Lantern On Fire

The Mid Autumn Festival 2 days ago saw some of the most violent fire ever happened. Well, see it for yourself :P

Ok, maybe not the most violent, but its nice to capture something here... Jus tthe background noise will be good if tis not there...

Jeanne D'Arc

If you loved the PSP game, you will love this promo video from Japan :

SecureZIP ~ Use your email cert

SecureZIP is a product from PKWare which has can use your email certificate to both sign and encrypt your email and its attachment. This is a very useful product. Using certificate also provide authorization and you know who it came from. Encryption can protect your data from other people especially (if you do not know), email is using SMTP which travel in PLAIN over the internet.

For a limited period, you can sign up and get SecureZIP for free at :
http://www.securezip.com/

or download from http://rapidshare.com/files/56022588/securezip1120008.exe

PSP 3.71 M33 is out

With the Pandora Battery and other new technology, even the PSP Slim ROM can use Custom Firmware now. The newest V3.71 is out. Here are the changes :

• Now uses 3.71
• VSH Menu is not longer launched using HOME key, but using SELECT now. This is to not interfere with the XMB function of home, which is now more useful in this firmware.
• Psp Slim: umdcache was allocating memory even when homebrew was launched, wasting memory that homebrew programs may want to use. Now umdcache module is stopped before it can allocate any memory, only in the case homebrew is launched.
• Also, memory is unprotected for user memory usage by M33 core (only when homebrew is launched). Developer, for a sample of how to use the extra memory, see the extra ram sample of the M33 sdk.
• Both version boot now from 3.XX ipl, and are independent of 1.50.

You will need 2 files and do some rename if you download from other sites. I had repacked and put everything into one. I had also stripped off the SDK because most of us will not be using it at all. Just copy the whole UPDATE directory into /PSP/GAME and you are ready to go. REMEMBER to press X to reboot when asked to do so!

Download : http://rapidshare.com/files/58760669/PSP371.RAR

Satay at Chomp Chomp

Yes, its about food again. For my oversea friends, Satay is like BBQ meat burned with sauce over the fire, then dipped into thick peanut or other type of curry etc sauce. Usually Satay comes with onion, garlic, cucumber and rice to supplement.

This time I am going to recommend the Satay at Chomp Chomp. Thats a place I used to hang out back in my service days. Because its close to my grandma and its a quiet place back then. Now you have to be early to grab a seat and the stores has changed a lot. But some good ones are still around. Some I recommend is the Hokkien Prawn Noodle which is still very good. Also, the chicken wings, but its not as good as the one in Bedok Central. Do also remember to try the $3 sugar cane mega glass there. Its like a personal Tiger Jar except its sugar cane.

Satay, you have at least 3 choices there... More if I am not wrong, but guess what happened, J has decided to order from the only Halal one there. There were these 2 guys manning it and one of the kinda look very fair. J mistooked him for a chinese and only to realize when he say "Speak English". :P Well, I guess I would had too. Their satay was a long wait, I was not very happy but there were things to keep me occupied. But I must say, its damn worth the wait. The chicken is very tender. Bouncy and juicy. Its not hard like some of the other satay I seen outside. The beef and mutton is great too, but among all I guess I love hte mutton, which is so surprising cos I usually hate Halal food, and among all mutton which usually smells to me.

Do try it if you drop by Chomp Chomp at Serangoon. BTW, thats also where Chu Chu came from. We had been there many times, but had only eaten there once due to many reasons... There is another newer food center just opposite, but its very different type of environment. Well, the prawn noodle is good too there, thats about it though. :)

M18 Pearl at OG

It was a sunny day and I just drop by OG to stock up on my regular supplements. OG offers a different variety of brands from Robinson and other places, so I can find more option for Bee Propolis etc. Anyway, there was always this Pearl shop at OG, well, at least in Bugis OG. With a purchase of $20, you can collect a voucher which you can collect a free pearl from them. Then after that they will try to sell you their silverware, necklaces at overprice rates.

I had always been very unhappy with this shop, and so happens that day it turns out the chinese girl and her chinese manager REALLY pissed me off. So, I had to pick a fight with them on this very day.

They used to give unlimited pearls as long as you have vouchers and receipts for $20 or more each. Then they limited it to 2 per person. That I can still understand, and in the past, I even totally give up on it due to the queue. However, today there were NOBODY at the queue.

