失くしたものすべて 愛したものすべて この手に抱きしめて 現在は何処を彷徨い行くの

Looking at everything that I've lost
And almost everything that I've loved
I'll hold them all tightly in my arms
Wondering where I am, so please tell me where to go

This stanza has always struck deep. Why, I do not know. But these days it seems to be pretty close.

Where do I wander off to now, holding in my arms all I've lost and loved?

Sometimes, don't you, well I don't know about you, but I do, wish .. Why can't I be a tad more popular? A tad more sophisticated? Have fifty billion friends in my Facebook? If person A can be so popular, why can't I be?

But of course, you know, deep down, that you're not that kind of person. Not the kind to maintain tonnes of friends, to say hi to everyone ... etc.

There is a Fortress of Solitude (not Superman's!), constructed long ago, during the Dark Times™, it has been years. Cracks are showing.

Too tired sometimes to think of walking alone. But we all do. Those who say they have friends, god etc are merely deluding themselves. At the end of it all, we are alone.

掌上明珠，去了哪儿?

It has gone, first, curled up in a corner, sad, as what Lu Ru Ping said (in the TV series), let me hide in a corner to lick my wounds, like an animal (well something like that). But now it has died.

Poor little sad thing, it'll never come to pass.

The Fort is failing, and there precious Angel who'd come has stayed away.

Can't keep like this for long.

XP.. BAH!

More of my angst filled posts..

Just when I clicked publish post, Resurrection BSOD-ed. WTH? Seriously.. What's WRONG with @*&%@$). My office Mac has been running forever (needing periodic reboots of course) but no kernel panics at all (except for once or twice but that was when I was writing my own nubby driver).

Stupid windows...

WTB more stable OS.

LOTRO and how not to do software

Well needless to say I'm hardly the definitive source for application design and stuff like that, but after using tonnes of applications, I think I'm qualified to say something.

.Net sucks. Simple.
The code looks quite interesting but somehow the framework does crazy things to your system.

Case in point, LOTRO. When it was released as a trial, I thought, hey! Finally the LOTRO trial! Now I can try it out and see if I should bother plonking down the cash for it or stick to WoW and wait for WAR.

Upon installing...

Hmm... it needs .Net..? Well sure I guess.

*installed* .. etc .. rebooted

*presented with login screen*

WTH? I thought I had Resurrection configured to log in automatically...? .. No matter... *updated the registry to allow auto login, rebooted. Ah that's fine..

Well, it's NOT fine now, auto login has kinda become a random flag which is CLEARED by some mysterious process or whatnot =_=

And it's all thanks to LOTRO (well, granted it's probably the .Net framework, but it was the main cause as to why .Net got to my system in the first place).

Speaking of LOTRO... It just smacks of unfinished. I can see UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! screaming around. Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time at it, for the simple fact that it wasn't engaging at all.

1. Characters - ugly, the facial expressions are a hoot though
2. Camera - weird sluggish feel
3. Movement - buggy..? I set up auto run to target (or click to move, whatever it's called), basically my character was supposed to run to the target I clicked on and start swiping it. However, it didn't do that.. I'd click on my target, watch my toon run to it... and overshoot... I had to click again to get him back to whack the target. And it wasn't as if my target moved a fair bit during the time it needed for my character to get there. What gives?
4. Movement - weird jumping animation, for some strange reason, the animation sequence looks really weird, clipped when your character is jumping. The arm flailing just kinda .. skips to the next frame, like a badly drawn cartoon, and when you jump in a jump (ie press jump while in the air), the animation gets slightly weird.

Bah

That's it for LOTRO then.

Tried out WAR during GC-Asia, looks, feels good. High hopes for it!

Of broken dreams...

So there I was, wandering around bugs during lunch, when I went by the kiddie section, which was selling little girl dresses... You know, those princess like ones with the frills.

And I couldn't help but think, how many little girls wore those dresses, looking all innocent and wholesome, with hopes pinned upon by proud parents, and how many of these dreams were broken.

Kinda morose huh.

Then I wandered past the toy section and peeked in.

A Pokeball on sale. Supposedly you're supposed to (somehow) open the plastic ball and a little stuffed pokemon will appear. The pokemon had a rabbit like face, and looked kinda sad.

