[ June 2008 ]

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Sunday, June 29, 2008 - 03:46 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - -
Changing Pains

changelog v1.08c
---------------
* OpenID authentication incorporated in comments, with ID Selector support (can't let glolg competitors like Blogger/WordPress/LiveJournal/TypePad pull away too much, right?)

* Mollom spam checking incorporated in underused chatterbox (misses some rather obvious spams now, but can only improve I suppose)

* Some minor comments page UI upgrading and bugfixes.

* Obscure but very irritating Snap Shots BASEFONT compatibility bug fixed for Internet Explorer.

* Blog entry title now displayed in HTML page title on direct link standalone pages.

Note: Our loyal readers still may or may not have realised that my blog has shifted servers. The explanation is easy enough for those with a grounding in domain name resolution, but for those not versed in it here's a very brief summary:

Humans prefer to use meaningful domain names like http://www.glys.com, but the actual domain names recognized by computers are of the form http://203.211.149.111, which is probably slightly harder to remember. The translation (resolution) of readable to numerical domain names must occur whenever a website is requested by a browser, but given the massive amount of internet traffic it is infeasible for a single server to provide this service (which would also mean that the Internet would go down if that server crashes).

Hence the job of domain resolution is farmed out to a large number of DNS servers, but again it proved unwieldy to exchange information for each request. Thus, the resolution is commonly cached for a period of time, during which the DNS server does not appeal to a higher authority, but happily just returns the last valid value. Which of course, could thus be out-of-date (by days, even). Local caching may also take place within operating systems or even browsers. Therefore, there is no way to instantly reflect server address changes, and in my case it would likely take longer than usual as I switched from a huge domain registry to a smaller one. But eventually my old ip 64.227.0.226 will disappear completely, and normal service will resume.

This necessitates the inconvenience of merging visitor statistics from the two servers manually for a period, but I guess I can live with that.

Here, I cannot fail to give another airing to the business practices of my old hosting provider. While they are happy enough to allow new customers to sign up for their services through the Web, cancellation requires a personal call... to their United States office. This made completely no sense of course, since I could no better prove my identity through the phone than by being logged in to their system, which I helpfully pointed out to them through their support ticket system. Hours later they predictably replied that they could not help me out in this case, leaving me to expend a few unnecessary bucks in making a tolled international call to their toll-free US number (didn't feel like exploring VoIP solutions just for this). The actual cancellation was mercifully swift after the automated process, thankfully.



So what's up with the OpenID thingamajig that I integrated? Time to lift a paragraph from its Wikipedia article:

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

 Thus, one can theoretically survive online with a single username and (strong) password, if OpenID gains widespread adoption (which it has a good chance to, with giants like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo throwing their weight behind it, though with some reservations discussed later). The idea is that an OpenID provider stores that username/password combination, and all sites which wish to have a user login supply a textbox for the user to enter his OpenID username. The user will then be taken to his OpenID provider's page, where he can choose whether to continue the login (and optionally set the login to automatically go through on future visits).

The obvious advantage here is that one no longer has to memorize (or worse, lug around) dozens of usernames and passwords, as currently it would be rare to be able to use the same username (especially a common one) on different sites; The same password can often be used for multiple sites, but then a global password change would be incredibly frustrating; OpenID thus saves user effort by consolidating their sign-in costs. A local program like Firefox's Password Manager could also do the job, but not when a user has to log on at different terminals, and does not address the torment of global updating.

