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TCHS 4O 2000 [4o's nonsense] alvinny [2] - csq - edchong jenming - joseph - law meepok - mingqi - pea pengkian [2] - qwergopot - woof xinghao - zhengyu HCJC 01S60 [understated sixzero] andy - edwin - jack jiaqi - peter - rex serena SAF 21SA khenghui - jiaming - jinrui [2] ritchie - vicknesh - zhenhao Others Lwei [2] - shaowei - website links - Alien Loves Predator BloggerSG Cute Overload! Cyanide and Happiness Daily Bunny Hattrick Magic: The Gathering The Onion The Order of the Stick Perry Bible Fellowship PvP Online Soccernet Sluggy Freelance The Students' Sketchpad Talk Rock Talking Cock.com Tom the Dancing Bug Wikipedia Wulffmorgenthaler       |
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Minor update on the last couple of months of some-exercise and sort-of-dieting: a total loss of about four kilograms (disregarding fluctuations), or about a pound a week, without too much discomfort. On track then to make about 65kg - which is about as light as I've been since Basic Military Training - by the end of the month, and once I get there... we'll see what's next. Felt less beaten up than usual after futsal yesterday already. And on BMT, my younger brother enlisted today, which just so happens to be his birthday, and just one day after the release of the A Level results. By the way, it seems an A* grade has been added atop the old highest grade of A, and A** grades proposed, because too many students were scoring As for top universities to distinguish between them. Well, if they don't manage this properly, we might have the grades of A*****, A****, A***, A** and A* as the passing grades in half a century, with A meaning "Almost Passed".  AT ATTEN-SHUN, SUR! Back to dear old Tekong. It would be the first time that I returned as a non-recruit, or certainly as a non-NSF, and my impression was that it hasn't changed much. Not that time has left the island untouched - for one, an extra pair of steps have been installed at the end of the balancing logs, perhaps to reduce the probability of getting a nasty knee/ankle injury from the standard dismount (see 0:03 of the clip here for an example), which by right ends with both feet hitting the ground at the same time, but by left, sometimes doesn't? Oh, and from the NS website above, the SOC now consists of just a 50m dash followed by the obstacles and finally a 600m run, a rather large discount from the 700m initial rundown (which I would say makes a big difference) when I first encountered it seven years ago; of course, this is already far easier than in my father's generation, which I'm told was fifteen kilometres with a bloody fullpack and not just Standard Battle Order, uphill both ways, or something. Maybe it'll eventually be reduced to controlling drones with the Wii, and maybe that is indeed the future - why spend years doing thousands of push-ups and marching hundreds of clicks, if an overweight gamerboy somewhere can simply wiggle his controller and put a load of lead into those muscles? And if this doesn't sound realistic, I have a lot of dead Afghanis who want a word with you. Well, other changes include the combat uniform, from the classic camo print (which IMHO lookes better) to a newfangled digital one, in addition to shifting the rank patch from the shoulders/sleeves to the chest, which I guess is a godsend especially for short recruits, who will no longer need to salute everything in sight. The tour of the barracks soon concluded, and other than some improvements to the SBO and duffel bags, the change of the PT T-shirt colour from grey to brown, and the introduction of garrison sandals, the seldom-used recreation rooms and bunks were more or less the same from my time. A combined briefing by the commanding officer in an auditorium then followed, and amusingly the first three questions fielded were on the issue of attending the local universities' open houses (NUS will be holding its in a week, for one), to each which the good Lieutenant Colonel spent minutes endeavouring to say "cannot" without actually saying the word outright. To be fair, they are willing enough to allow recruits to attend interviews, from experience. The parents finally got the hint, and the commanding officer mollified them somewhat by making his new recruits promise to call their parents before their girlfriends; this got the kind of technically-correct but less-than-convincing "Yes, sir!" that soldiers swiftly learn to give the first time round, so he had to ask the lads again. After the oath-taking, lunch followed, and I was reminded that cookhouse food seriously isn't all that bad, if one is hungry and keeps an open mind. No Western dishes, to my disappointment, but the large chicken wing was very edible. I saved the orange for later, and added it to the bottle of mineral water, three-pack of Oreos, packet of tissue paper (to reserve seats in the cookhouse?) and ballpoint pen that SAF kindly gave to visitors.  SAF ORANGE REPORTING, SUR! The draw came through last week, so it's $1984.50/$2100 now on pretend punting. Today: $100 on Manchester United (-1.5) vs. Wolverhampton Wanderers (at 1.90)
- + epl tales - It's for carpark lot HG20. Thank you." - some guy on MP George Yeo's Facebook wall "If you come down to my MPS, the Dude will appeal for you." - MP George Yeo's classic response
$1669.50/$2000 as Villa did the trick, and today it's on: $100 on Sunderland to draw Fulham (at 3.15) Elsewhere, Batman beat Superman yet again, and a Facebook ad led me to discover that someone actually named himself Muad'Dib. What the.
