I rock, you suck

Divisible by 6 or 7 but not both

2010-12-29T15:28:00.005+08:00

I saw this student posting a problem on her blog and decided to have a go at it in Java. The problem is to print out the numbers below 100 that are divisible by either 6 or 7 but not both. The naive solution is to just loop through all the numbers below 100 and test them using the % operator. However, that might be inefficient if the limit was, say 10000000 instead of 100, so I tried to do it without using the modulus operator. It turns out that there wasn't really that significant a difference below 100000000. Ah well, here's the code anyway.

public class SixSeven{
 public static void main(String args[]){
  int adder=1;
  int six=0;
  int seven=0;
  int limit=100;
  while(six   six+=6;
   seven = six + adder;
   if(six>limit||seven>limit)
    break;
   if(adder==7){
    adder = 1;
    continue;
   }
   System.out.println(six);
   adder++;
   if(adder==7)
    continue;
   System.out.println(seven);
  }
 }
}

On what I will do before I start at the next job

2010-01-20T21:12:00.004+08:00

I have actually been a big fan of Heath Ledger's since "10 Things I Hate About You", but I think this was still a funny conversation.

Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: but i'll likely start in feb
which leaves me with one week break
something i haven't had since i graduated!
woohoo!
JaDe: that's so nice...
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: yeah it is
i can finish up some stuff i've been putting off
like my album and novel
:p
oh, almost forgot my epic feature film
JaDe: who are you working with?
are you doing avatar II or something
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: nah, something grittier
heath ledger begins
a reboot of the heath ledger story
starring christian bale as heath ledger
it's gonna be awesome
JaDe: what
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: there's this part where christian bale plays heath ledger playing the joker in dark knight
JaDe: christian bale does not make heath ledger
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: "who plays christian bale playing batman?" u ask?
adam west, of course
:p
JaDe: ahahahahha that's gonna be awesome
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: yeah
we're gonna have the "POW" and "BAM" stuff
only the latest in special effects for my baby
JaDe: are you aiming for oscards
ocars*
aarahrgahrgahggghh OSCARS
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: lol
JaDe: stupid fingers
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: i'm pretty sure it'll sweep the awards
JaDe: sure
just invite me to the premier
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: needless to say the film will be based on my novel and the soundtrack will be from my album
i'm just worried the universe might collapse because it wasn't built to contain that level of awesome
JaDe: hahah
well arent you afraid
if the universe collapses
where will you be?
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: it's a concern
i'm hoping to get chuck norris to maintain the structural integrity of the universe with his beard

Physician, heal thyself!

2009-08-24T13:33:00.005+08:00

Hmm, I saw this post in the morning. While I am not a fan of the national rag myself, in this instance, mainstream journalism clearly got their facts right. So I wrote this comment on his blog.

"Free software does not equate to open source. One good example of free software that isn’t open source include Google Docs, or pretty much most of the Google Apps. Please editor, check Wikipedia the next time something like this lands on your desk."

Ah, actually, the author could have been using "free software" the way the FSF uses it. While not precisely synonymous with the term "open source" as defined by the OSI, it's pretty close.

Ironically, you could have found this information on the wikipedia article on free software. :)

Even more ironically, it was moderated. One would have thought that someone railing about the lack of journalistic quality in mainstream media would have been less quick to censor on his own blog, but that's by the by. The primary irony here was that he actually committed the sin he accused others of (not checking his facts). Physician, heal thyself!

[Edit]
Oops, my nerd rage was too hasty. Apparently the guy's blog is hooked up with Twitter, which was why some comment originally posted on Twitter appeared on the blog but the comment I posted on the blog did not appear. My bad. Sorry, motochan.

I have a dirty, dirty mind

2009-07-28T22:56:00.000+08:00

So the Zii has finally been released. I took a look at their OS overview and saw the following picture. Immediately, I thought that it plays pr0n out of the box.

Seriously, though, it seems like a cool piece of technology, so go check it out. Also, please donate US$399 to my Beer Fund so I can get one of those. Come on, people, this is no time to be stingy, KTHXBYE.

Can you code?

2009-07-24T13:11:00.002+08:00

Heheh, this made me snigger a little.

His name was Michael Jackson

2009-07-08T10:31:00.002+08:00

This has got to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a while.

Eclipse is bloated

2009-06-27T15:11:00.002+08:00

Why does an IDE require half a gig of disk space? Does it, like, fry my eggs or something? Does it play videos? Isn't it supposed to just help me edit my code?

Seriously.

I am an asshole

2009-05-27T09:15:00.004+08:00

Check out this picture.

I saw someone who said she would date Wolverine and went to all the trouble of changing my display name just so I could crack this joke. And yes, I have two gtalk accounts who are in each others' contact lists.

I deplore competition

2009-05-12T17:44:00.001+08:00

So I'm considering joining this programming competition, and I was talking to a friend about it. She's considering joining too, so here's the conversation that ensued...

Friend: hope to see u too, if i;m joining
Friend: ahhahaha
Don AQ®: gold ÷ 100 = 忍: hahaha if you're joining too i hope u die

As you can see, I am not big on the sportsmanship. Now, where did I leave my can of arsenic?

Why do lesbians turn guys on?

2009-05-08T17:07:00.000+08:00

No idea. But they do.

Let us bridge our cultural and institutional differences in a shuddering display of joy and togetherness and be an example to the rest of the world

You just have to love that line.

Facebook shenanigans

2009-05-06T16:58:00.004+08:00

I feed on the misery of others.

Innocuous News

2009-04-24T12:01:00.000+08:00

Hacker News has recently been renamed to Innocuous News by Paul Graham, because someone complained that he kept getting weird looks from people who thought he was a computer criminal. This is the sort of quaint hacker humour that keeps me going back to it everyday.

Password Generator! For great Justice!

2009-04-19T16:13:00.004+08:00

The other day, I was talking with a friend about the hassle of having to come up with and remember passwords for every site that I have an account with. So I thought, hey, why not write a password generator capable of coming up with unique passwords for each site based on my handle and a password so that I would only need to remember one password?

Well, why not?

Blogger pagination hack update

2009-04-19T16:03:00.005+08:00

It works for labels now, bitches, and if you're already using it, you don't even have to alter your blogger template to enable it. Enjoy.

Yeah, it's been requested before, but I didn't really want to make the effort of figuring out how to do it (hey, I do have other stuff to do). Then someone was actually industrious enough to find out how and, since it was a minor modification, I implemented it. You guys have Alexander to thank for this.

Google's April Fool's joke goes awry

2009-04-01T13:06:00.002+08:00

Breaking news, only on I Rock, You Suck.

I have no inspiration. Sue me.

Epic Fail

2009-03-31T20:27:00.003+08:00

So I failed my driving test today, and I was talking about it with one of my bros.

(07:34:56 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: lol
(07:34:59 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: epic fail!
(07:35:17 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: grand total of 38 points!
[Ed: 20 points and above for the driving test means failure. As can be seen, I was way beyond that.]
(07:35:46 SGT) Friend: what 38 points?
(07:36:03 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i suspect 史上最强！¹
(07:36:12 SGT) Friend: Ohhh
(07:36:15 SGT) Friend: ur driving!
(07:36:17 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: cfm!
(07:36:25 SGT) Friend: cfm 38 is godlike
(07:36:31 SGT) Friend: i suspect u killed someone
(07:36:47 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i got off easy actually
(07:36:54 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: the instructor failed me but kept quiet
(07:36:59 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: we buried the body together
(07:39:03 SGT) Friend: haha 30 points for 1 kill
(07:39:08 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: yeah!
(07:39:13 SGT) Friend: i suspect u did more than just killing someone
(07:39:25 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: cfm i reversed to make sure he's dead
(07:39:30 SGT) Friend: u kill + reverse onto his body
(07:39:33 SGT) Friend: + 8 points
(07:39:41 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: cfm
(07:39:43 SGT) Friend: hahaha
(07:39:48 SGT) Friend: u power
(07:39:51 SGT) Friend: but fear not
(07:39:57 SGT) Friend: i failed 2 times also
(07:39:59 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i already booked may 7th
(07:40:07 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: u failed twice or took twice?
(07:40:12 SGT) Friend: 3rd pass
(07:40:19 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: but i suspect u cannot beat my high score
(07:40:34 SGT) Friend: legend has it the best drivers pass after the 2nd attempt
(07:40:44 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: lol yeah!
(07:40:49 SGT) Friend: ur high score takes a man to do it
(07:41:03 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: are they the ones who are called 烈火战车！²
(07:41:09 SGT) Friend: 38 is like A*
(07:41:23 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i suspect the test is /40 only
(07:41:27 SGT) Friend: cfm they are all future F1 drivers
(07:41:34 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i missed full marks by 2 points!
(07:41:56 SGT) Friend: normally after 30 points they will take over the wheel cos u r a hazard on the road
(07:42:12 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: lol
(07:42:13 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: actually
(07:42:13 SGT) Friend: he give chance let you drive back liao
(07:42:21 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i think this tester too yim zim
(07:42:33 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i nv make tt many mistakes i think
(07:42:38 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: maybe he see my hair beh song
(07:42:41 SGT) Friend: haha he dun like you lar
(07:42:48 SGT) Friend: cfm ur afro
(07:42:52 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: cfm
(07:43:05 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: i suspect i must wear terrorist mask next tp
(07:43:11 SGT) Don AQ®: Epic fail!: kk later

¹Means "strongest in history". It's an Asian thing.
²Literally: Fierce fire war vehicle. It was a HK movie a lot of Chinese dudes of my generation liked.

Censorship

2009-03-18T10:03:00.003+08:00

I just saw this on Hacker News. Apparently, Australia is banning Wikileaks, and Australian webmasters who link to Wikileaks will receive a fine of up to AUS$11000 per day. That seems a little harsh.

This post does not have a point except that I thought it would be cool if I got my blog banned in Australia. Also, I think it would be cool if this became a widespread meme and whole chunks of the internet started to link to Wikileaks, thereby making the Australian feds ban like, half the internet. That would be so tits.

Whimsy

2009-03-01T11:56:00.004+08:00

I just saw a profile picture of my colleague's on MSN and it showed him posing with a prominent leader in Singapore. This colleague of mine often sends me, via MSN, spammy links to Viagra or pr0n or whatnot. This is not because he is a pervert, but because his computer has a virus. The result of the confluence of all these is that I ended up wondering if that politician (who is quite old) uses a computer, and if he does, whether it's infected with a virus.

Astrology. Nonsense, much?

2009-02-23T15:21:00.001+08:00

Please read this before basing any of your actions on astrology.

The online diary

2009-02-22T01:28:00.002+08:00

I have decided to blog like I'm writing an online diary, because that's how it all started, right? If there's one thing I'm about, it's keeping it real. Because I'm street, aight?

Dear Diary, it's been nice talking to you, but I'm going to go take a shit right now.

Presenting the RequestProcessorFactoryFactory

2009-01-23T11:39:00.001+08:00

Yes, you heard me. --> RequestProcessorFactoryFactory

Remember kids, this is what happens to your brain when you do Java.

From Bash.org

2009-01-04T15:23:00.003+08:00

This is one for the history books.

<Anonymous> Now, I’m sure many of you have encountered little shits in supermarkets. Little kids running about and knocking things over, being rude, walking all over their parents, you know the kind. But the worst are the biters. Yes, those little cunts that feel it is okay to bite you whenever they feel like it.
<Anonymous> Okay, here’s the best part. A biter got me today when I was grocery stopping. He broke the fucking skin, too. This was when the gears started turning, the moment I saw a tiny sprickle of blood on the little shit’s teeth as he was grinning at me like the little cunt he is. I made my eyes get wide, and started screaming “SHIT! SHIT!.” Now, my good friend, Tom we’ll call him, was there too, and he instantly picked up on it. He started shouting “FUCK! MAYBE HE DIDN’T GET IT! FUCK!.” By now, the kid is scared shitless and starts crying, and instantly, Mizz Mom appears out of nowhere and starts getting pissy at us for yelling at her kid.
<Anonymous> Here’s the kicker, I look her straight in the eye and say, “Mam, get your son tested as soon as possible, he just bit me and I’m… I’m FUCKING HIV POSITIVE.”
<Anonymous> And now there is silence. Not a peep in the entire store. The brat knows he just fucked up big time because his mom isn’t defending his ass. She just stares at me wide eyed. I walk away from them, buy my shit from the wide eyed cashier, all the while blood is dripping from my calf, making a nice little trail on the floor. And, just s we leave, we start to hear the mother sobbing. Sobbing like the cunt she is.
<Anonymous> I have never felt any more satisfaction than the moment I heard that sob.

Cute spider

2009-01-02T13:35:00.001+08:00

Saw this hilarious post recently. I'd duplicate the post, but you're not worth the effort.

Icky Pr0n

2008-12-28T12:33:00.001+08:00

Oh man, why? And who? I'm not even going to link this, but you can go take a look if you're interested --> http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/insults/iceland1.jpg

Everybody should read this

2008-12-18T23:33:00.000+08:00

The fable of the dragon-tyrant.

The Dodger

2008-12-15T21:46:00.001+08:00

Check this out.

Looks like drafts are not the only things he's good at dodging.

Dear Mr. President

2008-12-02T14:00:00.006+08:00

My friend and I were talking about long job titles and how there seems to be a generally inverse relationship between the length of a person's job title and his actual ability. We also observed that if your job title doesn't tell people what you actually do, then you're probably not doing much. Take, for instance, the title Deputy Assistant Vice President. I remarked, upon hearing this title, that it's like Number 2 of Number 2 of Number 2, since that's more or less what the words "deputy", "assistant" and "vice" means. You might as well call the job Vice Vice Vice President.

We then came up with the following.


vice(degree){
 if(degree==0)
  return "president";
 return "vice " + vice(--degree);
}

So in this case "vice(3);" would be the title of the guy above.

I think we can all agree that this is a more efficient method (method, get it? haw haw haw) for expressing such titles.

p.s. I am a software programmer, which means I get paid to think about stuff like that.
p.p.s. Yes, I know an iterative function would be more efficient usually, but recursive functions are just cooler.

How to write unmaintainable code

2008-11-25T22:04:00.003+08:00

I found this article absolutely fascinating and hilarious. Beyond the trappings of manic humour, however, there are some pieces of arcane technical knowledge to be gleaned from there. Take this C snippet, for instance.

int arr[2] = {1,2};
int i = 1;

Now, what is the value of i[arr]? Yes, it seems obvious to me now, but I was a little surprised to find that gcc accepted it.

Outrageous claims: Behold, I am Atlas

2008-10-14T22:48:00.001+08:00

Outrageous claim #1: Ah, you noticed the financial markets rallying? I did that.

Slap fest!

2008-10-08T00:40:00.001+08:00

I was randomly surfing videos and came upon this. 4 words: Fight Club for Chicks. And it was kinda hot.

I prove my assholiness yet again.

