Win a Lenovo u300s IdeaPad Ultrabook worth US$1,199 (S$1,500)

Pingback: Your geekiest moments of 2011 | PS3 Festplatte
Pingback: {Best Souvenirs} |
http://twitter.com/janheart26 Janice

hi there! I’ve been having difficulties posting using my facebook account so I’ve logged in using my twitter account. This is my facebook account though! reallly really hope to win the awesome ideapad!!!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=674973246
http://twitter.com/janheart26 Janice

Oh gosh. Talk about geeky (and embarrassing) moments!

1. I own a tablet and a smartphone, and I use them almost every moment of the day. Naturally, I assume that everything else, ( and i really mean it when i say everything), is touchscreen. During one of my presentations, I pressed my fingers on my friend’s macbook to zoom in on the diagram, but of course, it didn’t! (and I looked pretty dumb in class :p)

2. Having used Siri for a while, I started to develop the habit of asking my phone to do things for me. What’s worse, I started talking to my android phone too! My friend stared at me for a moment before I realized what i was doing!

3. Taking pictures with an Ipad! This never fails to draw too much attention to yourself. I love the ipad, I dont deny it! But it always seems like you’re using a computer screen to take photos of yourself! Or when you comment on facebook using your Ipad on the train, it is basically open for all to see!

4. Recently as I was playing playstation 2(games of my generation), as I was playing street fighter, I started moving around as if I was the character of the game! All this technology has gotten into my head, I must have thought that I was playing Wii.

These geeky moments have brought lots of laughter to myself and my friends around me! Yet I’m so glad for these technologies. Can’t imagine life without them
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.
Liew Wen Hwee

2011 was a pretty geeky year for me. I sort of became a ‘IT consultant’ to colleagues and friends.

There was an incident when the office printer decided to go on a strike and showed error message which none of us could understand. Frustrated by the machine, I decided to call the company and resolve the problem. I finally found the solution and solved the bugging issue. I went around demonstrating the solution to my colleagueo that they could solve the same problem when they encounter it again. From then on, i became the de facto ‘IT consultant’. Have since been approached for issues such as restoring archives to windows outlook, photoshop etc.

The most interesting incident when i actually used the S Note function of my Android smartphone to make illustrations which helped my friend know how to use the various functions of their smartphone.

It was fabulous to be able to offer help to others. I’m also actually learning in the process. And I’m enjoying it. It’s an interesting processes where you learn new things from problems encountered by others. For example, i don’t use iPhone so i don’t have issues migrating contacts and songs from iTunes to Android OS. But i have friends who have such considerations. This arouse my curiosity and i went to look for solutions to help them. In the process, i learn abt the frustrations to migrate between the different OSes and the workarounds to solve them. Also, i researched on the different OS before buying my first Android smartphone last year. I was able to share some info abt the OSes to my friends when they were thinking about buying smartphones or thinking of switching OSes. (nope, i didn’t attempt to influence their choice, i merely gave them info and reply to their queries. I believe all OSes have their pros and cons and individuals must but a phone that is suitable to their lifestyle. I merely shared on the choices available.).

I have also started teaching my mum how to use the Android OS. She’s completely new to smartphones so it’s quite frustrating for her. You can imagine how the different touch response that is so convenient for us become a scary experience for elders.

This year, am thinking of documenting all the workarounds, information and how to gathered over the year from the issues brought up by my friends.
Matthew 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!
coldkohmew

It was IT fair in November,i and my sister were queuing up for the HP tablet and then she decided to play Tap Tap Revenge

