the wayang

Did some more observations today. My verdict, so much emotions on their part, but so much unfufilled and not done, we look down on them. The deprecation of the old system has begun. They can follow the obvious, but we follow a path that will meet on higher ground. Strike? We cannot be bothered, it is not worth the effort.

Watched ROTS today, the saga is finally complete.

sought

d-opps, discreet opportunity. make the difference, hit the revolution.

I was looking for inspiration once again, its so important to look for it. Everything I have done thus far, they arised from inspiration. The job attachment may be slack, but its draining inspiration on a dull routine. Today, Wikipedia had the Voyager 1 on their front page side article, and I took a look at the Jupiter flypast. Billions of miles out in deep space, this machine endowed by the faith of mankind, had returned beautiful images of this celestial object we will never see close up with our own eyes. The work of so many engineers and scientists, poured into something that was built by mankind. Just yesterday, I watched a documentary on the Great Wall of China, the same essence was there. Hard faith, rebellious dynasties. Wired is running this article of a crazy college dropout proposing a crazy theory on spacetime. Interestingly, he managed to get it published on a journal. That time as we know, has no instance, is indivisible, but is rather a series of events. Will this guy be the next Einstein, who started out as a patent clerk anyway. New ideas and things, they don't always originate from the dominant community, some crazy guy has to come along and do crazy things.

attresh

Ate the $2 McD muffin with tea set this morning, the tea was friggin hot as usual. Had to dump half a cup of it away to catch the train as the next one was 10 minutes down. Business was good today, ixus sell like hot cakes. The plan to do something has been narrowed down to a franchise revolving around a revolutionary concept called powerleap. Not a very catchy name, but if the concept works, the world will be slightly different. The essence of it is around on many online communities and cults, but its not properly acknowledged. Can we cash in on it or even truly define it?

I thought of some terms to use within native acintas system comms,

• Sanetize
• Deprecate
  

Insed

Not a bad day, got to Funan early, but the shop didn't open punctually. The people were quite friendly, but couldn't connect to anything about xbox games or whatever they were talking about. Amazingly, they sold 3 Nikon D70s, 5 Ixus40s in a day, quite a feat for a shop slightly larger than my kitchen. The customers buying these stuff seem to mull over the decision much longer than my hot-headed purchases, maybe I should be more like them, mull even more. Kaleni and BZ came over at about 5pm to pay a visit, something about crap paperwork. Tomorrow will be a good day I guess, I still hope we get paid.

updated agenda

• Reformat main desktop
• Restore laptop SuSE settings
• Unify music database
• Update acintas.media Showcase section
• Seek out people
  

Silent Seek

Starting my work attachment tomorrow. Hours are rather long, I hope they pay. Anyways, I'll get a photo of my Jason Liu muffin replica tomorrow as proof that it has been done. I'm gonna do an acintas design philosophy page to set the mark right. Its time to find people again. OpenStep.

Rendevous

NDP Racks on the Padang

Phew, what a day this was. Went out to Orchard, then to City Hall, Funan, Esplanade. Anyways, I'm pleased to announce I have successfully duplicated Jason Liu's ham muffins. The only thing that's slightly off is the cheese, I smsed him to ask him which type and he won't tell me. Either he genuinely doesn't remember or is purposedly withholding this important info. The cheese he uses is not as saturated. If anyone was thinking of selling this stuff, my conclusion is that the costs aren't justifiable. Here's a breakdown per muffin: bread ($0.80), ham ($1.20), cheese ($0.10). Selling it at $1.50 is already a steal and you are not even recouping the ingredients cost at all.

So went to Orchard, parents' friend's daughter who has a bellybutton ring, nose piercing, nokia clamshell phone and pack of Malboros. What an impression. Then on to Funan, John 3:16 was closed, wasted trip. Hit off to that shiny durian in the distance called Esplanade. The rooftop is actually a cool location for capturing the CBD waterfront scene. A band was playing downstairs and the atmosphere was arty just like any other day. I saw some great quotes on the way in and out:

If everyone is thinking the same, then no one is thinking.

The only limit to all possibilities, vision.

Rapport

Its Sunday and I shouldn't be working, but anyways I got the front site redone up. Only quirk is that the bottom menus no longer stick to the bottom as before. Other than that, mostly minor cosmetic change, but the coding underneath is totally different.

Just came to the revelation that the ipod mini will only last about 12 - 14 hours with the VBR 192kbps mp3 tracks I will feed it with. Apparently, lotsa people are getting about this long only, and I can't really believe ipodlounge's claim of 26 hours at all.

agenda for today

• Recode acintas front page as a single frame
• Call up the John 3:16 shop people
• Reformat my main desktop
• Get SuSE settings on lappie right
• Unify music database
  

TVmobile on taxi 

engaging suse

acintas.current
Running SuSE 9.2 on my laptop once again, something went wrong with the bootloader and now it can't boot from HDD without DVD support. Gonna reinstall everything again in a while. I have managed to gather more software for SuSE:

• Browser: Mozilla Firefox
• FTP Client: gFTP
• IM Client: gAIM
• Media Player: VLAN / MPLAYER
• Media Codecs: win32codecs
• DLink DWL-G650+ Driver: ACX111 Libraries

Guru RPM has a good inventory of SuSE compiled RPMs. A redesign of the acintas front site is gonna be underway to get it XHTML compliant as I have done for the galleria.

另一面

Recounting today, went to play pool with Justin and company for 3hrs at Paradiz. My pool skillz have some way to go, Mingyi is l33tz. The holidays have practically begun for me since next week I have job attachment out of school. Right now as I blog, those OM people are probably already in Maryland, US of A, either enjoying junk food or having a good nap from the flight. They probably will be in holiday mood while in San Francisco, so what's that got to do with anything? I think I have a headstart over them in getting some things done in the holidays. Difference is theirs is a merry-making holiday, mine is a dedicated get things done holiday.
This holidays, I want to:

• Restore pride in school work
• Improve upon Chinese language
  
• Redesign site front and remap site content concept
• Start on my comp science project
• Master Linux
• Start a spinoff and make some bucks out of it

Though its 5 items, its quite a handful in actual steps to accomplishing them. But I'm glad I at least have a plan to work towards to. Karan, Colin and BSoh were talking today about future plans and scholarships, their verdict was not to get bothered too much over an ultimate end. I have some short-term goals here, I will be happy to see them accomplished.

Writing about concepts and theories about being successful is no shit use if the actual stuff does not happen. Its so true and I dun want to bullshit too much about how to get there. I need to get there. I want the enterprise to be fun and fufilling, simple and not mind-gawking, just get there. I owned my first apple product, the ipod mini, a couple of days ago, and I can see why the Apple philosophy is so highly acclaimed. Its simple, but just sophisticated enough. I like options, but not sophistication. Google's philosophy is to do no evil. I need to find my own philosophy, or should I just blend these 2 together.

sioca

Blogging rite in front of the TV now on my laptop. Watching a talkshow regarding depression and its prevalence, I think I suffer from some level of borderline personality disorder. Not that I'm suicidal or anything like those people on the show, but the symptoms are:

A person with a borderline personality disorder often experiences a repetitive pattern of disorganization and instability in self-image, mood, behavior and close personal relationships. This can cause significant distress or impairment in friendships and work. A person with this disorder can often be bright and intelligent, and appear warm, friendly and competent. They sometimes can maintain this appearance for a number of years until their defense structure crumbles, usually around a stressful situation like the breakup of a romantic relationship or the death of a parent.

Uncanny similarity to my own diagnosis. Thing is I dun bother to harm myself like such people are supposed to, since I can't be bothered to. Apparently, ex-president Wee Kim Wee also had his own story of depression while young: He was overworking, and the doctor told him the first thing to do was to go home and take a sleep. Ok, my instable personality can't be solved by a nap. The problem I realize is that I tend to partionalize stuff around so mechanically that I have totally lost touch with a certain emotional side. Yet there's another overpowering side which is purely mocking my own helplessness and isn't helping. Results from CTs are back today, and I dun really feel anything much, why? Somehow somewhere I got nullified and dulled. Trying to find some colors this weekend.

silent movement

An unexpected thing happened to my ipod mini, it hung. Ok, considering its running a pair of ARM procs and has a decent OS underneath it, it probably hangs. So the remedy came from some quick googling. Plug the ipod with the power cable, hold the menu and centre button down for 6 seconds, it will reboot with files intact. Phew!! Now I know what to do in an emergency like that earlier on. Wonder if anyone else had theirs crashing on them.

After 2 weeks of orderliness, this room is back in havoc again. Time to fix it, yes. I can't work at home, managed to get the Four Continents booklet finished in the Woodlands Library. Never mind, betta clear the place first, getting headaches.

Holidays Are Comingz

First stop... sup sup supermarket
Went out for the first proper time in months on the quest to get some goodies. Tada, these are the fellas in my new collection..

Catches from the day
Total amount was a cool $444.. Let me recount in the order I did my purchase, $44 for the wireless card, $330 for the ipod mini and $70 for the sony nudes. I finally squared out my thoughts, its no point thinking a color screen mini will come out anytime soon. The 2G was only released 3 months ago, you think Apple would kick themselves in the butt so fast?! Their product cycles run for 1year for god's sake, so just go get it! The ipod mini's soliloquy as follows..

Allow me to reintroduce myself...

Behold, I'm the world's most well loved music player!
Wootz.. its charging rite now, music's back in my mobile world again.

disorder

Lack of drive for work is gonna kill me some point in time within this week. I've been trying to busy myself with some useful stuff, like helping out at wikipedia or simply tweaking the acintas sites. Still haven't confirmed ROTS movie outing, might not even be going. And still contemplating over the 250GB HDD. Meanwhile, I must remember to burn some stuff for some people.

movement

Went over to cst room whilst geog free period, everyone was busy doing their OM props so no one really bothered about me. And guess what, I created by first article on Wikipedia today!! Its on BreadTalk, took about 20 minutes, but I like it. =) Gonna contribute more in the future, but maybe I should go get a picture of a BreadTalk store and floss bun to add to my article.

Linux for Human Beings

The open source bug bit me again and recent updates to the acintas sites have included promotional links to open source projects, notably Firefox. And so in line with the spirit of open source, I did like to share with everyone another open source project worthy in its cause. Behold, "Ubuntu Linux", read below for more. Meanwhile, I'm doing an article on quality open source replacements for common apps many people use. Hopefully I can get it out and enlighten more people on this freedom movement.

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support.

The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

These freedoms make Ubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.

The team behind Ubuntu makes the following public commitment to its users:

• Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
• Ubuntu includes the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable by as many people as possible.
• Ubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or the current development release. Each release is supported with security updates for at least 18 months.
• Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of free and open source software development; we encourage people to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. The current Ubuntu release supports Intel x86 (IBM-compatible PC), AMD64 (Hammer) and PowerPC (Apple iBook and Powerbook, G4 and G5) architectures.

Ubuntu includes more than 1,000 pieces of software, starting with the Linux kernel version 2.6 and Gnome 2.10, and covering every standard desktop application from word processing and spreadsheet applications to internet access applications, web server software, email software, programming languages and tools and of course several games.

custom building

With dual core systems on the horizon to become mainstream next Q2, I may be right in saying that prizes will certainly fall for single core systems. And this June happens to be the right time to pick them up. If anyone is thinking of building a new comp system with budget ranging from $1-3k, I'm game to help you build one or even a few. Just name the prize and I can quote you the specs. What do I expect to gain, one afternoon lost for a pizza and some cold drinks.

tech fatigue?

I have a terrible storage crisis on hand. It is almost impossible for me to backup my 120GB worth of data to anywhere else cos I have no system around with that capacity. So an option was to go SLS and get a 250 or 300GB drive. At the same time, there are many aspects of this aging system that seriously need to be updated.

Over the span of the last 6 months, I have built 2 systems for others which are way heck faster than my current one. Not that mine is junk, it was built to be future proof for 2 years, and now its already in its 3rd year. So planning back then proved rather sane, it was future proof for 2 years but age is showing up. Mobo + PSU + optical drive failures have already costed about $300+ in replacements. And I had souped it up with a 9600pro last year costing an additional $170, together with a 80GB drive from the year before. Maintainence of same performance and tiny perf boosts came to around $500+. But for $700+, I can get a nearly similar and even better full system set.

So performance aside, these should be the last updates possible for this system:

• 250/300GB Seagate 7200.8
• Dell 1704FP / Samsung 710T

OK, that's enough for all this system is worth, no more updates beyond this. So I might as well predict what my next system would be at the end of the year:

• AMD A64 3500+ / X2 4200+
• 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
• 2x 300GB Seagate 7200.8 on RAID + 250GB
• Benq 1645 Lightscribe Drive
• 6600GT AGP
• Dualscreen Dell 1704FP
• Antec Sonata2?

That's all for now, wishful thinking..

Going out snapping! 

greenzap

If you haven't heard of greenzap, you are hearing it now. Its a community service similar to paypal, which you use to pay money online. Its not yet open yet, but you can pre-register now and get $25 free for future use, and you get more if you refer others in as well. So here's my referral link, Click Here , yeah its really my link. Side note, I read the terms and conditions, even though they state they hate SPAM, they will share your email info with some financial or wadeva institutions, so please prepare a spammmed account for them.

期と～止めるは馬鹿

I now remember why I loved watching Naruto, he never gave up. My title with my limited Japanese translates as one day, to stop would be stupid.

Stuck no more, time to change

Common Tests are finally over. Comp Science wasn't the nemesis I expected. There have been lots of things running through my mind the last few days.

Change. I don't know where to start. The people around me again? Friends if any, I don't profess to have any good friends. Some research showed that guys only make alliances. I'll be straightforth with myself, the friends around me are only there for the advantages I can give them. Likewise, I expect advantages from them. Simple as that, they can be meat buddies whom you eat out or enjoy gaming with, or work companions who are very efficient at working with you. Pussies who are shocked that friendship can be defined so meaninglessly without human touch, they claim there's also warmth and happiness. Strikeon, that's one of the advantage of hanging out with meat buddies. You drink and you play, you think you are happy.

So do I have anyone to look to? I can't really care much anymore, this is the way the world works, and its great to put this down clearly in words. Somebody said I lead a sad existence, and I'm still trying to find out purpose, and there is no one to enlighten me anyway. I probably wrote all the above because I was disappointed at many people around. Their behaviours have totally turned me off. I dunno how many times I have witnessed people being snubbed by others, its very rude. Take for instance the morning of Chem paper, Royston was pondering over some questions and was trying to ask Jason who I guess couldn't hear. JGoh came over, told him the answer, and even tried to explain. Except Royston told him to shut up or something, only to have Jason come over and give him the exact same answer with similar explanation. I would have taken it to be a one-off event, if only an earlier incident had not happened. I cannot remember the exact details, but once when the taiwan grp+clement were crapping as usual, I had passed a casual comment, and Royston said: "You quiet ah!". I'm not doing any personal attacks directed at anyone in particular, Royston is not the only guilty person around. I have noticed Clement snubbing Kiahua at times, but at least he does help Kiahua at times as well. Snubbing is common in 410 I think, was just snubbed by Leonard couple of days ago. I suspect Niche might be a top snubber. There are lots more incidents but I won't name them. People around are simply so dismissive of others, I myself have been guilty of dismissing Kiahua at times as well. Disappointed, indeed.

Then there were people whom I thought I had found long-term friends in since last year because we had been working on many little projects, shared common nuances, or tried to be pioneers of new things. But then again, both of them have been rather busy, and had things to be preoccupied with in their own arena, they became distant. I was disappointed with another's character, and at my own incompetence at seeing through the fog and layers. I don't click with anyone anymore, other than some loners or outcasts. Jovin and maybe Muthu? They make great people to talk to, as often as I do coincidentally bump into them on the way home. Together with a few others, the rest are distant worlds away in that of DOTA, KOTAR and the likes of taiwan. I regret not being able to keep those old fellowships intact, but I have no energy to chase after them anymore. Some people asked me what enterprise 5 was, its another stage of change of stratem, in reaching out to people and keeping people abound. I acknowledge that I change, people do all the time. Sad to say, enterprise 5 is more of a pessimistic stage of change, less proactive, more conservative but slightly radical.

I read Paul Graham's What You'll Wish You'd Known a couple of months ago, but haven't gotten time to put it into action. I showed it to Daniel today, I have no idea what he thought about it. But Karan shared the same sentiments, that we must get something useful done. And it will be done this June, I'm pledging the whole month to it. The night rendevous is part of my fun plan of change, and I will try to make it happen, to find similarity and common ground with people who are becomming distant. In a way, I help my pathetic self. Less of a loser, just trying to lead a life.

I'm writing all these for myself, but I'm aware outsiders do come here. I apologize if any persons named above are unhappy after reading this. I don't intend any harm or offense, just rather moody, will be willing to remove the offensive portion if you ask.

tech again

Our bunch of comp sci ppl were hanging out in kwok's lab whilst everyone else was tackling that geog paper. No one had anything to ask kwok, so everyone was trying out that dumb castle game. Quite pointless, so I went over to ars technica and read up their os x tiger review. Theirs is the only proper decent technical review around stretching about 14 pages. And it doesn't cover user experience! Nope, its all the downright nuts and bolts about HFS+, CoreImage, Quartz 2D Extreme bla bla.

If you know abt Q2DE, it seems quite revolutionary considering how they have moved towards offloading everything to the GPU which will be long before Longhorn. So we get the world's first truly graphical hardware accelerated OS, and its all done through OpenGL. If you have some 3D knowledge, each window is handled as a texture surface, and blending and smoothing are done very nicely through the GPU. Q2DE now adds video on a 3d texture, which means video done on the GPU in real time. But if you think about it, its only revolutionary in that M$ idiots have yet to come out with that in Longhorn, which will still be real long time away. So kudos to Apple, they are making the GPU do what its really intended for.

HFS+ has new implementation of metadata handling which I can't say much except that its looking real different from the windoze world. HFS+ includes Access List Control which is basically an extension to Unix permissions. Quite interesting in that they have chosen to use Java library syntaxes, just like what our DNS is doing now. An interesting fact in that accessing www.apple.com on a mac, the mac reads it as com.apple.www just like the DNS systems. It actually makes more sense in terms of hierachy as you know where to look first. Notice that acintas series of sites are denoted by a '.' in between their types with the syntax 'acintas.type'. Was inspired by Java, seems like others were too.

the light is visible

Today is the day when most of the people around me have started celebrating their just returned freedom to frag at that lanparty like there is no daylight. I think hongyi is an obvious leader in this market. Whilst I have the worst luck of taking the last paper for C.Sci, not that its even a paper. We get this problem question paper, a computer and 1hr on hand to get the task done. And its open book! So it cant be that easy. At the same time, there's nothing to really mug for. I think one can tell whether the question is doable within 1 or 2 minutes of looking at it. I have calculated the possibilities of a doable question as 66.67%. 3 possible topics will come out: Stack Queue, Vectors or Linked List.

Vectors is heck easy, Stack Queue is pretty ok. Linked List, I don't understand a single code of its implementation, so it better not be coming out. I only know 2 out of 3, that makes 66.67%!

Am I worried? There are reasons to, but I don't seem in the least to be. If Linked List comes out, I'll attempt my hack job of masking Vectors in its place. But for that to work, I need to find the Object library class function to convert Objects to integers.

continuation

It occurred to me momentarily that ppl have been ranting on their blogs about how they felt cheated by the senior admin with the CTests in that they were no different than mid-years. In a way, I understand what they meant. But if you think about it, would you feel comfortable sitting for your end of year paper without a stepping stone in between? Its such a big gap to cover, some might make it, most won't. At least I think that's the rationale.

tada

Physics went quite well, 3 hrs of mugging did more miracles than 5 months of Jason Chan. The maxim that Amath was easier than Cmath didn't hold true today. Wasn't an exact utter disaster, the stuff was solvable, but I was rather overwhelmed by the depths of working and the time constraints.

CTests aren't over and my thoughts sometimes sway towards after the tests, the celebrations and everything. Not exactly a bad thing, since there are things to look towards to. Some stuff that have been floating upon my mind the last few days, notably my picture gallery (its accessible via the link on the side). I did the unthinkable, added in a picture under the 1yr+ old Chiangmai folder, took slightly more than an hour. Some might call it time wasted, but I simply wasn't in the mood for mugging, and had rather indulged in something I could call productive. If you are four-niner or four-tenner reading this today, and find it disagreeable, naughty you shouldn't be reading this, keep mugging.

Anyways, what I wanted to record down was that I should look into redoing the gallery this weekend. And Changi Boardwalk seems a good place for the june night rendevous.

Chem's tomorrow, I ve done advanced preparations since last Friday thru Saturday. I seemed confident couple of posts ago regarding Chem. But right now, I can only say it will be a miracle-first if my Chem results come higher than my physics.

stay the course

Mugging physics, things look good on paper. There's nothing to practice with, and it seems quite dangerous if not for the 1hr extra time before the paper. 2hrs in between till amath, offloading small changes till then.

I came back at 4pm today and saw the whole list of ppl MIA on msn as compared to yesterday. Anyone whose so free to read care to enlighten me as to whether I missed out some last minute remedial from Jason Chan.

reinstate

Chinese went well today, much better than LA. Rather enjoyable paper, though more lapses than I expected, thus I don't think I'll ace it.

