Random stuff

Last few days of slack... before sch starts. the time time still aint out yet... and i still don't know which elective i'm taking... gah...

presidential electives date set for the 27th aug. i still barely know a single thing abt the candidates -.-''' man i don't even know how many have submitted the forms so far... gah... guess i've got some reading up to do before i head to the polls.

recently there's a couple of english songs i'm kinda addicted to. considering how i've been listening to arashi songs (japanese) for the longest time... its been a really long time since i last added any new englis songs to my list. well there was grenade by bruno mars a while back, but recently Airplanes by B.o.B. and price tag by Jessie J really caught my attention. came across airplanes when i went shopping with my family in msia (yes the one with the roast duck and all i blogged abt a while back)... finally got round to downloading the song a while back and been listening to it a lot since than. i normally try and caught a few phrases/sentences of the song, write it down in my phone, than go find the song when i remember later on...

well i don't think the PV is really nice... doesn’t really get me into the mood of the song... but well that's the nice thing abt western world VS JE... they happily post their official PVs on youtube for everyone to watch, share, and spread... whereas JE takes down videos from youtube as soon as they can find them :(

i heard price tag when my sis showed me a cute arashi fan vid... found the song addicting and when to dl it. the fanvid is really good tho (except the poor quality i'd prefer it not to be in b/w)... as in, the scenes fitted nicely with the song lyrics, and made the whole song look and sound fun... fits the mood of the song really well IMO. so yeah... here's the vid that i really liked. the best part is probably the 'everybody look to the left/right' part... really amusing lol.

yesterday i went on a crazy rampage of dl-ing high quality arashi song PVs and music station performances. maybe i'm spoiled by JE's type of PVs... maybe cos i've been a fan of arashi for a while... didn’t really like many of the US made PVs... grenade pv was really quite... meaning less to me... the storyline was really weird and it just didn’t... entice me to listen to the song. maybe its just a total different mindset... like from my friends who prefer western pop to me who erm... prefer arashi songs (i wont even say jpop, since i pretty much only listen to arashi songs... for now). its like after watching those PVs i wish i'd just listen to the song on its own, w/o ever looking for its PV. meh... but since i generally don't like those PVs, i didn’t watch many of them so maybe it just so happened that i'm unlucky...?

meh... i wonder wat my friends (i've got some to absolutely love musicals, glee etc) would think if they see arashi's PVs... some of the dance (they didn’t dance in all PVs, depends on the song etc...), outfits, and settings are just so darn freaking cool. truth and monster is cool, troublemaker had a cute and fun PV... very much like the song's title... now i'm in love with mada minu sekai e dance in music station. they jumped around a lot and yes they sang live. maybe i shd try n get my friends into arashi... than at least i wont feel so left out when they discuss on and on abt all the western music scene...

heh. nothing else to say... or rather, too many things to say, but not sure how to put it out in words. that's all for now.

lol

Differences Between You and Your Boss

When you take a long time, you're slow.
When your boss takes a long time, he's thorough.
When you don't do it, you're lazy. .
When your boss doesn't do it, he's too busy.

When you make a mistake, you're an idiot. .
When your boss makes a mistake, he's only human.

When doing something without being told, you're overstepping your authority..
When your boss does the same thing, that's initiative.

When you take a stand, you're being bull-headed..
When your boss does it, he's being firm.

When you overlooked a rule of etiquette, you're being rude. .
When your boss skips a few rules, he's being original.

When you please your boss, you're apple polishing..
When your boss pleases his boss, he's being co-operative.

When you're out of the office, you're wandering around..
When your boss is out of the office, he's on business.

When you're on a day off sick, you're always sick..
When your boss is a day off sick, he must be very ill.

When you apply for leave, you must be going for an interview. .
When your boss applies for leave, it's because he's overworked.

Morale: Be a Boss!

hmm... just found this in my draft... this must be from (literally!) years ago when i purposely surfed the web for jokes/randomfunnystuff and quotes...

On the topic of funny stuff, i thought i'd just share the video my friend sent me just now...

The Lion Rawrs

Ok, so i've updated to Lion OS X for a few days now... There are indeed some things abt lion which irks me... i turned off the natural scroll feature right away for one, but realised it still exists in some places like scrolling ard launch pad and in the google map of iphoto... i can get used to the naturally scrolling alright... but it feels extremely weird when i'm using the mouse... and since i switch btw xp and mac for games, i figured i could use 1 less item to get used to during the frequent switches.

here's some info on how to make lion act like snow leopard... http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/25/making-lion-act-more-like-snow-leopard/

granted, there are some nice features introduced in lion, but there are some i'd rather not have.

read some of the comments abt launchpad and other changes introduced. i can't help but agree that the current launchpad is quite a failure. with some changes it could become a lot better and more useful... but right now i'm not using launchpad... at all. You cannot remove unwanted icons from launchpad... removing = uninstalling, like in the iPhone, only that this feature in the mac seems just... weird to me. Somehow my parallels didn’t uninstall properly and i've not gone around to properly correcting that problem, so i have PAGES of useless parallels windows program icons on the launchpad which i cannot remove. I end up dumping them into two folders to make the pad neater... however i still find scrolling ard the pad troublesome. arranging the icons and folders in launchpad is just abt as troublesome as on the iPhone... so much so that i just arranged those programs that i would use, but a lot less often (such that i tend to forget to program name and cannot call it up with alfred) in folder and put them on the 1st page... i had hoped for launchpad to be something like an icon palette for us to arrange and customise... but sadly it offers a lot less flexibility than than. Considering that launchpad was one of the highlights in Lion, i was quite disappointed. You can't even change the background shown in launchpad... can only hope that they give us more freedom with it in later changes... right now i'm not liking/using it at all. oh yes, in installing lion, somehow some of the basic programs like chess got duplicated/reinstalled, and i ended up with two Chess icons, and unable to delete them. If i have the patience next time, i might arrange those more useful programs nicely on the 1st page... but i think i'll pretty much stick to using the dock and alfred ><

Mission control is another highlight in Lion (ask me wat's new in Lion before it came out, and mission control + launchpad is the 1st thing i'll remember, so i was really quite disappointed with launchpad). The comment from heavy uses of spaces is that mission control makes things overly complicated/troublesome... like it takes a lot more steps than previously to change a window/program from one desktop to another. Personally, i don't use spaces at all, so this isnt a problem for me. I do appreciate the more organised look of mission control. at least i know which window is in which browser/app. HOWEVER, if you open several windows in the same app, the 2nd and subsequent windows will be partially blocked by the 1st window. (ok, i just look at my mission control, i can barely see the 3rd window, and since it blends with my white timetable desktop pic, i didn’t even see the 3rd window at the beginning and was wondering why it showed i have two windows when i shd have 3... this is bad ><) 

There are some much appreciated changes tho, for one you can finally resize windows from every corner. And there's the useful resizing options that lets you pick exactly how and where you want that window to be. For eg. you can get a webpage to take up the left 1/3 of the screen, and get a pdf file/another window to show on the right 2/3 of the screen. Bad thing tho, when resizing stuff like browsers is that your tool bars etc are just CUT OFF and become UNACCESSIBLE unless you resize the window. Scrolling only changes the view of the page, not the toolbar (like if i make my firefox 1/3 on the left, i can't even access the address bar!) yet another brilliant idea made dumb due to some overlooked detail.

somehow the small things they left felt like the new OS was done in a rush... in a totally 'un-apple' fashion (from my short experience and impression of using a mac)...

hmmm... shortcuts... while the spreading of fingers to show desktop, pinching to show launchpad thing is a great idea, its not very effective.... somehow the success rate is maybe 50-70%? the OS fails to recognise those motions properly... or maybe the action isnt as easy to execute as just swiping up/down with four fingers, so the variety of finger actions that occur makes the shortcut inaccurate.


heh. seems like all i have is bad new abt Lion... i guess its partly because i've not really start WORK on my mac, so those stuff like auto save, versions etc have not been tested. there's only 1 mac in the household so i've not tried airplay (nothing to send over too!)... i don't use facetime, i don't use their mail since i mostly check my emails from my itoy (maybe i shd try the mail function tho).... there's probably loads of stuff working nicely in the background, and loads more that i've not tried so all i notice are the stuff that sticks out like a sore thumb (hence the less than cheerful post).

so that's all i have for now... to end off, i'll link you this video of how friendly and carefree the Apple store service staff in the US are. Its really hilarious, go watch it :)

Lion at last!

