The Blog

Monday

2008-05-05T15:21:00.003+08:00

What a great day, some nice weather in contrast to the scorchers we've had in the past few weeks.
So, it looks like I've got the entire holidays right in front of me! My exams just ended last Friday, so I guess todays the official start :)

Time for my usual holiday wish-list, hope I don't blow it playing games again like I did last time...

GSOC! This is very exciting, I get to work on a open-source games project. Having to write code that will be used by others... is kind of an honour. So far, I've only done personal stuff and school projects, which I assume they throw in the virtual bit bucket after grading.
There's some friends who want to start a club in NTU to advocate open-source. Not sure if I'll be roped in the committee, but I wouldn't mind helping out in some of the activities.
Study...? There's a lot of stuff that I want to learn before entering the working world, especially math which I've never been good at. I've some books on statistics and calculus, fundamental stuff which I've been neglecting for too long.
Get some exercise...
Get some more music and books

Marketing complete

2008-04-04T21:23:00.003+08:00

Just finished the presentation, we got a B, which is decent for the effort which we put in :). Now, I'm left with the AI assignment, getting an attachment, exams and then I can start to enjoy the holidays!

Todo for holidays

Battlestar Galactica
Game prototype
Upgrade hardware, for:
PC games (too many to list), but there's also some Wii games like:
Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, Mario Galaxy
Iain M. Banks novels
Plenty of movies
Try/Buy Sam n Max, Aquaria, Audiosurf, anything Indie
Get new music

So much to do, perhaps I should get started right away.

Firefox Beta 4...

2008-04-03T21:50:00.004+08:00

performs really badly with Chinese language sites. On linux at least.

Problems

Slow to load
Slow to scroll
Formatting out of place

Otherwise, it's great.

Currently a little stressed by marketing presentation tomorrow.

Today was fun. Had lunch and just hung around school preparing the presentation. Then met with family for dinner. We talked to Benny, the owner of that restaurant. I'm tired, so my sentences are shorter.

edit: Had to install the proper chinese language fonts to get smooth performance. So apparently Firefox has some builtin support for chinese? Cool, I guess.

Updating for the sake of it

2008-03-29T01:37:00.004+08:00

Now I'm going to sleep.

I need it.

I've been working late nights for a week, submitting school assignments. Last monday I submitted 3 assignments. AI, Networking and Software Engineering. Bang bang bang.

On Tuesday it was the Marketing presentation. I wouldn't say it was bad, but the tutor said it was. :) Two of our four team members failed to turn up, leaving me and another guy to basically improvise our presentation from whatever slides they gave us. Fun in a twisted way.

On Wednesday I stayed in school to work on the ALICE game. I copied the wrong file over and found out when I got home. My friend then said the school purges the accounts at the end of the day, so I spent the night redoing the same work again. Didn't take as long as I feared actually.

Next up: Marketing plan, Last AI assignment, Exams
But before that: Sins of a Solar Empire? Should I?

What's been going on

2008-03-22T18:27:00.003+08:00

Applying for GSOC (fingers crossed).
Got a driver's license.
Got an Eeeeeepc.
Abandoned this blog (until now).
Exams coming up!
Using this post as an excuse to procastinate (again).

Exams are over!

2007-11-29T10:44:00.001+08:00

Exams are finally over! Or at least, they will be after this next paper, in 2 hrs time. I can't help but think of the holidays now:

One-week school project, 9-to-5 daily
Practice for driving test
Train for IPPT

So much to look forward to!

I love you Grandma

2007-11-11T04:26:00.000+08:00

My grandma passed away this morning at 2.15 am. She died of cancer.

I just needed someplace to write this. My grandma was a very kind person. Even up to yesterday, on the hospital bed she was asking questions about us, about our well-being, showing the level of concern for others that really made her special.

When I was younger, during primary school days, I would stay at her house when both my parents were working. From what I remember, I always liked it there. I loved staying there, because my grandma and aunt were such warm-hearted, caring people. Back then, she was always talking to me in Hokkien, and I was always unable to reply because my dialect was so poor.

There was a sense of urgency in her yesterday. She wanted everything to be just right, and she commented on everything around her. Her blanket had to be covering her feet, which were already cold, but not all the way. The table had to be shifted to the right position. A box of tissues had to be placed next to her. We put one on both sides just to be sure. :)

She was admitted more than 2 weeks ago. She had complained about her swelling foot. Who knew that it was a symptom of cancer? But other signs were there. She was already barely eating food for some time, due to the tumour in her stomach. By the time the pain starts, it's already too late.

The Lord works in mysterious ways. I was praying for her sustenance, at least long enough for my aunt from Sydney to arrive, but when her condition became critical yesterday we all feared the worst. My mother told me that she went peacefully, while we were asleep.

God bless you Grandma, you are surely in a better place now.

2007-08-14T21:19:00.000+08:00

I'm using Google Documents to write this entry, which it will then post to the blog.
It seems I'm always using some gimmick like this to get myself to write. Now, I just need something to write about...

New school semester - The new school semester has started, and apparently I'm in the "second-year, second semester". Nice to see everyone again.
Space trading game project - Still working on the "trading" part.
Freelance project - Finished, with a $100 bonus, not sure if it's entirely deserved.
Future - Lots of project work this semester.

Okay, that looks like quite a few things. Back to sleep for 3 months.

Still not dead

2007-07-16T00:14:00.000+08:00

What a great holiday. Gonna be over soon, but still, long enough for me.

Didn't work much. Very low on $. Finished 2 freelance projects, so I probably learned a bit about web development, even if the pay isn't too great.

Started driving lessons.

Now I'm working on a space-based game. I hope I can get enough motivation to actually finish a significant portion of it before the holidays end.

This holiday is too short! Argh.

Tyranny

2007-05-29T01:15:00.000+08:00

Post title holds no meaning.

