Devoid of Anything Useful

Anti-establishment

2010-04-12T20:21:00.003+08:00

I hope it isn't becoming a trend.

We have had past isolated cases of apparent insubordination, but now it's becoming something "in" for people with no fear to do. Does this not remind me of suicide terrorism? I have no idea.

However, one thing I must say is that this form of anti-establishmentarianism will go nowhere. C'mon, it's like throwing stones at some massive building. Yes, dents and scratches, the public will react, more voices would start appearing etc; but Security would take you in before you even manage that.

To wreck an establishment beyond repair, one must join it from the bottom and work his way up the hierarchy (if applicable). Once at the top (or any sizable position, preferably vice-top), he would then proceed to tear the system down from the roots, having planted mines and bugs everywhere on his way up.

Now, if the act of joining the system disgusts you, you probably aren't extreme enough. Go home and get sober.

April

2010-04-04T18:16:00.002+08:00

It's time to spend another April in Singapore, not braving freezing weather and not evading internet blockades.

Such is life

Merger

2010-03-24T14:50:00.002+08:00

March 14

2010-03-14T08:50:00.003+08:00

Of course, being hexagonal and all, the ratio of the "circumference" to the "diameter" is 3:1, but \care/

Also, being non-American and all, it's 14/3 not 3/14. Of course, it is 3月14日.

This is going to have an irregular schedule, so don't spam refresh. Just use RSS :D

Why Goto is bad for code

2010-03-14T08:43:00.003+08:00

This can't be good

2010-03-11T23:16:00.001+08:00

overloaded

2010-02-19T21:02:00.003+08:00

I suppose I can't complain, given that others have had more work piled up on them and yet they were still able to cope. How I wish the "don't compare with others" quip can be used here.

But mechanical projects are inherently different, I suppose. Let alone 2 of them (Robocup2010 and Quadcopter). I just hope one doesn't die just because of the other.

I'm scaring myself silly as I'm actually doing homework (goshes). If not for my random nature I couldn't have attributed it to anything.

The last batch we'll be seeing has come, let's hope they can survive their cycle of 长江后浪推前浪. I wish them the best of luck.

I've suspected this long ago, but it's just recently confirmed that my name has spread further than I have. I wouldn't think it is that good of a thing, but me being the Machiavellianistic person I am would have Xanatosed a scapegoat already.

There's been lots of Chekhov's guns and gunmen around me recently. I just hope I ain't being a big Xanatos sucker this year.

It is no surprise

2010-01-17T19:48:00.004+08:00

that this is rather dead.

Of course, given that this would be (generally) a year of suck, I shall take care.

My thoughts swim freely, coming and leaving as they please. Without a whole integrated human interface device* (ironically making me less human) on me at all times, I don't really want to jot down every single thing I think. My rationale is that if it is important enough it would pop up again sometime later.

*Eyetaps, coupled with some air keyboard, a microcomputer and a near permanent connection to the internet.

Also, the sale is still ongoing, with the addition of Catalogue2

X'mas

2009-12-24T20:00:00.003+08:00

I still don't get it.

It's being this massively commercialized day of the year. The only day other than your birthday you would expect to recieve presents from relatives or friends.

Of course I'm not trying to be a wet blanket and trying to ruin the spirit of which does not really exist in me, but I don't know why there is this wall between me and this so called festive occasion. Other than the songs of course.

Also, Santa is not a very well recieved image I've heard. Or maybe I've been hearing from the wrong people. The only way I see the day being spent is like how it is in A Christmas Carol, and usually my day would be spent watching all the different versions of that, including Disney and Looney Tunes.

However, any excuse to wish someone a good day is a good excuse.

Happy 25/12 (and it's still the eve, as of posting time).

Year End #miko Sale

2009-12-13T21:38:00.003+08:00

from the random folks on #miko @ irc.rizon.net

Details and proceedings:
- Prices are in SGD, Singaporean buyers preferred.
- Official communication (for queries/collection etc) would be done via IRC. (#miko @ irc.rizon.net)
- Bidding will be done via comments on this blogpost. No Cbox!
- Please state your name/nick/unique identifier, item/group as clearly as possible, with bid amount (in SGD).
- Bidding closes on 31st December 2009, 2359h. Any bid placed after that would only be valid if it is the only bid for that item.
- Minimum bid increase is SGD 1.00, unless otherwise stated.
- Additional Details in Catalogue available here -> http://www.mediafire.com/?ywvygmzwrt2
- There will be a part 2 soon-ish, with another closing date. Do check back!

Suspension of disbelief

2009-12-06T21:01:00.004+08:00

For the people in this thread who do not understand what the above means:

What he said.

break;

2009-11-19T23:05:00.002+08:00

It appears I am only posting this because I have broken out of the loop of which I want to post a post but still fail in the end. Deja vu.

Rather than willingly spending time sitting down writing about something I am excited about doing, I feel that spending time actually doing it would be much better.

Chasing SeiZon, Kämpfer, NHnH2 and NyanKoi!, while watching e.f. (memories). It's the 7/8 th week of the fall season, and I must say relative to the shows those weeks passed quickly. Also following FlashForward, which is quite interesting, and supplements all that 2D I've been getting.

Scripts aplenty. I should start saying "There's a script for that". Reading Google Reader by spoofing the cookies using wget. grep and sed being my very good friends. Each script teaches me something new. Working on IRC bot with bash now.

AFA'09 Shortly. I must say it is more hyped up than last year, so they had better justify that 250% price increase. Danny Choo Stormtroopering over here was also lulz.

That Otaku Elimination Game thingy, I actually fully support it. I don't really appreciate the dilution of the "otaku" pool. I am no otaku, definitely not. Neither is anybody else who can survive in HCI able to justify themselves as being otakus.

Robocup is burning my HP with incredible speed. There is nothing else that makes me breathe acrylic, tin, lead and aluminium fumes more than this. Being cooped up in a room does things to you.

Ubuntu 9.10

2009-10-28T21:27:00.002+08:00

Sorry for a lack of updates, but I see social networking and microblogging has largely eradicated the need to use a blog to tell others what you are doing.

Also, Robocup has been keeping my ass up all the time.

But it's coming tomorrow! The OS that will mark my first anniversary of Ubuntu usage. And somehow I feel like doing what most otaku do with their waifu, and eat cake in front of my laptop, with a pic of either Tux or the Ubuntu logo.

Belated anniversary.

2009-09-22T16:14:00.002+08:00

DoAU (not referring to the posts I made on s--n--s) is slightly under one month over one year old. Quite a mouthful there, but goes to show that I forgot I set this up during one fine NJRC training session. Or I couldn't be bothered enough.

This also means I have been crapping for almost that long.

----

Feeds have already been expo-imported into Google Reader.

----

On a side note, I've just realised that only this year I've needed to interact with 3d. Through DS somemore. FML?

Timeline

2009-09-18T21:39:00.002+08:00

22/09/2009AD (Tue) - 27/09/2009AD (Sun) :
- Preparation of feeds to import into Google Reader
- Finish writing script to autocheck Gmail, Twitter and FB (optional)
- Organize reading materials currently in school and at home

28/09/2009 (Mon) - 04/10/2009AD (Sun) :
- Mugging commences
- Stop reading feeds, except perhaps XKCD and Gawker Priority
- Update self on FB/Twitter/Gmail 4 times a day (0630/0900h, 1400h, 1700/1900h, 2100h), max 30min per session

05/10/2009 (Mon) - 09/10/2009 (Fri) :
- Update self on FB/Twitter/Gmail once a day (2100h), sleep by 2200h

Mon - EL1, IHE (GEOG)
Tue - CL1
Wed - CHEM + H
Thu - IHC
Fri - PHYS + H

10/10/2009AD (Sat) - 11/10/2009AD (Sun) :
- Relax a little
- Mug a little
- Sleep a lot

12/10/2009AD (Mon) - 14/10/2009AD (Wed) :
- Update self on FB/Twitter/Gmail once a day (2100h), sleep by 2200h

Mon - EL2
Tue - MATH + H
Wed - CL2

15/10/2009AD (Thu)
- (If I'm up to it) Go take Bio paper
~~- Celebrate with the rest of non-bio people~~
- Spam feeds
- Resume normal operation

16/10/2009AD (Fri)
- Celebrate with the rest

where is the GPS now?

2009-09-11T19:42:00.005+08:00

It appears that NJRC has sapped my life. HP, Mana, WIS, CON, STR, INT, DEX and CHR all went down by loads.

And apparently Robocup preparation is next. FLL looks fun this year, and most likely I will just be coming up with ideas while the others slog it out.

And that marked the end of my 3 empty years in NJRC (secondary school div).

In the midst of it all, a direction marker was lost, bearings could not be found.

And Chromium received updates. Could have been anytime between this and my previous update, so forgive the lagginess. Anyway, it doesn't seem like many are doing this.

Now there is no need to have the "--enable-extensions" flag, but the "--enable-plugins" one is still necessary.

This doesn't work, but it appeared.

This looks much nicer

So does this.

By the way, good luck to those going to BSC in either Oct or Dec, I could give tips. And in return help me get some magazines from the roadside stall kthx?

Query Strings

2009-09-05T19:17:00.003+08:00

This is a problem I had yet to address, but I've been driven up the wall after so long.

Please remove useless query strings from URLs you share.

A very good example is this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWKfYa3oBSU&feature=player_embedded

Its only purpose was to tell Youtube that you reached the page from an embed player, and not others potentially following your link.

If you still do not know what I am talking about, here are a few more examples.

- http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/04/229204/-Code-Breaking-Quantum-Algorithm-On-a-Silicon-Chip?from=rss

- http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/09/steel_velcro.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egUDYu_qmL0&feature=related

They serve no purpose for others, increase their length, decrease their readability, add another entry to URL-shortening and Online bookmarking services, and screw up what the website put them there in the first place for.

Of course, please use your own brain and test those query strings to see if they are useless. If they are required to show the particular page you are linking (eg. ?page=2 ) then obviously leave them there.

Another thing is that occasionally, there are also cases when a page can be linked by ID alone. Examples include:

- http://gizmodo.com/5353104/steel-velcro-made-by-germans-supports-35-tons-heat-at-up-to-800-degrees-celcius

- http://lifehacker.com/5352974/this-weeks-most-popular-posts

They can be removed very safely, and the only reason you would ever want to leave them there is to let people know where it leads to. Which is quite pointless since they are usually truncated anyway.

So, make the tubes a better place to be in.

EDIT: Apparently, someone else had written a similar post before me.
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/how-to-save-urls/
Go read that too.

AAR of Tahan Climb

2009-08-31T22:00:00.000+08:00

:D

1) Should have wrapped big lighter in ziploc instead of newspaper
- Rain made newspaper wet and cake up everywhere

2) Should have checked neck-pillow before departure
- Neck-pillow was leaking

3) Should have gotten better sleeping bag
- Green one was too heavy + big for current state of technology.

4) Should have brought salt
- Leeches were fun to melt with salt.

