Pzizz

Sylvia from ping.sg twittered about Pzizz.com. I dunno how new this site is, can't be bothered to check now that I've closed the window. But in short Pzizz offers you customizable audio to relax and energize you with their Energizer module, or bring you peaceful sleep with their Sleep module. Pzizz combines New Age-y music, the usual soothing stuff, and a relaxing voice to accompany you to sleep. And these change with every play, ensuring that you'll never get tired, nor will your body be too accustomed to the musical sequence for Pzizz to lose its effectiveness. Sequence durations and audio levels are customizable to suit your preference. In other words, it fills in the energy limits of humans. I don't think you'd last 20min accompanying and soothing your child or loved one to sleep. You'll wake up screaming crying and drooling at 7am the next morning with three stacks of work undone and half an hour to get your arse to the office.



As a trial, Pzizz offers download of their software, individually or as a bundle, as well as a 15min sample track of each module. I played the sleep sample track. And after 30 seconds I was so frightened of knocking out right in front of my computer that I turned the track off. I'll load it into my MP3 and try it out later. I do need some uninterrupted sleep badly, if that's what this software touts.

Check it out and lemme know! :)

You Dropped Your Pad

Yesterday I was honored to be invited to Daphne's 21st birthday party. We were at The Mussel Guys at Vivo City, and we had a really great time with well, not funkilicious, but at least good seafood (if you consider fish and chips seafood, that's what I ate). The fish was soft, and at times that became a fault because you couldn't dip your chunk of fish into tartar sauce without leaving it behind as you lift your fork up. The tartar and fries, however, were good. As we finally left for the... oh what's that place called... Rooftop Gardens? for a few final pictures, John motioned to the welcoming waitress outside the restaurant. The filter sponge of her earpiece had fallen off as she removed it, and she hadn't noticed it. Ben and I noticed him stopping, and we turned to see what happened. As John explained, Ben comprehended and filled in with, "Ohhhh the pad issit?"

"Yeah yeah."
"And you told her that she dropped her pad."
"......"
"Um..."
"No let's... don't go there."
"I'm not going there!"

So all the girls saw at first were three guys screaming and laughing and bent over and walking like drunkards. I could barely explain it to them over my laughing fit. Oh gosh, it was so funny.

"Excuse me ma'am, you dropped your pad." Nice.

Should I Join the Petition to repeal 377A?

A friend of mine invited me to a Facebook group, or rather the Facebook group for Repeal377A.com, to petition the Singapore government to consider repealing the (in)famous Section 377A, presently criminalizing gay sex even between consenting partners. As I was about to click the Join button, a powerful force on the inside of me swelled and set off alarm bells. My subconscious was hesitant. I had a dilemma on hand.

As a person with, at the very least, an average intellect, I'm neither ashamed nor afraid to say that I recognise the need for Singapore's society, especially the older generations, to be more open-minded. Things are changing rapidly, very rapidly, and if you don't agree with it, you'll just be left in the dust. If you don't agree with it as a nation, you'll be left in the dust as an entire nation, dragging younger generations like us who wish to see Singapore becoming a more intellectually modern place. That said, 377A is, to me, a rather rare stepping stone to voice our concern in this area. The contents are certainly controversial, but how many chances like this do liberals get to voice their stand on an open society?

On the other side, I am Christian, and I firmly believe that fornication between two men is not natural and is not God-ordained (whether it gives pleasure is another thing. But it's not right).

Just today, my junior sent me the link to Keep377A.com, the "nemi-site" of Repeal377A.com.

Once before I commented during the last Singapore General Elections that while we all weren't exactly overjoyed with the PAP, there wasn't enough strength and faith in the opposition to vote for them. So I said I would have nullified my vote. To which my cousin gently corrected me, saying that since I've been giving the choice, I should exercise it to the best of my ability, and not waste it when others don't even have the chance to make their opinion counted.

Today, I feel that I have been given a chance to vote. For or against liberty, and for or against the inevitable spread of homosexuality should this section be approved. And after all I've just wrote, I've come to a conclusion. That's right, thanks to blogging, I've made up my mind. And it is this.

