I've moved my blog and portfolio to http://fusedthought.com/en/blog. However, this site will still be kept as an archive...
Individual entires can still be accessed using their trackback links.
This is plain interesting.. Chance open a site talking about a Thumbdrive which was bought from China, which turned out to be fake. So beware...
Take a look: 
Full article at: http://www.gadget9.com/2007/06/17/usb-thumdrive-from-china/. Picture originally from there too.
This should be in my tech blog, but I thought it would be nicer here... seems interesting what the opensource community can do nowadays.
The question on whether there is a need to upgrade to a new OS is really quite pertinent...
The two OS here in question is Windows Vista using Aero interface and Ubuntu Linux running Beryl. I believe the same effects can also be achieved using Compiz which Beryl is based on.
Cheers
Some quotes which I saw on television and stuff
It doesn't matter how people say how you should be.
The important thing is how you want to be.
Below are a few by Oscar Wilde. I heard one of it from Oprah Primetime.
Ambition is the last refuge of failure
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal
Cheers...
(I'm going Mad over Studies and going Moo over Mootools.. Ok.. this is far too random... )
I was replying to a thread in STOMP forum when these thoughts suddenly came to me in my reply.
The phrase "There Is No Explanation" is, in itself, an explanation (GenSephyr)
Sounds weird? After thinking about it, you'll come to realize that it is quite true.
In one's life, there are countless experiences and sights we have seen, smelled, felt, heard etc. However, with each of these, a reason is sought. Questions like "why is that happening?" is always asked, especially by the young ones.
Whenever that question is asked, whether to ourselves or someone, the explanations given comes from one's experiences. More often than not, these explanations have scientific or religious backgrounds. However, what about those that aren't explained either by our religious or scientific reasonings or, taking it further, can't even be explained when you Google it or put it through some other search engines like Yahoo or Windows Live Search?
At that juncture, the answer to yourself would be "there is no explanation (for now)".
Let's take this out of context and give an example.
For example, in a Mathematics question. The teacher tells you that "a x b = |a||b|sinӨ" (its in the topic of vectors). You ask, how the formula came about. The teacher answers that it is too complicated to answer.
At this point, in order for you to accept that formula, the explanation behind the formula (for the student) would be "its too complicated to know".
Take this case above and put it in the previous context, wouldn't the phrase "there is no explanation" which is similar to "its too complex to know" be the explanation for the unexplained?
Don't know if I make sense here but, I'll just end here with you in thoughts (or maybe not)...
Its been sometime since I blogged as I haven't switched on my computer for about a week or so. Many things have happened.... New friends were made, but sadly, some were lost.... Well, back to the blog topic....
hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
A friend was telling me about a long word in a dictionary. Well, what can I say. Long words are intriguing.... we just cant get enough of it.
Remember Mary Poppins? There was a song with the word: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. The word is obviously not a real English word. However, there are real English words which are just as long. One example would be “Antidisestablishmentarianism”
There is even an hypothetical disease of the lungs, caused by inhaling mineral or metallic dust. The name of the disease is: “pneumonoultramicrosopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”
For the uninitiated, according to Wikipedia, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words...
The word itself is an irony.. as a person who has sesquippedaliophobia, would fear the word itself.
So after this post, I hope no one gets hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!!
(N.B. All meanings are obtained from Wikipedia)
There are always somethings which is just paradoxical
Like the sentence on Wikipedia: “This sentence is false” (The liar paradox).
A paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox)
There are many experiences that results in a paradoxical situation that one may not be able to describe or put in words. It just seems so awkward and sometimes confusing.
Another example would be: “If truth does not exist, the statement ‘truth does not exist’ is a truth, thereby proving itself incorrect.” (Nihilist paradox taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes)
Sidetracking.. ok.. actually still on topic....recent events followed by a reflection lead to me to conclude with this quote....
“We have to (learn how to) Let Go in order to Hold On (to something)....” (GenSephyr)
Paradoxical? Ironical? But quite true if you think about it... Many of these quotes depends on how you see it, or from what “angle” you look at it.
(N.B. and disclaimer: If you find any quote here in this post anywhere else (which is recognized to have been said by any person long time ago) but not cited properly, ... inform me so I can do the relevant citation or changes to include proper citation to the correct person... but for now, I take credit for the last quote about Letting Go... )
Its really a wonder what kind of issues public toilets can throw up. Two issues that is almost intolerable... especially the first...
Issue One: Cheeky Uncles (Usually quite old)..
Thankfully these type of people are a minority... These people, trying to peep across urinals, can't mind their own business... Such creeps. You would think they feel that they aren't obvious in their peeping ethics.
