philips remote control

Went to Philips factory yesterday again and saw something interesting.

At the service centre there are 2 big TVs hanging from the ceiling for customers to kill time while waiting to be served. So there was this auntie, think she was sending in her TV for repair, and she was holding her own TV's remote control in her hand. Then she got bored with the channel, she used her remote control to switch the service centre's TV channel!

Erm, is that possible? (even if different model?)
(imagine in some urban areas their high rise apartments are so close to each other that your window is facing your next block's window, and you can help them change channel with your TV remote. Freaky!)

ping.sg advertisement with chillycraps

Decided to stir some crap and join in the fun...
Meet chillycraps!
Join in the fun by creating your custom made ping.sg advertisement

Your advertisement must meet these criterias:
Size: 600 X 450 pixels
Font: Microsoft Sans Serif, 36, Strong
Font Colour: White
Phrase: Meet XXX. He/She just got Pinged. Have you?

A Ping.sg logo must always be at the top your picture.

Let's spread the fun~

minesweeper at ping.sg gathering

Went to the Ping.sg gathering yesterday after the triathlon. Actually I didn't sign up to go cos I wasn't sure when the triathlon would end, and even yesterday I was deciding whether to go cos I had a backpack full of dirty wet stuffs. In the end couldn't resist the temptation. (altho they say when you can't decide, don't decide)

When I reached Miss Clarity, I was actually the second pingster to arrive, after claudia. One by one or two by two the pingsters arrived.

It's pretty funny, pingsters whom I always talk to in shoutbox or MSN were pretty shy and didn't chat much yesterday, on the contrary those whom I seldom talked to online actually talked quite a bit yesterday~

And somehow arzhou is forever surrounded by girls. He's like that number 5 surrounded by mines (altho it's not wise to call the girls mines.) At least he wasn't number 8, if not all the male pingsters would have just beat him up.

So male pingsters, next time must sit beside arzhou, then you will be part of the entrapment.

safety kayaker = beer machine

Was at the OSIM Singapore International Triathlon 2007 today at East Coast Park as a safety kayaker. Basically what a safety kayaker does is that when he/she sees a swimmer in distress, he/she is supposed to come to the rescue and help the swimmer by knocking him/her down and let him/her sink faster..No lah! Managed to help 2 competitors who got cramp or was too exhausted to continue.

It was quite spectacular to see tens and hundreds of competitors splash down at one go. There were kids and old men alike taking part in the triathlon, something that I dare not take part in.

As the waves of competitors kept coming, there was no time for pee break for the kayakers out at sea. And so what I did was.... I peed into a mineral water bottle =P It was quite scary actually, cos I scare other kayakers could see from outside (ooo there were a few cute girls as safety kayakers. Anyway they were already wet =P)

You will be surprised how much froth (and how much urine) there was.

end of v-i-peeing

Today marks the end of my vacation internship programme (VIP) at that organization you see on the left. There is a bit of mixed feeling as on one hand it feels like an unfinished enterprise left hanging, on the other hand I can't wait to get back to normal life.

To quote from a stupid research intern's report,

It is indeed very heartening to see the design taking off from the computer screen or the drawing paper and into something physically real. Of course it is no simply swing of magic wand as much hard work was put into both the control mechanism and the mechanical design, as well as long hours of repeated testing. No design is perfect and there is [...]

Lousy report.

osim singapore international triathlon 2007

What can swim and crawl on land? Crabs!

Catch chillycraps at the OSIM Singapore International Triathlon 2007 tomorrow at East Coast Park Carpark E2!

(let's hope nothing bad happens...)

boss in motion

Are there bosses who:

1. tell you when it's lunch time and ask you out for lunch together?
2. ask you along to take a tea/coffee break?
3. make sure you leave work on the dot, if not earlier?

I mean all this while they are promoting family and stuff, but they only make you reach workplace on time, do they make you reach home on time? Imagine they say everyone must reach home by 6pm or leave home no earlier than 8am...

