itunes

my itunes is not working well right now :( It stopped being the ‘glass of ice-water’ that steve jobs claims it is. It sort of crashes for about a minute when i start it. I’m thinking of changing to mediamonkey. It supports synching to ipods and other portable media devices :D

P.S A small part of my brain is telling me that it’s vista and not iTunes. It’s probably the same part that has been putting up with all the funny error messages. (Un)Lucky me, i got to see a error with a negative number on my vista. error –36. Any idea what it is, anyone??

Once again, merry Christmas and a happy new year, everyone!! Enjoy the video! It's Sheldon's Christmas special!

UBZ and SEP

I was trying to get Human Relations via the USP pre-allocation exercise, but nope, didn’t get it :(  And i know that i don’t have enough points to bid for it under cors. And so, i gave up all hopes of taking that module and decided to settle for negotiation and mediation instead, UBZ3001. It’s an advanced usp module and i have to register for it. Now the danger of this is that i can’t withdraw from it once i’ve been selected for it. And lessons are on the weekends, namely the first 3 weekends of the semester would be gone. yep, from 830 till 5. And i’ll have to do up the deliverables during the rest of the semester.  And yep, i got the module. I’ll go down to the biz library on monday to borrow books for that module.

And now for sep. I was hoping to get one of my first few choices, but yea, i got the last one, Eindhoven University of technology. Well, i did claim that i’ld be okay with any university on the list. So yup. I’m now kinda okay with it, although i am likely to face some sort of language barrier over at The Netherlands. But i do look forward to going there, and having a good time, especially to explore the city and the country sides with a bike! The min amount of credits i’ve to do there is 15. 15 is such a weird number, as in most of the modules i’m gonna replace are all 4 MCs and i’ll have to take 4 mods, to do one more MC than is actually needed. Yes, i’m complaining about 1 MC. But to think about it, i could have been in a much worse situation if Ad hadn’t helped me shoo off the UC entries off my list. And he is helping me do some module replacements too :D

I’m also thinking of applying for the US thingy for the upcoming 3-month holidays. I was also originally considering the usp himalayan biodiversity thingy, but i guess i’ll have to forgo that if there’s a clash. This US thing appeals more tome, since pretty much everything would be sponsored for me.

Microsoft One Note

I dunno if i’d blogged about downloading the software before, but yea, last sem, i downloaded onenote from the SOC website. yes, it’s legal for students taking soc mods, you can use your SOC accounts. And i received a product key to unlock it. And the key didn’t work. I was thinking that all the microsoft 2008 softwares use the same key and so tried the one that came with my student edition. It too, didn’t work :P I tried sending an e-mail but i hava a feeling i sent it to an automated replying system, so no reply. Guess i’ll have to wait for another SOC module to come by, in my senior year.

More abt my new phone

 

I sould have done this a long time ago, but:  I've recently changed to a Sony Ericsson W595!! (below). It was great to get rid of Nokia :)

After using a sony ericsson phone is secondary sch (think it was the first phone i got) i simply couldn’t get used to my nokia 5300 music express. But i held on to it cos of its music and radio. And now, this w595 guy has it all-music, radio, accelerometer and a 3.2MP camera and more! It’s all nice, except this thing that happened:

I found out that i couldn’t do a phone-to-phone transfer of contacts and thus, transferred all my contacts to my PC and backed it up. And when i tried to sync it with a Sony Ericsson PC suite software, i couldn’t sync the entire list. I am sure that the contacts are getting synced to the phone memory and not the SIM card and yes, i’ve tried trouble shooting it myself. So, i decided to call up the sony ericsson service centre. Here’s my experience:

Attempt 1: A lady, sounding quite old, answered the phone. I explained EVERYTHING to her, all the technical details about how i’ve tried to sync and all. And at the end, i was told that she would go call for ‘technical assistance’. And she came back to tell me that the ‘technical person’ was busy at the moment and that i would be called up again. I gave her my phone number but was never called back :P

Attempt 2: This guy called James took my call and this time, i kept the explanation shorter. He asked me to update my suite software with the one from the net, as I’d used the CD version of it. I did just that and nope, I still had the same problem. Now, James had earlier told me to call back if the solution didn’t work and that he would offer me an appointment with a technician and i can bring my laptop and all and get the problem fixed. i called back. Another guy answered, claiming that James was out and yup, u can guess what happened. I was told that i would be called back with the details of the appointment with the technician. So, i gave him my phone number but was never called back :P

Attempt 3: Now i’ve kinda made some advancement. A girl answered my phone, and after i explained, she admitted that  indeed, i was supposed to be called back (phew! at least there is some record). And that she’ld inform the deputy manager about it. And u can guess what happened. I was never called back.

