Wednesday, November 30, 2005  

[Random thoughts...Really!]

I went out today to run some errands, first stop was at NUS, I left some of my old textbooks used this semester with this 2nd-hand textbook agency to help me sell them next semester. I needed some money, but the silly ATM machine which I went to ran out of $10-notes, so I had to withdraw $50 which was way more than I needed.


After that, I went down to C328 to get some carbon for my aquarium. The carbon in my aquarium used to last about 6 to 8 weeks. Now they last for about 4 weeks. More fishes I expect....The carbon wears out faster than ever. I saw this tank there without a price tag, and thought that it would be a good place for me to keep my fries, so I bought it. It's actually meant for bettas, so you can partition the tank in the middle if you want.


I then headed over to Bukit Timah Plaza to get a new flavour of creatine serum I've been meaning to try out. At the bus-stop, there's this cat on the seats in a crouched down position. It looked as if it was ready to prounce on it's prey or something. Or is it about to give birth? I have no idea, not into cats. It was in this position the whole time I was there.



When I reached BT Plaza, I walked passed this pet shop which sold mainly dog and cat supplies, so I was surprised to see a marine tank in the shop display. It's a Christmas offer, $238 for the whole setup. Took some pictures of the clown-fishes inside.



Got the serum. Trying out the thermogenic version this time cause I'm trying to lose some weight. Aren't we all? I picked the raspberry flavoured one....Because there were no other flavours. I opened it up at home and....


...it's green! WTF? Green raspberry? To be fair, I've never seen a raspberry in my life, but I think they are supposed to be red, right?


On my way home from BT Plaza, I took a bus from this bus-stop. I was extremely tempted to steal the Saw II poster, seeing how the ad display was open. When I got onto the bus the poster was flapping away like crazy because of the wind.


Finally...My sister showed me this picture when I reached home. Taken from today's papers. Cute dog, begging for...bones? Haha!

^^^ by Locksley @ 5:30 PM. 4 comments.
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[What's the world coming to...]

...when countries want to be paid not to cut down the trees in their rainforests? Isn't this your planet too?

...when some people suggest having a moment of silence when a convicted drug smuggler is hanged? Isn't this reserved for national heros or victims of natural disasters? You guys want to honour convicted criminals too?

...when ministers are more concerned about "bad press" than finding and handing out punishment to the individual responsible for the prisoner abuse/humiliation? How can the police chief and certain ministers remain so "we-didn't-do-anything-wrong" even after the Prime Minister has apologised to the other country?

...when politicians say "if you don't feel safe in our country, you can go home" to the foreigners in their country? Why did the people vote for 8-year olds to run the country?

On a separate note, I received an email from my lecturer last night, asking if I was one of those who were not present at our 2nd MCQ test without a valid reason. I was there, and I have a test score on the result page to prove it. Sent him my reply last night, still waiting to hear from him again. I think it's nice of him to send an email like that to ensure that he didn't make a mistake regarding the attendance, but of course he already did by sending it out to the wrong students....

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:18 PM. 2 comments.
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[Damn layout....]

I've removed the clock and countdown ticker until I can figure out why it's making all the IE go CPU crazy. Changed the colours a bit on my AdSense ads also.

And guess what...This new layout *still* doesn't display right on Firefox. I give up. Damned Firefox....It insists on adding scrollbars to my CSS panels (I'm not sure if this is the right name for it). If you're a Firefox user, click here to see what the layout should look like.

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:42 AM. 0 comments.
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005  

[Exams over!]

My exams are finally over for this semester. Today's paper was not too bad, of all the 4 papers I took this semester, today's paper was the easiest.

Yes, I finally changed the layout of my blog. I've been wanting to do it for a while now, and was playing around with some of the design ideas in my head since before my exams. My exams ended at 3pm today, I reached home and started work on the new layout at 4:15pm, and it's ready now at 7:30pm. That was pretty quick, considering I took a dinner break in between.

Anyway, I have a favour to ask of everyone who's reading this post. With the local time and countdown tickers (above) in view, open your Task Manager. Under Processes, how much CPU cycles are being consumed by IEXPLORE.EXE?