- + hamsters - One might think that being dead is the end of one's worries, but noooo... after nearly a year of wandering through the afterlife, I got a letter reminding me of my reservist obligations to my human guardian, in particular one which would trigger upon the death of my partner in crime, Mr. Ham G. Bacon, who just had to choose a particularly inconvenient time to pass on (and immediately clear his block leave). Very smart ah you. I was ready to become a defaulter, but desisted because I really needed the cash. You see, the guy whose Ferrari I was going to set on fire begged me to stop, and promised to burn a paper one to me instead; I agreed, if only because I was having some trouble striking the matches. And lo and behold, my Ferrari did indeed arrive the next day. But it was a freaking paper Ferrari. You tell me, what good is a lump of reconstituted dead tree fibre, which moreover doesn't even have the correct curves? KNNBCCB. To cut a long story short, I've secured a good deal on a slightly-used blowtorch. Once I get the funds to purchase it outright from my human's work assignment, I will take the paper Ferrari, and place it under that wiseguy's Ferrari, and show him who's boss. The first order of business was to get the word out, and I dutifully posted want ads on various recruitment websites, local newspapers and magazines, and even at bus-stops and void decks, despite the human gahment doing its level best to stifle free enterprise:  While I waited for responses, I scouted out proper housing for the recruits. They would have done well with our old cage, but it turns out that the human guardian's grandmother threw out all our old stuff, which would seem like a waste except that it should be incinerated anytime soon. I'm not sure what we'll do with the cage now that we have our pick of glorious subterranean landscapes and fluffy cloud tops to explore, but I suppose it'll make a decent storage space once we get a lock for the thing. We got rather more applicants than expected, and thus had to hold several rounds of interviews. A bunch from the neighbourhood pet shop came up first, but despite our shared pedigree, I regretfully determined that they were not the elite-calibre hams we were after, and sent them form rejection letters to that respect. The remainder were mostly from Pet Safari at Vivocity, and this is where things got interesting. I was seriously quite impressed by a trio of pudding winter whites, but sadly they all turned out to be female. Can't have that for now. Well, that's what the human says, not me. Then I found one which was a splitting image of the young Mr. Ham G. Bacon - Lazy? Check. Promising hints of future chubbiness? Check. Allows self to be easily grabbed by humans? Check. Absolute lack of hambition? Check. When he just stared blankly when I congratulated him and told him that he was in, I knew that I had made the right choice. The second vacancy was filled by a fancy mottled winter white. I didn't really want to take him, but I had to admit that his sheer arrogance, energy, and unfriendliness reminded myself of a young me - heck, of an old me. His grooming was, moreover, faultless. It'll probably take a fair bit of squeezing, but I expect him to be a good fit. I also warned him not to rub in the fact that he cost thrice as much as the other hamster. But back to their new digs:  The latest in hamster cage technology  Top view, pedometer inset The indescribably cool built-in pedometers aside, there are various thoughtful hamgineering improvements:
 Might make a decent temporary home for unfortunate hamsters Here we have Mr. Ham J. Burger (aka 火腿二世, 小甜) sleeping in the Las Hamstas Sands, with a more cautious Mr. Fish D. Watt (aka 炸鱼什么, 小花, 他妈的臭小子) keeping watch behind:  Taking after their namesakes A note here on hamster naming conventions: Unlike individualistic humans, the family name comes first for us, therefore as Mr. Fish F. Chips, my family name is Fish and not Chips. There is also some belief in a sort of reincarnation lineage for hamsters (and I do indeed feel progressively lighter) similar to that which selected human Tibetans have, and while there are still some challenges to the theory (i.e. how does it work when the reincarnee is born before the reincarnator kicks the bucket?), but I'm confident it'll all work itself out someday. Can't be harder than general relativity. And indeed, I warmed to the new Mr. Fish quickly enough - after getting grabbed, he makes a good show of deliberately grooming himself, to the extent of making straight for the sand bath and rolling in it. What a hoot! The two are, if not exactly super-friendly, tolerating each other admirably, and eased easily into "you climb over me, and I climb over you" status, helped no doubt by a generous squirting of animal deodorant to mask their smells. Collaboration is coming along slowly - together, in a night, they have made 85 rounds on the left running ball, and 401 rounds on the right one, for a total of 486 rounds. As the running balls have an approximate circumference of 36cm, this translates to about 175 metres covered, which is not too shabby. Hopefully they can take over some of the blogging duties soon. As for me, it's blowtorch time. Heh heh.
