thoughtless ramblings

xna

2010-02-25T18:49:00.001+08:00

xna. xna. xna. xna. xna.

*roar*

out of town

2009-09-17T10:18:00.001+08:00

having slogged it out for the past few months, the moment we have been waiting for is finally here.

first time competing overseas, getting real jittery and filled with self-doubt. i have failed them one too many times, and a nagging fear inside of me wonders if i will let them down again.

regardless, let's go, ACES! go to thailand, fight our hardest, and win that self-confidence we are still lacking of!

the journey

2009-07-10T01:58:00.001+08:00

i do have to wonder, sometimes. is it the intensity of the journey that makes it so wondrous, or does the length of the journey itself convey a meaning of its own?

how do you know if it has already ended without you being aware of it at all?

helplessness

2009-06-11T22:19:00.001+08:00

swimming against an upstream current. should i even be fighting?

wheeeeeeee

2009-04-28T02:36:00.003+08:00

driking is fun1!!!

*drinking

slacking

2009-04-15T23:00:00.003+08:00

oh dear. first paper's over and i'm like, in the slacking mood already. can't seem to gather the necessary concentration for studying.

HOW.

this is definitely not a good thing.

randomness

2009-03-30T16:06:00.003+08:00

sigh. whatever am i doing here? nothing's going in; nothing's making it to permanent storage.

boredom has overcome me and after spending a whole NIGHT, watching some crappy kung-fu drama, WHICH HAS A COMPLETELY CRAPPY ending, i think boredom's winning by a fair margin.

righto.

on a different note, a recent reader (note: singular) of my blog mentioned that i did not blog about our recent victory at Cheerobics 2009, so here goes: by a wonderful mixture of hard work, blood, sweat, tears and a dash of luck, NTU ACES Team Red managed to emerge 1st Runner-up in the Open Category at Cheerobics 2009. perhaps i'm an underachiever, but when the emcee came to the Open Category prize-winners section, i was thinking to myself, "a simple third place would do, not asking for too much, am i?". needless to say, when we were announced as the 1st Runner-up, Kah Weng's war cry came to mind: "F*CKING YEA!".

even happier still: our senior team, Team White emerged as champions again, making this their fourth consecutive victory at Cheerobics. even though one of their stunts did not make it up, but they trashed the competition by a wide margin.

and off on a random note again.

WALL-E DOES NOT CARRY A F*CKING KNAPSACK. HE CARRIES A F*CKING BOX!

equilibrium

2009-02-03T02:30:00.005+08:00

after so long, the team b list is finally out.

strangely, having been so anxious and worried about the selection results, i have to honestly say that i do not feel the thrill and exhilaration that i thought i would feel.

rather, my thoughts went out to the friends that have left, or were left out. these are the friends with whom we went through months of training together, endured strenuous trainings together, suffered misery at the hands of persons unknown together. and we came through it all, somewhat closer, bonding through the experiences we had.

yet as the time drew nearer for the selection, one left, soon to be followed by another. the number of friends were lessened.

and with the announcing of the selection results today, another two fell to the evil arbitrariness that is the selection process.

at the risk of coming across as being fake, i would just like to say that i really enjoyed the times i had with the four of you. though you may no longer be in the team, but i still regard all of you as friends and i hope to see you around.

rants and raves

2009-01-20T11:54:00.002+08:00

sigh. lectures. the inavoidable bane of university/tertiary life.

sitting here, listening to a random stranger rambling on and on about a topic that i have the least notions about, and worse, having to endure jokes that are clearly meant for a different generation. well. that's just about the most i can endure.

ROAR. SCHOOL OF COMPUTING. HA. HA. HA.

crap. totally random.

and why is hard work and commitment level not synonymous with success? having put in so much work, and having dedicated a large portion of time to it, yet, you do not see the end result being on par with the amount of effort. it just sucks to have put in so much sweat and blood (literally), and someone just comes along, on an express ticket to replace you. that *really* sucks. i know that my skills and techniques suck, but those can be trained, right? it's not as if i'm totally averse to trying to improve myself.

ippt

2008-11-29T19:23:00.001+08:00

wow.

i passed my ippt.

simply amazing.

time to sleep. shag.

one down; four to go.

2008-11-14T20:08:00.001+08:00

after a certain amount of fear and trepidation, my foundation mathematics paper is finally over.

at the beginning of the semester, perhaps it was due to a lack of interest and lack of understanding, but this module was one of the modules for which i feared i would fail and re-take next semester.

but during the light-weight mugging sessions prior to the quiz, i managed to grasp a little of the part on statistics, thus reducing my chances of scoring a big fat 0, by 50%.

after the statistics and probability lectures were over, calculus took over and for the second time in my life (first time was in poly), i am profoundly happy that i took a-maths in secondary school. differentiation and integration thus did not seem that alien or unfamiliar to me, like statistics or the rest of the calculus chapters covered such as matrices and vectors.

after today's paper, i can be sure that i will not score, but at the same time, i do not think i will fail, though the possibility of that happening is still frightfully high.

well. one can only move on in the face of adversity.

such as sleeping.

such as sheer lack of understanding.

such as red alert 3.

studying

2008-11-10T11:28:00.001+08:00

<rant>

studying has to be the worst form of torture any student can endure.

c'mon, eating books and regurgitating them onto the exam scripts? hasn't anyone heard of google nowadays?

</rant>

exams suck. period.

