| Singapore Poly's Field |
[Feb. 22nd, 2006|09:35 pm] |
Aaah... the lush GREEN field of Singapore Polytechnic...
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You... |
|
|
| Happy Meal... |
[Feb. 21st, 2006|12:30 am] |
Here's Sanche again with ANOTHER Happy meal... Can still play with it, waving it around like nobody's business.. loL!
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You... |
|
|
| Ensemble @ Fuchun |
[Feb. 15th, 2006|09:11 pm] |
Basically ensemble was like any other day in Fuchun except that finally they got the whole group settled and played together.. A fiasco at the first time but not bad towards the end...
Violinist and cellist and Mr Tong conducting...
Here are the percussionist... After sucking my blood for weeks telling them how to play the rhythm, they finally could play it together with the ensemble...
Here the cellists during their sectional practise... 6 of them in total... They're really good people... Able to play their pieces within few weeks only...
Erm.. Here's the bassist... Yeah.. the Bass BODY is bigger then him and he needs to stretch his hand like mad just to get the top fingering.. loL! luckily the school bought a smaller bass for them...
Here they are... with a blur look... with their new half-size bass... tsk tsk tsk... Sanche, you ought to teach them more better.. They are soo blur after Mr Tong tell them what to do.. lolz!
And here's Sanche trying to play "O Waly Waly" on the cello when i'm teaching them... He professed that he had been taught by Your Ma Ma (Not the famous Yo-Yo Ma you know) how to play the cello... No wonder it sounds soooo "nice".. Note the "". And here's Mr Yong showing a PEACE sign.. lol!
If you have read my blog earlier, you'll know that he's not really matured yet.. lol! see now you can see him playing with the primary school kid. Oi! teach your forsaken bassist lah!! AHAHAHA!!
And here's Sanche and Sodohoya after a long day teaching... lol!
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You... |
|
|
| omg.. Passed Music theory... |
[Feb. 14th, 2006|09:59 pm] |
Finally results for my music theory is released.. and I PASSED!! ahahah!! No distinction though.. only Merit... and ooh.. sorry for wrong info.. passing mark is 66 over 100..
Not bad lah overall... Did badly for musical terms and naming ornamental, got 10 for my composition (which i felt that it should be lower coz it sounds like decomposing when i sang it out). And suprisingly got 13 for my intervals!! yeay! *clap hands* got zero last time.. ahaha! So over all 81.. oklah for a person who scored badly for the first time.. ahaha!!
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You... |
|
|
| Ensemble maddness... |
[Feb. 9th, 2006|02:25 am] |
Anybody want to create an ensemble? Not so easy. First, must gather 47 pupils...
and ooh... make sure they listen to you.. if not end up somewhat like this.. ahahaha! nolah.. well organised..
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and epoch with You... |
|
|
| Internet Explorer 7 |
[Feb. 4th, 2006|01:27 pm] |
|
Is it a bug or something?? Keeps appearing like thah when i sign in to hotmail. loL!
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and epoch with You... |
|
|
| Age of Empires I & III |
[Feb. 4th, 2006|12:26 am] |
|
Age of Empires I
Released in 1997, it is one of the first bold move to Real time strategy (RTS) gaming. Looks like 3D but actually 2D as it uses different image to show different angle of units. Image quality is adequate for playing. Doesn't stress the graphics card or the processor at all. But gameplay is awesome. Classic. Take note the size of units and ships. System requirement: Pentium 90, 16MB RAM, 80MB Hard drive.
Age of Empires III
Fast forward to 2005, we have one of the top rated Strategy game of the year.
The humble colony where workers gather resources to fuel the raging war upfront. Image quality is awesome. Buildings, animals and environment are realistic,Facial features of each units almost can be seen. Pure 3D.
Everything near the waters are reflected including trees, units and buildings. With Shader model 3.0, water looks more transparent and realistic. If you look closely, the cannons glimmered in the sun.
Age of Empires III is the first RTS game to utilize the Havok physics engine which translates into eye-popping building explosions and units getting tossed about like rag dolls by cannonball explosions. Impressive.
