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Of Dragons And Hamsters The Dragon Year's come along with hopes for a baby boom (then again, since when did dragons reproduce more than bunnies?), which would improve the native demographics situation from completely hopeless to marginally less completely hopeless. In other news, there is no end to the travails of the local rich, with their being hit hardest by inflation being headlined prominently - yet another unique phenomenon in a unique nation. Regrettably, my year counter has also incremented - time seems to pass more quickly nowadays - while Ms. Robo W. White's life counter ran out. The Lunar New Year period has historically not been kind to my hamsters. She was always a sweet little, if nervous, thing, who never quite got used to living alone. Not that it was easy to tell, given how Mr. Ham especially often appears very convincingly deceased, especially when there's work to be done. As a small consolation, he's at least quiet when he's pretending.  Let her eat cake The remaining two did not appear overly affected by this somber news, busy as they were in sprucing up their Chieftec Black Dragonhamster home:  And nobody dropped any angpows in after all that effort! Mr. Ham (in his accoutrements as Leader of the One True Quadrilateral): Says who? I, for one, in my near-infinite grace, am extremely saddened by my custome... follower's passing. It came at a most inopportune time too - she had only received the Passport To The Third Zone of Paradise (with the Rider for one free spa access each day, which was on offer) for generous donations to my mansi... a new building which shall be put to very good use, and had almost been persuaded to fork out for a Golden Ticket Of The Sixth Inner Sanctum Where The Tortured Screams Of The Unbelievers Shalt Be Music To The Ears Of The Faithful. I'll got far too many of those in inventory! (Teeny sharp voice from above): Just a minute, young ham! There ain't no mountain of sugarcandy as you promised in the contract, no, and the folks up here just smiled when I showed them my Passport! What sort of scam are you tryin' to pull? The Most High And Munificient Ham (shiftily): Erm, I did warn you, right? Some little trouble with contractors and all that, you know the sort, or maybe the sand's not coming through, can't get the labour, all the government's fault. It's all a miscommunication, really, I'll get my secretaries onto it at once, oh will you look at the time, got to go, got two exorcisms and a test drive (born after group work with the cats) scheduled, bye! *disappears* The night of CNY eve was spent on the time-honoured practice of gambling (for once, with small stakes) on Blackjack, Texas Hold 'em and Big Two (one of the few card games I feel myself to be good at), while watching Manchester beat London in football and confirming that having a larger bankroll helps tremendously in coming out ahead in the long run. Sorry, bro. It will supposedly be a good year for Pigs, but fortune tellers in Hong Kong are feeling the heat from a smartphone app that is undercutting them. Quoth:  You honour, the defence rests (Source: graphics.stanford.edu) In my opinion, devotees can relax - the readings shouldn't be that bad, given that yours truly managed to get away with made-up Tarot predictions during a secondary school fair (it was for a good cause!) It might be supposed that humans would have the advantage of cold reading, but gee, I wonder how accurate a Facebook fortunetelling app (with access to feeds, friend lists, etc) could be... and in fact, Google is already doing it (check their guess about you out) The Bright Side Of Media Jambon Speaks Me: All please welcome the return of the lesser-seen half of our house political analyst duo, Monsieur Jambon! Jambon is here today to give voice to the other side, after a rewarding stint working as a consultant in Hamerica. Monsieur Jambon, could you tell us about your experiences there? Monsieur Jambon: Certainly. I had a great time offering advice to the Republicahams - for one, they pay better than the Democrahams - and they wisely took some of it. Mind, when I suggested that they "promise the moon" (itself a common enough political strategy, like apologizing at the last minute), I didn't expect them to take it so literally! Me: Well, if we can consider building an underground city, I don't see why they, with so much more resources, can't dream big. But on to the main event - today, Monsieur Jambon, political analyst and advisor extraordinaire, shall explain to us why high salaries in government is necessary. Monsieur Jambon, please. *ahem* Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to inform you that you are a fortunate people; for in what other land has good governance been seen, have intelligent policies been made, has sweat and toil been given in the service of the nation, as Singapore? No, you have not seen the whirlpool of corruption that is the rest of the civilized world, nor felt the tentacles of dynastic nepotism so prevalent elsewhere. And it is for one reason only - you have been privileged to pay your political leaders and top civil servants a lot. Ah, you might say, what about countries like Sweden and Norway? I tell you, do not believe them, you know not what hidden malfeasance lies in their socialist Scandinavian hearts! You really believe they are less corrupt than us? It cannot be! Their wages are way too low for that. I tell you, you lot are lucky to be able to pay. Only recently, two high-level officials have suffered the ignominy of being arrested for possible graft, and it is all your fault! If you people had been more generous, and doubled their meagre remuneration of S$30k a month - how does anybody live on that nowadays - likely none of this would have happened! I did not want to say it, but you citizens have let them down. For is it not written, ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you? Whether they turn out to be guilty, as so many of you have immodestly presupposed, or not, is