The moral of the story is not to never sit on a barrel of radioactive waste, but that even the most comfortable arse can get cancer.
And their daily webcomic.
7 February 2010
5 February 2010
bury it, smother it, murder it
Picture by vladdyphotogeek on flickr
Just wanted to post something so I don’t have to stare at the iPad picture when I come here.
There could be much more stuff to write about to make this less of a pointless entry, but upon thinking about, typing the thoughts out here will make the equally pointless.
At least, that’s my point of view.
p o int less
2 February 2010
iPhail
I’m not an Apple lover. I don’t hate Apple either. I just stay clear of its products.
And just to fall for their marketing ploy by spreading the word further, here’s an alternative take on the latest sensation.
(1) Don't ask me where this came from
And here’s a great clip.
In the end, not only is the name a bit.. interesting, we see that there may be problems ahead.
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iPad is a Chinese clone, or maybe Japanese (2)
Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/technologynews/view/1033961/1/.html
SHANGHAI : The unveiling of Apple’s iPad tablet computer was one of the most anticipated technology events in recent years, but a similar looking device has been on sale in China for nearly six months.
The touchscreen iPad look-alike marks a new milestone by Chinese manufacturers: cloning a product before it had even been announced, mused Shanghaiist.com, a Shanghai city blog, and Shanzhai.com, a tech blog dedicated to Chinese copies.
But Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co. — makers of the Chinese device, which resembles an over-sized iPhone — said Apple appeared to be the copycats.
“We don’t understand. Why did they make the same thing as us?” Huang Xiaofang, an executive at the company, told AFP.
The iPad-like “P88″ was launched in August and was on show last year at the Internationale Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin, she said.
“We launched it earlier,” she said.
Although thicker and heavier than the iPad, the P88’s specifications boasts a slightly larger screen, faster processor, larger memory and, unlike the iPad, has USB ports, according to the manufacturer.
But its battery life is only 1.5 hours compared to the iPad’s 10 hours.
Apple’s first iPads will ship worldwide at an entry-level price of 499 dollars in two months.
But for gadget fanatics who cannot wait, Huang said the P88 is available now on Great Loong Brother’s web site.
Over in Japan, electronics group Fujitsu insisted Friday it had been selling “iPad” mobile devices for years, spawning speculation over a possible trademark spat with Apple.
Fujitsu Ltd. said its US subsidiary launched a sleek multimedia device, which allows retail store clerks to keep inventory data and manage other business operations, in 2002.
The US unit made a trademark application for the name “iPad” with the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2003, said Fujitsu spokesman Masao Sakamoto in Tokyo.
The application is still pending and has not been registered, he said.
Sakamoto said Fujitsu was yet to decide on how it may react after Apple’s tablet computer was launched at a huge media event in San Francisco this week.
“As we are now sorting out the facts, we have not decided on what action we may take at the moment,” he said.
- AFP/sf
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(1) Image originally found here.
(2) Article source here.
iPad is a Chinese clone, or maybe Japanese
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SHANGHAI : The unveiling of Apple’s iPad tablet computer was one of the most anticipated technology events in recent years, but a similar looking device has been on sale in China for nearly six months.
The touchscreen iPad look-alike marks a new milestone by Chinese manufacturers: cloning a product before it had even been announced, mused Shanghaiist.com, a Shanghai city blog, and Shanzhai.com, a tech blog dedicated to Chinese copies.
But Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co. — makers of the Chinese device, which resembles an over-sized iPhone — said Apple appeared to be the copycats.
“We don’t understand. Why did they make the same thing as us?” Huang Xiaofang, an executive at the company, told AFP.
The iPad-like “P88″ was launched in August and was on show last year at the Internationale Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin, she said.
“We launched it earlier,” she said.
Although thicker and heavier than the iPad, the P88’s specifications boasts a slightly larger screen, faster processor, larger memory and, unlike the iPad, has USB ports, according to the manufacturer.
But its battery life is only 1.5 hours compared to the iPad’s 10 hours.
Apple’s first iPads will ship worldwide at an entry-level price of 499 dollars in two months.
But for gadget fanatics who cannot wait, Huang said the P88 is available now on Great Loong Brother’s web site.
