Too much Tea can make you Sick

When I was sick, I used to drink lots of hot tea. Tea is a good drink as it is soothing and hot. That combination really alleviates all the symptoms related with sickness.

Yesterday, I was somewhat sick. However after drinking litres of tea, I felt great, and even in the evening, I was strong and confident enough to get out of home and hit a few golf balls. However after that, I had trouble sleeping. Too much tea = too much caffeine - which in turn made it difficult for me to sleep. At the end, I didn't catch a wink, and got sick again in the morning.

Careful, and don't end up sick like me by trying to get to smart for his own good.

Safe Internet on Public Terminals

Using public computers is a risky endeavor, and there are certainly numerous ways that you can easily get hacked. That is especially risky if you are logging to accounts that deal with money (e.g. credit card transaction and etc), in which you can easily get into alot of trouble.

Due to that, I would like to write just a few short tips that might help keep you save if you are planning to use the Internet on Public Terminals. I'll try to keep the guidelines short and easy :P

1) Don't use public terminals when on the go!
If it isn't necessary don't use public terminals if possible. If you don't expose yourself, you won't get into trouble. However this isn't quite possible is it?

2) Access only low priority accounts
If you really need to access your accounts on public terminals, it is also a good idea to access low priority accounts. In other words, access emails that are not critical to you. Don't access your bank online from public terminals! That is certainly a really dangerous thing to do.

3) Logout and Delete all Cookies and Caches from Your Browser after Finishing Usage
This is one method that has been highly touted as a way to keep yourself especially safe when you are logging into a public termainal. Though this method can prevent most kinds of unauthorized access to your site, certain programs embedded in public computers by hackers such as keyboard loggers can easily figure your account and password easily. Due to this, there is another precaution that could help.

4) Copy and Paste Passwords Letter by Letter
Here is one under-utilized technique that can easily prevent keyboard loggers from finding your account and password. Try opening up a random website and copy letters from the webpage to fill up your account and password when you want to log into any of your account. This can prevent simple keyboard loggers from knowning your password as all it can see is a series of copy and pastes without the letters saved.

These techniques discussed here is just a simple rudimentary way to protecting yourself when using Internet on public terminals. It still can't prevent from advanced forms of hacking from the most dedicated hackers, but at least it is a quick guideline to keep yourself safe. On a short note, this doesn't cover the proces of selecting good passwords or segregating your accounts to limit damage when a hack has occured :P

Unexpected Hero

Getting to my work place is quite a long transit. First of all I have to get from my home to the bus stop which is a 5 minute walk. The next step is to take a 20 Km trip accross the city on an express bus. This part of the journey is deceptionally fast, as going on the expressway literally on the opposite way of where must the traffic are, the trip takes usually only half an hour which is a short time compared to all the inner city traffic jam. After debarking from the bus, I have to cross the bridge, and walk another short transit to a shuttle bus (the red pickups) before I could reach my work place. This process usually takes me about an hour to complete a single trip.

In most of the cases, the trip here are usually uneventful. However a few days back, things weren't as simple as it turned out. As I got off the express bus, there were a few people that usually use the same route as I do. On this day, things were mostly the same, except that during my walk from the busstop to the shuttle bus - which was about 500 meters, I met this man that was dressed in short jeans, and a red shirt that didn't cover the waist. As seeing a somewhat odd fellow, my usual reaction is to take a long route around the person. As I was walking past him, he was muttering all sort of non-sense - in which I ignored, knowing that it is best to avoid these types of people. However as I walked past him, I heard a scream, and a young lady (probably a student in one of the schools close by) ran past me, and grabbed my hand, and told me that she was harassed. As I turned back, I could see that I was in between the crazy person I mentioned earlier and she was behind my back. As I looked at him and sized up, I could see he was mutting all sort of nonsense before turning sideways and shouting at a telephone booth. A few seconds later he walked back and shooted at a trashcan. As seeing he wasn't quite interest in us anymore, we decided to walk off.

As we briskly walked on, the young lady gave a call and quickly hopped on the cab while I continued my transit.

Afer all that has happened and as it sunk into me, I couldn't help by wonder how things could have been very very different. As in this case, I was lucky, as I was only confronted by a crazy person which in most cases were quite harmless. If the person was a stalker or a sick individual, I deduced that I might have been in serious trouble (e.g. been stabbed or stalked for helping another person out). The worst part about it is that in this case, I wasn't given the ability to choose whether to help or not. No matter the case, at the end of the day, I'm just glad everything turned out not too bad... At least I'm still around to tell this tale...

