I don’t know what to do with all that time. Today’s Tuesday and it seems that I’ve wasted the entire duration of my off pass doing absolutely nothing. I’m starting to dislike holiday seasons. The problem with them is that there’s too much cheer in the air, too many smiling faces, and I can’t get into the mood of that. Holiday seasons seem to serve as a reinforcement to my feelings of  isolation and disconnection from the world.

I haven’t been writing not because I don’t have anything to write about, I do. So why don’t I? Two reasons mainly.

One, it’s because what I have to say are too personal for me to be comfortable to leave hanging out. I’ve a huge paranoia about people using what I say against me, especially on the Internet where everything is logged and archived. Judging by the tendency of public figures having their past dug out and used against them, I wouldn’t say my paranoia is all that unfounded.

Secondly, I just can’t seem to find the energy to talk about things. This is one of the most happening periods in the world, and I’ve a lot  of comments on current events, ranging from the inauguration of US President Obama to Singapore’s 2009 budget and handouts (which I concur with the comment from an opposition that “people would be hard pressed to decide to spend it on salt or sugar”). Phrasing them into words however, it feels like a mammoth effort.

I hope the rest of you are faring much better. Happy (Chinese) New Year to all.

Rules

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

There’s already been another rather similar post here in the past so I’ll try to list something different this time.

1. I don’t own any pets. I used to long for a dog when I was about six or seven years old, but my parents were adamant that I was not up to the task of caring for them. Today, I think they might be right after all, seeing as to how between school and gaming, I’ve very little free time.

2. I failed my basic driving theory test and couldn’t be bothered to take it again. I know driving is an important life skill, but I can’t realistically afford to purchase an automobile in the next 10 years. Cars here in Singapore are extremely costly as they get slapped with a huge tax.

3. I’ve never got to travel much and the only places I’ve been to are the UK (with my school) and Indonesia (with my family). I don’t come from a very well off family and we usually don’t have too much to spare at the end of the year.

4. I love long vehicle rides that allows me to gaze out the window and enjoy the scenery (or the urban crowd rushing about here) while listening to music. It’s extremely relaxing and I often feel reluctant to get off at the end of the journey.

5. While on the topic of transportation, I can never read nor watch a video while traveling in a land vehicle. It gives me a headache.

6. I frequently carry a notebook (the paper kind) in my bag although I almost never write anything in it. The current one has been with me for a few months now and it’s still blank.

7. I hate waiting for the elevator and would very much rather take the stairs as long as it’s about six stories or less. I guess I could describe myself as being a rather restless person because standing around and waiting for something just irritates me, and I’d rather be doing something every moment. Doesn’t matter what, just anything!

8. I selectively eat only from a small variety of food, and am often hesistant to try something new. On the rare occasion that I discover something new I enjoy, I’ll order the same food repetitively for a long period of time, up to months, before I get tired of it.

I don’t have 8 people that I want to pass this to, but these are the people I’ll like to tag: Clifton, Leander, RailGun, Richie, Stargrace, Gothun. I’m going to break the 4th rule and not comment on everyone’s blog directing them to this post as that’d amount to spamming.

1. Introverted.
You might not be able to deduce this from my behavior in class, but I’m introverted. The Myers-Briggs Type Indication classifies my personality as ‘ISTP’.

ISTP stands for: Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving. A detailed explaination can be found here.
If you are curious about yourself, the test can be taken here.

2. Loves movie/game soundtracks and trailers.
I’ve a rather decent collection of soundtracks and my favorites are those orchestral and vocal ones.

I can’t really explain my love for trailers well, but I guess this has a connection with me spending plenty of hours wandering around watching demos and trailers on those home theatre display sets.

3. I’ve difficulty sleeping the afternoon.
No matter how tired I’m, once its past 10am, I’m usually unable to fall asleep. Even if I had the aircon turned on, I still feel warm and uneasy.

If I do manage to catch some sleep, I’ll wake up feeling stretched and having this weird feeling in mouth that is kind of like waking up in the morning and your teeth screaming at you to be brushed. The feeling remains even if I try brushing them.

Either way, I hate it.

4. Dislikes applying/equating a monetary value to anything
One thing I loathe about this society is that everything can be equated to a certain monetary value. I simply can’t bear to charge a friend no matter what is being exchanged.

Sometimes, this results in me giving away an item or a service more than I’m willing, but still, I can’t bring myself to accept a single cent for it.

5. I’m a gnome!
Tinkering and collecting things, that’s me! If it wasn’t for my height, a gnome would describe me perfect. I just simply adore collecting and keeping anything. Just like an invading army, there is nothing more fun than looting; grabbing anything that isn’t bolted down, and then everything that is. But rest assured, I certainly wouldn’t pocket anything from your residence if I was invited, although I make no promises about tearing things apart.

It is amazing what one is capable of under the torment of pressure and panic. What used to be a seemingly impossible and daunting task can now be assembled at such a rapid rate, as if I’ve somehow made sense of everything that has been taught, or supposedly taught, in the entire semester all of a sudden.

Panic was what allowed me break out of the “what to do” and “this shit is impossible” cycle for my IA project and led to the production of a program that met the baseline requirements in a matter of moments last night. And right after it was completed, I was tossed into a state of euphoria, with an immediate +1 boost to my level of confidence.

