Holiday-sick

So this is the second day of the hols. To date, many people in 110 have fell sick. Such are Junneng(fever), Xiaotian(fever), Jun(Headache), Jemimah, Yanling(flu). And I shared soup with Junneng, and did not get fever from him. Waha I so power. Holiday is cool when I blast my woofers to the max. Hope everyone go to oneten forum and post then more things to do.

Update

Jeraldine is sick too. Hope she gets well soon, she has cough flu and fever. o_O

Source: Kenoriga's Blog, Thank You...

Nano-ing Again

Today is the first day of the EOY holiday, and I have also owned my Nano for a week. That means I have not blogged for a week! I am generally satisfied with Apple's Nano, as it plays punk rock songs very well and is extremely portable. It is even sold the same price as a 4GB Mini. The colour LCD display screen definitely makes it a higher class than all the previous iPods. (I really cannot think how people managed with black and white screens.)

But the catch is that it scratches VERY easily. It sustained a few scratches after a day's usage, so I hope Apple can manufacture future iPods with a toughened coating, though the backing made of chrome is considerably durable.

There are also some things in the area of functionality which I am not pleased with. Sure, it comes with a stopwatch complete with lap splitting, a screen lock and international clock, but I think Apple should really bundle in a 5-band custom EQ(Equalizer) option and FM tuner at the very least. Sound recording is not a must-have, but it is good to have it in iPods.

The audio support with files should be improved on too, not being compatible only with AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, but also with WMA files. This will do away with the need to convert the file format from WindowsMediaAudio to M4A in iTunes. Lastly, iPod should be able to transfer files through 1394 port(aka FireWire) to enable transfer rate to be increased, while currently UniversalSerialBus(USB) 1.1 or 2.0 is supported. 1.1 is the older version(duh) which is even slower.

This is why iPods are best-sellers, but not the best mp3 players on the market. I forsee even greater sales of iPods if the above are bundled in iPods. Maybe Apple could release a Service Pack(SP) for us iPod users to buy and download to upgrade the software in iPods. And they could also release a trial version of the SP1 for iPods, and then I could crack it. Haha.

And I got back my report book. 62.1 Average, 19th in class and 259th out of 360 in level. Sorry because this post must be very dull for electronic idiots out there. With that, I conclude this short post and now I must go downstairs to ta pow lunch for my family. Bye

Nano-ing

English : 63 (second highest in class)
Chinese : 56
Maths : 64
General Science : 63
Geography : 76 (top in class)
History : 54
Literature : 53
Art : 53
Home Econs. : 51 (not including practical)

These are my EOY results. Not exactly your dream marks right? The average of these is a lousy 59.2222....(recurring decimal). I expected myself to get at least 60, and I had to go and get a 59.2. What shit.

Anyway, my parents grudgingly agreed to let me use MY own money to buy a iPod Nano. Isn't this weird, first getting permission to use my own savings? You might say that the money is theirs, as they gave me as pocket money. But it is I who managed my income and expenditure so as to allow the possibility of having enough money to buy a Nano.

But that is not my point. I am supposed to blog about my Nano, and got carried away as usual. Today I woke up early to get ready for going out to Xiaotian's house. I wore a White tee and long jeans there to see if there was any stock of Nano 2GB there, as they were selling at a cheap price of $328 while Apple's official pricing is $348. We have visited there one month earlier but to no avail. I expected them to have stock today, but it turned out to be a great disappointment.

We then went to Simlim Square again to look for a $340 Nano which we saw during the last visit. In the end we found out that almost the entire stock of all the stalls there were wiped out! There were only the more-ex ones left. Sigh. And we walked up and down twice to look for a cheap Nano. So in the end, we had to settle for a $348 Nano. Next Xiaotian lent me his money to buy a $15 silicon case for my Nano, which cover is very fragile and scratch very easily. But not to worry, it is extremely durable. (It was tested by some crazy dudes and its controls can work even though a Volkswagon ran over it twice. URL : http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/3)

Then we rode back to Jurong Point and met up with Joshua to watch Transporter 2. It was a relatively short movie with simple plot and lots of action(extreme violence). And if you like cars burning rubber, you will like this movie, as Xiaotian and I did.

After the movie, Xiaotian bought Battefield 2 with his POSB card(its balance is almost zero now, going to be frozen). Personally I think he want to keep slashing it in cardreaders till it melts. Oh and his 4 other cards have been frozen.