5) Should have landed hard on knees less
- Knees very pain now

6) Items brought were adequate
- Clothing was almost just the right amount
- Toiletries were ok

7) Should have taken more pictures
- Walk slightly slower next time.

8) Lightsticks were good
- No need for torches

Back to civilisation.

2009-08-29T14:07:00.005+08:00

And so, I climbed a mountain.

Stuff happened in both the cyber- and meat-spheres while I was away. I was half expecting something like Rick Astley dead (touch wood) but luckily it did not happen.

And to those routed here by that short mention: Hi, welcome, nothing much here I would expect you to really like, but if you do just keep quiet. If namedropping is the path to more traffic I would rather not take it, thanks. Not that it is a bad thing but I don't really like taking advantage of it or anything. Anyway I'm the supposed noob I was made out to be.

By the way, thanks Edward for doing a little bit of PR while I was away. I didn't ask for it but I appreciate it.

And I see I've lost touch with a few things, as feeds take over (And I'm not just talking about the 5 days of flooded feeds). Nevermind, I have come to terms with a few things and hopefully I can have a life again.

Longer post later (I hope) about the climb.

And since I'm so messed up anyway, Chromium updates:
That language dialog is finally there.

More SSL options already there.

I have also just realized that it is another 2 more months to Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. I'm looking forward to it, especially since it is a chance to clean my system of residual config.

Stamps

2009-08-09T13:25:00.002+08:00

It is definitely not a monetary issue here. In fact, I would get either 5 or 10 of those sets just to spite if I were that determined and well off enough. And I actually already have a set from the 90th Anniversary Gala Dinner.

But the point is, even if I were well off enough to buy those sets to spite, I shouldn't. The very fact that I am not doing charity when I am giving to charity is the reason I shouldn't give. When one gives, one must actually want to give, and not expect anything in return. It should also not be like feeding dogs. A rich man could donate a small portion of his fortune away, but if his mindset was that he is feeding dogs, then what good could come out of it?

It was like the times when NKF was doing their shows and giving out lucky draws for people who call in. It is just not right. And just as much not right as forced charity.

But someone thinks otherwise. And I'm not talking about the first one involved.

The difference between spam filtering and collecting interesting things

2009-08-07T21:44:00.002+08:00

When you filter out useless info, generally you look for words you do not want. This is easy, but sometimes we miss out on things we actually want. And these could actually be important. But it is relatively easy to do.

However, if we try to collect only the things we are interested in, the quality of content would be generally improved, and true negatives would be reduced. The difficulty is with generating the list of "interesting" keywords.

One big problem I have been facing is the lack of a good filtering method. For example, If I am not interested in stuff about the Palm Pre, I should do the clever thing and block it in the Y!Pipes already. However, it could be involved in a parody of something else that I am interested in, or just simply related to some other field I am interested in, I would not receive that info.

So now, how to generate that list of keywords that I actually want, without sitting down and writing down every single thing? I can think of something related to Bayesian theory, like I choose stuff I'm interested in and it starts to learn, but I have no idea how at the current moment.

Or I can stick with status quo and spend 15 minutes per 45 minutes weeding out the not so interesting stuff from feeds. Not very fun.

eh

2009-08-01T13:55:00.003+08:00

Heh, finally decided to update

I'm going to Tahan camp from 22/8 - 27/8, so I have to find some way for me to grab the full feeds while away. Google Reader should work since it is perma online, so I shall do some stuffs to it.

Heh, got up Bukit Timah Hill for the first time, a puny 163m compared to XiangShan's 588. But it was different cuz this was less windy and more humid.

I took this a while ago, when I just wanted to check my Y!Mail for a while. Failsome

Because chromium crashes and Firefox hogs memory, I decided to use wget to download large files. I just needed to get the direct link by waiting a while.

Chromium stuffs:

I got this a while ago, when some random flash crashed

Heh, this appears but i dunno how well it works

plugins have arrived in chromium

2009-07-25T11:10:00.003+08:00

(hum to the tune of "Santa Claus is coming to town")

Apparently, the recent updates were rather major.

This is clever. Look at this and you will know what I mean. UPDATE: It seems it doesn't work for the current build...wonder why.

Flash plugin works now.

GTK theme looks better...

Character encoding list updated

Cookie manager...

Hmm

2009-07-18T18:40:00.002+08:00

If you found the lack of updates unsettling, I somewhat apologize. However, no one should have been surprised.

Life suddenly became like PvZ, where I just manage to ward off everything that is coming, yet so near to losing.

Chromium updates, though it is starting to get unbearably buggy at times.

a-r-r-g-h

2009-07-09T10:20:00.003+08:00

It would appear IHE would take up quite a bit of time.

Feeds would be read less.

Hey, for the first time, FML. (though I myself don't think I deserve to say it)

And in the midst of these, chromium updates.
Old, but the new newtab page is not too bad

I dunno when these came but I just noticed:
Naisu searchbar hint

And then it tells you

Dragging tabs seem stable now

Creation

2009-07-04T19:49:00.004+08:00

Innovation and Creation are inherently different, I believe.

It is well known that many programmers can never do media design. I think it is more of an epic lack of ability to create.

We can comment on whether a webpage design is good or bad, but never come up with a design ourselves.

We can say if a photo is nice (to a certain extent, I have made mistakes before) but can never come up with that shot.

Even for code. I find it hard to start with a blank page. I need to refer to past code, and actually copy and paste it into the program. Then I edit. For all the times that I actually code something from scratch, I would need to sit and think for at least half and hour, forming the routines, drawing out flowcharts etc. Then I can start translating that into code.

Ok. Endrant

Btw, chromium alpha updated. Apparently they added a GTK+ theme, but it was a sore sight.

ぜつぼうした

2009-07-03T22:20:00.004+08:00

So, Endless Eight (Part IV) next week.

I'm ok with repeating. Just that a) 15,500? where did the light novel go? and b) Kyon did not even let Nagato get to the point where she said how many times they found out about the loop.

Koizumi saying the same thing 3 times saved it a little, though I thought it was something wrong with my comp.

Anyway, those who desperately wanted time loop in ep2, you got it. Many times too btw.

In other news, I have somehow lacked the urge to edit r9k already, so I shall package it nicely and hopefully send it off as version 1.beta soon (yes, anything before this was a pre-alpha).

With E-learning over, the loads on my HDD, RAM and clogged tubes are eased. For now.

Chromium alpha update - taskman added.

shall do post on can't create some other time then.

hey

2009-06-30T19:14:00.002+08:00

K maybe I lied. After soldering up the breakout for the compass sensor I still had a little time before dinner, so I went to fix that big bug in r9k.

http://randname.pastebin.com/f4cd88808

Just some little warnings (this should be in a README...):
If you are copypastaing the code and running it just like that, remember to create directories that you may have specified. I haven't gotten round how to prevent that but just do. In the code I posted up that means you have to create [xchatdir]/r9k/logs and [xchatdir]/r9k/form ([xchatdir] is your xchat settings folder).

CHANGELOG:
1) Bugfix - Numbers now logged (number multiples are not stripped btw)
2) Logfiles now are "short" (under 10 chars), the multiples of 10 under 150 and "long" (150 and above). This will potentially be configurable. In the meantime just archive your old logs or smth
3) Toggling via PM now indicates who did it.

Hmm, since this was a bugfix I shall not think I have continued messing with xchat.

Ok...

2009-06-30T07:13:00.003+08:00

Since school has started (though it's at home), I shall not meddle too much with other stuffs first.

Chromium Alpha has some updates again. Under the Hood options updated.

Also, search options can be tweaked. Finally I can edit keywords and delete Live Search.

oops...

2009-06-28T22:56:00.001+08:00

Major bug found in r9k.

Logs do not include numbers.

At first I thought it a little weird, but now it's confirmed anyway.

Planning to issue major changes anyway so I'll be clearing logs.

+TODO: Hash loglines longer than a certain length.

changelog

2009-06-27T16:25:00.005+08:00

For the lack of something that I think is better to do, I have decided to edit r9k in lieu of elearning.

~~1) Put announce_status() in its own sub.~~ Done, but its called r9k_status()
~~2) announce_status() whenever someone joins.~~ Not doing, will redirect to 3)
~~3) !r9k will include status, or PM 'status'~~ Done, but without !r9k trigger
~~4) Start using variables in regex. So that i can just do "blah blah ^n blah blah" and replace ^n with the nick etc.~~ Done. Stripped chars, pm passwords and allowed triggers moved to variables.
5) Change the mute time based on repeated offences. Like the real Robot9000.
6) Hash based one-time-use remote passwords.

Other Changes (excluding those associated with 4):
a) Everything output to the channel via the script is prepended with "Robot9000: " to avoid confusion when I'm talking instead.
b) Status change now includes reasons (via Xchat, via PM, quit, reload).
c) punishes differently for empty strings/strings with whitespace.
d) punishes for "!r9k". now the only legal r9k triggers are "form [nick]" and "help"
e) Default answer for PM when r9k is off is "r9k is off".
f) Timeout help text moved to variable.

TODO 5 and 6 will prolly come very much later. New version here : http://randname.pastebin.com/f3ed439d1

And thus...

2009-06-27T13:44:00.003+08:00

The melting iceberg had frozen over again, albeit to just a quarter of its original size. People who were clinging on to the shrinking chunk can stand and move on it yet again.

And yes, I just happened to notice that Chromium can do http authing now. One less reason to run Epiphany. And even now I watch youtube from Liferea since there is a mozilla engine built in anyway.

And some short words on events past:
RIPMJ: Sad that I only knew him for Moonwalk, Bleach, Nose and Pedo.
ELEARNING: Saved the asses of a few people I bet. But we will have trouble rising on July 7.
COSFEST: July 11/12. wth is this going to happen with h1n1?
ENDLESS EIGHT: Kyoani settles this in the most elegant manner possible. Applause. Not helpful or clever, but elegant.

moar chromium updates

2009-06-26T18:34:00.004+08:00

I just bothered to check today, so I dunno if they have been there earlier, but its new anyway.

The bookmarks bar just started working for me, as with the Bookmark Manager, so I loaded some useful bookmarklets rather immediately.

Also, finally the Personal Stuff options page has been updated. Not much but not too little, and I immediatley went to turn off Password remembering

somehow its beginning to feel bloatish, with that zygote process running. Hopefully I will not have to make a difficult choice between FF 3.5 and Google Chrome/Chromium. And now I have this really weird bug where i can only type in certain places.

r9k todo

2009-06-24T19:21:00.003+08:00

In order to keep my own promise that I will not touch R9K unless a bug appears (but it seriously addictive), I shall make a todo so that I know what I would have done.

1) Put announce_status() in its own sub.
2) announce_status() whenever someone joins.
3) !r9k will include status, or PM 'status'
4) Start using variables in regex. So that i can just do "blah blah ^n blah blah" and replace ^n with the nick etc.
5) Change the mute time based on repeated offences. Like the real Robot9000.

UPDATED: 6) Hash based one-time-use remote passwords.