Had a meeting with the client. Changes requested, as expected. Actually they seemed alright with most of it, so I'm rather relieved. My friend said I was sweating during the meeting, hah.

Then, went to have a drink with friends. I had Earl Grey tea, of course.

Picture

2007-05-28T00:28:00.000+08:00

Start of a new evening

2007-05-27T21:46:00.000+08:00

Just submitted a prototype of the project to the client. This gives me a bit of breathing space at least until.. tomorrow when I meet with them again. I have a nagging feeling there will be a lot of changes requested.

I'm going to be taking a look at the mobile project again. So far, I've not really delved into J2ME yet, although I borrowed a book about it.

What else is new? I went for guitar class after skipping a few lessons already. We are learning "Sing" which is a well-known Carpenters song. You know: Sing... sing a song.. sing out loud... sing out strong..

Of course, there will be no actual singing while I'm playing it.

Work

2007-05-26T12:14:00.000+08:00

I've been pretty obsessed with the freelance project lately. Time to step back a little, and take a break. :)

I did a bit of stargazing from the balcony just the other day. I didn't really expect to see a lot, but instead I saw about 20+.

I did spot the Crux star cluster, as well as Antares, which I know because I played a game with that name before. I also noticed Saturn (I think) and Jupiter, which was extremely bright.

I also saw some mystery objects flying at extremely high altitudes. Hmm..

Lazy Sunday

2007-05-21T00:58:00.000+08:00

Very tired today. I didn't get much done, really need to start working on my projects soon.

I've been toying with elinks and w3m these few days. These are text-based web browsers, meaning you can surf the net using a simple terminal. Both software have their pros and cons: w3m has better rendering but elinks is more usable. Either way, its nice to browse web sites without distracting images.

One thing I did today was to play around with the source code from my friend's mobile game prototype. I removed the splash screen and high score system (because it needed a server), but haven't wrapped my head around the game code itself yet. Ubuntu works very well with the WTK beta released by Sun.

I just got baptized today. Joy? :)

My dad flew overseas for business. I saw him off at the airport, then had an enjoyable dinner at Swensens.

Goals for this week
1. Get started reading some books given to me by the church and family
2. Arrange a dinner with guitar-ensemble mates, since I probably won't keep in touch next sem.
3. Finish the basic functionality for the freelance project.

Number 3 is quite worrying. Its turning out to be a bit more work than I had expected. Hope things will go smoothly.

P.S. I don't know when I started writing in point form. I don't know when it will end either.

Mid-week

2007-05-16T23:11:00.000+08:00

Gave the space demo a top-down perspective. I'm going to work on the controls next, so that moving the spaceship will 'feel' right. Hopefully. Having the camera follow the ship is another problem.

Installed Ubuntu Studio on my desktop PC.

Have to revise for tomorrow's quiz. The subject matter is interesting, but the lectures are pretty boring. Wonder if I can get through it by guesswork.

Accepted some freelance work. I have to do it in JSP, so now I have the chance to learn something new. I did some database accessing. XAMMP is very nice for this sort of project.

My friend already came up with a prototype for our mobile games project. I haven't done a thing at all. :(

I applied for a part-time job as an invigilator.

I wonder if there are part-time jobs for volunteers? I don't mind not getting paid, if the work is meaningful. But all the places I looked require at least 6 months commitment.

My thoughts are all over the place today. I can't concentrate on anything at all

Not again

2007-05-15T09:09:00.000+08:00

Last night I dreamed of Earth being attacked again.

Last month, I dreamed that a horde of flying creatures (let's call them birds) descended upon the Earth. Their leader was a giant creature that looked a lot like a rubber duck. Our leaders tried to negotiate with them, but I felt that they were up to no good.

This time round, the aliens were mostly humanoid like us. But they had at their disposal giant woolly mammoths. These mammoths had the ability to infect our animals, turning them into zombie-like creatures with elongated jaws and sharper teeth.

Among these aliens was a small mischievous boy. Somehow, one of the humans had managed to influence this boy, who was perhaps a prince of some sort. Thus, the aliens attacked and rounded us up to find the cure.

I'm just posting this here in case it becomes true, so that I can say I told you so, while the rest of the Earth goes down in flames.

Mother's Day

2007-05-13T00:59:00.000+08:00

Went to grandma's house for Mother's Day celebration. Chicken curry, rojak, crab and fried noodles, that's all I remember about the evening's activities. :)

Got started on the game, it's fun playing with the demos that come with python-ogre. One of them already comes with a spaceship and a nice space background too. I'm not sure how to make the camera top-down and following the ship, but that's for another day. Hopefully tomorrow.

Second post

2007-05-12T03:14:00.000+08:00

I've decided not to go for UCLA Summer program. Too expensive, lah.

Driving lessons might have to wait.

I really want to start on the personal game project! I've downloaded python-ogre and can't wait to try it out. Previously, I wanted to use ruby as the language. Don't know why I'm going to use python now. More importantly, the game is going to be something in space, in my opinion there are too few space games out there. Independence War 2, and Escape Velocity:Nova being two of my very favourites.

It may tie in nicely with my special term too, which is about astronomy. :)

So, this makes two posts in quick succession. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of this blogging thing.

Been a little busy

2007-05-12T03:03:00.000+08:00

I thought holidays would be easy... well it certainly has been fun. But I might have put a little too much on my plate at the moment.

I got into special term at NTU, that's like extra classes. I already missed a week, equivalent to two weeks in the normal semester. Hope to catch up by reading the lecture notes, and maybe finding the textbook.

Accepted some freelance work from a bunch of students who are doing their project. I didn't know it would be for someone's school project, but I'd feel bad backing out now.

I'm doing a mobile game project with a classmate. This one should be quite simple, we're doing it on our spare time only.

Time management has never been my strong suit. Hope that everything will work out well.

Went out with friends a couple of days ago. Everyone is working now... earning money and supporting themselves. Cool.

