Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Went to the Bintan Islands over the weekend with the guys! It's not exactly a place 4 dudes will fully enjoy themselves in but zy bought a GoPro Hero 4 Silver edition. Having a camera record us doing stupid things made it infinitely more fun.

We spent a lot of time in the water filming random stuffs and I got muscle aches all over on the last day; also had the obligatory HTHT sessions.

Honestly there's not much else I can say, everything is in the videos! (my efficiency of making videos is increasing! the quality though... =/ )

This getaway is much appreciated, it's my first proper break since exercise wallaby! Getting away from the chaotic lifestyle here is awesome as well. Oh well, till the next time.

Labels: awesome, bintan, featured, holiday, life, overseas

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Monday, September 01, 2014

I can't believe that I haven't written anything here for over a month (nearing two). It's not that there isn't anything happening at all but most of the stuffs are just related to the army so it's kind of boring in a sense.

Regardless here are the stuffs that happened while this blog was stagnant.

I bought a new CPU cooler, top of the line, premium Noctua NH-D15. As air cooler goes, it's as  good as it gets. You can tell by the sheer size difference between it and my old cooler.

Who said size didn't matter?

Mounting bracket

It's taller than my 760!

With it I never went above 53 degrees celsius under 100% load, which is pretty darn amazing considering that I live in a rather warm environment.

Went to the River Safari for our unit cohesion day. It was boring as hell, and I got bitten by a small monkey; but I guess it's better than spending Friday in camp working. Only took a few photos but it turned out rather decent!

This fish just keeps swimming like this

Either jiajia or kaikai, no idea

First time seeing a polar bear, it's damn huge

no idea what it's eating

Looks like it's praying

Back packing

Dugongs, they look like giant shrimps platter

I'll leave you with some panorama goodness.




Moving on, the title of the post; I just ran 10KM yesterday at the Safra Bay Run. It's the first time I ran a marathon, also the first time that I ran so far. Got a timing of 1 hour 24 mins. Not good by any means but it's good enough to me!

Front | Back

I didn't take any pictures at the event because... I didn't run with my phone and I felt like dying after the run. Kind of wasted but oh well, it can't be helped. The worst part of the run isn't the run itself, but that I've only had 2 hours of sleep due to some admin cockup, followed by my growling stomach throughout the run.

My friends all disappeared within the first 500 metres. Either too far in front, or too far back. It's one of the rare times that I truly felt lost in a sea of people.

To be honest I really didn't felt like running, I initially planned to just walk for the most part, but when there's a few thousand people running with you, it's hard to just say, "I give up." So for better or worse, I did run most of the distance. Which no part is due to my own motivation. I thank you, the pretty ladies who wore skin tight clothes and ass hugging tights.

And the driving force is way more than I anticipated. There was this chick I noticed since the start line, and I chased after her for 3 km before hitting an obstacle. Stairs. Pretty much lost sight of her until the 6 km mark where she suddenly ran past me. I am honestly shocked that I actually passed her, but the rest of the run was just me not wanting to lose to her in the end. HAH!

Every time she passed me I will make sure I put enough distance in between before slowing down. It's kind of stupid racing against a girl who is probably younger than me, but then again I really had nothing to do and no one to talk to. Passing all the people in the last kilometre felt really awesome though.

I wonder when will be the next time I post something, but I guess... wake me up when September ends?

Labels: awesome, desktop, featured, historical, life, lordofgeeks, marathon, river safari, xperia z1

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Friday, January 31, 2014

OLD | Thermaltake Commander MS-I

Last week, I decided to change(upgrade) my desktop case after roughly a year. When I bought it at first, I was simply looking for the best bang for buck case and settled with it. It had the features I needed, it was cheap and it looked decent to say the least. (mini tour of old desktop)

I've always had my eye on the Fractal Design Define R4 and I simply had to get my hands on one of it. Hence I made the trip down to Sim Lim Square last Saturday. One mistake I made was not taking the cab. This case is heavy as fuck I swear, at least it shows that it's well constructed.

It looks quite messy as you can tell

 So I started removing all the internals to prepare transferring to the new case, starting with my precious graphic card.