There are criticisms too, and the best I've seen are from this warpspire post. They are not insurmountable, and here are my thoughts on the points raised:

  1. Naive Implementation - i.e. the possibility that a fly-by-night OpenID provider allows masses of people to park their IDs there, then closes down and leaves them in the lurch. The open (duh) nature of OpenID means that this cannot be avoided, but then I suppose almost everybody will end up with one of the big guys like Yahoo or Blogger, the same way that they flock to Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. I mean, there's about the same chance that your user@fly-by-night.net email service dies on you.
  2. Mobile Web Inconvenience - Long OpenID urls are the gripe here. However, as some bright spark on another site pointed out, generally OpenIDs will not be much longer than an equivalent email address, and not many people are complaining about emails being used as usernames. To illustrate, for a username@user.com email, the corresponding OpenID would just be user.com/username.
  3. Phishing - Clearly, having one means of authentication for everything means that all one's accounts are compromised if that identity is stolen. The onus here is probably on the OpenID providers to provide some means of preventing it, and I can't see much wrong with the Sign-in Seal that Yahoo uses, for example.
  4. Multiplicity - Ironically, as OpenID's major selling point is the convenience of a single identity, people will find that they have quite a few OpenIDs automatically assigned to them. Yahoo and Blogger gives them out unasked, and surely more will follow if OpenID takes off. At least the solution is straightforward - pick one and stick to it.
  5. Less User Friendly - OpenID adds an additional step to the sign-in, as the provider's site has to be accessed to verify the identity (unless it is good enough to have an always-verify-for-this-site option). It could be argued that the sign-in might on average be faster after the first time in this case since the password is omitted, but the more serious concern would probably be - what if the provider's site goes down? This is a real concern, since it means the user is locked out of a ton of services at once. Having many many servers probably helps, and in the end it's back to signing up with one of the big boys.
OpenID 2.0 introduces Directed Identity which further simplifies usage, as one can initiate the sign-in by just typing in the provider's domain name (like yahoo.com for Yahoo).

Trouble stems from the implementation, however. Some large sites (again, like Yahoo) currently set themselves up to provide OpenIDs (and gain user data), but do not allow OpenIDs provided by others to be used to sign-in to their services (probably since they would then be providing the service but not have the user data). Which kinda defeats the whole purpose, then again since when have high-minded principles triumphed over hard-headed pragmatism in business?

On my side, setting up OpenID authentication on the blog wasn't exactly a breeze. I didn't feel like coding my own library from the specs this time, so I decided to partake of the libraries kindly written by other developers. Felt like trying a Perl->PHP->Perl interface now that I have PHP enabled, and thus downloaded most of the PHP libraries listed to play around with. The Simple OpenID PHP Class was promising, and appealing since it was just a few scripts without tons of dependencies, but unfortunately was hopelessly outdated.

In the end I went with JanRain and the EasyOpenID frontend. Early on there was an issue with XML parsing, which was resolved by switching to PHP5 from the PHP4 default. The combination then worked - but not for HTTPS servers or Directed Identity cases, which was quite unsatisfying.

After contemplating fixing that up myself, I Googled the issue and strayed off onto the wrong track when I came across some other guy with a similar problem who posted on the developers' Trac that it had to do with Certificate Authorities, which was not the case for me. Finding little else pertaining to this in my opinion rather large hole, I took a punt and uploaded the latest development snapshot of the code instead of the stable release, which was just out three weeks ago. I had initially resisted this, since development code is often buggy, and how much could have changed in such a short time?

Quite a bit, apparently, as everything magically worked (And the stable release seems to have been updated yesterday). So, I now have a leg up on Blogger it seems, as their OpenID implementation does not seem to support Directed Identity yet, hohoho.

Took the opportunity to fix a some more code, like localtime() now being true Singapore time (as the server is now hosted in Jurong East, it seems). No more Daylight Savings compensation!

Alright, I guess that's enough technical stuff to last a long time.

(Minor) Public Service Announcement: I like Google to bits, but recently a couple of their services haven't been up to par. Gmail is lagging for one, and Google Web Accelerator conflicts with most YouTube videos, causing them not to play - even they are not perfect either, it seems.


Definition of flaky

Life recently has centered around the usual stuff and the holiday job, though I found the time to indulge in a bit of badminton. It would have been nice if the (free) weekend slots at NUS weren't snapped up almost instantaneously, and as it was we had to go to Clementi Sports Hall, not that slots there were easy to get either. After another serving of Blue-Hand syndrome from my antique grip, I finally got around to getting a nice new grey wrap for next time. Can't wait to try it out.



