A game based on the official Battlestar Galactica storyline? You have got to be kidding me. This looks quite nice really — Beyond the Red Line. It’s just what all the Battlestar Galactica fans need to hold them over till the movie and next season surface in a year.
Aman Yus asks how to save the default settings for putty without having to type out Default Settings. I’ve run into this question myself, and I keep rediscovering and then promptly forgetting how it’s done, so for posterity, here it is:
Load the Default Settings session, make all the changes you want, then go back to the sessions list and (without clicking anything else) click Save.
It is actually that simple. Somewhat unintuitive, but … it works.
I sent an email to the Malaysian Open Source mailing list about how I couldn’t seem to find any PHP programmers worth hiring and it generated quite a bit of buzz.
This morning though, something struck me. Despite this seeming desperation, you’ll not find programming jobs paying above average salaries. Interesting isn’t it? Perhaps there are programmers for hire, but they simply find it more lucrative to take jobs in other sectors? Combine that with the fact that not many would want a job that made thinking mandatory and it certainly seems to be a problem…
I’ve been testing Vista out for a few days now, and I have to say, it’s not too bad really.
Would you like to install that with recommended settings?and it worked afterwards. Nice.
Yeah, I caved and got myself a 1GB flash based MP3 player:
(Mine’s black)
As usual for a Sony product, excellent. It comes with AVLS — Sony’s fancy acronym for what basically artificially limits the volume to levels below that which would render you deaf by 30. Custom and preset equalizers, some form of normalization (not sure how it works, but it seems to) and of course, a decent pair of headphones. Not much more to say really.
To say it looks good is an understatement. From the semi-transparent skin, to the flush screen, it’s all good. The front panel itself is actually a transparent plastic piece, with all wording and logos printed beneath it. Below the panel is then the actual layer that gives it colour. Quite a nice, subtle effect.
The flush screen is just awesome. It looks like they somehow managed to integrate the screen into the actual surface of the player — you can’t see the usual screen boundaries even if you try. The only hint you get that it’s just an effect is in the dark when you can see the backlight glowing around the square plate.
It comes in a really handy form factor too. It’s somewhat larger than the average thumbdrive, which makes it really easy to just slip into your pocket and forget about.
With a screen that small, I expected something of a headache when it came to navigating the various menus. Surprisingly though, most of the time it works well. I’ve not had to resort to reading the manual at all. The one irritating thing about the player was that it defaulted to beeping with each action (Next, Previous, Stop, Open menu etc.) but that was easy enough to turn off — Options -> Advanced -> Beep | Off.
SonicStage, the application used to manage the player quite frankly not going to win any awards. It’s alright for it’s stated job, but you won’t see me using it to play music regularly. Thankfully, there are various third party applications that work fine at managing the files on the player, and quite a few of them are Java based, which makes this player Linux compatible. Shocking eh?
Overall, a good buy. Sony needs a kick where it hurts for the disaster of SonicStage, but since there are many applications that do a good job of music management, it’s not so bad.
Today, as I wept with despair at the difficulties of reading Flash 8/Flash Media Server 2 documentation with Adobe’s PDF tools, ivan (from #joiito on freenode.net) pointed me in the direction of Foxit Reader, an alternative PDF reader.
Now, to say that this reader is awesome would be an understatement. It loads in less than a seconds, and opens PDF files in a flash. The best part though is seeking/searching in a PDF file is instantaneous. No delays, no waits, no hour glass icons. It’s a little creepy how they’ve managed to make it look almost exactly like a lighter version of Acrobat though…
It is blazingly fast. I highly recommend this if you need a speedy PDF reader.
After what seems like forever, I’m back on Malaysian soil. It feels good to be back to say the least. A big shout out to Vivian, Michael, Joe, Yuko, Tina, Zhou Wei, Lenky, Cici, Jacky, Li Bao, and Lily. You guys rock. I didn’t feel out of place thanks to your efforts, and I know it must’ve been a challenge figuring out what the ignorant brown man was saying half the time :P Thanks.
To Loh and Foong, or rather to 小罗 and 小风, it was fun and thanks for all the translation work :P
I love Malaysian weather and food, after visiting China. That is all.