2008-11-10T01:06:00.001+08:00

it doesn't seem much too long ago that i was having my FOC in NTU, having fun and enjoying it while it lasted.

now, with exams coming up on friday, fear and uncertainty clouds my mind. fear of not being able to pass the module, coupled with the uncertainty of my own understanding of the various modules makes me worry for my own future in NTU.

damn.

personal resolution: if i manage to scrape thought this semester, i'll never procrastinate and leaving revising for the last damn minute.

grr.

at long last

2008-04-19T21:22:00.001+08:00

well. after so many months of worrying, i finally received NTU's acceptance letter today.

can't described how relieved i am to have been accepted by them. all this time, i was mentally preparing myself for yet another crushing rejection, but i guess lady luck was smiling on me this time round.

though i'm rather ecstatic, but when i think of the journet to and from school in future, i shudder in dread.

guess there's always a price to pay for everything, eh?

~~MacBook Pro~~ NTU, here i come!

memories

2008-03-02T04:55:00.001+08:00

well. had our second GYPS '96 gathering today. was a blast being able to see so many old, yet new faces gathered around after so long.

not only did the students turn up, our two beloved teachers, Mrs Tjan and Mdm. Yap, came for the gathering as well! and after all these long years, they still looked the same as i remembered them.

arranged to meet up with wenrong @ dover mrt station around 1910 as he wasn't really sure where the crystal jade we were going to was located at. met ming jian @ outram mrt station as i was going up the escalator. turns out he was on the same nel train as i was.

after meeting with wenrong, boarded 106 to holland village and we were the earliest to get there, but not surprising since we were there early anyways. wenny was the next to arrive and after a few minutes, left with ming jian to check out the neighbouring crystal jade outlet.

standing on the sidewalk with wenrong, suddenly spotted mdm yap and mrs tjan walking past and went forward to approach them. thought they couldn't remember our names, but it was evident from their joyous faces that they still recognized us as their students.

where do you find teachers who recognize you even after not seeing you for 12 years?

after meeting up with them, went up to the second floor and 'claimed' the table wenny booked. sat around chatting and catching up till matchy arrived with ee von. after them came adeline, followed by zhiyuan, then michael and his girlfriend, felicia. eileen was the second last to arrive and yao hui got there at around 2045.

final attendance list:

mrs. tjan
mdm yap
wenny (thanks for booking table!)
eileen
ee von
adeline
felicia
michael
ming jian
wenrong
yao hui
matchy
zhiyuan
me

before eileen got there, all 12 of us squeezed around one table as there weren't any available tables nearby and we joked that eileen and yao hui would have to spend a romantic evening alone at one of the tables by the window-side. but eventually, we managed to get a smaller table adjacent to ours and we settled into a more comfortable arrangement just before dinner arrived.

dinner was à la carte style and wasn't too bad. loads of chatting and laughing and catching up all throughout dinner. just after we'd finished eating, yao hui finally arrived and we almost made him eat the leftovers. thankfully, we are all merciful people and he placed his order which came relatively quickly. it soon transpired that yao hui acutally went down to GYPS to personally invite mrs. tjan and mdm. yap to our gathering, so here a big kudos to you, yao hui. YOU DA MAN!

sat around there long after dinner until around 2230, upon which wenny left with mrs. tjan & mdm. yap to send them back home. adeline left to buy dinner for her hubby & eileen went off with ee von for some chit-chat.

the rest of us wandered around holland v for a while and finally settled down at NYDC for some dessert/refreshments. zhiyuan left us just before we spotted nydc as he wasn't feeling too well the entire evening. eileen re-joined the troupe soon after and spent the next couple of hours there just chilling. wenny was supposed to come back to look for us, but ended up back home instead. next time, we'll dispatch an escort with her to make sure she gets back to our gathering. just kidding.

finally left nydc @ 0150, to the relief of the manager, and that concluded the second gathering of the GYPS '96 batch. hope we'll have many more gatherings to come throughout the years!

with regards to the contact list, i've finished compiling them and will e-mail them out to everyone as soon as wenrong confirms his MSN e-mail address with me. the pictures i've taken are already up on facebook and i'll be looking for a suitable place to host them (probably imagehost) and will include the link in the e-mail as well.

to michael, ee von: if you want, i can meet up with you to get your photos and upload them online as well.

cheers!

warning: cloverfield detected

2008-01-21T11:34:00.001+08:00

so.

i caught Cloverfield at GVMax last friday. having bought into all the hype and what-not prior to its release, i was pretty psyched about the movie, despite it being shot in The Blair Witch Project style.

here's how my first movie of 2008 went down (AvP2 doesn't count; i watched that on new year's eve):

1900: bought seats in the sixth row from the front (Row F)

2015: got into seats and put iPaq into silent mode

2035: badass rumbling sound effects

2125: head starts spinning from all the shaking of the screen

2210: left GVmax with a serious case of motion sickness and 'WTF' thoughts running through my brain, or what was left of it anyways

to sum it all up in the words of a friend of mine (lOi), Cloverfield = epic failure.

serious.

i've never gotten motion sickness on any form of transport and yet this dumb biatch of a movie made me want to hurl my Filet-O-Fish at the next poor soul sitting in front of me. pfft.

next up - things that pissed me off:

Hud is a serious whiney S.O.B. and he ought to be castrated then disemboweled with a blunt wooden spatula. serious hate for the guy here and i couldn't stop wishing for him to be one of the first few to be killed by the godly indestructible monster (more on that later). that, and his sucky camera skills.
above-mentioned godly indestructible monster. like, what's up with that? if you tell me that carbines and machine guns can't hurt the guy, fine. i'd accept that. tanks and RPGs can't scratch it too. oh-kaaay. stretching the limit here, but digestable too. after all, we're talking about a 30-storey mutant. but B-2 bombers can't even hurt it? no f***ing way i'm gonna buy that.

if you value your sanity, go watch something else instead.

or if you're a sucker for dizziness, do yourself a favour and watch it on an empty stomach.

