“针锋相对” - 张恒芝太爱抢话？伍洛毅不够深度？

自从王帝聪和代替他的謝燊杰走了之后，就觉得很多时候主持说的话比来宾说的话还多。 比较喜欢王帝聪的主持方式，他会察言观色，在适当的时候把问题交给相适当的人，然后自己就在旁用心聆听来宾的看法。他把来宾们带到幕前，把焦点放在他们的身上，让他们发挥，自己成为配角。而且，画龙点睛是他的强项，他能用一两句发人深省的话为节目画上完美的句号。謝燊杰还不错,懂得发问也懂得聆听.

张恒芝呢，老爱打断来宾的谈话，而且有很多意见，到底是要听她发言还是要听来宾们发言啊？她的风格太霸道,节目的节奏经常被她突兀的发言所打断.

今天的来宾包括伍洛毅，这好像是他第二次上节目.看他在其他节目中表现都相当不错:幽默,自然.但是他"在针锋相对"和"有话就说"中的表现就显得比较逊色.在这些谈话性质的节目中,面对严肃的话题,他说话的内容显得有些空洞,看法也并没有什么精辟独特之处.反而是刘歗鸼和黄伟雄欧有自己见解.伍洛毅潜力不错,若能在事实新闻这方面加强,相信他能够成为更全面的主持人.

New release of EasyEclipse 1.2, based on Eclipse 3.2 Callisto

EasyEclipse 1.2 is finally released, get it here. All the plugins for your development needs, none of the fuss (well almost).

Korean movie - Please Teach Me English

Ever tried to teach a pig the ABCs? Plain-Jane Yeong-ju (Lee Na-Yeong) did, and as you can probably guess, fat hopes. Learning a new language is often an arduous task, not only for pigs, but also for adults. Yeong-ju is repeatedly frustrated by her command of English, but having a kid string immaculate English sentences in front of her is downright demoralising and sort of funny.



The movie, "Please Teach Me English", also stars Jang Hyuk (of "Volcano High" fame) as the cool Moon-su. The romantic comedy has our two stars in a conversational English class, with Yeong-ju needing to learn English for her job and Moon-su needing to learn it to communicate with his long-lost sister.

Yeong-ju is easily attracted to Moon-su, but Moon-su is smitten by his Caucasian teacher, Cathy. Moon-su's feelings are not reciprocated, but our unattractive heroine still has many hurdles to climb before she can reach Moon-su's heart. With Cathy's help, she is able to interact with Moon-su in the class and their feelings grow closer. And after tutoring the pig together, Moon-su discovers that Yeong-ju is not as plain as he had thought.

In Singapore, English is ubiquitous: it's everywhere. But in countries like China, South Korea or Japan, English is not as widely-spoken. We can see the difficulty encountered by both the natives and the foreigners, not only when they can't understand each other as they speak different languages, but also what happens when meaning is lost in translation.
The South Koreans in the movie recognize the advantage of the ability to speak English will try to learn it despite the difficulties encountered.

The movie is light-hearted and enjoyable, but some may find it too fluffy. It should be enjoyable as a film for the family or a couple. Although some of the funny scenes are exaggerated, they don't come across as obtrusive or pretentious, and the geekiness of the heroine does somehow attract me. Of course, it's always funny when you see beginners learn a new language.

More shows to watch out for!

Thoughts on NUS alumni donation

Straits Times October 30, 2006
Just 1% of alumni donate to NUS
An appeal to National University of Singapore (NUS) alumni for funds to help its needy students has fallen on deaf ears.

The full article can be found at Funkygrad forum or the nclave.

Straits Times Nov 21, 2006
Foreigners get 4 in 10 bursaries given by NUS this year
But S'pore students come first, it says in response to some rumblings

The full article can be found at Ohgenki forums or Mr Wang's.

I've been seeing these pieces of news appear regularly in discussions or blogs, and as one of the 99% I do find it intriguing. For me, the reasons for not donating are simple, I'm in a financial conundrum and I don't have strong feelings for NUS.