- changelog - changelog v1.15b --------------- * Added Feedjit Live Traffic Feed. Time flew - I had been planning to get stuff done during the New Year break cum recess week, but ended up going out for some reason or other nearly every day. Yesterday was largely spent on a KTV session sending off twm, who will be in the US of A for a year or so, though I'll be the first to admit that if there's something I can't do, it's sing. And for good reason. Get Fuzzy has been coming out with non-contextual jokes (i.e. the sort that could be transplanted into just about any comic with equal success) for the past couple of weekends, but it's justified this time:
Left early to catch United vs. Everton, only to see them lose quite deservedly. The past week has seen its fair share of refereeing controversies, with Arsenal "victims" of a quickly taken free-kick (and arguably more of unfortunate goalkeeping), and Klose heading in a match-winning goal when clearly offside. Reading the archives of You Are The Ref has mollified me somewhat - is there a goal if a defender miskicks a direct free-kick from within his own penalty area, and an opposition striker rushes into the area and smashes it into the net (no)? Can a player take a throw-in with his heels on the touchline (yes)? Is it possible for a player to prevent a sending-off (and automatic suspension) by scoring an own goal, which could be very useful tactically if his team already have a comfortable lead, or have no hope of winning anyway (yes)? Other stuff of note: The first local Well, Singapore may be getting more vibrant after all. In this vein, my imaginary punting is now at $1536.50/$1900, and this week's selection is: $100 on Aston Villa to beat Burnley (at 1.33) Another development is the sale of fake degrees from local universities - which might at least be a sign that they are getting a reputation. The kicker however is that the fakes are printed for just seventy cents, but are sold for thousands of dollars, which might be more criminal than the act of counterfeiting itself. Next, an overview of a useful CS application - Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing [2007] (academic paper here). In reading research, it is often useful to get a general idea of the new technique (even if it probably does sell the authors short), and here the big idea is to resize an image based on removing the pixels with the least information; unfortunately, removing pixels from all over the image tends to destroy it, and therefore the constraint that the pixels have to be connected (i.e. form a seam) is imposed. Then, to shrink an image by a pixel horizontally, we find and delete a single vertical seam. As an example, consider this picture:  Adobe Photoshop CS4 has implemented Content-Aware Scaling (or so they call it - the free GIMP has Liquid Rescale, which is the same thing, and there are even JavaScript implementations), so let's give it a test drive:  Note that content-aware scaling has mangled the razor wire to the right of the bird somewhat, but it should be apparent that it gives a visually superior effect compared to simple scaling. Though in this case cropping might have sufficed, let's see how content-awareness can help if we wish to expand the image instead:  There is again distortion of the razor wire, but the star of the show - the bird - automatically more or less maintains its proper proportion. It has to be said that such effects have been available to Photoshoppers for a long time, but required a ton of manual work. For the interested, a video showcasing more possibilities (such as removing objects from images in a natural manner) is available online. And more exclusive, unreleased footage of the late Mr. Ham in his chubby prime:
- + hamsters -  Well, it had to happen. When I didn't feel like munching on a cashew nut, it could only mean one of two things - either I had rediscovered my hamster-pride, or I was dying. The most cursory of soul-searches revealed that I was as unscrupulous as ever, so it meant that my time was up. Two years and two months ain't too bad for a dwarf hamster, and the variety of food was okay - all the sunflower seeds you can eat, honey stars, and table scraps once in a while, even the occasional drop of beer and wine. I've had it all. So, the final question was, would I get my own comic like Mr. Fish did? Obviously, I didn't want the human guardian to mess it all up, and therefore I had been spending my days penning the script (or a "name" as the Japanese name them). I was clueless about the subject material for a time, but then it struck me - why, it would be my (slightly embellished) autobiography, of course! I guilt-tripped him into doing up the cover (see above), but the incompetent human spent a full couple of hours on it (fully digital, using Corel Painter) after discovering that his old tablet didn't work any longer; As being dead hasn't done anything for my lack of patience, I shall give a sneak preview of some of the monologues: 世人曆代皆羨慕着凶猛的野兽 什么龙啦虎啦雄狮黑豹凤凰的 为鼠的似乎永远也抬不起头来 但我就是不願；承受着这一切 [Note: Sketches of abovementioned creatures, back image of wistful hamster] ... 