And do stay tuned for attempt 4.

Merry Christmas!

This goes out to all my friends out there. Merry Christmas! As a 'treat', i shall post a part of the christmas special episode of the big bang theory serial. Here:

Sheldon’s Beloved Christmas Special

In the pre-Christian era, as the winter solstice approached and the plants died, pagans brought evergreen boughs into their homes as an act of sympathetic magic, intended to guard the life essences of the plants until spring. This custom was later appropriated by Northern Europeans and eventually it becomes the so-called Christmas tree. 

Partial BHBH4 Outing!

 

Pics!, we met up at farrer park and went down to an Indian restaurant.

Then, we hopped off to Mustafa centre to explore the place. I found that the cost of the shoes i bought went up to $139! I rmb that i bought them at somewhere between $100 and $110.

Oh, and then, we headed down to clark quay for supper! More pics: (since it’s drag-and-drop here, i’m using windows live writer)

This is the full set of ppl who went down: From left:

Shem (a.k.k Shemmy), Wendy, Hung, Tung Ni, Joyce, Zi Hua, Yoga (trying his very best to fit his height in with the rest)

This windows live writer seems to be working very well.I can now type out my entry right on my blog, as in, with this greeny surrounding that you see and so yea, it’s really WYSIWYG. I dunno if i can add a flex application, though. Flash should be okay, i guess although i haven’t tried it yet. Alrights, I’m off now.

live writer

I'm blogging from windows live writer!! haha, this better not screw up my blog. And i better be able to edit my blog from blogger when i want to. This is supposed to be WYSIWYG. and i can put in stuff like maps, photo albums, tables and so on. It’s kinda integrated with windows live photo gallery. This gallery software seems to be doing better than windows photo gallery. The lagging is a lot less. I’m now in the process of backing up my pics.

nexus and software that have become a-live

Here's 2 cool things that i've found recently:

1. Nexus

http://nexus.nus.edu.sg This is a personal learing environment for nus students. It features a lot of cool stuff like MSN and GMAIL RIGHT BESIDE YOUR IVLE module stuff.

2.Windows live photos. http://photos.live.com/ This is recently introduced on 2nd december 08. It offers 25GB of storage space for pics. Go enjoy! and i just don't understand why things have to be screwed up. I have windows photo gallery. it comes with windows. but to upload my pics in bulk to the windows live photos, i need a new software. Windows live photo gallery. And it doesn't stop there. You've probably noticed the difference between Windows Messenger, windows live messenger and msn messenger. And if u've really got your nose stuck in, windows messenger service would be added to that list. the first 3 are real softwares, that u can interact with ang the last one is a background service. 

here's another one: Development of Windows Movie Maker was abandoned after the release of Windows Vista; its replacement, Windows Live Movie Maker. 

3. Windows live writer. This allows ppl to blog without a writer. I'm gonna check it out.

Cyberia Camp

Well, it started with ed Ad asking me if i'm going to Siberia. 

The first day, i went to school on 151 and saw 2 other ppl with big bags like me. I went a bit early to go down to pgp to return    his matric card. I came back and registered and checked into an old double room in raffles hall and waited for my roommate to arrive. There weren't much ice-breakers and we went down for the first course on photoshop. After lunch and another session of photoshop, we went for an Amazing race. I'm still waiting for pics from the rest, since i didn't bring my camera around for the first day :( Another game that was supposed to be after dinner was cancelled too, cos the amazing race ended too late, i think. The games were really fun. And what made them fun was my group. Small yet, very bonded and coordinated, for a group of ppl who just met. Another interesting thing was the points system. It was measured in kilobytes. And points were represented by circuit components like resistors, capacitors, transistors and IC chips. It was just funny to see them all being pushed into a styrofoam board. It doesn't conduct electricity! They should have given us components to make an amplifier circuit and decide the number of points from the gain that we can achive or sth.

 I wanted to go running on the first night, but didn't bring my running shoes. so, too bad.

2nd day. had bee hoon and milo for breakfast. The 2nd day was fully on softwares. We learnt flash ( with actionscript squeezed into the last 10 mins) and flex. Flex is a cool adobe software for making web applications. I would say it's a marriage of Flash and Dreamweaver. We had BBQ at evening. It all ended so fast! It's good that my group decided to go down to fong seng for supper. I guess the addition of the fong seng component which involved walking about 2km by foot, in addition to the main dining experience added a great deal to the group bonding, although only 5 ppl were involved in them. After coming back, a few of us watched a chinese movie, beaststalker, i think.

