I’m currently on Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, connected to my home desktop PC using the Terminal Server (a.k.a. Remote Desktop) connection. The desktop PC is in turn connected to NTU’s VPN, through which I connect to my FYP PC in school using another Remote Desktop connection.

So the end result is that I have an Ubuntu machine connected to a Windows XP machine, which in turn is connected to another Windows XP machine, all through Remote Desktop connections.

Oh, the things that geeks do…

Now if only I can get hold of a Mac machine, it would be perfect.

Didn’t have much to do on Friday, so I went to school to return the book I smuggled out borrowed from library for my last paper. Also went to the International Student Centre to collect my PR invitation letter. I’m not a PR yet, but I will be eligible to apply for PR once I get a job. I also went to the Career and Attachment Office to get my IA certificate. Finally I’m starting to see something out of my university education.

After putting the items in my locker, I headed out to the airport. I SMSed some of my friends, but none wanted to go, so I went on my own. It was a nostalgic trip, with all the nice memories there. Bought mint chocolate and Cadbury chocolate at Candy Empire.

I managed to catch the A380 while at T3. Also attempted to spot airplanes, though I still have to brush up on my airplane identification skill. The airplanes were landing on runway 20R, and probably 20C (I could only see the first runway from T3), and so it would have been perfect had I been in Changi Village instead, since it would be just under the landing path.

I wanted to spot the A380 taking off to Sydney, so I made my way to Terminal 2. Unfortunately the viewing gallery was too small and anyway it was quite dark out there, so I didn’t catch the take off in the end.

I had my dinner at Popeyes Chicken, but unfortunately it wasn’t nice at all. Perhaps I was just unfortunate to get the tasteless chicken or maybe it was just the lack of company. Kind of regretted getting the 3 chicken meal set that I bought.

I was contemplating to go home, but heard that Daphne was going to meet Chillycraps and Xizor2000 in town. So I went to drop by Suntec’s Starbucks.

The journey to Starbucks was not without any challenges–I thought they were at the Starbucks in one of the Suntec towers. So I went all the way, only to be told that they were at the Suntec Convention Centre Starbucks, which is like just next to the exit of the underpass I had to take to get to Suntec…

So I made my way back to the correct Starbucks. It was also the first time that I met my plug police partner Xizor2000. It was great meeting them, though Chillycraps had to leave early. Thanks to Xizor2000, now I know how to use the shoutbox on my phone without any additional devices. Maybe I’ll do a walkthrough post on this too.

We only left after midnight, and since there was no more trains available, Xizor2000 and I shared a cab home.

Heh, this post sounds very boring… I really wonder where did all those funny jokes I used to pepper my blog with go.

Fine, I haven’t gone about putting them into typing.

That sentence sounds weird.

Anyhow, I’ve been going out and spending quite a lot of money since exams ended. Not that I’m rich or anything, but I think I deserve a rest after all those weeks holing myself up either at home or in school to mug.

Tuesday evening was spent with a friend. It’s been a while since the two of us last met, and I only realised that I wore exactly the same shirt that I wore the previous time we met.

I swore I changed in between.

Dinner was at Pepper Lunch (our favourite) followed by coffee at Starbucks. It was inevitable that the chat revolved around romance, and I must admit that I am not ready to move on to another girl. In the meantime I’ll just wait and see how things go.

After deliberating later on in the Ping.sg shoutbox, I decided to go with Krisandro and Ironic Gamer to the Podfire.sg launch event at Geek Terminal on Wednesday evening. It was also the first time I met Krisandro in person.

Podfire.sg is a podcast aggregator based in Singapore. Currently they carry the Blogger’s Treat (a food show done by bloggers) and Geek Goddess (a technology show, also done by bloggers) as their inaugural episodes. Unfortunately, the inaugural episodes of the two shows failed to impress me. They are not badly done per se, but perhaps it was because I had carried a certain amount of expectation of the shows.

It would be great if the hosts in Blogger’s Treat were more vocal and describe the food that they are eating in more details, because after all viewers can’t taste them when watching the show, instead relying on visual and aural clues. I also felt that there was too much emphasis on the hosts instead of the food itself, but it could be just me.

