Repeated Monotony

monumental musings from insight gradually gained in the past few months

2009-03-07T23:46:00.001+08:00

The best thing to have happened to the internet: Wikipedia
A mixed blessing: Google
The bane of the web: Online Advertising, and the selfish, greedy businesspeople that follow.

Fin.

Generate readable content, you say? No problem!

2008-09-11T02:06:00.003+08:00

After working hard at setting up niche blogs and such, all I wanted to do was to get some rest. But the blogs needed content, something that was hard to make, and very time consuming to produce, otherwise expensive to buy. I needed content and lots of it. And the content had to be unique.

There exist on the internet multiple programs that can do this task to a certain degree. I won't link to any of them, but one of them is called Blog Content Wizard. Just do a search on google for it. There are, of course, article rewriters and spinners as well, but these either do a poor job or take a long time to make your content.

So what do I do? Well, I'm a programmer. And when faced with a programming task, I jump to my feet and begin solving it! If only online business was as easy. (Sigh).

Anyway over the past few days I've more or less succeeded in my goal, and produced a piece of software that can generate unique content for use online. I wrote it in VB.NET because it was a simple and easy to use language plus it had plenty of build in functions which I found useful (particularly string splitting). I managed to develop an application that will take in phrases from a file I specify (I wrote my own phrase dictionary) and mix and mash them to form new and unique content based on a few keywords I specify. To make it even better, I developed and included spinner technology similar to the one found in Jetspinner. This means that {many|a large number of|quite a lot of} variations of {a sentence|a string of text} can be produced {quickly|with great speed} based on a list of {options|choices}. I also added the ability to load and join multiple dictionaries of phrases together. Combining these together, I get something like this:

I promise your life will improve greatly. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, don't you? Frankly speaking, The answer is surprisingly simple. Once you have fully understood Yellow Bananas, you won't go back. Believe me when I say this. The previous week, I compared some options for anyone who want to find Yellow Bananas.

Well, half a loaf is better than no bread. Thats the way things are. That is merely my kind opinion. Don't sit on the fence. There is just an overwhelming about of things to write about Red Apples. I believe that I know enough on the subject of Red Apples. Like I already mentioned, keep it in memory.

Now that may sound pretty crappy to normal readers, but it's gold if you compare it to the crap most content generators spew out. Now I'm slowly improving on it by expanding the dictionary. If all works well, I may have a whole lot less work on my hands. Who knows, I may even be able to market this product.

Another slice of life

2008-08-31T13:12:00.001+08:00

Hello everyone once again, surprised to see me? I wouldn't be surprised if you were, after all I haven't been posting here frequently. But i'm here today to announce what a few days of hard work, an old domain and some online help have produced...

If some of you remember, I bought the domain qfwr.com over a year ago. Back then my plans for it were the same as my plans for it now, create a free, easy-to-use URL shortening service that people could use create redirects to shorten their long urls. Of course back then I didn't have the resources or the motivation to actually carry out the project to completion.

Fast forward a year, and I've finally completed it enough to be released. Hopefully with this service I will be able to make a couple of extra dollars to "tide through the days" so to speak. With luck and God willing, qfwr might just be the thing that helps me gain a foothold in this harsh online world.

Until then...

So come on and visit it at qfwr.com. If you like, and I would appreciate it if you do, please link to the website at http://qfwr.com. I really really need all the support I can get.

Back after a month

2008-08-04T20:06:00.003+08:00

If you thought my 3D tank was good, then this will blow your mind.
Behold, after many hours of hard work in front of the PC...
My assignment 2 in 3D modelling...

A 3D APU (Armoured Personal Unit) I modelled and textured in just a little under 100 hours.

Now to start the rigging...

Mostly Madness, Happy 4th of July.

2008-07-04T16:37:00.006+08:00

Lionel, Sam and I built and launched more rockets after YA on last saturday. Lots of crazy fun firing them off at night, especially the loud bangs. Here's the updated table of the rockets so far.

Rocket Name	Date of Construction	Rocket Type	Date of Launch	Status
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	3 Stick, Aluminium Foil Bundle, No Nozzle	Friday, 13 June 08	Successful Failure, Flew but disintegrated, resulted in burn injury to self.
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	4 Stick, Aluminium Foil Bundle, No Nozzle	Saturday, 14 June 08	Failure, Did not launch, awesome burning.
Pioneer I	Sunday, 15 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Monday, 16 June 08	Complete Success, Successful launch. Rocket was not found.
Pioneer II	Monday, 16 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Wednesday, 25 June 08	Complete Success, Perfect Launch. Rocket was not found
Pioneer III	Monday, 16 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Partial Success, Good launch although rocket fragmented in mid-air into a few pieces.
Exodus I	21 – 22 June 2008	16cm Cardboard Cylinder, 8 Stick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Failure, Resulted in massive explosion and shockwave following hull rupture.
Pioneer IV	26/27 June 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Uncomfirmed, Lound bang and rocket disappeared. Possible launch or explosion.
Pioneer V	26/27 June 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Uncomfirmed, Lound bang and rocket disappeared. Possible launch or explosion.
The Sam Rocket	Saturday, 28 June 08	9cm Cardboard Cylinder, 19 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Partial success, Launched with many colorful trails, lost stability in midair and starting spinning.
Feeder I	Saturday, 28 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Failure, Rocket was a dud.
X-S1	Friday, July 04, 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, T-Pressed Nozzle	N.A.	To be Launched
X-S2	Friday, July 04, 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Open Uncrimped Nozzle	N.A.	To be Launched

A few awesome videos to accompany the text...

Exodus I, Exploding with a huge bang.

The Sam Rocket, which was the last rocket we let off, concluding the night's events in a finale shower of sparks. 4th of July comes early!

Speaking of which, today is 4th JULY! To commerate this wonderful occasion, which I have absolutely no part of and does not involve me :\, I intend to launch off the two experimental rockets I made today, X-S1 and X-S2. But the red rocket's glare always brings a wonderful feeling to us all, doesn't it :D

The final flight of Pioneer II

2008-06-25T23:29:00.003+08:00

Rocket: Pioneer II
Date of launch: 25th June 2008
Time of launch: 10:30pm
Location: Undisclosed, Relatively Empty Area
Observers: My dad and I

Like all rockets of the "Pioneer" edition, this rocket is of small stature. Composed of a mere 4 sparklers, it can fit into the nose of a regular plastic bottle, from which, in fact, it was launched.

Pioneer II is almost identical to it's predecessor, Pioneer I, except that it had a more balanced nozzle and a lower stability stick, which proved effective in stabilising it's flight (since it flew much farther and straighter than Pioneer I).

It was a cool wednesday night, and my previous launch site was locked up, so I launched the rocket Pioneer II in a different location. This launch proved to be more successful than the previous, with maximum altitude well over 30 feet. The rocket started it's fiery launch at nearly 90 degrees angle, but soon went slightly sideways (about 80 degrees) after the propellant was consumed. Last seen of Pioneer II was a smoldering trail of some rapidly descending bits some 10 metres away. The remains of this rocket were never recovered.

For the first time, here is a video of the launch! Observe the rocket frame by frame as it blasts off into the night sky and takes it's place among the stars before falling back to a cold, hard earth, never to move again.

Video is in portrait, so please tilt your head 90 degrees. Thanks.

Touching the skies

2008-06-22T22:18:00.004+08:00

Rocket Name	Date of Construction	Date of Launch	Status
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	Friday, 13 June 08	Successful Failure, Flew but disintegrated, resulted in burn injury to self.
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	Saturday, 14 June 08	Failure, Did not launch, awesome burning.
Pioneer I	Sunday, 15 June 08	Monday, 16 June 08	Complete Success, Successful launch. Rocket was not found.
Pioneer II	Monday, 16 June 08	N.A.	To be launched
Pioneer III	Monday, 16 June 08	N.A.	To be launched
Exodus I	21 – 22 June 2008	N.A.	To be launched

A table of my past, present and planned rocket launches. Here are some photos.