问世人感觉得到我的霸吗？ 问世人感觉得到我的狂吗？ 我开着口，就能吞食天地； 我滚着走，来个翻天覆地； [Note: Silhouette of hamster against setting sun] ... 自成名后，我走遍天下，也不曾遇上对手 从笼东处，至终极北处，甚至登天踏云时 方圆十厘米内，更霸绝一方 但无敌的孤寂，却离我不去 不练即能，钻砂循地 初年功成，破纸扑壁 如日方中，嚼铁為趣 最后察觉，为时不宜 ...
- + hamsters - Greetings to all on this auspicious conflation of the Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day, which must impart a rosy outlook for chocolate-covered bak kwa (hint hint). I, Mr. Ham G. Bacon, shall be your guest blogger for the day, as my human guardian is off mining for red packets, which I would have disapproved of if they did not translate to food for me, at least potentially, and my deceased-but-no-less-irritating colleague Mr. Fish is off trying to set fire to a Ferrari somewhere. Due to my diligent self-upgrading and involuntary dieting, I have found myself more attuned to the cosmos, and acquired the psychic discipline of telepathy; By closing my eyes and concentrating very very hard, I have found that I am able to communicate over vast distances through sheer force of will! For some reason, this is most often successful when I stand on a mystical black slab that I found lying around and paw some of the numbers on it, but I am now completely accustomed to the ringing tone that signifies a triumphant conclusion to my profound meditations. A more spiritually uplifting experience I have yet to encounter.  Mr Ham (on left) makes first contact with the HamTire I will leave my irresponsible guardian to settle his own problems (something trivial about "phone bills", or so I hear), and continue with my delvings into the mysteries of this world... wait, what's that? A fellow hamster? Thank goodness, I was wondering if I would ever get past the "wong-lumber-buh-bai" stage of my studies! <HamTire> Harlow. I'm so excited! I'm so excited! <xXxHamsomeStud96xXx> Hiiiiiiiiii <HamTire> Intro 1/m/bedok? <xXxHamsomeStud96xXx> sigh ***xXxHamsomeStud96xXx is now known as MrHam*** <MrHam> 3/m/jurong Maybe if I concentrate harder next time, it'll be a female. Not that I have anything better to do now... <MrHam> hows d human cny for u sfar? <HamTire> not good <HamTire> one of them is prodding me around my cage. has he no shame <MrHam> i understand the feeling <HamTire> lemme send you a foto of his mug Hmm? Eh... the black slab is glowing! I must have transcended into the next level of hamster consciousness! Um. Isn't that my human guardian? What the... <HamTire> i think hes trying 2 grab mi <MrHam> humans r lousy lk that <HamTire> oh i dunno <HamTire> i cn smell another hamster frm his palms <HamTire> smells lk a skinny sellout <MrHam> WTF <MrHam> u think u very fat issit <HamTire> as a matter of fact yes <HamTire> lemme send u sum pics  MMS_Attachment_1 <HamTire> check out my flabs, baby (no homo) <HamTire> they call me the michelin ham <HamTire> thus d nick ...now I know why the human guardian's whipping himself into shape.  MMS_Attachment_2 <MrHam> okok enuff alr <MrHam> so is he still trying <HamTire> yah <HamTire> i m hiding but somehow he manages to find me  MMS_Attachment_3 <MrHam> dey are relentless lidat <MrHam> it is but a matter of time <HamTire> nooooooooooooooo <MrHam> but if u play ur cards right, u cn get something out of it <MrHam> hold out for food. special food <HamTire> but... wouldn't i be a sellout to hamsterkind too? <MrHam> which century r u livin in? <MrHam> we call it pragmatic politics now <HamTire> ah ok got it <HamTire> mmm... rice doesn't taste bad after all <MrHam> give them ur cute face, they cant resist that <HamTire> like this?  MMS_Attachment_4 <MrHam> not bad, not bad @ all <HamTire> actually i learnt abt this in sch <HamTire> a book called haminal farm i think <MrHam> its the difference between theory and practice <MrHam> so would u rather keep your principles and grow thin, or discard them and prosper?  MMS_Attachment_5 <HamTire> tt's easy! <MrHam> glad 2 c u r true hamster <HamTire> happi new yr 2 u 2!
