Spartacus Gods of the Arena on HD

I finally used the WD TV that my sister and brother-in-law gave me for Christmas to watch an HD feature on our Samsung LCD TV. Ok, its not exactly 1080p, but the 720p season premier of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena was an eye-popper. This is a 6-part prequel of the Spartacus season 1. Ahh... blood and gore look so much better in 720p. :)

The story line, as usual, is fantastic and really engaging. Action, drama, and, of course, lots of sex and violence, makes this prequel just as addictive as Season 1. The show explains a lot about the characters' background in Season 1. Too bad, the show's main star, Andy Whitfield, is rumored not to return for Season 2 due to his illness.

HCR @ Wee Nam Kee

I've been wanting to try Wee Nam Kee at Ayala Triangle for some time. I brought the family here on a weekend a couple of months ago but the place was too crowded and we did not want to wait. Since I often have late lunch, I finally decided to give it a try today.

Wee Nam Kee is a very popular restaurant in Singapore. Its specialty is the Hainanese Chicken Rice (HCR), which is also Singapore's national dish from what I know. They offered a personal set which is meant for a single serving. Prices are reasonable.

I must say I was pretty satisfied with my meal even though it was a very long walk from The Peak. I did have a bit of an upset stomach tonight though. I don't know if it is related. I should give this a try again soon.

Decoding MIME Attachments in C#.NET

I previous wrote an application that required extracting email from GMail via POP3 using C#. Now that same application has gotten a bit more complicated. I need to extract file attachments from the email. I've done Base64 MIME Encoding/Decoding a long time ago. I did not have the inclination to re-do it in C# so I went searching through the 'Net for ready-made code.

There were several open source examples, but the one that suited me best was this one from CodeProject:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/MIME_De_Encode_in_C_.aspx

For now, I'm just using the decoding part. But I foresee a need to do encoding pretty soon.

Crappy Diskette-based SSS System

The Social Security System (SSS) require that local employers should submit their monthly contribution reports in diskettes. Yes, you read that right -- diskettes! Not flash drives, not CD's, but diskettes! PC's vendors have stopped pre-installing floppy disk drives for years.

I had to borrow a USB-based external floppy drive from the office and attached it to our den PC because the built-in floppy drive seem to malfunctioning and damaging all diskettes you plug in it. But as I found out, the crappy SSS program does not give you the option on where to save your data. Its hard-coded to always write on Drive A!!! Attaching my USB floppy didn't work because Windows was assigning it as Drive B.

I eventually installed the SSS program (which seem to be written in Visual FoxPro) on my HP Mini 110 which correctly assigns Drive A to the external USB floppy drive. I can't understand why a cash-rich government agency like the SSS can't even get their software re-written for the 21st century. It should already be moved to the web and the report files uploaded via http. Diskettes? Unbelievable!

Retrieving Email from GMail using POP3 Programmatically with C#

I'm writing some new Dragonpay code to interface with UCPB's online banking system. I need to retrieve some information via POP3 protocol. POP3 is a very simple protocol using TCP stream over port 110. In fact, I've written code 15 years ago to retrieve email and read it over the phone using text-to-speech synthesis using Dialogic software. But the challenge this time is I need to get the data from Google's GMail.

Unlike regular POP3, GMail's POP3 uses SSL encryption. My limited knowledge on encryption does not extend to SSL encryption. So I did some research. The UNIX fetchmail program can retrieve GMail POP3 email with SSL encryption. But to run code after retrieving the email would require having to program with Linux and procmail. Since I mainly write in C# .NET, that was more trouble than its worth.

I eventually found my answer at Code Project -- http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/Pop3MailClient.aspx. Downloaded the code and it worked like a charm.

Kaos @ ResortWorld

Cols, Caitlin, Kenneth, Stephanie and I watched the 3pm matinee show of Kaos at Resortworld. Kaos is a full stage production involving singing, dancing and, of course, death-defying acrobat. It is similar in format to a Cirque du Soleil show -- just on a slightly smaller scale, of course. The performers were a mix of European, South American and Asian acrobats.


The Resortworld theater is located in the same complex as the casino. But instead of going straight to the playing area, you take a right and go up the escalator or elevator. The theater looked great. Way much better than Meralco Theater which is quite old. Much bigger than the RCBC Plaza auditorium. The seats were very comfortable and leg room is very generous.


The show was ok. It was Caitlin's first time to watch a "circus". Production value was also good. Ticket price was reasonable. We bought it as a promo a couple of months back at the SMX Travel Expo.

PLDT Billboard

I took a cellphone shot of this PLDT billboard ad along C5. I just find it rather strange. It shows a mom and daughter spending quality time enjoying surfing the Internet. But wait -- what are they surfing? What else but their PLDT telephone utility billing! I know its kinda hard to see from this blog, but the image that seems to "float" out of the screen is really their phone bill.



Uhmmm... I don't know about you guys but viewing utility billings is not really something that I would find enjoyable. Judging by the smiles on their faces, they seem to be having a great time looking at their phone bill. There's something wrong with this ad.