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bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ today's page views: 237 (28 mobile) all-time page views: 3741175 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1257 page created Wed Mar 11, 2026 08:11:45 |
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- outings - Fifty-five thousand tickets for the Singapore vs Malaysia return leg sold out. What's this, a rerun of the Malaysia Cup days? As luck would have it, my dad had eight free grandstand tickets from a friend who had no use for them: 
0001197 doing its job Had a slap-up dinner at a coffeeshop with my family before the game, then made the long trek down to the West Entrance. Heard the cheers from way outside, which boded well for the atmosphere in the grand old dame (who according to tpk, will have her last secret event in March). Met up with law, who just had his wine appreciation course, there. The match was already under way when we entered, but apparently we didn't miss much. 
Weak attempt at a panorama, but you get the idea The spectators gave a good impression of the Red Sea, which only goes to show no matter the state of soccer here, there will always be takers against the auld enemy, whom were represented by the small yellow square roughly in the middle of the above photo. Good for them that the average Singaporean fan isn't known for hooliganism. Heck, the security detail even confiscated my waterbottle. First half went by goalless, though the crowd got in some energetic cheering and several Kallang Waves - the pre-wave stomping reminded me of the good old TCHS days when we did our rendition of Rock You while in the grandstand by virtue of being Track and Field champs. Then horror of horrors, Lionel Lewis fluffed a tame strike by Eddy Helmi Manan. True, it did bounce right in front of him, but that's little excuse. 
Paul Robinson: Trust me, I know how you feel That woke the Lions up (why does it always have to take conceding a goal?), and about fifteen minutes later a rather chaotic scene at the other end saw some guy in blue rushing in to bulge the net. The crowd went absolutely wild, and I didn't even manage to catch the goalscorer's name when it was announced a minute later (it was Muhammad Ridhuan). 
Hopefully there will be instant replay screens at the new stadium It went to penalties, helped by the opposition goalie being flat on the ground in the last minutes of extra time. Perhaps he felt that his side had a better chance in the spot-kick lottery? I realised then how nerve-wracking it could be to take the responsibility in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans, whether they are for or against you. The first four kicks for each side were duly converted, though there was an instant's scare when one of the Singaporean shots was partially blocked, but not quite enough. Shi Jiayi, who was perhaps the most hardworking Lion on the pitch, then made Singapore's fifth. It was down to Malaysia's Khyril Muhymeen to score to keep his side afloat. Choruses of boos rang about the stadium, part and parcel of being away, and there was a great spontaneous stomping of feet. You could feel the stadium move. The poor guy hit it straight and weakly, and Lionel Lewis didn't pass that up. Felt kind of sorry for the Malaysian player as he collapsed to the ground, but hey, he can't be expecting sympathy. Better luck next time. 
Bad focusing technique masquerading as artistic expression So the Lions somehow get through to another Tiger Cup/ASEAN Championship final without beating a single opponent of note (yes, a 11-0 against minnows Laos, but 0-0 vs Vietnam, 2-2 vs Indonesia and two 1-1s against Malaysia). Given that Thailand have a 2-0 lead from their away leg against Vietnam, it's safe to say they have one foot in the final, and there will probably be no new winner this time. Could it be Singapore? Well, seeing as how they have got themselves of tight spots so far, why not? I'll skip my $100 Challenge total update this time round. $100 on Man U (-1.5) vs Portsmouth in the FA Cup (at 1.73) - No wasting time.
Twenty three years old, one hundredth blog entry. Happy Birthday to me! Ah, I feel myself getting old, but then twenty-three, ninety-three, what's the difference? In my third year at university just like that, but still four semesters from graduating. Argh.
Slept at 3 a.m. today due to a Physics lab report, woke at 8+ due to an SIGAIG meeting, and one afternoon lecture, two back-to-back tutorials (one in S16 and the other one in AS4 at the other corner of the campus) and an evening lecture later, I'm beat. Zzz. Alam Shah's wows Shah Alam - Malaysia 1 Singapore 1 semi-final first leg. Deserved? Perhaps not. Taken? Gladly.
