I guess with this new found time & comparitively slower pace of life now, just let me recap the very hectic holiday week at the comfront the school’s cafe. Indeed the last few weeks was the mid semester holidays. Tests coming out at the end of the holidays, not to mention elearning assignments. I guess the legend semester 2 heat is definately getting on the us students as a whole. All my grades are an average 10% lower this semester, with my the first time failing one homework assigment with a 12/50 & possiblity not being able to get 100 for my Thermofluids test I’ve last tuesday. Other than that some promising tests, including (Mechanics on Monday) will be as follows:

Engineering Maths: 20/20 (10% in overal total)
Design Techniques & skills: 83/100 (50% in overal total)
Computer Aided Machining: 83/100 (20% in overal total)

Millege for the 1st holiday week was impressive with 52km, with 2 visits to the gym. But things slowed down relatively with stuffs with school work, revisions & workz, clocking 24.3km on week 2. Theres a class chalet BBQ & the adventure race on the 3rd week (Week June 18th-24th), so didn’t actually had time to even drop down to school for gym & track training.

Millege for last week (7 day period, June 18th-24th)
Adventure race - 20km (Competitive 1st Runner Up)

Total Millege/week = 20.0km (67% of 30km a week target met)

And there we have it the Edgegames Adventure Race 2006 (venue) held early this morning. The race flagged off at 6am today with us spending the previous night over at the salvation army praise haven building to equipment check & preps. The 1st team is expected to arrive with 3hours of the 20km run/bike adventure event. Neither do we know that the Champion & the runner up finishing close to 2 1/2 hours. With my team being the latter. Yes finished at a time of 2hours 35mins with a 10mins penalty for having 2 checkpoints wrong for the orientiering checkpoints. The 1st team had an overal timing of 2hours 28mins with a 5mins penalty. Minus all the penalties I can say its a very close game with 2 mintues between us teams, not to mention us able to take 1st place (0pt penalty) if we actually found all the checkpoints in the orientiering station. We are unable to find the clues largely due to lack of info on the start of the find, just say we weren’t briefed properly on what to find.

The race was quite “our race”, not only beating the expected fastest in 3 hours expectation, the 3rd team in our category actually came much later, like a 30min interval I guess. Nevertheless, the race saw us through elements such as challenges like “swimming” thru the Singapore long-kang drain systems, passing through jungles & climbing rock faces/quarries besides the all usual navigation & biking team bialthlon.

Pre-race planning (& Food!)	Getting ready to go	Champion Team & 1st Runner up

Collected our Trophy from the Toa Payoh Sports Hall just today evening. Though 2nd place may not be too bad out of 20 over teams (60+ over people that is), we felt we can actually do better. Moreover, the 1st team actually consists of all members from our SAF Army Commando unit. Come to think about it, if my team can pull through with my teammates not even army training & yet finish just 2 minutes behind Commandos, man I guess we are actually quite good! Nevertheless the race was indeed very fun (& dirty muddy) for a first. The adventure race spirit is definately within us now. Let do better next year then, let us bring home The Golden Trophy next year in place of this year’s silver.

Celebrations was at ChinaTown Point Swensens last night (Saturday), also in conjunction with Father’s day around the corner I guess. Initally we wanted to celebrate at Bugis Swensens but I guess arriving at 7pm will definately have a long queue there, not to mention orchard or PS as well, futhermore the one at Liang Court closed quite sometime ago. Nevertheless the branch at ChinaTown Point proved to be one of the better Swensens I’ve ever visited, in terms of service on top of food. Not only we get recommendations for better food offers from the manager besides that offered by the dinky Singtel Birthday Discount Coupons, the staff even all gathered and sang Happy Birthday to her when they served the Ice-cream cake! Not to mention having made a couple of ballon-tie poodles for her as well (one blue & purple). Niffy! Happy Birthday Sheena!

Come to think about it, I guess visiting Swensen resturants on the outskirts of town usually have better service as the staff are not as stressed & stretched to crowd demands, with that they can work more relaxed & happier - in turn better service! This branch definately gets my thumbs up & recomendations.

Its the holidays & really had been very very busy over the last few weeks. If its not catching up & pondering over E-learning homework, its written assignments & getting all the 75 orders & cash for the track & field shirts ready for printing. Busy busy busy. Oh yea besides that theres work too, I guess good work, guess can make some good money over this holiday.

Sporting wise, theres the selection for poly50 hehe, did 20 rounds of 200m with 3mins rest in between last week. All runs must not be less than 40secs or be eliminated to do slow jog laps round the field, courtesy of coach. Last tuesday saw the timing dropping to 37sec/round which most of us barely made, only to drop out on Friday’s elimation of constant <35secs/round with 5 runners remainding, very challenging indeed. Nevertheless there’s a rule that no more than 5IVP runners can be in one team (a handicap) so we are more of less split up. Coach is sending in 3 Teams for this year’s poly 50. I am in Team 2 of the SP Track & Field Team, would be fighting it out officially on July 12th. In the meantime its more speedwork & passing practices for the team. Also, with training over the summer holiday period, it the norm to have Dinner was at the campus’s house-resturant FoodHaven after training, only to reach home at 10.30pm everytime whahaha.

