Author: Grievous

My Take on the Israeli Response in Gaza

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This was on my Facebook status at 11:51pm on 10.1.09. The status came from this site, as I have ‘donated’ my Facebook status to be updated by it every few hours:

In 2007 – 2008, Hamas fired 4681 rockets & mortars into Israel.

4681 rockets and mortars. Without the knowledge of that, I am not surprised most would have considered the Israeli attacks to be an unwarranted and excessive use of force. After all, the world media has been one-sided in presenting all of the facts to the public.

Thus, Israeli responses have been called many things – from genocide to state-sponsored terrorism etc. The very things that would remind you of the Nazi Germany. Oh, the irony that the Jews, once oppressed, are now the oppressors! * ptui *

But what about these rockets and mortars that are fired almost daily at Israel? It’s not like the fireworks you see during National Day, you know?

A lot of people no longer takes the entire picture into its proper perspective now because of the propaganda on the mass media. So, these are some of the things I’ll like to share with you before you make your judgement:

So, Israel had enough. And so had I, with the gross hypocrisy of the mass media.

Shalom Aleichem.

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电影: 赤壁 – 决战天下

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吴宇森的 《赤壁: 决战天下》 在气势上的确是拍的不错的。虽然戏的前一个小时感觉上有的闷，在视觉效果方面肯定是近期中文片里非常好的一部 – 特别是火烧连环船的那一幕。而且烧船之后东吴军登录攻击曹操大营的那幕，犹如两栖登陆战。感觉上有点像 《雷霆救兵》 (Saving Private Ryan) 的开场，只不过是古代版的。

登录后的作战却有点像 《天国王朝》 (Kingdom of Heaven) 里撒拉丁攻击耶路撒冷的一段。大体感觉上是很好，但是对看过比较多电影的人来说，这部电影不会给他们留下非常深刻的印象。唯一可能令人印象比较深刻的反而是戏中的关羽说了一句：” 你过时啦！”

这时，我心里倒想起… 模仿 《特洛伊》 (Troy) 和 《魔戒三部曲》 (Lord of The Rings) 的大型战争场面是否本身也是过时了呢？因为除了在影视效果方面企图超越之前的这些电影之外，这类的电影本身有什么新意可言？

如果说到历史方面的话，我个人认为还是别把这部电影用来当作历史教材。因为肯定会误人子弟。曹操挥军南下，当然不是因为他 ‘鸡疯’ (Chee Hong: 新加坡福建话里带有好色、重色轻友的意思)，为了得到周瑜的夫人小乔才出兵的。

我才疏学浅，但是个人认为，身为一个雄才伟略的政治家，曹操出兵南下肯定有其政治、军事和经济上的目的。政治目的当然是要扫荡当时在东南方拥兵自重、或者不服从他的军阀 – 如刘备、孙权等 – 来巩固他的地位。经济方面，我相信曹操觊觎南方一向称为鱼米之乡的东吴 (江南地区)，因为占领江南地区将让他日后统一的霸业简单得多了。军事目的是主要的目的是占领军事枢纽荆州，控制这战略要地和长江下游并局部完成统一当时东汉王朝的东部，以便日后在平定西南面的汉中和益州时无后顾之忧。

所以说，这部电影虽然视觉效果很好，但是我个人还是认为剧情简直是荒谬之极。这是我看上半部时就已经讲过。

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Mobile Broadband Woes..

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Either something is faulty with the Huawei K3715 USB Mobile Broadband modem I am using, or something is wrong with the Lenovo X61. I get disconnected so often using the M1 service, I could hardly get connected for even more than 5 minutes.

And no, this is not a problem with the M1 Mobile Broadband service. There is something either seriously wrong with the USB modem or the laptop itself. I cannot be sure because I am also having some problems with the Wireless LAN adaptor on that laptop. I think the problem here may not exactly be the heat from the Wireless adapter because I have tried turning it off entirely and the problem persists. I have reasons to suspect it maybe some patches in the OS, or the perhaps a unstable current supplied to the USB ports, which the Huawei K3715 maybe sensitive to.

I will need to find a day when I can ‘nuke’ the machine back to factory standard. And see if stability will come back to the Huawei K3715 after that. If that doesn’t work then I’ll get a powered 4-port USB hub, and prove my ‘unstable USB supply current’ theory wrong.

Once all that is done I’ll go down to the Huawei Service Centre at Tai Seng Avenue – technically the armpit of Singapore – and make a big fuss to get the damned thing replaced. 😛

In the meantime, I have resorted to getting connected via my M1 wireless broadband using… * gasp * my old Sony Ericsson W550i. Yep, I was asking around if someone has the cable so I can get that connected to my laptop because the original one was run over too often by the wheels of my chair at home, it is now ‘decapitated’. I had tried doing the same with my Nokia 7390 succesfully but it gets a little tedious for me to keep swapping out my SIMcard

FoxTwo pointed out to me that I can just connect it to the laptop using the BluetoothBlueTOOT technology. Why this ah toot (i.e. me) didn’t already think of that is beyond me. And now I have finally and successfully connected my W550i to M1 broadband with it ‘linked’ wirelessly to the X61. And it’s so simple I had to kick myself a few times wondering why I didn’t do so earlier.

Technology bring advances, but at times it has also bring much misery to the generation that came before it. It’s not that I am not aware of the technology or that I don’t know how to use it, but I can now sort of understand why it is difficult for a lot of people to manipulate technology. It is a lesson in humility for me.

On top of which, I admit… I am getting old. And I fully understand now the Chinese lament: 哎，岁月不留人啊！[Translation: * sigh * Time waits for nobody.]