MSI Nvidia GTX 760 Hawk Edition

4 X 4GB of cheap value RAM

Dust is the bane of all computers

After un-wiring everything from my old case, removing all the components, I was ready to unpack my beast of a case. I love how clean it looks. Clean geometrical lines and a full black coating makes it really sexy.

Fractale Design Define R4

First look at the internals

Box with all the bolts and nuts

Seating in my motherboard

 For the next hour or so I was busy wiring up everything neatly and making sure that nothing goes wrong, referring to the manual diligently and hoping that I won't screw up anything. Much effort later...

Everything is installed! Still a little messy though

Cable management holes to keep everything nice and neat

Wiring up everything at the back and tying them up. (before it's actually done)

No dangling wires

no dangling wires

I made a mistake of not taking glamour shots of the case. This actually has a rather large window pane to showcase the internal components, maybe some other time when I'm making a substantial upgrade. (shouldn't be too long from now*) I recently added a Corsair AF140 Quiet Edition fan to the front panel. Increasing it from 1 to 2x140mm front intake fans.
*planned upgrade to the CPU cooler

I was so excited typing this out that I forgot to mention why I did this and what's so good about this.

This is one of one of the few rare cases that I totally gave in to what I want and there isn't much of a need nor solid reasoning. I suppose I could say that this is my hobby, seeing how much time and effort I've put into it. I want it to run as cool and quiet as possible, thus extending the life of the machine itself.

So, what's so good about this case compared to the other one?
Firstly, it's extremely quiet; to the point where I wouldn't know it's on if not for the LED indicator, and I sit about half a meter from it. I put my ear to it and the only thing I can hear is the air being sucked in and pushed out.
Secondly, awesome cable management. As you have seen from the pictures above, there are holes and space for me to route my cables properly and give unrestricted air flow.
Thirdly, expansion-ability. As it's quite a bit larger than my previous case, there are simply more space to put more substantial upgrades. Like I could water-cool my system should I wish to; it would be hard with my old case.
Last but not least, have you seen how sexy it looks?!

Moving on, I've been hard at work researching like mad; preparing to build a new computer. I'm not kidding, I am preparing to build a storage server, something that can scale out and suit my needs for the next couple of years. My main motivator is my depleting storage that is forcing me to shuffle things around, to make matters worse, I don't have any backups.

I'll be writing up a post pretty soon detailing what I've been doing all of today. Sometimes I wonder myself, what am I trying so hard for...

Oh by the way, happy chinese new year.

Labels: awesome, define r4, desktop, featured, fractal design, lordofgeeks, show off

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Sunday, January 05, 2014

What more can I say, I have successfully lived through my teenage years to accomplish what might possibly be my greatest achievement: turning into a proper adult.

There has been so many events leading up to this moment that words alone can't portray everything I have felt since the start of 2014. Because I don't really have the time to write this at home, I shall spend this entire week typing away at my phone in camp, creating what may be my greatest blog post ever.

A huge thank you to all my friends who have been by my side (:
But I shall sleep for now. For now...

Labels: awesome, birthday, featured, historical, lordofgeeks

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Friday, October 18, 2013

After 4 months of grueling training, I have finally graduated from BMT.

Alright because there's really just too many things that has happened over the past few weeks so I'm going to consolidate everything in kind of a half-assed manner. But yeah, there's still the stupid field camp to write about. But anyway, first and foremost, I have finally left that island!





The rest of the pictures are already on FB so... yeah can't be bothered to post them all. But my bro really did take quite a few good shots, not bad.



So in the previous post I wrote about signing on Army.

Well, that didn't happen.

To more be precise, I was rejected for that vocation. You must think that the army must be crazy for turning me down, and yeah they are; but there are a ton of reasons why it didn't go through. The thing is that this was always a win-win situation for me. It doesn't matter if I didn't enter because it just means that I will only have 2 years to serve instead of 5.

Oh, yeah by the way I got posted as an Auto Tech. Which means that I will be repairing vehicles. It's... rather interesting to me. I have always been interested in vehicles and this is just a chance for me to actually get my hands on them.

