Bluez

Go Bloomberg!

2010-08-13T21:47:00.003+08:00

The NYTimes featured Mayor Bloomberg's stance on the Muslim Center to be built at the 9/11 site. Definitely something that makes me actually feel a modicum of support for the man! The quotes from an earlier speech supporting the center:

"In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’ ”
...
“We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights — and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.”

Good speech, good principles!

Wonder what it's like to go into business for yourself..

2010-08-07T03:06:00.002+08:00

Seems like so many friends have decided to start their own businesses. Of course Jav and HJ are the closest reference points, but quite a few friends are now starting their own things - usually after their bond has ended, strangely enough.

Is there fear? Is it excitement? Do they ever feel tired, jaded and burnt-out? Do entrepreneurs have boundary issues the way priests do?

sigh...

Heavy Rain...

2010-08-03T02:18:00.002+08:00

... is proving to be immersive and laden thickly with emotion. The games interface feels very gimmicky, but I suspect the very mundane, basic nature of most interactions with the game world is what causes it to be so immersive in the first place. When even taking out an orange juice to drink takes 3 actions, and when you realise that all your actions are taken in the context of a limited amount of time, then suddenly you consider the consequences of every action even more thoroughly.

We're still very much in the introduction, I'm looking forward to seeing what the game proper will bring.

The importance of taking time to respond..

2010-07-22T23:09:00.002+08:00

An edited clip, taken out of context, leads to a woman being accused of racism on national TV and being forced to resign. And all along she was doing the right thing!

I'm glad that she was exonerated - and the family on the other side reached back out and testified on her behalf.

Why didn't the people in charge take time to investigate and then respond?

And are the people who put out the edited clips going to get away with it?

Now reading: Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

2010-07-22T03:14:00.002+08:00

Started reading again, somehow. Book recommended by Glen, and the first two chapters have been pretty interesting.

Sam now has a Facebook page

2010-07-22T00:25:00.002+08:00

Please look for him there, under Sam Forest Loo Lim!

The New Abortion Providers

2010-07-15T21:43:00.001+08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18abortion-t.html?_r=1&hp

Am I a PC?

2010-07-13T22:33:00.002+08:00

No, not an existential topic today. PC harddisk is slowly failing - delayed write failures and now I can't even scan my disk for errors, so time to start preparing for the worst. Now to figure out if I should replace it with a Mac or PC.

Advice, anyone?

A footsoldier in the Holy Order

2010-07-12T21:10:00.002+08:00

Via Shiyan:

From Dr. Goh’s final speech in office:

“To the New Guards soon joining us, may I say this: Welcome to you. Some of you will discover before long that you have joined a Holy Order that expects total commitment from you. That will be your moment of truth. You will then regard the present condition of the Republic not as a pinnacle of achievement but as a base from which to scale new heights.”

Massively inspired on one level, and on another level it sounds very Star Wars!

Lego and organ donation

2009-11-13T09:31:00.000+08:00

I really really like this xkcd comic..
http://xkcd.com/659/

2009-10-09T12:10:00.002+08:00

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home every day
And I'll send all my loving to you

I'll pretend that I'm kissing
The lips I am missing
And hope that my dreams will come true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home every day
And I'll send all my loving to you

All my loving, I will send to you
All my loving, darling I'll be true

- All My Loving, by the Beatles.

I'm a sucker for melancholy musicals - in this case Across the Universe. But to be sure, there was a section midway through the show when the show totally lost the plot. If I hadn't been on an airplane I would have switched it off and done something else...

Blogging has kind of gone soft

2009-06-16T19:06:00.000+08:00

Heh... been very busy, plus I think it's easier to do links in facebook. What should I do in this space?

Don't drink if you go red?

2009-03-24T22:50:00.000+08:00

Important piece of research... Alcohol may be a cancer risk for people whose faces flush when they drink...

10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse

2009-03-17T22:04:00.002+08:00

Definitely guilty!

I think the one KeY finds most annoying now:

8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress - So what are laptops and mobile phones for, if not to resolve disputes or questions wherever you happen to be? Why would anyone get annoyed when you pull out your iPhone in the middle of a discussion about, say, a news story, and a minute later break back into the conversation with the details of the story that everyone else had forgotten? Yeah, it beats me, too, but my wife insists this belongs on the list.

Yup. She hates this!

Resident Evil 5

2009-03-14T09:35:00.002+08:00

Great review of the game over at Ars Technica. I played the demo, KeY and I got scared to hell, and I'm looking forward to playing it in live, split-screen co-op late at night with anyone who's game!

The ultimate public sacrifice

2009-03-14T09:31:00.001+08:00

But there's a price one pays in becoming president. Giving up being liked is the ultimate public sacrifice. This was the hardest lesson for Bill Clinton, who loved people and found the isolation of the presidency particularly brutal. Similarly, Obama wants to stay in touch with everyday Americans, as symbolized by his reluctance to surrender his BlackBerry.

There was a time last week when Obama looked younger than usual. Not youthful so much as not fully formed. He seemed out of place in his presidential role. In a word, he seemed haunted. Had he been visited by the ghosts of Christmas future?

Washington Post

Kino 20% sale for members

2009-03-14T09:15:00.002+08:00

Senses of Spring sale, 12-15 March
Going to buy the AD&D sourcebooks!

Dwarven Forge

2009-03-14T09:11:00.004+08:00

This is so cool...

I wonder if Dwarven Forge works with Descent...

Getting serious about board games?

2009-03-14T09:03:00.002+08:00

I'm thinking about it.... Not sure where the value is yet.. but guess I have to work on teaching
board games first... I can see opportunities in hosting, facilitating, re-packaging, but I'm really not sure that there's a sustainable business proposition there...

Correlation (LOL)

2009-03-07T07:23:00.003+08:00

via Greg Mankiw...