Yesterday,

2007-05-05T23:34:00.000+08:00

I went to Aloha Loyang, and had fun there. Just sitting around and hanging out. We watched the sunrise together.
We recorded some songs too. I wonder if they could be uploaded here.

Jamendo

2007-04-29T18:44:00.000+08:00

Apparently, there's all this great free music on the web, available via Bittorrent. I'm having fun listening and discovering new songs, which can sometimes be good, but usually it's just average, or maybe not my type of music.

There are two options when downloading the torrent: mp3 or ogg vorbis (default), but the mp3 version has much faster seeds.

A nice extra is that most albums are licensed under Creative Commons with derivatives allowed. So you could use them in your own remixes. Or whatever.

Back to study, tomorrow is a very exciting day.

Back

2007-04-28T23:17:00.000+08:00

University holidays are starting soon, so I've a few plans in mind:

Summer school at UCLA starts in July, ends August. Sounds pretty interesting... and expensive. Overseas studies are always tempting, as they offer once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but this one comes with a US$4500 price tag.
Driving lessons. It's about time, too.
Brush up on my language. Specifically, Chinese.
Build a HTPC for the living room.
Make a game. :)

Number 5 is a particularly sore point for me, as I've always wanted to code a game by myself, but put it off for later. Procastination could be my middle name. As a matter of fact, I should be studying for my last exam paper, which is this Monday. :)

Oh no.

Backup

2006-08-27T22:41:00.000+08:00

After reinstalling my OSes 3-4 times in the past few days, I've come to realize the value of having a separate backup system.

I need something with more storage though. For stuff like photos. Mozy's servers don't seem to be as reliable as I'd like, too. And the client, which you MUST use, is Windows XP only.

At least I've managed to save my years of IRC chat logs though.

Hello world

2006-08-17T22:34:00.000+08:00

OK university life is not exactly what I expected. Living in a hostel when you're surrounded by people you don't know sucks. Everyone keeps their door closed. Including me, I guess =) This makes it hard to introduce yourself.

Crazy huh. My parents are paying for my education, how lucky I am. But I'm here whining away about isolation.

STUDY!

What just happened?

2006-08-09T03:14:00.000+08:00

Call it crazy/sci-fi/fantasy/fiction, whatever.

The fact is that I just had a waking dream.

In this dream I could walk around on At first I was just coasting around, suddenly it clicked that I was in a dream and I could do whatever I wanted.

It was a exhilirating experience, I felt very much alive during it.
My heart is still pumping from the feeling of flying(which I did do in the dream)

Some boring accounts of my experience in my totally made up dream world is as follows:
...
I can only remember bits and pieces of it now.

I was with some poly mates. Sitting in some rocking chair thing. Weird, I know.

I was exploring this place. It was empty and barren. This happened a few times, all with different places.

I saw people sometimes. Sometimes they would say something to me, but I couldn't talk to them. I saw a good looking girl too, but when I tried to kiss her she pushed me away :) :(

Sometimes I was doing things to the environment - ripping pieces of the walls, looking through with "x-ray" vision, etc. No one seemed to respond to my vandalism.

I had a encounter with devils too. Perhaps they represented the demons in my heart? How poetical.
I had to come into physical contact with them. They held on and wouldn't let me pass. I prayed to God and suddenly I moved to the next phase in my dream.

Oh yeah there was flying too. I found I could float or just speed whereever I wanted. Cool, like some superhero. I even encountered an evil empire which threatened the planet. But I didn't fight or anything. just spied on their soldiers. There was a heroine in that story too. But as soon as we met the dream changed :(

Why did I think that this was a lucid/waking dream? It was much more vivid. I could recall a lot more. I also was aware, while dreaming, of my real identity. I keep telling myself my home address, thinking of my real room. I could move my physical body while in the dream too (or maybe that was part of the dream?)

Before this dream I was really dog tired. I even fell asleep during Economics lecture earlier on.(not that hard to do - it's Econs). Then, I stayed up even later to try and fix problems with my laptop. By the way, my desktop monitor seems to have blown up this evening as well.

My writing is shoddy and probably full of mistakes. That's because I'm writing in the early morning. I don't know how tired I'll be tomorrow. Aiya it's National day anyway...

Ubuntu again

2006-08-09T00:05:00.000+08:00

I formatted the old linux partition and reinstalled Ubuntu. Haven't installed the temperature sensor, but processor scaling seems to be working again. From putting my hand near the heat exhaust, it doesn't seem as hot as last time. Hope that this isn't the prelude to an explosion or something...

Taiwan

2006-08-07T17:05:00.000+08:00

Taiwan is nice and fun. There were many great places to see. The food is good and cheap too.

Okay, pics.

Ubuntu is killing my laptop

2006-08-07T16:47:00.000+08:00

I guess alternative OSes are just too advanced for me. I can't seem to stop Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) from overheating my ASUS W3J. It starts at 70 degrees and slowly rises after startup, even though it's idle. Meanwhile in Windows, it averages 53 to 55 degrees. After reading some forum posts, it seems that the solution requires recompiling the kernel or something, so that Ubuntu can access the fans or throttle the processor. This seems like a really nice OS, but I'll have to stick with Windows until I can really look into the problem.

What irks me is some forum posters writing that it's not a OS problem, it's the manufacturer's fault. If the laptop stays cooler in Windows, how can it be a hardware problem? I think Ubuntu should have more built in GUI support for laptops, like ACPI and suspend modes. A new user like me won't know about things like command-line configuration and recompiling the kernel.

I really hope nothing went wrong with my laptop after that experience. Argh.

Taiwan

2006-07-29T10:56:00.000+08:00

I've just come back from Taiwan. It was fun. Hope I can write more about it later.

It's been too long..

2006-07-13T16:37:00.000+08:00

Finally, I've started to clear my leave. Another 3 weeks and I'll be out of National Service. Good riddance.