No matter how rare opportunities will come by, we are a rapidly evolving society. You can try to resist it, but soon it will overwhelm you. I believe, and in fact hope for more chances like this to show my support for liberalism in this society, without having to deal with thorny issues such as the spread of homosexualism. For now, faith and rational morals will take the throne. I will put my name down in Keep377A.com.

What is your stand today?

One of those weird dreams

So I was woozy in front of my computer right? As always my sleep cycle wasn't complete before I woke up, and I'm dozing off to make up for it. I just never learn. Images of an excited email from my podcast's head honcho Daniel shrieking that we have another PR email flashed around my mind. I tried to open it and the only thing I can remember now was a 5-letter email conversation (thank you so much Gmail) and someone from the PR firm starting off with Dear Renhao.

A couple of minutes later I woke out of Twilight Zone, and I'm in that part of waking up when you recover from sleep? Like when batteries get over-charged and they're trying to deal with it? Yeah, and I'm doing the cover-one-eye-and-frown thingy and thinking What was that all about?

Then I saw my Gmail Notifier was blue.

Then I opened it up and saw a press release email from Olympus announcing the E-3 DSLR, successor to the 7-year-old E-1 (thanks to the Engadget community).

Ok so it wasn't an excited letter from Daniel. But it's still a press release! How the tech did Olympus get my/our email? I dunno, but I find it kinda presumptous to add media to the press list without first notifying them innit? Cos this was directly from Olympus, not even from a PR middleman (middleperson).

The mystery lives on...

Fu-i-ku-to-ri

Wuha.

Ahahaha.

MUUUUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! VIC-TOR-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Tsukasa-chan's through to the next round of Saimoe '07!

Tsukasa BANZAI~! BANZAI~!

Tsukasa's victory however, also means that San-chan from Seto no Hanayome has been booted from the competition. And I'm not gleeful to see her go because she's one fine gal, with alot of chivalry to boot. But nevertheless I'm more happy for Tsukasa.

WAII! WAII!

You know you're too obsessed when you rejoice over your favorite cartoon girl getting through a competition.

Free webhosting and domain. Why not?

Ok, well, since I thought of blogging about something or the other anyway, I decided to join unclesha's free webhosting and domain contest.

I deserve to win the 1 year free blog hosting and web domain sponsored by ‘We Host You’ because I've been wanting for the longest time to have my own site. I love Blogger because it's just so straightforward, and it offers more horizontal room than I would ask for. But, and this is not Blogger's fault in any way, I don't get vertical freedom.

What the hell you talking about? Well especially with a sort of user interface for layout editing, Blogger's brought the ability to customize your blogs to the masses like never before, when previously to do so you had to learn HTML. I know, because I did. But anyways, layout editing. That's what I mean by horizontal space. Short of having the theoretical ability to make your blog into an interactive site with CGI fairies and THX-certified surround sound, Blogger's got it all laid out for you. But what if you wanted to create a survey page? Or a special page for a special something, say a page dedicated to the situation in Burma now, showing your support for the monks. Or a mash of your Web 2.0 stuff - Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc.etc. Or a page that doesn't have the usual characteristics of a blog page. Now it's not Blogger's fault they don't offer something like this to you, because they are a blogging site after all, hello?

Having your own site offers that flexibility and more. I've got so many ideas waiting to be launched, that are either not feasible on Blogger or a chore to do. I'd rather just wait than work my ass out to make something half-past-six on Blogger when I can do it so easily on my own site.

So yeah. I deserve to win. Really.

Discman VS MP3 Player

There was a week's gap between the time I returned the review ZEN unit and yesterday when I collected my very own unit. To fill in the void of a portable music player, I burnt a few CDs and went back in time to use my Discman.

It was a disgusting experience.

What an irony that CDs which were supposed to be far more superior than painfully compressed digital audio files sounded like a mere shadow of the latter. But in all fairness, these weren't original CDs but burnt CDs converted from MP3 files. I always wonder what they do... expand it back to its original space? Well wouldn't that just make things worse?

Guess I answered my own question.

