Friday, May 30, 2003

The Way to Crack an Egg


For years I have been cracking eggs against the edge of a bowl. More often than not, I end up with egg shell scraps in the bowl as well. I heard some advice on the radio not too long ago about cracking eggs on a flat surface - I tried it this morning on a couple of hard boiled eggs - with great success!


So remember, there is more than one way to crack an egg; some are better than others.

Thursday, May 29, 2003

Singaporeans are Innovative


Talk about innovation! As I got off Paya Lebar MRT to work this morning, I saw a group of people standing at the elevated end of the covered overhead bridge looking for their slow-moving buses to come round the heavily congested Paya Lebar Road.


The road runs in a north-south direction. At 9am in the morning, the bright, hot sun is still low in the sky, making the bus stop shelter ineffective at protecting commuters. The covered overhead bridge walkway serves a really good purpose!


Growing Pains


Ah, the joys of growing up! Chloe has started teething. My sis can feel a tooth erupting at the bottom row.

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Okay I admit I am a cheapo for not paying for a custom webhost, but thinking about it, how many people do visit my website? I must have some really interesting stuff first yeah?


But I am looking around for some hosting packages. My preference is for a local hosting located in Singapore, but why does a .SG domain cost more than a TLD? I really don't understand. In Singapore, everything costs more! The thought of running my own server at home did cross my mind, but the power bill is not going to be a joke.


Monday, May 26, 2003

I screwed up my template code somehow, and now I get an empty textarea where my template is supposed to be. I have tried to switch templates to no avail; the changes won't take. I've even tried to save some other template code into the empty text area, but even that goes into /dev/null.


What's going on? Any pointers? Lemme know. Thanks!


I'm starting a new weblog called Comsul which is a collection of computer tips and interesting factoids that I have managed to learn in everyday life.


Also publishing Chnrxn at BlogSpot now instead of FortuneCity, which disallows too many FTP logins. any idea how much space I have on BlogSpot?

Sunday, May 25, 2003

There were not many people at the brisk walking session this morning. Just some people from the youth community club, RC and civil defence. This is only the third week and it seems like the enthusiasm from the general community is wearing off. We have to actively encourage the residents to come out to excercise more regularly.

Bought some new shirts and pants today with Yvonne and Eric, of course not forgetting dear little Chloe. Eric even bought a circular rotation fan for Chloe to cool her off during the night, as she often wakes up in the morning with her head all wet with perspiration.

Oh well, going back to work again tomorrow. What a drag!
Had dinner with Guangrong last night; complained about the usual things and basically caught up with each other. Tried out Singnet's wireless access at Delifrance with his brand new Acer laptop with the Centrino chipset. Performance is not too bad at all.

While spending the rest of the night at Borders, I was browsing this book by Dr John Gray (of "Men are from mars, Women are from Venus" fame) about men and women in the workplace. I forgot the title though. It was a very interesting read, since I can identify with most of what it said.

Was helping Vanessa this afternoon installing Windows 2000, so that true multi-tasking has finally become reality.

Spend the rest of the day at the library. Really has to finish those books. I managed to get what I wanted from the Embedded Systems book and skimmed through the Cisco Wireless book, learning about HiperLAN and what not. Finished just before the library closed and grabbed another CSS+DHTML book in the process.

Tried to look for Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" but it was on loan. Laurens introduced me to Ayn Rand to help me achieve a better understanding of life and why things are. Check out Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

Thursday, May 22, 2003

Hmm... how do you get people to visit your site? What makes it worthwhile for people to visit day after day? It doesn't make sense for me to maintain a site that read by only me myself and I does it? I should really be finding some interesting stuff to put on the website then. Any tips for me? Email me.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Getting too much spam on your personal free web-based email account? Deactivate it for 3 months and you will be spam free forever. Since everyone of us probably has a few of these accounts, it doesn't hurt to switch to using another one for the moment. Just remember NOT to leave it lying around newgroups and forums. I just found one of my never-used email accounts and this is what I saw after I logged in.

Your Yahoo! Mail account is no longer active.
Why is my account inactive?
Yahoo! Mail deactivated your mail account because either:
  1. You have not logged into your account in at least 4 months, or

  2. You have asked that your mail account be deactivated
What does this mean?
  • All emails, folders, attachments and preferences have been deleted
  • All messages sent to xxxxxx@yahoo.com are being bounced back to the sender
  • You can still use your Yahoo! ID to access other registered services on Yahoo!
  • Deleted information cannot be recovered

My father just bought a new Samsung flat screen PLANO 15 inch TV with Teletext (for the 4D) to put in the kitchen. It will go on top of the smaller of our two large refrigerators. Don't ask me why we need two, ask my mum.

Now all it needs is an antenna and to preset the channels. Of course the only channels needed are Channel U and Channel 8.
Adding this large banner for some sitestats.


Sunday, May 18, 2003

ChannelNewsAsia reports a new case of SARS. This is a reminder that the battle is still on.
My mum has become a TV fanatic! So we are now going around shopping for a smaller TV to put in the kitchen! That's besides the 2 29 inch sets that we already have in the living room!

I bet right now, she knows "Ah Cheng" (showing weekdays Channel U 7pm) better than she knows me!

Okay, IMH cases 99% confirmed not SARS. What a relief.

As if I had nothing better to write about, I cleaned my keyboard today, yeah, what an achievement! Oh yeah, and I got a haircut ...

