A Better Title

Fed up with the speed of StarHub as of late, I decided to do a quick test to compare the performance of StarHub and the only other competitor I have access to: M1 3G SunSurf Mobile.

The following table shows a quick comparison of the advertised features between the two:

So do they live up to their expectations? Check out some test results from Speedtest.net, at four locations worldwide: Singapore, San Francisco, London, and Melbourne. The tests were done at about 12 pm local time, on Sunday, 30 September 2007.

Singapore:

San Francisco:

London:

Melbourne:

A download test of a 1.06 GB file from Download.com also showed that StarHub only managed to get speeds up to 15 KB/s, while on M1 I managed to get speeds up to 22 KB/s, which is ironic because a wired connection is supposed to be faster than that of mobile.

Note that this test result is not perfect. The upload speed, in particular, may not be a fair test as all upload tests with M1 invariably break at the 40-50% mark, but the website inexplicably remarked that the tests had been completed. In addition, I only tested the connection speed to 4 different servers. A real, fair test should also include other locations worldwide.

Nevertheless, the results have tempted me to switch to M1 Broadband, which is supposed to be faster than M1 3G. At $22.42/month, it bundles 5GB free data with download speeds of up to 512 kbps. Extra usage charge is at $4.28/GB up to a maximum of 10GB, putting the maximum charge at $65.22, cheaper than StarHub’s offering. Not only that, the islandwide coverage is also tempting, in case I need to do my work at a place where there’s no free wireless connection.

The connection to StarHub was done through a router and a cable modem. The connection to M1 3G was done through my Sony Ericsson K618i, connected to the PC via a USB cable.

I think I really need to take some time deleting and ignoring application requests in my Facebook…

Don’t you find the application requests getting more irritating with each passing day? Especially those gazillion applications that are made for exactly the same, nonsensical purpose, each of which sends out invitation requests at least once.

Hoshi Saga 2: DON’T play this game unless you have at least an hour to spare. The premise is simple–just find the hidden stars. Yet it’s the perceived simplicity that makes this game addictive. I’ve just wasted my two hours (while surfing other sites) playing this.

[via OneMoreLevel.com]

Should I reply? I only have up to “12AM (MIDNIGHT) TONIGHT” to respond…

DEAR SIR MADAM,

YOU MAY BE SURPRISED TO RECEIEVE THIS MESSAGE, BUT ALLOW ME TO INTORUCE MYSELF, MY NAME IS SIR MADAM. YES, SIR/MADAM, MY REAL NAME IS SIR MADAM. I UNDERSTAN THIS MAY BECOOME DIFFICULT TO DUSTINGUISH BETWEEN MYSELF, SIR MADAM, AND YOU, SIR/MADAM, BUT THAT’S THE WAY THINGS ARE SOMTIMES. IF YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO BE REFERED TO AS SIR OR MADAM, PLEASE KINDLY PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO THE SIR OR MADAM NEAREST YOU.

Read more…

So I decided to search for Jack Johnson on Youtube after reading Mr. Malique’s blog post, and clicked on the first search result returned. And boy, was I impressed… his songs are actually quite nice! Funny that I only heard of him so late.

Also check out the music video for “Sitting Waiting Wishing”… It must have been quite a feat to record the entire music video in one take, backwards!

It’s the mid-autumn festival once again and many clubs in NTU have started to grab the opportunity to raise funds by selling mooncakes. Such emails will typically end up in my “Deleted Items” folder the moment I read the subject, but one of those actually caught my attention.

Now I really wonder how the mooncakes are going to slide into my doorstep… Maybe I should just order one to see it in action.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me and the Internet lately.

Since last semester when the school completely upgraded their wireless system, I have been having tremendous problems trying to connect using my laptop. Sometimes it will be connected just fine for a couple of hours. Other times the connection will get rapidly disconnected and connected.

Everytime it happens, it screws up all my existing connection, causing me to get disconnected from MSN and leaving web pages to get loaded only halfway through. The rapid disconnection usually happens every 10 seconds or so for a few minutes, before it gets disconnected totally (or, in rare occasions, back to connected).

Other times the laptop doesn’t get connected at all although it looks like it does. The only way to get properly reconnected is to unplug and replug my wireless card. More often than not, the connection only lasts for one web page. No, that’s not a typo either, it really lasts only for me to load one web page on Firefox, before the connection dies again. Then I have to unplug and replug the wireless card again.