As for the distribution of the bursaries, I don't really see any problem with it. Given the source of the bursaries are mostly Singaporeans, there appears to be some moral obligation to help Singaporeans first. From the second article, this is the case, and not only that, they are getting more.

The NUS financial aid office has offered 1,500 bursaries so far this year, with 60 per cent, or 900, going to Singaporeans. No local applicant who met the eligibility criterion of per capita monthly household income of up to $900 was turned away.

They were awarded bursaries ranging from $1,000 to $2,000.

Foreigners who could show proof of hardship took the rest of the bursaries, with each getting about $300 less than their local counterparts.

Since no Singaporean student is worse off because of a foreign student getting bursary, I'm fine with it. Additionally, if we look at it another way, if the foreign students who need such aid follows some random distribution, then part of that aid goes to helping future residents and citizens. And besides, even if they don't end up being part of our society, can't we be good neighbours to them by offering them help?

Mr N. Riva, 44, a businessman and donor, added: 'I decided against giving after I found out that it went to foreigners as well. Just last year, NUS said it did not have enough to help all needy students.'

NUS came under fire last year when it revealed that only 492 out of 1,074 bursary applicants had received funds. It responded by pledging to top up alumni donations with its own money.

If this is the way a lot of people think, then the pool of money available will reduce and we'll return to a state like last year where less than half the applicants received the funds.

At least I'm glad to see the relaxation of the criteria for bursary application and the availability of other schemes to help needy students.

GIMP tutorial - Create a high-contrast grayscale image

This tutorial attempts to create a high-contrast grayscale image. Below are two methods to go about doing it, the first is quick and easy, while the second offers you more control over the distribution of gray values.

Method 1

1. Open an existing image. On the menubar, File>>Open. I’ve chosen an image of the beautiful Kyoko Fukada.
   


2. On the menubar, Layer>>Duplicate layer. Select the new copy of the image.


3. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>> Layers>>Colors>>Brightness-Contrast. Adjust brightness and contrast until you see desired results. Try and aim for an image with 3 or 4 strong colours.
   


4. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>> Desaturate.
   

Method 2

1. Open an existing image. On the menubar, File>>Open. I’ve chosen an image of the beautiful Kyoko Fukada.


2. On the menubar, Layer>>Duplicate layer. Select the new copy of the image.


3. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>>Levels. Extend the dynamic range of colors of the image.


4. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>>Curves. Once again, try and aim for an image with 3 or 4 strong colours. Experiment til you find the spread of colors you like.


5. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>> Desaturate.

---

That's the end of the tutorial.High-contrast greyscale images are useful for generating images that look like the are cel-shaded or duotone images.

This is created by changing the mode of the top layer to "overlay".

This is created using Layers>>Colors>>Color Balance and setting the Midtones and Shadows to red.Some books on GIMP.

phpBB mod uninstallation - tedious

I was experimenting with phpBB (a PHP-based forum board) recently and was doing some mod installation via easyMOD. It was a breeze, though you have to watch out for occasional errors. Manually installing a large number of mods, backing up can be a real pain. You also have to careful and not screw up. Here's what they have to say about installing mods safely.

Installing a mod, whatever size it is and whatever your skills in HTML/PHP/phpBB are is always a very risky operation. Doing it live, even if the mod has no bugs and even if you use easyMOD to be sure to make no errors while applying a mod sounds so like a little crazy.

If you're going to manually uninstall mods, you might go a little crazy. Uninstalling via easyMOD is somewhat easier, but you have to take note of the order that the mods were installed, as the changes are applied in a stack-based fashion, first-in-last-out.
What this means is that you have to carefully consider what you are going to install and in what order to install them. If you have installed 10 mods and want to uninstall the 3rd mod (based on time of installation), then you have to do 7 un-installations and 6 installations. Yeah, that's tiring. I'm guessing this can be automated though.