2008-10-05T14:18:00.000+08:00

I was talking with a friend just now, and he had just completed his National Service (the mandatory 2-year ~~sentence~~ term in the armed forces for Singaporean males). So he was telling me that it's tough to be back in the civilian world because he hasn't found a job yet and there was no more allowance coming from the army. Then he jokingly wondered how many more people he had to sleep with.

Punchline: I'll pay you to not sleep with me, dude.

I DIDN'T KNOW!

2008-09-26T19:59:00.003+08:00

I wonder if anyone will actually write this virus.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

2008-09-25T23:31:00.001+08:00

Uncle Sam fucks Liberty. Gotta love that.

Grow a beard! Run as root!

2008-09-18T14:18:00.001+08:00

This is hilarious.

Buying an island

2008-09-15T22:29:00.002+08:00

So my friends and I were talking about buying an island. I decided that if I bought an island and it was situated beside an inhabited area, I'd start digging deep. Hopefully, I'd eventually hit the mantle and woohoo! Lava! Imagine the surprise of the nearby residents when they suddenly find themselves living beside a FUCKING LIVE VOLCANO.

That would be so tits.

Adobe complaints

2008-09-15T16:38:00.003+08:00

These are the top complaints for Adobe. My favourites were the following three.

Could you make Adobe Reader start up slower? I'd like to have enough time to go get a sandwich before I read a one page document.
Do you think its smart to put the names of the developers up when the product is taking forever to load?
why can't I copy/paste formatted text from one of your expensive applications into another one of your expensive applications

Software freedom and downloading the internets

2008-09-11T09:29:00.004+08:00

Be there or be square, bitches.

Here's another example of why my friends hate me. There he is, telling me about some serious work he did, and here I am going Chuck Norris on him.

(09:27:27 SGT) CY aka Big Guy: yesterday i downloaded the whole live folder of **** website..

(09:27:34 SGT) Don AQ®: 黄美珍 has an epic voice.: u power

(09:27:38 SGT) Don AQ®: 黄美珍 has an epic voice.: wtf for?

(09:27:48 SGT) Don AQ®: 黄美珍 has an epic voice.: yesterday i downloaded the internets!

(09:27:57 SGT) CY aka Big Guy: fucking took 3 hours

(09:28:23 SGT) CY aka Big Guy: and there is a lot of rubbish

(09:28:27 SGT) Don AQ®: 黄美珍 has an epic voice.: i have the internets stored on my hard drives bitch!

Web OSes and density

2008-09-08T09:35:00.003+08:00

My friend showed me this hilarious piece just now. I do so admire a man who speaks his mind.

Teching around

2008-08-30T00:38:00.002+08:00

I finally received my Neo Freerunner a couple of days ago, and boy, am I psyched. To be honest, as a phone, it totally sucks. Out of the box, the interface is not terribly intuitive, and the GUI runs pretty slowly. Furthermore, the battery lasts about a day when fully charged. However, it is a developer's toy after all, so one must make allowances.

So I've finally gotten a chance to fiddle with it some, and after poring through the wiki, I decided to try installing Debian on it. Yes, motherfuckers, Debian runs on a phone now. I'm actually doing it now as I type this post, because the installation script is running, and there's basically nothing you can do except wait while it does its work.

Anyway, since this is an entirely new platform to me, it's kinda scary. After all, the phone did cost some SG$600, and I haven't even heard of any hackers in Singapore who are playing around with it. So if I brick my phone, I'm pretty much on my own. I doubt anyone around these parts has a debugging board. With that frame of mind, I was reading through the wiki about flashing the phone, and it seems there are all sorts of problems which can occur. Happily, hackers from around the world have contributed solutions to the wiki. Stuff like "You may encounter... but if you... you should be fine." This is all very optimistic, and it seems to tell you that, hey, you're ok. We've got you covered. My perverse mind immediately wondered why these people were all so resourceful. I keep expecting to scroll down to the bottom of the page and seeing someone finally encounter a problem no one could solve. It would say, "If you do this and this followed by this, the phone shuts down. At this point, you may, if you have a sharp nose, you may detect a slight odour of something burning and... you're fucked."

That would be so darkly hilarious.

Friendly conversations

2008-08-22T17:24:00.002+08:00

As can be seen, I am an asshole.

(05:16:42 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: ask you... when in old company.. do u have any comments on the cup i used?

(05:17:19 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: i dun remember such details about you man

(05:17:23 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: i'm not that into you

(05:17:24 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: lol

(05:17:48 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: lol..

(05:17:52 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: cos i using the same cup..

(05:18:11 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: got strange looks.. very funny

(05:18:43 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: haha

(05:18:55 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: who cares about the headcounts?

(05:19:08 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: when the revolution comes, they're all cannon fodder anyway

(05:19:50 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: when the revolution comes, they're all cannon fodder anyway?

(05:19:50 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: lol..

(05:20:28 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: yeah man

(05:21:19 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: out of context

(05:22:02 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: oh shit i forgot you're not part of the new world order

(05:22:07 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: forget i said anything man

(05:22:29 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: lol.. wtf..

(05:22:30 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: fuck this is funny

(05:22:33 SGT) Don AQ®: 骑白马的，未必是白马王子，他有可能是唐僧。有翅膀的不一定是天使，他或许是鸟人。: i should post it

(05:22:36 SGT) Chin Yong aka redhex: what have u been keeping from me?

Sometimes, I wonder why I have friends.

Real Man's Olympics

2008-08-21T14:03:00.000+08:00

This is pretty funny.

Rambling

2008-08-16T23:59:00.003+08:00

I attended an event hosted by some government body recently, and it featured Google's Jolly Good Fellow. He seemed a pretty cool guy, humble and unassuming but probably terribly smart, as they all probably are at Google. During the event, he talked about how everyone in Google wants to change the world.

So, towards the end of the event, someone asked him what he was doing to change the world. He replied that he was trying to (and don't take this as a quote, because I do not have a perfect memory) promote mental fitness. If I remember correctly, he said that the key to this was meditation and that he hopes someday it will be as prevalent as physically working out to stay healthy. Like if you asked someone if they meditate, they would reply with "Well, of course. Duh." Then he said that this would holistically heal a lot of the world's existing problems. Like war would no longer exist if everyone just wanted peace.

Now, I just want to state for the record that I have nothing but respect for the first Singaporean to make it into Google, but I couldn't help but think of this Deep Thought by Jack Handey.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

Because I am easily sidetracked, I started reading more quotes while looking for that quote and this one by James Arthur Baldwin struck me in particular. Here's to all of you out there who like lecturing younger people but never do anything noteworthy or noble.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Today I went to eat at a restaurant and I saw that they were hiring "Customer Service Representatives". Wow. Cool title. I almost applied for the job. Then I looked at the picture underneath it. Oh. They meant "waiter".

I think the world could do with less of this sort of crap.

小 Beng is quick

2008-08-12T13:56:00.006+08:00

I was chatting with Zhe Bin just now, and he said something funny.

(01:32:37 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (gmail.com).: is your gf back in sg?

(01:32:41 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: yep

(01:33:01 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: she's been back for quite some time now

(01:33:06 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: one year plus

(01:33:11 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: omg

(01:33:15 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: so sorry

(01:33:17 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: hahaha

(01:33:22 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: very outta touch

(01:33:24 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: haha

(01:33:27 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: no problem man

(01:33:44 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: why should u be in touch with the location of my gf

(01:34:14 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: well that's between me and her man

(01:34:18 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: although you have every right to know

(01:34:40 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: haha good one

(01:34:59 SGT) *one Nate (tzb): Hey I will be changing my msn address to (@gmail.com).: so she's working also now lah

(01:35:06 SGT) Don AQ®: Oh, would that I could touch your brilliance. Hedy Lamarr: shit i gotta post that

Cuil who?

2008-07-31T00:38:00.002+08:00

So it seems there's a new kid on the search engine block. One created by former employees of the incumbent champion, no less. They claim to rank results based on content. They also claim to have indexed more pages than Google. That's like saying that you have escaped your shadow or caught up with the horizon, isn't it? Nevertheless, I decided to put them to a vanity-based test. I searched for "laditudinarians", "donaq", and "i rock you suck", all of which I place on the first page of results for Google.

None of them found yours truly on Cuil. Searching for "donaq" turned up my old comments on Popagandhi. Searching for "laditudinarians" turned up some page on sgblogs.com mirroring this blog. Can you claim to produce more relevant results if searching for "donaq" doesn't produce donaq.blogspot.com before producing a link to donaq.blogspot.com as a comment on someone else's blog? I think not. Also, how can you rank a mirror above the actual site (which is not one of the results returned)?

Google: 3
Cuil: 0

They say "cuil" is an Irish word for knowledge. Unfortunately, this would-be new giant seems to be a leprechaun with an illusory pot of gold instead. Google FTW!

Not to diss on my countryman, but...

2008-07-24T21:54:00.004+08:00

This bugger is just plain stupid.

<AntiMage> I THOUGHT YOU JUST MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN THE FOLOWINGS:
<AntiMage> WE ARE CURRENTLY HIRING WORK HOME
<AntiMage> TYPIST/CLERK/SECRETARY/SUPERVISOR/TRAINER/MARKETER/MANAGER.
<AntiMage> WE PAY WEEKLY 1000 USD POTENTIAL.
<AntiMage> NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED.
<AntiMage> MUST KNOW TYPING.
<AntiMage> NO SEX, AGE LIMIT.
<AntiMage> PART/FULL TIME.
<AntiMage> ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
<AntiMage> APPLY NOW : jaxkhor85@hotmail.com
<luks> COOL
* sawfish__ (n=Sawfish@62-47-184-188.adsl.highway.telekom.at) has joined #gcj
* Sawfish has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
* sawfish_ has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
* Sawfish (n=sawfish@62-47-184-188.adsl.highway.telekom.at) has joined #gcj
<luks> secretary working from home is an interesting idea, though
<AntiMage> yap...if interested pls apply to the above email address...thx
<luks> :)
<AntiMage> no harm to try...hehe
<luks> you might get banned or at least kicked easily, I guess
* adi112358 has quit (Read error: 131 (Connection reset by peer))
<AntiMage> ya...xpected d
<AntiMage> jz hoping can help others..n help myself
<luks> do you think programmers are interested in that kind of job?
<vollmond> Ooo, no sex limit
<AntiMage> erm...jz part time mah...
<vollmond> sounds like fun
<AntiMage> no nd u 24hrs go n monitor
<TheWarrior> lold
<TheWarrior> so, i can have as much sex i want? ^^
<vollmond> man, my current employer keeps me at once a month :(
<AntiMage> sory..pls dun mis understd the meaning
<TheWarrior> if you could spell properly, it might help in preventing misunderstandings. :))
<AntiMage> hahaha
<AntiMage> okok..
<AntiMage> btw is NO SEX, AGE LIMIT...
<TheWarrior> ah, so encouraging child exploitation, then? :D
<AntiMage> shld i chg to ANY SEX ?
<AntiMage> or simply MALE / FEMALE
<AntiMage> hehehe
<TheWarrior> well, changing it to male/female would exclude the shemales, and those of unspecified gender from your target group
<TheWarrior> ^^
<AntiMage> hahaha...thn vry hard to explain d
<Linus`> AntiMage
<Linus`> why are you talking like this?
<Linus`> are you just dumb or what ?
<Linus`> 12 years old?
<AntiMage> nono...sory is i said sumthg wrong
<Linus`> sigh.
<Linus`> what's the problem with you?
<AntiMage> .......
<AntiMage> shld i say wat problm wf u la
<Linus`> oh, whatever.
<TheWarrior> his isp probably charges him by the letter.
<Linus`> oh, i see
<sadiq> vowels also cost more.
<TheWarrior> yes, apparently he's on a flexible cost plan.
<TheWarrior> :)))
<B|ackPanther> AntiMage,i wonder if one would trust you especially that you write in such a confusing language
<AntiMage> did i say sumthg wrong actually ?
<AntiMage> confusing ?
<AntiMage> which part u confuse ?
<AntiMage> i alrd use simple n easy word
<B|ackPanther> No,the short forms you use are so confusing considering that short forms are not standard.
<Linus`> :D
<AntiMage> oh..icic...
<AntiMage> sorry...
<Linus`> wh r u tlkng lk ths??
<AntiMage> will try to use full
<Linus`> cnt u c is hrd t ndrstnd?!
<AntiMage> bt i understand wat u talking about
<AntiMage> u said why are u talking like this...
<AntiMage> cant u see is hard to understand ?
<B|ackPanther> AntiMage, apparently how many channels have you posted your message ?
<AntiMage> just tried some which won't direct kick me out
<TheWarrior> B|ackPanther: well, he's spamming after all, it would be folly to expect he's only doing it once :)))
<B|ackPanther> AntiMage,Its best you paste that somewhere and then give out a link.
<luks> heh
<AntiMage> oh...good idea Panther
<AntiMage> thanks for the suggestion
<AntiMage> cause i think i flood
<B|ackPanther> i been to #ubuntu and he did the very same thing.
<AntiMage> so kicked out from the channel
<AntiMage> haha...u saw it ? that channel kicked me out when i pasted it
* forest has quit ()
<B|ackPanther> AntiMage,yes,you are not suppose to do that!!:(
<AntiMage> wil create a link then..very thx to your good suggestion
<Linus`> you are not supposed to be even on freenode
* prekageo (n=a@nes2.nessos.ondsl.gr) has joined #gcj
<TheWarrior> well, as a matter of fact, he shouldn't be in front of a computer at all.
<AntiMage> Linus'...can please suggest a better place ?
<Linus`> sure
<Linus`> try work offers site
<AntiMage> TheWarrior...i know you are pro...no need to say people like this ok ?
<Linus`> or if you want to chat, well, there is msn
<Linus`> or if you want irc, well, another network perhaps
<B|ackPanther> Linus', are you the guy behind linux or his fan? Just curious.
<TheWarrior> AntiMage: i never said i'm "pro", i just said that the world would be a better place if you vow to never touch a computer again. :))
<Linus`> im just named after linus van pelt
* prekageo (n=a@nes2.nessos.ondsl.gr) has left #gcj
<Linus`> peanuts character
<Linus`> charlie brown's comic
<Linus`> and snoopy, etc
<AntiMage> TheWarrior : Everyone also have first time ok ?
<luks> AntiMage: not everyone is a spammer though
<TheWarrior> first time for what? spamming? don't think so.
<AntiMage> ok fine..since you are so rude..don't believe is fine...i dont wan to argue anything with u
<luks> I don't even see the point of spamming here, it's not like anybody is going to apply :)
<B|ackPanther> Whats the maximum amount of time does programs in GCJ have to take to execute ?
<B|ackPanther> Or they are concerned with correctness only ?
<TheWarrior> AntiMage: you come here to spam, and then call us rude? don't you think that's a bit paradoxal?
<luks> B|ackPanther: 2 minutes for short input, 8 minutes for the long one (minus the time to download/upload it)
<luks> er, 4 minutes for the small one
<AntiMage> ok...i spam..but i said i first time in this channel only..but u dun believe..so what else u expect me to say ?
<B|ackPanther> So they dont actually need the code to be optimized,thats sounds better.
<Linus`> B|ackPanther: of course not, it is in the FAQ, anyway
<luks> well, it's not always easy to solve the large input in 8 minutes with a wrong algorithm
<Linus`> AntiMage: well, leave and never come back would be a good start
<AntiMage> thx everyone...is a vry good to treat new people here
* AntiMage (n=jaxkhor1@121.120.177.204) has left #gcj

I think most Singaporeans should be able to tell that he's one. My only question is, how the fuck did he find freenode? Shouldn't he be in galaxynet?

