Author: Wilfrid

Categories
Diary

Summer Blog Episode 5 – Lifts Going Crazy

This is a true story.

The problem was not without warning.  At first I discovered that the buttons that called the lifts were not as responsive.  At times when I pressed the button, it remained dull, and nothing happened.  As if determined by some random events behind the electrical circuits, the button would light up, eventually.  At random.  In a modern living environment going by the observation that since this was a common problem, someone would have reported it, and hence there was no need for me to take action.  Perhaps that was why this problem was escalated to a second stage.

One warm afternoon, I was back from my grocery trip.  Carrying with me bags and bags of goods, I could barely walk on a leveled ground.  Called for the lift but none of the button worked.  I waited for a divine intervention but there was none.  Strangely, the lifts went up and down under their own will.  At times, a human or two got spat out of the metallic container and before I could enter, it closed its mouth.  How did those able to board the lift if no one could signal it to stop at their floors?

Lack of options, I walked up the stairs, carrying the heavy bags.  On my way up, I saw someone on the way down.  We greeted silently and exchanged a reluctant smile that did not say much but said it all.  I wonder what would happen if I was 100 years old.  The stairs looked indeed daunting.

Shortly after, I needed to get out of the apartment.  I attempted to call for a lift, it did not seem to work.  Lifts went crazy going up and down on their own.  While contemplating if I should take the stairs instead, one lift arrived at my floor.  I dashed inside without much thinking.  Suddenly it struck me.  What made me think that I could control the lift from inside?  As it closed its mouth, I felt as though I had been swallowed by a crazy lift.

Categories
Diary

Summer Blog Episode 4 – I Am A Wallpaper

Year 2000, Kevin Bacon played the character of Hollow Man.  Being invisible, this fictional scientist takes full advantage of his new found ability doing stuffs that he would not be able to do, including spying on his female neighbor.  Rumor says that there is a deleted rape scene too.  The film prompted me to read “The Invisible Man” by H. G. Wells.  Imagine what I would do if I can be invisible.  Imagine what you would do.  That sense of invincibility.  Even if one perishes, no one knows (assuming that invisibility persists through death and beyond, which I recall according to the story, it is not the case).

The opposite of Hollow Man is not any one on the street, I think.  The opposite of being invincibly invisible is being visible but no one takes notice.  Like fading into the background or becoming a piece of everyday wallpaper that no one stops and takes notice.

One day, I went into a restaurant alone.  The staffs were busy doing the things they did.  I chose a seat in the middle of the restaurant.  Still, no one attended to me.  I stood up, picked up a menu nearby, returned to my seat, and started reading.  Quietly contemplated on what my lunch would be, I could not help but to observe that people around me were aware of my presence but liked a piece of wallpaper, I had faded onto the background.  Perhaps when the lunch hour was over, when the rest of the customers had eaten, paid, and gone, the staffs might notice someone siting in the middle of the restaurant reading a menu.  And they might wonder when did I step into the restaurant in the first place.  Or not.

It seems to me that the only time when we get to notice, examine, and appreciate the wallpaper is when the room is empty, newly renovated perhaps.

Categories
Reflection

Summer Blog Episode 3 – My Table In My Primary School

My memory of my primary school life has been fuzzy.  Of the few fragments that I remember, there were those wooden tables that we used at school, unlike perhaps the fine furniture students use today.  The surface though smooth, was uneven.  You could trace the texture of the wood and you could see the little holes of various sizes scattered over the tabletop.  If you had a wide imagination like I did, you would picture the surface of the table as the terrain of an unknown planet.  You could even draw a map and name the craters.

In my primary school days, we used pencils and rubbers often.  Instead of brushing the residue of the rubber onto the floor like I suppose every student did, I had developed this craze to bury it into the little craters on the tabletop.  I would press the residue hard using the end of a pencil or my bare fingers.  Soon, I was busy producing residue for the sake of filling up the holes.  It took a long time to fill up all the holes, large and small.  When I was done with the job, I would start to dig out the residue from one random crater and fill it up with fresh residue.  And the job never ended.