Classical Music Etiquette for Dummies

As being in many classical music concerts, I somewhat get irritated when seeing a few members in the audience who haven't followed proper etiquette during the concert. Thinking about it, I thought it might be a good time to write a few things I've learnt over the years in simple words :P

1) Turn off your mobile phones (easy, but why can't people do it?)
2) Don't talk during the performance.
3) Don't applaud until the whole house does (so that you don't have to know the difference between movement and pieces)
4) Wear warm clothes (As most concert halls are cold this is recommended)
5) Don't make too much noise (e.g. eating)

Hmm.. well I hope I didn't forget to mention, enjoy the performance :P

Gambling for Fun

A few days ago, I went to Vik's home for a party. Vikram and his extended family has just finished building their 8 story building that houses their family and relatives, and he wanted to invite a few close friends over to celebrate the occasion. Our group that went there were people who played sports together - namely we are on the same basketball league on Wednesday evenings.

During the party, we happen to meet up with Sumitr, Vik's elder brother who was a classmate of mines. What ended up was that we had a gambling game for laughs, each game was 10 baht which was a puny sum. After nearly 3 hours of playing, I ended up gaining nothing and losing nothing.

The point that I want to raise is that gambling isn't bad if you know how to control yourself. It is also pretty fun! For those who think they don't have the luck in these games, try to take classes on statistics. I will really help you out well here making you more aware of decisions you have to make. To be exact, I got much better in statistics when computing all the odds of popular games in the casino :P

Wired for Speech

I've just borrowed a very interesting book a few days back called "Wired for Speech - How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationships" by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave. This book basically explores how people react to voices both real and virtual people in different social circumstances. Though the book touches mainly on human/computer interaction, it does raises alot of ingrained social prejudice that is prevalent amoung lots of humans.

One of the issues that it raised was that people are generally quite evident on racial characteristics. If you have a face like a eastern asian, and have a western voice, it makes people view you in confused manner - as the conflict between the expected accent based on the facial features and the accent to be completely different. This can invoke either a suspicious, curious, or a bewildered response based on typical human behavior. Talking about it, I've noticed I belong to this category. Kind of interesting, I have to agree.

Mobile Phones?

I've just bought a new mobile phone a few weeks back. The reason for that was that my old phone, a 5 year old NGage was broken after all the years of abuse. The new phone I got was a lowend stupid mobile phone. After using the mobile phone for a while, I ended up using only the voice mail services and I can't figure a reason why I should spend more money on a gadget that I hardly use any specific features. Mobile Phones are awful platform for games. That is where a Sony PSP or a Nintendo DS come in. It is also awful for music and MP3 as there are many different MP3 players that can do the job way better. Internet browsing is kind of overated, as why would I want to browse the internet in such small resolution, and have trouble with the input (unless I really buy hi-end mobile phones).

It might sound very unfashionable, but I essentially downgraded my mobile phone. On an interesting scan, even market vendors have better mobile phones than I do :P

I'm not much into fashion, so I guess it isn't a big deal.

Anyway before I end it, I would like to say that the biggest reason for buying a cheap phone is that I'm kind of a heavy handed person. One of the huge worry is repair cost. In my case, I don't have to worry a single bit :P

Games I'm playing at the Moment

Games that I'm playing at the moment are Starcraft and Company of Hero. Just got back to retro gaming with starcraft as a hobby in our company. The other game I play alot is Company of Hero, which I personally think is one of the interesting and new RTS in the market :) If you happen to stumble here and want to play a few games, poke here, and we can have a quick friendly match :P

Inspiration

I wonder if there is can inspiration to eat. I'm seriously lacking it at this moment. I guess too much work is causing a drop in inspiration level. Must do something...

Random Thoughts

It saddens me that many people will give up immediately after facing any obstacles.

Where did the will to fight suddenly gone?

DeathNote Character Quiz

Oh well, just a quiz I did for fun. Amusing...!





What Death Note Character Are You?


Hosted by theOtaku.com: Anime. Done right.

December Blues

For most people December should be a great month. First of all, there are numerous holidays on December. We have the King's Birthday, Constitution Day, Christmas (for some of us), and New Year. In addition to all of that, it seems that many of the weddings are arranged in this month also - considering it is one of the most auspicious months as defined by fortune tellers. Now that is where the trouble lies. If you have a number of friends and collegues that have weddings on the same date, and you have to go to a wedding for nearly everyday for a week, then that is where December can be very aggreviating. Maybe it is just me, but I keep on wondering why those fortune tellers don't spread out the auspicious dates into other months?