Before proceeding:

You agree that by proceeding (to view the photographs on this web page), you will not attempt to duplicate any parts of the devices shown below. Also, you agree not to store, distribute, or modify any of the photos shown below. You may not use any of these photographs as incriminating evidence against me, by proceeding to view them you agree to indemnify me from any legal liability that may arise from these photos. You also assume fully legal responsibility for any consequences that may arise from attempting to duplicate the devices and procedures depicted here.

If you do not agree, you may not proceed to view the photographs. By proceeding you agree to and accept all of the terms mentioned above.

=============================

This is the second unnamed rocket, shortly after construction.

The remains of the second unnamed rocket after its failed launch.

Pioneer I completed rocket. Skewer attached for stability in flight. It is not a firework.

Pioneer II and III, and Exodus I.

I am aware that by posting these photos I am just asking for trouble for myself. But I am so awed by the beauty of this science that it is a risk I am willing to take.

But I can safely say that I have taken all necessary steps to prevent probable hurt or injury to other people, and have taken precautions to prevent probable danger to others, such as carrying out the experiment in an area without combustible matter, ensuring that the launch site is clear and that everyone else is a safe distance away, and wearing a fire proof jacket when lighting the rocket's fuse (except for the first two rockets). Also take note that the rocket does not have any payload and does not explode, nor does it produce any pyrotechnic effects, the only visible output is the light produced from the combustion of the propellant in the rocket. Therefore, it is technically not a firework either.

The price to pay

2008-06-13T19:00:00.002+08:00

Earlier today, the two hours I spent working on a photoshop assignment for diploma plus was totally wasted when I accidentally closed the window containing the image I spent two hours working in (go ahead, laugh). It was a lousy mistake, not saving at all during the entire time. I have no choice but to redo the entire thing from the start. And it's entirely my fault.

But it gets better - The nonsense of this holiday is building sparkler rockets. My previous attempts at such feats of rocketry usually resulted in a little melted pile shooting out sparkles. Well today I decided to make something different. Rather than grinding up the sparklers and tamping the powder into aluminium foil tubes, I tightly wrapped three of them in multiple layers of aluminium foil (which surprisingly, held better than I expected). The nozzles were the gaps between the sparklers. The top was sealed, and I made a crude wire platform on which to launch it.

I have no photos since I didn't bother taking any, and I've already disposed of the remains of the rocket. I will, however, take some photos the next time I attempt such a feat again.

T minus 15 seconds - Rocket on launchpad and ready for launch. All nearby flammables are removed as a safety precaution (which would prove invaluable later). I use a lighter to light a single sparkler which I will use as a match to ignite the propellant.

T minus 7 seconds - Eight seconds later, the sparkler has reached ignition temperature and combusts into a bright shower of sparks. I place the lighter aside.

T minus 5 seconds - I place the lighted sparkler next to the short "fuse" for my rocket which in reality is just the ends of the sparklers sticking out of the crude foil tube.

T minus 3 seconds - Due to the high temperature, the propellant rapidly ignites. What happens next happened so fast, it was almost a blur.

T minus 1 second - The tiny and closely packed sparkler fuse burns out in a mere 2 seconds, faster than I expected. I don't even have time to get back.

T minus 0 seconds - The propellant has reached the "nozzle" of the rocket. A bright flash floods the area. "This can't be good", I think.

T plus 0.5 seconds - I hear a loud fizzing sound.

T plus 1 second - The rocket takes off. My fear turns to amazement.

T plus 2 seconds - The rocket hits my arm and lands on the floor. I am surprised that the rocket actually worked even though it flew chaotically.

T plus 3 seconds - The remains rocket is smoldering on the floor. The pungent smell of ammonia fills the air. My senses kick in, and a sharp, searing pain fills my arm, and I hurry off to treat my 2nd degree burns.

I never expected the rocket to actually liftoff, and it did. Therefore, I consider this experiment a success.

To whom it may concern: The sparkler powder is not used for improvised explosives. They are used a propellant for rockets. These rockets are not weapons. They are intended to fly into the sky, not to injure people.

A stitch in time saves nine

2008-06-03T01:34:00.000+08:00

Spent the entire day trying to clear my laptop of a very persistent and irritating piece of malware. I've been looking for a no compact disc "patch" for caesar 3 ever since I upgraded to version 1.0.1 and have had little success until then, all the "patches" i found were only for version 1.0. Finally I found this link from a suspicious looking website. By then, I had exhausted all other possible options such as trying to make a mini image, copying various files... nothing worked. I knew if I really wanted to I could copy the entire image from the CD but that would take up too much space. So I downloaded the "patch". This patch was probably the fifth or sixth one that I tried and my guard was down. My antivirus was outdated and I did not bother to scan it online ( I did so for the first few ones). Opening the file, a command prompt popped out... and stayed longer than it should. A feeling of dread filled me as I noticed multiple popup windows appearing across the screen. Spyware. Adware. Malware. The scourge of the internet, and one of the things I detest. Little message boxes started popping out and balloon bubbles containing ads floated up from the taskbar. It was going to be a long, long day.

Here I am, nearly 12 hours later with my PC finally clean again (hopefully). The malware deleted all my system restore points and fixing it was tricky. But I finally managed. Lesson learned: Prevention is better than cure. And now, it's time to go to bed.

Tank you

2008-05-28T00:22:00.003+08:00

At last, after a couple of hours doing texturing, my tank is fully texture mapped. For your information, all textures were created by myself with photoshop. No external images or brushes, just some good filter usage, brushing and filling. Behold, the German Panther in it's full glory (or at least about the best it's going to get).

Just following suit

2008-05-22T22:40:00.004+08:00

If two people wrote something, it might be worth reading. If three people wrote something, it must be really good.

So here I am, after a really long break, coming back just for a slice of the action and the fun in following suit.

It's really really overdue but what the hey, last sunday we (me, hoho, lionel, sam and jeanie) finally made our trip to St. John's island! It's really small if you look at it from the map, i think the whole island takes up less and one page in the street directory, but on the island itself it actually feels quite sizable. The island used to be a detention and quarantine camp, so there's a lot of fenced up zones with sentry posts and barbed wire, though it's supposedly no longer in use. Then again, who can tell? The government is probably doing some stuff there that they don't want the public to know about. Who cares though.

The island is your stereotypical storybook tropical paradise. First time I’d ever been there, and I would have taken a lot more photos had my phone camera battery not given up on me. The beach was just so undisturbed and lush and wonderful. The sea was really clear and sparkled in the sun. The grass was so soft and smooth, like a putting green. Lionel brought a hammock and I made sandwiches. It was really a day just set for rest and relaxation, though ironically, I found it tiring. But it was truly worth it and I’d do it all over again if I had the chance. Took a walk with lionel and for the first time in my life, I actually got to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of nature. Tropical islets covered in lush green flora, coconut trees and mangrove swamps. There was this part where the ground was covered in thousands of brilliant yellow leaves and the trees with red flowers, it felt so surreal. It's natural beauty easily surpasses any beach or park found in mainland singapore. My only disappointment was the mosquito bites, which still plague me up till now. Leaving the island, we got to see a magnificent sunset coloring the sky a rich orange and the waters sparkling golden.

Everyone else has posted the exact same photos in one order or another, but for the sake of amusement and completeness I shall dutifully post them here as well.

Just arrived mid-morning after a 30 minute ferry ride.

At the jetty.

