Pandora's Jar

Some of you may have heard of Pandora before. It's basically a customizable internet radio station which can remember your music preferences, and recommend you new songs which are similar to the ones you already enjoy.

So basically Pandora is good for automatically finding nice new songs to listen to. What if... it could automatically download all these songs to your hard drive as well?

Presenting... Pandora's Jar!

This program is still in beta, has a number of bugs, is quite difficult to set up properly, doesn't work properly all the time, and of course what it does is of fairly questionable legitimacy.

But when it works it's AWESOME

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Short recap of the new year celebrations

Eve's eve. Ian Soon (of all people) jioed me to go chionging. Went to St. James Powerstation, specifically the Powerhouse. Distinctly older crowd. Regretted not taking the chance to try out the other clubs in the Powerstation, especially the damn cool chill out place on the right side of the building.

New Year's Eve. Had a simple gathering with the usual gang at 94D Upper East Coast Road over pizza and KFC. Got the chance to meet Albert's gf (incidentally her name is Eve) in person for the first time. Quite pretty, but kind of quiet. After getting into the appropriate state of mind with the aid of Chivas and red wine, headed down to Expo with Selvia and Za for the Countdown. (thx za for the free tix!)

It was pretty meh at first, but got a lot better after midnight. Met Irene, Luther and their friends. Proceeded to take over a platform for our dancing use, and rocked to mambo and RnB to our heart's content.



2007. Met up with my batch people for dinner at Elaine's place. Jay was back on holidays from his medicine studies, and he is still his same old self. Siyu didn't turn up as usual. Elaine's mom ended up cleaning everyone out at the mahjong table, with Albert suffering the biggest losses. Man U drew with Newcastle! The chance to open up the gap further is lost.

Another year, another beginning. May this year be a better one...

Throttled

The massive disruption of internet services in the region wrought by the huge earthquake off the coast of taiwan highlighted numerous vulnerabilities in our current system. Besides demonstrating how important the internet is to our high tech enonomy, and how fragile the current infrastructure is, it also revealed rather clearly the difference between the top two service providers in singapore.

Starhub's response to the disaster was immediate, working round the clock to ensure that their services were restored as soon as possible, whereas Singtel took its time to respond. By most accounts, Starhub users were able to enjoy slow but almost full connectivity to the world by the next morning, while Singtel users (like me) couldn't even check gmail until the day after. Accusations that Singtel was uncoorperative in repair efforts by a Korean telco further tarnishes Singtel's image.

Given that my contract with Singtel is over, and I have been considering upgrading my connection for some time already, it looks like I will changing my provider in the very near future.

In other throttling related news, Saddam was executed by hanging this morning. It is a rare day indeed that the world actually manages to get its act together to catch, try and finally get down to actually punishing a former tyrant/dictator. May all his victims rest in peace.

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Blogger recently added several new features to its blogging service, so I took the oppotunity to change my template and layout while giving out the new features a try. So if the new layout looks a bit rough and messy, please bear with me, I am still in the process of trying out new things.

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Remember Streetfighter: The Later Years?

Presenting Part 2 and Part 3! - "Why don't you just take off the fucking mask?"

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena - Huge collection of mind boggling optical illusions.

Unusual Clouds

Hilarious!

Jingle bells

Another year, another quiet christmas.

My family has never been big on christmas, or any non chinese festival for that matter. Even for birthdays, they prefer to celebrate the lunar calendar date rather than normal calendar date, if they bother to celebrate it at all.

Hence I am not really bothered when no one notes my birthday, or when I have no one to spend christmas with. Looking back, I must have endured quite a great deal of loneliness when I was growing up, being an only child in a somewhat dysfunctional family and all, until I have grown numb to it. I certainly prefer to be around people when the occasion calls for it, but I can do without company just as easily.

