Blog on army days

Miss your army days? Hate your NS moments? This blog titled "Days Were The Those" has folks posting their days during National Service and for regulars, their days serving in uniform. In the words of the blog this is on "Stories of National Service in Singapore. Contributors welcome. Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, Civil Defence also can." Fun read, especially for those who has been through life in green.

Selling on ebay with babes

Gizmondo is reporting that folks are now selling items on ebay with photos of sexy Asian babes. Kudos to the guy who first thought of the idea and it's a wonder why no one of of it in the first place, considering that magazines like Stuff have been using this strategy for some time.

"I believe you"-a novella

This guy called Low Kay Hwa has written a short novel and it is on the Net for your reading pleasure. I've not read it yet but it's suppose to be a"romantic and bittersweet story about two Singapore Junior College students trying to find their meanings in life." Can't vouch for the quality of it though. Still, without the Internet, this guy would have to look for a publisher, but now, you can self-publish and get an audience. Hey, if you've some time, do support Singapore writing and give it a read. You can even post your views in the forums created for it.

Vader has a blog

Everyone has a blog these days. Hulk has one, and so does the Dark Lord Darth Vader. On the blog titled The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster, Vader himself, or someone controlled by Vader pens his daily musings and what he does daily running the Empire. Real funny stuff.

It can be challenging to maintain your dignity as a dark tyrannical overlord when the circuitry in your left leg constantly misfires, threatening to send you off on a mad pirouette without notice. It requires a serious effort of will to maintain my poise, the tendrils of my connection to the Force reaching deep into space to feel out my distant quarry and at the same time wrapped around the mechanisms of my own body to keep them working.

Star Wars Revelations

Star Wars fans are a fanatical bunch. So mad about it that they have
went all out to make fan films with the galaxy far, far, away as the
backdrop. Even Lucas the man himself has endorsed these films. Here is
one totally professional looking production that runs at more than 45
mins. Titled Star Wars Revelations, it is set between Episode 3 and 4
where Jedis are hunted fugitives. If you're a Star Wars fan
interested in anything even remotely related to Star Wars, you should
check this out. If you're not a fan, look at it too, to see how good
the production is.

Civ for free

Civilization by Microprose is a classic game. In the spirit of open source freeware, these folks have developed a free version of the game called Freeciv using the same addictive turn-based gameplay and it is multiplayer for those who wants to play against something more challenging than the computer AI.

The video game pianist

This guy is talented! He can play themes from video games on the piano and became an internet celebrity when the video of his performance, blindfolded no less, was circulated on the net with him playing the Super Mario World Intro theme. The website has media files of his performances and also links to the VG Sheet Music Club, for those who want to print out the scores and play the music on the piano.

Cartoon Hindu gods

Pixar animator Sanjay Patel has done up a children's book of Hindu gods. Cute. But will Hindus be offended? Hopefully not! You can purchase it on the website.

Games + Comics = Gamics

Ever seen video games and comics combine into a happy medium? This web site stores a collection of comics that is done by taking screenshots from games, and weaving in a story using comics bubbles on the shots. It's really cool and amazing that folks are combining different media forms in creative ways. For Half-Life fans, there's also a comic called "Apostasy" using screenies from HL2 and it can be found on BrashFink's WebWerx.

Cardboard cows

These cardboard (?) cartoon cows are appearing all over grass patches in Singapore. So far, Ilve seen then at Fort Canning, Orchard MRT, and the park across the Istana. They are actually quite cute and is a refreshing change to see fake cows grazing in the fields. Oh, they are suppose to be some promo stunt for a new ad agency. Nice way to get attention, only thing is not many people know what they are for. Alien cows?

Revenge of the Bricks!

We've seen fan-made LEGO films. But this one is offical and will be
shown on the Cartoon Network! "Revenge of the Bricks" is a computer
animated mini-movie featuring LEGO Star Wars mini-figs. In it, you'll
see "good and evil clash, imagination explodes, and creativity saves
the day when the heroic Jedi Knights battle the villainous Sith for
control of the galaxy". I can't wait to see it.

Google + Yahoo! = ???

Yagoohoogle!!! Someone has combined the two search engines together. Using this website, you can query for stuff on the two search engines and get two different results. For those who can't get enough of results, go to Yagoohoogle. Only problem is that the name is a bit hard to remember.

Blogging in Hokkien

Oh my... if you can read this blog, you must be really proficient in the Hokkien dialect... Here's a sampler of what is on the Wa Si Hokkien Lang blog about Internet Relay Chat...