In fact, the main differences between my script and the real Robot9000 is that mine can only be on when I run Xchat, and that I use a (actually a few) flat file database instead of a real database with SQL. But hey, its just for entertaining friends.

I wonder when I will think it enough to put it up in official script repositories.

r9k updates

2009-06-23T16:28:00.004+08:00

After breaking my own silent promise not to touch r9k for the last week of 'holidays', I believe I have reached the point where I feel it ok not to edit the code now and then.

In fact so much that I shared it: http://randname.pastebin.com/f280b7151
(Sorry for bad formatting and weird obfuscation, it's one of my very bad habits)
Feel free to edit it as much as possible. If you can get it to be more like Moderator on #xkcd-signal, why not?

Changes include:
1) No more debug mode.
2) Sets channel to +m on activation, -m on leaving. Also announces to the chan
3) Mutes for configurable (default 5 seconds) time by -o pplz
4) either say "!r9k" or pm the bot "timeout" to get the current mute time
5) either say "!r9k form [nick]" or pm the bot "form [nick]" to find out how many times you have angered the bot. If nick is left out it defaults to you.
6) Password for remote toggling. Look for "password" in the code and change that.
7) Nick list accessible from @users and also $num_users after calling load_users();
8) Xchat::EAT_NONE; instead of printing again.
9) Order of stripping: Case, Multi-letters (>3), punctuation, Multi-whitespace.

Finally, a well deserved rest away from perl. But this means I need to rush the remaining homework. Kuso.

15498

2009-06-21T15:41:00.004+08:00

zzz. After reading "Endless Eight" off Baka-tsuki, I can't help but think its rather fitting for them to have put things as such. But seriously, what was that snakey thing that Nagato had? It appeared to be just coming out in an endless stream from the ground. and her 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4 was epic lol, with Mikuru's many gutterballs.

zzz. new OP is ok, animation feels like that "Skittles" MAD (with Candy Pop), especially the part where the name comes out with the stars behind the person. And what's with the quantum terminology in the chorus? I see neutrinos, the different quarks, gluons, tauons, muons and electrons. wth. Then the street signs, "tomare" and infinity lol. My favorite is the last part where everyone does the retarded moves, incl. the minor chars + the computer society. And even the final running sequence has many references, I think I saw Planck's constant, Riemann Hypothesis and telekinesis. Oh, and kyon's ccc-combo breaker.

zzz. and with what coincidence that it was also the last 2 weeks of our "summer break"? (when it aired) Lets all hope it repeats 15498 times with some variations and we can all do homework together on the last day to break the loop. Of course pardon me if any IDEs are around, hopefully you can help us vary our activities a little so that it ain't that boring for you.

heavyheaded

2009-06-19T22:51:00.003+08:00

Been nose-deep in Perl for the past few days. No doubt still messing with R9K.

Tried to add nick-stripping - Epic failded at getting the nicklist properly
Tried to add kick-logging - Epic failded at writing to the files

Tried to save time looping through huge logs by splitting according to line length
- Still ok. By analyzing what was the most frequent number of characters in a line (since I had logs already), I decided to split the files into x<20, x<50, x<100, x<150 and everything else. Currently as expected the x<50 file is the largest with the most number of lines.

Also, been draining my brain coming up with thrust vectoring for the Arduino. Secret project desu. All I can say is "arrgh, I do not want to see a Servo library again".

Seriously, I have not been able to clear a single backlogged ep these "holidays". Was even too busy to watch the other half of "Endless Eight" (which btw, I was late in getting) after I paused to reboot my comp after updating the kernel. And I just thought about the day I need to regex sentences like the previous one. ARRGH.

Yet another half of the remaining half of the iceberg has sunk into the icy waters, clinging on to the remainder is futile.

Robot9000

2009-06-18T11:51:00.004+08:00

UPDATE: Nao it strips multiple whitespace instead. and I just exhausted my brainjuice for the day by regex matching a url...

on #miko @ irc.rizon.net we usually have quite a bit of problem with spamzorage.

Inspired by the Moderator from xkcd-signal, I decided to write up a small xchat script to do that. I was already editing Uberscript for dunno since when, and I think I have the basic perl + regex foundations.

And I think I have most of the stuff done. Robot9000 on #miko (the bot is named, well, MikoBot) does these:

- ignores case, more than 3 repeated chars, punctuation (except some) and spaces
- Keeps its own abridged logs with the above output.
- Lets triggers (!slap, !quote etc) pass.
- Special triggers for !hello and !url to share the love.
- Commands for Toggling and Debug mode (with debug log and debug log clearing)
- And of course, Kicks when "you said something said before" (cuz a mute ain't fun)

It is working rather well, except that it can only work when my Xchat is running. dang.

*note : in that order. Think about how it actually affects the output

nuance

2009-06-15T20:33:00.003+08:00

I have the perfect opportunity to finish as much of my backlog as possible in this hols. Back to back 12 eps at a time ain't a big problem now. But I am not doing so.

For the lack of a better way to put it, I shall just say I don't want my family to say that I am doing something unconstructive. I prefer to be reprimanded for not doing anything constructive.

And that's my holidays wasted away. I wonder why.

http://xkcd.com/597/

vanity urls

2009-06-13T19:31:00.002+08:00

I got kwokshungit. others had better plans.

WTH:
http://www.facebook.com/retard
http://www.facebook.com/slashdot
http://www.facebook.com/parody
http://www.facebook.com/rickroll

http://www.facebook.com/touhou
http://www.facebook.com/reimu
http://www.facebook.com/sakuya
http://www.facebook.com/patchouli
http://www.facebook.com/cirno

http://www.facebook.com/toradora
http://www.facebook.com/shana
http://www.facebook.com/index
http://www.facebook.com/mikuru
http://www.facebook.com/suzumiyaharuhi
http://www.facebook.com/caramelldansen
http://www.facebook.com/evangelion
http://www.facebook.com/kanaria
http://www.facebook.com/suiseiseki
http://www.facebook.com/souseiseki

Some Sense:
http://www.facebook.com/Portal
http://www.facebook.com/fakku
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft
http://www.facebook.com/windows
http://www.facebook.com/haruhi
http://www.facebook.com/hatsunemiku
http://www.facebook.com/fatetestarossa
http://www.facebook.com/photoshop
http://www.facebook.com/suigintou

not taken? (as of 20090613 1900h):
http://www.facebook.com/kyon
http://www.facebook.com/tsuruya
http://www.facebook.com/nagatoyuki
http://www.facebook.com/asahinamikuru
http://www.facebook.com/izumikonata
http://www.facebook.com/gundam
http://www.facebook.com/4chan
http://www.facebook.com/google
http://www.facebook.com/yahoo
http://www.facebook.com/error
http://www.facebook.com/darthvader
//anyone after shinku

redirects to home for some strange reason
http://www.facebook.com/flandre
http://www.facebook.com/pidgin

popup blocker for the lulz

2009-06-12T20:34:00.005+08:00

I just noticed that...and why it shows that it blocked 6 when there were supposed to be 10...I have no idea. They definitely did not slip through.

Oh, and options dialog upgraded! Nao you can selects your default search engine (for the omnibar). For some reason I still can't set my homepage, but you can set what pages open at startup (I use the chrome://newtab)

UPDATE: This is most likely lagged, but I read about it in ubuntuforums and some guy was asking it 2 days ago

nice looking but I disabled them again.

Action vs Inaction

2009-06-12T19:22:00.003+08:00

Sometimes, I feel that when I make a decision it basically means one willpower was stronger than another. If I wake up to read the papers, it means that my willpower to get updated in the meatspace was stronger than my willpower to stay in bed just before the sun rises. And I don't think it has anything to do with desire.

Somehow this holidays I have been sweating a lot. Was it Beijing or is it simply that the weather is getting hot, I dunno. I feel ok, but my body tells me otherwise. But then again I don't like sweating in clean clothes so I am using the ceiling fan a lot more than usual.

Also, I think I do stuff very much better when I actually want to do it, or I myself have somehow put it into my agenda. It is no use trying to get me "in the mood"; you have to hope for the best. The greatest problem however, is that most tasks are set within a timeframe; and if I don't feel like doing it within that timeframe then either I or someone else is screwed.

Travesing wikipedia

2009-06-12T15:02:00.002+08:00

One of my much less enjoyed things (though I do it rather often and that it is rather beneficial) is going to Wikipedia to read up on something that popped up, and finding myself reading all the related articles for the next half to one hour.

Final Theory (by Mark Alpert) -> Da Vinci Code (yes, I did not know anything much about it till now) -> Angels and Demons (this too)

And from A&D, it split into many things
Quibble (Oh great now I know what it is)
Ambigrams (Oh so now I reinforce what I already knew)
Lara Croft (via Illuminati)
All those society thingys
All those controversy thingys

Thanks a whole lot.

pc show 09

2009-06-11T22:09:00.002+08:00

Nothing much this year, except for a finding a printer that uses waterproof ink AND can print on CDs. If you thought this is nothing, then show me some older (before this year) models (regardless of brand) that can do the above...

Oh, and before going in, I stopped by the BlueMax somewhere in the Tropics part and saw DVDs of Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. If not for the fact that they were Code 3 (I prefer Code 1, but then again I don't think they were released in that format) I would have grabbed them.

I need to hunt for a Terabyte storage drive for my stashes...arrgh...

Mashup

2009-06-11T16:31:00.003+08:00

I got this a while ago but it took me a while to reproduce it:

And that was after I accidentally tabbombed. Related links always catch me.

I must thank gnome-screenshot for not screwing up when my comp was lagging pretty badly.

Also, I realized something. I totally needed to defrag my life, but I definitely do not have enough contiguous free space nor time to do so.

I would really like to find someone who is having the same multi-life as me. Stepmania, Juggling, Programming, DIY-ing (electronic/mechanical type), Inline-skating, Yo-yo-ing, Animu-ing, and RC flying.
Those are the key things I am looking for at least for now. If anyone knows anyone other than me who shares at least 50% of the above, tag. That is all.

Anti-neet

2009-06-09T15:10:00.004+08:00

I consider myself to have been a hikki for most of my younger years, not going out except for schoolwork/family. It's not very much different now except that I do go and socialize a bit with my previous classmates and there are competitions and other stuffs. Also there is the ironical part of which I go out for anime stuffs like Cosfest and Latendo.

Of which speaking I just went to a while ago. I made a transit at Sunshine Plaza to check out the prices at KKnM before going to Kallang. I thought I would have learnt from my previous time on the same route that I chose; but apparently I got off at the stop which I did last time which was much further than the stop just before. Nevermind, a bit of exercise never killed anyone. Then I went to cross an overhead bridge and I soon found out that I didn't need to, as the bus stop was on the same side. Stupid mistake #2.

I wanted to get the baseball ver of Haruhi and Mikuru, but seeing that there was 3 sets of each I deduced that it was not too popular and I should wait for the price to drop first. The Tsuruya Maid ver and Mikuru Battle Waitress ver has 1 each, so I got them first.

