CS3216 had been a great module. I met many brilliant classmates, although that only served to remind me just how little I really know. Throughout the module, I got my hands dirty with web programming, and did stuff that I have never done before. In fact I think CS3216 is making me reconsider my previously rather narrow ambition of landing a job in the gaming industry, now that I have seen for myself just how much the Web can offer.
Now I am taking a little break as I prepare for my Student Exchange Programme. Among the things to do this week include a visa interview on the 6th, confirming my flight details, transferring money to my friend who kindly helped me pay my accommodation fees through credit card, and reading up on North Carolina and South Korea hehe.
As mentioned in my previous entry, I've got a new phone!
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V is my second Android phone; the first was a Samsung Galaxy Spica. It was a nice phone, but its dated hardware and limited memory made it painful to use, hence I was prepared to fork out a little money for better performance.
I was not looking at Sony Ericsson initially; my brother's Xperia X10 mini was too heavily customised by SE for my liking. I was deciding between LG Optimus Black and Motorola Defy+, both costing $98, when the Xperia Neo V caught my eye. At $0, it offers the same performance as the LG and the Motorola: 1Ghz Scorpion CPU and Adreno GPU on a Snapdragon chipset, and 512MB RAM. The only thing the Neo V falls short is the 320MB of internal storage it offers for installing apps, but I can live with that.
Of course, the one factor that made me decide to take the Neo V is SE's software support. While LG is still struggling to upgrade their models to Gingerbread, the Neo V already comes with Gingerbread out of the box, and an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich is already promised. Then just a few days after I got this, SE rolled out a software update, which I came to know later, made SE phones one of the first to support WebGL. Awesome.
Usually, I am not a fan of manufacturer-specific bloatware, but I really like SE's Facebook inside Xperia functionality. I have always frown upon the lack of Facebook Events integration with Google Calendar, which in turn synchronizes with my phone calendar [or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough]. Now this little SE app pulls all my Facebook events and friends' birthdays and displays them in the Calendar [you can see my BBQ event in the screenshot], and leaves my Google Calendar alone. Neat.
I have always been using Samsung phones; the only other time I used a SE phone it completely let me down. So far the Neo V has been great, so let's hope it lasts!
In other news, I have returned my iPad to school. The iPad has been fun to use; I found myself reading alot more than before. But in the end, I guess its not exactly a necessity, and I can live without one, especially now that I have a new phone that can satisfy my reading needs [as I repeat, the Galaxy Spica was painfully slow to use].
That said, I'm not ruling out getting an Amazon Kindle Fire when I go to the US. Hehe.
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