Selecting a Browser Over a Decade Ago...

I started browsing the Internet around 1996, and my first few browsers I've tried was Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer Lynx, and an lynx. For those who don't know, lynx was a text based browser. At that time then, Navigator was the best browser overall, but it was slow as a turtle. IE was lacking in features. What I ended up using the most at that time was lynx. It was a text browser, but it was blazing fast considering that I had a crummy connection back then. As I didn't care much about eye-candy, lynx was the browser of choice.

Talking about it, it was strange to recall this story. Makes me sound old and like an old dinosaur :P

Test Recordings

In a few days, I have to present a paper at a research conference about a Computer Vision to aid myself playing the EWI. In my paper, I've used a number of image processing techniques to find where I am relative on the stage and then make real-time on the fly changes to the software mixer. A number of extensions to help me play the EWI such as using multiple cameras (to define surround sound position), and other natural input devices such as Using the WiiMote were discussed on the paper.

As I was preparing my paper presentation, I've noticed that the demos and music recorded in the paper presentation was rather sparse. I have one piece showing me playing the C Major Scale (which is absolutely boring), a short Glide, and a short piece. In other words, I only had very few recordings of myself playing the instrument! Just to fix things, I've decided to cover a few quick songs, just to make sure the audience knows that at least I can play the EWI :P

You can take a few listen to it at the following url: http://168.120.1.247/dump/ewi/

Great Comedy

Talking about Comedy, I found it somewhat irritating that many of the current crop of comedic movies in the market are pretty much not funny. To sum it up, many of the movies try to play the obscene card as they think it is funny to the point that it gets repulsive. Good examples of obscene acts that are over done are like excessive vomitting, public urinating, and over miscreant behaviors. In many of these movies they spice it up with a little of sex, and they think it would sell well to the young adolesence market. As I myself am out of touch with the trends of today, yesterday, and I believe to the future, I can't really mention much more than that.

On a short note, what makes a good comedy to me? The last really good comedic movie I saw was a witty German movie called "Say Goodbye to Lenin". I don't think it would be easy to find, but the premise was tad intelligent, and was excecuted well. To get a quick idea of what type of comedies that I really like, take a look at the following video clip:



As noted, I like that skit. If you thought it was about APPLE products, think again very careful! It isn't about Apple, but its about a hidden topic, and that is why I find this parody to be extra ordinary funny and witty without all of the obscene nonsense.

If you don't get the message, try reading out the names of all the products out loud, and you will find the hidden and underlining meaning of the whole thing :P

New Mobile Phone?

Just a few days ago, during one of my proctoring sessions, one of my co-worker's phone broke down for no apparent reason. After trying to resurrect it for a while without any luck, we concluded that the phone was dead and my friend needed to buy a new phone. As he was a Indian lecturer, I took him to a mobile phone store and took the time to help him browse through the list. As noted, if you don't speak the Thai here, you're pretty much clueless of what is offered. After much consideration, my friend picked up a rather nice multimedia phone for about 7k baht - which had loads of features such as photograph, MP3 player, radio, blue tooth, and a whole load of other goodies.

On a short note, I was also planning to buy a new mobile phone soon. If I do have to replace my mobile phone, on a strange note, I was planning to go to an old retro version. A mobile phone that is only a mobile phone. Cheap and effective. That is all I need. To be exact, though it is good to be excited with all the new features, at the end of the day, I figured that it was more important to have a working phone during crunch time than to burn my batteries with all the unnecessary tasks such as listening to music or playing video games.

Talk about how different the philosophies are LOL

Hello Headache!?

One of the things that I hate the most is having a headache. In most cases if you feel sick, having a headache is typical. The problem is that if you are feeling pretty normal, but you have a headache. What to do in that scenario?

I would like to work, but my headaches and its pretty difficult to keep focused on the matter at hand. I also don't feel that bad that I have to go on sick leave :( Hmm... What to do? What to do?

Zen of Python - Recommended Read for Programmers

Being a programmer, I found the following easter egg in Python a very interesting read. You might be surprised, but programmers should be considered as writers also :)

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Profile of Singapore People

During the last week, I went on a business trip to Singapore. During my discussions with the numerous people I've met there, there was this observation I've made about Singaporean people due to their mixed heritage. They have the industry of the Chinese, the merchant skills of the Indian, and have the regal qualities of the British. Hmm... quite a quick way to summarize a typical Singaporean? Not quite sure, but it does sound like a good compliment!