Well, it's actually really lucky that I got this. I don't think that I will have to run about; I think. Either way, seems like the next 2 years of my life has been settled, there's not much to say about it until I go next Monday.

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Labels: awesome, featured, geek, historical, life, msi gtx 760 hawk, ns, POP, sony, xperia v

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Saturday, October 05, 2013

UPDATE
For whatever reasons, my contract didn't go through. So the entire post below is moot. It's interesting to know my thought process though so I won't delete it.

I have just signed on Army under Military Intelligence for 5 years.


Well, I really couldn't imagine myself doing such a thing just a year ago, but yet I have done it. Many, if not all of my friends are baffled by my decision. Even I myself am surprised that I did such a thing. However, I would like to assure everyone (including myself) that this isn't just some impulsive crazed up bullshit that I cooked up, there has been a lot of deliberate thought put into it.

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Labels: army, awesome, featured, historical, life, lordofgeeks, military intelligence, nsd, sign on

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Monday, June 03, 2013

I have been sort of MIA from this blog, not because I am doing anything important, I have just been too damn addicted to this game.

Kerbal Space Program website

It is one of the most fun game that I have ever played that is still in development/beta. In short, the objective of this game is to build a spaceship and go to space. As it is still in development, you get to stretch your imagination as far out as you can and do whatever kind of crazy shit you want to. (Sandbox mode)

Been playing for the past... 4 or 5 days pretty much non-stop. The first thing I did was to try and land on the Moon, which I failed terribly and crashed into it. I learned how to set up a perfect orbit around Earth. (well, it's called Kerbal in the game)

Last of all, I spent like 3 days to really master how to build a spacestation. Which is something I'm in progress of now. Trying to dock 2 ships in space is definitely not as easy as I thought it would be.


So, the largest Space Station that I have managed to build so far is this.

Orbiting at ~265,000 km

Since there isn't any limit to what you can do, you can make really crazy looking rockets. This isn't really that crazy though, I've seen people online making just ridiculous designs.


So... after countless hours of tinkering, I decided to redo the space station, it's still in the early stages but I am really looking forward to how it'll look like once I've finish building it.

Huge fuel tank to fuel ships to venture further out

Turn on the lights! Yes, lights are important

I have gone through countless of designs just to send stuffs to the station. I refrain from reading guides of any sort online as it'll sort of defeat the purpose and make this a lot less fun. Pretty much just trial and error all the way until I get the design correct, then I'll start all over again trying to make it better.

As you can probably tell by now, this is an extremely geeky game. But if you're interested, you can find it on steam. (or torrent)

This probably isn't the greatest way to spend my time since I'm entering into a prison of some sort. (more on this another time) Man, I really need to clear out my blogging list soon.

Labels: awesome, game, kerbal space program, ksp, life

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Friday, May 10, 2013

I think editing a video is more enjoyable to going through hundreds of photos.

But yeah this is Day 3. We did White Water Rafting, Elephant rides and ATV. Sadly it's rather impossible to shoot those videos with my kind of camera. Still, the rest of the events are pretty funny and we had an explosive ending.

I should probably get back to editing the pictures and typing out the events. Man, this is more work than I expected. Day 4 is really long so I'll leave it for another day.

Labels: awesome, featured, holiday, life, overseas, phuket, phuket trip, video, youtube

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Thursday, May 09, 2013

I have to say that I am rather proud of this video! It turned out way better than I thought it would be. Though my expectations did drop a little when I could get some of the shorts I wanted.

I haven't edit any video since I graduated from High School and I have to say that I have done some rather shitty videos in the past. So the point is that I have to learn from the scratch again, though I have a slightly better idea of what to do now.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5

First time I'm using this software and this is definitely an overkill for what I am doing, wasted so much time finding out how to do all the simple things. Total time taken: 4hours+. It's times like these that make me fully appreciate having a fast computer. I cannot imagine editing on anything slower, it would be the death of me.

I wanted to try color correction and some other stuffs, but then got too lazy to learn it. Thankfully my camera, Sony HX9V takes awesome video so I didn't have to do much to them.

