Saw a familiar nick popup on the ICQ network, one which I haven’t seen in a very long time.

However as with nicks which I have not seen in a very long time, I have no idea who the person behind the nick is.

me: hello
him : hi
me: i forgot who you were. hee
him: I forgot who you were too =P
me: yah but i remember your nick
him: yep. been like 2 years since I last used icq

And thus we have no idea who each other is but do remember having conversations before. So started a very weird conversation of us trying to find out how in the world did we get each other’s contact.

Not from school cos he’s 7 years younger. Not from TFC (our clan was too famous not to know).

me: wonder how i got your icq contact
him: can’t remember =P. but I think we have each other on list since 4 or 5 years ago?
me: yah. i think more than 5 years ago.

Could be from a random chat but I found his nick too familiar, and so does he.

Started naming all our hangouts and stuff and found them all to be different. Not from church either. Even went on friendster to see if we had any common friend connection. No substantial connections.

me: you from ncc?
him: no
me: hmm.. ok another dead end
him: even if we did there’s a huge age gap =P for you to be my senior
me: yah so i was thinking more of gaming leh
me: 5-6 yrs ago you were like 12?
him: yep lol

In the end we just gave up trying to figure it out. Exchanged MSN contacts and just left it as that. We’ll be talking if we ever wanted to.

It seems that a large percentage of my contact list are filled with people like that. People whose identity I know, or once knew, or never at all.

Most of them are on ICQ since that was once the popular network and most failed to be updated during the “Great Migration” to MSN.

Now they remain as silent nicks, hidden from view, eternally offline.

Well this is nothing new. Have been procrastinating a lot more lately, or rather because there is stuff I need to do, especially those to do with writing.

There are entries I want to post but never really got to writing them down. I have a report due on Tuesday but I haven’t even started.

It’s this thing about writing that just makes me feel lazy. Like it’s such a chore to put down my thoughts into a written form and what more to organise it into some structure like what GP teachers teach.

Well it is easier to write about my day or rant about something but it still is hard to write about feelings.

Ah… feelings and emotions. Seems like I can never comprehend them let alone express them.

How wonderful it is to start the day with not having anywhere to run off to when you wake up, to be able to play the guitar and sing praises and worship for over an hour.

It’s not that I can really play well but I’m sure He don’t mind. After all, it is more than the song.

If only everyday can be like this. It should be.

“How marvellous, how wonderful
and my song shall ever be
How marvellous, how wonderful
is my saviour’s love for me”

Got a phone call from some guy who was a friend of my friend. Told me he was an engineer and had wanted to do some business and I was referred to as my friend told him I would be suitable for it.

Well I do get calls from people for projects or to help them in their business venture, usually on the IT side so this call didn’t faze me much.

Anyway I’m not really interested in doing business but I think it’s rude to turn away people before you hear them out. So I asked him what he needed me for but he said he can’t explain over the phone and that I should meet him. Well again nothing suspicious because usually IT business ideas are easier to explain in person so I agreed to meet up.

Since he mentioned he was doing some e-commerce business, I thought to introduce Jib too since he is interested in doing business and is currently unemployed, to at least make up for my lack of interest.

Met up with him tonight along with Jib, who caused me the usual inconvenience which I shan’t discuss, at least not here.

His initial small talk already felt wrong, like asking about what we want in life, how much we think we can earn and all that crap. Alarm bells already ringing but out of politeness decide to just sit through.

To cut the long story short it turned out to be a network marketing strategy. Not that I have anything against network marketing but it’s just not my cup of tea.

But what amazed me was that at first he actually talked about e-commerce and how it can bring consumers direct to the manufacturers, relating it to a pipeline to consumers. Then later he goes on confusing the terminology introduce by using the same term “pipeline” to refer to a totally different thing.

Any attempts to question that was quelled with him saying he can’t explain it well and that he’ll pass me a VCD to watch. Ok I’ll give the the benefit of doubt that he really might not be proficient in explaining but I just feel he’s avoiding the question.