Next up were Power Ranger SPD toys. This time their intelligence levels had gone even lower; their uniforms had huge numbers on their chests, in case they forgot their designations I guess.

Why do they make such totally insipid toys?

I remember reading a long time ago, that some kids, mostly from western stories, have this little chest at the foot of their beds, a hope chest of such.

I made one too, put in all the stuff I didn't want to remember and tossed it into the sea, never wanting to see them again. From time to time though, it rises, like a rotten corpse, bloated from the sea, floating, never truly wanting to be put down.

Oh well, such is life I guess.

MSN

Well after a harrowing 2 weeks+ of counting packets and parsing bytes .. finally managed to fix my stupid 04 packet error. Now display pictures and emotes can be downloaded perfectly! woot.

MSN's a pretty well designed protocol imo, each client maintains 2+ connections. 1 main one is to the notification server which will send msgs when ppl invite you to sessions, change nicks, add you, etc. While the other one is for chatting. So if you ever tested and wondered why your initial message to someone is always slower, well that's cos both clients are negotiating with a session server for a session!

Heh.

Wanted to blog about other stuff one .. but mysteriously all is forgotten as I sit here.. So I shall just blog the last thought I had before opening this tab...

I have a friend .. well someone who's on my MSN list but I don't talk to at all... she prob doesn't even know who I am now. Anyways, she has a nick "Everytime I look up at the sky at night, I wonder if it's the same stars we're seeing"

Just feel like msging her and say, well, if you're looking at the same position at the same time every night, you're seeing the same stars. However, as the year passes by, the stars will slowly shift, so the same stars you see in Jan - June will be different from July - Dec. Somewhat like how you see Orion in the beginning of the year and Scorpio in the end of the year.

But I guess it doesn't sound as 'romantic' as the message huh.

Come to think of it, her nick reminds me of those rubbish you see in cheap bags/T-shirts which say something like "Time is memory" or some crap like that.. Sounds deep but actually doesn't make sense.

Maybe she took it from there =p

Blogs and blogs

It's back to the "Season" again! Currently setting up a website for my guild ^^ KRP!

Wordpress looks pretty good.. thinking of moving this blog over to Wordpress.. But it means I (somehow) need to port the data over and such .. But the wordpress themes look so yummy.. /tempted.

Chinese software... pui!

So, I've been looking at QQ these few days, for the uninitiated, QQ is a China made IM which apparently is taking China by storm.

Looking at the application... you can really see the differences in design methodology by the East and West. Western design ie Apple, go for the minimalistic approach. Things are described in as few words as possible. More emphasis is on presentation rather than features.

Eastern design is completely opposite. It's features features and more features. Just a visit into QQ's website, or any other Chinese websites and you'll know. It's text upon text upon text upon text. Just a look at it and you'll go @_@, unless you're China Chinese I guess.

The application itself borders on spyware. Upon installation, I suddenly had many 'extra' programs like news, firewall, doctor something or other .. Weird things were popping on my system tray. Alerts I didn't need.

Clicking on the system tray icon yields a pseudo Windows start menu (they designed as thus) with even more menu entries than your Windows start menu.. Clicking on those yield MORE menus..

Urgh.

You can't even do offline messaging (it seems). Every other feature seems to be a paid service. I tried to use one of my own pictures as an avatar and it told me, Sorry! You must be a QQ user (ie paying, non leech) to have your own avatars. wth? In the meantime I'm stuck with funky heads as my avatar.

And the QQ number thing is SOOOO ICQ era. Guess China Chinese can remember numbers better than us... They are pretty smart too, letting you buy special QQ numbers, like birthdays and such. Enterprising.

Convoluted and ugly. The only saving grace is possibly the penguin mascot.

Oops I did it again..

..

Yes in a span of 2 days, I've snapped .. 2 .. erm .. straps. I just reach over .. lean over, bend over... and hear this sickening piak sound, and -_-... bah.

So many things to think about these days

The Product™
The Product's™ Table
$$
and some other stuff
/zzz

Well checked my std account, had more $ than I thought there was, which is good.. although it's still too little =\

Need to save/earn more!!

And so..

So today, I (finally) audit (so to speak), the server logs. The Boss™ charged me to pull out pictures from The Product™ so after doing it, I was just looking through the server logs.

And discovered an oddity.