The Geek Goddess show was riddled with technical issues, for example there was one time where the host spoke softly, and just when I was straining my ears, the host started a song which was very loudly, startling me in the process. Also, since the website reviewed was in Chinese, it didn’t really appeal to me.

Nevertheless, it seems like a new idea and I’m sure that subsequent shows will be much better.

They have also teamed up with Tech65 (another technology podcast from Singapore) as their partner. I met numerous people at the event, old and new: Arzhou, DK, Paddy, Nadnut (first time), Mintea, Tian Hong, Nicole, Uzyn, Ridz, Krisandro (first time), Ironic Gamer, Sabrina (the host of Blogger’s Treat, though I didn’t talk to her in the end), Daphne, Deadpris (first time), Jean, Claudia, Bernard, Miccheng, Lu Yee, Farinelli, and many others (apologies if I missed out your name here!).

Food was onion rings, spring roll, sandwich, and potato wedges. It was alright, but of course, an event at Geek Terminal is not perfect without Danny’s coffee. As usual, Nicole never failed to manage to get Danny to stretch his creativity and come up with new drinks. I wonder what they were, since I didn’t get to drink them, but they sure look good (look at some of the photos in Jean’s blog).

Unfortunately, I was too shy to interact with the others (it’s amazing what months of anti-social life can cause you) so I remained rather low-profile throughout the event.

We then headed out to The Pump Room, which is a pub located a few stones’ throw away in Clarke Quay. Not knowing what to expect, I let DK order my drink which was their signature lager beer. It was then that I realised why I hated beer.

As the music (mostly oldies) started and the crowd started to dance, I felt totally out place there and decided to retreat to the back of the room. I’m more of a geek than a clubber, and so I watched people dance in the background. A while later, Ironic Gamer, Daphne, Tian Hong, Deadpris and I decided to call it a day and caught our last trains for home.

It sure brings a smile to my face, even as I face the last battle that I have to go through in approximately 9.5 hours time from now. It sometimes even made me unconsciously sing to myself when I’m studying, which puts a big question mark on my sanity.

The next time you see a guy going “la lalalala, lala lalalala, lala la lalalala” in NTU campus, you know who he is.

Read more for the lyrics.

(more…)

I do wish to remember all the memories, maybe even write about everything, but for now, this will suffice: two nice songs I used to listen a lot.

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police

You To Me Are Everything - The Real Thing

Well actually, I found that the nicest arrangements of the two songs were “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by Flying Pickets (which also happens to be one of the best a cappella groups out there), and “You To Me Are Everything” by Budak Pantai (a local a cappella group).

Too bad I can’t find them neither on IMEEM nor YouTube. Buzz me if you want them.

Monday, 21 April 2008

• 6 pm: Wake up
• 10 pm: Reach school
• 10 pm-5am: Go through character list for Chinese paper

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

• 6 am: Go home
• 6 am-12 pm: Sleep
• 12-4 pm: Go through book one more time
• 5-7.30 pm: Chinese paper
• 9 pm-3 am: Sleep

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

• 3-8 am: Revise Embedded Systems one more time
• 9-11 am: Embedded Systems paper

Of course, nothing is perfect. I finished going through the characters list by 6 am, but by then it was raining heavily and I didn’t bring an umbrella along. So I stayed in school, had breakfast, and by the time I reached home it was already 8.30 am.

I set my alarm clock to 12.30 pm, half an hour later than planned. Then from 9-10.30 am, I just lay awake on my bed, tossing and turning, trying to sleep but couldn’t. At 10.30 am, I decided to postpone my waking up time to 1 pm instead.

From 10.30-11.30 am, I still tossed and turned. For some reason I was really sensitive to external interference. Like when I put on my blanket, I felt warm, but when I took it off, I felt cold. When I raised the air-con temperature by one degree, I felt warm again, and so on so forth.

Even the slightest sound of my flatmate hanging his clothes in the bathroom (the sound is caused by the metal hanger hitting the wall which is adjacent to my room) put me in an alert state again.

Finally at about 11.40 am, I was just about to fall asleep.

Just about.

Then my handphone rang.