System Requirement: 1.4GHz processor, 256MB RAM, 64 MB video card capable of Hardware Trasnformation and Lightning.
In the 1990s, some scoff at the quality and the gameplay of computer games. Most games are popularised through the console games such as, nintendo game boy and Atari gaming consoles. Computer games now have come to prove it wrong.
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and epoch with You... |
|
|
| Medical Certificate |
[Jan. 5th, 2006|01:44 pm] |
Yes! Got another MC... No need to go school again... Wahahaha!!! *evil laugh*
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with you... |
|
|
| de SARASATE: Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 |
[Dec. 21st, 2005|07:34 pm] |
Went to Gramecy at Tanjong Katong Road to look for pieces. I was particularly looking for Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, one of my repertoire for the performance. The other will be Tchaikovsky's 3 movement of Violin Concerto no. 2.
Finally found the piece. $9.30 for a 11 page booklet.
Here's the preview of the piece. Lots of challenging parts especially the running passages and pizzicato.
Went around to see violins also. Some violins costs from $3,600 to $23,000 from France to Italy. Phew, big investment. Intending to get a carbon bow over conventional bow in the next change. Lighter and provides more balance.
Went to McDonalds parkway to have a chat with Sanche on the pieces intended to play. Here you can see his childishness emerging from within. Bought a happy meal and started to play with the figurines. -_-""
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion,the Witch And The Wardrobe figurines. Collect them all from McDonalds with every Happy Meal. lol!
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with you... |
|
|
| 2005 National Piano & Violin Competition |
[Dec. 21st, 2005|04:14 pm] |
Went to YMS Arts Centre last Sunday to watch the National Piano & Violin Competition. Didn't join though coz the prospect of memorising 3 pieces and playing it infront of hundereds is horrible. ok joking. Partly because I only have 3 months to prepare and I still got school to bear with now. But will try in two years time. Only Sanche joined the competition, performing Vivaldi's Spring, Bartok's First Rhapsody and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto no. 2.
You can't take pictures in the auditorium during the performance. This is the scene during one of the intervals. You can see the tuner tuning the piano. The auditorium is quite small; only a hundred or two audience can fit inside it. Acoustics for the place is dry as what Nicholas, Sanche's pianist said.
Here's a pic during one of the rehearsals. Looks like somebody have not memorised their piece yet. lol!
The competition went well. Went to watch the junior and senior category. The senior category there were few which were definitely the ones going to the finals. But for the junior category, there was a fierce competition. For the first time, I knew what's the meaning of "eye popping" coz my eye nearly popped watching those juniors play. One of the juniors played Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen Op. 20, a diploma standard piece. He's only like, 8? 9 years old? The piece made my Kabalevsky's Improvisation sound like Twinkle, twinkle little stars.
Lol!
Note: Images were taken with a Panasonic VS3
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You...
|
|
|
| Half-Life 2: Lost Coast |
[Dec. 7th, 2005|08:53 pm] |
In the last entry, I spoke briefly of the Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. It's actually a technology demo demostrating the new(Not really) HDR technology. What's HDR? HDR, stands for High Dynamic Range. It's a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. It is a way of portraying an image with a higher contrast range than normal on a simple monitor through a variety of different methods. For example, if you are in a dark room and you walk into the open. You'll be blinded for the moment as your retina adjusts to the light. This is one of the techniques that HDR uses. More techniques below.
This is what you'll see when you start the game. Realistic rendering. Even the waters are treated with HDR water reflection. Over here you can see a few techniques. One is the HDR "blooming" where the sun and some other bright part of the scene are blurred to simulate your retina adjusting to the light. Another technique is the HDR skybox where the sky are painted in multiple exposures so the game can adjust exposures based on the player's "eyes". Take note on the sand. It even relects the sunlight.
Here's when HDR is disabled no blooming, no sand reflection, no water reflection.
Here you can see the the wet stones are applied with HDR lighting. Sunlight source is bounced off different objects via radiosity, in order to light the entire area realistically. Here you can see the rocks are reflecting the sky. Looks odd though. The houses also looks blurred near the sunlight.
Here's when HDR is turned off... No comments.