Yesterday I was quite pissed off cos my boss made me attend a 5hr long workshop that had nothing to do with me. Somemore it was my third last day with the company. The worse thing was the workshop dragged until 7pm. And I had a gathering yesterday evening. When bosses make you do overtime, do they bother to ask if you have anything on?

My boss: "if they conduct this kind of workshop outside can cost $500-$800 per person!"
me: "wow, so I have earned $500-$800 extra today"

i shot a supervisor

Yesterday I was doing machining in the workshop when another group's project lead came and disturb me. I was operating the milling machine, then this old freak used the vacumn cleaner's pipe to poke me and say "why are you not wearing safety goggle?"

"This one must wear meh?" (i have never seen people wearing goggle in the workshop lor)

"Later inspection they make noise" blah blah blah blah.

Aha, so his main concern was inspection, and not safety.

Then he still wanted to busy-body examine the metal bar that I was working on. Just nice I was holding on to a air gun spraying away the aluminium filing and dust, so I conveninetly sprayed him with the high pressure compressed air as well. You should have seen the way he backed off!

(he must be damn unhappy that his own interns cannot make it. They all come to work late and leave early. There was once I made a sarcastic remark in the elevator with him inside about my group's interns spoiling market cos it was 6.01 pm when we were leaving the workplace)

many sold or many spoilt

Last Saturday I went down to the Philips Service Centre. It was my 3rd visit there (for different products though) and as always it was full of people.

What can we infer from the phenomenon? Either Philips products are very popular, or they are very lousy. Why do I say that? Let's say there are 10 faulty products altogether. If only 10 were sold in the first place, that means 100% of the products are faulty. However, if 100 products were sold initially, then we still have 90% confidence level with the brand's product. Aha, so things aren't always as they seem to be. Anyway Philips is good in innovation. (no commission for me though)

There was this joke. Queen Elizabeth II was on a visit to Japan and she toured around Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (松下電器産業株式会社) The staffs there were introducing their products to the Queen when she told them she uses Philips. Her husband is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. -_-"

water vending machine

This morning I went to the vending machine, inserted the coins, pressed the button for Hot Milo, and waited patiently. *Beep beep beep*. What came out was hot water.

Apparently they ran out of Milo powder.

So I inserted the coins again, pressed for Cold Milo, and waited patiently again. *Beep beep beep*. What came out was ice water. Nah I didn't do that.

By design, the machine is supposed to show the Sold Out light and not respond when someone presses the button for a particular drink that has run out of powder. Some luckier people got sugary milky water.

Engineers from Fuji Electric (which manufactured that vending machine), please do something.

ads and subtracts

Yesterday after reading the newspaper article on putting ads on blog and earning money, curious me went to the website to take a look.

Usually when you are at the sign-up page, above the "I Agree" (and the "I Disagree") button there's always this long essay of agreement and stuff. Normally I won't bother to read through it but somehow yesterday I spent time reading through it and saw some interesting lines.

One of which says, if you want to remove the ad's html code from your blog's template, you must write in to them 48 hours in advance. Now, not as though I'm altering their code of something, but I find it weird why must user inform them that he/she is removing the code from his/her own blog?

If a guy wants to remove his Crocodile underwear, does he need to inform Crocodile 48 hours in advance?

misumi and mizuno

When you keep mixing up Mizuno with Misumi, you know you have had overdose of mechanical engineering.

(Mizuno is a Japanese sports equipment manufacturer.
Misumi is a Japanese mechanical components supplier)

don't try email-war with me

Early Sunday morning and I had to receive an email from some blind fella.

One week ago I sent an email clear as crystal, one week later he dare say I didn't state properly.

Do you want me to freaking write in

font size 72?

My impression of NUS Canoeing Sub Club is getting from bad to worse.

*Breathe in, breathe out.* I shan't punish myself for other people's stupidity.

And don't try an email-war with me.

mechatronics barbecue

Went to my group's gathering last night at one of the PhD's place. Actually I wasn't feeling well and had a bad sore throat + headache, almost wanted not to attend but decided to turn up anyway. Sore throat and barbecue, great combination.

