More than meets the eye

Soundwave was always one of my fav Transformers character. I'm keen to get this version of Soundwave that doubles up as an MP3 player. Way cooler than an iPod.

Good husband

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's Christmas Party. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all.
He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.
Jack had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.
He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house.
He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.
Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make you your favourite dinner tonight. I love you, darling! Love, Jillian".
He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating.
Jack asks "Son...what happened last night?"
"Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.
Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??"
His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed "Leave me alone, I'm married!!"

New Old Airport Rd Food Centre

What a mouthful. Anyways... its good to know that the food centre is up and running. The Wanton mee stall is back but some people were confused becoz its signboard has changed. But its good to know that some times don't change. My fav Rojak stall is back and as usual, you had to wait for your turn to order some scrumptious Rojak. There was a fucking irritating woman who pissed the hell out of me. She complained out loud "What a stoopid system. I have to wait 20 numbers". What a bitch! If you don't want to wait, don't eat. I'm very sure the Rojak sellers don't give a shit if you eat their delicious Rojak or not. I blame assholes like her for Singapore's bad reputation overseas.

Wolfing down the Rojak calmed me down.

Pretty lights!!!

Woah!!! Freaking cool. Check out my new portable HD. Jealous?

Jap!!!

Been having a lot of Jap food recently. Going to avoid it for awhile. Check out the cold noodles and Sashimi that I had. Mmmmmmm.

Welcoming shade

It was blazing hot before the rain came. The clouds provided welcoming shade from the freaking hot sun.

Humongous melons

Hahahahaha. The picture says it all.

Char Siew!!!

There is always a queue at this Char Siew stall when I'm there. In fact I took this pic while waiting. You guys should try their Char Siew and Siew Yok... damn nice.

Overdue

Attended SyScan07 on 5th and 6th of July. Hahahaha. So this post is really way overdue. It was a 2 day security conference. Had its good and bad. Good becoz I got to listen about really cool hacks but at the same time listen to some really dreadful presentations. I have to admit... the speakers at this conference are probably the most brilliant people in this industry but a few of them couldn't be understood either becoz of their thick accents or becoz they did not bother to elaborate on their points but instead read word for word off their slides.

The conference was held at Novotel Clarke Quay btw. The bus stop where I took my buses home was just outside the site where the National Theatre used to reside. Its such a pity that they tore it down especially considering that the site is now unused. They should consider rebuilding it for commemorative purposes.

Got the retro pic from this guy. Damn!!! He's way cooler than I.

Far out!!!

My friend works for M$ and he co-authored this guide on malware removal. Cool stuff. Check it out.

"Not Defined"

I was clearing some mails when a sys admin approached me for help. It turned out that he was having problems logging into a Windows server and needed my help. He couldn't log in even though he was a 100% sure that he knew what the password was. I promptly burned Ophcrack into a CD and popped it into his server.
Ophcrack went about its job of cracking the passwords of accounts residing on that system. While waiting for the cracking to complete, I noted that the root account was listed as "Not Defined". I found that strange as I had never seen an account listed as "Not Defined". The sys admin commented that it was probably due to the OS hardening configurations but I doubted that as the other account names were displayed just fine. My colleague suspected that the account information on the hard disk was probably corrupted.
The cracking was completed and the password revealed. I went back to the Windows login page. I entered the root user name and cracked password into the login window. Failed. I tried variations of the user name and password but still no luck. Then it struck me, the user name is probably what was listed in Ophcrack. I tried the user name "Not Defined"... lo and behold... it worked!!!
That was when I had to stifle my laughter. The other admin who hardened the server had mistaken the remark "Not Defined" in the hardening guideline as the mandatory name to rename the root account!!! "Not Defined" actually means that there is no recommended configuration and that the admin is free to ignore that config or use their own preferred config. In fact, other sections of the hardening document has "Not Defined" remarks for several configurations so I was not sure why he got confused by it. OMG!!! Bloody hilarious. I couldn't help but laugh for about 15 minutes after my work was done.

"Compliment king"

Eh! I don't always complain ok? I sent another email to SBS yesterday but it was to compliment their driver. I was pleasantly surprised by their driver yesterday. What happened? Well I left my office at 5.30pm yesterday and was walking to my bus stop. The bus stop is about 10 minutes away from my office premises and it also requires me to cross a cross junction to get there. The bus stop is another 50-80 metres* away from the traffic lights. Well I was crossing the junction when I saw my bus arriving, I started running for it**. The bus passed me while I was running but I didn't stop running because I still harboured some hope of catching it. Lo and behold... the bus driver was kind enough to wait for me even though I was not even close to the bus stop. Thanks mate! Becoz of his patience, I managed to reach my home at 6.20pm :p

*I'm very poor at estimation as you can tell.
** One of my favourite pastimes is running after buses. I hate waiting for the next one.

"Complain king"

The bus driver this morning was a maniac. He sped along certain stretches during my journey and was continuously horning at other drivers. He drove very close to another car at the junction outside Serangoon MRT and that was the final straw. I wrote a complaint email to SBS this morning. Nuts!!!

Bastards!!!

China already has a bad rep when it comes to their food. I was flabbergasted when I read that they stuff their "xiao long bao" with cardboard husks in the newspaper today. Fuck! No wonder I was sick for one week after eating "xiao long bao" on the last day of my Shanghai trip in 2005.

Hitman the movie

I haven't had much to blog about recently but I'm extremely excited when I came across the Hitman trailer while browsing through Apple's trailer website. I nearly wet my pants actually. I love the Hitman PC game series. In fact, I bought all the Hitman games except for Hitman: Blood Money. I'm waiting for them to release it as a cheaper repackaged version to complete my collection. The movie? Looks good.
After a crappy first half of 2007 with few worthy movies to attract me to the cinema, there are tons of interesting upcoming movies. Turns out that a remake of "Get Smart" is going to be screened soon. Steve Carell is Agent Maxwell Smart. I watched the trailer... actually hilarious. The last of the Bourne trilogy "The Bourne Ultimatum" is coming soon.

