Pesky email attachment limits!

Chinese New Year is a time of meeting up with relatives, often times ending up snapping photos of 'year-lost' relatives. Inevitably with the time and age that we live in, it has also become a time of exchanging of photos taken with each individuals' cameras when we say goodbye for the year. What happens then if you need to share those photos or even a hefty video?

Let's not have any of those crappy compressed photos sent over Whatsapp or any other messaging client. If you wish to send several large files over to your relatives or friends, you'll then have to send multiple emails to them because of limitations in email attachment sizes. What happens when you only wish to send one email with all your attachments? Here's what you'll be facing.

Of the three popular email providers, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, you'll be looking at

Provider	Attachment Size Limit	Workaround	Storage Size
Outlook.com	25MB	OneDrive.com	15GB
Yahoo Mail	25MB	Dropbox.com	2GB
Gmail	25MB	Google Drive	15GB

There are actually 3 email providers (I'm sure there's more) that allow attachment limits over 25MB. If you're interested, they are GMX, Lycos Mail and Inbox.com - their attachment limit is 50MB. Of the 3, GMX provides unlimited storage, Lycos offers 3GB free and Inbox.com is a 5GB offering.

The problem is unless your recepient is using one of those 3 email providers, they won't be able to receive your 50MB attachment. Which brings us back to the top 3 free email providers. Their workaround over the 25MB attachment limit is to use cloud storage. Outlook and Gmail have their respective cloud storage services, OneDrive and Google Drive, while Yahoo Mail has partnered with Dropbox.

There is always the option to purchase more storage space if needed but I'm going to focus on the free options. It should also be noted that the various cloud storage providers offer a variety of options to 'earn' free space.

Dropbox does so via a referral system, 500MB for each friend you successfully refer (yes they have to sign up!) up to a limit of 32 successful referrals. Linking your Facebook and Twitter accounts will net you 250MB extra storage. Using Dropbox's Mailbox service will earn you another 1GB increase. Complete the tour of Dropbox's features to earn 250MB, enabling the camera upload function will grow your storage space by 3GB. I remember purchasing my Samsung tablet/smartphone and getting a 50GB increase (alas! there is an expiry date on that increase). Alternatively, purchase 1TB of storage space for SGD$9.99/mth. 
Total free space: 22.5GB

OneDrive offers 15GB out of the box with the option of gaining 500MB for each successful referral of a friend - up to a limit of 10 friends. Similarly, if you link it to your phone's camera roll, you'll gain 3GB of space. If you subscribe to Microsoft's Office 365, you'll get 1TB of storage.
See sidenote at the bottom. 
Total free space: 23GB (223GB)

Google Drive is a 15GB offering and is closely tied in to all that Google has to offer. That 15GB is shared across your Gmail, Google Calendar, Youtube and Google+ accounts, so it does go pretty quickly. There is however no referral system but I've been lucky enough to get 10GB free from downloading Quick Office (apparently that offer is over) or if you purchase a Chromebook, you'll get 100GB free for 2 years. That said, if you're smart about it, Google Drive's 15GB could last a long way because, photos below 2048x2048 resolution and videos below 15 minutes in duration don't count towards your limit. Google documents that others have shared with you similary do not count towards your storage limit. 
Total free space: 15GB

Coming back to the task in mind of sending a huge file attachment to your friend or relative.

Start up any of the email providers, type in your email message as you normally would, attach all the photos that you wish to send and each email provider will popup a pretty similar message.

Gmail

Outlook.com

Yahoo Mail

Proceed as suggested by clicking 'Send using Google Drive', 'Go to OneDrive.com' and 'OK' and your photos will be upload to each cloud storage. Your friend/relative will then receive an email with your attachments - either as a link to the photos that you've shared in your cloud storage or a link whereby upon clicking, they will download the photos from your cloud storage. Voila! It's that simple.

An interesting sidenote, OneDrive has two current offers going on at the moment that could gain you quite a bit of cloud storage space. Not sure how long they'd last though.

1)  If you're a Dropbox user and you install OneDrive, and allow OneDrive to verify by sending a document to your Dropbox account, you will gain 100GB for a year. Find the link here.

2) If you signup for Bing Rewards, you will gain 100 GB for 2 years. Sadly this is only open to US citizens but use a free VPN and workaround that if you are keen. Link here.