Neo FreeRunner

2008-07-10T21:09:00.002+08:00

I wonder... how many geeks in Singapore are interested in this? Let's find 9 other buggers and get the 10-pack!

Aw, come on, no one?

Damn.

[Update] Sold out! OMG.

Why Google is cooler than Ebay

2008-07-01T23:37:00.005+08:00

Hacker cool, that is. Google organizes a programming competition, and Ebay does one too. Before I even get started, note how the Google Code Jam page is written entirely in HTML, CSS and Javascript. All open standards. Then note how the Ebay page (unnecessarily) uses what has been dubbed "the cancer of the web" by some. Even though I wouldn't go that far, (you can always not go to Flash sites) I do think that its use should be minimized. I will not go into the reasons here, but if you're curious, shoot me a comment. Furthermore, clicking on their "Register Now" button brings up a popup which Firefox promptly blocks.

Anyway, the point is this:

The Ebay competition is very obviously the brainchild of suits and not hackers. At the event where they launched the competition, I did not see a single techie there who represented Ebay. Furthermore, although I can no longer recall the exact figures, implementation comprised a mere 20% or so of their judging criteria. To put this in context, minutiae like business plan or some crap like that was worth 30%. I suppose it makes sense if you're trying to attract talented suits, but then why hold a Developer Challenge? Why not hold a Suit's Biz-Off and just give the winner some money so he can hire hackers to implement his business plans?

Google, on the other hand, doesn't give a flying fuck about your business plan. What you have to do instead, is solve algorithmic problems. As swiftly and accurately as possible. That is the attitude that ensures Google always has the brightest engineers.

p.s. A friend of mine who attended the aforementioned event with me said that we should just interrupt the speakers with this:

I propose that we forgo the competition and split the $25K among all those present here (a coupla hundred for each person, more or less). All those in favour, say "yea"...

My friends are funny.

It never rains but pours

2008-06-22T15:36:00.006+08:00

Well, after months of not clubbing, I suddenly had the urge to, so I beamed the Bat Signal into the night skies on Friday, and DiDa suddenly decided to go. It's a testament to how much both of us like to dance that in spite of the fact that we've never met before and couldn't get any other friends of ours to go, we still went. Then again, maybe I have a tendency to do stuff like that anyway, since I almost always go clubbing with people I don't know. Anyway, I've known her online for ages, but for some reason, we've never met, and I've been really curious about what she's like in the flesh.

She wasn't quite what I'd expected. I'd expected her to be altogether more aloof and, well, grownup. As it turned out, she was quite the tiny chilli padi. Ok, maybe it's a little irrational of me, but for some reason, diminutive people tend to give me the impression of extreme youth. DiDa looked like she was 16 or 18. She looked so young I'm surprised they let her into the club without checking her ID. Also, she was quite unexpectedly really pretty. See, a lot of bloggers put up pretty pictures of themselves on their blogs, but when you actually meet them, they turn out to be total dogs or at least merely average. DiDa, I must say, is probably the cutest blogger I've ever met.

If you've been reading her blog, some of you might have wondered if she exaggerates her clubbing posts. Well, speaking as a primary witness, I'm going to have to say on oath that she hasn't been exaggerating, Your Honour. She does dance on the podium (even though her friend XY wasn't there), and she does attract a lot of attention when she does. I sort of faded into the shadows so I could watch her do her thang, and I could see most of the guys in the room, even those who were with chicks, giving her The Look. And, of course, bitches being bitches, not a few of the chicks there were also giving her The Other Look. You know, that look that says "wtf is this slut doing omfg she's such a horse and who does she think she is and i hope the bloody couch gets sucked into her gaping vagina and i-hate-her-i-hate-her-i-hate-her-i-hate-her".

Girls. What are you gonna do with them, huh?

All in all, it was a good night for me, even though the clubbing experience wasn't terrific because it was too crowded to dance and the music sucked. Why did it suck? Because I didn't like it, of course. Anything that I dislike sucks, you see. But hey, I got to meet a hot chick, and that's always good.

Crab People return

2008-05-28T23:58:00.005+08:00

Dr. Fletcher doesn't often do long posts, but when he does, it is worth reading. Be warned. The blog post you are about to read reveals disturbing facts that you might want to let your children know about right now in order to give them an advantage in survival. One of those facts is, namely, the existence, and resulting threat to the human race thereof, of Crab People.

It's like trying to patent breathing

2008-05-27T17:14:00.003+08:00

Winners of the Biggest Douchebags of the Year award. Courtesy of Simply Jean. This is another example of a company behaving like a gangster putting his finger in his pocket and pointing it at people to extort money.

Chocolate!

2008-05-18T18:17:00.003+08:00

This movie has me all psyched. It has me so psyched, I'm going to rush out after dinner and watch it alone. I have watched both Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong, and, while the plots left a lot to be desired, the action sequences were without parallel. Even better, in some respects, than those in Chinese martial arts flicks.

Ok ok, I'm just a sucker for movies.

Scramble or hacking?

2008-04-18T10:53:00.008+08:00

Some time ago, I was arguing with my colleagues about which required more intelligence: writing a program that could cheat at Scramble? Or winning at Scramble? Naturally, I took the stand that writing programs requires way more intelligence than playing some word-finding game. My friend, being a rather contentious guy, told me that I was biased because I am a programmer and that he respected the top scramble players because we couldn't do what they did, blah blah.

I said that all that scramble required was memory and basic pattern recognition coupled with the digital dexterity required to type words fast, while writing programs required a higher level of intelligence and the ability to understand what was required to solve that problem (i.e. problem abstraction). I told him that the skill set required to play scramble wasn't that much different from that required to play minesweeper, and that since I could hit timings of 80+ seconds on minesweeper, I could probably also play scramble well with practice. He didn't buy it, even though he's also a programmer. Well, I've written a program that could cheat at scramble. I've also been playing scramble and I've improved to the point where I can get to the top 10 positions.

To sidetrack a little bit, the main game in scramble has at least 300+ players playing on the same board at any one time, so it is really not that easy to own at the game.

However, I can actually prove my point with a simple observation. Let's take the intelligence quotient required to play well at scramble as X. So if you play well at scramble, all we can conclude is that you have at least an intelligence quotient of X. Now, let's posit that the intelligence quotient required to write a program that cheats at scramble is Y, as yet an unknown quantity. However, we observe that, since the program is able to attain better results than a human player (my program is able to get all the answers on the board within 1 second, while the average good human player plays a 3 minutes game and usually attains sub-perfect results, but let's forget the obvious disparity for now), the program itself has at least an intelligence quotient of X. If an entity with an intelligence quotient of Y is able to create an entity with an intelligence quotient of X, does it not logically follow that the creator is smarter than the creation?

I end this post with a challenge illustrating the above for those programmers who still disagree. You're probably smart enough to write a scramble solver. But are you smart enough to write a program that can write a scramble solver? (QED)

p.s. Note that I'm not saying that people who are good at scramble are less intelligent than me (though they probably are, heh heh). I'm just saying that of the two tasks, writing a scramble solver and solving scramble, writing a scramble solver requires higher intelligence.

p.p.s. If you come to me with a program that prints the source code for a scramble solver, I... would really not know what to say to you.

[Update]
I spoke with the aforementioned colleague again and he pointed out a flaw in my previous reasoning, namely that it takes an entity with a higher level of intelligence to create an entity of a certain level of intelligence. Basically, if one believes, as I do, that humans will someday birth artificial intelligences greater than themselves, then one must believe that an inferior intelligence should be capable of creating a superior one. My bad.

I still think the second illustration is valid, i.e. the fact that one can write a scramble solver but cannot write a scramble solver writer implies that the former task is less complex and hence, requires less intelligence to accomplish.

Demonoid is back!

2008-04-16T16:41:00.004+08:00

The #1 purveyor of old, old, torrents. The only tracker site at which you can be almost absolutely assured of the availability of seeds. Fuck you, CRIA!

[Update]

Even Wikipedia is glad that Demonoid is back. :)

Outburst

2008-04-04T12:48:00.004+08:00

After struggling for 2 days to make some Javascript and CSS display code work on all versions of Internet Explorer ("overflow: hidden", anyone?), I had gotten increasingly frustrated. Today, in the office, after IE 8 refused to acknowledge what Javascript was trying to tell it^*, I finally blurted out something that precipitated some merriment among the colleagues:

"Firefox is open-source! Go copy their code, for gods' sake!"

This goes out to all the engineers and programmers working on IE 8, who I know (hope?) are probably trying hard to address these issues.

In other news, I recently met with the ThinkingPHP.org guy, Felix Geisendörfer. If you're a PHP geek, you should know the name. Cool guy.

^*_{IE 8 was listening to his Zune and whistling while Javascript spoke till she was blue in the face.}

Hacking Scramble in C

2008-03-27T21:21:00.001+08:00

Recently, I've been playing this game on facebook called Scramble. It's basically an online version of Boggle. I noticed that there were a group of players who consistently had way, way higher scores than the rest of the players. Naturally, there were accusations of cheating, but how would you determine whether someone was cheating?

Well, the easiest way in this case was to also attempt cheating and see what the limits of it are. So I googled around for a cheat and found this solution implemented in Ruby. I ran it and thought it was rather slow, so I decided to implement my own cheat in the fastest language of them all.

C! I've had precious little opportunity to hack in C since graduating anyway, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get in some practice. So anyway, it runs quite a bit faster than the Ruby solution (less than 1 second for a dictionary with 151000~ words), but it doesn't calculate the total score and it doesn't output stuff like "found word:". On the plus side, though, you don't need to run it everytime the board refreshes and thus suffer the overhead of loading the dictionary everytime.

Of course, it was relatively easy to win using the program against non-cheaters, but like that Ruby hacker said, it takes all the fun out of the game. Anyway, my verdict is that the players I was talking about were definitely cheating. Some of them could almost keep up with me despite the fact that I did not even have to look for the words on the board. No way there are more than one in a million people capable of beating a computer for speed at finding words on the board.

I don't grok Ruby, so I can't really tell why there's a difference in speed, but my guess would be that it's because Boggler.rb solves the board by doing a board traversal while scramblecheat.c tries to match words to the board.

One last point before the code itself. I did not provide for the "Qu" tile, but since this is a proof of concept, I don't care to provide an edge case for it. Interested parties can solve that for themselves. The code was compiled on Linux using gcc-4.1.2 and no, I'm not providing binaries. Oh, and you can do whatever you like with the code, including stripping it for spare parts and selling it. :)


#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define BS 4
#define MAXLEN 8

void resetuse(int usearray[BS][BS]);
void startboard(char boardin[(BS*BS)+2], char board[BS][BS]);
int findword(char *word, char board[BS][BS], int usearray[BS][BS], int wlen);
int findrest(char *word, char board[BS][BS], int usearray[BS][BS], int wlen, int pos, int x, int y);

int main(int argv, char *argc[]){
	int c,lines=0,maxchars=0,currentlen=0,wlen;
	int i,j,k,l;
	char **dictionary;
	char board[BS][BS];
	char boardin[(BS*BS)+2];
	int bcount=0,getout=0;
	int sa=(int)'a';
	int sz=(int)'z';
	int usearray[BS][BS];
	FILE *fp=NULL;
	if(argv!=2){
		printf("Usage: scramblecheat <dictionary filename>\n");
		return 0;
	}

	if(!(fp=fopen(argc[1],"r"))){
		printf("Could not open %s.\n",argc[1]);
		return 0;
	}

	printf("Finding maximum word length and number of words...");
	/*find the number of lines and maximum string length*/
	while((c=fgetc(fp))!=EOF){
		if((unsigned char)c=='\n'){
			lines++;
			currentlen=0;
			continue;
		}
		currentlen++;
		if(currentlen>maxchars)
			maxchars=currentlen;
	}
	maxchars+=2;

	printf("Done.\n");
	printf("Maximum word length = %i\nNumber of words = %i\n",maxchars-2,lines);
	rewind(fp);

	/*preparing dictionary*/
	printf("Preparing dictionary...");
	if(!(dictionary=(char **)malloc((size_t)(lines*sizeof(char *))))){
		printf("\nFailed to allocate memory for dictionary. Exiting.\n");
		return 0;
	}
	for(i=0;i<lines;i++){
		if(!(dictionary[i]=(char *)malloc((size_t)(maxchars*sizeof(char))))){
			for(j=i-1;j>=0;j--)
				free(dictionary[j]);
			free(dictionary);
			printf("\nFailed to allocate memory for dictionary words. Exiting program.\n");
			fclose(fp);
			return 0;
		}
		if(!fgets(dictionary[i],maxchars,fp)){
			for(j=i;j>=0;j--)
				free(dictionary[j]);
			free(dictionary);
			printf("\nFailed to form dictionary at line %i. Exiting program.\n",i+1);
			fclose(fp);
			return 0;
		}
		/*get rid of newline*/
		for(j=0;j<maxchars-1;j++){
			if(j==maxchars-2)
				dictionary[i][j]='\0';
			if(dictionary[i][j]=='\0')
				break;
			if(dictionary[i][j]=='\n'){
				dictionary[i][j]='\0';
				break;
			}
		}
	}
	fclose(fp);
	printf("Done.\n");

	/*get board*/
	while(1){
		printf("Enter board letters in small caps in the order left to right followed by top to bottom or enter an empty board to quit: ");
		fgets(boardin,(BS*BS)+2,stdin);
		/*get rid of newline, make sure length of string is correct*/
		for(i=0;i<(BS*BS)+2;i++){
			if(i==(BS*BS)+1)
				boardin[i]='\0';
			if(boardin[i]=='\0')
				break;
			if(boardin[i]=='\n'){
				boardin[i]='\0';
				break;
			}
		}
		if((int)strlen(boardin)==0){
			printf("Thanks for using the scramble cheat, you disgusting creature.\n");
			break;
		}
		else if((int)strlen(boardin)!=BS*BS){
			printf("Wrong board size! Please try again! Cheat with intelligence!\n");
			continue;
		}

		for(i=0;i<BS;i++){
			for(j=0;j<BS;j++){
				/*check for invalid chars*/
				if(!((int)boardin[bcount]>=sa && (int)boardin[bcount]<=sz)){
					printf("Invalid characters in board! Try again! Cheat with intelligence!\n");
					getout=1;
					bcount=0;
					break;
				}
				board[i][j]=boardin[bcount];
				bcount++;
			}
			if(getout){
				break;
			}
		}
		bcount=0;
		if(getout){
			getout=0;
			for(i=0;i<BS;i++)
				for(j=0;j<BS;j++)
					board[i][j]='0';
		}