I also preordered the Toradora Gashapon for some old friends. I said 3 sets and those guys lifted an eyebrow slightly lol.

a plan

2009-06-08T20:30:00.005+08:00

(101th post)

I think I told some before, but I think a community effort would be better.

I don't regret not learning the piano, but sometimes I really wish I could play some pieces past "Mary Had a Little Lamb", especially OPs and EDs. Decoding by ear isn't very fun either. Rather than lament, I'm going to make use of that piano Dr. Hon left in the OTH Hall...

I want to print out the scores that I can get off http://josh.agarrado.net/music/anime/ and just "place" them there. Hopefully they don't get blown/thrown away and someone who is playing bothers to pick them up to give a try...

And by my wishful thinking people studying there would be doing their work with HHY in the background...

Also, after listening to the K-On! songs I still can hold off watching it, but most likely not for long. CoalGuys subs seem to stand out.

Planning a trip to Latendo tmr, most likely to preorder stuff and get figmas.

Move

2009-06-06T13:13:00.003+08:00

From now on I will put animu stuffs here, where they shall rest.

Next few posts will be imports.

UPDATE : Did something stupid, imported 4 times...spent about half an hour finding my posts and deleting the others...still need to slap on tags...

UPDATE 2 : Also, it appears that with the addition of imports I have 100 posts. How stupid. And I hope I didn't miss out anything...

Wtf

2009-06-03T21:27:00.002+08:00

I met a 知音 at YDSP today. Irony that he is from RI, but he doesn't seem like the snobbish type.

I was playing stepmania, then he came over. Quite obviously he saw my OS and the song that I was playing.

He asked if I was a geek, but I daoded him a bit first. My troll filter was set on high just in case.

Then a while later while I was choosing a song he whistled one of the songs from Shana. I carried on from where he left off, then we lolled. After that he also did Imperial March.

Then he saw my taskbar, with "Gendou's Ani...". He said something about "illegal dls" I told him my house won't have enough space to put the cds. He also saw my wallpaper with Kona and I spun it around to show him the rest.

Slightly later on when I was playing motteke! sailor fuku he asked me if I knew the typing game, the I went "oh-yeah-typingmania". That totally hit the mark.

He doesn't seem to have FB (yet), so I shall get his contact or something. It also suddenly dawned on me that I forgot to get his name.

Chromium Alpha

2009-06-01T21:16:00.004+08:00

Now we are getting some nice progress...

Also, I never noticed this (on Chromium) before...

With current progress, FF is going to be dumped soon...

And by the way, if anyone is noticing the focus shift here, don't worry. Its just another burst pod.

Ok whatever if you want/miss the other me

Danboorus

2009-05-31T22:58:00.006+08:00

Danbooru (だんボール, from だんボールばこ or cardboard box) Imageboards are win. However, browsing through them is a nightmare. RSS feeds can help a bit. I did a bit of poking when getting them, and found that you can actually subscribe to multiple tags...and I dun have an account for nuts.

1) Grab the main url (For a list of Danbooru-like boards, see here)
e.g. http://danbooru.donmai.us/ or http://moe.imouto.org/

2) attach "post/atom?tags=" at the end
e.g. http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/atom?tags= or http://moe.imouto.org/post/atom?tags=

3) Find what tag combo you want, via the cheatsheet searching guide (Its available for the other boards too but its the same anyway)

4) Add a "+" between each tag
e.g. rating:safe+~shakugan_no_shana+~zero_no_tsukaima+~toradora (for the tsundere freak, sfw)
e.g. suzumiya_haruhi*+-kyon+rating:explicit (for haruhi H without Kyon)

5) whack the string from step 4 to the end of step 2
e.g http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/atom?tags=rating:safe+~shakugan_no_shana+~zero_no_tsukaima+~toradora
e.g. http://moe.imouto.org/post/atom?tags=suzumiya_haruhi*+-kyon+rating:explicit
(they actually work ok...)

6) Put that url in your RSS reader. Then you are done! Unless you want further mashup via Yahoo! Pipes (that was how I found out about the ?tags= hack anyway).

Another oxymoronic productivity tip brought to you by randName();

Something totally off

2009-05-31T10:45:00.003+08:00

I feel this has nothing to do with any of you. But I don't know where this is going so I'm just going to post this anyway.

"Elevon" Mixing Logic for microcontollers.

To make sure those who understand are relevant people, I shall keep to jargon as much as possible. I do not guarantee that relevant people will understand though.

For this, I would be using 1 stick, as for me I am running 2 motors like an RC car.

Basically, you would need to get the max/min values for when the transmitter stick is up/down/left/right. For each channel, you just need to read the pulse length at the receiver end (at least for Futaba receivers).

After getting the values, get vmax=[difference of top and bottom]/2 and hmax=[diff of left and right]/2. Also get voffset=[whichever is bigger, top or bottom]-vmax*2 and hoffset=[whichever is bigger, left or right]-hmax*2

Ok let me sort out the representation of the values before completing.

[update]: Basically you take the sum of the values of the stick and limit them. Think about how the left and the right are supposed to move in each case, sooner or later you will get it.

Seriously...

2009-05-28T19:33:00.004+08:00

I almost thought I had to change my blog name. Then I remembered that none of you would find this useful in the near future.

Simple shell scripts, and I hope by doing so I am repaying the community which has nurtured me.
But then again, I still got info from many places, including here.

All the below require libnotify (for notify-send, but its already on 9.04 anyway)

Fortune v2 (added timeout depending on text length)

#!/bin/bash
fort=$(fortune)
/usr/bin/notify-send -t $((1000+300*`echo -n $fort | wc -w`)) "Fortune" "$fort"

Reminder (change remind_icon and say_on_every to whatever you like)

#!/bin/bash
msg=$(zenity --entry --title=$rem --text="Task to remind")
tim=$(zenity --entry --title=$rem --text="Time to wait")
rem="Reminder"
remind_icon="~/remind.png"
say_on_every="Ding Ding Ding, time is up."
espeak -a 200 -p 90 -s 155 -k10 -w ~/remind.wav "$say_on_every $msg"
notify-send -i $remind_icon $rem "Reminder set for $msg in $tim"
(sleep $tim && notify-send -i $remind_icon $rem "$msg" && aplay ~/remind.wav) &

ReadThis (requires xclip. Reads from Text Selection buffer)

#!/bin/bash
stuff=$(/usr/bin/xclip -o)
if (!$stuff)
then
 stuff="nothing"
else
 espeak -a 200 -p 90 -s 150 -k10 -v m4 -w ~/espeak.wav "$stuff"
 notify-send "Saying" "$stuff" & aplay ~/espeak.wav
fi

Yayzors. My exp increased by 5. 95 moar to next level. For full documentation request plox.

clicky...

2009-05-28T10:49:00.003+08:00

After getting slightly more pissed than normal, I finally decided to find a solution...It was quick, no later than 5 minutes from my initial search was I already led to this.

being random, e-learning was "fun"...

being even more random, I finally learnt about /usr/bin/notify-send and is having fun with /usr/bin/fortune

I wrote up a small script for fun:

#!/bin/sh

fort=$(fortune)
/usr/bin/notify-send "Fortune" "$fort"

Anyone knows how to improve it, please comment.

suddenly...

2009-05-27T21:12:00.002+08:00

I realised something. I get angry when people somehow wreck what I have spent much effort to do. So to eliminate most of that kind of anger, I don't work so hard for things that I won't want to put effort in...

Also, I don't know why I found this and why I am putting it here but let me just do.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
- Kyon – 170cm
- Suzumiya Haruhi – 158cm
- Nagato Yuki – 154cm
- Asahina Mikuru – 152cm
- Koizumi Itsuki – 178cm
- Asakura Ryoko – 160cm
- Tsuruya-san – 160cm
- Taniguchi – 170cm
- Kunikida – 166cm

The cake is a lie...

2009-05-26T13:56:00.000+08:00

...and so, I let 25/5/2009 slip past me just like that.

Recollecting the past year, I did a lot of firsts.

First time I went to an animu event (Cosfest'08), of which would mark my frequent trips to such events (STCC'08, AFA'08, SOYA'09).

First time I queued up for very long (STCC'08) to get a free gift.

First time I went Pulau Ubin (OBS).

First time I installed Ubuntu on a Laptop.

First time I joined a Line Control competiton, got a 3rd for Gas.

First time I queued up for very long (AFA'08) to get tickets.

First time I got a figma (Kyon), which was at AFA'08, which would mark my growing collection.

First time I used NXT for a robotics competition (FLL).

First time I chased an Anime on TV (ZnT3) and on teh Netz (Clannad AS).

First time I juggled in front of a crowd I didn't know (CIP).

First time I took a plane (BSC), gone over 900km/h ground speed etc.

First time I lived in dorms for an extended period of time (BSC).

First time I had school on my Birthday, and that I was relatively well (I still had slight flu)

Tomare!

2009-05-26T12:30:00.003+08:00

That is the title of SHnY 2009 ED, if you were wondering. No dance ftw.

HHY was obviously superior, but this was good too. So let me try very hard to pretend that HHY did not exist.

First thing, the flashing was irritating. Can cause seizures...
They put the characters in, but I don't think most noticed they were moving till the Haruhi one.

The time lapse style was ok when the Danchou band was being drawn. That I can take it.

That flashing part was still mildly ok... but the art was not too bad.

Biggest peeve: K-ON! similarity.

Was that mikuru or tsumugi?

Was that haruhi or yui?

Nevermind, did I do anything other than post 3 screenshots? no.

SHnY 2009

2009-05-24T18:40:00.003+08:00

I am going to do a hit and run here.

Becoming one of my many usual selves (or should that be "selfs"), I am going to calmly state that there were at least 3 hentai opportunities in Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, and what disappointment I had when a Google search for "bamboo leaf rhapsody hentai opportunities" led to nothing useful...
(If anyone is interested, they are: When Mikuru was asleep, both when her elder self was around and after Kyon helped chibi-loli Haruhi; then there was in Nagato's guest room.) If anyone is willing to illustrate I can try to come up with a half-assed story.

priceless comment is priceless:

“Hey do you know what is the true reason we had to wait for 3 years?”
“No clue”
“Our male lead and one of the main characters have slept for 3 years. That’s why”

Back to another of my more mild selves (damnit I'm going to stick with "selves"), Mikuru when Kyon woke her up was priceless. Head moving left and right in such a robotic manner, supplemented with the stuttering, then feeling herself for her TPDD, and finally mass murdering everyone via nosebleed with the moeblob "aiyo" (my mother actually asked if they really go "aiyo", I'm not too sure myself...) and crying.

Then comes the "travelling forward in time via freezing oneself". I've seen it a few times, but none as subtle as this. The tankazu part is quite obviously a time loop, but time loops are apparently treated as completely normal in SHnY. Not that it hurts anything, but over-reliance on them to solve the plot is not fun...

Overall, watching with the Light Novel translation as subs was really no problem, except when they were talking too quickly for me to see which line they are on. But it was easy to catch up. I did watch with subs later on, ignoring the troll subs.

