Well it had been few weeks since I’ve updated on racing news, I think you won’t miss the Nike Human Race adverts running all around Singapore (and if them covering up queensway shopping isn’t loud enough). Nike+HumanRace is largely a charitable race with a good intentions, something I will greatly personally recommend to run at $25 per entry for a good cause- You can choose to run for UN Refugee Agency, Lance Armstrong Foundation or the World Wildlife fund for nature for the Singapore league and beats any overpriced $35 Mizuno Wave Run anytime.

This race gets my recommendation mainly for the price, charity part (not any commercial orientated run) and the very exceptional goodie bag items. There’s even an incentive for being the 1st 200 runners!

Without further ado, the details:

Entry Fee (Not including GST)
24 years and below as of 1st September 2008 - $25
25 years and above as of 1st September 2008 - $45

• Runners will receive a Nike Race tee with pre-printed number bib + other goodies
• Virtual runners can choose to buy a Nike Race tee with pre-printed number bib as well at S$35
• 7% GST applies in all prices listed.

Do note that with regards to road and marshaling capacities, places are limited, so do register early!

Registration (online only)

• Global registraion site (click on “Join Race” then select country, join race in this country).
• Alternatively, jump straight to the Singapore payment portal by DigiLab here.
• Check your registration confirmation here (Using your IC number).

All fees are paid through Visa, MasterCard or at our SISTIC authorized agents (Cash/Nets).

Race Event Excerpt:

Categories

• School Team Challenge Cat. A (Secondary + Junior Colleges)
• School Team Challenge Cat. B (ITE + Polytechnic + Universities)
• Men’s & Women’s Under 25
• Men’s & Women’s Open category

On top of these individual race categories, participants can also choose to select to represent their school in the School Team Challenge. The school in each category (School Team Challenge Cat. A or Cat. B) that has the most number of registered runners completing the Nike+ Human Race 10K under 90 minutes will win the School Team Challenge.

Group Registration
Please email nikeplushumanrace [at] nikeupdates.com.sg if you are interested to sign up, and you will get a reply within three working days.

*A minimum number of 25 people will be required
**Payment for group registration will be by cheque, payable to ‘Nike Singapore Pte Ltd’

Administration Contact Information
Registration Technical Enquiries (Singapore only)
Registration Partner:
DigiLab Singapore Pte Ltd
2 Soon Wing Road #08-14
Singapore 347893

Tel: +65 6291 2019 (9am to 5pm, Mon to Fri)
Email: humanrace [at] digilab.com.sg
Nike+ Human Race 10K Event Enquires (Singapore only)
Email: nikeplushumanrace [at] nikeupdates.com.sg

Well, today is the 3rd day of the voting rounds of the Singapore Blog awards, and just as how campaigning fever has subsided in the States with Obama and Hilary in alliance now (with the exception of the Anwar case going on now), campaigning fever is definitely up on my side now! I am glad I have my contacts and not to mention my website traffic to help me pull in a steady stream of voters for this voting round, to date my site is 3rd in the round!

But of course that means having to strike a balance between my professional side/work and casual campaigning as well, and not like bugging anybody you know just as if your life depends on it, or even mentioning or hinting to people to vote for me, even in my 1000-odd convention talks, classes or even advertising for it over the various portals and websites I run, that will be stupid.

Unlike rebellious juveniles who will simply bug anybody without a care in the world, sometimes as a grown individual, you get to see the mature side of things than disturbing close friends or acquaintances for favors which kinda gives you the uncalmy feel of being indebted to even when they help you out, but I am glad everyone I approached so far was a great help!

But mind you, not that I don’t like feeling “indebted” but very much the respect I give to my friends, after all this is just a small blog competition and it boils down to what you value more and not risk going overboard. Sometimes I feel that a little reflection of your actions can go a long way. I won’t set my standards too high and the competition can be something which I am prepared to even lose, so anything else is just a bonus.

I don’t need a laptop, neither do I need a fancy phone when I win the award, so I will be considering selling or donating them to the salvation army or to my contacts in charge of the sharity gift box, but that is of course provide if I win, so I won’t count the chickens before they are hatched.

But I will be glad to be in the competition for the thrill, kick and challenge of it, as being a marathon runner, the other sporting side of me do not have a nature to give out so easily, so if you are my competitor you can be rest assured it won’t be an easy journey for you.

In all, the thing which matters most to me in this competition is winning the “best design” category will mark more than 10 years of my commitment and dedication in building and designing websites which means alot to me. The thing which amazes me is that I am glad this 5 year old, but still rather entrancing website design is still able to see me through so far.

