Finally, what I’ve known for a long time, games are good for you!

Men’s Health Lists : MensHealth.com

. . . grab your joystick.

Not that joystick, but the one attached to your kid’s Xbox. British researchers found that the longer people play video games, the higher their levels of concentration, sometimes equaling a trained athlete’s ability to focus. “Playing video games requires a high level of concentration to be successful, and that seems to transfer to the real world,” says Jo Bryce, Ph.D., the study coauthor.

P.S. The Men’s Health lists breakdown by 1 paragraph per page to make people click their site more is just terrible, absolutely terrible!

My old and trusty Samsung SGH-D900 started getting the hiccups recently as the keys became less responsive. I bought it in 2006 so I forgive it, 3+ years is a reasonable lifetime I guess. So I was ready to spend a few % points of Friday’s P&L on a new phone ;-) I wanted to get a new Samsung since I like their physical and UI design but I also wanted a phone that supports Hebrew, at least in the browser so that when I check Gmail I can view emails. After quite a bit of research and digging around it turned out that most Samsung phones don’t and will not have Hebrew firmware since they aren’t very popular in Israel while Nokia’s and Sony Ericsson’s do. So I started looking at SE. I finally went with the T700.

Mostly because of:

1. It’s cheap, only 7,200 Bhat or about $200.
2. It’s super slim and lightweight at only 10mm thin and 78grams. The thinner and lighter the better.
3. Has everything I need: Quad-band + 3G + music player + camera + a really good built-in HTML browser (NetFront 3.4) + expansion slot up to 8GB.
4. There’s Hebrew firmware for it (another $10 at MBK shopping mall, can also be a DIY job if you know how to use a USB cable and google “debranding’).

So I bought it yesterday and I really like it so far. The screen is only 2″ but is of excellent quality, super bright and clear. The sound quality through the headphones is great, the camera produces good results for a 3.2Mp phone camera, the interface is fast and responsive and very intuitive. It supports java applications and stuff like google maps and geo-tagging through GSM triangulation. What else could I want. OK, it doesn’t have an Apple logo at the back ;-)

So the obvious reaction I’m getting is folks I know is: you should have bought an iPhone. Why didn’t I? Well it’s quite easy, in no particular order:

1. I don’t commute so it’s quite rare that I need to access internet on my phone.
2. I don’t need to bypass an employer’s corporate firewall to secretly check on Twitter / Facebook / Myspace / Jobsdb.com.
3. There’s no 3G in Thailand anyway (well not commercially and over HSDPA/UMTS yet), but there is 2.75G.
4. I’m a cheapskate who doesn’t like spending on status symbols / functionality I don’t use.
5. The iPhone is bigger and heavier without giving me anything extra that I need.
6. I don’t like touch screens.

I’m sure the iPhone is a fantastic phone which lots of people really like and enjoy but it just doesn’t suit my needs now.

So that’s it. I’m enjoying my Sony Ericsson. Maybe I’ll use the 18,000 Baht difference from the iPhone price to get a new travel lense for my Nikon.

I finally got the Company of Heroes Tales of Valor expansion pack. Instead of going to a physical shop I got it online. Via a digital purchase. I really like getting digital versions like this or ebooks instead of the hard physical item (no shipping, yay!). I don’t need a DVD with a plastic cover and a printed manual and I’ve actually lost a few of those during my moves. Zeus knows where’s my AOM CD.

There are a number of places one can buy downloadable games, the main ones seem to be: Steam, Direct2Drive and gamersgate.com, which is where I bought it from. The advatnages I saw for gamersgate was that the game didn’t require any background client running during play like Steam requires, it had no restrictions on international purchase like Direct2Drive and they keep the game for you for download as well as the registration keys forever.

The whole buying experience and downloading process was very fast and easy with payment via paypal and instant availability of the CD Key and a small executable that downloads the game. I already had the previous versions of CoH including the CoH Opposing Fronts expansion so all I needed to do is download the latest patches and apply the activation key in order to unlock the unique campaigns and units and be able to play them in single player and multiplayer.

Looking forward to a fun weekend with the game.

Here are some pics I took over the last few days. We went to Koh Tarutao which is in Satun province in the south of Thailand. I’ve been to Similan before which is also in the Andaman sea but never this further south. From one of the islands you can see Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur is actually nearer than Bangkok. We spent our time mostly hopping from Koh Lipe which is the main island of the Taru tao national park to the other smaller kohs for snorkeling and food. It was a fun trip and a good break.

Click thumbnails to enlarge.

One of the smaller islands of Koh Tarutao

Longtail boats and a crystal clear sea

Sunset on the beach of Koh Lipe

It’s Songrkan holiday here in Thailand so I’m off on vacation for a while. It’s been 4 months since my last vacation so quite overdue. Heading off to the south, there are some awesome spots there I haven’t visited yet.

Had a nice weekend. Started with a relaxing Saturday at home followed by a more “active” Sunday of pub lunch (steak pie + Guinnes at the Barbican) and then having our feet eaten by fish for about an hour, plus half an hour aromatic oil massage.

It was quite an experience. My feet are pretty ticklish so in the beggining I couldn’t stand putting my feet in for more than a few seconds, then after about 5 minutes of in and out I started getting used to the tickling and left my feet in for a while longer. Then started “phase 2″ the longer the feet were in the more fish came over for a nibble, which meant it started feeling like worms or snakes were sliding and crawling all over my feet - so it’s up the and out of the water again for a bit. But those little buggers looked hungry so I plugned my feet in again. Had to shake a few aggressive ones occasionally for the next few minutes but by the time I was in there for about 15min it started feeling pretty pleasant. Towards the end I was verbally encouraging the little fish - oh yes in between those toes feels good, a little more please.

And this is what it looked like as they were eating the dead skin off our feet.

The place is called Cafe de Spa, it’s in Ladprao Bangkok. The fish part is 300 Thai Bhat (~ US$8.50 about a dollar more than that Guinness I had with my lunch) and the optional 30min massage following that was another B300. It’s a pretty good deal, nothing you’d have to take out payday loans for, and very relaxing once you get used to it.

Been watching lots of movies this past week. Yesterday it was Wanted. I thought it was really good. Action packed with some nice plot twists. For the first 20-30min or so I thought the movie was going to be a kind of dark comedy but then it turned into more “serious” action. Anyways, there’s no way of talking much about this movie without spoiling it for people who didn’t see it so if you haven’t and you like action movies then go watch it, it’s a good one.