any say in it. Like others have said. If you're the type of moron who's too stupid to SECURE your wireless network then you DESERVE to have "bandwidth thieves" logging in to your network. Seriously. I think it should be illegal for these IDIOTS to operate an UNSECURED network. Stupid is as stupid does. People why whine and cry about someone accessing their unsecured network is the same as those who get all upset when someone breaks into their house (or car) because they were too stupid not to LOCK THE DOORS. Cry me a river. If you're such a moron, you deserve to be stole from. Maybe it'll teach you a lesson.

the mrbrown show: niche tv

You may get to watch some new niche channels, turn on the tv at mrbrownshow.com!