With that, I will still bang on the bulk of my votes coming from people who visit my website, I think I might not go wrong with the traffic I get on my site. So I will leave it to unbiased people who think that I deserve the award for my contributions to blog design and development. With that, I will feel that my votes which (possibility) make me win more meaningful, not to mention deserving. I thank all my site visitors, friends and acquaintances who vote for me, your vote will be a very meaningful one and will go a long way into the competition.

Last but not least, yup here are the link, so do vote for me! You can vote once a day.
» Shaun’s Picture instructional guide on voting! (Click for instant image) » Vote NOW!

I was around back at school today after a short corporate meeting in the morning. There I managed to bump in a short one hour of gyming back at campus with my new alumni card before getting more work done in the day.

Alumni what card?
There, I was told by the gym auntie in-charge there that the alumni card I’ve got for this year’s batch is very different from the older cards issued previously- much lower in quality. This was so as I come to know after showing her how cheap and flimsy the cardboard-like laminated card I got in the mail last week (which is now peeling off at all the edges), even the photograph appears white-washed. My card which arrived in the “credit card” style holder in the letter already have it’s laminated coating damaged by simply removing it from the delivery holder, it’s that bad. For a lifetime membership thing, this card can’t even last 3 days!

New gym machines!
On a side note, the gym recently got a bump of new machines, such as a doubled number of treadmills to eight as well as the introduction of few new elliptical trainers as well as a new free weights and barbell training area, which sadly is always a hogging ground for dragon boat members. All these new additions are of course courtesy of the now dysfunct gym back at the old T14 block.

University university university
Our principal, Mr Tan was around on a tour with a few accompanying heads and directors to check out the new SP gym as well, thats where I got to chance upon him and we chatted for a while with regards to my application to the universities I am gunning for. He reassured me that I won’t go wrong and will have no problems entering the Imperial College, having not only studied there himself but also with the strong ties SP has with Imperial itself. He added that it will be a better choice as a technical college for engineering and research than Cambridge (which is ironically also one of the few Colleges I am gunning for in UK itself). He added that he will also be present at my scholarship prize presentation ceremony next week to witness all the selected SP students receiving the award as well.

Having done training, thereafter I was very much around my usual work W1115 area as a mentor helping out my juniors and undertaking project group members on some technical and software aspects of my gaming motion simulator (which they will be seeing through in their final year project). Few members were there to share their problems about group and management conflicts when forming their “ideal” teams, which I always emphasized is a very critical aspect for a team to be successful through their FYP and I was glad to be much of help in solving and giving advices which set them very much back in pace.

I did a fair bit of reflection thereafter with regards to my university choices, I mean I want to spend a significant amount of time doing research and development after I graduate, as I always want to bring something new and groundbreaking to the world, like the new age of you know!. That too, of course meaning having to do my PhD in the process as well. So the 4 year masters course in Imperial and Cambridge will be the most logical choice for a “fast track”.

I can’t deny that studying in US will be a very enjoyable experience too, with them being the preferred choice for engineering, but I felt I needed a more firm decision of choice myself rather than “going with the flow” or being so flicker minded- having never seen myself so open with so many choices at this crossroads period before. Later do I know that I got a tip off from one of my contacts who knew one of the Engineering Deans from MIT and they are interested in having us meet, whoa MIT, this will be very exciting!

Oh yes, for the record, I’ve got my NYAA Gold offer letter for interview today, double yay!

The voting period of the Omy Singapore Blog Awards 2008 are open! with each of the top 10 members of each category announced. So far is the competition is in it’s third and final stage with the floor now open to public voting, yes now it’s your turn to determine the winners by voting!

Overall, the winner in each category will be determined by 30% public votes and 70% scorings by our panel of professional judges - media industry veteran, Man Shu Sum; The Theatre Practice Co-Artistic Director, Kuo Jian Hong; and acclaimed movie director, Kelvin Tong.

This website will be gunning for the best design category, so I will be needing all your support, friends, relatives! etc please do vote for Shaun Chng.com. With that, I will let you in of what you can get by being a voter:

For winning blogger’s prizes, besides bloggy fame, we will be getting a laptop, an LG phone and a trophy designed by Tan Swie Hian. More details on the prizes here.

So act now and vote for Shaun Chng.com! we are listed as entry number 6 of the ten in the best design page. With that I’ve prepared few instructional goodies to get you up to speed on how to vote:

May the blog with the best design win!

Hey here it is finally the Singapore Toy and Comic Convention 2008 was finally here. Held at the Suntec City convention center over the last weekend, the event is one of the few first public events to bring the whole toy and comic industry closer together in a series of annual cons and events held throughout the year and man was the place packed!