There are times when my laptop decides to puke the moment I unplug the wireless card (something to do with Windows expecting the card to be there when it’s not there, I believe). The laptop will just get restarted automatically. This is a terrible nightmare, especially if I have just opened many tabs in Firefox before the laptop crashes.

Sure, there’s such thing as the “Restore Session” feature in Firefox, but the problem is that the moment the laptop gets restarted, the authentication to the wireless system sometimes gets expired. Which means that I’ll have to log on to the wireless again. You see, the thing is that the wireless authentication is done via a web interface whenever the laptop attempts to connect to a website. Trust me, restoring the session in Firefox is NOT a good idea in this case. If I had 20 tabs open when the laptop crashes, I will see 20 authentication windows to complete. Not a pretty sight at all.

Fair enough, I’m suspecting it has something to do with my wireless card, which is why I’m getting a new wireless card tomorrow. Or if anyone can be so kind to advice me on which bank or person I can rob for $1700 to get the cheapest laptop in school, I’ll be more than grateful.

As if the bad wireless connection in school is not enough, the connection at home is just as bad. The Starhub connection is somehow extremely slow. I’m not exaggerating when I said that sometimes my M1 3G connection is faster than the Starhub connection, especially for overseas websites.

The Starhub connection is particularly bad when it comes to viewing videos on Youtube. Take the case right now, I’m trying to watch this 6-minute video. It took me 5 minutes to buffer the first 2 minutes of the video. The remainder of the video is never loaded at all, i.e. when you play the video it will get cut off at the 2-minute mark. The only way to continue is to refresh the page, which causes the whole video to get loaded right from the beginning again. Then 5 minutes later, the video will get cut off again, perhaps this time at the 30-second mark.

Seriously, this is getting very irritating. It doesn’t help that I need to do my work in school (too much distractions at home, I know part of the problem lies on my self-discipline). I just hope that things will get better in the times to come.

“Hi, sorry to disturb you, but may I do a survey?” she said as she approached the bench where I was doing my work moblogging.

“Um, may I know what it is for?” I know the usual tactics. If she had answered anything to do with insurance or some religious groups which I have no intention on joining, I would reply with a firm no.

As expected, she said that she was from Campus Crusade for Christ, and I quickly replied that I wasn’t interested.

“But this survey is only to see how people view Christianity.”

“Can I remain anonymous?” From experience, my friends who left their contact numbers are prone to being pestered over and over again. There was a friend who was pestered so much that she had to threaten to call the police before the calls stopped.

“Sure,” she said, and I agreed to do the survey.

And sure enough, I remained anonymous throughout the short interview-style survey.

However, the survey made me realise one thing: I should be more careful about how I identify myself.

She started by asking me how I felt about Christianity, how they practise the religion and how my view on my Christian friends in terms of character, etc.

During the survey, I revealed that I was a Roman Catholic.

Legally speaking, this was true. “Katholik”, or Catholic in the Indonesian language, is typed on my Indonesian IC (no, that’s not a typo, it is literally typewritten). Indonesians are required by law to belong to any one of the six recognized religions–Islam, Christianity (both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism), Buddhism, Hinduism, or Confucianism. Of course, in practise you can belong to any other religions or don’t belong to any at all, but you need to have one of the six on your IC.

Personally though, I don’t feel as much Catholic as I claimed to be. I stopped going to church for a couple of years now. When she asked me to share more about the religion, on how it is different from other Christianity denominations, I mentioned that we place a higher importance on Mother Mary compared to the other denominations.

But when asked why the reason was, I couldn’t really answer. The only clue I had was from my religious studies teacher back in Indonesia (I was from a Catholic junior high school). The teacher told us that it would be more effective to talk to the son as well as the mother, who can then talk to the son again to reinforce the prayer. Whether this is officially acceptable in the Catholic religion is not clear.

Neither could I comment on her question on whether this implies that Mary is more important than Jesus, who’s supposed to be the one we can directly talk to when we pray.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t as pushy as some others that I know of–the very reason why I had asked to remain anonymous. She did attempt to say that the bible itself says that Jesus is the one who we should turn to as our saviour, those who believe in Him shall be saved. When I said I did not wish to comment on the issue, she didn’t persist.

When asked why I had stopped going to church, my reason was probably a personal one: it is because I believe that it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to or how you practise it. As long as you keep your moral values up, and you don’t give up hope whenever you’re in trouble, you will be living alright.

NerdTests.com says I’m a Kinda Dorky High Nerd.

What are you?

This is why you should not rely on spelling checker alone…

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it’s weigh.
m My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o’er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

[via Wikipedia]