..:: ZOMBiE Destinee ::..

Thursday, July 22, 2010
Kite Flying
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:27 PM --- Post#3409754026169035378

Awesome day with Sher Hern. We went to Wendy's @ Lau Pasat and I though their beef patty is as great as Carls Junior's. We took a wrong turn and went from Lau Pasat to Marina Bay Sands. That place looks rather atas, with all the service workers in suit. The only thing not that atas is the random zhi cha store at the basement. Anyway, as usual, no matter now atas the place is, you will find Singaporeans in tees and shorts and slippers there.

There is this huge acrylic bowl artwork, which I couldnt be bother to take down it's name. There is a hole in the center of it that leads to a water pool in the basement. I supposed that is meant for water catchment during rainy days and but people had been throwing in coins as if it is a wishing well.

Sliding down would be fun. Sliding down and collecting those coins are funner!

Oh well, I guess that is a Singaporean culture...because I did it too:

Check out the "Sampan Service" available:

That is a real person. And yes, you got to pay to ride it. This idea may work wonders for Orchard Road when it floods.

Anyway, after taking a rest and walking over from MBS to Marina Bay MRT, we took a shuttle bus to Marina barrage. It was lightly drizzling and the "field" was wet, but not muddy. According to my dad, the compound they used to grow the grass on the Barrage isn't your everyday garden soil, but some other compound, and that might explain why the grasses are so dense, green and not muddy.

This is the first time I fly a kite officially. The last time I touched a kite was when I was -91230 years old, I could not remb if it took off or I just chewing it hungrily then. Here is my kite:

I wanted to buy the Smiley Face kite, but when the shop keeper told me it wasn't round, I changed my mind. Stingray looks better.

Assembling it is a brisk (it's just unpacking, fixing the spine and tie a know to the fin), flying it is not much harder. Given the high wind speed at the Barrage, kites took off without much effort. I got my kite for $8.80 and the reel for $9.90 at SKP. The reel features a static handle for your left hand to drip on, and a rotating outer reel on ball bearings that keeps the string. The string is fed through an outlet (the one ones on a fishing rod) before connecting to the fin of the kite. The rotating reel makes string feeding nearly automatic, ie when the kit gets blow by the wind, the kite will pull the string and the string turns the reel to feed more string while your left hand remains gripping the handle. To tension the string, I used my right hand to reel the strong back. You can use either the crank for a uniform slow reel in, or steer the outer reel for fast rapid pulls. I manage to get my kite flying in the air for quite some time, while i stupidly sit there and lock my eyes on it. It's flying over the sea, so I felt rather shaky.

That is around half the maximum string length. Since my kite is small, I dun see a point in letting it fly 999km away and looks like a dot from ground. Later kena the moon.

And here is the video...

The stores are the Barrage are ripping off the kite prices and still have the cheek to put a column of "outside price" against "our price" for comparison. I would consider the Barrage a tourist attraction: Scamming allowed.

I saw this humongous Tako kite:

It never managed to took off despite me standing there getting my camera ready to shoot a video of it rocketing up

A video of the Tako Kite.

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Friday, July 16, 2010
Birthday 2010
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:43 PM --- Post#6997565727674783272

Who makes it a must to blog on your birthday? I have decided t write this entry one day after. Birthday is yet another day.

Thanks for all who wished me.

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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My newly configured workstation!
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 10:25 PM --- Post#444318581943434388

Desktop Rig:
- Asus P6T Deluxe
- Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz
- Geil DDR3 1033mhz 3x1GB
- EVGA nVidia GTX260 SSC
- Cooler Master Real Power Pro 650W
- Cooler Master Elite 334
- Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" 1TB/64MB
- Seagate 2.5" 500GB/8MB in A.C.Ryan eSata Case
- Samsung DVD RW
- NoBrand Card Reader
- Logitech C300 Webcam
- Logitech MX3200 Keyboard + Mouse Combo
- Razer Goliathus Control Mouse Pad
- Dell U2211H FullHD 21.5" IPS LCD Monitor
- Phillips 170B 17" LCD Monitor
- Spyder2Pro Monitor Calibration
- Brother DCP-150C MultiFunction Printer
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Laptop Rig:
- Compaq V3000
- C2D T5500 1.66Ghz
- Kingston 4GB DDR2 RAM
- 14.1" SuperLousy LCD Calibrated with Spyder2Pro
- A4Tech G7-630 Mouse
- Barracuda Lite Mouse Pad
- 80GB Hitachi HDD (Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit)
- 320GB Western Digital HDD (Mac OS X)

