One would think the person who picked up the call (my dad) would’ve asked what the bank was calling about. Oh well.

I’m flying off to San Francisco on monday, and will be back on the 16th of June. I haven’t yet discussed the update schedule with Zeng; we’ll see what we can come up with while I’m gone. In the meantime, check out Old English! It’s a whacky film-sketch-comedy website. I especially enjoyed Adam’s Orange Stand, and of course, the Apple Switch parodies (Quicktime will be required).

The official BitTorrent search engine is up. I don’t know how Bram Cohen is going to fight off the inevitable lawsuit, but a few minutes fiddling with the thing tells me one thing:

It’s fast.

Fast like Google is fast… maybe even faster.

I wonder what’s going to happen next.

Er, Adrian passed me this chain-mail (chain-blog?) thingamajig. Contrary to my normal habits, I shall actually do this one, because I wouldn’t've heard of a lot of good music if others didn’t share them with me.

Total volume of music files on my computer:

11.34GB, 2714 Songs. I don’t know how long it will last if I play them all because I don’t put them on a giant playlist.

The last CD I bought was:

Chappaquiddick Skyline. It’s a horrible CD, so please don’t get it (even though the link goes directly to Amazon, heh).

Song playing right now:

A Bitch Iz A Bitch - N.W.A. It just started playing, man!

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1) Express Yourself - N.W.A.
2) Lullabye - Ben Folds Five
3) Cherry Blossom Color Season - Yu Miyake, Katamari Damacy OST
4) Eternity ~Memories of Light & Waves~ - Hiroko Kokubu, FFX-2 Piano Collections
5) Blue - Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop OST3

(To the person who started this meme with only FIVE (5!) songs in this category: you, sir/madame, are a true sadist. I’ve too many genres to narrow it down to a measly five songs!)

Five people to whom I’m passing this baton:

Nobody. Like Agooga, I delight in killing off chains. Heh heh heh.

Of course, you can pretend that I sent one to you, and start anew…

House-keeping

You may have noticed the Google ads on the left. I’ve had to fiddle with the CSS, but I’ve finally gotten them to work cleanly in Firefox 1.0.4.

If the ads have messed up Squarebrain’s layout for you, press SHIFT while you click the “Refresh” button on your browser, and that should clear things up.

If Squarebrain still looks odd, chances are you’re using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer - stop that right now, and download Firefox. It’s small, it’s fast, it’s simple, it’s free.

Safari users: There are minor issues (none as horrifying as what IE will do to Squarebrain). Rest assured I’m working on a solution.

Opera users: I have no idea what Squarebrain looks like in Opera. If it looks like crap, take a screenshot and send it to me.

Update: I’ve confirmed it works in Opera 8.0, on both Windows and OS X.

I’ve also confirmed it works in Safari 2.0, on OS X Tiger. Any errors you see on either of these browsers (Opera 8.0 or Safari 2.0) is a result of uncleared browser cache. Clear it, and it should work fine (that was what SHIFT+Refresh was meant to do, but oh well)

That only leaves IE. Sigh.

So it seems I was a bit premature in drooling over the XBox 360, because Sony announced their PS3… and its features are impressive. Some highlights include:

Full backwards compatibility with the PS1 and PS2, something which the XBox doesn’t have.

Built-in wireless, just like the XBox 360. And it connects with the PSP!

Up to 7 bluetooth controllers supported, versus the XBox’s 4. Party games, anyone?

Dual HDTV output. Though this is probably overkill.

Just about the only weapon the XBox 360 has is its stellar online component, as yet un-matched by anything Sony has produced.

The PS3, of course, is not without its flaws. It’s controller design is… questionable, to say the least. Sony has the dubious honour of being the sole creators of (possibly) the world’s most expensive bluetooth-controlled vibrator. I mean, look at the thing!

But hey, who am I to argue if it gets more girls playing video games?

Spoilers, so highlight the rest of it to read.

(Btw, this review is absolutely priceless, and kept me entertained much more than the movie itself did).