After a RIDICULOUSLY long wait for OS X to download, i'm finally running Lion. The new OS installed w/o a hitch, tho both the download and installation took much longer that wat others reported in the app store. played with the new OS for barely 10 mins... needless to say the 1st thing i did was to change my dock and program icons back to the custom ones i had last time... esp the dock. after getting so used to my wavy lined dock, the white one looked outright ugly.

still have not settled the issue of the finder icon on the dock... liteicon doesn’t work this time round even after i restarted... darn! well its not THAT impt tho, so i'm gonna explore the other aspects of the system 1st. the finder sidebar icons for one looks really really plain. i miss having my miniature maple characters in the sidebar etc... gotta see if there's a way for me to get them back. seen some not so good comments abt lauchpad already.... have gotten round to using it yet, but since i had to try sooo hard to find the liteicon app just now since i forgot the app name, and looking through the whole list of apps in finder didn’t really help (in the end i had to open up my blog, look for the blog post i made abt all the mac apps, find the app name, and type it in alfred, how pathetic!), i'm really looking forward to grouping my apps together in folders. we'll see how it goes when i get round to using it more.

oh yeah, the new gestures... they have the natural scrolling thing that basically reverses the direction of scroll... i don't really see the benefit/difference (quite ok with both directions) on the trackpad... but once i use the mouse wheel to scroll its... arghs! the difference becomes so hellya obvious.. and irritating. can't take the scroll wheel moving in the wrong direction issue and switch the natural scrolling option off within 5mins of trying it out. kinda sad but oh wells.

guess the rest of the features like auto save + version history etc will take a while before i get to try them out... gonna try out lauchpad now than head to bed. sch's starting in a week so i guess the timing of lion release is just nice for me...

k, till next time.

LION RAWR!

Yes, i know i'm like super slow, but just realised today when i actually started the mac app store. mostly on xp these days cos of maple and tudou video watching (their video loading program thingy only runs on windows)... and the few times i went on mac i didn’t check the app store. i swear i signed up for the email notifications but i didn’t get any email either... oh wells.

downloading the app now, 30USD is a decent price i guess. saw some reviews in the mac store... some positive, some negative... one with the worst case scenario of the installation process gone haywire and the whole system crashing. since i have not backed up my system, i really hope it wont come to that.

the download is taking super slow... need to wait between 3-4hours (like wth!) to download the 3.74GB software... don't know if its cos singnet broadband sux or cos my sis is watching videos online. but still, i see other reviews only taking at most an hour+ downloading the thing... heck even if i download other software i don't think it'll be so slow... seriously don't know why my internet is kinda screwed up today. oh wells. all i can do is wait....

wat's in a title?

Whee, going out for breakfast with my friends tmr! guess i'll have to sleep early tonight else i wont be able to wake up!

Been slacking ard playing games and more games recently... but gosh time sure speeds by when you're having fun! Sch is starting on 1st Aug and that's soooo soon! meeting jlf (at last yay!) on sat too! cant wait to see here, been like 2 years since we last chatted... and i dont talk to her on msn and hardly so on facebook >

no inspiration/dont feel like writing on this blog lately... shall be off to update the other one... *winks*

wat a FULLFILLING day

Started off with meeting sandra, joy and philana at nex for lunch. we settled at carl's jr after some nosing abt. quite literally... that place has really bad ventilation i swear! i got a portobello mushroom burger... thick. the mushrooms were good, i <3 mushrooms... the meat wasnt very impressive tho. think the beef at wendy's is better.

meet up with my sis and bishan mrt after that... i so desperately wanted to try the fruit tarts i had with my friends last time... but thought we'd try the fruit paradise shop we saw at vivo/313... so we headed over to 313... tarts arent exactly lunch tho, so we got off at orchard mrt and shared a yakisoba from gindako... than my sis wanted to try soup spoon... so we had velvety mushroom soup after the noodles. more mushroom yay! i got thristy than, so we went daiso to get some drinks. we shared a can of ginger ale while walking to 313 from ion. its the 2 cans for $2 ones - the other can we shared on our way BACK from 313... now the tarts...

we tried the strawberry tiramisu and banana chocolate. bill came up to $16.... the tarts were good but somehow... i preferred the ones i had at ma mansion. was it cos this was the 2nd time i'm trying it? idk... like the tiramisu was good, but it lacked the fruity, refreshing taste i was hoping for. it was by no means bad however. the cake in between the cream was basically SOAKED the fragrant, delicious coffee. banana choc had more fruity taste... like the cream too was full of banana... but not the kind of banana taste that i encountered previously. this one is more... like the fresh banana you peel and eat. the one i had previously was more... sweet? artificial perhaps... like the banana flavor you would encounter if you drank banana flavored dutch lady milk or eat some banana flavored sweets. idk why but that was... good... it was somehow more delightful and... refreshing. we'd wanted to go bugis but than i changed our minds with 1) the cost of eating lunch at ma mansion and 2) ma mansion takes their cakes from else where, and didnt seem to have as much variety as a result in mind. gah... the chicken i had there was really good tho. i swear i'd go out with my sis again. to dine at ma mansion. MUST!

we were lamenting earlier that we dont get to eat the takoyaki from gindako cos of the long list of food we have lined up... but we shdnt have worried. my mum teaches some kids tuition and she either goes to their place, or have them come our hse. she went to their place today (my this, waking day that is) and since that place was nearby orchard, decided to go orchard get some stuffs. my dad came along to pick her up and they went to eat yakisoba (yes, same shop!) AND takoyaki. and they nicely left 4 for us... making me feel guilty abt all the gd food we had earlier ><. ok... just sorta guilty... i really did have a great time chatting with my sis and all even tho she was complaining abt how she's gonna fall asleep any min ><.

passed by the li ning shop at ion orchard and wat started out as casual browsing ended up with my sis getting a pair of shoes and me getting a shirt and 2 pairs of socks. the sales peeps there are like... one of the friendiest guys i've met in a long time. very knowledgeable abt their products, alert, and very helpful. it didnt matter if you ask them to get this and that over and over. they were patient and most willing to help out. my dad started chatting with one of the guys abt how his feet are really small and makes it hard for him to buy shoes, so the guy started pulling out all sorts of shoes for my dad to try on - fully aware that my dad just wanted to try out the sizes and cutting of their shoes and didnt have any intention to buy the shoes now. not pushy at all, but rather trusting that their product will convince you to buy it the next time. after that we chatted with them a bit abt how we were li ning brand fans... like the bag i brought along today, and my sis's jacket (which ended up on my dad cos he was cold) were both li ning products.

still rem we purposely went down to ion orchard when the store just open and were disappointed with the small variety of goods sold. was quite pleased to sell the variety of goods was much increased this time round. saw a bad very similar to the one i was using, its like in the same series or smthing. there was this orange bag there too, i saw the same one when i visited the li ning shop in shanghai when i went to visit the shanghai world expo last year... was looking for a bag that time, and was hesitating btw that orange one, and the one that i got in the end.

guess this li ning craze started when my dad went china for work... i was looking for a new jacket... like... windbreakers... to replace my old one which was too small + way too dirty thks to my sis.... somehow those type of windbreakers i was looking for was totally out of fashion in sg. we searched high and low to no avail... so i asked my dad to keep a look out for us. in the end he came back with 4 li ning jackets... for me and my sis (2 each lah... 2 pairs of identical designs, just diff size)

after that when we went china for hols we'd go visit all the li ning shops we came across (which was a lot!) and i got like... another jacket, a bag which i share with my sis too... a down feather winter jacket... wallets... my sis got shoes, sling bag... jackets... etc etc... yeah... its like the 1st time that we've bought so many products from the same brand (no, i wont count brands like ikea... -.-''')

on a separate note... my dad is definitely keen on getting a mac. he's still undecided on getting a macbook pro, or a imac (desktop) tho... and he's waiting eagerly for iphone 5 to be out too... i'm waiting for iOS 5 and Lion...! esp Lion. wonder how much i'll cost but.... ah the new features... really a must have imo >< hope the price wont be too steep since i'll have to pay out of my own debit card. actually that's all i use my debit card for. iTunes purchases.... >< talk abt under utilization lol.

had a really fun day today... talking with sandrajoyphilana was fun, tho sadly since i dont watch any of those dramas or read those inspirational/philosophical books sandra was talking abt so i couldnt join in much... it was great listening to them chat as always. we'll meet again in dec ya?

Puzzles!

