As you can see, I lost connection to the Internet!

Slowly but surely, my friends disappeared off MSN one by one. The skies got darker and darker. I went to my cupboards and took stock of what food I had – couple of canned food, loaf of bread, and some frozen meat. Good thing the electricity and water still flow – the people at PUB must have died off suddenly. I checked my phone – ok service is still on. The people at the telephone company must have suffered the same fate too!

I opened up some canned sardines and cooked some rice. This will have to be rationed out. I need to stretch the food as much as I can, and hope I can find more soon.

It’s now midnight… there is no sign of the sun coming back anytime soon. This post-apocalyptic world looks dark and dreary indeed.

ps: in case anyone didn’t know, it’s a humour piece. It’s not meant to be taken seriously.

Related articles

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• DON’T PANIC! It’s the end of the world as we know it (and we feel fine) (metro.co.uk)

Also, everyone knows MS Office costs an arm and a leg, simply because it’s used in “the office”, hence it should cost more since businesses can afford it.

Trouble is, MS Office has become so pervasive that everyone is “forced” to use it, even outside of the office. Government forms downloaded off the Internet for you to fill in, for example, would be in MS Word format. You, as a student or a retiree, would need some sort of MS Office-compatible software to read and edit those files. Now, not everybody can afford the huge price tag that MS Office commands, especially for a home-user. Just look at the prices (in US$ no less!) in the picture below:

MS Office prices comparison

Even in Singapore dollars, these figures are not small. Some of us really cannot, or prefer not to, spend these sums of money just for software. Fortunately, the Internet is full of free alternatives. Free, and legal. Most popular would be OpenOffice.

However, none of these free alternatives are 100% compatible. There would be bits and pieces of features that cannot be replicated completely in the free versions.

Recently though, I discovered a free alternative that is, by far, the “most compatible” to MS Office, and that is the Kingsoft Office suite. How do I know this?

Because recently, I have had to fill in some forms that have been sent to me, and they were in MS Word format. Using OpenOffice, LibreOffice and some other “free alternative” office suites, I was unable to fill in the documents. Some parts of the document used dropdown boxes and restricted-text entry fields, and none of the free alternatives were able to use the fields. I looked around for a free alternative and couldn’t seem to find any, and I was about to give up and look for a friend who owns MS Office to try to fill in the form at his PC.

Luckily I happened to stumble upon Kingsoft Office via reviews I found on the Internet, and was amazed that the entire suite was just a 36MB download. Yes, 36 megabytes! Not 300MB, not 500MB, not 1GB… just a tiny fraction at only 36MB!

And, it edited that document I was having trouble with effortlessly. The dropdown boxes worked, the field selections worked… the text entry fields worked.

I’m throwing out OpenOffice and LibreOffice now, and sticking to Kingsoft Office…

Related articles

• 9 Of The Best Free & Low-Cost Alternatives To Microsoft Office
• Does it still make sense to buy Microsoft Office?
• Kingsoft Office 2010 Volume License 30 PCs

Why does someone want to use his own router? For one thing, all your wireless SSID, security settings, DHCP, and so on, are already configured. If you have to dump your router and use only the one provided by the ISP you would have to set everything up again.

In any case I was surprised how easy it was.

When the Starhub guy came he said essentially that if I wanted to use my router I would have to disable DHCP on it and all my reservations will have to be done on the new router. I didn’t want to prolong the issue so I said ok, you set it up as you normally would, I would figure it out later.

After he left, I figured it out. The steps are very simple.

DIR-655 (My own existing router, with all my wireless settings etc)

1. Changed WAN settings from DHCP to Static IP, assigned 192.168.2.2. No other settings changed
2. Note – LAN IP is still 192.168.1.1

Starhub-provided DVG5402SP

1. Router IP 192.168.2.1
2. DHCP is disabled
3. WIFI is disabled
4. DMZ set to 192.168.2.2 (for my DIR-655 router)
5. WAN port is connected to Opennet ONT device (for fibre connection)

What you need to do to make it all work

• Connect Ethernet cable from DVG5402 (any port) to DIR-655 WAN port.
• Renew/get new/reboot DIR-655 (optional. May not even need a reboot)
• Done!