Most of the time I was looking after the fire, other times I was drinking with the staffs. Had some real good stuffs such as the 46% vol 二锅头 (erguotou) and 40% vol whiskey. It was amazing seeing PhDs, scientists, engineerings and researchers (and most importantly, my boss) getting closed to drunk. =P

Now my sorethroat is worse.
(photos HERE)

giant monkeys

Just now I was at Giant Supermarket's fruit section, I saw people crowding around the lychee and cherry and "sampling" them. They really looked like monkeys, their hands feeding the fruits to their mouth non-stop like eating competition. And when they had have enough of one fruit, they moved on to the next fruit. -_-"

Just when I was asking myself why don't they peel an orange as well, a man in his 40s actually cracked open a mangosteen and eat!

And then my mother handed a peeled longan to me...
-_-"

ramen with climbers

Met up with the Yishun Climbing Gang yesterday, not for climbing but for dinner. It has been a long time since I last saw Nicholl the businesswoman and Meder the Kyrgyz. Alex the (insert word) was there too. Meder will be leaving in August to work in this giant internet company whose name starts with a G, whereas Nicholl is currently handling 2 companies. Wow. And we haven't climbed together for more than half a year.

The dinner place was called Nanten, a Japanese restaurant at the basement of Hong Leong Building. Somehow our group has this habit of eating at Japanese restaurant. Last night's restaurant has this bookshelf of comics books for customers to read and I think it was quite cool. Saw this lone otaku reading comics while eating =P Oh, the black sesame ice cream was nice~!

There was this lady who looked like a Japanese, and she kept looking at Meder throughout the night. Meder said she must be a geisha, while I said she must be human sashimi (ok, 18+). Later we found out that she's the restaurant's owner (oopz) and Meder went on to chat with her in Japanese language. It was amazing to see an angmoh (he'll deny he's one) speaking in Japanese.

Argh I want to climb with them again!

small things considered

Just finished reading the book Small things considered by Henry Petroski.

It's an interesting book that talks about design in everyday life's objects. Things like how paper bag evolved into plastic bag, how the paper cup was made, how WD-40 got its name, why our doorknobs are at this height, why stairs are in odd number, why our handphone's keypad is in such a way... It's a story of how designers build things within constraints. You don't design a toothbrush so sophisticated yet it can't fit into our mouth.

There's this meaningful quote in the last chapter: "Engineers use science to solve their problems if the science is available. But available or not, the problem must be solved, and whatever form the solution takes under those conditions is called engineering."

i not from anti-you, i from end-you-ass

Do you have the feeling that I have something against NTU? I won't deny that it's not entirely untrue (err -_-"), even my family thinks I don't like NTU.

I'm not really into comparing NUS and NTU (c'mon, it's beyond comparison, muhaha), and I do sound a bit ethnocentric when I make fun of NTU, but truth is, lately I'm working inside NTU campus and naturally I do see some funny occurrences here and there. When semester starts in August, I will be making fun of NUS again. =P

Actually I look up to NTU College of Engineering a lot (ours is only a faculty, theirs is a college. Wow!). They have nurtured some of the best engineers in the country (my brother included) and what's more, their engineering has more pretty girls. =)

Any NUS student wants to apply for local student exchange programme?

nuclear/unclear power plant

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO)'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant sustained damages during the recent earthquake of 6.8 on the Richter scale that struck Japan on July 16. A fire broke out in the transformer (yes, transformer, dunno autobots or decepticons) and radioactive water was leaked out. The good thing is, the reactor shut down automatically as designed.

Our dear neighbour Indonesia has been thinking of building a nuclear power plant on one of their sunny islands. The thing is, Indonesia also lies on the earthquake belt. A technologically more advanced Japan faces this kind of problem, do you think Indonesia can handle it? And what about us?

It's like your neighbour's house catches fire, then your house also kena. Can we stop our careless neighbour from cooking?

ntu kid dunno how to flag bus

This morning I was on the bus to NTU when I saw this weird kid in campus.