On to the next stage!

2 more months...

2006-05-29T21:16:00.000+08:00

Well, it's been a long two years for me. Now I'm about to be free of national service, and it's time to start looking ahead. I'm going into NTU this August to study Computer Science. But first, I have to plan out my ORD...

Plan and apply for leave
Start to bring my personal effects home (guitar, amp, etc.. :)
Go for medical and dental checkups
De-kit my stores with the CQ
Get my clearance forms signed

That last part might be the most troublesome. I have to get like 20 signatures from people whom I don't even know. Hopefully it will go smoothly. I hate these random variables. Who said ORD was easy anyway... I still have to collect my pink IC on the same date I'm entering university.

Test Driven Development

2006-03-19T19:20:00.000+08:00

Reading this article on TDD inspired me to work on my game again. I've been going over code I've written and making unit tests. Excitingly, my program no longer runs.

It's partially due to the unit testing, which made me look through the code and discover what a mess it was. I may have to rewrite some stuff again, but at least I'm no longer slacking.

Time Sinks

2006-03-04T12:36:00.000+08:00

These are some of the sites that I can't resist visiting at least once a day, and probably a lot more. I wouldn't say they are a waste of time... more like a black hole that sucks up every inch of personal time you have, preventing you from ever getting anything done. I hope one day to wean myself off these nightmares.

del.icio.us - Social bookmarking service, shows an endless stream of interesting/unusual urls that I MUST FOLLOW
digg - Community ranked news site, sometimes a lot of crap but usually very up-to-date on the latest news
digglicious - a cruel blend of digg and delicious, uses ajax to display new activity on either site, updated in real time
Arstechnica's gaming forum - occasional good discussion on games. Sometimes I find myself reading some stupid thread for hours.
Google's startpage - Google has a customizable portal page that allows me to view all the latest page feeds. Everytime I glance at it, there's something new and then there goes 15 minutes of my time.
Newsvine - A site offering user-submitted and professional news blended together. Since it's a new site I'm not sure if I'll get sucked in too, but I'm weak so anythings possible.

Just sharing a few great albums

2006-02-19T00:11:00.000+08:00

Disclaimer: I'm no music expert

Daft Punk - Discovery
Very catchy tunes in this album, such as "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". But they've somehow tweaked their electronic tunes to sound soulful as well. Robots singing about love, that's one of my favourite genres.

Aimee Mann - Bachelor No. 2
Her lyrics are great, but I needed a few listens to catch everything. A lot of strange instruments were used on this cd, giving it a varied and interesting feel. I can't really decide if the songs are optimistic or depressing... still great pop music nonetheless.

Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Probably one of my favourite albums. Heart-rending and catchy and just damn near flawless. Surreal and whimsical yet deeply personal. I didn't take to it at first, after a few listens I was hooked. I bought the band's previous albums and was not disappointed either. But only this one features ROBOTS SINGING ABOUT LOVE.

media app

2006-02-12T19:07:00.000+08:00

media app
Originally uploaded by Eugene Tan.

This program allows you to scan the contents of your CD/DVDs into a database. I use it to index my collection. I wonder if anyone else will find it useful though.

After a birthday party

2006-01-21T22:42:00.000+08:00

Just finished sending off everyone from my house. Feeling dead tired, but it was fun. Seeing everybody with their significant other made me cold and lonely inside, haha. I'm going to finish reading a fantasy novel by Phillip Pullman before I go to bed. Got a borders gift card as a present, so maybe I'll buy it's sequel tomorrow. ;)

Coding again

2006-01-01T08:34:00.000+08:00

A couple of friends asked for help with their projects, so I spent the whole afternoon working on Java applications. Which makes me very tired and grumpy. This is because Java is very syntax heavy, requiring far more typing of symbols than most other languages. Everything must be specified in great detail before you can even run the program. Maybe this is great for enterprise level software and other professional code, but it's really too unwieldy for an amateur like me. I kept skipping the usage of brackets and forgetting to put semi-colons. Been using too much Ruby lately I guess.

Ruby on the other hand, has it's own set of problems for me. So far I've only used it for simple shell scripting, transferring files into my Palm and so forth. I can't seem to do anything major with it though, like 3d programming. It's performance is nowhere near Java or C level. But I think the real reason is I don't really have a focus, like a particular software that I really want to write. Lack of motivation has probably been the story of my life so far.

It's really loud outside. People in my condo are throwing a new-year's party, accompanied by lots of shouting, screaming and music. Happy new year.

Web Apps

2005-12-28T03:43:00.000+08:00

I've been trying out a lot of web applications lately. Web applications look like normal web sites, but they provide functionality equivalent to desktop software. For instance, I'm writing this post using Writely, a web-based word processor. It features spell checking, formatting tools and the ability to save your work in Microsoft Word format. It runs totally from my browser without installing anything, and anything I write is stored on their server as well. Some other cool features include auto-saving, direct posting to a blog and allowing multiple users to work on the same document together.

Another application I've used recently is Ta-da List. The name may be a bit goofy, but it's fast, free and easy to use. Basically it keeps track of your to-do lists, allowing you to share them with others as well. It may sound simple, but simplicity is what makes it good.

Of course there's Google Maps too, which surely doesn't need any introduction. I've not used it other than as a novelty item, but it's extremely cool nonetheless.

There's a ton of other applications out there. Music sequencers, photo editors and even a functional operating system! I hope someday I can write cool software like this for a living. </dream>

Dead beat...

2005-12-26T01:37:00.000+08:00

after coming back from a christmas gathering. The venue was at some guy's place from my church. The place was huge... I heard it cost a cool 2.5 mil. Well, at least I had a brief taste of how the rich live during my lifetime. I got to meet a lot of people from my church and talk to them, which is funny because I don't normally socialize in my church so I'm getting introduced to all these faces which I see week in, week out... as if we'd just met.