- programming - It's been a year since I first began this little blog, and it is with some sadness that I have to report having to watch Arsenal overturn the Man Utd lead to win 2-1 on the day. And it was the maiden match of our new Toshiba Regza LCD HDTV (though most channels don't broadcast in HD...). Ah, well played Arsenal, at least they attacked too - a six point lead with 14 games to go is a handy enough one to have. Shame about United trying to play defense after scoring, that usually ends in tears. I'll take this opportunity to clear up some snippets that failed to make it into any of my previous posts for some reason or another. Uncle, Rojak satu! "Needle Threading" - Ah, this after helping my grandma to will more than one frayed end into a tiny eye, but of course this is nothing compared to the wealthy devout who warp camels through them with regularity. I was gonna comment on how dipping a short length into some glue might stiffen the ends and make threading much simpler. Someone try it out. "Cockroach Hunter" - Captured my first cockroach in a plastic bag then. Sibei big occassion. I think I threw a party. "我看你的眼，我看你的眉" - a line from some song I overheard on the TV. Happens too often to me, knowing only a fragment of the song and then being haunted some weeks or months later for not remembering the remainder, when Googling turns up nothing. Haven't tried for this. Oh, and just a mention for the Chinese to Unicode translator I use. "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster" - Was it about approaching limits to theoretical algorithms or an expression of frustration at not being able to run some buggy PC game? "Eternity does not mean inevitability" - Some argument that even given an infinite amount of time, a finite number of states does not have to repeat (Just found the source after some diligent searching. Damn high!). Here goes: "Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur." - Georg Simmel Well, I guess its validity rests on the transcendental property of π, but this begs the question of how to rotate the third wheel with the necessary precision (a rebuttal appealing to quantum mechanics and discretization is on the source page). Kind of like the revolutionary data storage solution of making a mark on say a 1m ruler - so, the theory goes, one can just read off the length marked and retrieve the data, so a mark 0.01020326 m from one end might be interpreted as meaning ABCZ, which are the first ("01"), second ("02"), third ("03") and twenty-sixth ("26") letters of the alphabet. Of course, the problem is that we will run out of decimal places far too quickly. The Planck length is on the order of 10-35 metres, which suggests that this naive method will be able to encode, like, eighteen letters. Ah, for the days of the telegram. That's quite a bit to swallow; Let's break for some verse, any verse: On the theme of impermanence (mujō), from The Tale of the Heike: The sound of the Gion Shôja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; The color of the sâla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; The mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind. And Death the Leveller, by James Shirley: THE glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill: But their strong nerves at last must yield; They tame but one another still: Early or late They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath When they, pale captives, creep to death. The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds! Upon Death's purple altar now See where the victor-victim bleeds. Your heads must come To the cold tomb: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. Back to prattling prose. "New 198 buses, bus conversation, 3rd World War" - Some old couple who apparently survived WW2 were going on about how Singapore would not have land to grow tapioca if there were another war. Tapioca. Hmm. And it was on one of the new wheelchair-friendly Volvo B9TL doubledeckers. No TVMobile, though. "Little kids all like to press lift buttons?" - I guess so. One of the things that never change. Super cute. "Repairing computer - the XP CD way" - Ah, the magic penicillin-analogue for Windows XP systems. Boot from CD (You do have your XP installation CD, don't you?), Select repair, then run CHKDSK /R on all the hard drives. More often than not one will see "CHKDSK found and fixed one or more problems on the volume", and the computer is up and running again. Dispense this advice like generic flu tablets. Shitty drivers - No, not the computer kind, but the idiot in vehicle kind. And this happened only a few days ago, so it's not in italics. Yours truly was halfway through the zebra crossing when a car just tried to cut across. Got half a leg in front of him, then decided to stand down though what happened was definitely not in the traffic code. I'm no actor to break a leg, after all. Guy in car was about my age. Well, let's not make the fundamental attribution error from psychology; Perhaps he was rushing to NUH for some emergency, or lost consciousness briefly. Lucky for him he wasn't up against smk. New Jersey - No, not the American state, but the Man Utd kind. Was thinking of getting my first United shirt in red, but I have to admit that this season's white with black and gold trim away version is a winner. Thought of getting both, but even pasar malam prices weren't attractive enough for that - plenty of time, no worries. Check out the Newton Heath green-and-yellow retro kit on the site :P And my first graduate lab assignment to tie this post up. It's a simple "solar system model" modified from this code to be time-sensitive, that is, run at the same speed on a 386 and an overclocked Pentium 4 (unlike some old PC games which are virtually unplayable on newer comps). The yellow digits in the bottom left show the framerate (inspired by FRAPS), while the blue digits indicate the slowing factor (higher number represents a simulated slower CPU), which as expected is inversely proportional to the framerate.
That's Man Utd vs Arsenal! Will be catching it later! That'll be a nine-point lead after Liverpool's favour, but seeing as how Chelski have played, it may not even be needed. $45 on Man Utd to beat Arsenal (at 2.58) - Arsenal favourites? Can't complain, almost never break the double returns mark on a straight win for the Devils Just eased through my first 3D Game Programming lab assignment. Note to self: Do just enough to get the marks. And watch your own public service announcement more - Physics tutorial due tommorrow still undone.