New 7 Wonders

The results are out... the new 7 Wonders of the World has been announced. The winners are The Great Wall of China, Petra, Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, The Colosseum, The Taj Mahal. Damn!!! I've only seen one... The Colosseum. I've always wanted to see Cristo Redentor*. My next trip might just be Rio De Janeiro :p
I'm shocked that the Pyramids, Statues of Easter Island and Stonehenge didn't make it into the list.
*Christ the Redeemer in Portuguese. Amazing picture taken by my idol, Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

Singapore, China?

The number of Chinese nationals in Singapore has increased exponentially in recent times. I am surrounded by them wherever I go. They are in the train, buses, hawker centres, shopping centres, restaurants, library... they are everywhere.
Is Singapore now a province of China? I think we might as well be. We can leverage their resources... hey, we can even scrap NS... just deploy the Red Army here.

Live Earth

Was watching "Live Earth" on TV and it struck me... I would like to know how much of the global energy consumption is attributable to Internet-related activites? The Internet is available to millions of people worldwide 24x7 and I believe that a lot of energy is used up to ensure its availability and resilience.
I decided to put my Googlefu to work. It was estimated that 8% of the total American energy consumption in 1999 was used by Internet-related equipment. That is mind boggling when you contemplate the fact that the Internet has exploded since 1999. Internet traffic is growing at an annual rate of 40% since 1999 and the number of Internet users has also grown exponentially resulting in the number of Internet devices increasing. All these factors point to increased electricity consumption. Will the equipment manufacturers please manufacture devices that consume less electricity or find alternative power sources for them?

XSS

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is an attack where a malicious party uses a web application (eg. website) to run malicious Javascript code on a victim's machine. More information about XSS and other web exploits can be found at OWASP.
I decided to see if I could insert benign Javascript into this blog. I saved the Javascript into this post. I visited this post and the benign Javascript was executed on my laptop.

I experimented inserting the same Javascript as a comment in my blog. Blogger disallowed the Javascript from being submitted.

What's the implication of this? Malicious parties are prevented from inserting malicious Javascript as a comment into blogs. However, they do not disallow bloggers from inserting malicious code into their blogs so you have to be careful when visiting someone else's blog as it may contain malicious code that will execute on your machine.
How do you block Javascript? There are two methods of blocking Javascript. You can disable Javascript from your browser. The problem with blocking Javascript in your browser is that websites that use Javascript for added functionality will stop working.

Alternatively, you can install NoScript. NoScript is a Firefox add-on that by default blocks all scripts on websites. You can manually choose to permanently or temporarily allows scripts to run on specific sites depending on how much you trust them. This won't eliminate all risks but minimizes your exposure to malicious content.

Bus 151

Anyone taken bus 151? Cool advertising... believe it is an ad for a bar or alcoholic beverage. At first I thought it was a hoax but you can clearly see the EZ-Link reader and bus license plate in the pic.

Another "fine" city

Turns out that Singapore is not the only city that resorts to fines to resolve issues. New York has implemented a new law that allows Policemen to fine citizens who contribute to noise pollution in the city.

Spice Girls reunion

Rumours are afloat about a Spice Girls reunion. My reaction? Xiao ah!!! Who wants to watch Spice Aunties?

Buzz word?

Its now hip to reference Singapore in movies and TV serials. Sao Feng (played by Chow Yun Fat in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) welcomed Barbossa and the rest by proclaiming "Welcome to Singapore". Now Wihelmina Slater (Ugly Betty) tells her assistant that "If house wives in Singapore can handle this, then so can I".
Wonder if Americans will start googling Singapore to find out where it is.

Finally!!!

Its hard for Blackburn to attract decent players. Its a surprise that in-demand Dutch striker Maceo Rigters signed for them. He was the top scorer in the recently concluded European Under-21 championships. Hope that he proves to be an adequate replacement for the departing Benni McCarthy.

Joss Stone

Can someone please tell April who Joss Stone is? Everytime Joss appears on TV, she asks me "who is she ah?". I reply "Joss Stone" and she replies "who is Joss Stone?".
I keep telling her that she's the white gal with the black woman's voice. I went to Joss Stone's website just now and she asks the above question again. I must have told her a million times who Joss is.

Durian puffs

Got some delicious durian puffs from Selegie. At first it wasn't so tasty when it was lukewarm but after putting the rest in the fridge, it was scrumptious.

I figured out what this building is. Its the new LaSalle School of Arts.

Portable apps

A suite of handy tools that you can run from your USB drive on any Windows machine. Very handy on the go.

Romantic?

Tony Blair proposed to Cherie while she was cleaning the toilet during a holiday in Italy in 1979. Haha.

Unfair

Singapore matched the Aussies in every department and hit the woodwork twice showing that they were no pushovers but still lost the game 3-0. Sharil Ishak had a one-on-one with Schwarzer prompting JC to SMS me saying that he would have buried the shot into the Aussie net. My SMS reply? "Pls lah. If its u, piu liao."
Indra Sahdan then headed against the crossbar and Khairul Amri shot against the post. We were outdone by former Leeds duo of Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka. Raddy is really the key to Singapore football. Since he arrived, he has really done wonders to our national team.
Its sad that we couldn't end the last game at this grand stadium for the last time with a win. I will definitely reminisce about the cheers, the drama, Kallang Wave and foot stomping. I'm so glad the last time I was in the National Stadium, we beat Malaysia on penalties. I look forward to watching the Lions at the new stadium.