Reliving the day everything changed :>

2009-02-14T11:17:00.005+08:00

Wonderful Terry from Oneeyeclick just passed us the photos from the big day. Reviewing the photos is just such an uplifting experience, thinking back to that day - such a momentous day, when the world revolved and shifted and suddenly everything was different, even if it was still the same.

And looking through the happy faces of friends and family of the night shots - I'm smiling so much I must look like an idiot now. :>

Thanks to everyone for coming, and making the night a great night for us! I'll upload the photos soon!

And special thanks to the helpers! :>

The Morning After - Final

2009-01-11T12:52:00.001+08:00

Lastly, seeing our guests and friends really made our day.. I'm very sorry we couldn't spend as much time chatting with you as we would have liked. The night was over in a blink, too quickly for us to have more than a few words and a photo opp. Sigh... But we will catch up with you some more!

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The Morning After (1/3)

2009-01-11T12:09:00.001+08:00

Wow! It's done at last! Really appreciate the good wishes of all our friends and relatives, whether they were able to come or not. Especially our helpers:
Andy, who was a pillar of stability in the morning and evening, and blocked all those drinks...
Chu Yun, whose encouragement and support helped keY to get through the long day...
Sangee, whose angelic voice brought us through the ceremony...
Junx and Lifang, who provided the beautiful valet coupons and made sure the food and drinks supply kept coming, and took on that stress for me...
Qianhui, Raymond, Marie, Kangwei and Huien, who warmly greeted our guests...
Nekki and Peiling, who ran around making sure there was music and space for everyone
Qiwei, making sure the cakes, music and goodies all came at the right time ...
Jeremy, for accompanying us all day...
Zeal, for being our Blair witch boy...
Shoon, for the wonderful wines...
Bryan, our Ringbearer..
Erin and Emily, our two gorgeous little flowergirls...
Yitch, for coming early..
Xiaoling, for rushing back...

Our parents, who woke up early, did all kinds of prep arrangements we didn't even know about to make the weddig run smoothly, who called all the relatives and dressed up specially for the occasion...

okay the post is getting too long.. Parts two and three coming soon

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Best sentence I've read in a while...

2008-12-27T18:11:00.001+08:00

From Greg Mankiw:

In my view, it is best to consider all knowledge as tentative. The best scholars maintain an open-mindedness and humility about even their own core beliefs. Excessive conviction is often a sign of insufficient thought, which in turn may be derived from a certain pig-headedness. Intellectual maturity comes when you can maintain the right balance between informed belief and honest skepticism.

Wow...

Strewth!

2008-12-26T08:46:00.001+08:00

All I want for Christmas is you...

Yep, don't take it literally.

你这个没有心的王八蛋

2008-12-24T07:53:00.001+08:00

Today was the first day it rained in the morning when we were supposed to work... So we ended up huddling under an umbrella walking on woodlands road to the busstop... Some really inconsiderate bastards driving fast on the outermost lanes kept driving by sending huge plumes of water to drench us and the other pedestrians...

Assholes, would it kill you to slow down or take the fast lane? You're driving at sixty to seventy during thunderous showers on a two lane road.. Sometimes faster than wiser people in the fast lanes, other times with no cars in the fast lane at all. Are you just oblivious to the world, or a sick vilehearted thing who wants to drench pedestrians.

你会有一天后悔...

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Starting To Clean House

2008-12-06T08:35:00.001+08:00

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Lobster! Sweet!

2008-11-30T13:53:00.001+08:00

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Lunch At Majestic Restaurant :)

2008-11-30T12:47:00.001+08:00

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Chocolate Waffle At MOF. Yummy!

2008-11-29T22:11:00.001+08:00

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Mirrors Edge Makes Me Dizzy

2008-11-28T13:12:00.001+08:00

And all I did was pick up the controller, look around, and take maybe five steps... Wow

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Hallucinations = Carbon Monoxide

2008-11-28T08:10:00.001+08:00

Listening to the national public radio podcast for halloween, the first story was quite strange.. Really creepy story that sounds very much like The Others, circa 1920s... Phantom knocking, people walking around somewhere in the house, strange people in the bedroom. But instead of a ghost story, it's a medical journal entry. And once they fixed a furnace which was leaking carbon monoxide, everything ended. Amazing, no?

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Lifecast V1.2

2008-11-26T07:15:00.001+08:00

Haven't blogged in a while. Part of it is just being too busy, and part of it was cos the previous lifecast got buggy and ate some entries. Hopefully this works. It's mildly irritating and quite a turnoff when you put a lot of effort into crafting something and it disappears into The Great Big Electronic Nowhere.

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Wish I was there...

2008-10-26T22:24:00.000+08:00

Oprah also gave away a Kindle to everyone in her audience on Friday.

Sigh...

Taking the train at 7am is bloody murder

2008-10-24T08:10:00.002+08:00

Ministry of transport senior management, both political and administrative, should try taking the train from say, jurong east and tanah merah towards town at 7am to understand how terrible it is. Without security guards and smrt minders of course.

ST Colour Me Tone?

2008-10-18T08:10:00.002+08:00

This "ST-Colour-Me-Tone" item appeared on my Singtel bill this month, so I had to call Singtel to verify that I had not asked for this service and get it cancelled from my future bill and waived from my current one. A bit pissed off, actually. So if I had been more busy and just chucked my bill to one side they would have happily charged me for a service I did not utilise?

So yes, some level of service recovery by cancelling and waiving, but in my mind this is not a fair strategy. Thinking about whether I should be making a complaint to IDA...

Status Change

2008-10-08T17:44:00.003+08:00

Zim is now a proud co-owner of a flat!

The second appointment was quick and surprisingly painless. Unlike the first appointment, we were done in pretty much half an hour and three forms. It's strange, I don't feel any different...

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Reminder - Go to the dentist after eating all that good food..

2008-10-04T13:07:00.002+08:00

Or you won't be eating much more..

Here's an interesting CNA article that says

A survey has shown that 54 per cent of adults here do not visit their dentists regularly, and 85 per cent of Singaporeans have gum disease.