That's Liverpool vs Chelski! May be catching it later - as my cousin said, "I don't usually watch Pool or Chelsea matches, but both of them together...". Liverpool do have a good home record. Go Reds! :P ($146.50+$1601.45 = $1747.95/$1900) $10 on Liverpool to beat Chelski (at 2.50) - Great! $15 on Liverpool to draw Chelski (3.05) - Okay. $10 on Reading to beat Sheffield United (1.67) - It's not which club $10 on Newcastle to beat West Ham (1.75) - you are, but which club $10 on Portsmouth (-1.5) vs Charlton (2.30) - you're up against I'm still feeling for the schoolboys (literally, they were Uni students) of Laos, who were put to the sword by Singapore 11 to nothing a few days ago. The unashamedly pro-Singapore commentator seriously rubbed it in ("what a humiliation!") though it was more a matter of Laos being poor than Singapore showing any exceptional quality. One couldn't accuse them of schoolboy defending, for one. It was worse than that. Alam Shah had a field day, though all he had to do was hit the target. Can't fault his finishing, and he had a scissors kick that went in off the crossbar to round off his seven goals. What Rooney would give for that! They were rather poorer against Indonesia and were simply clearing the ball out in the final twenty minutes, which doesn't bode well for the semi-finals against Malaysia. 2-2 was enough, and Indonesia went out because they hadn't slaughtered Laos enough in their match (they only won 3-1), while Vietnam had the good fortune of playing Laos last and knew exactly what they had to do - win by three or more. They won by nine. That cost Indonesia manager Peter Withe his job. On a completely unrelated tangent, I think I've found my first textbook error for the semester! On page 555 of Hal R. Varian's Intermediate Microeconomics, it sez "... If head comes up you get $14 and if tails comes up you lose $10. This bet has an expected value of $12..." Looks like $2 to me. Is that right?
- changelog - music - changelog v1.05c --------------- * Comments bug vanquished. Let free speech reign! Sorry to those who wasted their posts... (oh ya credit edchong) And a song... VINCENT (STARRY, STARRY NIGHT) by Don McLean Starry, starry night. Paint your palette blue and grey, Look out on a summer's day, With eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills, Sketch the trees and the daffodils, Catch the breeze and the winter chills, In colors on the snowy linen land. Now I understand what you tried to say to me, How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how. Perhaps they'll listen now. Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, Swirling clouds in violet haze, Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue. Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain, Weathered faces lined in pain, Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand. Now I understand what you tried to say to me, How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how. Perhaps they'll listen now. For they could not love you, But still your love was true. And when no hope was left in sight On that starry, starry night, You took your life, as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one As beautiful as you. Starry, starry night. Portraits hung in empty halls, Frameless head on nameless walls, With eyes that watch the world and can't forget. Like the strangers that you've met, The ragged men in the ragged clothes, The silver thorn of bloody rose, Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow. Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they're not listening still. Perhaps they never will...
- sport - Ran out of excuses to stay home (other than the rather reasonable one that the match would be shown live on TV anyway) and thus made the trek down to the National Stadium to watch Singapore play Vietnam in the competition formerly known as the Tiger Cup. Went through some TIME magazines while on the MRT, and thankfully the metal connectors between carriages didn't squeak as much on this train - they really got on my nerves in my trips to and from Sim Lim Square on Friday. That was followed by a ten-minute walk from the Kallang station to the stadium proper. Shortcut through the PA Headquarters was closed, but I simply blended in with some people who were obviously headed for the match, and with the floodlights clear in the evening sky, how hard could finding my way be? 
Remind me to pay kh for this... Entrance was $6 for two matches, including the earlier Indonesia vs Laos contest (which ended 3-1 to Indonesia). Students get in for $2, but apparently the maximum level of education once can get to while still considered a student is polytechnic level; University appears more tertiary than tertiary. 
"Well, I prefer adidas" Met up with kh and andy at the East Entrance, where we were accosted by a cameraman looking for our thoughts on Nike's new advertising campaign. Kh obliged for his fifteen seconds of fame :P Settled into the gallery with two other of andy's friends, about in time for the national anthems. Sad to say, the Vietnamese travelling supporters were loud. Then again, people don't travel hundreds of miles to sit in silence. Probably some of them haven't forgotten the time Singapore lifted the Tiger Cup in 1998 when they were the hosts - we had the Shoulder Blade of Sasikumar to thank for that. Despite the overall perception of local soccer as not really up to the mark, the Lions have won two of the five editions, not too shabby at all. Too bad about qualifying for the Asian Cup or even the SEA Games gold, though. 