We went home. Joshua and I took the MRT while Xiaotian took bus 199.

And now I am blasting music from my Newly bought Nano into my ears. Sigh..the wonder of technology...

The Nicest Day I Had in So Many Months

Today, I started off the day by waking up at 8.20am. It broke my 2nd best record of waking up late. The best was 8.50am. My mother scolded me again. She said that I was supposed to finish practising my piano and doing a chinese comprehension before going out with my friends, because I was to meet Xiaotian at Jurong East at 9.10, so I did not have time to do all these except to eat breakfast. After eating breakfast, I took a shower and decided to wear long jeans and a black OP tee. I also brought extra short pants and white OP tee along in case I would eve need them.

Went to Jurong East and met him at 9.30am. We proceeded to Simlim Square. After about 45mins of chatting, we alighted at Bugis. I cannot reveal the content of our conversation as it is private to Xiaotian. We strolled to Simlim Square and had an argument whether to build the desktop at his house or in the shop we plan to buy the PC components at. He wanted to build there and then as he was afraid that we would meet some problems with the hardware, and I wanted to do at his house as there was more space. I fumed for several minutes, but in the end agreed. And anyway it is he who is buying the PC not me.

Walked around Simlim. A majority of the shops have not opened. The shops which are open are still not doing business, as they were cleaning up for the day. We went up and down the levels, looking at advertisements. Eventually, we walked into a stall which has opened up for business. It belonged to a friendly looking Malay(or Indian) storekeeper. Xiaotian asked if he sold PC components, and he said yes, and asked what did he want. Xiaotian replied with the following:

Motherboard, supportable up to 3.2 gHz
Processor, Intel 3.2 gHz, support hyper-threading technology
DDR RAM, 1 GB(two separate 512mb RAM chips)
Above average Graphics Card
Good Powersupply Box(for those who doesn't know, powersupply box converts electricity from the plug to a form of electricity the computer can use)
40 GB Hard disc
Casing

Altogether it all added up to about 1k. Very cheap. If you buy one in the market, a PC manufacturer for example Fujitsu would sell about 3k for the same quality. Xiaotian then began to bargain with the shopkeeper when he was paying for the items. As he wanted an 17 inch Philips LCD screen and Altec Lansing speaker system, he bargained the $600 items for $500, and throwing in a Norton Antivirus and Keyboard and $149 Ego speaker system. The shop keeper obviously declined, so Xiaotian said he did not want the keyboard and Ego speaker system and Norton Antivirus, and the man agreed,

The graphics card is also quite good. Nvidia Geforce something. Forgot the model. I think it was 7800FX or something. Xiaotian chose a futuristic white casing. It also has 3 cooling vents, two with fans. The motherboard was also not bad. It has 8 USB ports. Cool man. The man asked us if we wanted the shop people to help us fix the whole com up, but we declined the free service. Show off a little mah. Action mah. But anyway, he gave us all the separate components and the casing. We proceeded to unscrew the casing and open it up. Then we screwed in the powersupply box. The motherboard was taken out. It was very nice. The older models were much bigger and the heatsink also had a unique design. We unpacked the processor and took out the CPU fan and chip. The chip is a small nifty thing(smaller than a country-eraser) with has many pins on the underside. This is the thing that makes your computer a computer. After locking it onto the motherboard, we secured the CPU fan over it. Without this fan, the processor chip would overheat and destroy itself. Then we took out the graphics card. Very cool. And the fan has a eagle sticker on it. Quite cute la. I ripped open the plastic covering of the hard disc with a screwdriver and passed it to Xiaotian, who secured it into the motherboard. The two RAM chips were the last. Very ordinary. We handled too many RAM chips in the past, so not fun anymore. After all these, we screwed the motherboard into the casing. We were careful to elevate it from the metal of the casing, or when the electricity runs overs it, it would conduct and blow the whole com and you up(no la just kidding. It would burn and become useless semi-conductors. Burns are not insured with the warranty)

I booted up the computer and went into the BIOS setup utility, and went to prioritise the boot up. We decided to go back to XT house to install the OS(Windows XP Home Edition).

We packed up everything and sorted out the rubbish. Then Xiaotian secretely put in the Ego speaker system and keyboard into the big cardboard box of the PC casing, when I was putting in the components empty boxes in. So smart ah this guy. We happily went down with a store helper who packed all of our things onto a trolley and boarded a taxi.

