ZOMBiE Destinee

The Inconvenient Truth

2012-02-11T19:40:00.000+08:00

As much as I always say that I seldom regret choices that I had made, I can be wrong at times. It has been ages since I blogged, and now that you see me do so, it signifies something terrible happened in my life.

I once said I liked graphic design and LASALLE was the optimum school for me. I may or may not be wrong, but I'm beginning to doubt myself, and the more I think about it, the more worst it becomes. Till now I reach a point, just around two months before I get a Diploma, I am considering quitting school.

What I though graphic design was when I was in JC:

- about spoofing posters and making satirical works

- techniques of Photoshop and illustrator

- techniques of photography

- expressing yourself

- theories of printing

- writing plugins for Photoshop, developing filters

And what it turns out to be:

- Its more "design communication" than "graphics design"

- Bullshitting. The more bullshitting you put when you present the better you are, although I am a bullshitter, I thought that was not very fair.

- Fake briefs. Most of the briefs are specially formulated to tekan or make things difficult for us. No one in real life will ask you to make a logo for Online Gaming Ninjitsu. No one will ask you to make a fake publication in A1 about your friend but sound as if its a serious shit magazine. Almost none of the ideas for integrated campaign is practical, and more than half of them are not even technologically and practically feasible. If you let me choose to make a hypothetical design solution for some international brand or a simple one for a store in Sim Lim Square selling harddisk that would actually be in used, I choose the latter.

- Real briefs. Oh yes, real ones call Live Project. Aka free labour. Giving us a few weeks to do projects coming from real companies, and then pre-selecting the entries before sending the best out. they tell you "its good for your portfolio if you win!". How many won out of the 100+ students? There are some projects that no body won and some that are done purely for the school.

- Ignorant to technology. No one gives a damn about how laser printer works. No one gives a damn about what is RAW. No one care to explain about colour calibration and colour profiling. My lecturer ask me to print in RGB. Photography was taught well in level 1, but I felt that was not enough. You are not taught on how to do audio and video recording, yet they are looking at professional results. Even more ironically, technical aspect only carries certain weight, then after, no points are given for superior use of technology, but only points deducted for inferior use. Not much advanced Photoshop and Illustrator functions are taught. I do not really blame then, since the school focus more on getting the ideas right, but that is just not my cup of tea.

- Rush. This one is my fault. I enjoy doing design work when given the liberty of time. But everything is so time pressed.

- I get sick of it. Doing all those over and over again makes me get sick of design. I no longer sketch ideas and illustrations and carry a little sketch book with me. I stopped all that. And now I am very sure I will NOT be doing any work related to design after I graduate. Even if I do, it would be because I got no job.

- Beauty over Function. It seems like people are concerned over how things should look good than how things should function well. I get quite irritated over it. Ir irks me to design a Merlion for a chair that is plainly uncomfortable when I can have a nice cheap chair made in china.

- Self Directed Learning. Hello SDL, it seems like we meet again after AJC. Its is puzzling that core modules are too under delivered while side modules are alright. In Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver class, things are taught step by step, hand holding you for the first few times and then let you unleash your creativity later. Whereas for the core studio modules, everything is expected of you to find out yourself. Till now, I receive almost no training on how to do layout, how to choose colour, how to manipulate text.

- Imbal learning curve. They teach you some basics, and you are happy with your ability to catch up. The next thing, they are expecting you to auto pilot to Advanced level and produce something at super level.

- Imbal points distribution. DST gets so much lesser credits than Studio when both require a lot of time to complete. Being good in DST, I am unable to use my strength to push my overall points up.

- Creative Process Journal or sketchbook. When will they ever realised that most people fake and fill up their CPJs with crap just so not to fail. It simply hinders my creative process when I need to take a photo of every single damn thing I do and the lecturers are not really going to read through it. I spend more time taking photos, printing the pictures, cutting them out and pasting them back than doing the project.

Basically, I realized the course in LASALLE is not quite like I imagine. All along, I have treated lessons in LASALLE just like normal school subjects. Close your eyes, just do and score points and fuck off. Often I lie to myself I am a design person. I am not. Sorry, I am not interested in typography, I am not impressed by nice layouts and illustrations. I hate vintage stuff. I prefer function over form.

What LASALLE want me to be:
- Professional designer in the industry
- Take up design projects
- Make things communicative and aesthetically please
- Great concepts!
- Work in major companies
- Create a good portfolio and reputation
- Never sleep, just do work
- Work for passion

What I actually prefer to do:
- In house the not-so-important assistant designer OR printing shop owner!
- Assist in projects of other nature in terms of design
- Make things really work and really useful
- Cheap and affordable concepts for everyone
- Work in small local companies
- Keep a low profile
- Relaxing lifestyle with plenty of time for hobbies
- Do work as people would like me to, just to earn their cash. Period.

I am not getting the passion in LASALLE like i did for DnT and Computing. Perhaps this is how it works in tertiary education. Perhaps you should never work or study something of your hobby, or risk losing interest in it. Right now I have almost lost all interest to do design. Don't get me wrong, LASALLE is a good school but its just that it does not really appeal to me. Comic sans looks more appealing to me than Helvetica. MS word Posters with real messages appeals to me more than nicely designed posters mean to grab your attention only.

[Compliment]Generous eBay Seller

2012-01-09T17:34:00.004+08:00

A few weeks ago, I was shopping on eBay for Sennheiser PX100 headphone earpads. My old one literally disintegrated after not using for some time. I found some cheap ones at four pairs for S$4.92.

After purchasing, I noticed that store sells some nice supra-aural earpads instead of the standard PX100 flat pads. It states that it is meant for PX200, but I had seen some other stores selling it as compatible for PX100 as well. Out of curiosity, I asked the seller about compatibility issues.

PX200 earpads that was on sale in the eBay store. It is not genuine from Sennheiser but build quality is as good. Costed S$12.99 for two pairs, excluding shipping.

The PX100 flat earpads beside the PX200 ones. It costed 4 pairs for S$4.92 including shipping. Not genuine from Sennheiser either but it feels and looks almost identical.

He replied that it is compatible with PX100 but not recommended as it would change the sound reproduction. It sounds legit since PX100 is an open headphone while PX200 is closed, differences in design might mean the choice of earpad makes a difference.

And here is the awesome part: He said since I had already bought the four pairs of cheap earpads from him, he can discount all the shipping fee if I choose to buy the PX200 earpads. Better still, he said he is going to send two pairs over first, and I pay (S$12.99) him only if I find it good enough.

I thought he was just trying to scam me or some sort, but since I will not be paying any money until I receive my stuff, I agreed for him to send me those earpads. I am curious of how it would change the sound as well. A week or so passed as the four pairs of cheap PX100 earpads arrived. Instead of four pairs, five was given. I gave away the extra pair to my friend who used it on Koss Porta Pro (it fits).

I thought he waived the shipping fee because he sent the two items together, but it is not the case. Another week or so passed and I got PX200 supra aural earpads, in a separately registered mail.

The package with PX200 earpads.

And since I am on this, I might as well do a little review. With the PX200 earpads on PX100, there was significant distortion in sound. The vocals became very laid back and far away and the midbass was overwhelming. The sound isolation is not bad as it drowns alot of ambient noises. But overall, its a bad idea to use the supra aural earpads of PX200 on PX100.

Both PX200 and PX100 earpads mounted on PX100.

On the skeptical side, the earnings from my PX100 earpads might have already covered that of the PX200 earpads+shipping, so in all the seller might not be losing money. But still, this is not something common to eBay sellers. Not to mention his PX100 flat earpads feels and look almost like the original and is one of the cheapest listed when i was doing my search. Afterall, I still feel that seller is pretty awesome, and despite that the PX200 earpads clearly sucked on PX100, I decided to message him today to arrange for the payment.

The seller's name is wang_yifei, and his eBay store is wang_yifei 2009.

[Gadget Review] Hand-Held Air Condition

2012-01-08T00:28:00.003+08:00

“WTF IS IT IN PINK?” I know, that is the first reaction of most people who saw me with this pink gadget walking around. I will explain later.

I remembered I was searching “portable air con” sometime last year on eBay Singapore and was amazed that this gadget turned up. It costed around S$20 then and I was unwilling to foot that money for something that looks dubious. A few months later, the pricing dropped and I got it from DinoDirect here when they were having promotion. I got it for S$11.20, while eBay was selling it for around S$15.00. Here is the catch: Only Pink units were left then, and I fail to notice it when I confirmed my order.

The whole package comes with the fan, the back cover, the sponge, a bottle, USB cable, USB power adaptor and a US-to-UK adaptor. To be honest, the build quality is anything but amazing. When I first got the fan, I rotated the head and it got derailed from the body. The head is held by studs that moves along a circular track on the body, and the studs came out of the track. It took me some forcing to get it back in and it is now working fine. There are lots of scratches on the unit. Long deeper ones near the battery compartment and fine ones on the head, they are quite unsightly if viewed up close.

Accessories that came along.

A long line across the battery cover.

Lots of fine scratches, if you see carefully.

This Hand-Held Air Condition works by passing air through cold water (colder than room air temperature) and thereby cooling the air that comes out. Evaporation of water is a cooling process as well that aids in dropping temperature. The water is held in a sponge at the back of the unit. That is why in the instruction manual, there is a chart that plots ambient temperature against humidity and how much temperature drop you will get. Typical relative humidity in Singapore ranges from 70% to 90% and higher on rainy days. According to the chart, at 30°C, 80% humidity, this product cools off by only 2°C. Honestly, that sounds sucky.

The sponge and the back cover.

The given chart in the manual.

The unit is powered by four AA batteries, has an off-to-max variable switch and a USB DC in port. Other than the rotatable head, the outlet has flaps that can be adjusted as well. The faux leather hand guard is too small for my fat palms so I don’t use them.

Rotatable head.

Battery compartment.

So here comes the geeky question: Does it work?! I set up to measure the temperature of the air from the outlet in various situations and configurations.

How a typical set up looks like.

These are the four set ups:
1. No cooling sponge at all
2. Damp sponge inserted
3. Wet sponge inserted with 30ml room temperature water
4. Wet sponge inserted with 30ml almost freezing water
5. Wet sponge inserted with 30ml room temperature water, in an air con room

In each of these set up, a thermometer sensor is placed around 5cm away from the wind outlet. The drop in temperature is then recorded. After each test, I waited till the temperature reading is nominal before continuing.

The first four set ups are done in my living room late at night (or rather 2am in the morning). I try to simulate a normal Singapore indoor situation by tuning on the ceiling fan, switching on the lights and opening one window. They were conducted at room temperature. For the fourth one, I put the sponge with 30ml of water into the freezer compartment for 10 minutes, when I took it out, the sponge was crispy and some of the water had frozen.

The last one was done in my air-conditioned bedroom. The reason for the last setup was to see if the device performed better in a place with lower humidity (air-con room usually has lower humidity than outside in Singapore)

“Damp sponge” refers to rinsing the sponge under running tap water and then squeezes it out dry as best as I could. Note that if the sponge turns completely dry, it will shrink and harden.

The instructions told me to “fill water bottle included… then pour 30ml EVENLY and SLOWLY throughout the surface… Do not soak under running tap water. It is difficult soak accurately 30ML of water. Always use the water bottle.” Problem: The bottle included is of 75ml capacity, how am I supposed to use the bottle to pour 30ml of water accurately? I resorted to using “agaration” that I learnt in NS by filling the bottle a little less than half.

And here are the findings:

Not putting any sponge in it does not cool the air at all, thus a straight line at 0°C. Putting a damp and wet sponge does not seems to make too much difference, and it seems like putting a damp sponge works better than one with 30ml of water in it. Acting cool and putting near freezing water in the sponge does not work as one would imagine since the temperature climbed up again shortly after it dipped. And clearly, using this gadget in a less humid area (air con room) yields a much better result.

With the results looking lukewarm, is this device useless? It doesn’t seem to cool even more than 1°C on a normal Singapore day as opposed to the claimed 2°C (but since I did not measure the humidity level, I would give and take for this).

Since it works well in area of lower humidity, it could be used in air-conditioned places. But why would you still want to use it when the place is already air-conditioned? There are some old malls, offices or eateries in Singapore that has air-con that works worse than a fan. Those stuffy, dirty, clogged and poorly ventilated air-con units are what I am talking about, I hate it when the air con is “bua sio leng” (half hot cold), stuffy like hell and not much cooler than outside, but you feel it’s less humid since your sweat dries up easily. Another viable place is shopping mall’s toilet, nice to have this while slowly taking a dump. This unit can be hooked up to a USB port and go battery less, so you might considered dripping some fragrance on the sponge and use it as an aroma diffuser, though it’s on the noisy side. Or, you could save it for use in some other countries when you travel.

Basically, if you are someone who uses a portable fan (which I honestly don’t think anyone does these days), this would probably work better than the regular one, though it’s much better in size. Either that or use it as a gift to con bimbos who failed physics in secondary school.

Battlefield 3 Maps Performances

2011-12-19T01:27:00.000+08:00

I noticed that some maps in Battlefield 3 is significantly harder to render than the rest, so I did some bench-marking among the maps using FRAPS and took note of their FPS.

For each of the map benchmark, I played a round of RUSH on BF3 Multiplayer. I tried to make sure the following is consistent but I cannot guarantee I did not overlook anything:
- Played on RUSH maps
- 32 and above player size maps
- At least 24 players at any point in time in game
- Play through 3 to 4 MCOMM pairs (on most test I play through all MCOMM pairs)
- Moving around most of the time, not camping
- Benchmark starts after the first spawn and ends before the results screen
- All Asian servers with little or no visual latency due to bandwidth

As you can see, Back to Karkand maps seems to take more juice than the others, with all of them falling below an average of 55FPS. Caspian Borders seem to be quite demanding as well. Note that the average FPS calculated by the total frames rendered divided by total time in seconds, and that the minimum FPS is not very significant as a momentary lag spike of a split second would floor the value. As I switched on vertical sync, the max FPS of all games is 63.

So if you want to tweak your system for multiplayer, you might want to take into consideration that Back to Karkand maps will have lower FPS than vanilla maps.

Digital movies in cinema

2011-12-07T12:36:00.001+08:00

Sometimes when you look at cinema time table, you will see the same title appearing twice, once normally and once with "digital" indication. Maybe people does not know what "digital" means.

A movie shown in a theater digitally implies its using digital projection instead of the traditional analogue tape reels. Its much like the projectors in office and school but at a much higher resolution (2K or 4K pixel in length).

It gives multiple advantages including stable image (no slight jittering of the projected images), lesser noise and artifacts (notice the stereotypical presence of hair-like dust and spots in old films), cheaper cost of production (printing tapes cost around $3000, one 320GB hard disk cost only $200).

Some wannabes might exclaim "Analogue is BETTER!" Fuck you. Since most modern movies available in digital projection are shot digitally, converting it back to analogue for project does not yield any better quality.

Amazon Kindle 3 Review (Singapore Edition)

2011-06-16T23:30:00.018+08:00

Amazon Kindle seems to be such a mysterious device in Singapore that most of the people whom I know of had never heard of it before. I wish to clear up most of the uncertainties in this review and aim to let you understand Amazon Kindle 3 (3G, 6") from a Singaporean's point of view. In view of the burning questions everyone had been asking me, I would unconventionally begin my review with a FAQ.

The Kindle 3. Photo from GadgetVenue.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is the Kindle like iPad?
A: Nope, they have different primary purposes, different hardware and different pricing.

Q: What is so special about the Kindle then?
A: It has an E Ink screen instead of LCD. It displays in grey scales and it looks like printed paper.

Q: Why to buy Kindle?
A: There are several retail stores and forumers selling Kindle locally. But it's always cheaper to buy it online, which I will cover later.

Q: But Amazon don't ship to Singapore leh?
A: You use route shipping services like vPost to get it to Singapore.

Q: What is Whispernet?
A: Whispernet (or referred to as a 3G version of Kindle) is a service for your Kindle to access internet on almost all parts of the world that has 3G coverage, with no additional cost like monthly bills or roaming charges at all. The only price you got to pay for Whispernet is the price difference between a Wifi-Only Kindle and a 3G Kindle, which is around S$60.

Q: Can I use Whispernet in Singapore?
A: Yes! You can use it to surf net, and you can use it to purchase books and apps too. That is at least for the Kindle 3 that I owned, I have heard that on older generations of the Kindle, you are not able to do so in Singapore.

Q: How many different kinds of Kindles are there?
A: You can wiki for all the different variants. Generally, I am now reviewing the 3rd generation of Amazon Kindle, unofficially known as Kindle 3. There are, during the time of writing this, five variants of Kindle 3. They are :
Kindle Wifi Only (6" screen)
Kindle Wifi Only with ad support (6" screen)
Kindle Wifi+3G (6" screen)
Kindle Wifi+3G with ad support (6" screen)
Kindle DX (a 9" screen version of those above, Wifi+3G)

Q: What are those ad-supported Kindles?
A: Those are Kindles with a lower pricing but display advertisements when they are in screen saver mode.

E Ink Screen
The Kindle 3 features a 6" E Ink screen of 600x800 pixels. E Ink screen is totally unlike LCD or LED screen (not the same as Pixel Qi LCD either). E Ink screen simulates prints on paper, mimicking the look of how words look like on a printed book. For some people, when they first saw an E Ink screen, they might thought that it is some sort of decorative printed paper of the device's screenshot stuck to the screen for advertising purposes. While E Ink screen does not look 100% like printed paper, it has a very high level of resemblance and inherited a lot of the properties of a traditionally printed page.

E Ink screen, like paper, can be photocopied and scanned normally.

Each pixel of the E Ink screen is made up of a capsule. Inside this capsule contains black and white floating pigments, where the black ones are negatively charged and the white counterpart positive. A plate at the bottom can vary its magnetic polarity to control how much black and white pigments float and thereby controlling the grey shade of the pixel. In a sense it is very similar to a piece of printed paper as both of them are made up of elements of pigments embedded on the surface of the medium, and that they do not produce light (unlike LCD) on their own, you see the contents when ambient light is reflected off the medium into your eyes. Therefore, you will need external light to read on the Kindle just like a paperback book.

I illustrated a diagram to show how E Ink screen works.

Hardware
Other than the E Ink screen, the Kindle 3 spots a pair of built in speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, volume control, QWERTY keypad, two sets of Next Page and Previous Page buttons, a micro-USB port, rubberised back panel, power slider and supposedly a mic which is not being documented. It runs on ARM11 532MHz Freescale processor, unspecified RAM and 4GB flash storage (3GB user available).

The QWERTY keypad is a bit too big for Asian hands and the lack of number keys is irritating. To enter numbers, you must bring up the Symbols Menu by pressing the "Sym" key, or press Alt + Q to P for number 1 to 0.

The sliding power switch resembles that of a Nintendo DS, which you push and it will slide back on release. It is prone to getting stuck: It was fast and smooth when I got my Kindle 3 and rapidly became "sticky", taking more than 3 seconds to slide back into place. It does not affect the function though, and can be fixed using by sliding a tissue ply with WD40 between the contact area of the swtich and the Kindle body. Some other online sources claim that blowing air through the switch while holding it half way using a compressed air duster can helps too.