*hurl*

We'll always remember you.

2007-10-25T22:47:00.000+08:00

At approximately 5 P.M. today, 25th October 2007, my cat Kiki passed away.

Our faithful companion for more than 11 years, she was both a source of great frustration and conversely, great happiness.

The frustration stems mostly from the fact that as she grew older, she began to defecate and vomit around the house more often. Though this was irritating to the extreme, it did not cause us to love her any less.

An oddball right from birth, she never openly liked us to stroke her or pet her and would bite us if we did. But despite her aggressiveness, she could not disguise the purring and playful manner in which she delivered her casual rebukes.

Here is a cat who is able to crack open bones with her teeth, yet can't bite us hard enough to draw blood? Seems pretty odd to me.

Kiki was a playful cat and often lost her balance while either playing with us, or entertaining herself. Many a times we have watched her fall off from the sofa or coffee table, pick herself up and walk away with a slightly hurt pride. But nevertheless, she retained her playfulness, right up till she got sick.

It began about three weeks ago, when she lost her appetite and refused to eat or drink. Over the course of a week, her skin began to turn from a healthy pink to a shade of sallow yellow. The vet's initial prognosis said that she was suffering from liver failure and prescribed a course of medicine for her, telling us that if she did not recover after taking the medicine, we should put her down for her own good.

During this period, she became very much attached to us and tried to spend as much time with us like never before. It was as if she knew that she did not have many days left and wanted to be with us more.

I never imagined it was possible for me to cry, seeing her sleep on my bed.

A week ago, she was admitted into Mount Pleasant Animal's Hospital and had an operation done to insert a tube into her throat in order for us to administer forced-feeding. But she was too weak to recover from all that, and passed on late today afternoon.

I have been dreading this day ever since she fell ill and now that she's really gone, I can't believe that it's real.

It is never easy to lose a member of the family.

Kiki, you have been a wonderful cat. Though I do not know if you were in pain throughout, but even if you were, you were very brave. It is too late to say this now, but we will always remember you and your place in our hearts will never be replaced.

Goodbye.

the revenge of the uh.. xbox360?

2007-07-16T16:10:00.001+08:00

geeked out

2007-07-16T15:54:00.000+08:00

i have no idea how they accomplished this, but it's abso-fricking-lutely amazing.

p.s. for the clueless, it's tetris.

progress, at last

2007-07-07T23:47:00.001+08:00

at long last. after countless repetitions of bashing out python code and restarting the Zope server, i've finally managed to get my first ever Product to appear in the ZMI (Zope Management Interface).

well. one down, a few gazillion more to go. hurrah.

pace of life

2007-07-07T01:43:00.000+08:00

i'm not sure what to make of this. ever since monday, i've not been able to sleep past 9am without someone calling me to either arrange for an interview, or ask me for more details with regards to some information i requested from that particular company.

not that i'm exactly complaining, but it is somewhat of a stark contrast with my general lifestyle for the past few weeks or so where i lazed in bed till noon or sometimes even later, depending on what time i got into bed. usually somewhere between 4am to 7am.

so, sue me already.

moving along. plone.

what's it with wysiwyg tools for plone? till now, i've yet to see anything that looks remotely like a wysiwyg editor for plone interface designing. i really dread having to return to the days of bashing out html code in notepad.

*shudder*

not again

2007-07-05T01:08:00.000+08:00

dammit. the spider clan ninjas in tairon are highly irritating. they're like, even worse than anything else i've seen in NG:S thus far, including the level bosses. i mean, first off, they come in group of threes AND they're highly agile. granted, their sword attacks do not break your blocking stance, but they do have this move whereby they get past your block, grab you and stab you in the back.

ok. point noted. no more block-camping. fine.

secondly, they have incendiary shurikens. what kind of a ninja has incendiary shurikens? you deflect them, they hit a surface and explode there. what often happens is either the deflected shurikens hit a surface near you and explodes, or another shuriken does not injure you but sticks somewhere underneath or behind you and explodes. either way, your blocking stance goes down and you get stuck with a few more boom-booms or you get sashimied.

o-kaaay. lesson learned. listen for hissing noises that means you're about to experience a world of hurt. fine.

thirdly, assuming if you get stuck with a boom-boom and you go into a blocking stance, you take relatively less damage (but damage nonetheless) and your blocking stance goes down, during which you are HIGHLY susceptible to further attacks. if you JUMP however, you take even more damage than if the spider nutjobs carved you up with their swords. WTF.

some choice expletives would be highly suitable for this situation. levelled up; don't get stuck with boom-booms. fine.

fourthly, did i mention that they come in threes?

some luck, at last

2007-07-04T22:05:00.000+08:00

well, things are slightly turning up. managed to get a job, salary's not too bad, location's quite ideal as well. starting training on the 16th.