E-commerce my foot. It’s just network marketing. As I said I have nothing against it, just that why do they have to disguise the strategy and mislead people initially, asking you to go for those functions and stuff find out more. Worse I have to pay to attend?!

That’s what I really dislike about the strategy. Why mislead me on the phone? I really hate that.

And don’t give me the reasons why, I’m not dumb I know why it’s done this way. I’ve been to presentations before and understand their concept. It’s just not something which I would like to do. That’s it.

I could retire in 5 years time, buy a yacht and go fishing for the rest of my life. Don’t you want the financial freedom to have control over your life? I’m sorry but as much as I would like to, I don’t want to have control over my life. Well most people just won’t understand that.

14,400 minutues/240 hours/10 days later, endless late nights, frutile battles with the elements, it’s finally DONE. All our hard work has come to fruition. We present to you Future Horizon’s http://www.ourmedia.org/node/104435.

allan in the dark room

the fight

Requires Quicktime 7 [Standalone Quicktime 7.0] [Quicktime Alternative]

The current clips will require the installation of Quicktime 7.0 Sorry for any inconveniences caused. Will be uploading a DivX version soon.

This was created for the Canon DV Festival 2005.

Comments are welcome. (Read : you better leave a comment)

Better yet, drop your comments at the Future Horizon blog itself.

Took a cab to Najib’s surprise birthday party at Settler’s Cafe. Having not been there before and being told that it’s at Clarke Quay, I just told the driver to go to Clarke Quay.

Well Clarke Quay is a specific location so the driver questioned us further. Thankfully Kewei did give Juz the address because Settler’s Cafe is not at Clarke Quay but along North Canal Road.

Was told people generally say it’s at Clarke Quay because it’s near the Clarke Quay MRT Station, which actually is at the very edge of the area known as Clarke Quay.

Found out that some of those driving there actually went to Liang Court and couldn’t find the place because that’s where Clarke Quay actually is.

Given the way prominent landmarks are named, it’s interesting to note how different groups of people will associate a place with different location.

One example the cab driver gave was if he is to pick up a teenager asking to go to “City Hall”, he’ll bring him to City Hall MRT Station. If he picks up a man carrying a suitcase in the morning peak hour asking to go “City Hall”, he’d better be brought to THE City Hall, i.e. Parliament House.

So next time, to prevent such misunderstandings, either 1) provide good, detailed directions or 2) just give the address or street name. Drivers usually look it up in the street directory and you won’t be blamed for given the wrong info.

So now, just don’t go the Boon Keng MRT Station to meet a friend at Upper Boon Keng. It’s actually at Kallang MRT.

Haven’t really been sleeping well for the past few days.

It’s not that I can’t fall asleep but my mind just don’t rest. Thoughts just keep flowing through in some muddled dream and I lie semi awake through most of the night.

Have a paper next week and the project dateline is looming, just when I need quality sleep the most.

It seems bleak but it’s weird that somehow I’m not really bothered by it.

With reference to Securing the Assignment Submission Protocol (Koh, Nov 05) which propose a way of securing the ASP against the attack highlighed in An Attack on Assignment Submission System (Teo, Nov 05), the author would like to comment on a possible weakness in the securing mechanisim, namely by questioning the validity of an assumptom made.

While the protocol goes to great length to ensure that k would be completely random and assumes to be hard to reproduce, the weak link is in the verification of the correctness of the signature.

The verification process is done my visually comparing a photograph of a swath of k against the actual colour of the signature. The human eye is easily tricked as can be seen in this example. Also taking a photograph quantizes k to one of about 65 million possible values. Coupled with the fact that lighting would corrupt the phototaking process, the validation key given the to students is not accurate given such a large threshold of error.

Therefore someone with malicious intent, Mallory does not have to reproduce the exact k which George picked but produce something close to the original which still lies within the large threshold of error. Furthermore, none of the students, including Bob has a record of the pattern created by Ah Meng thus Mallory can simply erase the existing signature with turpentine, and create a new pattern with his fake but undetectable k on a different mailbox, as in an adaptation to the attack described by Teo.