About kakuro, MPC and more…

September 12, 2006

first up, i’ve improved my kakuro timing to 1m28s. wow, what is my limit i wonder? the best part was that i wasn’t in the “competitive” mode to try to improve my score. in fact, i’m half asleep now, while adding this new entry. feel free to skip through paragraphs if you find that i talking things that dont make sense/appeal to you.

next on the list: my thoughts about MPC. what is MPC? Media Player Classic. i find that MPC is a pretty good player and is currently rated (by me of course) better than VLC (go google if you dont know what it is) player. why do i say it’s better? it can display font & styling of subtitles in mkv/ogm files tha VLC seem to fail most of the times. it could be that my VLC settings are not right, so please do enlighten me if i am really a noob at using VLC, lol. but besides that, i prefer the time scrollbar of MPC over VLC, easier for me to see i move the timer thing to what time period liao. VLC one totally cannot see (or once again due to my noobness which i dont think can happen twice lah). well that’s about it.

i dont know what’s up with singnet. totally cannot sign in @ MSN messenger, except WebMSN (as tested by hwz ppl, i couldn’t be bothered). not very sure if starhub users are affected or not. but apparently it’s not MSN’s fault as Jeff can sign in from camp (he’s on duty if u’re wondering). though surfing and downloading is still smooth (acceptably smooth for me at least.), its performance recently is really quite disappointing. over the weekend, while playing GW with zong and wk&bro, the lag is just -____- bad. and it isn’t just my problem as wk&bro are also singnet users. since we live in different parts of sg, it would most likely be singnet side problem rather than at my end. what’s more, connections to sites can be unstable at times during the weekend. complains on hwz is so rampant that i gave up reading after a while as everyone was bitching, bitching and bitching about singnet. oh well, it’s been termed “stinknet” and “sinknet” by some hwz ppl. now, i’m thinking if i should recontract with singnet or just switch to starhub (otherwise nicknamed as LagOnline), but imo, singapore broadband is just not up to standard, considering how much sg likes to boast about being technologically advanced, being a hub and what not. hopefully things turn for the better, or at least dont get any worse. it’s quite bad already -____-. oh, did i mention that some hwz people actually blame IMF for the lagness cos as everyone knows, they have dunno how many kilometres of cables up just for this event to cater for all the computers and internet and what have you.

speaking about duties, i’ve finished last week’s medic cover. that leaves 1 more medic cover, the morning after Change Of Command parade for CMC. of all times, the parade has to start at 1730hrs on a friday. that’s sooooooooo great. (if you can’t see the sarcasm, u should get your eyes checked). oh, back to the topic about medic cover. time passes sooo much faster when you have another medic doing duty with you. there’s this medic posted in to HQMC, thus i *should* be guiding him through his first duty, like where to report, what to expect and some of the standard procedures. i believe i did a decent job in orientating him for the job except for the fact that i feel *abit* ashamed that my medic skills are so cmi. well that’s kinda expected but nonetheless still sad case. good thing i probably only have another duty in october (hope it’s 1 not 2). when reservist comes, i bet i have forgotten 99.99% of the stuff i’ve learnt. hahahaha.

about IMF: the only good thing about IMF so far imo is that apparently that my ops duty has been removed as a result of a reshuffle of duty schedule in view of the IMF thing. hope jeff isn’t lying (i believe he isn’t…). then again, i hope that wont result in me having 2 ops duty next month. now the bad things about IMF (yeah blame me for my non far-sightedness in the significance and impact of IMF meeting being held in SG. i’m short sighted. xD). so much money is spent on this event, so much man-hours/power, so much inconvenience caused, so wayang (this one like everyone agrees). yeah, those are the main stuff i can recall *at this point in time*, though i probably wont bother to add on to the list even if i do recall others. oh yah, there’s something that struck me (not literally). IMF security very tight on ground (and underground even, see the sewer/drain covers), but i dont really see them (media) “advertising” about “air” defence. can’t terrorism/attacks come from air? dont get me wrong, it’s not like i’m wishing some bombing occurs or what, but having spent so much money & resources on security and “advertising”, i dont really see anything being done about possible attacks from the air. maybe they’ve considered the area based on the heights of the buildings in the region. BUT then again, who would have thought US commercial planes will ram into the WTC in NY 5 years ago (incidentally it’s 911 today). hopefully history wont repeat itself, or the airforce is everready (no, not the battery), after all they are a force that’s *supposed* to be “above all”.

enough of IMF stuff even i’m bored typing all those. i’m sure those reading this will be feeling worse. or would they even bother reading? i think this should be my longest entry since i’ve moved to i.ph. longest as in amount of text written, not absolute length on your browser space cos pictures >>> text.

with enough words to bore you, i’d like to say that 87 days from now i would have gotten my pink IC, and i have 45.5 work days, which can be further reduced i *hope*.

p.s. i find 周杰伦’s 夜的第七章’s music composition quite nice. i have weird taste i know… as for the vocal part i’ll just keep comments to myself.
Finished up Ergo Proxy today. Too sci-fi for me. hic.
for some reason, the timestamp is 8.5hours faster.