IRC angmoh ji si Internet Relay Chat. Hokkien wueh kio ai-ah-Si. Wa mm zai ai ah Si lai chor simik.

SIN CITY Film-Comics comparisons

The adaptation of Frank Millar's Sin City is now a movie. I've not seen it yet but from the net, the resemblence to the comic book is striking. The shots look amazing and I'll certainly be in-line to watch this when it reaches our shores.

Life after Star Wars

There's life after "Revenge of the Sith", it seems.

Lucasfilm.com recently posted job hirings for new animated Star Wars TV shows and possibly the live action series. Lucasfilm's Jim Ward confirmed that a live action Star Wars television series is on the way, and likely to come out in 2006.

Should we get excited over this? Maybe. Let's see how Ep III thurns out before we all go crazy.

Use iPod shuffle without iTunes

This should interest those who want to just drag and drop their MP3 files into the iPod Shuffle without having to go through the hassle of managing things in iTunes. The iPod shuffle Database Builder allows you to do that and dump your music anywhere on the Shuffle.

The Database Builder comes in two flavors: A plain C Win32 console application, and a platform-independent Python script. The Win32 version is for Windows users (obviously), and requires no additional installed software to work. The other version requires some recent version of Python (tested with 2.3.5 and 2.4) and should work on any platform Python supports. This includes Linux, Windows, MacOS X (tested) and a large amount of other Unix-like systems.

25 great Sesame Street memories

Still on Sesame Street. The Progressive Boink website has a list of the writer's fave Sesame Street memories. Looking through the list, I sure remember some of them, especially the one Grover goes "near" and "far". Of course, not in that list but would be my personal favourite will be Ernie singing "Rubber Duckie" in the tubby.

Cookie Monster going healthy

Eating healthy. You may think that it may not apply to the monsters on Sesame Street but it does. CNN is reporting that the PBS kid's series is advocating eating healthy food. That's not really a bad thing but it's certainly different from the Sesame Street of my youth. Even the CNN journo reporting this thinks so.

My beloved blue, furry monster -- who sang "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me" -- is now advocating eating healthy. There's even a new song -- "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime" foods and "sometimes" foods.

"Sacrilege!" I cried. "That's akin to Oscar the Grouch being nice and clean." (Co-workers gave me strange looks. But I didn't care.)

Clothing for the Treo

My quest for something to protect my Treo 650 has led me to these two options here-the Boxwave Silicone Skin and the egrips. The best option is to have a case that both protects and won't add too much bulk to the phone. The Silicone Skin (pict left) protects quite well but adds a little bulk. Plus it picks up lint from my pants after a while. I was quite satisfied with this case until I began to dislike the feel of the case with lint. After some looking around, I found the egrips. It's not so much a case than something that allows you to have good grip of your device. After using it for a while, I am happy to say that I like it. Although it doesn't fully protect the Treo, it gives me good grip on the phone with its grippy qualities. Since this will help prevent slipping and sliding, it gives me the assurance that as long as I am careful, I won't drop it. Since it is a stick on, I hope it will last. Am I still looking for other options? Maybe the magnesium Innopocket hard case can be a contender. For now, I'm a happy guppy with egrips.

Seems to be working

After changing the Blogger email, posting to the blog using email on my Treo seems to be working.

Still trying to post via email

Posting via email is still a problem. Does it work properly?

Hitting 1000 page views!!!

Wow, I've hit 1000 page views. Thanks to myself, and probably one or two little kittens who occassionally view my blog. Well, this blog is not one of those uber-popular first-class blog. So I never expect it to have millions of page views such that the server goes belly up. On to the next milestone then... 2000 page views!

Test post to blog

This is another test post to Blogger. Posting via email seems a little flaky.

Football movie made in Singapore

Who says Singapore movie is just Raintree or Jack Neo or Royston? These guys have put together a 15 mins short film about

the journey of 3 soccer-crazy boys. Having taking up the challenge of a friendly soccer match, the boys realize that it is not easy to find a good, free public soccer field in Singapore?..if there's any at all. Through their journey they encounter obnoxious care-takers, locked-up fences, deterring weather and a persistent policeman. Will they be able to find their dream soccer pitch?

Titled Tak Giu, which means kicking football, this is way way better than anything you see on MediaCorp these days. It is even better than the Gurmit Singh-starred One Leg Kicking.