far from the point. The point is that these two men have sacrificed greatly in the first place. If they had not entered public service, they could potentially have been private entrepreneurs raking in billions! They were not even properly incentivized - where were the performance bonuses for not participating in adultery? You know not of the pain and suffering public office brings! These heroes have undergone a precipitous drop in the standard of living they would otherwise have enjoyed, they risk being shorn of all dignity, unable to look local millionaires (of which there are many) in the eye due to their pitifully low paycheques, they cannot even enjoy their French cuisine lessons in peace! And all this shame, all this humiliation, for what? For the ignorant (and almost certainly corrupt, from their income levels) hoi polloi to grumble? I tell you, no! A thousand times no! It is only right and proper to reward exceptional performance with exceptional salary. Look at our transport, our housing, our security, our environmental planning... all world class! Nay, not only world class, but ten times as good as can be found anywhere else! Paying our leaders less than ten times as much as can be seen anywhere else looks like an absolute bargain now, doesn't it? Yes, in time, you lot shall regret pressuring such irreplaceable men of virtue into reducing their pay, mark my words! Heaven hath eyes! But it is not too late to repent. Write to the media, to your representatives, and beg them to take the money, before it is too late! Shall the nation collapse because of your mean-spirited and unwarranted stinginess? Gentlemen, I will not let that happen! *slams tiny paw on lecturn* No, we shall prove once more able to defend the salaries of the great leaders of our island home! I say we pay, if necessary for years, if necessary alone! At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of the Government - every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation! The citizens and the Republic, linked together in cause and need, will defend to the death our right to pay! We shall pay in our flats, we shall pay in the carparks, we shall pay in the foodcourts and on the roads, we shall pay in the casinos and with every purchase and after we die; we shall never stop paying, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our top talents, armed and guarded by their immense net worth, would understandably and deservingly immediately flee the borders for pastures new. *wild applause*  And if paying doesn't work - I shall eat my hat! Post-CNY Flutter Me: Jambon, I've got to hand it to you, that was... impressive. Monsieur Jambon (1577/1900 seeds, on behalf of Mr. Ham): That goes without saying. I was, after all, paid. And am going to be paid even more from this: Birmingham City (-1.5) vs. Sheffield United (at 5.05) FAKEBERT (1963.5/1900 seeds): Great odds on Manchester United to beat Liverpool (at 2.65)
Bowled 156 for the first time in awhile - deliberating whether to take up my cousin's offer to take over his old ball - and received my Official Manchester United Supporter's Trust Green and Gold Sharp shirt (No. 1150), to make it a satisfying Friday. Oh, and the Discovery Channel is showing a documentary on the Milgram experiment, while Real was castigated for playacting against Barca. Really, against Barca? Let me calculate the odds. I have also been trying to learn how to relax, which is proving more difficult than thought. It's easier with a good tutor, though: Do please mail me one if you have a spare lying around More encouragement in the toilet by my lab:  I found it strangely soothing No SOPA For Now as if there was any other reason for the copier to be there." - Andy Kessler, Eat People, pg. 189 The power of coordinated blackout compelled the American government to shelf the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) [see some primers] - which would, for one, shift the onus on detecting copyrighted material to information providers, possibly to a degree that they might effectively cease to function. After plenty of frantic calls from irate (and non-tech-savvy/bandwidth-challenged) students deprived of their accustomed source of acceptable plagarism, the Justice Department's website going down under DDoS attacks orchestrated by Anonymous [Note to the CIA: Though he may be a frequent commentator here, I don't know anything about him! Honest!] and perhaps some padded envelopes from Silicon Valley, Congress caved, with declared support for SOPA shifting from 80-31 to 65-101 in a single day, and thence to a crushing 61 for to 189 against. Which only shows that you can throw trillions of dollars and thousands of lives at long-drawn questionable wars or imprison people indefinitely for no reason at all (repealing the ISA just became trickier, sigh), but deny citizens their weekly dose of Dexter or Game of Thrones and that's it, man! It is the Land of the Free, after all.  Arrrrr take that, ye scurvy legal ninjas are sunk! Double portions of looted rum n' pictures tonight, men! (Source: flickr.com) While efforts to prevent copying are probably doomed (think Prohibition - more of this later), a more interesting question is whether it is possible to efficiently detect offences (the enforcement side is covered in the Wiki article). Wouldn't it be infeasible to try and match passages in the unimaginably vast sea of data that is the Internet... eh, wait, isn't that what search engines like Google (and services like turnitin) do all the time (in milliseconds, no less?) Alright, the major proponents of SOPA, Hollywood and the MPAA/RIAA (basically the movie and music industries) probably don't care too much about text that isn't a script or lyrics (leaving Google to happily digitize every written word they can lay their hands on). Then, the question is, is identifying pirated movies and songs that hard? Probably not. We have already seen here how feasible image search is, and what is video but many images? An obvious adaption would then be to sample the video