now, next on my agenda: get an MCSE and MCSA certification. they ain't cheap though. the MCSE course and exams alone would cost at least $4,500 and coupled with the MCSA? i'm definitely gonna go broke. and this on top of my plans to get a MacBook Pro...

purty, ain't she?

bah. tough choices, tough decisions. i'll have to rustle up some freelance website work if i'm to accomplish my plans. but then again, getting the MacBook will actually depend on whether i'm successful in my Big Application next year.

having said that, it's odd how those companies which provide the microsoft certification courses don't advertise their prices anywhere on their sites. only one company, New Horizons, actually does show the prices for individual certifications on their site. or .pdf, for that matter. perhaps i suck at surfing sites. i dunno.

but i was slightly surprised that HP provides certification courses. i was under this impression that they dealt mostly with hardware and software solutions. interesting.

on a different note: keyboard skills on new keyboard are, happily, levelling up. still lack the speed at which i bash out code on the traditional keyboards, but i'm getting somewhere there. thank microsoft for IntelliSense. without it, i'm, in a nutshell, fucked.

well. i'm off to go dig deeper into the enigma that's Plone. i'm definitely sinking deeper into geek-dom.

reality

2007-07-03T03:37:00.000+08:00

having been bitten by the reality bug more than once, until recently, it still did not factor into a lot of my considerations. i blithely went about my life as usual and made plans as per normal. but life has its own way of bringing a person back down to earth.

now that things are the way they stand right now, i don't have many options left open to me. with this recent setback, i've wasted yet another year, thus putting me another year behind my peers. a heavy price to pay for arrogance, for it is paid with one of the things in life that cannot be bought by money.

time.

a year.

twelve months.

three hundred and sixty five days.

eight thousand and sixty hours.

five hundred and twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes.

thirty one million, five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds.

i'm morbid, i know. but i tend to do weird stuffs in the wee hours of the night anyway.

on a lighter note, i seem to be getting slightly better with Ninja Gaiden: Sigma. initially when i started, i totally sucked at it. even the most basic of enemies could trash me to ninja heaven and back. took me a while to realise the importance and boon of using ultimate techniques. i'm still getting the hang of it, but at least i do not get horribly raped by creeps anymore.

- attempts to master wall-running technique but fails horribly and has intimate encounter with floor -

procrastination

2007-07-01T03:16:00.000+08:00

< mental type = 'note' destination = 'self' runat = 'mind' >

dim ramble as string

ramble = 'finish up work on blogger template that has been sitting in dreamweaver ever since it was in MX 2004 and now in CS3'

< /mental >

more than meets the eye

2007-07-01T01:47:00.000+08:00

wow.

perhaps not the best word i could use to describe the movie 'Transformers', but it was the first word i uttered when i saw Barricade transform. i mean, having read both negative and positive reviews about this movie, it was with mixed feelings that i stepped into the cinema. but i left it with a profound sense of child-like awe and wonder. kudos to michael bay for doing a spectacular job of bringing my childhood fantasies to life.

Optimus Prime. Jazz. Rachet. Ironhide. Bumblebee. Megatron. Starscream. Scorponok. Barricade. Frenzy. Bonecrusher. Blackout. Brawl.

all of them, brought to life on the big screen, gratifying that inner child in me. the transformation from their vehicle mode to their upright robot form is nothing short of amazing and wondrous. you can almost make out where each part on the transformer belongs on its vehicular form and the amount of detail lavished on each transformer borders on the impossible. despite the autobots and decepticons being totally cgi-generated characters, they were dosed with near-human emotions, the most prominent example of this being displayed by Frenzy, when his attempt at hacking the defence network was thwarted at the last possible second and he bashes his head against the monitor in cyber-frustration. that takes the cake.

apart from the visual eyecandy, the script itself was no letdown either. interjected with humor and the right amount of emotions coupled with the spectacular pyrotechnics, it stands out from the usual gigantic robot slugfest that most people would expect it to be (not to say that you don't get all the transformers duking it out with each other towards the end).

apart from a few loopholes (how does bumblebee get his voice actuators to work again? what happened to scorponok? wasn't Prowl supposed to be the police car?) which are very much forgivable, this is THE movie of the year to watch.

bashing out this post on my new keyboard, Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, was an experience in frustration. fingers kept going to the wrong position after having received years of conditioning on normal keyboards. d'oh. punctuation is going to be yet another problem. commas and periods getting all messed up.

gah. if all goes well, i'm going to hafta learn how to use Plone and brush up on my Java skills. hopefully by then, i'd have mastered this keyboard. else my neighbours are gonna hear some very colourful swear words emanating from my room.

"Autobots! Transform, and roll out!"

freedom

2007-06-09T16:56:00.000+08:00

ord.

the most eagerly anticipated event (at least for me) for the past two years.

looking back upon these two years, it doesn't seem as horrific as i once expected it to be. i still remember the trepidation and hesitation with which i boarded the ferry to pulau tekong for the first time. the unfamiliar surroundings and the stifling sensation of discipline and orderliness, not to mention the first taste of 'wayang', the oath-taking ceremony in the auditorium.

well. it is over and done with. pink ic retrieved and objective met.

