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Ending November

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FC5 Line dances

School’s rather manageable this week, with the exception of a few hiccups here & there, not to mention training in the rain last tuesday… still good, luckily didn’t catch any fever or cold whatsoever, like what most people I know are having now.. eww “mucus-maximus”

Highlights of the week includes workshop. Finally managed to get almost most of the project done ahead of schedule, only to shave off addtional 1mm off my metal work on the milling machine! barggh! accuracy marks say bye bye… Maybe I can consider making another one if time allows.

Managed to put together pieces of VB & C++ programing into place, next week will be the VB test. Mmm, the funny thing is… programming what to study for ah?

The business people are always good at organising flea markets & stuff on a frequent basis with one coming up, the thing is that we all usually don’t even get to see any stores at all. Even when the event is held at the plaza- MY TURF! Maybe they are good at publicising it, but horrible to even make their stores be seen!

Very bad time trails for IVP:
2400m – 10.20, 3000m – 12.30, 5000m – 23.00, 10000m – Timings Next Week
The thing about long distance running for me now is not aerobic endurance, but speed. I am more or less adapted to running long distances, like 21km+ but only at a constant slow 400m/2min pace. Coach suggested more interval training for me, maybe those 100m sprints & drills will work out.

Still on sports, the 2005 Vertical Marathon placing results are out on their website. Came in 22th position out of 118 people in my category (Mens 20-29), that puts me in the top 20% of the athletes in the category & dang! I am like 10 seconds away from top 20… grrrr. It must be the last 10floors… must push harder next year. (Official .pdf file here)

They are finally getting those newer superbuses to ply the route between my house & SP. Think they are the newer generations of the Volvo Super Olympian. The automatic transmission is rather smooth compared the older superbuses, but can be rather draggy at times too. Yea & they seats they have are rock solid, so I can fold up & lean my legs with whatever pressure on the seat in front of me without annoying passengers in front. Hehe e-v-i-l-m-e

SP Mini Trialthon will be on this Saturday, consiting of a 200m swim, 6km bike & 2.4km run. Should be very managable. Standard Charted marathon will be on in 2 weeks time, 4th december, should be starting carbo loading sometime early next week.

Singapore Waterless Washing Machine

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Singapore Washing Machine!

Got some time up on surfing today, & see what our peeps in the university had came up with:

A waterless washing machine that removes stains from garments in a few minutes has been developed at the National University of Singapore, the facility said on Wednesday. The appliance uses negative ions, compressed air & deodorants to clean clothes. Industrial design students Wendy Chua, 21 & Gabriel Tan, 23, said they were inspired by the technology in air purifiers, which uses negative ions to clump dirt & bacteria, making it easier for the particles to be sucked out. The ions are a natural cleaning agent.

Whee, maybe I do not even need to get my hands wet in the future!

Same news also on Engadget & The Gadget Blog.

Tablet Research

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Got Tablet?

Ahh Notebook research.. Been doing alot about it over the last month or so, though I always hate surfing & drooling over items which ultimately… I COULDN’T even afford in the first place.

You know its something like Pictures—> wooo! *scroll**scroll* Specifications —> wahh! *scroll**scroll* —> Price: DANG!

Its the love for technology I guess *grins* which always keeps me glued to whatever tech… For me, its always like “oohh new phone out ah? Then ok *checks watch & marks on calender* I guess I have to wait approx 5760 hours or 8 months before the price comes low enough for my pocket!”

Poor me…

On a lighter side, been saving up for my new tablet PC I would be purchasing sometime early next year, just in time for the very much rumoured “compulsory laptop policy” SP’s gonna have like next year or so… why? monkey see monkey do loh, as NYP, RP & Nee Ann are ready doin’ it… Then what’s free access for dude? oh well brrr… I guess doing so could maybe give our school the braggin rights in the education industry… E-learning? my NOooo! No human – teacher touch, only opens up possibilities & opportunities for us to hack & temper with the school e-learning & result system… mmmmm which is not too bad either! Just don’t distrupt my wi-fi or I will BITE!