at intervals, essentially converting each clip into many static images, and execute an image search on the results. Is this feasible? Well, if we sample at one-second intervals, an hour's worth of video would generate 3600 images. While this makes the problem a couple of orders of magnitudes more difficult than for images (assuming that there are as many hours of videos as there are images online, which I doubt), this is plainly not insurmountable - the digital era is all about exponential growth. Once any good-enough frame image match is found, the preceding and succeeding frames can then be quickly scanned to confirm the overall match. Of course, the problem can be greatly simplified by such obvious measures as eliminating duplicates (how many scenes are made up of the same actor talking for half a minute?) or slightly more complicated procedures like extracting keyframes, but they might not even be necessary with enough storage/processing speed. One could well imagine requiring all file-hosting services (in whatever form, whether YouTube or Megaupload) to scan all uploads against a set of copyrighted material, and at least force would-be pirates to resort to measures such as mirroring or steganography. So why won't they do that? It wouldn't be perfect, but it should catch, offhand, a very good percentage of current infringements. Well, I don't know - do visitors generally go for high-production-value blockbusters and MTV clips, or indie "look at my hamster" vids? [Mr. Ham: Hey!] And do advertisers give money to sites with or without traffic? Hmm. To God or Not To God A couple of weeks ago, an event called "common ground" was held by a Catholic council with the support of the Inter-Religious Organization. It was then reported upon posthaste in the local news, by a reporter who happens to be Catholic. All would have been well (other than the ludicrous premise of bringing together beliefs, which tend to officially assign those of other beliefs to a flaming afterlife, and have them skirt the issue entirely), if not for an unfortunate paragraph:
Yes, that was the sound of a Buddhist's head hitting the ground mid-chant in disbelief (one is reminded of C. S. Lewis' "being led by God's secret influence" sop, which was not warmly received by some Christians). At least a couple of them promptly wrote in to sternly assert that "Buddhists do not meditate to reach god through silence" and explain "Why Buddhists meditate" [answer given: to cultivate samadhi (concentration) and prajna (wisdom), and certainly not for communion with god or gods]. Ironically, a third forum submission berated the writer of the first letter above for presuming to know what each and every Buddhist does when he meditates, and argued that while the Buddha Gotama did state that there is no Creator God who controls human destiny, Buddha also clearly stated that there are many Maha Brahmas who are our contemporary equivalent to god (w/o capital letter). This is a perspective certainly not lost on local undergrads, who are fervently laying offerings before the God of the Bell Curve (distinct from the God of the Flat Curve), which inspired some good-natured dispelling of myths by the Provost. Back to the Buddhists, perhaps it would be wise for them to figure it out while their kind Catholic hosts debate the Protestants, before the winners of the two matchups come together to decide The Ultimate Truth, but I fear it will take a long time - the Pope already has enough on his hands bleating for an end to discrimination against his flock (cry me a river, like they were nice to other beliefs when they were strong) even as his pedophile abuse investigator was jailed for possession of child porn. Well, in the commendable spirit of finding common ground, I shall attempt to very briefly compare and contrast observations of Catholic (keeping in mind they remain the definitive Christian denomination)/(Protestant) Christian against Buddhist/Taoist/Chinese folk-religion (I find it hard to draw a clear line here from my experiences in temples, which appeared mostly syncretic) practices and beliefs:
Nom Nom... My Foot! The ruling party hasn't had much luck with food analogies despite Singapore's deserved culinary reputation, and after well-publicised distaste for cockles and comparative analysis of hawker centres, food courts and restaurants, the latest gaffe involves Peach Garden S$10 XO Sauce chye tow kuay (darn, now I'm hungry), which just begged to be lampooned, and not totally without basis. One could almost sympathize. Almost:  HAPPY NEW YEAR! (Source: Facebook) More Figurative Cannibalism A swift summary of the impressive Eat People, which lays out a number of rules for modern-day entrepreneur Free Radicals:
Song of Week (With Accompanying Quote)
Does this bear out with observation? Hmm... Happy Betting Mr. Ham (1577/1800 seeds): No contest, everything on the Totten-hams to beat City (at 4.00). And win the league! FAKEBERT (1963.5/1800 seeds): Not passing up on a good thing - 100 on Bolton to draw Liverpool (at 3.60)
Pick of Parliament The much-loved hamster expert on Singaporean politics is back, with his observations on the ministerial salary non-debate!
Herr Ahm: Here, your Prime Minister confirms that he has at least a theoretical understanding of the Principle of Working Backwards From Desired Outcomes Before Creating Plausible Justifications *whistles innocently* Then again, the Workers' Party has indeed shifted its position on ministerial salaries far closer to the PAP's in recent years, and deserved to be called out on it; they seem to be slowly morphing into a safe-alternative-underdog-pseudo-PAP, which as strategies go is a very tenable one. One obvious observation which has been murmured online often enough, but expressed most concisely in the ST Forum, is that the independent committee might have cherry-picked justifications, such as keeping the Westminster practice of paying both the ministerial and MP salary, but refusing Westminster-like pay levels. I dunno, sounds rhetorical enough to me.