Ready and waiting Without danger of spoiling much, I can reveal that the eventual nil-nil draw was rather drab. Soccernet has a rather good summary of the match (ignore the fact that it's entitled Thailand v Myanmar Report), but I've been spoilt by high EPL standards, and Man Utd's breathtaking play in particular. It didn't help that many of the names were unfamiliar to me, whereas in the Malaysia Cup days the entire squad were household names. The Lions were decked out in blue, awaiting Nike's new kit design, and Vietnam were in white. Surprisingly, the visiting fans went relatively quiet after the kickoff, not that we were too loud either. I estimated about ten thousand souls in the stadium, but also marvelled that the stands weren't actually that high - expansion to seat a hundred thousand should be very possible. Slick interpassing was few and far between, and the Lions inevitably tried their luck with predictable long balls, especially wide to the right flank. Creativity in attack still seems the weak spot of the side. Their organization at corners was also questionable, with no-one stationed near the half-way line to try for a fast break, but no-one covering the posts either. Maybe the fashion hasn't caught on in Asia? On the bright side, they won most of the headers, and appear a pretty solid defensive unit. Neither of the goalies had to make any outstanding saves, so that pretty summed the night up. One heartstopping glitch saw Phan Thanh Binh go through and put the ball in the net for Vietnam, but the linesman's flag was already up. No free T-shirt either, and after a short discussion on the new iPhone at the MRT, joked to kh that United could have scored three by the time I got home, then boarded the train home for the United match. Switched on the TV at about 11:40pm. What do you have it - Man Utd 3, Aston Villa 0. Well, well - the first forty minutes of live United action that I have missed in months, and they go and score three on me. At least I caught the replays. Park Ji Sung was pretty involved in all of them, scoring the first before Carrick opened his United account, and Ronaldo went level with Drogba at the top of the scoring chart with a header. And he's not even a striker! Slightly sad to say that there is simply no comparism between Man Utd and Asean national soccer. Even when in second gear, the Devils were still a sight to behold. No more goals in the second half for them, and Villa even managed a consolation, but much of that was down to Sorensen. Wayne Rooney was out of sorts for goodness knows how many games now - I think he's trying too hard, though that's part of his appeal. He was desperately unlucky to hit the crossbar with a superb curler late on, and was not that all pleased with having to play the final half-hour on the left flank to accommodate Saha either. Chelski battered sorry Wigan 4-0 to stay six points behind, but the Fink Tank gives United a 92% chance to lift the EPL trophy this season, and I'm inclined to believe them. The main justification for this is that while United can of course drop points, so can Chelski - and realistically it will take United to amass two losses and a draw more (in the 15 matches left) than the Blues, before they can be overtaken. Oh, there are the tricky fixtures - like this Saturday away to Arsenal - but Chelski have to play Liverpool too. After the Gunner test, it looks smooth till March 3 at Liverpool, possible hiccups against Bolton and Pompey, then the Big One - Chelski on April 14. But that'll probably be rescheduled due to the FA Cup semi-final clash. Finally, an insightful read from the official Manchester United forums. A rather heated debate on whether Man U is an acceptable abbreviation for the club's name, which according to some old-timers, is highly disrespectful due to its closeness to the Manu** taunt by rival fans. Well, no club is immune to these jibes, though some have it easier than others (think Arsenal and Arsene Wenger). Pretty pointless most of the time if you ask me, though interestingly I was hard pressed to find derogatory nicknames for the less prominent clubs (clue: other than their local competition, no one cares enough). Several Asian supporters did point out that Man U is a largely neutral and popular name for the club here (which I believe is so), only for them to pretty much get shot down by the oldies. Personally I've no problem with it - seriously, it's pronunciation is pretty far from Manu**, and in any case the attitude with which it is said is far more important, but in this case I'll defer to the seniors. Man Utd (rhymes with Canute?) it'll be from now on.
- + linux - + sim lim square - That's Week One of Seventeen over and done with. Crashed two lectures (and nearly a third) in my free time, one on Metaphysics (which I was planning to take, sometime), and the other on MATLAB. Got a taste of my first graduate class. Concluded that there's no real need to get intimidated or anything - don't see that much difference between a Level 5 module and a Level 1 one yet. New projects demand new setups, or rather the revival of an old one lost in the Nasty November crash. Firstly, I'll be needing some flavour of Linux on my system, and taken with the reputation of Red Hat, I kept with their Fedora Core offering, now at version 6 ("Zod") - still have the CDs for FC1 "Yarrow" somewhere. Contrary to popular perception, Linux is not always a bare-bones geek OS, and Fedora Core 6 takes up five full CDs, and one rescue disc. Even a minimal standard install will require the first two CDs, which may seem surprising as Windows XP only needs one CD (if I remember rightly). There are more compact Linux distros, of course, and Ubuntu (1 CD) is highly favoured by some. The very impatient might go for Damn Small Linux (50 MB), which can be booted from a thumb drive! Well, I put my Bittorrent client to legitimate use, and got the few Gigs of Fedora Core 6 images onto my computer over several days. Burned them to physical CDs and got going. Windows XP users may at this time realise that Linux is not just another