Firstly, a big thank you to our readers who participated in our recent Lenovo u300s IdeaPad Ultrabook giveaway contest.
The challenge of the contest was to write about your geekiest moment of 2011, and we received close to 20 submissions. Unfortunately, even though many of the submissions were really good, there can only be one winner.
Before we reveal who our winner is, let’s take a closer look at some great entries:
The Prank by Mathhew Hardman
The age of wireless devices has led to a bigger and better set of pranks. I remember one time I was sitting in an all day planning session with everyone sitting there with their laptops. A colleague from across the room was just showing off his new laptop he purchased, a Dell Alienware portable, and was pretty impressed by himself. During the break he went out and I noticed he hadnt locked his laptop at all. He was also using a Microsoft Arc Touch mouse with the Micro USB dongle, which luckly enough matched the micro USB dongle of the arc keyboard I had in my bag.
So since he was out, I switched the micro USB to my keyboard on his PC, and waited for his return. As soon as he got back from whereever he was, and started looking at his screen, I did a couple of quick key presses on my arc keyboard sitting in my lap under the table, and brought up notepad.
He seemed a bit bemused, and before he could do anything I started typing in a frenzy things like…
“Good trip to the toilet Dave?”
“You know its unhealthy to drink all those drinks”
When he tried to use his mouse to close the Windows the mouse wouldnt work, obviously because I had switched the Micro USB dongles.
A colleague who was sitting next to me was almost in tears laughing under her breath as she saw me make the switch and though the guys reactions to the whole experience was priceless.
Finally I admitted to what was going, the guy was a bit taken aback, but saw the humour in it in the end… as did the rest of the people in the meeting!
Im looking foward to getting another person again one day!
Boss, you got STOMPED by Keegan Chua
I started using my Galaxy Note and I was telling everyone that is the best stomper phone out there. You can simply doodle and just circle out the object/person in the image straight away and with the 8MP camera everything is just so clear.
I was asking her one day about her work and she was again still stucked in office till quite late as her normal working hours is till 5:30pm. I feel bad and was telling me that she ill treat her (boss), so I decided to circle that sentence and was determined to let everyone know.
Her reply was later “DON’T”
Can you imagine with today’s technology, letting many person know about something is just that simple?
The Vintage Collector by Thetick
I’m a collector of vintage/obsolete video game systems. Blame my parents for NOT buying me an NES during primary school (had to sneak over to a classmate’s house to play Contra and Super Mario Bros) there’s something magical about playing crappy kitsch 8-bit games on the original system that make me incredibly happy.
Thorough the years I’ve dug around flea markets and thrift stores and managed to amass a collection that consists of: Super NES, NES, SEGA, N64, Sega Saturn, playstation 1 + 2, mirco genius and 2 original game boys.
In August 2011 my wife and I visited San Francisco for a holiday and true to our thrift shop hunting ways we visited several in the Mission district. It was amongst broken typewriters and casio keyboards that I stumbled across a brown box that withheld my holy grail:
The Atari 2600.
With 2 joysticks and a dozen over cartridges.
For the bargain price of $4.
I grabbed it and in spite of my wife’s protests (“you don’t even know if it works!”) on the lack of luggage space, brought it back to Singapore in hope that it would magically burst into life on my home TV.
I’m happy to report that I’m spending my weekends playing Frogger, Pac Man and Combat on my newest and most prized console. That was my geekiest moment of 2011.
The Dog Whisperer by jchowjs
Early last year, I thought that it would be quite cool to actually see if my girlfriend’s uncle’s dog would actually respond to one of those dog whistling applications which you can find on the iTunes store. Trying it out for fun, I downloaded a free app (one of many which can be found) and tried to see if the dog would respond to it (I was sceptical at first). Turns out that you have to adjust the frequency of the whistle app in order to get the a response as each dog would react differently to different frequencies. It took a few hours but I finally managed to find one where the dog’s ears would actually perk up whenever I pressed the button!
Moving forward, as we were training the dog to start obeying commands like “sit”, “stay” and “fetch”, by using treats as a reward. I thought it might be interesting to train the dog by pairing the “sit” command with a hand gesture and the whistle, to see if in the future the dog would actually be able to sit once we use the dog whistle app instead of issuing a verbal command or using a gesture (which is normally how people train dogs). After a few months, we were able to remove the treat and the dog would obey only the verbal “sit” command paired with the hand gesture and dog whistle. Then, we slowly started removing the hand gesture and after another few months the dog was able to respond to only the verbal command with whistle.
At the tail end of last year, my geek moment came. When playing around with the dog whistle app one day, I noticed that the dog started to sit around almost every time I pressed the app! While not 100% accurate, we actually managed to get the dog to obey the whistle app without having to issue a verbal command! I thought that was pretty cool, however it does take a lot of time and effort (and perhaps a huge dose of luck, who knows if other dogs would have responded similarly).