Reaching Xiaotian's house, I installed the OS and I demanded him to give me his old Harman Kardon speakers, as he stole the Ego system. He agreed, but I needed to give him $15. I changed my clothes as I was sweating like hell in the long jeans and we went out to Jurong Point to eat. We met Yanling there and I almost did not recognise her in her hairstyle. We went to Seoul Garden and I paid only $5 out of the $28. Haha, so after paying him $15 tomorrow I still benifitted as I got speakers and a good meal. We ate like siao. I took all the meat available(i think 10 diff meat) and two pizzas, two plates of beehoon and yellow noodles and fishballs, crabmeat, taupok, vegetables and fries. Xiaotian made the soup very nice. He added in alot of meat and vegetables and tomatoes and mushrooms etc. and let it boil. It turned out from ginseng chicken soup into duno what, but it was very nice.

After eating so much, we went to the arcade and played Daytona for two rounds. I lost duh. It was my second time playing it. As Xiaotian's card did not have much money left, we decided to say our goodbyes and go home.

Ah what a fun day...

The REAL After-exams

Arrhghhhhhh!!!!! Exams are over! Hooray! Let's pop some champagne! Home econs and art is shit.

After the 1hr paper of Home econs(which was very easy) Xiaotian and I went to Clementi MRT(No he did not go on a date with Haoting.) Chiho treated us taxi and bubble tea. Nice. But I discovered that I should never drink bubble again in the morning. It made my teeth and mouth numb. Anyway, we sat the MRT to Dhoby Gaut. We chatted to Dhoby Gaut and did not feel like getting off so we sat till Serangoon and then alighted and rode back to Dhoby Gaut. Xiaotian told me about the process of internal combustion in the engine of a Car. But even he does not know the exact whole process. Like when the fuel is pumped into the combustion chamber, he did not know where does the oxygen come from to have the chemical reaction when fuel combusts with oxygen and explodes. But we assumed that the oxygen comes from the surroundings and goes into the car through the grille-like thing between the headlights.

Anyway we went to the Starhub Store. Xiaotian needed to buy a new sim-card. He fiddled with the Sim-lock function of his HP and in the end it locked. And he was so stupid not to guess the default combination of 1234. He only thought of 1111 2222 3333 and so on. Stupid la. Now need to spend $30. Haha. When we went in after the store opened for business, the service was very good. The lady at the reception greeted Xiaotian with warm smiles and said "Very good dear!" when he said he got the authorisation letter to activate a new sim-card. I laughed when she called him that, and she also turned and smiled at me(I was standing beside the queue beside XT, as I had no business to do with Starhub). Later on I settled into one of the several flat-cushioned chairs in Starhub and watched Mr Bean on the TV, while XT settled his Sim-card affair. When I started watching Mr Bean, I saw him exchanging his pants and underwear with another guy in a locked cubicle. After he got his pants and underwear, Mr Bean threw the guy's pants and underwear over the locked door of the cubicle. The guy managed to catch the pants, but the underwear dunked into the toilet bowl. Cool. Oh and Mr Bean's Mini got crushed by a tank at a fair.

After 10min, XT was ready and he was impressed by their service. We went down and rode the MRT again to Jurong Point. Went to PK Computer like what we did yesterday. The guy was not very pleased when XT asked about PC stuff again, as we go in and do not buy anything. So later on XT bought Windows XP Home for $155 and went we went home.

On the MRT, I met Ee Hui, my ex-classmate. Pity we only exchanged greetings. I only said hey ee hui! and did not say anything else. I could not think of anything to say. He was talking with a bunch of friends about Gunbound.

Upon reaching home, my mother scolded me as she thought I ate outside. So she had to prepare lunch for me. I was puzzled at her getting angry at this small thing. She said like, Wa you think im your maid ah, anytime go home must fix food for you blablabla etc. Sigh. She seem to get cranky over small matters recently. She also said that I could not buy iPod Nano unless I got good results, EVEN THOUGH IM USING MY OWN SAVINGS. What Shit is this. My hard-saved money cannot be used freely ah. Shit la.

Later I still have to practice piano. Crap. And I thought I was supposed to be happy after exams.

Ah who cares. Just settle for blog-surfing now..

