February 2004 Archives

I just learnt that my personal tutor in law school, Prof John Parkinson, passed away on 19 February 2004 of a brief illness.

I remember the first time I met him back in 1997. I knocked on his door at the appointed meeting time. I was standing in a hallway lined with with many other such doors.

"Enter," a crisp voice at the other end, called.

There was a man at the end of the room, seated at his desk. I was surprised by how he looked, because all the other professors I knew of, were old, balding, bearded and grey-haired.

"You look young for a professor," I ventured.

He smiled. "I look younger than I am."

John, as I called him, was a distant mentor in my first year. I only started seeing more of him when he became one of our Contract Law lecturers in our second year. I still remember how he described to us the case of the exploding coffin with a straight face, which made us roar with laughter. He apparently had a more devastating effect on my seniors, who were seen swooning and gushing about how smart he was, after one of his lectures.

I started talking more to him when he became my Company Law tutor in my final year. He gave me suggestions on how to improve my scores (which were admittedly not fabulous), and was willing to mark my practice essays promptly.

Hearing of his death prompted me to check my inbox for the emails he sent to me. I last wrote to him when I was applying for my Masters course at USC, last year. He agreed to be one of my referees. I was glad he even remembered me.

Rest in peace, John... God bless your family.

[Update: The Guardian had a respectful and sincerely written obituary on him on April 9, 2004. ]

We'll be looking around for an MP3 player this weekend so if you know of anything good, please post a suggestion. I haven't had time to do much research, and most of the people I know don't use any.

The storage capacity for our intended gift, doesn't have to be in the 30-40 GB range, but it has to be easy to use and sync with a PC. I'm thinking 256MB at least, and possibly up to 4GB.

Whatever the case, it shouldn't be too clunky or complicated. It would be nice to have a voice recorder and FM radio as well.

Naturally we considered the iPod first, but found it too pricey - and we were told it needed a separate Firewire cable to hook up to our computer. I don't like the idea of having to separately purchase and attach a microphone, either.

I hear Sony-Ericsson has a Bluetooth-enabled audio player coming out soon. I also picked up the latest copy of T3 and looked at the iPod alternatives.

Still I think nothing beats a visit to the shop, to try out the products and see if they're suitable for our individual needs. I'm going to look at some models from Creative, for reasons of portability and features.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try converting my Nokia 6600 into an MP3 player. I encountered a conversion failure yesterday using the PC Suite, while trying to beam it through my laptop + bluetooth dongle. If it works, we might be better off just getting a larger multimedia card.

[Thanks for the info, folks. As for those in Singapore, here's a great iPod deal from DBS. Thanks to Kim for the tip!]

Some of you may have started receiving emails about how a certain young man was horribly maimed in a robbery, found God, had plastic surgery and became a world famous actor who has now produced 'The Passion of the Christ'.

However, before you forward it on, it is only an urban legend. Mel Gibson did get his face bashed up in a fight, but he didn't join a freak show. I'm sure however that his conviction led him to produce this movie.

A great way to use CSS for different devices.

Microsoft may be slapped with US$100 million fine, forced to split up software.

Yahoo versus Google - a comparison on 'word density'. Time to check out Yahoo's new search algorithms.

I was surfing around at the Digital Homes magazine website, and chanced upon an interesting service, Zinio. For a subscription fee, it lets you download digital copies of magazines, page for page, onto your hard drive.

It may be ideal for people who love reading magazines but don't want to clutter up the place / kill trees / spend too much money. Also, say you're looking for an interesting article you came across a while ago, but now can't seem to find the page. Zinio is able to search for terms similar to the way Adobe Acrobat reader does. There are hot spots for web links listed in articles, so you can visit the site in question. And the page-flipping effect make it feel like you are going through a normal magazine (you can turn it off if it bugs you).

To view the digital mags, you need to install Zinio's reader software. This allows you to view the magazines on normal PCs as well as tablet PCs and Macs (Panther). You can view your mags on different computers, as long as you download the magazine files again. You can even mark out certain pages to email to other people. One downside is the huge file space usage and download time - an issue of the image-intensive Architectural Record was 23MB. Thank goodness I have a CD writer. And broadband.

I'm trying out some free samples of back issues now. If I'm happy enough I may sign up for a subscription or three. [Assuming I can't find the same content online!] Coming to think of it, the paper equivalent would have cost me a good amount of overseas postage too.

So many things have happened in the past few days, yet I hadn't the time to recount them on my blog until now.

