Adorable waste of time

An interesting find this week... Japanese game maker "Eyezmaze" has a series of interesting and yet, seemingly pointless, Flash games... it's really cute and I believe that there is a lot more strategy to the games than it appears at first. I'll keep going at it until I figure it out... try all of them now!

U Gotta Believe!!! De La Soul ft. Double

Majorly sweet video... featuring animation from PaRappa da Rapper! 2D fun in a hip-hop video... Check it out!

Birth of an Nuclear Explosion

In a scary/crazy/cool way, these photographs show the amazing shots of an atomic bomb explosion at 1/100,000,000ths of a second from initial ignition.

Edit: The news article has been removed/archived, so I will post the link if i find it again

Plus: Here's a video of the beautiful, billowing death clouds during atomic explosions. Thanks to Google Video for the link.

Digital spring-cleaning

Ever felt that your hard disks are just simply bloated with all kinds of files that you probably don't use, don't read, and really don't bother with after some time? At the same time, you also think your friends deserve a look at them before you toss them into the digital dumpster in the sky... buuuut... the damn file is over 10MB in size - which is, incidentally, the max limit of e-mail sizes in some ISPs, many have lower thresholds!

Ok, so whaddaya gonna do about it? Well, hang on to your horses, deputy, coz a new sheriff's in town! ^_^

Check out this wonderful list of sites you can upload your files to be shared out (either permanently or temporarily) ... the free web space given range from 10MB to 2GB!!! Give it a look and mark your calendars to start do some housekeeping on your PCs soon!

Getting Linux to play nice with wireless USB network cards

As a reminder to self, and to pass along helpful information for any other fellow 'nux n00b who are trying to get their Linux boxes to run nicely with USB Wireless-G adapters, here are some great resources for setting up the WLAN NICs:

• Linux Wireless LAN support database
  
• ndiswrapper, and its installation WIki
  
• Linuxant DriverLoader for NDIS Linux drivers
  

Have fun! Right now, ma Penguin Playpen is running SimplyMEPIS 3.4.2-RC1 on an old generic box: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ w/ CoolerMaster Aero HSF, ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, 2 x 512MB DDR PC3200 SDRAM, IBM ATA66 20GB HDD, Yamaha CDRW, and a SMC EZ Connect 2862W-G 802.11g USB2.0 NIC (connected using ndiswrapper, used iwconfig to setup WEP... will try WPA another day).

P.S. I've tried a Hawking Tech HWU54G v2, Gigafast WF748-CUI (both are running Zydas ZD1211 chipsets, and I'll probably have to try find some time to get the ZD1211 'nux driver compiled and working first) and a Netgear WG111v2 (uses some Conexant chipset... worked with ndiswrapper, but connection was not stable with WEP/WPA security turned on... so I returned it).

Art of Sound

Everyone, it's tiiimmmmme to hit the beat! For anyone who ever aspired to bang on the drums all night, here's one reason why you should not give up on your dreams! There's always Flash! ^o^

This is my first published blog entry using the Performancing FireFox extension! Waaaayyy coool!

Meow Meowwww Hsssss... Woof! Woof!

Ready for some primal violence? SGAnime forum member NCH and his com'padres mold together a nice piece of animation - featuring the never-ending feud between Dog Dog and Meow Meow... Now online! Check it out!

Gong Xi Fa Cai 2006

Chinese New Year has passed by swiftly here in Ohio, but that doesn't mean we Singaporeans are gonna just go down without a fight! Kicking the bad luck from 2005 and welcoming the new wave of prosperity in 2006, the SSA and Friends' CNY dinner celebration was a great success! Not only that, we were fortunate to have a Lion Dance performance on the very night of our dinner! w00t!!!

Anyway click on the image link below to check out our CNY '06 celebration pics!

Osaka Revolution

As any fan of Azumanga Daioh would know, Kasuga Ayumu aka "Osaka-san" is our regular ditsy/day-dreaming character of the anime/manga series. And she happens to be one of my favorite characters in anime (you can easily draw parallels between her and Pheobe from 'Friends' ^_^ ) ... Here is a wonderful psychedelic AMV (Anime Music Video) featuring the song "Waka Laka" from the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) series by Konami!