Moreover, I guess the recent failure of my desktop’s motherboard did set me back by a considerable amount of dollars, nevertheless, these are the main nominiess to replace my aging 333Mhz Althon socket-7 (yea its ancient all right) notebook I had since 1998.

  • Ultra portable tablet (Sonoma Centrino 1.7Ghz, 2kg) = Fujitsu T4020
  • Ultra performance tablet (Sonoma Centrino 1.8Ghz, with Geforce 6600GT Go) = Toshiba Tecra M4

So its a matter of wanting to carry a brick which allows your to play DOOM3 for 2hours at all settings maxed or a light small lappy where u can carry anywhere with out a bulge & run for 5hours. Decisions, decisions…

Everything looks good, now I all I need is an additional $3,720,50. :mrgreen:

Semester 2 Barghah!!

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Rawr! Semester 2...

I guess I had been away for quite sometime, duh been quite busy lately, as usual with life, business & training.

Nevertheless, semester 2 started rather slow & easy. Though I am taking EIGHT modules including GEMS bawrr! But I guess its gonna be quite a managable semester as subjects such as Character Development & Critical Reasoning Skills are just like “extra” modules. As usual the CCA points for the whole track & field team is not updated for the previous sem, sending more or less the whole team screaming at our president (in a very polite manner of course! 🙂 WHERE ARE OUR CCA POINTS!!! especially when the ownage for me last sem being like 40 points, dun play play leh… gimme points like, I earned it leh…

The sport event season for 2005 is coming to a close, ending with the standard charted marathon on 4th december. Then the 1st event next year will be the Safra Bialthon on March 11th, mmm dunno should I participate or not…

For Sem2 we have, on the 1A Module for the year:

  • Workshop – 🙄 Hands on! My Fav! Project of the module is to make a metal contraption to dispense scotch tape.. don’t ask me why… duh.. looks easy though, I was looking forward into building a drivable beach buggy or so…
  • Engineering Materials – The most daunting module, very very textbook based.. grrr
  • Electrical Technology – Its like a repetition of my previous Electrical module, with plus learnt at O levels.
  • C++ Programming – Finally get to learn some prog stuff, very primitive though I guess I won’t be writing my own OS very soon…
  • Engineering Maths – Very much like Maths C at A levels, minus my super hated STATS! yea!
  • Character Development – Basically a tok-cok session :mrgreen:
  • Critical Reasoning Skills – Very very toned down version of General Paper.
  • GEMS – Visual Basic Programming – My second programming module for the sem, since I am taking C++, why not VB as well?

I guess its wise to take difficult GEMS during the 1st 2 years of poly, then take easier modules as term progresses, like maybe web design or entrepreneurship something where u dun even need to study… hehe 😈 teacher me dunno design what webpage ah!

Oh well, gotta juggle school, training, competitions & business together again… A fresh sem, new aims & schedule whoa haha!

Weekenders Work – Nil!

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A day trip to Malaysia

Well its Sunday now, but I will just ramble about saturday 1st as I didn’t actually had time to talk about my day trip to Johor – Malaysia yesterday!

Saturday
The whole of saturday was more of less spent at johor where dad brought us to his favorite western-chinese coffee shop some where in johore. While crossing the causeway, I learnt a few tips from dad about driving in unfamilar places (though hes actually kinda know the place at the back of his plam anyway) & car security parking like not parking openly in public carparks, best options being hotel carparks or private ones with attendants.

I had alot to catch up on Johor. It had been like ages since I crossed over the straits, with the exception of my last visit to KL early this year, otherwise umm its like since early secondary school? ahah The place certainly had many more shopping complexes, not to mention the very big ones like city square, etc & the good old holiday inn (which is renamed now). Mum & Sheena very much spent most of the bulk on shoes & clothes while I just got a simple shirt & some fashion accesories, dad was naturally got on his ever-lasting-quest to find his ultra rare bata leather shoe whenever he chance upon any of their stores. The very interesting thing any shopper will inevitable experience are the number of pirated CDs & DVD stores around, not only in shopping centers but on the streets as well, I happened to chance upon a “high class” pirated CD store in a particular big shopping center where they even had staff serve customers professionally.. whoa! talking about class! brr! I dislike especially those on the streets where they just keep mocking you even if u are not interested in their goods. The day ended with dinner at “big horse” night market where we had a scrumptious seafood meal, even the drink store aunties recognized dad as we used to be regular, after all these time, man those those were the days…