 Run Baby Run So... I managed to pass my IPPT for this window, which was somewhat less than what I had hoped to train for last year, but you know, this and that, I found moving heavy stuff more to my taste than pounding out laps, and here we are. My original booking on the third of the month ended in Miserable FailureTM, which was not wholly unexpected given the amount of specific training I had engaged in (zero, exacerbated by my job description which basically entails sitting very very still for hours on end, every day), and was therefore selected so as to allow an additional couple of weeks before the window closes for good. It wasn't exactly enough time to improve much, and even the option to drop weight evaporated in the face of seasonal Ramly burgers and exotic instant noodles (I picked out a new brand! How adventurous!), which left me at about 73kg going into the test, from anywhere between probably 64kg to 67kg for my last two attempts. As it was the sit-ups and 2.4km (a sad 14:21) that were the problem the first time round, I decided to *sigh* actually run, and revisited the neighbourhood park by my primary school for that purpose for the first time in over a decade. Let the training commence:
Mindful of gleaning any possible shred of advantage, I impulsively picked out Why We Run by Robin Harvie at the library. It happened to be not all that useful in this respect, especially as I knew the answer deep down (Run. Just keep running.), but it did reacquaint me with just how crazy Emil Zátopek was - the guy trained in his army boots in winter, and then resorted to stomping on his washing in the bathtub for hours when it was too cold outside! "By keeping and increasing his exercise a person can train his willpower... when a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing 100 times then he certainly has developed. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter either. Then willpower is no longer a problem..." The first sub-four-minute miler, Sir Roger Bannister, wasn't amused, being an amateur of the old British school; Bannister regarded him as cheating by training so hard as it did not give others a fair chance, so different strokes for different folks (note that he ran his historic mile two years after Zátopek's feat, so he may have changed his mind on training methods). Zátopek's times would eventually be blown away by the Africans, but that's another story. In the end, all I got out of it was the advice not to tense up - I do have trouble relaxing - by gently touching thumb to finger and checking that the shoulders do not rise while running. So, with "five practices" under my belt, I went for it again:
Verdict: Pass Clearly, there's no huge secret to it - knock out a two-minute 400m pace for over 10km, as was routine back in NS, and sub-11 times are well within reach. One of those simple-but-not-easy things [N.B. Bloody heck, Murakami's an ultramarathoner. No, I haven't read his books]. Can I find a reason...?
 When will it be my turn again (Source: Somewhere on the Internet) Well, Spurs were indeed held by Wolves, which means a windfall of 530 seeds for Mr. Ham; the ensuing liquid fortifications, coupled with a goodly hamster-pouch-sized portion of a Ramly Burger, means that the fat furry one won't be stirring any time soon. FAKEBERT was consoled by Liverpool and Stoke nullifying each other in a nil-all draw, which was at extremely good odds considering Suarez was banned. And what would you have it, Scholes immediately picked up where he left off and got his 151th goal for United. Rooney had a penalty saved before that, but nobody was too surprised. j00 cruNch3d L0L Some days ago, it was reported that locally-based startup Fusion Garage had bitten the dust (although the signs were there for some time), which means the wait for another Creative Tech is gonna drag a little longer. Long story short: The company was born to create a tablet computer to be named the CrunchPad in 2008, in partnership with the TechCrunch blog. Things went as fine as could be expected for a time, but it all became very messy in late 2009, when the tie-up fell apart, with the TechCrunch side claiming that they were unreasonably being kicked out, while Fusion Garage claimed that they were entitled to cut and run given that they had done all the work. Now, whoever was in the right, it remained that one party was a tech blog with millions of readers and oodles of influential fans, while the other was a still-obscure company (with questionable PR to boot - but that's par for the course here), and as the Penny Arcade vs. Christoforo affair has demonstrated, there can only be one winner in the court of public opinion in this matchup. Score one for TechCrunch. All this wrangling might have meant something had the CrunchPad/JooJoo been the Next Big Thing, but as it turned out, it just wasn't very good, moreso given its ambitious US$499 pricetag, the same as the far more established and polished iPad. While Fusion Garage may be admired for at least having the guts to fail in a risk-averse climate, one can't help but think that they were a little too eager to go about it. The recently-launched Aakash tablet makes for a good comparism, and while it has attracted its fair share of criticisms, it does cost only US$60 (US$35 subsidized, in India), compared to US$499-plus for the iPad 2; now, if only it would support Dota 2...  SIRI being jealous in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? (Sources: photobucket.com & technobuzz.net) Exactly how hard is it to build a touchscreen PC, anyway? Well, a couple of months ago, a Chinese student made the international news by constructing a homemade iPad for his sweetheart, and for just US$125. Cursory searches turned up plenty of detailed tutorials, for example on converting a MacBook, a touch-PowerBook with a Wacom tablet (hmm, I've got one of those lying around) - this back in 2006 - and even a multitouch "really-from-scratch-cut-your-own-acrylic" surface how-to. As the Kinect community has demonstrated, professional-quality technology add-ons are often released at effectively no cost to the original creators, who seriously should quit hoarding stupidly broad patents. No A For You, We Grade On Curve S&P has cut France's credit rating from AAA to AA, which while seemingly a minor adjustment, can have very serious knock-on effects in these trying times. Part of the reason is that institutions often have rules mandating that they have to