Pork and Beans - Weezer This has got to be one of the most brilliant music videos I’ve ever seen, featuring many YouTube celebrities. Thanks to Kevin Lim’s Twitter for the heads up. PS: Did you notice that it’s not just a simple mashup of videos? The Singapore Freeze Videos After 3 days of waiting, the videos for the Singapore Freeze in which Daphne, NTT, Plaktoz, Juzzywuzzy (all 4 from Ping.sg), Theresia, Jenny, Yogesh, Mahesh (all 4 my friends), and I participated is finally out! Kudos to the organizers for putting up the video in such a short time. Watch the videos below. See if you can spot where we were. And here’s the coverage on Channel NewsAsia. For those who didn’t know, Singapore Freeze is a project where 400 participants froze for 5 minutes in front of Ngee Ann City in the name of fun. It is modelled after the Frozen Grand Central, which has spawned many, many other Freeze events worldwide. Read more for other videos on the Singapore Freeze. Juzzywuzzy’s blog post Plaktoz’s blog post (more…) On Emotional Attachment Sometimes I can get emotionally attached to the weirdest of things. As I was cleaning up my FYP PC last week, I felt rather sad. I first knew the existence of my FYP PC back in October last year. It was when I inadvertently surfed into the FYP website, and realised that in fact there was a lab being assigned to me. I had been using my personal laptop previously, but it proved inadequate in terms of processing power. Ever since I claimed the PC, I had been going to the lab often. I probably went there close to every workday, sometimes even on weekends. Even if it was only for casual surfing porn, I still went to the lab, for the simple reason that I didn’t have to fight for a computer with the other students. Even when I did bring and use my laptop, I would connect to the FYP PC through Remote Desktop to utilise its power. With a dual core processor, a 2 GB RAM and a clean environment, it was no surprise that the FYP PC ran much smoother than my laptop, which packs an outdated Pentium 4-M with 512 MB of DDR (!) RAM. Consequently, sometimes I even used the FYP PC for reasonable personal use, such as Windows Live Messenger and Bridge Building Game. So when I had to release the PC back to the lab, I felt rather sad. As I was cleaning all my settings and data, personal or otherwise, I felt as if I was making the PC forget everything that it had known about me: my FYP data, my chat logs, my Firefox bookmarks, my personalised WALL-E wallpaper. I wouldn’t have any more place in school that I can call my own. But I cannot be selfish right? Someone else needs the FYP PC more than I do. Besides, I am graduating, so I should be happy that I finally can release the PC back to the lab. So goodbye ICISP-D5, I will miss you. (OK I know, this is one of the weirdest endings of a blog post. I dunno what else to write! LOL…) Feels Like 39.5 Degrees C It’s not hot in Singapore. It’s bloody hot! The weather panel in Ubuntu indicates that it’s 33 degrees C, but it feels like 39.5 degrees C. I wonder what I can cook with this kind of temperature… Not to mention that I’m currently outside, trying to look cool for a cool place to do my work. It’s very difficult as it’s a public holiday and most people are outside too. I either find power points or seats, but not both at the same time. If Only I Could Turn Back Time This is exactly the song that have been running on and on in my mind for the past 120 days… just that I’ve never bothered to post it here. If only I could turn back time. If only I didn’t do things rashly. If only I had not done what I did… but does it matter now? Read more for the lyrics. (more…) Protected: Moving On (MSN me for password) This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: “Only Happy People Will Be Considered.” As it’s time for me to go on to the next phase in life after school, I went to sign up for campus interviews. It’s just one of the events provided by the Career & Attachment Office to help graduates in securing their first job. As I was going through the list of companies to consider, one of them caught my attention. Have a look at their requirements: “Only happy people will be considered.” Oh dear, is the IT industry that bad that many people who go into it are unhappy? In any case, I think I’ll try to apply to this company. Not only because of that statement they use, but also because the job scope seems interesting. Have a good job-hunting to those who just graduated! On Being Taken For Granted Sometimes I really feel that I’ve been taken for granted by some of my friends. Note that I really mean some, and I can name a few of my friends who are not as bad as what I’m going to write in this entry. There was this girl who haven’t talked to me for a couple of years already. And then all of a sudden, she messaged me on MSN, asking me how my FYP went and whether I’ve got a job already. Despite being surprised, we chatted for a couple of lines, before her true intention suddenly rose to view: her PC kept on giving her an error and she wanted me to help her solve the problem. Another friend of mine suddenly called me for the first time ever since we got to know each other. It turned out that he wanted me to help him with his website assignment. Well, so much for being one of those better-informed in the IT field. It is not that I mind helping out. To put it in an often-overused quote: It makes me happy to make people, especially my friends, smile. The thing is that I do not officially open a technical support line, and thus being only sought after when people need me to solve their problems only make me feel like one. I couldn’t help but think to myself: Am I really that unimportant? Am I meant to be forgotten? Is