The more-or-less-annual football gathering at TCHS on Saturday, where my yellow boots with studs got their first outing, and proved useful on grass if a tad clumsy on solid surfaces. Ignored the elliptical trainer to watch Own Goal score a hat-trick for United against beleaguered Portsmouth. Sunday saw a trip down to Johor Bahru with my cousins for a spot of shopping, whereupon I discovered that it was not much more inconvenient than going to central Singapore - it is just seven MRT stations away to Kranji, compared to about twelve for the City Hall area, although an additional S$1 bus trip is needed to get across the Causeway to the Malaysian immigration complex.  Inside a Causeway Link bus (photo credit: lwei) The complex is however but one pedestrian bridge from the City Square shopping centre, which has a large selection of stores, and more pointedly, prices that are approximately half that of malls across the border - and that's before further discounts. One might suspect that the Singapore government would be concerned about the outflow of currency, but not to worry, the place is majority owned by them in any case.  Bowl is smaller than it appears (photo credit: lwei) Some strolling and spending later (including a cab ride down to Holiday Plaza), we had dinner at the Kim Gary restaurant at food court prices, where I reflected upon the merits of making purchases in Malaysia. The next time I require a good shirt, for instance, I would be tempted to have it made to measure there. The only negative I got from the trip was spraining my right thumb, in a manner that I would prefer not to relate. Here, I should mention that housing is also far more affordable in Johor, with a recent Straits Times feature (reproduced here) on Singaporeans buying property there (salient quote: "Every month I pay a S$630 instalment on the [S$125000 and 2,140 sq ft] house which is less than the S$800 I pay for my car - and I can't live in my car!"). Seriously worth consideration, especially if better transport links are developed between Singapore and Johor. Revisiting the wage-to-housing price ratio, a bit of searching suggests that my initial estimates may have been a bit overboard. From here, the average household income in 1982/83 was S$1724 (see page 7), while it was S$7090 by 2008 (see page 3). Then, comparing apples to apples, housing prices would have kept pace with wages if they increased by 311% from 1982 to 2008. Available figures from 1981 show that new five-room flats cost anywhere between S$72900 to S$126400 then (after subsidies), from which we might expect such flats to cost from S$300000 to S$520000 today. Although, as Mr. Tan Kin Lian noted, prices for new flats are hard to come by, it appears that they do fall within this range; Indeed, according to the HDB, current prices for new five-room flats are anywhere from S$229000 to S$428000 (see page 10), and a quick search on resale five-room flats in Jurong West on the HDB InfoWEB shows an average price of about S$372000, for over 1000 transactions. Ang Mo Kio has an average price of some S$493000, for 168 transactions. Offhand, it may seem that incomes have kept pace with housing prices after all, but in that case it is strange that our Minister for National Development, and even our Minister Mentor, have acknowledged the issue instead of trotting out the facts. It may then be that statistics don't tell the whole story, and a few considerations spring out:
In summary, a definitive conclusion cannot be made without the right data, though my hunch is that if a minister admits that there may be a problem, there likely is one. More transparency would be appreciated, or a house fifteen minutes from the border would begin to look more and more like a realistic option. Monday was upgrade day, as I resolved to try out Windows 7 on my home desktop. Considering that I have been using Windows XP since 2002 (having wisely skipped Vista), this had the potential to be a big plunge. It ended up being painless, however, and I even kept XP installed as a fallback, by partitioning my original system drive into two, and then installing Win7 into the empty half (which still had 250GB)  Aero Flip 3D (WinKey+Tab) Triple-booting is now an absolute breeze compared to a few years back, as Win7 automatically sets up a boot menu for the user. Half an hour later, I had a clean install zooming along with no startup junk, and access to all my existing data. Applications were another