Reading Books And Other Contents
The Kindle 3 comes with a micro-USB port for data transfer and charging, which is becoming more popular as a standard IO port for gadgets (shame to Apple). Kindle 3 supports AZW (Kindle's offical format for eBooks), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC, JPEG and some other picture formats. Most of the time you will be dealing with AZW and MOBI files.

All you have to do is to hook up your Kindle via USB and drop your eBook files into the "documents" directory. Or, you can visit the Kindle Store and buy books. All your documents are listed linearly on the home page. There is no other way of categorizing your documents other than creating Collections, which are like folders. Collections cannot be nested. The most recently accessed items are listed on top. The best way to find a book from a huge library is to use the Search function.

JPEG pictures can be viewed by either zipping them up in the "documents" folder, or dropping them into the "pictures" folder, which you have to create yourself. In this way, you can manage mangas and comics easily. It is recommended that you crop and resample the pictures to 600x800 pixels before transferring them to your Kindle. Comics with small words do not display well on Kindle, it helps to convert the pictures into grayscale, sharpen and increase the contrast on a PC first.

PDFs can be opened, but due to the inability for PDF files to alter their page dimensions on the fly, most of the time PDF files would either look too small due to different aspect ratio from the screen or you have to do tiresome pans around the documents. The large 9" Kindle DX is recommended if you think you are dealing with PDFs often. Either way, you can also crop and manually reformat your PDF files using Adobe Acrobat or the like.

While reading, you press the elongated Next Page button to advance a page. Moving the keypad left and right will skip to the next key point (usually the next chapter), while pressing up and down presents a cursor which you can navigate around the text to view the dictionary explanations of the word through a pop up window. You can select text and make notes or share them on Facebook and Twitter. Also, you can listen to music via the built in mp3 player when you read.

There is a dedicated "Aa" button on the keypad, pressing it pops a menu where you can choose among the font sizes, fonts & typefaces, margins, leadings, Text to Speech toggling and screen rotation. There are two unnamed typefaces, one serif and one sans serif. The serif typeface has two fonts to choose from: regular and condensed. There is no automatic screen rotation for Kindle 3, so you got to manually set the rotations if you want it.

Pop up menu for text adjustments.

Whispernet
Whispernet is a service by Amazon to access 3G networks. It will fall back on GPRS or EDGE if 3G is unavailable. It is much like your Singtel/Starhub/M1 mobile broadband plans, but the difference is that Whiserpnet is free. Other than the ~S$60 pricing difference between the Wifi-Only and 3G+Wifi models of Kindle 3 and other additional services related cost, there are no additional charges for using 3G. You can surf the net, browse Kindle Store and use Whispersync on Whispernet for free. Kindle 3 does not support tethering.

For Kindle 3 models with 3G, you will need to select USA as your residing country for Whiserpnet to work, or else it will report that you are not able to access the web due to content restriction. Once done, you should be able to access internet almost anywhere in the world with 3G support. I have tested Whispernet in both Singapore and Malaysia, and most of the time, you will be able to get a high signal strength. If a Wifi network is available and Wifi is enabled, it will use Wifi in lieu of 3G. The transfer speed of Whispernet feels speedy for its intended use, but sometime seems hindered by Kindle's hardware which I will mention later.

Amazon provides each and every Kindle with two email addresses, where you can send documents and pictures to those addresses, where they will be converted to a compatible format for Kindle and delivered right to you. This is a very convenient feature, but do note that one of the email address (eg ahbeng@kindle.com) will send the converted documents via 3G (Whispernet) for a fee of US$0.99 per MB, while the other one (eg ahbeng@free.kindle.com) sends them for free via Wifi only.

You can use Whispersync to synchronize your books, notes and bookmarks among other gadgets that have the Kindle apps. It will also be backed up on Amazon's server.

Remember, remember remember: Set your country to USA.

Experimental Features
MP3 files can be placed inside a "music" folder on the root directory (create one if it does not exist) and the very simple music player can provide you with tunes while you read. It almost does not spot any graphical interface, playing/pausing and skipping tracks are controlled via keyboard shortcuts. There is no playlist or any way to choose which track you want to play directly as well. The lack of features and support make it an almost crippled function of the Kindle.

The other interested feature is the text-to-speech function. Granted, it still sounds very mechanical and supports only English, but reading a book while listening to it creates a new experience. It is especially good for people who cannot speed read (like me), and together with the dictionary, Kindle can be a good English language aid.

Kindle comes with a web browser as well. To be very honest, surfing the net on Kindle is painstaking. Although the internet access is speedy, it is bottled-necked by the slow hardware. With a ARM11 532MHz processor, that should be ample to render most mobile versions of webpages. The way Kindle freezes and crashes when there are lots of images on the page seems to indicate insufficient memory. Not only that, E Ink screen has a very low refresh rate, there are no official numbers but from my naked eye observation, it seems like the screen is capable of refreshing less than five times a second. To add on, ghosting is common on E Ink screen, that is why when turning a page, the screen goes through alternations of all black and white to remove ghosting. This does not happen when you are using the web browser (that would make the low refresh rate problem even worst), and you will see faded imprints of the previous image on screen. Fanciful features like multi-tabs and Flash are not available. Do not even think about viewing videos on your Kindle. Irritatingly, uploading of files are not supported too. File downloads are limited to AZW, PRC, MOBI and TXT only. The overall experience of web browsing feels like a pre-2005 handphone, but still, it is quite alright for Facebook and Wikipedia, when paired with Whispernet, works wonders when you are not in Singapore or do not have data plans.

This is not funny, at all.

Kindle Store
Kindle store is the online app store by Amazon, which allows you to buy apps and ebooks at the comfort of your Kindle. If you are an iPhone fan, you will be disappointed at the severely low number of apps available for Kindle, probably due to its screen and hardware. Unlike web browsing, accessing the Kindle Store is smooth and easy. The straight forward layout and indications speed up the task of searching for a publication you need. You can browse by categories or do a search to find a book you want, you will get detailed information about the book such as the publisher, author, number of pages etc. You can even sample the books and perodicals, if the publisher allows, and a stripped down demo version of the eBook or magazine will be sent to your Kindle via 3G or Wifi. Some eBbooks even allow lending to another Kindle, which after a set number of days, will be inaccessible or deleted from the other device.

The typical Kindle Storefront.

Not everything about the store is perfect though. The search results cannot be sorted in any other ways like by pricing or by publication dates. The One-Click Buy is really one-click: When you browse to an eBook's listing page on the store, the "Buy" button is automatically highlighted. A single click is all you need to purchase the book and get it sent over to you immediately. Although there is a button after purchasing to undo the process, it still warrants me to be extra careful when I am at a book's listing page, especially if I am to lend my Kindle to my friend, as common users are well know to anyhow press buttons. There is no way to disable One-Click Buy in the Kindle Store (but you can for regular purchases in Amazon on a PC). Alternatively, you can add a set of dummy credit card information and address and assign it to your One-Click buy to prevent accidental purchases or simply remove all credit card details, but that proves to be troublesome if you genuinely want to purchase from the store.

Example of a book list page. Note that "Buy" is automatically selected upon entering the page.

Battery Life
Forget about the 2 months battery life claimed by Amazon. My Kindle 3 lasts me around 1 to 2 weeks with some use of wireless (around an hour or two altogether between charges), around one to two hours of reading daily and sometimes playing with the apps. If you leave your wireless on constantly, the battery dies in around three to four days. Note that I never turn off my Kindle at all, I merely let it slip into screen saver/sleep mode after some time of inactivity. E Ink screen supposedly need no power to maintain its display, where power is needed only when the display refreshes.

Still, the battery life of Kindle is amazing.

Buying Kindle 3 in Singapore
Kindle 3 cannot be bought in Singapore local stores at the point of writing. To make matters worst, Amazon do not ship them to Singapore via online purchasing as well. The most straight forward way to get one (other than asking your friend to buy one for you from overseas or flying over to USA yourself) is to use a reroute shipping service like vPost (by SingPost). Basically vPost will give you a USA address and you request Amazon to deliver to that address upon ordering, and then you pay vPost a fee to bring that parcel from USA back to your Singapore home. There are other reroute shipping service providers other than vPost, but I did not use their services to be able to review on them. Some people question the reliability of vPost, but they did deliver the items to me on time as stated on their website.

You might have came across some forumers and local stores selling Kindle 3 but I suspect most of them are not the official dealers. They simply bought the Kindle in similar ways that I described above and sell it to you at a higher pricing. The pricing for Kindle 3 (3G+WiFi) is US$189, which is around S$234. Shipping cost S$25.16 at the time or writing via vPost. That would make your Kindle 3 (3G+WiFi) around S$260. A Kindle 3 Wifi-Only would cost around S$200. These pricings serves as a reference should you decide to buy one locally, and remember to ask the local seller if it is ad-supported or not.

As a kiasu Singaporeans, do look out for discounts. vPost often gives 50% off for first time customers on shipping and Amazon gives free US$25 gift cards at times (I've got one).

Here is the estimated ordering procedure from vPost:

Kindle 3 Accessories
Just like any other gadgets, Kindle 3 comes with a variety of cases and screen protectors.

DO NOT USE A GLOSSY SCREEN PROTECTOR, use a matte one instead, as the original screen is matte (like book paper stocks), there is no reason to use a glossy screen protector on a Kindle. Some people might prefer their screen naked, but I would prefer to put on one since I could barely see any visual difference with and without, and having a screen protector keeps the actual screen away from grease while I munch on chips and read at the same time. You can find one on eBay for less than S$1.

It is a tough choice to choose if you would want a casing for your Kindle or not. The Kindle is merely 0.85cm thick, and adding a case makes it at least 50% thicker. I chose to have a faux leather one on since it looks like a book with leather cover that teases the idea of me bringing a "book" around. It adds some shock and scratch resistance to the Kindle as well.

There is a crazy official casing going on for US$60 that leeches battery from your Kindle to power the a little book light. I bought an additional mini light powered from external battery similar to the one provided by the Kindle's official casing and it was far from ideal: LED light beams are highly concentrated that make it unable to illuminate the screen uniformly, which is irritating especially for geeks who cannot stand LCD bleeding like me (though it is an E Ink screen, I still hate uneven lighting). I would assume the book light on the official casing would give me similar problems. Secondly, I do not wish to waste battery from the Kindle.

I got my faux leather case from eBay for S$7.

Conclusion
For S$260, Kindle 3 is definitely worth the money. As land and HDB flats in Singapore are sacred, I personally do not wish to cut a large portion of my room to store physical books. Kindle 3 solves this problem entirely as it is only 8.5mm thick, that is still slimmer than a usual single paperback. I, as a graphic designer, love the ability to format the typography of my reading materials as and when I like, and I find the offset white background and rich blacks perfect for reading. E Ink screen had proven itself to me to be a much more conducive screen to read on than LCD, with comfort level that matches that of a real paper back. I took a day to get accustomed to reading on Kindle, but after that, it does not feel far from reading an actual book. Although the device has lots of flaws, most of them lie in the additional attributes, where the core features for reading eBooks are solid, and the most important of all, the pricing is reasonable.

"NO!!!! NO TECHNOLOGY CAN REPLACE THE GOOD OLD PAPERBACKS!!!" I heard that plenty of times. I guess that is more of personal preference. To me, a screen than simulates real paper printing coming to life is much more interesting than transparent/holographic screen depicted in movies actualizing. Five or 10 years back, E Ink screen might have been some crazy talk, potential Sci-Fi material or even something that would appear in a retro-futuristic setting, and even as of today, E Ink screen is not even much heard of in Singapore. Although E Ink screen was first developed in 1997, it did not gain popularity till recent years. I am more than willing to embrace such a new and exciting technology. To me, E Ink screen is definitely a good replacement over paperback novels. It cannot quite replace coloured books and magazines, but hey, colour E Ink screen its already on the way! As of today, I am already planning to sell away all my old paperbacks, to make space in my room.

There is an alternative OS for Kindle 3 known as DuoKan. I have yet to try it, but my friend who did claimed that it is even more customizable than original OS. He said that the installation process is snappy and after which, you can dual boot between the two OSes. It seems like 3G is not usable on DuoKan though.

Kluang Trip Via KTM

2011-06-15T15:58:00.003+08:00

Me and my relatives decided to jump on the bandwagon to visit the KTM station and take a ride on the train before it closes down. We plan to head to Kluang for a one day trip. However, the trips and experiences were more disappointing than adventurous.

The train station.

A few weeks before my departure, I went online to try to book tickets. I was unable to do so on their handicapped website of poor layout and lack of instructions. I was unable to choose my train cars and therefore could not complete the booking. I gave up and head down to the station itself to buy the tickets. I was later told that only long distant trips could be booked online, but no such instructions were seen on their website.

There was a huge wooden board which stated the train schedules. At the bottom of the signage wrote that tickets could be bought 60 days in advanced. But when I queued up for the ticket, I was rejected and the customer service officer showed me a hand written cardboard which he kept away (not displayed on the counter) previously that reads something along the line that you may only book tickets 24 hours in advanced.

Despite failing Maths, I can tell that if I were to depart the next day at 8am, 24 hours would mean I buy my tickets at 8am the day before. Which is exactly what I did. Again, I was turned away. This time round he kept his handwritten cardboard hidden and told me to buy tickets only on the very same day of departure. Ha. Awesome.

The food area at KTM was, simply put, bad. It had the bad of both sides: Poor hygiene, poor ventilation and they charge high in Sing Dollars. My relatives tried the Nasi Lemak store and it was, as expected, not up to standard. The Ramly burger I tried was pretty well done though, but not as WOW as some ppl sweared by.

The yellow-orange machine is the generator unit of the train. It seems to be independent of the engine. It provides power to the carriages for the air-con, lighting, doors etc.

The operators. They dun seem camera shy.

4D anyone?

The tickets to Kluang costed S$5 and before you enter the platform, your passports were stamped, as usual. Now here comes the interesting part: If you are thinking that the trains are ancient machines that rumble and rock on the way with gorgeous views, steamy engine, chu-chu sounds, magical beasts and cannons like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, you will definitely be disappointed. The air con was stuffy, and you got to bear with it for the entire almost two hours. To make it worst, the air con broke down on the last 30mins of the trip. Granted that maybe the poorly maintained train carriages give them an authentic feeling, the sensation of me sitting in the moving train was no different from my everyday MRT ride. To add on to the similarities between the two, short distant trips are of free sitting, which means people will be sardines inside the train carriages and there is a high chance that you dun get a seat. The good news: There are no reserved seats for elder/pregnant women/disabled/parents with kids.

The joint between carriages. Note the two lobangs on the side of the flooring.

Huge gap in the joint area between carriages. Can see the track ballast through the gap.

What about my beautiful sceneries along way? Unless you consider trees, tall grasses, zinc-roof houses with undies hanging outside, regular roads with vehicles, regular buildings, some cows, trees and tall grasses and more trees and tall grasses as "beautiful sceneries", you might as well just have an eye shut while the train works its way to its destination. Trust me, you get better views riding MRT in Singapore.

The coffee shop at Kluang station

I din't get the chance to try it.

"What happened to the photos of Kluang?". No photos. Simply because there was almost nothing of interest in Kluang near the train station. It was a one day trip and we did not venture far. For breakfast, there was a chicken rice shop which smelled heavenly but the taste was mediocre. Most of my relatives are food lovers, but nothing in sight caught our attention. In fact, there were not much food stores around. We ended up at KFC for lunch, what a pity. There was a froyo store that sells froyo which melted within a minute of scooping out. We visited a few of their shopping malls and some of them were in a worst condition than Katong Mall over at SG.

There HAS TO BE one photo of interest right??? Fine, I hereby present to you the most interested photo I've got during my Kluang trip:

A decomposing dead pig in midst of a canal. I really wonder how it got there.

The return trip was much like before. Book your ticket on the spot and get on the train to get squeezed, just that now, the tix cost RM5 instead. We discovered that you can jolly well board without a tic since there was no checkpoint before board and the ticket-checking officers did not check on anyone snoozing off on board. Even if you do get caught, you can simply exit the train and get back in from another entrance, for you can easily blend into the crowd.

Shot from the mini bridge where you go over to the other side of the tracks.

Familiar scene?

All ready to chiong in for seat. Singaporean spirit.

Before reaching Woodlands, the immigration officers would go down the carriage (one officer per carriage) and inspect your passport. No stamping this time, but he used a red pen and jotted down something on everyone's passport to indicate that you have cleared M'sia customs.

Arrival platform.

Going to Malaysia via KTM is fun for the first time for experience, but I doubt I would go again.

Big Skinny World Bifold Wallet with Zippered Pocket Review

2011-06-02T01:49:00.008+08:00

The two mandatory items Singaporeans (and perhaps people from other country) bring with them out of home is probably a wallet and handphone. While mobile phones are becoming smaller and lighter, a wallet does not (other than when I spent all the cash inside).

I got to know this brand of wallet Big Skinny that claimed to make ultra thin wallets yet able to contain more than what most leather wallet would. I bought the World Bifold Wallet with Zippered Pocket around five months ago from Big Skinny’s web store. I decided to do the review only five months later simply to give the wallet ample to time to reveal its resistance to wear and tear, so do not be surprised if the wallet in the photos does not look brand new.

Front view.

Inside View.

Back View.

The wallet cost US$25.95 with US$5 shipping cost to Singapore. I got mine at US$15.57 that time during a sale on their web store. Most people could spend S$38 for a leather wallet at OG, but the World Bifold Wallet looks like some cheapskate stuff you can get at pasar malam for S$10 or at most a S$20-ish at Billabong or Ripcurl store, it takes some courage to purchase one to know if it is really worth the money.

Big Skinny claims that their wallets are made from micro fiber material that makes them as durable as leather yet thinner and lighter. Micro fiber is no rocket science in today’s context, but from a common consumer point of view, it seems to be used mainly in athletics's wear and cleaning clothes. Perhaps there are other manufacturers that use micro fiber for wallet as well, but they don’t feature it as explicitly as Big Skinny does.

The wallet is truly thin, with the fabric almost as slim as paper. My Big Skinny wallet with everything in it is still thinner than my former leather wallet with nothing in it. The fabric bends well, meaning to say when closed (with nothing in it) it does not leave a gap near the bending edge like most leather wallet does. Other than that, it’s significantly lighter in weight as well. If you geeks want a value, it measures around 5.2mm in thickness empty. Being thin and light is the main feature of Big Skinny wallet, and no doubt my World Bifold Wallet lived up to its claim.

Empty Big Skinny wallet VS empty leather wallet. Big Skinny is skinnier.

Filled Big Skinny (10 cards, 5 banknotes, some coins) VS empty leather wallet. They are about the same thickness.

The World Bifold Wallet is full of bells and whistles, which are mostly simple enhancements and designs that goes a long way. It comes with six card slots, each one has a generous 8mm excess width after inserting a standard credit card, and you can stuff around four credit card in one slot. Having extra wide slots do not mean the content falls out easily, the insides are laid with a layer of slip proof material, hence you can turn your wallet upside down and give it a shake and most of the time nothing falls out. There is an ID card slot with an oval opening for you to take your ID out easily.

You can stuff a debit card plus a key (showing extra width) nicely into the card slot.

The wallet filled.

There is only one bank note compartment, which is very deep in, you can slot in your Singapore $50 notes in and it fits nicely without its edge coming out. Again there is a layer of anti- slip material to hold the notes in place.

On the insides behind the card slots are two storage slots. Basically they are two large pockets for you to stuff anything your want there. Personally, I use one side to store all my promotional/membership/seldom utilised cards and another side to put some name cards/receipt/notes/tickets etc. These pockets are pretty roomy, you can stuff in quite a lot of junks (which most people tends to) before they are full.

Generous space for the side storage slots.

The back of the wallet houses a zippered coin pouch, which has a flap that expands the compartment upon unzipping. The zip is smooth and durable although the black paint can drop off quite fast. While in the front, there is an oval shaped Big Skinny logo made of rubbery material sewed on it, it is said to aid user grip the wallet out from your pocket as the logo is in the position of your thumb.

The zippered compartment.

The wallet does have respectable durability. After five months of usage, there are no holes, no tears, no moulds, little fraying and the thread stitches are holding on steady. I am considered a rough wallet user, although I don’t do crazy stuff like set my wallet on fire, go swimming with it or dragging it along asphalt concrete, I never took particular care of my wallet. I throw my wallet on my table when I reach home, dumped it into my bag filled with other gadgets, flip it open and close wildly, drop it occasionally onto the floor, squeeze it tight in between my pants and my thigh fats and all sorts of other nonsense. Looking at its condition after five months, I would expect the wallet to easily last for years.

Not quite relevant but the wallet is extremely flexible.

The World Bifold Wallet does suffer from some significant flaws though. The most obvious one would be its aesthetic design. Frankly speaking, it looks like shit. It is probably one of the ugliest wallet for S$38 that I had ever seen. There are no graphical printings on the wallet - it’s just straight all black (or whatever colour you choose to buy). Big Skinny’s logo design isn’t helping with the plain design at all. To top it off, it looks squarish when closed, making me feel somehow uncomfortable about it as most wallets that I had seen are rectangular. The wallet’s appearance makes it look very cheap, where others would easily mistaken it to be some worthless wallet from Bugis Street.

The zippered coin pouch expands too little upon unzipping, my fat fingers are having a hard time digging out the coins I need. Most of the time I resort of pouring everything out, choose what I want and pour everything carefully back in again. It can quite annoying when pressured to pay up in front of a queue. Where the rest of the wallet has its edge folded in then sewed, the expanding joint was not. It results in some fraying of the fabric at that part. Some paint on the pull tab of my wallet drops off too.

Imperfect edges of the expandable joint on the zippered coin pouch.

The micro fiber fabric is prone to creasing too. Often you can see marks from coins and cards imprinted onto the exterior of the wallet. You can see some dings on the fabric surfaces also. The sewing of the wallet is done professionally, but not as professional as some of the other fabric products that I had seen. The sewing is straight but not perfectly straight and untidy double sewing lines and ending stitches could be seen randomly around the wallet.

Excellent sewing but could be even better.

To be picky, the key holder was pretty useless. I tried several keys and most of them simply fell out of the opening easily. It's too floppy to act as an effective bank notes separator too.

The supposed key holder.

Overall, the World Bifold Wallet is one that lives up to its claim of being light and thin. It has lots of user friendly features although it suffers from minor problems with the zippered coin pouch and exterior designs. It would be suitable for geeks, sportsmen, factory workers or anyone who wants his wallet to be made of high-tech razor thin material with the durability of leather, but not for fashionistas or those in suit and gown.

Ask and you shall be given!

2011-05-17T13:25:00.001+08:00

During election period my MP, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin came to my area and asked around if the residents have any feedback or need any help. He came to my unit and my dad told him that our block has a problem with the rubbish bin near the lift: There is always too much rubbish and not enough space in the rubbish bin, thus residents resort to placing rubbish on the floor around the bin. That is not all, sometimes kids will come and actually PLAY with those rubbish (lol right?), causing a mess. This occurs almost everyday. He said he will look into it.

I did not give two hoots at first, as I thought surely nothing would be done. After election, I was struck by anger and depression that Tin Tin will be my MP for the next five years, and cursed my life as a Singaporean. A thought got to me, hey if they are drawing so much pay, they should be helping us out. Nothing will be done if I just sit around. And since PAP has said they are going to use social media to get in touch with the youth, why not give it a shot?

I found my MP's Facebook account and reminded him about the issue. I shall let the screenshot do the talking now:

14 May 2011 image in the FB comment.

15 May 2011 image in the FB comment.

Judging from the replies, I was thinking nothing would be done again. I was intending to post pictures of the rubbish bin for a week to show my MP that the problem is really recurring and let the pictures do the taking. And today, 17 May 2011, this is what I saw:

WOW! It's like a Christmas wish came true! And it proves me right that the bulk bin would solve the problem immediately, at least at superficial level.

Throughout my life, I have seen lots of cases where people just do not dare to ask for what they want. Either they are afraid of the consequences or paiseh. During NS, I had problems with my shoulder, ear and foot and I asked for medical reviews and excuses to protect myself from further injury and I got it. During NS (again), I asked for a revocation because I felt the job was not right for me. I got it. When my RT timing clashes with my school time table, I make lots of call and demanded for something to be done and I got the date shifted away. When I purchase something from eBay or DealExtreme, the the item quality was not acceptable, I ask for the refund, and I got it.

However, this does not mean I am satisfied with the current Government. There are still lots to be done, and I still believe that there are high chances that the Oppositions could do an equivalent or better job. Compared to the other burning national issues, this is just tip of the iceberg, but still, it's something done right by my MP for the good of the residents in my block.

Moral of the story: Be thick skinned and ask for what you want.

My neighborhood is no longer in Singapore

2011-02-04T19:11:00.000+08:00

I was at my neighborhood just now intending to buy some drinks. Upon reaching my neighborhood, the scenarios were rather expected: Most shops are closed for CNY.

But what bothered me is the number of foreign workers in my neighborhood. Bangladesh workers and ah tiongs are flooding my neighborhood like a Zombie Apocalypse. Probably because they are given the CNY holiday as well, there is an unusually large number of them today. The sat in groups randomly all over the grass patches, corridors and outside supermarket with snacks and beer. Shop and Save were overcrowded thanks to them as well, buying their party items.

Not only that, ah tiongs that supposedly did not return home to celebrate CNY gathered as well. Some of them ran coffee shops instead of their Singaporean Chinese colleagues (reason is obvious). In my field of vision, I could not even spot one Singaporean. I feel like a Survivor in L4D among the zombies. I cannot hear a single sentence of Singlish, non-accented Chinese or common local dialects which I would usually. My neighborhood used to feel so warm and welcoming, yet today it dun even feel Singapore at all.

Like Game Like Life

2011-01-06T10:43:00.006+08:00

It's hard to deny that im blogging less due to facebook and vr-zone. Ever since i left army, or actually more of AJC, i no longer have any heart burning or super expressive thoughts. Random thoughts are much better expressed thru facebook (also why i think its no needed to linl blog post to fb status), while general discussion are left to vr-zone. Lame stuff are left to my imouto. I'm quite happy for that, since that also means i have less complains in life.

I was watching K-ON!!, and unsurprisingly I like it since its quite similar to Lucky Star. Shamefully, I like animes that have very blissful and tranquail settings, did I not mention, watching anime, like playing games, reading books and watching movie set u momentarily into a different setting that you enjoy - aka escape from life.

And I did a quick analysis of the anime to find out why the setting is so peaceful and blissful:
- Be it in school or at home, minmal interaction and relation to parents
- Building on the last point, characters seem to be totally free to do and choose what they want without parents restriction
- Despite some characters being poor, they never seem to have any financial issues
- Almost every classmates are easy going and nice ppl
- Slacky n kee siao teacher
- Never have major problems and minimally bothered about grades
- Amature band can compose, write lyrics, sing and play instruments properly within like half a year or one year lol
- Less of complains (if u make an anime based in SG i bet you sure will not run out of complains and complain kings)

Say, if real life was like that, how would that not be shiok?

To be continued... Going to watch Ghost Must Be Crazy.

*Continues*
Like game like life, i always play support role. In most games that i played, i often choose the role that constitutes of indirect attacks and gurella warfare instead of direct offensive parties. In DOTA i'm often agility characters that appear out of nowhere to attack towers and be gone once enemies come. In L4D2, Boomer and Spitter are my favouites, while Smoker is a ranged Special Infected, its tongue snap too easily and the range is way too short compared to L4D making its attack not much of long ranged. In Borderlands and Fallout NV, i also do iron sight snipe using assault rifle from far to take out most enemies first. In Battlefield Bad Company 2, my most used class is the Engineer, I earn most points by repairing vehicles than fighting instead of killing. When in tank, me and my friend take down targets from far and take turn to repair the tank ti maintain it. On the ground, i snipe using rockets from far, and when i really need to engage at close quarters, my SMG will deal good dmg by simply spraying.

In real life, I am seldom the leader. I usually help out from the side, but retain enough say to make some decisions. Reason being i hate responsibilities, being support will lessen amt of responsibility by a lot more. I would rather be the MVP in the team than the leader.

I often help out in IT in a team, making sure my team has the least technical hiccups and able to use IT to leverage the team and impress others.

I believe how one would behave in real life affects the way how someone play games. Through the choice of characters, skills and classes, you can tell alot about someone in real life.

I Lub NDS Lite!

2010-11-26T19:18:00.002+08:00

I love NDS Lite so much so that I made a paper sculpture for it! Nothing masterpiece though. Its entirely made of paper and adhesive, other than the piece of transparency used for the "screen". Obviously, its a non-working sculpture, you can flip it open and close like the real thing.

My paper sculpture on the left, and the real DSL on the right. There was some measurement mistake and my paper sculpture is taller than the real device.

Side View

You can flip the sculpture open and closed, just like the real DSL.

You cant play games on a paper made DS though.

Testing Shots for old Tamron SP 35-80mm

2010-10-25T17:53:00.003+08:00

I am NOT a fan of ancient moldy lens. I dun believe that old lens has exceptional quality over new ones, given than the need to do manual metering and focusing has already greatly impacted work and creative flow. I am NOT a fan of discolored, light fringed, blurred, vintage, scratchy yellowed, lomo photos either, I think most of the time wannabes use those effects as an excuse over poor hardware and skills.

Testing Shots for old Tamron SP 35-80mm found in one of my dry cabinets. Used with D80 body. Since its an old lens, its non-CPU, therefore no metering, no auto focusing, no TTL Flash etc. You do all the calculations yourself. You can only use this lens in Manual mode on D80, the other modes are all restricted.

The lens is surprisingly sharp. Wanted to sell if off, but having second thoughts now.

The bugger is the one on the right. The age of the lens is older than me.

Sherly's Photoshoot

2010-10-13T22:15:00.002+08:00

Read/Write Speed of a Regular Thumbdrive

2010-08-29T22:00:00.004+08:00

I always wanted to test how does the rear, front or extension cable affect the transfer speed of a regular thumbdrive. I'm not quite interested in high-performance thumbdrives that can fly to space cos I'm too poor to use them, therefore I chose to test with one of the cheapest 16GB you can find in SLS.

I intend to use it for ReadyBoost on another test to find out how effective ReadyBoost is. According to Wikipedia, the solid state storage for ReadyBoost should be "capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device, and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device."

Now here is the 16GB thumbdrive I've got from Toshiba at SLS for $46. The packaging states that it supports ReadyBoost.

The thumbdrive, packaging, instruction manual, receipt and NETS invoice.

Here it is...

Can open one.

Then put at the back.

Without further a do, here are the results:

Rear USB Port

Front USB Port (Connected to Mid-MotherBoard USB)

Rear USB Port with 1.5m ATake USB Extension

Read USB port seems to be very slightly better at sequential and 512KB blocks write, while front USB port seems to be better in 4KB Q32 blocks read. Otherwise, the other readings dun differ much from one another. All three pass the requirements for ReadyBoost as well. Looking at the minute difference in speed, it is safe to say that for a regular thumbdrive, you get more speed from the rear USB port, then the front one, then the cable extended rear one, but the difference is so small that it might not even make any significance in real life usage.

[My Hoot Today] Dual Star DS-110 Office Chair

2010-08-15T23:28:00.002+08:00

After a freaking two years of waiting and consideration, I finally splurged to get a new office chair for my SORO(Small Office/Room Office), which is a even smaller version of a SOHO(Small Office/Home Office).

Alot of times, geeks forget about the fundamental of machine operation - human control. No matter how advanced technology is, there will be a certain degree of human control. Sad to say, my hobbies and work deals with large amount of both human interfacing and machine automation. We often forget to pamper ourselves with good IO control, environment and spiritual well-being despite constantly upgrading our rigs.

Introducing the Dual Star DS-110 chair I just hooted!

I got it from vHive for a whopping $395. Thats quite a lot of pay for a freaking chair, though considered chicken to Herman Miller's. I dun earn a lot, so $395 is quite an amount to me. I went to the Jurong megastore for an overall comparison for a few models in my mind, and picked this. It took vHive around a week to deliver the chair to me upon ordering. It is warranted against manufacturing defects for 1 year. For the first three months, both transport and parts are covered. Then after, only parts are covered, meaning if you are to ask a repairman to come up to your house to service the chair, it cost $25. After the one year warranty period, you got to pay for both parts and transport. Not a very good warranty term compared to stores like Ikea which gave some of their chairs 10 years warranty. The build quality of the chair feels very good.

The chair is made in Korea, by the brand Torch.

This chair feature two kidney shaped back rests, that fits the contour of your back nicely. It feels very comfortable, and able to support your back even during long hours of seating. This back rest is the major reason why I got this chair. Moreover, the chair seat and back rests tilt at different degree when you lie back, unlike some cheaper chair whereby the back rest and seat tilt together, making your posture unnatural.

Back rest is connected to the spine with a big rubber flexible joint.

This chair is pretty customizable:
- Height of chair
- Back rest slide forward or backward, independent of seat
- Free lying back, and sitting up or lock in a certain degree
- Position of each of the kidney shaped back rests, slide left and right
- Position of each arm rest, slide up or down
- Headrest position, slide up or down
- Headrest tilt high or low

Arm rest sliding/locking button.

You MUST tweak those "settings" to get a comfortable support, you wun feel optimally shiok with the factory setup. And this chair is great when you want to watch movies without a sofa or couch, as it feels better when leaned back than sitting upright.

''I herdz you liek ARTZ ''

2010-08-03T09:27:00.001+08:00

''I herdz you liek ARTZ ''.  No, nothing is better than slack n grow fat.  As usual, one will never cherish something till it's gone. I always thought that 3 months holiday would never end, but it did. But hell, are holiday's meant to be cherished? Aint they supposed to be relaxing?  I think the most wasteful part of my holiday is the part where i procrastinate cleaning n tidying up my room. I did it real little by little that it took me more than a month. During this time, i did nothing as i felt it's not proper to do anything when room tidying is not done yet. I just lurked the net day in day out.  It shows two things. One, it's bull shit that its better to be slow than no. I was extremely slow in this case n the holiday does not permit that without penalty. Two, procrastination is my enemy.  Why does every school re opening blog post must be done on bus via handphone?

Kite Flying

2010-07-22T23:27:00.006+08:00

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.

Birthday 2010

2010-07-16T23:43:00.001+08:00

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.

My newly configured workstation!

2010-07-14T22:25:00.000+08:00

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)

Cosfest IX

2010-07-04T19:10:00.008+08:00

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:

[Food Review] Zespri Gold Kiwi

2010-06-30T17:10:00.003+08:00

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.

Yang Sheng Le Review

2010-06-30T02:13:00.003+08:00

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.

PS 1 and 2 Controller to USB Converter Review

2010-06-29T23:00:00.004+08:00

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.

PEACH!

2010-05-25T16:07:00.003+08:00

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...

Aglio Olio

2010-05-14T02:27:00.003+08:00

Aglio Olio with prawns and scallops, extra (10 pc) mini dried chilli. First time trying.

Note to self:
- Use 3 tablespoons of Garlic instead of 1.
- Use 4 to 5 tablespoons of Olive Oil instead of 3.
- Cook Penne at 320C instead of 280C.
- Add prawns once garlic turns slight brown.

Bastards

2010-04-17T16:35:00.002+08:00

Dead Blog
Dead blog is dead. Indeed. Life has been so straight and boring that there is nothing much to blog about. Everything is ok, smooth, and nothing of interest as far as it gets.

Geemu
I had been going on a long journey, from releasing insects swarms in BS2, shooting aliens in ME2, fighting with criminals in Miles Edgeworth Investigation, to saving the earth from some Weapon Of Mass Destruction in BadCompany 2, all the way to a tedious adventure with Link and Princess Zelda on a train. Well, nothing feels better than gaming and gaming and gaming and gaming...

Shukudai
So homework? What homework? Anyway, my lecturer just gave me about the most usless comments that I had ever heard. Most of the students goes up to him and he will bombard them with tons of questions and criticism on their ideas.

But when I go up, all he says is "Ok...not bad...not too bad, some are really not too bad, ok...ya...do the cover page and I want to see it next week. Continue." So what does tt means? "Not too bad" literally means "bad, but not to a large extent", so meaning my work is hideous. And if so what happened to all his bombardment of comments and criticism? On the surface, I could only say that my work is beyond hope for him to comment. Weeeeee....

Graphic design is really quite a special subject. Not only does it involves aesthetic skills, it relies heavily on tech like vector and raster software, and printing related work as well. You know how anal I can be when things like that comes into place, so I am not quite sure if I can totally agree with some of the claims that my lecturer tells me. Of course, I could have gone ahead and flamed him, but according to my principal, going against a lecturer unnecessarily is no goot, no goot esp the scoring system in LASALLE could be quite subjective and biased.

Bastards
Recently it seems that fucked up ppl keep hitting into me.

Firstly, there was a fucktard who asked me to host a L4D2 game, he promptly reminded me again and again not to forget about the game, in which I had set time out of my nitely schedule to accommodate him. I even went as far as to start connection test and set up the game 15 minutes before time. 10 minutes before, I smsed him to let him know that I am ready. My friend joined on time and we were waiting and waiting for him. I nudged and smsed him but he was not contactable.

We started the game first and later on I called him and he said he was still on another game with his friends. I tot his game was ending so we waited for another half an hour. I smsed him again, and he replied that he is still playing game. We waited and waited and smsed. Finally after around 1 hour then he replied that he is not going to play with us. We were frustrated and disappointed.

I told him that he had made a promise and I feel that for the fact we dig out time out from our schedule to have a lil fun, he should not pang seh us liddat. His reply was just a "zzz like this also can".

Although this is only a game, but I feel that even simple things liddat test your integrity and upbringing. There is nothing wrong with last minute crop up, but I do feel that you should inform us earlier, drop a sms or smthing. Or at the very least, a sorry. He keeps reminding me about the game, so I took it that he is serious and really interested. His sloppy attitude at the end really disgusted me.

Luckily its just an online game. What if I were to meet him at a LAN shop? I would have wasted my trip. A few days later, he asked me if I am still angry with him. Yes I am, and I dint reply. There wasn't even an apology. Fuck that.

Just as I tot things are turning better, another mofo did it again. This mofo agreed to go Mayday concert with me, which is actually today. Here is the chat log:

It a decisive evidence that MoFo has agreed to go. And becos of his very bad trade record of owing my money, not paying on time and suffers from severe bipolar selective stinginess/spendthrift-ness, I decided to ask him iBank the ticket cost. Weee...and he refused.

A few days later on Tuesday, after I have checked the tix availability, seating, linking with the other person going, Mofo tells me that he is not going. Wow. His reason: "Its in the midst of my exam got damn it. I got to get >3.7 for deans list. Then i will be so fucking rich nxt time that discounted concert means nth opportunity cost too high."

I think he deserves this:

For his LIAFCIPE theory.

There is this stereotype that people from top schools are arrogant and atas, I refused to believed that cos I have a friend who was RJC, skillful and willing to learn. Yet remained on a low profile and aided me in a lot of my projects. He was just one example. Many more in my life.

Yet now I think that all Stereotyping has some truth in it, so unfortunately, this MoFo is that black sheep. Not only was he arrogant on his slightest success, he tends to push and discredit ppl's success, and work his stubborn arguments around things that he likes, which changes often like ppl change underwear.

His logic is simple:

Today I support PRODUCT ALPHA, and PRODUCT ALPHA is good, everything else is bad, and I will defend my choice with my life. Tml I support PRODUCT BRAVO, PRODUCT ALPHA alongside with the rest is now bad, and I will defend my choice with my life. Those people who do not agree with me at that instant are arseholes.

or

I have SKILL ALPHA, I will describe this skill as one of the best on earth, and any other skills that I have are useless. Tml I finally learnt SKILL BRAVO, and I think I did it better than the rest, and those without SKILL BRAVO are losers.

or

I have BELIEF ALPHA, I will uphold his belief of mine with my nose high high, another one not agreeable to me are dumbasses.

Of course those are exaggeration, but you get the idea.

And now back to the topic. I was ultra disgusted by that MoFo that I refuses to talk to him for the time being. I think I just lost 10kg puking my fats out when someone mentioned his name. The concert last a mere 2 hours, and its right beside Stadium MRT station which opens today, yet he just smsed and ask if I wanna play L4D2. Wow, one match last slightly more than 1 hours and two matches will be around 2 hours. Plus delays, waits and technical error, its going to be longer. He has the cheek to ask me to play game, yet no time for the concert.

Again, it's not the concert per se, its the fucked up attitude. Its just one concert, if you have a perfectly reasonable excuse I would except it, not some LIAFCIPE theory.

LED Flybar For Lama v4 Xtreme

2010-03-24T03:24:00.002+08:00

Long Exposure 30s, F3.3, ISO80.

This LED flybar is shorter and lighter than the stock. Its either I haven been flying heli for some time or this flybar makes the heli far more sensitive and throws it into TBE immediately. Could there be a problem somewhere? Linkages seems a bit tight but free enough to move easily. Need to test outdoor soon.

Remember, never play helicopter unless you are rich. Else you will turn poor in matter of months. This sucks more funding than audio...

Lock + Ban

2010-03-24T03:20:00.001+08:00

+1 Lock and Ban! Fan service for VRZer. No EDMW "ROCK AND BEND" please...

Singlish or GTFO

2010-03-18T02:55:00.003+08:00

Click to see full size signature. Fan service for VRZers who hate the new influx of EDMWers. Later on it seems that the admins and mods are not supportive of my siggy here...

Mistress Not Enough

2010-03-16T00:00:00.001+08:00

Enuff said. I wonder who is the director.

BioShock 2 No AA?!

2010-03-15T03:00:00.000+08:00

Was playing BioShock2 and was "shocked" literally that the graphics did not really improve since the first in series. There was no anti-aliasing and I still face the problem with jittery ragdoll phyics (sometimes laggy animation when an enemy falls upon death, especially splicers, falls while the rest of the world are running in perfectly smooth frame rate) as with BioShock 1. Thus I decided to use nHance to force anti aliasing.

My final settings is Multi-Sampling 16xQ, which makes the irritating jaggies go away yet maintaining my perceived lag-free performance. Super-Sampling 4x4 does not seem to yield better results yet sucks lots of GPU power.

Click on the screenshots to view it at full size.

DX9, In Game Settings All High, No AA, Good Game Performance.

DX9, In Game Settings All High, nHance set to force Multi-Sampling 8x AA, Good Game Performance.

DX9, In Game Settings All High, nHance set to force Super-Sampling 4x4 AA, Below Average Game Performance.

Master in the Wind

2010-03-14T18:52:00.003+08:00

Standing on the dried brown grass,
Thumb on the throttle and eyes on the tail,
Speeding up steady and fast.

Twin blades swirled past each other,
Fly bar fought against the will of wind,
A pair of motors bellowed in anger.

CA on the battle scared canopy,
The metal forged rotors and swash plate,
Carbon frame secured and ready.

At times it hovers,
Or boosting and drifting on air cushions,
Shooting up and down the levels.

It fears no wind,
Even if it was shoved by a puff and crashed,
It attempts again and win.

Proud and glory are short-lived,
When the Li-Po bites the dust,
It's time to take its leave.

Lama v4 Xtreme Outdoor Test Flight

2010-03-06T10:41:00.001+08:00

Lama v4 is a 4 channel fix pitched RC helicopter measuring 40+cm in length. Unlike those nitro fed 6 channel helicopter that does aerobics 3D stuns, Lama v4 was originally designed to be low powered for playing indoor - at home. But due to shortage of space (SG's public housing isn't big, plus my room was filled with stuff from many of my hobbies), there is no fun playing Lama at home, all I could do was to fly forward 2 to 3 meters and I got to turn back. The most practical thing you could do is to take off gently and try to do precision landing. But that is not what I want, I wanted more speed and more thrill, and the versatility to play heli at home.

Due to lack of time and not confident in flying 6 channel helis yet, I decided that I should hold off buying one. It's not quite possible to fly CP helis in my small room, and it's also not quite possible for me to go down to the large field (not to mention that it's often used for soccer games) everyday to play, plus I was not able to fork out large amount of cash in one shot.

As I am still new to this hobby, aggressive flying of lama in my room lead to lots of crashes. Esky stock parts are easily broken and most of them are made of plastic, they warp when there is too much movement causing the flight to be harder to control.

Thus, I decided to upgrade my Lama. The RTF kit costed me $160, and I spent another $500 on crashes and upgrades. I mainly used Xtreme Production's upgrade as their stuff had never disappoint me before. After upgrading, my heli got much more power and durability. I replaced 95% of all the stock parts with Xtreme's upgrade, other than the design it's hardly a Lama v4 now. But with power and durability brings instability to my helicopter. The upgrades seemed to have upsetted the delicate balance of the machine.

Now, it drifts more during hover, and it drifts in random direction. Sometimes heading or turning too fast will cause the heli to become out of control, in which it will drift severely in one direction and it's hard to steer it back in course. With wind, it made it worst as the 180 motor are far from capable from deterring wind. It will still be able to steer, but it would be extremely difficult hard to control, but I would still insist on flying my bird on a windy day to get the kick out of "battling with wind", which lead to more fun and crashes, luckily the Xtreme upgrades could withstand a lot of abuse.

On the other hand, I have to be careful, even if I have to crash my on a tree, I would always try my best never to crash it into human or animals, for obvious reasons. The park at my neighbourhood has lot's of kids and they are damn irritating as they will bug you to let them play and ask you 1001 stupid questions. Luckily most of them are smart enough to avoid an incoming heli by ducking and running away.

This video is recorded by mounting my camera on my Transmitter, I was not able to see the screen while recording as I have to focus on the helicopter. Thus some of the camera angles appears weird and off-center.

List of Upgrades:
- Xtreme Blades
- Xtreme Carbon Fibre Body Frame
- Xtreme Carbon Fibe Tail Boom
- Xtreme Landing Skid
- Xtreme Canopy
- Xtreme Swash Plate
- Xtreme Lower Rotor Hub
- Xtreme Outer Shaft
- Xtreme 8mm Extended Inner Shaft
- Xtreme Delrin Gears
- Xtreme Blade Grips
- Xtreme Metal Bearing Housing
- Xtreme SE180 Motors
- Xtreme Motor Fuse
- Xtreme Flybar Linkage
- HiTec HS-65HB Servos
- Kong Power 880mAh 28C and Turnigy 1000mAh 20C Batteries

I was nearly hunted down by leopard!

2010-03-05T11:08:00.000+08:00

Enjoy this cute pussy leopard. Hope it cheer up your day!

Playing With Mini Fire Crackers in Msia

2010-02-28T20:44:00.001+08:00

Went to Msia, Johor to play with some mini firecrackers. Those that I played were nothing compared to rockets and sky high ones that I saw there. Now I know why there are banned in SG, they are so damn dangerous! Some of them produce as much noise as grenades and 5.56mm's.

Varieties includes:

- Poppers (You can find these in SG too, its a small bag of explosives where u smack them on the ground and they explode)

- Mini Bee (Small cylinder design of a bee, light them up and see them fly into the air around 3m with green explosion)

- Small Twirlers (Burst into flames and twirl around on the floor, not very fun)

- Big Twirlers (Big version of Twirlers)

- Spinners (Cylinder shaped firecracker, when ignited spins vigorously on the ground with multi-coloured explosions and launching of mini cluster firecrackers at the end )

- Spark Shooter (Shoot lots of sparks into the air for around 30s)

Insomia

2010-02-23T13:28:00.002+08:00

How strange is it that, when im feeling good, everyone ask why i eat so much. And when im feeling pick, everyone ask why i'm not eating.  

On thursday, i was doing work n suddenly felt super tired. So tired that i just fell asleep. When i woke up i can barely walk or talk or listen. To cut the story short, i went to the doc's n diagnosed of being overly exhaustive n mild insomia. Given lots of pills to eat n sleep.

  I skipped a couple of lessons, and i found myself feeling guilty. . . Wtf, i used to skip lots of lectures during JC and never felt guilty before. . . What's happening. . .

Supper

2010-02-19T03:47:00.003+08:00

01 x Nong Shim Noodle Spicy Cabbage
05 x Prawn
05 x Scallop
05 x Imitation Abalone (Squid Meat)
02 x Crab Stick
01 x Large Egg

Fields

2010-02-15T00:25:00.002+08:00

Zodiac

Green Tiger

According to a temple, I belong to "Green Tiger" this year. It's strange how you can be both a Dragon and Tiger at the same time. And this secondary zodiac changes yearly, what happens if it's the year of Dragon? I will be a double dragon???

In the Chinese Zodiac, you have:

Pok pok, rooster

Snake

and
.
.
.

CHARLIE!

Fields

It's only when you start to play RC Heli outdoor, you will realised that SG government actually left us alot of empty fields for, i suppose, recreational use, despite our uber packed population density. From what I see, recreational use = let sports people play soccer or a certain kind of foreign workers to sit down all over and picnic. I feel so proud to be one true blue Singaporean Geek to make use of these fields for geeky purposes.

Chinese New Year

2010-02-13T17:36:00.002+08:00

I woke up to a mixture of CNY songs, incense fragrance and the chattering sound of kitchen utensils. The next thing that i realised is that i had not done any work since yesterday. This is actually nothing uncommon, but no doubt bore the guilty feeling.  

I did my 5BX (pee, shit, brush teeth, bath and shave) and begin to sit on my chair and VR-Chatted. For some reason, the CNY festive feeling actually seeped into my cold n depressed room. I stood up n actually opened my windows (i usually keep them closed), took a deep breath n studied the scenery outside - a jungle of hdb n cars, overexposed to a warm yellow from the morning sun.   I guess the feeling at that moment is what Dipa (my drawing lecturer) described as "feeling good". Its not that i had never have this tranquil n relaxed feeling before, it's just that all of them are short lived, reality will soon invade my delusion n shatter everything w stress n worries.  Like many other children (yes, im 12 yo), my source of stress comes from school. Probably mine went deeper as i take into consideration my seemingly smoky future, and my attitude problems.

I do realised that i lack a lot of motivation, and once i subject appears uninteresting to me, it will be hard for me to focus on it. I lose interest in things like i change underwear.  Maybe nowadays i need not worry much about my relationship with my classmates and extreme fear of new environment , as i believed that i had stepped out of the mental obstacle through counselling. Truely speaking, my relationship with my Lasalle classmates are way way way better than in class 08, where there is only like one or two person who i can speak to, where the rest avoided me like a plague. Its ether that AJC, my former class or me is truely fucked up. I will leave that answer to you readers.   

In singapore schools, holiday means more work. Despite being cny, there is no reduction in work load (in fact there is more) for us to actually enjoy our holidays. For me, my family don't really visit like 999 other families to tell them "gong xi fa cai", so i would still have some time to work. What about those who comes from big families or those international students? Will they have time to do work. Well, i believe that most people are hardworking enough. . . Unlike me.  The mood of CNY is just wrong. So superficial. Happy on the outside but down inside.

Although i am no longer in depression, im not that happy with my life still. First, LASALLE isnt quite what i expected. I keep thinking its a school for slackers and keeping up with times using digital media. Im so wrong. Its fucking xiong and a lot of modules still require me to hand paint for the entire artwork. Not to mention meaningless research n documentation.   This 'research n documentation' thingy isnt unfamiliar to me. I did it in DNT last time, which i hated so much, and my teacher told me to just focus on the end product n then fill it up later. But this method of working backwards isnt encouraged in LASALLE.   

Digital based modules are like "touch n go" here. They give you lots of work in a very short time frame n expect you to learn photoshop or sketch up in that few weeks, one lesson a week. And they take up only a small fraction of the overall score.

  Moreover, i have to spent tons of money buying art material that probably i would use only once or twice. And lots of stuff are overpriced in ArtFiend.

  All these are not what i am looking at, seriously. But perhaps what i wanted is on level 1, which i will have to pass Foundation to get to. So everyday i ask myself, why am i paying money to a course that I thought i would like but in fact isnt quite the case. I joined LASALLE to liberate myself from typical tet education system and now i am stuck with this one. Good job zombie, good job.  How i wish i could be as hardworking or as talented as the rest. Wishful thinking huh. No wonder i fail in life.

  Gong Xi Fa Cai! Hong Bao Na Lai!

I cannot love myself

2010-02-12T23:53:00.001+08:00

I cannot love myself. Tested and proven.

Pikachu for you

2010-02-08T00:10:00.000+08:00

Hmmm. Yet another testing post. . .

Testing

2010-02-07T23:49:00.001+08:00

This is to test that i can blog directly from the Message function of my Nokia phone.

Abalone Noodle

2010-02-07T04:20:00.000+08:00

Supper!

01 x CQYD Sesame Oil Flavour
05 x Imitation Abalone (Squid Meat)
03 x Seafood Tofu
02 x Crab Stick
01 x Egg (Mid Size)

Lama v4 Xtreme Mod (KOBX) Outdoor Test Flight

2010-02-06T17:30:00.000+08:00

Testing my Lama v4 Xtreme mod outdoor. You will see at some point in the video the chopper could not be controlled properly, that is due to the strong wind during the rainy season near the end/starting of the year. Also, I find that the chopper is much more stable (less vibration) without the camera mounted. The maximum height during this video is about 10m, observed from my eyes.

Upgrades:
Xtreme Carbon Fibre Frame
Xtreme Landing Skid
Xtreme Tail Boom
Xtreme Metal Bearing Housing
Xtreme Blades
Xtreme Blade CX2 Canopy
Xtreme +8mm Extended Inner Shaft
Xtreme Outer Shaft
Xtreme Gears
Xtreme Swash Plate
Xtreme Resettable Fuse
Turnigy 1AH 20C Lipo Battery
Bronze Canopy Shoring

Sleepless

2010-02-02T11:30:00.000+08:00

When I dun sleep for a few days, part of my brain will shut down for energy conservation. I think it's my right brain, because i will have unresponsive or no emotions at all. Sometimes it's a stuck in depression state. In fact, this is the state i am in now. I bet when i wake up with enough sleep, i will find this piece of writing different from the rest of my blog post.

Sometimes this is good, it shields me from emotional hurt, yet on other times, my logical thinking could be distorted as well.

I should not lie to myself, but why is the course in school feeling so far from what i actually want? I want to deal w digital medium, i want to play w information technicalities involving design. But why, why, am i doing hand work everyday. I detest hand manual, im not going to be a fine artist, why do i have to draw everything by hand. Doing art work by hand is simply restricting my freedom n creativity, and to a large extend, im dreading it.

Why do i have to do research when everyone is reading on the same thing online. Just read from screen lor, simply n effective. Why do i have to do research n development when but there could be done on the fly? Must all designers come out w a book thick of cut n pasted research n articulated experimentation to produce an art work? Who defined those rules?

Some things dun make sense to me. Maybe it's time to go back to counselling?

Switching back n fore between the wide awaken me n the sleepless me is scary.

KOBX Cockpit View (Bedroom)

2010-01-24T04:02:00.001+08:00

Used another method to mount camera. Vibration still exists, but getting a bit better.

Yaoi Culture

2010-01-21T18:39:00.000+08:00

My exhibited artwork showcasing a man on a long colourful swing taking off on a plane. The flowers growing on top suggested female personalities bound to the swing which the man is attached to, in which the plane signify freedom as the man stands on it, preparing to take off.

I wanted to show the uneasiness and difficulties for a homosexual man to be hanging on something which he could not control easily, and how he wishes to break free of the situation.

The entire installation is made from various types of sticky tapes.

KOBX Cockpit View

2010-01-18T01:26:00.000+08:00

A camera was mounted on my KOBX (Esky KOB modded to a Lama V4 then used a Xtreme conversion kit). The camera has nothing wrong, the shakiness you see is due to the vibrations of the helicopter itself.

School. . . Sian

2010-01-11T08:26:00.001+08:00

First day of school. Great. Remember i once said that if i dun blog, it means that there isnt much going thu my life? That explains for my 'disappearance' over the holidays, with only some pics n videos.

I feel like the secondary school girl standing beside me down, so grumpy, so gloomy, so much to say yet no chance to do so. School is a jail.

Its true that im studying something i like now, unlike that secondary school girl, but i realised that when a hobby turns into an academic subject, it becomes fucked up. And no hobby is as passionable as slacking n lazing.

I have no complains about the school, other than the tight shedule which is seriously putting me off. Everyone says LASALLE is a poly, but its not as slack as one.

(finally bus came, air con. . . )

Another problem is the art materials. Not only did they not sponsor any of them, lugging them to school is a chore. Imagine dragging some big bag of paint n A2 paper to draw some shity stuff that looks ugly n yet u cant throw. . .

Im still energetic today, but i guess in a few day's time i would be zombified again. Thinking of all there made me dread going to school. No choice. . . I chose it myself. . .

Esky KOB

2010-01-10T17:03:00.002+08:00

This is my untuned and badly damaged Esky KOB Remote Control Helicopter. This is the first time trying out 4 Channel helicopter and had been playing around for two days prior to shooting this video. I cant fly my bird well yet, and the damages were acquired from my initial practises two days before where I could not even stay in air for 10s.

The KOB has the same parts as the Lama 4 except for certain body frames and structure parts. In case you are wondering, KOB stands for "King of Bird". But now the bird like becoming blue bird liao.

The flying movement looks weird as I was mainly looking at the camera's LCD while flying.

Damages:
1. Canopy - Squashed nose, fixed with lots of clear tape
2. Tail Suspension Rods both broke - Used satay stick and cable tie as replacement
3. Tail Boom broke - use cable tie to secure in place
4. Tail Fin snapped - fixed with clear tape and satay stick
5. Bent Flybar - did nothing, cannot be bothered

Upgrades:
- Xtreme Blades
- Xtreme Swash Plates
- Xtreme Main Shaft

Syma S107

2010-01-01T00:09:00.002+08:00

I shall celebrate 2010 with videos of my new Heli rig: Syma S107~

Sea Slug Squeezing Through Its Friends

2009-12-28T19:51:00.000+08:00

A sea slug trying to squeeze through two of its smaller friends to get pass. It compressed its body at the intersection where the two other small slugs are to slide over them. Quite a queer sighting for me. Saw this at one of the fish farms in Pasir Ris.

Miniature Rifle and Revolver

2009-12-28T19:35:00.002+08:00

Bought the above two toy firearms at Plaza Singaura few weeks ago. Rather fun and interesting, and potential to incorp into figurine photo shoot. The down side is that it has rather poor build quality and incorrect instruction. You are suppose to cock the rifle before loading the magazine, but the instruction stated the opposite, which will cause your firing pin to break. Its a capsule toy costing $2.

Lucky Star Wish Your A Merry Xmas!

2009-12-25T23:46:00.001+08:00

Lucky Star Figurines Studio Shot

2009-12-19T23:06:00.004+08:00

Damn me spent $80+ without knowing to buy figurines from Lucky Star... Since when had I fallen so deep into anime and related... Dun mistaken me for being an otaku, the animes that I had watched is as few as the intelligence in my brain.

I remb 5-7 years ago I used to like figurines a lot, I have the whole bloody 151 Pokemon's figurines before Gold and Silver came out and I declared bankrupt to spend anymore on Pokemon/Digimon. Now I have one huge Toyogo box of their figurines sitting under my bed. Though I no longer play with them, I never intended to sell them off (unless someone offers me a really good price.)

Click on the photos to view a larger version of it.

Konata Scratching her head.

Konata hugging you!!

Want fight?

Her famous "Hmmmm" pose.

Shopping! My favourite shot among all.

Main characters from Lucky Star.

A second shot.

ZOMBiE's Enticezy Spaghetti

2009-12-16T03:28:00.000+08:00

Introducing my new supper menu item: ZOMBiE's Enticezy Spaghetti (mildly cheesy with tomato and vegetable sauce that is of the right sour level)

Reading Books

2009-11-30T02:11:00.002+08:00

I was just wondering: Why do some children hate reading books so much? By books, I'm referring to the fictional ones.

I was born in 1988, year of Dragon, and I vividly remembered that primary and secondary schools were pushing for us to read books, and there was this book exchanging program where each class is given a stash of books, and everyone was assigned one, every month, you are to give you book to the person below you in register and within the year, you should have read half of those books. There was also this form where you've got to fill in every time you read a book, and if you do no meet the quota, you get punished by teachers. Smart me often goes to the library and just copy off the names any books I can find. Holiday reading was a must, you are given a Chinese book and you are to finish reading it within a month during the holidays, and to write reports on it. After the holiday, there will be a test base of the story in the book.

I never liked books when I was young, I hated them. But one day after my close friend pointed me to to a title which he claimed that would interest me a lot, which is "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon in Kinokuniya after we went shopping in Sim Lim Square, I started the habit of reading books. That was a few years ago. I realised that some novels can really draw my interest and keep be engrossed in the storyline (as well as games and animes do) and just keep me reading. I want to clarify that I am no bookworm, I do not read like 10 books in a day or something, I barely read one every month. I do not know a lot of authors and I am no good in English, I do not do deep analysis of the plot and blog them. But the point is, I will take my time to read and after finishing one, I will head down to buy another. It becomes a habit.

So I start to wonder, why do most of my friends back in Primary and Secondary school hated reading books? I came to several conclusions:

1. National Library
Just face it, most of the books there aint interesting at all. Half of the good ones had been loan out and the other half are scatted all over like needles in sea.

There are practically no new books (by new I mean published within three months), and I always prefer to read new books over old ones, as new books tend to have references and styles pertaining to current happenings, people and items.

Most of the library's books are torn and tattered, and it is reasonable for them to be so due to natural wear and tear through many hands. Although you should not judge a book by it's cover, I do not find a book with rotting and yellowing cover appetising at all.

I read a lot of translated Japanese books. These books aint available in the National Library as well. Visual Novels are hard to find too. Their magazines and comics are pathetically outdated.

Despite saying that, the Library isnt useless, its damn useful for researching on subjects that you can rarely find online.

2. Censorship
Most of the books that the school recommended are considered "safe". No sex, no violence, no vulgarities and nothing against the Gahmen. I am someone who cannot be impressed or interested easily, and having no sex, no violence, no vulgarities and no rebellious seemed to be rather.... unrealistic? My batch of students scolded vulgarities and know about sex in primary school, and we know that adults do that, we do know about censorship on TV and the teachers thought that they could fool us in? And thus I felt that those books our school bought for us are of the interest level similar to that in the National Library. Of course, there are good books among them, but very rarelt.

3. Assignment
You can call it being rebellious or taking things for granted or whatever. But how can one enjoy reading book when he is forced to do so? The school gave a pile of rubbish novels and I cant really browse and choose which I like due to the system of handing your book orderly down by the register. Sometimes they force everyone in the level to buy a novel just for doing an assignment. And then they force you to read it, write reports on it, meet quotas and test you on it. That definitely gives the idea of reading a big big negative impression to the kids.

I used to have an uber bad impression on reading, I kept thinking that books are boring stuff. Books that I buy from book stores are totally different from the one from school. So if anyone who hates reading is reading this (pun?), probably you could try buying from book stores instead of going to the library.

Where is ZOMBiE?

2009-11-28T02:27:00.001+08:00

You must be wondering where had I been? After my assessment, I went into some deep hibernation, then ventured into Pandora in search of The Vault. Now I'm going to join the army for some modern warfare, followed by a zombie massacre. Shsss...dun disturb.

HP Restore: Nong Shim Supper

2009-11-08T23:13:00.002+08:00

01 x Nong Shim Seafood Instant Noodles
05 x Grey Prawns
03 x LeLe Dumplings
03 x Pork Ball
01 x Extra Large Egg

Prawn heads and tails pre-boiled in soup base of noodles for extra flavour.

MP Restore: Ginseng Soup!

2009-11-07T18:33:00.002+08:00

Brewed for over 8 hours with fresh chicken and ginseng. Super strong flavour and savoury aroma mean that I'm going to stay up all night to complete my projects.

Home - Video Art

2009-11-01T01:24:00.000+08:00

A school project on Moving Images and Sound. Students are to develop a video clip of 2min or less on the application of the appropriate use of sound on motion pictures, using consumer video and sound recording gadgets like hand phones, web cams, music players and compact cameras.

This artwork is inspired the novel, After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, where he mentioned that Japan during night time is a totally different world. There will be strange happenings, events and sediments going on that will never be observable during the day. I extended the authors idea and applied it to my own context my own home at night. In this video, I showed how several happenings at home can actually be more than superficial, which will trigger deeper thoughts and vivid imagination. Furthermore, some of the basic requirement for a place to be called home may also be sometimes distorted and abused.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix FS15
Sound Recording: PC with $4 Sim Lim Square Microphone
White Balance: Self Printed Grey Card
Filter: Various common household objects; in-camera colour filters
Lighting: Household mini-florescence bulb

Video Software: iMovie
Audio Software: Audacity

No stock videos/images/sounds were used.

Starry Starry Wars

2009-10-31T23:46:00.004+08:00

My Adobe Illustrator project for school. Headshot with an ace. The requirement is to incorporate yourself into one famous painting.

This artwork is inspired by the movie series, Star Wars, in which the setting took place in the future depicting the use of very advanced technologies in battles. Coincidentally, Van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night, seems be a suitable setting for a scene in Star Wars, as the picture is dark and showed swirls of stars and a huge Whirlpool Galaxy in the middle, both could be used to suggest “outer space”. Therefore, I drew myself as a possible character (a Jedi) in Star Wars, dual welding light sabers (a fictional weapon in Star Wars) in a defensive stance in the foreground.

SongTank

2009-10-31T21:47:00.002+08:00

And I tot with my cable done, I ought to promote my own music player. Fuck school work. Hobby comes first!

SilverMax Ultra ZCE

2009-10-31T18:45:00.002+08:00

TADA! I finally fulfilled my wish of usng Paillics plus for my SilverMAX Ultra to zheng up the aesthetics. Instead of a silicone tube, a heat shrunk one is used as the jacket. I chose one that is just slightly bigger than the cable. The result a jacket that is easy to sleeve in and has much much more flexibility, great for portables. Instead of wrapping the outside of the plug with another heat shrink tube, I upped the thickness of the cable coming out of the plugs with HST inside. This will prevent the problem of seeing the insides of the plugs if bent too much, as well as preserve the nice outlook of the plugs. I know that they aint well cut, but i will work on it next time.

For those who dunno, this shit is made using 99.99% pure silver. Much more precious than those sterling silver girls used for jewellery. And the outcome is nice looks + same old nice sound. This cable is same as SilverMax Ultra, just that this was made with more aesthetic sense in mind. I will NOT be selling it, thus, it shall be name under my label: SilverMax Ultra ZOMBiE CYGIG Edition (ZCE).

My workshop/room.

Messy work table with tools.

The smell of soldering fume definitely lifted my spirit and killed some depression. Me lub lub soldering!

Koped

2009-10-29T10:26:00.005+08:00

Nice one, I just broke the record of not sleeping properly for like six days, I am like seriously starting to believe my mom that LASALLE is training immortal rather than artists.

There had been a series of issues going on, but thankfully, I was not the victim like what I would used to be.

The following text had been BlogLocked. Select all, copy and paste into BlogLock and decrypt with the correct password.

I owned for Illustrator and Photog, but fucked up my Video and Sound workshop, it is so ironic that my work was selected for exhibition buy I only scored a mere C. I was told that I did not have enough experimentation, I only showed the final work. But another Illustrator graded my illustrator work and she said I showed my experimentation and trying out of different methods in my work - which i purposely did for my Video and Sound as well. I guess I made the wrong assumption.

Selected video + mere C grade + need to come back tml to set up my own exhibition = Epic Fucked Up.

I continued to experiment with the idea of "JC on LASALLE", exploiting skills that LASALLE do not teach (but taught in JC) and apply them to smart work in LASALLE. I guess at some points, definitions and instructions aint really empathized in LASALLE so as not to impede the creative process, but it is undeniable that if you follow the steps it would be like 9999x easier. Thus last minute work would be highly possible.

Oh ya, thanks to WK's recommendation for the A4 Tech G7 mouse, truely value for money. I shall put up some studio pics and review IF I HAVE THE TIME.

Hmmm...my Hackintosh shall go into deep sleep after today. Fucking OS.

MJC Farewell Assembly 2009 (Math Dept Video)

2009-10-17T23:51:00.002+08:00

Only if AJC teachers are half that creative....

What I mean by good make up skills

2009-10-12T01:47:00.004+08:00

As the title suggest, this is good make up. Use of natural colour to enhance your face, and not some complementary and saturated colours to attempt to change your face.

I Ought To Post

2009-10-10T11:54:00.003+08:00

Hi, all
It has been quite a long time since I posted something proper. Sorry, but I had been lazy and covering things up with pictures and videos, but I do believe in original user created content, so even of the issues projected in those pics and vids were something discussed about umpteen times across the net, I still hope that the interest level is maintained through my self acquired media that portray these experiences in my own angle.

Busy in School
Ok to start off first, I had been super fucking busy at school. Those who know me well enough will know what my definition of "busy" means "lazy to do work, then last minute chiong". Ok, I think I'm having some concentration problem here, but I simply CANNOT just put myself into a period of time where I can concentrate to work. So much for being a geek, watching anime, tweaking PCs, running Hackintosh, surfing VRZ drew my attention off from work. The truth is, the former events are 10000x more interesting than the latter.

I believe that we can produce art through cheating and shortcuts, Im not saying to produce sloppy work that no one likes, but you can make good looking artworks using minimal effort. Alot of times, we see those famous artist as spending lots of time planning and executing the process of creating the artwork, and most of the time they are inspired by some chim ideology in life.

I had been to the National Art Museum and saw this blank sheet of paper hung up as a piece of artwork. I dint manage to take a photo and take note of the artist though. Do you really think this artist spent a great deal of time doing his artwork?

Most prolly he was like "ok....I need some cash and I'm feeling lazy today...hmm...what should I do... *picks a piece of paper from thrash bin* aha! This is my artwork! What should the theme be.....ooo I shall call it "The Paper of Life", meaning no matter how pure and white you want your paper (as to life) to be, it will always have some impurities on it - No one is perfect! Sounds Great!"

When it comes to completing school work, I focus on the requirement, get it all met, the actual work nice or not, dun care. Because that is how the LASALLE system works:
- Incomplete but ultra nice work = very little marks
- Completed but lousy work = average marks.
- Completed work with some signs of effort = average high marks
- Completed work with super nice artwork = high marks

I will spend min. effort to hit #2 or #3. In a way, its not very fair, cos I had seen students with fucking nice work but he dun have time to label and sort them out in his sketchbook and failed. But hey, Im a life hacker, I'm suppose to be exploiting this loophole!

Technical Specifications
Probably it is a geek's instinct to adhere and fulfil technical specifications,and it's also a way for developers to cheat. A produce can meet all specification, but has horrible flaws in them. An audio player can meet the requirement to playback FLAC but there could be a limitation that only a very old version and low compression level of FLAC is hardware supported. The player can have "bass boost" but when upping the bass, it produces lots of clippings.

BTW, for common users, most of the time "Bass Boost" = "COME DISTORT MY BOTTOM TILL IT CRACKS!". If you see an audio player featuring "Controlled Bass Boost", tell me, I may buy it. Oh ya, did you know that, more than half the time, the more visually/artistic appealing the headphone, the lousier it sounds? I had seen a lot of funkily designed headphone in school from skullcandy or the low end audio technica and I um chio and kiss my TripleFi.

Bullshitting in school definitely works, and I think blogging helped me to express my true feelings very easily - something LASALLE values. Thus when it comes to modules like Grey Matter, I could write my reflection with no problem. Just write what I feel la! Broken ang moh nebermind coz they look at ideas and not English. Of course your ang moh must be good enough to be read la! Some ppl attempted to bullshit, but epic fail la... Can tell they aint hitting any point. When you bullshit, you still must meet the technical specifications!

But when then again, my laziness is pulling me down. Haiz.

English or Singlish?
I see that my classmates are always speaking very good English. For me ish VR/Net-language + Singlish + Mandarin. Singapore sucked enough, and to me, the multi racial culture, food and Singlish are the three aspects that I'm proud of as a Singaporean. I hate standard English, so mafan, inflexible and inexpressive, Singlish FTW!

My international friends get confused between race, religion and nationality, some of them lived in countries with one dominant race and few religion and foreign talents. They were confused by Singaporean Chinese, Indonesian Chinese and China Chinese. They thought there is only one race in Indonesia and Malaysia. One even asked me if my friend, who is a Chinese Buddhist from Msia, will celebrate Hari Raya cos she though everyone from Msia is a Muslim Malay. Some though all Indians in school come from India, but actually those are the Singaporean Indians.

Happy Belated BD to KTK
Oh ya, happy belated birthday to KTK! I await your laksa! I miss those days we all go Bugis to hunt for food, sit down and talk cock about audio, machines, flash light, DIYs, hackings etc... Sian ah....

Mac OSX on my Compaq V3000 Laptop

2009-10-04T00:05:00.000+08:00

After some tedious research and try outs, I managed to get Mac OSX on my V3000 laptop. The reason for doing is is because one of my projects strictly requires iMovie. I am never a fan of Mac, rather, I am a geek who prefers to program, mod and customise PCs. In fact, I hate mac due to their misleading marketing. Thank you OSx86 team for iAtkos 7.

Sorry for the poor filming, I could not get a better video due to time and hardware limitation.

Bye Bye Power Rangers

2009-09-26T00:42:00.002+08:00

My display cabinet with Power Rangers.

These got to go, selling them to a collector for $85.

White Ranger.

Dino Megazord Tank Mode.

Dino Megazord Battle Mode.

Mega Tigerzord.

Red Dragon Thunderzord.

Sold part of my Power Rangers collection to a collector for $85. What is sold is shown above. Bye bye to them! They were my "friends" when I was young, when you grow up without human friends, you began to personify toys and objects around you... Probably that started my interest in gadgets. Somehow I was abit reluctant to let go, but they are practically useless and takes up quite a lot of space. Probably a collector could do more to them.

$85 altogehter for those sounds cheap, but I can justify. During those days, those toys were abused like fuck by me. I remember I used to have 雷神王 bots, and when I threw tantrum I will smash them onto the floor, and I remembered they ended up in the bins due to severe fracture and breakage. But Power Rangers could resist much more abuse by me without a total break down. By now, most of the bots have scratches and peeled stickers. My sis used to bite those accessories like swords and staffs and now they are filled with chew marks. Some small figurines and objects tt came with the set were gone too. Thus I self-justify the steep decrease in its price (not value).

If its in mint condition or at least 8/10 (now is about 6/10),I would have sold one set for $60 lor.

DIY Grey Card

2009-09-25T11:06:00.002+08:00

I printed out all shades of grey for my printer, and match it with a free grey card I got from purchasing a photography book. Though technically there colour aint totally the same, but practically it's useful enough for something that cost near to nothing.

Make Up

2009-09-23T18:48:00.002+08:00

Just now, I was browsing through some Facebook photos when I came across this girl, whom I always commented on her make up. She used to look all right - average college girl, but after she went to University, she started all her "face painting lessons" and made an "artwork" out of her face. Wheee...I will always see saturated electric triadic colours - blue, yellow, red all over her face, machiam like colour mixing palette for glossy car paint. Its not just my view, some my my female friends agreed to my judgement as well.

I'm not sure about other guys, but I never like girls that make up, esp if she cannot do a good job. When I see a woman with make up, I will tend to play "Spot The Flaws" and try to see your pimples and freckles and dark circle underneath. Natural skin FTW, even if you aint pretty, I will appreciate you for being yourself naturally.

There is this statement I always used to describe girls that cannot make up properly, "Using Lipstick as Mascara", which I feel is not far away from reality. The truth is, if you have a face with all parts fighting for attention by using strong and heavy colourings insensitively, then you are going to look like some shit.

Generally, what I feel is:
If you are an ugly girl, and you dun make up, you look ugly.
If you are an ugly girl, and you have poor make up, you look fugly.
If you are an ugly girl and you have good make up, you may look chio, but once someone sees your true colour, that scene of your un-make-up face will stay forever.

If you are a chio bu, and you dun make up, you look chio.
If you are a chio bu, and you have poor make up, you look like a disgusting piece of bimbo.
If you are a chio bu and you have good make up, you look heavenly.

So, if you cant make up well, dun make up. Simple. You wun lose out more.

Going back to the photo of the girl whom I saw on FB, on certain photo, I could barely recognise her. Not that her made up had became worse, but the reverse is true. Her make up is much better now (though still far from perfect) and it has done its job to portray her as grown up woman instead of a woman-wannabe. Well, I guess some wannabes level up till professional levels at times. I can still see some awkwardness at certain angles, but its a definitely a great general improvement.

I always thought that mature girls are woman with confidence and pride, who dress up sensibly and appropriately, and not one that pours colour powder over her face, try to show assets that she dun really have, act high class with innocent and being fervently girlish.

Cleaning my ATX Tower

2009-09-21T22:58:00.000+08:00

It's term break and i'm bored at home...thus started to take out my ATX casings and panels to clean them.
Im using CoolerMaster Elite 334.

3rd Party Ink for Brother DCP-150C

2009-09-21T16:21:00.002+08:00

Empty compatible ink cartridge bought from DealExtreme.

A blank cart that I filled. Remb to remove the plug for the air vent pior to use. This pic shows the air vent plug stuffed in.

This is the black Sepoms ink I used. Bought from Mustafa Center late at nite cos got to print project for the next day.

The black cart compared to orginal.

This is my set of compatible ink cart I used for my Brother DCP-150C. For those interested, this is how the set looks like. Basically, it has similar physical shape to the original cart so that you can feed it into the printer as usual. But these compatible 3rd party carts comes with holes (one for filling, one for air venting)and plug to make refilling job much easier. The original ones I have are difficult to open, and the ink is contained in a soft plastic sheet that would break, puncture and tear very easily. It makes refilling possible but a pain.

Remb to wear gloves and apron while refilling, esp if you are a noob in this. Ink stained onto your clothings cannot be removed. If you get ink onto your hands, you will need to bleach your hands to get rid of them, some people have sensitive skin, and bleach is caustic (it corrodes and try to "eat" your skin).

Cyber Clean Review

2009-09-20T02:14:00.001+08:00

This is SKU 24037 from DealExtreme. The product description is "High-Tech Dust Removal Slimy Cleaning Gel (75g)" and it turned out to be the orginal Cyber Clean. I though it would be some kind of China imitation. I got it for US$4.34. This video shows what you will get if you order one from DealExtreme.

Beef Try Out

2009-09-07T20:49:00.002+08:00

Yet another beef steak for my lunch.
Weight: 260g
Price: ~$12
Thickness: 1.0 inch
Grill Temperature: 180C
Grill Timing: 3 mins 30 secs a side, total 7 mins
Seasoning: None
Purchase from: Cold Storage

Grilling on induction cooker.

DonE!

Cutting open...

About Medium done.

Shiok Breakfast

2009-09-07T18:54:00.000+08:00

Three-Layer-Fat Pork stewed by my dad for three days. Super powerful taste! Kiap with bun skin as breakfast! Ate four of them this morning.

School Life 1:5

2009-09-06T11:30:00.004+08:00

Now for some serious shit. Something had went really wrong in my life.

LASALLE was much more xiong than I though. Dun get me wrong, by xiong, I do not mean throwing you 101 theories and formulae to remember of give you three GP essays a week, by xiong, I mean doing something that is easy to understand, but need ultra patience and lots of time to complete.

At first, I was told to draw my face in six different style. Still ok, but when done my lecturer told me that I need to be neat, the papers got the be clean, presentable etc. I was like "WTF? Why dint you tell me earlier?". I based my assumption on the same sketchbook they showed us, which is all dirty and untidy, and backed it up by what my design teacher used to tell me that if one work is dirty (with content and flow inside as well lah), it means he had put in effort in the exploration process. I know of ppl who redid the entire two weeks project in one day just to produce a neat copy, and ended up her grades remained the same.

Just as I tot that was worse, then I was given one week to do up a colour chart. Using RBY and black and white to create 103 different colour isnt fun at all. I did it for nearly 10 hours. And guess what, I was told that my colour is't accurate and needed amendment.

And just as I tot that was epic worst, I was just told to paint a whole fucking picture. We were told to trace it all out to a watercolor paper, and split the image into four parts to paint - Monochrome, Analogous, Complementary and Triadic colour scheme. Fact: I had never touch watercolour in my life before.

Oh btw, that is just one module. There are SIX more to deal with. WHEEEEE. For the last week, I slept only six hours for four days, each day arriving in school like an authentic zombie. Lol, I was always authentic.

Im not stressed, maybe a bit but the stress level can never beat those times in AJC. I'm just frustrated, at first when I joined LASALLE, I always though that my skills in NS and AJC could help me to a large extent, but I was partially wrong. My chao keng and excuse-scripting skills definitely helped me with some sticky situation and the Chao Slacker skills acquired in AJ helped me out in taking several short cuts (though laziness itself will use up lots of time to do a single thing even if short cut is applied). GP helped me in CCS and Grey Matters. Whereas Project Work helped me in presentation. Despite all say, art skills STILL MATTERS. Ppl with poor English and lower qualification can easily own me when it comes to drawing and painting, for my specialisation is in digital arts, I am a TOTAL noob when it comes to producing images by bare hands. But everyone can draw, it's just the matter of nice or not nice, I feel frustrated when I should be the one having advantage but end up becoming a total noob. But on the other hand, not everyone can do A levels math :) Thus the frustration and not stress.

Probably I should talk about something good. The time table is good, the people here are good, the lecturers are good, and the system is good. How good? I dun have time to really explain now, but here is a brief idea: you come to school, you study and you go home. No forced dumb commitments like CCA, extra lessons cos the inefficient AJ teachers cannot finish his syllabus, class bonding session, stupid school events like AJ Carnival, PE, helping lazy teachers etc. That is nearly exactly what I wanted. I come here to study, not to serve the school. Additional events should be left optional, and you dun make a big hoo haa if I decided to skip a lesson or two. You dun become a VP for so many years and make the whole school a totalitarian sector, sacrificing many students just for your career portfolio. Having aircon in all the classrooms is great, not like some JC which won the best energy saving award not until I was about to graduate, there were not even fans in the study area.

One thing worth mentioning in LASALLE is the teachers. You can call them "lecturers" or "tutors" but that's all just terms. I was astonished that alot of our teachers are famous practising artist and designer, coming here to teach us Foundation Studies (not sure if they teach other levels). This is what I call professionalism. You do not call in an ugly old nanny, who is IT illiterate, with her brain filled with thinkings from the 80's (along w stuff like favouritism and nag-gation ) and lead one of the alpha groups in class to doomsday for project work, to teach. Unlike common belief that the older the teacher the better, I would prefer young teachers any time, simply because communication would be fluent. I really respect my LASALLE teachers.

Now, let me talk abit more about the people in LASALLE. The first week was a fashion show, and it seemed that this trend is dying - people are now beginning to wear much more casually. Maybe its my mind getting used to the environment, I dunno. The people here have personality tilted a bit towards secondary school than JC.

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[START]ěģįĲĲĥģĴĝ߼ࠝߎࠝࠔࠔࠓࠜࠡࠓߚߎࠐࠣࠢߎ߷ߎࠔࠗࠜࠒߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠞࠞࠚߎࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠖࠏࠤࠗࠜࠕߎࠜࠏࠗࠤࠓߎࠢࠖࠝࠣࠕࠖࠢࠡߜߎࠂࠖࠓࠧߎࠐࠓࠚࠗࠓࠤࠓߎࠗࠜߎࠢࠖࠗࠜࠕࠡߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎߖࠏࠐࠡࠝࠚࠣࠢࠓࠚࠧߗߎߐࠒࠓࠢࠓࠠࠛࠗࠜࠏࠢࠗࠝࠜߎࠥࠗࠚࠚߎࠚࠓࠏࠒߎࠧࠝࠣߎࠢࠝߎࠡࠣࠑࠑࠓࠡࠡߐߜߎ߯ࠜࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠥࠓߎࠡࠖࠝࠣࠚࠒߎࠏࠚࠚߎߐࠥࠝࠠ࠙ߎࠖࠏࠠࠒߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠑࠖࠏࠚࠚࠓࠜࠕࠓߎࠝࠣࠠࠡࠓࠚࠤࠓࠡߐߜߎ߷ࠔߎࠢࠖࠗࠜࠕࠡߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠒࠝࠜࠓߎࠥࠠࠝࠜࠕߚߎࠥࠓߎࠔࠏࠑࠓߎࠗࠢߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠥࠓߎࠠࠓࠒࠝߎࠗࠢߜ޻޻ߵࠓࠢߎࠛࠧߎࠗࠒࠓࠏ߭ߎࠂࠖࠝࠡࠓߎࠤࠓࠠࠧߎࠞࠝࠚࠗࠢࠗࠑࠏࠚࠚࠧߎࠑࠝࠠࠠࠓࠑࠢߎࠏࠜࠡࠥࠓࠠࠡߜߎࠁࠝࠛࠓࠢࠗࠛࠓࠡߎࠗࠢߎࠡࠝࠣࠜࠒࠓࠒߎࠤࠓࠠࠧߎ߯߸߱ࠗࠏࠜߚߎࠐࠣࠢߎࠜࠝࠢߎࠓࠜࠢࠗࠠࠓࠚࠧߎࠏࠡߎ߯ࠠࠢࠡߎࠏࠜࠒߎ߯ࠑࠏࠒࠓࠛࠗࠑࠡߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠟࠣࠗࠢࠓߎࠒࠗࠔࠔࠓࠠࠓࠜࠢߎࠔࠗࠓࠚࠒߜ޻޻ࠁ߳߳߻߷߼ߵߺࠇߚߎ߷ࠛߎࠜࠝࠢߎࠡࠣࠠࠓߚߎߴࠝࠠߎࠛࠝࠡࠢߎࠛࠓࠏࠚࠡߚߎ߷ߎࠑࠏࠜߎࠡࠓࠓߎࠞࠓࠝࠞࠚࠓߎࠕࠝࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠖࠓߎߟߣߎࠛࠗࠜࠣࠢࠓߎࠑࠏࠔࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠝࠠࠒࠓࠠߎࠁࠢࠏࠠࠐࠣࠑ࠙ࠡߎࠑࠝࠔࠔࠓࠓߚߎࠥࠗࠢࠖࠝࠣࠢߎࠕࠣࠗࠚࠢߜߎ߶ࠓࠠࠓߎࠛࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠅ߹ߎࠢࠠࠧࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠡࠏࠤࠓߎࠡࠝࠛࠓߎࠛࠝࠜࠓࠧߚߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠞࠓࠝࠞࠚࠓߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠡࠞࠚࠣࠠࠕࠗࠜࠕߎࠛࠝࠜࠓࠧߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠗࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠢࠛࠚߜߎ߷ߎࠐࠓࠢߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎࠖࠏࠤࠓߎࠕࠓࠜࠓࠠࠝࠣࠡߎߖࠛࠏࠧߎࠜࠝࠢߎࠐࠓߎࠠࠗࠑࠖߗߎࠞࠏࠠࠓࠜࠢࠡߜ޻޻߷ࠢߎࠡࠝࠣࠜࠒࠓࠒߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠜࠝࠢߎࠠࠓࠏࠚࠚࠧߎࠐࠓࠓࠜߎࠢࠖࠠࠣߎࠚࠗࠔࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠧࠓࠢߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠏࠡࠢࠓߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠖࠏࠠࠡࠖߎࠠࠓࠏࠚࠗࠢࠧߜ޻ߴࠝࠠߎࠢࠖࠝࠡࠓߎࠥࠖࠝߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠐࠓࠓࠜߎࠢࠖࠠࠣߎ߼ࠁߎࠗࠜߎࠛࠧߎ߱ࠚࠏࠡࠡߎࠥࠝࠣࠚࠒߎࠐࠓࠖࠏࠤࠓߎࠝࠢࠖࠓࠠࠥࠗࠡࠓߜ޻޻߷ߎࠔࠗࠜࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠗࠜࠢࠓࠠࠜࠏࠢࠗࠝࠜࠏࠚߎࠡࠢࠣࠒࠓࠜࠢࠡߎࠐࠓࠢࠢࠓࠠߎࠐࠓࠖࠏࠤࠓࠒߨ޻ߛߎ߼ࠝߎࠐࠗࠛࠐࠝߛࠗࠡࠛߎࠝࠠߎࠖࠗࠛࠐࠝߛࠗࠡࠛ޻ߛߎߺࠗࠛࠗࠢߎࠢࠝߎࠖࠝࠥߎࠔࠏࠠߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎ࠘ࠝ࠙ࠓߎࠏࠠࠝࠣࠜࠒ޻ߛߎࠁࠝࠣࠜࠒߎࠔࠗࠜࠏࠜࠑࠗࠏࠚߎࠑࠝࠜࠑࠓࠞࠢߎࠗࠜߎࠛࠗࠜࠒߎߖࠒࠣࠜߎࠏࠜࠧࠖࠝࠥߎࠥࠏࠡࠢࠓߎࠛࠝࠜࠓࠧߗ޻ߛߎࠚࠓࠡࠡߎࠏࠢࠢࠗࠢࠣࠒࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠛࠝࠠࠓߎࠝࠞࠓࠜߎࠢࠝࠥࠏࠠࠒࠡߎࠞࠓࠝࠞࠚࠓ޻ߛߎࠛࠝࠠࠓߎࠥࠗࠚࠚࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠖࠓࠚࠞ޻޻߼ࠝࠥߎ߷ߎ࠙ࠜࠝࠥߎࠥࠖࠧߎࠓࠛࠞࠚࠝࠧࠓࠠࠡߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠚࠝࠝ࠙ࠗࠜࠕߎࠔࠝࠠߎߴࠂߎࠚࠗࠏࠝߜߎ߯ࠚࠝࠜࠕࠡࠗࠒࠓߎࠥࠗࠢࠖߎࠔࠏࠑࠢࠡߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎࠒࠣࠜߎࠑࠝࠛࠞࠚࠏࠗࠜߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠥࠗࠚࠚࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠥࠝࠠ࠙ߎࠚࠝࠜࠕߎࠖࠝࠣࠠࠡߎࠔࠝࠠߎࠚࠗࠢࠢࠚࠓߎࠞࠏࠧߎߖࠥࠗࠚࠚࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠕࠓࠢߎࠐࠣࠚࠚࠗࠓࠒ߭ߗߚߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎࠝࠣࠢࠞࠓࠠࠔࠝࠠࠛߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓࠏࠜࠡߎࠚࠗࠏࠝߜ޻޻߰ࠓࠗࠜࠕߎࠏࠜࠢࠗߛࠡࠝࠑࠗࠏࠚߚߎ߷ߎࠛࠏࠒࠓߎࠏߎࠡࠏࠔࠓࠠߎࠑࠖࠝࠗࠑࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎ࠘ࠝࠗࠜࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠔࠝࠠࠓࠗࠕࠜߎࠡࠢࠣࠒࠓࠜࠢࠡߎࠏࠡߎࠏߎࠑࠚࠗࠟࠣࠓߜߎ߷ࠢߎࠡࠓࠓࠛࠡߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠗࠛߎࠏࠡߎࠑࠚࠣࠓࠚࠓࠡࠡߎࠏࠐࠝࠣࠢߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߎࠡࠢࠣࠒࠓࠜࠢߎࠑࠣࠚࠢࠣࠠࠓߎࠏࠡߎࠢࠖࠓࠛߜߎࠅࠓࠚࠚߜߜߜ޻޻߰ࠣࠢߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠢࠖࠗࠜࠕߎ߷ߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎࠗࠡߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠢࠖࠓࠧߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠤࠓࠠࠧߎࠝࠞࠓࠜߎࠢࠝߎࠗࠒࠓࠏࠡߜߎ߳ࠤࠓࠠࠧࠝࠜࠓߎࠗࠡߎࠥࠓࠗࠠࠒߜߎࠂࠖࠏࠢߎࠛࠏ࠙ࠓࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠥࠓࠗࠠࠒߜ޻[END]

There is one particular person who I die die have to mention.

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[START]ěģįĲĲĥģĴĝࠂࠖࠏࠢߎࠗࠡߎࠢࠖࠓߎ߱ࠖࠗࠜࠏߎࠕࠗࠠࠚߎࠗࠜߎࠛࠧߎࠑࠚࠏࠡࠡߜߎ߷ߎ࠘ࠣࠡࠢߎࠛࠓࠜࠢࠗࠝࠜࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎ߷ࠜࠢࠓࠠࠜࠏࠢࠗࠝࠜࠏࠚߎࠡࠢࠣࠒࠓࠜࠢࠡߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠕࠝࠝࠒߎࠞࠓࠝࠞࠚࠓߚߎࠐࠣࠢߎ߷ߎࠕࠣࠓࠡࠡߎࠢࠖࠗࠡߎࠕࠗࠠࠚߎࠗࠡߎࠟࠣࠗࠢࠓߎࠏࠜߎࠓࠦࠑࠓࠞࠢࠗࠝࠜߜ޻޻ࠁࠖࠓߎ࠙ࠓࠓࠞࠡߎࠑࠝࠛࠞࠏࠠࠗࠜࠕߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߎࠢࠝߎ߱ࠖࠗࠜࠏߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠡࠏࠧࠡߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߨ޻ߛߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߎࠥࠓࠏࠢࠖࠓࠠߎࠢࠝࠝߎࠓࠦࠢࠠࠓࠛࠓ޻ߛߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߎࠔࠝࠝࠒߎࠏࠚࠚߎࠢࠓࠠࠠࠗࠐࠚࠓ޻ߛߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߎࠢࠖࠓࠏࠢࠖࠓࠠߎࠢࠝࠝߎࠡࠛࠏࠚࠚ޻ߛߎ߱ࠏࠜࠜࠝࠢߎࠣࠜࠒࠓࠠࠡࠧࠏࠜࠒߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓࠏࠜߎ߱ࠖࠗࠜࠓࠡࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎ߳ࠜࠕࠚࠗࠡࠖ޻޻߷ߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠐࠠࠝࠣࠕࠖࠢߎࠖࠓࠠߎࠢࠝߎࠤࠏࠠࠗࠝࠣࠡߎࠔࠏࠛࠝࠣࠡߎࠔࠝࠝࠒߎࠡࠞࠝࠢߎࠗࠜߎ߰ࠣࠕࠗࠡߚߎࠏࠚࠝࠜࠕߎࠥࠗࠢࠖߎࠠࠓࠑࠝࠛࠛࠓࠜࠒࠏࠢࠗࠝࠜߎࠢࠝߎࠛࠏࠜࠧߎࠡࠖࠗࠝ࠙ߎࠚࠝࠑࠏࠚߎࠔࠝࠝࠒߜߎ߰ࠣࠢߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠒࠓࠓࠛࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠓࠛߎࠏࠡߎߐࠖࠝࠠࠠࠗࠐࠚࠓߎࠢࠏࠡࠢࠗࠜࠕߐߎࠓࠤࠓࠠࠧࠢࠗࠛࠓߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠏࠢࠓߎࠢࠖࠓࠛߜߎࠁࠖࠓߎࠑࠏࠜࠜࠝࠢߎࠣࠜࠒࠓࠠࠡࠢࠏࠜࠒߎࠥࠖࠧߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓࠏࠜࠡߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎࠢࠝߎࠓࠏࠢߎࠠࠝࠏࠡࠢࠓࠒߎࠛࠓࠏࠢߎࠠࠗࠑࠓߎߖࠑࠖࠗࠑ࠙ࠓࠜߝࠒࠣࠑ࠙ߝࠑࠖࠏࠠߎࠡࠗࠓࠥߎࠠࠗࠑࠓߗߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠛࠏࠒࠓߎࠏߎࠒࠗࠡࠕࠣࠡࠢࠓࠒߎࠔࠏࠑࠓߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎ߷ߎࠝࠔࠔࠓࠠߎࠢࠝߎࠐࠠࠗࠜࠕߎࠖࠓࠠߎࠢࠝߎࠓࠏࠢߎࠑࠖࠗࠑ࠙ࠓࠜߎࠠࠗࠑࠓߜߎࠂࠖࠓࠜߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠏࠡ࠙ࠓࠒߎࠗࠔߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠏࠠࠓߎ߰ࠗࠜࠕߎࠂࠏࠜࠕߎ߶ࠣߎߺࠣߎࠗࠜߎࠁࠗࠜࠕࠏࠞࠝࠠࠓߜߜߜࠏࠜࠒߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠡࠏࠗࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠖࠏࠡߎࠢࠝߎࠐࠓߎࠓࠏࠢࠓࠜߎࠝࠜࠚࠧߎࠗࠜߎࠅࠗࠜࠢࠓࠠߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠜࠝࠢߎࠡࠣࠛࠛࠓࠠߜߎߴࠇ߷ߚߎ߷ߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠓࠏࠢࠓࠜߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠐࠓࠔࠝࠠࠓߚߎࠗࠢߕࠡߎࠡࠖࠏࠜߎࠨࠖࠏࠠߚߎࠔࠣࠑ࠙ߎࠡࠥࠓࠓࠢߎࠝࠣࠢࠡࠗࠒࠓߎࠒࠣࠓߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠡࠣࠕࠏࠠߎࠑࠝࠏࠢࠗࠜࠕߚߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠔࠣࠑ࠙ߎࠡࠝࠣࠠߎࠗࠜࠡࠗࠒࠓߜ޻޻ࠁࠖࠓߎࠑࠝࠣࠚࠒߎࠐࠏࠠࠓࠚࠧߎࠣࠜࠒࠓࠠࠡࠢࠏࠜࠒߎ߳ࠜࠕࠚࠗࠡࠖߚߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠠࠓࠚࠧߎࠝࠜߎࠝࠐࠡࠓࠠࠤࠏࠢࠗࠝࠜߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠟࠣࠓࠡࠢࠗࠝࠜࠕߎࠑࠖࠗࠜࠓࠡࠓߛࠡࠞࠓࠏ࠙ࠗࠜࠕߎࠑࠚࠏࠡࠡࠛࠏࠢࠓࠡߎࠢࠝߎࠣࠜࠒࠓࠠࠡࠢࠏࠜࠒߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠚࠓࠡࠡࠝࠜࠡߜߎ߯ࠜࠒߎࠏߎࠚࠝࠢߎࠝࠔߎࠢࠗࠛࠓࠡߚߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠡࠑࠓࠥࠡߎࠣࠞߜ޻޻߽ࠜࠑࠓߎࠗࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎ߲ࠏࠠ࠙ߎࠀࠝࠝࠛߚߎࠓࠤࠓࠠࠧࠝࠜࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠚࠝࠏࠒࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠖࠓࠗࠠߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝࠕࠠࠏࠞࠖࠗࠑߎࠞࠏࠞࠓࠠߎࠗࠜࠢࠝߎࠢࠖࠓࠗࠠߎࠞࠗࠜߎࠖࠝࠚࠓߎࠑࠏࠛࠓࠠࠏߚߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠢࠣࠢࠝࠠߎࠏࠡ࠙ࠓࠒߎࠥࠖࠝߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠧࠓࠢߎࠢࠝߎࠔࠗࠜࠗࠡࠖࠓࠒߚߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠠࠓࠛࠏࠗࠜࠓࠒߎࠡࠗࠚࠓࠜࠢߜߎࠂࠖࠓߎࠚࠗࠕࠖࠢߎࠏࠡߎࠡࠥࠗࠢࠑࠖࠓࠒߎࠝࠜߚߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠁ߱ࠀ߳߳߳߳߯߯߯߯߻߻߻߲߳ߎࠏࠡߎࠖࠓࠠߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝࠕࠠࠏࠞࠖࠗࠑߎࠞࠏࠞࠓࠠߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠡࠢࠗࠚࠚߎࠓࠦࠞࠝࠡࠓࠒߎࠝࠣࠢࠡࠗࠒࠓߜ޻޻ࠁࠖࠓߎࠢࠝࠝ࠙ߎࠢࠖࠠࠓࠓߎࠢࠠࠗࠓࠡߎࠢࠝߎࠕࠓࠢߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝࠕࠠࠏࠞࠖߎࠠࠗࠕࠖࠢߚߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎࠛࠝࠡࠢߎࠞࠞࠚߎࠢࠝࠝ࠙ߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠢࠠࠧߎࠝࠜࠚࠧߜߎ޻޻ࠂࠖࠓߎࠔࠗࠠࠡࠢߎࠢࠗࠛࠓߚߎࠛࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠛࠧߎࠔࠠࠗࠓࠜࠒߎࠒࠓࠒࠣࠑࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠢࠝࠝ࠙ߎࠡࠝࠛࠓࠝࠜࠓߎࠓࠚࠡࠓߕࠡߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝߎࠏࠡߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠢࠖࠗࠡߎࠕࠣࠧߎࠥࠖࠝߎࠚࠝࠡࠢߎࠖࠗࠡߎࠒࠣࠠࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠒࠓࠤࠓࠚࠝࠞࠛࠓࠜࠢߎࠞࠠࠝࠑࠓࠡࠡߜߎ߷ࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠓࠜࠒߚߎࠏߎࠥࠖࠗࠢࠓߎࠣࠜࠓࠦࠞࠝࠡࠓࠒߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠔࠝࠣࠜࠒߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠒࠓࠓࠛࠓࠒߎࠢࠝߎࠐࠓߎࠖࠗࠡߜߎ߶ࠓࠠߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝߎߖࠐࠓߎࠗࠢߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠢࠝࠝ࠙ߎࠖࠓࠠࠡࠓࠚࠔߎࠝࠠߎ࠙ࠝࠞࠓࠒߗߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠐࠚࠣࠠࠠࠓࠒߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠏࠡ࠙ࠓࠒߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠏ࠙ࠓߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠛࠝࠠࠓߎࠢࠗࠛࠓߜߎ޻޻ࠂࠖࠓߎࠡࠓࠑࠝࠜࠒߎࠢࠗࠛࠓߚߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠑࠏࠛࠓߎࠐࠏࠑ࠙ߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠠࠓࠏࠚࠗࠡࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠖࠓࠠߎࠞࠗࠜߛࠖࠝࠚࠓߎࠑࠏࠛࠓࠠࠏߎࠖࠏࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠖࠝࠚࠓߜߎߺࠝࠚߚߎࠢࠖࠏࠢࠡߎࠖࠝࠥߎࠥࠓߎࠒࠓࠒࠣࠑࠓࠒߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠛࠗࠕࠖࠢߎࠖࠏࠒߎࠡࠥࠏࠞࠞࠓࠒߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝߚߎࠓࠚࠡࠓߎࠖࠝࠥߎࠑࠝࠛࠓߎࠖࠓࠠߎࠔࠗࠠࠡࠢߎࠞࠖࠝࠢࠝߎࠖࠏࠡߎࠗࠛࠏࠕࠓࠡߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠖࠝࠚࠓ߭޻޻ࠁࠖࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠡࠣࠑࠑࠓࠡࠡࠔࠣࠚߎࠝࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠢࠖࠠࠗࠒߎࠢࠠࠧߚߎࠏࠔࠢࠓࠠߎࠕࠓࠢࠢࠗࠜࠕߎࠡࠑࠠࠓࠥࠓࠒߎࠐࠧߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠢࠣࠢࠝࠠߎࠔࠝࠠߎࠡࠣࠑࠖߎࠏߎࠒࠣࠛࠐߎࠛࠗࠡࠢࠏ࠙ࠓߜ޻޻߲ࠣࠠࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠖࠓߎߡ߲ߎࠑࠚࠏࠡࠡߚߎࠥࠓߎࠏࠠࠓߎࠡࠣࠞࠞࠝࠡࠓࠒߎࠢࠝߎࠐࠣࠗࠚࠒߎࠏߎࠡࠢࠣࠑࠢࠣࠠࠓߎࠣࠡࠗࠜࠕߎࠡࠢࠠࠏࠥࠡߎࠢࠝߎࠞࠠࠝࠢࠓࠑࠢߎࠏࠜߎࠓࠕࠕߎࠔࠠࠝࠛߎࠑࠠࠏࠑ࠙ࠗࠜࠕߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎࠒࠠࠝࠞࠞࠓࠒߎࠔࠠࠝࠛߎࠢࠖࠓߎߡࠠࠒߎࠔࠚࠝࠝࠠߜߎ߷ߎࠡࠑࠠࠓࠥࠓࠒߎࠣࠞߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠛࠗࠜࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠝࠜࠚࠧߎࠔࠏࠗࠚࠣࠠࠓߎࠗࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠑࠚࠏࠡࠡߜߎ߱ࠖࠗࠜࠏߎࠕࠗࠠࠚߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠡࠝߎࠖࠏࠞࠞࠧߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠖࠓࠠߕࠡߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠡࠣࠑࠑࠓࠡࠡࠔࠣࠚߜߎ߯ࠜࠒߎࠡࠖࠓߎ࠙ࠓࠓࠞߎࠏࠡ࠙ࠗࠜࠕߎࠛࠓߎࠡࠑࠏࠠࠏࠡࠢࠗࠑߎࠟࠣࠓࠡࠢࠗࠝࠜࠡߎࠚࠗ࠙ࠓߎߐࠓࠖߎ߷ߎࠢࠝࠢߎࠧࠝࠣࠠࠡߎࠡࠣࠑࠑࠓࠡࠡࠔࠣࠚ߭ߐߎࠝࠠߎߐࠡࠝߎࠣߎࠕࠝࠗࠜࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠠࠧߎࠏࠕࠏࠗࠜߎࠝࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎߢࠢࠖߎࠏࠜࠒߎߣࠢࠖߎࠔࠚࠝࠝࠠ߭ߐߎ߶ࠝࠥߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠠࠧߎࠏࠕࠏࠗࠜߎࠥࠖࠓࠜߎࠛࠗࠜࠓߎࠐࠠࠝ࠙ࠓߎࠝࠜߎߡࠠࠒߎࠔࠚࠝࠝࠠ߭ߎࠂࠖࠏࠢߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠝࠐࠤࠗࠝࠣࠡߎࠡࠑࠏࠠࠏࠡࠛߜ޻޻߯ࠔࠢࠓࠠߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠔࠗࠠࠡࠢߎࠢࠖࠠࠝࠥߎࠔࠠࠝࠛߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠢࠖࠗࠠࠒߎࠔࠚࠝࠝࠠߚߎࠛࠧߎࠚࠓࠑࠢࠣࠠࠓࠠߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠜࠗࠑࠓߎࠓࠜࠝࠣࠕࠖߎࠢࠝߎࠕࠗࠤࠓߎࠛࠓߎࠢࠗࠛࠓߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠝࠣࠑࠖߎࠣࠞߎࠝࠜߎࠛࠧߎࠡࠢࠠࠣࠑࠢࠣࠠࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠠࠓࠚࠝࠏࠒߎࠏࠜߎࠓࠕࠕߎࠢࠝߎࠢࠠࠧߎࠏࠕࠏࠗࠜߎࠝࠜߎࠢࠖࠓߎߢࠢࠖߎࠔࠚࠝࠝࠠߜߎ߳ࠤࠓࠠࠧࠝࠜࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠖࠓࠚࠞࠗࠜࠕߎࠛࠓߎࠢࠝߎࠐࠣࠗࠚࠒߎࠛࠧߎࠡࠢࠠࠣࠑࠢࠣࠠࠓߚߎ߷ߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠡࠝߎࠢࠝࠣࠑࠖࠓࠒߎࠏࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠑࠚࠏࠡࠡࠛࠏࠢࠓࠡߎࠥࠓࠠࠓߎࠡࠝߎࠜࠗࠑࠓߎࠢࠝߎࠛࠓߎࠐࠏࠑ࠙ߎࠗࠜߎ߯߸߱ߜߎ߰ࠣࠢߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠥࠏࠡߎࠢࠖࠓߎࠝࠜࠚࠧߎࠝࠜࠓߎࠥࠖࠝߎࠡࠏࠢߎࠢࠖࠓࠠࠓߎࠏࠜࠒߎࠡࠛࠗࠚࠓࠒߜߎ߯ࠚࠢࠖࠝࠣࠕࠖߎࠡࠖࠓߎࠖࠏࠡߎࠜࠝߎࠒࠣࠢࠧߎࠢࠝߎࠖࠓࠚࠞߎࠛࠓߚߎࠐࠣࠢߎࠢࠖࠏࠢߎࠡࠗࠕࠖࠢߎࠗࠠ࠙ࠡߎࠛࠓߜ[END]

Generally, that was how people in LASALLE are like. I do not know if that is a good or bad thing. I think I'm quite done writing about my damned life, and ya, I think I should go and mug le. Bye NEE!

Happy Birthday Tomato!

2009-09-04T00:00:00.002+08:00

Tomato Birthday Cake without candles.
Taken from The Sugar Syndicate

Happy birthday to TOMATO *spray ketchup* !!!! Sorry for posting late. YOU OLD LIAO. Ya I know you will always be younger than me..but its just one year! And I want my bd present leh...hehehehehe.

Another Beefy Attempt

2009-08-22T11:11:00.000+08:00

That's the induction cooker.

I tried another piece of beef, this time from Giant. Bloody hell, they showed me a tub of beef and I chose the smallest one. End up that thing is like four inches thick? I ask the person to slice it for me and she slice until one big one small. End up screwing my cooking time and such. And yewwww...Giant beef taste so dry! Unlike the packaged Cold Storage Aussy Beef, which tasted without marination and sauce, this Giant beef taste really inferior, and the price isn't any cheaper.

Presented together with some Chinese food. Why Chinese food? Cos there aint any other Western food around.

I need to experiment more to get my perfect slice of beef. Tips and advices welcome.

DIY Beef Steak

2009-08-15T23:45:00.003+08:00

"Steak for you sir?"

About medium done.

As a beef lover and life hacker, there is no way that I'm not going to DIY beef. Ok, so my dad got me a 250g Sirloin from Giant for my "experiment and research". Guess the cost? $2.60 only! Plus, this piece of meat was pre-marinated = save time && great for beginners. Sure, you can purchase a "blank" meat if you want to marinate yourself.

Rightfully, most of the beef steaks are charbroiled. "Broil" actually just means "grill" (IIRC its an American term), and "charbroiled" means use charcoal to grill la! Time is an important factor, and I have no BBQ pit or what sort at home. So I decided to grill it over a pot using my dear induction cooker. That was the best I could to grill the beef. The pot was much bigger than the beef, and thus it acted more like a pan.

It took about 5mins at 150 degrees before I decided to stop the grilling. Some parts are beginning to toughen due to overcooking, and later on I discovered that some are still quite red. But the whole beef is warmed up and no real blood could be seen flowing. I would say it was medium-rare to medium done. The taste would probably be "the usual steak", but that was good enough for $2.60. It could own any coffee-shop Western Food's bagua-thin beef steak selling for $5 or $6, but probably lag behind Jack's Place by a bit.

I could see nicer cutleries, a baked potato + spring onion + mayo + beacon sprinkles, onion ring side dish and my DIY Mocha together with the steak as a complete meal.

"Crawford Lane" Road Sign Fell Mysteriously

2009-08-15T23:31:00.002+08:00

Me and yan were walking towards a clay pot rice stall near Beach Road when we came across this fallen road sign. The strange thing is, there was no sign of an accident happening, and then why would this road sign fell out of no reason? Dun look like a repair or renovation work in progress as well.

No traces of abuse seemed to be found on the road sign, other than that one of the semi-circular plate that would cuff and clamp the road sign onto its pole were seen detached from the road sign itself just next to it, in the top picture.

Hmmm, what would had happened?

Meow Meow

2009-08-15T23:26:00.002+08:00

zzzzzzzzz....

This cat lives around my neighbourhood. It is one of the cleanest cat around, though one of the most non-human-socialable as well. It got a cat collar though it is a stray.

Cheese Fries

2009-08-15T23:21:00.002+08:00

This is my clothes that I wore a few days ago. Yellow top and white FBT

And I tot the colour scheme of my clothes and pants looked like...

KFC CHEESE FRIES!
Photo from webshots by twinkle427

Why do I keep thinking of food?

Does characters in anime watch anime?

2009-08-13T13:57:00.003+08:00

A scene from Elfen Lied.

Though I had not watched much anime, but till now, I had not seen anime character watching anime in an anime. I had seen them reading manga though.

So, do they?

LASALLE

2009-08-12T02:34:00.002+08:00

Weird name, Weird school. LASALLE.

So, somehow I made it into LASALLE. I questioned myself - did I make a hasty choice? Before we dwell further into that question, probably you would be wondering why did I asked that question as it sounded rather ironic. Ironic because I liked creativity, always wanted to improve on my hand drawing skills, and graphic design was what I did freelance for the past few years.

Now, let me tell you why...I will try to be as transparent and truthful to myself as possible, but it's not easy as my ego would tend to show people how great my choice of school is.

The first shock that I had was the people and culture. Imagine stepping into school, and everyday is a fashion show. You see people with strikingly coloured hair roaming around, some had exaggerated piercings, fanciful clothings or daring tattoos. I am visually bombarded with clothings, make ups, hair styles, bags etc daily. Call me an unker, but I do not fare well with ppl with outlandish appearance. I do much better with uncles and aunties at the coffee shop or XMM in uniform. From my counselling session, I realised I had some sort of trauma with ppl of outlandish appearance as they tend to be the school/class bullies. Guess what, I'm the victim, not once, not twice, but all the time during my primary and part of secondary school. Sure they aint gg to wack me up in LASALLE, but the strong magnetic push was present and I do not mix well with them. Moreover, it made me feel kind of weird as I'm someone who do not give 0.002x10^3 hoots for my appearance, you see, when everyone is dressed up weirdly, and I dun look weird, I am the weird one. Sure, I could pass off saying that "I'm a big slaxxor and that's my way of self-expression", which is actually true - I'm too lazy to try to make myself horrible face and body look good.

The second factor is that I realised when a hobby turns into an academic subject, it would lose interest value. In fact, it had lost most of its interest value and "value-add" with freebies like "stress" and "not-enough-time-to-watch-anime". Now I understand why Lily said she likes teaching but hate her school days. I used to misunderstood her by saying that she brought unhappiness upon herself, but now, I truly understand what she meant. Using Photoshop + Illustrator to pwn and impress ppl, plus earn some money, is one thing, while learning all the sketches, drawing your face seven times, each with different silly effects (hairy, watery, distorted), figuring out the poor instructions by lecturers and lugging heavy sketchbook to school is another. School and hobby, in my case (not sure about others), coincided only by a small margin and differentiated negatively in a large portion. Good Game!

Thirdly, I always though I would stand advantage because I
1. served army (more skilled in management and admin).
2. had previous relevant work experiences.
3. am a A level cert holder.
4. am 21 (somehow ppl see being 21 as an important 'achievement').

And then...it turned out that:
1. No one gives a damn about army, those who never been through it yet (majority of the ppl) dunno how it's like.

2. Seems like ppl can thrash me in hand drawing even without previous work experiences. Those who have worked before came from reputable companies.

3. No one have any idea what is "A Level" like since majority comes from Sec School or ITE. When you were young, did you really get an idea what would JC or Poly life be about?

4. Ppl though I was kidding when I told them I'm 21. Ppl 16 = 21, I 21 = 16 || 60.

Those are the three main factors why I would question myself "did I make a hasty choice?". So so so..did I? Nope. If you look at it from the other way round, I entered LASALLE because:
- There wasn't any other better institute I could go.
- There might be some other courses for my A level score, but I'm sure it would end up being more boring than drawing your own face in seven styles.
- It is near my house and SLS/SLT area, would help in my hobbies.
- Cheap, relatively.
- Fulfil my mom's demand for me to get a degree or dip instead of letting me work full time.
- I just want a damned degree at the end of four years.

LASALLE was a choice among no other choice. Further more, I could not find any accurate info on the school culture and workings and syllabus, thus I was unable to review the school before committing. Call me careless...if you want to. So the three main factors I'm disturbed by were unknown prior to choosing the course and making the decision to admit to LASALLE. With all that, I conclude that I did not make any hasty decision when choosing LASALLE. If anything were go wrong, I myself will have to take up that responsibility.

Fucked-up stuff aside. There are some good points about the school which I loved.
- No long dumb stupid talks, all the admin and information distributed were short and sweet.
- Not much school rules. You can sleep in lecture, miss a tutorial, no one will care.
- No attire limitation. If ppl can dress as fancifully as they want to, the opposite is the same - you can dress as casually as you want to. Good for slackers like me.
- No overdrafted lessons. Lessons always end BEFORE time, and there is no drag or teaching chionging to book slots for make up...
- Professional teaching. Unlike AJC teachers, teachers in LASALLE are all nice peepz who really know what they are doing and teaching. They will help you out and explain stuff until you understand. The lectures were not boring at all, and the tutorial classes are very interactive, much like attending a discussion session. Technology were constantly applied in lessons, all the teachers are good in IT and can set up presentation without begging student to help. Latest news were used as examples in lectures instead of old stale happenings.
- Good time table
- Good supporting stuff. Fast in admin processing and requests.

So...how? How how? I also dunno how. As this is probably my only choice left..I think I will try my best and see how it goes. Hopefully, with luck, things will not be as complicated as I thought it would be. Do not forget one of my favourite doing - bypassing and hacking real life systems :)

System Self Check

2009-08-11T22:43:00.004+08:00

School has started for a week, and I though it's time to actually do a self-reflection. For people who knows me well, I'm pretty much the same old ZOMBiE, the guy who
- drops into depression easily
- has lots of gadgets around him
- stays at home and have no life
- do lots of crazy IT stuff
- is uncouth and badly-mannered
- cracks super lame joke (either you love it or hate it)
- had married his computer
- with weird mp3 player and earphones
- is always emo
- money minded
- not very socialable
- blabber technical stuff that no one understands
- cant give two hoots to his outlook and appearance
- loves the heartland, the food and Singlish of Singapore
- never off his comp
- talks too much

The list is so long, but I believe my combination of personality traits would be rather unforgettable, be it positively or negatively. I would wish to use the words "character" and "personality" but din't cos some of my properties defined me cover both or will get mixed up. So, I came up with two terms - "core" and "interface".

Core is a mix of character and personality that defines me, while Interface is a part of my personality esp in the area of human interaction as well as perception of the world, plus probably my five senses and how they sense stuff. I am still essentially the same person as the one you saw when I was Sec 1. It's just that my interfacing with the world have been updating and changing to fit the society.

Some people would say that you should not change yourself for the society, just be you, but I had failed terribly in the past that it had impeded my self-development, it shows that you cannot deviate off mainstream too much without careful consideration and probably some kind of skills. I will be constantly updating my Interface to match with the environment that I’m in, and polish up my cores as well. If I attain a high level for my Interface, that would mean I would be able to control my personality very well dynamically – different personality for different scenarios and able to keep hypocrisy to a minimum level most of the time unless the situation calls for a need to conceal my true self.

I have a lot of catch up to do in my Interfacing, especially when it comes to socializing. Note that interfacing is not just input and output, but the way the input is taken in could very possibly affect the processing and thus a change in my character and perception of the world.

Anyway, I decided to come up with a list of achievement that aided me in my personal development (Core, Interface, Character, Personality all that shit):

- Passed the test of socializing with a very small community through work experiences. I am able to communicate and interact with them without much problem, with the help of my counselor.

- Able to be more empathetic towards people around me. I started to appreciate what my friends do for me, what my parents do for me and even what strangers (food court aunty, cleaning unker, bus driver, politicians etc) do for me. Though a lot of times I could find more fault in them than good, but still, I did realized the good in them.

- Immerse myself with more insights of life through novels, PC games, anime and movies. I like to listen to stories about someone else, somehow I can “store” such an insight, information and probably second hand experiences (be it real or fiction) and hopefully use it as a reference in life.

- Breakthrough of understanding in electronics. My DIY stuffs were probably a tip of the ice berg when compared to professionals, but I would consider it an achievement since it’s a hobby and the skills are self taught. It goes hand in hand with one of my belief listed right below.

- Able to try out different skills (cooking, electronics, audio, graphic etc) across different areas and cross use them in times where needed. It will give me a triumph card as I would have sufficient knowledge on something else that could be brought in and applied, where other opponents in that particular field would normally not have.

- Shave off some of my egoism. I hate egoistic behavior, but I have it in me as well. Most guys have a huge load of egoism and pride, that’s why you often see them fight and duel in many different fields. I managed to keep it under control, but giving ppl a chance to talk, and giving myself some time to think through, and forcefully end an argument by keeping close monitor on the logic part of me. If the opponent is correct, I would sniff that judgment out from the many layers of egoism and self delusion and forcefully acknowledge it with an appropriate action (Say “sorry” or something).

- Being nice to my sister. I think I had made an improvement to be more caring for her, lending her my ear and giving advices, though sometimes I may prank and irritate her when I’m bored.

- Patience. Other than one defining moment with my family members, I did not blow up or get mad this year at all. Frustration and “dulan-ness” incidents were kept low. Patience and coolness (in the sense of not being hot tempered) is one point I’m proud of myself.

Now to conclude, here are some goals which I will be trying to get:

- "Live your lifestyle, but do not impose your philosophy on others". Quote taken from wwenze’s blog. I will try to quit imposing my own beliefs onto others, that does not mean I do not state and inform ppl of my belief, it’s just that I will try to be less aggressive when promoting my own beliefs. Means, no more “ipod sucks”, “Mac is bullshit”, “J*ben rip off”, “AJC fucked up” etc .
- I would further cut my egoism dynamically. For most people, I will try to spend more time listening and putting myself in your shoes, and like in the above point, will try not to demolish your views and impose mine on you (unless you asked for it). But for some handful of people, ownage is the best way to deal with them.

- Completing my final test in socializing. I had set LASALLE to be my final test for socializing (for now at least), it is way harder than any previous test as it involves a large number of ppl and all of them have background very different from mine. They form groups and cliques which is one of my weakness as I’m often a lone ranger. The character of a lot of ppl there are also against mine, and now it puts my Interfacing to test to neutralized (superficially at least) the differences.

- Concreting my Core. I wish to continue my long founded definition of myself throughout my stay in LASALLE.

- “Low Flyer” attitude - taught to me by KTK. I found out that after so much, the most important thing is to stay happy. You dun need a degree or a good career to stay happy, some ppl need, but I find my happiness in doing things that I like (DIY, forum, movies etc), in places that I love (my room, my warm-hearted neighborhood, sitting one corner and look at crowds in shopping mall filled with happy faces, being in peaceful solitude etc) and with ppl whom I adore (friends, family, cats maybe). At this point in life, I would not have tremendous supporting myself, I can easily find a job that support myself alone well enough. Thus no matter how stressful the it would be in school, comfort and relaxing comes first, of course, that does not mean giving up in studies completely, I will still try to make it through with min. effort.

- Further enhance my skills. I would wish to enhance my skills and learn new ones across the fields.

- Closer ties to friends. I would wish to amend previous damage or insuffice in friendship (damage control), and build better bonds with my friends. I still stand on “quality friends” over “quantity friends”. No matter how little friends I have, I would always cherish those I already had as their friendship would be the upmost premium.

- 改变世界，改变自己. Translation: Change the world, Change yourself. One of the album by Wang LiHom. My counselor changed my view of the world, Yantronic changed the way I look at front line service provider. Front Line Service Provider refers to the aunty uncle who sells u laksa, drive bus for you or clean public toilet, they dun refer to the whole company, just the front line ppl. I always see him being so polite and cheerful to them, and he always get good services from them. I followed his path, and found that by being patient and polite to them, you will get good services in return, and I feel happy when I make that grumpy promoter smile and feels proud of his job. It shows that you can change the world. Maybe I can start by changing people around me, by making them feel better and by helping them. Then slowly, probably my actions could change Singapore. I do not like the ruling party, but I do love Singapore along with her culture, and I believe that (like gadgets and electronics), some tweaking and modding would let the country perform slightly better, if not optimally. Thus I’m quite keen to change my environment for the better, and as things go by, I would be able to change myself (ie Level UP) then.

Happy National Day

2009-08-11T22:39:00.001+08:00

Errr...I think this is a WOB. But ya, happy national day. Thank you for the holiday.

Erm, No, I dun really (actually not at all) celebrate national day.

Unfinished Fats

2009-08-11T21:30:00.003+08:00

This is a pork trotter.
Photo from Flickr user, topquark22.

I was at a hawker center last nite, and my dinner was the "O-so-damn-juicy" pork trotter with gravy rice. The thing about pork trotter is that the most delicious part lies in the fats, ligaments, tendons etc whatever that's gooey and slimy. Oh ya, I forgot that pork skin is shiok too!

After I finished my dinner, I was leaving the hawker center when I saw this plate of unwanted and half finished pork trotter left on the table beside me. the skins was peeled open and all the meat was gone, leaving a lump of fats/ligaments/tendons sitting depressingly on the plate.

I asked my sis to come over to look at it, and she was listening to music on her IEM, and so I tot I should speak louder, "Ooi! Come see this. WAH LAO! Waste food lor! Never eat all the fats and the skins...those are the most precious parts of a pork trotter lor!"

My sis widen her eyes and pushed me away, as she signal me to look behind. Behind me was a table of around 6 or 7 people, probably a family, staring at me as if I'm some criminal. Immediately I understood - they were the one who ate that plate of pork trotter and left it next table after they were done with it to make space for more food on their table.

A pang of guilt embraced me and I thought a tinge of pink was shown on my cheeks in embarrassment. OH NOs.......

*Smiled and took off at full speed*

Would You Sample Mango Liddat?

2009-08-11T03:12:00.000+08:00

I was travelling in a shopping center and came across the Fruits Section, and this was how the mangoes were sampled. The fruit was cut into many slices and put onto an expanded polystyrene foam plate. A thin film with two large holes held over the plate which several toothpicks were stuck in, containing the mango pieces.

I was observing the toothpicks, I could not really tell if those were
1. New toothpicks
2. Used ones or
3. Meant to be publicly shared and reused

Upon further inspection, I realised that the same sampling method goes for other fruits around that area, where I saw consumers walking past and just used their bare fingers to pick a few up and ate them down.

I do not give doubts that this method of sample fruits MAY BE hygienic enough for consumption, as I am no hygienologist, but I'm somehow disturbed and felt uneasy upon seeing how those mango slices were presented. Ewwww...

ASADI

2009-08-09T00:56:00.000+08:00

ASADI

Looking for branded sandals?

Laser Mod

2009-08-03T00:35:00.003+08:00

Better focus, distance and visibility after modding

Modification:
- Change to a new lens, old one scratchy
- New lens is thread-locked to the grip in such a way that the entire lens-grip assembly is longer. Meaning to say it can go nearer to the diode, and focus even further away. I can now focus a small concentrated red dot on distant buildings without the dot becoming bigger.

Thats me!

2009-08-03T00:34:00.000+08:00

This will be me when I grad from LASALLE....wheeee....

Colour Balancing Piece

2009-08-03T00:31:00.003+08:00

In this photo, you can see the green lego piece with three strips of colour - grey, white and black. Using this piece, I can easily adjust the colour balance and exposure to be near accurate. The problem lies with how to remove it from the picture afterwards. This method seems more practical for studio shots where the object will be taken out form the background.

School "Kope" Student's Prize

2009-07-29T19:38:00.001+08:00

My sister's class was forced to take part in an anti-drug essay competition writing for her secondary school (Cedar Girl's), so under the control of her teacher, she got no choice but to conform, though I believe that it's really ridiculous for teachers to force students to take part in an essay writing competition, it simply shows that the teachers are probably skiving on the part on lesson preparation and used some other means entirely as the lesson itself. I cant comment much since I wasnt there.

Then later, all the entries were actually sent in and my sister's was selected. Note that the organiser of this essay competition is not her school itself. She, along with all other selected winner were called together. The teacher, a lady, in charge did not even bother to tell them what place they had got or what prizes they had won, and instead started to ask if they mind donating the money to school, and aggressively persuaded the students to do so by pressurizing the fact that they should show gratitude to the school, about the postage pricing and other crap. It was very obvious that the teacher wanted to coerce the student into saying "No" for the question. And how exp could postage of a few cheques be?

I was angry at a my sister, at which why did she just follow suit according to the teacher. Then later, she explained that there were several cases of students getting picked for various stupid causes (parents complain, generalisation of student, bothering teacher too much).

I wanted to dismiss my sis's explanation, but thinking back, I did experienced same situation as my sis before. During primary school, some teachers got jealous cos the class like the new NIE Trainee teacher more than her. Using threat to forcefully get an answer favourable to the teacher was a technique widely used. Some of them have really bad attitude. While in JC, favouritism was very obvious and prevalent. VP picked on and spied on students who blog about the school. In the end, I could understand why would that group of lower sec students "agreed" to the "suggestions" by the teacher.

Side tracking abit, I was having lunch near my primary school (Maha Bodhi), when I saw one of the discipline mistress then, and now still, sitting at a corner of the coffee shop. I was wondering why was she sitting at such poor location as it was at the end of the coffee shop. Upon walking nearer, I saw her puffing away with some other aunties. I stopped and took another look to make sure I dint see the wrong person. She was indeed that discipline mistress and she wore that shades, which instead of hiding her appearance, made me recognise her instantly. That is because, she always wear that shade when she buy 4D near our school. She looked anxious when she saw me looking at her smoking, wanted to look away and hide her face.

Sure, she was sitting in Smoking Area, she had all the right to smoke (and buy 4D). Ironically, she was also the one who punished those who smoke and gambled in school, and I remember that alot of them were probably "filtered" out as not to tarnish the school's reputation by expulsion. Its an offence to smoke and gamble in school and at that age, but we all know in SG, if u get expelled from school, your future will not be so bright liao... So much for a school role model.

When ppl asked, "what happend to students nowadays"..probably, they had forgotten "What happened to teachers nowadays".

Laksa is humful

2009-07-25T01:45:00.000+08:00

What a humful laksa me and KTK has last week...

Are you...hungwee?

Should Not Be Cooking Instant Noodle For Supper Only Occasionally

2009-07-23T02:24:00.004+08:00

Instant noodle for supper are never "occasional", they are mandatory.

This is what a call a decent supper:
- Nong Shim Spicy Shrooms Instant Noodle, 120g x 01
- Prawns (Boiled heads and tails along with water for extra taste) x 03
- Hotdog x 01
- Crab Sticks x 02
- Pork Ball x 03
- Egg, large x 01
- Home Grown Mini Chilli (Boiled along with water for extra spiciness) x 04

BURN!

2009-07-22T02:33:00.004+08:00

They keep saying DVD red lasers can pop ballon, cut paper, burn match...I dun quite believe... at least not in my DIY laser pointer. So I took the time to try the experiment out today. Focal point and stability is very crucial. Click "HQ" on the Youtube players to view in higher quality.

This is my DIY DVD laser, showcasing how this laser can burn thin paper. A black dot is drawn on the paper using Zebra permanent marker to exaggerate and aid the burning. I tried with some other markers s, but the paper simply gets etched (finely cut by the laser) instead of "exploding into flames" like this one.

This is my DIY DVD laser burning matchstick at a close distance almost instantly.

Supper

2009-07-17T03:25:00.000+08:00

Ran out of eggs...