it such the case that people will only come to me when they need me? Am I just being taken for granted by these so-called friends? Why can’t they ask me how I am doing instead of asking me to do a favour for them? *** But then I thought about it again, and decided to put it in another perspective. For those friends who haven’t talked to me in ages, I myself have not talked to them in ages. Has it not been a case of me taking them for granted then? Have I actually made the effort to say hi and ask them how they are doing? And haven’t I done the same thing when I ask people to do me a favour when I haven’t talked to them for a while? It’s much too easy to put the blame on others when we are not perfect ourself. It’s like being a hypocrite, when we expect others to do something when we are not willing to do it ourself. So take this story and reflect: for each person that you think have taken you for granted, think again, have you yourself taken them for granted? If you know you have, perhaps it’s time to say hi and ask them how they’re doing. If you have never taken them for granted, and they do take you for granted… well, perhaps it’s not worth your time to bother with these people. Or maybe… it’s just a case that I’m not good in maintaining friendships, in advancing from the acquaintance stage to the friend stage, and most of my contacts happen to be in the former. I looked at my chat logs and realised that I only talk to less than 15 people in the past few months. Even then, out of these, less than 10 are worth a real chat (i.e. not those hi-how-are-you-how-have-you-been-oh-i-see-and-silence-and-bye thing.) A Four-Year Reflection “I have no more questions for you, thank you.” As the FYP moderator completed that sentence after my presentation, I knew it was the end for me. The end of my academic life, of seventeen years of formal education (4 years uni + 2 years JC + 2 years secondary + 3 years junior high school + 6 years elementary school). It also marks the start of the next phase of my life, replacing school with career and classmates with colleagues. Let me just take a quick tour down the memory lane as I recall what had happened throughout my four years in the university. *** First year I was still green. I still remember my aims at that time were to get straight A’s, to be in the Dean’s List as many times as possible, to participate in research, and to be active in CCAs. I even aimed to take up a PhD at the end of the four years. Of all the aims, I managed to obtain none. Participated in my first Indonesian freshmen orientation. It was fun. I joined the Visual Arts Society and SIGGRAPH as my ECAs, with a few others in which I’m just a member. I had a massive culture shock, with the majority of the Singaporeans speaking Chinese and foreigners speaking in their own tongues, leaving me with a majority of Indonesian friends. I also decided to take up the Minor in Communication Studies, taking visual and designing modules. I was exempted from some core subjects, so I managed to finish the minor by my second year. Results were quite satisfactory, although the Accounting module I took in the special semester was horrendous. Also took part as a committee member for two external projects: Digital DESIGN and Image|reel, even though I was in Indonesia most of the time (I was acting as webmaster). It was a wonderful experience working with the best team I ever worked with in my entire university life. *** Second year Suddenly my Indonesian friends were spread into the different courses. So do my best of friends. As we don’t meet too often anymore, we gradually started to lose touch. I became a committee member of the Indonesian freshmen orientation and took too much photos and videos. I still have one video tape untouched and unedited since then. But it was fun. I decided to focus on SIGGRAPH for my ECA, acting as the special projects manager. Arranged a lot of activities with the rest of the team, though the bond wasn’t as close as it was in Digital DESIGN the previous year. I found my love in SIGGRAPH. Completed my Minor in Communication Studies. Started to regret going to EEE, wishing I was in SCE instead. The funny thing was my results were only getting better. Still, no Dean’s List for me. Too much competition. Participated in Digital DESIGN that year as vice chairperson. It wasn’t that bad I suppose. *** Third year The best year of my university life. Forgone exchange programme and research opportunity, partly due to financial reasons, and partly to spend time with the one I loved. Left all ECAs, partly as I would be having an internship, and the same second reason as above. Results were the best of my three years. Unsurprisingly, still no Dean’s List for me. But I didn’t care anymore. Second semester was spent on internship. It was the best semester. Learnt a lot of new things at work, and realised that university degree isn’t everything. Had a lot of fun during internship. Circle of friends was even smaller. Started to have doubts about my love. *** Fourth year Exactly the opposite of the third year. It was the most horrible of the four years. Attempted to be very serious, but it was quite hard after the realization during internship. FYP didn’t go well from the beginning, and it was only towards the end that things started to look better. Dropped everything, including socialising and entertainment, for FYP. Nevertheless, completed it rather successfully despite the suffering. HRM was a killer module, with the amount of work exceeding even that of FYP. Didn’t join any ECAs despite my initial intention to, as I expected the academic workload to be heavy. Realised that I still loved her after all. But in the end, I still lost my love to… projects? stupidity? But