August 2006 Archives

Bad design gets you higher pageviews.

She’s telling jokes only she understands. And laughing her head off.

While cleaning the house I picked up Anne’s bib. Some bread crumbs fell out of it. I shook it a little and out popped a raisin.

It made me smile.

We need only look a little northward to be thankful for what we have.

Consider Lina Joy, whose conversion to Christianity means that she has to go to court to fight for her right to marry because Malaysia’s constitution defines Malays to be Muslims. Malays are therefore stripped of the right to choose their own religion.

And here I was complaining about a DVD being banned.

That’s not to say I’m ok with not being able to buy a copy of “V for Vendetta” though.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is often misquoted as “the path less travelled”. Most are able to quote the famous last lines of the poem, “I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” in a Frank Sinatrasque “I did it my way” manner.

But the poem isn’t about defying all odds or grasping life by the balls, unlike Sinatra’s swan song. It is a poem about the uncertainty that comes with being unable to be at all places at the same time.

It succinctly sums up how I have been feeling of late.

Grid evangelist Mark Boulton on typography.

Probably chump change to get the annoying kid to just shut up.

Fabulous comic by absurdly talented Singapore artist Dan Wang.

Like many of you out there who made V for Vendetta the number one box office hit when it opened in Singapore, I was all hyped about getting the DVD upon release. So I headed down to my favourite DVD store, and was subsequently told that it was banned in Singapore for language that was anti-Christian.

I’m not the Pope or anything, but when I watched it in March, I didn’t detect any overtly anti-Christian sentiments. Anti-government ones, on the other hand, were what struck a resonant chord with all V fans.

Now if the Da Vinci Code DVD goes through without hitting the censors…

Ok, so downing down a whole 1.5 litre bottle of green tea in the late afternoon will induce insomnia.

A free PHP AJAX Shoutbox

She’ll probably kill me for this when she grows up.

Expand your HTML vocabulary.

Still not quite sure if it’s great usability to reduce screen size.

Wonder if Flex will give Ajax a real run for its money.

By the time Vista is out, Aero will be sounding like an old joke.

1GB SD Card that gives digital cameras WiFi capabilities.

MySpace and eBay come in first and second.

Not sure if I’d sacrifice readability for a few extra microseconds of my life.

A sneak preview of Microsoft’s much touted “iPod-killer”.

If you don’t participate in the blogosphere, at least be in the know.

Very intriguing indeed. Would save us all a ton of hackery.

Ok, think I definitely need to be paid more.

Guy Kawasaki sums it up from the hiring side of things.

Ubuntu looks very promising, but I’m spoilt by how things simply work in Macland.

Dearest Faith,

I’ve been enamoured with you more than half my life. I spent the other half on the pursuit of chocolate, twirling the hair on my forehead into a curl, tying my blanket around my neck and jumping off elevated surfaces in hopes that I’d fly. Preferably to more chocolate.

I’m in love with everything about you. Your laughter at a joke I made. How your dimples appear when Anne does something utterly adorable. The way my heart feels when you come in the door; sharing space with you in the same room is oddly exciting and fuzzily heartwarming all at once. When I see you walk towards me from a distance, there’s this strange magnetic pull that devours the physical space between us; and when I finally put my arm around you, I can almost hear a “gloop” - more a feeling than a sound. The feeling you get when two drops of mercury finally combine.

I love you so, so much, that I feel the very fabric of my being reach out and wrap around you such that we are inextricably bound - untouched by the passing of time and the world around us.

I don’t write about these feelings as much as I used to because these days I have the luxury of walking over and telling you everything. Then there are times like these, when you are fast asleep, and Anne the subconscious motion detector lies beside you on our bed.

On the way home from work the eve of National Day Raizan and I were talking about the housing options available to Singaporeans. It led to talk about en bloc - situations where private land developers buy out the residents living in an area in order to build something more upmarket there, usually condominiums. I casually mentioned that if such a situation came about and I was forced to sell my home, I’d probably migrate. I said that it made sense pragmatically, the money I’d receive from an en bloc sale would probably not get me anything similar in Singapore, but could afford a rather nice place almost anywhere else in the world. If I continued in my line of work I’d probably move to California, I said.

While I might have made sense from a pragmatic standpoint, the juxtaposition felt ideologically jarring.

There I stood, wearing red in observance of National Day, all set to attend the National Day parade the next day, seemingly ready to migrate at the drop of a hat. If I moved to another country, would that make me a quitter because I didn’t stay?

Useful tips - so it’s not that hard after all.

A flash game that includes Superman and digital SLRs - how could I resist?

The real life story of Emilie du Châtelet, the modern woman too modern for her time.

Management, management and management.

Need to read up, brush up, code.

In the last 12 months, I have found this to be the gospel truth.