On Saturday, I learnt to my delight that I am getting the Korg Triton Extreme as a birthday present (three months to go). That's absolutely brilliant, or might I say in Ali G-speak, "Wicked!" of my parents. They knew I was going to use my savings to buy it, and since I do put my existing equipment to good use (abuse, actually) they probably felt it was a worthwhile investment.

Earlier that day, I had also recorded a piece which I wrote back in Bristol, on the Clifton Hill House piano, for my mother who requested a CD of it for her birthday (which was on Sunday). Yes, the person who inspired the song also qualifies for a copy which can be collected upon return to Singapore ;-)

We missed the big match as we had dinner at Blu, but as expected Arsenal beat Chelsea again. I was also glad to hear that Smithy scored one for Leeds - best of all against the Red Devils.

Today I got to test pianos and electronic keyboards during lunch time. It was fun, I didn't want to leave! This is the third time I've been willingly dragged along by people to test keyboards before they made a purchase. Anyway this time the instrument will be used to play worship music - all the glory to God.

If the Runaway Jury was a gripping book, I'd say the Runaway Jury was a gripping movie. I never read the former, but I just enjoyed watching the latter.

Dustin Hoffman was, of course, impeccable as the prosecutor. He's one of the few actors who can fit into a role so easily, you'd think he really was the character all along. It's funny to think that when I was young, every time I saw him in a movie I would instinctively think, "Tootsie!".

And I realised, after watching Serendipity and this movie, that I quite like John Cusack. That boyish look, those purty li'l lips... Even if he was playing a manipulator he'd look all innocent and sweet.

The show also demonstrates real-life legal and social issues which people have been debating since laws were invented. Was it all for money (for both defence and prosecution)? If the prosecution won, would that open the floodgates for all other manufacturers of just about everything else in the world, to be sued as well?

For most of the show I was left guessing until nearly the end. Go watch it. It kept me on the edge of my seat for hours.

When I started my first job in Project Eyeball, I probably took for granted the fact that almost everyone there spoke and wrote great English.

A programmer colleague said this was the most well-spoken lot he'd ever worked with, but having come fresh from a law school in England and an English-speaking home, I didn't think he was serious.

Then when I moved out into other sectors and started meeting more people, I realised that it wasn't the norm in Singapore. People mixed up their 'have' and 'has'; added an 's' to uncountable nouns, tangling up the he's from the she's and getting 'me' and 'I' confused.

What irks me greatly is hearing people speak with a smattering of Mandarin and Chinese. They use nouns of important words in English, while the rest of their statements are made in Mandarin. Perhaps it is a product of our bilingual education system that some of us have turned into a Jack-of-all-trades where it comes to languages. While my Mandarin is far from intelligible, I try to make complete sentences in the same language, even if it is to order a bowl of noodles with chilli.

We should aim to be proficient in one language without having to rely on other forms of lingo, or else it might be more tricky, or less natural, the next time we have to deal with foreigners who may not speak our dialect or understand Singlish.

Another lot of Singaporeans have an affinity for bombastic words. At a writing course I attended for the past two days, we did a short exercise trimming down lengthy phrases into one or two words which had exactly the same meaning.

I'm thinking that this built-in need for complexity comes about largely due to insecurity. By filling up the expression of your ideas with big words, you think the reader will be impressed and not notice the holes in your argument so easily. We were told that smart bosses aren't fooled. Lee Kuan Yew himself preferred clear and concise papers because those were actually harder to write than long, flowery ones. That was an interesting thought!

So that's what I've been up to the past few days - learning and reflecting on the state of our nation. Once again, thank you for bearing with my silence. Good night.

Another Nokia 6600 pic for my readers. The Touche bottles were backlit, giving a lovely glowing effect.

I was browsing through our government's Bird Flu website and this bit of FAQ made me laugh:

Q. How do humans get infected?

It is rare for bird flu to infect humans. In the few cases where humans are infected, the virus is transmitted through close contact with infected chickens. You can only catch the bird flu virus if an infected chicken coughs or sneezes directly into your face, or if you breathe in particles from its droppings.

I never realised chickens could cough and sneeze. Hee hee.

I love the new Mozilla Firefox. But I noticed something funny this morning when I tried to access some of my usual news websites.

The scrollbar was missing. When I tried to get around this problem by using the PgUp and PgDn keys, my page appeared to scroll down, then a split second later bounced back to the top again. The normal 'down' arrow worked fine, though.

A quick search on the Mozilla website didn't reveal anything, but I did find out that other users experienced the same scrolling problem (see the comments postings on Firda's entry here).