Unfortunately, there is no morale to this story.  I think I should have studied to become a dentist instead.

Categories
Whacky Thoughts

Summer Blog Episode 2 – A Harem Full Of Girls And A Hard Disk Full Of Music

Cynthia often pokes fun at my ears.  She says my ears are promiscuous.  I used to buy many compact disks regularly.  My favorite pastime since the day when compact disk format was made popular was to camp at record stores, staring at the nicely wrapped disks trying to decide if I should buy just one more.  It was an obsession, before the time when consumers rely on listening stations and online reviews to decide if they should part their hard earned money in exchange for a forty minutes of an unknown piece of music.

I suppose there is an ounce of truth for Cynthia to choose that descriptor for my ears.  I suppose if you have a few girlfriends to juggle at the same time, you probably would not have a good memory on who they are, not even their names.  At times when I listen to a beautiful tune playing on the radio, I would turn to Cynthia and asked, “I think I have that song in my music collection.  But I can’t recall which one it is.”  Cynthia would give me a standard reply that my ears are promiscuous.

What happens to the days when we could remember the lyrics and sing along with the songs?

When I share with the people around me that my phone comes with a legally unlimited music download service, some are surprised while others cannot relate.  When I walk into a record store these days, I am no longer in my usual euphoric state.  The entire recent collection, I almost have it.  OK, I recognize the album covers, music that I have downloaded with a click of a button.  But I doubt I have listened to all.  It does feel good though knowing that some albums are inside my computer’s hard disk somewhere, ready to be listened to when my ears are free.

I reckon the idea of a harem full of girls is not to sleep with all, but keep some to look at.

Categories
Announcement

Summer Blog Episode 1 – New Series

I love summer holidays.  There is a certain charm to this mysterious reference: summer holiday.  It does not reveal where the destination is, or how long is the vocation.  A generic reference that says everything and nothing.  It often prompts the listeners to momentarily drift towards the memory of one of their previous summer holidays.  Hence, opens up conversation in the opposite direction, rather than me talking about my holiday.

This summer holiday, I wish to do something different to my website.  I have got Bob the Botâ„¢ to churn out contents while I am away.  My personal ghost writer.

Every week, I have received hundreds of comments originated by the spam bots.  I must say, some are quite entertaining to read.  Some are outright encouraging.  Some are bizarre jokes that even if I am to put a perverted hat on, I still cannot figure out what the joke is about, except it sounds funny.  At times when my site is dead quiet, I do not mind fishing amongst a pool of spam comments to see if there is a legitimate one hiding inside while getting amused by hundreds and thousands of illegitimate ones, in a twisted sense.

Bots are going to rule our Internet one day.  The density of the web is going to intensified by the bots that do not need to eat or sleep, busy copying contents, meshing up contents, and generating random words of a multitude of languages.  As for my personal Bob the Botâ„¢, I doubt if it is going to be that proliferate.  I am as excited as you to find out what the bot can do.  Stay tuned.

Categories
For the Geeks Game Reviews

Final Fantasy XIII Scores Very High In My Book

I have always said that Japanese’s imagination knows no bound.  And their commitment to production quality is truly an inspiration.  If I am to combine all the cut scenes from the game Final Fantasy XIII, it can easily be one beautifully made anime in full HD glory (1080p).  It takes me 80 hours to see the ending (still not completing the game yet) and I have lost track on how many and how long the cut scenes are.  Especially in the beginning, I could literally spend a few minutes playing the game and then here comes the cut scene.  It is long enough for me to make a cup of tea, finishing eating an apple, and wash my hands.  As the story unfolds, the gap between the cut scenes lengthens depending on how fast or slow you progress.