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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Cosfest IX
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 7:10 PM --- Post#2179144560028387605

Although I love to watch anime, it is never really of my interest to go to cosplaying related festival. Due to my multi-hobby nature, I am not able to fully support one single hobby to its maximum financially and mentally, therefore when it comes to Japanese culture, I have only covered some animes and some of their technology (which coincide with my geeky side) so far. I did not even bother to read manga or look deep into J-Rock/Pop, as I had already spent a fortune (to me) on English novels and Mando music. Therefore I believe I am not up to the mark to understand cosplayers and cisplaying events (since I cannot identify what the cosplayers are cosplaying most of the time, either that of my imagination is too chui to relate the drawn character to a representative in real life.)

From the pics of cosplay related festival hosted in SG posted online, I can already imagine how it would not be my cup of tea: Watching epic fail Barney costumes, or fat people cosplaying as slim characters, DnT-failed people made props, lousy band performance with equally lousy sound systems, low turn up rate and event space, marked up "fan made" items etc

But holidays are boring and with no good PC games in hand, I decided to head down to Cosfest IX @ Downtown East. I am not armed with much of high hopes nor high end camera, I just hoped that I can get a good laugh at Barneys. The event was not big as expected, just little bigger than my JC's MPH. The place is flooded with Mikus, you see fat miku, thin miku, hair loss miku and indian miku. No racism meant when I said Indian miku, but she really look weird. It's like asking me to cosplay Pikachu, you got see Pikachu so fat one? OH YES! There is a fat dude there with Pikachu outfit! There was a Malay cosplaying Captain Jack Sparrow and he looks great, because of the matching skin tone, body height and build. The idea is that when you cosplay, find some character that suits your physical outlook. I will stick to Boomer or Ditto for now.

Some of the props are really chui, the are a few that are good though. Vocaloid's headphone made from cardboard and marker...hmmmm... The fan made items seems to be eBay-ed from HK or China, or simply DIYed from koped internet images. Some are overpriced, the rest are of usual cost, nothing of good deal though. There are some hand drawn marker rendered posters that look great, but sure to fail Rashid if you know what im talking about. Black Tatical is there as usual, with severely under-aged kids wearing army outfit with that innocent smile. I saw a M4A1 going for $30 that looks reasonably realistic (to the context $30) with details like the real one with a reflex scope, but did not buy as I though it would end up hanging on my wall collecting dust.

The nightmare of having lousy band and lousy sound system came through, other than a band who played "Butterfly" from Digimon Season 1, the rest all GG. All zhao xia one...I told my friend its a competition to see who pass, and not who scores, since nearly all failed liao. The MC was nothing impressive, and his corny jokes like "WOW I FEEL LIKE GOING HOME AND PLAY WII NOW AFTER LISTENING TO 'BUTTERFLY'" and "THE WINNERS GET A FREE NIGHT STAY IN HIGH CLASS HOTEL CARPARK" was rather distasteful.

Luckily/Unluckily I did not see any Barneys during the event. I guess I will still go for cosplay festivals, for the LULZ, of course.

Some pictures:

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Wednesday, June 30, 2010
[Food Review] Zespri Gold Kiwi
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 5:10 PM --- Post#5041551501309926989

I was never a fan of kiwi fruits as they often leave itchiness on my tongue. But recently the Shop n Save near my house is selling this Zespri Kiwis. I'm not interested in their ordinary green kiwi, rather their Gold Kiwi caught my attention. After some persuasion and good talk from my sis, I decided to buy a packet to try. A packet of four cost $4.35, which is quite expensive.

A packet of four.

Unpacking...

A single Gold Kiwi.

Cut open.

Close up of the fruit.

Verdict: It taste significantly better than green kiwis. The center portion with seeds is sweet, and becomes sour as it gets nearer and nearer to the outside. So you get a combination of sweet and sour in this Gold Kiwi. The camera was custom white balanced prior to taking these photos, and thus the colour is quite accurate. As you can see, it's not as GOLDEN as kiwi images in the sticker on the packaging. It's more like a yellow green. Since it came packed, there is no way that I can test how ripe it was when I purchased them. From what I know, the softer it is, the riper it will be. I believed that if they are riper, the taste would be better (more sweet less sour). Although it is more expensive (green ones are sold at $3+ for a packet of four, I would rather spend that dollar more instead of throwing $3 away to eat super sour green kiwis.