The only official entrance to the island, and we proceed...

....but oops, suddenly it's time to go already with no photos of the actual outing itself.

Sunset and goodbye.

Is it already nearly june holidays? Feels like the term started not too long ago, and its already week 6. Time really flies. I just realised from hong en today that the runescape economy has been totally scrapped, making the game more like Soloscape or some social gathering game instead of a real MMORPG. I’m really glad I quit the game ages ago, it’s just getting from good to bad to really really horrible. I’ll admit merchanting has it’s risks (like my loss in cabal), but it also makes the game dynamic and interesting. A MMORPG without trading and economy is like a car without wheels, it’s comfy and safe, you won’t get hurt, but it’s pretty boring and useless for all purposes that matter.

Anyway i've got to finish up all my remaining projects by the week's end.

P.S. We did have lunch on the island! Yummy white bread with a generous spread of some mildly radioactive something goop! If it looks like spinach, it must be as good as spinach!

P.P.S. The above photo is not edited... sort of

P.P.P.S. I might be having you on. Or not. Heh.

How do you know

2008-05-08T21:45:00.001+08:00

Third Day - How do you know

I've got my doubts and I've got my questions
It's nothing new 'cause I've seen them before
I've had my share of false revelations
It always seems they're knockin' on my door

You said that I should see the light
But sometimes faith is blind

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

You're thinking that you've got all the answers
You've got my situation figured out
But you're only seeing part of the picture
There's so much more that you don't know about

And here you come to speak your mind
But I'll say one more time

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

Welcome to the Real World

2008-05-02T22:12:00.003+08:00

It's the end of week three of the new semester and things are as boring as ever. C++ programming is bad once you get to know the higher level languages, interesting how I found it fun last year in innova. Well anyway right now I'm studying 3D Modelling and here's what I'm going to do for my assignment:

Taadaa, a 3D model of a WWII German Panther Tank. It's meant to be low polygon so it renders fast in games, so don't expect too much detail. At 1040 polygons, this is some 3D eye candy. Don't let the simplistic looks fool you, slip on a good texture and this tank will be perfect for a casual java game.

Interestingly, the main frame takes up only around 200 polygons! The bulk of the polygon count comes from the tank tracks and wheels. Thats the bane of polygonal modelling - circles.

In case you're wondering what I used to model this tank, its a program called 3ds Max (also known as 3D Studio MAX), a nifty 3000 dollar application that will eventually be used to create the matrix. Fortunately, this program is available in the school computer labs for me to use. Unfortunately, it cannot be legally transferred to my laptop via the school. READ: Legally and school.

Anyways, here is the photograph of a real panther tank which I used as a reference for my model. (For all I know it could be itself a photorealistic 3d model, thats the thing which those high end models these days, which such hyperreality you cannot differentiate the real from the unreal anymore...)

I'm pretty sure this photograph is authentic, though.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Thats all for now. Are you disappointed? Heh.

Circles and Lines

2008-04-16T21:44:00.002+08:00

It's been a really long time since I last wrote here. Just two days short of a month, to be precise. Holidays are over, and everything I ever wanted to do during the holidays has not taken shape. In fact, I'd say i've achieved practically nothing meaningful and wasted the past two months away.

School started and this is the end of the third day already. It's tiring and I can only expect more work in the days to come. I did manage to get into diploma plus, which means I take double diplomas and have to attend night classes. My bag is heavy, my laptop is cluttered and i'm pretty exhausted.

My chilli plant is growing well, far better than i expected it to be. When i planted it I thought to myself "this will symbolize my online venture into monetary blogging". Well that stuff is all in shambles and totally another one of my unfinished abandoned projects.

Sigh.

How to Get Properly Indexed by Google

2008-03-18T12:38:00.002+08:00

Alright I've been tinkering and experimenting for the past month and a half and have finally gotten an idea of how google has been working recently, and I thought I should share my discoveries.

Anyway for those of you who don't already know, I've been working on this thing called niche blogging, which is basically setting up a blog with a particular focal point, slapping on relevant posts that are keyword optimized for search engines and trying to make money with adsense. I can't say i've had much success, but there again I'm a stubborn/determined person and I won't/can't give up that easily.

I can't dispense advice on how to get top rankings, because hell, I can't do that myself. But I can tell you how I get my blogs indexed.

Google has been recently following this pattern, which I'll describe to you. Basically, You make a blog and fill it with posts. Googlebot will find your blog via a backlink, so gathering a few will help your blog get crawled by googlebot faster (note that it doesn't mean it will be indexed). Never, never add your blog with the google addurl page, it sucks big time and is completely useless. A quick way to get a few backlinks is to link to it from an existing blog, or if you don't have one, try do-follow commenting, meaning leaving good relevant and meaningful comments on related blogs which are already in the index and allow do-follow in the comments (DON'T OVERDO THIS OR YOU WILL REGRET). If you don't know what do-follow is, it's basically the absence of it's opposite, the no-follow. No-follow is just a link relation telling google not to credit the link, making the link effectively useless.

Do not dump many posts all at once. You might raise a spam flag and delay your indexing. Do not add adsense before you are indexed, that will slow down indexing and purportedly give a lower ranking than what you could have gotten otherwise.

Keep a lookout for your site by querying google, helpful commands are info:yoursite.blogspot.com ,which will help you determine if googlebot visited(if it did, there will be some info), site:yoursite.blogspot.com will show if you have been indexed or not, but even if you are indexed, you won't rank if you are in the google pit hole aka google hell aka the supplementals (to check if you are in the MAIN index, search and add two trailing slashes like this site:yoursite.blogspot.com// ) Finally there's cache:yoursite.blogspot.com which will show you the cache that google has of your site. THE CACHE IS NOT UPDATED UNTIL SIGNIFICANT CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO YOUR BLOG.

When you know for sure you site has been crawled, add a post or two (preferably long posts with pictures) and check the google cache of your site.

Now google will find and possibly index your site in roughly two days if you get enough backlinks. It might take longer but it should take less than a week.

Tricky part - The dreaded DE-INDEX. Google has recently adopted a new system in which they DE-INDEX some recently indexed sites. I'm not sure what their reasons for doing so are, but it really sucks. Either that or they visit your site once, decides it sucks and don't come back for a long time, leaving your site in suspended animation in their serps.

The cure? Update about once in three days. Whenever, and whenever you update, use PINGOMATIC (http://pingomatic.com) to ping your blog. Add all services to the ping, especially weblogs and google blog search, very important to keep pinging those.

If you do that for about two weeks, google will (and it's happened for every one of my 5 niche blogs) come back and totally index your site, shift some pages out from the supplementals.

This does not happen gradually, it will come in one shot. So you might be trying for a week and seems like nothing is happening, do not stop. Keep updating and pinging, it will work.

If I helped you, feel free to link to this blog.

Holidays are almost over, I hope to spend these last few weeks doing something meaningful.

Paper Cranes

2008-03-13T02:06:00.003+08:00

I think google is one of the toughest nuts to crack because I still haven't gotten much out of my attempt at online niche blogging for money. I'm beginning to get discouraged but I'm not going to give up just yet.

I've been sick with the flu for the past few days, probably due to me constantly staying up late (which i'm doing now - again!) It's 2.09am and I intend to wake up at 9am tomorrow. I'm better already actually, but last few days was hell with chapped lips, a sore throat and a really stuffed nose.

Anyway it's been a while since I last updated properly, so I thought i'd just post here that I've gotten my exam results back, and I have a final GPA of 3.48 points, bringing my average GPA as yet to a nice 3.41 points, up from 3.32 points last semester (I would link to that post, but i've been linking so much for SEO i really can't be bothered to do so now. Ironic that google actually discounts your efforts cause this blog has some solid spots in the SERPS without even trying).

