Doing my FYP work with the TV on in the background. WWE on now and the dialogue is like what the heck man… its pathetic…

Obtained here

Just sad… so sad. But just couldn’t resist posting it.

Waiting for my uCLinux image to be transferred to the uCgardener board for EE4214 Real Time Embedded Systems. The module has a lot of potential but they expect too much I think. They expect you to know Linux before hand. Well we probably would if they had a module on that which I believe would be just as useful as CS1101C: Programming Methodology.
The good thing about this module is that I am learning a bit more about Linux slowly but surely.
FYP is going so. I think MS VC++ MFC GUI is nice but I dont like the fact that a lot of things are hidden from the user. I feel that Java GUI programming is where its at. It intuitive and thats without a GUI GUI builder :P
Been watching go-open since I’ve torrented both volumes. 1.34GB and 13 episodes. It’s all about open source software. So bits of the program are interesting to listen to but the host act gay-ish to me.
Ok looks like the image is done downloaded and program. Back to work. Enjoy the coming week people. And looks like I might go and see ET :D

Get your copy here.
Been silent for quite a while, too busy caught up with school work but just had to break the silence which such good news story.
Now I just wonder how the web statistics will change. Yes I know lots of people use Firefox and many still will. Extensions offered by Firefox are indeed a great thing but for me Opera’s overall integration inclusive mail, IRC and torrenting is good for me so I’m sticking to Opera.
Anyway… back to work…. aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Mid semester break coming to and end soon :P And still lots to do

And its been up and down since then. Tuesday night I couldnt get my X windows to work with Xorg. And I realised I installed the 2.4 Linux kernel instead of the 2.6 kernel. So I tried updating to the 2.6 kernel. Downloaded several different 2.6 kernels but they all didnt work: all hung on the boot screen, the part where it said “booting to kernel” or something like that. Yesterday (or rather I should say this morning, EARLY in the morning) I’ve made progress and now I have my GUI =D Only problem is that the resolution is 1024 by 768 NOT the native 1280 by 800 that my new laptop has (yep its a wxga screen, didnt really want 1 but the deal for the rest is just too good to miss and I’ll accept its ‘flaw’ of a wxga that I dont really like)

Anyway today is software freedom day and people from The NUS Linux User Group are giving out free Ubuntu CDs at outside LT27 from 1145am onwards! The new world of Linux. Exciting and interesting but I dont really have the time to be exploring too much into it. Its been 2 ‘sleepless’ nights just trying to configure and learn about Linux. No regrets in terms of learning, but regrets in time being taken away from my projects, especially FYP. But I guess thats my nature. See a problem fix. Must fix……

Tell you the stupid thing that happened today. Woke up at 9, 2 hours before my tutorial so I decided to sleep for an hour more then get ready to go to class. So I sleep and by the time I get up I feel like I’ve slept for a long time and go look at my clock. 11 o’clock!!! DOH!!!! Tutorial starting!! I forgot to switch the alarm on… I set the alarm to 10 but I didnt switch it on… doh…

So I rush to class, luckily it’s at Science which is pretty close, get there and switch on my laptop. Or rather say I tried to switch on my laptop. Didnt boot… Didn’t know what was wrong so I just took out the battery and plugged in the power and it worked. Kind of freaked me out, just been 1 day and its already spoilt. Luckily it wasnt so I thought… Switch on and the touchpad doesnt work.. Thought it was because of some application I uninstalled or removed from start up to clean my system to no load unnecessary junk. So I tried system restoring and that didnt help. I even reinstalled windows and that didnt work. I kind of gave up at about 9pm. Then I accidentally but the computer on standby. Then I wanted to switch it off. So I turn on the computer and play around with the touchpad just for fun, and I see the mouse cursor move!!!!! Then it just stopped again and didnt work. Repeated recovering from system standby and the same thing happened again.

It was then it hit me, there was a disable touchpad Fn key. Pressed the combination and viola, it worked. Man…. ‘Wasted’ day worrying that the laptop was screwed :P I hate touchpads :P Give me my nipple. That didnt have any funny thing like this. The funny thing was that even after a system recovery (from the recovery disk) the touchpad was still disabled. So basically there is some low level firmware / hardware keeping the status of the touchpad. The worse thing was there is NO indication of it whatsoever… except for the fact that the touchpad didnt work… :P Anyway I know now. Stupid touchpads…

Anyway things to do today. SLEEP… Been up all night configuring because I finally managed to install a 2.6 kernel, just had to add the ‘noapci’ boot flag in the install. Linux is fun if you have the time to explore. Which I honestly think I do not really have. I just hope I can get this resolution to 1280 x 800 then I can start my slow move to Linux. Trying to install Steam and try Counter-Strike Source on Linux :P New lappie has 64mb X700 =D

Have a nice day people. I’m sleepy :P

** Updated at 4:37:23 on 2005/09/03 **
Rudely awakened this morning by a phone call. I was wondering who could it be so ‘early’ in the morning. It was a guy saying that my laptop is ready for collection :D Then… He called again about 10 minutes later saying that I cant collect because this is my 2nd laptop purchase and that I have to get a letter from the Computer Centre. He said I have to go to the Computer Centre for them to delete the software in my laptop. WTH! Why should they have to do anything with my old laptop, I’ve formatted it several times and don’t even have any NUS software on it. Anyway any software downloaded from Web shopping still needs to be on the network to run, at least thats how it worked with Matlab that I downloaded off there. Pathetic and stupid policy. NUS Computer centre you suck