That is all there is to it! The trick is that the modem/router provided by Starhub (or your ISP) must be on a different segment (hence 2.1 instead of 1.2). What that means, is that all my PCs and Laptops etc will still get DHCP-assigned IPs for 192.168.1.x (from the DIR-655). The 192.168.2.x segment is purely for my fibre and router connections.

Yes, I can still log in to 192.168.2.1 (fibre modem) web page to make configuration changes from any LAN-connected or WIFI-connected devices.

Recently I resigned from my job, hence now I am left with a sizeable amount of free time. One of the crazy ideas I’ve had was to re-play my old games back from the late 90s and early 2000′s. My current setup lacks a joystick, which although is NOT REQUIRED, but it is highly recommended to have one to play those. I mean, it would be really, really difficult to play flight sims with your mouse and keyboard, or space-combat shooters with your mouse and keyboard.

Plus, back during those days, games of those genres expect  you to have a joystick, so the mouse/keyboard combo support is pathetic.

So, I went off to Sim Lim Square (aka SLS) and went hunting for one. I thought I would be in and out in 10 mins. Little was I to know how wrong I’d be!

I arrived, went to a “champalang” shop (local slang for a shop selling accessories and peripherals for PCs and other electronic gadgets, but does not sell actual PCs nor gadgets). I looked, but couldn’t find any joysticks. I did see some Xbox controllers though. Ok so I left that one, and went to another, and another and so on. None of them had any joysticks! I came away totally perplexed, because gaming companies like Logitech, Thrustmaster, CH Products, Saitek etc still make them, and the Flight Sim community is still alive and well (on the Internet at least).

Feeling abit disappointed, I headed for my usual gaming shop, just to see what new games are available. I haven’t been there in a while, because I stopped buying retail games. I hated all the DRM protection that comes with disk-based installs, and now I prefer buying them online via Steam, Origin, Gamestop, Amazon etc. Download copies don’t have DRM and I can just play them without needing a “crack” to stop them checking for my disk before they would launch.

Lo and behold! In that game shop, I saw a whole bunch of joysticks on the shelves! From full HOTAS setups to mid-range all-in-one to simple joysticks! Nowadays I seldom play flight sims, so I decided a full HOTAS setup would be overkill. I’d just get a mid-range all-in-one kind with throttle and twist handle to simulate rudders plus throttle.

I came away with a Thrustmaster T.Flight Stick X, from Thrustmaster of course.

It costs a little bit more than I was prepared for, but still it was so hard to locate a joystick now that I practically didn’t have a choice. Not that I would have gotten anything else because Thrustmaster makes one of the better gaming products anyway, but it would be nice if I actually had a choice and then decided to get the Thrustmaster on my own, rather than to be limited by only having one shop in the whole building selling joysticks and I had to choose from that shop’s inventory.

In any event, the joystick is plug and play – stick it in via USB, Windows auto-detects and loads in the correct driver (by Microsoft, not Thrustmaster), and it’s auto-calibrated with ZERO drift and a no deadzone! This is somewhat of a surprise as I remembered my older joysticks all had to be calibrated once in a while to compensate for drift (some joystick even have trim controls on them) and specify a deadzone so spikes in drifts didn’t jerk the game during play. Maybe joysticks now are fully digital and no longer analog like in the old days… Hmmm…

I fired up Freespace 2, an old space-shooter which I had fond memories of, and went for a spin with the new joystick. I was impressed with the stick, but not with my performance. In the 12 or so years since I stopped playing these kind of games, I now totally SUCK at dogfights. If I were to go online to play flight sim dogfights, I would be blown out of the skies in no time flat. Running LOMAC, or Lock On: Modern Air Combat, confirmed it. I overpulled most of the time, and even if I could get in behind the enemy, I just can’t seem to lay my gunsights on the enemy for a gun kill.

Ah well I guess I will have to practice playing with a joystick again.

Related articles

• Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog Review (gadgetreview.com)
• Joystick (wiki.archlinux.org)
• X-Gaming USB Joystick (techfresh.net)

That’s what I think of this whole sorry affair.