Getting antsy ...

It's been a while ...

 

We submitted our application on 11 Jan.
Went for the health check on 23 Jan.
It's not 21 Feb and we haven't heard a peep - is that good or bad?

From advice garnered off the web, it seems long waits aren't unusual but still ... can't help getting antsy.

We do know that the health results have been sent in though.
Logging into ImmiAccount and checking in, we saw the following messages for the 4 of us

Meeting the health requirement

Health has been finalised for this person for this visa subclass based on the information provided to the department. If this person needs to do anything further to meet the health requirement, they will be contacted by the department. There is no need to contact the department at this time concerning this matter.

No information though on whether we've passed or failed.

Renewable Energy ...

As an avid fan of city building sims and one who steadfastly refuses to place a coal, oil or nuclear power plant - I frequently opt for wind turbines or solar panels, at least until my city threatens to do away with my services! Then I plop down those mean electricity providers, sighing at the e-pollution they create but I never stop dreaming of renewable energy.

Go green!

but I provide MORE power!

ONE wind turbine :P

Which is why it was so good to read during this week that two tech behemoths are doing their part to harness renewable energy.

Google will be harnessing wind power to run its HQ - Wired.com | UtilityDive

Apple instead is turning to solar power, purchasing enough to power all its California stores, offices, HQs and a data center. - Bloomberg

Even in going green, they differ!

Not going into details but suffice to say they are throwing boatloads of money into renewable energy and I commend the effort. Now if only Singapore can do more to conserve electricity - perhaps by changing all public corridor lights with motion detectors.

I think I'll do my part now, shut down my computer, switch off the lights and head for bed.

Facebook 'Legacy Contacts'

Would it bother you if you left this world and your Facebook presence lives on?

I have to admit, it bothers me to a certain extent. My opinion about this was formed in no small part by the experience I had trying to get Facebook to delete my mothers' account when she passed away. I was lucky that I managed to gain access to the account. It really does nothing for the grieving process when accounts are kept alive.

Basically if you don't have the password, you'll get nowhere with them - I don't blame them actually, for all they know, every attempt to gain access to an account could have malicious intent. To get them to shut down the account, evidence of death - i.e. death certificate would have to be provided to Facebook before they would take any action. You can find the relevant link here.

Which is why I think that Facebooks' decision to introduce 'Legacy Contact' is a great thing. You can now finally decide what happens to your Facebook account when you die as opposed to the method above where evidence must be provided of what has happened to your loved ones. You decide, now, when you're alive by assigning ONE person as your legacy contact, in other words, there's no backup for your backup.

Your legacy contact will be informed about your decision

What can your legacy contact do? They can write a post to tell the world you've passed on, change your profile pic and respond to any new friend requests. They can also download an archive of all your posts and photos you've posted. They cannot however access the private messages, edit your previous posts or remove any photos you've posted. They also do not have the authorization to delete your account.

So what happens if you do not name anyone to manage your digital accounts in your will or make use of Facebooks' legacy contact? If Facebook somehow finds out that you've passed on, it will freeze your account and leave your posts and pictures at the privacy settings you last settled on - they call this memorialized accounts.

So what are you waiting for? Take control today. Head over to Settings, Security and then Legacy Contact. Currently it is only availble in the US, I'll be getting this done once it's ready for users in Singapore.

Not available in SG yet!

If you're interested, Google has its' own version of Legacy Contact. It's known as Inactive Account Manager, learn more about it here. One of the differences that stand out is the ability to set a timeout period, which starts after your last sign-in and once it's exceeded, the account status would be seen as inactive.

Singapore featuring in the movie Hitman: Agent 47

In the year that Singapore is celebrating its' 50th birthday, I think it is only fitting that it's being featured in a movie, specifically Hitman: Agent 47.  Agent 47 has its roots in computer gaming and it is going to be interesting to see how it translates into a movie. Catch the trailer below!

Filming for the movie began back in 2014.

Filming along Robinson Road

Which yielded the following scenes. I'll leave it for yourself to decide when was the last time you saw that many cabs together in one place.

ITE also featured in the movie. Now how many schools can claim to have appeared in a Hollywood production?

 In the next picture, featuring a fight scene, looking out past the window shows us more of Singapore's buildings.