Quite a few friends of mine asked if FF13 is indeed linear.  To be frank, non-linear game does not mean that it is good.  Linear game does not mean that it is bad.  It is all about execution.  In terms of storyline, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome, unlike other games.  That also means that you do not need to play the game multiple times to see the complete set of sub-stories.  For FF13, you play it once and be totally immersed.  There is a fixed number of characters and gears you can develop,  But which ones to pick is entirely your decision based on your preferred strategy.  In fact, looking at the game play, the key feature that sets the game apart from the rest is that it has little to do with your reflex actions.  It is the strategy you deploy prior to each battle and the ability to think on your feet every 5 seconds or so during the battle.  The combat system is unique and has earned a lot of praises.  There is no need to mess around with the positioning of your characters during a battle and it does not require you to frantically press the buttons on your controller to beat the enemy.  At a macro level, you control the roles of your characters and switch them at one go by up to 5 defined sets created by you.  At a micro level, you can choose to execute a specific action for the character that you have a direct control with.  And because of the variety of enemies, you are forced to adopt a different strategy for each battle.  Be it as a different role set combination, or even a different set of characters and gears.

Another noticeable difference compares to other role playing games is that the enemies in FF13 do not level as your characters level.  You can go back and revisit your old foes that gave you a hard time and beat the crap out of them in seconds.  Or you may get trashed by some unknown enemies that are so powerful that in the early stage of the game, all you can do is to flee.  Because the enemies re-spawn, there is no shortage of action.  In later part of the game, you can explore the area in any direction you prefer.  Tackle the missions in any order you prefer.  Or if to see the ending is all you want, you could skip the side missions.

While the enemies do not level, at the end of each battle, there is a 5 stars rating system.  The more powerful you become, the target time goes down.  In another word, you still need to work hard for a 5 stars rating.  In some cases, it pays off to get that rating.  Some of you asked if there are a lot of grinding, like other role playing games.  I suppose the choice is yours.  But I find it rewarding to do a bit of grinding to get more powerful and to farm materials to improve the gears. 

Majorities of the battle are quite easy, I must say.  The boss fights from the main storyline are often long (like more than 10 to 15 minutes of intense thinking).  The boss fights from the side missions can be extremely hard.  Some of the tough battles you may take a defensive stance, sacrifice the 5 stars rating, and win.  Others will slab you with a doom counter if you are taking too long.  A doom counter is one that you must beat the boss in 3 minutes or there will be an instant death.  In short, there is no shortage of excitement.  Needless to say, some are so tough that you have to further develop your characters and return for another attempt later.

Judging FF13 from the Western standard, it may fall short a bit (it is after all a Japanese RPG).  But I happen to be thrilled by how beautiful the game is made – the colorful and unique environment, the memorable characters that are so easily to fall in love with, and the dramatic story development.  These days, it is hard to find a non-violence game that does not come with blood and gore and sex – like FF13.  If you wonder what the game play is like, here is a brief breakdown.

Part One – Stories And More Stories

In the first part of the game, you do not get to choose whose is or are in your team.  It depends on how the story unfolds.  There are lots of cut scenes.  The combat system progressively gets more complex, a good learning curve that I like.  Some comment that this part is too linear.  I happen to like the fact that I am forced to learn how to cope with different characters and different team composition.  In FF13, all the characters have different strengths and weaknesses.  Part one took me about 30 hours to complete.  It also accounts for the story of the 13 days prior to where you first started the game.

Part Two – Open Side Missions

Once you reach Gran Pulse, you get to venture to different parts of the map.  As you complete side missions, portals are open to aid you in warping to a different location in the map.  In this part, you also get to pick your team composition.  You do not have to complete all the side missions.  But they are rewarding.  It did not feel like grinding to me, although I have to pass the same area multiple times.  There is always something to be discovered.