I was a noob in this game so i lost to her every single game .I blamed that my big fingers always can’t get synced to the phone and that it was very hard.Thanks to her portable charger,i was able to practice.I thought,if i get an ipad,then i would be able to beat her in this game.So even though in the end,we didn’t manage to get the HP tablet,i was running around to find the best deal for an ipad.I manage to find a good deal for an ipad at one of the outlets but my sister said that there are better deals online.Interested,i went to search on google.I found a deal that needs me to check in at a particular shop,buy any drink and post it on facebook.I decided to try it out and within 2 weeks,i got my ipad delivered through mail.Now i got my ipad,i think i would be able to beat her in the game.So i created an event and posted on facebook to let her agree to my challlenge.My father was invited too.It was time for my revenge!I got to a good start but when it comes to the shakes,i was slower and soon i lost again narrowly.Seeing that my father was new to this game,i thought i would win and challenge him to a game.But to my surprise,he did better than me i also lost by a very narrow margin.Now i have to clean the whole house for losing the game.How ungeekly punishment for me =(
Benjamin Loh

Last October was my 3rd anniversary with my girlfriend.
Instead of our usual celebrations with my presenting of the tried and tested
bouquet of roses and Hallmark greeting cards, I thought I should turn the
tables around and play hard to get.

So what I did was to design a SOC (Standard Obstacle Course) – geek
style for my half-converted girlfriend. Credits to me, but of course. I had
left a series of clues in my house that with the access of my laptop and iPhone
would slowly but surely, lead her to finding the eventual clue and then
eventually, the present I had for her.

Test 1 – QR Code

Pasted right at my wooden door, this was a dead giveaway. Thankfully,
I had educated her about Cold Storage e-shopping facilities via QR code. She
swiftly whipped out her iPhone and took a snap shot of it.

Test 2- Morse Code

The QR code sent her a link of a web page with an entirely white
background with just a word ‘source’. She had a tough time on this one and on
heavy hinting, I told her “hmmm, behind every web page is a document and this
document describes how and what this page is about… just like that of a medical
record of a patient” so she fiddled and managed to find the option to view the
source of the page and I had left chunks of irrelevant HTML coding to confuse
her.

But what was indeed distinct was an encrypted Morse code,

“- …. . / -.-. .-.. ..- . / .. … / .. -. / — -.– / .-. — —
– –..– / .. -. / — -.– / -.. .-. .- .– . .-.”

(The clue is in my room, in my drawer)

Though her reaction was, “What the…” she came to realize that this was
pushing her to her seams. But her ‘ah-hah’ moment came when she shouted, “MORSE
CODE” and then went quite quickly to translate it.

Test 3 – Word Play

We ran over to my room and she saw quite a couple of scrabble pieces
all jumbled up together.

TCYIORNADI

Didn’t take her to long to realize the clue lied in the dictionary and
she ran furiously towards it and knocked down a couple of my other books…. Only
to realize another slip of the paper with the words,

“Throw
it off the highest building, and I’ll not break. But put me in the ocean, and I
will. What am I?”

(At this
point in time, given my half-tech girlfriend, we were already 45 minutes into
the hunt and I had actually fallen asleep on my bed)

Test 4 –
All in the Tissue Box

So she
finally realized the answer to the riddle was a tissue after pondering about it
for a good 15 minutes. What made her all the more furious was that my
dictionary was actually next to the tissue box, i.e. the answer was staring at
her right in front of her eyes!

She dug in
my tissue box and finally fished out a thumb drive, which she plugged it in and
watched a video of a scene where I sang her a love song at Sentosa in front of
all my friends. It was quite an emotional moment for her considering the fact
that I had lost contact with my friend who actually filmed the video and we
thought that scene would be gone forever.

After
she recollected herself, she finally said, “Ok… so where’s my present?”

I looked
at her in her eyes and told her, “right in front of you” and I put on a
necklace for her. One that she had fallen in love with some time ago while we
were shopping.

—

Truth be
told, this isn’t exactly the geekiest moment in my entire life but this
“geekness” is about telling a story of how we started and we will still
continue on, in our own quirky ways and appreciate and accept each other for
being so. It takes no effort to be a geek for me but it does take a lot to
translate my “geekness” in a way that my girlfriend loves and appreciates and
in doing so, I’ve found the geek in her as well.
- techgoondu
  
  Haha…. cool one, Benjamin. You have a patient girlfriend.
http://twitter.com/javanng 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.
- techgoondu
  
  Nice, Javan.
  - http://twitter.com/javanng Javan Ng
    
    Thanks
  - http://twitter.com/javanng Javan Ng
    
    Thanks
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.
Nicholas Foo

My girlfriend had to book a flight to Europe. At that point of time, she just couldn’t access the booking system on the website. So we collaborated via an application called Teamviewer.