I was until recently one of the 54 percent, and am still battling to get out of the 85 percent. Go see your dentist today, really!

Beef D'luxe At TCC

2008-10-04T09:04:00.004+08:00

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Brotzeit, Suntec. O Wow!

2008-10-04T00:32:00.003+08:00

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All Routes Lead To Jams

2008-09-26T08:26:00.001+08:00

1) Got on the 77.
2) Immediately stuck in jam on bt batok east avenue 3.
3) Got off, walked back one stop.
4) Got on 174.
5) Old lady offers seat
6) Stuck in jam on Toh yi drive

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You Know You Look Very Put Upon When...

2008-09-26T08:11:00.001+08:00

An old lady offers you a seat on the bus! Damn paiseh, and very grateful!

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Starting From Scratch

2008-09-25T12:21:00.001+08:00

Just attended a meeting for the department where I'm to start work soon. Seems like a daunting task, with much to learn. Exciting, and worrying at the same time, with high stakes on the line. Can I make it?

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Time Crush

2008-09-23T01:32:00.001+08:00

Just getting to sleep due to work overload. It's intensely frustrating that the to-do list is piling up. Worst thing about today was the feeling that a colleague just palmed off some work to me simply because he could. Does it look like I'm very free? Or is it some misguided sense that if you're taking notes for one meeting and I'm doing it for one then that's fair? Frustrated as he'll because I've been working till 1 or 2 for about three weeks and am almostvat breaking point.

Think these three weeks really brought home to me, that when there's too much work, the quality slides inexorably down waaaaay before work starts getting done, and it's not always noticeable till afterwards, when you can only look back and sigh on disappointment.

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Bad Grammar!

2008-09-09T08:23:00.001+08:00

I was transferring over to the north line at dhoby ghaut yesterday when I noticed a poster that said "Exposing your valuables and you may end up losing it." So I google this and find that Mr Brown has already blogged it. Curious to see what he said, I click through the link and discover that he posted it in 2006! And the funny thing is, someone claiming to be from the police answered the post and said the posters were being removed.

So, why are they back? Organizational FUBAR screw up, probably.

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Indenture

2008-09-05T11:03:00.001+08:00

First I sold my soul to the government, now I've sold my body to the HDB.

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Proof Of Marriage Needed A Bit Earlier Than We Thought

2008-09-05T10:05:00.001+08:00

As long as we're taking the hdb grant, we need to give our marriage certificate at the second appointment. Or, beforehand seek approval by showing our booking of a wedding venue. Oops.

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HDB

2008-09-05T09:38:00.001+08:00

Wait wait wait.

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Getting Pissed With Citibank

2008-09-05T09:37:00.001+08:00

So I've faxed in my ic twice already. First time was too dark, second time was too near the top and so the top was cut off. Funny they didn't mention it the first time considering it was in the exact same place. I'm this close to just stopping the application process and just using vpost. If they ask me to refax one more time, I'm just going to just stop. They have some serious service recovery to do.

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Lobster And Chicken At Spageddies

2008-08-31T23:52:00.001+08:00

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Productive Weekend

2008-08-31T23:51:00.001+08:00

I just spent the whole day shifting boxes. Didn't play boardgames, and didn't do much for the wedding, but somehow, it was still a very satisfying way to spend the weekend, with key, with friends new and old, sweating it out with some old fashioned manual labour.

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Major Crash

2008-08-28T23:15:00.001+08:00

Just had a major freeze. iPhone got stuck on safari screen and couldn't be switched off. Didn't know how to reset either. In the end, how you reset the phone is: press and hold both the sleep and home buttons for ten seconds. Simple right? Too bad it's not in the manual. Simple google search turns it up, but what if the phone is my only surfing device?

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Raining Cars And Dogs

2008-08-28T07:41:00.001+08:00

For two months while I was in Geneva, I had a totally different world view on what the words "heavy rain" meant. I didn't miss these convection storms, and how if it was raining when you left the house, your pant legs, socks, shoulders, and backpack would be totally soaked even if you had a brolly. If you didn't have one... Well, good luck! Probably the only reason why they don't describe our storms as "torrential downpours" is because typhoons (like in Hong Kong) and other acts of God are supposed to be worse (wouldn't know, haven't experienced those) but then, those aren't exactly common experiences. Not as common as our convection storms, anyway.

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I Ate Curry Today!

2008-08-27T21:56:00.001+08:00

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Longer Words Are Easier...

2008-08-27T07:21:00.001+08:00

Thanks to auto-correct, or whatever it's called. If I get more bombastic, that's why.

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Lifecast: First Post

2008-08-26T15:58:00.001+08:00

Trying out lifecast now. It takes away the complexity of logging on, but I wonder if the posts will look different? Only one way to find out!

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iPhone

2008-08-26T14:59:00.001+08:00

first post with an iPhone, and it's not very easy. Think I need to explore alternatives!

What's psurf?

2008-08-21T23:13:00.003+08:00

Wow.. haven't blogged in a while.

So I was in the train and I saw these Nokia ads.. "musicapturenjoy" is obvious... but why "songpsurfind"? What's psurf? Is it a typo?

Takes a google search to toss up "gps" is one item. Kewl, yeah?

Freaknomics and Charity

2008-07-27T10:44:00.004+08:00

Can people really change their behaviour easily, if resources were available to help them change their lives?

They believed that poverty was largely a result of resource deficiencies and organizational inefficiencies: if the poor had more money and their service providers could simply manage their giving more efficiently, change would happen. None placed much emphasis on feelings of self worth, the long-term nature of behavioral change or, most important, that staying above water is itself an accomplishment for a poor household. Everyone modeled their expectations after their family business or other corporate workplaces where they saw the “bottom line” motivate people to meet certain standards of achievement.

Very interesting post overall, for all of us who've burnt out on this in one way or another... and a few other interesting posts under the philanthropy tag on the site.