did I actually lose it, or did I leave it? Will I regret doing what I did in the future? I’ll probably never know. Didn’t widen my social circle much, but attempted to deepen what I already have, with polarized results. Took up Chinese, though I’m still too shy to actually use it. Still, academic results in first semester were about the same as that in year 3. Now waiting for results for second semester. *** Well, that pretty much sums up my four years… Will probably add on things if I can remember them. Double Remote Desktop I’m currently on Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, connected to my home desktop PC using the Terminal Server (a.k.a. Remote Desktop) connection. The desktop PC is in turn connected to NTU’s VPN, through which I connect to my FYP PC in school using another Remote Desktop connection. So the end result is that I have an Ubuntu machine connected to a Windows XP machine, which in turn is connected to another Windows XP machine, all through Remote Desktop connections. Oh, the things that geeks do… Now if only I can get hold of a Mac machine, it would be perfect. Backlogged Post 2 - Labour Day and Airport Thursday was Labour Day, and so I was in the hospital in labour stayed at home to rest and play games… Managed to improve my standing to #2 in Singapore for TrackMania Nations Forever Solo. If anyone’s playing the game, do add me as your buddy. My login ID is hendribudi and my password is *******. Didn’t have much to do on Friday, so I went to school to return the book I smuggled out borrowed from library for my last paper. Also went to the International Student Centre to collect my PR invitation letter. I’m not a PR yet, but I will be eligible to apply for PR once I get a job. I also went to the Career and Attachment Office to get my IA certificate. Finally I’m starting to see something out of my university education. After putting the items in my locker, I headed out to the airport. I SMSed some of my friends, but none wanted to go, so I went on my own. It was a nostalgic trip, with all the nice memories there. Bought mint chocolate and Cadbury chocolate at Candy Empire. I managed to catch the A380 while at T3. Also attempted to spot airplanes, though I still have to brush up on my airplane identification skill. The airplanes were landing on runway 20R, and probably 20C (I could only see the first runway from T3), and so it would have been perfect had I been in Changi Village instead, since it would be just under the landing path. I wanted to spot the A380 taking off to Sydney, so I made my way to Terminal 2. Unfortunately the viewing gallery was too small and anyway it was quite dark out there, so I didn’t catch the take off in the end. I had my dinner at Popeyes Chicken, but unfortunately it wasn’t nice at all. Perhaps I was just unfortunate to get the tasteless chicken or maybe it was just the lack of company. Kind of regretted getting the 3 chicken meal set that I bought. I was contemplating to go home, but heard that Daphne was going to meet Chillycraps and Xizor2000 in town. So I went to drop by Suntec’s Starbucks. The journey to Starbucks was not without any challenges–I thought they were at the Starbucks in one of the Suntec towers. So I went all the way, only to be told that they were at the Suntec Convention Centre Starbucks, which is like just next to the exit of the underpass I had to take to get to Suntec… So I made my way back to the correct Starbucks. It was also the first time that I met my plug police partner Xizor2000. It was great meeting them, though Chillycraps had to leave early. Thanks to Xizor2000, now I know how to use the shoutbox on my phone without any additional devices. Maybe I’ll do a walkthrough post on this too. We only left after midnight, and since there was no more trains available, Xizor2000 and I shared a cab home. Heh, this post sounds very boring… I really wonder where did all those funny jokes I used to pepper my blog with go. Backlogged Post 1 - A Meeting and Podfire.sg Procrastination is not good. Since exams ended on 29 April, I’ve thought of many things to blog about, just that I haven’t gone about putting them into writing. Fine, I haven’t gone about putting them into typing. That sentence sounds weird. Anyhow, I’ve been going out and spending quite a lot of money since exams ended. Not that I’m rich or anything, but I think I deserve a rest after all those weeks holing myself up either at home or in school to mug. Tuesday evening was spent with a friend. It’s been a while since the two of us last met, and I only realised that I wore exactly the same shirt that I wore the previous time we met. I swore I changed in between. Dinner was at Pepper Lunch (our favourite) followed by coffee at Starbucks. It was inevitable that the chat revolved around romance, and I must admit that I am not ready to move on to another girl. In the meantime I’ll just wait and see how things go. After deliberating later on in the Ping.sg shoutbox, I decided to go with Krisandro and Ironic Gamer to the Podfire.sg launch event at Geek Terminal on Wednesday evening. It was also the first time I met Krisandro in person. Podfire.sg is a podcast aggregator based in Singapore. Currently they carry the Blogger’s Treat (a food show done by bloggers) and Geek Goddess (a technology show, also done by bloggers) as their inaugural episodes. Unfortunately, the inaugural episodes of the two shows failed to impress me. They are not badly done per se, but perhaps it was because I had carried a certain amount of expectation of the shows. It would be great if the hosts in Blogger’s Treat were more vocal and describe the food that they are eating in more details, because after all viewers can’t taste