Teamviewer allows users to exchange files, conduct presentations or provide remote help. In our case, I gave my girlfriend access to my laptop via the application. It would be save us time and travelling cost to meet up somewhere and get it done. So with both laptops synced, she access my laptop remotely. She managed to go through the ste-by-step booking process successfully and bought her ticket to Europe!

Who knew Teamviewer could be used in such a way? It was a timely lifesaver for her, and yes we are still amazed by our geeky moment when we look back.

So that’s my geeky moment to share. Do check out Teamviewer. There are so many ways to use it. Think out of the box!
Nicholas Foo

Both me and my
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 ‘liaozhabor’ 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 works 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 dong and snide “Hello! Why don’t you take my glasses and
get on with your payment, lady?”
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.”
daren han

My geekest moment will be when I first bought my iPhone 2g from apple usa. It was the first iphone and nobody has it yet in Singapore. I bought it through comgateway back then as only certain couriers shipped it to Singapore. It arrived 2 weeks later. I was so excited to open the package and use the iPhone. Back then, there are not many apps in the iTunes App Store. Trying to figure out how to play radio on the iPhone 2g is a mystery back then as there isn’t any radio app available to use on the iPhone.

I did some research on the Internet and found a open source media center app which is called Tversity. The application is able to let you add streaming urls to the media center software. This struck me in a instance recalling that there are online radio stations that broadcast radio. I search for the radio web sites and kept the individual streaming urls in an excel worksheet. I then paste the urls into Tversity and access the media server on my iPhone 2g. It actually did work! I can now access the online radio through my iPhone using just the safari web browser. I am so happy that I can actually have radio on my iPhone now. The next thing I did is to find all the podcasts that I can add into Tversity so that I can access podcast through my iPhone connected to my local network. It is easy as the steps are similar to how I get radio streaming on my iPhone 2g. Now I get radio and podcasts using TVersity without using any app from the iTunes. This taught me a valuable lesson that you can only get this far using your tech gadgets’ primary functions but if you research further, more functions can be added to your gadget as well.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000566129103 Xiang Xun Yeoh

From young, I was always fascinated to be a DIY/modder for electronic hardware. As my father is an engineer, I was heavily influenced to do mod on ANY electronic devices I can get my hands on. As an engineering student now, I still continue my passion for modding and DIY electronics.

In 2011, around July, I got this idea of saving money by charging my mobile devices with solar charger and portable battery. This idea was driven by the fact that my father had some financial problem and our family’s financial is not in a good shape as a result of it, hence, I decided to do my part to reduce our family electricity bill by reducing the electricity required to charge our mobile devices. As I am a polytechnic student, I will fully charge my devices as much as possible in my campus, however, the battery of my second hand laptop (my brother finished his diploma and passed it down to me) and mobile devices could not last more than a day… In addition, I have siblings (4 siblings!) which also contribute to the electricity bills with their devices. So, I did some research online and with the help of a friend who studies in USA(met him in online MMORPG!), I got him to ship to me some high grade solar panels from Amazon cheaply and I began to build my solar charger to be used at home. I also bought high grade rechargable and high-efficiency battery with the help of my father’s friend (such high grade batteries are available online but are unfortunately not allowed to be shipped to Singapore, so I had to go the long and arduous way to get it locally).