Remember kids: Don't stare too hard and ENJOY-JOY-JOY!!! ^o^

Kawaii to the MAX!!!

Hahah... juz can't resist posting this adorable little music video.

Title: Daisuki da yo
Vocals: Ai Otsuka

The Eccentric Opera and staying chilled...

I heard a track from The Eccentric Opera the other day on Kawaii-Radio on SHOUTcast (via Winamp's Radio), a really strange mix of trance/dance and classic opera tracks.

I googled about them and found (amidst a ton of Japanese sites) an English fan site with some information (dated '99) about their first few albums. Quite interesting, and I guess I'll keep listening out for their music. It also seems like their music is featured in a few anime series. More research on this topic pending! :P

Also, for my fellow SHOUTcast listeners, I also highly recommend Swiss Groove for some really nice light'n'smooth chill-out tunes... Great for lounging back. They also feature online streaming audio for Quicktime, Windows Media and Real Networks.

If you are willing to spend a pretty penny on audial pleasure, try the Ultra Chilled collection (I believe there are already 5 albums out). I've heard quite a number of the tunes from these CDs on the Swiss Groove station and they sound great! :D

So. Addictive. Must. Stop. Help. Me...

Y'all MUST check out this Falling Sand game. Well.. it's not exactly a game per se, but more like a sandbox, with no real objective or "endgame", you just mess around with the flow of materials pouring down. And mess with the slug-like thingy. :)

Read the posts, then click on the title link of the blog post to start it.

btw, you must have Java enabled on your browser!

Have fun... I had to tear myself away from my PC... coz I gotta work tomorrow... errr... later today... Grrr...

3 things that [most] men want

Was watchin' Chris Rock's performance in Harlem, NY on his Bigger and Blacker DVD (1999) the other night and i was laughing my a$$ off. I almost fell off my chair a couple of times. If there is only one stand-up I will ever watch for the rest of my life, it's gotta be Chris Rock!

If you have a video rental store membership, you owe it to yourself to pick up this (if available) and watch it. Fair warning, profanities spews out of CR's mouth like water streams out of a fountain, and if you feel strongly about political correctness, then forget this. Else, watch this with an open mind and let CR tell you about stuff that you know should be talked about, but no one does - like the whole Clinton impeachment debacle, about kids shooting up schools, men and their prized porno stash, racism, homophobia and even them fat cats in the pharmaceutical corporations!

Recalling one of his many, many quips that somehow dug itself into my brain, which of course... ahem... does not apply to ALL men:

"[Most] men only want three things...

Food, Sex, Silence.

Feed me, F*ck me, Shut the f*ck up!"

"Now where's my big piece of chicken?!"

Post-Christmas and Pre-New Year's greetings!

To my fellow readers and bloggers, here's a big Melly Kleesmas and a Happi Neu Ye-arh! May 2006 harken a new era of prosperity and happiness in all your endevours, whether it's work, studies or play!

A little something from my childhood days in school... arrhhh-ummm!
*clears throat*

Should all acquintances be forgot
And neber be blough to mind...
Should all acquintances be forgot
And lays of aww lan syne...
Awwww lan syne, my dear...
Awwww lan syne... should all acquintances be forgot
and days of aww lan sign..

Ok, that's enough of that. ^_^

My top five resolutions of the upcoming year:
1) Get a social life!!!
2) Get out of the house to exercise more, les I run a risk of losing my tan ;)
3) Finish the health supplements that my Mommy dearest sent to me
4) Try to score a job in California (Wish me luck, Dad! :)
5) Score more booty!!! >:D

Have you decided on yours yet?

Are you feeling lucky?

Google has become such a powerful presence in the lives of mainstream Internet users that I truly believe that anyone who has to rely on the Web for his or her daily dose of information fill-up should and would (by now) know where to find it. For those in the dark of this Web Search wunderkind, I would like to briefly introduce you to the family of Google tools that empowers mere workstation drones with fresh resources unknownst to them before...