Here we are at Suntec for the SG Toy & Comic Con

View of the Singapore crowd wahhh!

The open stage

There is no entrance fee and you get a neat informational booklet with coupons upon entry, so any similar minded Singaporean will sure pop by to give a look. But don’t expect to find any goldmine of limited collectors editions comics from the dusty garage sale area or find trades for that all rare issue of superman missing from your collection- our comic fan base here is almost zero to nothing, so the only stuff we are getting here are not old 5c marvel comics dating to the ages, but rather reprints and rather commercialized bookstores simply selling their “goods”.

Few reputable companies were there as well, Imaginary Friends, the company which brought us the rather nice drawings and illustrations we can see in Capcom games (just to name afew) were there as well. Well not that the design scene in Singapore is appreciative of their work or many who know about them unless you are in the field. They have a life photoshop session on the projectors during showtime, where you can catch a few paint brush and spray tips here and there, but otherwise, for the average layman visitor there, all they can do is simply is stare in awe as the artists transforms a plain document into a nicely coloured illustration. Gary Erskine, who brought us lots of comics, notably even back from the old transformers era (no kids, it’s not that generation of transformers you see on TV now) was present at my visit and he was around to sign autographs as well as work on few on-the-spot commissions. Even old masterQ (lau fo zi) was there as well so that really added to the asian touch of the show, interesting.

Imaginary Friends studios double booth

Gary Erskine @ work

Some inedible bread anyone?

I was surprised to find an Singapore Polytechnic booth there as well, NUS was there too, specifically their comic club, but their presence was so small, I hardly even took notice. Otherwise for education institutions that very much about the attendance besides few private animation school offering courses of their own. I was surprised to find Mr Choy, one of my old lecturers who taught me in school back then who was the lecturer on duty at the SP booth that time. He proudly showed me his exhibits on display together with some background information and him being the coordinator chairperson of the event for the SP booth. Looks like they are intending to use the not only to showcase student’s works but largely to sell their design and animation courses as well.

Mr Choy at the SP booth

Some of the rather plain looking lego on display

Creepy dolls area getting photo raped

For the average visitor, this con is definitely an eye-opener for many, but if you’ve been to overseas comic enthusiasts conventions, things are really very much different, and they usually have one thing- focus and a very large fanbase, in fact it’s the people themselves there which makes it such a big hit, but it’s no evident here.

One reason why I find this local con rather disappointing is that besides it’s rather commercialized feel, there is no solid targeted crowd, with toys, dolls, game consoles, manga, animation, Japanese, Taiwan, Americian comics all thrown in one area. It’s like the organisers just want to hold the event to make a quick buck or two. You can’t put them all together and it dilutes the feel and authenticity of each genre. Coupled with a weak fan base here, it just makes this con here feel kind of aimless, not to mention pointless. There is no exclusivity as well especially with almost all “collectables and comics” sold can be brought from any common comic store on the streets. But hey I am in no position to talk about all this, so only things will change when our comic fanbase here becomes bigger.

On the forefront, we won’t be looking forward to the size of comic cons we see in the States such as those by Marvel or Dark horse fans, neither will we be seeing a Blizzard con or an E3 equivalent on our shores too soon too, but hey at least this is some baby steps forward into realizing that in in the future to come.

Here is an interesting read from Dupont automobile painters, especially if you are in the design scene where colour tells more than it being just a plain dab of hue. From their surveys, it seems that Blue (and their varying shades) will still always be a favorite colour among many. While its still interesting to know that black is still the colour of sophistication for modern professionals and executives, let be white being the new chosen “purist” colour for ultra luxurious cars such a Rolls Royce’s and Lamborghinis. Here are their findings in a rundown of the favorite colours over the regions.

Asia Pacific
Dark blue metallic is popular and is being fine-tuned for that region. Candy whites and tri-coat pearl finishes also are extremely popular, confirming the 2007 DuPont Global survey finding that white had overtaken silver as the most popular color in Asia and North America. Luxury car buyers prefer black and mid-tone metallic grays, while medium-size cars favored champagne is over light silver.

Europe
Blue is the most important chromatic color in Europe (12% of the market). Black, overtook silver in popularity in Europe last year. Preferences are highly influenced by ecological concepts, with demand growing for light, pure and sophisticated looks.

Latin America
Achromatic ranges, including white, silver, gray and black, dominates consumer preference as reported by Wolstano Marin, DuPont color designer for Venezuela. While Green led the chromatic colors for several years, Blue now seems to be the most popular in that family with personal preference, fashion and resale value seem to be the major factors contributing to car color choice in the region.

