S'pore firm claims patent to image search : News : Internet - ZDNet Asia

What the?! I think my English needs fixing because after reading what they've described as "Use" of their products on their website, twice over, I still don't fully understand what they mean as actual usage. Is the article exaggerating the issue, or did the press release from the company not cover the issue accurately?

Clue #20080529: I know I'm a geek when...

Even after work, I try to rework the ERP rates table off the LTA website for my mobile phone. And end up writing more bits of custom code in Javascript. All that for fun! whee!

Don't think this is a hoax

Don't think that was a hoax. Coconut crab, rather.

definitions definitions definitions

What's the difference: a Masters degree vs a Graduate Diploma?

Apparently a Masters degree is worth more than Grad. Dip. it seems. But why then, are Masters courses in town made available for completion in possibly one year, whereas the latter can take 3 years?

I'm inclined to translate the definitions based on what I've learnt from people around me. That a Grad Dip falls between a Masters' and a Bachelors' degree. And it comes with more specialisation. So it seems to cover more depth than breadth. But yet the Masters' would seem to be more high level.

Is this something like mobile phone networks, where a Bachelor is 2G, the Grad Dip a 2.5G, followed by a Masters being 3G?

Or can I otherwise liken it to part of our Singapore tertiary education system? Bachelor = Secondary school, Grad Dip = ITE, Masters = Polytechnic, Doctorate = JC? How are these things being assessed and valued by companies locally? I'm perplexed.

I'm still shopping around for a good postgrad course to take up, when I came across the above. If you have any (part-time ones) to recommend , do tell. I'm still trying to weigh cost/quality for what I've collected thus far.

INSEAD/Chicago GSB are of the BMW/Mercedes price range, whereas SIM/Kaplan/SMU are the Toyota/Honda price range.

Yes I realise I like to do analogies. Paints pictures better that way, I noticed.

World Court awards contested Pedra Blanca (aka Pedra Branca) island to Singapore

A piece of rock in the middle of the sea. With a lighthouse. Operated by Singapore. Disputed by Malaysia. Now what?

Singapore won Pedra Blanca, Middle Rocks goes to Malaysia, and South Ledge has a big question mark over it. So what? How does this affect both countries economically? Shipping lines won't change in major ways because of this. Watercraft will still have to travel and reach their land destinations regardless.

And why on earth did Malaysia not at some stage stand up and say "Hey Singapore, move over. We'll handle the lighthouse and administer the island now." Then at least if they had decided they want to take ownership of the lighthouse it'd be more justified that they get it. Instead of doing that, they just go "we own that island" but not take responsibility for the lighthouse on it? Sure the Brits built the lighthouse and it's been cared for by Singapore. But if they'd been more concerned about the shipping lines affected by this lighthouse, this case might have been more to their advantage.

In any case, life goes on. People may get affected emotionally, but the only livelihood that's really on the line is the lighthouse keeper(s), a Singaporean I'm sure, who may lose his/their job(s) over this had Singapore not won.

The International Court of Justice has decided, so let's move on. The media's gotten it all blown up anyway.

PS: I've noticed the spelling mistake. It should be Pedra Branca instead of Pedra Blanca. The article linked to the title of this post has that stated correctly in the article though.

simply hectic

As I don't have much time to rant, here's a news brief/summary of the situation at the office.

1x ICT (aka reservist, back in June)
1x MC (his whole family also sick!?)
1x newborn (discharging from hospital today, after labour, 3 months leave starting right away)
1x meeting attendee (80% of the time)
1x The Boss (does whatever a boss has to do, who apparently is on MC today as well)
2x freshies (sure, they've got more experience under their belt, but they're still somewhat new to this company's system)

At the end of the equation, there's one person left: me.

Go figure.

PS: The boss is on MC today! @#$%

PPS: FWIW, I just got my new road tax disc in the mail last night. I'd gotten my car on 21st May 2007. So this means that I'm officially one year into my car ownership. Amazing how time flies...