Star Wars in 45 minutes time ……mwahahaha. No i won’t be like other stupid bloggers who will tell all the spoilers in their blogs. ( To the person who spoiled Million dollar baby for me, thank you hor ).

Ray wants his mac back..and may the force be with you! Later.

Tappa tappa tappa tappa tappa plop. Tappa tappa tappa, tappa tappa tappa tappa tappa… tappa… plop.

It’s the sound of the future.

I heard the noise while visiting the toilet in the firm I’m working at. There was someone in a cubicle, furiously typing away on his mobile phone and simultaneously taking a dump.

Tappa tappa tappa plop.

Apparently, as a lawyer, you’re so pressed for time you communicate even as you relieve yourself.

Tappa tappa tappa… tappa tappa… tappa plop.

I fear for my sanity when I graduate.

(Just in case anyone there is reading this, a disclaimer: the toilet is shared by another firm on the same level, so it could be anyone.)

Writing this from Beach Road Shaw’s Burger King. Waiting to see Star Wars. I love wireless!

Time magazine’s latest cover is funny stuff.

A little bit of background before the eye-candy: Microsoft haters have, for a long time, compared the software giant to Star Trek’s Borg. The comparison is quite apt; like the Borg, Microsoft absorbs smaller software companies; like the Borg, Microsoft adds the smaller company’s assets to their own; like the Borg, all opposition is ruthlessly crushed.

Hell, even the Borg catchphrase, “Resistance is Futile”, seems like something Bill Gates would say.

It’s gotten to the extent that the icon that nerd-community-blog slashdot uses to represent the software giant is a photoshopped, Borg-ified Bill Gates, like so:

Funny, yes. Nerds everywhere cackled at their geeky wit. “Take that, Bill Gates!” they proudly proclaimed as they fiddled with their ‘nix systems…

Enter this week’s Time magazine cover (screenshot from www.time.com):

I’ll bet somewhere in America, a photographer got fired.

The XBox 360 was just unveiled on MTV. Kotaku has a write up and pictures, but after they mentioned the feature list I kind of stopped reading.

Native HDTV support! (Yes, games in High-Def)

Wireless network support! (You can play movies/music off your computer’s shared folders)

3 PowerPC cores running at 3.2GHz! (Mac users may put on smug expressions of superiority. Okay, okay, so it’s only 1 CPU, but still.)

Couple that with XBox Live (the only console multiplayer environment to actually get it right) and you have, in your hands, the Ultimate Gaming Machine. I don’t own an XBox, but if they make the XBox 360 backwards-compatible, I know what my next purchase is going to be.

Ah, competition. Now we wait for E3, and see what Sony has in store for the PlayStation 3.

(Purely off-topic: speaking of Macs, I’ve just installed Mac OS X Tiger on my iBook. Let’s see what this baby can do.)

Once, while I was speaking to this girl about dating, she said: “Isn’t it all a power play?”

Isn’t it indeed.

It’s all just a game, with winners and losers, and pity the fool who ends up the loser. But while we’re all squandering our youth in the merry thrust and parry of the dating game, secure in the illusion of invulnerability our lack of experience has granted us, thrilled at the minor boost to our self-esteem every put-down brings, remember this:

It’s all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.

Yeap, a new strip is up. I think Zeng captured panel #3 perfectly. She looks so… focussed. Heh heh heh.

To the one poor soul who stumbled upon Squarebrain while looking for case notes on the Quistclose trust - Hah hah! (Say that out loud as Nelson would).

(For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, read this post on how AWStats lets me see search phrases to this website, and this post that contained the reference to Barclays Bank v Quistclose)

Singapore Legal Mumbo Jumbo Demystified has a short blurb on the Acidflask saga. There’s also apparently an e-mail (!) sent by the dude himself on Singabloodypore.

Wannabe Lawyer also chips in, talking about the Channel News Asia article that prompted Acidflask’s mail.

And of course, the brown man himself thinks CNA was kinda slow on the uptake ‘cos tomorrow.sg broke the news a full 2 weeks in advance.