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Sunday, June 22, 2008 - 13:57 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Host Migrated



Nobody other than myself will get this bit of news for a while as the glys.com domain is being moved (takes 5-10 days normally), but it's finally done. Switching my web host was something I had earmarked for this holidays but might have again procrastinated on, had my now-ex-Host-That-Shalt-Not-Be-Named not prodded me into action:


The Straw Before Last

The last straw was the slow support response, but the relatively pricey plan for that US-based (and rather large) host were factors too. I was however still not looking forward to the possible hassle of switching, but after a brief Google search for local hosting companies something rang in my mind - I personally knew one of the proprietors of Vodien from both NS and NUS (in fact having just taken a common module last semester), and he was on my MSN list.

Cutting a long story short, I downloaded my entire site off my old host, and by nightfall I had also transferred my domain registrar from Network Solutions (can't say they have let me down, just that they were slightly overpriced too) to Vodien (S$20/year), and shifted my blog painlessly (rest of stuff to follow). Site hosting solutions have come some distance since the bad old frontier days of 1998, and for just S$8 a month, this is available:

  • 5GB of space (was in the paltry hundreds of MB range before, but surprise - I used just 16+MB of it!)
  • Unmetered bandwidth, with restrictions only if exceeding 10GB/month (unlikely with most images outsourced to ImageShack)
  • Perl, and also PHP and mySQL (I anticipate some fun fooling around with ImageMagick)
  • All the usual subdomain/email configuration options
  • Local 24/7 phone support (Yay, though hopefully I never have to use it)
Yes, maintaining a website is easier and cheaper than ever before.



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Saturday, June 21, 2008 - 04:11 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - -
Free Awesomeness

"I have only one project: to marry Estelle, which is what I'm asking her today. I know it's difficult, but it's at moments like this that you need everyone and I need her."
- French coach Raymond Domenech's stereotypically French response after his side's elimination from Euro 2008. Shankly turns in his grave.


changelog v1.08b
---------------
* GlobeTrackr site traffic widget added in site statistics tab. Review on whether blog can and should continually accumulate such widgets kept in view.

Firefox 3 is out, if you haven't heard. I don't use Firefox myself, but here's to piling on the hype.

Lift Upgrading Project


Lift A being upgraded on left, upgraded Lift B on right

Not that many years after the elevators in my block were upgraded to ones with windows and the lobbies tiled more tastefully, the recent upgrading has left me with - gasp - an elevator landing metres from my doorstep. It felt incredibly strange after two decades of walking down four flights of stairs to access the elevator, and the same to get home. These four floors will be seldom encountered now, I suppose. As will the exercise I got by walking up fourteen floors each time I got frustrated waiting for the single elevator when construction work was in progress. Trivia: The passenger elevator photo used in Wikipedia currently seems to be this very model.

This will probably make life quite a bit easier for the elderly, disabled and deliverymen, but one can't help but be reminded about the fairness involved for those whom fit in none of these categories and yet are forced into paying if 75% of their neighbours vote for it (no, not me). Then again, those fortunate (or clever) enough to have been allocated a flat on a floor with an elevator lobby are not only exempted but have also enjoyed this convenience for long enough, so I suppose a completely equitable policy eludes us in this instance.

YA4OO (Yet Another 4O Outing)


Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...
(Movie poster from KungFuPanderTrailer.com)

Outing of the week so far was to Bugis Junction to watch Kung Fu Panda, which was well worth the six bucks. "There is no charge for awesomeness" must be the movie quote of the year for me.

Before that, I attempted to nip down to the Kinokuniya main store at Ngee Ann City to get rid of the vouchers that have been burning a hole in my pocket, but didn't make it due to lack of time. I overlooked the fact that there was another branch right downstairs from the cinema, and ended up topping up with my own cash to buy two books. Vouchers are sneaky that way.