Oh btw, merry christmas.

Sitex? What Sitex?

2005-11-27T22:45:00.000+08:00

Went to Expo today with a Poly friend to see "Big Boy's Toys". Basically it was like an issue of FHM brought to life. Flashy sports cars, sleek motorcycles and even some skating stunts show to watch. I guess it was an okay experience for my $10. The skimpily clad models beat next door's Sitex girls hands down, and I could have killed myself for not bringing a camera.

Sitex was relatively empty this year. At least I didn't have to jostle and barge around just to move an inch forward. Didn't even see a Microsoft booth... and I'd hoped to see the XBox 360 too. Some guy at the Razor Gaming mice booth was playing 1v1 Counterstrike vs a 6 yr old boy then later some 10 yr old girl. It was a open category to anyone, but I bet he felt like less of a man after thrashing both of them. Anyway his prize was a Razor mouse and pad, so I guess it was worth it.

Slow Week

2005-11-03T20:46:00.000+08:00

I did nothing but play games this week. And go out with my family too, which was good. I hardly talk to them on my normal weekends.

Games I played or tried:

DOTA

Shining Force Neo

Shadow of the Colossus

Star Wars Battlefront 2

Space Rangers 2

Space Rangers 2 is a crazy russian space game where you just travel the galaxy in your ship and do whatever you want. There's turn-based strategy, RTS (warcraft style), Arcade action and even text adventures all rolled into this game, therefore it owns me.

Long week over

2005-10-29T19:54:00.000+08:00

Whew, I just came back today from a damn long week, thanks to guard duty last Sunday and a parade today. Spent the day cleaning up my computer desktop and reading up on some web sites. Sadly my actual room is still a mess. I don't know what I'm gonna do this week for block leave. I hope I don't waste the whole week away on playing games.

Flock

2005-10-22T02:00:00.000+08:00

Trying out this new browser has given me a chance to update my blog again. Flock is based on the Firefox code base and features integration with various web services, such as Blogger. So now I'm posting using the browsers built-in interface, and it's a bit unwieldy but a lot more convienient than the web page interface. Not that I write a lot here (too busy with this).

Edit: Ok I just saw that I can view all my previous posts and edit them with Flock's interface. Just changed a few errors in my post. I'm never using the old Blogger site to post again.

Testing some desktop stuff

2005-08-15T02:12:00.000+08:00

Just finished a few hours of Dungeon Siege 2.. it's the digital crack I never wanted. Didn't do much today, but spent quite a bit of money still. Random crap like a 2-pin AC plug and music cd. Also, watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (not to be confused with a certain 80's musical). Very surreal, certain parts were very amusing and creepy, and it completely destroyed the impression I had from my naive childhood memories of the book. Thank you Tim Burton! Willy Wonka certainly has got some deep-rooted angst! Flaming gnomes!

2005-07-30T15:43:00.000+08:00

I was surprised to see one of my company-mates in the news today.
Link.
Damnit, he's smart.

2005-07-26T14:13:00.000+08:00

I've changed the title of this blog to better reflect the content.

2005-07-24T22:49:00.000+08:00

Programming programming programming.
Ok.

Using a combination of Ruby with RUDL, I've been trying to develop a simple GUI. My first goal is to display a window that can be dragged around the screen. Other interface elements include buttons and a text field.

I also have some idea for a simulation game, but still not sure where to start. That's why I bought the Pragmatic Programmer book, maybe it will give me some wisdom to begin with.

Virtual Cobwebs

2005-07-24T22:27:00.000+08:00

Damn, this place has become abandoned, even more than my usual tardy standards. I've been on some army courses lately, but that's just an excuse... I simply haven't got any energy to write, and even my own programming projects have fallen by the wayside. Over the weekends I've been playing a lot of games, to recharge my batteries. Now that the course is coming to an end, I have yet another one coming up! This time it's only a two-week engineer course, hopefully it's a bit more relaxed.

I brought a whole bunch of music cds to camp this month, and I've finished listening to most of them. The ones I like the most are by the Flaming Lips. I have 3 of their albums and they all rock. Among my other favourites are the White Stripes and Badly Drawn Boy. The CD I'm listening to right now is Bodily Functions by Matthew Herbert, and it is good.

So..

2005-06-12T20:39:00.000+08:00

Why no updates recently? That's because I've been having little to gripe about. Life has been pretty good in the army ever since I got my injury! Getting excused from physical training rocks, I can always go to the gym on my own anyway.

Err anyway, I sprained my ankle while playing soccer, and I've had difficulty walking ever since. I've gone for western and chinese treatment to make it heal faster, but only now (4 weeks after injury) my leg is starting to recover. I'm not too sure whether that's a good or bad thing.

Guild Wars has also been taking up a lot of my weekend time, I can't even get started on my programming project. Damn my lack of willpower!

What I have been doing the entire weekend

2005-05-22T21:00:00.000+08:00

Ritual
Originally uploaded by Eugene Tan.

Link.

Wargames

2005-05-12T21:52:00.000+08:00

This week, our brigade conducted a wargaming exercise. Basically a war strategy game held on computers.

Although my trainer described it as 'being like Starcraft', I found that difficult to swallow, because the graphics are minimal at best, the gameplay is boring as hell, and one Starcraft mission lasts 2-4 hours, while one Wargame mission can last 2-4 days.

It's a pity I didn't get to catch a glimpse of local celebrity Tay Ping Hui, who was locked inside the opposing forces room. After seeing the carefree manner in which our commanders expended the troops during battle, I can only hope that those great military leaders use us a bit more sparingly in the event of an actual war.

Flickr

2005-05-08T18:39:00.000+08:00

FYP Presentation Day
Originally uploaded by Eugene Tan.

Just testing out my Flickr account, a service for storing and sharing photos. This photo shows my final year project group during those fun-filled poly days. That's me in the back, looking hip n' all.