Here you can see the Fisherman model. He's specifically designed for Lost Coast. Contains over 3,000 polygons, hewas designed to demonstrate the HDR lighting and how light falls on human skin in the level. The highlights on the forehead, nose and the cheek demostrates the specularity on the skin.
Take note at the wrinkles on the cheeks and eyes. Detailed. What's next? Acne? Pimples? ehehe!
Here's when we're going into the tunnel. You can see the other end of the tunnel is blurred.
Here's when we're out of the tunnel. Everything blurred until.....
..... Your retina adjusts to the surrounding light.
Here's when you're about to enter to the Church. Here, you can see the HDR refraction. When seen through a semi-transparent or refractive texture, such as this window, HDR lighting assumes some of the properties of that texture as it falls on the scene around it. Here, the refraction shader on the window, copy the scene to a texture, refract the texture and then apply it to the window surface. Phew. Just for a window.
Here you can see more window which showcases the HDR refraction effect. This happens when light streams through these stained-glass windows. Also seen here is the bloomng effect and the HDR lightning. See how light falls on the pillars and then reflects, lighting the surrounding.
Here's when HDR is turned off... Nothing much...
All in all, the demo lasted bout 20mins. Quite short but enough to demonstrate the Source engine handling HDR. The Lost Coast requires a powerful system and graphics card. Although 'some' companies claim that a card must have hardware support for Shader Model 3.0 to deliver HDR in games but usually it's not the case. It only sort of makes the graphics card efficient to calculate high precision and more advance conditional operations then earlier Shader Model. Current graphics card that supports Shader Model 3.0 is the Nvidia 6200 and up and ATI Radeon X1xxx series and up. I think if you own an ATI Radeon 9xxx series and up or the Nvidia GeForce FX 5xxx series and up, you'll be able to play. But dun expect high frame rates. That said, my 3.4GHz, 1GB, Radeon X850XT computer churns out between 20~ 27fps.
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with You... |
|
|
| Miscellaneous Pics |
[Nov. 27th, 2005|12:40 am] |
Here are some pics i took randomly when cleaning my Dell...
Here's the part of the motherboard. I took off the X850XT for cleaning purposes. You can see the green shroud at the top of the image. It houses the heatsink for the processor.
Here you can see the graphics card connectors. It's a 16x PCI Express for Graphics. Currently it allows bandwidth of 8GB/s as opposed to the previous AGP of 4GB/s. It's not a necessity to upgrade from AGP 8x as current games goesn't even exploit the full potential of the bandwidth, but surely future games and application will. Expect photorealistic rendering in time to come. HL 2 are almost there with it's HDR implementd in the demo, Half-Life: Lost Coast.
Here's my ATI Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition. It's like the.. third fastest now? i think so according to some banchmarks. Anyway it's the previous generation graphics card after the Radeon X1800XT. I took this picture before i cleaned it, so it's kinda dusty..
Here you can see the thin fins of the copper heatsink. Underneath, sit the GPU, the heart of the graphics card. Here you can also see the voltage regulators? and the power connector.
Here's the back side of the card. The memory chips are under the heat spreader. As you can see.. The ATI Rage Theater chip is missing and being replaced by a sticker.. Sobz...
I forgot to show you the Serial-ATA and the Parallel-ATA connection when i posted the hard drive story. The blue and the red connectors are the Serial cables. The blue one is for the Western Digital and the red one is for the Maxtor. On the right of the serial cables, you can see the Parallel-ATA wires. They're thick and obstruct the airflow in some cases. You can also see the memory sticks. 2 512MBs DDR2 533 CL4.0.
And finally here's the sound card. The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2. It does the job nicely in sound processing delivering up to 24bit/ 192 kHz sound quality. You can also see the small black connector at the bottom of the motherboard. That's the 1x PCI Express connector. Not many company produces cards that uses the 1x PCI express although it sports a higher bandwidth than the PCI slot; 133MB/s vs. 512MB/s
In pursue of perfection, one will flaw even more... |
|
|
| SITEX 2005 |
[Nov. 26th, 2005|10:45 am] |
Went to SITEX with a couple of friends and Mr Foo on friday. Basically it's the same old stuff like, freebies, offers and more insane offers. Was looking for the Logitech G7 mouse but only managed to find 1 shop that sells it. If i remembered correctly, it was $169... Challenger sells it at $10 cheaper and what's more, you'll get points. But if you buy in Sim Lim, you'll get to bargain. ahaha! anyway, didn't buy it that day.