First of all, prostitution is NOT illegal in Singapore. The workers must all be 18 years or older. Clients are free to patronise their services without running foul of the law.

Before anyone asks or accuses me, no I have never, and will never, patronise these kinds of services. I am not “defending” these men because I am “also a customer”. I can think of better ways to spend my $50 or $100 on things that will last me longer than 30 mins (or whatever time is alloted per session).

Forget for a moment that this case involved sex. Let’s break it down into business practices and business law.

The girl is providing a service. The law says she must be 18 to provide this service. She lied. Clients started to purchase her service. Later they (the clients) are in the media spotlight simply because the service provider had lied about her age, hence breaking the law unintentionally.

As an example, I have a product which I claim to be a 20 Terabyte external harddisk for sale. It is rectangular in shape and pretty heavy. Customers buy my product, plug it into their computers but it doesn’t work. When they open up the casing, they find out I put a brick inside the case instead of hard disks. So now, who’s at fault, me or my customers?

Should the media focus on my customers for being stupid to purchase my product? Or should they focus instead on me, the evil vendor that pawned his clearly-fake product off as the real thing?

In business, this is considered FRAUD.

The media should instead focus on the real crux of the problem here – that it is SO EASY for underaged girls to enter this industry, and commit FRAUD (whether intentionally or unintentionally). When you patronise a vendor by buying their product or service, you as the customer trust the vendor that the product is at least what it claims to be, and that you should be able to use it for the purpose you purchased it for without any fear of legal repercussions. When the vendor cheats you of the product or service, the provider or company should be held accountable, and reparations should be made to the VICTIMS.

Yes we can’t control the Internet. There is an outcry of people saying these men are bad, they are evil, they exploited a 17 yr old helpless girl. Remember this – these men didn’t stalk her on Facebook, didn’t convince her to come out under false pretenses, didn’t rape her. SHE OFFERED HER SEXUAL SERVICES AND WELCOMED CLIENTS TO PATRONISE HER. That is already mis-representation. Sometimes people just follow the crowd and never think further into the problem. This is partly the fault of our education system – we were never encouraged to think for ourselves… all our exams and tests are based on rote memory.

I just wish the media (and social media) would stop focusing on these “big bad men” who are actually victims of a CRIME (ie, business fraud) and focus instead on the perpetrator – the girl that lied about her age to work in this (questionable) industry.

A quick recap for those who may not know – a 21 year old male (Private Dominique Sarron Lee Rui Feng of 3 SIR), required by Singapore laws to serve in the 2 years in the army, passed away during training. The above, “Singaporeans too weak? LOL” was a comment posted by a girl (Zheng Huiting) to a Facebook link about the news of this tragedy.

What followed was a furore of irate netizens who started flaming her.

However, this blog post isn’t one of these. I’m not going to rehash what has already been said. If you want to know more, just google for it.

You can’t really blame this event as an isolated incident. In recent years, much ridicule has been laid on our serving NSFs (National Service, Full-time). Pictures of a maid carrying a soldier’s fullpack, of soldiers sitting down in MRT etc have been published to STOMP (I won’t grace that tabloid website with a link here), always with some condescending remarks about the soldier(s) in the pictures. This in turn took a toll on the image of Singaporean men who are serving their compulsory 2 years in the army.

I, myself, have been through it. Every male Singaporean has (unless you managed to geng your way out). As usual, “during my time, it was tougher than today”. This is a common saying among the older folks, but it was always said in jest, never in ridicule. In fact, “during my time”, there were less safety measures in place than it is today.  For example, we rode in the back of 3-tonners (military trucks) all packed in like animals. Now, it is forbidden to do so for safety reasons. The point being – SAF has evolved and grown. Trainings are made as safe, but as realistic, as possible (flashback – machine guns firing REAL BULLETS over our heads while we crawled under barbed wires to get to the objective). There are always risks to military trainings, but SAF has many safety measures in place.

Nowadays we even have the “NS Portal“, a website dedicated solely to the activities of our citizen-soldiers, not just NSFs. Setting up this NS Portal proves that the SAF has indeed kept up with the times – our soldiers can book test dates, seek exit permits, register or request for deferment of service, or even go shopping online to purchase their necessities for use in the army. The point is, SAF didn’t stay stagnant. They grew, and updated themselves with new methods of training and safety measures.