Well hope you liked the video! There's still 3 days left. Time to find another song that fits the occasion.

Labels: adobe, awesome, featured, life, lordofgeeks, overseas, phuket, phuket trip, video, youtube

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Wednesday, May 08, 2013

It was another early start [8am] to a very long day. As I've only came back from Phuket within the same week, I wasn't exactly the keenest in going overseas again.

However, I wasn't dreading the trip at all, in fact I was really looking forward to it. The activities that we have planned was totally my cup of tea. Go-kart and Paintball, who would've thought that I would get to do the both of them on the same day.

Before I continue ranting, I should probably mention that this was a 12 man group. Again, because of my paranoia I shall only give the initials of the people: A, JH, KQ, V, MC, L, J, XK, YJ, C, D. Well, that introduction was stupidly pointless. So anyway,  my point was that there was definitely enough people for this to be a really fun event.

Go-kart is definitely my favourite. I say it with such confidence even though I have only done it once in my entire life. (not counting this one)

If you somehow missed the title, these activities were held in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. JH helped us book a minivan to drive us around for the entire day. If I'm not mistaken the price was SGD $450. Definitely not a small amount but definitely something we were willing to pay considering that the presidential elections were the next day.
(looking at the news, I'm rather glad we weren't caught in any deepshit)

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Labels: 2013, awesome, featured, fun, gokart, johor bahru, life, overseas, paintball

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

"Wow", this perfectly describes the feeling I get about the slew of new Animes this season. Lots of AAA titles pouring out from every nook and cranny I can possibly think of. 

Labels: 2013, anime, awesome, otaku, spring

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Friday, April 05, 2013

All meat galore

 I think Daily Photo kinda lost it's meaning. But oh well I think I'm starting to have a little more mood to take pictures.

Korean BBQ Buffet, located at Tampines T1, 4th floor, beside Challenger. I totally forgot what it's called. But it's relatively cheap, ended around $16.50 per person. However, and it is a huge however, you have a 2 hour time limit. Which isn't very strictly enforced I think?

My awesome creation

I have created the most awesome roll ever.
It's Teriyaki Chicken, wrapped in Bacon Strip, wrapped in Thin Pork Belly.

It tastes pretty darn good, less could be said about the ability to eat it without making a fool of yourself. It's too much to stuff in one go, and not enough structural integrity to sustain being bitten. It was awesome eating nothing but meat, the only complain I had was that the chopsticks were really hard to use. It's thin, but not over all, it's thin like it's flat. So if you had a cross-section diagram it'll look like a rectangle rather than a square.

Hung out at K's before heading for Basketball. Now I'm sore all over and practically didn't move at all today. Man, I'm definitely not looking forward to soccer tomorrow.

Labels: awesome, basketball, daily photo, food, korean bbq, life

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Tuesday, April 02, 2013

I have to post this, but because the music is good. This really isn't my type of music, I post this because the video is so god damn awesome.
(note: it's not the boobs, it has nothing to do with the awesomeness)

Disclaimer: You might feel nauseous watching...



I am thoroughly impressed with how they managed to shoot something like this. It's just really really well made. The fighting and all? Perfect.

Labels: amazing, awesome, first person, music, must watch, video, youtube

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Thursday, March 07, 2013

Lyrics

I'm itchin' on a photograph
Yeah I'm scratching on a thermostat
Yeah I'm giving up on looking back
Yeah I'm letting go of what I had
Yeah I'm itchin' on a photograph
Yeah I'm scratching on a thermostat
Yeah I'm letting go all of that I had
Yeah I'm itchin' on a photograph

[Chorus:]
Feel the rain come down and you know now
Put the fire out, you'll burn
Ever wonder how you can see now
That this landing ground is so
You know, you know, you know,

Yeah I'm waiting on my mum and dad
Yeah I'm swinging on a branch that'll last
Yeah I'm going up then falling back
Yeah I'm itchin' on a photograph

Feel the rain come down and you know now
Put the fire out, you'll burn
Ever wonder how you can see now
At this landing ground and it's all while you were sleeping
Yeah it's all while you were

[2x]
Yeah I'm itchin' on a photograph
Yeah I'm scratching on a thermostat
Yeah I'm letting go of all that I had
Yeah I'm living now and living last

Yeah I'm itchin' on a photograph
Yeah I'm scratching on a thermostat
Yeah I'm letting go of what I had
Yeah I'm living now and living loud
lyrics from www.azlyrics.com

S introduced me to this band couple days backs with Tongue Tied. I loved it, and decided to check out their album Never Trust A Happy Song, turns out that Itchin on a Photograph would be my favourite one!