- ff7 victory tone -

Untitled

2006-12-24T07:00:00.000+08:00

went through my Friendster account out of sheer boredom earlier on. kinda surprised to see that my OC has actually added me to his Friendster account. i have to admit, it's not something you see everyday, but the gesture is rather touching, regardless.

finally gotten my arse around to formatting my laptop and am supremely pleased with its state of 'cleanliness' now. but its a real pain in the arse to have to re-install everything from scratch, though this means that many things that i used to need but do not need now are no longer there. double-edged sword.

*commits hara-kiri with a DVD disc*

ehm. well. have fallen in love with FireFox 2 after the format. not sure why it didn't catch on to me before, though it was already installed on my laptop. perhaps its one of those things that you don't realise you had until you no longer have anything else.

hm. that doesn't really make sense. but then again, it seems to. heck.

it is somewhat of a pain to back-up my stuff from the C: prior to formatting it. i've got oodles of stuff hidden all over the system drive that i would definitely want to keep (e.g. Inetpub, SQL databases, etc.). but thankfully, i keep them relatively well-organised and stored in central locations where possible, thus hassle is much reduced. but i can't get rid of a nagging feeling that i've missed out something somewhere. blimey.

important note: never eat Delifrance's Ham & Cheese Croissant after they're more than 4 hours old -- it makes your stomach run like there's no tomorrow.

new tv's here. has HD. considering buying PS3 once its released here. oooooog. the temptations of the material world.

joseph@bedok camp is really starting to bugger my nerves. the rascal is full of shit and his level 6 ultimate is called Cold Joke. guaranteed to freeze the nuts off polar bears.

1 minute draft job with MSPaint.

on a totally un-related note: Office 2007 is rather sweet. spiffy interface and all that. fonts look good, even than the MacBold font i've been using all along.

i think i'll just go encode a few episodes of One Piece for fun.

what's a guy gotta do at 0742hrs to get time to go faster?

*goes to pee*

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166 Days to ORD

---------------------

Untitled

2006-12-13T19:22:00.000+08:00

my mind's been wandering around asp.net quite a bit. not sure why either. but speaking of asp.net, i've finally finished up with the data entry portion of my new project, leaving only the displaying of the information entered by the users. but i'm kinda sitting around on my arse on that one mainly because i have not the faintest idea as to how i'm going to go around designing the interface on that one.

hrm.

sometimes i curse the the absolute lack of any artistic skills on my part whatsoever.

*dances to the tune of "Badger Badger"*

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177 Days to ORD

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Untitled

2006-11-26T22:09:00.000+08:00

procrastination will be the death of me.

my anime re-encoding skills have just levelled up. i've finally managed to figure out why my MP4s would not re-encode successfully, although my MPEGs re-encoded without a single problem. darned ffdshow.

ht has been a pretty spiffy weekend, with me being on the beach on both saturday and sunday mornings and afternoons. but it was rather dreary at Palawan Beach, with the skies being overcast and a spell of moderate to heavy rain for about 45 minutes. but if you're the sort who doesn't like the sun at all, you'd love it.

oh well. i think i'll go work on my new asp.net project a little more.

*types furiously on keyboard*

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194 Days to ORD

---------------------

2006-11-21T22:56:00.000+08:00

wow. it's been two long months since i last updated this blog of mine. heh. well, lots has happened, and yet, nothing has happened. i'm a living contradiction.

anyways. like the orphans we are, we're now dumped to Bedok Camp II, attached to 7SIB for the brigade exercise, Ex. Voyager, next frickin' year. next year!

holy cripes.

and 7SIB is a Guards brigade (or mostly Guards). we're *so* doomed.

see, the exercise is scheduled to begin in the last week of January 2007 and will stretch into the first two weeks of February 2007. and the training is beginning in the middle of November 2006. exercising the 'ol Singaporean spirit of 'Kiasu-ness', eh?

this is just so wrong. we are being abandoned to a brigade which we do not belong to, and neither do we want to belong to, and being horribly and forcibly compelled to participate in an exercise which we have not the faintest compulsion to be in. and yet, we're here.

as the time-honoured SAF adage goes: 'LAN LAN SUCK THUMB'.

but since we are already doomed to be here, let me talk about the short time (approx. 2 weeks) we've been here, lest i overdo my bitching over spilt milk.

the upper echelon of commanders here are for the most part, fairly ok, with the grand exception of the OC (Officer Commanding) and the sniper PS (Platoon Sergeant). i shall try to devote some time to them, but do not get your hopes up as they are not much worth wasting my bashing of keys on.

the snipers here are very much friendly and chatworthy, them trying to make ourselves feel at home here (something we will never feel as long as we are in the SAF). one interesting point to note: although they are all part of the 'JC' batch, but they do not seem as... excruciatingly dumb and kill-worthy as larry seems to be. strange.

a brief synopsis of the two commanders singled out above -

OC - self-serving and somewhat discriminating
PS - sarcastic and displays an unwillingness to lose out to lesser people

we were summoned for a company cohesion activity at sentosa last friday and will try to post up pictures soonest.

blah. shoot me.