Honestly, any kind of military training (assault, defense, whatever) is always tough. You think fighting in the jungle is easy? Like those FPS shooters? Just blam blam blam shoot at the enemy? Anyone can do it?

Unlike games such as Modern Warfare or Battlefield, we actually use TACTICS. Why? Because ONE BULLET can kill you. Amazing isn’t it? The hero never dies from just one bullet in the movies (or computer games). In fact in computer games you can easily get hit a few more times before you “die”. Even then, you can use a “healthpack” and refill your health bar back to full, and you can run and jump as if you were never injured in the first place.

In real life, we would need to throw grenades, dig holes to set traps or to take cover in, lay wires to give us warnings of approaching enemy, and of course, we can only carry so much bullets on us. In my day, we could only carry 210 bullets on us – there was simply no more space to put more. Our M16s can empty a magazine on full auto in 10 seconds. In 70 seconds, our full store of 210 bullets would be used up. Imagine that! 1 minute and 10 seconds of firing our guns before we run out of bullets!

No we didn’t drape bandoliers of bullets across our chests like Rambo, simply because the weapons we used did not use belts! Well, other than a machine gun. No, we can’t carry a machine gun in ONE HAND while shooting at the enemy for 2 simple reasons. 1 – The machine gun itself is heavy as hell, and you can’t fire one standing up…. and this leads to 2 – you can’t hit the target! Machine guns need a stand, a bipod or a tripod, to have any sort of accuracy. You would bloody sprain your shoulder or elbow if you were to fire a machine gun in one hand while standing up like in the movies. This is not about strength, or whether our soldiers are weak or strong – it’s about PHYSICS. Even if you are strong enough to carry a machine gun, fire it while standing, you will be unlikely to fire it in the hip position – the kickback will dislocate your elbow if you tried to be Rambo. Even if you are strong enough to put it up to your shoulder and fire it like a normal rifle, you will still end up with a dislocated shoulder, for the same reasons.

Why? Because of the bigger bullets they fire, hence bigger explosions (louder bang bang sound), hence, bigger kickback. Also, the speed of which machine guns can fire bullets off in succession contribute to the inaccuracy.

It’s not because we’re weak – it’s because the movies (and in some ways, computer games) exaggerated it so much so that people think that is possible, or easy, to do!

The difference was – back in the day, there was no “Internet”. If something did happen, it was investigated, corrective actions taken, and perhaps the accident reported to the press. People can’t comment on the newspaper with insensitive remarks simply because the newspaper editor would not even print it in the first place. All feedback and letters to the newspaper had to be written on paper and mailed (stick a stamp on the envelop) to them. Who would go through all that trouble?

Now, it’s so easy to just pass a comment of such nature on the Internet. Just type something, press ENTER, you’re done.

There will always be insensitive people around. Look around you in the office, I am sure you can find at least one (just like a “blur king” and a “geng king” in your platoon) if not more. We can’t stop you from posting stupid and insensitive comments online, of course, but at least know why your comment was stupid and insensitive. Training is always going to be tough, but it doesn’t mean we’re too weak for it. It’s just your perception that the trainings have become so easy or “soft” that Singaporean men are now “too weak” for it.

My advice – watch less movies, more documentaries, and think before you write the next comment online, or post a picture of a soldier to STOMP.

ps: writing this post reminded me of The SIA Hijacking and the Cable Car Accident. These are what our men in uniform do to serve and protect us! Instead of snide remarks and ridicule, we should be thanking our men in uniform for their service to the country!

One fine day, my videos suddenly had a black border around it. I remembered clearly that previously they played fine in full-screen (Alt-Enter), but now in full-screen, they have this black border around it.

I tried playing the same video in VLC, and it played fine in full screen. So that implies that the video only is affected by DirectShow filters.

I then tried to recall what I did recently just prior to this problem, and I remembered that I turned on the ATI Catalyst “Steady Video” function.