Web Search - as everyone SHOULD know, it is the Internet's most darling search engine, often giving the most relevant results (although smart-alecky advertisers have learned how to pollute searches using trickery) compared to other lesser search engines. Plus, it's not JUST a plain vanilla search engine... Google comes with various features that you can use in your daily grind, such as units conversion (try "65 mph to kph", or "32 F to C").

Groups - dig through the many USENet newsgroups and mailing lists to find answers to your most obscure and insipid questions! Actually, this is a gold-mine for IT tech support folk, like yours truly. I feel that if there is a problem that ever comes up (esp on Windows), more often than not, someone else would have gotten the same issue before!

Local - a.k.a. Google Maps, this driving directions and business mapping tool has combined the power of satellite imagery and road-mapping to give travelling users one of the most useful online "hybrid" tools ever! Many smart and creative folks have used the freely-available Google Maps API to create other interesting informative tools. And for those of you with the system horsepower and Windows 2000/XP (sorry Mac and Linux users), you might wanna give the free Google Earth a try! Find your home, wherever it is on the face of this planet (I found mine, in Singapore, using the satellite imagery... it's pretty amazing)!!

News - no longer do you have to open a dozen browser windows/tabs to find the latest news from around the world! With the information-harnessing capability of Google, all your favorite news outlets can be referenced from a single portal. (Of course, for all you RSS/newsfeed fans, you probably have your tickertapes already running on your desktop :)

Froogle - although still a relatively crude price grabbing tool, Froogle has come a long way since its inception and I've found myself using it more often, along with my other price-matching tools such as PriceGrabber and ResellerRatings.

SMS (US & UK only) - Ever wished to find the address to the nearest branch of your favorite restaurant? Or find a comparable market price of a particular item? Well, if you have a cell phone and reside in the US of A, search using Google SMS! Pretty handy to have around, esp if you decide NOT to tote your laptop around for shopping trips!

Some other tools that I've not used as much, but deserve some mention, such as the new (and controversial) Books Search, the online Images gallery, Scholarly libraries search (for links to books, journals and articles), and Directory - a categorized search engine (not unlike the Yahoo! and Open Directory style).

For those of you who enjoy to stay on the cutting edge of Google's development, try checking out their company Blog or their Labs once in a while... many interesting things pop-up there. I've seen quite a number of interesting tools show up, such as Google Video (excellent resource of funny and 'informative' videos, uses Flash to stream) and Google Base (a collaborative online database of stuff, putting a foot onto Craig's List and eBay turf).

More great stuff that Google provides are applications that can be installed onto your PC to help you bring information to your desktop. Unfortunately, most of these are Windows-centric (where's the love for Mac and Linux users?!). Anyway, some of the most important tools that I've seen from Google include:

Google Toolbar for IE - waaayyy before Redmond decided that their flagship browser DOES need a pop-up blocker and search bar, which (IMHO) is an ESSENTIAL feature of any modern browser, I've told every single IE user that they should HAVE this installed to ensure that they are free to annoying pop-up ads and have instant access to the Google search engine (of course, this advice usually follows my initial rant, "What the heck are you using IE for? Switch to Firefox and/or Opera NOW!!!" >;).

Picasa - An excellent (and FREE) photo/image/graphics catalog tool, anyone who has a ton of pictures in their machine will find this a god-send to keep their stuff organized, without burning a hole in their wallets! Try it today, coz you've got nothing to lose! :)

Gmail - ahhh... Google Mail. It's been, like, so long since we first saw free mailbox providers panic at the announcement of Google's intent to give their mailbox subscribers an entire Gigabyte (read: that's a sh*tload of space!) of e-mail storage goodness. Of course, it started out as an invitation only service, but word got around FAST and people flocked to the Gmail service, in every way possible! Today, Gmail is open to US consumers, and storage space has been bumped up to a whopping 2.5GB (!) so sign up if you haven't already! As for those of you residing in the rest of the World, send me a message if you need an invitation! ;)

There are some other interesting developments that I've not delved into as much, such as the language translator (similar to Yahoo!/Altavista's Babelfish), the Desktop/Deskbar tools, and the newly introduced IM (instant messaging) client Google Talk. Those of you would enjoy programming and would love to incorporate Google's tools and capabilities into your next big application, should check out Google's open source Code initiative.