After snagging Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, which I had my eye on for some time (along with Sam Harris' The End of Faith, among others), I felt strangely compelled to give the view in opposition an airing in the form of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, for getting both sides of an argument is a principle I believe in, and moreover I can usually appreciate good prose independent of any deficiencies in logic; And then I remembered that Lewis lived and wrote a long time ago, and his works should properly be freely available online, which indeed they are.

Figuring that the living Hitchens likely would have more use for my money than the estate of the deceased Lewis in the best traditions of utilitarianism, I then roved my eye and caught The Pig that Wants to be Eaten by Julian Baggini, which was rather a disappointment though little fault of Baggini. It was more that I had encounted many of the thought experiments within already, and so gained relatively little there. If only I had the time to browse more thoroughly...

Euros

The French are down and out and probably deservedly so as mentioned above, and so are the Portuguese after their fragile defence committed set-piece suicide against the ever-efficient Germans. To think I had called them to win it all before the start of the tournament, but Player Of The Year elect Ronaldo struggled to stamp his influence, and with all the Madrid hoopla I can't much sympathize with him. Well, as Gary Lineker famously said, "Football is a simple game - you play for 120 minutes and then the Germans win."

There may be a simple solution to the football price-gouging that is beginning to take off, and that's P2PTV, perhaps more popularly known as live streaming. The concept is much the same as file sharing, with a television channel being bounced between many clients. Yes, this means that the stream will have to be late (usually by a couple of minutes), and the quality won't be the best, but it is smooth enough and a zero dollar plan. Sites like MyP2P.eu publicize links to the channels, which require only the installation of viewing software like SopCast. What's not to like?

The first question is, of course, is it legal? Preliminary research has not yielded a definite answer, and the most detailed piece on the issue I could find was from NUS alumni James Seng's blog (and posted close to three years ago). Even there, the verdict is cloudy. I guess there are parallels with the time-honoured solution of catching free-to-air football on Malaysian and Indonesian channels. Let me consult The Pig that Wants to be Eaten... Yes, this is sort of covered under Thought Experiment 82 (The Freeloader), and guess what, there is no straight answer. Well, until another Odex saga comes to pass and the boundaries drawn, indulge at your own risk.

Random Euro Fact: The music played after a goal is scored is Bellini's Samba de Janeiro.

Not-So-Random Man Utd Fact: Against all my expectations the leaked 08/09 United away shirt is the real deal. Sure, it looks okay-ish on the players now I see them, but the colours are a tad too American for me. Then again, they could wear sackcloth for all I care if they win.

Completely Random Fifa 97 Email: Out of the blue, I received an email inquiring on a "fifa 97 intro". This didn't seem like run-of-the-mill spam, and after a bit of head-scratching I was reminded of a website I had set up a full decade ago on Fifa 97. Now, I guess it is a useful if slightly embarrassing template for what not to do in website design.

Guitar Hero III

Got my first taste of this game after watching my cousin tap his controller furiously on his Playstation. Easy in theory, but those multiple-button presses can be very confusing.


BLARDLAST

Out of nowhere I began to wonder which manga characters would go well together into a rock band, and after some thought came up with this ensemble, which I hastily sketched:

Each qualified by being sufficiently badass in their own way.

Ending with the "most difficult" Guitar Hero III song, Through the Fire and Flames by DragonForce. Amusingly the original guitarist supposedly only managed to get through 2% of it in Guitar Hero III before failing :P




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Monday, June 16, 2008 - 03:14 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- + -
Play It Again, Ham



It's a bit sad really that the hammy "brothers" had to fight - but as the incarnation of Greed in the latest One Manga release of Full Metal Alchemist implied, we all have our wants; Greed - the universal force, the ultimate economist?