program, it's a whole spanking operating system! For starters, it demands its own hard disk partition (if you know a way to install Linux on the same partition as XP, please let me know), with its own filesystem (ext3 prefably), as opposed to XP's NTFS. More experienced users will probably already have their drives carved up, and in my case I happily had two drives with a total of eight partitions - I just sacrificed a 50GB one for Linux. After making sure that no wanted data is left on that partition, I simply let the Fedora Core 6 installation take care of the reformatting issues - there's an option within the installation process itself to delete the original NTFS partition, and further subpartition it into /boot (ext3), swap (swap) and whatever one may want. Note that the partition I sacrificed was not the first one on that particular hard disk drive, so there shouldn't be any problem with MBRs. One may wonder at this point - how do we get to choose which operating system to log on to at boot? My old solution was to install GRUB on the second drive's first partition and point BIOS to boot from it. This time round, I decided on the solution outlined here. It involves using the rescue disc to create a boot.lnx file, and using the XP boot manager instead. Edit the timeout to three seconds or thereabouts; Future boots will conveniently continue loading XP by default if Fedora is not selected within that time. Be careful not to put GRUB on the Master MBR in this case, whatever you do. Once this is done, the hard part of installing Fedora Core 6 should be over. The remainder should be straightforward, and soon the nifty login screen, in chrome DNA theme, appears: 
It was just a dark blue screen for Yarrow. (from Fedora Project Wiki) Unfortunately, I would say Fedora Core 6 won't endear itself to the casual user much (other than the price front, that is). It's true, Average Joe wants to click buttons and have stuff work, which for the most part is what happens in Windows. Case in point: Pretty ugly fonts in the default Firefox 1.5 browser. They don't have Verdana, for Torvald's sake! Probably some licensing problem or another, whereas for the original Fedora Core, everything looked beautiful out of the box. It's not unsurmountable - Mauriat Miranda's Personal Fedora Core 6 Installation Guide has a quick fix - but it's gonna be a turnoff for many. Oh yes, the graphics card drivers also have to be installed manually to enable the cool desktop-rotating-cube effect, but that's another story. Few may have known it, but the Geforce FX 5500 that the PC shop people threw into my computer never really worked at 32-bit true color. Oh, it displayed stuff alright most of the time, but on dark backgrounds like my desktop (and this blog), there would be the most irritating green flickering pixels where there were subtle gradients. Ended up operating in 16-bit color just to be rid of them. Believe me, I spent hours of research on trying to get rid of that, from reinstalling various versions of nVidia's Forceware drivers (66.93, 84.21, 93.71) with my LCD monitor's drivers in various configurations, blowing non-existent dust from the card and meddling with the BIOS, all to no avail. Finally I concluded that it was broke, likely some bad memory, and there was no fixing it. Junking it was not such a hard decision to take, especially given that the Geforce FX is 2002 technology, and the 5500 is low-end 2002 tech at that; My old ATI Radeon 9600 PRO was probably on a par with it, especially as ATI had a huge lead over nVidia at about that period. Armed with some of the cash from the December job, I scoured the Internet for recommendations. How much was I willing to spend? In the region of $200, which can buy most of a decent computer these days. One of my uncles didn't believe that a respectable system can be had for $300+ nowadays, assuming that one possesses a monitor and an OS. An illustrative example from one of the leaflets crammed into my hands at Sim Lim Square yesterday: Intel Celeron 2.66GHz LGA 775/DUO CORE Mainboard 256MB DDR2 533 Memory 80GB 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive 52X CD ROM Drive PS2 Keyboard and Optical Mouse ATX Case with 450 Watts Power Supply USB2.0 4 Ports 2X Front 2X Rear Integrated Sound and Graphics Price? $339. Won't run any top-of-the-line games, but perfectly acceptable for word processing and surfing, and I daresay most games which came out a few years ago. I settled on an nVidia Geforce 7600 GS at the end, seeing as how I don't play many new releases nowadays either. Problem One: Upon inspection, my micro ATX Foxconn motherboard only has an soon-to-be-obsolete AGP slot, and no PCIe ones. Most new cards are built for PCIe slots. Luckily, some manufacturers have anticipated this issue that poor sods like me have. In return, they get my business. 
ASUS N7600GS SILENT box Silent? Zero decibels? That's because... 
Look Ma, no fans! Yes, it has a passive cooling solution - no moving parts, simply a huge heatsink that covers most of the card. This ain't Old Trafford, one doesn't want any fans to make any noise; The metal can go up to ninety degrees Celsius under heavy load, so I wouldn't touch it then if I were you. Not much chance of that, though. 
The sticker's not scaring anyone I had to open up the casing again... the warranty on this must have been voided many times over, but darned if I'm going down to the shop each time I need something put in. 
And it's in! Installation was a breeze - the only trouble was the small form factor of my mini tower casing - would never have gotten such a casing if I were DIY-ing. Had to pull a little to get a power connector to get to the card, but neither snapped. My grandpa helped at this point to remove the front cover of the casing to slip in a DVD-writer that was sitting around, instead of slowly unassembling the disk drive frames from the side. Didn't do it myself because I sensed that I would break something, and was justified since with all his experience, my grandpa only broke a very small inconsequential plastic hook. 
