Customising the Treo 500v

This has taken me some time to figure out, mostly because there doesn’t seem to be very much interest (at least in the internet vocal enthusiast crowd) about this phone. In fact, the net is so quiet about this that it’s almost as if someone is actively deleting anything that has to do with this phone. Anyway, here’s what I’ve done to customise my phone to suit how I like to use it.

(EDIT AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

The “carousel” menu

I like this menu, but I don’t like that you can’t change the programs that it displays. From the “Recent Applications” screen you can click on the right softkey to go into the “Main Menu”, but that’s time wasted waiting for the carousel to load and go away. The name of the carousel menu app is “Hotlist.exe”, and to change the program that is launched when you press the “Start” key, go to:

\ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Shell \ Rai \:MSHotlist\ 1

…and change the value to a different launcher. I used the app that shows the “Main Menu”, which is called “Gridview.exe”.

The side hardware button

The Treo 500v ships with the side hardware button (not the volume buttons, the one below those) not linked to any program on a click, but will launch Pocket IE when held down for a time. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for this except that either Vodafone or Palm forgot about it when then were setting up the phone. You can change it so that when you press down on the button it will launch one program, but when you press and hold down it will launch another. To do the former you have to change these two keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Apps \ KeyAssignment \ Click \ 195
“Open” = “\ Program Files \ YourProgram.exe”
“Remap” = dword: 00000000

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Apps \ KeyAssignment \ Default \ Click \ 195
“Open” = “\ Program Files \ YourProgram.exe”
“Remap” = dword: 00000000

…and to change the latter:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Apps \ KeyAssignment \ PressAndHold \ 195
“Open” = “\ Program Files \ YourProgram.exe”
“Remap” = dword: 00000000

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Apps \ KeyAssignment \ Default \ PressAndHold \ 195
“Open” = “\ Program Files \ YourProgram.exe”
“Remap” = dword: 00000000

I’ve changed my phone so that it launches the “carousel” menu on a click, and the camera on press and hold:

Click — Open: “\Windows\Hotlist.exe”
PressAndHold — Open: “\Windows\Camera.lnk”

The Vodafone Live! softkey

I bought my phone unlocked from eBay, and I don’t use Vodafone, so it’s pretty pointless to have a button devoted to a link I can’t use. I do, however, lean pretty heavily on my tasks program, so I changed it to launch Tasks instead:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ software \ microsoft \ home \ key \ 113
“Default” = “Whatever the label should be”
“Open” = “\ Program Files \ YourProgram.exe”

You should be able to change the icon as well with the “IconResDll” and “IconResID” keys, but I’m not sure where the icon for the Tasks program is, and it’s not that important for me anyway.

Start Menu icon order

The last thing I did was to put all the apps that are useful but aren’t used too often (like the calculator, voice notes etc) in a folder in the Start Menu. But folders are placed low in the list, with Windows prioritising application icons. To change the order, and to “pin” my “Quicklist” folder to the top of the menu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Shell \ StartMenu \ Order

…and edit the “Order” key by adding (or removing) a line from the list.

That’s all the changes I’ve made to my phone so far, and it’s working pretty well for me. I’m no expert though, so you make these changes AT YOUR OWN RISK. I also had a fair bit of help to find these myself, the solution for the “Start” button I found here, the left hardware button here and the Start Menu order here.

Hope this works as well for you as it does for me.

What’s In A Name?

1. Think about your own name. Did you ever have trouble spelling it as a kid? Does your name bear any resemblance to something unfortunate that haunted you through school (and possibly beyond)? Does your name have any stereotypes associated with it?

2. Names seem so straight-forward. It was probably the first thing you leant how to say and spell, it’s possibly one of the words you will hear and say most often in your lifetime — beaten only by hello and goodbye; or in my case: fuck.

3. Consider my name. By birth in Hong Kong, my name is Kung Chun Hin:

0802_name.jpg

4. When I was seven, my family moved to Australia. I remember a conversation I had with my family, talking about what English names my sister and I should take on. I first wanted “Peter”, but Mum thought that “Peter” was a name for triad punks (nevermind that my Dad’s name is the Dutch version of “Peter”). Anyway, such was my level of English (zero) and imagination (sizable, but not in English) that my next choice was “John”, and so it stuck, and I named myself “John Chun Hin Kung”.