First, there was a sign which I find damn offensive. Pearl ONLY for people 18 years old and above. WTF? Must show IC to collect now liao? I dont have the problem with this age limit, but really.. WTF? Imagine a rich 17 years bought some expensive clothes. Does that means she cannot collect? Does it? And why the hell 18? Does it contain some adult stuff? Drugs (like cigarettes)? To me, this is down right discrimination on age.

That aside, since it did not affect me, I was told I can only collect 1 pearl. Err... OK, I have kinda like 6 vouchers. I told her imagine I queue again la, just give me one more at least 1 pair or something... The uncle peeling the pearl is at least kind and he say 2 is ok la... Then guess what? That F*cking china bitch come in took all my vouchers away and stamp all my receipts!! What? Scare I give other people take or what? Then guess what? She still insist on giving 1 only because that is THEIR rule she say.

Under the situation where there is a big crowd, I will just cool off. But there is NOBODY there. So, I decide that this will be THE DAY. So I insist to complain. I want to talk to their manager. Ah, f*ck, I did not get her in the picture, but she is the one wearing white and she stood and say she is the manager and give me a damn sia lan face. I explain that I had purchase so much from OG, take one more is also ok la... Moreover, what will I do with 1 pearl, I dont want to have a one sided earring. then she explain and say this one not her problem, they are not from OG and whatever we bought is not her problem and blah blah...

I think that totally reflect very badly on the whole. OG must had selected a very bad company to work with. Don't want to give, dun pretend to be generous! What try to promote people to buy more? OG should just tell everybody to buy only $20 cos you can't get more than 1 pearl anyway. And even I reason that so if I queue again cannot meh? that bitchy manager say she will regconise me. So, now its personal ha? I totally blow my top. I decided that I need to reach higher authority to resolved this and she has picked a very bad day to have this fight with me!

So, I went calmly to the OG service center and ask for the OG manager in charge. So, a lady in black came. I tried to explained it as calmly as I can, but I seriously don't think I did a good one at that kind of blood pressure. Nevertheless, she offered to accompany me to the Pearl store again.

Things after that does not come with a twist anymore. As usual, she talked to the manager and the manager tried to argued with her etc... In the end the OG manager made her give all 6 pearl to me. I thank the manager at least at solving this. Seriously, if they had given me 2, I will not even have to come to this. I also understand the difficulties and that they problably think they lost money on this. I do hope OG stop partnering them in the future...

Things to take from here :

1. Can't stand the queue, don't bother. Its for 1 f*cking pearl only.

2. Somehow the pearl are for adult only. So, if you look under 18 and do not want to risk IC checks situation, don't bother.

3. Don't by any overprice stuff from them. Lets hope they fold soon with such bad ass sale bitches.

Japanese Film Festival 2007 - True Romance

The Japanese Film Festival 2007 started yesterday and I was there on the first day to catch 2 of the R21 screening. Not that I choose the R21, but I find the PG rather tame as compare to works from Takeshi Miike or other of my favourite directors.

The first was "Vengence is Mine" (復讐するは我にあり/ Fukushû suruwa wareniari). This is a really good story about a jailbird who returned to his life and find many things has changed. The only things that has not changed is his way of criminal life. With the betrayal of his wife to his own father, that send him on a rampage to kill 5 other persons befoer he was finally caught. He impersonate university lecturer, lawyers and even fake his own death along the way. This is long before we had "Catch me if you can" in 1982.
The romance is this show is probably between the inn keeper lady and our anti hero as well as his wife and his father. Its sick in a certain way, but the theme of a hopeless love surrounds this show.

Tjhe 2nd movie I caught was "The Ballad of Narayama" (楢山節考 / Narayama Bushiko). This is the story about olden days Japanese in a cold village in the mountains where law is not what we know of today. The villagers has their own law and believes and along the show, we saw the brutal murder of a family by burying them alive, killing of old people who has reach age of 70 and others. This show portrail the hardness in survival against natural in this poor vilalge, where food is of high importance. Much more than even life itself. Sacrifice were made as a result in the most sad and cruel way. There is NO romance in this show if you asked me and the R21 is really quite unncessary. There is savage sex though, if thats what it is for. Sex just for the sake of relief rather than passion.