Here are two interesting puzzles taken from the book 'How Many Socks Make a Pair' by Rob Eastaway. (Well the didn’t make up the puzzles himself though, so u can find the same puzzles elsewhere too)

The Burning String
You are given only a piece of rope and a lighter, and you have no other way to tell the time/keep track of them. The rope burns for exactly one hour, how do you tell if 30 minutes have passed? Cutting the rope into two wont work though, since the rope is of unequal thickness and each part takes and unequal amount of time to burn...


Where is the Father?
A women is 21 years older than her son. In six years time, she will be five times as old as her son. Where is the father?




Answers
The Burning String
Start burning the rope from BOTH ends. When entire rope burns to ashes you have 30minutes!

Where is the Father?
It seems like the question is completely unrelated to the clues given... but do some simple algebra (which i am too lazy to write) and you will find that the sons age is -3/4... which is around the time of conception aka the child is 9months away from being born... so where is the father haha?

New blog address, name and background?

i've been using this blog address since like when i started blogging in like... jc? or rather, before that i didnt use blogger. i'm thinking of changing my blog address (still under blogspot domain of cos, i dont plan to pay for my own domain any soon) to something... shorter/nicer sounding... and do a little drawing of my own to put in the background. that's if my drawing succeeds and all...

it's gonna take quite a while tho, so i wouldnt be holding my breath if i were u.

wat on earth???

it's been a spite of not so pleasant incidents from yesterday till now. 1st: the internet was acting really really strangely. some websites would take forever and not load (while my friends had no problem opening them), while others loaded fast and smooth.
2) my mouse died on me AGAIN. or rather, it was the scrolling wheel... same thing as what happened to my previous mouse, and the previous-previous ones... the rest of the buttons are still working, but the scrolling button gave way.

went to jurong point to do some shopping with my mum, and got a new mouse as well. its getting harder and harder to find the mouse i want these days. i want the 5 or 6 button mouse (with back and front buttons), that is NOT wireless (i.e. usb). well challenger doesnt have a very wide range of choices, actually i wanted to go sim lim today and buy but since mum dragged me to JP... but there were only TWO mouse from the brand power logic that fits my criteria. one had 5 buttons, i got the one that cost 2bucks more with a button to change the DPI. cost me 21.90... hope this one lasts for more than a year like... my past 2 mouse only lasted me for like a year >< thing these days ah... quality getting worse and worse tsk.
most usb mouse these days are the usual 2/3 buttons (no back n forward) ones, and the rest are wireless... which i dont like cos the battery dies really fast. for someone like me who uses the comp (and hence mouse) like the whole day, the battery dies out in less than a month (the packaging claims it'll last for 6 months to a year, wat bull...) having to bring ard those extra batteries and to keep buying batteries is really troublesome + costly... so i prefer the wired ones.


weekend was happily reading my books and training my battlemage (maplestory) to 3rd job... so till now i've still not posted the pics of the museum trip :P blah. it'll come. soon... i still haven had time to play ard with the pic i took the other day... what i am busy with? i wonder....

When was the last time u went to a museum?

For me, it was some time ago when we visited the museum during CNY. i cannot remember which year was it.

gng out later with my family to visit the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the Asian Civilizations Museum (ACM). Entrance is free for full time students, teachers, and NS men...

we'll also get to try out the augment reality app ACM came up with for the exhibit - its the 1st time they are coming up with such things. Hopefully the response is good and they'll do more of such apps...

i'll probably post some of the photos i take later. since i've found an easy way to upload pics from iPhoto to photobucket, hurrah!

would you D.E.A.R.?

so after writing half of the post on English, i took the chance to take a trip to the library after gng out with my mum on wedn... i picked up... 5 books. one of which i finished in a couple of hours, and returned in today (opps i mean yesterday) when i went out to meet mich.

borrowed the books from jurong regional library, my favorite hunt for books (near my place, big library, great air con, few ppl and all)... but i was quite disappointed that day. i rem last time there were loads of science books... physics + chemistry + bio... when i went on wedn tho, the science books got reduced from 1.5 - 2 rows of books, to like half or a third of a row!!!! like where did all my books go!!!!! T.T (kk, they aren't MY books, but they are MY favorite TYPE or books) gosh... i'd check it out again next time and see if its still like this... ><

anyway i've read finish one book, and half of the other... both are really interesting books so i'll give a brief intro of the books.

Here's the book i finished reading:

And Thereby hangs A Tale by one of my favorite authors, Jeffrey Archer. it’s a collection of short stories, some inspired by real stories, while others are fragments of his imagination. I first came across this author in sec 1, when his famous A Twist in a Tale appeared in my reading list. I've read most of his books, and I while I find his novels a great read, I can't help but agree that this guy is a genius when it comes to short stories. The great thing about short stories is that you can put down the book any time. If you've not read any book by Jeffrey Archer yet, you really must give it a try. I'd recommend you go for the short stories, they are so nicely written, i'd describe them as epic.

I only borrowed one fiction story book this time, the other four are what i call science story books. yeah they go under non-fiction, but many of these books are written with the general public in mind. Stripped of as much jargon as possible, and presented in a light hearted, enjoyable, and easy to understand manner. Many of these science story books i have read attempts to describe science/math as applied to everyday situations, such as the book i am about to describe.

How Many Socks make a Pair? by Rob Eastaway

He wrote a part 2 for this book, which i picked up w/o even realising they were by the same author... indeed, both books give a very light hearted take on a subject that many of us, including myself, hates - mathematics. For me i don't hated math in sec/jc, as i could no longer see the big picture... like the whole application thing was missing... concepts got way too abstract... like all the differentiation and integration stuff... i didn’t like algebra much from the start... and the way those topics were presented didn’t help. thankfully, all of that is avoided in this book. it really shows the math that can be found in everyday life, shows the beauty in math, and presents the reader with puzzles to solve and simply experiments to try. definitely a great read. perhaps i'll post some puzzles from the book here next time. if i can't remember to do so before i return the book that is.


i've read so many science story books over the years, many of their names i've forgotten - until i next see them in the library that is. i'll introduce some of the books i've enjoyed next time... of those that i can remember their names that is.

i love the holiday period, cos that's when the library will double ur loan quota, under the Drop Everything And Read aka D.E.A.R. campaign. well the doubling of the quota has been around for quite a long time, but i'm not sure if the D.E.A.R. is as old. last time i borrowed way too many books at one go and ended up returning a lot of them unread... so this time i decided not to be some ambitious and to just pick four (which i still exceeded by 1 in the end)

alright, its getting really late. i'll probably read some pages of my books and off the lights. Would you D.E.A.R. with me too?

The English Langauge

Recently I helped my friend to proof read his scientific report. I ended up spending quite some time giving him tips and helping to edit any thing I felt needed editing. Was quite fun doing proof reading, and on a subject I love at that – chemistry. It has been so long since I wrote a proper scientific report. Heck, the only truly proper report I wrote was the one for SRP/SSEF like 4-5 years ago when I was still in JC. In ntu… I only wrote a few lab reports and all… nothing that felt really formal and needed tons of planning/time to write. Those lab reports were mostly just… crap anyway… its like you just rephrase the materials and methods from ur lab worksheet and write pretty much the same stuff in ur discussions and conclusions as everyone else. Since we all did the same experiment anyway. You didn’t have to plan your experiments, loads of stuff was pre-prepared by the lab tech for u…. it just didn’t feel like a real experiment and the reports didn’t feel real either. Not interesting really.

So I was really glad to have the report to read and edit, it really made me think, some thing that I’ve not been doing enough of recently. It made me remember the time I had in IBN… everything in my long forgotten past… I dug out my old report to read. It was… okay. Well I was quite surprised that the report was a mere 2.4k words long... and that’s the total word count including all ur acknowledgements and references. Ok, there was a word limit requirement for the report after all. Still, I never remembered it being so short. I guess its cause I’ve been writing all the long, grandmother stories with my blog posts. Hitting 2k words isn’t a problem at all. The language use and such, my friend put it in a very positive way: ur English was already as good last time as it is now. That’s an optimistic way of looking at things. If you look at it from another direction, it just means that my standard of English didn’t improve in these 4-5 years. I can’t help but agree with this train of thought.