PPPS: The shitpile of work still isn't letting up. I'm expecting workload to hit Nargis proportions come next week.

muffypoo - Google Search

i just tried to google myself. needless to say, because i hardly use my real name online, nothing much could be found of me like that. so i worked on my more common alias instead. amazingly, i came up as the first item in the results. my deviantart account at least. then my friendster account as well, and something more silly, my nick in this game IdleRPG.

how would your search turn out?

ps: i found out that i'm also
a) some 22yo brit chick
b) an account on some stock image site i don't know about
c) a 59yo woman living in California
d) a 20yo texan chick, called Nikky

i know, i know... they're all... females. something's wrong with my choice of web aliases. so bite me.

Working Nintendo Coffee Table Video

Working Nintendo Coffee Table - Watch more free videos

amazing work done!

my CEO on the tele

We have the TV on channel 8 and they were showing a re-run of this show "Health in Pulse" when I noticed a familiar face. The guest doctor they'd invited on to this variety show was supposedly a specialist, and the topic they had on for this episode was about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

bwahahaha!!! According to the Chinese version of the article, this show aired in Oct 2005, so no wonder he looks much younger than he is now... =x

But it's still so weird to see the big boss on air. I suppose he was still on the way up back then but he looks slightly... slimmer. xD

The Incredible Machine

Those were the days... I was having a quick conversation with a colleague when we brought up the topic about this computer game. If you've heard of Rube Goldberg contraptions, you can build one in this game. It was loads of fun back then.

April Fools' Day RFC - Wikipedia

This is a collection of ultra-geek humour on wikipedia. RFCs were part of the building blocks of the world wide web... So in essence, these (geekily) amusing documents were started by the forefathers of the Internet. Really geeky! xD

For example, here's something about pigeons (aka avian carriers)...

AjaxTrans

This is a very interesting attempt from a 15yo! Sure he's 17 now but doing this translation on-the-fly with Ajax is cool proof of concept for something useful. Now if only somebody can implement this as a plug-in for some IM application like Meebo or MSN Messenger. Typing in broken Japanese is better than not knowing how to type at all!

how would you pronounce "!xobile" as a word?

Ever heard of click consonants? If you saw the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, then you might have heard the little African man speaking in his native tongue, to which nobody else really understands what he was talking about. So apparently this is the real deal, as I'd found out. Interestingly enough, there seems to be more than just the simple click as I discovered that there are numerous other forms of clicks that can be voiced out.

Rummaging through wikipedia, I stumbled upon this. There aren't a lot of information online regarding this but it still seems quite amazing.

I started on this thanks to Russell Peters. Here's an excerpt from his stand-up a while back with the !xobile portion.

without StreetDirectory.com, we still CAN!

Here's a little tip to fellow Singaporeans out there. No doubt, we've lost functional use of StreetDirectory. Their website is back up after the fiasco with the Singapore Land Authority, with the exception of their maps. Now the government arm has even come up with their own version of the local maps on their very own site.

Nevertheless, let us not forget the one other hero still surviving amid all this. You might have heard of it, and forgotten about it. But it appears that can.com.sg is still alive and kicking. They have similar functions to streetdirectory with the only difference is in their website being less specific. Also, one other down side is the maps require use of Internet Explorer. The site doesn't appear to work properly under Firefox.

With that said, you should have a rough idea of where _else_ you can go to online to search for routes and places on our little island. Good luck!

Building the Real Iron Man | Popular Science

I just caught Ironman with rachie last night! The movie was fantastic! The show was very cool with its effects, and the cars... :~ Tony Stark had the Audi R8 and the whole bunch of cars in his garage, including the hot rod was so pretty.

But enough of all that gushing. That was comic science fiction. This video is something more realistic. It is a prototype still in the works, with superhuman strength and stamina. Although it can't fly and have built-in rockets (yet) it's going to pave the way for better things to come!

Only thing that it's going to need is that "arc reactor" that's keeping Tony Stark alive. If only that part of technology is realised sooner.