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Yang Sheng Le Review
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 2:13 AM --- Post#2377672331163123760

Maggi and Yu Ren Sheng has came out with this new herbal soup concentrate. Being a herbal soup lover, I needa try it out to see if it's good enough. So I hooted a bottle of it from Shop n Save, and boiled it according to instructions.

Yang Sheng Le American Ginseng flavour.

Opening it...

The bottle of concentrate, a packet of wolf berries and manual.

Other than the bottle of concentrate, you will need 600g of chicken.

Sad to say, I only managed to get around 300g of chicken...

The instructions says 1L of water.

Pour the water into my induction cooker and boil it.

Meanwhile I opened the bottle of concentrate. Looks pasty inside.

Water reached boiling point and the concentrate is added.

Wolfberries added.

Chicken added.

the instruction states that I should simmer it for 20minutes, but I simmered for 30minutes instead.

Scooping a bowl out from the pot.

Close up

Verdict: The flavour is rich enough, but does not taste exactly like American Ginseng. This is perhaps due to the herbs and type of Ginseng they added into their concentrate. It's nice to drink, but you will get sick of it if you drink the 1L in one shot. The aroma could be better, I think I should add more chicken and pre-simmer the chicken to extract it's taste into the soup. Otherwise canned or power chicken stock would do as well. I have not tried the other flavours yet. Considering it's price (including the chicken), I could have drank 2 bowls of herbal soup from my neighbouring coffee shop that was certified by some Channel U food show. One bowl of soup from that stall would easily be around 500ml (soup plus ingredient) and they taste heavenly, far fetch from this Yang Sheng Le soup. I think this soup concentrate would be good in the hands of those with intermediate cooking skills, who can add more ingredients to enhance it's flavour, in turn making this a quick dish to prepare at home.

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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
PS 1 and 2 Controller to USB Converter Review
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:00 PM --- Post#6815249835484939464

I wanted a game controller badly, but due to poverty (prevalent in Singapore, anyone without at least $10,000 in back is considered poor) I did not want to blast a hole in my pocket to get one. Not to mention, I am against the idea of playing FPS using gamepad, and no prize for guessing that I am a FPS freak. But that does not mean I play FPS only, I'm fine with other genres of game, just that I enjoy FPS more than the rest. The controller would be useful for some racing, RPG, vehicle simulator and fighting games. I'm sick of playing Street Fighter 4 and Burn Out Paradise with KB and mouse.

I got an old old PlayStation 1 (big one, not the smaller PSone) console with DualShock controllers (with analogue sticks and vibration feedback) collecting dust in my room. Those were the Primary School childhood days where my cousins would come to my house during holidays and play Crash Team Racing with me.

I saw this converter on DealExtreme which converts PS1/2 controllers bus to USB, and could be used as a PC game pad. The converter takes in two controllers at once. But the price was not attractive enough. Being poor, I eBay-ed and found a similar model for around half the price.

A package arrived!

Unpacking...

The converter and driver CD. The converter is upside down to show you the bottom view.

Close up of the converter.

The PlayStation controller port.

My ancient DualShock controller.

Close up to show u the DUST!

How it looks like hooked to my PC on my desk.

Playing Assassin Creed 2 with the controller.

On Windows XP, there is no need for driver to detect the controllers. But I installed the given driver anyway which gave me more options (IIRC vibration feedback and feedback strength could be enabled only after you installed the driver). I tried on TM Nation and Assassin Creed 2, both working well. No problems with analogue sticks (can enable and disable properly with the "ANALOG" button) and vibration feedback. However, the controller would not work properly on L4D2, in which there are some hearsay that only XBOX360 controllers work. L4D2 is a FPS and I'm not interested to use a gamepad for that thus did not research further on.

Guess the price of this converter?
US$ 0.99 + US$ 1.83 (shipping) = US$ 2.82 = S$ 4.23

Pardon my poor photography.

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
PEACH!
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 4:07 PM --- Post#4236604614957628279

No, I am not a fan of pinky fruits that seems to taste gross, but really the peach plant I have at home bloomed and bore fruits. What fruits? Peach lah! Before you think of a large bungalow with a huge peach tree, no, its potted outside my HDB flat unit.

Actually, I cannot really confirmed that this is a peach plant (that is what my parents said it was when they bought them, but it does strike some resemblance to those peaches during The Feast of Peaches (番桃会) celebrated by Queen Mother of the West （王母娘娘）depicted on TV.

Even if it is, this is bound to be a mini or maybe undernorished version of peach since its potted. The length of the fruit is no more than 4cm. Anyway, it looks ugly...

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