		/*generate words*/
		/*for each word in dictionary, try to find it in the board*/
		for(i=0;i<lines;i++){
			resetuse(usearray);
			wlen = strlen(dictionary[i]);
			if(wlen>MAXLEN)
				continue;
			if(findword(dictionary[i],board,usearray,wlen))
				printf("%s\n",dictionary[i]);
		}

	}

	/*cleaning up. always clean up after a good job*/
	for(i=0;i<lines;i++)
		free(dictionary[i]);
	free(dictionary);


	return 0;
}

/* reset usearray */
void resetuse(int usearray[BS][BS]){
	int i,j;
	for(i=0;i<BS;i++)
		for(j=0;j<BS;j++)
			usearray[i][j]=0;
}

/*tries to find specified word on board*/
int findword(char *word, char board[BS][BS], int usearray[BS][BS], int wlen){
	int i,j,found=0;

	for(i=0;i<BS;i++){
		for(j=0;j<BS;j++){
			if(board[i][j]==word[0]){
				usearray[i][j]=1;
				if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,1,i,j)))
					return found;
				usearray[i][j]=0;
			}
		}
	}
	return found;
}

/*tries to find the rest of the word*/
int findrest(char *word, char board[BS][BS], int usearray[BS][BS], int wlen, int pos, int x, int y){
	int found=0;
	/*word found*/
	if(pos==wlen)
		return 1;
	
	/*try x-1,y-1*/
	if(x-1>=0 && y-1>=0){
		if(!usearray[x-1][y-1] && board[x-1][y-1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x-1][y-1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x-1,y-1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x-1][y-1]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x,y-1*/
	if(y-1>=0){
		if(!usearray[x][y-1] && board[x][y-1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x][y-1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x,y-1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x][y-1]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x+1,y-1*/
	if(x+1<BS && y-1>=0){
		if(!usearray[x+1][y-1] && board[x+1][y-1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x+1][y-1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x+1,y-1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x+1][y-1]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x-1,y*/
	if(x-1>=0){
		if(!usearray[x-1][y] && board[x-1][y]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x-1][y]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x-1,y)))
				return found;
			usearray[x-1][y]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x+1,y*/
	if(x+1<BS){
		if(!usearray[x+1][y] && board[x+1][y]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x+1][y]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x+1,y)))
				return found;
			usearray[x+1][y]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x-1,y+1*/
	if(x-1>=0 && y+1<BS){
		if(!usearray[x-1][y+1] && board[x-1][y+1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x-1][y+1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x-1,y+1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x-1][y+1]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x,y+1*/
	if(y+1<BS){
		if(!usearray[x][y+1] && board[x][y+1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x][y+1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x,y+1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x][y+1]=0;
		}
	}
	/*try x+1,y+1*/
	if(x+1<BS && y+1<BS){
		if(!usearray[x+1][y+1] && board[x+1][y+1]==word[pos]){
			usearray[x+1][y+1]=1;
			if((found=findrest(word,board,usearray,wlen,pos+1,x+1,y+1)))
				return found;
			usearray[x+1][y+1]=0;
		}
	}
	return found;
}

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Kissing lessons

2008-03-25T03:26:00.002+08:00

I can't believe one of them said it felt good.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Blazing fast mirror from Taiwan

2008-03-22T18:00:00.001+08:00

I got amazing speed while downloading Ubuntu 8.04 from Taiwan. Woohoo!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

黃美珍

2008-03-22T12:18:00.001+08:00

Yesterday, my friend directed me to this YouTube video. I've heard the original before and wasn't much impressed with it, but this chick was something else. Her voice has a majestic* quality which was absent in the original singer's voice but essential for this song. You see, the title of this song is 女爵, which approximately means "Female Lord", though Marquis would probably be a closer literal translation. Surprisingly, she did not win the contest, which means either that the other contestants were from the angelic or demonic choir, or that the judges were a bunch of morons who have no taste whatsoever.

In case you were wondering, yes, I define people who have taste as people who like exactly what I like. Obviously.

Contrast this with the original.

_{*I actually meant 霸气, but I'm not sure how one translates that.}

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock this shit

2008-03-19T02:17:00.003+08:00

I've started using the Flock browswer and, being a geek and a man, I'm naturally curious about the vital question: How fast can it go before it breaks? So let's wait and see.

Anyway, here's some interesting stuff about Flock.

It's based on the Firefox code base. If you're not a geek, that means that it's a modified version of Firefox.
It is capable of integrating almost all your social site accounts with itself. You know, the usual Web 2.0 suspects (Facebook, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, digg, etc).
Related to point (2), the integration is pretty nifty. For example, if you integrate your Facebook account with Flock, you get a feed of all your "friends" in what they call a People Sidebar. This presumably makes you all feel really informed and up to date, because you're a bunch of lonely people. However, I digress.
If you integrate your Flickr and/or YouTube account with Flock, it can show you streams of media from those sites in your Media Bar. This helps to fill up that gaping emptiness you feel inside.
If you integrate any of your blogging accounts (even Xanga and LiveJournal), you can blog anytime by right-clicking in whatever site you happen to be visiting. Flock even adds the link to that site for you. This has a two-fold purpose.

It aids untalented and overly enthusiastic bloggers in filling up the internet with boring, ungrammatical posts about whatever inane thoughts or boring sites they happen to be entertaining or visiting at the moment.
It helps to lower the productivity of the aforementioned untalented but enthusiastic bloggers.

I am writing this post on Flock (screenshot below). :)
I posted the screenshots to Flickr using Flock. (screenshot below). :)
If you close the sidebar and the Flock toolbar, you're pretty much left with Firefox.

Verdict so far:

It's convenient, if you're like, still in school and have tons of time for social networking sites and blogging or if you're running a startup and thus have tons of time for social networking sites and blogging. Otherwise, it's mostly just eye-candy on good ol' Firefox. It's been fun so far, though.

And now, here are the screenshots.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

DiDa is irritating and stupid

2008-03-18T22:23:00.002+08:00

For an otherwise intelligent lass, she seems to turn into a raving 'tard when she's with her boyfriend (like many other chicks). I am at a loss to explain this phenomenon. If you are reading this, DiDa, would you and your pilot bloke care to participate in a scientific investigation of this anomaly? *snigger*

Blogged with the Flock Browser

xkcd is funny

2008-03-11T19:59:00.000+08:00

As above.

The water's just fine!

2008-03-02T02:58:00.005+08:00

Recently, I've had many people on my MSN Messenger contact list sending me disguised links that lead to http://msnstatus.net/. This website claims to be able to tell you who blocked you on Messenger... but you have to give them your username and password, of course. This, as any initiated member of the Geek Council will probably agree, practically reeks of phishing. As a public service, I Rock, You Suck investigated their claims and, as it turns out, they weren't lying. They really can tell you who blocked you on Messenger.

You see, after you give them your Messenger username and password, they will access your account and repeatedly send their website's URL to all the people on your contact list. This will almost certainly have the effect of annoying your friends, who will soon stop being your friends and block you. The good folk at msnstatus.net will thus be able to tell you quite truthfully that you have been blocked by everyone on your contact list.

Just in case anyone was unable to detect the overwhelming sarcasm, well, of course it's a phishing site. Duh.

I like breasts

2008-02-28T11:33:00.003+08:00

My colleague told me today that the search for the exact quote "I like breasts" had only 600+ results. This is clearly an injustice to all the beautiful mammaries bouncing around out there. It is absolutely preposterous!

Hence, here and now, I Rock, You Suck pledges its ~~undrying~~ undying love for boobs, knockers, jugs, titties of all colours and denominations. I strongly urge that all self-respecting male bloggers out there post an entry with this title, because the fate of the relationship between mankind and hooters hangs precariously in the balance. We must unite in this noble cause and cry out in one voice and no uncertain terms that we, the True Men of Earth, love and adore breasts. We must not falter, we must not rest, until the internet is literally, liberally, littered with results for the search for the quote "I like breasts".

[Updated] Take comfort, brethren, in the fact that there are women out there who want us to nestle in their boobies because it's "so comfortable".

Sweet.

Fat is a valid reason to break up

2008-02-26T10:30:00.006+08:00

Yesterday I was reading the local rag, and there was this article written by some journo, let's call her L. In a nutshell, the article was about one of her friends getting dumped by her boyfriend because she was fat. L then throws a neurotic hissyfit about how looks shouldn't be that important and about how superficial men are.

Now, this is a perfect example of why I don't read the local rag much. Firstly, come on, you know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel if you start writing about your friend's relationship woes in the leading newspaper in the country, even if it is in the entertainment section. I mean, her friend isn't even a celebrity, so whatever, you know?

Secondly, isn't a romantic relationship by definition a very subjective thing? People are attracted to and repelled by all sorts of things that were either hardwired into them or the result of their experiences in life. Whatever the reason, they probably can't help their reactions to these things, and even if they could change, why should they do so? Because you think they "should"? Grow the fuck up and get the fuck over yourself, L. What everyone "should" have is the right to select or reject partners based on their own sets of preferences. If you think that's unfair, well, get used to it, honey, because that's the way it is, and there's no "should" or "shouldn't" about it. If you can't jive with that, then maybe you "shouldn't" read so many fluffy romance novels where unconditional love is the norm rather than the exception.

What's this bullshit I keep hearing about unconditional love anyway? There's no such thing. You can go on and on about how some chick's boyfriend got into an accident and became a vegetable but she still stuck by him, but that's still not unconditional love. That's probably just obligation and responsibility, or residual love at best. The chick loves the memory of the man, not an inert organism who can't even converse with her. Unconditional love would be falling in love with a vegetable, which would immediately suggest to me that the chick is in need of help.

Thirdly, the single most tangible characteristic that distinguishes a romantic relationship from a platonic one is - let's face it - sex. So what happens to a romantic relationship if one party no longer desires the other? It becomes a non-romantic relationship. It may not be exactly platonic, but it's definitely not romantic. So why "shouldn't" they both go looking for partners who are more ideal?

L goes on to mention that one of her male friends said that looks are to men what money is to women. In other words, women go for men with money in much the same way that men go for women with looks, and therefore, women are just as superficial as men. This is pretty much true, especially in Singapore. L, after mentioning that her friend said that, then goes on and on about how women are less superficial than men because they are more forgiving than men where looks are concerned. This made me wonder if L did not understand her male friend or if she was just stupid. Hello? Shouldn't she be arguing that women do not go for money to make her point that women aren't superficial instead of arguing that women do not go for looks, which we've pretty much established?

Finally, L says that she has dated men of all shapes and sizes and that she knows of many other women who would do the same, and cites this as evidence of the generosity of women. I could make the same point for men by saying that I would go for broke, dumb hot chicks and that I know of many men who have done the same and proceed to lament the fact that women don't love us as we are because they always want us to be intelligent and at least financially stable. However, since I'm not a journalist in Singapore's leading newspaper, I shall not use such an "intelligent" argument. I shall instead make the point that you can't expect others to have low expectations just because you do. Otherwise, you're going to be one sorely disappointed motherfucker.

In conclusion, fat is not only a valid reason for breaking up, it is as good (or as "bad") as any other reason for doing so.

P.S. There are of course exceptions to the rules. My girlfriend, for example, is definitely not with me for the money. That should be rather obvious because I have none.

Entrails?

2008-02-24T23:48:00.001+08:00

My friend sent me this clip of some random carnage. Erm, thanks I guess.

Edison Chen is a dick

2008-02-05T11:45:00.000+08:00

I suppose everyone has heard about the sex scandal and his subsequent statement. I guess we now know what's behind that pretty face of his. Absolutely nothing.

I mean, seriously, I don't care if he screws all the chicks in the industry, but why the fuck did he have to document the process? Admittedly, the chicks had to allow him to do it, so that's not all his fault. But why the hell did he have to keep them in his computer and then send it for repairs? Jeez. And what the fuck were those chicks smoking? Remember, if you have daughters, give them this simple advice.

1) Don't fuck around.
2) If you must fuck around, don't take pictures or videos of it.

And what's with asking people to delete the pictures if they have them? That's just hypocrisy, isn't it? I mean, if he's the sort of person who takes amateur pr0n pictures or videos of chicks who liked him enough to fuck him, he's probably the sort of person who'd have been the first to look for downloads of such pictures upon hearing the news that they're available.

Furthermore, I doubt that statement would have one iota of effect on the situation. The people who aren't the sort to download such pictures wouldn't have done so anyway. The people who have downloaded the pictures but are basically decent people will probably keep them but not pass them on. The rest of the people who aren't so decent aren't the sort to heed his moralistic pleas in the first place. The people who haven't downloaded the pictures but want to download them can find them easily enough with a few Google searches. One of the gossip sites hosting the pictures (based in the US, incidentally) taunted Edison after his statement was released. And I do admire one of the celebrities involved, so no, I shall not exacerbate the problem by posting the link to that site.

And that is the thing about the Internet Age. You cannot scare people or even prosecute them for hosting content disadvantageous to yourself, because even if you have legal grounds in your country, your legal system has no jurisdiction in other countries. This is generally a good thing, because god forbid that there should be an international body with enough power to prosecute across borders, since absolute power corrupts absolutely, (haha, the irony) but in this case...

About all that one can do these days to ensure that no bad publicity falls upon oneself is to not do anything that would give grounds for bad publicity. That is unless, of course, one owns all the ISPs. Ah well, poor Cecilia.

Congratulations, Edison, you dick, you've most likely destroyed the careers of all those chicks you've boned.

RIP Heath Ledger

2008-01-26T00:00:00.000+08:00

Sad. I really liked him in 10 Things I Hate About You, my favourite teen movie of all time. And I heard his poor family still has to deal with fucking idiots picketing his funeral. They are the ones who should be dead. Messed up world.

Cloverfield is a shit movie

2008-01-23T17:02:00.000+08:00

Yes, you heard me. In spite of the fact that the local rag's movie critic hack (you know, the one who writes cringe-inducing puns) gave it a rating of 4 stars out of 5 and in spite of the megabucks that were poured into the production, that movie sucked ass. Why? I could write about it, but here's some evidence. Yes, someone actually took the trouble to post an ad on a classifieds site to tell everyone how shit the movie was. Someone not on a payroll, who has nothing to gain, watched the movie and felt outraged enough by it to take out an ad telling everyone else not to watch it.

That's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Ascii Animation

2008-01-15T00:22:00.000+08:00

This is just too totally fucking cool for words. Why? Look closely. It's not an animated gif. It's Javascript and CSS.

http://procool.ru/interesting/funny_kitten.htm

List for stupid people.

2007-12-27T15:30:00.000+08:00

Someone sent me a list of naive, feel-good crap and this was my reply. The stuff in square braces was written by me.

This should probably be taped to your bathroom mirror where one could read it every day. You may not realize it, but it's 100% true.

[no, it's not]

1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.