The timestamps were wrong. -_-;

I was going zomfg?! And did a quick check. As expected, it was logging everything under CST. /sigh.

So I call over CK, erm oei, you know your program logging the date and time wrongly or not?

Then he said he just follow server time. Which is a fair assumption, after all, if a program can't depend on OS time, then how? But hah! He didn't check! Even though I set the server time to SGT already, for some reason Java does not inherit it (not all the time) and will run at CST, which was the server's original configuration.

So, since astartes, the logs have been going under CST time .. urgh. Grr, did you not try and see? Urgh.

So well, if who's going to fix it in the end? .. most likely me. Cos I can apparently write scripts /eye roll

.....

Also I found out that his migration was incomplete -_- Logged images weren't completely copied over from the old directories to the new ones.

Looks like I'll have to do that too -_-

/sigh

What is a programmer?

programmer, n:
       A red eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with
inanimate monsters.

....

Grr..

Told bvo about it before, about this dude, we'll call him CK, who has been rather .. irritating. -_- There was once, where I was doing work, and up he rolls, and asks me some question.

I go.. .. erm .. Well, definitely there's a way to solve this problem, but I'm not sure how .. er .. *click on FF* *google abit* errm...

He sits there for abit, and then rolls back to his place without saying anything. Leaving me to go wtf?

He also has this bad habit of coming up to my place and just stand there and stare at my screen. Leaving me to go .. erm .. yes? Wth are you doing staring at my screen? I don't stare at yours, don't stare at mine. Got pretty thing there izzit? Usually I just endeavour to ignore him.

So today, I'm reading stuff and thinking about stuff, and he suddenly IMs me. Where is XYZ (where XYZ is an object (programming stuff lah))? I'm :@ immediately. I mean... the source code is THERE. The API is THERE. Not that obvious, but it's THERE. And you have CTRL+F or even better, import the whole thing into an IDE and it'll probably hot link the definition to the declaration. Or just install grep, windows version and look for it yourself. WTH are you doing asking me a question wherein you can easily find the answer yourself!?

I hate answering questions like that.

But .. well I just answer it, and I get silence back. Not even a word of thanks.

Are CKs all like that? So annoying. Want very much to just /ignore the person, but not possible lah.

GRRR.

Edit: Yes.. I know, information sharing and stuff. But this is not even a hard question. You're a programmer. I'm sure you have tools, or at least know how to LOOK. It's not difficult. Even windows search can search for words in text files. So stupid. Grr. Next time maybe I should just reply with www.google.com, or best, "Dunno".

The Penguin

The Penguin

by Rob Flynn
and
Jeramey Crawford


Once upon a term'nal dreary, while I hack'ed, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten code--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a beeping,
As of some one gently feeping, feeping using damn talk mode.
"'Tis some hacker," I muttered, "beeping using damn talk mode--
Only this. I hate talk mode."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak semester,
And college life wrought its terror as the school year became a bore.
Eagerly I wished for privledges;--higher access I sought to borrow
For my term'nal, unceasing sorrow--sorrow for a file called core--
For the rare and radiant files of .c the coders call the core--
Access Denied. Chown me more.

"Open Source," did all mutter, when, with very little flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Penguin of the saintly days of yore.
Quite a bit obese was he; having eaten lots of fish had he,
But, by deign of Finnish programmer, he sat in the middle of my floor--
Looking upon my dusty term'nal in the middle of my floor--
Came, and sat, and nothing more.

Then the tubby bird beguiling my sad code into shining,
By the free and open decorum of the message that it bore,
"Though thy term'nal be dusty and slow," he said, "Linux be not craven!"
And thus I installed a new OS far from the proprietary shore--
The kernel code open but documentation lacking on this shore.
Quoth the Penguin, "pipe grep more!"

Much I marvelled this rotund fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help believing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird in the middle of his floor--
Bird or beast sitting in the middle of his cluttered floor,
With such instructions as "pipe grep more."

But the Penguin, sitting lonely in that cluttered floor, spoke only
Those words, as if its soul in that instruction he did outpour.
Nothing more did he need utter; understood did I among that clutter--
Understood his command as I could scarcely do a few moments before--
I typed as furious as was willed me, understanding just a minute before.
Again the bird said "pipe grep more!"