Although this is hardly my preferred method of working, I’ve to vouch for its effectiveness as it has saved me, yet again, from my otherwise doomed project.

My other two projects however, are dead in the water. Coincidentally, both of them happen to be applications for a mobile device, one to be done in J2ME, the other in VB.NET. The problem with developing mobile applications is the lack of resource availability. It is as if these were some obscure arcane knowledge that one could only obtain from a dusty tome locked away in the library of some cultist keep.

Now that I’m 1/3 done, theres nothing like spending a Friday afternoon idly chatting away and then swearing constantly in a 2h 30mins long match of Company of Heroes to pamper myself after the long week. I always loved Fridays as it signaled the start of the weekend, and I declare Fridays to be a ‘no work day’. If you do realise, I’ve rarely stayed back in school on a Friday and I resent doing so. This Friday in particular, was a much needed break.

The situation is only going to deteriorate next week and get worst.

Surprisingly, they’ve a pretty good collection of DnD novels at Borders, but most series were lacking one or two for the complete set, which made it really fustrating. What worst was that for most of them, the first in series was unavailable, rendering the rest of the series unreadable. Hit Kinokuniya up next.

I’ve always loved the terminals at Kinokuniya which allows you to search for and locate specific books. Imo, all bookshops should implement a similar system. It’s a lot more convenient than to browse through shelves of dusty tomes looking for something you already have in mind. The system was a bit unresponsive and there was a 2sec or so delay between hitting “print” (for a map to the book location) and the actual printing process, so I tapped it a few more times, and wrecked the system, which then started vomiting out volumes of the same map, while the other controls remained frozen.

I had a hard time deciding between reading on Elaine Cunningham’s Swords & Songs series, R.A. Salvator’s Elminster or his Drizzt Do’Urden series. After some deliberating and tossing of a few dices, I settled on the following:

• The Introvert Advantage (great understanding of myself and would be something I would keep referencing against)
• Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky (always wanted this book and could never locate it previously. Oddly, one copy was available)
• The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore (which was basically the first 3 books in the Drizzt Do’Urden series)

Really wanted to purchase The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins too, but was already choking up $108~ for the above purchase. Would have to wait until next time.

Timetable for Monday blows. I’ve this gapping 5 hour break between my last 2 lessons. I’d love to stab the person that came up with the timetable, but that’s not possible. Timetables in my school are computer generated. For this particular Monday, I did find some nice chairs to take a nap on the 4th floor of the school library however. Otherwise, the overall duration of lessons per week seem to be 2-3 hours shorter than previously.

Project assignments were handed out rather hastily on the first week, which came as a surprise. It also seems that a fair bit of self learning is require for certain subjects as the course coverage seems to be rather minimal, such as Visual Basics, which would be essential for certain projects that require the use of the .NET framework.

Problem based learning (PBL) seems to be the new buzzword these days. I enrolled in the course to be taught, not to be told to rely entirely on figuring out everything myself. PBL sounds all good on paper, find out information by yourself, teaching and learning from your peers, so on and so forth. In reality, it is a time sink, whereby people who get their information from questionable sources, sharing whatever they think they know and ultimately acquiring knowledge of somewhere close to zilch. Whats more is I probably could pick up whatever at home and not wasting my time in class.

Selecting networking over Java for my subject selection for this semester, you would think the focal point would be it, but no. I get like a 2h lab and 2h lecture each week. Are you kidding me? I expect my subjects to be modeled around it, not for it to be shafted in a shy corner.

Advanced mobile computing is taught by a bloke named David Yeo, and is a rather awesome bloke too. First impressions, or first 2 rather, has shown him to be one that is current and well informed about recently developments in the industry. He also consistently relates whatever that was being taught to the real world. These traits are pretty uncommon among lecturers, who most of the time just read out slides and cite examples from something like the early 90s.

Also, there is an inversely proportional relation to how many years a lecturer has taught for in a particular institution and his/her knowledge on how to operate the projection device.

Outside of school, this week has also sported two major releases, Firefox 2.0 and Fedora Core 6.

Firefox 2.0, I am currently using on all my systems now. There isn’t any really major ground breaking difference compared to 1.5. The additions are small, but help improve accessibility quite a bit, with individual close buttons for each tab and the build in spellcheck, which is unfortunately sports a rather limited dictionary. The ability to load seaches in a new background tab also seems to have disappeared. It still is able to load up in a new tab, but not in the background, even with Tabbrowser Preferences plugin.

I’m still unsure to use Fedora Core 6 or not on my storage server over Windows, mainly due to my Linux knowledge being very limited. I recently installed FC5 on my laptop to play around with, and might upgrade the installation to FC6 to experiment with it.

Gaming wise, a number of upcoming releases that I’m keen to experience are Splinter Cell: Double Agent, FEAR Extraction, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Gothic 3. All of which is to be released sometime between now and mid next month. I hate it how school here and gaming releases are always in conflict with one another. A few years back, now is when I’ll be sitting for annual final exams, and most of the time totally screwing up because it coincides with a game release. I’m unsure to how much I’d actually be able to play with this semester looking pretty hectic atm. Already considering taking a break from EQ2.

Weekends are here, but rest ain’t. One thing true about life is, no matter how bad it is, it could always get much worst.