There's one particular post, on how to give away $70million to charity. Interesting comments, and I particularly like the comment by Shine:

I can’t tell you how many n– -s do stupid shit because they couldn’t get no food. Lot of people rob and steal to put some food in their belly. Make sure people got food. A man stops feeling angry against the world when his belly is full.

and this other comment:

I can’t believe all these people think we should first give outside America! That’s exactly the problem.

I go to the Hamptons, and they have these stupid fund raisers for things going on that are thousands of miles away. And, then you go back to 5th Ave (on Manhattan’s Upper East Side), and you tell your doorman to make sure no homeless people ask you for money on the block. It’s sick.

In my mind, there's an closer dilemma even before I get to the international-domestic line. What business do I have donating my time to other people, when I don't spend quite enough time with my own family? :<

Randy Pausch

2008-07-26T23:21:00.001+08:00

Randy Pausch has passed away...

Interesting factoid on mirrors

2008-07-24T00:04:00.002+08:00

From the NYTimes:

Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

People overwhelmingly give the same answers. To the first question they say, well, the outline of my face on the mirror would be pretty much the size of my face. As for the second question, that’s obvious: if I move away from the mirror, the size of my image will shrink with each step.

Both answers, it turns out, are wrong. Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes. Importantly, this half-size rule does not apply to the image of someone else moving about the room. If you sit still by the mirror, and a friend approaches or moves away, the size of the person’s image in the mirror will grow or shrink as our innate sense says it should.

Hmm... I was fooled, too!

Kuriya Dining

2008-07-23T22:09:00.005+08:00

We ate at Kuriya Dining at Great World City today.. quite a pricy place, starting at $35 a head for set lunches, so you get the picture. But celebrating Wing's birthday, so that's okay, of course.

Of course, someone pointed out - if it's such a fine dining place, why are we using disposable chopsticks? It's a very good question, which was answered by MC. Basically, from his 5 years' experience in Japan, all the fine dining restaurants used disposable chopsticks. Anyone can verify?

On to the food - Konniyaku(?) soba comes with a raw quail's egg.. how strange!

My own dish was sashimi...

accompanying a codfish teriyaki.

The main dishes were.. decent not fantastic, but the chawanmushi was wow!

Food: Bistrot du Boeuf Rouge

2008-07-23T21:59:00.003+08:00

An excellent, excellent place in Geneva, near Paquis and the Hotel Beau Rivage. Here's one of those really cool chalkboard menus...

And that last dish? The Tournedos Passini?

Wonderful beef, topped with foei gras that melts in your mouth, topped with caviar (which was to me, only meh... )

Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics

2008-07-15T09:23:00.002+08:00

Wonderfully offbeat article, with great learning points, like

In general, and with rare exceptions, the returns in love situations are roughly proportional to the amount of time and devotion invested. The amount of love you get from an investment in love is correlated, if only roughly, to the amount of yourself you invest in the relationship.
If you invest caring, patience and unselfishness, you get those things back. (This assumes, of course, that you are having a relationship with someone who loves you, and not a one-sided love affair with someone who isn’t interested.)

and

Realistic expectations are everything. If you have unrealistic expectations, they will rarely be met. If you think that you can go from nowhere to having someone wonderful in love with you, you are probably wrong. You need expectations that match reality before you can make some progress. There may be exceptions, but they are rare.

Ben Franklin summed it up well. In times of stress, the three best things
to have are an old dog, an old wife and ready money.

Lol...

iPod Game: The Song Summoner

2008-07-12T17:25:00.001+08:00

That's right - an RPG for the iPod! I think KeY might really dig this. By way of Penny-Arcade.

Reading: Never Let Me Go

2008-07-09T21:07:00.003+08:00

I borrowed Kazuo Ishigaru's Never Let Me Go after reading LiCh's excellent post on the book. I haven't yet finished, even though I tear through huge chunks of the book each time I start. Somehow I feel like I don't want to read the book in snatches the way I usually do, I'd rather really read the text and understand what's being said. I feel like there's something beneath the surface there, that I'd only grasp if I could understand it better.

Plot-wise, it's quite clear that it must be alternate-universe - somehow, a world in which cloning was available in, say, the 1980s. I mean, cassette tapes and Walkmans. But I'm willing to suspend disbelief, and let meaning override consistency. In the meantime, here's a short excerpt which made me stop reading on that page, just so I would remember to blog it.

What I'm saying is that we were all of us struggling to adjust to our new life, and I suppose all of us did things back then we later regretted. I was really upset by Ruth's remark at the time, but it's pointless now trying to judge her or anyone else for the way they behaved during those early days at the Cottages.

Regret's a big part of my life. So many things I said that were cringe-worthy, so many things done that I should never have, can barely forgive myself for, so I simply try to forget, and hope that everyone forgets as well, that in others' memories only the best things are preserved. But then again, would I really extend the same benefit to those I know? If I don't blame others for their transgressions, it's likely because I did not notice, or don't remember.....

An unintuitive argument about the mechanism of suicide

2008-07-09T00:45:00.001+08:00

In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.

More here.

2008-07-07T00:09:00.001+08:00

On Milgram:

...those who stopped generally believed themselves to be responsible for the shocks, whereas those who kept going tended to hold the experimenter accountable...

One more reason to hold yourself accountable for your own actions.

Questions: Length of loan?

2008-06-30T08:30:00.002+08:00

Trusted colleague was advising me: I may wish to consider getting a larger and longer HDB loan since I would be able to get better returns on the money than 2.6% anyway. Not sure, it's a bit against my inclination to get out of debt as soon as possible but I suspect he's right!

Major life decisions

2008-06-29T22:36:00.002+08:00

So we finally put down for a option on a resale flat. Hmmm...

The Art of the Job Offer

2008-06-26T23:19:00.004+08:00

Encourage candidates to turn you down...

I don't agree with the last point. But, the first four points make sense!

First, don’t use the offer as an opportunity to sell the candidate.
Next, be completely honest about the culture.
Then, tell the candidate your concerns about them.
Fourth, don't give candidates a long time to make a decision

Will try to apply this if I ever get into that position, lol.

Kung Fu Panda: Favourite line?

2008-06-26T22:56:00.002+08:00

It's quite a funny show - so many funny lines... I'm actually a little torn between two lines which have much applicability in real life...

"There are no accidents."
"I know, you've said it twice already."
"That too, is no accident."

Or... (rough approximation)

"There is no good news or bad news, only news."
"Tai Lang has escaped!"
"That is bad news."

Boom Blox is fun!

2008-06-25T23:10:00.002+08:00

Just tried out Boom Blox for Wii today. Wrists hurt, but it was fun! Try it today!

Wired features Descent

2008-06-23T23:28:00.001+08:00

A very light review of Descent. However, I would say that a good Overlord isn't just trying to eliminate the players, but is trying to guide them through with a maximum of tension - ie, you're not trying to kill them entirely... just a couple of times to up the tension, is all...

D&D seems even more appealing

2008-06-22T01:28:00.002+08:00

Listening to Penny Arcade's D&D podcasts again.. like what one of the players was saying, this makes me really feel like starting a campaign, seriously! With a nice group of people, of course.

Finished reading: Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson

2008-06-19T05:19:00.002+08:00

His prologue explains how his writing style is different from other fantasy writers. I'm not entirely convinced that it is that different, but he does try to make his explanations fit better into the story.

That having been said, I was captivated enough to want to finish reading it, but not enough to want to get the next book. At the end, I've got so many questions - How does one become an Ascendant? What is the relationship between Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake? Does the Deck of Dragons dynamically update? How will Sorry + Crokus work out? Are Kelanved and Dancer in a different book? What does Quick Ben have planned?

A product of his writing style, I guess, because he leaves sooooo many threads hanging. But despite that, I don't really feel like I HAVE to read the next book, and I'm now contemplating leaving the book in Geneva if I have problems with my luggage. Ah well, the book was cheap and it was an entertaining read, so it's not a total loss, I guess.

Does this apply to drivers with radio decals?

2008-06-17T04:44:00.002+08:00

Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express rage -- by honking, tailgating and other aggressive behavior.

Ie, they are more susceptible to road rage. But from my reading of the article, it's not that these people are more aggressive, it's that these markers "personalise" their car and make them more likely to be defensive about their space.

Does this mean 93.3 contributes to Singaporean drivers' unfriendly attitudes by giving out car decals?

Of WoW Raid Decks and Magic the Gathering

2008-06-17T04:28:00.003+08:00

The guys at Penny Arcade went to play at a WoW TCG tournament, resulting in this comic.

We saw the same decks over and over and over and over for the three days we were there, I assume these were either "greatest hits" from previous tournaments or represented the current state of the art, but it made the experience much less organic. You could discern the entire arc of the game from the moment they placed their hero.

I think this may be why I suddenly stopped playing Magic again. I just don't really relish playing the same strategies over and over again.. True, by following the best strategies as refined by other peoples' research and play against each other, I am essentially playing a stronger deck. By playing other peoples' strong decks I am forced to play better. But maybe I'm not playing because I want to be better?

Somehow I find the 4-of, 60-card decks playing the best rares, uncommons and commons, just a bit boring. The combo decks were pretty fun for a while but it also became meh. Highlander was awesome right until the part where I find that everyone's playing the same cards - like really really the same!

I guess I'm looking for a story in it, and the Raid decks and their heroes vs DM style of play really appeals to me. But I don't want to learn a whole new card game, collect a bunch of cards, and then end up in one-on-one matches all over again. So... no, no, no. If I'm doing any of this stuff again, it's D&D 4th Ed. Or Descent. (and the two do seem quite alike, somehow. I might even be able to use Descent stuff to do D&D lol... )

Bistrot du Boeuf Rouge Geneve

2008-06-17T04:18:00.002+08:00

Really, really wonderful beef and foei gras at this restaurant on the Rue de A. Vincent. Will post pictures once I'm home, forgot to bring my phone upload cable....

True words from Obama

2008-06-16T21:43:00.003+08:00

NYTimes reports on Obama's speech on absentee fathers.

“But we also need families to raise our children,” he said. “We need fathers to realize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception. That doesn’t just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

Mr. Obama spoke of the burden that single parenthood was on his mother, who raised him with the help of his maternal grandparents.

“I know the toll it took on me, not having a father in the house,” he continued. “The hole in your heart when you don’t have a male figure in the home who can guide you and lead you. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle — that that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my children.”

(Emphasis mine)
True words, indeed. I would add, being a good husband to my wife.

Abortion rights

2008-06-15T05:21:00.002+08:00

Frightful true stories - but we should not look away. Making abortion illegal may stop some abortions, but it drives the rest into the shadows.

Kindle, e-book reader

2008-06-15T04:44:00.003+08:00

I've been thinking about an e-book reader for a while now. I really like reading, and especially re-reading favourite passages, but I hate storing books. They turn all moldy and brown and silverfish swarm all over, and it takes up lots of space. E-books are fine (I've been reading little books on my Axim for a while now) but it's difficult to read in sunlight generally. Plus battery life might be a problem. And the books I want to read may just generally not be available.. And it's difficult to do cross-referencing between pages.

So I've been looking with interest as the Kindle, Cybook, and other e-book readers get good reviews.

Communities Dominate Blogs linked up an article on the number of Kindles in circulation. And of course Tyler Cowen has been writing about the Kindle (since he bought one) saying that it's better for fiction than non-fiction, noting the low, low price of an e-book, and that sales of e-books are going up. That last post also linked an NYTimes article about how Kindle might affect the book market as a whole. Preetam Rai also reviewed much earlier the Cybook Gen 3, and the photos he posted (plus the Kindle photo in the NYTimes article) assure me that the screens can be bright enough for good reading. The usual tradeoff for that is battery life, though the article on Electronic Ink posted by Preetam suggests that it does not drain power as long as the page is not updated. (As a note, Wiki says that Kindle is also e-paper based.)

