Sequel to the Bus Rides post

197 seem to attract a lot of annoying interesting people.

On the way to school this morning, there was this really fat lady sitting in front of me, blasting some really terrible rock music (I have nothing against rock, but what she was blasting sounds really awful) at a blasting volume that really annoys the hell out of me. Thankfully she decided to stop after a while.

On the way back home, on the very SAME bus, there was this group of punks who began blasting equally terrible rock music again, WHILE I WAS TRYING TO GET MY FORTY WINKS!

Gosh, these people are really really inconsiderate.

I’m not going to post any of my views here – I reserve the right of knowing how I feel towards this issue to only myself and some close friends.

Ages ago, TalkingCock posted a rather controversial satire about GEP (Gifted Education Programme) students. You can look at the comments to see how the GEP reacted.

Recently, a post by a former GEP student from Raffles Junior College (RJC), prompted another “issue” regarding the GEP programme and, apparently, about the future of Singapore. You can read the saga here. Do take note of the comments on that post too. Of course, the subject in question has chosen to close her blog.

Satire authors will no doubt make use of such an “opportunity” to make fun of the “issue”. Talkingcock and Mr. Brown (two links; one for each word) have taken up the chance.

We have Followup one and Followup two.

(Hmm, these bloggers have pretty good vocabulary, maybe I should learn some from them – good for GP!)

Some habits are tough to break – not necessary bad ones.

Everyday when I finish bathing, I will leave the bathroom and without thinking twice, flick the switch to the lights of the bathroom off. Many times when there’s someone else going in after me, I was told explicitly to not turn off the switch when I’m done (apparently to lengthen the life of the light bulb; I know not if this is true). No matter how hard I try to remind myself not to do so, my hands will automatically flick that switch off without thinking twice.

Anyway, while I was browsing through some forums, procrastinating about doing PW, I came across this interesting thread about some J2s being extremely worried about their NS enlistment date. Well, I can’t say I am not anxious or worried about that, but I think some of them are going overboard. Typical, kiasu Singaporeans. Period.

When I asked Kinokuniya about the reason why when imported, Japanese books cost twice as much, this was what I got:

Thank you for your interest in the Death Note Illustration Book [Blanc et
Noir]. However, we are unable to disclose the costs involved in importing
the products as these are classified as confidential information. We seek
your understanding in this matter.

A little disappointing, but oh well.

I realised I slept almost 12 hours today. Something I haven’t managed for a while. But it felt good.

If I had a Nintendo DS, or if there were some working emulators, I would have spent a lot of my time playing this. I’m not ashamed to say I still play this =P The Zero series was pretty addictive, with difficult and cool gameplay and best of all, the music was GREAT! ZX has great music too. For those audiophiles out there, here’s a torrent of the ZX tunes in lossless encoding.

California rest in peace
Simultaneous release
California show your teeth
She’s my priestess, I’m your priest
Yeah, yeah

Tags: Gaming

Woke up early today, on a Saturday morning, to go to school to attend a boring and useless talk about university admission. The speakers from the various universities weren’t that good except for the one from SMU. The only good thing is probably the bag of information booklets they gave us. And it is through them that I think I have finally decided on the course of study. If I could, I would love to do a double degree on Physics and some other engineering. NTU has a course that offers this. Of course, if I could get a scholarship, I would rather go overseas to study.

In other news, I’ve released a new version of my thumbnail generating class. You might want to take a look at that. Fixed some bugs, wrote a new documentation.

You can now generate your own thumbnails easily with this tool. Enjoy!

Tags: PHP

Spoilers! So don’t ask me what the scan is saying if you don’t understand.

One Piece never fails to amaze me. The latest addition to the list of “shocks” I received would be this:

An interview of Tsugumi Ohba was posted on ZaoBao on Wednesday. There were some interesting tidbits in it that you might find interesting. The interviewer only got three of her seven questions answered.

Firstly, when asked about how Ohba works with Obata, she basically repeats what we already know – she does the story and then hands it over to Obata and he draws without her interference.

Secondly, when asked about what she felt of the movie, she was “extremely satisfied” of it. She says she felt that the actors of the two main characters gave brought the characters to life. In addition, she was extremely shocked about how “smooth and coordinated the CGI Ryuk interacted with the other actors as though Ryuk was physically there”. Lastly, you might find this a little disappointing, she says the next movie is going to “deviate from the manga core storyline” of which “she has never seen before and is very excited about”.

When asked about how she comes up with the story line in the cat and mouse game between L and Kira, she mentioned about putting herself in the shoes of L and Kira to get a feel of how each of them will think. “I am not one of those authors who have inspirations that drop down from the sky – every volume is the work of hard brainstorming”, she adds. Her particular favourite part of the story is, apparently, the part when L reveals his real identity to Light.

First up, look at what we have for the featured article of the day.

Firefox 2.0 is released (and boy the new site design looks great). For those of you die-hard IE users, you might find IE 7 to be of interest to you. Though IE 7 is, I admit, much better than IE 6, I’m not going to make the switch – it still sucks in the standards department.

And look at what the SPAM king landed himself in.

P.S.: Someone is translating the Death Note novel! =) I hope some US company decides to translate the novel – I will definitely buy it. (It’s kind of touching to read what Mello has to say of L…)

Before you start reading this, I ask that you look at the post time. I’ll give you 10 seconds.

Done? Great, now that I have your attention, I must confess – I might be the craziest person around. I just came back from a JOG not too long ago. I’m still sweating as I type this post.

What prompted me to do this you ask? Well, I planned to jog in the evening but when I woke up from my nap and found my brother meddling with the PC which I had left rendering some PW stuff, my circuits went haywire. You could say I blew my top (and the plan as well).

While I was returning home from the jog, some crazy dudes in a mini-van with the doors open came driving along the road and shouted some profanities at me at the top of his/their voice(s). If it had been daylight, you bet the police would have had your car license plate on their agendas.

I think those who saw me jogging might have thought I was crazy. Do you think so too?