The bus was about to drive past the NTU Canteen 2 bus stop when I saw a guy standing at the bus stop looking blankly/blurly in the direction of the bus driver. The bus driver slowed down, and I could imagine him looking back like long lost lovers, not sure if the kid want to board or not. At last after a dozen seconds or so the kid decided to run across the bus bay and boarded.

The thing is, there were 2 more bus 179 right behind mine! That kid dunno how to flag the bus is one thing, he could have let my bus go and board the next 2 buses behind!

NTU is always so happening.

ping pong diplomacy

On the very first day of my internship, my upperstudies brought me to play table tennis during lunch hour at the company's training room. Now I have been playing table tennis almost everyday for 10 weeks. =)

Table tennis is a simple yet technical game. Basically you only need a table, a net, a ping pong ball and a bat for every player and you are good to go. But there are technical stuffs like spin, cut, smack, backhand, etc...

Most of the time we play double game, and you will be surprised the amount of teamwork required. For example, I like to cut the ball, and if my partner is not on the ball, my partner may end up eating my own spin when the opponent return the ball. And we don't team up with the same partner everyday, so in the back of our mind we kind of remember one another's style.

Most of the staffs who play table tennis are from China. Ping pong diplomacy?

food for dirty thoughts

Question to ladies:
Let's say you have a nice figure. If a guy look at your body, do you think he's pervert?
If he doesn't look, do you think he's gay?

Question to guys:
Now you see a girl zao geng. If you see another guy looking at/into that girl, do you think he's horny?
If he doesn't, do you think he's just plain stupid?

reply from smrt

Dear Sir/Mdm,

Thank you for your email.

We wish to take this opportunity to share that under the Rapid Transit Systems Regulations: no person shall conduct himself on any train or in any part of the railway premises so as to cause a nuisance or annoyance to other passengers.

As it is not possible for our staff to conduct checks at stations and in the trains at all times, we would greatly appreciate it if commuters could alert us by calling our SMRT hotline number 1800-3368900 for our immediate follow up. However, the hotline is operating during office hours from Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 6.30pm only. Therefore, if such incidents occur outside the hotline operating hours, commuters may wish to inform our station staff who will alert the next station's staff to take immediate action if the culprits have yet to alight from the trains.

Apart from enforcement checks, SMRT also invest in efforts to educate passengers on safe and courteous behaviour when travelling in our public transport network. In addition to regular Learning Journeys Programme and school talks, we organise annual courtesy and safety programmes comprising educational visual and audio reminders, roving roadshows at our stations, contest in the media as well as the iconic travel race SMRT Challenge, to drive the message home.

Whilst SMRT will do all we can to provide a pleasant journey, we encourage passengers to be gracious and considerate as they have an equally important role in ensuring an enjoyable ride for all. On the national level, SMRT has been an active supporter and member of the Singapore Kindness Movement running joint campaign, outreach educational programme to spread the courtesy and kindness message.

We thank you for your feedback and appreciate your effort in contributing to a better travelling experience for all passengers on our trains.

Compare this with LTA and SBS Transit's replies. What do you think? Oh well, SMRT's reply is the longest. But none of them has mentioned my suggesion.

Fine, it's lousy.

first lesson in ntu

You know what's the first lesson some freshies learn in NTU?
A: Cut queue.

I was queueing up at Boon Lay Bus Interchange just now for the bus to NTU, when I saw whole groups of orientation camp kids blatantly cutting queue. I believe they did it under the instruction of the orientation camp leaders (OGLs). Call it organized crime.

You know, this cut queue phenomenon at NTU is very irritating.
The good thing is, in 2 weeks time I am saying goodbye to NTU.

pixel art

This clip is so cool!
After watching it, I opened my Macrohard Paint and attempted to do my own pixel art. Then I felt so stupid.

I'll stick to my CAD drawing.

first sign of being gay

This is the first sign of a person being gay.