And these past two days I've had the Aurvana X-Fi headphones with me to play around with. For those of you still not in the know about X-Fi technology, X-Fi aims to accomplish two goals of audio resurrection and relative spatial reproduction. In English, to attempt to replace what has been lost through compression, and to reconstruct an accurate stereo stage for a more wholesome listening experience.

And even the X-Fi could only do so much with the crappy CDs. The sound quality was average at best. And the volume, oh my goodness. At MAXIMUM volume, the CD player was outputting to the headphones at my normal listening volume (65%). I thought well, maybe the headphones required power to run properly.

Then I got my ZEN today! Excitedly I dashed back and loaded songs in and played.

I only had to crank up to 75% volume to have a fantastic (nevertheless ear-spoiling) listening experience. But the ZEN I've always felt, I thought, had a higher output power.

And then as I'm typing now, I'm listening to my brother's spoilt iPod Shuffle (dunno how he can throw here and there until the USB internal data cable snapped. No hope). Still has battery though, so I'm taking the chance to try it out. Very surprisingly, I estimate that I've turned the volume to about 80% or at most 85%. And it's already blasting into my ears.

Well that's that then. CD players, you disappoint me. Be thee casted into techological oblivion forever, and may ye not just burneth there, but melteth there.

How many of you got that joke now?

Reviewin' the Creative Aurvana X-Fi Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Ok so I attended the launch event right?


Well my audiophile friends, the review unit is here. And guess what.



I'm ROCKIN' OUT ON IT BIG TIME! \m/ It's a freaking aurgasm powered on my computer (too soft on portable devices - standard problem for otherwise rocking headphones). I'm listening to classic guitar tunes (not classical, classic) like Hotel California, Cemetery Gates, Sultans of Swing, Master of Puppets, Sweet Child O' Mine, and I'm thinking to myself "I can die happy."

Well ok I do have one regret. It's not that snug that I can do some serious headbanging. If I do that, give another minute and I'll start banging my head for headbanging $500 onto the floor. In pieces.

Many pieces.

Watch out for NTT and my extensive review of it on Tech65 soon.

Good Day Bad Day? I Can't Decide!

So I had set my alarm for 1030, thinking that that would be late enough, and yet give me enough time to do my usual computer routine before leaving for Creative's Aurvana X-Fi Headphones press event at 2pm. Magically I woke up wondering why my alarm wasn't ringing yet, and I saw that it was 1027. Lovely. Might as well switch my alarm off and sleep in abit. It's still early innit... and it's raining, too... ...

I woke up at 1.11pm.

With a big fat curse I greeted my day, and flicked my computer on while I took my clothes out and packed my bag. When I opened Gmail I saw that NTT was online, and the first thing I did was swear again and let him know I would be coming by cab. By the time I left the house it was almost 1.30, and I was carrying my nasi lemak my dad bought for me (free lunch what why not?). It took until 1.40pm to get a cab at the forsaken bend that my estate faced. And with the rain and all, I only managed to reach Wheelock Place at 2.10pm.

Now let me say something about the cab driver. (Obviously you have not much choice over whether I say it or not, it's just for smooth transition's sake.) This guy drives up to Wheelock, by the side. This is good for me because the office lifts were just upfront. But this idiot stopped on the second lane, because he didn't squeeze into the first lane when he could. And as I was still waiting for him to slide in so I could get out safely for goodness' sake, he looked at me and I looked at him and he flicked his head.

"Here lor," he said in Mandarin.

Quite obviously I was already in a bad mood for his less-than-swift driving, but I had a press conference to attend and couldn't be bothered arguing with him. After I paid him 13 bucks I threw the door open then gathered up my things, and fuck you if a crazy speeding vehicle took the door off its handle. You deserve it damn you.

Zipped up to the 9th floor to find that they were still expecting quite a few people. While in the cab I had already prepared my name cards, and sure enough these came in really useful 90% of the time a handshake occurred.

After the official presentation NTT and I went to spend more time with the X-Fi and the Live! headphones. He had to dash first, so with the kind help of the peeps at August Consulting and Creative's product presenter Eugene, I filmed an episode of Channel65. The tape was playing back as the cameraman for the day passed the camera back to me, and I found it to be good and shut it off. Later I remembered to take some close ups of both babies, and the hell I did.

