Weekend With Cats

F1 is held this weekend, however I am not a F1 fan, and I just find it pretty stupid to pay for things zooming past so fast that you can't even see how they look like.

So I decide to post pictures of cats that I have collected from the net. Here you go:

"I surrender..."

"Caught sleeping with chicken... ah..."

"Very sleepy after surfing net..."

"Pet's pet"

"S&M Style Sleeping"

"Painful look"

"Garfields?"

"Do not disturb... k?"

"Perfect circle"

"hug and kiss..."

"no eye see"

"camouflage cat"

"Soldier! Wake UP!"

"zzzzz..."

"New furry plant species"

"Turn on the tap..."

"Cat in a wok"

"Another quite painful sleeping position"

"Necking couples"

"BBQ cat..?"

Complain-Fu of Singaporean

We have Kung-Fu for the art of self-defence, Code-Fu for the art of computer programming, now, allow me to introduce [drums rolling]: Complain-Fu, art of complaining!!

There is a guy in Singapore found out his new-born daughter has the number 444 as part of her birth-cert serial number. Obviously upset, he went up and down to complain, including the local major newspaper, the Straits Times, as posted here.

I am amazed this can also be complained. Although it is understandable as a parent he wants the best for his daughter, but nitpicking on this is really pushing things too far, and too hard. Imagine how many serial numbers typical adults have had, if we had to make sure every number has no 4, 13, or the combination, we wouldn't get anything done at all.

The well-being of the baby girl is dictated by the values and principles bestowed by her surrounding, and people around her. I think she is kind of bad luck in this case, not because of the cert number, but the presence of not so smart, superstitious, and like-to-complain parents.

There are people I just can't understand.

New Blog!

I have set up a blog on computer programming, it is listed under "Personal Blogs" at the right panel of this blog. From now on, programming stuff will go there, while the rest will stay here.

With the new blog, I hope to have a show case of my programming skills for potential employers.

Comments are welcome :)

5th Anniversary of Working

Five years ago this day was my first day in the working world. I still could recall I attended the orientation. I met SoothSayer there as well as we were under the same manager.

Five years passed just like that. Today definitely I know more than I knew then, but I am losing steam and a lot of ambitions along the way. This is what they call growing up I guess which I have experienced, but never really understand.

The Haunt of Scope Creep

Yet this is another fine Friday evening. As usual, Cuppa is blogging while having a beer by his side.

Scope creep is the topic today. This term means uncontrollable changes in project scope.

This happens very often in job because of pointy-hair boss thinks "it is just a trivial change that takes only 3 minutes of your time", but the job blows up and you lose 3 weeks of your time. However our pointy-hair boss is far more brilliant than just adding merely one task on your plate, at that point, you are having a scope creep.

For Cuppa, the scope creep happens when I am drilling deep down into C++. On my way I found a lot of interesting tidbits, like generic programming, pattern design, the STL, and a lot of libraries written in C++. I am side-tracked by all these topics to the point I nearly forgot what my initial intention was to get a better understanding of core C++ first.

This is not the first time scope creep happens to me. For example way back when I was in college, I was studying multi-dimensional calculus, but ended up getting a lot of irrelevant maths books on my way back from library. I would go and get books on topology, number theory, functional analysis, etc. All of those which were (and still are) beyond my comprehension then.

Therefore this time I will concentrate only on the topic on hand, and will put aside all those topics until I am done.

How about my personal life? Well, my mom once again is concerned about my getting a girl friend. At this stage, I already admit defeat of winning MAK over and just let my mom do whatever pleases her. I told her "Whatever, as long as she is a woman, not too ugly, not too bitchy, and can tolerate a nerd like me, fine."

Topics of The Week

I can't help but to blog these:

1. Microsoft's Ad: After get mocked by Apple's ads for years, Microsoft hits back with a $300 million ad campaign: the first installment dubbed "Jerry and Bill". The YouTube link is here. Honestly I don't quite understand what message the ad wants to convey and thought it could be because my English is not good, after reading the reviews on the net (this one, for example), it seems most people don't either.
   
2. Google Chrome: This browser really generates a lot of talks around the world. I have no intention to do any technical analysis here, but I just thought about what kind of strategies Google has by throwing resources behind this project. The most obvious motive will be trying to ease M$'s grip on web browser, and after that, my guess is Google wants to unify the user interfaces for both PC and portable devices (e.g. hand phones) like what Apple is doing, therefore building up a Google-centric kind of business model.
   To me it all sound nice and warm as I choose to sit by the curb and see the war unfolds itself. It is always interesting to watch from afar.

That is all for today's news. [BEEP]

Friday Night, Beer Night

This evening is a lonely Friday night, and again Cuppa is typing away on his keyboard at home. With no uncertainty, a can of Tiger is found beside him, and one more can is sitting safely in the freezer, of course.

So what am I up to lately? Phew, it is an interesting question.

Personal Life:

First of all I dumped the pictures in my hand phone and post some of the more interesting ones as follow:
I went to St. James Power Station, a Disco near to VivoCity, 2 weeks ago. I was totally sober throughout the night, to the extent I could take a nice picture with steady hands, as above. That was my fourth time there and I felt a little bit bored. I just filled with emptiness and nothingness. Downing more beer obviously won't help, that is why I am here blogging. At least I have the peace of mind in my room.

The following day, my housemate invited me to a dinner organized by a temple. The picture above shows the auction of items to raise funds for the temple. Curiously, that temple worships the legendary monkey king Master Sun (孙悟空). This kind of dinner is very popular in Singapore during the seventh month of the Lunar calendar, during which traditional Chinese believe the hell gate is open and all the ghosts will walk the earth. This dinner is set to celebrate this special month and there are special food items (not in the picture) just for the "good brothers and sisters" (aka ghosts). The good point of such dinner is there is absolutely free flow of alcohol (white beer, black beer, and Hennesy VSOP). Cuppa likes it. :)

Professional Life:

My company's platform is built on top of Linux and a set of libraries written in C++. They are reasonably well-built, and even though the software system is a little bit dated (built circa 2000), the main architecture is still worth studying. I have been looking at the graphics library (QT), C++ general library (boost), communications framework (ACE), and all the technologies I have yet to discover. In fact I have moved on to work on the C++ files, though my manager isn't too approving my act, he doesn't explicitly forbid it. I just do it anyway whatever. I always remember my ex-boss told me "It is much easier to ask for forgiveness, than to ask for permission". ;)