There seems to be a bug in wordpress’s trackback code. My apologies if I seem to have not tracked you back. I’ll have to get it fixed…

Me, I’m very curious to know what it was that irked A*Star so much. Was it something so horrible that legal action had to be threatened? ‘Cos if it was, then Acidflask does indeed deserve to have his ass kicked to high heaven. But if it wasn’t (as I’m wont to think, given that nobody knows exactly what was said), then all I can say is… what’s the big deal?

Relac la!

At least wait until I become a lawyer so I can also partake of the… um, rewards, can?

Warning: long geek rant. Read at your own risk!

An interesting read on Google vs. Microsoft.

Over the years, Microsoft has always managed to slay its opponents (Novell, Oracle, Netscape, Apple, IBM, Sun Microsystems, the European Union, et al). Some bounced back by clinging onto a niche the software giant was too lazy to swat (Novell). Others were agile enough to find other means of making money (IBM). Still others survived (arguably) because they made deals with the devil (Apple, in 1997). But they all fell to Gates’ juggernaut… until now.

[W]hat really bothers Gates is that Google is gaining the ability to attack the very core of Microsoft’s franchise—control over what users do first when they turn on their computers.

When I switch on my computer, one of the first things I do is log on to the internet. And when I’m on the internet, the first place I go to is - that’s right - Google. Nothing else can make me do that. Sure, I use Firefox as my browser, and iTunes as my MP3 player. Sure, a flavour of Linux + Apache is the preferred web server of choice. Sure, I think Apple’s OS X is far superior to Windows XP.

But none of those things is as ubiquitous as Google. It’s even entered the common vernacular as a substitute for “search”, as in: “Why don’t you just Google it?”. Blogger, the free web-based blogging software millions of people use, is owned by Google. Wikipedia, that vast web-based community-maintained encyclopaedia, is being supported by Google. GMail, Google’s free e-mail service, offers a whopping 2GB of storage (that’s increasing all the time), and is used by a significant proportion of people I know.

Yes, the storm is brewing. Microsoft is struggling mightily to beat the one thing Google is good at - searching. To put things into perspective, and to appreciate how hard this actually is, here’s what Squarebrain’s server (with Wordpress) does when you visit our page: 1) checks a small database of less than 100 posts, 2) generates some HTML code in the order in which I’ve posted it, 3) sticks it up for you, the visitor, to see. All this takes about 0.15s (or so the timer tells me), with a puny 300-400 visitors per day.

Here’s what Google does when you run a search (not in this order): 1) checks a huge database of 8 billion pages (that’s 8, 000, 000, 000!), 2) figures out what you really meant (”smart ass” is more likely to return results about your joker classmate than an intelligent donkey), 3) checks its results for authoritativeness, reliability and relevance (Page Rank), 4) checks its advertisers for related advertising content, 5) generates some HTML code in order of relevance, 6) sticks it up for you, the visitor, to see. As of February 2003, Google handles some 250 million queries per day.

The average Google search takes about 0.2 - 0.3 seconds, and is relevant enough that you’ll more likely than not find what you’re looking for in the first page of results.

That’s what Microsoft is up against.

Microsoft’s most powerful weapon, it’s virtual monopoly on end-user operating systems, has nothing to do with Google’s ad-based business model. Google runs on Linux, freeing it from that particular trap. Google will still be running if every Microsoft product should disappear off the face of this earth (though only gleeful unix-heads and Apple users will be using it). Nothing Microsoft can do to Windows will affect how well Google functions.

That’s what Microsoft is up against.

Microsoft’s second most powerful weapon, its huge financial advantage, is blunted when dealing with Google. Microsoft killed Netscape by making their own product free - Google already costs nothing. Microsoft can literally spend billions to make a comparable search engine - Google’s already works. Microsoft could outright buy Google - but Google works on Linux, not Windows, and the company would be in an awkward position of using a competing product. Sure, Microsoft could conceivably throw enough money at Google to kill it, but it’s gonna hurt them bad.