Just the other day I was at a heartland shopping center toilet, I saw one uncle, probably about 50-something going 60 years old.... He kept turning his head side to side, looking around and sometimes even stretching his neck, trying to mind OTHER people's business.... The guy beside couldn't take it and left. I exited too. Couldn't tolerate that cheeky old guy...
Issue Two: Doors
You really wonder what are doors for....
Doors are suppose to keep what happens inside a particular area from what others aren't suppose to see.. So then I wonder, why do they put a stopper in front of the door keeping the main toilet door permanently opened.... So whatever activity that happens inside... No wonder nowadays, newer toilet designs do away with doors...
However, doing away with doors means a risk of people entering the wrong toilet...
For example, at a shopping center along orchard road, one guy came out of the male toilet and almost walked straight to the female toilet if not for the few of us who shouted out...
Toilets... one can wonder how many events can be associated with it....
Ok.. This post is gonna sound like a big rant and most would probably be turned off by the web jargon. Oh well... here goes...
As the title suggested, its about markup languages. Well we don't seem to get enough of it. Although mostly based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) which made things slightly easier. In fact, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and the reformulated HTML base on XML rules: the XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is like a subset to XML.
Blogger
With the introduction of the new Blogger beta, is the introduction of a complete set of template-ing tags. It now takes XML tags instead of the classic HTML tags. Not that the support of the old tags have broken, you can choose classic if you want to, but then whats the point of upgrading if you don't use it?
Have you noticed that the you no longer need to wait to republish the entire site or the "Publish Index Only" etcetera? Well, I heard that Blogger works differently now. Instead of having published static files, the files are brought together dynamically before serving up to the browser. When a file is requested, information about the widgets and post and headers are gathered and then a HTML file is generated. It reminds me of PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor), Adobe / Macromedia ColdFusion and evem the newer Adobe / Macromedia Flex Data services.
Well judging from the namespaces given, it seems that it may be named Google Markup Language (GML).. But then again, GML also stands for Geography Markup Language for those who are familiar with mapping tools.
And by the way, namespaces refers to the xmlns section. In an attempt to explain: "XML namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references." (Source: W3C) But really namespaces are more useful than that and frankly, I don't know much about it myself.
Its going to take sometime again before I can come up with any new layout that conforms to w3c standards. However, for the quick and easy way of customizations, there is actually a website which already does some hacking into the new blogger beta templates. Hackosphere has some excellent methods and hacks. I use their label widget hack too..
With a 3 new namespaces, I really hope Blogger would release the schema for the namespaces. Doing so is going to make development of the templates even easier. With tools like XML Spy and the excellent Open-Source Eclipse Integrated Development Envrionment (IDE) where it is possible to customize it to use custom schemas (.xsd files).
XSD by the way "is a library that provides an API for manipulating the components of an XML Schema as described by the W3C XML Schema specifications, as well as an API for manipulating the DOM-accessible representation of XML Schema as a series of XML documents, and for keeping these representations in agreement as schema are modified." (Source: Eclipse Community)
And well API stands for Application programming interface. I shan't attempt to go into it and act like I know it well.. because I don't...
Adobe/Macromedia Flex
Well this is something that I am looking into now, ever since the release of version 2 of Flex, and the release of the free Flex 2 SDK. It uses a customized version of XML too. Known as MXML. Again, knowing XML is useful here.It is to be a framework for RIA (Rich Internet Application) development. Flex generates Flash (.swf) files as the front-end.
There isn't much I can say here since I just started looking into it.
However, for the curious, you can look at the Flex website at http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/.
Its quite free in a sense as you can develop Flex Applications with just the SDKs and a editor of your choice. My favorite is Eclipse, but even Notepad will do.
ColdFusion
Its been in the market for sometime. Can't say much about it though... Never really taken to it since ColdFusion pages require a coldfusion support to be installed on the server.
However, like the rest mentioned here, ColdFusion also has its own Markup Language called the CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language)....
And??... (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Beyond)
The list goes on and on and on... There are definitely more out there which other may know and I have not heard of. But the list is definitely growing. The only good thing that comes out of this is that it increases a person's employability to have these skills in the age of Web 2.0. In fact, Web 3.0 is already being disussed.
Web 2.0 is "a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and since 2004 certain technical and marketing communities have adopted and loosely adapted the phrase." (Source: Wikipedia
Information about the percieved Web 3.0 is still dispersed. But according to ZDnet, Web 3.0 is divided into few secions, namely: API services, Aggregation services, Application services, Serviced clients. There is much that I haven't read about Web 3.0, but for more information, the article on the topic at A List Apart may help shed more light to it.
For now, I guess we'll have to be adaptable to the various languages and look as the web proceeds beyond into semantics, user experiences and controls.