Comics:

Recommended Reads:
Endoh’s Dungeon – Uniquely Singaporean!
New York Times: Cells That Save Lives Are a Mother’s Legacy
NutritionCentre.org – What Happens To Your Body Within An Hour Of Drinking A Coke
Random Thoughts Of A Free Thinker – Lianhe Zaobao: “Is there no history in Singapore?”

Reviews:
Tech65.org – Review: The Lenovo Thinkpad X300

For Laughs:
Chinagirl08’s Blog: Comments under A heartless Singapore Guy
Amnesia Blog.com – The Top Ten Worst URL’s in the world

362 days in an Advertlets year

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It is a little amusing to see this. I recalled around the same time last year, Advertlets forgot to renew their domain, causing problems to many blogs. The end result: Some bloggers removed Advertlets from their blog in anger.

Advertlets took precautions to prevent it from happening again this year by renewing their domain until 2010.

Everything seems well with Adverlets until I noticed on Singapore Daily an article titled: Advertlets forgot that there is 30/12/08?

In fact, when I logged in to Adverlet’s on Jan 1, 2009, I had discovered that there were no records of my earnings – if any – for the day of Dec 30 and 31, 2008 along with Jan 1, 2009. That’s not mentioning I had problems logging in to Advertlets on Dec 31st, 2008.

While there was no problems hitting the main page, the page with the details of your blog earnings just won’t load after entering the login and password. I had no idea how long that problem persisted, since I gave up and only tried to log in again the next day.

Does Advertlets run on a special calendar that has only 362 days? Or was there some problems that prevent Advertlets from properly accounting for all the impressions and clicks on those few days. I do not recall receiving any email explaining this matter. Or is Advertlets hoping that no one notice so they can sweep it all under the carpet?

It makes one wonder whether Advertlets as a business is running into difficulties. I have on several occasions heard from other bloggers that they did not receive payment even months after they cash out. In fact, if you read all the responses to this Plurk closely, some are even questioning whether Advertlets has been adjusting their hit counts.

If it is not a sign of difficulties with the business itself, then perhaps it is a sign Advertlets has lost interest with bloggers, if not their presence, here in Singapore. That impression is of course further reinforced by the fact that most Advertlets’ blogger events are so far organised in Malaysia, while one of their competitors has even managed to organise a blood donation drive.

It certainly makes one wonder whether Advertlets’ competitors have been so successful in edging out Advertlets’ in Singapore, that Advertlets no longer find it a worthwhile enterprise to maintain their presence and good relationship with bloggers in Singapore.

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[)1$(µ$$ 7#3 ||37: Customer Disservice

2009 – New Year, New Look!

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Ok, to be exact I start making the theme change since late December 2008. I have been searching for a nice theme to put up for a long time and I have tried a lot of other themes.

The problem with other themes is not that they don’t work, but rather the difficulty for me to make it look the way I want it to. Sometimes, the widgets in my dynamic sidebar will not appear properly even when no modification is needed. But the worst of it all is even after I managed to modify the style.css and the various .php files that deals with the output, they didn’t really quite live up to my expectations, nor did they appeal to my regular readers.

For a moment, I was using this theme, as I liked the drop-down menus, and the fading sidebar. Even while some of my friends who did me the favour of checking it out liked the new look, their feedback was that they would prefer something less cluttered, or in one particular case actually asked if I can make it look like the mirror blog I had on xanga. I had to agree with them, as the background picture did take a bit of time to download on a slow connection.

Thus I began my search for a new theme with the objective that they must have drop-down menus with a cleaner look. That is why I dropped a few of them even when I do like their look, for e.g. the Varg theme. I liked the background pictures a lot which is why I have taken them out of that theme and used it in the current one. Of course the lack of drop-down menus wasn’t the only reason I dropped this theme, but rather the 3 column layout, not to mention I am too lazy to tinker with the style.css to make it 2 columns. The main reason I won’t use a 3 column layout, is that I am unwilling to go through several years of blog post to make them 3 column compatible.

So I went searching again, and It was by chance I stumble on this new theme called bullit, created by miloIIIIVII.

It took me several hours over a period of 2 days to figure out the functions of some parts of the style.css and make the necessary modifications. I did this by changing the stylesheet line by line to see the effect of the changes since I am almost clueless about css. Everything appears to be well until I applied the theme. This is when I discovered this rather irritating problem: When readers comment, all they get is a blank page even though the comment has been accepted. On top of which, I can only log in to my admin page by renaming the theme folder or moving it to another location.

I wrote back to the theme’s creator via email and not expecting a reply, since it is provided out of goodwill, and I also had a bad experience with plugin makers previously.

Several days went by and there was indeed no reply from the theme’s creator. By then I have by chance figured out the exact cause of the problem, after reading pages and pages of unrelated text on the WordPress forum. It has dawned on me that a set of instructions in the functions.php file which adds a function in the admin page is the cause. By remarking that section of, everything would at least appear to work properly – at least I think it is working properly since I can’t find anything to show it isn’t. After all, I am not .php trained and I would have no clue if my ‘indigenous patch’ had broken the theme in some other places.

It was a pleasant surprise when on the 1st Jan 2009 itself I get a reply from the theme maker, who has since modified the functions.php file and sent it to me. And now I have a fully functional theme without my own patches.

I would like to express my gratitude to miloIIIIVII, and also my appreciation to Carro of the Varg Theme – without it there would be no nice wolf pictures that now mark the header and footers of the blog, to leen of The-Scenary theme whose drop-down menu inspired me to lookout for themes with similar effects. Without them, I would not have been able to get to this point in making my blog better.

Please do check out their sites / blogs and see if there are anything you like. Do also give them some encouragement if you like. I am not suggesting that you are to expect exceptional support from these theme creators, but rather simply as a token of appreciation to all these people out there.

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