Ilyana came at around 5.30 and we went round the exhibition again. But this time, i whipped out my camera to take all her.. erm.. weird actions.
Ooh. she trying on the Cintiq 17UX. It's an "interactive pen display" that cost only $4999 i think. !!!! Let's take a look at her masterpiece.
Mdm Chan, if you're reading this, please take note that Ilyana has missed you a lot. Until of all things she writes your name on the contraption and let everybody see. ahaha! Mdm Chan was my chemistry teacher when i was secondary 2. kewl eh.. ahaha!
And this is artist Ilyana with her masterpiece entitled "Mdm Chan, where are joo!" Was erased by the personnel 5 mins later. ahaha!
Her bahaviour turned worst later as we went out. She started handling out those FHM Hardware guide demo. It's actually a demo book showing cool gadgets (really cool ones...) and a model wearing bikini on some pages. Was a erm.. distraction actually.. really.. LOL..
And there goes Ilyana with the FHM booklet. lets see who's her first victim. Ahahah!
And ooh! she got her first victim. ahaha! on the right, you can see Mr Foo running away, laughing. ahahaha!
And that was her last victim. erm.. a 4 year old kid i think. omg think of what the parent might think if he's seen holding that book. ahhahaha!
After visiting SITEX, we went to Seoul Garden to have dinner with our "Robotics Kakis". Unfortunately, only Zhen Yi and Justin turned up. For some unknown and similar reason, Evan and JoNNy could make it as something came up at the last minute. lol!
You can see Micah and Lih Kang "taking five" after eating non-stop for an hour already. ahaha! Mr Foo and Zhen Yi had given up 5 mins ago.. ahaha! Justin and I are still going strong. LOL!
After a while, i also took a rest and started taking pictures. As you can see, Justin is still going strong and Micah's hand, prodding into the soup. Apparently, instead of frying the meat, Justin went to boil it. lol.
Yes i finally gave up and Justin wins for eating the most. You can see, he's posing for the.. erm photographers. omg.. with all his plates stacked up like HDB flats and his final course.. Ice-cream...
Yes, I'll like to thank Mr Foo for the treat.. lol.. and also like to congrat Mr Justin for not only eating the most but eating without paying ahaha! 4 of us came in the first and Mr Foo paid for it, Zhen Yi came and paid for himself. But Justin came and said that he was looking for his friends. He came in, sat dow and started eating and was not detected at all.. Ahaha! Interesting...
In pursue of perfection, one will flaw even more... |
|
|
| Panasonic EB-VS3 |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|09:23 pm] |
Finally upgraded my phone from the Nokia 6610 the the Panasonic VS3. At first I thought of getting the VS2 but Starhub ran out of stock. Haha! So then saw the VS3 and I though, why not get it? There's not much difference between the VS2 and the VS3 except that the VS3 sports the X-Changeable Cover. You can change the front cover with one of the 3 provided. Don't know if they sell other design separately or not.
The box is cool. Simple design. To the point. Everything is said on the box.
Ok here's the phone. I've choosen black instead coz.. i like black. lol. You can also see the camera. It's a 1.3M megapixel CMOS that supports photo resolution up to 1280x1024.
Ok you can see the connectors to the handsfree, USB cable and the charger. The white button is for the opening the phone. Once you press, the coiled spring will be released and open the phone.
Here are the other two front covers provided, the two manuals, the screwdriver for screwing the hexagonal screws on the face plate. They also provide 2 extras just in case if you loose your.. erm.. screws.. lol...
Here's the rear of the phone. Nothing much to see except that the speakers are located here. It may be a good location as bass sounds are accentuated by the hard surface if placed on the table, giving a more clearer and deeper sound.