Saturday ended with a return trip after dinner, but not before filling up a full tank of gas. On our way back the we chanced upon a rather funny sight of an overloaded Honda jazz at the checkpoint area, its was so full, that it could not even clear the speed bump at the immigrations, you can guess how panicy those drivers were behind that car if it were be to stuck there in the middle of a jam. hehe

Comp Up!

Sunday
Yupyup, Saturday actually started with a short trip to Simlim in the morning to purchase my new gigabtye 8IPE1000G motherboard before the johor trip, which in turn is still “not too new either”- it has AGP8x to the present PCI-16x, supports 478pins processors, very much a board to fit into my current system parts without a complete overhaul. I didn’t repair my old board as firstly its too troublesome to do it yourself, motherboards are freakin damn afforable now, lastly it actually costs $10 per capacitor if you were to replace them in a pc-clinic, (& my board have like 15 capacitors.. duh!). So all point towards a new board.

The greatest welcome are SATA support & dual channel ram slots, allowing my existing modules to go in dual channel mode & increasing memory bandwidth & speed by a considerable amount. After my bad incident with bad capacitors, I’ve introduced 2 additional fans in my system for optimum cooling over prolonged uptime, specifically one active cooler dedicated to the ram modules & the other for capacitors in “hot dead areas” aka areas of stagnant hot air. Cable ties are my best friend in case cable organisation, (why didn’t I thought of using that previously?) & they can really keep the interior clean, tidy thus allowing air to circulate more efficiently.

I would be running 3D mark 01,03&05 on my new sytem config soon, hope it can put through some reasonable scores with directx9.0c shader support my 6600GT can offer now. In the meantime, yea my system is finally up!

Workstation MIA

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Computer MIA

Yea, you guessed that right, my personal workstation blew up today. Duh! & here I am posting for the 1st time on my family living room computer…. 🙄

My system had been acting up the past few days, restarting randomly at first, I needed to get work done but heck how can I work on a system which restarts itself anytime it feels like? Even in safe mode? Initially I thought its some graphic problem so I went to purchase a GF6600GT for a quick afforable fix, (in answer to BattleField 2 & Quake 4 too :lol:), well I guess I was wrong when the computer couldn’t post or even tell me the right amount of ram my system has! Moreover, it could only boot up into OS only after like 10-20 restarts, & it keeps forgetting system information & config & yea the restarting symptom was still eminent, then I thought my PSU was faulty – because restart equals no power? or power surge maybe?

Only after a in-depth search off the net given these unique symptoms when I found that that my MSI 648-MAX motherboard is actually capacitor fried. Well I guess hardware nowadays have very limited lifespan, due to mass production & cheap parts. Though it will usually comes a time when hardware reaches end-of-life, but not like in 4 years (or so)!

You can read more of the problem here.

Vertical Marathon 2005

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The finisher's kit...

Well its competition time again, a time to participate & compete for the fun of it. This time, its the swissotel vertical marathon. Responses to this year’s event was so overwhelming that registrations have to be closed a month early. Luckily for me & my team we registered early. Met tiwazz, a SGrunner at the swatch shop around 6.30am, stayed & chatted for a while before its time to register for my category where I coincidentally met ahlong too, followed by kops & brokenruner at the registration booths.