*deep breath*

Ok, I guess you guys can tell I've become a slave to Google... :P

Ohio's 1st snowstorm of 2005

Ze winter storm eez upon uz! Heaps of dense snow! Perfect for a snowball fight... Mmmmwwahahahah!!! *rubs paws in gleeful anticipation*

Of course, it's not all fun and games... I was lucky when I decided to leave earlier from office today. Snow was just starting to sprinkle... I dived (not literally of course) into my car, which thankfully is still clear of any heavy accumulation. By the time I reach the freeway on-ramp, snow was pouring and coating the roads... even with my snow tires, I was scrubbing and hopping a bit when I got a bit heavy on the throttle! Eeks... Ok, so while merging into the freeway I was sliding laterally a little, and I quickly did a bit of nudging to correct my heading and stuck to my lane until I reached my exit... Traffic was pretty much topping out at 55mph.

Of course, Everyone was naturally cautious, safety first! I saw a few folks scrub for traction moving off at junctions or crossing junctions (where they had to hop across some mounds of snow)...

I was close to home when I heard a blast of sirens and a bright flashing object in my rear-view. Instinctively I tapped the hazard lights and slowly brought my vehicle to a stop at the side of the road, which fortunately, I could still make out the kerb from the layer of snow on top of it. Some of the drivers in front of me and one behind me (I guess) didn't expect the ambulance's sudden appearance and slid around a bit before they managed to tame their machines and made room for the emergency vehicle. After the big van/truck cleared the junction ahead, order was resumed and I slowly drove the last bit of my journey to my mailbox to check to see what goodies the mailman has for me...

Ah! My LEGO catalog! Wooohooo!

Exams week long hiatus

Okay... I've not been keeping up with ma posts here...

But I've got a good and valid excuse! Finals week is upon me over at OSU, so I've been shoving my nose into my notes and book(s)... *yawn*

Can't wait 2 feenesh all dees stardi-ing... Gladuasion, here cums daddy!!!

btw, the dang weather is freezin' ma a$$ off... brrrr... we're lookin' at sub-zero temps here in the Midwest now.

Hippy Hop Trippin!

Joined the SEASO gang over at club C.B.R last Saturday... started out slow, no thanks to some technical glitches with the DJs' equipment... but once the beats start pounding, and the people started moving and groovin, the club came alive! I was moving a lot more than I thought I would, and I ended up only downing a single bottle of Killians (then again I was the designated driver, so it's just as well!)

Check out some of the pics, courtesy of SEASO's camera-trigger-happy host Nga! Yes, that is Nga who is doing a little Victory dance atop my head... I'll get ya for that!

Romelo and Julilette

Was watching an Asia-imported animated movie that was sent to my sis-in-law by her best friend in Singapore... Liang Shan Bo yu Zhu Ying Tai, also known as the classic Chinese romance novel "The Butterfly Lovers", with a tip of the hat to William Spearshake's tragic romance Romeo and Juliet. Of course, names and details have been changed to protect the innocent.

So that got me thinking... hmmm... what if there was a Singaporean version of the classic love story? Just imagine the headlines...

"Classic tale of love lost in an urban jungle"
"Star-crossed lovers take leap across supernatural boundaries"
"Forlon romance between Romelo 'Ah-Seng' and Julilette 'Ah-Lian'"

And the theme song would probably be a good 'ol fashioned remix of Ah-Niu's "Dui mian de Ah-Lian kan guo lai... kan guo lai..." (translate: "The girl opposite me just looked my way... looked my way").

Newest member of the entourage

Now that the period of rememberance of our dearly-departed Taurus wagon "Luna" has come and gone, it's time to introduce her replacement! Aptly known as the "GC" or "The Grand", laaaaadies and gentlemeeenn... I present to you... *drum roll*

Our Grand Caravan Sport, aka The Baby-Mobile! *ka-cheeessshh!* *applause*

Looking forward to many happy grocery store runs and road trips ahead!