5. Over the course of time and several run-ins with, err, less worldly Government officials, I took to hyphenate my middle names; apparently when confronted with “John Chun Hin Kung”, some people couldn’t figure out which was my middle name and which was my surname. So my name became “John Chun-Hin Kung”, which is what appears on my passport.

6. Just before I came to Japan, I stopped by Hong Kong to visit family, and to get my Hong Kong permanent ID card, which gives me the Right of Abode in Hong Kong. The officials there were very helpful; they understood that some Western officials were, err, unhelpful and easily confused. So the name on my ID card was “Kung, John Chun-hin”.

7. When I got to Japan, Japanese officals were far more strict about how names were recorded, and my name became “Kung John Chun-Hin” (note the lack of comma after my surname). This was fine, it’s close enough to my passport and how I’m known in Australia. The trouble only came to bear when I was getting married.

8. According to government officials here, “John Chun Hin Kung”, “John Chun-Hin Kung”, “Kung, John Chun-hin” and “Kung John Chun-Hin” were all different people. Order and punctuation were very important, any deviatiation could cause terrible confusion. And if you have ever dealt with Japanese beauracracy, you’d know what I mean. If not, imagine you have no legs, and you were placed at the end of a long gravel driveway and told to crawl to the house. It gets old pretty quick.

9. And it gets better — it’s generally custom for the wife to change her surname to match mine, but since Japanese uses Chinese characters, does she use my romanised surname, or the original Chinese? I would prefer Chinese, but then that doesn’t match any of our documents so far, so that would cause that “terrible confusion”. Luckily for us, the changing of her name is a custom, not a requirement.

10. Add to this a new dilemma — it has become popular for the Chinese to keep the order of their names, and add their English name to the front, so in my case that would be “John Kung Chun Hin”. I really like this, it keeps the original order while conforming to Western standards. And officials now are more aware of non-Western names, and it’s a lot easier now than it has ever been. But because of a choice made in necessity when I was a teenager, I’m stuck with the name that was shaped by others. And one’s name is, in the end, all that one has; everything else can be lost or stolen or given away, but a name stays true. I just wish I could have the name that best represents me.

Why only 20% of Japanese people vote in elections

1. The Japanese Foreign Minister, Masahiko Komura, on Japan’s renewed whaling effort after abandoning plans to hunt 50 humpback whales:

“Japan has its own culture as much as Australia does and since [whaling] involves public sentiment, it’s not an issue we can resolve by confusing each other using logic.”

2. Wow. Did the Japanese Foreign Minister just blame Japan’s whaling on the Japanese public?

3. I’ve lived in Japan for almost 2 years now, and I’ve met many many Japanese people, and I’ve asked many of them about how they feel about whaling and whale meat, and I’ve heard a fairly wide range of opinions on the matter — but I’ve never ever met a single Japanese person who feels that whaling is their divine right. In fact, most Japanese people that I’ve met don’t eat whale meat, doesn’t like the taste of whale meat, and quite frankly wouldn’t notice if whale meat just disappeared from menus and supermarket shelves. This, from another opinion piece in the Herald by Dr Kumi Kato of UoQ:

“The claim by the Japanese Government that whale meat is part of Japanese culture is true in that it existed in this small-scale, community-based coastal whaling similar to the hunts of indigenous groups such as the Makah and Inuit, but this is, in my opinion, clearly separate from the large-scale industrial whaling conducted on the high seas.

If the Government is seriously committed to the maintenance of cultural tradition, the priority would be on the sustainable livelihood practices of coastal community fisheries, which may include a very limited number of whale hunts. It is human arrogance to assume harvest of any natural resource as a right but, if an inherent cultural right is to be granted to anyone, it would be the coastal communities.”

4. I think it would be safe of me to say that the Japanese coastal communities never hunted in the Southern Ocean, since, you know, the Southern Ocean is a billion miles away.

5. On the other hand, every single Japanese person I’ve met hates their government, and hates their politicians. TV shows are created with the express purpose of inviting political representatives on so that powerful TV personalities and famous comedians can call them stupid. The rampant disregard of the political elite for the thoughts and welfare of their constituents is, well, feudal.