Perhaps ironically, my worst subject turned out to be.... online entrepreneurship. Yep, i got a straight A for java program but as it turns out, I probably wouldn't be trusted to sell food to starving millionaires. What a bummer.

I made an application for the diploma plus scheme, so I'll be taking two diplomas at once if i'm successful. The other diploma is some stuff in digital media creation which i'm not really interested in since I already know a lot about it and can learn it much faster online on my own, but my parents convinced me that it would be helpful when I applied for a job in the future (which by looking at my pathetic attempt at online entrepreneurship, i probably would).

Anyway to end off and justify the title, let's just make this page relevant to Paper Cranes. I folded a massive paper crane out of mahjong paper just now. This crane made of paper is nearly as large as a puppy and makes you want to laugh when you look at it.

Trust me, look at this picture of my brother holding the paper crane and laugh.

I suppose this page is pretty relevant to paper cranes by now, so if you found this page with that term then i've succeeded, if not then at least i tried.

Have a nice day!

Cashing in on a current event

2008-03-06T02:10:00.001+08:00

Well if you havn't already known, I've been busy trying to make money off niche blogging. And tonight, as I was at my pc, a wonderful idea popped into my head. There's this terrorist that escaped from detention a few days ago called Mas Selamat, so why I don't I make money off him by providing general information from web sources on a blog, then adding adsense? Sure it's like ethical, after all I'm helping bring a terrorist to justice. So chip in and let the link juice flow, and join in the hunt for mas selamat.

Crack the code and Win $5

2008-02-22T22:18:00.003+08:00

Hello you people! I've just finished writing my fourth encryption tool, called 4CRYPT, the successor to the Enigma, D3N0V0crypt and 3NCRYPT0R. It's written in JAVA and probably the most advanced one of the four. Unlike the first three (Enigma has very limited and basic numeric key support, the first two didn't have any.) 4CRYPT has support for any ASCII based key of arbitrary length. It does encryption on a binary level, I can't tell you more or it will not be fun. (Hint: I didn't use native bit shifts, but I created my own shifting functions.)

Well good luck! Email me at hochanhong at yahoo dot com dot sg with your answer. If it's correct, you get $5 SGD, payable through either cash (if you're from singapore and I know you) or PayPal (this challenge is open globally).

You must get the original message by decrypting this. The key used here is "cheesesticks".

795A351318708679634545A16FBABEEFD0EDEB6320DC2FADC9B17B7BC
F3297A290FA50DFC018F6D3184BB160D4AC60043A302926097A9BCE28
76488473DAF68DC8EBB9383F5F66F2CF6C7B83C3299745963C4E1BD5CE
B74E4A5BA425D4C46E117F152F1B4A749F6B26091CA37FBAA1E7D2E0EB
6027DB7CF9D5B12369862B80A29DE11CC4CE04F1D74A41A4709ABE2E56
52322D224A70D2CE263559CC7EC8AFC9

(Line breaks do not matter, it is a continuous string.)

To help you, here is some text encrypted with the same algorithms.

The plaintext is:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

and the key used is "apple".
And encrypting will get you the string:

403D68BA0B61C3203887C2D8E924BD083307E26F3A2059D69A25C5A
6289BA2DE72B16F66346013F3253AB7

Good luck! First person will get the prize!

Google likes junk food?

2008-02-17T11:23:00.000+08:00

I know that this post may not appeal to the people who have no interest in SEO, but I'd like to share a revelation I had. Anyone who is more enlightened, maybe you could shed some light on this situation because I find it rather puzzling, to say the least.

Well here's the deal. I'm still expanding on my niche blogging empire. I have a few white hat blogs (there are links to them scattered on this blog, go find them if you will), and a few black hat blogs (which I will not link to to avoid incriminating evidence). I set up the blogs in batches of threes. Here are the major differences between those blogs.

White Hat Blogs

Three of them in this batch
Set up between 7th and 9th February
Good, Meaningful niches
Adsense implemented very early (around 2 days after creation)
Full of quality original content that I took time to research and write myself
Content added slowly in a post every few days.
Well optimized for keywords in content, title and URL
Obtained a few backlinks by answering Yahoo! Answers and friends blogs (related).

Black Hat Blogs

Three of them in this batch
All set up on 15th February
Optimized for keywords in search terms that don't make sense but get traffic
All content dumped in in 10 minutes
Content is badly written and mostly scraped and rearraged (scrape and rearrage the words), keywords rich content.
Obtained quite a lot of crappy backlinks through comment spam (on a do-follow site)

Now the weird thing is, up till now (17 Feb 08), only 1 out of 3 of my whitehat blogs (i must have spent over 5 hours on each one) have been indexed by google. That blog took 6 days to get indexed.

My Blackhat blogs, on the other hand, are faring much better. Two out of three are already indexed, and it took less than 2 days. I'm shocked and appalled by this, because it means that google actually likes to eat crap instead of the good food that I'm offering it.

If this goes on in this trend then I guess I'll favor the dark side, because they have money (and cookies too).

Burn out Bright

2008-02-11T19:03:00.001+08:00

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you are here and i've got something exciting to show you. For those of you that have been subscribing to this blog's atom feed, here's a reason to celebrate - repeated monotony now has it's own Burned RSS Feed! Yes, i've decided to burn my feed and you can find the burned feed right here (note that the anchor text isnt even keyword optimized! Now why would i do that?) (p.s. those who have no idea what i'm talking about go google "SEO").

For those that already subscribe to my blog's feed you may consider adding the burned version. For those that don't know what a feed is, think of it as a kind of "detached" blog. Posts are literally "fed" to feedreaders (there can be many types of them) who process it and display it. Okay that explaination wasn't too useful. What the hell. Read this.

Have fun and enjoy!
Feeeeeder :)

Sowing seeds and putting eggs in baskets

2008-02-11T15:09:00.000+08:00

After reading up on SEO such an irrelevant post title makes me feel uncomfortable but this blog isn't trying for the SERPS so it's okay. Anyway i've spent most of my free time these few days trying to kickstart my online passive income via blogging. I've created three blogs in completely different and unrelated niches. I don't know if putting them here is shooting myself in the foot but I guess this is the only way to get them indexed fast. A risk I'm willing to take.

So what's new? Well the latest coming up are two brand new blogs. The first is a guide on how to get better sleep. Content is, as of yet, 100% original (meaning i put in good time to write it, readers better be happy i'm giving you good stuff). The second is on fun stuff to do on the computer. Both are basically just some tips and tricks and mostly the common sense that some people lack.

I'm aiming to churn out some content (posts), optimize keywords for search engines, get good traffic via social bookmarking and slap on adsense and leave it to rot, hopefully all done by the end of the third week of february, so i can claim passive earnings while i pursue other fun things during the remainder of my holidays.

More Green Stuff

2008-02-08T15:34:00.000+08:00

So I was reading some articles on the internet about making money online, search engine optimization and such (ive been reading that stuff for days already.) So since I felt I had a good amount of head knowledge already I thought it was time to put that into practice. Thus, for the first time yet, I've decided to put in some effort into making passive online income. James is already making good bucks and I figure I can pocket a few easy dollars if I put in a little effort. But I'm not ready to invest in my own private servers and I don't intend to put in hours on end to create some wonder php project again.

This time, I created a little gardening blog called Gardening For Beginners. I know thats probably one of the nuttiest niches to try to get into but I'll never know if I don't give it a shot. A blogger blog is free and has practically no upkeep cost, takes minutes to setup and lasts indeterminably. Basically I plan to slap the blog with some tips and tricks for noob gardeners and leave it to rot, after optimizing it for keywords and slapping ads on it. No harm checking it out, and if it works then I'm on to making the internet a worse place.

