I really don’t understand how these people can live in this world.  I mean if you sell fake watches or fake clothes to make a quick buck, sure go ahead. In does not kill anybody or anything. Of course a few very rich people will get very pissed and their feathers start to stand up but that’s about it. Not really much of a harm to society. But if you selling milk powder (especially for young kids or for babies) and you are adding some harmful chemicals to it, then that’s something very wrong with you. Seriously, if you are the one doing that, you got to go and have both your brain and your conscience checked. I am very willing to come and open up your brains for you and have a look see inside. Perhaps something is rotting in there.

The fault in the China milk scare should lay with the government officials, the milk provider middlemen and the company that manufactures the milk products. The milk provider middlemen are the ones who add the chemical so that’s a no-brainer. The company is at fault for acting like nothing has happened and trying to cover it up and by not stopping the products from being released to the public even when they knew that the milk products had problems (due to numerous complains). The government officials are also at fault to not pulling the milk products off the shelf and for not telling the public when they knew about it. And kudos to the New Zealand government for reporting to the press and the central government about this. If not, I am quite sure many more would have died. If I have to point my middle finger at someone, it would definitely be the government officials who had the power to stop this early but didn’t do anything. They could have saved a lot of children and their families from misery but alas, did squat. This is not unexpected I guess. China doesn’t have much accountability to it’s people anyway, so I guess they don’t really bother much. As you can see, it was the involvement of a foreign government that forced the hand of the central government to stop the sales of the contaminated milk products.

I don’t really know what to say regarding this. It is shocking to see that such people still exist in the modern world. They left thousands of sick children and 4 dead babies and we don’t even know how many more will die from this poisoning. Come on, it’s food for god’s sake. And it’s food for young children and babies. I am very very disappointed with the world and with China in particular.

Looks like got another ulcer. And yet another, this is a huge mother of an ulcer. I think the correct term is mother of all ulcers. Big, greenish, nasty and angry looking and it looks like it may even explode at any moment! And, god awful painful.  One thing about ulcers is that they tend to grow at places like at the ends of your lips where it is very painful every time you move your lips.  You may often wonder why does it grow in such places. Well, if you know the answer, please give me a heads up. I have been trying to figure that one out for the longest time.

Anyway, I am treating this ulcers with plum juice. Yes, you heard me correctly, plum juice. You can of course use salt and gently put the salt on your ulcers but salt are coarse and may instead injure and worsen the ulcers. All you have to do if you use plum juice is to add a few drops to a cotton bud and then apply it on your ulcers. Yes, it will be painful. But after a wait, you will see the effects of less swelling and reduce pain. However, you will need to apply pretty often for it to be effective. I have heard of others using water melon frost (the white stuff just after the skin of the watermelon) to treat the ulcers. But a few years back, there was a poison scare involving some China manufacturer who made water melon frost and that got a lot of people worried. So, I guess it will take a lot more to gain my confidence in using back water melon frost.I have to admit though, it is pretty effective as well. All you need to do is to apply a little water melon frost (it looks kind of like a greenish powder) and wait till it heals. Yes, it taste rather bitter and your teeth may have that greenish stain but all that matters is that it works, right?

Well, I am sure that my ulcers will disappear in a few days time. That’s usually how long these ulcers last.Next time, whenever I get a little cut or a bleed on my lips, I will have to really take care of the little cut/wound on my lip and make sure that it doesn’t get infected. I believe that my ulcers were caused by my nephew who had recently scratch my mouth. If you know of any effective method of healing mouth ulcers, please post a reply in the blog. I am very keen to hear from you.

Well, I guess it is time for me to get a brand new PC. No, I am not going for a super high end setup but just a budget one. No point for me to get such a high end PC when I don’t (or seldom) play games anymore and I merely use my PC to do work and watch some movies and the occasional game. Of course, I will need it to be slightly more powerful than my last rig because my last rig was just too slow. Can’t help it as it was just a Pentium IV 2.5GHz and it was about 5 years old. I couldn’t believe that this system lasted me so long. You know me, I was usually the kind of person who would want to get the fastest PC available. But as I get older and poorer, I realize that all this racing is pointless and actually quite stupid. It’s just a waste of money. Sure it is a hobby, however you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars every month just to change parts for your PC. If you do that,then it is not a hobby but an obsession which you may never get rid off.