The next image shows a night time view of the 6-star condominium, The Sail.

I like the next pic as you can see the Esplanade, ArtScience Museum and the Helix Bridge. Does a pretty good job of showing off the Singapore skyline.

Last of all, is the promotional poster for the movie. Although I think the buildings are not in their correct geological locations, it's still a fantastic poster.

The movie is due out on the 28th of August in the US so hopefully we'll get to watch it in Singapore about that time too. Definitely gonna catch this at the cinemas just to see how well Singapore comes off in the movie.

Vaccinations

The furore in the US about whether vaccinations should be made compulsory is truly dumbfounding for a Singaporean.

Over here it is not even an issue or at least not one that I am aware of but considering that I am mostly unaware of a lot of issues though, maybe it is a bigger issue than I am aware of?

What I do know as a parent of two children is that there is a comprehensive immunisation program in place. There is even a National Immunisation Registry in Singapore, I kid you not. As you can see from the picture below, immunisations are clearly mapped out and administered to children from birth all the way up to 11 years of age.

As a teacher, I can also attest that regular health checkups are conducted in schools and for certain years, immunisations are administered in schools.

I also wondered as I was reading the news if there were parents opting out of vaccinations in Singapore? A quick Google search turned up scant details.

My personal viewpoint? Why would anyone not vaccinate their little ones against the infectious diseases out there in the world? I understand that we cannot keep them safe from everything but if there's a vaccination for a known infectious disease, surely you'd take it yourself, much less deny it to your little ones.

As I understand it, opponents against vaccinations often quote the following reasons;

1. effectiveness, safety and necessity of vaccinations
2. compulsory vaccinations go against individual rights and religious principles
3. the discredited but oft mentioned claims that the MMR (measles) vaccination causes autism.

It is pretty amazing that something so routine in one country can be so roundly debated in another. I have always believed that to live in society, we have to live by certain rules. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about society prescribing the length of your hair or anything like that but surely when the decision revolves around curbing the spread of an infectious disease, we should all be able to agree that it is necessary.

Which was why it was so disheartening to hear politicians come out and attribute it to a matter of choice. I certainly hope that sort of mentality never takes hold over here.

In my humble opinion it is pretty clear cut.

If you're anti-vaccinations and decide to live in a cabin up in the mountains all by yourself, good on you. You should never be forced to vaccinate if you don't want to.

However if you've decided that you want to be part of society, live around people, go to the cinemas, walk in the parks and like the cases that triggered this discussion, visit Disneyland, then it's a moot point, you have a responsibility to keep others around you safe.

This article over here, claims that in some US schools, vaccination rates have fallen below 50%. That is a pretty shocking statistic. If your child was in one of those schools, contracted measles from an unvaccinated child and unfortunately died from it, how would you feel? You could sue the parents, rant at whatever god you believe in and cry your heart out but the damage would have been done.

Vaccinations aim to prevent that and it is sad we are allowing disinformation cloud our judgement.

If you're still reading this and still in doubt. Let someone more eloquent than me convince you about vaccinations. Roald Dahl, the author, lost a daughter to measles and wrote an impassioned letter about vaccinations - you can read that here.

I leave you with a simple infographic.

Singapore Scenery

Popped by Tiong Bahru the other day for some chwee kueh and bak kut teh and after that spent a little time walking around the neighbourhood. It's pretty fascinating and at times it almost felt like I was taking a walk back in time - not as much with regards to the buildings but to the pace of life.

Trawling around a bit more, I was struck by how the alley in between two blocks resembled the one behind my parents' place. Except the concrete path back then was a lot wider. Don't see many of these anymore, including those metal structures for drying clothes.

Also noticed many hip eateries catering to the hippie crowd popping up all over the place. Can't wait to explore them soon but at the same time hoping that Tiong Bahru manages to retain its identity as it changes with time.

Fruit Juices

One of the changes made to my diet has been to consume more fruits. Kiwis are supposed to reduce blood pressure so I've been trying to fit one into my diet when I get to visit the hawker centre. The darn things are so expensive though - they are being sold at $1.50 each. The profit margins must be pretty amazing.

For good measure, I've also replaced my daily cuppas of tea, grass jelly drinks and packet drinks with a single cup of fruit juice. Tried combination number 7 - mango and milk but that didn't really catch my fancy so I switched to number 29 - pineapple and rock melon, that went down a lot better.

