Of Life the Universe and Everything

fdgdfgs

2006-10-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

Maradona and Jordan - The Greatest Artists - video powered by Metacafe

Finally I am back

2005-12-21T03:04:00.000-08:00

I finally update! I was busy with the end of school project rush and other stuff but know im back.

School has stopped for Christmas break at last, well it stopped on Friday but yeah. Sandeep is gone to India, Jong to Rome so lots of people are going away. After Christmas I'll be going to Austria with my family to snowboard, and yes Im going to the school ski trip as well.

My bro got Need For Speed:Most Wanted for Christmas so we started playing it already. I think I have to use this break to catch up on stuff I wanted to do and also to do homework. This break is probably going to be uneventful.

My cousins came last week and we had lots of fun. Watching the extreme micro skillz of my cousin in Warcraft 3 was pretty interesting. Im pretty happy that I am now the best in Halo 2. I spent every afternoon playing Halo 2 after school before doing homework :p.

So thats it really, feel free to stop by and say hi.

RSS feeds

2005-12-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Ok, listen up peeps, I shall now tell you about the magic of RSS. What happens is that a site will have this RSS feed, and you the user can suscribe to it using an RSS reader. What happens is that your RSS feed reader will automatically download any updates to the feed.

IN THE MOST SIMPLE TERMS:
RSS feeds means that you will know when a site has been updated.

An RSS feed is usually nothing fancy, just a header of the new news and a short summary/the text.
This is especially useful for BLOGS. All major blog providors have an RSS feed option. So now I dont need to tell you when I update and you dont need to keep checking the site, you will get a new notice in your RSS reader.

Most RSS readers are integerated into your browser i.e. Internet Explorer of Firefox. Firefox supports RSS feeds with "live bookmarks" but there are also extensions you can use like Sage.

An easy way is to use google's RSS feed reader, (www.google.com/reader) I set it as my second homepage in firefox. Or use the personalized google homepage (www.google.com/ig), it supports RSS feeds but it only shows the headers.

I currently use a combination of Sage (Firefox extension), live bookmarks(Firefox) and protopage. If you go to the protopage link it will show you my current feeds.

Feeds:

Digg
Engadget
Gizmodo
Lifehacker
Slashdot
Ars Technicha
ExtremeTech
Hack a Day

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'

2005-12-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

"Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report."

read more | digg story

The End Of Copyright

2005-11-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

"I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of copyright is drawing to a close. I donâ��t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but itâ��s inevitable."

read more | digg story

Squirrel-Speak Decoded!

2005-11-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

Just for Fun :p

We've began to decipher the language of the little critters!

read more | digg story

Short Update

2005-10-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

Grrr Im pissed at my math test. Mr Kelly gives such stupid tests, all the questions are easy except for one stupid question:

What is the value of k?

2x - ky = 2
3x + (k+1)y = 4

WTF?! 3 unknowns 2 equations, this seriously sucks. Stupid evil math...

Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid has ended after 13 episodes, so sad. But there is going to be a new season! yay! Full Metal Panic: Sigma or something, yay!

Black Cat the anime is pretty cool , but I hate how Train is drawn. They make him look so childish when he should be all cool and stuff, like Alucard in Hellsing. Oh well we cant have everything.

Damn I have run out of things to say, I really envy those columnists and radio people. How can you find content to write about? Some radio people can talk on end for hoursm I guess im not one of those people. Oh well, whatever, I just wasted a few minutes of your precious life to talk about mine. MUAHAHA now go away before I waste more.

Standardized testing, international meal, return of fencing and random crap

2005-10-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

Well on tuesday and wednesday there was the standardized testing which was stupid but good. Stupid cos it was pretty easy, good cos we get to miss classes. International Meal was great, our homeroom had such good food. All the korean and japanese were in my homeroom so we had the best food. Then the Europeans in our homeroom brought dessert. This was the most I have ever eaten in the school. Today my legs feel so tired. First I played handball in PE, then right after that i ran a lot during soccer in lunch. Then after that I had fencing which is hell on the legs. Standing with bent knees for an hour on end, lunging really screws up the legs. Having a knee scrape doesnt help either. Wow I just realised how much I whined, oh well damn.

I have been thinking about what John C Dvorak (tech commentator) said about all these blogs and stuff and I find it to be very true. Nowadays there are so many tech podcasts blogs etc. But what quality podcasts like TWiT and techphile has is that they have inside knowledge. That is what makes news interesting. Also I have realised that finding content for a blog is hard. How much can you write about? Anyway I have resolved to update probably every 2 to 3 days, so you could probably check in once in a while.