Overall the race started off in groups of eight participants, flagged off at one minute intervals. I let everybody in my pack to overtake me at the start only to overtake all of them past the 20th floor 🙂 hehe evil me. From there, its up towards overtaking those from earlier flag off groups. Finished with a time of 11.43, achieving my aim of not exceeding 12.00. The interesting thing about rising so fast up a high height in a short amount of time is the lack of oxygen at high heights, coupled with the fact that the stairwell is not a very well ventilated place. Therefore the sub-set of temporarily dizziness is quite eminent in a few participants immediately after the climb. The view up there is nice, but not that eyebow raising either. A finsher’s kit consist of a personalised cert with official timing by tissot & a finisher’s medal on top of a standard free flow of redbull/mineral/spring water not to mention being able to keep our bibs as well!

Everything looks set for next year’s event. Next stop standard charted marathon!

Free Coffee! no wait! Chalet!

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Free Coffee!

And free flow it was at NTUC BM, yesterday while doing grocery shopping. Haha the thing about us Singaporeans is to pounce onto anything we see free. What else the best things in the world are free right? lol aha.. ya if you wondering why am I grocery shopping again you guess that right if you’ve been following the previous posts, mom jus wants me to carry stuff home for her!.. dang!

Went for my bi-weekly 12km jog at tiong bahru park last evening, this time clocking in about 60mins on the run, breathing through my nose all the way. Currently everything looks set in progression towards the stand-chart marathon in december. Now if only I can wake up early to go for track & field training…

Its quite a fast week after the chalet late last week. Still yet to find time to put all the photos online. It was quite interesting depsite the rude fact that wild wild wet was closed for the MONTH for renovations (maybe possiblity adverting another “fantasy island style closure” & the discovery that Escape theme park is ONLY open on weekends! ARGRH! so guess it more time on the xbox, Ps2 we brought in & arcade. Mmm, mentioning arcade its thru this sudden availability of free time during the chalet where I get to try out & master the konami arcade game- Percussion Freaks & man I guess I am good! scoring A’s on the begineer level after only 2 virgin plays. heyhey! guess its another game I would see myself playing more often besides DDR haha. Anyway, feast yourself with some pictures from the chalet!

Whoa BBQ!
Whoa BBQ!
Synco-swimming?
Synco-swimming?
Happy Bday Andre! (waterbombs ready...)
Happy Bday Andre! (waterbombs ready…)

On a sidenote, had been trying the game 2nd-Life for about 2 weeks, & I say its quite an interactive game where we get to create stuff in game & sell them for real money! whee! there even a life exchange rate for the in-game currency, whats more joining is free now, if you are interested, just leave a comment or contact me & I will invite you to the community.

Mmmm if only I can convert the money I earn in counter-strike to real cash.. *snicker*

Driving License – One year!

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Driving for one year!

It comes a time in Singapore, where a driver will go ultimately go through the ritual to take down the probation plate after obtaining his/her driving license for one year. As scared as it can be as putting it up initially, its a day I had been long counting down too… haha! YEA BABY! its time! Today! 8th of OCT! whee whooo! no more newbie sign. Watch out DRIVERS!

With that I would like to reflect on my rather safe & accident-free 1st year. & so will it be for as long as I drive.

cheers!

1 Cockroach = 2 Free Dishes

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Breeks at habour front

Well, thats the case this evening at the Breeks cafe, HabourFront. I ordered my usual double servings of fish & chips + baked rice while dad got his chicken thigh set, Sheena with her baked pasta & mum with her chicken baked rice. Everyone was happily eating when I started on my 2nd serving – baked rice after my finishing my fish & chips… So after going thru like, one third into the 2nd dish, I was rather amusingly greeted by a well baked baby cockroach sandwiched & perfectly moulded into the rice… Well as the saying goes: whats worst than seeing a worm in your apple? – a half bitten worm of course! Thank goodness it wasn’t the latter!

We reflected the bug to the staff, where I guess an autopsy was conduct in the kitchen thereafter. The manager was very traumatised by the the matter, he came to our table & kept explaining all things from kitchen management, how it possibly went in, their monthly extermination with pestbusters, etc. I guess the issue was quite controversial with the staff & such, as they were like, you know, kinda “scared” as they approach our table thereafter, fearing that we might bite their heads off with a complain to the environment ministry… haha just say they were very apologetic… & they approached us in a rather professional manner, which is a good thing I guess.