keep a certain proportion of their money in investments of a certain (often the highest) grade, which means that any downgrade can choke a country's access to funds, which in turn means that others are less likely to get paid... and you get the idea. The intentions behind these rules were probably good - probably to keep managers/trustees from losing their coat on speculations - but as has been repeatedly pointed out and borne out, there exists a basic conflict of interest between rating agencies and the client entities they audit, not to mention that in an economic manifestation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the agencies do (sometimes, severely) affect the situations they are analysing. I wonder if they attempt to take that into account. Finishing off the long-overdue Hard Truths review: Chapter 9: Singapore Greening Care was taken to adhere to the highest standards with polluting industries, so much so that a particular refinery was regarded as a mistake, though originally allowed in for the money. Still, Singapore's carbon footprint is 0.2% of the world total (to give some perspective, Singapore covers about 0.0005% of global land surface, given that much of it is uninhabited), though only about 5% of it directly serves the country. [N.B. Wouldn't have known] Individual governments will not have the will to take the necessary measures to counteract/slow climate change, and so we should be prepared to take the consequences [N.B. And indeed, just last month, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, purportedly to support a new deal, but more likely to sidestep some US$14 billion in non-compliance penalties. One can hardly blame them, given that America gave its own excuses for not ratifying the treaty from the beginning - China and India have reasonably pointed out that the USA has been the biggest cumulative polluter, but does anybody seriously expect Sammy to pay? It would be far cheaper to deny, since incontrovertible direct evidence is hard to come by] Singapore won't be hit too badly if the sea level rises just one metre, but a few more and let's just say that ponding will be the least of our worries. [N.B. Note that Singapore did join Kyoto in 2006, but not under Annex I, and therefore is under no emission-reduction target, a good deal if I say so.] Neither solar nor nuclear power has been discounted [N.B. one can recall recent pushes to solar, involving figures that make even ministerial pay look tiny in comparism, with nuclearites also pushing their agenda] A lower population density is actually preferred, but that is now in the hands of the government of the day [N.B. Hmm] Chapter 10: Not Your Average Grandad Young people nowadays aren't apathetic because there's no political activism in the institutions (university campuses), but because they're too comfortable [N.B. Well, just lift all restrictions on activism, and we might see just how comfortable students really are!] If Singapore fails, the well-educated can migrate, but the majority will start becoming others' maids and labourers. [N.B. When qualified in this way, the much-maligned "maids" comment doesn't seem completely outlandish, and anyway aren't the low-paid menial jobs on offer basically the same?] There is nothing at all in the eight sides of the S$1 coin being for good fengshui [N.B. This I can well believe, given how we managed to erect gigantic altar tablets to welcome new arrivals] Homosexuality is genetic, again a conclusion arrived at by observation and historical data, illustrated by the example of Dick Cheney and his daughter, but two men (but perhaps not two women) adopting a child is still not desirable from a practical standpoint. Chapter 11: Husband, Father, Grandfather, Friend [Skipped - The End!] Pick Of The Week
I had just settled into the coffeeshop last weekend when my fellow United fan informed me that Paul Scholes had made a comeback, after retiring last year. Naturally, I thought he was joking, and then:  The Ginger Prince Returns (Source: bleacherreport.com) So it seems the lucky red Scholes 18 jersey that I was wearing had worked - time to order a Cantona one? Not only that, United came out 3-2 winners, though they were made to work despite being a man up after a slightly soft sending-off early on. Scholes' passing remained immaculate, but his tackles unfortunately remain breathtaking in a bad way, and the less said about his mobility the better; problem is, while he probably still can spray long passes better than almost anybody on the planet, he's not going to be too useful on the defensive, which makes having him the designated hanger-back risky. A nice problem to be able to have, that said. Anderson's cropped hairdo had me wondering who the new signing was, but United's already-bare midfield department would end up even shorter on numbers with Darron Gibson moving to Everton. For all of Gibson's inadequacies (to a team of United's level), he did pack a shot that Scholes would have been proud of... did he move after his niche was taken? Still, with his departure and Fletcher's long-term medical condition, an opening for official United scapegoat has opened up, with Jonny Evans leading the pack. I'll be off for a jog and to get a poulet spécial burger à la Ramli to bribe Mr. Ham with for the Bolton match, so I'll hand things over to the punters: Mr. Ham (1047/1700 seeds): All 100 on Tottenham to draw Wolverhampton Wanderers (at 5.30) FAKEBERT (1776/1700 seeds): 50 on Fulham to beat Blackburn (at 2.20) and 50 on Liverpool to draw Stoke (at 3.75)