Random stuff

2005-10-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

I hate getting sick for an afternoon, it totally sucks. I have already done that 3 times this year already. I would go home, feel sick and sleep. Next day I feel fine so I have to go to school. So yesterday I came home feeling like crap, went to sleep for the afternoon and when i woke up for dinner i felt fine. I wish I would get sick and skip school for once. Today was so weird in all my classes, half of our grade was gone for the geography trip so there was like 7 people in most of my classes. Ow my knee hurts, stupid PE. I was goalie in field hockey so i scraped my knee, but at least i saved every goal so my team won. We also won handball because Soung Chan is so big so the goalie is always scared when he shoots. German class was great cos Mr Bubb just let us talk the whole time which was pretty cool. Fencing kind of sucks now, because only 3 other people who can fence joined. Everyone else is new, so now im so much better than everyone else. At least my older brother is coming so i can have someone good to fence. Argh, I hate it when my weekend is gone it totally sucks, I have a chess competition on saturday and sunday. Oh well chess is a time consuming sport. One match can take up to 4 hours, whereas in fencing it only takes 9 minutes. So thats all folks, now go to some other site that is more interesting than this.

Long Time No See

2005-10-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

Well I am sorry for not updating for nearly a month =o

I wish I lived in America and had a credit card, it sux living in Germany. In America you get all these realy cool online sites which sell awesome stuff and even ship it to you. I found this great store www.jinx.com it sells the coolest t-shirts ever.

Well we have a new 42" plasma TV!!! Its from Tevion which is an inhouse Aldi brand. For those who dont know Aldi is like the budget supermarket in Germany. Anyway the TV is really cool great to play Halo in. I also connected up the xbox sound to the Samsung surround sound system, so now Halo in surround sound on wide screen. I have just one thing to say... OMFG BOOYAH. Well 2 whatever :p

I hate info tech class. It is officially crap, they teach you nothing, its for total n00bs. Unfortunately most of the people in the school are n00bs. We learnt how to make a frigging blog... WOW its soooo hard /sarcasm. Then we learn what file types can we open on a computer. ANY file type can be opened on a computer, you hust have to have the right program but noooo we have to make stupid questions based on the schools computer. For example "Can you edit a .htm file when you open it?" well if you open it in a text editor of course you can, but the answer is noooooo when you click open it opens in IE. One word: WTF?!?!?

Have you ever had those times when you just think about life? Well when I cant sleep I just sit and think. I always wonder what is my future? What will I do? For come reason I feel that the world is going to end in the next 20 years and I need to make the best of life. Somehow all this phiosphy scares me. I guess I just have to go to sleep ive been rambling on too much.

bye

Oh yeah one more thing, it would be nice if i get comments once in a while, like for example could anyone tell me whether they would visit this blog if it was updated regularly?

Noob's Guide to cleaning up your system

2005-09-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Ok n00bs, this is how to clean up your system and keep it running nicely. For all those pros who say "I know this already this guide sucks" then just go away :p

Now there are 2 things mainly that screw up your computer. Spyware/Adware and Viruses. Ok 3 whatever...

Spyware/Adware are programs that are not exactly malicious but are a big pain in the butt. They install those nasty toolbars in Internet Explorer and those ad toolbars and all the other crap. Also, you know those pop-ups that appear even when you are not surfing the internet? Those are Ad/Spyware.

Viruses you have probably heard of, they are nasty little buggers that can give access to your computer to a hacker. They also have various other effects.

I will start off by telling you how to clean up your computer and then how to prevent it. First up the viruses. GET AN ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE. What are you still doing here? Go get it. Anyway I use Trend Micro and I love it. Others swear by Norton, but by experience it takes up too much processing power(read: makes computer slower) and doesnt work so well. If you really dont have cash get the free AVG anti-virus software. The biggest disadvantage of this is that it does not have real-time scanning. e.g. it does not scan your computer while it runs. You have to scan your computer periodically just in case.

A List of Popular Anti-Virus Programs:

Norton
Trend Micro - Free Housecall utility works over the internet and is a good precheck
Kaspersky - Apparently it updates every hour or something
Panda
AVG - Free!
F-Secure

The most important thing about anti-virus programs is to UPDATE them. If you don't then there really is no point. My old com which I had when I was a n00b was not updated and we got 8 viruses... Catch my drift? Also get a firewall, i suggest getting one of those internet security suites, they usually include a firewall in them and other useful security tools. To use any of the programs just follow the instructions, even you can do that.

Now that your computer is virus free (hopefully) We get rid of the nasty spyware/adware. With spy/adware you want to have a few programs as there are many different types and some might slip through different programs. Also GET FIREFOX, I recommend it A LOT. In case you didnt know Firefox is a free web browser. What is cool is that it is way more secure than IE. Also there are tons of extensions and themes so you can customize your browser. There are many different anti-spy/adware programs. Currently there is the beta version of windows anti-spyware which is supposed to be ok. The two best free programs(in my opinion) are Lavasoft AdAware and Spybot S&D. Run these programs and clear all of the entries. Some of your supposedly 'free' programs you have might not work after the cleanup. This is probably because the ad/spyware was in them.