Saturday, May 17, 2003

FortuneCity is only good for text now. Can't get any pictures to load properly from them. They may even delete my account!

Friday, May 16, 2003

My resume is mostly done. Just have to touch up the small parts.
Bummer ... cannot upload files via FTP through proxy server ...
Find me a cure!

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Man, it is damned HOT HOT HOT!!! My whole body is caking up with sweat!!!

Just finished capturing the last of my father's 8mm videos, going to encode and burn them, and keep the camcorder in a safe place. Hmm ... tempted to get a digital camcorder $$$.

The IMH fever cases are not confirmed SARS cases yet, thankfully. The health authorities said it is likely to be a type B flu virus, whatever that is. Maybe it is the same one that is floating around.

Eeek!
Staying home today to recover from the slight flu I have. Darn ... people are going to avoid me like hell. Well, I can take this time to clean up my room for once. Hmm... hungry ... wanna makan.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Okay, screw records. SARS is a really potent creature, we have to fight it together. Onward Singapore!
Oh, new suspected SARS cases at IMH (WoodBridge Hospital). Seems to be a mass infection. There goes the record of SARS free days in Singapore. Let's hope MOH is able to trace it fast.
Still feeling a bit wierd, although my throat does not feel sore, but quite sure there is something wrong with me still. Well, tomorrow is another holiday, Happy Vesak Day!

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Finally became a blogger today. Guess I can concentrate on writing the entries instead of worrying about how they look on the website. I really have to trim the size of my resume webpage. Saving to HTML from Microsoft Word is a sure no-no.

Initiation

Became a blogger tonight. See so many people doing it that I just had to jump onto the bandwagon, despite my constant criticism of many non-forward-looking companies of doing the same thing. Since Singnet's servers do not allow FTP access from non-Singnet domains, something I still do not understand. I am putting it on my FortuneCity website, which prepends to every webpage, but hey, at least they allow FTP access! WAKE UP! Singnet!!! FortuneCity still gives me 100MB of space!!!But no MP3s and no single files over 3MB. So here it is, myBlog.

Discovered the most elegant name for flu; get this - "Upper Respiratory Tract Infection" or URTI for short. More information. The most disparing thing about virus infections is that it cannot be cured using medicines. The medicines provide symptomatic relieve while allowing your body to fight off the virus naturally. I just had a major bout of flu at the end of last year, and now I am getting one again. Went to this doctor who is really thorough with his examination and patiently explains facts to you. I've seen my fair share of doctors who expects to know what is wrong with a patient by the patient's own description WITHOUT doing any medical evaluation, then packing the patient off with paracetamol, a cough mixture and some lozenges. Well, I can be my own doctor then!

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Went for the Walk-A-Jog organised by the PA at 8am this morning. Walked about 1/4 way before running the rest. Quite fun. Took the rest of the group another 20 minutes to make it back to the CC.

Had a Mother's day dinner last night with my mum, aunt Anita and uncle Yap. Giving them a treat together with Yvonne and Eric. The restaurant was over filled and under staffed. Our food took ages to arrive; many diners got so fed up that they left without finishing.

I caught a cab to Jadine's place right after the dinner. I had the responsibility of conveying many other people's birthday wishes to her, so I just had to go.

Jadine is back in Singapore on holiday, as well as to celebrate her birthday. She turns 23 this year. Happy Birthday Jadine!. Bought her a Disney's Theme Song Double CD from you-know-where 1. Good thing is, Jadine doesn't already have the CD.

Oh, I didn't manage to see the Miss Beautiful Legs 2003 finals, so I am square!

Footnote 1: Dun wanna mention it's name because they preferred to stand around than to attend to me, and I was left standing at the counter WAITING TO PAY!!! If I did something wrong, tell me!!!

Sunday, May 04, 2003

Watched A VIEW FROM THE TOP at Lido this afternoon. Starring Christina Applegate, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Preston, Mike Myers, it certainly has all the makes of a big production. Quite interesting - the movie actually has a few themes that are worth thinking about.

Hung out at THAT CD SHOP for a while listening to an SACD from Hacken Lee and an XRCD collection of Jacky Cheung. The SACD really seems to sound better than ordinary CDs, or it could very well be the headphones or the glib tongue of the salesgirl. Will be back there again ...

Chloe is here again, but she doesn't seem to be too happy. Must be the teething... poor dear... I'm looking forward to the day that she calls me "Uncle", or in Cantonese, "Kau Fu".

Saturday, May 03, 2003

Friday, May 02, 2003

first ever entry

Finally got my HTTP file upload script to run through successfully, using cURL. What a relief! Now that the concept has been proven, what's left is to add in some informative progress ' indicator messages, and then pack the thing into a self-extracting ZIP archive. Hope it is able to run the batch file upon opening the archive executable. Oh yeah, hope that those guys don't come asking for a Windows GUI for the thing... ' bengz

Caught X-Men 2 with Sidney and Sherri after dinner. The themes from X-Men 1 are carried over into X2, but X2 also has a few new themes of its own. There is a lot more action in X2 compared to X1. A notable addition in X2 is the appearance of Kelly Hu as the female version of Wolverine, super regenerative abilities plus an Adamantium skeleton - her 'claws' grow out of her finger nails in the most elegant manner. Too bad she died before the audience (okay, I admit it is just me) could get enough of her perfect bodily curves. What a waste...