!#$&@&!&.

And from my experience, once I’m awakened when I’m just about to fall asleep, I won’t be able to fall asleep so easily afterwards.

I might as well don’t sleep now. Besides, my experience with the English language has been that my linguistic abilities performing better when I don’t have enough sleep. For some reason, the creative side of me is able to string together more complicated and intricate sentences better when I don’t sleep enough. I hope it’s the same with Chinese.

Now the only problem is that if I were to do that, I would be awake for more than 24 hours by the time Chinese paper ends. That will leave me in a severe shortage of sleep, and I doubt the 6 hour sleep I catered to give enough time for the last-minute Embedded Systems revision is enough.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

The good thing is that I can sleep all I want after the Embedded Systems paper, since my last paper will be on 29 April.

Meanwhile, I’m off to mug Chinese again.

The reporter said:

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s all the news headline this afternoon, and after these messages, we will join our colleague [colleague’s name] in MetroMini, we mean Metro TV studio at Jakarta Stock Exchange. Stay with us.

This is Metro TV.

And this is MetroMini.

This is what she said (in Indonesian):

Pemirsa demikian headline news siang ini, dan setelah pesan-pesan berikut, kita akan bergabung kembali bersama rekan [nama rekan] di studio MetroMini, maksud kami Metro TV Bursa Efek Jakarta. Tetaplah bersama kami.

Now we know what mode of transport she took to work.

Here’s how one PMMA molecule looks like.

And here’s a chain of them. Does it look familiar?

Does it look familiar now?

And this too…

It’s no wonder that they said home-made dance pads can be made of acrylic glass.

Just for the fun of it, I checked out the article on Pisces on Wikipedia, and see if the so-called traits apply to me. My comments are in bold. The traits are in bold as it looks nicer that way.

According to Wikipedia, Pisces people have these good traits:

• hypnotizing charm - *stares out of screen to hypnotize my blog readers*
• flexible - Not at all, I can’t do sit and reach…
• nurturing - I like to teach, though the reverse is not necessarily true
• free-spirited - Of course I’m free! Need to pay meh?
• romantic - Nope, never read Romance of the Three Kingdoms before
• happy - Yatta!
• sensitive - Don’t criticize me can?
• mystical - Nah…
• enchanting - Haha, seriously? *starts chanting instead*
• smart - No comments
• emotional - Who doesn’t have emotions?
• reverent - Nah, not at all
• creative - I prefer Apple iPod nano
• loving - Maybe
• easygoing - Quite easy lah
• fun - So fun meh?
• spontaneous - *combusts spontaneously*
• sympathetic - Pathetic? Yes. Sympathetic? Not very sure
• compassionate - To my compatriots? Perhaps
• intuitive - Common sense? Think so
• unworldly - I’m a god?
• wise - Haven’t removed wisdom tooth yet
• open minded - Not too bad I think
• caring - Yes, sometimes too much
• devoted - Too much for my own good
• liberal - Looks like it
• humorous - I’m that funny meh?
• shy - Too shy
• innocent - Of course I’m innocent!
• imaginative - Let’s see, what would happen if I don’t study…
• understanding - Really?
• perceptive - Perhaps
• tolerant - Too tolerant
• benevolent - Am I?
• self-sacrificing - Too much
• artistic - A bit here and there

Pisces people also have these bad traits:

• distracted - I’m supposed to be studying, for goodness sake!
• detached - I’m not having exams! What exams?!
• illusionary - There’s no exams, right?
• impractical - I need to print my notes if I want to study for exams, now! (4.46 am)
• gullible - My flatmate said there’s no exams for him… Means there’s none for me too?
• escapist - Let me just blog for a while…
• lazy - I think I’ll continue studying tomorrow
• erratic - Or should I study now? Oh look, nice game…
• aloof - I don’t care, I want to finish blogging before I start studying I thought aloof meant stubborn…
• moody - Why oh why does the library close so early and my CashCard expire at this time when I need to print my notes?
• fickle - Should I print my notes in the library, or the lab?
• confused - Library? Lab? Library? Lab? Or don’t print at all?
• depressed - Crap, exams really coming soon, how? I cannot finish studying like this lah… Die lah die lah, might as well don’t study at all…
• complicated - I don’t want to study anymore… But studying is fun. How?