Looking back at the recent few years, I’ve stopped reading tons of storybooks like I used to. I hardly borrow books at all, and if I do, they often end up returned, unread. I really need to get back into the habit of reading. It’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that I need to make it a habit, it’s that I need to make the time. Being in ntu where broken English or Chinese is used way too often, at least among the friends I hang out with the most, didn’t help improve my language capabilities. The lack of practice didn’t do me any favor either. And that was precisely the reason why I decided to restart my blog (even though this blog has close to no readers) – I am in dire need of practice. Even my typing and spelling skills have deteriorated. Apart from the casual blog entries I shall try to write something more proper and sharpen up my skills, however little it may help. My vocabulary in particular is severely lacking. My poor memory and spelling skills certainly doesn’t help in this.

Perhaps I did learn a little about English over the past few years. At least I think I’ve become more aware of the language. After taking some basic courses in Japanese, and courses such as ‘Mastering Communication’, ‘The Art of Academic Writing’, ‘Technologically Speaking’ and ‘Research Seminars’, I’ve taken a new look at languages, grammar, and how to use them. My teacher from Mastering Communications lamented about how those ang mo lecturers complained to her about the poor grammar of Singaporeans, and questioned if we were ever taught grammar in school.

I remember learning about the various tenses in primary school, memorizing whole lists of the various tenses of the verbs (such as present tense, past tense, present perfect etc)… I only knew exactly how present and past tense worked, the rest of the tenses… I learn from examples how and when to use those tenses. Right now I can’t even remember which tense is which, or what present perfect tense is and when it should be used etc. I remember my teaching trying to teach us the different parts of a sentence, like which is the subject, which is the verb and so on. I never understood those things in class, as with many of my classmates. My teacher attempted to explain to us, and I remember her repeating it a few times, but somehow the concept was too huge for our small minds to grasp. I remember how at the beginning I had great difficulty remembering to use past tense when I needed to, probably because the idea of tenses was still new and foreign to me – there are no tenses in Mandarin. Later on, somewhere along the line, it just got natural for me and I started forgetting about grammar. In secondary school I starting reading a lot of storybooks, and that was when my language improved by leaps and bounds (actually, that’s cause my English standard was really terrible to began with). I made fewer and fewer grammatical errors in writing, but in the process I forgot all about the basic grammatical rules taught in primary school. Or maybe you could say I never remembered them. I only knew what’s a noun and how to differentiate past tense from present tense.

Years later, I decided to study Japanese in uni – because I think its fun, because I could, and because I enjoyed to. That was when all that grammar that I had forgotten caught up to me. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives… I actually had to check the dictionary to find their meaning and some definitions were absolutely of no help… in fact, I found that I was learning the meaning of those words through this foreign language. I guess it is because I now have a greater understanding of things in general. It was much easier for me to grasp the grammar rules of Japanese than it probably was when I learnt English in primary school. I was really glad I took those Japanese modules. Not only did it give me more insights to the Japanese culture, it was made me take a closer look at language itself.

The Technologically Speaking course I took also highlighted many of the differences between languages. I enjoyed the course thoroughly as I contemplated on the various differences between English and Mandarin.

I’ve never been good at languages. Spelling in particular, whether in English, Chinese or Japanese, has and probably will always be a big headache for me. I failed my Chinese spelling in primary 5/6, and continued to have problems with it throughout secondary school. I remember being punished by my English teacher in primary 6 to write out words 99 times for every word I got wrong in spelling. I remember how she insulted not just me, but even my parents in front of the whole class… but I just suck at spelling. And pronunciation (though you could, argue that just about every Singaporean suck at it too - the environment we grew up in does shape us after all). I still rely on spell check to tell me whether it’s silent or slient; sliver or silver. It took me a really long time to remember how to spell remember (oh how ironic, I know). I still have trouble with words especially when I’ve not had writing practice from some time. Sometimes my mistakes are so bad that even spell check or google can’t figure out what I’m trying to say. Neither can I. I often try and spell words like how I would pronounce it, which ends up all wrong. Perhaps you can say it runs in the family. My dad was Chinese educated and still has difficulties spelling things (that even spell check can’t save or help him). He comes to me and my sis for help to draft formal letters at times... Perhaps it is because phonetics wasn’t taught to us early on? Perhaps it is because I don’t work hard enough…

The usage of both British and American English in Singapore further adds to my spelling confusion. In primary school everything I learnt was taught with British English, but now it seems like Singapore is moving towards the use of American English… why is that so, I do not answer. Seems to me that is, and honestly I didn’t pay much attention. I suspect that many people are probably just as ignorant as I was about the differences between the two. The usage of ‘s’ and ‘z’ is pretty well known I guess, as with words like ‘colour’ and ‘color’. But how about words like ‘center’ and ‘centre’? or ‘catalogue’ and ‘catalog’… or ‘foetus’ and ‘fetus’…? I never paid much attention to these till it was highlighted to us during the Research Seminars module. During that module, the key concepts of scientific writing were nicely highlighted and emphasized upon. As someone who has had experience in writing scientific report, most of the information I had already figured out on my own. Still, it was content on grammar that I found the most useful. It really made me pay a lot more attention to my writing. For the most part however, I questioned the need for a course on scientific writing, so late into our course at that. It was only until our lecturer showed examples of my classmates work that it struck me there are many people who really needed the course.

So good at memorizing, and so what?
Memorizing and more memorizing, that’s what the Singapore education is all about it seems. I find that while we are bilingual, Singaporeans are neither here nor there. Many/Most of us do not process a high standard of English, or Chinese (I cannot speak for the other mother tongue languages). Sure, most of us can write decent English, but we have a pathetic vocabulary. Which is the reason why you see me repeat my words so often – my small dictionary doesn’t present me with any other choice. Same goes for mandarin, only that it’s probably even worst. While I am proud to say that I can speak Chinese well enough for some of my friends from China to think that I, too, came from the mainland, the same cannot be said for my reading and writing skills. Writing, in particular, was a killer. And my lack of practice only makes it worst. When was the last time I even wrote my own Chinese name… probably last year? I’ve wanted to do some self-improvement on my mother tongue but, as usual, never got round to doing it. Somehow exams just don't sit well with me. I remember thinking about how Chinese is actually quite interesting the very day my O lvl HCL exams ended. Why didn’t I think it was interesting before? I figured it must all be due to the four-letter word EXAM. I wish we’d adapt more of the teaching style in America… how they promote free discussion and more importantly, critical thinking. It’s something that is really missing over here. So important, yet so little of it seen.

Right now I’ve got about half of my holidays left, guess its time for me to do something more useful and brush up on my reading, my vocabulary, my writing… and just doing something, rather than nothing.


Note: i wrote the front half of the post two days ago, the rest was completed now... (in case there are any confusions in time references)

steamboat!

Had a great day out with mich today! was supposed to be a troop outing lah, but than one by one ppl cmi, till there was just the two of us left...

i was actually a bit worried that there'll be periods of awkward and sad silence since i'm such a terrible conversation started, but meh, my worries were unfounded. had such a great time catching up with mich... i think it's been such a long time since i had a nice chat with anyone... besides my sis.

gotta find a date for troop outing again... someday where we can actually get hold of sandra, mich, and ASH. ash is forever gng mia at the very very last min lah! all her family commitments and all... sometimes i just she didnt have that many aunts/uncles/grandparents to visit and all lol. and like she always goes missing after u sms her or talk to her on fb a few times! so hard to get hold of her lah!

anyway we had steamboat at some place opp bugis junction today. the food was soso... like the usual steamboat buffet stuff like flower crab, frozen scallops n mussels, pork(oh yes pork, since ash isnt here today haha, else u'd have gone soul garderns since mich had a steamboat craving haha)/beef/mutton, fish, fish/meat/crab balls/cakes, pork liver + another pork innard that idk the name in english of (+ too lazy to check). oh there was blood cockles and loads of marinated stuff for bbq. the shop we went to offers bbq + steamboat for 20bucks per pax, steamboat only for 18. the bbq wasn’t very gd tho, maybe cos we paid scant attention to the food and the meat ended up either charred, undercooked, or overcooked (and i don't really like heavily marinated food).... well steamboat isnt much better either, just that the food only ends up being overcooked and very tough. its like i was just happily chatting away and totally not paying attention to watever's in the pot while mich happily adds more and more food to cook... so yeah. overcooked food. 20 bucks... kinda ex yeah? was it so ex when i went for steamboat with my crusades friends to the shop in the opposite street like last year? i can't rem... but well... inflation inflation. cost of living goes up, wages stay as low as ever. hurrah!

i'm a really bad person when it comes to keeping in touch with others. i use facebook mostly to play mousehunt... and now to upload a couple of pics i took... hardly actively check ppl up. msn? even worst... i only talk to ppl if i need to, like if there's a project work or smthing... same for sms n calling. its been a really long time since we had a troop outing together... i think the last was... the one we went soul gardens or smthing. now when did that take place? oh that was hilarious. the dozen or so eggs that mich + ash took... they were in love with eggs but... in the end we had a huge mountain of leftover eggs... -.-''' ha i kept making fun of mich abt it today. *looks at the clock* oh dang, its yesterday. i prefer to think abt days as my waking hours, and the separator between today and tmr as when i go to bed.

can't wait to see ash + sandra... its been a while...! and oh yesh, jlf is coming back tmr yay! said she'll be free later next week to go out or smthing! XD its been like 2 years since she came back to sg... but now she'll be back for a yr to work b4 doing her pHd. can't wait to see her again!