I did a ton of research and LEARN about the whole concept of solar charging and electrotechnology from Wikipedia (I did take electrotechnology as my module too, which helped me substantially…) Finally… I got it to work! I was so happy! Of course, I owed my success to the help of my family and siblings, especially my brother who assisted me with the soldering and checking of the circuits. It is not easy at all. Not only did I have to persist till the end (I gave up for a month due to common test), I had to start from scratch to research on how the solar charger work. The toughest part is actually to persuade my father to help me source for the battery… I am thankful of my friend in USA too…

I hope I can win this contest and get the new laptop to replace my 5 years old acer laptop as this is indeed a geek event I can be proud of as I put my knowledge to use in real life. In fact, I used this example often for my recent interviews as one of the answer for my “achievement”. I learned how to appreciate even more for the inventors and pioneers of technology in the old days. They are truly heroes whom changed not just their own life but our life too…

If you guys are interested, this website revolves heavily around my research then: http://www.instructables.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=591390845 Alvin Woo

Being a driver, it always feels like a waste to display car park coupons when I am just parking for a short while. What’s the chance the car park warden, aka Summon Auntie, will catch me when there are so many cars for her to check, right? This proved to be a bad decision, especially in the first half of last year, because I got 3 summons for all 3 times I parked without displaying my coupon. As a student not yet earning my keep, it was a pain having to fork out $70 every time this happened.
All this changed when I read TechGoondu’s review on the “Summon Auntie” app. I found out how drivers all over Singapore alert each other whenever they notice the car park warden, just like in the good ol’ times when drivers would shout “MATA LAI LIAO” whenever they see one on the prowl. The app quickly became one of my most-used apps and I developed a habit of using it whenever I had to park my car for short periods of time. Having shared my experience with my friends, they all downloaded it and on few occasions we have all managed to escape from the clutches of the Summon Auntie. We also managed to pull this off successfully in our school, where Campus Security is quick to fine cars not parked appropriately, even for short periods of time.

Alas, it was never going to be easy being a driver in Singapore. I got involved in an accident early one morning in December while rushing down to school for lessons. On the left filter lane at a junction, I began moving off after checking for oncoming traffic, without realising the car ahead had not moved yet. That resulted in me rear-ending the car. It was my first accident, and with all the new rules in reporting accidents that I had not bothered to read, I was at a loss about what to do. Thankfully, I had only just noted the night before on Twitter that the “Summon Auntie” app was getting an update which allowed drivers to note details of an accident! While speaking to the other driver (who also did not know what to do), I quickly pulled out my phone and began updating “Summon Auntie”. Within a minute it fully updated and thanks to the app, I managed to take down the relevant particulars and was reminded to take photos of both cars involved in the collision. While I still had to fork out the cost of repairs for both cars, I was saved from fumbling around trying to figure out what to do at the accident scene — all thanks to “Summon Auntie”.

It wasn’t exactly my proudest moment, but I definitely consider it to be my most geek moment of the year.
- techgoondu
  
  Great story, Alwin! Summon Auntie to the rescue.
http://www.facebook.com/jm.lagapa Jm Lagapa

My most geek moment happened twice last year on 2 different occasions. The first one was when our company’s regional director asked my help whether I know of an online service that allows for conference participants to engage with the organizers during the event. He thought of Twitter but I happen to know how many services provide this kind of service so I quickly googled it and in a few minutes, I was pitching the Coveritlive service to my director. He liked it and we started working on the project until the conference date came. Everything was a success and I even received positive feedback from the people who attended it. Most of them didn’t know of that nifty service prior to the event. That’s thanks to more than 10 years of search engine practice and trying out a lot of websites along the way!

The second one happened when my boss asked me to share my knowledge and experience with Social Media. As I was new to the company and most of my colleagues haven’t been oriented to the power of Social Media, I wanted to impress them and it only added pressure because days before I was fed to the sharks, they have been informing me of how they were really looking forward to what I had to present. Of course, my geeky moment didn’t come until I wowed everyone by using Prezi instead of the usual Powerpoint slides. I swiped and zoomed my way to everyone’s good side as I showed how powerful the internet has been and how social media amplifies that. Again, I received very positive feedback from everyone who attended and I even got a request to do another presentation for another director. Good thing I didn’t have to present again because I never really liked being in front of an audience. Now that’s a geek through and through.
http://www.facebook.com/keeganchua 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?
- http://twitter.com/alfsiew Alfred Siew
  
  Nice one, Keegan!

Win a Lenovo u300s IdeaPad Ultrabook worth S$1,899