Here's when the phone is opened. The screen is big but if you have an oily face, sure gonna dirty them. Lol.. I seriously need to wipe the screen furiously with my specs cloth before taking the picture. lol.. Other parts of the phone are easily subjected to oily fingers. lol..
And this is why I i wanted this phone. No not because of the included Sonic The Hedgehog game but the screen. It boasts an approximately 16 million colours and 300 candela per square meter. Although the screen is small compared to my Pocket PC, it has the same resolution as it. Cool eh?
Here's when it's opened. No comments.
On the other side is the volume control, camera button to operate when taking own shot and the IR transceiver.
One thing bad bout the VS3 is the volume; it's too soft. If you have some one shouting beside you or in a party, you'll need to ask the caller to scream before you can hear him. The volume only have 4 controls. That is to say, softest, soft, loud and loudest. lol..
In pursue of perfection, one will flaw even more... |
|
|
| PSLE results |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|06:04 pm] |
Today accompanied my brother, Fauzi to collect his PSLE results. It's also good as I have a reason to go back and visit my primary school. Not that i haven't been there for the whole 4 years.
Here's the entrance of the school.... Quite shady as it's covered by trees
aha! Here comes Fauzi. He looks cool as he make his way here...
And he gets nearer.. His facial expression is grave. Doesn't respond his friend's calling. Lol!
Ooh can see him smile. Lol.. Must be good results. ahahaa!
Ooh, finally his results is known... All Bs.. Aggregate? 188.. Blah! one less marks and he'll be in N(A). Oh well, see if MacPherson Secondary wants him or not.. ahahah! |
|
|
| Hard drives |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|09:40 am] |
Hard Drives are the most important hardware in our computer. It stores our data by means of magnetic recording magnetic medium can be easily erased and rewritten, and it will "remember" the magnetic flux patterns stored onto the medium for many years. This makes it ideal for "long term" storage of data.
Here's a picture of my 2 hard drives. I took it when I was spring cleaning my computer.
This is the Western Digital Raptor WD360 it's currently the second fastest hard drive after it's big brother the Western Digital Raptor WD740 the platter spins at 10,000rpm and has a seek time of 7.6ms. It also has 8MB built in cache and utilizes a Serial-ATA to connect to the southbridge.
Here you can see the Serial-ATA connections. They are much more thinner and transfer data faster as opposed to the Parallel-ATA. You'll notice the moulded heatsink on the hard drive itself. This only can be seen in drives having platter spinning more than 10,000rpm and SCSI hard drives
Here you can see the Serial-ATA connections and the power connectors. If you notice, there's only one chip on the this side of the hard drive PCB. That is the serializer/deserializer (SERDES) chip. Actually the hard drive is still based on Parallel-ATA technology. So the only was is to employ a serializer/deserializer (SERDES) chip. Although, this may cause bottleneck, there is no evidence of it in all benchmarks and applications. The Raptor is definitely fast. Windows XP loads to desktop within 40 seconds. But that is also depending on what's running in the background. There are about 20 background applications running during start in mine and usually it takes more than a minute to start before this. Applications and games also starts almost immediately.
Ok now lets take a look at the storage drive. This is where I store all my.. erm.. musics and video. lol.. and also my projects and other things.
This is the 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9. It's neither big nor fast but does the job nicely. It's still uses the Serial-ATA technology but still based on the Parallel-ATA technology as you can see the SERDES chip on the second picture
I dunno what biggest chip does but highly suspect it's the controller. The second biggest chip is the memory chip. It also has 8MB of cache.
Usually, if you keep your files on your computer, it's more appropriate to store it in a separate hard drive or partition. Sometimes unpredictable things may happen and you probably need to format the main hard drive. If you are sharing the files with your family and have a netowrk at home, it's more better to employ a Network Attached Storage(NAS) as families do not need to access your computer to get the files. |
|
|
| Moving on... |
[Nov. 22nd, 2005|05:04 pm] |
|
Ok here's my new blog... I don't know what happened but xientist.xyberia.net just died. The owner just abandoned the site and didn't even bothered to tell me until my friend told me I didn't pay my bills. Heh! Anyway, lets hope this is my permanent place. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
xientist's journal