Foreign construction workers denied public housing

Andrew gives us an interesting view of the possible repercussions once this policy is implemented, including rising costs of construction and and employers finding ways to skirt the policy. I have my doubts on the possible relocation of these workers to private housing though, since the cost is forbidding. The employers would rather house them in cheap workers dorm or some temporary on-site housing, which are quite shabby. And I don't think it contradicts with the move to integrate foreign talents into Singapore society, since the government doesn't consider these workers to be talents in the first place, and the aim is to let these workers earn their money and go back home. There is a problem if we decide to let them settle here. We are basically expanding the pool of unskilled workers, and are denying our own unskilled citizens jobs. Wages for these unskilled workers are going to be depressed (like the workers themselves), widening the income gap. It's the Polish plumber problem. The supply side of the problem must be handled if we are going to narrow the income gap.

Gayle Goh seems to be saying that these workers don't cause any problems, making "mysterious sounds" that she has never heard. And Singaporeans who complain about them are hypocritical and bigoted. I think that is really not the case for other people. Personally I used to have some foreign construction workers as neighbours and they have never caused any problems. But there are people who have to deal with insecurity and irritations on a daily basis because of the workers.

Listeners of Radio 100.3's Chamber will know of Ming De's story about screeching noises coming from foreign workers living above his mother's flat (or was it his flat?) in the middle of the night. Despite numerous discussions with these workers, the noises persisted. Even interventions by the police did not work. I've watched a Channel 8 current affairs show, which was talking about the problems caused by foreign workers in a particular housing estate. They will crowd around the void deck at night, drinking, singing, and sometimes fight when they are drunk. They leave litter and broken bottles lying around after their little party. I still remember that riot police were mobilized when a group of foreign workers got into fight at a hawker center, an event which occurred this year and I saw it on TV but I can't find it on the Web. Not sure if it's on Youtube though. And I know of people complaining that these workers cooking curry or other strong-smelling foods at night and disturbing their sleep.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Singapore, you know....It's not that Singaporeans look down on them. It's a matter of living habits. We'll complain about our neighbours regardless of their nationality if they do things that disturb our living environment. For instance, if your neighbours play mahjong at 3 a.m. or fry belachan at 1 a.m. every night you'll be unhappy too, regardless of nationality or occupation. That said, there are some practices that we generally accept as part of our way of life, like the Malays having weddings or Chinese having funerals at our void decks. Yes some people may not be able to accept that or find it noisy, but Singaporeans as a whole are able to tolerate that and accept it (else they will have to move into private housing). Likewise, the funerals or weddings don't extend into the middle of the night and disturb other people sleeping (if you sleep in the morn or afternoon, there's some problem though).

Gayle has a point that enforcing nuisance laws can help to alleviate the problem, without having to implement this new policy. From what I've seen, there is a problem with enforcing it, and that's why HDB dwellers have to resort to asking their MPs for help. I'm not sure why, but the police may need to look into it or we may need some new legislations regarding nuisance laws.

陈绮贞 - 天天想你

很温柔甜美的版本，吉他手很棒！

Check out 华丽的冒险.

绝对Superstar 2 - 24强，阳盛阴衰？

看了昨天和今天的节目，第一个感觉就是男生们都很有实力，歌喉都不错。女生们却没给我留下很深刻的印象。只有汤灵伊和陈诗韵让我留下一些印象，唐灵伊蛮可爱的，外形上很占优势。陈诗韵歌声浓厚饱满，相当有感染力。觉得男子组将会有一番龙争虎斗，女生们得加把劲了。

评判们还是那么逗趣，尤其是黎费辉，取笑参赛者露肉或头小，搞得他们哭笑不得，我们看得也很乐。

Bedok gets new mall?

Got this piece of news from Lushhome.

Frasers Centrepoint Ltd (FCL) has bought the adjacent Bedok and Changi theatre sites for $40.8 million and plans to develop the leasehold sites into a mall which, when completed, it will pump into its shopping centre trust, Frasers Centrepoint Trust.

The $40.8 million price reflects a unit land price of about $441 per square foot of potential gross floor area inclusive of an estimated $2.9 million development charge for tapping a higher plot ratio, and a land premium payable for buying two adjoining strips of state land that Frasers Centrepoint can buy.

Market watchers reckon the break-even cost for a new mall project on the site could be about $1,100 psf.