Part Three – Head to Chapter 13

FF13 is divided into 13 chapters.  After Gran Pulse, you can do one chapter and return to do more open area exploration and complete more side missions.  The last two chapters can get pretty hard.  That is where the experience (and confidence) you gather while doing the side missions pays off.  Personally I love the story of FF13, although I must admit that I do not quite understand the logic of the Japanese.

Part Four – Open End Game Missions

This is where I am at right now.  After the final boss of the main storyline is beaten, after the story is concluded, I am brought back to the save point right before the final boss.  The difference is that I can now further develop my characters.  There are 64 missions in total.  Quite a number of them are designed for the end game.  Missions can be retaken if getting a 5 stars rating is what you are aiming for.  Or just for the fun of it.

Talking about save points, another good thing about FF13 (compares to other JRPG I read) is that there are tons of save points.  You can pick up the controller, play for 10 minutes or so, stop and do something else in real life.  I find that very useful.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

The Internet Is A Playground By David Thorne – An Insanely Fun And Bizarre Read

I suppose if one is to publish a book based on what he or she writes in his or her website, the book would look something like “The Internet Is A Playground”.  I have no idea if the materials are factual.  What it does indicate is that the author David Thorne lives in Australia and there are quite a fair bit of reference to that country.  Hence, some of you may be able to relate to the book better than I do.  Nevertheless, majority of the materials are hilarious (those that I got it).  One evening, inside a Japanese restaurant while waiting for our food to arrive, I showed Cynthia some chapters from the book.  She read, I read again with her, and we had a good laugh.  Half of the book contains email correspondence between the author and his neighbor, colleagues, his son’s teacher, and etc.  Looking at face value of these emails, I would say the author is pretty annoying, may even perceive as a bully in the Internet space.  I for sure would not know how to correspond if he writes to me.  Having said that, if you read between the lines, the author writes with good wit and humor.  Usually there is a point he wishes to make, but not directly.  It is fun to read it as a third party.  Hence the book title.

Interestingly, some readers point out that the entire book can be read from his website.  I have not got the time to trace the chapters and verify.  The website appears to have a better layout, contain links to external sites (that Tower Defense online game is insanely fun), and have extra materials (or was I reading too fast?).  So, why would one want to buy the book?  I suppose if you are going on a trip where Internet access is not convenient or if you are having a vocation and the last place on Earth you wish to visit is the Internet, it is good to grab a copy and have a good laugh.  Be prepared for some original hilarious stuffs that blow your mind away.

External Link: The Author’s 27b/6 Website

Categories
I See I Write

SingTel mioTV Gives A Black Screen? Here Is How To Hard Reset Your Setup Box

Update: SingTel called me to propose waiving one month mio Home subscription fees as a token of compensation.  I think it is reasonable and fair.  And he mentioned that I have been a loyal customer for many years, which is true.  Let’s hope that the mio service will get improved.

10 pm, it was the official kick-off 2010 World Cup.  I switched on the free-to-air Channel 5 HD channel on StarHub TV.  No problem.  The image looked beautiful.  Out of curiosity, I switched on SingTel mioTV at the same time.  Black screen, no signal.  Strange.  I have installed the box 2 days ago and it has been working fine, so far.  During half time, I played around a bit more with mioTV and realized that all the channels – live or on demand – were blacked out.  I couldn’t even select an on demand channel.  The menu said that the service was not available because I belonged to a business user group.  Business?!  I am pretty sure I am a regular consumer who wanted to watch World Cup live, free.  Even for that only one match.

To cut a long story short, if you too have experienced the same issue, you need to hard reset your mioTV setup box.  Press OK button, the down arrow, and the power button on your setup box at the same time.  You should see all three indicators (green, blue, and red) on the front panel light up.  Then release the power button and keep the other two pressed.  Once you see the flashing of the indicators, release the OK button and down arrow.  Your setup box should now be reset and it will take 30 to 40 minutes to boot up.

In another word, if you Google the answer to the problem, you would probably only miss 45 minutes of the match.  If you wait for SingTel to pick up the call (like me), you would miss an extra 45 minutes of the match.

I am quite mad at SingTel.  The helpful service consultant told me the network server was down during such an important live event.  When I enquired if SingTel is going to compensate us for not being to view the live broadcast (that is the whole point of paying for cable TV, yes?), she told me that her supervisors were busy.  They will get back to me tomorrow instead.  I am a patience man.  I am eager to hear what they have got to say.

PS. Once you hard reset your setup box, the default resolution is 564i.  You can choose your optimal resolution by pressing the menu button.  Go to settings, channel guide, screen settings, and there you go.  Good as new.

PS. For those of you who have paid close to S$100 in order to watch World Cup on mioTV, well, good luck to you.  If I have to subscribe, I would subscribe the channels on StarHub TV instead.  I am starting to worry about the F1 broadcast now that SingTel has taken over the right of ESPN.

Categories
Diary

A Comic Relief – Uh Huh … Say Hello To mioTV?

I love watching Formula One on TV, at home.  Getting another setup box because ESPN is moving back to SingTel this July is something I dread, but inevitable.  I suspect under the umbrella of mio Home – a bundle of land lines (yes, plural!), broadband, and television – I may have saved some money.  It took the super patience SingTel sales consultant at Bishan Junction 8 one full hour to explain to me how mio Home works.  Who says the SingTel service is bad?!  After that one hour fruitful session, Cynthia commented that both of us were like a broken record.  “F1 will be broadcast in mioTV?”  “Yes, F1 will be broadcast in mioTV.”  “You sure F1 will be broadcast in mioTV?”  “Yes, I am sure F1 will be broadcast in mioTV.”  “I am signing up for this only because of F1.”  “Really?  Just F1?”  “Really, just F1.  So you sure come this July I can watch F1 on mioTV?”  “Yes, F1 will be on mioTV.”  “This July?”  “Wait a minute please.  Let me check.”

OK.  At least he admitted that he was not that sure.  All that drilling was not going nowhere.

After what appeared like 10 minutes, this friendly SingTel sales consultant emerged from his office and produced a screen printout for me.  He said with a big smile, “This is not easy to come by!”.  And I wondered why.

I love working with sales and service consultants, face-to-face or on the phone.  I always picture them as someone cheerful, always eagers to help.  After my mioTV installation appointment was made, I needed to shift the morning session to afternoon.  No problem, the hotline said.  A few days later, I needed to shift the afternoon session back to morning.  Sorry sir, all fully booked – so said the hotline.  On the day itself, SingTel called me if I could shift the appointment to the morning.  Really, I kept my entire day free just for SingTel.  Of course you can.

There is one good thing coming out of this mioTV exercise.  The sales consultant was so helpful that upon further poked by me, I was informed that the promotional rate for my 3G mobile broadband add-on (30 GB) will be expired on July 2nd, this year.  It will be a hike from S$12.57 per month to S$39.99!  My oh my, how lucky I am to discover this than years later, when I would discover that I had been paying so much more per month for a much slower speed.  Like before.

July 2nd I will be out-of-town.  Can I sign up for another promotional deal for July 2nd onwards (S$13+ with a reduced quota of 10GB, a cap of S$39.99 a month – finally! – and the speed is increased from 1 Mbps to 7 Mbps!)?  Hot-line replied: Nope, because today is not July 2nd and you can only do it on July 2nd.  OK.  Great.  And I am told that to enjoy the promotional rate, I have to sign up online.  Are there any other ways?  Yes, the hot-line replied.  But I will have to pay S$1 extra per month in order to sign up via the sales consultant on the phone, instead of DIY via online.  This really makes sense.  Especially when I am out-of-town.

Fine.  I requested to terminate my 3G data plan from July 2nd onwards and will deal with it when I am back from my summer holiday.  How I love SingTel for prompting us to be alert and creative in solving problems.  All the so-called savings from mio Home bundle would have been wiped off by the silent hike of the 3G data price.

*     *     *     *    *

The duo who installed mioTV for me were fantastic.  101% service oriented, dramatic with a good sense of humor.  If there was a feedback form, I would have punched in 5-star rating for all categories.

Hours ahead of the scheduled appointment, this duo appeared at my doorsteps.  The Chinese guy had such a big pair of eyes and defined face line that I bet girls would melt seeing him.  After opening the phone socket at my living room near to my telephone, one guy got a shock.  Where was the 2nd line?!  The what?!  2nd line!  The Chinese guy turned the tracer on and the Malay guy (equally charming) went to the phone switch box outside of my apartment armed with this bizarre hand machine that emitted sound.  I suppose this futuristic device is to determine the phone signal without having to tap onto the physical wires.  How nice if the Matrix has incorporated this idea into the film.

“Is there a tone?” the Chinese guy would shout.  “No!” the Malay guy would reply.  The Chinese guy would switch to another bare wire and shouted out loud, “Is there a tone?”  “No!”  “How about this?”  “No!”  “And this?”  “NO!”.  “THIS?”  “NO!”. “THIS?”  “NO!”. “THIS?”  “NO!”. “THIS?”  “NO!”.

Déjà vu.  It was broken record once again.

“Where is the main wire?” asked the Chinese guy.  “Erm, I have no idea,” I replied.  Shortly, I realized that he was talking to himself.  Next, three of us – the good looking duo and I – were busy going round my apartment to hunt for that missing wire.  Later, after some detailed explanation from the Chinese guy, I understood that outside my home, there is a telephone cable that concealed 3 pairs of wires.  This cable goes underneath the floor outside my home, into my home, and emerges from a main socket somewhere.  And our job was to find out where.

As the hunting team combed through my apartment, I was busy concealing all the not too PG stuffs.  Like my used socks and what not.  One socket after another socket, we frown in disappointment.  Finally, we have located the source.  When we opened the case, it was empty!  The Chinese guy exclaimed, “The cable should come out from there!”.  “But there is nothing inside!” I replied in equal if not more enthusiasm and drama.  The duo stormed through my kitchen, through my storeroom, even went into the false ceilings of the bathrooms turning my house upside down.  I really give it to their positive work attitude.  After what appeared as a fruitless exercise, we concluded that the contractor who renovated my home back in 2000 must have forgotten to connect all six wires from the cable outside to my home inside.

What does that mean?

Well, my home could potentially support three telephone lines.  How SingTel has this vision that a tiny home like mine would need three telephone lines?  I do not know.  With mio Home, one phone line is dedicated to broadband Internet access shared with my main telephone line.  Another phone line is dedicated to watching TV channels on demand.  Interestingly, because of this 2nd phone line (that comes with a new telephone number!), I now can have two telephones at home!  Cynthia can talk to her mother in Indonesia while at the same time, I to my mother in Hong Kong.  One happy family.  The Chinese guy laughed when he heard me thinking-out-loud and commented that incoming calls for the 2nd phone line is not free, unlike the first one.  “Huh?” I said.  “But you can set up a fax machine and receive faxes for free!” he hinted.

Things you would not have known if not thinking-out-loud.  SingTel puts in a lot of hidden bonus materials for those who care to ask.

Back to the drama, we failed to locate the 2nd phone line.  There was no 2nd phone line in my home.  What a disaster!  “What shall we do now?” I asked.  The duo proposed that they would route a new cable from outside, use the existing StarHub concealed cable truck, drill a hole through my wall, and route the line around my living room to where my telephone is.  Concealed and free-of-charge.

Free?!  Wow.  It is not even SingTel’s problem.  But they were happy to make this works for me.  Though I am not a big fan of mioTV.  I am touched.  Not only did they do all these for free, the Chinese guy was sensitive enough to ask if I have a vacuum cleaner.  “For?!” asked I.  He took out his huge and long tool (I swear I have not seen such size before) – a driller – and told me that if we could suck the dust while he drilled, my home would not be so dusty thereafter.  Good idea.  He drilled and I held the sucker (sorry I forgot the English term for that).  And to add onto the drama, our driller failed to go through!  He tried until his face was all red.  I stayed still and looked at his driller in puzzlement.  Later, we found out that his driller had hit a metal plate put in by StarHub as an attempt to defend its cable (whoever came out with that idea is a true genius).  Wrong hole.  So he positioned his tool up a bit and drilled.  It went through OK.

*     *     *     *     *

It is true.  There is a high chance that if you do not know what you are doing, your mioTV may take 30 to 40 minutes to get switched on.  The SingTel duo said to me that it is IMPORTANT to switch off the power at the mioTV box BEFORE turning off the power main.  Failing to do so may incur a 30 to 40 minutes penalty the next time you switch on mioTV.  If I may backtrack a bit, I also love SingTel for keeping us alert and proactive in not creating a problem in the first place.  The solution can be so simple that you feel like a genius knowing it.

PS. What if I have a sudden power failure while mioTV is on?  Read on and you will understand my concern.

*     *     *     *     *

Contrary to how some may perceive, I love to embrace change.  Take wireless phone as an example.  I have changed from Nokia 8850 to Nokia N85 to Nokia N95 to Nokia N96 to Nokia 97 to now, a Nokia N900 over a decade (on a more serious note, I did change from nVidia to ATI and being a PC gamer to a PS3 gamer).  My next phone is likely to be a different model of a Nokia.  So, how does changing from StarHub TV to SingTel mioTV feel like?

Since during this promotion period (what a scary marketing phrase coming from SingTel), all the channels are opened for viewing, I requested for my favorite girl-fight-girl, girl-fight-lots-of-guys, girl-feed-girl-with-blood movie “Blood, The Last Vampire”.  It is on demand, so once I click OK, the movie started.  Wow.  That is pretty cool.  OK, the censorship is horrible (that’s why I seldom buy DVDs here) but that is nothing to do with SingTel.  Will I pay S$6.42 per movie?  I suppose if I think deeper on how much I spend on StarHub TV’s movie channels a month (S$28) and end up probably not watching any, if I think deeper on how many DVDs that I have bought thinking that I would watch but still in wraps, S$6.42 per movie may seem reasonable.  I don’t think Cynthia will be delighted to drop the Star Movies, HBO, and HBO HD channels currently playing in StarHub TV.  So all these thoughts are purely academical.

Net-net, what does this mean to me?  It means Cynthia now has StarHub TV and SingTel mioTV channels to watch.  I can say goodbye to console gaming and eBay off my PS3 today.

PS. I do like mioTV’s ability to retain the signal’s aspect and resolution and let us have 3 levels of zooming in and stretch and what not.  That way, the faces and arms on TV for the non-HD channels are not stretched unnaturally.

*     *     *     *     *

I have always wanted to make a listing of the electrical appliances used across four power sockets in my living room here in my website.  I guess now is a right time to do so.

I think I may have reached a critical stage on how many electrical appliances I can support in my living room.  I kid you not.  If I am not careful in manually load balance the demand, the circuit breaker would trip.  If I am lucky, my home would be blacked out.  Otherwise, the entire tower may black out.  I pray that none from my condo reads this.

In no particular order, here is a laundry list of what are plugged in, of which three of the four power mains can be switched off if not used.  That is a pretty sophisticated power saving mechanism I have derived lately.

  1. Plasma TV
  2. Wireless headset that is perpetually connected to the TV
  3. Main telephone
  4. Portable telephone (with charger)
  5. Sony Playstation 3
  6. Network-attached Storage (my home server and more)
  7. Squeezebox (to stream my music wirelessly)
  8. Squeezebox controller (believe it or not, it is a computer on its own)
  9. Audio amplifier (that is also used for gaming, video, home studio, and etc.)
  10. CD player
  11. Blu-ray player
  12. Radio player
  13. StarHub Hubstation HD
  14. mio Box (modem and home network for broadband)
  15. mioTV setup box
  16. Wired modem for mioTV
  17. HDD recorder (because my mioTV does not come with one)
  18. Network switch (yes, I have that many devices)
  19. 24″ LCD computer monitor
  20. My power hungry computer
  21. Maxtor external on-the-fly backup drive for my computer
  22. Printer
  23. 22″ LCD computer monitor
  24. Cynthia’s computer
  25. Computer speakers for Cynthia’s computer
Categories
Linguistic My Hobbies

Objects In The World Of Spanish, And The Distractions That Entail

Learning a new language makes me feel like a kid once again.  It is long, hard, made of wood, and we use it to write, to sketch, and to paint, what is it?  And my study partner would answer, “Pencil!”, in Spanish.  And it would be my turn to ask, “What is it?”.  “A handkerchief”.  “What is it for?”.  “To wipe nose!”.  So on, and so on.  For the obsessive compulsive me, this exercise is ideal to practice for our upcoming Spanish examination.  Unfortunately Cynthia is far from being an OCD.  And she prefers to watch television instead.

Learning should be fun.  The beauty of a language is not what the words mean but what one can do with them.  To that extend, I love learning expressions.  Every culture has its unique way to express a certain idea.  In English, there is a saying: Every cloud has a silver lining.  I think it is beautiful, though at time of a heavy downpour, I can hardly find any silver lining.  Dark patches all over the sky, that is all I see.  But expressions like this stick to our minds.  In Spanish, the same idea is expressed in a more practical term.  No hay mal que por bien no venga, which roughly translate to good things won’t come when nothing is bad.  Don’t think too hard on the logic involved.  My mind goes into an infinite loop whenever I ponder too hard on the Spanish version of every cloud has a silver lining.

Learning new words, I must say, is hardly possible without dictionaries.  Kids nowadays are so blessed.  The online free ones are even better than some of the paid ones.  By right, I would imagine that with an explosion of readily available online knowledge, kids nowadays should be super kids in no time.  Yes?  One may be awed by the movie Matrix when Neo learns Kung Fu via an instant download from an optical disk.  The 20 years younger version of me back in the nineties would too be awed by the fact that one can learn the overview of Spanish history – or any topic of my choice – with a click of a button at Wikipedia today.  Or to learn how to bake a cake at YouTube.  Perhaps with the explosion of online knowledge comes an explosion of distractions in an equal magnitude.  That may be why our kids are still not the super kids we would have expected.  Or because knowledge is so readily available, we seldom make an effort to memorize.  That would explain why I keep searching the same Spanish word online again and again.  The penalty of not memorizing a word is another click of a button.  Hardly a penalty at all.

Learning objects is more fun that I thought.  Cloth hanger in Spanish is called percha.  Informally speaking, ser una buena percha is an expression that means to have a good figure (for girls).  I suppose if one’s body is good enough to hang clothes, one’s figure must be good?  My favorite one is pañuelo that means handkerchief.  Instead of saying it is a small world, there is a Spanish expression that says the world is a handkerchief (¡el mundo es un pañuelo!).

Learning online could be distracting.  What does a comb use for?  Peinarse.  I looked up the word and was attracted by the poetic usage of the verb comb (peinar).  Las aves peinan las olas depicts the beautiful graphical scene of the birds gently combing through the waves.  And by looking up the meaning of secarse (to dry), I stumbled upon the sentence me sequé las lágrimas (I dried my tears), and was intrigued by the conjugation of the first person past tense of ‘to dry’.  Soon, I am staring at how to express crying one’s heart out in Spanish (llorar a lágrima viva).  I am pretty sure none of these matters for my Spanish examination.  But I think I am too old to study solely for an examination.  Don’t you think?