Over in Japan, electronics group Fujitsu insisted Friday it had been selling “iPad” mobile devices for years, spawning speculation over a possible trademark spat with Apple.
Fujitsu Ltd. said its US subsidiary launched a sleek multimedia device, which allows retail store clerks to keep inventory data and manage other business operations, in 2002.
The US unit made a trademark application for the name “iPad” with the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2003, said Fujitsu spokesman Masao Sakamoto in Tokyo.
The application is still pending and has not been registered, he said.
Sakamoto said Fujitsu was yet to decide on how it may react after Apple’s tablet computer was launched at a huge media event in San Francisco this week.
“As we are now sorting out the facts, we have not decided on what action we may take at the moment,” he said.
Over in Tokyo, Japanese electronics group Fujitsu insisted Friday it had been selling “iPad” mobile devices for years, spawning speculation over a possible trademark spat with Apple.
Fujitsu Ltd. said its US subsidiary launched a sleek multimedia device, which allows retail store clerks to keep inventory data and manage other business operations, in 2002.
The US unit made a trademark application for the name “iPad” with the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2003, said Fujitsu spokesman Masao Sakamoto in Tokyo.
The application is still pending and has not been registered, he said.
Sakamoto said Fujitsu was yet to decide on how it may react after Apple’s tablet computer was launched at a huge media event in San Francisco this week.
“As we are now sorting out the facts, we have not decided on what action we may take at the moment,” he said.
- AFP/sf
1 February 2010
30 January 2010
water… water..
The title is meant to be a reference to an episode of My Boss My Hero.
Picture by tim.perdue on flickr
But it is not water I am drinking much of these days.
I recall having a discussion with someone, and it was mentioned that having a bottle by you, instead of going to the kitchen for a glass, makes you drink more water. Personally I always use a bottle, and I refill it every so often.
A guess would be the bottle contains a larger volume than a glass, and the drinker ends up being more likely to drink more. Or that because the bottle is always within reach/sight, the urge to drink comes more often.
Either way, I drink a lot of water.
At least that’s before the term started getting heavy with work (and it’s only the end of week 3).
For some reason I recall fairly accurately my water consumption so far for today.
3 cups of coffee
3 cups of (real brewed) green tea
1 cup of pokka green tea with genmai
>10 mouthfuls from the bottle from the many times of walking past the fridge
2 bottles of water
What’s the point of this entry you say?
None of course. None at all.
Just like my existence.
bleaargh.. splat
That is how you puke blood, something I am close to doing these days.
But let’s talk about slightly happier things, a rare topic here I guess.
The three not-so-tall ones
The coffee and tea maker and bottle of green tea are new. Just bought them today. The jar of coffee – not so new, and at the current rate, will be empty pretty soon.
The coffee maker is my latest toy, and it will give me a reason to drink more tea, and maybe buy coarsely ground coffee beans for different taste. It’d be great to drink loads of different types of coffee. That’s such a simple ambition.
And genmai green tea is fantastic. You should try it too.
Wonder what’s the point of this entry, and why it seems disjointed? I’m feeling tired, and trying to watch a webcast of a guest lecture, and trying to wake my neighbours by drumming the joint of my toe against the cabinet, producing a hollow knocking noise.
If you know me long/well enough, you’ll know I’m cranky and irritable when exhausted.
Maybe that is true for most people? Maybe not.
26 January 2010
butter, marmalade, jam and kaya
Picture by ittichai on flickr
Kaya, because I’m local.
Tutorials start. Assignment deadlines appear, and I find myself juggling homework, housework, and fighting the flu. Feel conned as some medicine that claims to be effective and non-drowsy ends up accomplishing the opposite instead. Instead of getting better, I find myself wanting to sleep most of the time.
And sleep was what I got, on the bus ride home. Since this term I would normally walk home (it’s about a half hour walk, and 2.5km), but since I was feeling unwell I took the bus. It was slightly past 6pm.
Got on the bus, found a nice seat, leaned against the side and fell asleep promptly. Twenty minutes, 2 bus stops and a nice lap later, I woke up to find myself still on the same road outside school, in horrendous traffic.
Normally twenty minutes I would have been off the bus already.