Me: Having strayed a little from my self-imposed Swisslike neutrality, it is only proper that I highlight some of the good that the great have done. For starters, the President has invited 1500 of the less-privileged to a garden party at the Istana, for which he rightly should be applauded. Then, the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources showed some rare candour in calling a spade a spade and disavowing the "ponding" euphemism. And, erm... taxi fares to go up... eh, Herr Ahm, is this your doing? Herr Ahm: Can't have a proper discussion without a devil's - or in this case, opposition's - advocate, can we? Especially as they haven't thrown any consultancy business my way. Me: Oh, alright, go rain on their parade. Herr Ahm: With pleasure.  Hmm... the ellipsis do evoke a councillary tone... (Source: hardwarezone.com.sg) Herr Ahm: Your mainstream media seems to be slipping ever so slightly - in days past, I am sure that they would at least have bothered to scroll to one of the semi-positive comments (to the tune of "it's a good start"); or maybe they are banking on the bilingualism policy being in need of some aid? Me: I certainly wouldn't want to see what qualifies as a bad review by these standards - HWZ Goes Into Meltdown? Herr Ahm: Methinks they might as well go for broke sooner or later - look at the possibilities:  By the way, word is that he's a free agent now Me: Don't you think this is going slightly too far? Herr Ahm: Hello, you hired me to be your political analyst shock jock. And more importantly, often to my own detriment, I call 'em as I see 'em, boyo. Okay, okay, seeing as today is Be Nice To The Poor Incumbents Day, I shall make their excuses for them. As I counted on in making my wonderfully prescient 30% prediction, the government didn't really have all that much leeway (in this respect only *wink*) in the magnitude of a one-time salary adjustment, as I have explained in detail, at least if they kept to expected parameters - and if there's one thing I can say about your local dominant politicians, it's that they are very good at behaving to form. Me: So I suppose the best we can hope for is a prolonged pay freeze in the short-to-medium term? Herr Ahm: My opinion is that the pay shouldn't exactly be the main concern; if, in some freak result, you lot actually voted the incumbents out and installed some opposition party into the hotseats, do you think that most of the stuff the people have been complaining about will magically improve? Me: Well... Herr Ahm: Mind, I'm not saying that things will automatically deprove either. However, if you were a lesser country where people-who-know-people sat on the boards on state-directed GLCs and PPPs, I might be concerned at all the unseemly power struggles and petty sabotage that might break out in the aftermath of a political transfer; thankfully, such happenings can surely never occur in such a paragon of meritocracy and transparency as your nation! Me: My relief is palpable. Herr Ahm: And I have changed my mind on the "When I made the decision to join politics in 2006, pay was not a key factor... (but) if the balance is tilted further in the future, it will make it harder for any one considering political office" brouhaha, in which one as esteemed as a Senior Minister of State was disparaged by the unwashed masses. Me: You're not being sarcastic this time, Herr Ahm? Herr Ahm: I shall explain with a song *breaks into tune* That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see." Herr Ahm: Well, cutting through all the crap, what is being said is that your country - or maybe, the ruling party - can't scrape together twenty good-enough people who actually want to serve the people for an internationally-competitive - yes, you can throw in perks like staffers and free travel - and sufficiently-dignified salary of say, pulling a figure out of my ass, S$30000/mth. A problem that, mind you, didn't rear its head in the likely more challenging Sixties and Seventies. This says that your 3.25 million citizens are all some combination of bloody incompetent or bloody selfish; so tell me, O proud Singaporean, which one is it? If you can't do that, why do you deserve to be a natio - oh sorry, I mean, corporation? Which is actually unfair to corporations, seeing as many startups actually manage to find highly-talented employees who are willing to sacrifice years, perhaps even decades, of toil with no guarantee of a big payday. Now, do you see, O Sinkie?
- current events - Computer Level Up Didn't mean to upgrade my computer, but after a couple of good years, it has begun taking several minutes to boot (probable motherboard issue?), and has occasionally required random reseating of the graphics card/RAM to do so. Things came to a head on New Year's Day, when, exasperated after a fruitless hour of fiddling with unrepentant electronics, I resolved to put my TA income to good use. The procedure has become fairly ingrained by now - I extracted the (relatively new) graphics card, DVD-RW drive and the still unused floppy drive and hopped on the train to Bugis, and thereupon to Sim Lim Square. As I wasn't in the mood to hunt about and save a few bucks on the side this time (not helped by not wanting to lug loose boxes home), I made a beeline to Fuwell and picked out the components I wanted, and had their affiliates assemble the system (which includes OS installation, and takes about an hour) for S$20. The deed done, I took a cab home (amazing how having some extra disposable income changes behaviours), transferred all my other hard drives and a case fan over from my old machine, and took stock:
...which should about cover it.  Mr. Ham considered moving in, having come into some money, but decided that real estate prices hadn't hit bottom yet, even though he managed to get exempted from stamp duty Part-by-part comments: CPU - It was this or the i7, given that AMD hasn't quite been keeping pace (and might not even be trying too hard to), and the additional perks of the i7 don't seem worth an additional S$150 or so to me. RAM - Having finally resolved to move to 64-bit Windows, I couldn't quite stay with 4GB, and since 8GB goes for less than S$100, why not 16GB? I've never regretted having more RAM, what with intense graphics processing/editing (and possible video editing) on the menu. Ah, for the days when I tinkered with MagnaRAM, collected free email accounts and installed loads of startup programs of dubious utility circa 1997 (alright, I still do the startup apps thing) There's more - recall the (kinda) new fad of solid state drives (i.e. glorified flash drives) for that extra bit of speed during bootup and gaming? Well, some freeware can convert 4GB of RAM into a virtual hard drive, which in theory smokes SSDs in speed, and moreover doesn't have the issue of limited write cycles, which can be a concern when used as a (web browser) cache/scratch disc. RAM avoids all this, though at the cost of longer bootup/shutdown times if the disc contents are to be conserved when the computer is powered down. Mobo - I've got to admit that I haven't been keeping up with motherboards, other than that it is possible to drop a few hundred bucks more on something that can support multiple graphics cards. Having no plans to do that, I asked for a recommendation, and this "Military Class" specimen with four USB3.0 ports and six SATA ports (including