Archive for the 'Updates' Category

NDS Lite vs PSP

Published
by
Zz85
on April 4, 2007
in NDS and Updates
. 0 Comments

Why I chose the Nintendo DS lite (NDS Lite) over the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP).

Its seemed like a long month in May. I was spending more on projects in Camp, but my concentration is definitely drained elsewhere. It wasn’t duties, so maybe music, maybe something else.

May is a month lots of money spent, on gadgets mainly, perhaps kicked off by the IT Show.

So I bought a NDS Lite -this will be added to my memories of hand-held computer games I bought in my life (I could count all of them with my fingers) since young.

While the majority of people I know owns a PSP, and rare minority an NDS, why the latter for me?

Here’s my reasons. NDS..

- Seemingly cheaper (~$230 vs ~$300)
- More portable (Easier to carry around or place in the pocket)
- Longer Battery Life
- Touchscreen (With a stylus, even 2)
- Although hardware’s power no where near the PSP, games are more creative and innovative (hardware usually fully utilized)
- Interesting homebrews
- DS sales wins high over PSP
- Comes in nicer colours

In no way here I’m looking down on the PSP. The points above are mostly debatable, eg. price of the PSP is quite low now (and getting even lower after a recent news says sony will cut down another 15% due to low sales). For its powerful hardware and features, its hard to beat. Tons of quality homebrew / hacks are available for the PSP.

For advice I would say, take the PSP if you want the entertainment (nice screen, graphics, and music) but pick the DS if you want something special, innovative or classic.

See this link which had a big influence on me for buying the NDS. Maybe this might affect you another way.

6 more months left in NS

Published
by
Zz85
on January 25, 2007
in NS and Updates
. 0 Comments

Some updates from camp’s life

1. Awarded Best Soldier in SAF Ammunition Command for month of Oct 06

Best Soldier Award

Well, the whole story about this award supposed to be another post, but anyway here’s what happened in short.

My outgoing OC looked for me when I was on off, through the telephone asked me to prepare a presentation at a conference for commanders.

After giving my speech, CO asked a write out regarding my defining moments.

Basically this was a chance I could recall my learning experience and memorial moments in NS and to thank all those who have helped me one way or another.

2. Promoted

after being a Corporal for about a year

Old Rank
Old CPL Rank to…
[okay the circle thing above the rank is a formation badge, which I backstitched (handstitching's another topic) not that well unfortunately]

New Rank
3SG (3rd Sergent) Rank.

ping? pong! (# see footnote)

Published
by
Zz85
on January 8, 2007
in Updates
. 0 Comments

Its been over 2 months, from the last year since I posted any new stuff on my blog. Welcome back!

I have a more or less the usual excuses for that my long absence from blogging. Here’s the excuse list

Reason #4. Server downtime

No idea why sometimes the pages loads too slow or the server fails to connect I may be planning to revamp my entire blog, upgrade the wordpress engine, create a design myself, move and host it on my server located at home.

Reason #3. Occupied with tons of end of the year and new year events

End and the start of year have no lack of festive seasons and activities in army, church or home.
In camp, usual work & duties continues.. In december I had 2 weeks of advance training course.
Then after that, was about a week sent overseas with my family
When I’m back, it was time for caroling and christmas and..
the cycle continues..

Reason #2. Series of computer tragedy
The irony that I’m always helping others fixing their computer problems, I never get the to solve my own.

Lately I threw out my pentium 3 pc, but I still left with tons computer debris. motherboards and other computer junkies are left lying around with a slight hope of electric life sprinkling in them or waiting to be “basketed”.

My main personal and working system, pentium 4 2.8ghz ht starts to load windows slow (which means really slow.. worst than my pentium 3 could boot up windows xp). ram problems, northbridge fan problems.. and when i think i got them fixed.. strange noise from my 160gb sata harddisk even after formatting. well, im using xubuntu (a debian, xfce, ubuntu type of stuff) on a old 40gb maxtor hdd (at least on a 80pin ribbon cable) to type this.

Reason #1. Plain laziness and impatience

Well, I could have used some other computer, login from somewhere else. But no, I thought my environment then on my pc was the best customised and didnt attemp, even when i would create an entry anywhere else on planet even though it was so.. technically possible.

Anyway here goes a post to break my silence, hopefully this would drive me out of my reason #1 keep going..

(btw the post is titled ping pong, well not that it has to do with table tennis but i remembered irc servers would “ping” clients which reply “pong” to show that they are alive — yes i’m still here. )

Distractions

Published
by
Zz85
on March 5, 2006
in Ideas, Technology, Updates and WebLinks
. 0 Comments

Some long time since I even visit my own blog, but I’m really happy and grateful to all those who visit, esp. those who check here regularly. I’m not faithful on my site, not to mention other blogs, and thank you to those who link over here even I dont border link to you. Thank you all for all the comments, sometimes I don’t even look, a greater sin than ignoring to reply. Those who are interested in my plugins, thank you again, although I dont have the interest, time, endurance and consistency to carry on any of them at the moment. And yes, I updated the new SK2 (Spam Karma not shop name nor the facial product) to get more accurate spam assination.

A little update on my camp life, I still find guard duties causing me restlessness and dis-orientated-ness. Sometimes I dont even know my dates or days, but I need to get use to things. Understanding and getting along well with people is not simple especially for me with low E.Q. You can please everyone, and for some reasons someone make dislike to for maybe no reason. My campmates education levels range from O’levels (Secondary), ITE, Diploma(Poly), A’Levels (JC). And with my promotion to Coporal, responsibilities and work loads increase.