"Amazing!" said I, "Penguin we will conquor the world if you will!
By the Network that interconnects us--by that Finn we both adore--
We'll take this very world by storm!" For now grasped I what he'd meant,
The thing I do while searching /usr/doc/* for that wond'rous lore--
Those compendiums of plaintext documentation and descriptive lore.
Quoth the Penguin, "pipe grep more!"

And the Penguin, never waddling, still is sitting, still is sitting
In the middle of my room and still very cluttered floor;
And his eyes have all the seeming of the free beer I am drinking
And the term'nal-light o'er him glowing throws his shadows on the floor;
And this OS from out the shadows that is pow'ring my term'nal on the floor
Shall be dominating--"Pipe grep more!"

It's been a while..

...since I last posted. Yeah I know been feeling lazy =p

Anyways uploaded my Vietnam pictures into my Flickr (finally). Tagged them and such, and jUploadr crashed -_- So did it again and it's uploading now. Huzzah!

Too lazy to talk about the trip, except it was fun! Fun! and FUN! And I'd go again.

And also, instead of being 'typical' tourists and buying all the touristy stuff (like bargain items (for SGians)), we bought lots of .. toiletries.. hehe.

Anyway feeling poet-y today, so here's 2

Popped into my head in the toilet (cough cough)
Is this poetry?
May it be two verses or three,
As long as it will rhyme,
And stand the test of time.


And another one for R's picture:
Sought by many, found by few,
He waits in his lair, feathered wings coated in morning dew,
Spawned from the blood of creature most hideous,
He stands, tall and strong, regal form so beauteous,
Pegasus, who arose from Medusa's blood,
Shall aid Kratos and turn Zeus' tears into a flood.

For his cloud pic

Somehow the haiku mood is gone, and the general ABAB poems that I usually write. Never really wrote the AABB type before.. Heh.

Must learn to write better poems and haikus. So far most of my haikus suck =p

Vietnam!

Leafing house in 40mins! lalalal~!

Quotes

"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Love is something you do, not something you feel."
- Gordon Atkinson

"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat."
--Confucius

(too cheem)

"The only thing high-definition television will do is provide sharper pictures of the garbage."
- George Carlin

(too true)

"Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else."
- Donald Knuth

"Education is not the filling of a pail, it's the lighting of a fire."
- Yeats

"Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy."
- Ronald T. Azuma

"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers."
- Larry Niven

"Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft?"
-Christine Comaford (PC Week, 9/27/95)

Toma!

My precious Toma .. in shwup while playing "We all go down together"
Quite a nice song.. doesn't quite make sense (to me) but it's still nice =p

No umbrellas this time though! Just トーマ ... sigh .. *goo*

Installing Love

Found this on a forum =p

INSTALLING LOVE

Tech Support: Yes, .. how can I help you?

Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install

Love. Can you guide me though the process?

Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?

Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready.

What do I do first?

Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you

located your Heart?

Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now.

Is it okay to install Love while they are running?

Tech Support: What programs are running ?

Customer: Let's see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge

and Resentment running right now.

Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt

from your current operating system. It may remain

in your permanent memory but it will no longer

disrupt other programs. Love will eventually

override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own!

called High Self- Esteem. However, you have to

completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those

programs prevent Love from being properly

installed. Can you turn those off ?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me

how?

Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke

Forgiveness. Do this as many times as

necessary until Grudge and Resentment have

been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that

normal?

Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the

base program. You need to begin connecting to

other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error

� Program not run on external components " What

should I do?

Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set

up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been

run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply

means you have to Love yourself before you can

Love others.

Customer: So, what should I do?

Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance; then click on the

following files: Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth;

and Acknowledge your Limitations.

Customer: Okay, done.

Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The

system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin

patching faulty programming. Also, you need

to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all

directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make

sure it is completely gone ! and never comes back.

Customer: Got it Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is

playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are

copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?

Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes

awhile,but eventually everything gets it at the

proper time. So Love is installed and running. One

more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be

sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you

meet. They will in turn share it with others and return

some cool modules back to you.

Customer: Thank you, God.

Jung's Personality Test. .. rather, yet another personality test

ISTJ - "Trustee". Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time- honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

shwup - photo sharing

It's raining!

Try it here!

Map of Online Communities

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png