Sellers Shaw Brothers (owner of Changi theatre) and Cathay group (which owns the adjacent Bedok theatre) obtained outline planning permission in early August to redevelop the two theatre sites as well as the adjoining state lands into a mixed-use commercial complex with a 3.0 plot ratio, with a total gross floor area of about 133,598 sq ft.

The two theatres, on sites with a remaining lease of about 70 years, have a combined land area of 33,084 sq ft. The two strips of state land can contribute a further 11,448 sq ft in land area.

Well, one thing, do we need another mall in the East? One thing I do like about Bedok is that there are no malls. I'll be disappointed if Bedok Central becomes Tampines Central, swarming with students, workers, people. It's just so much quieter without malls. Besides, malls are bad news for shop owners nearby. It's only in these 1-2 years that I've seen business picking up for shop owners in and around my estate. I'm sure the arrival of the new mall is going to have a negative impact on their businesses.

You can’t say ‘Bomb’ on an airplane!

There was a rerun of "Meet The Parents" last week, and there was this exchange between Greg Focker and a police officer. Quoting IMDB,

Norm: I got a plane full of people saying you threatened that stewardess.
Greg Focker: I was not threatening her. I was just trying to get my bag into the overhead storage thing...
Norm: You were acting like a maniac and you threatened her with a bomb.
Greg Focker: No, I said I didn't have a bomb.
Norm: But you said bomb.
Greg Focker: I said, "It's not like I have a bomb".
Norm: You said "Bomb" on an airplane.
Greg Focker: What's wrong with saying 'Bomb' on an airplane?
Norm: You can't say 'Bomb' on an airplane!
Greg Focker: Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb. You gonna arrest me? Bomb bomb bomb bomb! During the war I was a BOMBadier!
Norm: You assaulted an airline employee and I oughta put you away for years!

In Singapore, you would probably not get away with saying the four-letter word on a plane. I thought that this guy was lucky to escape a jail term.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A 65-year-old Australian man was fined S$10,000 ($6,423) by a Singapore court for uttering the word "bomb" on a flight to Indonesia, The Straits Times reported on Wednesday.

Riccardo Paulin, a retiree, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to having asked a flight attendant "Where do you keep the bomb?" on a flight operated by Singapore regional carrier SilkAir to the Indonesian city of Surabaya, the newspaper said.

The newspaper said he made the remark after trying to find space in the overhead lockers.

Paulin was charged under the United Nations anti-terrorism regulations, which carry a maximum fine of S$100,000 or up to five years in jail or both.

He apologized to the court for his remark, saying it was meant as a joke.

Signup for SingTel IPTV trial

News of StarHub and SingTel's bidding war for the television rights of the English Premier League (EPL) has made many consumers unhappy recently. I'm not sure if our neighbouring countries are broadcasting it, if they are we can probably get to watch it for free. Else we'll just have to wait and see who wins the bidding war and fork out the cold hard cash. BTW, I didn't realise that watching those P2P streams was illegal.

Anyway, the SingTel IPTV trial has started, sign up here. I guess it's good to have some experience with the service before deciding to sign up or not. Not sure how this is different from Ideas BroadBand though, but I signed up anyway. Just be careful handling the equipment they're going to hand out top you, you have to pay if you damage them.

Amazon Unbox is a pretty cool alternative but it seems to be restricted to US users.

GIMP tutorial - Pencil Sketching II

This tutorial is based on Sweety's clean sketch tutorial for Photoshop. The steps are largely the same for GIMP. Compared to the previous tutorial, this tutorial produces a cleaner pencil sketch.

1. Open an existing image. On the menubar, File>>Open. I’ve chosen an image of the beautiful Kyoko Fukada.
   


2. On the menubar, Layer>>Duplicate layer. Select the new copy of the image.
   


3. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>> Desaturate.
   


4. On the menubar, Layer>>Duplicate layer. Select the new copy of the image.
   


5. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>>Invert.
   


6. From the layers dialog, change the mode of the inverted layer to "Dodge".
   


7. From the menubar, Filters>>Blur>Gaussian blur. Set the blur radius to a value from 3 to 5. Apply.
   

And this is the final image!