UPDATE:

Going to sim-lim with XT tomorrow to buy PC components and casing. Together we will make a high-end desktop PC which is Intel 3.2 GHz Processor, Integrated 3D graphics, 1GB DDR RAM, 420v Powersupply box. Cool.

After Exams

Ahh the exams are ALMOST over. Still got Art and Home Econs left. So shitty. How can Nanhua count them as subjects. Do you know that St Joseph's count art as Extra curricular subs. Sigh..the unfairness of all.

Anyway, after the Math paper I went to Jurong Point to eat with XT. The Math was damn hard la. I really hope I'll pass. We went to eat at the foodcourt there as all the shops have not opened yet, including Pizza Hut and others. I ate the Xiao Wan Mian(mini-wok noodles) and Xiaotian ate the stupid laksa and a big Ice Kachang. I scolded him for eating such plain food, but he disagreed and said it was very nice. But when he tasted my soup, he changed his mind and wanted to throw away his laksa and buy a bowl of Xiao Wan Mian. Wa that guy is so crap. I stopped him of course.

After the meal, as we walked around the just-opening-for-business Shopping Centre, Xiaotian came up with a suggestion to go Simlim Square. So since it was still 12.30 I agreed and we sat the MRT there. We browsed around for the shop selling the cheapest Ipod Nanos, bargaining on the basis that we were buying two. Thebest discount we got was from the original $348 to $330, at an Indian Shop. Not bad la. Xiaotian was still not satisfied. He wanted to get one at $300. Told you that he is crap. Then Xiaotian bought a 30gb PC harddrive for $89.

He then wanted me to go back to his house with him, so I had to call my mother to ask for permission. She was not pleased and scolded me for not studying and going out instead. But in the end she agreed la. But he told me that his mother was in chatting with a neighbour. I was very scared that she would chase me out, but she turned out to be a very warm individual. Xiaotian showed me his homemade PC and began ripping the plastic cover off the harddrive he bought. Then he plugged in several wires from the Powerbox to the harddrive. He bought it because his old harddrive was not able to function. The old computer was given to him by his parent's friends and many components were not working, so he took some components out and mixed with newer components of his own. Pity that the Nvidia graphic card could not function. It is quite a good brand. So after he plugged in the harddrive he turned on the power and a Compaq logo appeared on the screen. Then he inserted the Fujitsu reformat disc into the DVD combo drive and began installing Windows XP Tablet PC edition. But of course it failed, as i expected because it is a normal PC and should not be able to use Tablet PC software. Furthermore the components were old and might not be able to meet with the requirements of the OS.

He wanted to go to a computer mart in NTU and wanted me to change clothes. He gave me a crappy shirt and long track pants. He said that the staff there do not entertain secondary students, as they would not buy anything from there. And we looked like undergrads when we wore long pants. Well thats what he said. We went down and boarded the bus going on the A route. Then we sat for one whole round and ended up back at his house. He is so crap. He did not know the bus routes around NTU. And he lived there. We got down and walked to a map of the A, B, C routes. He told me that the routes were newly implemented on 1st of October so he was not familiar. Then we took the C route and walked for a short distance and went into the computer mart. The electronics they were selling there were all like $20 off from prices outside, including ipod nano. They were selling at $329! Wow. But too bad they had no stock.

Then we looked around and then went to the canteen to buy a soursop drink of 30cents. We took route C back and in the end it did not go to Xiaotian's house. Wa lao I was damn angry with him. But in the end we took another bus and reached his house. I ate some instant noodles and pistachios. Oh he also gave me some old speakers, as he had bought a new Harman Kardon Speaker System. Crap la he so rich. So I went home, as his dad was coming home soon and took 199 to Jurong Point and sat the MRT back to Bukit Gombak.

I met my mom at the lift lobby. Talk about suay. If I were 1 min earlier, she would not have known. As I promised her that I would reach home at 5, but i eached home at 6 instead. She had gone to Causeway Point to buy some stuff. Upon reaching home, I stacked all the Sec 1 textbooks into a cupboard and made space for my "new" speakers. It included one bass and two subwoofers. I plugged them in and played my iTunes. Wa really not bad quality. Strong bass and music which do not have static when the max volume was turned on. Very good. The only bad thing is that the fabric covering the subwoofers have mould growing on them. Aiya, but nevermind one la. Can play is good enough.

Ah the bliss of the exams being ALMOST over. Doing art tomorrow and Sunday. Shit la.