The ED video gave me a headache, but not too bad. The chorus is nice, but seems familiar. Haruhi looked too much like Hirasawa Yui in the closing shot, and the other characters looked K-ON!-ish as well. Wonder what the OP will be like.

Next ep possibly in 4 weeks, after Remote Island Syndrome II. Also, I'm sure everybody noticed that Haruhi S1 was also "3 years ago", around this time...In fact, May 21 '06 was the Original air date of Remote Island Syndrome II.

EDIT: I suddenly remembered this also:

There are two date-related lines in episode 2; "In the process, we reached the first day after Golden Week." and "So that makes today Wednesday." Considering "the first day after Golden Week" is May 6th that is Wednesday, the year of the story is estimated as 2009, thus "Three years before" is 2006. The anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya became a big boom in 2006, and we actually saw the "information flare" caused by Haruhi Suzumiya on the net (like this page or Youtube, for example).

Yeah, yeah, haruhi overrated. But I guess it was not shitty at least.

Ok I lied about the hit and run. But does anyone want screenshots?

wait...

2009-05-23T09:43:00.003+08:00

Back from BSC for 2 weeks, fit in with SGLife...

3 days before my tanjoubi and I get a long overdue gift from Kadokawa/KyoAni

Watching raws with Light Novel translation is fun.

Reviving this instead of posting on s--n--s was for the lulz

Lets see if I get to do more later

Wut

2009-04-23T07:38:00.000+08:00

It seems like this is late.

There is just too many things over here which cannot be expressed in a page of text.

The Chinese lessons in the morning helps. I absolutely cannot deny that.
Only sometimes, my body does not agree, even after coffee, and I accidentally take some shut-eye.

Last week we went Tianjin for fieldtrip. The ecocity was...ok. Nothing much there except for the exhibition centre.
I should think that Singapore is not doing it by herself is becuase our land is ultra-scarce.
Also went to Nankai, secondary school of Zhou Enlai and Wen Jiabao

Then we went Tiantan. The echo wall had too much noise to be fun. The 天心石 looked like something out of Golden Sun.

Immersion started. Their lessons were almost alike ours.

For geog we have not many things in our country to analyse, so we just pluck stuff from anywhere.
They have the 3rd longest river (Yangtze, which they were learning about) and other stuff to boot.

For their history they did Republic of China (1911-1949). Started with the flag and stuff then went on to the 83 day joke.
It was less propaganda than expected (actually no propaganda, it could totally have been a lesson in Singapore).

Computer lessons were imba? All the machines were linked to a desktop switcher application, so instead of having a large projector, material needed will be fed to the screen directly.
Their textbooks had V.Basic and Artificial Intelligence, but I think they are not really touched.

English? Seriously, their standard is better than expected. In fact, the PRCs in our class should have picked up more than 85% of their English in these classes.
The friendly neighbourhood angmoh is not too bad (lived in Canada, now in 双井).

Politics was not too much of that. If I were to rename the lesson, it would to be Current affairs, Civics and Moral education.
But again, I haven't seen much yet.

In P.E. they actually learn a set of moves. Fun overall.

Saturday at Tian'anmen square and National Theatre (国家大剧院). Seeing people queue up like got Hello Kitty just to see Mao is amazing (pun coincedental, now intended).

Bought many stuffs, of which I will be rather gged for. Nevermind that.

Tuesday went Xiangshan. Nice climb to 557m. Cable car down cost 50 RMB. Back in SG the same thing would have costed about $15.
Also got Botanical Gardens. Inside got Sleeping Buddha Temple also.

Heard about the crazy wind, wait till you see those over here.

2 days to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, can't wait...

Yet again...

2009-04-12T12:10:00.000+08:00

Due to us working harder to get the key, I am here on a foggy Sunday

When entering the Bird's Nest last week, I was held back for a while because of my pliers. I still have it by the way.

Great Wall was fun. Nothing much to report though. Just that the very steep part was extremely best.

Zoo was yay. Panda. Didn't bother with Zoo plaza.

Its fun when you find Tengoku. Its more fun when you find many different Tengoku all in one place.

ZhongGuanCun（中关村）is that place. In Singapore's terms, it has at least 5 SLim Squares, 2 SLim Towers and a Sunshine Plaza.

When I arrived, I found myself getting off on the wrong end of the street. Nevermind as I walked on.

I had a set of directions to HaiLong Center. Walking there took about 20 mins, but along the way the names of the buildings looked fun.

As I had no interest in consumer electronics, I was going over to a building which I saw "LED" pasted all over.

On the way, a building caught my eye. 中关村国际动漫城

Woah. 3 floors of worthy stuff ain't that bad... The top (6th) floor was a “动漫主题餐厅”. I did not enter for the mere reason that I thought it be a maid cafe, and the food would burn my wallet.
The 5th floor was about 7 KKnMs. I havent got any loot from there, but I saw a Mikuru figma for 210RMB. There were also Oppai mousepads, including Furukawa Nagisa. The 4th floor was about the same too.

Then, I went over to the place for LEDs. 1 for about 0.30RMB is not bad. I got 10 of each of the 5 colours.
There were also laser modules for 10 RMB. I got 5. LDRs were also 0.30RMB.
I also had 4 LED matrixes (8x8) for 6RMB each. Obviously I tested them on the spot with my VOM.

The weather is getting better, air-con ish.

My magazines are heavy. I dunno if they will make it back.

Youtube is accessible with Tor.

Yet again...

Hi...

2009-04-06T19:22:00.001+08:00

Much has happened since Tuesday. I'm going to blog by week cuz there is no time during the week.

I have left contact with the ground for longer than 5 seconds (more than 6 hours to boot)
Not too much of an experience, but I must say it is different.
I would just take it like an uber long bus ride, but with added stuff like the entertainment system is not bad, and the risk of dropping out of the sky.
This would also be my longest trip overseas so far, not with family to boot.

Achivements aside, day one (Mar31) was just an intro to the nice cold weather of Beijing (and temperate countries in general)
When I got off the plane, I wondered if the cool air-con like temperature there was heated or normal.
After this week, I bet it was heated. But at that time I did not know...
It was freezing cold after stepping out of the airport to board the bus.
The trip to the campus was rather long, and is nice how you can look in one direction and not see a building.
I knew the road directions were swapped, but I only conciously realized when I started taking videos.

After we got off the bus, it was king cold. While wating for luggage retreival, it was cake cold.
Everyone ran into the building rather quickly due to the cold wind. Did I mention it was cold?
After settling down in the dorm for a bit, we went off to the campus. Toured almost everything there.

On April Fool's, I stared at my feeds updating with all the technology pranks but could not really catch up.
Lolling at the people on Facebook was also fun.
Torrent speeds are good, much better than at home (excess of 20kbps compared to 5), so I was more than happy to leave my laptop in school to feed off the netz.
We went off to Beijing Planning Exhibition Center after lunch. Took the public buses.
Most of the buses are long, the entrance is in the middle, manned by a condutor who has tasks like making sure those without a card pay cash,
making everyone squeeze to have space, and to make some random announcements. Exits at the 2 ends, which everyone makes their way to.
It took about an hour (never felt it that way), and the exhibits quite zai lah.
Passed by Tiananmen Square on the way back, saw roflMao. Looks less grand somehow.
Online lesson left most people gaming, while I attempted to catch up with feeds and think of which compo to write

Mornings are spent drinking 3-in-One Nescafe, taking those vitamins, changing into uniform, and layering yourself.
It takes about an hour, mostly because the brain does not operate well at such temperatures.
I wake up at 5+ am, the sun rises at about 5.30am, I finish most of the stuff by 6+ and leave before 6.30am

On Thursday we joined in the Mass exercise for the first time. Everyone was either lolling or trying to catch up.
It was slightly harder than Hare Hare Yukai, mostly because I don't get to do a Frame-by-Frame study of it.
Then my PE was after that, and I opted soccer. We played with some local students and one angmoh international students.
We got pwned rather badly, but no one was truly owning.

Apparently we got caught up in science week, something like ISYF. There was something called Brain Olympics which was a quiz show.
Then also got some debate. Motion was "Building upon knowledge is more important than creating knowledge".

The Chinese Lit lessons are currently on Poems, whether she will do something else I dunno.
The Chinese Studies in Chinese was basically that, just with a different angle.

Friday was lessons as usual. There was the closing ceremony of the Science week. Rather grand socialist shit.

Saturday went Forbidden City. Big. Huge amounts of walking. Tian'an Gate not as grand as on TV.

Sunday went shopping. Got stuffs but no clothes or shoes.

Monday went Bird Nest. Looks smaller than on TV.

Tuesday having lessons then going Great Wall

Due to unforseen circumstances, I wrote this on Friday night but no internet to post until now.

By the way, I got some loot over here. Will show in the meantime

Ok, moar stuff

2009-04-01T19:33:00.001+08:00

More about the first 2 days...

later

(My idea of a mirco-joke)

BSC!

2009-04-01T10:47:00.001+08:00

Its vveeeeerrrrryyyyy cccccoooolllldd here...

Internet is less blocked than I thought, and rootshell.be got me to youtube (currently text only though...)

Yays

Woah

2009-03-30T21:52:00.002+08:00

It is still kind of unreal that I'm gonna have my first flight.

Ha.

祝自己一路顺风。。。

melancholy

2009-03-28T13:03:00.003+08:00

I have been thinking a little about what I do that I consider myself "semi-pro", and what is crippling me from becoming "pro" in that area. Here is a list:

Hobbies:

Rubik's cube - OLL, PLLs and the fact that I still cannot Sub-60
Yo-yo - String tricks
Juggling - 2-in-one-hand needs more practice.
RC flying - plane orientation
Inline Skating - T-Stops
Stepmania - Jumpstreams
Math - Calculus, and all the stuff in MOP
Jappy - Jap grammar, Animu nubness + long backlog, Shitted opinions
Language - English spelling, Chinese hanzi, expression in both.
Webpage layout - CSS
Electronics - I still can't do the Ohm/Amps/Volts in my head.
"Hacking" - I am still using low-tech methods
Google searching - I still need a few tries to find errors
IRC - Still can't remember all the flags
Programming:
Javascript - I'm still refering to stock code.
Perl, Python - I'm still at editing variables/flow operators
C++, Actionscript, PHP - Still need to refer for functions

Then, there are communities I am involved in but do not do/know a shit:

Touhou (#fantasia_gensokyo on irc.rizon.net)
DSLRs
Photoshoppers (those who edit photos)
Media designers (Those who create digital art)
ROM dumpers
Fansubbers
OSS (haven't created any)
Council (I'm not even in it)
Debating

So there, a screwed up number of lives, enough to last for very long

eh?

2009-03-24T21:35:00.003+08:00

I just realized I wasted my 50th post on that stupid shit. Not that it matters.

Anyway, I must say I've been living too many lives at one time.

If a "life" is what you do, or what you tell people you do, then indeed I have too many.

However, each life always has one thing in common with the rest. Randomness notwithstanding, I can say my lack of decision-making ability and the fact that I do too many things in each life is the same.