[not true, but there are some i would kill for]

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.

[i can't see why. i hate them all.]

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.

[that's bullshit designed to make people like steven lim feel better. sometimes, people hate you just because you're a jackass.]

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.

[nope. the only expression i want to see on the faces of those i dislike is utter, hopeless, abject misery.]

5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

[that's kind of creepy. unless she's hot, in which case it's kind of a turn on - in a creepy way.]

6. You mean the world to someone.

[the more fool him/her]

7. You are special and unique.

[...just like everybody else]

8. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.

[like... God? or a stalker?]

9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

[yes, for other people.]

10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.

[*looks* yep, the bastard still has its back turned]

11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

[because they want to be just like me, eh? time to wake up and smell the funk of reality, buddy]

So...........If you are a loving friend, send this to everyone, including the one that sent it to you. If you get it back, then they really do love you.

And always remember....when life hands you Lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!

Good friends are like stars you don't always see them, But you know they are always there.

Truth is what you make of it

2007-12-22T01:33:00.000+08:00

I read this post on Dr. Fletcher's blog and snorted in a politically apathetic way. Then, since I was blog-surfing anyway (for the first time in weeks), I surfed on to Agagooga and saw this post. For those of you too lazy to click on the links, here's the gist of it.

The post on Dr. Fletcher's blog was a reproduction of a letter to a leading newspaper in Singapore that seemed to be expressing the author's approval of a pay increment for civil servants. The post on Agagooga was a reproduction of said author's comment on a blog post clarifying that his letter to the newspaper was meant to be satirical and that the paper had actually edited his letter to make it seem as if he approved of the pay increment.

As I have stated time and again, I suffer from acute political apathy, so my motive, such as it is, for writing this post is solely for the lulz. Far be it from me to suggest that either party is lying through their teeth, but one of them (assuming of course that the author of the letter did actually post the clarifying comment) obviously is. I leave it to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions about the Truth, if such a spectacular animal ever existed.

Look What Og Make!

2007-12-15T00:17:00.000+08:00

I ripped this off from Dr Fletcher

RickRoll'D

2007-11-30T19:36:00.000+08:00

I got RickRoll'D by xkcd. =_=

After the fog cleared

2007-11-17T00:13:00.000+08:00

There was a cockroach apocalypse near my place.

Maybe it was the velociraptor at my neighbours' place that got them.

More about laditudinarians

2007-11-16T21:49:00.000+08:00

I got more comments on my "laditudinarians" post.

Here's one.

Maybe you shouldn't be a smart-ass. Laditudinarians are a group of evangelical Anglo-Catholics. Maybe she likes Anglo-Catholicism.
# posted by Anonymous : November 15, 2007 1:16 PM

One apparently wasn't enough. The author of that comment felt strongly enough about this that he or she wrote a longer comment and posted it again 4 minutes later, this time leaving a name.

You're a dick.

By the way, Laditudinarians are a group of evangelical Anglo-Catholics. Maybe this fictional joke person is in to Anglo-Catholicism, which is probably why it's funny.

Don't be an ass.
# posted by Sam : November 15, 2007 1:20 PM

I can only reply that you, Sam, are an idiot.

Try googling for "anglo-catholic laditudinarian" or "laditudinarian anglo-catholic". Nothing turns up. Try searching dictionaries for the term "laditudinarian". Zilch. Try searching Wikipedia or even the Encyclopedia Britannica for it. Still nothing. This suggests one or more of three things. Either the group does not exist, or you misspelled the name of the group, or it's a very small group. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt concerning the group's existence and the way they spell their name, this only tells us that they are a bunch of nitwits who misspelled the word when choosing their own name, you moron.

This is the third time you have posted a comment regarding this on my blog, and you still haven't bothered to save yourself some embarrassment by checking your facts. You could have been doing something more productive with your time, like checking your goddamned facts. Instead, you have wasted the air you breathed while typing those comments, you have wasted Blogger.com's disk space storing your inane drivel and meanwhile, the universe creeps inexorably to its ultimate, entropic death.

Please, Sam, help the world save some resources. Help strengthen the human race's gene pool. Get yourself sterilized. Think of the kittens.

Update: I searched for "latitudinarians" (you know, the correct spelling of the word you're thinking of) and, hey presto, there it was. The very group of which you spoke. Now you look even stupider than the author of the personal who started this in the first place. Remember kids, check your facts before arguing with someone. You look really, really stupid if you're wrong when correcting others.

I can't help but agree...

2007-11-14T17:46:00.001+08:00

Vehemently.

377A

2007-10-26T14:09:00.000+08:00

Well, looks like our glorious nation has decided to keep the law criminalizing buttseks after all. Here are some quotes, snagged from Popagandhi, from Nominated MP Thio Li-Ann.

Anal-penetrative sex is inherently damaging to the body and a misuse of organs, like shoving a straw up your nose to drink. The anus is designed to expel waste; when something is forcibly inserted into it, the muscles contract and cause tearing; fecal waste, viruses carried by sperm and blood thus congregate, with adverse health implications like ‘gay bowel syndrome’, anal cancer. ‘Acts of gross indecency’ under 377A also covers unhygienic practices like “rimming” where the mouth comes into contact with the anus. Consent to harmful acts is no defence – otherwise, our strong anti-drug laws must fall as it cannot co-exist with letting in recreational drugs as a matter of personal lifestyle choice [..] Opposite-sex sodomy is harmful, but medical studies indicate that same-sex sodomy carries a higher price tag for society because of higher promiscuity and frequency levels.

[...]

Second, while homosexuals are a numerical minority, there is no such thing as ‘sexual minorities’ at law. Activists have coined this term to draw a beguiling but fallacious association between homosexuals and legally recognized minorities like racial groups. Race is a fixed trait. It remains controversial whether homosexual orientation is genetic or environmental, perhaps both. There are no ex-Blacks but there are ex-gays. The analogy between race and sexual orientation or preferred sexual preferences, is false. Activists repeat the slogan ‘sexual minority’ ad nausem as a deceptive political ploy to get sympathy from people who don’t think through issues carefully [...] While we cherish racial and religious diversity, sexual diversity is a different kettle of fish. Diversity is not license for perversity. This radical liberal argument is pernicious, a leftist philosophy based on radical individualism and radical egalitarianism. It is unworkable because every viable moral theory has limits to consent.

Ah, where to begin, where to begin. Let's start with fasting.

Fasting is inherently damaging to the body and a misuse of organs, like, well, not eating when you have a belly. The human body ~~was designed~~ (designed my ass, wtf is the vermiform appendix for?) has evolved to consume food, extract nutrients from it, and then crap the remainder out; when humans choose to not eat, gastric juices in your stomach have nothing to digest and start digesting your stomach walls. This can lead to extreme hunger pangs and gastric pains.

I wonder who's the next target? Would the esteemed NMP be interested in campaigning for criminalizing fasting next? After all, there are ex-Muslims but no ex-blacks.

Let's take an even more ridiculous example. Human teeth and nails ~~were designed~~ were evolved to engage other living creatures in mortal combat. Not doing so results in weaker teeth and nails, hence we should also have a law criminalizing not fighting wild beasts with tooth and nail on a regular basis. Lions, tigers and elephants (oh my!) should therefore be imported just for that purpose.

Bah. Humbug.

Latitudinarians, laditudinarians

2007-10-22T14:54:00.000+08:00

Some time ago, I saw a personal on The Onion and blogged about it. For some reason it ended up on the first page of search results for google when you search for the misspelled term "laditudinarians". After that, of course, idiots started trickling in, feeling that they had to strike a blow for like, equal rights for the stupid or whatever it is that idiots fight for. Here are some of their comments.

Ditto for how I got here.

But, this blogger doesn't even realize the "pretentious bitch" personal was all a joke in the first place. Jeez.
# posted by Anonymous : October 19, 2007 6:36 PM

I have no idea what Sherlock here is referring to, so I shall attempt to cover all bases.

Possibility #1: The Onion Personals is a joke.
The Onion Personals is not satirical. It is an actual personal ads section of The Onion.

Possibility #2: The author of that personal ad was joking.
Yeah? How would you know that unless you're *gulp* the author? Anyway, the joke, whatever it was, wasn't funny, which makes the author even stupider, now, doesn't it?

Whatever the case, I can't see how it being a joke (which I doubt) magically makes my post any less valid. Besides, my post was also a joke. So there.

What's more pretentious than her getting something wrong is you being proud you noticed it and publicizing it to losers like me who read things like this. Grow up.
# posted by Rhys : October 22, 2007 6:02 AM

What's more immature than me noticing someone getting something wrong and publicizing it to losers like you is losers like you who know that you're losers making comments on my blog about it and giving me the opportunity to lambast you for it instead of, you know, going out and doing stuff that makes yourselves less loser-like. Grow up (and wow, that was a whopper of a sentence, wasn't it? bwahahaha).

For the record, I didn't notice it. I just did exactly as the author said and looked the word up, something she should have done in the first place. I'm actually doing a public service by educating everyone about the correct spelling of the word. And yes, by Goddesses, I'm proud of it.

China Wine aftermath

2007-10-16T14:33:00.000+08:00

Some time ago, I blogged about Ho Yeow Sun's China Wine music video. For some reason, it got a lot of responses, the latest of them being posted just two days ago.

She was an ex-pastor. what does this say to her church followers? being a role model, isit ok to dance like a harlot and spew immoral words? she even claims shes spreading God's love through her music.

a complete disgrace to christians if u ask me.
# posted by Kiesna : October 14, 2007 10:29 PM

Ok, first and foremost, she wasn't dancing like a harlot, Kiesna. Harlots don't dance. They gyrate in thongs against poles with their tits showing in their full silicone-implanted glory. And that's totally awesome. As for immoral words, I didn't hear any in that song. Then again, since you appear to live in medieval times, maybe women saying anything whatsoever in public constitutes immorality to you, huh?

Secondly, you've already said she's an "ex-pastor". So why would she still be expected to be a role model for the flock she's left behind? Seriously. That's like saying my ex-girlfriends are still obligated to fuck me or expecting ex-convicts to live in prison.

Lastly, how is what she does a disgrace to Christians? I mean, come on, if we have had people burning abortion clinics, lynching gays, opposing the use of contraceptives, hunting and burning witches, attempting to convert people by the sword, rushing into war while purporting to follow a loving God and committing genocide against cities such as Ai on God's command (Joshua 8:22-26) all claiming to follow the Judeo-Christian God, what makes a little dancing such a disgrace to Christians? Even if she were to strip and dance naked on television, would that really be worse than genocide or even murder? Why don't you run along and go do something useful instead of judging others? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, eh?

Law

2007-10-10T23:56:00.000+08:00

A friend of a friend left this comment on the previous post.

Hello! I don't know if you remmeber me but I met you a year or so ago - I'm a friend of Joel's and he organised this trip to the Tiger brewery?

Anyway, I don't know if you've seen the online petition to the PM to repeal the law decriminalising gay sex. If you haven't, please take a look at http://www.repeal377a.com - the petition closes on October 19.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this law is asinine. If two guys want to get it on, that's their own business - why should the law get involved? In the meantime the fact that it's illegal makes it hard to teach safe gay sex in sex education or in HIV/AIDS outreach, which means there is actually a public health issue at stake! If people can't talk freely about the act because it's criminal, they can't talk about how to do it safely either!

It would be great if you could sign the petition, ideally with your real name, and even better if you could publicise the URL to the readership of your blog. Or email your friends! Every signature is important to show the government that it's NOT true that Singapore's people oppose tolerance, equality and dignity for gays. I mean, what's so bad about a little bum sex anyway?!

Please consider helping, anything at all would be appreciated.

I do not know how much this will help, since not many people read my blog these days, but hey, anything to piss off people who are against other people having buttseks. I'm against buttseks for myself, but seriously, I don't give a damn if other people have so much of it that they all walk with a limp and neither should you, so long as no one is trying to forcibly stuff their pricks up your asses.

Jokes aside, go sign that petition. For freedom and equality, for the country, for the gays, to look cool and enlightened in front of your friends, or even just to piss off sanctimonious assholes (who need to get stuffed), it matters not. Your voice is needed, ok?

Warbook

2007-10-05T14:47:00.000+08:00

It's a Facebook game which I'm playing now, which explains the lack of updates. Go try it, bitches.

Hollywood, slow as usual

2007-09-24T15:47:00.000+08:00

You just have to laugh when you read stuff like this. Apparently, there are quite a few new television shows that are supposed to cater to the geek subculture.

Joseph McGinty Nichol (who directed the Chuck pilot:

Hollywood, he said, is playing catch-up with IT culture.

"The classic shape of the computer geek is over when Bill Gates became the (richest), most aspirational, coolest guy in the world," he said. "He is the original thick-glasses, pocket-protector guy. Now who doesn't want to be like Bill Gates?"

The real IT geeks, that's who. How do you expect to woo the geeks without even knowing that? Try Ken Thompson instead. Or Dennis Ritchie. Or Donald Knuth. Or RMS. Or Linus Torvalds. Hell, I'd even take ESR. Bill Gates? Christ, get a clue.

In other news, unless you're planning to give your stuff away, don't use Creative Commons licenses. Read the fine print, people.

Moralistic e-mail

2007-09-15T23:38:00.000+08:00

Recently, I received one of those chain e-mails containing moral lessons. Moral lessons? Sent to me? Obviously, this chick does not know me very well. Anyway, here's the email, interspersed with my comments (in italics).

TRUST is a very important factor for all relationships. When trust is broken, it is the end of the relationship. Lack of trust leads to suspicion, suspicion generates anger, anger causes enmity and enmity may result in separation.

What's with the cheap Star Wars ripoff? What next? "And separation leads to the Dark Side"?

A telephone operator told me that one day she received a phone call. She answered, "Public Utilities Board." There was silence. She repeated, "PUB." There was still no answer. When she was going to cut off the line, she Heard a lady's voice, "Oh, so this is PUB. Sorry, I got the number from my Husband's pocket but I do not know whose number it is."

Without mutual trust, just imagine what will happen to the couple if the telephone operator answered with just "hello" instead of "PUB".

I think the fact that she's calling up numbers she found in her husband's pocket pretty much implies that trust is already dead between them, genius. Besides, what's the moral of the story here? To always reply "PUB" when someone calls?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

NO POINTING FINGERS

A man asked his father-in-law, "Many people praised you for a successful marriage. Could you please share with me your secret?"

The father-in-law answered in a smile, "Never criticize your wife for her shortcomings or when she does something wrong. Always bear in mind that because of her shortcomings and weaknesses, she could not find a better husband than you."

Oh, fuck me dead now please. This must have been written by someone with a serious self-esteem problem. The secret to a successful marriage is in believing that your wife settled for you because she couldn't do better for herself? I have a better strategy. Find a wife who has low self-esteem like the bugger who wrote this. That way, you can do whatever the hell you want and she will still stand by you.