6. And when their own ministers show such incredible arrogance, who could blame them?

Our Engagement

“Hi, I’m John.” ‘Oh, hi, I’m Iku.” Slight befuddlement cross my face – “Iku, like go. But a different kanji.”

1. Who knew what would come of that?

2. On October 14th, 2007, at around 2am, after a night out and just hours before we had to get up to go to the Sake Festival, I proposed to Iku. It had been just six months since that fateful day in April, beneath the cherry blossom trees on a slightly chilly Saturday evening. To be honest, I didn’t make much of our meeting at that time; seating arrangements and social politics prevented us from speaking. It wasn’t until later, when Iku and her friends were leaving that I briefly spoke to her. I had been walking from the toilet back to our spot, they were leaving for another bar, when one of Iku’s coworkers said:

“Oh we didn’t meet before. And you’re cute!” Me, grinning like an idiot, slightly taken aback, “Oh, so are you,” Noticing Iku in the background, “and you too!” ‘So where’re you headed?” I ventured “To Mac, you should come. Bye!”

3. A couple hours later, after I’d dispensed with a few more drinks, I headed to Mac, partly intrigued by the randomness of that last encounter and partly because I was all greased up and ready for a big night. At Mac I bumped into our friend, Naoko, who unbeknownst to me had already spoken of me to Iku.

‘One of my coworkers think you’re cute,” she said “I know, she told me.” “No, not that one, the other one. Go talk to her!” “Well she’s talking that other guy over there,” I countered, “Don’t be a baby! I’ll go get her!’

4. She went, she grabbed Iku by the arm, and the next thing I knew I had her in mine.

5. We talked about ourselves, of our interests, and of inconsequential things, and half hour or so slid by. She had to work in the morning, so we exchanged numbers and said our goodbyes. I stayed out later, getting home in the morning, sleeping off the hangover for the rest of my weekend, and thinking about who I can ask about this new girl I’d met. I spent the week grilling anyone who knew her for any little it of information they knew. We agreed to meet the next weekend, again at Mac, so come Saturday night I was tired and nervous and seriously in need of a drink.

6. Iku had thought that I would be coming with friends, but I came alone. She was there with a bunch of her friends, who were all looking at me without looking, totally curious about that Japanese looking boy who couldn’t speak Japanese. I was keyed up, full of nervous energy, but we settled into a great groove of conversation, discovering that we had almost everything in common. We got drinks, got drunk, started dancing, and when I shyly reached to hold her closer, she came willingly. I haven’t let her go since.

7. The next day we met for dinner, the Wednesday after we made it official, a week later I confessed my love. A month after I asked her to move in, couple months later she did. I met her parents, she met mine in Australia, we started sharing a life together. Barely six months have passed and I can’t remember what life was like before her; it was not so much going from Black and White to Technicolor as being able to see after an eternity of blindness. I hate waking alone, and my favourite time of day is when I come home to find her there, with her cute librarian glasses and a ready grin.

8. I asked her once when she fell in love with me, and she said it was when she saw my photographs on my website. Iku, also an avid photographer, believes that you can see a person’s personality reflected in their photography, and once she saw mine she knew I was the one.

9. When she said that, I knew she was the one too.

So, a week in Australia, and what have I learnt?

Koala shaped chocolates, with exception to Caramello Koalas, are really hard to find.

However Koala shaped everything else is everywhere.

The old crows that work at Myer at Miranda are still as rude as I remembered them to be.

And on that note, people still stare at me in Miranda. Yes, I’m short and have black hair and I don’t look like you, Ms-born-in-the-Shire-die-in-the-Shire-middle-aged-”but-still-young-at-heart”-shivelled-up-crow, so stop staring.

Happily, I don’t get stared at anywhere else. That’s progress for ya.

But most people now think I’m Japanese. Or at least a foreigner. Including Flight Attendants. Who are Australian. Even with my accent, which I have back, in full force maaaate.

Speaking of progress, a funny thing happened when we walked through the city on our first day — neither of us felt like we’d left Japan. Because walking down George St all we saw were Asians — everywhere! Where did they all come from? Did I just not notice before? It felt like we were walking through Roppongi on a Saturday afternoon than walking through Sydney.