Also, my Jung thingy personality is ISFP. Slightly different from Sec1's INTP. Maybe I actually have evolved? From a singular to someone who appreciates the collective? Maybe. But I must say my Feeling is only 1% from 0, so that could be still a transition.

wtf

2009-03-22T15:57:00.003+08:00

Due to popular (i.e. 1 person) demand, I shall list the general content of that stupid dream that I had.

I was sitting in something that looked like an auditorium, then suddenly either Perry, Yibin or Nat (be thankful I forgot who) unleashed two 3d girls at me. Then they immediately leapt (flew?) to the seats next to me. Obviously they pestered me for a while and suddenly I exploded and woke up in cold sweat. The whole thing took about half an hour.

Also, somehow I remembered seeing 2 of my ex-classmates (female duh). Also be thankful that I forgot who.

Thank you. I hope to have no more.

Somehow I've come to understand the fear is not of the physical object, but of what comes out of it.

And for BSC, I've done most of the packing. Whee.

Afterthought

2009-03-19T13:33:00.004+08:00

Nevermind that I din't put this in the previous post.

For them to have slashed the price from 70 to 20, something is not right. Yes, maybe it was big "members only" sale day, and that it was most likely already on discount before this. Actually, there is a perfectly logical explanation. No one buys them, or even better, no one expects them to be there. Apparently I found the stack beside some gundams going at 35++. wtf. They must be like, what-the-shit-is-this-no-one-buys-these-anymore-lets-sell-them-f**king-cheaply-so-we-can-look-perfectly-normal. But they were definitely repackaged, as the Rei was uber dirty...I had to scrub it with dishwashing liquid and a sponge.

Also, since I would not be appreciating Lunamaria too much except for the fact that her voice is not bad, I may want to sell it off. Obviously I will want to make some shit out of it, so starting price is $35. If anyone is interested... Nevermind. Yesterday there were at least 5 more, today I would expect that they would still be there. Go grab them yerselves.

They are not too bad, the highlight is the voices. Asuka doesn't say "kimochi warui" though, which actually pisses me off slightly. The voulme can't be controlled, but it is rather loud. Not unlike those other noisemaking toys you have seen.

Windfall

2009-03-19T11:07:00.004+08:00

w00t yeah 600th post. I'm supposed to be doing my biography but I spent the whole morning taking pics...

Here is a little clue:

I however, lament at my ability (or lack thereof) to operate a DSLR properly.
As we will see...

The story:
It was 9+pm. I have got to get a luggage for EFZ immersion stay. There is wan offer at OG for 20%+10% discount on Luggages and it closes at 11pm. Rushed down to get. Chosen, to wait in queue. While waiting, go to toy department. Feel like antique. Observe gashapon. Find they have NGE. Curse that coin compartment was recently emptied. Check to top to see F/SN, but none of the machines have it anyway. Turn around to see Lunamaria Hawke staring at the floor. Find 5 more. Find Rei and Asuka hidden below, one each. Find both to be dirty, but ignore. Check price, almost fainted. ????. PROFIT!!!

The Loot:

Ayanami Rei

Sohryu Asuka Langley

Lunamaria Hawke, who I have only known because this is at Latendo

No pantsu. Sorry!

They come with a switch so they don't drain the battery.Its 2 AA batteries

Bottom of boxes:

Of course, this is only some of the pics. I have pics of Koizumi figma and Rei Revoltech, but too lazy to upload nao.

Moar notes to self

2009-03-19T07:33:00.002+08:00

1) When you find out that an offer for luggage (20%+10%) ends at 11pm and its already 9.30pm, rush down no matter what

2) If you have not been to a departmental store's toy section for a long time, you will feel like an antique

3) Stop to look and smell the flowers. Be observant.

Hopefully I will have time to provide details, and if I will it will appear on S--n--S

I wanted to do a linkdump...

2009-03-16T23:22:00.002+08:00

but I really think that some things just can't be shared.

yoinked from http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html

There is an entire development methodology (whose name escapes me at the moment) that makes use of that very phenomenon.

We called it the Rubber Duck method of debugging. It goes like this:

1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck
(bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over
some code with it, if that's all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into
detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then
realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck
will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you
on your way.

Works every time. Actually, if you don't have a rubber duck you could at
a pinch ask a fellow programmer or engineer to sit in.

Andy

And of course, since I'm at it I might as well...
http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2009/3/16/push_systems_vs_pull_systems/
(nice comment later on)

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/02/stepping_up_divison_by_zero_to.php
(I'm surprised people can actually come up with that)

http://www.presidiacreative.com/57-wallpapers-you-must-see/
(The link says it all)

http://dollarstorecrafts.com/
http://www.realsimple.com/
(nice)

http://pythonide.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-make-money-with-free-software.html
(uber)

oops

2009-03-15T21:35:00.002+08:00

I've been daoing my feeds pretty much. Seems like they have fallen in priority, yet I still feel the urgency. I will wait and see how my body responds.

我竟然开始做假期功课了。虽然没做完，但我真是无聊透底了。可能是因为扩展课程的时候已经有“哎呀！假期功课还没作”的心情。

But I do need to get started on Biography T_T.

I managed to get hold of a Shell Account at rootshell.be. My account is here. "What is it for?" you ask. Well, they are basically Linux servers running shells for people to play with. And depending on the service provider they can be quite powerful. rootshell.be allows some hosting with simple mail and other neat shit, but those are not the reasons to get an account.

w00t they are for the ssh tunnel I have been talking about. Anyway the near-1337 needed to understand it is...nevermind.

Facebook has got people grumbling. I don't really mind, except for the fact that my status gets pushed back a bit by my own link sharing, and that stories are expanded by default. I still see people not using the Twitterness correctly, and I have no intention to step in anyway.

Not again...

Mourning... or not?

2009-03-14T14:41:00.003+08:00

At this juncture, I must take special care.

It could be a ploy by the school. If it is so, I encourage them to go that way, and evidence does show that we are headed in the right direction.

But if this is going to be a Snape Killed Dumbledore sort of double-crossing, I don't really want it.

The current situation from what I understand is that:
1) As part of the FutureSchool@HCI initiative, Microsoft has pumped in quite a bit (relative to their current market value) of money and thus we saw those banners from them "[Congratulating] Hwa Chong Institution on becoming a FutureSchool".
2) Because of that, we are restricted to use only their products when dealing with "over the table" work. Whether it is enforced by law or by contract, it does not matter.
3) They have to keep Comp Lab 5 a secret, or at least not publicize that it has OSS on it.
4) Not just MS Office, but our servers are running IIS.

If these are my "observations", I produce 2 theories

A) The school is intending to walk into doom.
It is ignorantly accepting such sponsorship, Lab 5 is merely a bug they are too lazy to swat, and future document formats will be restricted to doc, xls and ppt

B) The school is planning to use this as a slingshot
It will first show acceptance; but internally there are already systems put into place such that even if Microsoft suddenly revokes all our school's licenses for no apparent reason, we will be back up and running on alternate systems with little panic. Minimal money from them is put into spending on licences, we are using it for external development.

Evidence supporting A:
Most of the thing that the school runs are currently MS based, like the Comp Labs (even 5 has XP installed) and the servers. It would be too much of a hassle to turn back after such infrastructure has been put into place. Lab 5's presence is also shrinking, being demoted into a lowly extra classroom, and when the comps are used for normal lessons they run on XP. The only occasions where the OSS will be used is EC3 training and the PHP MySOL course.

Evidence supporting B:
Lab 5 is still there. Teachers are starting to implement external systems like Ning, Wetpaint, Facebook and Moodle. Such cloud computing is generally OS independent. The servers run IIS, but are starting to show an OSS style of handling things.

So, if they are really going to do a LeeKY (first accepting the communist radicals then throwing them out eventually), I applaud that; just that I may not be there for long enough to see it. Even if they want to take path A, it would be at most for another 4 years. The Government is already looking into replacing their infrastructure anyway.

And I would still submit my homework in pdf unless I would be penalized if I do so otherwise.

The place that started it: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

It appears I have been doing it without realizing.

Oh, and I managed to find some cool stuff, like FreeShells and other cool vpn shit.

Clannad AS

2009-03-13T22:41:00.003+08:00

Call me a noob or something, I don't care.

After reading Ascaloth's review of Clannad AS 22 on Riuva, I actually shed some tears. Of exactly what I do not know.

After following it like how anime was supposed to be watched (weekly), now I sort of understand the attachment people get. I am not as devoid of emotion as I thought myself to be.

The last time, I got shat when I watched Colbert die with wishes unanswered. But in the confusion of the not so mega-ecchi that ZnT had, coupled with his Doctor Who style revival, I do not think those were true tears.

But just reading the ending reviewed by someone, I think it removes external context of you watching it, and instead forces you to concentrate on what happened.

Aww nevermind. Not that I did not want those tears anyway. Dango full ver somehow did not alleviate the situation too.

P Day

2009-03-12T16:54:00.003+08:00

I have no qualms about it, but I feel that there is quite a bit that I feel needs change.

It is not about the education system we have here, nor is it the mindset.

But not being able to do a project you are pretty much spending all your time on is not fun.

If I do need extra skills to convert it into a proper and presentable project, I am willing to learn. Not that I have not been paying attention during RS for the last 2 years.

Not everything should be quantified.

But I think I shall use the remaining part of the year to come up with a proper proposal, which I had planned to but never did execute when my projects started to go downhill.

I did not join GEP because I did not like projects with deadlines, especially if you like the project idea very much. If faced with the same decision today, I would reject for exactly the same reason, even if my mind was feeble then.

It simply removes all the notion that you have liked it.

return 0;

Arrgh

2009-03-05T23:26:00.002+08:00

Why did I have to think of this 5 minutes before I was going to sleep

Before anyone else does, I did a search on "internet memes real life applications" and not many useful results surfaced.

So, next year's research topic: "Internet Memes and their real life effects and applications."

I will orient it towards spread theory and shit.

Note to self

2009-03-05T22:56:00.002+08:00

Todo ASAP:
1) Arrange for an SSH with YYC to poke through the Great Firewall of China.
2) Get all the wallpapers that 3S2'09 wants confirmed to print cheaply.
3) Make checklist of what electronics to get over at Beijing
4) Get extra battery for lappy.
5) Get power adapter for BSC.
6) Get list of what to pack.
7) Pack table

Before boarding plane
1) Load as many youtube vids as possible.
2) Hyperventilate
3) Make sure I do not screw up by saying "bomb" accidentally
4) Hyperventilate
5) Copy stuff from SG_HDD to lappy so that I dun need to do it anymore
6) Hype...nevermind
7) Shit (or rather, defecate)

又来了

2009-03-02T21:13:00.004+08:00

Bilingual post :-p

我从3月30日到5月8日会在北京，就是我们的”卫星校园“（其实只是从北京师范大学第二附属中学借来的几间课室与设施罢了）。
我选择去是因为:
1) 我在这个时期没有任何重要的比赛
2）这个时候北京的气候不会太冷太热
3）在 Robotics 的几位重要人物都在忙着 SLC （Student Leaders Convention)，就趁机在他们忙的时候走开；不然我出国他们也出国，课外活动就没人在了。

就因为这些原因碰巧符合，我就去好了。这也会是我第一次乘搭飞机，真刺激。

我看我在那里的几个大问题是：
1）上网可能有些困难（The Great Firewall of China)
2）找电插头给我膝上电脑充电
3）心理上接受那里的食品
4）冷天气
5）空气的素质
6) Clannad After Story 的最后几篇我可能下载不了

就那么几个罢了，也不是什么大问题。

Back to my normal life (or lack thereof), I have found Yahoo! Pipes (which helps me filter and combine feeds so that Liferea actually functions well), and TinEye, an image search engine. For the most extreme example I can offer of its ability, search for this image (source) gave me this.