Jokingly I texted a friend saying that I would probably have reached home earlier if I crawled home, fainted halfway, got admitted to hospital and then discharged.
Such is the traffic situation here.
A friend is needs a questionnaire answered regarding public transportation system and stuff. Help out here.
22 January 2010
more randomness
Picture by tuis on flickr
(Wonder if this picture is actually local. The bus looks suspiciously like SBS Transit’s)
Just more random nonsense after the short hiatus.
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Somehow the final episode of a series is more interesting when you are under the wrong impression that there is another episode, i.e. you’re not watching the last episode. Or perhaps I like getting surprised. I like to predict what is going to happen in the future, and somehow I link my opinion on the show to its ability to surprise me. Hence on that aspect Avatar failed badly, since I got almost every bit. Then again it’s probably a common sort of plot, except I didn’t watch Pocahantas as well.
But anyway, I finished a series, watched the last episode thinking that it was the second to last, and was surprised when the show headed towards a resolution. Isn’t it nice to be surprised?
By the way, I’m not going to say what show, except it was largely predictable once the setting and characters have been somewhat defined. For some reason it was highly rated, I guess due to the unique presentation. Not to my tastes though.
What’s the point of saying all these if I’m not going to say what show it was?
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The best thing about being pessimistic is that you’re always either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
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Sometimes it feels really weird to be a citizen of your country, born and bred there, only to feel marginalised. Once again ICT ruins holiday plans for work and stuff.
The new Pioneer magazine has on its cover “You make us proud”. I recall during my 2 years when we were doing some real worthwhile work in the logistics behind NDP, we were told to hide from the public because we were in work dress, and not some spanking new and sparkling uniform.
Proud indeed.
And I’m sure the glossy paper for the magazines could have been put to better use.
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Somehow it occurred to me. People aren’t like wine. They don’t age over time. They age through suffering.
21 January 2010
i’m back if you missed me
Not that there was a noticeable absence.
But anyway for the past few days I was without my laptop. The mainboard died and it had to be sent back to Lenovo for replacement. And I was having problems with the desktop.
Felt super unproductive on the desktop. I don’t have a lot of work programs there. Just games.
But oh well, finally the desktop is back, and the past couple of hours have been spent reinstalling my nonsense since I reformatted and reinstalled Win7.
Mine happens to have more functions, and a nicer picture. From xkcd
Now the laptop is back, there’s a lot of work to be done. Time to get into the working mood.
And time to brainwash myself into liking math. Unfortunately 2 out of 4 modules are math heavy. One is an engineering calculus module. The other an algorithms module. I feel so cheated sitting in a computing class listening to words like “induction”, “limits”, “as n approaches infinity” and “l’Hôpital’s rule”. According to Wikipedia, it is also known as Bernoulli’s rule. I wonder why we don’t use that name instead, since at least I’ve heard of that guy, and it is way more pronounceable. I’ve seen the variations of the name, such as one understandably without all the accent marks, as well as hospital. Apt perhaps, more of this in my life I could just get warded for high stress.
I wish there’s a nicer way to end this post. And I’ll just leave the wish at this for now.
15 January 2010
tower
Blow wind blow
It’s painful readjusting back to a more “normal” sleep cycle. I’ve been sleeping from 5am to 12 these days. Now it’s probably going to be 5 to 9.
Been watching quite a few series of shows, while I still have time. After 1 week of lessons, it seems like what I’m watching now may well be the last for a while.
Or maybe for all eternity.
Multi-tasking: Watching a show, appreciating the jokes, translating the words, and building a card tower at the same time. I got it to 4 levels and discovered I had enough leftover to build another layer.
If only other things were so easy to expand on.
But then again, if you’ve seen my collection of cards, you’d agree I can make many many more layers. Just this particular brand of card I have 3-4 decks. Unopened. This red deck happens to be the I-don’t-mind-it-being-destroyed deck.
Suddenly it feels that building card towers can be an interesting distraction. Or avenue to channel excess “processor time” while watching shows and stuff. Good to train to still the hand.
And hopefully the mind.
Somehow it feels that the tower can be like life. You build it bit by bit, but one mistake, or a slight disturbance, and everything just falls apart.