It has a very indie feel to it, I'm not not the greatest fan of indie, but I do appreciate quite a few songs from this genre.

Today was extremely unhappening, to the point where I could almost say that nothing happened. Really slacked through today, reading mangas and finally watched The Hobbit. Yeah, it was boring as everyone had claimed. Still, I pretty much watch it for Gandalf, I have a crush on that old man.

Time to try and be more productive.
Or I could go have a game of Dota, maybe two... We'll see.

Labels: awesome, grouplove, indie, itchin on a photograph, music

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Sunday, February 03, 2013

After years of mindless wandering, I've finally decided to put my skills to the test. Everything that I've learnt will be used in order to make this work.

I am going to create a web portal that allows me to access and control every aspect of my home network, from the scratch. Sure, I could always use a corporate solution, or even using home server solutions. But where's the fun in that?

There are 5 main functions that I'm interested in for the moment.
LOGS: Display logs from selected devices. (routers mainly, SNMP)
COMPUTERS: Manage my computers. Remotely boot up/shutdown, remote desktop and ssh access
ROUTERS: Well... just the management page for it
FILES: Access files from any device. (mainly the NAS)
BACKUPS: Scheduled backups to NAS. Summary/management

Draft of what it might look like

Sure, I could simply use Windows Home Server to do most of the stuffs I'm going to do. Why not do that?

For one, I must have a decently powerful computer turned on at all times. That sucks up electricity and is probably idle most of the time, terrible for efficiency. Whereas I could host this web portal on my router, which takes up maybe 4 Watts or less of electricity.

Trying to implement proper security all of these will also be an interesting problem to tackle.

Again, the question people always ask me is

"Why?"

It's a little hard to explain when it comes to computers. Think of it this way, people train very hard to play instruments properly. They learn some tough pieces to challenge themselves, or maybe because they love that piece. Or that people in sports train their body to perfection, because they want to be better at it, that it's challenging.

This is a challenge to myself. It may not seem intuitive to many people, but that's how I view my interactions with computers. I love what I can do with it, and I want to get better at it. For the years of learning I haven't really had anything substantial to show for myself. Sure, a couple of neat tricks here and there, but nothing as big as this.

Let's see how much I have progressed over the years, shan't we?

Labels: awesome, featured, geek, life, LOG, lordofgeeks, project

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Sunday, January 06, 2013

Finally watched this today with Y and S. And ohmygod it was really good. Though it was really really sad, as expected from the Movie title. I haven't watched the original film though. There is also the 10 and 25th year anniversary play that I have to check out.

Well, since me and Y's birthdays are only a couple days apart, S surprised the both of us by... well, surprising both of us!



We got a really cutesy blue ukelele for Y. Even though she doesn't know how to play it. But man, now you have to learn it now no matter what. 

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Labels: awesome, birthday, les miserables, life, musical, ukelele, wendy's

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Friday, January 04, 2013

it's a sausage fest

There were seafood, in the kitchen

This was a really last minute decision.

The day started early as I had to head to school to show my In-Charge the progress of our FYP. Which didn't take very long as we haven't really figured out one major part of the project. But the rest of it is done, somehow, in one way or another. There'll be more about it in the future. So my teammate came over and we did whatever we could, before B came over and asked me to check his router.

Which turned out to be perfectly fine. Long story short, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if the problem is his house or not. (probably is)
p.s. fuck you dude, for picking up smoking.

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Labels: awesome, birthday, funny, happy, instant noodles, life, poly, steamboat

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