Forgot to mention. Thanks to NUS’s 5 day week the Computer Centre is closed. NUS you suck too

I just got a BSOD (blue screen of death) when running a Java application that just drew a GUI on screen. WTH. Worse part is that corrupted my source code file. WTH! Something is seriosly wrong with this computer :( Been locking up while playing Counter-Strike Source and Warcraft 3. Just when I changed the motherboard and graphics card. Must be the power supply… Life…

Well I could be just me but I find it so exciting that I do not know where to start off haha. Conflicting interests of report writing and programming. I so much want to program but need to do the report and program flow to make sure things turn out properly and smoothly ;-)
‘Finished’ a report last night and started spring cleaning my computer.
For everybody who doesnt know, last week both the computers I have died on me. Friday evening I came back from the Alpha course just to find out my laptop couldnt switch on. On Saturday evening after church found out the Nirun’s desktop (which I have since he’s gone for NOC for a year =D :p) didnt display anything on screen. After a bit of debugging I think the problem was both the graphics card and motherboard.. AAAAHHHHHHHHH
Tried the graphics card on a friend’s working computer, no output to screen. Tried friend’s working graphics card on Nirun’s motherboard, switches on with the BIOS beep code that something is wrong with the graphics card. So I suspect both the graphics card and the motherboard AGP slot were screwed. Sigh.. life.
So brought it to Sim Lim on Sunday before the Brunei gang gathering, which is a first I think :P The guy showed me blown capacitors on the motherboard so that I guess would also explain the fact that when I connect the power cable to the computer sometimes it would just switch on without me pressing the power button. Also when I was putting in a new ethernet card, I was just pushing it into the PCI slot when the computer just switched on by itself. aaahhhhh
Anyway got a new motherboard and graphics card for S$175, cheapo graphics card replacing a cheapo graphics card :P From a GeForce 440 MX to an ATI 9250. The motherboard is an MSI 848P Neo-V which I have to say is a pretty nice motherboard, but then I havent seen many :P, but still I found it nice except for the fact that the IDE and floppy connectors on the motherboard are too crammed up. The motherboard has 2 SATA connectors, 2 IDE connectors, a floppy connector, integrated ethernet (100Mbps though), integrated sound and 4 USB 2.0 on the back and 2 connectors on the motherboard for more USB 2.0 connections. Only 2 RAM slots though, but all in all a nice CHEAP motherboard :P haha cheap :P
Anyway got the hardware installed on Sunday night but then Windows couldn’t boot up. I heard it’s because when you install Windows XP its hardware depenedant so you cant simply take an hard drive with WinXP installed and use it on another different system. I’m not too sure how hardware dependant it is because I’m sure if you change just the graphics card or RAM or CD/DVD drives it shouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps its just the motherboard. But anyway had to go get an WinXP install cd. Borrowed one off a friend but it couldnt boot… aaaaahhhhhhh
I tried something else. Because I realised I didnt have enough free space in the hard drive to install anything so I had to try move files from 1 hard drive to another. But I didnt have any OS installed. Luckily I found my Gnoppix live CD thus I could boot into Linux from the CD and transfer files. Here comes 1 of the most annoying and limiting factor of trying to go to a Linux world from a Windows 1. Linux can read NTFS (the file system most current Windows systems have) BUT it cannot write to it. At least not reliably. There were NTFS writing tools for Linux but I’ve read that it can screw up things thus I dont dare take the risk. Also read that it can modify files but cannot create new files. This is just a way too much an incoveniece. Windows seems to have a read-write driver for Ext2 (a file system Linux can use)
here. Haven’t tested it so cant be sure though. Anyway finally found a way to install Linux via the net install. NUS Linux mirror site :D YAY!!!! Found it throught the forum for EE4214 Real Time Embedded Systems which is another real killer course :| We just start the course and they expect us to come up with an idea for the project that has to incoorportate real time deadlines. We just started the course wanting to find out what they really are and they expect us to know already. Thats not the worse part, we try to consult the lectures or lab assistants and then we get an email saying, and I quote, “please understand that we will not be able to help you to define and scope your project or provide technical support.” And I’m like what the heck!??!?! Then what are they there for? Its just crap that they expect us to come up with and idea and implement it. And if it doesnt satisfy the requirements we dont even know because they cant provide technical support…. A friend of mine said his friend did the same module and submitted their proposal and carried on with their project. 1 or 2 weeks before the deadline they were wondering why they couldnt get something to work. Only then did the lab assistant say that the processor is not powerful enough to handle it. I mean like WHAT THE HECK!?!?!?! Perhaps if they were told that earlier they could have done a feasible project. Just seem to things more and more modules are screwed up. Admin is screwed up.
Anyway back to FYP stuff. I should start programming today :D 5 straight hours of programming hopefully :D And hope to get something tangible working today.
But first a few links :P
Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office: “The state government has decided that all electronic documents saved and created by state employees have to use open formats from the beginning of 2007.” Hooray!!!! Been using OpenOffice lately, love the export to PDF feature :D
For those fans of the MythBusters
An Interview with Adam Savage Part 1
An Interview with Adam Savage Part 2