How goes?

Millege for last week (7 day period)
15 rounds Tiong Bahru park, Sunday - 15km
1 hour continous cardio swim, Monday
SP Gym 2+1 Sets Weight Training, no threadmill - Tuesday
200mx20 (4km total <40secs/round, 3mins inbetween rests) - Tuesday Coach’s Track Training
15 rounds Tiong Bahru park, Wednesday- 15km
SP Gym 2+1 Sets Weight Training, no threadmill - Friday
Circuit Training + 3km campus run - Friday Coach’s Track Training
15 rounds Tiong Bahru park, Saturday- 15km
Total Millege/week = 52km (170% of 30km a week target met)

Millege for this week (7 day period)
1 hour continous cardio swim, Monday
200mx20 (4km total <37secs/round, 2.50mins inbetween rests) - Tuesday
200mx5 (1km total <35secs/round, 2.30mins inbetween rests) - Friday
430mx10 (4.3km track recovery run) - Friday
15 rounds Tiong Bahru park, Sunday- 15km
Total Millege/week = 24.3km (81% of 30km a week target met)

Typing this post as I am waiting for the blackbloard to submit my assessment result, again! As stinky as it is, Singapore Polytechnic’s E-learning E-stinking week is merely a typical “monkey see monkey do” thing. Its not practical as our campus infrastructure (physically & digitally) was never designed with the e-mode in mind. In fact it’s more of a rather “frankenstein like” segmented array of new & old study blocks joined together with no main concept in mind. Despite the rather negative feedbacks by students & lecturers alike, it’s still a green light to it this semester on the reknowned & country-wide debunked failed project. A classic attempt to mimick what schools in the US do.

For example, modules like Pro-Engineer CAD requires students to use the facilities in school to work, so theres nothing much like out-of-campus e learning at all. Dinky heads, unless they are willing to sponsor $6000 worth of software to each student to do it at home, they did better reconsider their options. So we have to come down to school during the E-Week to get the assignment done anyway. But wait, we have to do it the “E-Way”, having to take the “E-bus” from our “E-home” working in the “E-classroom” within school for the “E-learning“, then break for “E-lunch” in the “E-foodcourt” & do our business in the “E-toilet“. We can’t talk to the teacher directly (yup) & we have to use “E-mail” or “E-chat” (which the latter can’t be used due to MSN messenger ports purposely being blocked in SP networks cus of “bandwidth hogs”) .

Well done SP! You scored another in the Books! Introducing a system is as good as introducing a whole set of problems with it. Lets see another few complain letters in the ST Forums just like the last time in a few weeks!

Its not uncommon opening up the blackboard & surf on my other browser tabs while it loads, only to check back the next 5mins to see that the blackboard is “STILL LOADING!” I mean hey, I had like 9 other active fast loading surfing tabs on Firefox, couldn’t be that slow right? Furthermore school sites always look screwy in firefox, so much for compatiblity. But things ain’t any better in IE anyway…

My recommendations before embarking on such E-projects is to at least have a basic infrastructure & concept & not merely a force from the directors directed from our principal down onto lecturers who have to come out with something for us to do during the week, (which is so uncoventional) just for the stake of it. Moreover, we do not have an integrated school network, a global nightmare for students having different passwords for over 4 seperate school facilities. Not to mention with the lacking of Wi-Max (so regular network disconnects are common when moving around campus). The CIS must be pulling their hair out on the scheduled crashing & overloading of servers this week.

Wahhaa face your greatest burning fears, what next to cooler than a paintball gun of a rubber band gattling gun? A super-soaker flamer!

Make Your Own Flamethrower With WD40 and a Supersoaker

Coming to you on your next chalet BBQ!

10 years ago, when we are all still thinkering cheap $20 mini arcade toys or with pagers & alphanumeric morse codes in school I never thought of the day where everyone my family would own a handphone each. Gone are the days of kids playing with plastic “make believe toy handphones” on the streets, now I’ve even seen primary school kids with their own Nokia N-series phones, (even makes my present 3 year old Siemens go & hide in shame…) not to mention also spotting Gameboys DS/SPs or PSPs… Moreover, 8 years ago since I got my first laptop , I never thought of the day when everyone in my family will have their own personal (not shared) notebook each.

That day will be today, (Thanks to mum who allowed me to photograph her new baby) with the latest, smallest & most powerful addition to the family. Mum’s Windows Vista Ready 1.8kg 12.1″ Samsung Intel Dual-Core Notebook with 1.5GB DDR2 667MHz Ram, DVD-DL Writer & 7 hours of battery life - A force to recon with, now only if mum know how to make use of it’s power fully. Brought it from from our 2nd visit to the PC Show today, which is super more packed than yesterday. Ok on the damage, to date, there are 3 functional desktops & 4 laptops at home, only time will tell on how technology will get onto us in the future.

