Archive for May, 2009

So Susan Boyle Lost… Surprise much?

So the finals of Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) just aired last night and I finally finished watching all the finals performance videos. I must say, Britain’s certainly gotten it right this time. This is the exact order of the winners I would have chosen, namely,

1. Diversity

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2. Susan Boyle

3. Julian Smith

Alas, in my opinion Julian Smith’s in there only because everyone wants him to win. He’s nowhere near as entertaining as the others are when it comes to performing on a big stage, especially when you come up to play an instrument just after everyone else has wowed the crowd with their singing and dancing and whatnot. However, there’s no doubt he’s good, and definitely deserving of the top 3.

Diversity’s biggest rivals in this competition have undoubtedly been Flawless, but they definitely saved the best for last. Amanda was right when she said Ashley’s (group leader) choreography is second to none. It’s probably the most entertaining choreography I’ve personally witnessed. While technically Flawless is way better than Diversity, overall Diversity just has that extra special something that makes them much more endearing and entertaining.

Now Susan Boyle on the other hand to me was way overrated. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an amazingly talented singer. But the kid, Jaheen Jafargholi, is as good a singer in my books. Yet Susan Boyle received so much more attention because her audition was aired in the first episode of Britain’s Got Talent with an amazing act and story. To me it played a huge part, and of course YouTube did its thing as it did when the net exploded with Signature’s performance during last year’s BGT.

Anyway, congrats to Diversity for a well deserved win.

And really, it’s funny how I’m a Singaporean yet thoroughly enjoy BGT. The hidden talent there is just pretty amazing, especially compared to Singapore’s population of 4 million, there’s barely any artistic talent here.

I’m serious… you should see what a joke Singapore Idol is…

Windows 7 Release Candidate Coming

Windows 7 DesktopWoots, it’s finally arriving. I just got an email from Microsoft saying that the Release Candidate is going to be available to the public for free starting 5th May till at least 30th June 2009. Not to mention it’s going to be available for download without any limits, that means to say you can download it as many times as you want without having to worry about product keys and the like.

I did try out the earlier public beta of Windows 7 back when it was released in January, and I left my impressions here. On the whole, I really liked Windows 7. It loses a lot of the bulk that cluttered Windows Vista (I don’t use Vista at all, still sticking with XP) and adds plenty of new features. That being said, I don’t think I’m going to bother with the RC this time around. Mainly due to the fact that I’m just too lazy to reformat an entire partition just to install an entire OS which I’ll stop using after a few hours. I’ll stick to my Mac now, till the final version of Windows 7 is released, and even then I’m going to pick it up purely for the fact that I need it to run all my games. Furthermore, it has DirectX 10, which I’ve been missing out on thanks to the bloated Vista.

Thus far, Microsoft has certainly been going in the right direction with Windows 7. Everything from features to the way they’re considering user feedback, to the way it’s being distributed. Except for one big problem of course: if only they’d get rid of the gazillion different versions of Windows 7 which just serve to confuse the consumer.