3rd day. Woke up quite late. The past 2 nights were cold.  brought a sleeping bag to use as a blanket! lucky i had a jacket. even with that, i was frozen the first night. I slept with the fan on. and my roommate didn't turn off the fan when he came in later. 2nd night, we decided to keep it at the lowest speed. it was a lot better, still with my jacket.

The competition went well. I thought i could have done a better job, but after seeing the top 2 entries, i felt lucky to have gotten the 3rd prize. Even if i've worked on it before, i don't think i could have done a better job. And also, thanks to for doing up the poster part!! and helping me hand up the work! :D And also, thanks to for helping me out with the animation!! haha, I could have used u better if i had done a better planning. Also, i wasn't really in the photoshop frame of mind that day. I kept thinking that it is hard for me to express stuff in a single picture, compared to how much i can say using some movements. So, i try to put in a lot of stuff into the flash animation. That's why u'll see a lot of things happening at the same time.

Alrights, the last day was also the day whereby i was more aware of how ppl around me were acting and i was actively thinking about it. And let me tell you this. I got to notice a whole range of weird behaviours that tell a lot about ppl, that i normally wouldn't have observed or understood. haha, time for me to read up on sociology. 

We broke camp at about 3 plus. I came back and applied for PAssion card and tried to get a windsurfing slot on fri, 19th. but no vacancy. Guess i'll have to try for next week then.

Ah.. i finally found a way to upload the flash ad that i did for Oki. Here, hope this works. Go get a flash player if u can't see it. I think you'll be able to download it if u click here.

no human relations :(

Argh! I didn't get human relations in the pre-allocation. I couldn't have missed it. I went through the name list about 5 times ald. I immediately went on to register for negotiation and mediation. I can't even log in into cors now,to see how many points i have. I guess i'll have to choeng next sem for the negotiation and mediation module. The thing about this UBZ module is that I can't withdraw from it, once i've been chosen for it. anyway, yes, i'll have to get selected for that module too. It's a see-how moment... :P

And i'm not done wth blogging on cyberia camp. I said pics later, rmb? I can't get my vista comp to read my harddrive. I'll have to troubleshoot.

end of cyberia camp

I ended the Cyberia camp today. Overall, it was a good camp. For me, camps are always enjoyable when my group people's enthu level is around the same or lower as mine :) I remember this science camp organised by TJ when i was in my sec. school. It was and IS the best camp i've went to so far, cos of the same reason. I guess it allows me to open up and interact more with others?

Anyway, cyberia camp is for teaching Adobe Softwares, Flash, Photoshop and Flex. We had 3 hrs of training for each of the above softwares and another 3 hr on the last day for the competition. For the competition, we had to come up with a photoshop ad for Lg X110 netbook and a flash ad for Oki printers. Since it was almost impossible to do all that in 3 hours, my group sorta combined our work. I did the flash part and someone else did the photoshop part. So, my group handed in 3 sets of work,i think. And in the end my flash and nel's photoshop entry won third prize. The judgement was really fair. The first prize and the second were really good, as in, ready to be printed out or published in today's media. really really good. I thought mine was wayy below them in terms of quality.

Alrights, i'll blog more about the camp once i upload the pics onto my comp and facebook. I'm trying to get a windsurfing slot this friday, but i may have to wait till next week cos the vacancies are all filled :P 

usp pre-allopcation and sep

haha, i forgot what i wanted to blog about. THE USP MODULE PRE-ALLOCATION RESULTS ARE STILL NOT OUT YET!! I was expecting it by the end of the previous week. If i dun get preallocated i need to go register for this crazy module. Oh well, the module i'm wanting to get via pre-allocation is kinda crazy too. 

And i really wish i get something for the sep. any of my choices will do. I'll be happy. It'll really be an encouragement for next sem, for me. But i'm also mentally preparing myself for the worst, as in if i don't get anything and have to participate for the round 2.

First night of cyberia camp! haha, there are only 2 nights, anyway... I think this is another camp that i'll really remember for the rest of my life. To ME, it's really enjoyable. haha, cos my grp and other grp ppl are not enthu at all lor.. so sometimes the ogl leads cheers and sometimes other ppl lead, and i get to lead too! And my group is supposed to have 11 people but in the end, 5 ppl went back home after the workshop, which was immediately after checking in. So, we were left with just 6 ppl and a Assistant-ogl (our ogl was off too!) going around the nus for amazing race. But i do believe that such a small group is a necessicity, given the initial 'ice' that needs to be broken. This is because, smaller group is likely to result in more interaction during the games and goiung around and all and hopefully, people will get to know each other better. And as for those who went back, oh wells... haha. I heard today was the most physically tiring day of all. And at the end of it, i still feel like going for a run, perhaps even on my normal long-D paths: bukit timah or vivo. But no... i need to sleep:P

I'm staying in Raffles hall, by the way. Has its pros and cons la.. so, I can't say it's worse than PGP. The washing machines are free, for a start. And the shower head is hand-held (better!). Although the rooms is freaking old, i feel really cozy here :) it's some warm feeling that i belong to this place. hmm.. But i'm not sure if i'ld like to stay here for a semester. Guess i'm too used to pgp.

great day!