Hmm.. i-Phone? Kindle? Gosh... not earning enough...

The kind of thing that would make me change career...

2008-06-15T04:37:00.002+08:00

Renovating a home, and building a puzzle in. Maybe not for the current homeowner, but for the next residents and generations to come. But what would happen if they renovated the place, or changed the bed? Sigh... I'm a romantic at heart, but it's like when you're building a D&D campaign, sometimes the players just can't solve the puzzles, and you have to help them out, which hurts things a little.

Loose Change

2008-06-08T22:59:00.002+08:00

I was asked to watch this show, Loose Change, which basically talks about 9/11.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's very conspiracy-theorist, and I have mixed feelings about that - it's very cyberpunk, but I tend to think that the people who have the power and intelligence to pull these things off don't leave little clues for others to catch. Ie, if they're so smart, how did they get caught by you? Of course, nowadays, with the stunts people pull, it's not really that hard to imagine powerful people dumb enough to get caught.

Anyway: debunking Loose Change here, so at least you get some sarcastic commentary about the claims of the video.

JK Rowling's Commencement Speech at Harvard

2008-06-08T01:07:00.001+08:00

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Well spoken!

D&D - brings back good memories, dammit!

2008-06-07T23:49:00.002+08:00

Penny Arcade is playing D&D 4th Ed! And they're putting up podcasts! Woo hoo! It was fun listening to it, just a bunch of people having fun there (and I recognized Tongli in Gabe... ) and it seems fun.. dammit, I miss RPGs.. :(

Obscure, useful fact of the day: Mark your heat waves

2008-06-07T20:41:00.002+08:00

If there's a heat wave, the wines from that region in that year are likely to taste better. So, mark those heat waves!

Credit: CP!

Monfils Sliderman

2008-06-07T20:32:00.002+08:00

Was watching Monfils' semifinal against Federer - damn good match, but the thing that stuck for me was how he was so expressive and showy. He wouldn't have been out of place in a Prince of Tennis comic, seems like, the opposing gaijin with some special abilities and bizarre motivations...

A short break

2008-06-07T20:15:00.001+08:00

A short break from work - good.
A short break from work on Saturday - wait, what am I doing working on the weekend?

Sheer insensitivity.

2008-06-01T01:51:00.002+08:00

I was at a meeting, and they were taking time out to remember someone who passed away. One of the guys started reading from a poem which he felt described the deceased well. This was Invictus, and it's a beautiful piece. "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul." How many people can say that? I wish I could.

So anyway, he's reading halfway, and someone starts making a commotion off to one side, and makes a hullaballoo that there was no interpretation. Cuts off the speaker entirely, and the speaker just stops.

Turns out the interpreters stopped because, you know, it's poetry. And not a prepared statement so it's not easy to translate. And I'm like pissed, because like, isn't that a totally totally insensitive thing to do? I mean, given the solemnity of the situation, just shut up and act sincere, why don't you?

Now reading: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

2008-05-31T02:57:00.002+08:00

I'm so starved of English books here, I went to Foyle's in London and looked for anything on sale. This was pretty cheap, 4 quid special price. Good reading so far, will have to see...

I'm thinking about getting a Kindle. I've seen a few good reviews of it, and frankly for me an electronic reader is probably best. I treat my books badly, travel frequently, like to re-read but don't really like the storage space they take up. Only thing is, will all the titles be available? And will I get used to reading off a screen? Part of my experience with screens is that it's awful hard to read outdoors, and turning up the brightness normally burns out the battery pretty fast. Whereas, well, a battered paperback can be read pretty much anywhere - except where it's dark, of course. Haha....

Limping to the finish line

2008-05-31T02:45:00.001+08:00

It's been a tough week. Sigh... Full of strange requests, rushing between meetings, and too little time to complete my work. Damn it. I hate these kinds of weeks. And to make it all worse, I'm missing my baby...

HDB Revises Flat Application Rules (part III of III)

2008-05-24T02:37:00.003+08:00

Continuing parts I and II,

Against the hope that someone important reads these posts, let me put the constructive comments before all the vitriol below.

Who are those "with urgent housing needs" who HDB should be selling flats to? They are the couples married or getting married, planning to have children in less than five years. When you have thousands of such couples applying for flats, and none of them wanted any one of the 30% of flats available in a particular BTO, what does that tell you? It tells me that for some reason, those flats are not suitable. Too expensive, too far away, too small, etc.

Yes, they could compromise to have less than ideal flats, so by definition they are picky. But if you choose to define them as picky, and try to shoehorn them into your plans rather than catering to their needs, then you're going to get delayed marriages, delayed parenthood, less children than they might otherwise have had.

My suggestion is this : 70% of the Coral Spring flats were sold. 30% could find no buyers at the price. I'm sure it was no accident that this 30% were not selected. They must be overpriced, in the sense that all the remaining homeowners rejected them. Can they be priced lower? If the price is already "unreasonably" low, then these flats must be worth less than they cost to built. Should they not be built? If they must be built (maybe they're all the low floors, or all the afternoon sun units), then the prices of the entire block should reflect the losses that would be made on the low-value units. And if the HDB overestimated the value of those units - then like private sector organisations, it should decide if it's better to discount these units or hang on to them and absorb the loss.

---------------------
Well those flats are subsidised, they're being built to help (more unfortunate) Singaporeans "with urgent housing needs". HDB should be allowed to tweak their rules anyway they want - you ungrateful twats! Right?

