Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Lost and Found

Met up with Deanna, who’s in Singapore for a short stopover, with the COSDU bunch. Ate at Makansutra. Dessert at Ben & Jerry’s.

I lightened up a bit after the ice cream. The Ben & Jerry’s staff are very friendly. Hopefully they maintain this standard of service unlike the Carl’s Jr staff. They started off friendly but now are run-of-the-mill fast food crew. But Carl’s Jr food still rocks.

Now, I’m home. And my mind has wandered back to an expensive piece of polycarbonate plastic and its associated piece of paper that’ve (seemingly) gone astray.

On a more positive note, I discovered goodmorningyesterday through tomorrow.sg. This blog, maintained by Lam Chun See, is, in his words:

… for Singaporeans of my generation to share stories of Singapore back in the kampong days when we were kids. I started this blog because I realised how much our country has changed in our life time, and it would be good if our kids can visit this site and learn a bit about our past.

He’s got photos of a bygone Singapore. A Singapore which my generation can scarcely imagine - urban squalor in technicolour. But more than that, he describes a simpler time. When wordly goods weren’t the sole preoccupation of this country’s occupants.

Singapore’s official history tends to skip from WW II to merger and separation to NS to economic powerhouse. Well, that’s not entirely accurate but I think you get what I mean. In Mr Lam’s blog, you can read about life as it was in the late 50s and in the 60s. His and his friends’ accounts may seem trivial and humdrum. But they are personal.

And the personal is powerful. The personal is as valid a history as any textbook, perhaps even more so.

It’s very heartening that a Singaporean of my parents’ generation understands blogging. And that he understands the educational value of blogs.

Thank you, Mr Lam for your contribution to the blogosphere. All Singaporeans are richer through your efforts.

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Gremlins

Experiencing lots of technical difficulties lately.

I’ve had problems with upgrading my RAM. Solved this last night. My home PC is now purring along with 2GB of RAM. =)

The problems with installing the RAM somehow knocked out my wireless PCI card. But, I have a new one, thanks to Stationery Girl - Saving the World one Plastic Folder at a time!™. =) It works great!

I got around to replacing my Lexar CF card. It’s my third card. It also ‘failed’ on my, like the previous two - the “CHA” message on my D70. Switched to my SanDisk, which worked fine.

Or so I thought.

Uploaded the photos to my PC. There were no EXIF entries for any of my photos. This includes the date the photos were taken. *sigh* So, looks like my CFs cards are not the only problem. =(

Got to hunt down these gremlins and exterminate them.

Update 1: Looks like the EXIF problem is due to the fact that I do not have the Nikon software installed. Wanted to buy it but John 3:16 Photo Supplies in Funan is still waiting for stock. Can get it elsewhere but J3:16 quoted a cheaper price.

Update 2: My SB-800 flashgun has given up the ghost. ‘Tis the season of mechanical and electrical failure. I’m having a McLaren season.

Update 3: Consulted the manual. Decided to take my own advice to many people - RTFM. After a complicated combination of button presses, akin to some Playstation game key sequence, my flash returned to normality. Wonder how it got to be like that in the first place.

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Sail Away, Baby


If she can’t believe that she’s going to be sailing the ocean deep in a few days time, she’s not alone.

Lena is going to be spending the next few months on the Uniquely Singapore Clipper. I can’t remember exactly when she first told me about this idea. At the time, I think I told her to just go for the interview and take things from there.

Well, she went. And now, she’s going.

On Saturday, she leaves for Durban, South Africa, to join up with the clipper and her crew, as the Uniquely Singapore team starts the 3rd crew leg and the fourth race. Yes, the yacht is part of the Clipper ‘05-’06 Round the World Yacht Race.

At the time of this post, Singapore is 5th out of 10 yachts. (Update: We just lost out to Liverpool before arriving at Durban - 6th of 10.) [Update of the update: Singapore and Liverpool have been ruled by the race stewards to have finished joint 5th. After a 4000 mile race. Almost as amazing as the three cars with the exact same qualifying time - to the thousandth of a second - in a F1 qualifying many years back.]

———-
Lena, I’m excited for you; I’m nervous for you too.

Take care. Do your best. Enjoy the experience - I know you will.

Not many people get to make their dreams come true. Savour it. Blog if you can. =)

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance.

See you back home in 2006.

Cheers!

P.S. Just discovered their photo album has an rss feed! Cool. =) The image in this post is from the gallery.

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Qumana

Yesterday evening proved to be an interesting chit-chat session covering blogging, nature, photography, Macs and I can’t remember what else! Siva and Ashwin Kumar - no, not the one from the Kumars at No. 42 - mentioned Ecto, a remote blog publishing tool.
Well, the Ecto site didn’t seem to be working very well, so I dug up an old email - thanks to Gmail’s search, of course - pointing to Qumana. I’m trying it out. Wonder what my post will look like.
Hmmm… can’t get into the HTML though…
Just posted, and it seems to work fine. Now to try technorati tags
Disappointed. The stupid button in Q inserts a Technorati tag for “Q” and nothing else. Jeez.
Anyone suggestions for a good remote blog publishing tool?
Another thought. Can’t seem to change the timestamp from Q.
Come to think of it, posting straight from Blogger is not so ancient. Not when you have nifty Extensions and Greasemonkey scripts. =) Okay, I know javascript isn’t the safest thing in the world…
Another thought - can’t add a link to my title. Bye bye Q.

My goodness… just took a look at the coding in this post. Soooo many useless DIV tags.

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New Look

I got tired of the previous template. (If you’re reading this post from a feed, please take a moment to visit my site.)

I chose this from Blogger Templates. Powell Street has clean lines, pleasing colours, and it is paradoxical to the visual projection of a cave.

That, I think, is an accurate reflection of moi.

I’m still tweaking the look of the site. Apologies to those who subscribe to my feed, I know my constant republishing has meant that my posts keep on appearing in your feed readers. Anyway, most of the sidebar and footer content from the old template still exists. Added a few things, took a few out. I’m wondering where the chiclets I had should go. Or whether they should just go.

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