On my geeky (IT/computers) side of life, I have upgraded to Singnet 1500 after a renewing of contract. Its $58/month, but with 4 months free in this 1 year contract, it averages up to $39/month, not that bad after all. It comes with other free services too, but the catch is if you dont explicitly terminate after the free period, charges come in. On the browser side, I using Opera to surf the net because I still find it the quickest and now opera is free and ad-less. I have too much extensions and scripts in firefox that its slightly slower and consume much memory.

Back to the Title topic of Distractions.

Discussion on how on-board screen distracts attention from driving.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/21/2330239.shtml

mynotes:
Gearing towards a centralized processing means a centralised controls and screen.
Engine, Aircon, Seats, Radio, GPS, Computer, TV, Locking System, Sensor, Alert system all comes together on the computer in the car. Might actually means system can be broken easily (single point of failure), or even harder to use, unless good UI is done.

Some projects that I’m been distracted with recently, and sadly never got to do much :(

1) Blogs and plugin. The content, the template, the plugins..

2) LilyTool.. I’m supposed to work on the NoteVisualiser aspect, allowing user to have a graphical display and input frontend to Lilypond’s syntactical code. But since I have been able to compile Bert’s new parser engine, it sort of hung there.

3) Mobile App I: Since I already started creating a Sudoku application for my nokia phone, I should have touch and finish up with it. However, with the lost of some of my project files and last of patience and time its on hold again.

App II: Pitch producing midlet. I managed to create one, but its UI: display and input needs brushing up.

App III: I’m not very satisfied with the current TODO list. I wanted to create one, but so far its only implemented in brainwaves or in-fact more dreamwaves.

4) 2 ideas I got for mobile phones which I really like.

a) motion detection. sort of turning ur phone left and right to navigate in a game.. sort like the new concept nintendo “remote control” joystick. I thought processing images on the camera can sort of “motion detect” like how a optical mouse works. It turns up that image recognition/process and motion detection issnt that simple. Idea passed.

b) Using the mobile phone as a instrument tuner. now this is a cool idea, although there are alreay pc applications which can do that, i have not found any for mobile devices. dealing with this subject means diving into a deep topic: DSP.

The last time I found myself swimming (or drowning) in foreign waters in the idea of implementing a network 3d badminton shockwave game. I soon found out there I needed the knoweledge of the toics of networking, human anatomy, 3d modeling, texturing and animation, game programming, director/lingo scripting languages.. all requiring indept knowledge and experience in order to do so.

Anyway the topic of DSP(Digital Signal Processing) is “cheem” or complex. Application areas range from speech, audio, music, telephony radio, signal analysis, instrumentation, image processing, multimedia, radar. sonar, control, biomedical, transport to navigation. I thought what I needed to know was just DFT (Discrete Fourier Transformation) but I see engineering mathematics, signals, electronics and a whole bunch of stuff.

5) I had an idea of creating some excel macros for some scheduling forecast.
After some weeks I needed to find out if the yields can justify the effort to create one. Sometimes humans can just do things much efficiently if they put in a little of work. Technology cant solve everything.. sometimes the root of the problem lies with laziness. Anyway this is diving into yet another topic: timetable algorithms. It seems that the best way is using Genetic algorithm which uses some genetic biology ideas. In my rough understanding of it, it means getting a random sequence, then manipulate/evolve it until solutions are present.

In closing, you might understand my plight of “trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none”, I’m a mediocre, but maybe with much discipline, I will change.

Here’s an addictive weblink somewhere if you want to get yourself distracted too.

These Last Few Weeks

Published
by
Zz85
on December 14, 2005
in Updates
. 0 Comments

from the time i think last updated myself.

Health:
Not that too great, although thankfully (or not) I started to fall sick at the end of my course, and taking zero MCs and MAs. Just like in BMT, times of my recuperation for my illness happen over the weekend and my block leaves.

Perhaps I first sign of falling sick was last Friday eating some lemon puffs biscuits. The saying that the mouth, throat, nose, ears are connected seems to apply well for me. Sore throat, leads to cough, then flu, blocked nose, slight blockage of ears, to feverish. Combined with irregular meal and sleep times (i slept just a little a night before, and last night i slept at least 18 hours straight skipping the meals), me and my body is feeling weird.

Army:
Thank God I reached these last few weeks at school. Things are toning down as the course is ending. A couple more interesting visits (and 2 camps were near my place) and projects and tests ended soon. Except one of my project didnt make it, so last week’s time at home was spent touching up the project (one of the reason i didnt went over for the messages at night).

Spiritual:
Was really great that Dr Hubert Spence and Dr Robert Wilson were able to come to Singapore. I am blessed to be able to listen to Spence’s messages during revival meeting last week of November and his Sunday sermons.

At the close of my course, this passage I read in the Bible seems to relate a little maybe at David close of life. This song seems to be place in Psalms 18 too.

Music:
Lots of music sessions this time! I learn a great deal from Dr Robert Wilson’s Piano Masterclass. Then a Christmas pipe organ by Carlo Curley at the esplanade. There I learn great deal about organs, esplanade’s organ, the colours, techniques of the organs and its pieces, while all on the theme of Christmas. Then in 3 days time, went for this “A Chopard Christmas with the SSO” at Victoria Concert Hall which I was really not pleased with the music programme. in 3 days again, was the first NYPSE concert at TFA which well wasn’t that bad.

Sports:
More doze of them this time.. physical training in school usually means soccer and basketball.
Plus more sessions of tennis, squash and badminton over the weekends.

Computers:
Due to all the other stuff during this time, I am surprising spend little time on computers. One update I learnt recently is the Firefox 1.5. So time to update and try the fasterfox extension.