@jlf: an early welcome back to sg

@ash: *squishes* when are you free! me + my sis want lepak with u lah. and anyone else wanna join us?

@sandra: miss u lots! time flies and gosh... i shd talk more to u on msn ><

@mich: <3 u loads! XD

Exporting from iPhoto to PhotoBucket + Mac VS Windows part 2

Was trying to look for some options in my photobucket account, and by chance stumbled upon the tools page and realised they provided a plugin for iPhoto for easy uploading of pics...! there there! my rant abt not being able to upload my pics to photobucket with ease solved! 1 problem down! of cos, the plugin is available for free... if you use other image hosting services u might want to check if they have such plugins for iPhoto too.


While i went out for a walk/jog yest evening... this uncle rode past me... with a folding table tied to the back of his bike. pro sia lol


was bored sometime back, so i tried out some photo effects... can't wait for my dad to buy a mac + photoshop for mac... i really want photoshop!

can't believe i left out all the rest of the keyboard differences in my previous post on mac VS windows... while mac has a command button taking over most of the work of the control key as well as en eject keyboard button (rather than one on the side of the lappy, i think this is better actually, cos i keep pressing that button when keeping/handing my old lappy causing the disk drive to pop out), it has many missing buttons compared to the standard windows keyboard...

there's a delete button on mac, but it actually works like a backspace button on windows. to forward delete, you have to press the Fn key and delete together... something that i actually just learnt today bravo. i really should read the keyboard short cuts list on the apple site to see what else i've been missing out gosh...

there's not end, page down/up, or home buttons. my lappy multi touch pad pretty much fixes all these, but it’s a chore when i can't use all these on the trackpad when i'm on xp cos my bootcamp is corrupted (tried deleting the entire partition and reinstalling, tried to re-install bootcamp so many times on xp till i finally gave up... its not too bad tho, at least i can type out my password in maple, no nid to use the soft keyboard, imagine having to use the soft keyboard when i did the attendance taking, i would have died!) it also sucks that i have less keys to put my skills n pots on in maple... but nothing that i couldn’t get used to really.

there are shortcut keys for mac for page up/down and home... but i must say that having physical key was much easier. sure they save some space on the keyboard but that's more shortcuts to rem. using the mac is all having shortcuts and more shortcuts i swear... bad for those for are more mouse oriented and would prefer erm... less shortcuts imo. i think for one my dad is gonna have big trouble remembering all these shortcuts... if he will even use them at all.

for the benefit of myself and anyone who doesn’t know:
space moves the page down, like in windows too.
shift-space moves the page up.
fn-arrow key works like page up/down
command-arrow key works like home/end
option-arrow key moves the screen up/down a page at a time... like say in preview.

that's all i think? hope i didn’t miss out any...
just a lot at this page and there's soooo many shortcuts available. most of them i don't even know, wont ever use, and wont ever remember...

i do like working with the keyboard... but so many shortcuts... it just gets kinda ridiculous at times... not to mention all my apps have their own little shortcuts... i don't use them too often and can barely rem half of them... ><

above: a list of the mac key symbols.

ah yes, i just ejected the photobucket installer... ejected a software? yeah u actually do that in mac... that's something i find cool abt mac. its really easy and fast to say stop ur usb drive. u just need to go to finder and hit the eject key beside ur drive. no nid to right click on the safety remove hardware button, than select the usb device, than select safety remove... to eject CDs u can too click on the eject button beside the drive in finder... or the button on ur keyboard... or just drag the disk icon on the desktop to the trash can... cool eh? i quite like this feature... cool and erm... fun? u can argue that its not much difference tho... but i still like the idea of not having the disk eject button on the side of the lappy. i constantly make the disk drive pop up when putting my old lappy into my bag last time.... or i'd reach sch/home only to find a half ejected disk drive cos something pressed the button during transportation. maybe that's why my disk drive on my old lappy died so fast... it died on me after like 1.5 years or smthing.

hmm, ok, that's all i can think of now... if i come up with more stuff i'll probably put them in yet another post or smthing.

Day Trip to Msia

ok... so i decided to try out flickr cos it’s the most convenient photo uploading service with iPhoto... went JB with my family on the 16th earlier this month to makan n jalan jalan... didn’t buy much tho... except some clothes. and wooden message stuff. the wood is really nice, my dad loves wooden things, like the natural wood texture, color and patterns, it kinda rubbed off me and my sis too.

ok... what i hate most abt blogger is still the pathetic photo uploading... and how many a times it doesn’t even work! and i'm just uploading a photo already on the web for godsake! i end up having to open an old post, and grap the HTML for inserting a photo from there (since my own html skill are close to zero)


we dined at 北京楼 restaurant for lunch (note: idk why this photo refuses to load for me. if u can't see it, click the words to open the photo in a new window/tab)


roasted duck. very good... crispy skin and the duck is very tasty - fresh duck. not like those frozen ones where the meat is tasteless and lost its original flavor. the sauce they gave to go with the duck is great too!


sea cucumber + goose feet + broccoli + pine nuts. i forgot wat fanciful name they gave the dish though. the broth is good, and the sea cucumber heavenly. the goose feet? to me it was nothing special... kinda like duck feet with more meat. taste wise that is. of cos there's more meat than duck feet... honestly i was much more impressed with the sea cucumber. it was soft but still springy. the dish is a one portion to a person, and you have to at least by two plates each time. my family got the min. 2 and we shared. The restaurant is actually famous for their seafood, but we only realized after ordering that we left out the seafood… except for the 2 pieces of sea cucumber… oh wells. We ordered more than enough dishes already so we didn’t really try their seafood in the end.



The dishes that we ordered… we had like one veggie, one tofu (counted by piece, min. 3 pieces, we had 1 piece per pax), one roost duck, one lamb pot, fried beehon with 冬粉… and two desserts.


that’s the羊肉锅 or lamb pot. Curiously the chunks of lamb came with… SKIN! Very much like your braised pork… only w/o the layer of fat underneath the skin, and the skin much more chewy and not as soft (compared to pork skin). 1st time I had lamb cooked with the skin. We figured that most of the time the skin + fur went to other places like handbags and all. I didn’t really like this dish though… sure the meat was soft and well cooked, but in the process of their food preparation, they removed the 羊烧味. Good news for many I guess, but the unique and strong flavor of lamb (and beef) is what makes me (and my dad n sis) attracted to it.


French beans… or something… tasted great but a bit too oily and salty... the only dish we couldn’t finish…


The restaurant’s trademark handmade tofu. Very unique, 1st time I see seaweed mixed into tofu and gosh the tofu and a very unique texture – it was very smooth and loose… the broth was great too. The seaweed at one end… the taste of seaweed isn’t strong or overpowering, just the right touch.



some vegetable+fruit juice they serve as an appetizer to all customers… they forgot to give us when we went though, my dad had to ask for it so we actually drank it after before our desserts rather than before our meal. We had trouble guessing what went into the juice… my guess was something like green apple + plums + star fruit… other guesses by the rest include celery, and… other green veggies like spinach… I’m 100% sure there are plums in there though. Like the salted ones u eat as a snack… could taste that quite strongly. Slightly sour, yet sweet, light and refreshing… very nice appetizer, just too bad it came late.

