Witness something on the MRT just the other day when I was on the way home after watching MI:3.

I was in the east bound train when it pulled into Bedok station. Just across the platform the west bound train was pulling in at the same time. The doors of our train open and a guy holding a skateboard walked out of the train towards the other train.

Just as he approached the opposite train doors of the west bound train, it opened and a girl stepped out and he passed the skateboard to her. After exchanging some quick greetings, the guy walked towards the escalator and the girl crossed the platform and boarded the east bound train just as the crowd finished alighting.

Such timings I have only seen in spy movies.

Had a bad bout of comment spam some time ago which even fooled WP Hashcash which I have been using then. Unwilling to make everyone fill in some unreadable Captcha image, I installed Spam Karma 2.

And all was well… until now.

My shoutbox just got spammed with 300+ entries! And that’s after passing it through the normal WP filters, which admittedly isn’t very stong.

So what’s a programmer to do?

Simple. Just recode the shoutbox to tap into Spam Karma’s rather efficient anti-spam system. But that is not without first looking (for my first time) at how Spam Karma actually works. It is a really neat design but doesn’t really have the API to just ‘tap’ into it, so I did the next best thing: Enter each shout entry as a new comment, let Spam Karma do its job, then take out the comment and put it into the shoutbox. With that it should work for most anti-spam plugin that works off the WP comment posting process.

As much as I know, this is the only shoutbox which integrates with your WP anti-spam plugin. =)

So no more spam! The same spammer tried again when I was testing the new version and it works perfectly. But if you’re somehow unable to tag, just drop a comment and I’ll look to it.

Oh and thanks Kerwee for notifying me so soon.

Finished my last paper last Thursday. Didn’t want to leave early hoping to write 2 more paragraphs which might make a difference. Ended up staying for 30 mins after the paper while they keep recounting and recounting.

So arranged to go shopping with Cheesecake after that - shopping at Sim Lim that is. =P Met Dan Dan at the bus stop and he decided to go get something at Sim Lim too.

But first stop was at Sim Lim Tower where I needed to get electrical components. Cheesecake looked really blur in the shop, surrounded by so many tiny little electrical stuff which she has never knew existed. Just imagine her holding the little box walking around while I find and dump components into it.

Next Panasonic miniDV tapes at $4 each from G&G, which I think it’s the lowest you can get in the market without mass order. w00t.

Walked around Sim Lim and got a 80-wire IDE cable and Dan Dan got his DVDs and BenQ 1640 burner, while my main intention is to get a stick of RAM for my laptop. Bumped into Kaifeng who asked what I was doing here. Funny thing was he was convincing me to get a memory upgrade to play WOW.

Kingston SO-DIMM RAM

The first shop (which I forgot the name) I wanted to buy from explicitly stated in signs posted all around the counter and even told me that there will be no exchange for incompatibility and that I should bring my laptop down to try before buying. Ok so I went to Video Pro which was $1 more and they said the same thing.

So I went back down on Friday with my laptop, but now there’s a catch: I will have to pay $10 for them to test out the RAM that I’m buying. If it’s not compatible then I don’t have to pay but if it is, then I’ll have to pay $10 on top of the buying price.

Now this does not make sense. What kind of flawed logic is that? Their argument is that it cost money to repackage an opened RAM package. But if that’s the case, then shouldn’t the $10 be levied if you return an incompatible stick?

Now since the sign said that there will be administrative charge for such returns, I asked how much would it be. Their reply, it depends on how you open the package and how damaged it is. So I asked what if they open it for me, in the way to incurr the least admin charges they said that’s why they’re charging $10 for their “opening” services, but free if it is found incompatiable and has too be sent for repackaging. What a shitload of bull. I wonder how many people they have conned into paying the extra $10. To hell with their “company policy” I’m leaving.

So I went down to Video Pro and said I wanted a stick and brought my laptop down to test. The guy who attended to me was making jokes which only he thinks are funny (hmm.. sounds familar) said they charge $5 for testing. Now thinking such weird policy might be store wide and that other shops are selling it at more than $5, I decided to go ahead.

So the guy opens my laptop and sees how ancient it is a joked again that it’s $5 for every year, so that’s about $15. But the nice thing was that when he keyed the final price into the POS computer and asked the boss to verify, the boss deducted $5 amd mumbled something. So the guy was like, Wah you lucky boss is in a good mood today. That’s why you should come to Video Pro.

Haha… ok I dunno if the boss was really in a good mood or it’s a marketing gimick but I had it tested and still got it for $9 cheaper than that stupid shop. Anyway more RAM is really shiok, and as Weijian says, a memory upgrade feels better than a processor upgrade.

—

On a side note, as we were leaving Sim Lim on Thursday, I pointed out the Canon XL2 on display to Cheese in one of the ground floor shops and she went, “Oh… is that one of those $700 camera?”
“Cheesecake! The XL2 cost more like around $7000!”
“Oh…”

The Canon XL2

If you have this

and this

then you will need this:

Just don’t try to get it from here as you are required to make a “donation” to get it. Last time I checked donation implied voluntarily.

Of course iTunes will not work on Windows 98 but there are other free and better alternatives you can find on the internet, like YamiPod and EphPod.

So after spending over two hours searching for and downloading the drivers, trying to install and replace the existing USB drivers by trial and error, and we all know how “plug and play” Windows 98 is, the two devices could finally communicate. But what was fun was seeing how the once completely unresponsive iPod when plugged in slowly became more connected in stages.

At first we couldn’t even get the iPod to charge. Rewiring the USB connections and installing some other drivers got enough power to get the iPod to its charging state with the battery icon. More driver replacing brought it to the “Do not disconnect” state with Windows detecting a new hardware but refusing to install the iPod drivers. Manual intervention was required to replace the existing driver.

Finally “Apple iPod” and “USB Mass Storage Device” appeared on the Device Manager and all is well. Why must they make something so simple so hard?

So I went did a second cut of my film, after being very disturbed by some parts. The story doesn’t change much, just some scenes are made easier to watch.

Watch the second cut at OurMedia or download it directly here.

For people using MacOS, I have no idea why there is yet to be a Mac version of the XviD codec. But you can download a mod here.

Actually after watching the second cut there are still portions which I’m not fully satisfied with. But then who will ever be? So I decided to just stop at two. =P

By the way, we got an A- for this film. Dr Edna commented that she “like the non-linear narrative and the way that you’ve constructed same scenes from different perspectives… However, what i find problematic is this report: it nicely details what the film is NOT… That’s a major weakness.”

Well I didn’t really care about the report anyway, I just want to shoot a film. We were showed a couple of other students works in lecture and though they had their own weaknesses, their story seems nicer than ours. Makes me kinda doubt my abilities in film making. Maybe I just need to find a good script writer. =P