Some books on GIMP.

Of hammers and lightning - 铁锤与闪电

Don't think this exchange made it to CNA or Straits Times, saw it on zaobao.com.

杨木光在发言时用捕鱼形容人们在环球化经济中求职的情况。

他说：“有人想要鱼，不会抓；有人看得到鱼，但是身体差没法抓；有人灰心丧气到只想向人要鱼，不想抓了；有人辛辛苦苦学会抓鱼了，鱼却游走了或眼看着鱼让别人抓走了；有的是嫌抓到的鱼越来越小；还有人刚抓到鱼却又抓不牢，有如工作一下子就失去了。”

因此，杨木光认为，必须将低收入者和他们所碰到的问题加以分类再对症下药，通过提升技能和重新设计工作程序等，协助他们培养就业和接受挑战的能力。

他说，人民行动党的议员一向采取具针对性的措施帮助弱势群体。

“我们不能像有些人拿着铁锤到处敲，遇到问题总是眼到、耳到、脑不到、手不到，头脑还可能被铁锤敲昏掉；有时看似帮忙，却是抓破人的伤疤，甚至在伤口上撒盐。”

杨木光的话引起反对党议员刘程强（后港）“反击”，他问杨木光：“水里面没鱼时，怎么办？即使有鱼，天有不测风云，天气不好闪电、打雷的时候，不能捕鱼怎么办？再者即使冒着生命危险，为了生活需要出去捕鱼，万一给闪电打死的话，那又怎么办。”

Let me try to translate it for those who don't read Chinese.

Yeo Guat Kwang uses fishing as an analogy to describe people seeking employment under globalization.

He said."Some people want to catch fish, but do not know how; some see the fish, but cannot catch them due to ill health; some are so depressed that they ask others for fish and don't wish to catch the fish themselves; some learn to fish diligently, but see the fish swim away or end up being caught by others; some grumble about the fish that they catch are getting smaller and smaller; yet others are unable to hold onto the fish they catch, like jobs that are gone in a flash."

Therefore, he believes the problems faced by low-income earners should be categorized and a targeted approach be used to solve them, to help them become more employable and resilient through initiatives like skills-upgrading and job-redesigning.

He said, the PAP has always taken a targeted approach to help the weak in society.

"We cannot be like some people who knock around with a hammer, whenever they meet a problem, the eyes are there, the ears are there, but the brain and hands are not, the brain could have been possibly knocked out by the hammer; sometimes it seems like they are helping, but in reality they have reopened the wound, and at times even sprinkling salt on it."

Yeo Guat Kwang's speech prompted Opposition MP Low Thia Kiang's "rebuttal". He asked Yeo Guat Kwang, "What if there is no fish in the water? Even if there is fish, the weather is unpredictable, when there is thunder and lightning and you cannot fish, what do you do? If one takes the risk and goes out fishing, he may get struck by lightning. What do you do then?"

Don't you wish they had put this on TV?

Simple steps to deter the casual piggy-backer (not hacker)

Someone was caught for stealing network bandwidth recently. With wireless broadband being so popular, I guess there should be a few unsecured networks around. Below are some steps which I take to secure my wireless network from casual piggy-backers. Real hackers can overcome most of them, except maybe if you use an authentication scheme like WPA.

1. Change the default SSID and disable SSID broadcast (just found out my router, DLink DI-624+ doesn't allow disabling of SSIDs. Oh well.)
   


2. Limit the number of IP addresses that DHCP assigns.
   


3. Enable MAC filtering so only registered wireless cards can be used.
   


4. Enable authentication scheme, such as WPA-PSK.
   

Nothing is fool-proof, SSIDs can be easily sniffed, MAC addresses can be spoofed, some authentication schemes such as WEP are easily cracked, but if we are dealing with casual piggy-backers these steps should be sufficient.

cci[RR]us talks about how the offender could have been discovered. It is interesting to wonder what if the owner deliberately opened up access to his network in order to farm the usernames and passwords of these people tapping into his network illegally, and then use this info to get the offenders into trouble.