Well - point 1 - urgent housing needs. I'd previously browsed articles about people urgently seeking rentals. Can't easily find them again, but Google popped up at least one -

Every time they ask HDB about their rental, everyone says the same thing -
to wait. It has been almost two years now and there is still no news. I am
really sad to see them this way

Right...
Well, enough character assassination. Think about it - urgent housing needs. The implication is that the picky ones are getting in the way of those with "urgent housing needs" - a phrase which conjures up visions of people living on the street, who could get a home now that the picky ones are being purged. But if your BTO is 30% under-sold, there's nobody with urgent housing needs, at least not urgent enough to buy what you're trying to sell them. It's a silly way to justify the policy, to disguise it as a resource prioritization issue. What HDB is trying to do is to incentivise homeseekers to buy what HDB wants built, rather than what the homeseekers are looking for. The thinking might go something like this:

"Ooh. Unsold flats. Why don't they want to stay at these places? If enough people moved into these remote locales in these beautiful communities we have planned, then the demand for services would bring services to these communities and everyone would benefit! These silly people, so picky! They're spoiling our system! Making us look bad too, first so many applicants, makes it look like we didn't build enough. Then so many empty flats, as if what we offered is so unattractive! These picky people! How do I make them stop applying and then not buying flats?"

I'm sorry - in my idealized view of government, I would have thought that the approach should have been to find out why the BTOs were falling short of those homeseeker's expectations.

Or maybe they've asked already, and discovered that these picky people are just unrealistic buggers who expect cheap and good, and their expectations are unrealistic. You'll never meet their needs so get them out of the way. Well, if that's the case - then the implication is that the unsold flats ARE worth their price. Obviously all the people applying for HDB flats are too stupid to see that the flats are good bargains!

-----------------------

HDB revises flat application rules (part II of III)

2008-05-24T02:25:00.002+08:00

Continuing the previous post,

Weren't the BTOs supposed to ensure that supply did not outstrip demand (and saddle HDB with unsold homes) (and on the side, cause a fall in housing prices that would anger existing home owners - hmm I wonder which is more important)?

The recent Coral Spring project, for instance, saw about 30% of flats not taken
up even after all applicants had been invited to book a flat.

So a question to self - if BTOs are 70% sold as reported there, then does it reflect that supply is outstripping demand? And how does that tally with 1000+ people still looking for flats and applying to the new BTO projects Compassvale Pearl and Punggol Sapphire?

It tallies. It tells me that the BTOs as HDB is building them is not meeting the needs of that bunch of people who rejected the flats and are still out there shopping. Rather than questioning the pickiness of the homeseekers, maybe the HDB should be asking questions like
"What are they looking for? Why are they so picky? Which 30% of the flats are not being sold? Maybe it's the low floors? Maybe it's the bigger flats? The smaller ones? Would it sell if we priced it lower? Would it sell if we made them bigger?"

If you tell me that the flats were eventually taken up after many applicants rejected them, sure, I'll agree that maybe those guys in front were picky, and the guys later got their homes in the end - after a longer wait then necessary. But when nobody wants the flats at all - maybe those guys aren't being picky. Maybe those flats really are lemons. I wouldn't know, I didn't apply - but if I had to guess from the available info I'd say, hell yes those flats must have been bad.

HDB Revises Flat Application Rules (part I of III)

2008-05-24T01:47:00.003+08:00

Recent launches of Build-to-Order flats have seen an overwhelming number of applications, especially those in mature estates, leading to speculation that there is a shortage of new flats. But HDB said, on the contrary, the bulk of applicants often do not end up making a purchase.

Right. Let's see.
1) The policy change targets first-time applicants.
2) As of my writing this post, after applications opened on 22 May (day before in Singapore time), there are 1226 applicants for 1485 apartments in Compassvale Pearl and Punggol Sapphire. Presumably the demand will be comparable to previous times. I haven't applied for BTO in a while, but the last time I applied for mature estates flats, there were >10,000 applicants.
3) Presumably many of these applicants are first time applicants.
4) There are 1226 couples (mostly first-time? Maybe HDB has some stats they'd like to release to us) watching HDB's site like eagles, waiting for new sites. There will be more applicants, since the application closes on 5 June.
5) Ie, > 1,000 people queueing eagerly for a flat. No shortage? Right.
6) At this moment, another page of the HDB site shows 1691 flats for sale - 1485 under the BTO and the rest for bi-monthly sale. Ahh... 206 flats unsold, including 196 in the wonderful Jurong West locale. Of course there's no shortage.

There's no point talking about shortages versus those unsold flats. As one of those people looking for a flat, I can tell you - the prices of those JW flats are going to have to be much lower before people are going to want to buy them. Any househunter is going to look at a house and compare its value to him and the price he wants to pay for it. Rather than saying that those unsold flats (and the 30% in Coral Spring) reflect picky homeseekers, maybe HDB should look at those unsold flats and ask itself, why those flats can't be sold to 1000 over people looking for homes? Basically, value < price! And part of that crappy value includes things like : far out in the middle of nowhere; lack of facilities; far away from MRT station; 2nd floor above the !#$%^ hawker centre; surrounded by industrial factories; and the list goes on.

Even though JW is sooooo far away, I might move into a JW flat if it was sufficiently lowly-priced. If you have excess goods, slash the price!

Yes, I know the valuers give a price to the flat based on many factors, but if a valuer prices something at $x and no-one wants to buy it at that price, even with HDB subsidies, well that tells me the valuer is wrong!

Put it simply - there's a shortage of HDB flats which new owners find have a higher value than the price HDB is charging. There's a small glut of HDB flats in JW (and presumably the 30% in Coral Spring) which new owners find are lower value than the price HDB charges.

Put it another way - HDB is selling flats, and when it can't sell some of the lousier sets in its collection it calls buyers picky. So to force-sell those units, it's trying to scare first-time applicants that they'll lose their privileges if they reject some of the lousier, unwanted sets they offer up.

More reasons to go to the gym

2008-05-22T21:08:00.002+08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/health/13muscles.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

If you don’t work your muscles, they will atrophy, especially as you grow
older. Older people often fall because they are too weak to brace themselves,
and they have trouble with steps and opening jars because their muscles have
lost so much strength.