After all, there's only enough space for either money or morals. And sure I want people to get relevant, useful search results. But am I willing to give that up for some of the "green stuff?" (heh heh).

So just check it out and feel free to give me a few relevant backlinks too, if you wish.

P.S. this post is also to help those nice search engines find this site, and a stepping stone to greater success.

Insert relevant search keyword here

2008-02-06T23:55:00.000+08:00

Chinese new year has been pretty busy. The usual visitations and such. In perspective, the money from the ang baos and such become pretty irrelevant. I think I'm eating too much heaty food, I hope I don't fall sick. Anyway it's day 2 of the chinese new year and we're relaxing at home because we've done all the bai nian yesterday.

A little peek on what i've been up to:

Switchfoot concert! One night of insane fun! Doubt they would be coming back to singapore in a good while but it was fun while it lasted.

Oil lamp! I made an oil lamp out of an old chicken essence bottle which runs on a mixture of used and unused cooking oil. With mop hair as a wick, it burns extremely well, it is resistant to slight winds and does not extinguish easily. It is also very efficient, being able to burn for well over 8 hours on a full bottle. It smells like oily food too. The flame size can be adjusted by the wick length. The only disadvantage is that oil flames are very, very sooty.

Random.

My chili plant! Got it from a YA service (everyone got one). It's now about a week old already and growing at a good rate. For the first few days it didn't germinate and I thought it had died. But I kept watering it and about three days ago it sprouted. It's now roughly 4cm and I'm going to transplant it soon. Got a bag of topsoil already.

ARROWS! I've not stopped playing with them. As I experimented, my arrows grew in complexity. These two are my latest arrows. As you can see, I've switched back to my 2 fletches instead of 3 fletches because it seemed that they were actually more stable and gave less drag too. To compensate for the loss of 1 fin, I made the remaining ones thicker and slightly wider. I bought a new pack of 12 inch skewers, longer and thicker than the old 8 inch ones. I'm now using 5 rubber bands to launch my new arrows, most of them can punch clean through shoeboxes and tissue boxes, penetrating up to 4 tissue boxes in a row. It's getting increasing difficult to draw back on so many rubber bands but it's worth it. Metal tips allow my new arrows to last longer (since they don't blunt as much as wooden tips) and penetrate harder material, up to 1/4 inch into wood boards and can shatter glass. One problem was that if the arrow impacted a hard surface or hit at an angle, it was prone to warp or even snap. Often the arrowheads would break off with a portion of the shaft. To strengthen my arrows, I duct taped to tip just like people used to use hardwood. The grooves allow the arrow to be properly attached.

I also made signal flares - arrows that have sparkler heads. Since sparklers do not extinguish easily under strong winds, these were perfect for lighting up the night sky. As of now I've only fired one flare since firing it would mean losing the entire arrow as well. The main problem is getting the sparkler to ignite, this was partially solved by strapping on a few match heads to provide ignition heat. Once the sparkler was alight, the arrow could be fired normally or vertically and would create a fiery trail as it traversed across the sky. The short bit of sparkler meant that the arrow would usually be extinguished by the time it hit the ground.

I want to make some passive online income. A few months ago I used google adsense on this blog, however I didnt optimize it and since this is a personal blog I didn't really earn much, in fact, slightly over three dollars to be exact. Disheartened, I removed the ads. Well the ads are not coming back here. Instead, I'm going to create some niche sites, optimize them for keywords and get a few backlinks, hopefully get into page 1 of the SERPs, then monetize them with ads.

Well long post. Goodbye!

Uncle Sam Says...

2008-02-02T01:24:00.001+08:00

Hahahaha.... Switchfoot concert was fun!

It's a wrap

2008-01-28T23:19:00.000+08:00

Well tomorrow is the last day of the semester, and the last paper for this year. Year 1 has been pretty eventful, i've learned quite a bit in the area of object oriented programming. I dare say that the best is yet to come, and I'm hopeful for a bright future ahead.

Going to the class chalet tomorrow, the final time the class will be gathered together before streaming into different specializations. Probably game development for me. Don't really know how to react to this. I guess i've grown closer to a few classmates over this year, through didn't really get to know the class as a whole that well. Maybe they're not my type.

Excited about the night cycling I plan to embark on, a long bike ride across three beaches around east coast.

Oh yeah, my parents wanted me to join them on some special program on newsradio. My dad helps out at Reach FSC and they are conducting some sort of parenting talk show every saturday. My dad has been invited as a guest speaker and they want me to join in too. Well I'm not too comfortable with airing my views out in the open, especially those pertaining to personal life (ironic that I'm writing here on this blog which is technically viewable worldwide, but that is a different sense of "public"). I mean, being on air for the whole nation to hear about your life can be too much to take. Either way, if i accept I will feel uncomfortable and if I decline then I let those people down. Argh. Well I decided that I'd rather not, better to remain silent and hold my peace than to speak folly and forever regret.

Hope

2008-01-15T21:57:00.000+08:00

Never Take Friendship Personal

2008-01-07T00:34:00.000+08:00

Mmm anberlin gets better every time I hear it. I like it. Maybe my taste in music is changing.

Anyway, it's 9th Jan. Exams are in a week, I havn't studied much, as in I have no idea how to do the maths taught in the last two months. Yep. I can't take it for granted this time, even though I could breeze through last semester. If I sit for the exams now, I'll probably fail maths straight away, just pass NetF, pass java and PCT with average marks and score decently in WebP. Don't think I'll ace any subjects. Definitely not good enough to maintain my GPA of 3.32 from last semester.

I can't wait for the holidays. As if I'm not slacking enough already. I want to do something meaningful this holiday. Whatever that might be.

Well I bought a dirt cheap mic at $2 from the local market recently. Attached to my FM transmitter, it allows me to broadcast my speech on any FM frequency I want. I think I'm one of the few people I know that actually do this kind of meaningless stuff just for the fun of it.

Oh yeah this afternoon I made 5 more bamboo arrows cause my old ones were getting blunt. Instead of clumping the rubber weight, I spread it out in little loops. This allows the arrow to be more streamlined, flying further and achieving deeper penetration. I also made three fletchings (fins) instead of 2, giving stability at the price of increased drag.

Well so long for now!

Godspeed

2008-01-02T20:35:00.000+08:00

New year's blues

2008-01-01T14:56:00.000+08:00

Is this the New Year or just another night?
Is this the new fear or just another fright?
Is this the new tear or just another desperation?

Is this the finger or just another fist?
Is this the kingdom or just a hit n' miss?
I miss direction, most in all this desperation

Is this what they call freedom?
Is this what you call pain?
Is this what they call discontented fame?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

I'm singing this one like a broken piece of glass
From broken hearts and broken noses in the back
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

You push until you're shoving
You bend until you break
Till you stand on the broken fields where your fathers lay.

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is nothing here worth saving?
Is no one here at all?
Is there any net left that could break our fall?

It'll be a day like this one
When the sky falls down and the hungry and poor and deserted are found
Are you discontented? Have you been pushing hard?
Have you been throwing down this broken house of cards?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is there nothing left now?
Nothing left to sing
Are there any left who haven't kissed the enemy?
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

Does justice ever find you? Do the wicked never lose?
Is there any honest song to sing besides these blues?

And nothing is okay
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in
Until the world caves in
Until the world caves in
Until the world caves in
Until the world caves in
Until the world caves in

Merry Christmas

2007-12-27T00:37:00.000+08:00

Well sort of. It's two days late.
And a happy new year anyway.

Grey Sky Mornings

2007-12-22T15:27:00.000+08:00

Wow, i've been away for slightly over a week and it feels like almost a month already. Seems like whatever little bit left of the holiday is crammed packed with events. Christmas parties, watchnight and not to mention about the school projects and assignments that I havn't touched since the holiday begun.

