A Better Title

Damn… Shouldn’t have slept only for three hours last night. @_@

iPod nano: I want…

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It’s 4.30 a.m. now, and I just came home! Woo!

No I didn’t go clubbing.

So after a good short night morning sleep nap, I decided to go to N4 side of NTU to meet the people from SIGGRAPH.

My mission was to venture into the foreign land called the Microcomputer Systems Lab to install the softwares required for Thursday’s Photoshop course. To boldly go where no owls have gone before. To help me in this, I had requested the Special Projects slaves sub-committee members as well as the Art Resource Artists to come down. In addition, the Art Director was supposed to brief the Art Resource Artists on what to do on the course day itself.

After coming 14 minutes later than promised, I met two Art Resource Artists (this title sounds quite repetitive, doesn’t it? I shall shorten it to Artists from now on) near the lab. I invited them in, and promptly started to install the softwares. As luck would have it, I copied the wrong software into the CDs I intended to use. Instead of the tryout version of Adobe Photoshop CS2, I copied the pirated version of Adobe InDesign CS.

So about 20 minutes were wasted finding the correct file in my laptop and burning it into the CD.

Five more people, a networked installation and one-and-a-half hours were what it took to install the softwares in the 47 computers in the lab. It was quite fast in my opinion. It was continued by a briefing on a major animation project and a short crash course on Photoshop by DN, the Art Director, for the Artists.

I hereby would like to thank my mother, my father DN, the art director; GJH, the External Vice Chairperson; GWJ, the joker Special Projects sub-committee member; TSW, my partner-in-crime partner in Special Projects; XY, the very-good-in-Photoshop Artist; HHK, the Indonesian Artist; Risuchia, the other Indonesian Artist; and Nicole, the fellow-blogger Artist.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I have a convention in writing out names in my blog. If the person doesn’t have a blog, I always use the initials of the full name of the said person. For example, if Hendri Budi didn’t have a blog, he would become HB. This is to make sure they remain anonymous but at the same time, people close to me would know who I’m talking about. If the person has both English and Chinese names, sometimes I put the latter in also, but sometimes not. So you may find both DL or DLJL.

If the person has a blog, then I use the name that the said person uses in his or her own blog. In addition, I usually link the first occurence of the name to the said person’s blog. For example, Suhu calls himself, well, Suhu (except the few times that he admits that he’s an obese panda). So in the blog entry it would be written as Suhu.

But some people prefer not to use his or her real name, so for example it would be XIV. Yes, I know that XIV is known with another name in the side bar. This is because my side bar doesn’t follow the same convention as one in the blog entries–I use their real names unless they request otherwise.

After listening to stories of how fun it seems to do projects related to computers (programming and the sort) I kind of regret my decision to enter EEE. Except for EE2010 Algorithm and Data Structures, I haven’t really been enjoying myself–and the reason why I enjoyed it was because the concepts required are quite similar to what I had learnt in Computing in JC; and because the tutorials are very short. Well, maybe I didn’t enjoy myself because I skipped too many lectures, but one of the reasons why I did was because I haven’t been interested in the lectures. Maybe I should have entered Computer Engineering or Computer Science instead.

Even GWJ was surprised when I told him I am in EEE, because I am “so good with computers” that he thought I was in Computer Engineering! Not bragging about myself, but I admit that I’m most comfortable when working with computers, and the reason why I didn’t choose to take Computer Engineering or Computer Science was because I thought that the labour market for computer engineers/scientists would be oversaturated when I graduate.

It’s a bit too late to look back, I guess?

So why the heck did I come back so late?

I was supposed to have an online MSN meeting to discuss my group’s EE2009 Technical Communcation project at 8 p.m. I was lazy to go back then, because if I were to go back, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on the task at hand. But due to one thing or the other, the meeting was postponed till 10, and then postponed again till 11. Luckily there was a friend to accompany me then. When the meeting finally ended, I somehow decided to go to the Students Activities Centre near the SBS building to supposedly study (I surfed the net instead in the end). Not the Singapore Bus Services building lah, it’s the School of Biological Sciences.

The SAC is a very nice place to study. Located in Basement 1 near SBS building, the room that we used to study is large (about 50 m by 50 m) and has quite a few bar stools, sofas and coffee tables in addition to desks and chairs for students to use, giving an impression that it’s a café. There’s also a real cafétaria next to the room that we used. From what I heard, one level down from the place (i.e. Basement 2) is the new Student Union’s room after they’ve moved over from Nanyang House.

One thing I could not understand, though, was the necessity to have six wireless access points within a total radius of probably less than 70 metres. The most ridiculous must be the two wireless access points located opposite each other on the walls, but just about 10 metres from each other (the room isn’t exactly rectangular). It’s good in a sense that wireless reception is guaranteed to be excellent wherever you are in the room, but isn’t it a waste of money to buy so many access points for such a small space?

I love Flickr. They have such a casual and unintimidating attitude towards almost everything in their website. For example, you can be greeted “Hello hendrib!” one time, “Salaam hendrib!” another time, and “Bonjour hendrib!” the next time.

My favourites must be these two:

The first one is found in the Your Account page. Who the heck has ‘Other’ gender? And they have an option called ‘Rather not say’ which most other services don’t.

The second is taken from an FAQ page regarding Flickr’s merger with Yahoo!. It’s just way out of point, but when you’re reading the entire list from the top, you’ll just chuckle at the text and probably go doubleyou-tee-eff.

Hopefully after the merger, Yahoo! won’t strip Flickr of these funny bits that users like me would love to see.

Ok, I’ve written this long and I still haven’t said why I came back so late.

Apparently, in addition to phobia of heights, I also have a phobia of lightnings. After I finished supposedly-studying (actually-surfing-net) with my friend, it was 2 a.m. in the morning, and as we were walking towards Yunnan Garden–which I had to cross to get to the overhead bridge that I had to cross to get back home–it was very windy and there were bright flashes followed by a low rumble of thunder from time to time.

The overhead bridge seems like an open area where in my mind I kept on running through scenes after scenes of what happens before, when, and after I get struck by a lightning. Even though it wasn’t raining yet and there were tall buildings near the bridge and there were quite a number of people crossing the overhead bridge safely–despite having to climb the fence to get in or out of the NTU–I was scared enough to take a shelter in the friend’s room instead.

A short drizzle and two hours later, I finally reached home and went to shower, and typed this entry.

This entry has been very long despite my attempts to keep it short. So I think I should stop here before I go on and on about more random stuff. In any case, It’s now 6 a.m. and I need to wake up in 2.5 hours. I have to be in school to borrow a projector for Thursday’s course and collect the mooncakes I bought for Visual Arts Society canvassing.

Till later.

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