All posts by Dan

Bigger Screens or smaller seats

Ok, flying down to Melbourne again. Today, I’m flying the 7:30 QFA411 A330-300. This was the plane Nik and I wanted to fly to in Business to Singapore last year, but got jibed (both ways) with the older fit out. Today, I’m flying the newer fitted put plane. First thing I noticed when I got in my seat (31K – kinda bummed got pushed back a little further than I’d hoped – at least the flight was on time unlike the 7:00 flight for Melbourne which was still waiting to board at 7:20) 

Anyways, back to the plane, surprisingly larger screen in cattle class, but are the seat smaller? 

The entertainment system has had a refresh with much more responsive touch screen, which means no more having to mash the screen to get a response. Ear jacks are up in front of you so when you get up, you won’t be risking another headphone jack being bent out of place. USB charger is a great, so when I drain my phone at the end of the day playing Pokemon Go, I can charge it on the flight back. 

Well the plane’s about to take off. So I’ll leave it at that. 

Pokemon Go 


Augmented Reality (or AR as the cool kids call it) has been around for many years. What’s interesting is how a popular 90s/2000s video game character manage to revive itself with such little fanfare. What was the secret sauce? Is it because it’s AR, or Pokemon nostalgia, both or something totally different with the new approach? 

I was intrigued by why it’s so popular. Personally having played it on and off for the past 24 hours has me stumped. As someone in their late thirties and have too much on my mind, I just won’t have time to nurture my collection of Pokemon, and the AR bit isn’t really 100% constant AR experience really (you’re only in AR when you catch Pokemon and Battling to keep your Gym) and even then you can turn off AR – and I found myself turning it off more often than not as I feel stupid spinning myself around to try catch a Pokemon. 

For a teenager or 20 something person with little care about parenting, work or sleep, I can see this being incredibly addictive. This is just going to be a fad that last for a few weeks or months. In Australia, they timed it just right with the School Holidays and in the US many are coming off 4th July and into Summer holidays. I would like to see how far this get when it runs later into the year when the hype dies down. 

For now, awesome work in reviving yourself Nintendo, what’s your next trick to keep the streak running? Gaming consoles are dying, other toy brands are branching out beyond just games and into other merchindising. So maybe Nintendo needs to capitalise on this and push out merchindising whilst the iron is hot and create a new generation of Pokemon diehards. 

Refreshed Site

Hi Everyone! Well, it’s been a while since I’ve refreshed this site. I had originally built this site using my own PHP scripts the hard way (you can still have a look at the 2004 version). Since 2004, I’ve had many life changes, got married, moved around a couple of jobs, became a father and recently starting to build a new house. So a lot has changed and need to have a more refreshed look.

So I hope to update everything using WordPress and gradually build out this site with more recent photos, personal projects and techie stuff.

With any luck and advancement of technology to update this with mobile devices, I should have more regular updates.