We had fried durian and honey dew sago for desert. The fried durian was good. Cool durian wrapped in those deep fried Vietnamese rolls… the ones where the roll is like some sort of netting


outside the restaurant






a huge fish tank... but hardly can see any fishes... my sis say she saw a lot of dead fish inside but i didn’t take note ><



we had Japanese food for dinner...



my sis ordered a... grape milk shake... if my memory doesn’t fail me.


salmon salmon our favourite. unless there's otoro. that's a completely different story. that'll be like comparing heaven and earth... ok, maybe i exaggerated a bit










curry omurice. was not bad but... i prefer the curry from that Go! Go! Gorilla Curry! at somerset 313 or Ion orchard (not sure if they opened outlets elsewhere). this dish is really cheap tho, was like 50% off for members and we joined the membership on the spot (20rm for 1 year, the always have special offers for members at half price...) i rem this dish worked out to smthing like 3+sgd... (once again, if my mem didn’t fail me...)


king spider ramen. basically tempura soft shell crab on top of ramen. does look quite scary and spider like tho




shioyaki ika... salt grilled squid. this one's surprisingly gd... i was expecting the ika to be over cooked and hard but nope... its was still nice and soft. personally not that fond of squids (to order a squid dish that is), but it was on 50% offer for members. we basically ordered all the non-vegetarian dishes on offer for members.


it does look quite spider like, don't u think?


their trade mark bento set A... the agedashi tofu was soaked in veggie soup... i prefer it 'dry' tho. sushi and sashimi was not bad... but kinda normal.




salmon + rice. i told u we liked salmon.




the restaurant had a really good ambiance. we went to another shop outlet at times square (erm, is that wat the shopping center right after the woodlands checkpoint is called?) before quite a while back. the place there was nicely furnished too, but it was too small and very cramp. i think the shopping center we went to this time was pelangi or smthing... my memory really sucks when it comes to such numbers and text/words... i can remember pictures and scenes vividly like i can recall the details of a movie i watch long ago and recite wat's going to happen next when Chnl 5 replays the movie X period of time later... i cannot however, for the death of me, memorize things like the times tables (as in, multiplication tables), or all the drug properties and side effects to pass my pharmaco module. but i digress...


a pond in the restaurant! yes its inside a shopping center... the restaurant is really big and spacious compared to those in sg. wat to say, msia big, sg small. simple as that.


pretty decorations...

ok, last picture!

the wooden massage stuff i mentioned earlier. randomly taken when placed on my bed. not the best place to take a photo but my table is way too messy.

ok... so that's all the pics we took... all in all we had a delightFULL day, really ate to our hearts content. the chinese food was more worth it than the japanese food though. both meals cost around the same price.... prefer the salmon we can get from the wholesaler somewhere in... woodlands? or smthing, i mix up the locations of the wholesalers... cheaper so u can eat more haha.

okays... i shd get going so that's all for now.

Mac VS Windows - the good, the bad, and why i love my Mac

I've been using a mac for about... 10 months or so now... so i thought i'll just take some time to summarize why i love my mac.

There are tons of articles praising macs, and even more die hard mac fans who would literally defend the mac to their grave... i dont think its all that fantastic and erm... godly as many make it out to be.... There are quite a few things here and there that makes my mac experience incomplete (at least w/o some EXTRA, and often paid, programs). Still, i'm loving the overall experience... In many ways the mac is more user friendly and convenient than windows... its undeniable that microsoft took ideas from apple when they came up with the sidebar + applications in vista, and the subsequent grouping of application windows in windows 7... what else did they rip off macs? lol.

The greatest change from windows and mac is probably the dock and how windows from the same application are grouped together.... unless you were a windows 7 user that is. It took me some time to get used to Expose. At the beginning i had great trouble with the idea of using both Expose and the dock... Let me explain the background situation 1st. I use firefox, chrome and safari all at the same time so i can say log in to different forum accounts and post at the same time. So previously i used the Expose function to view ALL open windows to switch between different browsers. Which gave me a huge headache as all forum windows look the same regardless of which browser it was opened in (even worst when all the preview windows are really tiny when there are many app windows open). Than figured, and slowly got used to the fact that i can use the dock buttons, and the Expose function to show all windows in the application ONLY. Now its no longer a problem for me... in fact, even when i switch to xp (cos the darn maple which doesn’t run in mac, even when i'm using parallels!) i move my mouse to the corner to switch windows... only to find that i have to click on the task bar instead.

OS X Lion is coming in July, and it brings along many features including mission control... from the preview it seems much better than the current expose as it shows at a glance which windows are from which application. Greatly looking forward to when Lion hits the stores. sadly i believe i'll have to pay to upgrade though :(

Another thing actually had to google on like the 1st day of using mac was... the finder. yes Finder is actually a program in mac, and its basically ur good ol' Explorer in windows. same thing, shows all your files and drives... only that finder is way cooler. Its more organised... instead of that big tree at the side bar showing all the various folders and sub, sub-sub etc folders... in the finder its much neater with less clutter. They dont list out ALL the folders on ur comp like explorer does, and instead you can select any folder you want to 'quick link' under Places.

Uploaded with Skitch!

'Quick linking' is very simple, just drag the folder onto the side bar!

What is strangely lacking though, is the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to cut and paste files. You have to drag the files instead, something which i find not so convenient. Weird that such a... basic? function is lacking. And ppl have certainly cashed in on the opportunity to develop programs to add in the function. Yes cashed-in. so far those that i've seen are all paid.

I use plenty of short cut keys and its great to see that like almost all the 'add on' applications i installed have short cut keys to make calling up the programs faster. the downside is that even till now, i cant remember all the shortcut keys... or wat those weird symbol mac uses stand for (i end up jabbing buttons here and there cos i just keep forgetting which symbol stands for what, there arent that many buttons to jab anyway...) i wish they put all the symbols on the keyboard itself, like the flowery icon for the command key... here's the apple help page for all the symbols and shortcuts...

Mac uses the command key instead of control key for just abt all the short cuts, and of cos the applications all follows suit. Personally i'm fine if either buttons, makes no difference to me (some say location of the command key is better than the control key in windows keyboards, less strain on the fingers and all, i dont feel any difference though). However this means that EVERYTIME i switch from mac to xp (to maple) or vice-versa, i need a bit of time to get used to pressing the corresponding button. Especially since i use the short cuts n each browser all the time (crtl/command + T to open new tab, + W to close tab, + no. to switch to that tab etc etc)... everytime i'll press the wrong key a few times before getting used to it. (command key becomes the windows key in xp!)

wat's great abt mac is that THE COMPUTER settles a lot of things for you. when you install a program, you just have to run the .dmg (its not .exe like in windows) files, and select which hard disk partition to install it in (basically i've got mac and bootcamp to pick from, of cos i install it in the mac). Some programs open up a window and you just drag the application to... your applications folder...! And now the even better part... uninstalling. Just drag the application icon to the trash! Easy! No uninstallers to run and all... no multiple folders to delete... easy and simple. I love this concept of mac.

The simplicity of using mac shines in many other areas, like the two finger scrolling and pinch to zoom features that is also found in the ipod/iphone and ipad. its so great that even other computer makers have copied the concept. rotating photos too... its all so simple and intuitive.

iPhotos is a great program that manages your photos, uploading... even simple photo editing. Great for managing your photos on the computer... but here is where i find simplicity being... a little too much of a good thing. To see the photos in finder you have to right click the picture in iPhoto and go to Show File... say if you want to upload the photos some somewhere not supported by iPhoto, like my blog here for example, or if you prefer say... photobucket (like me) to flickr... you wont be able to 'find' those photos to upload... you have to save the photos to some other file before you can upload them. Really really irritating... so much so for all the other convenience eh?