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199 Days to ORD

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2006-09-15T06:53:00.000+08:00

whoopee. i'm finally done with converting the damned webby's database to SQL2005. everything just seems to fall perfectly in place now, though something tells me i'm just being biased against Access.

as a result of severe boredom while waiting for the SQL Database Engine Tuning Advisor to complete its job, the below pictures were born:

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267 Days to ORD

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2006-09-06T07:15:00.000+08:00

Do While Monitor.Resolution = "1280 x 1024"

Me.Scream.InAgony = True

Loop

god. i miss my previous resolution to bits. it made coding so much easier without having to scroll from left to right to see the full line of code. grrrrr.

now currently burning my One Piece anime episodes onto DVDs. everything seems great, except that the re-converted (had to convert them from .avi to .mpg) files have two drawbacks:

they take up twice the space after conversion, although that doesn't matter much in the long run, since i'm burning them to DVDs anyway
each episode takes around an hour to convert, which is roughly three times the length of the episode itself; absolute insanity

my new burner is quiet though, far more so than my old CD-RW burner. hmmm. i almost miss the sound of the damned thing whining as it burned my porn data.

back to bitching about coding. been coding a new asp.net 2.0 project for the past week for so. its shaping up pretty nicely, with the themes now working properly and extraneous code removed. the only real gripe i have with it now is that i'm still using Access for the database and that pisses me off to no end. if i had my way, it's either SQL2005 or nothing.

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276 Days to ORD

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2006-09-01T23:19:00.000+08:00

wow. i never imagined i could save this much real estate by switching to a lcd monitor.

sweet. bought the Samsung SyncMaster 931BF at Comex. performs pretty good, but i miss my 1600 x 1200 resolution. stuck at 1280 x 1024 now. argh. and i can't get my Trinitron to work in tandem with my lcd monitor. crappy graphics card. strong temptation to go get a better one.

must... restrain myself... -ackkk-

*burns debit cards*

anyways. been playing with asp.net 2.0 in visual studio 2005 and it seems pretty spiffy. life as a programmer seems to be getting better. hooah.

oh crap.

i forgot to put in the dvd burner i bought at Comex. now i've got to turn my pc off, AGAIN.

leaky memory. pfffft.

2006-08-03T15:29:00.000+08:00

hmmm. writing out my blog while i'm in camp doesn't seem too bad an idea. at least it gives me a chance of keeping it semi-current.

though, i'd still have to book-out from this god-forsakened place in order for me to upload them.

augh. my ideas usually end up like stillborn infants. bloah. to hell with it.

after all, idle hands are the devil's workshop. as is very evident from the below photos:

major crisis. i was actually unable to achieve a silver during yesterday's IPPT. holy crap. talk about stunning achievements; this is definitely one, but of the lowest order. i'd managed to score four points or more for each of the static stations, putting me in pretty good shape for getting a gold, assuming if i manage to clock a timing of 9:44 and below for my 2.4KM run.

and i nearly made it. with huge emphasis on the word 'nearly'.

breakdown:

i needed to complete each of the three 800M rounds with a timing of 3:15 and below. at the end of my second round, my total timing stood at 6:04. but if you've seen cars running over spiked speed strips, you have a general concept of what happened to me on my third round: i deflated like a leaky balloon, leaving me with a less-than-decent timing for my run.

extremely saddening.

off-topic note: i'm not sure why, or how it was related to me at that particular point of time, but while i was struggling my miserable ass through the last round, i had this vivid hallucination of Darth Vader floating beside me, telling me that he finds my 'lack of faith in the Force disturbing'.

so i'm a complete nerd.

sue me.

2006-07-19T15:09:00.000+08:00

yay. i've survived yet another series of torture attempts of the most gruelling and sadistic in nature possible to the typical NSF: lectures.

oog.

time for practical lessons.

whoopee.

2006-07-18T13:40:00.000+08:00

woah. i'm must be bored out of my skull to actually write my blog down.

POI TTT (Train-The-Trainers) course = LCC (Lecture Confidence Course). oog.

lectures totally suck. most especially SAF lectures. if you're going to give a lecture, then at least have the damned courtesy *NOT* to read from the slides directly. a more ideal option would be to read from a prepared set or notes or something. anything but the slides.

and no, a printed hardcopy of the slides does not count.

jeez. the hypnotism of powerpoint slides.

i'm not even sure i want to be here in the first place. the impossibly stale lecturers are all repeating what we've heard at various points in time at Maju Camp, just that it's more formal in nature, but it still gives me the 'been there, done that' feeling. maybe i'm just ranting, but i'm sure the frustration stems from the helplessness i'm feeling while listening to them mumble on.

droning, more like it.

i initially thought that as long as we are able to escape from the dreaded COC parade, i would be more than willing to come for this TTT course. but i'm beginning to wonder if the parade would have been the lesser of the evils.

very much the devil or the deep blue sea, don't you think?

the spectrum of ranks here though is really broad, ranging from a minimum rank of 3SG all the way up to CPT. more interestingly, our next RSM is in this course as well. given what i've seen of him so far, life *MAY* be slightly better with him around. but i could be hugely and drastically wrong.

*shudder*

moving on: cookhouse food.

though the cookhouse here at clementi camp has an odd smell about it, but the quality of the food is markedly better than Maju's, though the default quantity leaves much to be desired. but the canteen... well. let's just say that it needs a little bit of improvement, somewhere, somehow.

yeh.

even as i write this, i've got this CPT up on the rostrum trying hard, but failing miserably, to capture his audience (that's us!) in some light banter as he so charmingly tries, with huge success, to hypnotise the whole lot of us into visiting La-La Land. he's absolutely amazing. wow.

off the topic of lectures for the time being. it's been quite a while since i last took a bus early in the morning. and i mean really early. probably around three years, in fact. i've totally forgotten how relaxing it is to leisure saunter to the bus stop and actually being able to carry out the physical act of boarding the bus instead of being forced to translate that act into an activity resembling a riot. some of our fellow human beings apparently seem to think that the bus would help them get reincarnated faster.

oh my. dear CPT Rosnan is encouraging us to get physically violent.