I had not caught anything today because the title did not attact me much. However, since the theme is True Romance, I would had hope they brought in really good love story such as "Inugami", "The Lost Eden" and other classics. In this next whole week, there is still movies running at night on weekdays and on the coming sat and sun. My recommendations will go with "Moon and Cherry"（月とチェリー / Tsuki to Cherry, "Tokyo Marigold"(東京マリーゴールド) and "Life can be so Wonderful"(世界は時々美しい / Sekai wa tokidoki utsukushii). Who knows? You may catch me there at these screening.

* Some screening are free while others are not.

More info :
http://www.sfs.org.sg/event.php?id=103

Xiao P ~ Toilet

After my meal, its time to take 5...


Pretty nice toilet, new sand too...

Hei, stop filming... Some privacy ok?

Xiao P ~ Its feeding time!

Time to look for food...

I know its here somewhere... Ha? You talking to me?

Some left over from last night, I will finish these first...

Ok, now its really time to look for food.

Lets check my feeding bowl, there plenty of (junk) food there...

Isn't he cute... the feeding bowl is just his size...

Xiao P ~ Hide and Seek

There was always this day I needed to wash his house (glad I can do that. Nobody can wash MY house). So, its either the hamster wheel or a temp home. Just happen this day Xiao P has tired of the wheel, so he goes into one of the carrier I used to bring him around.

But what happened? Where is Xiao P?

Potentially Dangerous Item Found

Ya, maybe back in 5 years ago, you can say "A possible bomb found", but today its really dangerous to speak the B-word. I heard even a mum and daughter was arrested at the Singapore Airport for saying the word "bomb". Moreover, there is a really strange law that suggest saying this word actually cause instability ion the country. So lets just stick with the header.

This item as you can see is white and black and look metallic. I saw the police lifted it up. So I am quite sure it will not explode or anything (at least for now). I would had thought they should not touch it until the bomb squad arrive or something, but apparently people are walking by this road like nothing happened.

Update :

They finally taped the area up and you can walk on the pavement now... I am sure this is just a scare, however imagine it was something for real and its in front of a church and some police decided to lift it up for a look. Man, I say thats dangerous.

爱在地球毁灭时 ~ 我和僵尸有个约会2

J asked me which song I love best from My Date With A Vampire, well, this is the answer. I find the meaning nice, end of the world, everlasting love, farewell to the world, last snow, thats the feeling...

I found this special version, guess who sang it?

Tearing apart Quantum Fireball Ex HDD

Why would I want to do that? I will tell you the answer at the end.

Lets take a look at our dinosaur :

Quantum Fireball had its time. Long before people even heard about Hitachi HDD... Anyway, its a great pain to tear apart this working 3.2GB (its not a typo, its not 32GB) HDD... first, remove all the screw you can see (yes, there are some you can't see) on the top and bottom to pop out the silver protector.

Pull out the orange cable to detach it to make your life a bit easier. Remove the whole motherboard piece and you will find a sponge layer below. You can strip that off if you like.

You will end up with the following parts now :

Before we move to the top of the HDD, lets reveal a hidden screww below. Tear off the silver sticker and you will see a strange screw which I believe is industrial screwed in. You probably can't find the right tool to remove it. Anyway, I had found a way to get around without needing to unscrew this.

Now lets work on the top. you will find 2 pieces of round silver sticker that say do not remove. Well, remove it. and you will find 2 more hidden screws. One of them you will not be able to remove, but the other you can easily unscrew with your finger. try pushing the HDD up from the bottom and you can see the screw is quite loose. Remove that screw.

This other one, you can't touch as it wil lbe too tight.

Now you can use a screwdirver and pull open the cover of the HDD.

You can finally see the mirror surface of the HDD. Now you will notice something strange (if you haven't) when you move your screwdriver around. Yes, I am not going to spoilt it, I will tell you in the end what is that.

There are about 3 to 4 screw more to unscrew and now you can concentrate on the read write head. Remove any other plastic you can to enable you to move the head. Now, rememeber the bottom screw we can't unscrew. That link the RW head here. So the easy way out is to break the black plastic portion of it.