The reason for this is because whenever I have the tickers in view, my IEXPLORE.EXE CPU cycle rate goes all the way up to 99%. I never noticed this until recently. I want to know if anyone else is affected by this. Please leave your respond as a comment. Thanks heaps! :)

^^^ by Locksley @ 7:26 PM. 6 comments.
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Sunday, November 27, 2005  

[Things I want to do before I die...]

In no particular order:
  1. Sky-dive.
  2. Have an article written about me on Wikipedia.
  3. Top Mick Foley's leap off the top of the Hell In A Cell.
  4. Win a Royal Rumble.
  5. Win the WWE or World Heavyweight Championship in Singapore.
  6. Successfully defend the above-named title in Singapore.
  7. Score the goal that takes Singapore into the World Cup finals.
  8. Score the goal that wins Singapore the World Cup.
  9. Shake Bret Hart's hand.
  10. Marry Jessica Simpson.
  11. Be the first Singaporean to go into space.
  12. Be the first Singaporean to return from space (hey, I don't wanna get stuck up there!).

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:06 AM. 0 comments.
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Thursday, November 24, 2005  

[Some things I don't get....]

Why hasn't anyone had the idea of making Tintin movies? We have enough James Bond movies as it is, and they are all the same (more or less). We should have Tintin movies. I'd pay to watch that.

How did we get to the state where we're paying for bottled water? Do you people not know we can get that for free from the taps? I think it started with one French guy, sitting in his chair, smoking a cigar going, "How dumb do I think the world is? I bet we can sell them water...." And there you have it....Bottled water. And there's a label stating the nutritional values. I was expecting a recipe for ice cubes.

The male seahorse is the one what gives birth? Why don't we just call it the female seahorse?

^^^ by Locksley @ 7:38 PM. 1 comments.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2005  

[Horoscope for today...]

"A person you've always thought of as a friend could easily become far more than that to you now. Don't count on it happening just yet, but definitely pay attention to the signals."

Uh-huh...

^^^ by Locksley @ 9:55 PM. 1 comments.
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[Don't ever say things can't get any worse...]

...because they can. And they will.

I thought I'd hit rock bottom after my paper on Monday. I was wrong. Today's marketing paper is the one which really finished me off. We were supposed to answer 40 MCQs and 3 essay/long questions.

For the MCQs, some of the questions have answers which I've never even heard of. I think I must have closed my eyes and picked a number for 25% of them. The essay/long questions were not any better. I stared at the first one for 10 minutes, not knowing what to write for it. As for the other 2, I crapped my way through them, giving answers I invented on the spot.

Things do not look good.....

Anyhow, my next paper is on the 29th. I'm gonna take a breather before preparing for it. Here's another reason why I don't belong in University....I took only 3 papers so far, and I'm completely burnt out. I have friends who are taking 6 papers in all, and they're still going strong.

^^^ by Locksley @ 9:45 PM. 0 comments.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2005  

[Mist?]


I've lived in Singapore for almost 24 years now, and I've never seen a weather report which said we were having mist. I've never really seen mist in Singapore neither....Unless you count the dew in the morning air sometimes. I seldom see that anyway, since by the time I usually get up....Let's just say breakfast is over.

Actually I did have the chance to see mist once. I will never forget that day.

It was the third day of a 3-day exercise when I was still in Army. I'll never forget this exercise because it was the single most exhausting experience of my life. To help the story along, it pays to know that of all the different weapons allocated that we had to carry, mine was the second heaviest, at about 14 kilograms. Lagging around a 14 kilo piece of metallic crap for 3 days on foot can really take it out of you. For comparison's sake, an M16 weighs about 2 - 4 kilos...I can't remember exactly how heavy.

I remember lying down to sleep in a clearing the night before the third day. I was dead beat, sticky, dirty, and I'm pretty sure I have some sand or dirt or something lodged in my ass crack. Wonderful experience. Anyway, as I laid down to sleep, I looked up into the sky and saw no clouds in the skies above, only stars. Hundreds and hundreds of stars. This is the first time in my life I've taken the time to look at the night sky. Living near the equator, the skies are usually cloudy, so being able to see the stars on a night with clear skies was a wonderful treat. I remembered thinking that all the crap I've been through for the past 2 days and what I'd need to go through tomorrow was worth it, having seen such a wonderful sight.