I am thinking of getting an AMD set for myself. It should be using the Palit N68S mainboard with a AMD 64×2 5000 processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. I never realize that RAM prices have dropped so much in recent months. I remembered paying about S$80 for a 512MB piece of RAM. Now the two pieces of 1GB RAM should cost about S$58. Yes, it is whoopingly cheap! Not planning to get another graphics card (since I am not into games anymore) but just a 500GB HDD to store my data. Of course, the spolit HDD of my previous PC will be sent for RMA. That Seagate HDD’s warranty is for 5 years so I am still in luck. It expires in 2011. Anyways, the budget AMD system should set me back about 550 bucks. Comes with a pretty good PSU and a very nice casing (12cm fan as well). Why not? The price is reasonable, the specification is great and I am happy.

I will be taking a few pictures of my new setup. And tomorrow, hopefully I will be posting another blog post from my new PC. Cheers everyone! Wish me luck.

The horrors of all horrors! My HDD just died on me! And I didn’t backup recently. All my mails, all my documents, all my information, all my porn, all my life has been eliminated by the death of the HDD. I feel like someone has just taken an axe and had chopped off my puny head. I don’t know what to do now. Seriously, I am very confused and I feel very hopeless. Don’t you just hate it when all your data is just gone like that without any warning? I had expected the HDD to at least give some symptons of it dying before it really go bonkers. But alas, it didn’t. Sad. Very sad. And with that, all my data is gone from history. That is over 8 years of data I had on my PC.

I am trying my best to recover any data on that HDD. Although I can see the drive in Window but I can’t access it. And when I click on the drive, it will respond very slowly, causing the entire PC to slow down and making it unusable. So everytime I do it, I had to wait for 15 minutes and I was then forced to shutdown my PC. Makes me want to pull all my hair out everytime. I think I will get a USB to SATA converter and see whether I can access the drive from there. Previously, I had successfully retreived some of my friend’s HDD information using this method. But all I have with me right now is for the 2.5 inch HDD (yes, notebook HDD) and my HDD for the desktop is the 3.5inch type so it is not compatible. Maybe I will be taking half day leave to get some of the stuff like an extra HDD as well as the USB converter from Sim Lim Square. It’s a big waste of time and money and not to mention effort.

I guess it is just my luck that the partition that I kept all my data in is the one that is causing all the problems. Yes, that’s the primary drive too. I can’t boot up (I am using another computer right now) and I had to move my HDD to my the other PC to do any rescue work. This is a warning to everyone, do backups often! Don’t expect your HDD to live forever! But I guess this is why people like me who works in the IT line still have a job. If everything lasts forever, we will all be jobless!

Not too sure what happened, but I got a freaking headache that don’t seem to go away. It started yesterday and it is still on and off today. I guess it could be due to the stress I am having this few days. And I am not sleeping very well. Yes, the weather is good for sleeping as it has been raining heavily these few days but still shit happens. Perhaps I have been thinking too much.Or perhaps it could just be the weird weather? You know, one moment it could be raining heavily and the other it would be extremely sunny? A lot of my friends got sick from this. Looks like our constant abuse of the weather is coming back to haunt us in the end eh? I would encourage everyone to start doing their part for the environment by first not using too much plastic bags. Bring your own bag when  you go shopping for groceries as this will reduce waste. Or if unavoidable then use back the plastic bag for other purposes.

What is surprising is that the headache goes on and off. Sometimes when I am doing something, the headache will suddenly come on and it is a splitting headache. Not your normal kind of headache where you feel a little pain here and there but a rather sharp pain in one part of the brain/head. However, it doesn’t seem to stay in one place. Lol, it goes all over my head like a ping pong ball in motion. Don’t you just love it when you got such a headache? Feels like someone is constantly pounding your head without any clear direction.

So I am very sorry if I had to cut this blog post short. It is very difficult for me to write long blog posts without fainting or just collapsing from sheer pain in the head. Yes, I am exaggerating but I am sure that most of you will understand the feeling.

Yes, how time flies right? I remember just a while back I was thinking of ways to celebrate the Chinese New Year (which was in February or so) and suddenly, it is September already. Another 3 more months and it is the end of the year. I often wonder how is it that we continue our everyday lives without realizing that times really flies. And how many of us realize that soon, we will be old(er) and will have tons of regrets? Have you wanted to do something when you were young but till now, you still didn’t do it yet? What have you accomplished throughout the years? And the most important of all, what the hell have you done?

For me, it’s simple. Nothing much. I am by naturally lazy and if I am not pushed, I will not do anything. In fact, if I wasn’t so crazy about beer and wine, I would not even have purchased the home brewing kit either. Perhaps I love alcohol too much eh? And for my sites, I wanted them to be visited by thousands and thousands of visitors everyday by writing useful and very much sought after articles and editorials. But till now, I have not written a really good or even remotely interesting article. And in my private life, I have yet accomplished nothing significant. It’s the same old boring go home after work kind of schedule that no one really envies. And worst of all, most of the time, I stay home on the Saturdays and Sundays. No, I don’t cry myself to sleep every night. I am not that kind of person who gets so emotional and think of suicide and suffer from depression and shit. Yes, just plain laziness and simply “bochaps”. If only I was a little more hardworking, a little more inspired and a little more disciplined, I am pretty sure that I would have done much better in life. Well, it seems I was dealt with a poor hand and I accept that.

And yes, another year is about to go by. I have this feeling that I am going nowhere fast. Not even my career is going anyway. I am still stuck in the same old job, the same old place and earning the same old salary.

Ahhh…yes, looks like it is the rainy season again. Not sure what really happened to the weather these days but it seems to always go to the extreme. If you are living in Singapore, I am sure that you will know a few months back, it was just so damn freaking warm. Even after coming out of the bath, I would start sweating like a pig. No, I am not exaggerating. It was that warm. The cruel sun never seems to stop shining the blazing heat onto us. The only escape was to the air-conditioned malls.

Now, it is the exact opposite. Everyday I wake up till I go to bed, the weather is either raining heavily or there is some cloudy thunderstorm nearby. And if you think of not bringing the umbrella along, you will be drenced from top to bottom. Of course if you are driving and the destination has sheltered walkways, then you are probably safe. But if not, it would be more prudent to bring either an umbrella or a raincoat. Anyways, nobody uses raincoats anymore. It looks ugly. So, you are left with umbrellas. And best of all, some of those umbrellas are a fashion statement, so I am guessing the females are very keen to bring out their umbrellas to show off. Still, I would prefer the rain than hot weather. When it starts raining in Singapore, the temperature will go down, making it rather comfortable to work and to sleep.

The thing about the rain in Singapore is that it will often rain very heavily. And even with an umbrella, the bottom of your trousers or pants will still get drenched.  Imagine going to work in the morning and getting your shoes and pants wet from rain. You will spend the next 10 hours in misery, hoping and hoping that the clock will reach 6 and you can knock off and get out of those wet clothes. I have faced this time and again, so I will put a pair of extra socks and shoes in the office. Smart right? Of course you can always use a plastic bag to cover your shoes. But…

And I am not kidding you. Just take a look at this article and check them out for yourself. I have seen quite a number of brush sets for Photoshop and the ones that are listed in the article beats them all hands down. Best of all, these are freely available. I am guessing perhaps it is time for me to change the logo of this blog with one of these brushes. Not many people know that you don’t need to have much skill in Illustrator or Freehand to design a logo. In fact, pre-built brushes in Photoshop can be easily used to create a pretty unique design which looks completely different from the brush set itself. And now, with these very beautiful brush sectors, I think this blog will look better. Just imagine the CSS background with one of the images made from the flower vectors and how good it would look. That is if I can get my fat ass off the chair and start my Photoshop…..

Lets all be glad that there are talented people out there very willing to share their skills in graphic design so that untalented people like me don’t have to waste our time trying to figure out how to use some freaking difficult imagine vector program. Let’s keep our fingers cross that there will be even more brush sets or vector graphics available for slackers with a blog/website.

Read here: 16 Interesting Facts About Google.

As you guys know, I am normally not a Google fan. Sure, they do run the best Search Engine out there. But that’s because the rest of the Search Engines are just plain crap. Yes, I admit that it is not easy to create a perfect Search Engine, but it just seems to me that Google is not concentrating on their Search Engine anymore. That’s the result of lack of competition. We don’t see any major improvement in their Search Engine results and listings for about a few years already. It’s been stagnant like a whale stranded on the beach. Okay, okay, sure we do see Orkut, Blogger and Youtube and other nonsense. Yes, they do have a lot of visitors from these sites and yes, they are modern social sites with quite a following. But how will that affect the Search Engine industry? In my opinion, it won’t. I feel that these social sites are unrelated to Search Engine although we do see them often bundled together.

Anyways, before I go off topic yet again, I am here to talk about some interesting facts about Google. I guess you have read the article I have linked to at the top of the post. The most interesting is number 12. It seems that they do read emails! For a company which probably get thousands of emails everyday (most of them would be spam I gather), it’s great to hear that they do read emails. At the very least, I know that it has gone through one real human’s eyes if I send emails to them. That would actually be good news for spammers!

I am also shocked to hear that the “I’m feeling lucky” button is seldom used. It is true that I don’t use it either but don’t their users feel adventurous enough when accessing Google to use that button? Or do they not have confident on Google to provide them with the best Search result? They should remove the button name “I’m feeling lucky” to something more mundane like “Go to the first result”. I am sure that more people will click on that instead of the “I’m feeling lucky” button. It’s human nature.

And oh, it seems that the founders of Google don’t know HTML. Now, that’s really very shocking. Even I know basic HTML.

Looks like the Antivirus company Trend Micro is trying to be funny with their lawsuit against Barracuda. For those who don’t know who Trend Micro is, it is a company whose main business focus is on Internet content security. Sadly, it just means that they are providers of (software) protection against viruses, spywares and malwares.  Yes, you might not have heard of them. That’s because they aren’t really a major player in the market. And yet, they are suing people like they are one big mean powerful corporation which I am sure a lot of us hate.

It  looks like they are suing Barracuda because they claim that Barracuda is violating their patent by distributing the free and open source antivirus program ClamAV, which in my opinion is stupid. How does it violate their patent if someone else is distributing some other software and that particular software (ClamAV) is meant for gateway and email antivirus scanning in the first place. It looks like they are targetting ClamAV users because they felt that this is a threat to their business. I don’t have any problems with people charging others for some service rendered. If you made an antivirus software and you want to charge someone for it, then by all means, go ahead. However, if someone else comes along and say that they have an antivirus software which is free and you don’t need to pay a cent for it, then if it is done fair and square, I too don’t have any problems with that. So how do you deal with it? You can either create a product which will encourage users to BUY your product or you can sue. Apparently, it seems that Trend Micro is using the (ridiculous) easy way out.

The reason why Barracuda (itself quite a player in the market) doesn’t want to settle (which would be much easier) is because if they settle, they are actually causing problems for other users of open source software. Which makes sense because if one side admits wrong doing if they are distrubuting or using a particular open source software, then everyone else using the same software would be implicated.

Anyway, it looks like Barracuda is fighting back with their own countersuit. I am not too sure about all these law terms and jargons and what not, but  it seems that Barracuda has their own set of software patents obtained from IBM. Let’s hope for the best.

For more information on the lawsuit, please take a look here.