North America
Blue also plays a role in American tastes, says Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color designer for North America. She sees lighter blues emerging with a reddish accent representing a clean, fresh trend. Medium and dark shades of blue are more greenish, evoking a modern feel.

I had been always a fan of Lego, having grown up with them since I was a kid, even I do occasionally build some contraptions of my own especially with the Lego Mindstorm series. So what do you get when you bind them and the world largest commercial passenger jet? You get the world’s largest Lego airplane model.

This Lego A380 is the largest aircraft model on display in LEGOLAND and is built entirely of over 75,000 LEGO bricks in eight colours. Situated at its exclusive display at “MiniWorld” in the main LEGOLAND Park in West Denmark, the SIA A380 model spans 2.9m in length, has a wingspan of 3.2m and is 1m tall.

It weighs a total of 125 kg including 100 kg of LEGO bricks, where the rest are made out of mainly supports, binding glue as well as the motors and speakers which spins the turbine blades and create sound effects. The SIA A380 model required the skills of the entire team of professional LEGO model builders at LEGOLAND and took 600 hours to produce.

You can view a short video of it here.

It’s Thursday already and for a note, I’ve recently beat the game, Test Drive Unlimited by Atari/Eden last Thursday, its kinda fun earning your filled crown having to complete all the missions and discover all the road of the replica Hawaiian island, just sad that no one plays this game now, but as again, that was stuff one week ago, now it’s very much TF2 to spend the time now, the Pyro achievements are cool!

It’s also good finishing up those old games I’ve brought and left lying around with no time to play. So as part of the stress buster ‘ol gaming traditions, together with beating Portal, C&C 3 Kanes wrath and getting all my achievements in Team Fortress 2, lets see what other game I have lying in my room with the box still unopened… Mmmm I have Tony hawk’s Underground 2, Armed and Dangerous, Rise of Nations, Halo, HL2 Episode 1/2, Gears of War, Hellgate london and Unreal Tournament 3. Mmmm choices choices…

It is official straight from Mr William Henry Gates III himself- on June 27th, Bill Gates will stop commuting to Microsoft’s Redmond campus on a daily basis, and begin full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he plans to donate his fortune of approximately $40 billion towards charitable causes. Bill Gates will retire from his day job as chief software architect of Microsoft, the company he founded more than three decades ago.

Gates said he is leaving gradually in order to smooth the transition of his duties to the two men who will assume them–chief technical officers Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, who have been named chief software architect and chief research and strategy officer, respectively, effective immediately. Steve Ballmer will still take the throne as the company’s key man, but Bill, despite his official announcement, Bill will still visit his Redmond office once per week, doing what Ballmer tells him to do.

There had been rather lots of speculation of what will become of Microsoft with the absence of their founder, and the problem is not just related to Microsoft as of yet- Apple is under speculation of a suitable successor as well, given the recent rumors of Steve Job’s progressive “thining-up” in all his press conferences together with his health problems.

Rather meaningful photo credit from Gizmodo

I can’t help noticing some new advertisements we are seeing around our bus stops lately, particularly those typically up on signboards by JC decaux which seems to litter all round the areas where I do my evening runs. It’s seems that the health promotion board is selling sports as a great way for both young and old to get their assess off the couches and workstations and out there to sweat it out, so as to interact and relieve stress as sated.

Speaking from my experiences, running is a indeed very good way to relieve work after a hard day, not to mention a good time to reflect on the day and prepare for the next. Nothing can beat a short 10km one after work and back home in time for Dinner. Well I guess it’s time people here discover the healthy way to end the work day as well.

Currently my runs planned for the year so far will be the New Balance Realrun 2008, Safra Sheares Bridge Run 2008 and nope me ain’t running the Wave run this year. I am sure there are quite a few runners out there I know who are planning on boycotting the wave run this year, and we saw that with the low attendance for this year’s Mt Faber run as well. But on the contrary, the recent Mt Faber run is a good one by VGO (so with the last), so we can take the Mt Faber and Wave run are independent events, despite being jointly organized by the same company. So do go ahead and participate in the Wave Run if you are intending to give them a second chance.

Been sticking to runs at most 12km for awhile, besides gym sessions. I will give the Singapore marathon this year a miss in preparation for next year’s London Marathon when I am up in the UK, thats where I will start bumping my my distances and hitting 1000km/year like what I did for 2007.

Whee! Shaun Chng.com has been selected in the judging round as the top 10 blogs in the competition for the Best blog design category! The voting round will open very soon the end of this month (around 30th June). I will be needing all of your support, yup you all my beloved my visitors to see the site well into the voting period! We can do this!

I will update all my site links for voting when the period opens, you won’t miss it then, so do check back and vote away!