2008-05-21T05:21:00.002+08:00

A follow up from my previous post

Very coincidentally, Errol Morris updates his blog yesterday sometime after I'd made my post. (Not the most probable thing, since his updates seem to be quite well-spaced-out). He's talking about how a photo from Abu Ghraib unfairly implicated (character-assassinated) one of the contractors/soldiers involved. She's seen smiling, posing with the body of a dead torture victim and we immediately assume that she's a sadist.

He interviews Paul Ekman (the facial expressions guy from Blink) on this:

“Horror,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the combination of disgust and terror. So I think “horror” is the right word. It’s a horrible sight, and it instills horror. And then you see, right next to that, someone having a good time. Most people will not realize that’s a “say cheese” smile. They’ll think, because of the broadness of the smile and the thumbs-up gesture, they’re having a good time. That’s what makes this a damning picture to the typical viewer.
I’ll add one more thing. When we see someone smile, it is almost irresistible that we smile back at them. Advertisers know that. That’s why they link products to smiling faces. And when we smile back, we begin to actually experience some enjoyment. So this photograph makes us complicit in enjoying the horrible. And that’s revolting to us.
So why it is such an upsetting photograph is not just because we see someone smiling in the context of the horrible, but that when we look at her, we begin to have to resist smiling ourselves. So it’s a terrible, terrible picture for that reason alone.

So going back to the issue of context which I'd mentioned in my earlier post, Errol Morris says:

Photographs reveal and they conceal. We know about al-Jamadi’s death because of
Sabrina Harman. Without her photographs, his death would likely have been
covered up by the C.I.A. and by the military. Yes, at first I believed that
Harman was complicit. I believed that she was implicated in al-Jamadi’s death. I
was wrong. I, too, was fooled by the smile.

It's an addition to what Yon had to say about photos, truth and context. The photo is fact, but like statistics, it's so damn easy to twist the fact into a false interpretation. Truth can only be obtained by investigation and reasoning, which we often hand over to the powers that be. The result? People wronged, and others who get away.

On perspectives, continuity and so on.

2008-05-19T23:55:00.003+08:00

A couple of interesting posts which seemed to converge today.

First off, found an interesting blog by Errol Morris, a documentary filmmaker. In this article, he writes about continuity errors - for instance, how a director can change the actors mid-movie and most people still wouldn't notice - and how that relates to the idea of narrative overriding evidence, change blindness, and the documentary he made which helped free a wrongfully imprisoned man. Through the piece, he moves from philosophical quotes like:

If the world ceased to exist for 2/3 of a second would we fail to
notice?

to cute facts like:

Everyone knows the most famous line from the movie “Casablanca” isn’t a line in
the movie “Casablanca.” When Ilsa enters Rick’s Café Americain, she says to Sam,
“Play it, Sam.” But everyone remembers, “Play it again, Sam.” So why does
everyone remember the line incorrectly? I have a simple theory. Because the
additional word “again,” clearly captures that something is being repeated,
something is being re-enacted.

It's funny that he uses the idea of an orange at the end to give an example of image vs perception vs consciousness, and in his earlier post focusing on the documentary of the innocent man, says

The engine of uncovering truth is not some special lens or even the unadorned
human eye; it is unadorned human reason.

Because Jim Cowen's Spade of Reason (my favorite short story) uses the example of an orange to illustrate how we make models in our head as well.

The second post is from Michael Yon, who's castigating Michael Moore (and others) for using a rather famous photo taken by Yon (to him, a true thing) to illegally (because Yon owns the copyright) convey falsehoods. I still have not watched any of Moore's works (not even Columbine) and haven't really formed an opinion, but Yon was fairly critical of Moore even outside his use of the photo - which given my currently fairly high opinion of Yon, doesn't reflect too well on Moore.

But that's not the point. The point is that idea of truth - the engine of truth is reason, according to Morris, and when you apply that to Yon's post, you get a rather more nuanced version of Yon's reasoning. Which is, the photo is "true", not because it is a statement of fact ( a photo is just a capture of a particular perspective of a scene - fact, perhaps, but not truth), but because when Yon shared it with the world, the context was fully disclosed - at least as far as was possible (which I will not discuss further, because the examples I give could offend). And in Yon's view, when Moore puts it into a different context, the implication, the reasoning that follows draws a false link (and Moore should know that this is false) between the death and the politicians in the same poster.

The Relativity of Wrong

2008-05-19T18:38:00.002+08:00

One of the two things I always clearly remember Glen Davis (pastor of our campus cell group at Stanford) teaching was, that there are different degrees of wrong, and that believing the world is a sphere is less wrong than believing the earth is flat. It's a quote that really makes sense to me, and a principle that has helped me in a lot of my thinking.

Today, I discovered that the quote is from Isaac Asimov's essay on "The Relativity of Wrong". I'm a big fan of Asimov's short fiction, so this just awes me totally.

Even crazier is how I discovered this, going from Gobwin Knob to Xyzzy to Asimov. Strange paths to true things.

(The second thing I remember very clearly is that Christians have five duties... )

Some pictures out of Paris

2008-05-18T22:24:00.003+08:00

Most of the pics were in KeY's camera of course (the camera I'm using now is much worse than hers, and getting a new camera is not on the list of financial priorities), but here's a couple from mine.

Us in front of Notre Dame. KeY's first time in Paris, and so I brought her around to see all the sights. Should really have stuck in the Latin Quarter just across the bridge from here, she would probably have enjoyed that more than traipsing around half of Paris.

We queued for maybe 45 min waiting to go up. Walked out on to the landing, and it was just a little underwhelming, especially when we've been up so many peak views, and they do tend to look the same after a while. (Honestly, I think The Peak in HK is the best of those I've seen so far. Easily the most recognisable as well. Probably because there's only one side to really look at) But we were a bit lucky, just as we were thinking "Nothing special", the tower erupted in lights. If we'd arrived just a bit later or somewhat earlier we would have missed it entirely... :>