Did that sound really racist?

Speaking of Asians, I can now no longer pick where in Asia someone comes from. The cross-breeding of fashion and trends from different Asian countries have done away with that — although you can still pick a Chinese family from the amount of noise we make in public places. Especially restaurants and places where we can take photos of each other.

And on fashion, I have somehow become more metrosexual. It pains me. And provides my sister with an unnatural amount of amusement.

And I missed Chinese food far more than I realised. Though I don’t miss the way it accumulates around the waste line.

Another surprising thing about Sydney — the trains were working ok. They mostly came on time, they were relatively clean and fast. Unfortunately they were really expensive, but you can’t have everything.

Food in Sydney is also expensive. As are drinks. And film, electronics, games, books, hotels, ferries, and just about everything else. I think it might actually be cheaper to live in Japan.

Sydney Airport staff are great — efficient, friendly, and helpful. Why can’t the rest of the damn country be like that?

I miss my dog. And my friends. And my ex-coworkers; though I don’t miss the work so much. But most of all my dog, who’s pushing 13 and has gone deaf and kind of blind. God I love that little guy, I hope he hangs on long enough for me to see him next time I come back to Australia.

0709_karma.jpg

Asia, the graveyard of western popular culture

1. A few days ago a friend who was holidaying in Bali sent me this message:

2. “The scene: quiet bar in Ubud, Bali. The soundtrack: “How Do You Talk to an Angel?”. It’s the song that won’t die!”

3. Indeed. I’ve been to Indonesia twice now, and while I have only spent a cumulative total of 32 days there there has been some eye-opening music experiences — and I don’t mean the ethnic local music kind. Ever wondered what Maroon 5 sounded like in Engrish? I didn’t, but I found out several times. Did you know that The Spin Doctors is still together? And touring? And speaking of touring, Foreigner, Whitesnake, and by God Michael Jackson have all toured Japan in the last 12 months. Marty Friedman from Megadeth lives in Tokyo. While you’re at it Billy Blanks’ new fitness video, Billy’s Boot Camp, is so fucking popular that in the space of one week I had some 20 people volunteer that they have used the video. Someone, please, shoot me.

4. (And, as my friend notes, Jakarta sports its own fair share of anachronisms: [Timezone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timezone(videoarcades), Sizzler, Fido Dido (when was Fido bloody Dido popular anyway?), and a tenacious fondness for Frente.)

5. And it’s not just music and fitness videos, cartoon characters are all the rage as well. While the rest of the world may be fixated on Japanimation, the Japanese is fixated on Disney. Oh yes, Mickey might be an arthritic geriatric mouse, but boy does he sell. So does Winnie the Pooh (a.k.a Pooh-san), Stitch (as in Lilo and Stitch), Tweety, Miffy and Gaspard et Lisa, to name a few.

6. (And that’s not including the home-grown characters — Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, Charmy Kitty and the rest of the Sanrio stable are still hard at work earning Mr Sanrio his dinner.)

7. But perhaps there’s a shift happening; Asian movies are finding its way into Western cinemas, Asian music is starting to find traction overseas, Asian actors are finding their way onto Western screens and into Western minds. East and West are merging, interwined in a web of images and sounds and thoughts and ideas, creating a new mosaic of identity: one defined not by the geography of past centuries, but one where we can be anything, limited only by what we are willing to accept.

8. And what will we do with our cherished notion of nationality? Will it be thrown out, or incorporated into a wider notion of “humanality”? Or am I just making words up? We are certainly living in interersting times.

June

1. Summer, in all it’s humid glory, is here. It’s actually not quite as hot as I remembered it last year, but it’s plenty hot enough for everyone. Though I do really love summer, the humidity makes it feel like a sauna but I prefer it to the dry furnace heat of the Australian summer — and I’m less likely to get sunburnt just sticking my head out the window. The Ozone Layer is really great like that.

2. (It’s so humid that at night, it fogs. At 24 Celcius.)

