Problems

CAn't say much...

have to debug my computer..

Couldn't start it up just now...

Gave me quite a scare...

Say got hardware problems..

hope I don't get a BSOD ("Blue Screen of Death")

LAter....

Mysterious neighbour

From where he entered the neighbourhood no one knows.

Up and out, early in the morning,

returning in the dead of the night...

We wonder where he works,

but we will never know.

Living like a phantom he goes,

Never once came over to say hello.

A character out of a book you may say,

But living next door is what I claim.

I hope to see at least his shadow,

one of these days.

A mysterious neighbour he will stay,

Until his presence can be shown.

Like stated above, I got a new beighbour recently. I don't know when he moved in or where he came from. The few of us neighbours have have been wondering what he does for a living. Yep... Its a he... One of my neighbours had the honour of catching a glimpse of him.

It juse leaves us speculating. A single guy, living in the corner 5 room flat, who goes out before anyone does in the wee hours of the morning, and comes back later than anyone else??

Did I mention that the neighbour who caught a glimpse of him was at 2am in the morning when he was working overtime and had to come home later than usual....

Hmm... Mysterious.

Rain to Sun

Rain to Sun

Finally! After almost two weeks of incessant rain, the sky has cleared up!
After those weeks of switching off my computer because of the lightning, not to mention two blackouts, there isn't a need to worry about it any more!! yeah!!!

More Copyright Laws

Here are more Copyright laws governing what we put in our blogs. Rates stated are said to be "competitive".

But seriously, paying $1000 a year (the amount you have to pay to put 10 songs or less) to put background music on your blog is ridiculous especially when majority of the bloggers who would actually put music on their blogs would be students. And they are expecting students to pay for it too.

Ok, you can say $1000 a year, which translates to about $84 a month is reasonable, but most casual student bloggers would not be able to find the money to pay for it. I think the easier way out for students would be to get it off their blogs.

Ultimately, the decision lies with the bloggers themselves.

Below is the a Channel News Asia Article taken from their website
(for bloggers take note of those in bold)

The Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS) has set up a one-stop centre to license music works for digital distribution.

COMPASS helps to protect and promote the copyright interests of composers, lyricists and publishers of musical works.

The move is seen as yet another move to reduce the spread of illegal music downloads.

To provide songs for downloads, a company like SoundBuzz needs to first clear the copyrights for them.

Previously, it had to obtain separate licences from nine different music publishers.

The new one-stop centre, up since beginning of the year, allows the company to just apply for a single licence.

But bloggers need to take note.


Dr Edmund Lam, CEO and Director of Composers and Authors Society of Singapore, said: "Currently, the trend is that we see an increasing number of bloggers that copy music into their web pages without obtaining the legitimate corporate licenses.


"We would encourage such bloggers to come to the one-stop centre to apply for the necessary licence. We are charging a rate of $1,000 for bloggers that does not exceed the usage of 10 songs."


(p.s. The following values are quoted from the January 12, 2006 The Straits Times, Home Section, page H7:
$5000 for 11 to 49 songs. $10000 for over 50 songs.

COMPASS plans to introduce two new technologies to identify illegal music websites in about six months.

One technology is called the webcrawler where it will go through the net and search for sites that have exploited musical works.

The other technology is called fingerprinting. What it does is it identifies the type of music that has been downloaded, and checks if the musical works have the appropriate copyright licences. - CNA/de

At version 7 already

Wow. This blog has just reached its 1st anniversary not long ago and has already gone thorugh 7 major revisions to the Layout. Currently the layout is at version 7.2.

Been learning eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), after I had familiarized myself with XHTML and CSS standards by creating this site. Although can say XSLT technology has been introduced quite some time ago.

I'm taking some time off to create a database for my contacts using XML and XSLT. My contact list is currently in a mess, with most of it stored in my handphone. Must make a hardcopy one of these days.

Yea!! finally the Government's website decides to embrace RSS. Been waiting for a year. Suggested long time ago for them to use it. Finally I can get reports easily using thunderbird instead of getting emails containing links to the site almost daily from them.

Also after a long 2 week wait. Bleach ep. 63 and 64 is out. Still waiting for DB or Bleach-Society to get it subbed. Wish I could understand Japanese, then no need to have to wait even longer. Its almost 10 hours after the airing. Should be out soon....

Warnings Not Heeded

I've deleted/edited the tags and warned time and time again, NOT to post any commercial advertising in my tagboard BUT my warnings were not heeded at all.

Well, that leaves me with no choice.

"Congratulations" to the IP address 85.64.110.102 for being the first to be entered into my Tagboard's Ban IP list.

WHOIS information on 85.64.110.102
IP location: United States - New York - New York - Provider Local Registry
Reverse IP: No websites hosted using this IP address.
Blacklist Status: Currently listed in the 'Spam and Open Relay Blocking System' database

Mis-used

Someone or some auto-generating comment spam system has been misusing my tagboard.

First was the "Phentermine" tag...
Then there was another which was even more straight-forward in its marketing.

Had to delete the tags. Had to disable the blogger comments system the last time (till now) because of all these spam-marketing related comments and now they are targeting tagboards???

ばかもの

Maybe I should start putting IP bans on those who misuse.

Happy New Year

Yepz!! Its the 1st day of the 1st month of the New Year!! In other words Happy New Year to everyone out there!!!

Oh boy... New Year, New Start, New Resolutions... Nope.. I won't say whats mine.. Let me keep it a secret! =)

Wonder who is Phentermine.. Thanks for tagging my tagboard and the compliment. Although I guess I will never know who that is as it seems like one of those auto generated comment adverts/spam.

Anyway.. very busy clearing stuff now that I have started..

Happy New Year to all again!!