Weekend

2005-05-07T21:36:00.000+08:00

This week was even more monotonous than the last. Besides SOC, which I failed to complete again, there were no other activities of note. For some reason, a bunch of guys brought their guitars. So we had a near-continuous stream of pop music in our bunk all week. I went to Borders today and bought a bunch of new rock albums, to help cleanse my ears.

Before that, I had lunch at Hotel Meridien with my family, to celebrate Mother's Day. It was a pretty glam affair, because Minister of Development Mah Bow Tan was there.

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to work on my game project. On the other hand, I finished watching the 1st season of Bleach, and I'm now starting on Beck, which is cool! ^_^

2 days left...

2005-04-30T23:40:00.000+08:00

I started on my weekend project today. Woke up early, around 10 a.m., then surfed the net for some information on Ruby (which is the programming language I'm using). Then my mother wanted to use the computer, so I had to wait. After lunch, I went out to play soccer.

Came back around 10 p.m. Didn't really get to do much work today, haha. Right now, my shooting game looks like some red blood cells are attacking white blood cells. I'm going to plan out a list of to-do items here:

1. Implement the controls
2. Create the scoring system
3. Put in a few types of enemies
4. Figure out how the game ends
5. Steal some nice graphics from sites like this
6. Put those graphics in the game, and some background
7. Make a main menu
8. Package everything into an exe file

Seems like a lot to do. I'll get to it tomorrow.

By the way, I've been using this bittorrent site a lot lately. It kicks ass, because the anime episodes are packaged in complete series, and they have manga, plus live-action movies too. If only it were updated more often. You need a user account though. Get one from here.

Slack

2005-04-28T20:33:00.000+08:00

This week was quite a good week, and we had quite a bit of time to rest and relax. There was an IPPT test again, which I somehow managed to pass. That leaves SOC to clear. Finished watching Constantine on my palm. It was fairly entertaining, despite Keanu Reeves. It's crazy how much content I can fit on my Palm, I almost have to force myself to go through them. Maybe I will start writing some reviews of comics and anime. :)

There's just so many distractions around me. I still remember when I first came to BRC, I set a few noble goals for myself:
1. Learn Japanese
2. Learn Ruby
3. Improve my guitar skills
4. Make a video game
Ok, maybe they're not so noble, but at least it's a lot more productive than... whatever I'm doing now. 10 months into national service, and I'm still no closer to achieving anything. I really do need to focus a lot more, and treasure what time I have.

Weekend project
I had this idea of using the coming long weekend( due to labour day ) to focus and build a small game. My chances of success are slim, but even if I can't meet the deadline, I hope to learn something and gain a small measure of satisfaction. If it gets done eventually, I'll write up a "game diary" of all the steps taken, which I'm sure will be lots of fun.

Fun PDA stuff

2005-03-29T15:27:00.000+08:00

Having a pda definitely makes my life less dreary during the long hours spent in camp. I can safely say that all those days spent away from home has forced me to find new uses for my handheld. Anyway, here's a list of things I do on my Palm :

Manga
I download manga from websites like this. Then I upload and view them using GrxView. I can fit about 7 volumes on my 256mb SD card, inclusive of all the other crap I put in there.

E-books
The screen on my palm is sufficient to read books comfortably. I use iSilo and Repligo to view my books. Sometimes I put web articles/ guitar tabs in there too.

News
Using Plucker together with Sunrise lets me download web pages/ Rss feeds for later perusal. If you don't know what rss is, think of it as the pure text portion of a web site.

Games
I used to think emulation was dead on the palm, but then I recently found Little John. It can emulate snes/ genesis/ gameboy games at a decent speed.

Blog
At the moment I'm writing this post on my palm. It's the first time I'm trying this, but I should have thought of it earlier. Perhaps now I can add more entries to the site so it doesn't seem so damn dead.

An invaluable tool I use is cardexport, which allows me to access the sd card in my palm directly. It's much faster and more convienient then using the default palm install method.

Smooth buttery pleasure

2005-01-01T18:46:00.000+08:00

After some technical handling, my computer is up and running again. It turns out the problem was with a few bad sectors on my windows drive. Fortunately I had two OSes, so I was able to run scandisk to solve the problem.
I'm running counterstrike:source as I'm typing this. It's great that the developers had a 'run in window' option. Initially the game gave me some problems with lag due to my wireless network. Turning off "wireless zero config" under windows services solved the problem. Multiplayer is a smooth buttery pleasure now.

2004-12-24T01:00:00.000+08:00

Infrequent updates, superficial content. What's the point of this site really?

I created a del.icio.us account, so anyone can visit it. Maybe gain some insight into my viewing habits, and learn of some interesting links, which are all stolen from other users anyway.

I just learned that my friend army vocation consists of maintaining web sites. Chatting and surfing the net while playing games. And getting paid to do so. As if that wasn't ludicrously fortunate enough, he's being sent on some advanced dreamweaver/flash course to upgrade his skills. I ought to wish him all the best, but my thoughts consist only of jealousy and rage.

Been toying around with Firefox lately. I just installed an extension which offers IRC chatting capabilities. Poking around the #singapore channels and such gives me the impression that IRC denizens are a pack of sexual predators.

2004-11-21T19:20:00.000+08:00

Yet another quickie update - I'm just squeezing them in the best I can. Recently purchased Half-Life 2, which probably needs no introduction to any PC gamer. It's very slick and intense, and I'm just at the beginning. Quite a few things have been keeping me busy lately. These things mostly include the playing of video games. It's not like I can help it - it's been a month full of blockbuster games so far. My "To-do" list includes the aforementioned Half-Life, Vampire: Bloodlines and Metal Gear Solid 3...

Meanwhile in my military life, I've failed to get into the bike course, which means that I'm staying in camp while my compadres get to race around on scramblers. Oh well, at least I have quite a bit of time off, to do my own thing.