Wut?

2009-03-01T18:09:00.004+08:00

It seems like I've been forced out of hibernation. Well, doing episode reviews are so donotwant and doing reviews of shows that have passed for so damn long are even more donotwant but I shall still do them anyways.

Let me start with a simple one. Jigoku Shoujo (or Hell Girl as I prefer calling it for some weird reason since I usually call by the Jap name like SHnY instead of TMHS but nevermind I'm sidetracking like shit).

Ok, basically you heard the story countless times, and after watching you would somehow get tired of it like I already am. And here I shall refer to season 1 first

Here is the stuff she says, translated and paraphrased so we don't die of boredom:
"Take this" (uketorinasai)
[Ai gives doll (Wanyuudou)]
"If you really wish to take revenge, you must pull the red string. Your target would be sent to hell immediatley." (bla bla hontou ni bla bla akai bla bla bla)
[Insert animation of person almost pulling]
"However, you make a contract with me. When a person is cursed, 2 graves are dug. You will also go to hell." (bla bla futatsu bla bla)
[Insert animation of person scared and reconsidering]
"Of course, that is after you die"
[Remove Enma Ai and present disappearence]
"The rest is up to you"

And the text on the website, "Your revenge, cleared" (anata no urami, harashimasu)

So that is pretty much what happens in almost every episode, plus minus a few lines for each case.

The template for an episode is pretty much like this:
1) Person gets bullied/wronged/etc that is caused by someone
2) (Optional) Person hears of Jigoku Tsuushin
3) Person accesses it. Optionally insert struggle process
4) The above transcript, give and take some details
5) Person uses doll (accidentally or not)
6) Revenge is taken with nice effects, method depending on what the target did.
7) Target on boat (nice boat?) with Ai, usually struggling etc
8) Ai says she will "ferry this vengance to hell"
9*) Candle appears in candlepool with Person's name, with Ai saying what is on the website.
10) Resolution, involve showing the mark on chest of Person

*Note: can sometimes be last, just before ED.

And after episode 8 comes a complication, where the Shibata family comes in.
Insert after 1): Tsugumi recieves contact
Insert after 4): Hajime tries to stop, usually not arriving in time/cannot persuade properly

Then there is Episode 13, where the past is explained. At the end of this episode we see someone who sent his friend to hell go to hell himself, but without torture.

Also, the last 3 episodes are very different. Basically its still their history in detail.

I shall not talk about the OP and ED since I have no such licence, but I must say the OP is some catchy shit and the ED is for curing insomnia.

So this is the post for the whole of Jigoku Shoujo 1. Even if I have time I may not do 2.

Test results

2009-02-24T19:30:00.002+08:00

English -> 35/50 (A2)
Chinese -> 67/100 (B3)
Chem -> 26/35 (A2)
Math -> 36/40 (A1), ALC test unknown
IHC -> 8/20 (E8)
Physics -> Target A2
China Studies in Chinese -> Target B3

MSG this way abt 3++.

It screwed is not.

此方无用处

2009-02-22T18:04:00.002+08:00

如果此博客需要一个正式的华文名，那么就用那个好了。

还有，如果我今年要有个学习华文的进步方向，我就说是朝向更正确的翻译。

班上的那两位来自江苏省的同班同学很用功，与他们相处多的话今年的华文可能就不成那么大的问题。

我写汉字还是半桶水，从小四过后我好像没有学到超过100个字。还好，社会开始发达，希望突如其来的汉字不会写不会成太大的问题。我看这短文里自己不会写的字有最少七到八个。我看专心学认字会比较有效。

就是不希望今年每一份课文学习单都是抄来的，但就因为前两年坚持完全不抄，但也没有努力／能力完成作业，而华文成绩不佳。我想连抄来的最少会有一点映像，功课态度那里也不会被拉下。当然，理解问答、长文缩短、辨字此类作业我就不抄了。

Cover yer eyes

2009-02-17T22:25:00.004+08:00

那天，有这么一个指示。每个星期都得交上一份“阅报心得”。就是网上新闻的读后心得。

我这个人只知关于电脑界的消息，就去了Endgadget的中文网站。有“新闻价值”的篇章没有多少，就选了“吓死人，盖茨一下放出N多蚊子！“，因为一位我（其实还有很多人也一样）把当成恶魔的人竟然做了有意义的事。

内容不可少过300字，就写了这些：

基本上，篇章报导说微软（Microsoft）的前老板比尔-盖茨（Bill Gates）出席加利福尼亚州举办的科技、娱乐和设计（英：Technology, Entertainment and Design. 短称TED）大会时在会议现场放飞了一群蚊子，为了就是强调疟疾的危害性。他使台下的听众感到惊恐，担心了一分钟。过后他才向听众保证，他放飞的那些蚊子不携带疟疾病毒。过后作者还支持“比尔大叔”的举动，说因为他走上了慈善的道路，即使释放了臭虫也没关系。我个人认为比尔-盖茨那么做又幽默又厉害，能用这样的示范强调疟疾是个严重的问题。他说得对，疟疾不应该只有穷苦国家的人民拥有。虽然他释放的蚊子并没有携带疟疾，但对在现场的听众是蛮可怕的。eBay的创始人皮埃尔-奥米迪亚尔（Pierre Omidyar）都被吓得说他再也不会坐在前排了。但是，有如篇章的其中一个回应里说到，“凭什么穷人失业了就当被蚊子咬了一下，富人被蚊子咬一下就当失业那么恐怖”。这反映到现在的聪明人太没有胆子了。

当然，错误连连是难以避免的。

还有，既然已经用中文打字了，就加上这小小的笑话：

华文专题作业-10个带有牛的成语，俗语或关用于
Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 9:58pm
1）牛气冲天
2）九牛一毛
3）汗牛赛屋
4）出生牛犊不怕虎
5）气冲斗牛
6）风马牛不相及
7）木牛流马
8）九牛二虎
9）对牛弹琴
10）牛皮不是吹出来的

11）中国牛奶*

*中国牛奶是本地一位专科华文的有名博士所创造的成语：
叶哲佑（英文：Ryo Yap, 1994年至2009年），

意思：形容表面安全，却对某团体或个人有害的人物或东西。
创造来源：2008年轰动全球的三鹿牛奶事件。
用法（例子）：
1。那位先生看起来斯斯文文地，却做出如此伤天害理地事，真是中国牛奶。
2。这个村里的人们都是中国牛奶，千万不要被他们的表面给误导！

（叶哲佑是在交上这篇作业后，被华文老师残杀而死亡的）

Lolwut. Its in code. And sorry if there are any encoding errors.

Update on life

2009-02-13T22:09:00.005+08:00

Current status: Still Alive

Well, between my last update and this, quite a lot has happened.

I am still using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (only now I regularly try to correct myself that it is U-bun-tu not U-ban-tu). Waiting for 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to be past alpha and beta. And I use this for my desktop unless in corporate situations.

I got a $12 2GB thumbdrive. Not big news, but I feel like an antique now that the last time I got thumbdrives were when they were over $100. Yet again, not as antique as the time when a 15MB HDD cost USD2500. And then, I hate the issue of GiB and GB. Somehow I never trust size labels anymore, unless they are in bytes.

I played World of Goo (Demo). Linux version. Just released yesterday. Completed the demo levels (Chapter 1 out of 4) today. Listening to soundtrack now. I will buy it.

Liferea does not rock very much. But it is ok. Pidgin segmentation faults now and then. But I have LogServ and F_GBot.

Homework is surprisingly fine. Except for maybe some which is hard to figure out by myself.

Teachers are ok. Most are fun. At least for now.

Touch-typing skills improved. Now for 99.999% accuracy instead of 90%. And I need to type CSC notes more quickly.

Ranted a bit on iSpark PSG Group on Facebook.

Classroom decorated with the 3 posters (total $10) I got at some Bookfair. Class Rep also helped by adding a Haruhi one and a Death Note one, but did not help by adding a Bleach one.

Juniors this year are OK. For now.

Clannad AS roxx. Haruhi (both Season 2 and the -chan) lagging is not.

Why am I writing in such short sentences?

S.O.Y A'09 ~ver. randName()

2009-02-01T11:33:00.004+08:00

My rundown...
The scene was rather good. Was damn lol that the place was where I had my SMP briefing. Had to register as photographer lol...

Arrows indicate highlights. From the left edge, its a) HALF of a huge (think shiehls) C.C. b) Its some Michael Jackson style trap. c) Carillus and his cap drawing SDM

Note that the C.C. is most likely what will happen if she really eats too much pizza. The RL one was really eating loads. Lucky for people who didn't go, you saved yourself some scarring.

财神到！ Its in season but ombwtfbbq. I have no idea who is that beside the fortune god.

It was fun to see this. Except for the Mikuru...

We were about to leave when I saw umbrella. Then like WTF.

All my other pics were fail. There was Miku but not that malaysian one who was at Cosfest'08 and AFA'08. There was the kagamines and they looked damn shota/loli.

SDC was fail except for SWS so I not gonna go any further than this.

Design fail

2009-01-28T20:22:00.002+08:00

I have not just discovered it; rather, I've just confirmed that I fail at any type of design or layout or art possible.

http://s402.photobucket.com/albums/pp107/randName/?action=view¤t=Haruhi1.png

Took some time, not much but still some.

As usual, its fail

Portal Gun

2009-01-21T15:29:00.003+08:00

Another feed thing, another wow.

http://kotaku.com/5135914/real-portal-gun-wont-leave-you-tasting-blood

I absolutely want it if I can change the colour of the light from Blue to Orange.

A portal gun beats the gravity gun any time. If one were to make a real (rusted) gravity gun it would require you to have a tetanus shot...

EDIT: Ok, its damn WTH, but http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/27/video-portal-gun-replica-hands-on

You can change the colour...And I still wants it...somehow

Ahhh...

2009-01-17T21:23:00.004+08:00

Hmm. It seems like the weekends are free-ish. Let me rumble more then.

Last week's FLL failure was partly my fault. Had I started work earlier I could have perfected the design of that cargo-thing that can lift the house (and I should have gotten the full points). Of course, I can actually have peaceful slumber because I know Tribal was too imba (and in this case it actually really means imbalanced).