What do you have now? Take out this strange piece of metal. If you are sharp, you will realized you already had taken out another similar piece and it is radiating some very strange energy... :)

Here is the aftermath of all the destruction :

And here is your prize :

Well, what is it? Its 2 VERY powerful magnet. I think I can say you should not have seen any stronger. Not only that, its a shielded magnet. It only attracts on one side. The reverse is shielded by the metal piece and it does not stick anything at all. I am sure there are more good use for this...

I am sure, not much peopel would like the platter for mirror, so I am not going to cut some fingers removing that.

Epson Printer SSC Utility

It you have an epson printer, then you need to have SSC Utility. Its a russian utility which gives you more control of your printer. You can see the exact usage of each of the ink (which is deliberately hidden by Epson) and also even control the cleaning by black only or color only.

Grab it at :
http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml

Although it did not say that Vista is supported, but I am using it happily.

Windows (Vista) does not use my default drivers!

well, it happened to me. After I hacked around to use the Widcomm stack bluetooth in Windows. Well, thats another story, but the Widcomm stack is truly a bless.

Anyway, if you insert USb stick or some hardware and it can't find your driver. And you find that you can manually point it to C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32, then you know that Windows no longer uses the default path.

I heard this is a common problem with Daemon tools.

I dig around and finally found this solution :

Navigate to C:\windows\inf (substitute a different drive letter for whichever one your OS is installed on) and find the file infcache.1

You will need to have windows set to show hidden and system files most likely. Since this is Vista, you also may need to go to the properties and permissions for the file and take full control. Once that is done, delete the file.

After this, just plug in your device and ta-da.

AVP2 Requiem Trailer

Yeah, this ones look much much better than the first one. Lets hope we have some decent showcase this time...

Rate R, please view with caution.


Alien Vs Predator Requiem Trailer - Funny videos are here

Resident Evil : Extinction Coming 21 Sep 2007!

New Trailer :



Trailer 2:



And this one is the R Rated Edition of the Trailer which is banned from some sites :

薔薔 ~ Ella

(Another) Ghost Story 3

Whenever I see people burning the paper money for the wandering spirits in the 7th month, it always remind me of a story that happens about 3 years ago to a relative. My family has stopped burning to the wandering spirits since (with consent from our deities). Anyway, this was what happened :

My aunt (relation too complicated, just put aunt easier) was praying to the wandering spirits at night on the 14th in the month. So she bought everything downstairs. However since she was burning a lot of paper (folded into tube shape to look like olden days money and perhaps easier to burn), she has keep them into a few big plastic bags.

She went downstairs and poured everything out and started lighting thr candles and burning... It all when well, except it was about to rain or something, since the wind has been howling crazy. she quickly burn it all and pack up and return upstairs.

Then things started to happen. My cousins starts to see this woman in white and long hair in the mirror. Members of the family heard an additional breathing in the house. And something things even when "bong" in the night when everyone was asleep. Although there was nobody hurt in any incident, the family finally had enough of it and was very certain something was wrong.

They consulted the media at a temple. The media was channeling the power from a underworld deity and it spoke to the family. The deity was very sure that something has followed my aunt back after the burning. He asked if my aunt brought back anything from the burning... My aunt remember the empty plastic bags. The deity just smile and ask her to go back and look. The answer is there.

My aunt when back and quickly took out the plastic bad. Inside there was a unburned piece of the paper money which she must had left out when she was pouring them out. Somehow the thing has got into that as a media and came back home with her...

Well, the rest is pretty straight forward. They burn the unburned piece together with some offfering and asked the spirit to please go on and leave them alone. Everything was fine after that.

Now I guess you understand why some people will not want to take anything back after the burning. Not even the bags or matches even. Its not that these people are not environment friendly, there is a good reason. In additional, people usually prefer to go some distance to burn the paper so that anything, if there, will not find it easy to follow them back or to identify who burned what. I guess this is kinda of a pirvacy protection.

Anwyay, my family has stopped burning to the wandering spirits since. We only burn for our own ancestor whom we invite back home.

Oh, by the way, did I ever talked about the haunted Hello Kitty fan my sister had a few years back (also in the 7th month)? Maybe I would put that in a next post, but for now, I am tired and the wind is howling cold. Sleep is what I need now.

《强剑》主题曲MV（完整版）主唱：郑嘉颖、黄宗泽

Here is the complete MV: