a Geek's Perspective

I bought my CPU, the AMD Phenom II X2 550, a dual core processor last year based on the multiple reviews that it could be unlocked to a quad core. To simplify things, the Phenom II X2 (dual core) is nothing more than a Phenom II X4 (quad core) with two cores disabled. Originally these cores were disabled because of low yields, but over time yields on quad-core Phenom IIs should be high enough to negate the need for a Phenom II X2. There in lies the simplicity of this unlock. However, when I first got my motherboard and processor, it didn't work and I was disheartened. Yet, it was definitely powerful enough to support / run whatever I had to throw at it and I was happy.

Just last night, I was checking out the price of a new quad core as I was looking at the pricelists to set up a new computer for my cousin. I am not sure why, but was suddenly tempted to try the unlocking again. This morning, I downloaded a new bios, played around with the settings and lo and behold :) it was done! I got my 4 processors working and everything else is working great.

when one door closes.. another opens...

we are often so preoccupied with the lost of some opportunities that we tend to miss the new opportunities present to us. I have been lucky at my career. It has not been the smoothest of paths but I am happy with what chances and opportunities it has given me thus far. Its going to be a challenging year ahead.. time to work hard!

Anyway, I am seriously getting fatter. Weighing in at about 65 kg now, and it is definitely not muscle mass gained. Damn. Haha...

So.. its time to train. And this is my geeky setup for jogging.
Bluetooth earphones linked up with a GPS phone that measures the distance + calories burnt of my run :) Everything connects easily and it just works (though some might say the initial setup is a PITA). Actually, knowing how far you run and how fast you run is a great motivator.

6 months ago, I re-contracted Starhub for the HP Mini-note 2133, at that time, I already had the intentions to get a netbook and was seriously considering the many iterations of the eeePC. The Mini 2133 then was really quite crappy, with a slow processor, overheating problems and poor battery life. With all this things going against it, I quickly sold it for $710. Only recently, Starhub started to offer the newer model, the mini 1000 as part of their recontract goodies and that got me interested. I sourced for one of them through the HWZ forums and found a buyer selling it for guess what, $710 too.

The mini 1000 is much better than the older 2133. It is lighter, faster and comes with an internal 3G modem, allowing me to put to good use my free 3G sim card from Starhub. Evidence of the portability was tried and tested today as I connected to the net from various places in Singapore. I was supposed to help the gf with her flight check in details but totally forgot about it till I received a reminder sms and thanks to the new netbook, was able to settle the flight arrangements when outside. Of course, not everything is perfect. The mini 1000 does not have a great battery life, clocking in ard 2-3 hrs but that should be sufficient for short bouts.

Oh well, just the usual dosage of geekiness...

I managed to dug up some of my old photos while doing all the Chinese New Year spring cleaning, and part of my plan of getting a all in one printer/scanner was to archive some of my old photos which I have not got around doing.

After losing all my files on my harddisk. It took me about a couple of hours to set up my computer, install the OS, and that's it, feels like I'm back to normal.

All I need is a web browser and a messenger tool.

Is that true?

The other applications serve to make my life easier, like office applications, media players etc and are easily replaceable. Hence no big loss that those were gone. On a daily basis, most of the information required is retrievable off the net and I hardly assess personal files. This whole experience also made me realise what are the more important items then...

1. Documents
2. Media
3. Photos
4. Eccentric S/W that requires customisation
5. Obsolete Software w/o Replacement

With that, really need to establish a backup routine, documents due to their size should be synchronised online, and while security might be compromised, it allows for access to information from anywhere. Hence, just need to be a little careful on what is sync-ed to maintain some form of security and it should be good enough. Media is a problem, as those tend to take up tons of space, while Picasa and Flickr etc offers online storage, there tend to be a limit to how much can be stored as well.

So unless space and internet connection speeds increase a fair bit over the next few years, (which very likely it will), I shall stick to the more conservative means of using a spare harddisk as a backup... Oh well, shall take it as a good means to start afresh...

Time really flies especially when one is busy. So much so that many things are just left undone. Twinkle of an eye and I am already 24, sheesh. I thought the holiday month could give me some time to rest but work and the stress level is still quite high.