Well this trip was a very intensive one, I must say. Cause we went with a tour group, and they had so many activities in every day, unlike last year's canada trip, which was at a much more relaxed pace.

I think my typing skills might have dropped a little, maybe it's the result of being disconnected from the internet for over a week. Anyway, I'll try not to make too lengthy posts so I won't bore you. The specific events can be talked about later, for now, i'll cover some trip reflections.

First off - airport security! This is one thing I want to credit to china. Immigration process was very smooth. The officer didn't bombard us with questions. No iris scans, no saving your thumb prints and photographs to add to their database. Not like last year.

Last year's transit through Portland was HELL. Don't know what is wrong with those people. Either they're paranoid or just trying to make life difficult. Either way I don't know what they're trying to prove. That they have the tightest security in the world?

Okay that was a bit off topic but anyway... China has changed a lot since the past few years. If anyone with white skin and colored irises still look down on them, they have a lot to learn. Especially in Beijing. I expected it to look like Kathmandu, Nepal. Instead it looked more like KL, Malaysia. Seriously, I was surprised too. They had huge skyscrapers and wide roads. BMWs. Electric buses like those in canada. Underground subway system.

Well we had this tour guide which wasn't that good in my opinion. I think he's getting paid some commission, cause he kept bringing us to places to spend money, like tea houses, pearl factories, tourist traps...

Then we sort of ran out of money since the tour guide signed us up for some additional package. Fortunately we were able to use credit card to withdraw some cash to spend. Bought plenty of goodies, as well as some cheap clothing and accessories.

Here are some photos

Commies

And a lot of bad signs.

And the best one

Boredom Freezes Over

2007-12-13T19:55:00.000+08:00

In one and a half hours, I'll be leaving for china.

Thought I might as well change my blogskin to a more appropriate theme. After all, october is already long over. It's been quite a while since I've made a long post and I thought perhaps now would be the opportune time.

Leaving for another country always feels a little weird. Last year, I felt the same before leaving for Canada, a edgy feeling of apprehension, combined with excitement and at the same time, a feeling of missing home already. Well looking back, Canada was great fun. It's a pity we didn't manage to take more photos. No matter, this trip we're bringing a digital and video camera, and I'll be sure to take lots of photos.

The days have been really cold recently, every morning I feel like freezing after showering. It'll be even colder in China, since it's roughly 5 degrees c in Beijing. I'm a bit afraid to go to china actually. Maybe I'm just paranoid. China seems like a place where bad things could happen. Haha.

Well I went for all the night rallies for Rhema Conference. Was pretty cool especially seeing all the people singing in T-ONE. The first sermon wasn't all that interesting, but the last service was pretty cool, especially the second worship part. Anyway, this holiday's going to be short and fast, packed with activity. Coming back on the 23rd of december. Christmas party later that day, and the next day. 25th Christmas, 26th class BBQ.

My only pair of creative earphones completely died today. I was listening to Swing Swing by the all american rejects when the right earphone started crackling. A few sputters later it went silent. Then just today, the left side went out as well. Those earphones were worth at least $30 or so. And now I had to get another pair. So I went to popular and bought a “Queen” brand earphone set for $15, being the thrifty cheapskate that I was brought up to be. Well you get what you pay for and those earphones couldn’t make the mark. So here’s to $15 wasted.

Hmm. And yesterday I went to TTS hospital to check my eyes. My left eye has been a little blurry lately, found out it's some condition where my cornea is conical shape instead of hemispherical. Results in increase astigmatism. Well now I have a year backbone appointment, a yearly heart appointment and a yearly eye appointment. And I'm only 17 this year. Lol.

Well I'll be away for the next ten days. This year is pulling to a close already. In an hours time, I'll be heading for the airport already.

See you all soon. I hope. Haha. No seriously I didn't mean it. I mean. I'll be back.

In Soviet Russia, blog post writes YOU!

2007-12-07T23:50:00.000+08:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I forgot that we have to choose electives today at 3pm and chose mine at 11:47pm. Since it's first come first serve, I'm in a pretty bad position.

Gotta get that 3.5 CIP somewhere somehow. It's bugging me but after making such a good video for Character Development, it'll be a waste not to do the CIP.

So many things to do.

This post is a stub. You can help 8C8 by commenting on it (on the tagboard).

Wayy too many goodbyes.

2007-12-03T23:00:00.000+08:00

I came home today to find that the r-age keychain I hung on my laptop bag had broken in two. Only one half was left, the other was nowhere to be found. It was a really nice keychain, from the dinner and dance this year. A few weeks ago, the metal started to get bent. It kept getting caught up in the bag strap and was slowly bent out of shape by the weight of my laptop bag. Then recently, the keychain started to break. At first, a small crack where the dent was. Then gradually the crack grew wider and longer. I noticed it but didn't do anything. Finally, it's gone and there's no way i'll ever get it back. Ironically yesterday was also the last time I would be going for the CM cell on sunday. Time seems to pass so fast. And suddenly it's time to say goodbye to so many people you wish you had known more.

Spent one last lunch at this chicken rice stall in far east plaza. Out of the original 12 or so people from this cell, only four (including myself) were present at this last meal together. We had a good time, and I guess it makes a bittersweet ending to it all.

And in just a few more months, it's time to say farewell to my poly classmates from year 1 too. It's just way too fast.

A Path Beyond

2007-11-18T11:36:00.000+08:00

Four minutes to midnight, a lot of things to write about so I might as well sum up the past few days.

Saturday - didn't join the class for CIP because I went night cycling with some guys from YA. Total of 8 people, me, joseph, jialiang, joshua, lionel, marshall, david and one more guy... i think it's chris or something. Anyway cycled from 7pm to 3am, total around 60km. By the end I was so tired I could barely cycle up the slope to my house.

Anyway this is the route we followed, we stopped at the esplanade cos we were too tired to continue. Stopped for dinner at ayah rajah, rest at harbourfront and ramly burger at KTM railway station. I'd say the trip was really quite fun, although the part at sentosa was very tiring.

Spent most of sunday at home, didn't go service because I was too tired. Dinner at bistro delifrance with my family.

Monday - Poly class celebrated my birthday! I didn't really expect it since I'm not that close to them and don't really talk that much with the class, but they proved me wrong and even bought a cake. It's sort of like a class tradition where they celebrate the birthdays of everyone in the class. Honestly, I was very touched that they actually took the time and effort for this. Even both of my own cells didn't mention my birthday.

I'm working on a new flash project, it's a game. Coming soon.

Actionscript!

2007-11-16T17:00:00.001+08:00

Started learning actionscript (scripting language for flash) yesterday!

Here's my first complete project! The blob jumper!

Improvised Slingshot Crossbow

2007-11-14T21:51:00.000+08:00

Repeated Monotony has officially claimed the domain www.repeatedmonotony.com! You may now access this blog through that link. Please update your own links and bookmarks. Attempts to connect to repeatedmonotony.blogspot.com will automatically redirect to the new domain. It took about a day for the CNAME redirection to set in but it seems to be running smoothly now.

Well MSTs are over and I'm really tired, not surprisingly. Every day I tell myself to get a little more rest and catch up on my sleep debt but I still end up sleeping after midnight at least.

Okay anyway, here's just a little slice of my life.

My sister's in taiwan now, she's going to be there for about a month for studying. Which just leaves the four of us at home. We celebrated with a sushi dinner the night before she left. Cheap 99 cent per plate sushi at some stadium. Very worth it.