them when watching the show, instead relying on visual and aural clues. I also felt that there was too much emphasis on the hosts instead of the food itself, but it could be just me. The Geek Goddess show was riddled with technical issues, for example there was one time where the host spoke softly, and just when I was straining my ears, the host started a song which was very loudly, startling me in the process. Also, since the website reviewed was in Chinese, it didn’t really appeal to me. Nevertheless, it seems like a new idea and I’m sure that subsequent shows will be much better. They have also teamed up with Tech65 (another technology podcast from Singapore) as their partner. I met numerous people at the event, old and new: Arzhou, DK, Paddy, Nadnut (first time), Mintea, Tian Hong, Nicole, Uzyn, Ridz, Krisandro (first time), Ironic Gamer, Sabrina (the host of Blogger’s Treat, though I didn’t talk to her in the end), Daphne, Deadpris (first time), Jean, Claudia, Bernard, Miccheng, Lu Yee, Farinelli, and many others (apologies if I missed out your name here!). Food was onion rings, spring roll, sandwich, and potato wedges. It was alright, but of course, an event at Geek Terminal is not perfect without Danny’s coffee. As usual, Nicole never failed to manage to get Danny to stretch his creativity and come up with new drinks. I wonder what they were, since I didn’t get to drink them, but they sure look good (look at some of the photos in Jean’s blog). Unfortunately, I was too shy to interact with the others (it’s amazing what months of anti-social life can cause you) so I remained rather low-profile throughout the event. We then headed out to The Pump Room, which is a pub located a few stones’ throw away in Clarke Quay. Not knowing what to expect, I let DK order my drink which was their signature lager beer. It was then that I realised why I hated beer. As the music (mostly oldies) started and the crowd started to dance, I felt totally out place there and decided to retreat to the back of the room. I’m more of a geek than a clubber, and so I watched people dance in the background. A while later, Ironic Gamer, Daphne, Tian Hong, Deadpris and I decided to call it a day and caught our last trains for home. Sing - The Carpenters This song’s play count in my media player has been shooting up ever since I put it on repeat yesterday. It’s such a happy song, with a happy tune, with happy lyrics. It sure brings a smile to my face, even as I face the last battle that I have to go through in approximately 9.5 hours time from now. It sometimes even made me unconsciously sing to myself when I’m studying, which puts a big question mark on my sanity. The next time you see a guy going “la lalalala, lala lalalala, lala la lalalala” in NTU campus, you know who he is. Read more for the lyrics. (more…) Memories How I wish that human beings can be blessed with unlimited, selective memory, where only the nice things are remembered, and the not-so-nice things can be forgotten as easily as a click of a button. I do wish to remember all the memories, maybe even write about everything, but for now, this will suffice: two nice songs I used to listen a lot. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police You To Me Are Everything - The Real Thing Well actually, I found that the nicest arrangements of the two songs were “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by Flying Pickets (which also happens to be one of the best a cappella groups out there), and “You To Me Are Everything” by Budak Pantai (a local a cappella group). Too bad I can’t find them neither on IMEEM nor YouTube. Buzz me if you want them. Two-Paper Combo: Plans and Reality In the perfect world, this is what is supposed to happen last night up to the two-paper combo I have this evening and tomorrow morning. Monday, 21 April 2008 6 pm: Wake up 10 pm: Reach school 10 pm-5am: Go through character list for Chinese paper Tuesday, 22 April 2008 6 am: Go home 6 am-12 pm: Sleep 12-4 pm: Go through book one more time 5-7.30 pm: Chinese paper 9 pm-3 am: Sleep Wednesday, 23 April 2008 3-8 am: Revise Embedded Systems one more time 9-11 am: Embedded Systems paper Of course, nothing is perfect. I finished going through the characters list by 6 am, but by then it was raining heavily and I didn’t bring an umbrella along. So I stayed in school, had breakfast, and by the time I reached home it was already 8.30 am. I set my alarm clock to 12.30 pm, half an hour later than planned. Then from 9-10.30 am, I just lay awake on my bed, tossing and turning, trying to sleep but couldn’t. At 10.30 am, I decided to postpone my waking up time to 1 pm instead. From 10.30-11.30 am, I still tossed and turned. For some reason I was really sensitive to external interference. Like when I put on my blanket, I felt warm, but when I took it off, I felt cold. When I raised the air-con temperature by one degree, I felt warm again, and so on so forth. Even the slightest sound of my flatmate hanging his clothes in the bathroom (the sound is caused by the metal hanger hitting the wall which is adjacent to my room) put me in an alert state again. Finally at about 11.40 am, I was just about to fall asleep. Just about. Then my handphone rang. !#$&@&!&. And from my experience, once I’m awakened when I’m just about to fall asleep, I won’t be able to fall asleep so easily afterwards. I might as well don’t sleep now. Besides, my experience with the English language has been that my linguistic abilities performing better when I don’t have enough sleep. For some reason, the creative side of me is able to string together more complicated and intricate sentences better when I don’t sleep enough. I hope it’s the same with Chinese. Now the only problem is that if I were to do that, I would be awake for more than 24 hours by the time Chinese paper ends. That will leave me in a severe shortage of sleep, and I doubt the 6 hour sleep I catered to give enough time for the last-minute Embedded Systems revision is enough. Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. The good thing is that I can sleep all I want after the Embedded Systems paper, since my last paper will be on 29 April. Meanwhile, I’m off to mug Chinese again. Metro TV Blooper Stumbled upon this while surfing randomly. The reporter said: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s all the news headline this afternoon, and after these messages, we will join our colleague [colleague’s name] in MetroMini, we mean Metro TV studio at Jakarta Stock Exchange. Stay with us. This is Metro TV. And this is MetroMini. This is what she said (in Indonesian): Pemirsa demikian headline news siang ini, dan setelah pesan-pesan berikut, kita akan bergabung kembali bersama rekan [nama rekan] di studio MetroMini, maksud kami Metro TV Bursa Efek Jakarta. Tetaplah bersama kami. Now we know what mode of transport she took to work. Acrylic Dance I was searching for scratchpad in Wikipedia for my EE4455 Embedded Systems revision. Unable to find it, Wikipedia suggested “dance pad” instead. It’s one of those multidirectional pads you dance on in the game Dance-Dance Revolution. Being a distracted Pisces, I clicked on the link, and saw that home-made dance pads can be made of PMMA, also known as acrylic glass. Here’s how one PMMA molecule looks like. And here’s a chain of them. Does it look familiar? Does it look familiar now? And this too… It’s no wonder that they said home-made dance pads can be made of acrylic glass. Me In Pisces I’m not exactly a big fan of astrology. I tend to think that personality traits associated with astrology were invented to make profits for astrologers, because some of the so-called traits are so generic that it can apply to anyone. So people are practically paying astrologers to tell them something that can be applied to just anyone. Just for the fun of it, I checked out the article on Pisces on Wikipedia, and see if the so-called traits apply to me. My comments are in bold. The traits are in bold as it looks nicer that way. According to Wikipedia, Pisces people have these good traits: hypnotizing charm - *stares out of screen to hypnotize my blog readers* flexible - Not at all, I can’t do sit and reach… nurturing - I like to teach, though the reverse is not necessarily true free-spirited - Of course I’m free! Need to pay meh? romantic - Nope, never read Romance of the Three Kingdoms before happy - Yatta! sensitive - Don’t criticize me can? mystical - Nah… enchanting - Haha, seriously? *starts chanting instead* smart - No comments emotional - Who doesn’t have emotions? reverent - Nah, not at all creative - I prefer Apple iPod nano loving - Maybe easygoing - Quite easy lah fun - So fun meh? spontaneous - *combusts spontaneously* sympathetic - Pathetic? Yes. Sympathetic? Not very sure compassionate - To my compatriots? Perhaps intuitive - Common sense? Think so unworldly - I’m a god? wise - Haven’t removed wisdom tooth yet open minded - Not too bad I think caring - Yes, sometimes too much devoted - Too much for my own good liberal - Looks like it humorous - I’m that funny meh? shy - Too shy innocent - Of course I’m innocent! imaginative - Let’s see, what would happen if I don’t study… understanding - Really? perceptive - Perhaps tolerant - Too tolerant benevolent - Am I? self-sacrificing - Too much artistic - A bit here and there Pisces people also have these bad traits: distracted - I’m supposed to be studying, for goodness sake! detached - I’m not having exams! What exams?! illusionary - There’s no exams, right? impractical - I need to print my notes if I want to study for exams, now! (4.46 am) gullible - My flatmate said there’s no exams for him… Means there’s none for me too? escapist - Let me just blog for a while… lazy - I think I’ll continue studying tomorrow erratic - Or should I study now? Oh look, nice game… aloof - I don’t care, I want to finish blogging before I start studying I thought aloof meant stubborn… moody - Why oh why does the library close so early and my CashCard expire at this time when I need to print my notes? fickle - Should I print my notes in the library, or the lab? confused - Library? Lab? Library? Lab? Or don’t print at all? depressed - Crap, exams really coming soon, how? I cannot finish studying like this lah… Die lah die lah, might as well don’t study at all… complicated - I don’t want to study anymore… But studying is fun. How? What about you? Pisces, hendri M1 MobileSurf - Boon or Bane? Ever since Tuesday, I’ve been having problems connecting to the Internet using my mobile phone. Being someone who is addicted to the mobile Internet, imagine my frustration when applications that require Internet connectivity stopped working, and websites that I could normally surf to were then broken. Opera Mini gave out a “Failed to connect to the Internet” error. I was sure it wasn’t Opera Mini’s fault, since it worked flawlessly the previous day. It was confirmed when Google Maps gave out a similar error. I could surf “normal” websites (such as blogs) on the phone’s default browser, but those that require authentication (i.e. username and password) didn’t work. Outlook Mobile Access for NTU’s webmail kept on asking me for my username and password without letting me in, and Twitter refused to let me send an update. One thing I noticed at that time was that there was a header and footer added to the pages. These belong to MobileSurf, a so-called enhancement for M1 users, which according to the