Meanwhile, ETP5 will lock on Cmath till the evening. Predicting an open time frame of 3hrs to mug physics. Unified termination hour at 11pm up to this Thursday. Duty and Responsibility, we will see this job to the end.

race

Its raining outside on this Sunday morning. Just ate breakfast (instant noods), savored the extensive natural and artifical flavorings. Rushing math, nothing more to say, machine log as follows:

++ Log seq
*init - chp17 max min pt
pb msc ex 17 pg 388 q4a: ans 2 psbs
*end chp17 max min pt

*init - chp19 exp log fns

muz mem
tri trigo rule
adv trigo derivatives
++ Log term

update

The enterprise is about 30% behind schedule. Jovin came over today. Compensated physics for chi the whole morning, mugged chem till evening. And wad can I say, finally saw the light behind the QA shit, what wonders a lil memory work did. I think I'm confident about taking chem next yr, Jovin said he figured it all out by pure logic, and its truly simple like math once you get the logic.

The chinese set has been fully copied, ran a simulation pass through it, started 25% thru the 2nd pass. Integreity reliability should pass on the 3rd pass. I should finish the 2nd pass tonite and execute 3rd pass tomorrow nite for Monday.

Slotting in physics and math tmr is quite problematic. Csci will wait till thursday nite.

progress

Finished covering chem up to molar crap, but that's only tip of the iceberg. Encountered some probs, log of probs is stored on this terminal shareddocs. Proceeding to copying out HCL chap1-7 (take note omissions) to test for memory integreity. I must remember to make a permanent duplicate in a proper book for swifter access during year end.

Fill out HCL tomorrow morning. Commit Physics + Chem at library. For CMath at the library tomorrow, I guess it would be great if possible to revise all S3 stuff for Sunday's session. Mug CMath + AMath whole evening tomorrow.

Bomb HCL fillouts and zaojus on Sunday morning. Math rundown in early afternoon. Go at CSci during the evening.

reorg

Did some re-organization of my music library and somehow got a morale boost in the urge to make things right. Lusting for the new gadget to go along with itunes, and it shall wait till i have fufilled my self committed promise.

Today's defeat did not signify that there should be only one end in sight and I'm determined to create a more acceptable and vibrant product to take home with. Having come thus far, I will not take it all going down quietly. No, its time to surpass!

stories

I know I screwed my LA paper, too slow at summing my thoughts, too slow at penning down. When others delightfully gloss over 4 sides, I snail out 1.5 sides. So my part with LA is dead. Feel so sick that I just want to indulge in music for the next few days. But my music libraries are paralysed on my desktop, can't bring them anywhere.

Just read the Wired story on Samsung's transformation back in 1995 when Samsung head Kun-hee Lee paid a visit to one of their factories. Guess what he did:

At Lee's command, the factory's 2,000 employees donned headbands labeled Quality First and assembled in a courtyard. There they found their entire inventory piled in a heap - cell phones, fax machines, nearly $50 million worth of equipment. A banner before them read Quality Is My Pride. Beneath it sat Lee and his board of directors. Ten workers took the products one by one, smashed them with hammers, and threw them into a bonfire. Before it was over, employees were weeping.

What that's glorious and powerful today is built upon hard and committed foundations.

aircon spoiltz

Common tests around the corner, but some stuff to chill off with.

A Day In the Debate Room

JFoo & Gang hoarding the cushions and tatami mat

Bestounded win-hon...

... joins in the camp...

.. and stones there

last the fight

Dunno why it happens, but everytime I bring my camera to school, it rains on that day. Apparently, POD was screwed up, so be it.

There are many things I used to do really well and own everyone at, but these have been consigned to the dumpster. And I struggle to trail along these days. So be it, I cannot hope to surpass others, but to match up with them for now.

Battle plan:
Today: Review Esee notes on point analysis
Friday: Prepare Chinese + Math rev materials. Separately Physics + Chem for saturday
Saturday: Mug Physics + Chem at library, prolly math as well
Sunday: Review Chinese chapters + zao ju, + Math, try C.Sci

Math: Major rev S3 work: loci, trigo
Csci: Stack Queue, Vectors, Linked List
Chi: Review Mem chap 1-7 + zao ju
Chem: Memorize Q&A, industrial processes, review S3 work
Physics: read TB all the way

the inquisition

Coming friday is the start of the common tests, and it will be kicked off by the 1hr language arts unseen paper. Everyone around claims there's nothing much to study, some truth to it. But tmr afternoon, I'll rush back and look for ESee's tips on analysing that she gave end of last year. I must admit that I'm at the bottom rung of anything literature, and that PEEKS thing will get points better than my blankheadedness when I get the paper. I screwed up that stupid song thing that Nathan gave, and I'm quite wary about this friday. If anyone still remembers what was that PEEKS or wadever thing that ESee mentioned, please msn me directly to save me the trouble of searching my files.