Hmm. I've made a cool weapon in my spare time at home, because I felt like doing something interesting. I've always liked projectile weaponry and this is no exception. Originally I wanted to make a crossbow with bamboo skewers and nylon fishing line, but it didn't really work well. After two attempts (both broke after overdraw) I decided to take another approach. I found an old Y-stick and strung two rubber bands around the fork. Although the original crossbow didn't work well, the arrows did. For each arrow, I split a bamboo skewer at the end and forced in a tiny wood chip to make the nock, bound it tightly with string and reinforced it with duct tape. I then used masking tape for the fletchings. The resulting arrow was very satisfactory. It flew straight and consistently. Anyway, I realised that if I wanted more accuracy I would need a crossbow-like rest for the arrow. So I bound a skewer and added little rings of duct tape as arrow guides. Arrows would be clipped on to the slingshot rubbers by their nocks. When drawn, the arrow would rest nicely on the bamboo and fire straight when the rubber was released, while the Y-stick acted like a makeshift stock. I did not use a locking or trigger mechanism (somewhat like a bow). The resulting device was sort of an improvised slingshot, crossbow and bow into one (whatever that is).

Anyway, performance was exceptional, much better than what I had originally anticipated. Those little sticks can do some real hurt. Anyway let me give you some statistics. At full draw, this weapon could propel my bamboo skewer arrows straight into two to three layers of thick cardboard with a stack (50 or so sheets) of newspaper in between at point blank range, or pierce right through both sides of a shoebox. At full draw, the arrow could travel up to about 140 feet and penetrate cardboard up to distances of about 30 feet All the way until half draw, it could decently puncture the cardboard at a distance of 16 feet.

Of course, that's with new rubber and arrows. As with most things, usage will cause wear and tear, especially if the arrows miss the target and hit a hard wall, which will cause the head to become flat and frayed, or the arrow to splinter. The rubber bands also snap after some usage, depending on how hard I draw. (so far i've changed them about 5 times already.)

One of my arrows.

This is about 2/3 draw. This can punch through two layers of cardboard at under 10 feet.

The Improvised slingshot-crossbow-whatever. Blue is duct tape.

My arrows, total 8. (Many are already not in optimum condtion, they hit the wall and the ends chip off, I had to reshave the arrowheads.)

The cardboard shoebox that I fire arrows into.

Punched through 50 sheets of newspaper sandwiched between two layers of cardboard, at point blank range.

Anyway here are some random pics. Yesterday was PCT class. The lecturer told us that the earlier class had messed up all the PCs and we would get 9/10 GP if we could fix them. It was foolish on his part to make this offer. Immediately everyone got to work.

Dismantling the PC was the fun part. Putting it back was a headache. But it's not my pc. So it's okay.

My friend and I (we work in pairs) practically ripped apart the box and plucked out all the screws and wires without looking. Hahaha.

Then after we put everything back, the power button didn't work, the reset button became the power switch which turned on the CD rom drive. Lol.

Motherboard and hard drive!

Fun!

No space on table so just dump all on the floor.

Yay chip.

Oh yeah. I went road cycling on monday in preparation for the big expedition on saturday night. Was kinda scary with all the cars around you, especially when I accidentally went to lane 3 instead of lane 1 during one turning and got stuck there. But all in all it was a fun experience. Can't wait for saturday.

Btw this is my rubiks mini and the family's rubiks cube. Woohoo.

Okay, goodnight!

De Novo

2007-11-13T23:06:00.000+08:00

Hey people, as you may or may not have noticed, my blog has been offline for a few days now. Well, it's finally back online. Anyway, I'm moving from this subdomain to a full custom domain anytime now. I've already bought it, www.repeatedmonotony.com and now I'm waiting for the cname to register on DNS. When that happens, please update your links to this blog!

Look forward to some new updates once this blog moves over to the new domain.

Helping Hands

2007-11-04T15:45:00.000+08:00

Alright I'm supposed to be resting already, after all I have a test tomorrow but I couldn't resist writing this down. Cos I know that if I keep delaying it eventually I won't write about it anymore.

Saturday was CIP with my SP classmates. Unfortunately for me, I had to choose between going to CIP or going to the Grace 2 event "around the world in 2 hours" (its a game). I decided to try to go for CIP then rush to the event after that. The problem is that CIP ended at around 5:20pm and the event was from 5pm to 7pm. Nevertheless I decided to try to make it. Who knew it would take 2 hours to travel from hougang to bukit gombak. Sigh. Was initally very upset that I missed the event especially since I had been looking forward to it but at least I knew what it was about.

Our CIP was organized by Hong En. We were supposed to go to the IMH (Institute of Mental Health) to assist the other volunteers in helping the patients there. We planned to conduct simple activities such as songs and dance.

Anyway, CIP was a very tiring and exhausting thing. I spent more time travelling than doing CIP, 2 hours to hougang and 2 hours back, with 3 hours of CIP. Had lunch with the class at pepper lunch at hougang mall, then walked all the way to the IMH.

Since photography isn't allowed in the wards, let me give you a detailed and visual description of our experience as helpers inside.

We were taken to a small holding room outside the ward. Earlier, we were briefed that the patients here were mostly mild and recovering cases, and we were not to expect anything we could not handle. However, photography was off limits and using mobile phones alone was frowned upon. We were also told to keep mum about all personal information. Before we were allowed to enter, our instructor told to sanitize our hands with an alcohol solution. It felt soapy and left a cool feeling afterwards. Behind the doors, we could see the patients already starting to notice us, staring at us with glassy eyes.

In minutes, we were ready. The instructor unlocked the doors and we cautiously stepped inside. Walking briskly, we uneasily made our way to the equipment stash in a room nearby to store our belongings. A moment later, we were in the ward, trapped there for the next two hours.

The place was what you would expect for an old folks corner, or lounge or whatever you would call that. The room wasn't that large, probably the size of two to three classrooms. The floor was neatly paved with an anti-slip mat. An old monochrome TV attached to a wall frame was displaying some malaysian channel, though clearly no one was watching. The outer wall was covered with numerous small windows, each slightly larger than a square foot in area. They were made of stained glass, making it impossible to see in our out of the room when they were closed. In front of the windows was a large metal grill attached. The grill was more like a grid fence, steel wires intersecting to form equal sized squares. The room had a few tables in a corner, although a large area of the room was filled with wooden sofa chairs and plastic chairs where the residents sat aimlessly for most of the time. The room had another smaller wall on the other side which had three wash basins there, although it seemed that few actually bothered to use them.

Some of the people there greeted us as soon as we entered, while a few appeared totally apathetic or otherwise unconcerned. They all had one thing in common, a glassy stare that made me feel uncomfortable. Most of the patients appeared to be in their 50s, although we were not informed on any of their particulars, other than that they were patients here.

At first, we tried to talk to them but soon realised a coherent conversation was going to be tricky at best and impossible at worst. Some refused to answer our questions at all while others gave garbled, unintelligible replies. One thing that surprised me was that a select few patients actually knew how to play checkers. On top of that, they were pretty good too.

We tried to carry out some activities with them and were met with a mixed response. Some continued to ignore us, others just stared while a few attempted to join us as we sang songs. We were allowed to use a box of toys to entertain the patients, although many toys were in pretty bad shape. The Xiangqi set, for instance, had lost nearly 70% of it's pieces and the chessboard was nowhere to be found. We attempted to engage them in some sports activities, such as a simplified version of bowling and ping pong. They did try, and I guess we also tried our best to entertain them.

After spending more time there, we began to see that they were not as bad as we once thought. As we persisted in conversing with them, we soon learned that some of them were brought here by a traumatic event, while others had been victims of an accident. Unfortunately I cannot elaborate on the conversations we had with them as I cannot disclose any personally identifiable information from the patients here or post any photographs here; we agreed not to prior to entering the ward.