two SATA 6Gb/s ones) does the trick. Also, it comes from the same manufacturer as my graphics card. GPU - See here. Running fine, the problem was with the old mobo after all. PSU - My previous CM 600W Silent Pro was still going strong, but I decided to upgrade to be on the (very) safe side, having had a few 500+W (though brandless) PSUs smoke out on me at most inconvenient times. Case - I've always been partial to cases which look easy on the eye, and this was it, and it wasn't too dear either. In a notable departure from all my previous cases, the PSU is now situated at the bottom, with its fan venting air downwards, made possible by the moulded feet which lift the casing a couple of centimetres off the floor. There are plenty of fan mounting positions available, and I cannibalized a mobo fan from the old casing, and got a couple of cheap 120mms to suck rising hot air out the top, in addition to the included blue LED fan at the front, producing a negative pressure setup. So far, it seems to be working, judging from the recurring blasts of warm air I feel up my legs. Internal temperatures are running at about 40 degrees under normal load. Hard Disk Drives - Ultimately, the value of a computer lies mostly in its data, and this is where the data is held (which, like the Ship of Theseus, allows me to claim that it is still "my" computer). There wasn't too much choice, with the Hitachi (now part of Western Digital) 2TB out of stock, and there only being three manufacturers left (Toshiba is the third). Gone are the days when I could muse over the merits of Iomegas versus Maxtors versus the Quantum Bigfoot (N.B. the latter two are now part of Seagate, as is Samsung's HDD division) The 1.5TBs are probably only a couple of years old, with the ancient Seagate 200GB dating back to 2004, when it was my main drive; now, it's used purely for archival purposes.  We were spinning both ways on Sundays before you young punks were blueprints in some electrical engineer's heads! A moment's silence for the Samsung Spinpoint P80 SP1614C (on the left above), which was to have been the archive drive, but developed the click of death after being subjected to more writes than it had for years (it was previously the scratch disc). It shall be dearly missed.  Cool heads prevail [N.B. This, however, may be too much] Seeing as it had no irreplaceable data, and I certainly wasn't about to shell out the cost of a new system for recovery, this looked like a swell opportunity to test out the freezer method. I double-bagged the drive and left it for about 30 hours behind some frozen fish (though I don't see why waiting for longer than the duration needed to reach thermal equilibrium helps), before plugging it into an external enclosure. No dice, the knocking reappeared; well, it was worth a try - perhaps I should place frozen peas on top of it next time.  Shiny new 6-32 screws And that was why I ended up purchasing a second 2TB drive, and since I happened to have a sudden craving for kebab (from the days in Spain), I dropped by to sample Sultan Kebab's S$8 Rice Chicken kebab at Peace Centre before the second trip on Thursday (What's gotten into me, spending S$8 for dinner? Well, it was tasty if not quite the same). Bought thirty mounting screws at twenty cents apiece after that, with the proprietor discussing the local educational system with me while I was picking them out. DVD/RW - Long, long ago, manufacturers strove to push faster and faster drives onto the market - single, then double, then 8X, 16X... even 72X CD-ROM drives! In comparism, they are basically commodities now - youse pays your thirty bucks, youse pick your drive, and then use it to rip ISOs of your most-used DVDs onto your hard drives for software mounting. So far so good, but as it was a clean install of Windows, I had to reinstall all my needed programs - and it may be surprising how many of them are freely downloadable. In fact, there's not much use in keeping CDs around, given how quickly a new version gets released. For the sake of it, I compressed all the installers I felt necessary to get myself up and running, and came up with a file of just over 1GB. No links provided, since they will just go outdated: Antivirus - The first thing that gets installed. Been using avast for ages (64MB), nothing that hasn't happened because of boneheadedness on my part since. Academic/Programming - MikTex 2.9.4 (167MB) [who would have guessed?], OpenOffice 3.3 (150MB), JDK 7u2 (90MB), Ubuntu 11.10 (55MB, dual-booted, very useful if only to access files when Windows conks), ActivePerl 5.14 (27MB), Apache Web Server 2.2 (5.8MB), Notepad++ 5.9.6 (5.5MB), openVPN 2.1.1 (1.7MB) Browsers - Firefox 9.0 (15MB), Google Chrome (600KB) CD/DVD Rippers/Drive Emulation - Alcohol52 2.0.1 (8.8MB), ISORecorder v3 (800KB) [for actual burning I generally use Nero, but that comes with just about any DVD writer nowadays] Data Compression - 7-zip 9.20 (1.4MB) [bye bye WinZip and WinRAR] Download Managers/File Transfer - Free Download Manager (7MB), BitTorrent 7.6 (6MB), FlashGet 1.96 (4.6MB) [don't like the the latest versions], FileZilla (4.5MB) [how long has it been since I switched from WS_FTP?] Drivers - NVIDIA's take up some 200MB, but it can't be helped [N.B. Warning - good stable driver versions can be hard to find, and should be treasured], Nokia (40MB), RaZer DeathAdder's (20MB) Gaming - Steam Installer (1.6MB) [The Civilization, Total War and Simcity series are all on Steam, as will Dota2, 'nuff said - note that each title is perhaps a 10GB independent download...] Image/3D Processing - Google SketchUp (39MB), GIMP 2.6 (20MB), ImageMagick 6.7.4 (18MB) Messaging - Windows Live Messenger (1.2MB), Skype (1MB) Miscellaneous - Google Earth (600KB) [someday...], GPU & CPU Meter desktop gadgets (below 500KB) [ah, when there was Active Desktop - something like it will be back soon enough] P2P Streaming - SopCast 3.4.7 (7.9MB) [I feel entitled to watching EPL streams online, given that I pay Singtel mioTV every month to not make HD channels available for more than ten seconds at any one time] Video Codecs - K-Lite Codec Pack 5.6.0 (9.7MB) Utilities - EASEUS DiskCopy and Partition Manager (52MB together) for moving entire partitions, Dataram RAMDisk 3.5 (3.5MB), TeraCopy (2.9MB) [N.B. For some reason I still prefer it to Windows' inbuilt copy], Gmail Notifier (2.8MB), MyDefrag 4.3.1 (2MB), 4t Tray Minimizer (1.4MB) On the subject of computers, an NUS server has been hacked. Well, it's probably more serious than this, but as a rule of thumb it's pretty pointless to try and steal from academics. We Have 30%! The independent ministerial salary review committee has independently done its job, producing recommendations of such quality that they were immediately accepted by the sitting government, no questions asked. Reproduced are the key figures, as published on Page Six of the January 5 edition of The Straits Times:
