It Is A Rainy Day
It's a rainy day and the sun wouldn't shine, an old techno tune by Ice MC. It rained all day. Slept till 1.30pm, the weather perfect for it. Lunch at Tiong Bahru Plaza with my brother.
Archive
Founder of lesterchan.net, a Singapore tech and gadgets blog running since 2002. An engineering leader by day and a WordPress plugin developer since 2003, with a soft spot for gadgets, smart home, and a good deal.
Study BTT
Woke at 8am to fetch Lian from the bus-stop to my place, my mom took her to work. Went back to sleep. Studied for my BTT afternoon, reading the book, expecting easy, but there's so much.
It Is A Monday
Stayed home all day, out only for lunch. Mondays are usually dull; most stalls at my coffeeshop are shut, so fishball noodles by default. Played a few rounds of Starcraft: Brood War with Lian till evening.
Billy’s Farewell Party
Watched The Guru at Marina Square before Billy's farewell party at Union Square. Didn't know Billy could rap so well; trance and dance from DJ Ash plus rap, rocked. Shame a good CANI lecturer is leaving.
109-bit Encryption Broken
I came across a headline, '109-bit Encryption Broken', and found it interesting enough to share. 109-bit Elliptic Curve Cryptography was knocked over with brute force; academics scooped a $10,000 prize after a massive distributed computing effort.
Resting Day
Stayed in, leaving only for lunch and dinner. Spent the whole afternoon organising the chalet photos for online viewing: resizing, compressing, the lot. It ate the afternoon; before I knew it, night had fallen. Time flies.
Nokia New Phones In 2003
Nokia is launching six new handphone models plus three enhancements in the first half of 2003: the 2100, 5100, 6100, 6800, 7250 and 8910i, alongside a trio of accessory enhancements. A busy year ahead for them.
C&C Generals Delayed
Command & Conquer Generals has been officially delayed, though Westwood always ships eventually. GameSpyDaily reports that EA Pacific's highly anticipated PC RTS has been strategically pushed to February next year. A long wait, but worth it.
Chalet Nov2002 Photos Up
Uploaded all the chalet photos from three digital cameras to the site, 271 photos, 26 MB total. They're up in the Poly Gallery. For the record, this site runs on B2's CVS version, so files stay current.
Chalet Here I Come
Off to my DMMT course chalet at Sentosa Holiday Chalet today, with Lian too. We'll be back the afternoon of 7 November, though I'll sleep till night before posting again. I'll try to upload chalet pictures.
Pre-Chalet Preps
This is d-N-a posting from GamerZ's account. Tomorrow's the combined class chalet at Sentosa; we've invited our lecturers for the BBQ, so it'll surely be lively. Caught Sweet Home Alabama at Great World City this evening.
Happy Deepavali
Today's Deepavali, a Happy Deepavali to all my Indian readers. It's a festival for all ages, where people express their joy by lighting earthen diyas, decorating their homes and celebrating the triumph of light over darkness.
Compass Point
Went to Compass Point with Lian, Alvin and Choon Sing to explore the newly opened mall and grab Choon Sing's portable hi-fi for the chalet. Surprised how big it is, with loads of shops. Tried deer meat.
#Pixel.Junkies Outing
Helped move my brother's things, computer and clothes, into his room, and helped my dad fix the air-con. My room's empty and spacious, so I'll buy a study table to fill the gap. A #pixel.junkies outing.
Minor Site Tweaks
Tweaked things on the site, mostly back-end rather than user-facing. The page load time is more accurate, shown at the bottom outside the layout. All layout parts are called from a function file instead of inlining.
Games Arena V7
My good buddy Shaun, aka DeMoBLiTzer, has redesigned his site, his seventh layout since 2000, called Project Zen. The red-and-black combination works well. As his news post says, the prototype 7.0 layout is finally out today.
Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween, everyone, the English equivalent of the Chinese seventh-month ghost festival, I suppose. Accompanied Lian to her job interview at Mosque Street in the afternoon, along with Jean and Zhi Wei, waiting while they interviewed.
Microsoft Office 11 & LongHorn
After XP, Office 11 is next, out next year but only for Windows 2000 and XP. Screenshots are floating around. On Windows side, the next release is rumoured as Windows 2004, with Longhorn as its codename.
Upcoming Movies
A rundown of upcoming movie sequels to watch for, ordered by release date, quite a long list. 2003 brings Shanghai Knights, The Jungle Book II, Final Destination 2, Jeepers Creepers II, X-Men 2 and Matrix Reloaded.
DSAL Exams Over
Reached school at 7.45am for breakfast with my gang before 9am exam. DSAL was tough. I hope I pass, though my overall's confirmed per the lecturer. The exam's only 30%; I've got 44/100 on the rest.
DSAL Sucks
Home all day studying DSAL, out to grab lunch: lor mee from my other coffeeshop, one of Singapore's famous lor mee stalls. Queued 15 minutes since past lunchtime, else it'd be 45. Good food's worth waiting.
P&Q2 Exams Over
Lunch at Clementi with Lian before my P&Q2 exam: Katong Laksa, the best stall there; I'd wanted the market, but renovation or fogging shut all the stalls. The P&Q2 paper today went reasonably well, I think.