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Sunday, June 15, 2008 - 01:33 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- -
Smack Those $p4m20r2

changelog v1.08
---------------
* reCAPTCHA Captcha verification implemented for comments - defeat spammers while helping to digitize old books! Not that this blog has had much comment spam yet, but better safe than sorry later.

* Comment textboxes now show old value by default if the comments are not accepted for any reason (such as a failed Captcha verification).

* Next/Previous month links at bottom of page, when surfing the blog by month.

* RSS time zone fixed according to RFC-822 specifications. (N.B. Interesting explanation by an NUS prof on why Singapore "is in the wrong time zone")

New stuff learnt: MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger have been (largely) interoperable for close to three years now, and there I was downloading Trillian to communicate with a colleague on Yahoo. Have I been living under a rock or what?

The Singapore Lions' Goal 2010 (remember that?) dream was officially extinguished today, after a 0-2 defeat to Saudi Arabia at the National Stadium (yes, it's really the final final match to be held there, this time). What can I say, they needed to win by two to have any chance at all, and it would have been a grave injustice had that come to pass on balance of play. Better luck next time.



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Saturday, June 14, 2008 - 02:54 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

A Month Gone

Just coded my first functional module in Drupal, a content management system (CMS) the kind of which I might have used for this blog had I not written the almighty glolg myself aeons ago. I think I've more or less gotten the hang of it, though if I had any choice in the matter I would have hammered it out in pure PHP (or Perl, for that matter).

This job has led me to some insights about myself:

  1. I don't really like content management systems that were not written by myself.
  2. I don't really like Linux, so sue me. Evil greedy bloated Windows for me, every day of the week.
  3. Emacs is a pain. Yes, I said it.
  4. I can't code in the morning, which may be entailed by the fact that I am usually not fully awake before noon. Night owl here.

In support of point one above, let me pull out a little tale about another CMS, Joomla. The files I pulled from the project CVS didn't work, and I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why, when I was belatedly informed that it was because PHP short open tags weren't configured on my home server. True, it could have happened with a pure PHP implementation too, but having such a thing occur on my first encounter has coloured my perspectives somewhat.

Tried my hand at badminton recently after not touching my racket for many months (the multipurpose racket photo-op notwithstanding). The purple dye came off the grip rather messily. Same thing with the soles of my army-issue New Balance sneakers, on other occasions - the conventional wisdom about not keeping shoes around for too long without wearing them seems to have something behind it. Came across Choo, ex-platoon mate, playing basketball at the NUS courts after the badminton session. The guy's back from studying Economics somewhere in the States or the U.K., I forget.

It's Euro season, but I've resisted the urge to subscribe so far. For one, there's no England to back and tumble with this edition (though the uncharitable could say that they just saved themselves the effort), and secondly the opening match between the Swiss and the Czechs was dire (by my spoilt Man Utd standards). The scrolling subscribe-by-SMS instructions nearly did it for me, but I refrained ten minutes into the match. Goal highlights on ESPN and the finals will do, thank you very much. On the other hand, missing the ten-goal Singapore vs Uzbekistan spectacle still riles me a little. Oh, and here's a tangentially relevant explanation on how stars choose who to swap their shirts with.

And perhaps the best Onion News Network video I've seen so far:


'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'


And another Onion gem I don't believe I've linked to.



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Friday, June 06, 2008 - 21:45 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- + -
Ham Can Cook

(Reminder to self: Return Edchong's thumbdrive to him upon next meeting)



Drove via expressway to Changi Airport and back for the first time, under the watchful eye of my old instructor. Pretty underwhelming experience (as it should be), even 90km/h didn't seem fast, except on those curves. It's quite impossible to keep to the speed limit on some stretches, it seems. Trivia: How much did that trip cost? Assuming average fuel economy (~25 miles per gallon), a round trip of 80km and a current Singapore petrol price of $2.10/litre... $15.80. Whoa.