As I was taking the picture below, the Fruit Juice Aunty wanted to make sure I was just using the picture for my own reference. When I assured her that that was my intention, she opened up, sharing that she had an album of another 100 combinations that she had not had the time to put up. 100 combinations! It's like playing the game of Alchemy (found a playable version on the web, try it out)

It is weird though because my late uncle used to sell fruit and juices but I never remembered his business thriving in the manner of this stall I was patronising. Perhaps it had to do with location. Hmmnn.

A drone for the boy

I have been getting my birthday shopping done early this year. The bad thing about getting gifts from online portals is that I feel a need to give them out as soon as I receive the items, in order to test them.

Anyway, this year the boy received a drone. He had seen one a few weeks ago and remarked that he would like to own one - as I was fresh out of gift ideas, I was only too happy to oblige.

I picked the SYMA X5X from Qoo10 and it soon made its way over from China. The drone itself is entirely made out of plastic and is very lightweight - making it hard to control the drone in even moderately strong winds.

I also ordered 3 extra batteries. Extremely glad I did that because each battery only provided between 10 to 15 minutes of flight time.

The remote control requires 4 AA batteries

The drone itself comes with one battery

The camera module that comes with this drone is passable, just don't expect high definition videos. There's a switch on the remote control that lets you snap a pic or start a video recording. There is however no indication on the LCD panel of the remote control of whether the camera has taken a picture or whether the video is recording, so that's kinda hit and miss.

Getting the drone to fly was a breeze, getting it to go where we wanted it to go, not so much. It was a pretty windy day though at West Coast Park, so we'll give it another go soon. Hopefully it'll go better than this time and I won't go crashing into trees as much.

We also captured phots and video footage using the camera but we crashed so frequently that neither of them was worth putting up. Better luck next time I guess. Already itching to capture some aerial videos of my neighbourhood.

D doing a better job than me!

Baking the Kindle under the Singaporean sun

We were at West Coast Park today resting under the shade, catching up on our reading. J was reading a paperback while I was on my Kindle. While she was taking a break from reading, I compared how the Kindle fared against a good'ole paperback in two settings - under shade and out in the open sun.

Press and hold Ctrl while tapping '+' to zoom in (alternatively, press and hold Ctrol while scrolling the middle mouse button upwards). When done, press Ctrl-0 to revert to normal view.

Side by side under shade

Close-up while under shade

Next up, under direct sunlight. I know, who reads under direct sunlight but since I was there and the book and Kindle was available. What can I say? I was curious!

In the first pic below, I cranked up the lighting to the highest setting and in the second, set it down as low as it would go.

Under direct sunlight with lighting set to maximum

Under direct sunlight with lighting set to lowest

As you can see, I was pretty pleased with the results. The Kindle fared pretty well even in direct sunlight. There was no glare and  no difficulty in discerning the text. I would have been squinting by then if I was trying to read on my tablet. In fact, S was having difficulty playing Minecraft on the tablet I'd loaned her - reflections and glare greatly reducing the enjoyment there.

Looking forward to many more happy reading sessions in the outdoors!

Kindle PaperWhite vs Kindle Voyage

I got this as a gift for my daughter as she too loves reading. I love my Kindle Voyage and S loves her PaperWhite. Having the two devices together, I thought I'd throw up a simple picture comparison.

Setup was virtually the same for both the kindles with the only exception being that since the Paperwhite was still tied to my Amazon account, there was an additional step of setting it as my childs' tablet.

Voyage's packaging is slightly smaller

Paperwhite - no pagepress buttons along the sides

Voyage on the left, Paperwhite on the right

Honestly speaking if you're choosing between the two readers, the difference is negligible. Voyage boasts of an automatic light setting, higher dpi screen, different locations for the power buttons, different backs and pagepress buttons - at least these are the three differences that jump out at me.

Size-wise the Paperwhite is large but not so large that holding it is uncomfortable. S who is 10 holds it comfortably in one hand. Tactile-wise, the screen on the Paperwhite is rougher, I am not sure if it was meant to simulate the feel of actual paper but coming from using regular smartphones and the Voyage, it took a little getting used to. It's not a bad feel just different.

It is also worth nothing that I feel that the Voyage's screen handles reflection of light a touch better than the PaperWhite.

