|
|
|
Thursday, December 28, 2006
[The day the Internet died...] Due to the earthquake in Taiwan, my Internet has been uncooperative since yesterday. Something like this really can't be helped, and just shows how dependent we are on a few underwater cables. As of this moment, I am still unable to access some of my email accounts. What I'm really miffed about is the way Singnet (my ISP) has been handling the fallout. A Starhub user said yesterday evening that most of his connections had been restored, and that surfing was just like any other normal day. Another guy with both Singnet and Starhub connections tried them both out, and the clear winner was Starhub. I thought that was weird. Didn't Singnet own all the...ahem..."infrastructure"? But the problems brought on by the earthquake aside, I have been unhappy with Singnet for a while. I have the strangest problem when I surf the web. It all boils down to the proxy server. Nowadays, we no longer have to specify the proxy server to use in our browsers. It's all "transparent", so much that some of the people I talked to told me that they thought proxy servers were only for dial-up connections. I guess they came to that conclusion because in the past (the age of dial-up) we had to specify the proxy servers manually. But I digress. If I surf without the proxy server, I get problems when I access certain sites. A CSS or JS file on Soccernet won't load, so the MouseOver menus were all opened up. I had to scroll down all the way to access the news. Images on BlogSpot and eBay won't load, and refreshing doesn't help. I can't access some sites completely, like MediaFire, without using the proxy server. All I got when I tried to was an empty HTML page, with empty HTML and BODY tags. Overall, the speed was slower too. When I use the proxy server, all the problems above go away. Yay? No....Because I could only have a maximum of four connections to the proxy server. Say I'm downloading four files simultaneously...That would be it. No more connections for me. No pages would load, no more files would download. And sometimes, the proxy server seems to "take a nap". To be totally unresponsive for a while. I usually switch to no-proxy during this time and switch back after the proxy server "woke up". I posted the above to the local forums. A few people suffered from the same problems, but most of they didn't (my guess, since I got very few replies). Guess I would have to live with it....For now. I went and got the results of my blood and urine test today. I go for an annual medical, and compared to last year, my health has improved. Yay me! But there were still some areas to work on. Food that taste good are never good for you.  There are some lift-upgrading works going on around my estate. One of the bags of cement they used had the funniest name. It's called Cock's Head, with a picture of a rooster's head on the bag. I couldn't take a picture because my phone's battery was low. But seriously, Cock's Head? I can't remember what is was...Concrete or cement. Cock's Head Concrete....Cock's Head Cement. Doesn't matter, they both sound wrong. CORS is down again. For the first time, I'm actually not anxious about the bidding. I haven't completely decided how many modules to take as well, which is a first for me. I usually have everything planned out bright and early. Finally bought a UPS for my computer. I've been meaning to get one for the longest time, and I finally did it on the 26th. It's an APC UPS, BE500R-AS. It's probably the lowest-grade UPS among APC's offerings. Whatever, it's just for one home computer. No fancy features like auto-shutdown or overload bypass (which would be a good feature to have, to be honest). Basically, it's a 5kg, S$77 giant battery. If the power goes out, only my tower, LCD and speakers (there were 3 outlets, so what the hell) would continue to run. Printer/scanner/modem/router would be dead. I tried it out last night, after charging it for 24 hours. I turned the power off while watching Lost and running AutoGK (which uses a lot of CPU cycles and forces my CPU to go up to max power) in the background. It lasted 8 and a half minutes before the low battery warning kicked in. Not too shabby. The funny thing is, the max output of the BE500R-AS was 300 watts. My HEC PSU is rated at 480 watts. Anyhow, I think we've all be duped, because while searching for information on UPS(es), I found a forum post by this guy who said his UPS reported that his rig was drawing only 91 watts. If that's the case, why do we need such a powerful PSU for? I don't know...But heck, if the UPS' overload warning hasn't sounded by now, it probably won't. ^^^ by Locksley @ 1:39 PM.
0 comments.
|
|
Broken for now. :( If anyone knows of a good way to display tweets without using Twitter's awful looking widgets, please let me know. Preferably something that allows me to retrieve my tweets in plain-text format.
Anything and everything under the sun. I write about my day, my thoughts, things I see in public, things to get off my chest, or sometimes just some senseless rants that make sense only to me. 30 year old male. Always with too many ideas in his head and too little time. For my 15 minutes of fame, I want to be a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman. Movies, TV, cycling, computers, planted tanks, cherry shrimps, P2P legal issues, Manchester United, WWE, TNA, UFC, etc... Best viewed @ 1280*1024 or above. Views are expressed are mine and mine only, and are not meant to offend or influence anyone. Designed for readers with a sense of humour. If you can't laugh at yourself, you probably won't like my style of humour. |