Mentos is very quickly becoming my best friend.

someone, please save me.

2006-07-02T10:31:00.000+08:00

whoa. i slept through the entire saturday. entirely enjoyable and guilt-inducing. but i guess that's what you get for watching dvds from 10pm to 7am. but i'm not complaining. *grin* the latest remake of The Return Of The Condor Heroes is very much watch-worthy, although not many fans of the classic novel will appreciate the rendition of Yang Guo in this remake, as his portrayal comes across to many as childish and immature in many scenes. but still, i find him refreshing as it shows Yang Guo in a new light. very pretty Xiao Long Nu too. *swoon*

moving on. our problems with the 'dog' may or may not be over, depending on how things turn out in the days to come. after a few discussions with our PC finally culminated in a showdown with the 'dog' and frankly, nothing really came out if it. being the cynical bastard that i am, i don't really think that things will change for the better. well. i'll just take things as they come.

next up, our long-awaited promotion to 3SG. i'm rather dis-illusioned right now and i don't know if i really want this rank at all. after all that has happened, i really wonder if i'm just better off with being one of the men instead of assuming the role of a commander.

sigh. maybe i'll just get out of the house and get some fresh air to clear up my thoughts.

*pfft*

2006-06-17T19:44:00.000+08:00

hooah. quite a few interesting things happening lately.

first off. my new mouse: razer diamondback (plasma). its sensitivity and performance is much better than any mouse i've ever used. the very first time i plugged it into my lappy, i had to turn down the mouse sensitivity by almost two-thirds of what it used to be. after installing the driver software i pulled from the razer site, i was very much impressed with the amount of sensitivity tweaking the razerConfigure utility provided. even more impressive is the ability to adjust the sensitivity on-the-fly, even when in-game.

it glows a pleasant shade of electric blue too. *grin*

finally booked out today after 3d/2n of FIBUA (or Fighting In Built Up Areas) training. quite fun, i would say, if not for the endlessly identical drills that we had to keep performing. but that was only on the first day and half of the second. we started off at Neo Tiew but later moved on to Sarimbun on the second day. Sarimbun was much more fun than Neo Tiew was since we were actually able to play out a mini-mission of sorts. it involved clearing a row of three 'buildings' in sequence and the team that performed the best would get to play the role of the 'enemy' in a later platoon attack on the same row of structures.

my team somehow managed to do better than the rest and we deployed in various positions in the structures. the platoon attack ended up with us, clustered in a container situated away from the main structures, holding the OC hostage.

extremely fun, while it lasted.

the exercise concluded in a live firing session in which we basically just fired a couple of rounds at figure. 11 targets at almost point blank range. very much a waste of time, in my sincerest of opinions. but it was done anyway.

i've been hard at work on HOMMV for the past few weeks and i'm loving every bit of it. well, almost every bit. the graphics are fabulous and the gameplay is great, but the scripted AI does seem somehow overpowered at times and can be ridiculously hard to defeat if you wait too long in certain missions.

it's time to go punish my new mouse some more.

2006-05-28T00:00:00.000+08:00

ooog. no mood to blog the past few days. not sure why either.

it's been pretty boring, anyhow.

caught X-Men III on wednesday evening. pretty flashy show, though the storyline wasn't exactly thrilling. but things were pretty fast-paced, thus causing the show to end about 30 minutes earlier than its predecessors.

next up would be Superman Returns, i guess.

after that rushed back to camp for COS duty for thursday. ack. sucky. but at least it isn't on a weekend. that's something to be thankful for, in any case.

survived through thursday, it being a relatively quiet day as compared to my other days as COS.

literally rushed out of camp on friday morning and basically lobo-ed the whole day away.

Heroes of Might and Magic V finally finished and i'm glad to say i'm not disappointed with it. graphics are wonderful and the gameplay seems good.

on other fronts, Windows Vista is rumoured to be slipping further from its previously announced release date. if this goes on any further, i'm most probably going to end up with a Mac and install Boot Camp on it instead. pfffft.

2006-05-19T14:03:00.000+08:00

oog. being sick is never fun, especially when it all comes together:

fever (38.1 °C)
sore eyes
sore throat, in conjunction with
cough
running nose

sigh.

food is now bland and tasteless, thanks to the fever.

my body feels like jell-o, no doubt due to a wonderful combination of my cough mixture and flu medicine.

but at least i get to come home instead of staying in that god-forsaken place, also conveniently known as Maju Camp.

i'm still pondering whether i should go for the Advanced Trainfire Package, a.k.a. ATP for those in the know. officially, i've got two days of ATTN C and thus, i'm medically exempted from tomorrow's ATP. but the idea of being attached to another company for my ATP is not very tempting.

after ranting about how my NUS application was not processed after eons, its status was finally changed to Application Denied.

crappy life, huh?