We all look forward to being loved and respected. Many people are afraid of losing face. Generally, when a person makes a mistake, he would look around to find a scapegoat to point the finger at. This is the start of a war. We should always remember that when we point one finger at a person, the other four fingers are pointing at ourselves.

Yes, but the finger pointing at you says "idiot", while the fingers pointing at me says "god". Moron.

If we forgive the others, others will ignore our mistake too.

Bullshit. Jesus forgave the Romans and got nailed to a piece of wood for it. Sometimes, you don't even need to make mistakes for others to not forgive you. History is filled with examples of this sort of behaviour. What kind of ignorant ass writes crap like that?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

CREATING PERFECT RELATIONSHIPS?

A person visited the government matchmaker for marriage, SDU, and requested "I am looking for a spouse. Please help me to find a suitable one." The SDU officer said, "Your requirements, please." "Oh, good looking, polite, humorous , sporty, knowledgeable, good in singing and dancing. Willing to accompany me the whole day at home during my leisure hour, if I don't go out. Telling me interesting stories when I need companion for conversation and be silent when I want to rest." The officer listened carefully and replied, "I understand you need television."

Basically, I think anyone who goes looking for a spouse at a government agency is most likely fucked up anyway, so no further comment

There is a saying that a perfect match can only be found between a blind wife and a deaf husband, because the blind wife cannot see the faults of the husband and the deaf husband cannot hear the nagging of the wife. Many couples are blind and deaf at the courting stage and dream of perpetual perfect relationship. Unfortunately, when the excitement of love wears off, they wake up and discover that marriage is not a bed of roses. The nightmare begins.

Just when I thought the author of this crap must be an utter moron, he manages to squeeze out some wisdom. Remember, kids. If you want to be happy, keep dating. Marriage is not only a nightmare, it is a nightmare from which it is extremely difficult to wake.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

NO OVERPOWERING

Many relationships fail because one party tries to overpower another, or demands too much. People in love tend to think that love will conquer all and their spouses will change the bad habits after marriage. Actually, this is not the case. There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "It is easier to reshape a mountain or a river than a person's character."

Love does conquer a lot and people do change for love. The problem is that marriage does not equate to love. Most people change for their partners when they fall in love and change back when they get married, because you see, marriage was invented by possessive people with low self-esteem who believe that without a legally-binding contract, their lovers wouldn't stay with them. In most cases, they are right, and they go on to make their spouses miserable for the rest of their natural lives. That's the way life is, motherfuckers. Deal with it. Heheheheheh.

It is not easy to change. Thus, having high expectation on changing the spouse character will cause disappointment and unpleasantness.

Naturally. The bugger's got an enforceable claim on you now, idiot. Of course s/he's gonna act the fool now!

It would be less painful to change ourselves and lower our expectations..

Yes, the key to no unhappiness is to follow the path of least resistance and become a loser. The key to happiness is quite different, though.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

RIGHT SPEECH

There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "A speech will either prosper or ruin a nation." Many relationships break off because of wrong speech. When a couple is too close with each other, we always forget mutual respect and courtesy. We may say anything without considering if it would hurt the other party.

Hey, fuck y'all if you can't take a joke, is what I say. What's the point of having friends or lovers if you have to be on guard even when you're with them? If she can't take my humour, she can fucking leave.

A friend and her millionaire husband visited their construction site. A worker who wore a helmet saw her and shouted, "Hi, Emily! Remember me? We used to date in the secondary school." On the way home, her millionaire husband teased her, "Luckily you married me. Otherwise you will be the wife of a construction worker." She answered,"You should appreciate that you married me. Other wise, he will be the millionaire and not you."

They should just have a ménage à trois.

Frequently exchanging these remarks plants the seed for a bad relationship. It's like a broken egg - cannot be reversed.

Eggs? What the fuck... Welcome to the Land of Bad Metaphor.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PERSONAL PERCEPTION

Different people have different perception. One man's meat could be another man's poison. A couple bought a donkey from the market. On the way home, a boy commented, "Very stupid. Why neither of them ride on the donkey? "Upon hearing that, the husband let the wife ride on the donkey. He walked besides them. Later, an old man saw it and commented, "The husband is the head of family. How can the wife ride on the donkey while the husband is on foot?" Hearing this, the wife quickly got down and let the husband ride on the donkey.

Further on the way home, they met an old Lady. She commented, "How can the man ride on the donkey but let the wife walk. He is no gentleman."

The husband thus quickly asked the wife to join him on the donkey. Then, they met a young man. He commented, "Poor donkey, how can you hold up the weight of two persons. They are cruel to you." Hearing that, the husband and wife immediately climbed down from the donkey and carried it on their shoulders.

It seems to be the only choice left. Later, on a narrow bridge, the donkey was frightened and struggled. They lost their balance and fell into the river. You can never have everyone praise you, nor will everyone condemn you. Never in the past, not at present, and never will be in the future.

Thus, do not be too bothered by others words if our conscience is clear..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

BE PATIENT

This is a true story which happened in the States. A man came out of his home to admire his new truck. To his puzzlement, his three-year-old son was happily hammering dents into the shiny paint of the truck. The man ran to his son, knocked him away, hammered the little boy's hands into pulp as punishment. When the father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital.

Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally had to amputate the fingers from both the boy's hands. When the boy woke up from the surgery & saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently said, "Daddy, I'm sorry about your truck." Then he asked, "but when are my fingers going to grow back?" The father went home & committed suicide.

How come this stuff always happens in the States? Do the people who make up these stories think that locating them in the States somehow gives it credibility because everybody in their target audience just takes it as a given that the US is populated by loons? I seriously doubt this ever happened. And what is the moral of the story here? To not rough up your kid so bad that he loses his fingers? And if for some reason, you absolutely have to, don't make him an orphan after that? Yeah, thanks a lot, we all didn't know that before.

Think about this story the next time someone steps on your feet or u wish to take revenge. Think first before u lose your patience with someone u love. Trucks can be repaired.. Broken bones & hurt feelings often can't. Too often we fail to recognize the difference between the person and the performance. We forget that forgiveness is greater than revenge.

What are you suggesting, that we should overlook any mistakes our loved ones make on the basis of that fictitious moron's actions? What kind of crap is that? I think most of us would just give the lad a good spanking, dipshit. Not all of us are fucking psychos who would break the hands of our own offspring in the name of discipline, ok? Thanks for your help, anyway.

People make mistakes. We are allowed to make mistakes. But the actions we take while in a rage will haunt us forever.

But the actions we took in a rage were also mistakes, and hence, by your reasoning, we are allowed to make them, right, Einstein?

Don AQ, leading the fight in the Holy War Against Stupidity.

Check it out check it out!

2007-09-03T22:37:00.000+08:00

Remember me mentioning Jiameei a coupla posts back? Well, a coupla posts later, Jiameei is back! What I'm curious about is how she saw that post. My guess is vanity-surfing.

So ~~Nethia~~ ~~the Minister~~ ~~The World's Greatest Period~~ The World's Greatest Full-Stop is back. Jiameei is back. Now, what other mysterious and ancient Lewdites, awakened by The Call, make their ways here even now?

p.s. I did not mean that any of you ladies are ancient, of course. That was just an attempt at being dramatic by cheaply ripping off Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. :p

Conan The Adventurer

2007-08-26T01:03:00.000+08:00

Anyone remember the animated series? Here's a little something to jog your memories.

I was reminded of it today, and of course I thought of the theme song. In secondary school, while lessons were going on and when I probably should have been listening, I translated the song into Chinese with my classmate. I had no idea the memory was etched so deeply into my head that I can still recite it to this day. Naturally, to make the words fit into the tune, some artistic license was taken and some parts were omitted. Here are the original lyrics and the accompanying translation.

Conan! The Adventurer!
克男!是个流浪汉!

Conan! Warrior without fear!
克男!什么都不怕!

He's more powerful than any man,
他比任何人都厉害,
his legend spans across the land and sea!
比任何人都强壮,克男!

(Talking part)
Conan! The mightiest warrior ever!
克男!是个无敌的战士!
His quest: To undue the spell of living stone cast upon his family, by driving the evil serpant men back into another dimension, and vanquishing their leader; the cruel Wizard Wrath-amon!
他的目标:为了解开在他家人身上的活石之咒,把邪恶蛇人打入另外一个次原,并且打败它们的首领,拉法门妖道!

Conan! The Adventurer!
克男!是个流浪汉!
Conan, Man of Bravery!
克男!勇敢的男人!
With his magic sword's protecting beam,
有他魔术剑的神光
the mightiest of warriors is he!
最强壮的战士,克男!
Feel the power! CONAN!
感觉力量吧!克男!

Yes, I was a poor student.

Where did you all go?

2007-08-20T14:06:00.000+08:00

So. Eternal is back (she doesn't want to be known). This is a Good Thing, but it sort of got me wondering where all the other Lewdites have gone. People like her, for example. But the Lewdite I miss most has got to be the awesomely cute and feisty Jiameei. See, her link on the sidebar no longer works, but I simply cannot find it in me to delete it, that's how awesome she is. Babe, if you ever read this, drop me a line telling me how the hell have you been, aight?

Watch out, Google, here comes Google.

2007-08-12T16:16:00.000+08:00

I read this recent article on the Straits Times website. Its title was "Watch out Google, here comes SPH Search." Apparently, Singapore Press Holdings is going to develop its own search engine for local stuff, and they're telling the search engine to watch out. The really funny bit for me was not the title, funny as that already is, but that just below the article, there were, ironically, Google ads. And yes, they were all ads posted by Singaporeans.

To conclude, allow me to post a coupla comments I saw on that page.

Overworked: Cool!!! Where can I find it (SPH search)?
Instill: Just google it.

China Wine

2007-08-06T12:01:00.000+08:00

Watch Ho Yeow Sun shake her booty in this video.

I've never been a fan of Ho Yeow Sun, but yesterday an article about her in a local Chinese newspaper caught my eye. Apparently, the people who were interviewed in that article have discovered fire, the internet and YouTube and they're all shaking with righteous indignation, saying that the MTV was licentious. Uh, no guys. Grace Quek aka Annabel Chong was licentious, Ho Yeow Sun is not.

Aside: Not that I have a problem with licentiousness, of course. (Nor should you, if you happen to enjoy some pr0n now and then. Don't be a hypocrite.) I quite admire Grace Quek, and I think it took a lot of pluck to do what she did and a lot of strength to live down the consequences and not only that, to transform herself into a web developer.

Aside to the aside: The geek snob in me feels compelled to point out that I would be a lot more impressed if she develops in Ruby on Rails, CakePHP or even Mono rather than inferior technologies like C# .Net, but hey, from pr0n star to pr0grammer is already way awesome. Go Grace!

Aside to the aside to the aside: I personally think that C# is not such a bad language, but my beef with it is that ASP .Net runs only on Windoze servers and, as Paul Graham said, "At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't."

Back to the topic, interviewees in the aforementioned article were saying that she can't be another Jolin Tsai because she's married and has a kid blah blah yada yada yada. Firstly, what century are these people living in? Hello, ever heard of Sharon Stone? What about Michelle Pfeiffer? Not that I think Ho Yeow Sun is as physically attractive as those ladies, but fuck Jolin Tsai, ok? She's a kid. They are women. Secondly, Jolin Tsai isn't even in Ho Yeow Sun's league. Jolin Tsai is regional. Ho Yeow Sun is global. She has #1 tracks on both the US and UK dance charts. She's collaborating with Wyclef Jean and Tyson Beckford appears in her music video. Who's Wyclef Jean? Remember Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie"? That's Wyclef Jean. Who's Tyson Beckford? He's the biker dude in Britney Spear's "Toxic" music video and one of the most prominent male models in the world. Who has Jolin Tsai worked with? Jay Chou? Don't get me wrong, the dude is talented, but while most kids in Taiwan probably danced to Hips Don't Lie in clubs, I doubt the average non-Chinese kid has even heard of Jay Chou.

Another point raised was that her husband happens to be a pastor. Well, what of it? Good for him, that a pastor can be open-minded enough to accept his wife being an international pop star. As for charges of licentiousness, come on, nobody would have batted an eyelid if it had been Christina Aguilera, Nicole Scherzinger or even Jolin Tsai in that video. Most of these "critics" have probably enjoyed watching the videos of at least one of those singers. Even if they haven't, their children probably have. These are the times we are living in, this is the stuff your kids are watching. Deal with it and stop being such anal-retentive fuckwads. Your time is over, bitches. Welcome to the next millennium.

As I said, I'm not a fan of Ho Yeow Sun, but come on, the woman is the first Singaporean to have #1 singles on both the US and UK charts. I'm not sure even Ayumi Hamasaki has done that before, and Jolin Tsai sure as fucking hell hasn't. This is as far as one of ours has ever pushed it, fellas, and we're trying to tear her down? What in the world of flying fucks is this nonsense? It's going to be our National Day soon, guys, so even if you're not a fan, like me, feel some patriotic pride at her achievements.

Good work, babe! Show 'em what you're made of!

Random recursion

2007-07-31T11:28:00.000+08:00

I'm too lazy to post stuff, but I had an inexplicable urge to. So, my original intention was to post about some random funny shit. I couldn't think of anything funny to say, so I decided instead that it would be sort of clever to post the source code for a random number generator and title the post "random" instead. However, I ran into a snag there, because the source code for good random number generators are rather lengthy, and I somehow couldn't bring myself to post the code for an outdated one.

So I decided to post about the process of coming to the decision of posting about the process of coming to the decision of posting about the process of . . .

L.E.W.D. Update

2007-07-12T22:12:00.000+08:00

Well, my school webhosting account has been terminated because I graduated. This is bad because I used to host all the LEWD logos there. If you used to put one on your blog, you might wish to update it.

1st logo:

<a href="http://donaq.blogspot.com/2005/04/lewd-manifesto.html"><img src="http://trashb.in/img/lewdlogo.jpg" border="0" alt="LEWD" /></a>

2nd logo:

<a href="http://donaq.blogspot.com/2005/04/lewd-manifesto.html"><img src="http://trashb.in/img/lewdlogo2.jpg" border="0" alt="LEWD" /></a>

small logo:

<a href="http://donaq.blogspot.com/2005/04/lewd-manifesto.html"><img src="http://trashb.in/img/lewdsmall.png" border="0" alt="LEWD" /></a>

That is all.

Live Free or Die Hard aka Die Hard 4.0

2007-07-09T10:52:00.000+08:00


Maggie Q calls some HACKER DUDES. Text scrolls by at a furious pace on screens. Obviously, HACKING is going on, because only k3w| d00dz can possibly read script at such speed.

Justin Long: Yo, bitch, you got a sexy voice. Let's mate.
Maggie Q: Seriously, has that ever worked for you before?
Justin Long: Not really, but hey, I am a hacker and hence, by definition, a socially inept geek.
Maggie Q: Oh. Well, in that case, let's you and I make furious, sweaty sex, you hot geeky guy, you.
Justin Long: Really? Wow! Let me just find my penis...
Maggie Q: Nah, just kidding. Have a computer bomb instead.
Justin Long: What?
Maggie Q: Nothing.
Justin Long: ...