Recently went to two places: 1. Vivocity and 2.IKEA, Courts
Went to Ikea, Courts today, but had dropped by Vivocity a few days ago...
1.Vivocity
Dropped by at vivocity a few days ago. And what luck. It was the day when the Singapore Premiere Curse of the Golden Flower (满城尽带黄金). And the guest is none other than the movie's main actor, Chow Yun Fat (周润发).
For a moment, I wished I was on attachment to SPH.. so I could stand on the less crowded platform. You should see how crazy some people are... shoving and elbowing so they could get a better picture... Not that I was a fan, but how often do you get to see a movie star in town? I wasn't the crazy few in front, but I did get a good look... Manage to get a picture...Not that clear though...
(I see many phones... lets leave for the movie!)
Anyway, took a nice walk around the place.. Its huge.. though abit of a bore.. However, the place would do fine for some one-stop shopping... The roof of the place have this pond/pool or whatever you call... I guess they can just take away the "No Swimming sign... it just isn't working. 2 days I went there and I can safely say there has been an increase in the number in the water...I found it incredulous that some even come prepared!! A change of clothes and swimming trunks!!
I know this is abit random, but the entire place on the outside doesn't look very interesting either.. felt that the off-white color of the building was made the whole building look so old and boring with a grey background. A brighter color of white would have been better.. Oh well...
and oh another pic:
(Let's Play HangMan)
2. IKEA and Courts
Can't believe that I actually gone to a megastore's grand opening in Tampines... That partly because wanted to go to Ikea which was situated next door.
The Grand Opening of the Courts Megastore today got Mega Crowded. Likened to the Ikea Megastore opening.
I can't imagine when the Giant Hypermart opens next door in the not so distant future. The place would seriously get congested... Then all we need is other stores like carefour to open one nearby and the area will resemble a beehive with cars inching along the roads... That is unless there are still space to inch along.
Saw a familiar sight though... now I know where the school got the snake in one of the classrooms from... It was on sale at IKEA...
(Snakes Galore!!)
Just for fun, I'll reverse the order of the points my post this time... haha
Random-ness
I know this is totally random, but yea.. I thought it was quite innovative to put the ashtray in a swivel design... haha
Sportsman Appreciation Talk
Today marks the official day that all JC2 PDP heads stepped down. Thus is also marks the new exco official undertaking of their appointment. The rest of us got our certificate of appointment... Sadly.. there there was a glitch somewhere... Won't elaborate further... haha
Haze
The haze isn't getting any better. SG hit a high PSI of 106 and stayed in the unhealthy range for quite sometime. Below is a picture taken in school... The buildings are supposed to be clear...
Saw something interesting.
I am sure there are people who have seen this sign before...I won't mention where I saw this sign. I even took out the name.
I have been wondering for a while what was wrong with it. Then it finally "hit" me.
I am sure we know what the difference between "free sugar" and "sugar free".
Same thing applies here....
Since the place is boasting a free wireless service, shouldn't the sign read "free wifi access"?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't the phrase "wi-fi free hotspot" imply that the place has no wi-fi?
On the sidenote, I fell sick again. Can't even swallow the food properly.. My throat is seriously inflamed. Ouch..
Went to the doctor yesterday. Told me to stay at home, and don't even think about going to school. First time he gave such specfic instruction.
Almost swallowed some metal thing when I went for lunch after seeing the doctor.
Below is a picture:
Luckily, a wasn't drowsy enough not to notice it.
Anyway, here I am, confined to the 4 walls of the house. Didn't even go to school today.. Don't know how the presentation went. Luckily, I did the presentation in html instead of powerpoint. At least they could use it through the browser.
Oh well.. drowsy again... 5 different kinds of medicine. Mostly medicine which will cause drowsiness...
-out-
Did you read the article in today's "mind your body"??
Well, it was on the tourette disorder, a neurological disorder which causes sufferers to haave frequent tics and other complex motor tics. It may even cause some to utter swear words frequently and uncontrollably.
The article featured an interview with a person who has this disorder. As I was reading the story, it occured to me that society has not completely abandon the word "discrimination". A modern society, more highly educated, but discrimination is still not eradicate. Probably discrimination is not very wide spread here, but what about other places??
It was especially hard for him in school. He mentioned his high school, which turns out to be my school... Are we actually do that? That really goes against the culture and tolerance of the school... Probably his time was different from what the school is now....
To him, a simple question like "whats wrong with you?" is taken to be embrassing to him and a sort of discimination and feeling of awkwardness which many would not understand. This display of "care" may instead turn out to have opposite effect.
From here, we must realise that we may, at some point, discriminated against someone, or even cause someone to feel rejected without ever knowing about it.....
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
