On this special day, which comes once in a life time, while the numbers 08.08.08 are repeated every 100 years.  I commemorate this day with a new desktop look.  Clean Simple, as how life on this earth should be. 

Its an exciting week for Visual Stylers.  Many releases, with a few transformation pack.  I don’t find them visually appealing, so I will only focus on a couple of notable releases and interestingly, its all dark.

Onixx Blue

Clean, small and a good dark theme. 

Shiftie 2

Good color combination, and another good dark theme.  Options in blue and grey allow users to change colors as the mood changes. 

TRiNIUM VS

Another dark theme, and this ones is totally dark, including the toolbar.  It comes with a sleak styler toolbar as well.

One of the most formidable rule of shopping is not to settle on the first price you see.  I was looking for a skin for my iPhone, and was browsing at one of the IT mall at Hua Qiang Bei.  As I was going up the escalator on the first floor, I spotted the item I wanted, it was RMB 35 for one, with a simple question,’can it be cheaper’, the price drop to RMB 30.  It was a little more than what I was willing to pay for a piece of rubber.  So I soldiered on to the 4th floor and came across another shop, with many more color choices and the price was RMB 15.  With much haggling, the price remained the same.  So I bought two, for the price that I would pay to get one on the first floor.  This is why, never settle for the first price you see.  You never, know, it might be much cheaper just a few floors up.  Oh, by the way, pink is for my wife, so don’t get any funny ideas.

Recently, on my trip to ShenZhen, China, I came across this CNN feature on Cai Guo Qiang.  An artist that imprints his emotions with gunpowder.  The thing that strike me the most was premierly this arts concepts.  During the interview he noted that the biggest challenge for an artist is being original.  That struck me as a bom.  I never thought artist to be like that.  I’ve always regard myself as an artist, because I like to create and appreciate.  But what I’ve created is oftenly inspired from something that I saw.  Something that imprints into my mind and comes out after being diluted and digested.  This certainly brings a new meaning to the word ‘Artist’.  One is only an artist if one creates originally.  Anyone can take something and then make it different, but not many can be original.  Also, being original is one thing, but being original and appreciated as something great that truely sets the ‘real’ artist out from the rest.  I regard myself an artist, its time I stop doing that.  I can aspire to be an artist, till I created something original, then I am a real artist.

Yes, you got it right, I bought this glamour phone for just a little over four hundred ringgit.  I bought it over at Hua Qiang Bei in Shenzhen and it got one year warranty.  I was amaze by the feature this little gadget pack and how it looks and works.  The photo viewing works fine with pinching zooming capability.  The music player goes to album view when the phone is tilted.  This is something that other models could not do.  The cheapest I’ve seen starts at RM3xx and all the way to this model RM4xx.  I found out on the web that this phone’s name was CiPhone and it was a fake that gets as close to the real thing as possible.  Just search for CiPhone at youtube and you can see a wealth of video about this phone.

Out of the box, the device came with a sleve, earphones, charger, usb cable and a user manual.  All looks like the real thing.  You can check out a video I made unpacking this thing.  There are so many “iPhone” models over at Hua Qiang Bei, All the model except this one supports dual sim card and they comes with two batteries.  However they are much thicker and the dimension are much bigger.  But they have much more functions, some could even change song when shake, like the sony handphones when it first introduced. 

There are a couple of things that might turn you off, first there seams to be a lag on this phone, you will notice it on my video.  Secondly, the phone battery indicator can go up and down, especially if we let the phone hibernate, the next time the phone wakes up, you will notice the battery indicator shifts up a little.  This phone only supports single sim card, while other models support dual cards. Lastly, there seams to be a problem with the phone where after some time, the music player would reset the phone whenever I click on the music player icon.  The shop guy first says it was virus, then he said the mp3 format not compatible, which is all loads of BS.  Somehow the Chinese Songs that came with the phone seams to be fine.  So there goes, want perfect working beautiful iPhone, stay away from fakes.  if you dont mind this, then, it is a cheap glamour phone for you.