Heh, overall geekiness was maintained throughout the course of this month thanks to a few bonus-es from the Telcos. Well, firstly recontracted Starhub Cable which for the 24 month contract, comes with a free HP Mini notebook, though not collected yet, should be quite fun to mess around. I probably intend to sell it tho, so if anybody is interested do let me know :). The other thing it came with was a Data Sim card, which allows me to surf for free via 3G. Hmm, useful but the hassle is in swapping sim cards, which resulted in me searching for another 3G phone or a 3G modem to use on-the-go. 

This was where Singtel came in handy, with the relaunch of their online SingTelShop, it came along with a blooper. A 0 dollars 24 month contract. Thanks to my unexplainable obsession with EDMW, I got the contract at almost the last instance before they took it offline. Singtel honoured their mistake and hey, a free 24 month phone contract + Samsung U700 for me, at no costs at all :) Putting in the starhub sim, this phone works well as a a on the go web browser, screen is definitely not as good as my E61 though. However, my dad is eyeing the phone to replace the junk that I got for him last year, oh well, shall hold on to it a little longer before passing over to him.

With that, this week also marks the end of my 3rd night shift, and 4 more days to my first official leave / break from work. Looking forward to it! Work is piling up yet again, and motivation to clear it is really quite low, somehow, more and more just seems to pile up. Oh well, shall give myself this break to recharge and hopefully come back with the energy to do so! (ya right, probably be just extremely tired when I'm back)

I'm always a procrastinator, in alot that I do. Perhaps its just being wishy-washy but never really dared to commit to something even though I might have spent quite abit of time thinking about it and just unwilling to take the final step to see it through. And it shows. In the way I work, in the things that I want to buy, sometimes I thought it could be more of being prudent and not willing to spend, yet, perhaps it really is more of just not willing to set my decision firm. Hmm... food for thought. It's really something I should change and improve, not good to spend too much time thinking, time is never enough :)

Innkeeper: "Would you like to rest here tonight?"
Chrono / Kaer: "Yeah!"
Innkeeper: "That would cost you 100 gold."
Chrono / Kaer: "!! I should just go home."


Nice? Haha.. my old bedsheet is just so cool. Sesame Street, still can see all the popular characters. There are 6 Sesame Street characters on the bedsheet, hmm, most of the popular ones are there, those lacking will be Kermit, the Count.. and hmm.. Argh. I didn't even liked the show last time, hated it, it was so very boring, would rather they show some cartoons instead. The blanket is probably even more kua zhang, ULTRAMAN. That's a permanent feature on my bed as opposed to the bed sheet which does get rotated with some erm, less cartoony ones from time to time.

All my bed accessories has lasted me so long, some probably even outlived me. Well, as they say, all good things must come to an end.


The "new" photo comes out so bland and washed out! Not going to bother retaking though. 

Time to ring in the change, my dad got me a quilt cover. He bought it after I just casually mentioned it in passing, ahh... 

It can be a tad too warm though, especially with my room occasionally resembling that of an oven. But its all soft and fuzzy and most importantly, nice to sleep on top of too! For those nights where tucking under is just too unbearable. The pillows are changed as well, so goodbye to those older than me pillows which have gone a little limp and less and less comfortable.

Oh just decided to blog about my phone today. Hmm, wow, life has been good eh, play with phone, go out, hmm, I wonder where that leaves studying. One of the cool software available on the current Nokia series platform would be Smart2Go, a mapping software released by Nokia. It has maps of many countries in the world, including Singapore. Alright, from what I see so far, the navigation is easily done by search and it works well and fast, since the maps are stored on the memory card.


The software has a very Google-Earth styling, where it will fly around the globe before zooming down to your location, looks nice, functionally might be a bit slow though. Well, after searching for the place, it then brings you to the onscreen map display. Zoom and scroll options are still available. I guess the map might be a bit small but well, it shows me how I can get to the place I want!


There's also an included Route Planner where it does a turn by turn navigation coupled with voice if you have a GPS attached. There's a simulation of that by setting a default speed for the car but I guess that's not too useful. Well, the instructions ain't bad and could be useful when I'm out and could be useful in determining how to get to a place I suppose. For now though, a bus guide might be more useful. :)


Well, erm, my take on it all? Navigation systems are getting quite plentiful, but this is firstly free and quite user friendly and the maps are definitely functional which is all good. It's definitely one of the great software on the phone and well, ya, Singapore is pretty much easy to move around but a little backup isn't a bad thing.

Sucks that you need a separate bluetooth GPS unit though.

Kids always get asked from time to time,
"boy (or girl), what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I can't remember my answer to that question, to some extents I guess work always appeared very much a burden to me. There were only that few jobs or supposedly big words a kid is expected to know.. let's see, the usual list probably goes like this, "engineer, doctor, lawyer, architect, teacher and the ubiquitous fireman and policeman". Or perhaps those were the few jobs that I know, that people felt deserved the recognition from such a vocation. I couldn't remember what I said then, but besides the usual computer stuff, which I am so inclined to, I guess I always had a thing for design or at least, just daydreaming.

The younger me, always had a passion for re-modelling of my room, but that didn't turned out so good considering how my room looks actually, haha. I think I have shifted the furniture around my room quite a number of times now, and its probably like revision 4.2704 (yes, I do not need perfect numbers like 4.0 or 5.0). Before I would start out, I would have multiple drawings of how my room would look, I guess, from isometric and both top down viewpoints, no talent though, especially considering how my art was :). That was around the late primary/early secondary school days.

A tinge of nolstagia, as I grew older, I still dabbled in this interest, and when my dad gotten the Punggol place, he did asked me how I wanted my room to be, etc. I guess, quite lucky that the following pictures survived my multiple hard drives formatting and loss of other files.

Surprisingly, despite Nokia's dominance, never used a Nokia phone before, the last 3 phones I owned were like Sony Ericsson or Samsung, and well, this makes for a nice change. I have been considering to get this phone for quite awhile, the wait was extended also no thanks to Singtel and the Red Wheels promotion, which gave me a $100 dollars voucher but required a student plan, hmm, the corporate plan under Mindef was still a better deal so didn't use the voucher and could have just gotten the phone almost couple of months ago. Well, better late than never!

What can I say, first impression of this phone is that it is wide and kinda bulky, but it makes up for it by being both slim and quite light actually, so it does fit nicely into the pocket. I haven't gotten used to one hand operation, and it might be abit unwieldy at times but it should be a matter of adjustment.

As for the phone itself, features wise, it is amazing. It lacks a camera, which is a great thing for me, the main reason why I considered this phone over the E65 other than the larger screen. It HAS a great screen, think it is as large as the Ipod Video, around 3", I've tried watching anime and trailers on it, quality's decent and definitely watchable, even with the subtitles. Oh, it doesn't come with any easy way of getting audio out to a decent headphones, might need to invest in an connector, which adds more bulk, so thats kinda zzz.

Wifi! Wow.. so many benefits here, browsing on the go, VOIP, synchronising, emails. Especially with Wireless@SG set to become more popular, this is a great feature. It's a 3G phone but that's expensive considering that there is Wifi. The battery life is quite decent too, its been 2 days, and some surfing here and there, some phone calls, usual sms-es and the battery is still at full, will see how long it can last.

I guess, its really a geek toy, Symbian OS allows for use of various software, although probably not as extensible as say windows mobile, but it has a decent community still, and more and more programs should be coming. In the meantime, just enjoying the phone for being so feature - rich!

Just read this article, "Ten Ways Being a Geek Makes You More Attractive" and hey of course, that applies to me! Of course, the natural thing will be to proceed down the checklist of 10 items, seeing which applies to me. So, erm, I might be some way off, but I'm slowly getting there!

1. You're probably very smart. hmm... well, applies to me? Yes, I DO think so. Hahaha.
2. It's hip to be geek.Nope, this doesn't apply to me. But hey, at least I'm not THAT scrawny, no thick glasses, and erm, I am at least good for a Hi or two? Fashionable geeks, hmm, seems like apply to the apple fanboys more! I'm still too much of a geek's geek =\.
3. You geek out on more than just your computer.
   "Ever seen the movie collection of a film geek? Ever had an automotive geek work on your car? Ever seen the body of a fitness geek? The tenacity of someone like us, when applied to hobbies outside computers and the like, can yield impressive results."
   
   Ooo... my tenacity might be abit lacking, but yeah, my interest definitely lies in more than computers alone, how about lightsaber swinging for a change?
4. Geek humor is the best humor.
   Well, I tend to laugh at my own jokes? Who cares what you think? =)
5. You listen to good music.
   Definitely! Bring on some REAL music! (Like those played by way too old 40 year old, tummy bulging, guitar banging old man with long hair)
6. You make good money.
   Nope, not true not true. I'm a poor sad case. Donations welcomed!
7. You fix stuff.
   ZZZZZZ. People remember you for a bad reason haha.
8. You've got your own stuff going on.
   Hmm, well true, but they are all geek stuff (mostly), not like that is such a bad thing in hindsight. I will never run out of things to do, or get bored.
   Yay.. *rushes out to overload my room with more Star Wars toys*
9. You're very articulate.
   "Compulsively reading a few hundred RSS feeds a day yields a vocabulary that could put most college English majors to shame."Oops, but my thesis got torn to shreds for its language! Still in a desolate spirit after that episode. Ah.. the reason why is because I only have 28 RSS feeds, (yeah, actually counted)... 
10. You're passionate.
    Yeah, talk about my craze for album art collection, of only wanting whole albums, of wanting movie folder art, of renaming every thing. Sometimes, passion can be mistaken as a form of enslaving obsession. And cough cough, what's not to like about a guy who's passionate?

1. CAM / TELESYNC (TS)
   Now this 2 versions suck and I strongly recommend to stay away, at least to not spoil the experience of watching the show. This basically means a rip done with a digital video camera. Telesync refers to a better audio capture but its still not a direct encoded source.
2. SCREENER
   Not worth getting, its pretty much equivalent to VCD quality, though some might be better. I generally try to stay away.

1. TELECINE (TC)
   This is a rare term seen and its not to be confused with Telesync above. The quality of this should be rather good as it refers to a drect film copied from the reels.
2. DVD-SCREENER
   Its usually the pre-release version of the actual DVD to be used for commercial advertising purposes. However, its also likely to come with some piracy warning or ticker that runs across the screen and might affect the viewing experience.
3. DVDRIP
   This should be high on the list to look out for. Its a copy of the final released DVD and as long as the ripper has any sense, the visual and audio quality should be very good.

1. HD (1080p, 720P)
   This is getting more common nowadays with bandwidth increasing. However, I still think its a tad too early and in order to truly appreciate this, you need one heck of a display to match it (at least 1080i which is equal to a resolution of 1920×1080 interlaced). For those lucky people out there, you should consider getting this versions but do note that the file sizes are easily 10 GB and likely more for a normal length movie.
2. HDRIP
   This is often more feasible with sizes weighing around 4 GB. They are the compressed versions of the original HDTV while maintaining the resolution. You would need quite a powerful computer to handle the decoding but the quality is really top-notch.
3. Actual DVD Images
   This will be for those people who are looking for the actual DVD experience with menus and such. My personal opinion is that compression quality nowadays is extremely good and I’m happy with the 25% filesize which equates to lesser waiting time.

Andy: "one day if u dun have computer and internet... HOW?"
Sean: "read".
Andy: "haha, so calm ah.. never go kee siao?"

Haha.. being so reliant on my computer, turning it on the moment I wake up, and then off usually only when I'm asleep, is it possible for me to withdraw from it? Yeah, I guess very much so, thinking about the reasons why I use the computer, its really very much for information, or dabbling with things. There's that tinker-ing nature in me, which isn't exactly very good at what it does, but still there.

Now -> Google Reader, my vice for all RSS feeds

Couple of months ago -> Digg, Lifehacker etc

Longer -> Hardwarezone Forums

And of course, my best friend. Google. Haha.

I guess, its just something to take time away from myself, having nothing to do, I need to occupy it. Last night, I learn that my life is just insignificant enough to be void of nothing, and so all these just fills it up.

So I guess, if one were to take all this away, I would just rely on the older form of information. Books. I guess its like how with my computer around, I read the newspaper less? Since I already get such an overdose of information (be it useless) everyday or every moment I am at my comp that I hardly want to read the papers and instead just flipped through it. Like when I'm overseas, which also shows how less computer reliant I can be, I would actively sought out papers and would be more interested to read them cover to cover.

And oh, there's always being just a TV freak too. Just last night, watched the last 2 movies of American Pie + 1 episode of 我猜. However, that would rely on me using my computer so I guess that's out. Books for the win!