The Return of the Fan To top it off, we cannibalised the green case fan from my old PC. Kinda defeats the purpose of a fanless card, but the case fan's pretty silent so... Real ultimate defeat in punting last week - $1601.45/$1800 now. But why shrink from sticking my neck out now? $50 on Man U (-1.5) vs Aston Villa (at 1.77) - yes, some people never learn $20 on Arsenal (-1.5) vs Blackburn (2.90) - Gunners in fine scoring form. Like, 90% conversion rate vs Pool? $20 on Chelski to draw Wigan (5.30) - Mourinho leaving? Perhaps not, but the Ruskies don't look too bright now $10 on zero goals in Watford vs Liverpool (9.00) - not likely, but given the payoff...
- academics - Hot on the heels of the successful Stop Discrimination Against Ear-Challenged Bunnies campaign, here's something for the bright new semester. Well, ever got an assignment/project/essay/job and wondered when would be the right time to do it? The answer is very simple. The right time is NOW. RIGHT NOW.
- cute stuff - Remember the fuzzy guy from a recent post? While moonlighting as my MSN avatar, he got this feedback: <LaW> hmm.. this hamster doesn't look very cute. <occ> may the vengeance befall ur hamster. Justice has to be served. The world must know!  Btw, having struck nothing with yesterday's token makebelieve $20 (Brighton looked good, oh well), here's the big one: $80 on Man U (-1.5) vs Aston Villa (at 1.85) - If they can get 0-3 over the same team away, that's enough for me.
Even as I was beginning to accept Gmail as my personal saviour from unsolicited email (hereafter "spam"), these began to pop up in my inbox: From: Lara Subject: legitimately giddy [IMAGE] (Spiel for some Holding Company) ALL TRAVELS SHOULD BE DONE WITH EXTREMECAUTION. ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO3 INCHES BY MORNING. SNOW FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE NIGHT WITH SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2INCHES BY MORNING... From: Victoria Q. Pace Subject: The employees are now upset because airline spokesmen are denying that the sighting took place. [IMAGE] (Spiel for some Energy Company) There are a number of aspects of the app that are worth exploring. jMaki is an Ajax framework that provides a lightweight model for creating JavaScript centric Ajax-enabled web applications using Java, PHP, and Phobos. Now that I've hit the top its time to slow down a little. I hope that the proceedings will soon after the conference be published. He soon noticed a circular object moving very slowly the sky... From: modernization Subject: There is also a shortage of academic geologists and many university geology programs being closed because of low or falling enrollments. [IMAGE] (Barely readable spiel for some Metals Company) "It's just extraordinary," an infectiously enthusiastic Dr Dodson tells The Scotsman. sbcommlink:visited, . com's Natural Science Center. There is also a shortage of academic geologists and many university geology programs being closed because of low or falling enrollments. Preserved by a volcanic blast?... From: Dorina Howell Subject: Re: my empres [IMAGE] (Viagra at $3.33, Valium at $1.21, Cialis at $3.75... Finally, traditional spam!) the end they reluctantly agreed. The duplicate was an exact physical should be grateful. eat them where they touch the cuticle. Which means that the power is very frightened. curled up my toes and keeled over. stamped into each brick... All this right after the good people at Gmail figured that I have little use for Cyrillic exhortations. Maybe it's a losing battle. Spam may not have that great a success rate, but as sending it is essentially free, what business they do get turns a profit, moreso when Nigerian royalty comes into play. Automated Bayesian filters are nonplussed when completely unrelated content is thrown alongside, and until the filters incorporate some sort of context understanding, this will be pretty difficult to detect, especially since one doesn't want a person's legit correspondence from being auto-stuffed into the Spam folder. Thus, the filter has to err on the safe side, and this means letting many such spamoetry efforts through. 