A random smattering of links

2004-10-15T01:08:00.000+08:00

del.icio.us a bookmarking website, i just use it as a source of interesting links. seems to be updated every time i click the refresh button.

ruby take the hassle and pain out of programming by learning ruby, a high level programming/scripting language. not only is it easy to use and flexible, it can also be integrated with Java or C, so you're not throwing your existing skills away.

shacknews games news, updated daily with interesting features like 'late night consoling'

2004-10-14T23:59:00.000+08:00

Hehe, another sproradic update. I'm having a long weekend right now. Life at my new unit is real slack at the moment. I wonder how long it will last... real training will probably start after my motorcycle lessons. It's getting hard to update this site, my life is so routine at the moment. Time really passes when you're in the army. Plus, blogger keeps eating my posts :)

Argh

2004-09-30T17:45:00.000+08:00

Guess I forgot to update the site this week. It's not been particularly busy, since I'm on leave. But having fun is my priority. I'm really into Kohan 2 right now. It's innovative and deep; a refreshing change from traditional RTS games.

Finished reading the Da Vinci Code. It's not the most well-written book I've seen, and I would say it's a slightly above average thriller. What sets it apart from the competition is the "inflammatory" nature of it's contents, regarding Catholicism and christianity in general. I guess it must be approached with a pinch of salt if you're the religious sort. This wikipedia page has a writeup on the controversy, if you want a bit of spoilers.

2004-09-19T18:01:00.000+08:00

Ok this place is going through some serious neglect. I'll be completing my basic training course in a week's time, then taking a week off. So there'll be time to update a bit more. I hope life will be better outside of Tekong.

Bye Bye

2004-08-01T19:51:00.000+08:00

I'm off now

2004-07-31T20:38:00.000+08:00

Not that anybody actually reads this site, but it's sort of disappointing to have so few updates. It's been what, a month already? There isn't much to say about army life, really. I'm a lot fitter obviously, but still below the standard required here. Slowly but surely, they've been teaching us the tricks of the soldier trade. We learned about our main rifle, close combat and some basic first aid this week alone. It would be pretty fun, if the pace wasn't so hectic. We're lucky if we get more than 30 mins of free time before lights out each night.

There was also a recruitment drive this week, with all the armed forces trying to get us to sign on. Some very attractive pay + benefits packages were offered, and the presentation was super slick, but I didn't take the bait. I guess I'm just not ready to sign away 10 years of my life so easily.

Watched I,Robot last weekend. I found it to be a decent movie, although very generic and typical of a Hollywood action film. I think it got my attention only because of the book tie-in.

I've been thinking what to do during my short weekends away from army life. Resting seems like a good option. I'll go rest now.

Gah

2004-06-06T01:28:00.000+08:00

I just came back from a movie + dinner with a group of friends. It had a "Last Supper" kind of feeling, and afterwards everybody said their last goodbyes to me.

Updating this website is going to be a pain in the next couple weeks. But I hope to post about my early training experience, if there's anything interesting to share.

But anyway, tomorrow I shall be reporting to the island of Tekong, where I will solemnly vow to spill my lifeblood for my country. Then after the administrative paperwork, there'll be the head shaving ceremony, tour of the facilities and an introductory session, before training begins in earnest.

I only hope I'm not too pampered and spoiled to adjust to army life, which is already pretty slack where I'm going.

Last Days

2004-06-01T23:21:00.000+08:00

7 more days to NS.

My original plans to work on the games project don't seem to be going anywhere, especially when everyone's busy/not interested. Well, it's their decision to make. So the question is, how to spend the last week of "freedom"?

My problem with the Army is that it requires total dedication, you're stuck in camp and there's no room for anything else. Which sucks, because I've not finished learning everything I want to know yet. It certainly won't be easy to start learning again after the next 2 years. I guess it's my own fault for wasting so much time.

I can't think of anything interesting to write. It's been a pretty dull day. I went back to my school to showcase a project, but I didn't really do much except to get in the way. Our "customers" were all secondary school students. Their knowledge of technology was pretty good, and they asked some smart questions too. The worst part about presenting the showcase was that I was a freeloader, so I felt pretty lame.

My dad is talking about buying a Palm device, so I don't get totally out of touch during NS. It's a nice gesture, but I don't think expensive hardware can be/should be brought to camp. Man, it would be great to read e-books and play a few games during long hours though.

Perth

2004-05-29T23:06:00.000+08:00

So anyway, here's my take on Perth, in case somebody out there actually wants to know.

Perth is a very laid-back, relaxed city. There's a lot to see, a lot to do, things to touch and experiences to be had, but it's incredibly peaceful and quiet, especially after 5 o'clock (there's no nightlife whatsoever). So, it's a good place to settle down and live... when you're 60. Thrill seekers, look elsewhere.

The shopping here is decent, nothing compared to Hong Kong or Malaysia though. You can buy some interesting Australian-themed souvenirs. Kangeroo scrotum (said to bring good luck, except for the original owner) comes to mind. A wide selection of "indigenous artifacts", made by real tribespeople, is also available, which include paintings, digeridoos, boomerangs and ... rocks. Also check out the local foodstuffs. Fremantle (a town right next to Perth) is a port town, so there's plenty of delicious fresh fish and other seafood available. Chocolate, ice-cream and any dairy-based products are also good, because the cows are right next to the factory.

A highlight of my vacation there was the 1-day tour of Perth. A charming and fat gentleman, called Ron took us to see a wildlife park, a chocolate factory (free chocolate tasting), a vineyard (wine tasting), a fruit store, a convienience shop, a boat cruise and finally his own house. That's right, his own house. Where he cooked a very tasty bbq lunch for us. His mom showed us his 3 story house (located on prime waterfront land, with a glorious view) and his personal yacht.