Random Hacker Dude's computer hangs. Instead of pressing escape or logging in from another virtual terminal and attempting to kill the offending processes, he for some reason hits the Delete key. This causes his computer to blow the fucking shit out of him, his friend, and his goddamned house.

Maggie Q: MUAHAHAHAHA!

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is making out with Some Guy in a car.
Some Guy gropes her tits and, like a perfect little cock tease, Mary slaps his hand away.
Some Guy tries again.

An ominous shadow looms over the car. It is Bruce Willis!

Bruce Willis: Big mistake. No means no. Get out of the car, punk.
Mary: Dad, relax! He's not even my boyfriend! Go away!
Bruce Willis: Oh. That's all right then. You can make out with anyone, just don't get serious about it, that's my girl. *goes away*

The Gestapo FBI experiences a momentary outage.

Cliff Curtis: Any hacker who could conceivably be even remotely involved in this must be rounded up.
FBI chick: Um, how do we know it's a hack attempt? And even if it is, shouldn't we ascertain who the culprit is instead of just randomly arresting people? Perhaps we could check the system log files first? Do a little computer forensics...?

Cliff Curtis: I stared at the screens for ONE SECOND! That's sufficient time for me to deduce that it's a hacking attempt.
FBI chick: But-

Cliff Curtis: ONE SECOND!
FBI chick: The actual culprits-

Cliff Curtis: ONE SECOND!
FBI chick: Oh well, at least this won't take much effort because all the hackers with the skills and motivation to do this live in the USA. We know this because 1) we are universally loved and 2) all foreigners are stupid.

Fortunately, this sort of thing does not happen in real life.

Bruce Willis' superior asks him to go pick up Justin Long.

Justin Long is in his apartment, and his computer hangs. His finger hovers over the Delete key, which the producers seem to think will magically kill all malfunctioning processes.

The doorbell rings, sparing Justin Long from a gruesome end.

Random Thugs: Well, the computer failed to explode, let's go shoot up the geek instead.

Justin Long: OMFG OMFG someone is shooting at me!

Bruce Willis: Don't worry, kid. I know exactly how to deal with this.

Bruce Willis springs a huge boner and deflects the bullets with it. Then, he proceeds to methodically squash all the Random Thugs with his enormous dick.

Justin Long: I feel so inadequate because although my IQ is 3 times that of his, I can't squash people or deflect bullets with my dick.

Surviving thug calls Timothy Olyphant.

Thug: Dude, we fucked up.
Timothy Olyphant: What happened?
Thug: Some cop whupped our asses with his huge dick.
Timothy Olyphant: Oh fuck, a cop with a huge dick? I feel threatened because in spite of the fact that I am a genius hacker and I virtually control the entire country's infrastructure, I have a small penis and occasionally can't get it up.
Maggie Q: It's ok darling. It happens to everyone.

Bruce Willis brings Justin Long to Cliff Curtis.

Cliff Curtis: Our worst fears have come true. The hackers have caused a traffic jam and sent us fake anthrax.
Bruce Willis: Yo, dawg. Here's the geek you ordered.
Cliff Curtis: Oh. Well, we're too busy right now, so stow him around somewhere, because although he's a genius hacker, he can't help us with this obviously hacking-related traffic disturbance right now.
Bruce Willis: Well, fsck you then. We're outta here.

l337 H4x0rs: We interrupt this program to bring you a special broadcast. America, you've been pwned! Uber pwnaged! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
America: *cringes in fear, starts panicking*

Justin Long: This is a fire sale! Everything must go!
Bruce Willis: Whatever. Let's go drive around for a while for no apparent reason. That's safer than staying here with all the feds.

Maggie Q: Just proceed here and go there. Turn left at the sign marked "ambush".
Justin Long: Hey, I'm having a minuscule erection! It's her! She's one of the bad guys!

Bruce Willis: Yo bitch. We're onto you. Instead of hiding that fact and using it to my advantage, here's a picture of my penis. As you can see, it's a good 13 inches in diameter even when it's flaccid. Way larger than your boyfriend's minute member.
Timothy Olyphant: I know all about you, n00b. I watched all the previous 3 movies and even though I know you're a psycho killer who exhibits Terminator-like invulnerability, I'm not gonna get off the line and quietly have you killed. Instead I'm gonna piss you off by erasing your 401K and telling you about it. PWNED! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Bruce Willis: IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, MOTHERFUCKER!

Helicopter: *shoots at Bruce Willis, misses because Bruce Willis' dick has erected a force field over the car*
Bruce Willis: *drives into tunnel*
Timothy Olyphant: *directs like 1000000 cars into the tunnel*
Bruce Willis: All right, that does it. I'm REALLY gonna use my dick now.

Bruce Willis springs a huge erection and launches his car at the helicopter with it.

Acrobatic Thug: *jumps off chopper*
Chopper: *explodes*

Acrobatic Thug: Yo Timothy. We lost the chopper in a freak car-helicopter crash. I shall not attempt to go into the tunnel to check for survivors, because clearly any superhuman capable of launching a car at a chopper with his dick could not have survived that.
Timothy Olyphant: Good job, dawg. In spite of my godlike intelligence stats, I will not ask you to go into the tunnel just to make sure.

Bruce Willis: So, kid. What d'ya think they'll do next?
Justin Long: I WANT MY MUMMYYYYYYY!!
Bruce Willis: Snap out of it, kid and help my dick save the world!
Justin Long: Oh ok. Well, they'll probably take out the power stations next. I even know the exact one.
Bruce Willis: Cool! Let's go crash their party RIGHT NOW!
Justin Long: You sure you don't need reinforcements?
Bruce Willis: To deal with a needle dick like Timothy? You talk crazy, man.

In the car...

Justin Long: So, how'd you do that thing where you launched the car at the chopper with nothing but your giant boner?
Bruce Willis: I am a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Bruce Willis: *rips off some skin from his dick to reveal a mecha-dick taken directly from some hentai anime*

Justin Long: My hero... wait, what?
Bruce Willis: That's just a line from my friend's movie. Actually, trust me, if someone else had a dick as large as or larger than mine, I'd gladly let them do this shit. Unfortunately, however, no one's dick is larger than mine. Even my wife left me because it hurts when we try to have sex.
Justin Long: Guess that's what makes you that guy.

Maggie Q: *Hacks the power station's system like a true script kiddie.*
Bruce Willis: I kill your henchmen with my enormous dick!
Maggie Q: I whale on you with my kung fu!
Bruce Willis: Even though I am ten times slower than you, I win by clubbing you with my gigantic boner.

Timothy Olyphant: Maggie?
Bruce Willis: I pwned your hot girlfriend! Who's the n00b now? BWAHAHAHA!
Timothy Olyphant: NOOOOOO! I'm never gonna get laid again! Oh, it's REALLY on now, copper!

Justin Long: We need to find Fat Geek. He is the only one who can help us save the country.

Fat Geek: Balls to you, copper!
Bruce Willis: Want a can of whoopass?
Fat Geek: Okok, let's not get fractious. The Bad Guy is actually Timothy Olyphant, who got crucified by the government, hung for 9 days on the cross, rose from the grave, etc. Look, the point is, he's a ghost. He's so good, you'll never be able to find him.

Timothy Olyphant: We gots your daughter, copper!
Bruce Willis: Fuck! Hang on, girl! Daddy's coming to get you!

Justin Long: Hey! I grew a pair! And my dick seems to be getting larger! This must be your influence! Mind if I come with?
Bruce Willis: Whatever. Just stay out of my way when the killing begins.

Bruce Willis: *finds the Bad Guys. so much for Timothy being a ghost*
Timothy Olyphant: Stop or I'll shoot your daughter!
Bruce Willis: Make my day, bitch. You ain't got the balls.
Timothy Olyphant: *looks down*
Timothy Olyphant: Shit! How'd he know? All right, lads, let's make a run for it. Acrobatic Thug, kill him!

Bruce Willis throws Acrobatic Thug into the blender with his enormous dick and has the remains for breakfast.

Bruce Willis: Cliff Curtis, if I don't make it through this, please get my daughter away from that geek.
Cliff Curtis: Haha, you're actually pretending it's possible for you to die. How droll.

Timothy Olyphant: Ok, I'm gonna send a fighter jet after the copper now. Surely that will stop him?
Bruce Willis: *ejaculates and gums up the jet's engine with a huge gob of semen, causing it to crash*
Timothy Olyphant: FUCK!

Bruce Willis: End of the line, pal.
Random Thug: *shoots Bruce Willis*
Mary: Daddy! NOOOOO!
Timothy Olyphant: Finally! Pwned! BWAHAHAHAHA! Ok, now instead of just putting a bullet into that thick skull of yours, I'm gonna get close to you, haul you up and put my gun within easy reach of you. In spite of the facts that you've shown signs of invulnerability and inhuman endurance and that you're not mortally wounded.

Mary and Justin Long: *snigger* What an idiot.
Bruce Willis: *impales Timothy Olyphant on his giant boner*

End

p.s. For the record, I actually quite enjoyed the movie.

Some (dis)information

2007-07-03T23:42:00.000+08:00

Ever wonder what makes your pointer move on the screen when you move your mouse? Well, wonder no more. Thanks to the wonderful technology of high magnification, you can now see how it works.

I'd be the first to admit PHP has its issues, but...

2007-07-01T01:40:00.000+08:00

Check out this recent screenshot.

Seriously, Perl guys. Put up a maintenance page.

Blogger Pagination Hack

2007-06-22T12:40:00.000+08:00

So. I wrote a pagination hack for my blog yesterday. For the uninitiated, pagination refers to the links on a site that go something like "newer posts" and "older posts". Here are some instructions for anyone interested in using it.

1) Download this. If you run a puny OS like Windows you can unzip it using WinRAR.

2) Navigate to your Blogger Settings page, Formatting tab. Change the "Timestamp format" to the one that says something like "6/22/2007 01:33:55 PM".

3) Host the files somewhere and include them in your blog template. If you do not know how to do that, you can copy and paste the following code. It must be somewhere between your <head> and </head> tags.

 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://trashb.in/css/bloggerpaginationhack.css" /> <script src="http://trashb.in/js/bloggerpaginationhack.js"></script> 

You can, of course, choose to omit the comments, but they do make it easier to find and modify/remove code.

4) You also need to include the following javascript variables, again, in your HTML header.

 <script type="text/javascript"> var datestr=""; var page=0; </script> 

5) Include the following code somewhere within where your post is displayed. Placing it somewhere near your permalink would probably work fine. This updates the variable that stores the date of the earliest post on the current page.

 <script type="text/javascript"> datestr = "<$BlogItemDateTime$>";</script> 

6) Finally, include the following at the bottom of your page.

 <div id="moreposts"> <span id="new"><a id="newer" href=""><< Newer posts</a></span> <span id="old"><a href="" id="older">Older posts >></a></span> <script type="text/javascript"> getParams(datestr); </script> </div>

It is a crude hack, because I'm not really a javascript hacker, and there is one major imperfection in that the "newer posts" link is really just a back button. I did it that way because apparently the query parameter "updated-min" does not work the way I would expect it to work. However, this guy apparently managed to work it. I had no time to find out how, but if anyone can tell me, I'd be much obliged.

p.s. If you happen to use this code, please post a link to this post or post a comment here telling me I'm cool so that I can know how many people are using it and thereby validate my own existence, k thx.

Opener of Ways

2007-06-18T12:19:00.000+08:00

"Goddess", Aten said, as his eyes closed again and he laid his head back. Hastily, Hathiel pulled herself clear of the Merging, her thoughts confused. She looked down again at Aten's face. He was still smiling slightly, his head resting upon the sand. Then, he stopped smiling and his eyes opened again.

"This is not a dream," Aten said, "and you are not a goddess. Who are you? Where am I?"

Hathiel remained silent as Aten sat up. The warrior winced, his hand moving to the back of his head where the mast of the ship had struck him. Then, he muttered to himself. "I remember now. There was a storm, and my ship was destroyed."

He looked at Hathiel again, his eyes piercing, and then he grinned at her. "And you, lovely lady, are somewhat of an enigma. Why are you here with me, on this beach the gods have forsaken?"

Again, Hathiel was silent, confused as the warmth of his grin washed over her, and the man nodded. "I know not who you are, lady, but I suppose you mean me no harm, or you could have slain me as I slept. Interesting as this conversation has been, however, I fear I must depart, for as you can see, I have lost most of my possessions and I am hungry."

Aten pushed himself to his feet, but giddiness from hunger and the blow to his head caused him to stagger. Closing his eyes, he swayed for a while, waiting for it to pass. Then, he started to inspect his belongings. All he had were his clothes and the dagger sheathed in his right boot. He surveyed the surroundings. The beach stretched off to the north and south, and in the west, beyond the beach, tall trees covered the ground in shadows. Aten strode towards the woods, then stopped as five warriors emerged from them. They approached slowly, deliberately. And they were all carrying drawn swords.

As Aten was waking up, Pas and the other four men in his search party had approached the beach. Upon seeing that Aten was indeed here, he had been jubilant, for he remembered well the lashes that had been delivered to his back by order of the general. 50 lashes he had endured, for nothing more than the offence of sneaking his whore into camp. The other men in his party had been similarly punished for various other offences, which was why they had been more than happy to take Hindustani gold in exchange for the death of the general.

Pas would have liked nothing more than to walk onto that beach and plunge his sword into Aten's foul heart, but he was wary, for it was common knowledge that the general was one of the greatest fighters in the Empire and, even unarmed, he was not to be taken lightly. The woman Pas dismissed, but the general he feared. He wished to kill Aten and claim the gold, but he had no desire to risk death attempting it, and so he signalled for silence and crouched among the trees with his men, observing.

They watched as Aten sat up and spoke with the unknown woman. Senji cleared his throat and whispered to Pas. "He has no sword, Pas. Let's take him." But Pas gestured sharply for silence. Senji sneered but subsided. Pas observed as Aten stood and staggered, and a slow smile spread over his face. The general was obviously weakened from fighting the storm. He stood and turned. "The Hawk is injured. Let's take him, but be careful."

Pas and his men rose from their hiding place, drew their swords, and strode towards the Hawk General.

Hathiel watched as the five warriors approached. Obviously, they planned to kill Aten. Perhaps this was how Aten would die. It was later than had been decreed in the Book of Fates - and this was unheard of - but she could investigate that with her sisters later. Her duty now was to wait for Aten's soul to be freed from his body, then return it to the Source. As these thoughts went through Hathiel's head, Aten spoke as if oblivious to the threat of the swords in the hands of the warriors facing him. "I recognise you. You are soldiers of the Empire and you have served with me before. You will give me your supplies and a mount, if you have one."

The leader smiled without mirth. "I'm afraid not, general. Today, we will repay you for the pain that you have caused all of us, and we will repay in ki-"

Impatiently, Aten interrupted, "Yes, yes. I am sure that listening to you whine about how I wronged you will be as painful to me as the lashes I ordered laid on your back were to you. But you do not understand. I do not have the time. I am tired and hungry. I do not have the energy for this nonsense. This is not a negotiation. Give me what I asked for or die. Decide."