What about you?

Pisces,
hendri

Opera Mini gave out a “Failed to connect to the Internet” error. I was sure it wasn’t Opera Mini’s fault, since it worked flawlessly the previous day. It was confirmed when Google Maps gave out a similar error. I could surf “normal” websites (such as blogs) on the phone’s default browser, but those that require authentication (i.e. username and password) didn’t work. Outlook Mobile Access for NTU’s webmail kept on asking me for my username and password without letting me in, and Twitter refused to let me send an update.

One thing I noticed at that time was that there was a header and footer added to the pages. These belong to MobileSurf, a so-called enhancement for M1 users, which according to the website “intelligently customises webpages to fit different mobile screen sizes. It can also handle flash animation and multi-languages.” It “provides a friendlier way to browse the Web on your mobile phone, making it easier to go online wherever you may be.”

Friendlier way my ass.

First, I must admit that larger websites now load up much faster, and the feature no doubt will be useful for people who have older phones which can’t load normal websites (i.e. those not designed with mobile phones in mind) using the default browser. It can also be useful when the website is so large that it can’t be loaded in the phone.

The thing is that I don’t need these features, since I am already using Opera Mini. And judging by the way a lot of websites are now broken, it’s more of an annoyance than it is useful.

My hypothesis was that since the header and footer are added on-the-fly, these interfered with how the websites work. Not only that, Opera Mini and Google Maps require their own specialized data format to be transmitted correctly in order to work. Adding the header and footer might modify the data in a way that can’t be read by the applications.

It’s like trying to open a Microsoft Word document in Notepad. Yes the text is still there, but it will be garbled for any practical purpose.

I called the customer service hotline on Tuesday at 10.15 am, and immediately requested to disable the service. The customer service officer told me that the service was only launched at 9 am that morning, meaning that I was probably one of the first to complain about the service. At first she couldn’t pinpoint the problem, and promised to call me back. She did in the afternoon, and advised me that she would send the Internet connectivity settings to my phone.

Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the problem, and as I was busy doing other things, I didn’t bother to call back.

Until morning today, when I realised that I couldn’t Twitter from the phone, even using the default browser (reading Twitters is not a problem, which was all I did on Tuesday).

I called the customer service hotline again, and after being redirected twice to the technical support officer, I described the problem and he immediately walked through with me steps to rectify the problem. He adviced me to use the Sunsurf internet profile instead of the default Mi_World_GPRS in order to bypass the MobileSurf feature, and lo and behold, all the problems were solved.

Opera Mini, Google Maps, Outlook Mobile Access, and Twitter work again.

In case you’re having a similar problem, here’s the walkthrough to rectify it. I am describing the solution on a Sony Ericsson K618i. Adjust to your phone accordingly.

1. Go to Menu > Settings > scroll right to Connectivity > Data comm. > Data accounts.
2. Check that “Sunsurf” exists in Data accounts. If it doesn’t, go to New Account > PS data, and name it “Sunsurf”. Fill in the following data in the subsequent page:
   1. APN: sunsurf
   2. Username: 65
   3. Password: (blank)
3. Edit the “Sunsurf” profile, and verify/fill in the following:
   1. APN: sunsurf
   2. Username: 65
   3. Password: (blank)
   4. Login request: Off
   5. Allow Calls: Automatic
   6. IP Address: … (yes, those are three dots)
   7. DNS Address: …
   8. Security/authentication: PAP only
   9. Data Compression: Off
   10. Header Compression: Off
4. Go to Menu > Settings > scroll right to Connectivity > Internet settings > Internet profiles and select Sunsurf. Also go to Settings for Java and select Sunsurf.

The connection should now work properly. Note that if you like the MobileSurf feature, you can enable it only for the default phone browser by selecting Mi_World_GPRS under Internet profiles, while selecting Sunsurf under Settings for Java.

I hope this helps M1 customers having problems connecting to the mobile Internet after they introduced the MobileSurf feature!

Still an M1 customer,
hendri