If you look at the last picture, you'll also find the difference if you purchase a Kindle with Special Offers. The Voyage on the left is without Special Offers while the PaperWhite was purchased with it. It'll appear as a little banner on the bottom of the screen only on your home screen. Ads will not appear when you are reading. The only other time you will see Special Offers is as a screensaver when the device is in sleep mode.

My advice is to purchase with Special Offers and then if you find it that much of an irritant, then pay to remove it via your Amazon account. Why? Because when you ship the item over from USA to Singapore, you have to declare the dollar value of the item, which is taxable. A cheaper device leads to less taxes and the removal fee for the Special Offers which is done via the website is non-taxable.

Petrol prices in Singapore and failure of the market mechanism

Petrol prices in Singapore are very peculiar. In fact it wouldn't even be wrong to say that petrol price in Singapore is very weird, given the way the prices seem to move in tandem. What has irked some drivers though is the fuel price mechanism. When crude oil was falling recently (a 41% fall in prices in fact), pump prices fell by 15% between July to December 2014. Our minister for trade and industry, Mr Lim said and I quote below;

Here's another article basically saying the same thing.

Let us not fool ourselves, given the many times price increases have been attributed to the rise in crude oil prices, done so no less by the petroleum companies themselves.

It is not just the percentage of change seen in petrol prices but the pace at which they change. When crude oil was falling, one of the reasons presented to us was that the petroleum companies practiced hedging which is why consumers were not seeing the full effect of the fall in petroleum prices. Over the last few days though, crude oil shot up and it was no surprise that pump prices were revised almost overnight to reflect the higher crude oil prices. Hedging, after all, should also protect us from sudden jumps in crude oil prices or our petroleum companies so daft that they are hedging when prices are high and refusing to hedge when prices are low?

This is an untenable situation and as the population becomes more educated, such 'crude' attempts to mask what is simple price-gouging must no longer be acceptable. There must be greater transparency in how petrol prices are arrived at.

Having said that though, Singaporeans are not the only ones to suffer from the recent rise in crude oil prices - Motorists in New Zealand and Australia were similarly greeted with a rise in pump prices.

Whilst we are talking about Australia. There is an illuminating article about the Australian fuel market. Why should it concern you? Because, Singapore's price of unleaded petrol is apparently a key pricing indicator for Australian prices.Even more importantly, the Australian price of petrol = the Singapore price of petrol (their purchase price) + shipping costs + Australian taxes (38 cents per litre + 10% GST). From that little nugget and the chart of information it can be discerned that Singapore has been selling petrol to Australia at a price range of AUD$0.70 cents in Jan 2013 to AUD$0.40 in Jan 2015.

Even bearing in mind that the Australian currency had an excellent run in that time, you would be expecting the Australians to be paying prices similar to Singaporeans right? Wrong. This little chart here shows you the prices Australians have been been paying recently. Let us pick out Brisbane as an example because it has the highest price out of all the capital cities at AUD$1.288. Google tells me that 1 AUD$ is equivalent to SGD$1.05, which translates to a price of SGD$1.36. Now tell me, dear fellow Singaporeans, when was the last time you paid $1.36 for petrol? Current price information pulled from Shell Singapore's website (as of 7th Feb 2015) shows a nett price of $1.8.

If you consider that only a few weeks ago, some Australians were paying AUD$0.997 (SGD$1.05) for a litre of petrol, I think it strikes home the disparity in the way our petrol is being priced.

Any logical person after all would assume that the Australians who are importing some petrol from Singapore and who have a longer distance to transport petrol from port to pumps would be paying a higher price but apparently it's not so. Is the distance from Jurong Island to our pumps so fraught with danger that there is some special tax pushing the price up?

Is there even any reason, other than downright profiteering that sees Singaporeans paying for petrol at 4 times over the price that we are exporting it to other countries? An oft cited reason has been rising land costs keeping petrol prices at a high premium in Singapore. If that is the case, this must be something that must be looked at by the Government.

To summarize, in June 2014, a barrel of oil cost S$150, price of petrol (95) was $2.28. Recently a barrel of oil cost S$78.20, price of petrol (95) is $1.8. A 47.8% reduction in crude oil prices has been badly reflected in a 21% reduction in petrol prices.