To keep your computer squeky clean, use firefox and dont download stupid things. If you want to use a download program use Limewire or even better bittorrent. You should be all set and good to go now. Have fun and good luck with your nice clean computer. =)

Podcasts, Hak.5 and the new apple offerings

2005-09-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

Well first off, get the diggnation podcast and the TWiT (this week in tech) podcasts they are great. Very cool information in both. Also I found a cool show(?) Hak.5 its an interesting show about computer mods and hacks. They just started and just realeased episode 2 and you can download episodes off their site.

Ok, Apple just released 2 new pieces of kit. The Apple Nano and the Motorola E1.

First off, the motorola is apparently just a gimmick. The main feature is that is has itunes on it, but apparently there is a 100 song limit. Also its been reported that it lags quite a bit. You might as well get an MP3 phone, much more functionality for probably a better price.

The Apple Nano... well they ripped the name off Creative's Zen Nano. Well it looks great, but I think you can get more bang for buck. I think that there is a certain size where a player does not need to be smaller. The nano is supposed to have great functionality so I guess we will just have to wait until someone opens one up ;)

EDIT: and some japanese people have opened up one...

here is a google translation: here

Trip

2005-09-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

So we 9th grade went on a trip to Dortmund/Ruhrgebiet.

First things first, why the hell couldn't we go to Salzberg, Austria like the last years...

Anyway the trip was really fun as all my friends were there and we were in the same room. But we spent sooooo much time on a hot bus to get from place to place, plus we got lost twice. At the SAME place. The GPS in the lead bus was messed apparently.

The planterium show was a disaster. My screensaver looks better than that. I mean come on, still 2D projections of planets is just wrong... and the little animation they had was just really, really bad. And wtf was up with the dinosaurs and the arctic? Its a PLANETerium, not some zoo. My homeroom teacher MS NAter agreed as well.

Ms Nater is the best teacher ever. She was more hyper than us, her students... She bought a new Sony Ericsson phone and she told us that she had a PSP. She also has a PS2 which she 'bought for her son'

It was a good trip, very cool with all my friends, we chilled a lot and had fun.

2005-08-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

I installed ubuntu linux on this system as a dual boot system finally. PartitionMagic 8 is pretty good, makes everything pretty simple. I thought it would take a long time because on the ancient laptop it took maybe an hour, but on a new com it takes only 30 min? However now that I have installed it I dont know what to do with it... any suggestions?

Also added a shoutbox as you can see, like the seamless integration into the design template? Most shoutboxes are white and dont conform with the template :p at least by my experience with blogs.

B-Day tomorow yeah!

Google, Google and other stuff

2005-08-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah this week is good =) Google desktop beta 2 was released with the google sidebar. I know that sidebars have been around for a while, but the google takes up so little memory which is the best thing about google. The same goes for the newly released google talk!

http://desktop.google.com
http://talk.google.com

Google talk is technically like skype, its main purpose is probably VoIP telephone calls, but it has a messenging function too. It leaves a very small imprint on your processes and is vewry minimalistic, a really cool piece of software.

MusicBrainz Tagger is another great piece of software I found. Even though its been around for a while its a great way to label your music collection, especially if you downloaded them and got tracks which are labeled wrong.

I recently read an article about patriotism which started to make me think. I don't really feel patriotic to any country. During the NDP preview performance for the primary 5, everybody was so enthusiastic during the celebrations, but I realised that I have no feelings to Singapore at all. I only lived there for 4 years and I used to be Malaysian.

Thats all for today, its my birthday in 2 days! and the trip next week looks pretty cool. Plus our homeroom teacher said that we dont have any duties to do during the trip and if they give any to us she will fight against it :p

Update cos its about time

2005-08-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Well not much happening. Some interesting things...

My birthday on Saturday 27th of August w00t!
Next week I will be gone on week long school trip, ill be writing all about it afterwards.
I tried an American NATO MRE(Meals Ready to Eat) and I just found out that it tastes better than the school food.
The latest double Naruto episode was freaking weird.... bad filler plots, hopefulyl new filler arc is going to be better with Shino, Kiba, Hinata and Naruto.

Damn this is going to be a short post...

Google Desktop search beta 2 is out! Includes spiffy sidebar, there already is a free sidebar on the net but google's seems to use less resources.

