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

And school is starting soon.
Yes I have yet again feel I have ‘wasted’ my holidays. Still so many things left unachieved and even untouched. Maybe dont plan for the holidays would be best :P
Starting to have doubts about my FYP (final year project). I’m thinking I would have liked it if I got my first choice. Maybe it’s just me being lazy and not wanting to work or maybe it is true. Anyway back to reading and brainstorming about my FYP, the thing that will probably make or break my first class honours. Hmmmm.. first class honours, is it really worth it?
I want to LEARN things. I want to enjoy school. I want to rest and not feel tired. I want me time. I want to stop typing now. What do I learn?
I’m selfish. As everybody is sometimes. Selfish. I need to learn to live my life and enjoy it more. I need to enjoy life more. I need to enjoy the finer things in life and not worry too much. God help me I pray

Since I’ve been back to Singapore about 2 and a half weeks ago I’ve had little rest. Out everyday except for 2 days so far. And not only that but recently I’ve been coughing alot with phlegm and stuff :P
Life’s been pretty good I guess since I got my room in PGP!! :D:D:D YAY!!!!!
Its right opposite the management office and I can even get wireless from here :D
The reception is not ‘that’ great but still a nice thing to have. Today was Matriculation Day for new engineering students in NUS so I had to man the IES booth. Funny thing was my duty starts at 1630 so I went a bit earlier and just as I got to the IES booth I hear an announcement saying something about all booths having to pack up at 1645 :P The hardest part was moving the stuff we brought down for the matric fair back to the clubroom. We took a trolley all along the road side and up slopes and a step :P Yes ‘A’ step.
Didnt sleep last night as I was trying to fix a problem with the IES Game server. Finally fixed it at like 1000 and left the rest of the day a sleepy blur. I did sleep an hour before going to the matric fair and that 1 hour did a lot of good. Perhaps the lack of sleep would explain the disorganised mess in which I am typing this. Anyway I better go do some work. Still got quite a bit of work to do not to mention a final year project. aaaaahhhhhh
Night people

For some reason the Cisco Aironet 350 card that I got when I bought my laptop from school doesnt seem to work with the DLink DSL-G604T ADSL modem/router that I got for my friend. My other friend’s card, ie also a Cisco Aironet 350 works fine. I upgraded to the latest firmware but it couldnt seem to connect. It would detect the network but I couldnt connect at all, ie no DHCP request and no IP was assigned to my computer. So I decided to use my SMC wireless USB dongle in the mean time.
So I decided to downgrade the firmware last night and what do you know it connected!!!! Mind that this was with the USB dongle plugged in. So after that I removed the USB dongle leaving just the Cisco card it. Worked fine last night.
So I switch on my laptop this morning with just the Cisco card in it and I happily see the DHCP request / IP resolving icon in my taskbar and suprisingly enough I got “Limited connectivity” with only an private 169.xxx.xxx.xxx IP assigned. So no net connection :| Strange.
I tried plugging in the wireless USB dongle and that works and suprisingly the Cisco card connects!!!! The freaking card connects only if the USB dongle is connected!!! WTH!!!!
Man Cisco doenst like me. I want a new laptop: with inbuilt wireless, a Pentium M processor, USB 2.0, firewire and a dedicated miniumum 64mb graphics card :P
School starting soon. Final year. I’m feeling old now :| Packed week next week. Somebody named Koh Chia Shin is coming to Singapore for a week and also this Sunday off to buy a game server :D Next Thursday is NUS matriculation day for new engineering students so I should be there promoting IES :P Next Saturday is freshmen orientation day for IES. Busy busy busy. This does not include my project which I shall now go back to work on :P

** Updated at 4:10:15 on 2005/07/12 **
****Edit 1 – Tuesday 12th July****
Called NUH and it is true. But they said they have enough donors at the current moment but it would be good to give them your contact if you can donate just in case :)
****Edit 0 ****
I don’t see any possible scam in such a mail except for the fact about the payment is carried by the parents and the inconsistency saying to text them your name and contact but dont supply their own. A person could be doing this to make an unsuspected victim pay expense for something they know nothing about or possibly it may cause people to donate money to them.
As I’m not currently in Singapore I can’t exactly call NUH or something to confirm this. If anyone can find out I suggest you do and help this little girl out.
Hematology & Blood Disorders: Aplastic Anemia: Some information about the said disorder.

Mail content as follows
——————————————————————————-
Dear Concerned Fellowmen / Students,

We are the parents of a 2 year-old girl, VANESSA NICOLE LEE LIM, diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a blood disorder
where her bone marrow fails to produce blood for her body’s normal function.

Because of this, we are in desperate need for DONORS for PLATELETS with A+ BLOODTYPE for the next 9 months.
Vanessa needs to be transfused with platelets every 2 days on the average.

For anyone who is so kindhearted and willing to extend help to our daughter, kindly proceed to NUH (NATIONAL
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL), Blood Donation Center, Level 1. Please inform the staff that you are a donor for VANESSA
NICOLE LEE LIM. They will screen your blood and if you pass the test, may we request 1.5 hours of your time for
platelet extraction when the need arises. The lifespan of harvested platelets is only 5 days.

Please leave your name and contact number to the statff so that they can contact you for platelet extraction when
the need arises. Please also text us your name and contact number so that we have a way to reach you and to thank
you.

Donors must be 18-45 yrs. old, at least 52kg., healthy, no history of hepatitis, tuberculosis, or other major
illnesses, no HIV, not on long-term medication, must have good veins on the arms for the procedure, and must
bring and ID or passport during registration.

We will shoulder all screening and platelet extraction expenses. Your body will recover the platelets in 3 days.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. We are fervently counting on your support.

Sincerely yours,

WILLY and TIFFANY LIM
——————————————————————————-

Well just be careful if you wear it with the collar up
Greenlighting: Do You Know What a Green Shirt with Upturned Collar Means?
Greenlighter FAQ: The gist of what you need to know.
Man its a strange world to live in. I have quite a few green polo shirts… Just a strange strange world. man….