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Friday, June 06, 2008 - 02:34 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

RTF Not WTF

Blogging a teeny bit less than I had expected to during the hols. After skimming through my previous writings, I realise how often I have forgotten to mention something that I had mentally filed away - for instance finding out that Andy was a Chelsea fan at the class gathering, or expounding (again?) on how chilled drinks after exercise must be one of my favourite experiences in life.

Was going to plop down a few reviews on recently read library books - beginning with Mario Puzo's The Sicilian, based loosly upon the actual story of one Salvatore Giuliano. Most gripping was the book's description of Sicily - island, battleground, and birthplace of the Mafia; A land where honour was paramount, a life could be lost for a word, a vendetta decimate entire families. Where men painted their houses as their fathers, and their fathers before them did, but who would kill any who (correctly) pointed out their ancestry as indicated by the ancient colours used. Where a Madonna stood in every household, but to show weakness was a sin.

The passage that most stuck in my mind was concerning a worldly abbot in cahoots with the Mafia:

"...Except for the wine, which was swilled down by the monks themselves. At night there was a great deal of gambling and drunkenness, and even women were smuggled in, but to all this the Abbot closed his eyes. 'These are hard times,' he said to Guiliano. 'The promised reward of heaven is too far away, men must have some pleasure now. God will forgive them.'

 Always wondered if celibacy is a natural state of being - I lean towards what Suzie Wong expressed, that it makes whatever Creator God there is extremely unhappy. Here You go, producing Man in Your image, and the lazy buggers refuse to continue Your Work. To each his own, at least until they find fulfilment in unacceptable ways.

Also ran through a few books in The Sword of Truth series (recently concluded), and a couple of potboilers by Ludlum, Cry of the Halidon (written originally under a pen name) and The Bancroft Strategy (ghostwritten). The latter is striking as it expands upon the moral themes I touched on a year ago, with some of the examples, such as the famous trolley one, stated in full. The main thrust of the story is on whether it is acceptable to undertake narrowly immoral actions, if it has been calculated with high enough probability, and in good faith, that it would bring about the greater good (myself, I have always been confused by the utilitarian proclamation of "the greatest good for the greatest number", since it often appears the case where options lead to a great good for a few or a small good for many).

To use a relevant example, take the Myanmar junta who have been less than forthcoming in allowing desperately needed aid into their borders after Cyclone Nargis, and hiding the actual source of aid. In mitigation, one can never be sure if there are actually any strings attached, but on balance it seems that the junta are more interested in saving their own faces considering the dire situation. Would it then be acceptable, if possible, to assassinate the entire top leadership of a dozen or so, to allow aid that would save tens of thousands? This sort of thing is exactly what the Bancroft Foundation does in the book, but of course cost-benefit calculations, on such a scale, are a tricky matter.

Another thing I realised is that decisions taken in real-life are almost never as clear-cut as when stated as a judgment call - when faced with a runaway trolley, an onlooker might be aware of the possibility of the five people having a hidden escape route while the single person does not, or of the track being damaged, or of the five people being able to survive... in very few situations can the outcome be known perfectly.

Watched Prince Caspian (chosen by occ) with a bunch of the 4O guys. Though the Telmarines are no angels, it sort of pains me to see a well-organized force defeated upon the whim of a talking lion, whom by all accounts could have saved a lot of bloodshed had he made an appearance earlier, but had to drag it out until he could make a suitably dramatic entrance after spouting some drivel about things never happening the same way twice. Reepicheep is definitely cute, as a scant consolation.

So, what's with the RTF not WTF title of this post? Essentially RTF stands for Rich Text Format, which I believe those who have used Wordpad are well acquainted with. My current job will probably require a web application that allows the user to edit and save RTF documents online. Not terribly hard, but the WYSIWYG interface would be troublesome. I saved myself that bother by searching for some copyleft freeware that would do at least part of the work, and soon came across the FreeRichTextEditor. Unfortunately, it outputs in HTML instead of RTF, but at least the problem is now reduced to hacking out a HTML-to-RTF parser.