Common tests in sight, I have yet to set the battle plan. But friday afternoon will be the time. I can't concentrate properly at home due to the weather, so I'll head to the library on saturday for coffee with some ppl. Kill chem and physics on saturday, chinese on sunday plus a lil math as well. the rest is pure luck.

Good Luck!

my lullaby

Phew, just finished that CSci Programming Assignment 5 that's been sitting idle in my file for 1.5 months. I had a go at it couple of weeks ago but basically just only had the basic structure, and couldn't figure out how to add in the Insert and Delete functions. I chatted with andrew and moh, both of them said for the Insert function, they just dumped the book in and resorted it. Well, the assignment stated to examine the alphabetical order of the books and determine where to insert it, not dump in it and resort it. Well, originally looking all that cryptic, I really couldn't see anything. So today, I just dumped out all the original code (screw them) and replaced it with all the vector based functions. So much simpler now, and I finished what I avoided for 1.5 months in 30 minutes.

Well, maybe I should take a look again at those crap that I have been ignoring (procrastinating), they shouldn't be that hard although they seem to weigh a tonne.

nonsensical

Finished some math and felt bored, hit the browser and went to some blogs. Apparently, the Apple cult has really kicked off well with the ipod. So much so that people like Nich actually bought a powerbook and is obsessed over it. I'm not sure, but based on hearsay and blogspying, I think dickson and mebe ian lin also jumped on. I have used macs before, such as my uncle's powermac G4. And also had some hand at the dual G5s downstairs running Panther, I must say OS X is sleek and I like *nix. That's why I use(d) Suse Linux on my laptop, but its nowhere near Apple's crazy customization.

Coming to my main point and intention of choosing the ipod over the creative zen, it comes down to style and ergonomics. I only crap heck realized how important this 2 factors are after my laptop purchase. You can pay all the money you like, for the features and everything, but if its not great or easy to use, your money's wasted. That's why, ironically, I dumped my cheapo Logitech mouse (free) and k/b ($15) for Microsoft's Wireless Optical Mouse ($45) and Media Keyboard ($40), even though I hate M$. Sorry to Logitech fans, I tried the higher end models, but Microsoft makes better human interface hardware, and you feel better using the computer that way. My laptop has all the speed and features I bargained for, but there's one irksome problem. The indicator lights for HDD activity and power level, they are too freaking BRIGHT!!! I keep getting blinded by them, and they are terribly distracting. I think its just myself, cos I seem to get affected by bright lights, even when walking outdoors, I'm always squinting. Ok, its my problem, but ergonomics count. If you are not happy using it, you probably wont make anything good out of it. Goodbye.

back to the beginning

The year has been strudded full of work and pre-occupation in things I once never knew of and probably wouldn't have missed. Goals have been rushed and ultimately never realized. Now that I think back of the spent part of the year, what that has been done seems so minimal. My portfolios are barely optimistic and I command just about the same traffic just as when I bought the site.

I was just lazing about on the sofa when chU showed this documentary on this mountain lodge which saw the passing and falling of a great period of revolutions in China. In his hey days, Chiang Kai Shek had stayed there, so did Mao Ze Dong. Its the only place in China where the 2 great leaders of both camps have ever stayed at before. Chiang Kai Shek and his first lady, one of the Soong sisters, placed their love for mountains in this particular one called lv shan. The place looked really nice and cozy, misty but awe-inspiring. And to think that this was the place where the 2 different leaders of revolutionaries had sought their peace and seclusion in realizing the Chinese republic. Now I realized why Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Ze Dong could be so feverish in uniting and strengthening China. I guess you have to see the view for yourself, to know that the mountains before were Chinese land, you want to believe that middle earth country is as majestic as the sight before you.

Well, I really need a holiday, to a mountain resort or anything away from the city. Somewhere that's misty, cooling, refreshing.