Right over the previous footage.

So now there's a little patch in the video where I'm standing in my hallway looking embarrassed and filling the missing content in.

Sat down on a ledge to eat my nasi lemak, then took a stroll through Borders before deciding to settle down at Coffee Bean to go through the press kit documents. Remember what I said about a free lunch? That earned me a Banana Chocolate from Coffee Bean. For artificial flavouring, it's not too bad.

What I thought would be a simple stroll to the nearest bus stop to take 65 home turned out to be a bloody hike through town. I was on the Wheelock-Ngee Ann City side of the road, and I surprise turned to frustration as I walked neverendingly, searching for a bus stop on this side of the road. I met several bus stops and NONE OF THEM was on 65's route, what the hell. All the way up to DFS Galleria and I gave up and walked backwards. I was on the other side of the road now, and as I walked I saw a 65 roll past.

Going to Tampines.

If you don't already get it, it means I could have crossed the road anytime to take a bus home. But whatever I was too sianed to swear already, plus I might get arrested and sent to Woodbridge. I took the bus home, and since I returned the ZEN review unit earlier, I only had my CD player with me. And the bus. I was sitting right at the back of the double decker, and I swear the air-con must have been lower than 16 degrees. Even with my hoodie on I was freezing, and had to zip up and jam my hands in my hoodie's pockets to make myself the least uncomfortable.

Good day bad day? I dunno. Sounds like a bad day with good bits. But whatever. It's over and I'm still alive, so who's complaining? Good night.

1st SIM Inter Collegiate Soccer Tournament Finals - UB vs UOL

Well, UOL won.

That's not the point I guess. But then I also guess we wouldn't really be thinking of saying that if we had won. To think I had had so much faith in UB (read: Akash).

I hope you don't misconstrue, I'm not expressing disappointment in Team Buffalo. Nor the goalie, nor Akash, nor whoever missed that last penalty shot (Leon? Dunno, don't care). If anything it's probably lack of battlefield experience. I don't see how anyone can blame any player or goalie for missing or not catching during shootouts. The pressure is immense to perform, and as we all have experienced in some form of another, that's prime formula for a spectacular fuck-up. It's a vicious cycle.

The real thing I took away from yesterday's match? Camaraderie. All coming together, watching together, cheering laughing wailing together. It transported me right back to my days in VS, where we'd yell the hell out of ourselves, and one guy would start a cheer and we'd all follow and recite the rest of it by heart. Any VS boy would tell you that sense of pride we felt when people asked which school we were from. We'd reply VS, and they'd laugh and go "Oho. The cheering bumblebees." Priceless.

We all watch world-class matches, World Cup and Euro, so we all expect lightning passes and triple combo hyper kung fu goals. Honestly, even S-League matches can only interest me for so long. And yesterday, obviously there were times when the whole damn game seemed so pointless, people plopping the ball around here and there, out of court, all that. But when the whole UB was screaming the hell out of themselves, I felt back home in VS again. And with girls this time. Loud girls.

Hans. What can I say? A few solos, some embarrassing, but where the Buffalos needed it most, this guy was no compromise. See how Celest and Ryan are leaning away from our direction? They apparently find Hans's drumming too loud. I chided Ryan and told him to go listen to more loud music. But when Hans turned back and yelled at the crowd to shout louder, even I winced. His drumming (poor tom-tom. The skin was terribly abused by the time the match was over) was responsible for starting like 75% of the cheers. Jane Anna and gang on top, some big lungs there. and Melissa and company one row lower with the pom-poms. Human loudhailers haha.

If there was one thing that I took away from my 4 years in VS, it was not to jeer. So I was obviously abit uncomfortable when they started poking UOL. SPEAKING OF WHICH! Shame on you UOL supporters! Leaving halfway during the match, what kind of supporters are you? Only ONE FUCKING LINE of supporters to celebrate their victory with them at the end of the game. That is sadness epitomized.

Ain't the end Buffalos. It was a fantastic match, with or without the crazy crowd, and you proved your dedication to the sport and to excelling. We'll sure as hell be there next year.

Because we rock. Horns up Buffalos. \m/ My hair looks like shit.