I was thinking about my sep choices again. I did order them on some basis that made sense but looking back at them now, i think i'ld be happy to get anyone of them. To me,they're all on a equal plane. Each uni has its pros and cons. 

Anyway, here's what happened yesterday, before i go on to blog about what happened yesterday. The day started off normally, with me going off from home to nus. I was too early for the bhbh4 meeting and so i decided to hang around in the library for a few minutes. I managed to find a few interesting books for the module i really hope to take next semester, human relations. But i borrowed one which i'm reading right now, though i ought to be preparing for my engin mods or at least packing for my camp tmr.Well, after that, i had my lunch and went for the meeting. We found this awfully good room at level 7 of the usp block to which [it takes some skill to see the name here] still had access to. So, Woohoo! haha, we played tennins golf and possibly other games on the Wii console in the entertainment room. Pics later. Then we had a short meeting and i was off to vivo to look for a good shoe. I couldn't find one within the time limit i set myself to, so too bad. I went off to orchard. We were just taking pics of the decorations when i realised i left my camera in the Wii room, conveniently after taking pics of the beautiful place. I immediately called up Mr I (whose name, u need skill to see, earlier in this post) and fixed a meeting with him to get his matric card so that i can get back my camera from the room. So, after a sumptuous Japanese dinner at Waraku, Orchard, I went down to vivo to meet him and went on to nus. Upo a through search of the room, i came to a conclusion that my camera wasn't in the room. someone had to have safekeeped it. So, i called up Mr H, whom i knew went back to the Wii room with other, after the meeting. He gave my 2 other names, ppl who were more likely to have it, Miss T and miss J. Upon calling Miss J first, she told me that miss T had it and after calling T, T told me that it was with J, after cheking her bag. And after a while, J was confirmed to have it, and so, Yipee! I found its coordinates. And coincidentally, J was on her way back home after a long day. She was kind enough to drop by NUS, pass me the camera and drop me at a place near clementi, for me to take a 105 home. YaY! The day started off happily and ended off happily. And i wouldn't mind going through it again. 

sep app

Dunno if i should write this in my blog but anyway here it is: I just applied for SEP!! :D:D 

haha, after thinking about it and planning out my senior year in nus for a few days. Here are the choices:

1 University of Waterloo 

2 University of Southampton 

3 Simon Fraser University

4 Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan)

5 Eindhoven University of Technology

I'll now go charge my ccamera now for the 2 events tomorrow...

This always happens to me after a long dist run. The way i think changes drastically. I would say that the change this year was a major one. I can see that my mind is a lot more refreshed, to start with and that was something i needed to do for this holidays.If fact my brain is good enough to start the next sem next week, or in a few days time :) But i guess i'll have to go for the cyberia camp and hopefully, more than 2 windsurfing sessions, and a few get-togethers that are coming up. I can't really describe the change but, i guess it's more logical? and perhaps fresher. Also, with this full marathon, i feel that i'm starting to get used to running  full marathons. I guess i'll go on to ultra-marathons (84km) after my timing is about 4.5hrs. That's my nyjc physics tutor's timing for this marathon.haha, i used to think that it was beyond hope for me, but after the recent 30 mins improvement, iam starting to see some light. 

post-marathon

Hmm, i realise i've not blogged since i finished the marathon. Well, I must say that it was a good run, in fact the best full marathon i've done so far. The official full and impressive (to me) results are here. It's pretty interesting, what they can find out from just a chip. I'll talk more about the experience here. 

Well, as i was keeping my eyes really open wide, i managed to spot Joyce on her way back, at the last part. Think she went for half marathon or sth. I'll go check it out later. 

The race itself was really good, as in the route was new. This new route, i think, was one of the factors that got me going on. But as usual, the east coast part was sickening, with going 9 km towards the changi side and back 9km to the other side; 18km in east coast in total. All of that 18 in east coast. Imagine that. That's about half the race in east coast. I would say that east coast is a very good place to run, being really flat with wide-enough paths at the start (ppl 'filter' down as dist. increases, with bernoulli's law still applying :) ) and a really good place to clock good distance and also, no serious road closures required. But i hope the organisers lessen the part in east coast and maybe put it somewhere else. 