...which is the cue for resident political analyst Herr Ahm to make a triumphant entrance.  Oops, there goes my mustache Herr Ahm: Danke, danke! Kindly refer to my prediction, made last September:
Herr Ahm: The changes above are almost all within 5% of the 30% suggested, and if the removed pensions are factored in, they rise to an average of about 35%; therefore, splitting the difference, I was spot on in calling the outcome. I even got the bigger cut for the President right! Me: As indeed you were. Here's your performance bonus, a bag of honey stars. Care to share your wisdom on how you arrived at the numbers? Herr Ahm: May I direct your attention to a quote, on the same page, by the chairman of the completely independent ministerial pay review committee:
Herr Ahm: First questions first - you believe this? Me: I see no reason to doubt... what are you doing, opening your eyes so wide? Herr Ahm: I was attempting to raise my eyebrows, and then I remembered I had none; well, if you believe that, you are more or less accepting that the committee started from a blank slate, and after months of no doubt headache-inducing deliberations (and "kinesthetic checks"), come up with an effective 30% cut ("whatever formula is used", as I sagely mentioned) over the current situation. Me: Well... Herr Ahm: Or, you might alternatively consider the hypothesis that they (briefly) considered the effect of various magnitudes of cuts under the current political climate - 10% or less says that they aren't changing, which would seem unpalatably arrogant and provide massive ammo for the next elections, while 50% or more says that they were obscenely overpaid for decades and are now desperate to regain goodwill. Splitting the difference, the nice round figure of 30% comes up, and then the tedious process of figuring out how to justify it working backwards can be slowly dealt with. Me: Come to think of it, that doesn't sound totally impossible. Herr Ahm: Well, despite the size of the cuts not being the point, the national broadsheet has found it prudent to publish the percentages in bold red letters on the front page, so make what of that you will. And now let us look at what the new formula is: 13 months of guaranteed fixed pay (including the ghost month?), and a variable pay of up to 13.5 months, comprising of a maximum of 1.5 months of Annual Variable Component, 6 months of Performance Bonus, and 6 months of National Bonus. But first and most importantly, how is the monthly pay determined? It is now pegged to the median pay of the top 1000 Singaporean earners (i.e. the 500th highest earner), discounted by 40%, instead of the median of the top eight earners in six sectors discounted by 33%, which works out to a reduction from S$1.58 million to S$1.1 million. Me: Hmm, does this not mean that salaries at the top are quite a bit flatter than expected? Offhand, assuming that the sector leaders have approximately equal earning power, this implies that the 500th highest earner gets about 70% of the 25th. Herr Ahm: Details, details. Cutting to the chase, as the NSP has pointed out, it still means that the benchmark is set to the top 0.03% of the private sector, who at least have to weather the attendant risks of business, and may or may not manage to earn this much year in, year out. Having settled on a meaty base pay, we come to the multipliers. The AVC is a minor dessert, while three months of Performance Bonus should be a given assuming the minister doesn't make the news too much. The National Bonus is more interesting, comprising four factors: real GDP growth rate, real median income growth rate, real growth rate of lowest 20th percentile income, and the unemployment rate. I assume that these metrics were chosen to provide proper incentives - but considering it carefully, what do the incentives actually say to a self-interested (as was the fundamental rationale behind it all) minister? Here's my list:
Me: Cynical little hamster, aren't you? Herr Ahm: Well, they started it. Alright, from one perspective, as your former MM famously said, the entire Cabinet costs less than one fighter aircraft, and who's really counting if the Air Force orders ten or twelve and then bases them in America? If everybody were doing well, I daresay few would mind that much. The fact that some ministers may have taken a pay cut to enter politics is also often mentioned, but after awhile one realises that it's usually the same few names. Not everybody's a Schwarzenegger, yes, we get it. Unfortunately, from another perspective, that of international benchmarking (which has been accepted in just about every other sphere), the salaries are still crazily high. Yes, apologists can argue that this is because you offer a (very high) "clean wage" with no hidden benefits, as opposed to say the President of the United States, who actually gets to live in the White House for free (which is a very strange example to use, given that your President not only got paid nearly ten times more, but also gets to live in the Istana for free, with a S$2 million household expenses budget on top of that) And then there's the reference to the UK expenses scandal. Well, the worst offenders benefited to the tune of maybe S$1 million over years, with most of the offences being frankly peanuts - S$10000 for one-time repairs? S$800 for food monthly? In any case, the action taken was to punish the guilty minority, not to hand them the money, and more, outright! It can easily be understood how the rank-and-file see this attitude as disgracefu. Me: Thank you for your penetrating insight, as always, Herr Ahm! Herr Ahm: Oh, that's too much praise. I'm not certain on the retained dignity part of the prediction, come to think of it. By the way, here's my name card - the next time your government needs to adjust salaries to deal with angry mobs, drop me a line and I will come up with a comprehensive package within 24 hours, and for a very reasonable fee. (Source: the mrbrown show)
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