Turns out that if you use alternative themes for Firefox 0.8, the scrollbars won't show. So for now I'll bear with the default version until the bug is fixed.

[Update #1: It appears that the scrollbar works with other themes I've installed, so it could be a problem with the individual themes and not Firefox. Thanks to Cheah Chu Yeow for the tip. ]

[Update #2: Those of you using Accessible Image Tab Rollovers (a la Fast Company) need to delete an extra line of code to make the rollovers work. More details over at Simplebits. ]

None of us at home are doing anything special this Valentine's Day. As with many of my colleagues and friends, we think this occasion has become too commercialised. And it's not like we can't do something special for each other on any other day.

I know of women who have told their husbands not to buy flowers for them today because it's not worth the jacked-up prices. I suppose anniversaries and birthdays are more important, because they're personal to the couple. Nevertheless I'm sure the restaurants will be at full capacity tonight, with couples happily munching on set meals.

I wonder if anyone's come up with something more original tonight?

I decided to update some parts of my site today. Nothing major - my reading list and blogroll. I'm also creating a new section about my own music but that will take some more time.

I finally learnt that Movable Type 3 alpha testing is available. 'Shows how often I have time to surf the web these days. As excited as I was over this new version, honestly I don't have the time to play around with alphas, so I'll pass on this opportunity and see what Lucian has to say about it.

I'm contemplating getting a new keyboard and am sorely tempted by the new Korg Triton Extreme. The special thing about it is that it has the features of the other Triton models and more, and ... it's blue, not silver. It isn't cheap. I'm waiting for it to hit the shops in Singapore to see if I'm comfortable with it.

Alternatively, if I could get my hands on a Fender Rhodes I'd be one very happy person. After listening to what Bill Evans (and possibly Jamiroquai) has done with the vintage electric piano, I'd lock myself in at home and play it all day long.

Ultimately I don't need 2,000 sounds in a keyboard. What I want are specialised programs - the electric piano with tremolo; that jazz percussion brush sound; rising cymbals; the urban snare; a rich acoustic bass; real-sounding strings; the 'film noir-esque' muted trumpet ... perhaps a few good synths and some good organ vibes. Also it should be easy to sequence, save and write tracks onto CD.

In other news, here's an interesting article for fellow musicians-cum-Flash designers from Keyboard Magazine.

I watched The Last Samurai last night / this morning. I usually cringe at anything with Tom Cruise in it, but whenever he didn't speak too much, I felt he put up a decent performance. [Potential spoilers ahead, depending on how you see it]

...Or bits of tit? Janet Jackson's right breast has drawn 60 times more web searches than the 'Paris Hilton' sex tape and 80 times more than 'Britney Spears'.

People are blogging about Longhorn, the code name for Microsoft's latest operating system. Here's Microsoft's own RSS feed. Incidentally I will hopefully be getting a preview of good things to come at a seminar later in the morning.

I don't know what happened to the Lean Dean campaign machine, but that is one flashy events calendar.

It's fairly easy to use (this demo lets you edit entries), though it could improve on initial load time - subsequent updates were much faster. Also, visitors aren't able to select or copy the event descriptions, nor click on email links to contact officials.

My home computer broke down. Sort of. You see, the CPU's power supply is running, but my monitor ("No signal input"), keyboard and mouse don't seem to think so. I have no idea how to fix it, and the guy we usually call for help seems to be out of town. I tried working on my office laptop which I brought home (yes, there's loads of work to do) but strangely it can only connect to URLs which I have visited recently. Which is very, very strange. So I'm hijacking my dad's PC for a while. Suggestions to solve either problem are welcome.

I finally cooked something in the new apartment. Something simple: bolognese sauce, to go with pasta (which I will boil tomorrow, which is the day of my company's pot luck lunch). Only problem is we don't have a microwave oven here. My fingers still have a garlicky-onion smell. Eugh.

From one dinner conversation, I discovered that at least six of my younger cousins blog. Interestingly, the other cousins closer to my age don't seem to have weblogs, but the ones who are still in primary school have started blogging. One of them started blogging after her class started a group blog.

My sister's gone back to Perth today so you know who's back to doing the laundry. Actually, popping clothes into a machine is easy. Ironing is tough. So's any form of cleaning up!

While resting between chores, I also watched Federer beat Safin (the Swiss is in peak form, but I think the Russian's cuter). Now I'm going to continue watching Chelsea beat Blackburn (I'm OK with both teams, but hey, if you had 100 million quid to spare, this sort of performance ought to be a given).