It turns out Big Ron's a multi-millionaire.

What a mess

2004-05-29T22:41:00.000+08:00

I tried porting over the project to use JME, but it's been surprisingly difficult so far. Surprising because most of the original code was ripped off from there in the first place. Now I've reached what appears to be a dead end.

Here's some background info on the project: It's a Java game project designed for multiplayer, originally created for a school project. It makes use of the lwjgl project, to allow 3d graphics and sound. Features of our project include:

- "Martian" terrain with textures
- 3D player models, which were stolen from polycount
- Powerups
- Multiple weapons deal out death and destruction
- In-game chat
- Lobby system where you can set up a game with others

Right now, what I'm trying to do is to replace the in-game engine with JME, because it has a lot of cool features and special effects.

2004-05-28T11:04:00.000+08:00

Back from holidays. Nothing except National Service to look forward to now. At least I have the spare time to work on the game project.

Eclipse came out with a new version recently. The most obvious changes are the appearance of the interface, and code folding (you can hide any block of code away).

On my todo list today is to write some JUnit tests for the project. Not sure how to proceed with this one, but I just like the idea of having automated tests filter out bugs at the touch of a button.

2004-05-21T11:28:00.000+08:00

I was originally going to post a short blurb on the different Java IDEs out there, but I realized that it's a highly personal choice. There's no real killer feature that distinguishes one from another. The IDE I'm using right now is Eclipse.

A short guide to getting Eclipse running from scratch:
1. Go to the downloads page on the eclipse.org website.
2. Click on the main download site
3. Select the latest version available(currently 3.0M8)
4. Select your operating system.
5. The download will start now.
6. Unzip the file to any location you choose
7. In the eclipse directory, double click on "eclipse.exe". It's the one with an eclipse icon.

Eclipse will start up immediately. No installation required. At this point, you may want to create a shortcut for Eclipse on your desktop or start menu.
I would definitely recommend going through the help contents, which can be accessed from the "Help" menu bar. For standard users, you can go through the "Workbench User Guide" and the "Java Development User Guide".

I'll be taking a short vacation in Australia with my family. Be back next week.

2004-05-19T16:25:00.000+08:00

So, we had a meeting to discuss our group project yesterday. I think we must have spent 5 minutes total in discussion. Then we went to play street soccer.

I'll be watching Troy later on. I hope it's good, the last movie I watched was Van Helsing.

A good site to visit if you like technology in general is Ars Technica. The site mainly covers news in the IT world, but they also branch out into a lot of interesting directions. Be sure to take a look at their forums too.

2004-05-18T03:47:00.000+08:00

Finding this site really made my day. I love this show.

A group of friends and I will be meeting up today, with the pretext of discussing our games project. I predict that the day will be spent playing Winning Eleven 7, and then some real football later on.

I really need to get some proper sleep now, seeing myself in the mirror scares me (hello outbreak of pimples, didn't see you yesterday. have you met mr.dark rings around my eyes?)

Open Source software

2004-05-18T02:19:00.000+08:00

Most of us, at one time or another, have installed pirated software on our computers, or perhaps distributed it to others. Even in the world of business, this is a fairly common practice for small to medium companies. A recent example comes to mind.

While I'm not going to discuss whether this is right or not, an alternative to casual piracy is to use software released for public use. For instance, instead of cracking that copy of Winzip or Winrar that you downloaded, why not try 7-zip, which is free for public and commercial use? It supports all the major formats you will find on the internet today, and comes with it's own format which has very good compression.

Which brings me to the term "Open Source". Open source simply refers to software which has it's source code released. Anybody who wants to can download the code and modify it to suit their needs, or simply use it normally.

Are you just an average user? You can skip the paragraph below then.

Are you a software developer? If your code is based on open-sourced software, there is one thing to watch out for: the license. Yes, free software comes with a license too, though I'm not too sure what happens if you actually violate this license. If it comes with the General Public License, it means that any software you write using this product will become open source too. You will have to make your source code available to the public. The Lesser General Public License means you don't have to release your code. It's as simple as that.

I hope to cover some useful open source programs soon, together with a short guide on how to get them up and running. The biggest source of open software on the web is SourceForge.

One of my fantasies is to start a software company based on free software, because I'm an incredible cheapskate.

2004-05-16T23:11:00.000+08:00

I've been tired and dull the whole day. I planned to put up some links to a few open-source programs which I like, but I'm lacking the energy right now.

Today, my grandmother and auntie went back to their home, after a 2 week stay here. I kind of miss them already, we rarely get to see each other.

I also set up my free newsgroups account today. I only subscribed to a few interesting groups, but there are thousands of messages already. I'm using this program as the reader, it's very easy to use and doesn't require an install.

You can find lots of other small, useful programs in this article. If you're into music or recording, you can read the other articles on the site too.

2004-05-16T02:08:00.000+08:00

Having just came back from the party, I find there's not much time left to write. (I'm dead tired). The party was fun, I had fun, everybody had fun.

In soccer news, the final day of the season has passed, and there were no surprise results to be had. Arsenal preserved their season-long unbeaten record, and the other two big teams, Man U and Chelsea, won their respective matches. I guess nothing significant really happened, except that Newcastle cinched their place in the UEFA cup. Congrats.

With Leeds relegation into the first division, I shall look forward to seeing how they perform next season. Life in the lower leagues is not to be seen as a setback, but a new experience. The only thing that I hope for is for them to put an end to their financial and management troubles. I'm really not a very demanding fan.

Over the coming 2 weeks, I will be writing on my experience of working on a computer game project. It used to be a school project, but my friends and I will be working on it on our free time now.

After those 2 weeks, I will be going to serve in the army. I'm going to miss my slacker's lifestyle.

Oh the thrill!

2004-05-15T17:30:00.000+08:00

I've decided to add my voice to the millions of others out there.

More to come after I return from a school function.