Unfortunately, the sad ending to this story is that a few weeks ago, my girlfriend’s uncle’s dog fell very ill and had to be put down in order to end his suffering :(. Hope he’s happy in doggy heaven with lots of treats.
The touch-screen AXS machine by JT
I have developed presbyopia overnight quite sometimes back and have troubles focusing on near work. While a pair of reading glasses could jolly solve the problem but I simply couldn’t bring myself to admit to the world that my status have been ‘upgraded’ to ‘laozhabor’ and thus, needs a
pair of reading glasses.
Besides that, I hate the fuss of having to constantly putting on and taking off the glasses to switch between near and far vision.
And also because I wear falsies, the long lashes would often get in the way and make the wearing of the glasses ultra uncomfortable.
To get around with that, I would do my readings under brighter lights and increase the font size or use the zoom function while doing work on the computer. And thanks to the pinch-zoom technology, I could easily touch and zoom for a clearer view of the fine prints on my gadgets whenever it is needed.
That worked well until one late night when I was at the AXS station trying to perform some transactions. The light at that area was very dim and instead of trying to strain my eyes, I instinctively do a ‘pinch zoom’ trying to enlarge the content on the screen repeatedly.
When it doesn’t work and the screen keeps on flickering and reloading in response to my touch, I cursed the instability of the machine and went frantically searching for the ‘CTRL’ ‘+’ key on the keyboard, still trying to enlarge the content on the screen!
I couldn’t remember how long I was struggling there but hubby got frustrated of waiting for me at the corner of the street came round, realized what I was doing and made a snide comment: “Hello! Why don’t you take my glasses and get on with your payment, lady?”
Conversations between Geek/Non-geek by TC Lai
I think 2011 was geeky for most people, even those who have always always found geek Greek (ok, pun over). There was the iPads, iPhone 4S, and Steve Jobs dying. His passing made me recall those times I spent playing and tweaking my Apple IIe compatible during my NS days when it was the techie thing to do then. Remember People’s Park Center? It used to be THE place to buy computer parts and accessories before Sim Lim Square came along (and not long after). But perhaps my most geeky moment in 2011 was trying to convince a girl friend why a clamshell netbook was a much better option for her six-year old than an iPad. The conversation went something like this: (We were considering a Samsung N150Plus, a pretty good second notebook if you ask me.)
Me: “I know it is a clamshell, but she’s at that age where she can begin to learn to type.”
She: “But it is not a tablet.”
Me: “I know, but people who buy a tablet will end up buying an external keyboard also.”
She: “But it is not a tablet.”
Me: “I KNOW, but would you rather lug a tablet AND a keyboard around?”
She: “No. But it is still not a tablet.”
Me: “There’s no memory card slot and she can’t play all her favourite Flash games!”
She: “What? Flash? What?”
Me: “You know, The Adventures of Scooby Doo, Swing Cat, Tokimeki, etc, etc.”
She: “But she likes Angry Birds also.”
Me: “What, you buy an iPad just so she can play Angry Birds? You have it in your Samsung Galaxy II also. And that’s smaller to lug around.”
She: “Yeah, I just hate to lug stuff around when I go out.”
Me: “And you can’t blog at Blogger too!”
She: “Really? That’s not nice.”
Me: “The text editor doesn’t work.”
She: “Oh.”
Me: “Look at this netbook. It’s under warranty, has 5 hrs of real-time battery life and runs on Windows 7. And I can pass you all my PC stuff to install.”
She: “Really? Hmm, I really like its ruby red color. I think she would like it too.” At this point, she picks up the iPad. “God, it’s heavy.”
Me: “Yup, trying holding it up for longer.”
She: “Ok. And how much is this ‘what kor’ netbook again?”
Me: “Dual core, DUAL CORE. $270.”
She: “Sold.”
Photo-mess by Javan Ng
Everyday is a geek moment to me. I snap photos using my iPhone everywhere I go, from home to supermarket, on the street, train, holidays and even in my office. I upload my photos on Facebook, tweet about it, whatsapp my friends and now I even pin them on Pinterest. Every moment is a geeky moment to me. Here’s a photo-mess created using an iphone app.
So what did we learn? Guard your USB dongles, don’t piss off your employees (or you will get STOMPED), and that touch screens don’t exist everywhere. 🙂
Each of these are great entries in their own right. We sincerely thank everybody for taking the time to write or post something, even if it wasn’t mentioned.
However, there can only be one winner.
And unfortunately, with this post already overly long, we’ll reveal the top three entries in a later post. There is only one winner for the Lenovo u300s IdeaPad Ultrabook, but we decided to give out consolation prizes to two other entries.
Stay tuned!