I fell asleep thinking about how funny it would be if it started raining in the middle of the night, since we were all in a clearing with no shelter.

I woke up the next morning with a rude shock. I thought my dream had came true, because my uniform was wet. So were my feet, and I had kept my boots on. I woke with a start, and got onto my feet, and then proceeded to stumble about for 15 seconds. Wanna know why? It's hard to explain this to folks who's never slept on the ground (not floor, ground), but after a while, your body gets so stiff that when you get up, your muscles won't respond, and you need to coax them back into action. When I finally regained my footing, I saw one of the most beautiful sights in my life.

The whole clearing was blanketed with mist. Actual mist! Not the lame-ass morning dew. The thick mist looked like clouds, and it almost felt like I was in Cameron Highlands. Visibility was about 50 metres. There's no way I can describe the mist, other than it almost felt as if I was in heaven with all the clouds and such. I know this is not a big deal for people from other parts of the world, but in Singapore, not many people would have had the chance to experience this.

So that's my story of the first time I saw mist in my life.

^^^ by Locksley @ 11:19 PM. 1 comments.
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[Winter...]


24 degrees Celsius. We don't get this often in sunny, tropical Singapore. This is like winter for us. Brrrr.....

^^^ by Locksley @ 5:47 PM. 0 comments.
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[More guppies!]


I've been keeping one of my female guppies separated from the rest for about 7 days...Her stomach looked like she was going to give birth soon, but after so many days, I thought she might be suffering from dropsy, so I added some medicine into her small tank (which is the same breeding trap I use for pregnant guppies). Lo and behold...She finally dropped her fries last night. I saw some of them this morning before I left for school, and this was the final count when I came back in the afternoon.

^^^ by Locksley @ 2:17 PM. 1 comments.
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Monday, November 21, 2005  

[FUBAR]

I crashed and burnt my first exam paper this semester. No doubt about it. I lost count of the number of questions which I didn't know how to do. My only hope now is that enough people screw up so that the bell curve would pull me up in the end.

This is one of the worst feelings you can have as a student. Knowing that you tried your best, but it's still not good enough, and have to depend on other people screwing up just like you did in order to stay in the game.

^^^ by Locksley @ 9:04 PM. 0 comments.
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Sunday, November 20, 2005  

[This pretty much sums up...]


...how I feel right now. 1 day, 5 hours left before my first exam paper for this semester. Feeling extremely unprepared. And lost. And unfocused. And burnt-out.

On top of that, I came across some disturbing news....Although I guess I should not be surprised about it. I may have to delete half my blog....We'll see what happens.

^^^ by Locksley @ 11:38 AM. 3 comments.
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Friday, November 18, 2005  

[Roy Keane leaves Manchester United...]


My sister came into my room to watch Survivor 5 minutes before it started, and the news broadcast was just ending. I was closing a game I was playing when I glanced the television screen and saw "Keane leaves United with immediate effect". Shocked, I went to Soccernet and saw that it was true.

I didn't care much for Keane as an individual, mainly because he shoots his mouth off more than he has to, but his on-field capabilities cannot be doubted. I can't remember when or against which team, but there was this time when United was playing very badly. Ferguson subbed Keane into the game, and the whole team changed. That's how influential a player he was on the field. He has the ability to inspire the team and change the way they play, and he's just one person. His aggression and commitment cannot be questioned.

It would be interesting to see how United goes about replacing him. As much as I like Alan Smith, he's not in Keane's class yet. He might get there eventually, but United needs someone now.

I close this entry with the best marketing strategy in the world: Calling your potential customer "idiot".

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:03 PM. 2 comments.
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[Haha!]

^^^ by Locksley @ 9:25 PM. 0 comments.
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[How the mighty hath fallen...]

I'm supposed to be using every minute of my spare time right now to complete my revision for my exams, but I simply could not resist this. I was watching a collection of Jeff Hardy matches in TNA when I saw this.


This match took place in December 2004. It was Hardy, AJ Styles and Randy Savage against Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. That's Nash on the right, and Hall on the left. For those of you who don't know, that's Diesel and Razor Ramon. Look at their ridiculous outfits! Elvis? HAHAHA!