At the later part of the race, i realised that i was a lot faster than last year and so, i decided to slow down so that it'ld be easier to do better next year. I expected myself to finish at slightly over 5 hours compared to the 5h 50 mins last year. After slacking from ~35th km to 41st km, i decided to chiong for the last part, since there were a lot of ppl cheering. And that's another good thing about this marathon. There were really a lot of ppl supporting the runners. So much that i felt their presence almost throughout the race. 

And one last thing. I really thought that i'ld get those sickening cramps at around the 23rd km, as it was for the past 2 marathons, but i managed to finish this one without any cramps at all! Apart from the timing, this is really something that makes me proud :) And i'm having a feeling that it's because of the better preparation this time. 

I'll end off with a summary of my results:

Time taken for 42.195km:  5h 21min 18secs

Position:           4302nd place, ahead of 66.7% of runners

Speed:               7min 37sec per km or 7.9kmph

Sectional times:   0-10km took 1h 1min

10-21km took 1h 13mins 

21-30km took 1h 12 mins

30-42km took 1h 54 mins

And lastly, i'm recovering quite well, although my legs and other muscles are still painfull. I slept the whole of yesterday, after the race. Somehow, i feel a whole lot more stable, emotionally, ready to take on whatever comes my way or better put,whatever i get myself in :P

Pre-marathon

Marathon flag off is in about 6 hours time. I'm mentally prepared, as usual. But i'm not really physically prepared and that is usual too :) I've got to get rid of the quite heavy dinner i ate 2 hours ago. I'm kinda done with the basic stuff, except that i need to fully sync all my contacts to my new hp. I called for tech assistance but was told that they'ld call back on mon or tue. oh wells. 

haha, I'll come back tmr to blog about the pains and stuff. stay tuned!

i was just browsing through wordne at Princeton. It's not just this dictionary, but a lot of other dictionaries claim that strawberry is a fruit! Now, it's technically NOT a fruit. It's a false fruit. The fleshy part is not derived from the ovary but that's how fruits are supposed to be. Instead, the fleshy part of strawberry is just a tissue adjacent to the ovary. It's those 'seeds' on the skin of a strawberry 'fruit' that are the real fruits. 

Watch this: It's just hilarious: 

It has been the end of a week. I'm kinda proud of myself, of the things i managed to accomplish without feeling the need to really 'relax'. I knew i'm gonna need some rest after the Singapore Marahton anyway. So, might as well get some things done before that. But not that the week has almost ended, i feel a bit of dissapointed too.  I REALLY need to blog about what happened today:

MY laptop's webcam and battery were faulty and so i decided to go down to the fujitsu service centre to see what can be done. Well, i was also on my way to collect the goodie bag and stuff for Singapore Marathon. When i went to the centre, I found out that they charge 80 bucks just to take in and see what's wrong with my comp. Now think about what i can do with that 80 bucks. I can

1. buy a new webcam (possibly better than the one that my laptop came with) to install it myself,  AND
2. Get my poor laptop a new battery

And mind you, that 80 bucks doesn't include GST and it's just DIAGNOSIS. i.e I'll have to came back in 2-4 business days to know what is wrong with it (which i already know, camera hardware and the battery). And after this, i'll be charged MORE for the remedies needed. Oh, and that 80 bucks diagnosis is free of charge if the laptop is covered under the warranty period. And it's not just fujitsu. I went around to look at other places nearby too, and some of them were worse. I'm really thinking that setting up a service centre is not such a bad idea. It's probably a better idea to keep it open at night time and sundays. 

Welcome to the new age of technology. this is the age where it is consultation for your computer is more than twice an average clinic's consultation :P

I finally decided to do up my CV. I'm mostly done chucking in information. I'll go put up the pics taken yesterday, possibly tmr. 

I've been crazily busy for the past few days, I'll just take some time to blog while my vista laptop restarts :)
I managed to change my handphone. the one that i had was nokia 5300 express music. now, i've a Sony ericsson W595. It even has an accelerometer! and it comes with a pretty cool PC suite software that i'm yet to check out. I've a class gathering this evening.

Also, i managed to get a wireless adapter for my desktop pc to go with the new starhub 8mbps connection. I'm nearly done setting up a home network. I was forced to find a solution since the networking software that the router came with expires in 10 days. haha...

let me see.. what else did i do? Oh, i backed up all the files and stuff and did some organising, and checked out of PGP. yups.. all within a few days. phew. I need a good rest before the marathon this sunday.