Pas' face hardened and he said nothing. Aten closed his eyes and drew a long breath, standing very still. When he opened his eyes again, all traces of weariness had vanished from him. He drew his dagger and flicked it in a high, slow arc towards Pas. Instinctively, the soldier's eyes followed the spinning blade as it fell towards him. Pas began to step to his right to avoid the falling blade. He never completed that step.

Hathiel blinked as Aten exploded into action. Almost faster than the eye could follow, he took two quick steps and hurled himself towards Pas. His left arm blurred out, slamming the heel of his palm into Pas' nose, driving the bone into his brain. The others had barely begun to tense in reaction when Aten's right hand flashed out, plucking the dagger out of the air and slashing open the throat of the man on his right.

Aten ducked under a neck cut from his left, then leapt into the air, spun, and hammered a booted heel into his assailant's face. As he landed in perfect balance, he hurled his dagger into the eye of the warrior furthest to the left. Aten spun to confront the remaining soldier, but he had turned to run. The general scooped up Pas' sword and hurled it like a javelin to stab into the fleeing man's back.

A groan sounded from behind Aten. He turned to see that the soldier he had kicked, Senji, was still alive. He strode towards the would-be assassin. "No! Don't kill me!" Senji cried.

"I'm too tired to do so, man," Aten replied, sinking to his haunches to stare at him. As the man started to weep in relief, Aten spoke again. "You can do it yourself."

"No! I won't do it!" Senji shouted.

"You will do it, for if I have to, by all the gods, I swear I will make it last for hours," Aten said.

They stared at each other. Senji obviously wished to attack, but lacked the courage. Finally, with a despairing cry, he rose to his knees and drove his sword into his own belly. For a while he remained motionless, then he fell over and started to writhe and scream in pain.

Aten strode over and casually flipped the soldier onto his back with his foot. "Gods, man, you appear to have disembowelled yourself. It looks as if your death will take an agonizingly long time, after all. However, as your screams are beginning to grate on my ears, I shall be kind and put you out of your misery."

The general gathered up the dying soldier's sword and stepped on his chest to hold him still. With one powerful blow, he hacked Senji's head from his shoulders.

Aten retrieved his dagger and wandered among the corpses of the soldiers, taking their swords and hefting them for balance. As he did so, Hathiel replayed the fight in her mind. She had never seen any man move so fast before, but it was more than just his speed that had been unusual. In the course of her immortal life, Hathiel had witnessed many scenes of violence. The action was usually brief and brutal, but unsure. Aten had been like a wolf among sheep, utterly confident and completely in control of the fight. His movements had been supremely graceful, like a dancer's, and yet blindingly sudden. By comparison, the assassins had appeared clumsy and inept. Hathiel knew that here was a true prince among warriors, perhaps the deadliest she had seen in centuries.

She watched as Aten wrenched Pas' sword from the body of the soldier who had tried to escape. The blade slashed through the night air in a series of bewildering arcs as Aten tested it. Apparently satisfied, he unbuckled the sheath from Pas' body and attached it to his own belt. Then, he turned to regard Hathiel quizzically.

"Well, you seem to be no stranger to death, lady."

Hathiel almost laughed aloud in spite of herself. If the man only knew . . .

Aten watched as a look of amusement flitted across the strange woman's face following his words. With her fair skin and white hair, she appeared fragile and ethereal. Perhaps that was why he had thought she was a goddess. Though her hair was white, it was not the listless white of the elderly. Instead, it seemed to glow with its own luminescence in the moonlight. Then, a deep voice spoke from the direction of the ocean.

"That was very well done, young Hawk." The woman gasped and Aten saw, for the first time, a look of alarm on her face. He spun to confront the owner of the voice. It was a man with ebony skin and short, tightly curled hair. He wore a gray shirt with a strange symbol embroidered in gold on its sleeves. And he was standing on the surface of the water.

Despite the blatant display of supernatural powers, Aten could sense no danger emanating from the strange figure. Yet the woman was afraid, and Aten reacted to that fear. His dagger flashed into his hand, and then into the air. "No!" Hathiel shouted, but the dagger was already hurtling towards the black man like a crossbow bolt.

Aten watched in disbelief as the dagger slowed, then stopped, floating in midair in front of the man's chest. "My, my, such insolence from a lower creature," the black man drawled as he stared into Aten's eyes.

The air was no different. The moonlight still illuminated the beach and Aten drew breath as he normally would, but, staring into the stranger's eyes, he suddenly felt . . . pressure. It was as if an invisible mountain had settled itself on the shoulders of his spirit. Aten tried to resist the immense pressure, but slowly, he sank onto his knees and his head bowed.

"That is much better. An appropriately respectful posture."

The pressure eased and Aten stood up. "Who are you?" The general asked.

"He is a demon! An accursed being who does not belong in this universe!" Hathiel hissed.

The black man raised an eyebrow. "You injure me, Hathiel, truly you do. I am absolutely crushed that you would label me so." He looked at Aten. "I assure you, general, I am not a demon. At least, I am of an order much higher than that of the mindless, ravenous being that caused the storm which sank your ship."

The demon gestured at Hathiel. "The appellation of 'demon' applied on one such as myself is nothing but a falsehood the gods use to mislead their servants.

"However, my nature is immaterial for now. You may address me as the Upuatu, Opener of Ways. Now, listen carefully, Aten, for your time is short. The storm that sank your ship was caused by the demon Zu. Zu was sent by a practitioner of the dark arts. Both the wizard and the soldiers who just attacked you were in the employ of the Hindustani Lord Girish. As you know, the Tiger General has been killed and the army he led into Hindustan was crushed. The Blood Buddha now marches upon your Empire with an army numbering more than 150,000. Your mentor, Tannin, has been murdered in his own house in a bid to provoke you to rage, for Girish feels that you are the only one who poses a slight threat to his plans of conquest. Is he right? That depends on you, Hawk General. Will the Empire survive or fall? That, too, depends on you. Whatever you decide to do, I give you Hathiel to aid you as best she can. Choose well, young Hawk."

The Upuatu turned to Hathiel. "Stay with this man," he said in a strange voice that seemed to be a whisper, yet reverberated in Aten's ears like thunder. Hathiel gasped and twisted as if trying to escape from some unseen grip. The air around her writhed as she struggled, then settled as she wilted and fell to her knees. "You are now bound to this shell of flesh, my dear Spirit of Air, until I choose to release you. If you wish that to happen, you must assist Aten in whatever task he chooses to undertake."

Upuatu held out his hands, palms facing the sky. "Come, Astarel, and lead these souls back to the Source."

A Spirit of Air appeared before the Upuatu, glowing and insubstantial. She floated towards the slain men, and for a moment, Aten could see their souls rising. Then, they all vanished. Aten looked back towards the Upuatu, but he was gone too, and the general noticed that his dagger was once again sheathed in his boot.

Aten strode towards the kneeling Hathiel. "Are you all right, lady?"

She appeared like a statue, totally immobile and staring vacantly into the air in front of her. The air shimmered around her again, slightly at first, but then ever more violently, until Aten was forced to step away as he felt tremendous waves of pure force blasting at his spirit. To stay there was to have his sanity blown away. Beads of perpiration appeared on her face and abruptly, the air settled. Hathiel let out an explosive breath of air, and fell to her side.

Aten leapt forward and caught her, lowering her gently to the ground. "I can't . . . break free." Hathiel whispered. Aten sat beside her, staring out to sea.

"Who or what was that . . . Upuatu?" The general asked.

For a moment there was silence. Then, Hathiel replied. "He is a legend, a myth, even to my sisters and I. We did not think He still existed, even though those of us who are eldest, those to whom the gods sometimes speak, know that the gods themselves told us of Him. Some say that He is more powerful than the gods themselves, though the gods deny it. They insist that He hides from them, fearing their power, and yet there is fear in their own eyes when they speak of Him.

"No god knows His purposes or His true identity, or if they know, none of them has chosen to tell us. When questioned about His origins, some gods say that He is a renegade who originated from their own realm. Others speak in weasel words and say He is nothing but a cowardly demon. The Book of Fates mention Him not at all. A goddess once told me that He is older than all of them, and that He was already here when they arrived in this universe. Some among us believe that the Creator Himself created the Upuatu before or just after He created the universe. Others believe the Upuatu is even older than the Creator.

"What all the legends agree on is that where He walks, chaos follows, and that He opposes the Book of Fates. I knew that He was powerful, but I did not expect His mastery of the Source to be so profound that He could make me human without destroying me. Above all, I did not know that Astarel had defected to His side. Is she alone? Or is there a cult among the Spirits of Air who secretly worship the Upuatu?"

For the first time since she spoke, Hathiel showed bitterness and raised her voice. "Inattentive gods! That they could allow this to happen! And now I cannot reach out to them. He has taken that power away from me too."

Aten considered her words, then spoke. "And I assume you were here because I was to die in the storm?"

Hathiel looked at him sharply, then shrugged and nodded.

The general nodded, and looked out at the sea once more, his eyes thoughtful. Then, he looked back at Hathiel and grinned. "Are you hungry?"

Wedding speeches

2007-06-10T09:44:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I attended a friend's wedding dinner. You know how at one point in most weddings, the bride and groom get to say something to all their guests? Usually, they say something mushy, like "I'm so lucky to have her" and all that shite. Well, I got to thinking about what I would say in the unlikely event that some devious witch actually manages to trap me. One can never be too prepared, you know? So here's what I came up with.

1) She's really lucky to have me. Man, I wish I was as lucky as her.

2) When I met this girl, I thought she must have been the most beautiful girl in the world. This has taught me something. Never pick up chicks when you're drunk.

3) Man, that fake pregnancy sure worked for her, eh?

And of course, this is the most likely.

4) When my wife first told me that she was pregnant and I answered, "So what you gon' do? Is it even mine?" She could not have made me happier than when she answered, "I'm gon' have this baby whether you like it or not and you gon' have to look after us both, motherfucker."

This reminds me. I have got to get a vasectomy.

The Cold One

2007-06-07T12:20:00.000+08:00

He follows the Golden Rule
He speaks with a silver tongue
His god is the golden fool
He was born with a silver spoon
His mother is a debt repaid
His father a wino, a junkie,
a moment of unconsidered lust
His friends are insurance policies
His lover is a sperm dumpster, used and abused
His childhood was an invisible pink unicorn
His school was a grifter's con
His tutor had plausible deniability
His textbook was The Prince
He was born of snow and ice
He is everywhere
On the streets, in the courts,
aboveboard, underground,
in the skies, in your eyes,
a backdoor in your hard drive.

Re: Singapore's Cyber-Threat

2007-06-06T11:27:00.000+08:00

Check this out.

No wonder my ears are burning.

Dear ASP Khoo Kay Chong Friday, Jun 1 2007
Uncategorized Michaelk 9:35 pm

Thank you for taking time to come to the School of Infocomm Technology, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, to give us freshmen a talk about cyber-crime. I am glad that local law enforcement keep themselves up-to-date with cyber-threats.

No thank you, for using the word hacker inaccurately. I believe that you were referring to people who illegally compromise the security of computer systems for illicit and unethical purposes when you used that word. The proper term for this is “cracker“.

A big thank you for correctly stating that Singabloodypore and Hung at Dawn have “agendas”, should be “read with a pinch of salt” and intend to “influence” readers. You are absolutely right.

However, I think that you also should have mentioned that the P65 blog, the Young PAP blog as well as the Petir Magazine (avaliable for online viewing) have agendas, should be read with a pinch of salt, and intend to influence readers. Instead of just showing us Singabloodypore and Hung at Dawn as examples of political opinion or ideological web sites, the PAP-run sites I listed above should receive the same attention. Don’t they contain political opinion and ideology too? If so, why are only anti-government blogs highlighted, but not pro-government blogs?

Thank you.

-Michaelk

Note: ASP Khoo Kay Chong is the head of the Technology Crime Research Branch of the Singapore Police Force. More information about him can be found in this Computer Times article or this Singapore Government Directory page.

In future I promise to abide by the words of Dr Lee Boon Yang - I promise to be 'objective, to be accurate and responsible for my views, to report accurately, objectively and responsibly, to become part of the nation-building effort, rather than go out and purvey views that mislead people, confuse people, which will in fact undermine the national strategy!'

Just like the mainstream media.

The question that immediately leaps to mind is this: Why do all these people even bother? It is all so infantile. I am supremely disinterested in matters of law or politics. In the long run, these issues are as ephemeral as fashion trends except when they interfere with the discovery and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In a hundred years, we may consider a democratic system of government as obsolete as we now find incestuous monarchies such as the ancient Egyptians had. However, e=mc² will define the relationship between energy and mass for so long as the laws of physics remain unchanged (i.e. probably at least until the end of this universe). Politicize that, bitches. What truly matters to the future of humanity is the growth of human knowledge. Meh free speech. Meh political agendas. Guess what, if we do not find a viable alternative source of energy before we run out of fossil fuels, you will all be blogging about your political views on an abacus, regardless of your political affiliations.

Having said that, I must confess that I would tend to take any lecture on cyber-crime with a large pinch of salt if the speaker does not differentiate between a hacker and a cracker.

I just had to link this

2007-06-05T17:07:00.000+08:00

Enjoy

Pit Stop

2007-06-05T10:57:00.000+08:00

For some, the journey of life is a stroll in the park or, perhaps, a picnic walk in the woods just beside the safety of their home, sweet home. For others, it is a bash through wild, demon-haunted jungles or a perilous trek up a glacial mountain, with never a moment of rest and the threat of death around every corner. For myself, born neither the scion of an excessively wealthy dynasty nor the bastard offspring of a crack whore in a war-torn, natural disaster-ridden land, life is perhaps a kayak trip down an uncharted river; sometimes calm rowing, sometimes hanging on for dear life through unexpected rapids and occasionally, crashing on unseen rocks around a sudden bend.

I find life to be difficult, but only because I am not content to be swept along on the river of time by the currents of random events like so much flotsam on the surface of the waters. Instead, I am compelled, by some obscure quixotic urge perhaps, to foolishly paddle furiously against the current and explore tributaries that have seldom been explored. This often results in my kayak running aground on unexpectedly shallow waters, or going over waterfalls when I fail to notice the sound while having lunch on the boat. Occasionally, however, it results in finding unexpected treasure, like a cave full of hot, female ninja-pirates with frikkin' lasers attached to their eyepatches.

At this moment, however, I have found myself a nice, calm pool close to shore, and I am safely drifting along. It is so peaceful that I have even invited some friends onto my boat to have lunch with me. One nagging doubt that plagues me, though, is that distant roaring sound emanating from the western horizon, where the sun is setting in the misty cloud. What the deuce could that be? Oh well, that is a problem for another day, one that my inestimable intellect and indomitable will shall no doubt overcome. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. For now, have some tea, and meditate on the beauty of life.