Personal, I am one who grew up with creepy crawlys, not only kept them as pets before but ate crickets & bugs overseas too, so no big deal. Usually I the kind ok with an occasional hair or so in a bowl of soup, with the except of flies & I guess lizards of course, being potent bateria taxis. In all, we had 6 dishes, but we only paid for 4, so thats 2 on the house plus an additional ice cream set for dessert- on the house. Luckily I was sharp, then mum mentioned that, I was infact rather sharp in eating my food, stating that if there were ever a roach in her food, she won’t know, as she would have eaten it already!

On our way back home we came to conclusion in a rather comical manner, saying that “the cockroach which sacrificed itself for a baking demise actually did it for quite a “good cause” – for our pockets that is, saved about $21 in all. Now jus hope I don’t make frequent trips to the toilet soon…

I got myself a 65cm gym ball at the habour front Aibi store! whee! bounces, bounces, bounces…

Oh yea & to all those still running the 168km all-around-singapore, all the best, I salute you.

Visit to grans *Burp*

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Hi five!

Then there was a Malay wedding ceremony Sheena had to attend before picking her up for dinner, & man do we have to drive like almost an hour or so before getting to Sembawang where the wedding is held… aka the-other-end-of Singapore as we know it. Luckily we were rewarded with some baryani rice, mutton & chicken from her friend as a dinner top-up. That very much set the in-car aroma all the way back, & man were we hungry then. Initially the plan was a visit to grans before heading down to breeks at habour front for dinner, where Mum wanted us to try the al la crate. She had been always bragging to bring us to go after her visit there last week with her PTA presenter’s gang. The plan was postponed due to the lack of time & we had dinner at a hawker center near grans place together with our additional malay cuisine, courtesy of our friends at the still-on-going wedding celebrations in Sembawang. Mum went about her usual groceries, while dad went for a hair cut, as usual I was mum grocery plastic bag boy… “arms very strong hol? come come help me hold all these things…” dang!

& no, we didn’t raid the cheers ice-cream machine this time. Next week will see my last paper for the semester, electronics. Brought stuff to study while at grans but didn’t find the time do to do then, sad. Left about 10pm+ before heading home.

Now, can anyone enlighten me whether a mixture of fried hokkien sotong noddles, beancurd, soyabean drink, baryani rice, chicken & mutton for dinner is a bomb for methane production? cus I am having lots of gas now.. yea… can’t stop “opps” burping & passing gas.. urgh! Maybe if that is so, then we can rely on a new definite source of renewable energy, thus solving all our current energy problems… now only we got to find a comfortable way to harvest the gas…

Funny Nintendo Revolution Advert

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Nintendo Revolution Ad Pic 1

Yea we all know that Sony’s out with their PS3 next year, answering that too will be Microsoft’s Xbox360, both spotting wireless controllers, new processors, engine & such. But I guess nothing much can offer the interactivity the Nintendo Revolution offers. In place of the all standard game controller is a rather unique “TV remote” styled controller where on-screen-controls are as easy as ‘point & click’ – YES point to the screen & SELECT, all no hassles, no wires. I can just imagine the possibilities this format offers, having the ability to pick objects in RPGs, swinging your controller as a racket/sword in a tennis game/samurai game, using it as a steering wheel in racing games, not to mention having an edge & doing away with the hassle of D-pads in first person shooters. Whats more, its expandable & can be mated with a conventional D-pad base for conventional gaming style. You can read a more detailed story & application of this rather interesting gyro controller on IGN.com here.

To have a feel of the interactivity involved, check out some snapshots I’ve taken from a Japanese advertisement Nintendo is currently offering as a trailer on Japanese airwaves, comically funny!

Nintendo Revolution Ad Pic 2
Nintendo Revolution Ad Pic 3
Nintendo Revolution Ad Pic 4

You can read more of this advertisement on a video game blog, videogames.3yen.com here & download the video from the page. Alternatively, you can download the video here Sorry on the broken direct video link, the site does not support hot-linking, please visit video games.3yen.com to download it direct from their page (Thanks GamerZ!)