After so many years, Hall's moves has not changed a bit. He can wear a mask and we'll all know that that's him. Still, he's better than Nash who probably knows a grand total of 5 or 6 wrestling moves. Most of his offense are either kicks or punches or elbows. Yeah, I know he had a health scare recently so making fun of him right now is probably in poor taste, but I don't like him very much.

Okay...Back to my books....

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:19 PM. 3 comments.
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Thursday, November 17, 2005  

[Time is running out...]

At this time of writing, I have about 4 days and 2 hours before my exams begin. I need to revise for a total of 3 modules (I have a 5-day break before I take my 4th and last paper, so not starting revision for that module yet), and so far I've only managed to finish one of them (my Marketing module). I tried the past year papers last night, and I did quite a lot of them wrongly. Crap....And the sample essay questions...I don't even know how to start answering some of them.

Preparing my cheat sheet for my MNO module. We're allowed 4 pieces of notes, I'm still on the first chapter and I've already used up half a page. This does not bode well....

^^^ by Locksley @ 3:06 PM. 0 comments.
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[Here we go again...]

Visited MIW a few days ago...There was no further news regarding the MOB at the end of the year. While I was told that it's been cancelled when I called to asked about it, I wasn't 100% convinced, and thought that maybe something would come up. I certainly wouldn't want to be sleeping on the day when I got activated...Like the last time.

Anyway, as it turns out, the MOB has really been cancelled. Yay! News of my next (actually first) ICT has been posted. June 12th to 16th 2006. Aragh.....

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:31 AM. 0 comments.
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005  

[33 Internet users here probed in piracy crackdown...]

Read about the news at the Straits Times Interactive: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/free/story/0,6418,353015,00.html. My comments are below.

If you keep up with P2P news, you'll know that this is the result of the latest wave of crackdown by the IFPI. You can read about it at http://p2pnet.net/story/6992 (this is not a neutral site, it is biased against RIAA/MPAA/IFPI, so use some good judgment on your part). Of all the users identified by IFPI, 33 of them are Singaporeans.

It might be interesting to note that one of IFPI's members is Sony BMG. From what I understand after reading the articles, it seems that IFPI collected the users' IP addresses, then went through them to classify them according to country, and then passed them along to the local arm of their offices, in this case the RIAS. RIAS then proceeded to lodge a police report against the users.

What I find most interesting was that there's practically no legal action being carried out after the recent Sony rootkit fiasco. To cut the long story short, Sony recently implement some sort of DRM on their audio CDs. When these CDs are inserted into your computer, the CDs would automatically install a piece of software known as a rootkit. What Sony has wanted to do was to prevent users from copying the tracks onto their computers. In the first place, this is wrong, as users who bought the CD had the right (Fair Use) to make a copy for backup.

The rootkit not only took away a user's fair use rights, it also opened a ton of backdoors into the user's computer, prompting Microsoft to add it onto it's spyware list. Other anti-virus companies are following suit. You can manually remove the rootkit, but doing so would render your optical drives unusable.

All these sounds like someone could invoke the Computer Misuse Act (local law) on Sony BMG. I've read somewhere that this could be a felony in the States.

So here's the kicker....Users buy original CDs, and get rootkits on their systems. They download the tracks, and get their asses hauled to jail.

Who's the real victim here?

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:23 AM. 1 comments.
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Monday, November 14, 2005  

[Eddie's last match...]

Eddie Guerrero's last match was on the Nov 11th episode of Smackdown!, against Ken Kennedy. Below are the some screenshots of the match.






































Eddie won the match by fooling the referee into thinking that Kennedy hit him with a chair. Classic Eddie gimmick. We'll never see that ever again.

On another note, I was over at one of our local forums. Someone posted news of Eddie's death, and quite a number of people did not believe it. Even up till now, they still think it's a work and basically are trash-talking those who accepted the news. I don't know what's worse...That we lost one of the greatest in-ring performers, or the fact that there are people who can think that it's a work when it's been reported on E! Online, and lots of other website.

These people are sick. I only hope that when their time comes, no one would give a shit because what goes around, comes around.

^^^ by Locksley @ 11:37 AM. 9 comments.
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