Mothers, future mothers and mothers-wannabe, please take note.

first climb of the year

Woohoo, 7 months into 2007 and I went for my first climb of the year this morning. It's amazing how lethargic I have been all this while. Even my SAFRA Adventure Club membership also has expired. But it was great to see the Yishun climbing gang at the wall. =)

It's definitely more than 7 months since I last did a vertical climb, so I didn't force myself too hard. Completed 3 rainbow lanes and feeling quite satisfied. The sweaty palm feeling is back~
Edwin brought along 2 hot UNSW girls to climb. Since the 3 of them don't have climbing cert, so I had to give an extra thought to the sequence of climb and stuff, so that I could step in if need be. Safety in mind.

I was helping the girls with wearing the harnesses, and if you know how a harness is like and how it's worn, it's like... underwear/panties. I did feel bit uneasy tying-in for them and checking buckles, when those areas were like so close to their pubic region. And why must they bend down!! =S

Wadeva, climb on!

invited research lecture

This afternoon I attended an Invited Research Lecture by Professor David J. Ewins from Imperial College London & University of Bristol. The topic of the lecture was "Modern Modal Testing Technology: A Tool for Design and Troubleshooting of Today's Machines and Structures"

Prof Ewins is the guy in vibration engineering. You can check out his past and present appointment here. Other than the part on finite element analysis (FEA) and scanning laser doppler vibrometry (SLDV), I really catch no ball on his presentation -_-" But sitting in a room full of PhD and MSc, guess it would be abnormal if I an undergrad understood the stuff.

It was fun watching Zee Monster getting to some of the audience =P

why the girl touched me

I was on my way home at Boon Lay bus interchange when 3 (quite good looking) girls surrounded me. One of them touched my arm and asked in Chinese,

Hi, can you do me a small favour?
Are you working or studying?

I'm going home.

The girls weren't wearing any uniform, and they weren't carrying any clipboard in their hands. What did they want from me?

Should have played along with them... =/

from solidworks to solid

Yay, the fabricated parts were finally here yesterday~! With the standard components that were delivered a few days ago, I started assembling my prototype yesterday.

A colleague was saying my design looks so complicated, it would take days to finish assembling it. I took half an hour, coffee break included. The only time consuming part was hunting for bolts.

Designing something on computer or even drafting it on paper is one thing, seeing the real structure is quite another. If the screw can't fit into a hole, it just can't. (happened in my structure) While designing, the software may warn that you are screwing too small a hole, but it won't tell if your screw is too small. (it can go in, but not fit in)

My innovative feature (yes, I'm quite proud of it but I'm not describing it here) seemed to work well, but sadly the control system (written by electrical guys) failed. People always say mechanical failure, how about electronic failure?

reply from land transport authority

Land Transport Authority (LTA)'s reply to my suggestion:

We refer to your email of 11 July 2007.

Your suggestion to have separate quiet train car is under the purview of SMRT Corporation Ltd (SMRT). We will, by copy of this email, refer your suggestion to them for their attention and reply to you.

Should you wish to contact SMRT directly on the matter, please refer to their email address below.

We thank you for writing in.

At least it sounds better than SBS Transit's reply.

reply from sbs transit

Yesterday I sent my suggestion (with craps censored) to Land Transport Authority and the 2 MRT operators. I got the reply from SBS Transit on the same day.

Dear Sir/Mdm

We have noted your suggestion.

We will forward your feedback to the Manager to remind
customer service officers, when encountering such incidents
to politely advise commuters to lower the volume of the music.

Thank you for your feedback

Wah please, reply like no reply like that. Did they get my point or not?

foul mood, foul mode

colleague: hey chillycraps!
chillycraps: 去你媽的! (chilly mother =P)

Today I was in a foul mood.

• showed middle finger to a MRT passenger for blasting music
• waved my hand in front of my nose cos the woman sitting beside me had smelly perfume
• bulldozed my way out of the MRT
• stared back at ah beng
• forcefully pushed my seat backward on the bus cos the guy behind kept pushing it forward
• sang this song whole day
  

research hits the crap

I was searching for research information