A Blogger Captcha specimen. It says "dinsvbqr" Kind of like the Captcha situation. Designed to prevent automated signups for online services (such as free email accounts, which spammers would then abuse to - what else - spam), early versions were quickly defeated by recognition programs, and thus to remain effective on popular sites, the Captchas had to grow ever more distorted and complex. A certain OCR Research Team, having defeated a couple of their own, began coding what might be the future of the Captcha, tEABAG_3D : 
It won't be easy for the computer, but it ain't easy for me either. For the record, it says "ver 0.9" Pulling in "abstract 3D imagination" to try and reliably differentiate between computers and humans is a swell idea, but I suspect that making it sufficiently hard that a computer can't break it would make some humans unable to also, which is a big no-no. But the key point is that it won't reduce the cost of Captcha identification below a pretty low threshold - that of hiring a worker in some developing country to do what a human is supposed to do. Considering the number of people earning less than a dollar a day, I wager it won't be too costly. Bartering Captcha solutions for pr0n has already been around for, like, ages. Other stuff falls into this category too. No matter how many times of the age of the universe it takes to break the encryption on some MP3 music file, even if the software manages to lock up the rest of your computer so you can't snoop in its memory, any Tom with a reasonably soundproofed room and good speakers and recorders will be able to make a copy of the music. Okay, it won't be as crystal-clear as the original, but guess what? I think most people don't care. Ditto for locking images with Javascript or whatnot so they can't be saved - hello, Printscreen key. Ctrl-V MS Paint. Worst comes to worst, a decent digicam and some touching up in Photoshop or GIMP. Presto. It's FA Cup Round Three week, and only the $36.60 from Blackburn's Benni McCarthy in that 2-1 over Boro saved me from a fat zero. Man U (and I) were cruising along nicely, them to a nice 3-1 score at 1.55 to the dollar on the half-goal, when a certain Mikael Silvestre practically invited Leroy Lita past him, thereafter waving comically at the linesman while Lita put the ball between van der Sar's legs. A top-class finish, but one which I was not exactly appreciative. Avid followers will recall that the French wonder just pulled a similar boo-boo against Wigan four days before that, to gift Leighton Baines a penalty in the last minute, and cost van der Sar a clean sheet. Either sub Tweety in the 89th minute or ask him to swop positions with Rooney in injury time, I say. And so I drift further - $1601.45/$1700 - good thing I don't do it for real. Absolute confidence in United doing the job against Villa on Sunday night, so a tiny something on the match of the round (Pool vs Arsenal, one must fall!) and Brighton: $10 on the Pool vs Arsenal draw (at 3.10) $10 on West Ham vs Brighton (+1.5) (1.63)
- sport - As Platini said, what Zidane can do with a football, Maradona could do with an orange - but what about ping pong balls? Pros: Cheap, common (a box of six for a dollar or two) Furniture/family-friendly (whoops there goes the TV, not) Suitable for full-power shots even when indoors Dull sting after said shot locates point of impact on foot accurately Relatively quiet (or noisy in a different way) Lightness helps train control Can even be used for table tennis! Cons: Obviously different feel from a football (2.7 grams to ~400+ grams) Reluctance to play/hard-trap ball on ground (misstep = flat ball) Reluctance to really accelerate with ball (more a consequence of being indoors) Pretty hard to take shots from the ground Toe-poke non-existent No high looping shots (more because of ceiling) Whether the pros outweigh the cons (or cops), the pro in bold settles matters; There is no way one can shoot at anything near maximum strength with a regulation soccer ball indoors, without being a guniang, having a basement, or a spare set of windows and other breakables. So for that at least, a three gramme ping pong ball is essential. Empirical observations confirm that said ping pong ball will ricochet off TV screens and glass cabinet doors with nary a scratch on either. 
Shooting lane (Red indicates preferred corners, yellow indicates secondary side preferences, green arrows are examples of good shot paths, blue arrow is a common miss. Note the altar at far right, making things more interesting - at least my ancestors have a grandstand view) The blank wall to the left of the above photo is great for practising passing and receiving - tennis with feet, in fact. Balls can also be thrown high off it to simulate heading situations. Lots of space for simple keepy-uppy too. Unfortunately the sofas in the living room are raised, so it can get frustrating when the ball keeps getting under them, even if falling flat to the floor every now and again should be good exercise. 
Acme Ball Retriever Thus, for long training sessions, I keep this close at hand. The prongs are even exactly the right width apart to fork the ball when it gets behind the TV cabinet. Swinging at the ball with it baseball-style is a nice diversion, too. And now to the meat (and bones, and tendons): 
My Foot, Part Deux Our feet aren't nicely flat, as I have found out more than once in my sketching; Also, some bits are just better to kick with, keeping in mind that propelling a soccer ball needs slightly adapted technique from ping pong balls. The inside of the foot, for instance, is seldom used (by me at least) when shooting. Or even passing, but that may be my personal preference. It loses out in power. The ridge is one area to avoid. Just no control there, or at least, I can't find any. If you can, all skill to you. The slope - ah, here's where it starts to get interesting. Most of my contact with the ping pong ball occurs here, not least because its just about the largest even (and predictable) expanse of flesh on the foot. It is equally good for juggling the ball, or smacking it full across the room, and even gives a satisfying piak for the latter. Not the most powerful part, but for a mix of that and accuracy, it's hard to beat this. The outside of the foot. Not used by itself often - very hard to kick the ball just so. For curlers, it's more a case of contact on the slope followed up by the ball leaving on the outside. The outside heel is actually a pretty big area, and is handy to juggle with too - can even be used to shoot with a rather situational thigh-high movement when the ball is too close to the body. My first little trick from primary school, in fact :P And now the instep, here divided into knuckles and toes, since no shoes are worn over them. The knuckles appear to hit a little harder than the slope, if somewhat wilder. Currently, the spot around the top right of the slope area and the bottom right of the knuckle area seems to be my accustomed default contact area. The toes are rather bony and can hurt when impacting at high speed, so I don't recommend using them on purpose; They are surprisingly decent for control, however. And finally the nails. They have given me my absolute fastest strikes, likely due to a combination of their hardness transferring most of the kinetic energy over, and their position at the very end of the legs. Of course, those strikes went all over the place. The exception seems the very tip of the big toenail, where hit balls make virtually no sound, but on even rather relaxed swings seriously fly. No contest. And they seem to invariably go straight and true, even. The only trouble is consistently getting a moving target spot of perhaps a centimeter square with another spot roughly the same size... Truly the perfect kick. This concludes the initial intro on How to Kick a Ping Pong Ball, and as a bonus here's a short clip on a basic one-revolution Around The World trick, of course with a ping pong ball: Okay, it isn't in the middle of a juggle or off a stopped ball, but getting a ping pong ball to stay on a foot is beyond me. Some moves just don't translate well from heavy balls to near weightless ones - Try it on the back of your hand, without using the ridges between bones. Something to practice.