OMG look a real live Mech is being built! http://digg.com/robots/Army_mechanic_builds_18_ft._Mech

I would like to inform the rest of the non-computing world about RSS feeds, these are cool things that would constantly check for updates to things like news sites and show them on your computer. Very useful for blogs and anime sites! ^_^

Anyway thats it for an update, not much but at least I update right?

n00bness of Info Tech...

2005-08-20T03:17:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday I had info tech class, and frankly I did not really like it. We had to make a blog using Xanga. Xanga is in 1337 speak 'teh suxors' So many ads and usless information, the templates are downright ugly and unchangeable unless you pay, the blog system is so confusing the list goes on and on... I didnt even know what the site url was... had to go to help to find out. Anyway it's http://www.xanga.com/daleech visit the blog and you'll know what I am talking about. Compare that to this blog and tell me which is better....

More Thoughts

2005-08-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

I have decided to split up posts in sections because it can get quite long

~Tech~

Hmm Microsoft sued Apple recently over some patent claims about the ipod. Apparently, the Microsoft holds the patents to some of the features of the ipod like the navigation system. But apparently this is totally absurd, as the ipod was being marketed before the patent was claimed. Just shows you the messed up world of corporate America.

This brings me to my rant on the ipod, excuse me for a sec but WTF is so great about the ipod? Or more specifically the ipod mini. The ipod mini's aluminum scratches off, its expensive and it has much less features. I even heard it crashes sometimes. I mean come on people get a brain and realise that ipod does not equal to MP3 player. There are many better offerings out there like the Rio Carbon, or Iriver, or Creative. Some rich spoilt kids even get them to put 20 songs on them and show off, like WTF???? /rant

The recent spate of instructions and hacks into the Mac OSX x86 is pretty interesting, but it does seem like a very complicated process and downloading the neccassary files is going to take a long time. If I manage to install Linux on this computer then maybe I will consider it. Lately though Apple is suing hackers of the OSX x86. I think they they should not do much about this hacker community though until they release official versions as this would introduce more people to their OS.

Interesting Fact: On the day that Apple had to submit a company name Steve Jobs told everyone that if they couldnt think up of a name by 5pm he would name the company after his favourite fruit, namely-the apple.

I was really suprised with the coverage of the virus attacks by CNN. The virus was not much of a big deal, but they made it sound like it was the end of the world. I mean come on, why are you using windows 2000 and why didnt you install the patch that was released to fix it??

~Life~

Well Science Class is messed up. We are having biology class in the old textiles technology class and since they are clearing the class there is only 1 desk in the middle. How the hell are we supposed to do biology??? French class is as dysfunctional as ever as every single grade level in the class learnt things at different levels.

Recently here have been many crisises. London 2 terrorist bombings, Plane crash in Toronto, Plane crash in Greece, Russians trapped in Submarine, another plane crash in Venenzuela. What in the world is going on???

Got to do Homework now.

Hello World!

2005-08-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

Well I know I have an MSN space and everything but I really hate it as you have to use Internet Explorer for the full fuctionality and I am a Firefox fan. I really recommend Firefox to everyone even if you aren't a really interested in computers. Firefox is very easy to use and the extensions are great.

Well the point of this blog is... nothing much I guess. I suppose I just want to write down thoughts on technology news, maybe anime & manga and things happening in my Life. Its going to be hard as I dont really know my target audience. Do I want people in Germany to read this? People in Singapore? Or just random people who accidently fall into here? I dont know, I just hope that I can at least get some comments.

I am an avid reader of Digg and Slashdot I guess its because I am a computer geek. I have RSS feeds of both sites on my browser and a ticker on the statusbar. So sometimes I might comment on some article I just read or link to one.
Im going to install Ubuntu Linux on my PC and dual-boot it, but im going to have to be really careful as I dont have any backups. I *acquired* PartitionMagic which is an awesome software and I have already partitioned out 5GB which I am going to install Linux on.

Well today is an important day as School is starting again. In 9th grade now so im now in Upper School. We have a new principal whos worked in Singapore, Taiwan and Egypt which is pretty cool and he seems like a nice guy. The new schedule with A-H days is really different from the old A/B week type and the new time slots are pretty confusing. The construction going on at the school is really irritating as during the breaks there is no space to play soccer as there are soooo many people. My homeroom is really awesome as we have an awesome teacher Ms Nater and also most of my friends are there. We Asians make up 2/3 of the homeroom which is kind of cool. But the location of the homeroom really sucks as its so far away from anything. French class is really weird as there are now 4 different grade levels in 1 class, grades 8-12. Its going to be one very weird french class this year...

Ill post anime I am currently watching on the sidebar and probably comment on them sooner or later. Im not going to bother to change the template graphics as I like the default graphics and if I try to change the header and icons it would not flow as well.

Now I go sleep, or maybe not, Ill see how.