You can upload photos to FaceBook from iPhoto, and in doing so you so called link the album on FaceBook to the one on iPhoto. The good thing: to upload new photos to that album, just put it in that FB album in iPhoto - the program does the rest for you. The bad thing... or things... is that:
1) you can't upload the pics to an old album that is not linked with iPhoto
2) you can't 'unlink' the folders... not in an easy way anyway... you have to go thru elaborate steps like changing ur FB acct password so that iPhoto can't go on FB and all... why would you want to 'unlink' the album? read on.
3) if you are running out of space on ur hard disk and want to delete some old photos, but leave them on FB... you'll need to unlink the album otherwise once u delete the photo on iPhoto (and thus ur comp), the photo will be gone on FB too. (hence the elaborate procedures others have come up with to unlink the albums)

if you want to upload the photos to an old album (and don't want to link that old album to iPhoto), you can either upload it directly to FB using ur browser after 1st copying out the file to a temporary location else where (use right click, show file to view the file in finder).... OR upload it to any linked album, than go to the FB page and manually move the photos to the album of choice.

linking old albums to iPhoto takes some work too, since there isnt a feature to do this in iPhoto. You can create an album from iPhoto, than move ALL the photos from the old album into the new, linked album...

is this linked album feature good or bad? its up to the individual to decide i guess. i do appreciate the convenience... esp since i know organising photos is a dreadfully tiresome job. However the trouble i have to take to upload photos to facebook, since i do not wish to link all my albums, leaves me with much to be desired. didn’t see any updates on iPhoto in the OS X Lion update... darn, i was hoping they'd come up with a better solution for this (especially for uploading photos to other places that's not supported by iPhoto!) even to upload photos it twitter is a bit of a chore... i paid for twitexport to add that feature on to iPhoto >< abt 6.5SGD sighz. one thing i feel is a little messy is the applications folder. say u have tons of apps installed... you'll have to go through the whole list to find the app you want (if you cannot remember the name to call it up using quick sliver or my preferred Alfred). sure, this problem is present in windows too, and mac is actually better in that you see a big icon, rather than a small icon in windows... but i welcome the idea of the iphone/ipod/ipad style launchpad arriving in mac. Love how you can group apps of similar functions together... i wonder what would happen to the desktop tho? no more dumping of random files onto my desktop? hey is the desktop even there in Lion? >< gotta read up more... can't wait for it to come though! ah... while mac OS supports 2 button mouse... it doesn’t support all the extra buttons like back and forward buttons. which is really dumb... you need an application (once again, its paid) like steer mouse for that... which i bought too... its not really cheap, but it’s a really simple but great program that lets u customise all ur mouse buttons, change ur mouse movement speed etc... you can try it free for 14 days, so give it a try if you are used to the using mouse with like 4 or even more buttons. i'm always used to pressing the back and forward buttons on my mouse rather than using the on screen buttons so the app is impt to me. i think that control freaks will need a bit of time getting used to the mac. you need to let go of that control and stop worrying about where your photos are being saved, or which folder ur applications are going into... or whether that simple procedure of dragging the program icon to the trash can is a clean uninstall... at least those were some of the worries i had in the beginning. what i loved best about mac was all the things i could customise and play around with. i don't know why, but somehow i just didn’t do it much, or at all, when i used my windows lappy. maybe it was cos i was excited at getting a brand new mac? perhaps its cos of all the convenience and intuitive features of mac itself that spurred me to make the lappy even more 'me'. or perhaps it was the mac app store... either way, i searched for apps both on google and the app store that would make things even more convenient and user friendly... or simply for apps to fill the gaps missing in the OS. Customizing the dock and the icons in the dock probably gave me the greatest satisfaction of all. sure that can be done on windows too, but in xp and vista that i used, the application icon in the taskbar was so puny u barely know what it looks like... unlike in the dock where its big, and visible at all times. oh yes... the dock was another thing i loved abt the mac. SO MANY dock applications... i swear there's a lot more than in for vista (tried searching once, didn’t find much interesting stuff). i've loaded my dock with all sorts of stuff like a scientific calculator with more features than the originally give one... weather report (ok, i forgot if that was there originally), word counter (this article contains like 2.5k words as of the previous paragraph ><), screenshot grabber, itunes controller, sticky notes, mac status (like the memory usage, temperatures etc), currency converter... etc... so much things to play ard with indeed. game compatibility is probably still the greatest bane for macs... well at least for a mapler like me. apart from that... well the mac pretty much comes with most essential programs already... the only thing i had to spend big money on (more than 20 bucks per program) was... microsoft office. i didn’t get mac's iWork cos... comments have said that msoft office was still more complete in terms of functionality, and since i'm only getting one of them i picked office (3 user license, which is all well cos i've convinced my dad to get a mac for his own use... nah, it wasn’t really me, it was my mac that convinced him). I need to get a photoshop for mac too. haven gotten it yet though... waiting for my dad to buy it when he gets his mac (and he in turn, is waiting for Lion to be out) hmm ok, that's all the stuff i can think of right now, and blogger keeps saying that auto-save failed. is it cos i've wrote too much? ><

till next time!

How to Zhng ur Mac!

How to Zhng ur Mac! aka How to Spruce Up/Pimp Your Mac (for those who are not Singish inclined)

(written with my macbook pro in mind, title inspired by mrbrown's zhng ur car series)

i remember making a post abt some great firefox and itoy aka iphone apps quite some long time ago. recently i've had a ball of a time sprucing up my mac and such... that i've decided to make a post abt all the best apps (IMO of course) for mac.

Warning: I forsee a really really long post coming up, and I think i'll take an equally long time writing it.


Ease of Access/Use.... Apps that make your life easier:

1) Alfred - free, available from the mac app store. a paid powerpack is available, but its pretty expensive (euros is omg so strong!) and i dont think i will use the powerpack features much (well basically i'm 1) too broke/stingy to buy the powerpack, sponsers anyone? 2) still prefer the mouse/trackpad for powerpack features)

ok more on the FREE Alfred and why i really really love this app to bits. Basically, Alfred is a handy little search bar that you call up with a keyboard shortcut (option + space by default) that allows you to search and run/open files, applications... etc etc. Its tiring to have to scroll through the whole long list of applications... typing them is a much faster way to call up those programs. the downside is that you have to remember their names though.... i dont use Alfred to open up files much. mainly because my lecture notes for sch work are named in all sorts of weird ways (and i'm too lazy to rename them all). Alfred also learns your user preferences, so it will list the most frequently used item on top.

There is another application called QuickSliver that does basically the same thing, i have them both installed but i prefer Alfred. why? cos Alfred shows a list of all the possible hits, rather than just one hit in QuickSliver. This is especially useful when you arent quite sure of the entire name - a list will let you spot what you are looking for while in QuickSliver you might just forever be missing it out.

I think Alfred should be one of the 1st (if not the 1st) app to get on a new mac. Hey its free afterall, why not just give it a try?



2) Window Keys - available in the mac store. Free... supposed to be free cos the developer just released another app... i downloaded it a couple of months back, and now its still free... so... yeah...

One of the greatest annoyances of mac is the pathetic window resizing function. I mean... I've gotten used to how they put all the application windows in the same application on the dock... I've gotten used to using the active screen corners (and fallen in love with it), and how to pick out the right window i'm navigating to amongst the many others show in a small screen etc etc... but i cant stand how they wont resize my windows properly for me. Many a times i click the green + sign and they... 1) make a window into some funny size OR 2) place my window in some funny location OR 3) make my window even smaller (hey, i always though that button was for expanding the window rather than shrinking it!). Well... Apple hates window(s). It’s a fact...

Here's where window keys comes in. It allows you to use keyboard short cuts to move, resize, and most importantly for me, maximise the window. a great savior for me - i like my windows as big as possible, but i dont like running things in full screen cos i love my dock + i keep switching btw windows (i prefer clicking the dock icons than keyboard shortcuts)



3) Typinator - i got this one on offer at like... smthing ard 15 SGD. Got it from MacUpdate Promo - Check out the site for programs on offer...

Yikes! This is one expensive app! Basically it replaces what you type with a predefined word(s). It works great as a spell checker, esp for ppl like me who keeps typing 'T-E-H" instead of "T-H-E', amongst many other common and constant typos... you can also specify long words or even whole sentences/paragraphs for the program to insert as you type. Check you more on their website http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/. It is really as fast as the video shows... and adding or removing words is as easy as they claim. I brought the program with all my frequent typos + upcoming reports/fyp in mind. Like ya know all that pesky long names... i can add them in the program so i dont have to type out the full thing. AND i can delete those when i'm done with my report/fyp etc. Quite pleased with it so far even tho i've not put it to heavy use yet.



4) Calendar - free, available in the mac app store.
Pretty simple app, basically it puts a small icon on your menu bar and lets you view your calendar (iCal) from there. better and faster than opening up iCal IMO. Scroll over the dates to see the entries for that day. If you need to add in any entry, just double click on the date and it will open up iCal for you. with this, i've removed iCal from my already overcrowded dock.



5) nowplaying for mac - free, available in the mac app store.
shows the song you are playing, artist in the menu bar so u can keep track. simple yet convenient. if you listen to songs on your comp a lot and like to keep track of wat you are listening to, than this is the app for you.



6) tracks - free, available in the mac app store.
another music related app. this one lets you type the song you wish to play from your menu bar. without having to open up itunes.


7) Copy paster - free, available in the mac app store.
Basically a clipboard so you can select which previous items you want to paste. Shortcuts available and can be configured.