Have a nice weekend people!
Work well! Work hard and play hard ;-)

We won! :D
[N]dt has won iPlay Counter-Strike: Source. Though we were playing as a foreigner team and can’t represent NUS. That sucks. We had to foreigners me and grim. Aaaaahhh wasted. Prize ceremony tomorrow evening but I cant go because I have my Alpha course in the evening. Aaaaahhhh :P Sister will also be in town tomorrow. Need to bring her and her boyfriend to Sim Lim Square :D
Anyway the way it was that in the 1 match we started off as Terrorist playing de_dust2. 15-0 without a sweat. 2nd half we won the 1st round so its 16-0. 2nd match which is sadly the finals was on de_cbble starting as Counter Terrorist. 14-1 in the first half. 2nd half we won the 1st 2 rounds so it was 15-1. I have to say the standard was pretty low but I also have to say that my team was super good. Considering I think I was the worst out of the lot compared to the rest as this was my FIRST real competition. Man I’ve been missing out on a lot of fun. Good game guys.

I welcome that more clubs are organizing LAN competitions and I like the fact that they tried to make it big. However I pity the shop vendors as the traffic was very low due to it being held in the multi purpose sports hall so people have to make a conscious decision to actually go down there and see whats going on compared to places like the Science foyer or Arts forum which is accessible by anybody with lessons near there.

Things to rant about :P First of all I have to say that all the publications advertising iPlay I remember seeing “WarCraft 3: Frozen Zone”. And I also dont understand why they capitalize the ‘c’ in “Warcraft” (though it is there in the “Warcraft” header at the WCG website though in the context its not capitalized). They also copied the game details from the WCG website. Since when did CSS have “over 20 new missions”. Heck when did it have any missions at all. Shame to the people who did the WCG site. I believe that you should verify all your data when doing things like this that will be presented to anybody as it reflects badly on the site/company or whatever. And the iPlay publication the word from the editor (or somebody I can’t remember) on the first page. I dont know where they copied the text from but there was like a ‘ö’ character at the end of the game names, eg Need for Speedö. I guess they copied the TM / ® sign from somewhere and it ended up like that. Perhaps it could have been the printers fault as well. But still have to say Need for Speedö is funny :P

Anyway I’m hungry, tired and sleepy. Have Philips FYP meeting tomorrow as well all the way in Toa Payoh :p Go eat and relax a bit then FYP mode

I was typing a post about my escapades today from skipping CS2106: Operating Systesm lecture to go play pool in Clementi to soldering stuff to fix a broken Palm m105. AAAahhhhhhhh
Guess thats what happens when I multi-task too much and forget about things and end up closing the page I was typing on before realising I hadn’t updated yet… ahhhhhhh
life.. lazy to continue. I go train :P

After several problems I finally managed to dual boot my laptop with both Windowx XP and Debian. Initially I installed the business card edition of Debian. Then I tried to install Windows so I popped in the Restore disks that I got with my laptop. It didnt even get me an option to which partition it was to install on. It wiped out my partitions and formatted the drive. It then hung at 85% of formatting then I had to reboot the computer to restart it. So after finally installing Windows AND the updates I wondered what to do. I wanted a distro of Linux to dual boot. So I tried search for non destructive partitioning for Windows. I had to scan disk and defrag to make sure the partitioning went along with less problems. After much looking if found Ntfsresize to do the partitioning. Finally I went with BG-Rescue Linux or SystemRescueCd (can’t remember :S :P). All in all it worked =D Yay!!! So installed Debian by downloading and burning 2 iso’s of the 12 available hoping that it would be enough to install Debian and then I could configure the Linux ACU client
or VPN to get online and finish the install. I guess I was wrong. Currently the screen resolution is 800 x 600 maximum. Something to do with nvidia drivers I’ve heard or something. Slowly but surely learning Linux thought thats the good thing :)

Went to Festival of Praise yesterday with several cell group people. Great experience :)

Been a long day today. Woke up at about 1100 today then went down to Queenstown to Church! :D 1300 meeting with cell leader for new life kit follow up before cell group, then service. After service end up eating and fellowshipping at the hawker centre until about 2200. 3 exchange students all from France , 1 from NTU 2 from NUS, were there so there were obviously curiousity on their side as well as ours. I suggested they drink bandung but too bad the stall didnt have :P One of the things I remember of the evening was where they mentioned that you can ‘slash’ a person. Weird word to use but as I recall it was basically you can say something to a person then when you ‘slash’ them they are not able to respond. An example the guy gave was a guy says this to a girl “I’m having a great party tonight. But I’m not inviting you”. Then he ‘slashes’ her so she cant respond or protest. We’re not too sure if they mean it out of sarcasm or just some strange culture thing. Anyway back to learning about Linux and hopefully get my screen resolution proper :P