- art - Indulged in one of my old hobbies on and off in the past week - it was going to be using my not-so-cheaply procured Wacom graphics tablet, but then I found out that the crash a month or two ago had wiped out my Corel Painter Essentials 2 installation. No problem, I thought, I kept the bundled CD. Until it prompted me for a registration code, which I had no idea where to begin looking for. I felt mildly the same as when I discovered that the all-important Windows XP Pro product key was printed in a small font on a sticker unobtrusively stuck on a corner of the plastic wrapping of its manual. And what is the most natural thing to do with plastic wrapping after you tear it open? That's right. Throw it away. And so, instead of "more than 50 pressure-sensitive natural media brushes", it was back to good old pencil and paper. A bit of preliminary research informed me that I was woefully underequipped - a single tutorial introduced charcoal and carbon in addition to graphite pencils, and blending stumps, tortillons, felt pads, facial tissues and chamois. Should I use Strathmore or Canson drawing paper? Decisions, decisions. 
Tools of the trade, and preliminary sketch I looked about my room. Several faint-marking HB's (which do work fine on OMR forms, despite recommendations to the contrary) and a sole 2B that has been around for some time. No kneaded rubber erasers lying around, but I found a green slab with a bit of sellotape on it. They would have to do. At least there was an abundant supply of A4 printer paper in the house, and a couple of good straightedge rulers. Won't be squaring the circle, so I'm good to go. Now for the unwitting subjects. I've got an old Secondary Three class seating plan, and a JC yearbook. *Evil laughter*. There's a particular risk of portrait drawing people you know, and more importantly, want to continue knowing, when one isn't all that good at drawing yet - but after revealing the finished work to some of my featured pals, my score is: Offers to financially support art career: 0 Terse statements of friendship dissolution: 0 So I guess I'm not doing too badly after all :P Maybe someday I'll approach the freehand standard of Mr. "May The Force Be With You" Tan, my TCHS Physics teacher and oftentime sketch artist. But there's always the fine balance between drawing what you see and what others want to see. Heard the story about the lame-in-one-foot and blind-in-one-eye king who fired his first painter because he drew him as is with his faults, his second one because he drew a strong and hale man who was clearly not him, and rewarded his third one for drawing him looking with his good eye through a telescope (with blind eye conveniently shut), and standing with his withered leg majestically planted on a rock? 
Some lucky individuals Started my little secret project on 23rd December. Shaded, cursed, erased my way through to the wee hours of 1st Jan. Learnt a few things in the process, such as minor errors in proportion being very fixable in Photoshop (rather than requiring a total redraw). And I think I'm getting better in hinting at shape by shading. And drawing hand postures. Yea, the quality fluctuates considerably, 1. Simply because I'm not that good 2. Because I don't have suitable source photos 3. Because most of 4O wears specs and seriously they can make a person look quite different Still, a blind test revealed that some of my sketches can actually be positively identified by sight, even in absence of other context. And in that alone I feel pretty good. Reminds me of a poem by Nostradamus' son in David Ovason's The Nostradamus Code: Caesaris est satis patris haec Michaelis imago Edit hic genitor, prodit hic ille patrem Sic pater est natus nati, pater est quoque patris Natus et hinc rebus numina rident. This image of Michel, the father, is by Cesar, the son. The former engendered the latter: he has produced his father. If the father is born of the son, then the son is also the father of the father. The gods smile at this birth and at this curious design. Finally, after a week of at times tedious drawing: 
With background (1024 x 768 version) 
"Clean" alternative (1024 x 768 version 1280 x 800 version by request) Many are the obscure symbolisms, but don't read too much into it - as the fine folk over at The Order Of The Stick say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
- changelog - changelog v1.05b --------------- * Patched this blog engine to be Y2K7-compliant. I think.
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