Of course, not one to brood over matters (actually, I don't brood. Bad things come back to haunt me in short bursts, like my realization that I have not been ordering student meals for the last 2 years (of which when there was that option (means not weekend) I think there were less than 50 times, so its not that zibei)) (And yes that's a lot of brackets)

My imageboard feed backlog has been cleared (at least the accumulated ones), and I dunno how long I can keep it under 200 each (Konachan.com is not that much of a problem. Its Danbooru and Sankaku Channel that is constantly bombarded).

If some know I have been doing research on dolphin waxing, and results have shown its not that horrible thing like drugs or cigarettes that the higher beings call it to be.

Word has been spreading that I watch H3N741. Yes, I did Bible Black (all except for the sequel) and Discipline: A record blah blah etc; but seriously, I don't have much time now that school started. And yes, I dislike 3d that much.

Currently I am only actively watching Clannad After Story, and even that is like what, weekly? If I actually have free time I actually want to do homework, but by the time I'm done it will be the next slot on my unwritten schedule. even if I'm done I feel guilty sitting there doing nothing so I end up clearing my feed backlog.

In the time I've written this, I guess at least 2 cycles have passed. The thing is that you will feel compelled to read the feeds. I guess it can provide something for you to live for, but I guess I should let it decelerate for a while.

Well, this is a pretty long post for the current state of events. I think I should reserve some time to do this in the weekends. Somehow I feel slightly better.

On a lighter note, I guess feeds have brought me something.
(http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml)
Of course, while I'm posting links: Invisible Tetris.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo)
And finally, don't worry. All the links that I post on this blog are SFW unless otherwise stated. I am, however, not responsible for you getting caught slacking off reading this while you were supposed to do something important.

School...

2009-01-16T13:55:00.002+08:00

2 weeks of school have passed...I'm not half dead nor alive, but I don't think I'm getting much better.

I have set down some unwritten resolutions to finish chinese homework and a better grade in IH.

Have been keeping constant feed backlog... Nothing much.

Lappy to and fro is giving me a good hand exercise.

Classmates are fun.

Why is this in point form...

Happy 2009

2009-01-01T15:03:00.001+08:00

Yeah lag whatever I was doing something else.

HAPEE NIU (牛) YEAR.

yeah yeah too cheesy whatever

Device Hell

2008-12-30T21:53:00.005+08:00

We will redirect to /dev/null on your behalf

[Insert form here]

Device Daemon appears.

"We will redirect your hatred into /dev/null immediatley

(Replacement of his soul with /dev/urandom or /dev/random on request)"

[Wants to hit enter]

"However, when a soul is cursed, 2 links are made.

Your soul will be replaced by /dev/zero

And will soon resemble /dev/full

After that you will still go into /dev/null all the same.

That's after you die of course.

The rest is up to you."

I had to get this out of my system...

2008-12-29T22:17:00.002+08:00

Raw egg white + Uncooked Sausage + Bee Hoon + Fishball + Good Arrangement = WIN

No pics. Or will be NSFW.

Light's Theme

2008-12-25T22:15:00.002+08:00

SoOkThisIsThatShitOnFacebook

1. Put your music on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the note as well as the person you got the note from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Pachelbel's Canon in D
[I think this is from my NGE folder]

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Hajimari no Kiseki (Steel Angel Kurumi Zero ED)
[wtf I don't listen to this folder anymore...]

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Colorless Wind (Sola OP)
[hmm. At first I was thinking of farts. Then again, redundancy.]

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Shine of Voice edited ver (Ichigo 100% OP)
[The original is nice too. I wonder why i have this instead...]

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Brand New Breeze (Kin'iro no Corda / La Corda D'oro OP)
[hmm. Farting again.]

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
You are the one (from SnS Single Yoake Umarekuru Shōjo / 夜明け生まれ来る少女)
[Right...]

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Hare Hare Yukai~ver Haruhi (SHnY OP/Haruhi's Character Single)
[This was supposed to be the one where all 3 sang, but Gendou's one is still this ver. And quite appropriate.]

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Hikari no Rasenritsu (Rozen Maiden Traumend ED)
[Hmm. means 光の螺旋律, Spiraling Melody Of Light. Interesting...]

WHAT IS 2+2?
Still Alive (Portal ED)
[Wow. One of the few English songs I have. And it could actually make sense.]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Colourful Days (Minami-ke ED)
[Makes sense too.]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
らき☆らき☆べいべー Lucky Star Baby (Lucky Star vocal mini album)
[wtf I don't listen to that often. But another that could make sense.]

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Cruel Angel's Thesis A.D. 2001 (NGE OP)
[wtf scary...]

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Megassa Koukishin (Tsuruya-san's Character Single)
[hmm...means Mega Curiosity. Quite accurate...]

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Keikenchi Joushouchuu (Minami-ke OP)
[Getting experience points...right.]

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Death Note Theme (Death Note OST)
[Wtf no...]

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Hare Hare Yukai~ver Kyon (Kyon's Character Single)
[It really had to be this. No way...More suited for the next question though.]

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Tsuki no Curse (Loveless OP)
[Hmm...watch out for the moon then.]

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Mysterious Purupuru Pururin (Welcome to the N.H.K. Insert)
[How appropriate. The instrumental is my SMS ringtone...]

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
16000 Hz (Mosquito tone-ish)
[I made this myself in Audacity. Not my biggest but you could call this a secret.]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Concerto (Stepmania song)
[Maybe...]

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Mitsukete Happy Life (Asahina Mikuru's Character Single)
[WTF?]

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
13.mp3 (Best of Hooked on Classics)
[I forgot the track name and guess what? The track number truly curses me.]

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Binkan na Fuukei (Sola Insert)
[Sensitive Landscape? Hmm...]

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Hare Hare Yukai~ver Tsuruya-san (Tsuruya-san's Character Single)
[Acceptable answer.]

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Dragostea Din Tei (OZone)
[I will if I ever get tired of it.]

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Inori~You Raise Me Up (Romeo X Juliet OP)
[Prayer? Niao.]

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru (Hatsune Miku Original song)
[I'm going to Miku Miku...No way it scares me.]

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Seishunii Janai Ka' (Tsuruya-san's Character Single)
[Ain't Youth Great is not helpful. And why am i getting so much Tsuruya-san?]

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Honto no Kimochi (Zero no Tsukaima ED)
[True feelings? Telling me something...]

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Tomadoi Bitter Tune (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu OP)
[Confusion? Nevermind.]

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Light's Theme.
[Ok. Off to post]

Ok bloody waste of time but cool anyway. And yeah Merry Christmas. Not like I celebrate it anyway. And not like you care.

my Twitter

2008-12-23T20:47:00.001+08:00

Apparently someone got there before me.

randName was already taken.

I took _randName_

http://twitter.com/_randName_

Nagisa's Birthday

2008-12-23T16:34:00.002+08:00

Let's all celebrate tomorrow! (24/12)

It's Furukawa Nagisa, not Nagisa Aoi (though they share the same VA).

It's one of the rare times character's birthdays are so clear. The only other one I can remember is the Hiiragi twins on 07/07.

Wtf this was so useless.

Again...

2008-12-20T20:39:00.003+08:00

The RP (RolePlay, as in RPG that type of RP) going on at fantasia_gensokyo was keeping me busy for the past few days.

Go there if you haven't already done so lol: http://fantasiagensokyo.proboards.com

My character Bio:

Name: fixedName
Age: 15 (his organic portion)
Gender: Male
Species: Integrated Data Entity Interface

Stats: 60 hp 40 mp

Abilities:
Environmental Interaction (Environmental Data Processing) [Level 1]
Environmental Interaction (Data Manipulation) [Level 1]

Appearance:
Looks like a lively, charming young lad. Not too tall or short when he stands beside other people (since he can adjust his shoes slightly anyway), he sports brown hair of colour #663300 and a fringe of which has dye so he can change the colour anytime (luckily, he only adopts HTML web-safe colours). He dislikes putting anything into his eyes, so it is of a natural black/brown combo.

Personality:
Adaptive, Changing to fit crowd. He mingles around for a bit staying silent, taking in verbal and body language from everyone. Then he gets the average and outputs it. Therefore everyone would describe him differently, but most often as a "very likeable" person, and one who is easy to open your heart to (that's how he collects more data)

History:
Attached to a living organism by the Integrated Data Entity because of a need to use its huge amounts of data more effectively than simple SQL statements. There are many others like him all around, but they rarely need to meet as there is an active database for communication (like a message board). They age less quickly compared to humans, and for them "true" ageing is simply the fragmentation of Interface data. Without proper TLC and maintenance, the organic component of the Interface may suffer from wear and tear which will make the it appear to age as quickly as humans. When the life span of the cells in the organic component are nearing their end, the Interface can request for a renewal, and it will be attached to another organic being. The record for the longest life of the organic component was 143 years.

Given the bare minimum amounts of information needed to survive, fixedName lived alone for the first few years of his life. He then moved around and started roaming "through a sudden bout of boredom", and has helped the Entity gather substantial amounts of new data, like who all the bases belong to.

Such wanderlust would certainly lead to something big. Finding the Roundtable was certainly that. Finding it interesting, he stayed there for a while, observing conflicts that happen there frequently.

Others: [TBA]

Changelog:
v0.1 (12/17:20:31) - Added Age, Species, Personality, Abilites and Stats
v0.2 (12/17:21:38) - Added Name, Appearence and Updated Personality
v0.3 (12/17:22:08) - Finetuning (Carillus)
v1.0 (12/18:19:20) - Updated Age, Personality, added History.
v1.1 (12/18:19:43) - Updated History, modded look

----------------------------------
Level 1
EXP to Level 2: 100
EXP: 35

And then the follow up by a skilled RPer

Nagato Yuki type reality warping, huh. Well, what the heck.
At the first level, you can only transform small objects into other objects of similar ability/function. Low level non-contact alchemy, basically. Kitchen knives into daggers, wooden swords into metallic ones, tables into little baby cots, things like that.

Shoes thrown at Bush

2008-12-15T16:11:00.002+08:00

Elaboration: When soon-to-be-Ex-President Bush was speaking at an un-announced trip to Iraq, an Iraqi journalist stood up and threw one of his shoes at Bush while calling him "dog" (doesn't Louise do that everytime anyway), and he managed to duck. The journalist threw his other shoe and this time the guy standing beside Bush helped to block the missile.

Lol. In Iraq that is "close to an ultimate insult" (CNN), as it implies that the person is lower than the dirty shoe. As Mr Brown puts it, "Yes, and in other cultures, throwing a shoe is a sign of respect, affection and love." And go see the pics he put up.

"It was a size 10".

Skin...

2008-12-14T22:20:00.002+08:00

I hope this is a temporary solution while I search for a nicer one.

And if the blogroll looks smaller, its because I had to put them back one by one, so don't fret if you don't see yours yet.

Parchment looks so good...

乐

2008-12-14T17:51:00.004+08:00

That would probably be one of the most appropriate translations I've ever seen for netspeek.

lol = 乐 (le4 if your chinese really that cmi)

1) It sounds similar
2) It brings similar meaning (happy)
3) It's short and sweet

乐