2006-05-14T00:29:00.000+08:00

i'm in a state of shock, actually.

just watched Poseidon at Lido. it was... watery. i dunno. maybe it's not to my taste, but i'm surprised that i forked out $9.50 to watch a couple thousand people get drowned/burned/electrified to death. not my idea actually. i wanted to catch M:I:III, but my folks wanted to watch big-cruise-ship-sink instead. mehhhh.

but at least i got to see the trailers for X-Men III and Superman. on my to-watch list:

Superman

X-Men III

The Da Vinci Code

Silent Hill seems like a pretty decent movie though. i may opt to go for that too. depends.

i'm pretty nostalgic for old games now. i'm not sure why. been playing Red Alert 2 and Transport Tycoon Deluxe. i'm as happy as a lark now. but on its way is Heroes of Might and Magic V. yay.

2006-05-12T03:05:00.000+08:00

you never know how wonderful sleep is until you try sleeping from 2am to 4pm on the same day. hooah. call me a pig; it just feels great.

spending the past two days at home drifting around, enjoying the temporary taste of freedom, mainly because the coming weekend will be burnt in the holy name of ATP. my ass.

on a totally unrelated note, i re-discovered the joys of DOS gaming today, specifically Major Stryker, a game which i totally loved as a kid. ditto to Alien Carnage.

2006-05-10T01:42:00.000+08:00

sleepless at 1.40am. i know i'm tired, but i can't get to sleep. i'm not even sure i should be sitting in front of my lappy.

bah. all this anxiousness caused by the waiting for my NUS application result is getting to me. i sent in my application thingy in feb but until now, my application status is stuck under Application Received. well at least if you're going to reject me, can't you do it faster and spare me the anguish?

sheesh. i'm gonna go apeshit soon.

bed. here i come once again.

2006-05-09T23:40:00.000+08:00

ooog. Blogger took heck of a long time to load tonight. three possibilities

knee-jerk reaction to blame blogger
my internet connection is on the blink
lappy needs to see a doctor (or undertaker)

sigh. the perils of spending too much time in front of the computer.

oh heck. it's officially over.

the 65th BSC is now a memory of the past.

yay.

never thought i'd take so much pleasure in saying that. our CO actually bothered to come down to our certificate presentation ceremony. i'm impressed. but anyhow, he was a general naysayer of doom. i think he took perverse pleasure in telling us that after we settled down back in maju camp, we would be soon deployed as POI troopers. he had the cheek to ask us why we were so tensed up. grrr.

after all was checked and accounted for, it was finally someone else's turn to watch us do our out-processing and leave SIW. mildly satisfying, to say the least.

on the tonner back to camp, i mulled over a few things, thinking back on the course itself and what would my remaining NS liability bring me. i'm usually the sort who leaves fate to work its own diabolical terrors, but i just couldn't help but idly wonder.

maju camp: a place of old buildings and old farts, but yet, a familiar environment. once the stores were all returned, i proceeded straight to punish my throbbing nose by standing smack in the middle of my dust-infested bunk.

i swear i came within an inch of taking a parang to my nose...

obstinately refusing to bow before the opposition in true PAP style, i proceed to burden my cupboard once again with my not-so-worldly posessions. it would seem odd that a smaller cupboard somehow seems more luxurious than a bigger one. don't ask me about that. i have trouble figuring out my thoughts while my nose is attempting to commit ritual suicide. spent the next couple of hours counting spiders scurrying about before finally getting the green light to change to civilian clothes.

as the wise ones say: out of the frying pan and into the fire. we gathered in the platoon office for a talk with our PC and new PS. goddammit. the two of them are a match made in heaven. they have the exact same gung-ho attitude towards army life. very depressing to hear the both of them tag-team and squash our freedom like a bug. in short: our life is not going to be good. argh. if i had known this was coming when i was back in SIW, i would have hope for the course to drag on longer.

currently, i'm on off till thursday, but since friday is a public holiday, gonna book in on sunday. next week, our weekend will be greedily consumed by ATP. urk. life sucks.

2006-05-07T23:33:00.000+08:00

it's kinda dumb: them making us book in on one day, and booking out on the other. but then again, i don't think i would like to get stuck in SIW for too long a period of time anyway.

field ranges are... peculiar. they seem to be an exercise in expending rounds.

can't hit the target? draw more rounds and go again!

that seems to be the main idea.

went down to beach road today to get the 'SNIPER' tag sewn on to the left side of my jungle hat and my name on the right. the tag is fine, but my name seems a little bit too small. but at least it's not eye-catching: the guy before me had the words 'ARCTIC FOX' sewn on in bright orange on his jungle hat too. but i think he's from recce.

headed down to old airport road in an attempt to have rojak for my lunch. i swear it's a goddamned conspiracy. two times i've been there and on both occasions, the store remains stubbornly closed. i know that it's not there just to serve me solely, but... it's just spooky.

even the curry puff store uncle decided to go on vacation with the rojak ah pek.

*rants*rages*

ended up having pizza at Scott's Pastamania. i think the staff there are starting to recognise my face. oh woe.

2006-05-06T17:48:00.000+08:00

at long last, my sniper course is coming to an end. it has been an ardous nine weeks, stuck at SIW.

contrary to my own expectations, i have actually managed to complete the course successfully and attain my sniper marksman badge. i do not usually believe in a higher being, but miracles like these make me wonder.

in any case, i'm finally returning to maju camp, and hopefully back to our old lifestyle. but with our PS gone, i guess it would be most unlikely.

won't stop praying though.

on an entirely unrelated note, i hate uploading pictures in friendster. darned php script keeps causing my browser (regardless whether it's IE or firefox) to time out. and thus i persist in uploading the same picture and i end up with a whole gallery full of the same picture.

*curses and swears*