Thankfully RTF isn't very complex, simply using control codes to set formatting, and braces to set scope. The full specification by Microsoft is a 11.9MB, 281 page document (giving RTFM a whole new meaning), and the RTF generated by Word is correspondingly obtuse, but there is no need for all that for what I am doing. Hint: Create a RTF document in Wordpad and open it in Notepad to see how clean the code usually is. Spent some time trying to chop away unneeded buttons from the interface, only to discover that the original author had a config file just for that purpose. Duh. Some extra editing was needed in the end, so it wasn't all wasted. Here's the beta:





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Monday, June 02, 2008 - 01:27 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

SSSS

"Singapore Super Sad Story"
- from Chemical Engineering friends


More than a little sore after blowing the opportunity to win my first S-League title in Hattrick, which to y'all not in the know is an online multiplayer football management game, in the vein of a very simplified Championship Manager (which coincidentally has also gone the online route). So now I'm still stuck on two national cups, but no top division ones, after almost twenty three-month long seasons.

I suppose it's a matter of perspective, though, since at the start of the season I would have been more than happy with a second place finish, which appeared not all too realistic given the crop of challengers. But after leading the table for a period, it became slightly hard to take. A win against the only other team left in the running in the second-to-last match would have done it, but after scoring my striker had to get himself sent off, making it easier for the opponents to equalize.

Still, all I needed was a win in the last game due to superior goal difference, and after playing a 4-5-1 due to a lack of personnel, my other striker managed to get himself sent off - prime hairdryer treatment material. It ended in a draw.

SSSS.

Can't say that I have been unlucky or anything over the course of the season, and being 2nd/600+ Singaporean teams isn't that bad, but still... I was quite certain that I would be able to strike another line off my Planned Achievements list today. Well, it will just take a little longer. I don't believe I have quoted this yet, so here goes:

What if the bird will not sing?

Nobunaga answers, "Kill it!"
Hideyoshi answers, "Make it want to sing."
Ieyasu answers, "Wait."

 When neither blunt application of force nor measured wisdom works, it may be prudent to just look towards a better day in the future (not fully passively, of course). Hey, if Ieyasu took all Japan with this philosophy, it's good enough for me. That and repeat a modified Litany Against Fear:

I must not (get pissed).
(Getting pissed) is the mind-killer.
(Getting pissed) is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my (pissedness).
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the (pissedness) has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

A plug for two freeware apps that may come in useful. AutoMouseClicker (74KB) lets users script continuous clicking, which happens to be very useful for Dragon Court play and Clickclickclick.com if they didn't already have a Turboclick button, and appears to be written by a Singaporean guy. Notepad++ (1.98MB) is a text editor with built-in highlighting for tons of different programming languages - cool!



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Sunday, June 01, 2008 - 00:47 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - -
Semester 7 Post Mortem

changelog v1.07e
---------------
* RSS feed generation for new posts fixed - previously had a bug with published dates.

First blog software update in months, this mainly for efficiency purposes - thanks to the RSS Feeds Toolbar, there need be no manual checking of blogs to determine if there are any juicy new posts. Just add the feed (comes by default with Blogger at http://[blogname].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default), and it'll alert you of any new entries within five minutes.

Results are out, and there is good news and not so good news. Good news is, it's one of my better semesters towards the computing degree, CAP-wise. Not so good news is, It didn't pull my overall CAP as much as I had hoped.

Below Expectations:

CS3216 Software Development on Evolving Platforms - B+. Probably could have done better, but at least I had a valuable lesson drummed into me, the specifics which I shall not divulge so cheaply. It's really not a module for everybody, so those who are concerned with the effort-to-grade ratio should probably stay away. At least it got me to partially deploy that MMORPG, though a real-time AJAX framework likely isn't scalable as of now.

Met Expectations:

CS3208/3209 Undergraduate Research in Programming (8MC) - A-. Well, it didn't exactly meet my initial hopes, but since there was no great breakthrough I suppose it's fair. Guess the RTS AI dream will have to wait just a bit longer.