website “intelligently customises webpages to fit different mobile screen sizes. It can also handle flash animation and multi-languages.” It “provides a friendlier way to browse the Web on your mobile phone, making it easier to go online wherever you may be.” Friendlier way my ass. First, I must admit that larger websites now load up much faster, and the feature no doubt will be useful for people who have older phones which can’t load normal websites (i.e. those not designed with mobile phones in mind) using the default browser. It can also be useful when the website is so large that it can’t be loaded in the phone. The thing is that I don’t need these features, since I am already using Opera Mini. And judging by the way a lot of websites are now broken, it’s more of an annoyance than it is useful. My hypothesis was that since the header and footer are added on-the-fly, these interfered with how the websites work. Not only that, Opera Mini and Google Maps require their own specialized data format to be transmitted correctly in order to work. Adding the header and footer might modify the data in a way that can’t be read by the applications. It’s like trying to open a Microsoft Word document in Notepad. Yes the text is still there, but it will be garbled for any practical purpose. I called the customer service hotline on Tuesday at 10.15 am, and immediately requested to disable the service. The customer service officer told me that the service was only launched at 9 am that morning, meaning that I was probably one of the first to complain about the service. At first she couldn’t pinpoint the problem, and promised to call me back. She did in the afternoon, and advised me that she would send the Internet connectivity settings to my phone. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the problem, and as I was busy doing other things, I didn’t bother to call back. Until morning today, when I realised that I couldn’t Twitter from the phone, even using the default browser (reading Twitters is not a problem, which was all I did on Tuesday). I called the customer service hotline again, and after being redirected twice to the technical support officer, I described the problem and he immediately walked through with me steps to rectify the problem. He adviced me to use the Sunsurf internet profile instead of the default Mi_World_GPRS in order to bypass the MobileSurf feature, and lo and behold, all the problems were solved. Opera Mini, Google Maps, Outlook Mobile Access, and Twitter work again. In case you’re having a similar problem, here’s the walkthrough to rectify it. I am describing the solution on a Sony Ericsson K618i. Adjust to your phone accordingly. Go to Menu > Settings > scroll right to Connectivity > Data comm. > Data accounts. Check that “Sunsurf” exists in Data accounts. If it doesn’t, go to New Account > PS data, and name it “Sunsurf”. Fill in the following data in the subsequent page: APN: sunsurf Username: 65 Password: (blank) Edit the “Sunsurf” profile, and verify/fill in the following: APN: sunsurf Username: 65 Password: (blank) Login request: Off Allow Calls: Automatic IP Address: … (yes, those are three dots) DNS Address: … Security/authentication: PAP only Data Compression: Off Header Compression: Off Go to Menu > Settings > scroll right to Connectivity > Internet settings > Internet profiles and select Sunsurf. Also go to Settings for Java and select Sunsurf. The connection should now work properly. Note that if you like the MobileSurf feature, you can enable it only for the default phone browser by selecting Mi_World_GPRS under Internet profiles, while selecting Sunsurf under Settings for Java. I hope this helps M1 customers having problems connecting to the mobile Internet after they introduced the MobileSurf feature! Still an M1 customer, hendri Permanent Head Damage I’ve just had a long talk with my supervisor. Basically, other than the relatively good news on my FYP (which I’m not comfortable with sharing), he also offered me an opportunity to do a PhD with his team. On one hand, I have an option of taking scholarship, even be paid to take PhD, so financially it’s not so much of a problem. On top of that, PhD is like a gateway to higher paying jobs, those which utilize as much of whatever brain cells left in my head before they die. PhD is also one of the options that I’ve considered, albeit admittedly one of the last. On the other hand, I’m currently feeling a bit sick of studying, so adding another 3 years seems to be quite a torture. And, knowing what happened during my FYP, there’s no guarantee that I can complete PhD studies satisfactorily. And… the biggest issue here is that I think it will be a waste of my 3 years if I don’t end up staying in academia, either as a lecturer or researcher. It also brings up the issue of overqualification, where my certificate may be too advanced for the type of job that I really want to do. I have until next Friday to decide… Any inputs, anyone? Self-Introduction (自我介绍) Ah, it’s 9 hours to my meeting with my FYP supervisor and I can only hope that he doesn’t screw me up down left right square square L1 R1. Next week I’ll be having 2 project assignments due, Chinese quiz and oral test, and the following week is the start of exams. *stressed* Let’s see if my Chinese is up to expectation… 你好！我姓温，叫温振昌。我是印尼华人。我会说印尼话，英文，马来话和一点儿中文。我今年二十三岁了。我住在裕廊西，新加坡。我的专业是电气电子工程。我念四年级。我将来想当工程师。我的电话号码是九九九。 我家有五个人:爸爸，妈妈，哥哥，妹妹和我。爸爸，妈妈和妹妹住在印度尼西亚。我的爸爸是商人。我的妈妈是家庭主妇。我的妹妹是学生。她的专业是建筑。我的哥哥住在澳大利亚。他是科学家。昨天是他的生日。 中文不好学。很高兴认识你。谢谢。 