Came back from a 15km run this evening. Bringing the total milege for this exam week to 20km.

Millege Run Log for the week
SP Gym 3+1 Sets Weight Training + Threadmill, Friday- 5.6km
15 rounds Tiong Bahru park, Sunday - 15km

Total: Approx 20km this week (67% of 30km/week target)

As its holidays for me now, next week’s millege will be interesting… Would be going for a 1 hour continuous cardio swim tomorrow morning.

Dropped by the PC show today as usual, its super crowded & more cramped than the IT Show early this year, maybe due to a smaller hall size. Nevertheless, had the crosshair’s set on a new notebook for Mum, who was there with Dad today as well. Been sometime since I went for an IT show with my parents too, guess its an exception as mum needed the “expertise” with her. Mum didn’t quite like the $1999 Dell XPS M1210 I recommended, mainly because of the 12.1″ screen she have some problems reading text on. Strangely she’s quite geared towards the similar sized $2099 Samsung Q35, something which didn’t cross my mind at all, besides looking through a few Asus lappies. I mean being gaming orientated, an XPS with a Geforce 7400 256MB system for $2150SGD fully configured definately has a drool factor. But as a business laptop, an integrated GMA950 would be good enough as well too, with more battery life at disposal.

Samsung Q35-C006
Samsung displayed what it claims to be the “world’s smallest dual-core notebook,” the Q35. It weighs a mere 1.9kg, and has the following specifications:

* 12.1″ WXGA display
* Intel Core Duo T2700 processor
* Intel 945GM chipset
* 1GB DDR2-667 RAM
* 80GB Hard drive
* DVD+/-RW DL
* HD Audio system
* 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
* PC Card slot

For $2099SGD (Show price)
The Q35 even has a six-cell battery, allowing it to supposedly get up to seven hours of life, which I still yet to see for myself. I estimate actual battery life to be around +-5hours. Mum will be dropping by again tomorrow to purchase the laptop then.

With challenger & SP co-op selling the 12″ Dicota Laptop slip cases at $26-$27 each & 15″ one at $39.90/each, how can I resist a deal from Travel Pac for a buy one & get another free at the same overall price? Paid $39.90 for a 15.4″ case for Sheena’s Fujitsu while I got a (similar/lower value) 14″ one for my T4020 free! The interesting thing is them allowing me to take the case out from their store before paying to test out sizes at Fujitsu’s booth on the other end of the hall. The other most interesting thing is approaching Fujitsu staff telling them that I am not purchasing their laptops, but actually just checking out whether my Notebook model on display can fit into the cases, which they happily allowed too with the exception of unremovable cable locks all around, nevertheless they were very helpful Asiapac salespersons for someone going beyond the call of duty.

Since we are at Suntec, finally got the Aibi Pedometer at $15 (usual $39.90) from the Aibi Concept store, will be testing it out on a 15km run tomorrow. Also purchased 100pcs cake box of 16xImation DVD-Rs. Intended to get a 2GB Thumbdrive, 2GB CF Card I’ve been saving for since last year. but was cut short when the store I am intending to get it from, Best Bargain computers ran out of stock for their $99 Mini 2GB Imation Thumbdrives, not to mention completely out of the 2GB CFs & 4GB Transcend SD Cards. Other stores are selling them at $106. Nevertheless, as memory prices can only go down, on a brighter side at least I saved some money as whole, only to spend it later I guess…

The term exams are over, 3 exams, 2 presentations & one project done. Now alls left is to finish up one portfolio project & 2 practicals when school reopens, not to mention the stinking E-learning next week. The Pro-E test went very well today, interestingly, only with me finishing the test on time in class, neato!

Mum came up to me last night mentioning that SGX tradings are all done electronic now, so she would have to purchase a personal laptop to get about work now. She was considering a $1200 Toshiba which will bound to send chills down anyone’s spine the moment they hear 1.6Ghz Celeron… ewwww. On a limelight, top up $900 more & you can get nicer sleeker, smaller, lighter, professional magnesium body notebook + uber more powerful specs, namely the new DELL XPS M1210 I am recommending, for $2150SGD, this is the damage you will be getting, quite value for money right?

Dell XPS M1210 Notebook
Intel Core Duo 1.83Ghz
Nvidia Geforce 7300 Go 256MB
12.1″ 1280X800 TFT Screen
80GB 2.5″ Harddisk
1GB 533Mhz RAM
Intel Proset Wi-fi+ Bluetooth 2.0
Sound Blaster Audigy DE Audio
1.3MP In-Built Logitech Webcam (w/30fps VGA Video)
5-1 Card Reader, Express-Card Slot
Wi-Fi Catcher
6-Cell Battery
Win XP Home (Windows Vista Ready)

So far my experience with Dell has been a rather positive one, namely with their rather excellent customer support. The best thing is that PC Show specials are also avaliable online, so we can beat the crowds!