Time passed and it was soon time to leave. We left the place having gained new insight on what the IMH really was like.

Yeah well thats about it, and let me stress it was really tiring. I was kinda scared at first, but eventually I also did interact with some of the patients.

A cause for alarm

2007-10-26T09:47:00.000+08:00

Ugh. My phone's alarm clock didn't wake me up because the loudspeaker was faulty so there was no sound when the alarm went off. Ended up waking up at 7.45am instead of 6.50am. How annoying.

Mini Chess Set

2007-10-23T14:56:00.000+08:00

Hey there people!
Wikipedia is soliciting donations once again!
Join the fun, help the world and donate some!

I donated $2 USD, and if another 19 more people donate $2 USD then according to wikipedia, they can provide 1 MILLION pageviews of free information! Well I guess that means I've paid for about 50000 pageviews! I think that i've used close to 20000 pageviews myself on wikipedia reading stuff, information and weird nonsense so I guess that leaves you folks 30000 page views! (If i refreshed my browser that many times, my finger would probably break).

Nonsense aside, wikipedia is a great (and invaluable) source of information, especially on controversial topics where asking others would be frowned upon. I'm glad to make this donation :D

I've also made my very own miniature chess set! Yeah, homemade chess set. It's both an International chess and Chinese chess set combined in one, pieces have chinese characters inscribed on one side and international chess symbols on the other. I duplex printed a chessboard, one for each type of chess, all on one sheet of paper.

Well, I like the eclipse mints (about $4 from petrol stations and supermarkets). They usually come in nice metal containers with a snap on metal cap. I had recently just finished another box so I had an empty container. Basically I just rinsed and cleaned it, and it was ready for use. I wanted durable chess pieces, so paper and cardboard were out of the question. Buttons were too small and coins were too heavy (not to mention unsightly). So what I did was I went over to Daiso and bought wooden chips. These are circular discs made of balsa wood, generally for hobby crafts, relatively inexpensive.

Bought 2 packs for $4, which contained 25 chips each, totally 50 chips. That gave me plenty of room for errors, should I happen to damage any of the chips. I then used the red and black ballpoint pens to inscribe Chinese characters on the chips. It's not really that hard, and in the case I found anything unsatisfactory, I could always rewrite that character on a fresh piece. Chinese and International chess both use 16 pieces per side (32 pieces total), so I had quite a few pieces left over.

I considered coating the chips to protect them and enhance their look, but it would be too troublesome and take up a lot of space.

Using flash, I quickly drew up two chessboards, one chinese chess and one international chess board. Printing them were quite easy too, although I had to manually duplex it.

I then decided to laminate the paper to protect it, thereby using up the last bit of laminate tape we had. Unfortunately, the laminate made the paper too thick to pack into the box and it had to be abandoned and reprinted.

Anyway, here's the final results of my miniature chess set.

The metal box casing, originally holding eclipse mints. Pretty small for a chess set.

The 32 wooden chess pieces.

Board with pieces, properly arranged for a game of chinese chess.

The board and pieces flipped over, this is for international chess.

All fits in the box nicely.

A match, anyone?

Autumn trees shed their leaves to live again

2007-10-18T12:44:00.000+08:00

As I walked home one October afternoon, I couldn't help but notice the beautiful sunset. In a way, it's a day slowly but surely leaving. The light fades, and there is nothing you can do no matter how hard you try, you can't outrun the sun. October skies represents a life looking for more. They show that sometimes, a fleeting sunset swiftly leaving the horizon can be beautiful. That leaving can both be painful and hopeful, bitter and sweet. There is hope, and a new dawn awaits after the sun sets, and only after the sun sets. The mistakes and misery of yesterday are washed away by the brilliant sunlight. I never really did catch the sunset or sunrise. But I know, while it lasts, sunset is beautiful.

Well it's been ages since I've changed my blogskin. I felt that it was time for a change from the green and blue themes, so here's a nice orange - red one with a magnificent photo of the sunset. For your info, most of my blogskins are either made by myself, or in this case, taken off some obsolete and semi-functional blogskin, heavily modified and used as my own. Oh by the way, I was upset at the fact that embedded background music isn't compatible with both IE and firefox, so I made my own flash music player. It's pretty basic stuff, but it works, and on both browsers too (didn't test with opera and safari though, but it should work like any other flash movie).

Anyway, lots of stuff has been happening, and I guess it's good to pen it down once in a while. For one, it's already october. Time really flies, in just over two months this year will be over.

This week itself has been pretty crazy. Sunday was good, went for lunch with sam and hoho just like the old times, back in ACE. Like the fun we had crapping and telling lousy jokes. No LAN, netspiel had long closed already. Gigantic burgers at Carl's JR and a really fun game of pool. This was my second time playing pool but I think I picked it up pretty fast, considering I even scored a double kill shot. Yep, the cue ball hitting two separate balls simultaneously into two different holes. I'm either that good or that lucky. Although I did pocket the cue ball a few times.

Well yesterday wasn't all that good. Maybe I was really sleep deprived, I kept making minor mistakes (such as repeated mistyping, tripping over something). What was really annoying was that I accidentally closed an important browser window and I have no idea what was in it (up to now, i still don't know). I do know that it was relatively important (if not I wouldn't have left it open.) I have a habit of leaving many windows (maybe over 10) open at once so I can multitask. It was a lousy mistake, and one just waiting to happen, I wanted to check my logoff screen and pressed alt-f4, but the focus was set to a browser window and poof, it closed. Got me really pissed as I searched through my history pages to no avail, trying to locate the window. Why doesn't firefox add a recently closed windows function. I would have gladly paid $2 to get that closed window back. Hah.

Another even worse thing. My sister was trying to install the Sims 2 on my mother's laptop. Well apparently there was a problem with the 3D accelerator, and the program wasn't working. She asked me to help, and try to help I did. And then, oh, I foolishly disabled the display adapter for the graphics card, thinking it might help in some way (actually, a reason why I can solve PC problems is that I am more persistent in finding solutions to such problems compared to many people, and that I try solutions at a much faster rate. Of course, IT skills also come in handy. Very handy. But that's besides the point.) Anyway, a little popup demanding a restart, a few mouse clicks and a minute later, I was stuck with a PC that showed nothing on the screen. Nothing. Just the BIOS loader, the splash logo from the boot screen and that's it. Blank screen. VGA mode doesn't work, Last good settings doesn't work and Safe mode freezes up. Oh what to do? Tried and tried various solutions, to the point of even trying blind keypresses, remote administration. Nothing worked. Windows narrator was immensely helpful, but the display adapters in the device manager had already mysteriously disappeared.

So my dad's going to try get his office tech support to help fix it (hah, I know you're rolling on the floor laughing now, like roflmao tech support lol). Anyway, if it doesn't work then I really don't know what to do.

P.S. For anyone who faced a similar problem and fixed it, please help me.

Well that's about it.

Halfway through the new skin

2007-10-16T15:41:00.000+08:00

It's not finished, it's a work in progress.
Juicy post coming up soon.
Stay tuned.

October Skies

2007-10-15T09:06:00.000+08:00

Autumn brings a song I sing so desperately
These shattered dreams
From broken wings of love
October skies and city lights were all a blur
And high tide came washing them away

I said
Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, this is for real

Church bells ring
the North Star seems so far from me
The coastal planes is where my shame shall lay
Autumn trees they shed their leaves
to live again
The cold air brings clarity to me
Yeah

I said Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, this is for real
I said Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, to your love

I, I've been running to nowhere
And I, I feel something's getting clear

I said
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright
I surrender, this is for real
I said Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, to your love

I said Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, this is for real
I said Alright, alright, alright
You make the calls tonight
I surrender, to your love