从才华到Superstar

绝对Superstar 又开战了,在众多参赛者中,发现了一张熟悉的面孔,那就是黄仕昱.想了一想,那不是和陈凤玲一同得到才华横溢出新秀本地赛事冠军的那一位吗?怎么没从上次比赛中获得演出的机会或者唱片约呢?之后又想,男总冠军崔鹏又跑到哪儿去了?只见他演一部"赤子乘龙",难道是回中国发展了吗?若是,这也并不稀奇,许多演员都不在新加坡拍戏了,或者大部分时间都在海外.范文芳,李铭顺,陈秀丽,郭菲丽,林明伦,陈天文都是这样.有不少留在本地的演员无声无迹得从荧幕上消失了,或者演的来来去去都是那一种角色,没有突破.

近年来,本地吹起了全民打造明星的一种风行,每几个月就有一群人凭着观众头选进入演艺圈. 有时候,觉得新加坡人其实也蛮多才多艺的.但想一想,现在乐坛里能够红的本地歌手,都是从海外打回新加坡的.哪里有一个是从本地票选中走红亚洲的呢?Olinda, Taufik 以数码媒介发行他们最新的专辑,令我不禁想问,难道唱片公司没信心他们能够出CD吗?不是说票选出来的就不能红,只是说应该是少数.公司所能栽培的人也是少数,所以这么样的"大量生产"这些演艺人员或者歌手然后因为缺乏机会或资源,把它们扔在一旁,真的很浪费.

Holistic approach to solving transport issues

I've been following the news on falling public transport use , and I think of IP routing to a website. It's the same analogy we always use in network classes. We've got so many packets going into the pipe, trying to reach the same server that at some point, the network becomes congested. The traffic is bursty, the network is congested only at certain times, like rush hour traffic. So what do you do, assuming the server can handle greater load just fine?

A few things come to mind, buying more bandwidth, improve latency, adding more routers to prevent bottle-necks, data compression. It's analogous to expanding roads, get faster cars or increase speed limits, build more roads, and using public transport in the transport context. But there are many constraints, such as how much land do we want to use to build roads in land-scarce Singapore? How much more accidents are we willing to risk in exchange for faster cars and higher speed limits? How many people can we squeeze onto MRT trains and SBS buses before they feel uncomfortable?

Or we can Akamaize our website. Basically that means distributing the content of the website to other servers elsewhere on the network so that clients don't have to get all of the content from one server. Different parts of the network are being used instead as the hosts are located differently. Are we seeing this happening in Singapore's road system? A little, but future developments will compound the problem. Ng Ka Yen states the problem clearly.

MORNING traffic patterns in Singapore are lopsided, with too much traffic rushing from the north to the south, and too much from the east to the west.

We cannot add burdens to these patterns forever. Adopting traffic minimisation and traffic diversion strategies is critical, and perhaps the only way to tackle long-term traffic problems.

In a few years, the integrated resort (IR) at Marina Bay alone will create 10,000 jobs and stimulate thousands more in other businesses in the area.

And do not forget that demand for office space in the Central Business District is always high, despite higher rents there.

Singapore Management University (SMU) is another big traffic generator.

A few kilometres away, the IR at Sentosa will generate as many jobs and tourist traffic as its Marina Bay counterpart.

There is so much development in the south, it's going to be a traffic nightmare. It's almost like taking two steps backward after the implementing the idea of regional centres.

How are we going to avoid this concentration? A related question is, can we put our regional centres to greater use to localize traffic usage? Of course, we're going to have to put more jobs, schools (especially universities), entertainment and recreational facilities elsewhere. The government has to find some way to make these places attractive to businesses and users. I think given the present state of technology in Singapore and our progress towards a wireless island, we can go so far as to say that we can eliminate some of this traffic altogether via telecommuting.As Thomas L. Friedman describes in his book, Indians are already doing so much work (tutoring, doing accounts, coding, etc) from the US and Europe via telecommuting, so I don't see it as a big problem here. There are worries about security and work performance, but these can be overcome with proper education.