It was set to “95%” when I first saw it. So, I moved the slider to 100%, but yet the black border persisted.

In desperation, I un-checked the “Enable AMD Steady Video” option, and my videos went back to full-screen!

So, if the normal fixes of making WMP stretch the video to fill your screen doesn’t get rid of black borders, and if you’re using an ATI graphics card, try looking at this option and see if it will fix your problem.

Related articles

• 5 great alternatives to Windows Media Player (onsoftware.en.softonic.com)
• How can you Troubleshoot Windows Media Player issues? (techanytime.wordpress.com)
• Multiple Windows Media Player Gives You As Many Player Windows As You Want [Windows Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

Well I just did it again. Recently while just “window shopping” with a friend, I came across this product from Logitech:

It’s the Logitech G105 Gaming Keyboard. Now, I’ve been meaning to get a backlit keyboard for awhile now. However, they are still expensive to me. Usually they cost about S$150 (US$119 or so). Imagine to my surprise and glee, that this one was only S$65. It was a no-brainer. The “window shopping” resulted in me lugging home this keyboard and quickly setting it up.

Why do I want a backlit keyboard in the first place? Well if you’re a gamer, chances are you’ll already know the answer. For everyone else, the reason is because we gamers tend to play games late into the night. This is even more true if you play an online game (such as Star Wars The Old Republic, or Everquest, or World Of Warcraft etc). Why do we play late into the night? Because most of our guildmates are in US, and the raids/high level activity usually starts during daylight hours in US time, not Singapore time.

And since we play late into the night, sometimes we may not want to turn on the lights. Some people may have a dim orange light (or “night light”) on, but for the most part, if I don’t turn on the lights, my room will be in complete darkness, save the light coming from the monitor. Having a backlit keyboard will make it easier to see the keys.

The above is my ONLY criteria for getting a backlit keyboard. Now for the bonuses (not critical to me, but VERY NICE to have):

1. 6 “G-keys” on the left side for you to program keystrokes. With 3 more memory setting switches, it expands the number of programmable keys from 6 to 18!
2. The G-keys can even be scripted – meaning you write complex scripts to simulate keystrokes, or launch programs etc from just press 1 key!
3. You can record macros into the G-keys on the fly (without using the Logitech software), even during a game!
4. It has a “gaming” toggle switch, which disables the Windows key and the Menu keys. No more sudden minimizing of game windows when you’re frantically mashing keys trying to stay alive when swamped by monsters and accidentally hitting the Windows key. In an MMO, the sudden minimizing of windows CAN KILL YOU! Especially during raids or boss fights.
5. The backlighting can be switched off during the day, or when your room is brightly lit. Personally I have grown used to the nice cool blue glow from the keys that I leave it on all the time.
6. WASD and arrow keys are coloured for your convenience. Why? Because the majority of games uses this key combination for movement. If I am not wrong, the WASD key combination was made popular by ID software in their game “Doom” back in the 1990′s. Now every shooter uses this key combination (even non-shooter games are starting to use this combination too!)
7. Control your PC volume via the F-keys with the FN key (useful for people who like to listen to MP3 while playing games or doing work). You don’t need to exit your application/game to change the volume.

Actually come to think of it, this keyboard is actually useful in the office too! Why?

Have you ever needed to enter 100 rows of items in Excel, each row only changing 1 or 2 characters? Otherwise each row is the same as the one above it? With this keyboard, you can record a macro to simulate your keypresses to navigate to next row, press ENTER, up-arrow, DELETE, etc until the part which require you to type in the new/different character of this row.

For now, I have programmed a couple of the G-keys to launch my favourite game(s), so I don’t need to have their icons cluttering up my desktop.

By the way, the more expensive “older brother” of this keyboard is the Logitech G510 Gaming Keyboard. That one costs S$139. The differences are pretty minor. For example, you can select your backlight colour from orange to blue to green etc. It also comes with an LCD panel that shows you info about the current song you’re playing or some other gaming-related info. Other than that, it is the same as my current one.

So here I am.