CS3265 Economics of E-Business - A+. A module in which for once I had both eyes on the final grade when I signed up. Oh, the interest is there too (I do have a second degree in economics underway), but the idea here was at least as much as to score as to learn new stuff. As expected, topics and concepts covered in actual microeconomics popped up liberally, which suited me just fine. Did well in the tutorials and midterms, felt I did well in the finals, and was lucky enough to get landed with a very good project group (second of about a dozen in the group work component). Cold calling for project mates pays!

SAP for computing: 4.50 (like last semester, sad)

No Real Expectations:

Okay lah, since my economics degree isn't honours (not with just half a year more and no real overlap as with CS/Maths for instance), and its CAP was (and barely remains) higher than my computing degree, it seemed logical to devote more time to computing pursuits...

GE1101E Place, Environment, Society - B+. Probably slightly less than expected, but the project wasn't that well done.

SN1101E South Asia: People, Culture, Development - B. Would have been more than a little upset about this had it actually counted, since I went to the trouble of actually going through all the suggested readings.

EC3303 Econometrics I - B-. Got reminded that I was never that into statistics. Probably could have put much more effort into it, too. Perhaps I should rethink going for Econometrics II and III...

This reminds me, I have to get about contacting my FYP professor. Really need an A from that now.



Continuing on from the last post, I forgot to mention possible alternatives to penalty kicks, which do seem too much of a roulette. Major League Soccer used a shootout format where the player starts with the ball about thirty-odd metres from goal, and has five seconds to dribble and score, which probably involves a little more skill on both ends. Myself, I rather like the idea to progressively reduce the number of players - say, withdraw two players from each team every ten minutes of extra time, until it becomes a five-a-side game on a full-length pitch. Surely somebody must score then? One objection is that the players could get dangerously exhausted, but I suppose this could be implemented right from the start of extra time, instead of waiting for thirty minutes to pass.

And about the S60 class gathering at Duanli's place. Didn't catch the exact directions the first time and ended up getting some unintended exercise walking to the house. There was a barbeque, where mistakes were made :P Should attend a course on how to cook food over barbeques someday. Usual chatter as might be expected at such gatherings, but also a few games. There was Dork Tower and Citadels, but they were not tried.

Instead we went for Cutthroat Caverns first, which attempts to balance community and self interest for the players. Personally I thought that there was a little too much randomness, as sometimes one just doesn't have the cards in hand to deploy much strategy, and a little too much complexity to be played out-of-the-box. Illustrations were top-notch, that I have to say.

Next was Bang!, a simpler Murderer-style card game. The player roles are randomly assigned (and secret, other than the Sheriff) at the start. As stated on the Wikipedia page, "...Generally, a person's role is implied if he tries to shoot, or otherwise harm, the sheriff. Others' role can be implied if they try to harm those who harmed the Sheriff." What I am not certain about is how far these roles can be hidden, since I generally do not see much benefit from pretending to be of a different role (would a Deputy go so far as to shoot the Sheriff, and even if he does, would the deception matter much?)

As a bonus at the end, the 4O peeps got a lift home from a very special young lady.



Had a little D.I.Y project at the back of my mind for some time now, which was to make a simple frame for keeping my modem off my router to prevent overheating. Thus far a gap had been opened between them with a used tablet blister packaging, and a computer fan used to supply circulation. Obviously this wasn't a satisfactory long-term solution, and therefore I put in a request with my grandfather to procure the necessary material to make a frame. After months, he got a good aluminum strip, which looked plenty good enough.


Resident uncivil hamgineer swears and disapproves, goes on strike

It remained to cut the metal to the desired specifications with shears, bend the parts with pliers, drill and insert nuts and bolts, and finally file away the rough edges. One leg was a little off, but nothing a bit more bending couldn't fix. Ta-da:


Alrighty, all done, ready for inspection!



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