It is really no big deal to spend such festivals alone. I would rather enjoy some quiet time to myself, and not waste time on trying to enjoy a festival which has no particular meaning to me. Which is not to say I think christmas has no meaning, but going out of your way to celebrate it, as though you are trying to prove a point, seems well, pointless.

In addition, the original meaning of Christmas is often lost among the rampant commercialisation and dare I say bastardisation of this by right holy and sacred date. Yes, its good for the economy and all, but the extent which this date is exploited is downright unsightly at times, even to someone who is not religious like me.

Ok perhaps I am just being cynical. Perhaps I should get out more and try harder to spend such occasions with people who celebrate them in meaningful ways.

The dulcet tones of church bells and hymns float from the church down the street from my house, reminding me that midnight has come. The joy in their voices is unmistakenable, and it warms my heart.

Merry Christmas everyone.

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50 Greatest Cartoons - Mostly very old skool cartoons, but they can still put most modern cartoons to shame. Sit back and enjoy!

Those crazy japanese and their ridiculous game shows. Mildy NSFW

Awesome expanding table.

Recap

Just a rambling entry about some notable events of the past few days. Mostly not worth reading unless you are very very bored.

Friday night. Went shopping for christmas presents. Met the oneiros static team, selvia and jackson, and omg Jiahua whom I have not seen in like 8 years. Turns out she just left AIA as she is going UK to study. Reminded again about how out of contact I am with my RJ friends. dammit.

Saturday lunch. Met Yvonne for lunch at Jurong point. Another new boyfriend? Got a nice gift from her for christmas. Thanks! Must remember to get her something for her birthday.

Saturday dinner. Gathering at Za's place with the irenicon people + friends! So much food. Kwara's apple crumble and Clara's roast chicken are the best. My terrible luck with gift exchange strikes again. Still, I believe that the thought behind it was sincere, and I really shouldn't complain so much.

Sunday night. Wedding dinner at the Shangri La. Damn posh. Absolutely no idea how I was related to the couple getting married, as I was dragged along without being given a choice by my mom (as usual). Over 700 people invited. They had a jazz band, a harp player, a flute player, and a singer to provide entertainment at various times. The bride was very tall, taller than the groom, and had a very strong handshake. Both were very good looking.

Monday morning. OMG man u lost to west ham. Too depressed to read the match report.

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Been trying out a few new anime recently, especially since Naruto and Bleach continues to disappoint.

One Piece is not bad. But trying to convince people to watch a show whose main character is a boy made out of rubber is rather hard. If you've enjoyed bleach and naruto (before they started sucking) you will almost certainly like One Piece as well.

Black Lagoon. Awesome with a capital A. Psychotic Unstoppable Terminator Maid? Crazy Vampire Assassin Twins? Gun-toting, Violence Loving, Bubblegum Chewing Nun with a mysterious past? Its got them all, and more!

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I am unable to describe this show without spoiling anything. Very interesting storyline and exceptionally well animated.

That's all for now.

One Down

And nine more in camps to go.

The aims are noble, but in practice the entire affair is rather farcical. Wayang, some call it. In an organisation where individuals are constantly under pressure to show results, where mistakes are desperately covered up, where the ends matter infinitely more than the means, things quickly lose their original meanings.

The overall picture is really quite depressing, so let's not go there.

Despite everything, there were some nice memories to be had. Watching endless waves of helicopters taking part in a massive Guardsmen exercise flying through the night sky, accompanied by the glow of fireflies and lit cigerettes of your fellow soldiers. Watching the sky make its slow transition from night to dawn, and to hear the forest come alive with the light. Sitting at the head of a 40 vehicle convey, waiting for orders to head out to the next deployment ground.

One redeeming point was that the people in my company are generally quite nice, responsible and cooperative. Of course you will inevitable have a couple of bad eggs, but as a whole these are a bunch of people I wouldn't really mind spending the remainder of my in camps with.

Solo

"... and LTA Brian here will be the only PC around for this ICT, so please give him your fullest support..."

Guess I am going to have to wing this by myself.

 

More on saturday.