Geez, that was extremely difficult, even with the help of my lecture notes to verify the characters! Let’s see if I got it correct. According to Google Translate, what I typed was: Hello! I surnamed Wen, called Wenzhenchang. I Indonesian Chinese. I will speak Indonesian, English, Malay words and a little Chinese. I am 23 years old this year. I live in Jurong West, and Singapore. My specialty is electrical and electronic engineering. I read the fourth grade. I will want to be engineers. My phone number is 999. I have five family: father, mother, brother, sister and me. Father, mother and sister live in Indonesia. My father is businessman. My mother is housewife. I am the sister of students. Her professional construction. My brother used to live in Australia. He scientists. Yesterday was his birthday. Chinese bad school. Very pleased know you. Thank you. Hmmm, not so bad I think, though I still need a lot to brush up… It doesn’t help that I could only type the above because I know the Pinyin and I referred to my lecture notes. If I had to write all in Chinese characters, I’ll die… If only there’s such thing as Pinyin to Hanzi converter that we can use during exams… but chances are I’ll end up using all the wrong characters. Haha… Luckily we can write Pinyin for the exams. Let me know if I got anything wrong k? wenzhenchang, hendri WP 2.5 Doesn’t Work for Me! Unfortunately, despite the success of so many people, WordPress 2.5 failed on me for some reason. While I don’t wish to speculate why it could be so, I can only say that the experience was not a good one. Thanks to tanfwc for helping me in troubleshooting the error, though in the end we decided we couldn’t do much about it. I attempted to upgrade to WP 2.5 this afternoon. Thinking that it would be a smooth one like all my previous upgrades, I didn’t bother to create a back up. Unfortunately, the script to upgrade the database stalled and gave me a blank page instead. When I tried to roll back to WP 2.3.3, I couldn’t log on to the site admin, and got a password error message instead. Thinking that for some reason my password was changed during the upgrade process, I requested for a password reset. Even with the new password, I couldn’t log on to the admin panel, still getting the password error message. In case I made further mistakes, I immediately created a back up of all my database and all files in the blog, somewhat belatedly. At this stage I didn’t know that the upgrade process had totally failed, and my database was actually preserved at the WP 2.3.3 state. Nevertheless, the fact that I didn’t make the back up before trying to run the upgrade script made me panic for a while. It turned out that the reason I couldn’t log on to the admin panel of WP 2.3.3 was because for some reason, the attempt to upgrade to WP 2.5 resulted in some additional cookies that caused a “session expiry” error. Clearing my cookies solved the error, and I managed to log on to WP 2.3.3. Still curious, I attempted to install a fresh WP 2.5 (i.e. with a new database) with the intention of importing the old database later on. Unfortunately, even the install script failed with a blank page. The last thing I tried was to import the upgraded database tanfwc had helped me create, but this failed too with a blank admin panel. I finally gave up and resorted to use the older WP 2.3.3 for now. I may be trying to install WP 2.5 again in the future once I’ve found the solution… One thing I learnt today, though, was to always create backups whenever I have to modify the database, no matter how confident I am in the process. LandWaterSky-O-Rama Whee, looking forward to the event this Saturday. It’s the LandWaterSky tour, which I’ll be going with my girl friend, my boy friend, and another girl friend. Thanks to the Prime Minister’s Office for the treat! I just hope that it doesn’t rain on the day itself. 0845hrs - Gather at NTU ISC for bus transport 0930hrs - Gather at FunVee Counter located at Lau Pa Sat food centre 0945hrs - Captain Explorer Amphibious Tour (Land & Sea) 1045hrs - 1 hour FunVee City Hopper Double Decker Open Top Bus 1145hrs - Board FunVee Double Decker Open Top to Harbourfront 1210hrs - Cable Car Ride to Jewel Box 1230hrs - Refreshments at Jewel Box 1300hrs - Depart Jewel Box to NTU or Vivo City I think it’s going to be fun! Too bad the package doesn’t also include the Singapore Flyer. I’d love to see how it’s like being inside the largest ferris wheel (currently) in the world! I’ll try to do a live moblog on the day itself, so stay tuned! After the trip, I will be heading down to ACJC for the Fun-O-Rama. I was so looking forward to go at first, then hesitant knowing that a lot of things can happen between now and then, but after a while of thinking, I decided I will go no matter what. It’s my alma mater after all! I may go with the girl friend, the boy friend, and the another girl friend, but even if they can’t make it, I will still go. At least to catch up with the teachers there. Maybe I’ll drop by ACS(I) too… I heard there are a lot of new developments down there. Can’t wait to go there again after two years! I hope it’ll be a wonderful week for everyone! WALL•E! I’ve been obsessed with WALL•E for a couple of days now. Just have a look at the trailer below. Isn’t he just adorable? Here’s a quick plot taken from Apple trailers website: What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL•E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. Have a look at more trailers, especially this one. Make sure you watch the Quicktime High Definition version if available, as the quality of the videos are much higher. Take a look at the official website too, as well as Buy n Large, the (fictitious) maker of WALL•E. They even claim they have a branch in Singapore, at the following address: Buy n Large Block 8N7 Kallang Way #04-05 Buy n Large Industrial Estate Singapore 344297 Singapore I wonder what’s really at that