That’s what Microsoft is up against.

Gates basically created the notion that success in software is a function of the IQ of your team, and for years Microsoft has prided itself on having the smartest employees on the planet. Now many of those overachievers feel as though they’ve gotten their first B.

Microsoft is fast losing its most intelligent, most experienced people to Google. Remember those mind-bending puzzle tests Microsoft gives hopeful employees/interns? Well, at least you understand them. Google’s tests are harder, yet fun. Those that get in, are treated to one of the most employee-friendly working environments Silicon Valley has to offer.

That’s what Microsoft is up against.

Google knows Microsoft is on to them. Google is taking the threat seriously, and is innovating like crazy to keep ahead of the lumbering behemoth. Froogle, Google News, Google Maps, Google Answers, Google Desktop Search, the list goes on and on, and shows no sign of letting up. Meanwhile, Microsoft is still struggling to get internet search right (irritatingly, a search for “squarebrain” doesn’t turn up in the front page of MSN Search right away; it seems to perform some other weird algorithm and only displays on the second try; on Google, it’s result #1 right off the bat).

Not to beleaguer my point, but that’s what Microsoft is up against.

To be fair, Gates has some tricks left up his sleeve. Being in control of proprietary document formats, Microsoft can presumably integrate search into Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook better than Google can. Microsoft could make search run just off the desktop. Microsoft could go the way of Apple’s Spotlight, and integrate search directly into the OS itself (as it’s already doing in its next generation OS, Longhorn). Integration = ubiquity.

It could work. Microsoft’s penetration into the mind of the average user is not to be underestimated. Just the other day, I had a conversation involving Firefox which went like this:

Them: “What’s firefox?”
Me: “It’s a browser.”
Them: “What’s a browser?”
Me: “It’s a way of surfing the internet.”
Them: “Huh? Isn’t internet explorer the internet?”
Me: “No, the internet is just the internet. Internet explorer and firefox are both ways to use the internet.”
Them: “Wow, you learn something new every day.”

Note that these people aren’t ignorant fools; they’re fellow law students, just about as bright as they come. And they thought, through no fault of their own, that Internet Explorer = The Internet. See, the end-user doesn’t really care about “spyware” or “tabbed browsing” or “unsecured connections” or “firewalls” until it turns around and bites them in the ass. Up until then, if their computer works, it works; double-clicking on “Internet Explorer” will bring you to the internet, and that’s that.

So yes, Microsoft could conceivably take Google. But all this integration takes time, and time is something Microsoft doesn’t have, as Google gains more and more momentum and becomes ever more entrenched as the go-to guy for search.

How much time until Search the Internet = Google?

I don’t know, but damn it’s fun to see it happening =).

I’m alive!
My engrish is still bad!

Okay, I’ll refrain from ending the post right here and start writing more.
(Ray has forced me to start writing more so that people don’t mistaken the artist Zeng as his alter ego…or something.)
Well nothing much really, Im just real real busy at work. I come back home and only have 3-4 hours to myself before I go into lala land to start the 7 am journey. During those 3-4 spare hours , I’ll try to improve my “social” life which isn’t really working cause the girls I’ve met recently, think all guys are jerks or dickheads ……..Of course girls being girls… they are currently with a jerk or seeing a dickhead…

I shall discuss about this phenomenom in a later posts.

Anyway Starwars Episode 3 is coming in 14 days? I think I’ll be seeing the very same people in the cinema when I saw EPS 1 n 2 ,some with the lightsabers others in their jedi suits, a few wannabes SW fans.. but loving SW all the same.. Ill really love to see a HOT SG gal wearing that Leia dancing outfit…..and its the perfect weather to wear it cause its so damn hot over here in Singapore.I hope she sits next to me! haha
Well its late and I don’t have much to talk about now so I’ll leave you with you the all time classic depressing one liners my msn users have .. enjoy.

No commitments… just emotions… ( I dont want to know… )

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