3. Summer never travels alone, so trailing its tshirt-tails are the festivals and festivities that happen around summer. Beginning of this month was Tokasan, which celebrates the coming of summer, where everyone dresses up in their best Yukatas and enjoy the street stalls and street food and street drinking. And dancing, as my friend Dan found, who looked his, err, best, in his man-Yukata dancing with the old ladies. He lives in a country town after all.

4. The beginning of the month also saw the leaving of two close work mates, and the arrival of a new one. It’s always sad to see people go, and it can be difficult to deal with friendships as a transient experience. But thanks to the magic of Facebook and email, they’re never that far away. Later this month my best friend here will leave for home, and tears may well be shed. *sob*

5. But it wasn’t all bad news. Fireworks are legal here, and people here love nothing more than to go down to the river and run around with sparklers and shoot off some explosives. So last weekend we did as the locals did, and went to the park to play with explosives. While drinking a lot. And I mean a lot. We also climbed trees, and you can see the photos here.

The Merry Month of May

1. ‘Tis be a merry month, for today is my birthday! Happy birthday to me! Yesterday a big group of us celebrated with a big big picnic by the river in the Peace Park, enjoying the spring sunshine and the river views and the many many cans of beer we all consumed. Strangely, I have almost no photos of the occasion, as neither photos nor words could describe just how much fun I had.

2. Last weekend was the Golden Week holidays, and a friend and I went up to Tokyo for a few days during the holidays. I took a lot of photos for that, and I’m sorting them out now. We also started a series of photos featuring my friend, Derek, who has an almost abnormal fondness for jumping in photos. Check it out here.

3. I also got myself a new mobile — a Nokia N73. It’s essentially an upgrade of my old phone here, the aging Nokia 6680. It’s a good phone, but damn the N73 is awesome! Even with Softbank’s (and other Japanese carriers) insistence on locking their phones down stupid levels (my phone doesn’t support playing mp3 files, can’t install many programs available on the internet even when it works with regular the N73) and removing functionality (my phone ships with Adobe Reader and Lifeblog, neither of which is on my phone), it still does so much — I use it like an iPod Shuffle, got about 1 Gig’s worth of music on it, as well watching movies and tv shows (converted to the same format as for the iPod) and for showing my photos. The screen is brilliant, the web browser is super sweet, and the camera does an ok job of taking pics. The camera, though, is really, really slow, even compared to the cheapest point-n-shoot digital. Even so, it’s a great phone.

4. New phone and holiday aside, I’ve also reined in the spending, and have started saving in earnest. My travel plans are changing by the day, which makes it difficult to know how much I need to save — so I’m just going to save as much as possible and see where we go from there.

5. That’s that for now, I’m going back to playing with all my presents!

ohanami

hanami_20070409_39.jpg

1. One of the most beautiful times of year in Japan are the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which signals the beginning of spring. Cherry blossom viewing parties, or “ohanami”, are held all across the country, and it’s basically a picnic underneath the cherry blossom trees where you hang out with co-workers and friends and family and get utterly sloshed. It’s brilliant!

2. Check out some of my other shots in my portfolio here.

The Month of Random Purchases

1. Remember when I wrote about my new years resolutions? Particularly the one about not buying random stuff? Well, it be April, and how have I been going with that one, you wonder?

2. Not very well, I’m afraid.

3. This has been a month of random purchases. In addition to the lens I bought (a worthwhile purchase), I have a bought a pair of running shoes (another worthwhile purchase), a Nike+iPod sensor kit (makes excercising fun, so, again, worthwhile) and a MIDI keyboard controller for my computer (I’ve been wanting one for ages, and I’ve written a bit of music with it already, so also worthwhile).

4. Ha ha, and it’s only April 6th.

5. April 19th will see the arrival of a new mobile phone, because I’m sick of the super-old Nokia 6680 that I’ve been using. Symbian 7.0, you are sooooooo slow. I’m going to upgrade to a Nokia N73, so at last I’m back with a modern phone. And having played with it it is soooooo much faster than my phone. Soooooo much faster.

6. End of this month is the beginning of a week of holidays in Japan called Golden Week, and a mate and I will be celebrating by going on a semi-road trip to Tokyo and back. Woooo, road trip! Two single men, a week, and a land of beautiful women… wait, I don’t like where this is going. Anyhoo, It Should Be Good. Much drinking and merriment awaits!