P.S.: Tina, I’m busy compiling a full album to upload. I’ll let you know when it’s done :)
It’s half-past four in the morning… Our CEO is still singing his heart out. The rest of the group is either comatose or has been carried home (everyone lives within walking distance). The only ones still going at it are him and I. Apparently no one here can hold their liquor…
Ugh. Tomorrow is going to be a painful day.
P.S.: Note to self — when someone asks you something and you can’t hear what he’s saying, or it’s in a foreign language, don’t nod in the affirmative… I just managed to order us more alcohol courtesy of the CEO… @_@
Well… No ill effects. In fact, I’m feeling remarkably good today. We all went out and had porridge for lunch today; nice stuff. Everyone is a little subdued, but I guess that would be expected after expending all their energy last night, and then sleeping only 5 hours :P
I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the rain. I’ve been here 13 days, and it has yet to rain. It rains almost every day back home.
The air is also much drier, and there’s a fair bit of haze in the air — put those two variables together and you have me, standing around coughing my lungs out :( . The temperature is apparently between 21C and 25C, but when the wind picks up it feels more like 16C. I think I understand now why foreigners seem to love Malaysian weather (Till they get sweaty. Then they whinge.)
I’ve taken a taxi ride three times since getting here and I’ve taken the bus once. The rest of the time, we walk. We walk to work, we walk back. We walk to dinner, we walk to store. We walk to the bakery. I’ve never walked so much in my life. The one good thing about this is that I get to see a lot more of the city on foot than in a car… and it sure is cheaper. Steve would be proud of me.
In China, green means, It might be safe to cross now.
If the taxis don’t run you over as you’re cross the road, the bicycles will when you’re on sidewalk. If they miss, then you’ll be assaulted by very persistent beggars. Walking to work must be the equivalent of an hours jog in terms of cardiovascular workout :o
Something even more shocking is how nonchalant people are about stepping out in front of oncoming traffic — today two people stepped out in front of a bus as it was hurtling towards them … and proceeded to relaxedly cross the road. They walked. Leisurely.
Good thing the buses here have good brakes. One went from ~50 km/h to a full halt the other day. The driver actually managed to lock the wheels — No ABS apparently — which must’ve left some interesting marks on the road.
I think I’ve eaten more than my standard quota of pork for the year in these two weeks. This isn’t a bad thing of course, but still, it does feel weird when you have to say, Can we not eat pork today?
The food is excellent though, but then again I am not exactly eating cheap either…
Beer is cheap. Really cheap. It’s 4.5元 (~RM 2.25) for a large bottle of Kingway beer. It doesn’t exactly win any prizes for taste or texture, but it’s not too bad. Well, it doesn’t taste too bad anymore.
There’s also the local rice wine, which smells somewhat like paint stripper — it’s ridiculously raw and strong stuff, sitting at a comfortable 45% vol. Yes, I do realise that a lot of liquor does match, or surpass that figure, but this just burns with the fury of a thousand suns on the way down. If you drop it on your skin, it feels exactly like paint thinner, really.
Well, Vivian, moved out of our apartment to a place of her own, and two dudes from Shanghai moved in with us. We are now in permanent bachelor pad mode :-/ People here find it completely acceptable to smoke indoors, in air conditioned rooms. Sigh
It’s been just over a week since we arrived in Shenzhen, and time has really flown past. I just uploaded 255 photos :)
You can view them over at my picasa gallery.
Today we spent the day at a friend’s place. We took a half-hour bus ride out of the city to get to Jenny’s apartment. Jenny and Yuko cooked us an awesome lunch, and then we lazed around munching on snacks the rest of the afternoon. In the evening we went to a restaurant called ‘Little Sheep’ — famous apparently for lamb dishes. We had ourselves a steamboat dinner which was awesome, and then came home completely drained — after all, we haven’t exactly been conserving energy the past few days; badminton, late nights, being ill… It does add up.
I’m going to strive to take better photos this week — I’ve familiarised myself with the various modes and settings the camera I’m using has to offer (thanks for the loan Perry). I’m also less nervous about spending time to frame things right now.
It’s interesting walking around and being stared at all the time. Now I know how my foreign friends feel when they walk around KL. I find the people very accommodating, even learning bits of English to converse with me. I’ve picked up quite a few mandarin phrases. The first few I learnt were:
:-P