Communications
1) Adium - free. Download from http://adium.im/
Basically its your MSN messenger, AIM, Yahoo... heck even the China messenging program QQ is supported here! Only bad thing is that it doesn’t support video calls. For that you have to use Skype or Microsoft Messager (basically MSN for Macs). For me, i only use MSN out of all the services that Adium supports... so why use Adium instead of the 'original MSN'?
- Msn (for mac) doesn’t support a bunch load of functions... including things like sending offline messages. I have many friends (heck, even my sis!) who likes to appear offline... i cant send them messages on msn, but i can on Adium
- Loads of pretty themes and emoticon packs for you to download and pick from...
- much better interface, more userfriendly. in particular i love how they put your conversations in one window, but different tabs... makes all your conversations look much neater. on the other hand, MSN is... screwed. Once you open up one conversation windows, ALL the rest of the conversation windows open up. Unlike in the Windows version where each conversation is a separate window, you can minimise and expand each window separately... here you cant.
- Previous conversations are kept in Adium... so you can keep track of where you and your friends previously chatted till. Ever found yourself in a jam cos u needed some info from the convo window but accidentally closed it? You wont have this problem anymore in Adium.

The only reason why I would open up Microsoft MSN is cos of the video chatting... which i hardly use anyway... in any case, there's always skype...



2) Skype - free (can pay to get more features). Download from http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/macosx/
i think most of us know about this already... basically its like msn, but more for video chatting and all... personally i dont use it much though, dont like having ppl see my messy hair + room...




3) MailTab for Gmail - free, available in the mac app store.
As the name suggests, it lets you check your email right from your menu bar. Very convenient indeed.



4) Twitter - free, mac store
Basically... you get a program that lets you read tweets, retweet, and post tweets so you do not have to go to the website itself.



Browsers
Camino - free. http://caminobrowser.org/download/
There's the usual safari (Mac's original web browser, like internet explorer on windows) , chrome, and firefox that most windows users would be familiar with... however there's one more browser that you should try for mac - Camino. It touts itself to be built exclusively for the mac, and have loading speeds to beat that of chrome. Its just like your other web browers, but probably faster. It does load web pages faster, but i've not done an exact speed test so i cant tell you the numbers.



Security Issues
1) Lock Screen - US$1.99 on the app store, i got it at 99cents previously.
with a command L you lock the screen... and you can set a passpattern on how to unlock it. well its not the most secure thing in the world, but its decent enough for me like when i'm in sch or smthing. its not like i'm working on some top secret documents anyway (i'd probably be more afraid of my lappy getting STOLEN than of them trying to crack my slide code...) PLUS, the lock screen is darn COOL i swear!



2) VirusBarrier Express - Free, mac store. There's a paid pro version too.
Free anti virus software that'll scan against mac viruses. Free virus definition updates... if you want it to scan for windows viruses... you'll have to pay.



3) TokenLock - US$2.99, available in the mac app store.
I got this one for free from some twitter... retwiting... erm... competition? idk wat to call it... basically i managed to snug a free code XD. Auto locks the computer when a USB cable is plugged in or out... or bluetooth device is connected or disconnected.



Photos and Doodles
1) Seashore - free. http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Download.html
Its an open source image editor for mac. No, it wont replace photoshop, but it has quite a lot of photoshop features that lets you do some basic image editing... and hey, its free.



2) SketchBookExpress - free, app store. there's a paid version too.
Great app for random doodles or serious drawing. Not really good at drawing so i dont know if this (or its paid version) is the best one out there... but this app looks pretty impressive to me.



3) Smoke - free, app store. okok, its US$9.99 in the app store... but you can download a free version from their website (will have watermark on save pictures)
Very pretty effects, makes for fun doodling... just randomly dragging your cursor around...



Visual Effects... and more... How to Make you Mac Pretty
1) LiteIcon - free http://www.freemacsoft.net/LiteIcon/
Lets you change all the icons of the mac system. Like the finder icon, the trash can... the Mac HD drive... various folders.... so on and so forth.



2) Img2icns - free to convert img2icns, but to do it backwards you have to buy the paid version.
http://www.img2icnsapp.com/
Basically with this, you can make or take your favourite picture, and convert it into the .icns file format for use as an application icon.

For those of you who do not know, here is how you can change your application icons to another picture: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2493. For a more pictorial version check this out http://pimpmymac.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/how-to-change-icons/. This method is sort of temporary however... sometimes the application... updates itself? or smthing and it changes the icon back. If you are sick of having to keep changing the icon, you can try a more permanent method by...
1) show the application is finder.
2) right click and hit the show package contents button.
3) find the original icon .icns file.
4) copy your new icon into the same location, and change its name to whatever the original one was... and delete the old .icns file.
5) restart the application (if it doesn’t work, restart your mac), and voila! new icon!
Google Chrome keeps... updating and changing its icon back now though... even the 'permanent' icon change doesn’t work... you'll have to do something more drastic like wat was listed here: http://macthemes.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=794798. (Note: i followed these instructions and it worked great)



3) DockLibrary - free. http://www.dativestudios.com/docklibrary/
Very simple, easy way to change the way your dock looks. Find a dock theme on the web that you like, open it in dock library and change your dock into the perfect look!



4) DockDodger - free. http://foggynoggin.com/dockdodger
Have too many icons on your dock? Have apps running in the background... and already have a menu bar icon... BUT STILL insists on taking up a dock slot? try this application. Note: i tried it on tracks but it didn’t work >< darn. Here's a screen capture of how my dock looks like at the moment...
Very pretty... no? haha... go pimp your mac now!




Other Useful Applications
basically i dont have enough apps to seperate into more categories, and i'm getting tired so i shall just put them under one universal heading...

1) Store News - free from mac app store.
This app shows you all the other apps on sale... not just for the mac app store, but also in the iOS app store. Convenient filters to help you find the best deals... and what's more, you can 'zhng' your iPhone n Mac at the same time! Now isn't that convenient?



2) coconut battery - free. http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
Lets you check your battery health. Things like how many times you have charged up your battery in total... your battery capacity now VS the design capacity... Great app to check up on your battery.



3) smcFanControl - free. http://www.eidac.de/
You can adjust your fan speed, and tweak other fan settings. Like on a hot day and your laptop casing feels really hot, you can bump up the fan speed to cool things down.



4) Caffeine - free, app store
Lets you keep your computer awake for as long as you wish (no screensavers and all). Great for draining your battery flat once a month/every few months to recalibrate it.

forever and ever.

yet another semester has flown by. like really, literally flew.

the exams were... mixed. pharmaco was so horrid, i'm convinced i've already failed (actually, i was convinced even before the paper started). things like DDD was ok.

there was so much that i wanted to write abt, but now i've forgotten them all...

this sem saw quite a lot of drama happening...

there was our favourite elections, which was right smack in my exam period... voting day = start of my exams day. thks for letting us know the election date so early. really. thank you. the sch wanted to shift the exams to the following sat, but many ppl already had holiday arrangements etc so they shifted it back to elections day in the end. it was really convenient ya know, the sch catered tons of buses to send students to various mrt stations so that we could get home n vote.

most of us abv 21 sg peeps got to vote this time round. except for those living in tanjong pagar. that unfortunately huge piece of land. stayed up till the end waiting for the election results to be out.... boy did i have a wheel of a time twitting n re-twitting that day. it was the 1st time ever that i hit my tweet limit... learnt not to retwit so much that day.

school was... wat's there to say abt sch??? well pharmaco was a killer. absolute... despair. all memorising stuff which i suck at.... + i didn’t try hard enough... my results were horrid this sem... sighz. i really really need to pull up my socks... just 1 year left, 2 sems, one of which is taken up by fyp. sighz. course registration done. i hope i made the right choices... either way i'll still gonna attend a few other lectures on the 1st two weeks and make my decision on whether to change any modules. i gotta put in more effort this time round. starting from week 1.

so many things to do, so many things to say... cant think of anything else in the way of updates to say right now. as u can tell, i'm still not in the habit of blogging. maybe cos blogging takes up more time cos i write long grandmother stories. twitting is much faster... even my gaming blog... uploading my SSes to facebook is much more convenient... blogs..... are getting outdated! haha nah... i'm just too lazy.

ok... i shall end this post now cos i got an idea for another blog post. just fyi... i've written the front of this post like a couple of weeks ago. and let it rot till now. bravo. (and hence the rush in completing this post)