Live-action Transformers in the works

How about that? CNN has news that we may be seeing live-action robots in disguise on the silver screens in 2006! Bad Boys director Michael Bay is slated to be in talks to direct this movie. Wow, it'll be fun to see real humans acting next to computer generated Optimus Prime.

Creative commons in the UK

This is an interesting and insightful piece on UK's, or rather BBC's, attempt to introduce the idea of Creative Common licenses. Anyone interested in the future of media should take a look at this.

The U.K. has a great tradition in providing quality public service to the citizen... I find absolutely fascinating the way the public sector has been engaged with the CC project" says Prodromos Tsiavos, the legal lead at Oxford. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the most influential public service content provider in the world, has been behind the project from the start and is using the Creative Commons ideology as a lynchpin for its core digital project, the Creative Archive.
...
By contrast, the commercial creative industries have raised the kind of misinformed objections to Creative Commons that will be tiresomely familiar to those engaged in the IP debate in the States.

Here's to hoping that this initiative works out and be the model for many other countries to follow.

Posting straight to Blogger from email

Although I've posted pictures to Blogger with the pictures stored on
Flickr, that is a service provided by Flickr. So, this will be my
first post via email using the tools that Blogger provides. Here's to
more ways of posting!

Disneyland LEGO

This is a reconstruction of Disneyland using LEGO bricks. It is posted
on Brickshelf, a site for folks to share their LEGO collection. This
construction is simply jawdropping!

ACS on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia where everyone can contributes. And guess what? You can actually find an entry to ACS on it. Not entirely surprising if you really think about it. Considering the number of students that has past through its gates, and old boys include famous criminals to famous statesman. Anyway, it is quite comprehensive and no mention of the school is complete without mention of the "snob" image that was perpetuated by others.

The school's students have also been accused of being arrogant and snobbish, and ACS itself has often been charged as being a school only for children of the rich and elite. In the 1970s, there was a minor flap in the local press about ACS students flaunting their wealth to other, less privileged students and the world at large, and the term "snob" began being applied to them. As a result, the school initiated strict policies on how much money a student was allowed to bring to school, and even what kinds of watches or shoes would be permitted to be worn.

What can I say? It's part of the school's history.

More board game recommendations

Just found this article that recommends some of the best games of 2004. Can't really say if they are really good since it's hard to find these games in Singapore, let alone find people who have heard of them. I have the original Carcassonne and Carcassonne: The City looks similar. Anyway, good luck finding them. Best to import them or get it when you are overseas.

Giant ewoks invade Star Wars Galaxies

Ewoks. Love or hate them, they fought on the side of the good guys in
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. On April Fool's day, the developers of
Star Wars Galaxies unleashed extremely aggressive and unusually large
Ewoks and set them on cantina patrons and innocent bystanders. Ewoks
are cute? Not when they're this size and when they are attacking you!

iTreoPod? It's April's Fool

Yesterday was April's fool and there must be tons of fake, funny news
reports circulating the web. I read one that Steve Jobs is going to
join IKEA (think it is on The Register) and almost feel for it until I
remembered the date. One of the best that I saw has to be the one on
CNET. They have the iTreoPod, a slap-together device that combines the
best smartphone and the popular MP3 player. But who really needs that?
My Treo acts as a perfectly fine MP3 player too.

LEGO Grand Theft Auto

LEGO is a toy that's safe for kids. But what if it's Grand Theft Auto
using LEGO? Brick Flick presents Grand Theft Auto: LEGO City and has
the minigifs running around in LEGO City doing GTA stuff. Check out the video clips. It's sweet.

Hilarious Teochew ringtone

Just found out that Singapore blogger Mr. Brown has started podcasting. A few days back, he did one which features a number of funny ringtones. The funniest one is this Teochew ringtone which asks you to pick up your phone. The featured link has extracted the ringtone so you can download it if your phone supports MP3.

EPIC 2014-possible future of the mediascape?

This is a 8 mins flash presentation of the future of media. The scenario presented sees Google and Amazon merging and the mainstream media going offline in response to EPIC, otherwise known as the "Evolving Personalized Information Construct". EPIC will customise news and media for you and is way more advance than anything we have today. Although the presented future may not come to pass, it has more than a hint of truth in it, considering the way trends are heading today. If you're even remoteing interested in how you will consume media in the future, this is an awesome piece that you must watch. For those working in the media, it is absolutely essential.