address… I’m definitely going to watch WALL•E. Will you? Obsessed, hendri I’ve Turned 0×17! As the system clock ticked past midnight on 19 March, my age register was incremented by one and before I knew it, the value was 0×17 (one byte is enough to contain the value of the register). For the benefit of those who don’t understand, let me rephrase that sentence: I turned 23 on 19 March. Damn, I’m no longer so young now. Thanks to those who remembered, either via Facebook messages, Friendster messages, SMS, MSN messages, email, even those automated emails from the likes of Care2.com, WhoLivesNearYou.com and subscribed forums. To those who didn’t know/remember… now you do. So what did I do on that day? I woke up at 9.30, pressed the snooze button until it was 10.30, cooked instant noodles for breakfast, and went for class at 11.30-12.30. The rest of the day was spent in the Computer Engineering Lab, doing my EE4455 Embedded Systems continuous assignment. When the lecturer said CONTINUOUS assignment, he really meant it. I’ve been doing the assignment for 4 days, and I’m still not done yet. Well, blame my anal nature to have to check and recheck and recheck my 0xFF80 0000’s and 0xFF90 0000’s before I dare to put them in the report. Spent about 5.5 hours on the CA, from 12.30 pm to 6 pm, totally forgetting about my lunch. Had dinner, and then whiled some time away and started doing the report for the CA. I wrote for about 17 pages before realizing that it was 2 am in the morning and I went home afterwards. Slept at 3, and woke up at 8 this morning, and came a little late for 8.30 class. So, that was how I spent my day. How did you spend yours? 0×17, hendri Make FYP Mutual and Together Phew, finally done with the first draft of my FYP report and academic paper… Hoping that the supervisors can give some comments to improve on it before the final submission. I can only thank these two songs by Olivia Ong, which I played on repeat on IMEEM the whole day when I was doing my report. I thought that her voice sounds really nice, and the beat of the songs drove me to finish my report. Make It Mutual Make It Together Read more for the lyrics. (more…) FYP Blues… FYP sure brings out a lot of types of people. From the not bothered… … to the enterprising… … to the relaxed… … to the enthusiastic… … to those who are counting down… … to the desperate… … to those who are still trapped in game world… … to the amnesiac. Special thanks to Ivan JL and Theresia for the WLM screenshots. Amnesiac, hendri Here Comes Another Bubble Brilliant. Just brilliant. Teka-Teki Cinta (Love Puzzle) I’m in love with this song… In fact, I’ve loved Project Pop’s songs ever since they were still called Padhyangan Project, at the time when their songs were mainly spoofs of popular songs. Anyway, those who don’t understand the language may think that the song is just another romantic ballad. Even I thought so too, until I really listened to the lyrics and realised how ridiculous the song is! Here are the lyrics and the translation. I personally think the pseudo-Spanish part of the song is a real masterpiece! Jika kugenggam tanganmu When I hold your hand Dan kubiarkan kau peluk And I let you hug Hati kita bersatu Our hearts unite Jika kubelai punggungmu When I stroke your back Eh berdiri bulu romaku Eh giving me goosebumps Dan kita pun terharu And we are touched Berjalan di kiri Walking on the left Mengusap pipimu Stroking your cheek Sambil meniup ponimu While blowing your fringe Fu fu fu (blowing sound effect) Kutersipu malu I become red-faced, shy Malu deh tersipu aku Shy, red-faced I become Merona wajahku My face becomes red Tersipuku malu Red-faced I become, shy [chorus] Cinta bagai teka-teki Love is like a puzzle Muncul dalam banyak sandi Comes with many signs Cobalah artikan Try to interpret Dengan sepenuh hati With all (your) heart Bisa saja sampai mati It’s possible that until we die Kita masih t’rus mencari We’re still looking Menemukan arti Trying to find the meaning Cinta adalah misteri Love is a mystery [pseudo-Spanish] Ma quando quo pre qu rasoy (?) Ma quando quo pre qu rasoy (?) Qiseretere ti amo (?) Qiseretere ti amo (?) Etu Español-e ngaco (sounds like “Itu Español-e ngaco”) That Español is inconherent Español-e quatro Español-e quatro Artinya konyol dan katro Means ridiculous and katro (katro ~= backward, like a villager) Ma quando que bolu etu (sounds like “Makan deh kue bolu itu”) Eat that cake Artinya gak tau Don’t know what it means [chorus] Tak mungkin ku hidup tanpa dirimu Impossible for me to live without you Mendekatlah padaku Come closer to me Kita kan s’lalu bersama We’ll always be together [chorus] Bridge Building Game Argh, this game called Bridge Building Game is damn addictive… This game appeals especially to engineers, in particular civil and mechanical engineers. In the game, you’re supposed to build bridges to connect the two riverbanks. Some of the introductory levels are pretty straightforward, and you can just build a simple truss bridge. But harder levels limits your budget and you have to think out of the box in order to get the train safely from one side of the bridge to the other. The harder levels even require the train to go from one side to the other, and then the other direction as well, requiring you to give a careful thought on the symmetry of the bridge structure. As you can see, the beams are colour-marked. Red means that the beam is in compression, while blue means it’s in tension. Give the beam too much compression/tension, and it breaks, potentially bringing the entire bridge down with it. The challenge is to get a structurally-sound bridge while staying within a tight budget. In fact I think it’s more addictive than Facebook’s Battlestations game.