So I was just talking to a gaming buddy yesterday about… yeah games, what else. During the discussion we were just talking about system specs and such, and suddenly I thought – why not? It’s been almost 3 years since I had my “budget” PC. At the time when I got it, I was under some financial restrictions and had to “make do”. Again, I went to Bell Systems on the 5th floor of Sim Lim Square. Again, the guy there was helpful and suggested a few cost-saving items. All in all, eventually I got a pretty dang good system – AMD Phenom 2 1055T (6 cores), 8 GB DDR 1333 RAM, ATI Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and the usual chassis, DVD drives etc. The only thing I didn’t get was the hard disk. I was going to bring the old one over from the previous PC, and let Windows auto-detect everything on the new one. After all, I just just done a reformat recently back in June. I don’t want to go through all that again!

True enough, once I got home and moved the harddisk over and booted the new PC up, Win7 autodetected the changes, needed me to re-activate it, and I just had to re-install my Catalyst drivers and everything was back!

It was here that I noticed a new option in the Catalyst drivers, under the Anti-Aliasing options – “Morphological Anti-Aliasing“. Touted as the next step in anti-aliasing technology and naturally in direct competition with nVidia, this mode is supposed to be more efficient and uses less clock cycles (read, “faster”) at making your games pretty. So, I turned it on.

Later on I started to see weird font and image problems with my computer, during non-gaming tasks. Simple things like viewing a web page in Firefox, reading emails in Thunderbird, looked “weird”. In fact I couldn’t put my finger on it till I came to my own blog and noticed that images had rounded corners and the fonts looked squiggly. The frustrating thing was, everything else looked fine. Shortcuts on the desktop looked ok. Fonts on them looked ok. The same webpages viewed in IE looked fine too. No amount of fiddling with font settings in Firefox (and Thunderbird) could get rid of the squiggly fonts.

Then I remembered the previous night, while gaming a friend used Xfire and chatted with me. I noticed the whole box had become blurry and fonts were squiggly but I didn’t know what happened at the time. In an unrelated task, I went into Control Panel and wanted to look at my Java settings. The entire Java control panel came out BLURRY. As in, seriously blurred out. Can’t read a single thing on it. I could vaguely see buttons but I don’t remember what the buttons were.

Suddenly things looked more and more like the MLAA option I had turned on in the Catalyst drivers.

So I went in there, turned MLAA off, and viola~! Things looked normal again.

So I guess I’m leaving this option off till games support this option in-game. I’m not going to turn this option on permanently again!

Image via Wikipedia

This is probably going to be one of my shortest posts.

When I first installed Windows 7, I was initially worried about the compatibility problems that I may have if I had installed the 64 bit version just like I had with WinXP 64-bit. Many software didn’t have a 64-bit version, and still don’t. However after about a year, I’ve seen almost no difference in terms of compatibility between Win7 32-bit and Win7 64-bit.

Further, recently my PC started acting really strangely – it would hang or freeze at random times and I couldn’t pinpoint it at all.

Also, I have been running Windows 7 for over a year now. It’s about the right time for a full reformat anyway.

Since I have my C: drive as a standalone partition, wiping it out and reformatting it is not much of a problem. My data (ie documents, pictures, savegames etc) is safely tucked away in other partitions. Also, having a NAS helps somewhat too, since all your stuff are actually not on the PC but on a network drive somewhere.

Thus I decided now would be a good time to reformat and go up to 64-bit.

Long story short, after booting up Win7 64-bit for the first time, the weird problems of hanging and freezing persisted. Thus it couldn’t be a software problem, had to be hardware-related. I spent a day thinking about this, wondering what I needed to swap out/upgrade. I even began looking at prices for CPUs (the chip, not the computer case), motherboards, RAMs etc.

Eventually I narrowed it down to my old 5-year-old 250GB harddisk. I wish I had installed a SMART monitor for the harddisk. I had enabled SMART in the BIOS but didn’t follow up by installing a monitor for it, so when the harddisk started to fail I was unaware. Anyway now I do, so the same thing shouldn’t happen again, I hope!

You know what I hate about reformatting?

After the reformat I would have to re-install EVERYTHING.. my Firefox, my Thunderbird, my games, etc. One saving grace is Steam – whatever games I had installed under Steam is all right back when I re-installed the Steam client.