issue - some of them couldn't start as-is, since they were registered in XP - but this was quickly fixed by designating a new Programs File folder, and re-installing vital apps there. Yes, there is some redundancy going on, but who cares when hard disk space is so plentiful? Following that, I transferred my Google Chrome history by copying the appropriate folder, as well as my trusty MSN emoticons (again) with Emoticon Made Easy. Windows Live Messenger itself had to be run in compatibility mode to minimize to the system tray, which now expands neatly into a box, and not distractingly sideways. Win7 meanwhile downloaded a load of patches through Windows Update, which has finally been decoupled from Internet Explorer. Some tweaking was required to adjust the user interface to my liking; I finally ditched the trusty Windows Classic theme for the spiffiness of Aero, but returned the screen resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768, and set the taskbar to use small icons without autocombining of icons, for the XP feel. The Show Desktop button is now at the bottom right, but this makes sense as one can just drag the mouse pointer down in that direction and click, without having to visually locate the icon to the right of the Start button as was previously the case (or one could always just use WinKey+D...).  Tidier than ever Having said that, yummy eye candy and some usability improvements aside, there probably isn't an overwhelmingly pressing need for XP users to migrate, though new buyers might as well grab Win7 (not that they will have a choice after Microsoft phased the old workhorse out). The thing is, despite looking far slicker, and boasting a bunch of new features, I daresay Win7 would be little more than a tuned XP to most (if you don't believe me, scan that feature list and tell me how many of those are truly revolutionary) Windows 7 does run everything I want it to speedily and flawlessly, and hasn't crashed yet, which is an achievement in itself; I'll continue using it as my main operating system, which is probably the highest praise I can give it. Amusingly, the latest Facebook revamp has adopted the Windows 7 "type in the first few letters of what you want to access it" paradigm.  Facebook knows where you've been, and offers sound financial advice On Tuesday, I finally went from masterless rōnin to actually having an official supervisor (or two). This should be - is - good news, except that I'll be somewhat busier from now on. As well I should be.  Likely slightly buggy, certainly free Therefore, I have paused development on my little tool to save myself time checking if my comics (and other stuff, but mostly comics) have been updated; Google Chrome has always won plaudits for its speed, but the lack of plug-ins kept not a few users from migrating. Now that Google Extensions are finally out, I couldn't resist whipping up one for myself. What gPageAlrt does is to periodically (default: once every hour) check each of a list of URLs, and if any of them has changed since the last check, mark it as such (the little red number by the icon shows how many such URLs there are). Some webpages (such as this one) contain dynamic information that changes each time the page is accessed (e.g. hit count, random quotes), and therefore the obvious implementation that hashes the content would not be useful. The approach taken was to access each page twice in quick succession when adding it, and then diff the data, to obtain possibly multiple fragments that do not include that dynamic information. There are of course still situations in which this won't work (e.g. when updates are on the ends of a fragment, or dynamic information that is not per-second or per-reload based), but this has been sufficient for my purposes. Another optimization would be to detect and hash RSS feeds whenever possible, but I'll leave all these for the future. Ironically, it probably will never recoup the day I spent coding it, but what the heck. In local news, there has been another thunderstorm in a teacup, as a pastor got hauled up for "trivialising and insulting the beliefs of Buddhists and Taoists". Personally, he's just being forthright, if insensitive. A devout person has to believe that his religion is true and others' are false to some extent, so the only thing is whether one quietly believes that, or shouts it to the world. And the world moves on.
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