A factor worth investigating is why do Singaporeans buy cars. Is it because it's a dream, it's a need, it's a symbol of success, public transport doesn't meet their requirements, etc? If it is to fulfill a psychological need, then improving public transport is probably not going to make these car-owners use public transport. Our hope is that the young no longer subscribes to such views like owning a car is necessary to be successful.

There are other solutions worth considering. Elia Diodati toys with the idea of express train service, but the cost of installing additional tracks seem forbidding. There are express buses, which I'm not sure of their effectiveness. I've written a suggestion to SBS about their express bus service not stopping at a particular MRT station but I've not received any feedback. I'm not sure how popular car-pooling is in Singapore, but such a culture can be encouraged. Or how about company-sponsored transport or private transport companies providing bus services, like what they do in Science Park or some industrial areas?

A more holistic approach is needed to solve our transport issues, because these issues also involve urban planning, our working and lifestyle approaches and the social and economic value we place on car-ownership.

TIME Best Invention 2006

Take a look at some of the best inventions of 2006 as voted by TIME magazine. Some pretty amazing gadgets and stuff.
There's an air mattress that costs $1.5 million, in USD I suppose. Not sure if it'll guarantee sweet dreams, but I guess most people will be having nightmares when they see that kind of price. Nonetheless, it still looks pretty funky, doesn't it?



Or how about this electricity-driven car that will not only helps to reduce global-warming but still looks smoking hot on the highway?



Not sure what cheese goes well with Chardonnay? This cute little robot can offer you some suggestions.

Wikipedia used to spread malicious code

There has always been the issue of the authenticity of Wikipedia articles, but now you have to worry about being scammed as well. After YouTube, it's another one of those examples of hackers using social networking website to spread their viruses around. The spirit of social networking is to promote sharing, and they provide a perfect platform for virus-writers. I guess we should be careful of what we get from the Web, doubly so for YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, or other social networking sites.
I download software like XAMPP, jedit, etc and the occasional stuff from download.com, from so-called trusted sources I suppose, but what if I want to download something from new and untried sources? I'll usually pass. I guess I'm biased towards them, but it's all in the name of security.

Has Wee Shu Min addressed Derek Wee’s main points?

Have been pretty late in talking about this,

Derek Wee's blog

Wee Shu Min's blog has been taken down, but her post has been replicated over so many forums and blogs, it's quite easy to find a copy. Here's one.

The outrage has been fueled by many factors. Her academic pedigree, her MP father, her strong language and lack of empathy, the recent deaths at the MRT stations, here and here.

Has Wee Shu Min's rabid attack on Derek Wee quelled any questions or provided any solutions for the narrowing gap between us and our neighbours? Especially in light of recent developments like the South Johor Economic Region and Indonesia's SEZs, which will serve to divert more foreign investments away.

Has Wee Shu Min addressed the employability issue for well-educated workers over the age of 40?

Has Wee Shu Min addressed the issue of Singaporeans not giving birth to enough babies and the accompanying host of problems?

Rather than see Derek Wee as an unmotivated whiner, she should perhaps take a step back and see whether the points raised by him are indeed problems. I don't think Derek Wee was asking for handouts or anything. He may be whining (or may not be), but the underlying issues are real. Anyway, I don't think she deserves to have her photos dugged up and splashed across the Web.

GIMP tutorial - Pencil Sketching I

I've been playing around with GIMP these 2 days, and have managed to create a simple pencil sketch which I'm quite satisfied with. This tutorial serves as a reminder of the lessons I've learnt while using the software.

1. Open an existing image. On the menubar, File>>Open. I've chosen an image of the beautiful Kyoko Fukada
   
   


2. On the menubar, Layer>>Duplicate layer. Select a copy of the image.
   


3. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>>Desaturate
   


4. Adjust the dynamic range of the image. On the menubar, Layer>>Colors>>Threshold
   


5. On the menubar, Filters>>Edge detect>>Difference of Gaussians. Play around with the values until you see something you like in the preview window.
   

And that's the final image!

Some books on GIMP.