After struggling with my failing Toshiba hard drive (primary hard drive of my XPS M1330). I managed to get away with 108kB of bad sectors with most of my operating system and important data still intact (thank god they only affected one of my videos, some random images from Adobe, AVG 8.0 configuration database and some free space).

Finally eGENTING released their photos. And, here are some of them. Due to the “fragile” condition of my hard drive, I’m not risking the I/O operations involved in censoring my name off the photos.

I finally can’t take the college’s foosball table getting screwed up like nobody’s business (the metallic board fell off, the legs of the men were dislocated for up to 180 degrees). It calls for desperate measures – I brought my power tools to college and attempt to repair the table.

Tools:
- Power drill
- Drill bits
- Screws
- Philips head screwdriver
- Hammer
- Allen keys (a bunch of them)
- Screwdriver drill adaptor with Philips head bit

Surprisingly the SSD “boss” Mr. Eng gave me the keys (to open up the table) easily when I just asked.

The locking sockets in the men are really out of spec, two identically spec (5mm) Allen keys were able to unlock different men due to different sizes of the keyhole – in other words, some men couldn’t be unlocked by one of the Allen keys but can be unlocked by another identical piece of Allen key.

After readjusting the men, I moved on to screwing (literally) the metallic board. I drilled 3 holes, with one of them drilled too deep (which the screw can’t really bite on it well, but I put one screw in anyway).

All that was done in under 1 hour in the morning. So, everything is fixed and we should be having fair games from now on?

…

Not.

Later in the evening, one of the men dislocated (again). I don’t know how the people play foosball, but this is seriously getting tiring.

I’ve received a call from eGenting R&D (Systems) this morning asking for my résumé. The caller said I might be one of the winners of eGenting Programming Competition 2008 – the competition whereby participations of all ages compete in the same category in a nerve-wrecking 8-hour-4-questions brain overloading pen-and-paper programming competition (without notebook or Internet).

*insert LP rewind sound effect here*

Wha…? I actually have a chance to win (or is that a trick to make me attend the presentation night, though I already agreed to attend)? The competition has a 100+ competitors all over Malaysia (and probably Singapore if they merge both results, add 100+ more), no age limits (unlike last year) and I only answer like… 2.5 of the 4 questions using sloppy coding.

To make it more nerve wrecking, she said “the results are not finalized yet” and “you might be a winner”. What she had done was successfully reviving my hopes (which have died since the day of the competition) of winning something, while not satisfying my curiosity if I have really won anything (which might resulted in two folds amount of the original disappointment if I don’t win).

Finally, she slapped me with a killer guaranteed-insomnia-curse by asking my expected salary during the evening. Does that mean I’ve been scouted before graduation? Am I still on earth or I’m now in lala-land? Does that mean I win something? Do I get one of the grand prizes? What if I don’t win? AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

Anyway, to ease out my anxiousness, I surfed the EGPC website and downloaded a few photos reminiscing the event.

UPDATE

I just contacted Calvin (the guy with the black localhost T-shirt shown above) and it seems like he received the call as well as request for résumé, as well (man this ‘as well’ shit is fun).

Spotted a bit of déjà vu, it would seem as if eGenting is a bit shorthanded…

Interesting…

Update

xxxxxxx,

There are a few categories of winners. You are at the top three. I don't wish to get you nervous but I have to inform you so as to make sure you turn up this Sat.
Just prepare a few sentences, or you can have a minute or two of it. But if you have more to share, perhaps you can send me your speech and let me take a look at it first.

Regards,
Chee Leng

End said. (Yay, I can finally claim back my library fine of ~ RM5)

Update

I attended the award presentation night and must say I am deeply disappointed. Though I got awarded second prize, it is not justified – when the standards are dropping like nobody’s business. I found it particularly disturbing when the speakers actually start making jokes out of it.

The statistics are roughly as follows (despite this is an open competition): 200+ people signed up, 100+ people turned up, 90+ answer sheets submitted, 11 answer sheets got at least 1 credible answers (makes 11 winners total).

The “easiest” (40 marks) question (4) got circa 4 credible answers, the “thought-to-be-not-easy-but-end-up-being-the-easiest” question (3) got around 8 credible answers (in Java, Tcl/Tlk and PHP), the harder question (1) came out with only 1 borderline credible answer, the hardest (IMO, not the most difficult, but the longest to write) question (2) (and certainly not specified really well on the protocol selection, and has so far the worst sample answer I’ve seen) has almost zero credible answer.

The champion has a total score of 210/1000, first runner-up 201/1000, second runner-up 190+/1000. Distinction winners are around the > 170 mark. (Note the maximum score for questions 1, 2 and 3 well exceed the total score of the champion)

In essence, nobody managed to solve questions 1, 2 and 3 perfectly. Question 3 is attempted by most of the people, and attempted by every winner. Question 4 supposed to be the easiest, but end up only a handful of people submitting credible answers.

With such a low performance record, winning anything in this competition is not worth to be proud at all. In fact, it’s rather a disgrace receiving the prizes without deserving them.

With this awful experience in mind, I will definitely gear myself towards EGPC-styled questions (and environment) and seek my revenge this year - for all the humiliation this competition has brought upon me.

My screw extractors arrived and it can only be one thing: operate on my Dell XPS M1330 (which has been delayed for several weeks due to a stubborn broken screw).

... Though I finally ended up extracting 4 (FOUR) broken screws from my notebook. Way to go DELL for using el-cheapo screws. Now I am able to play UT2k4 at high detail level and (finally) able to play Gears of War at a decent frame rate (though the buffer times really lagged shit).

Some photos for those who are curious:

寒冷的风 - 闻起来酸酸的。别了，苍神录。

Creative X-Fi Crystalizer (available in Creative X-Fi series audio devices) is one of the very few DSP (digital signal processing) I really recommend turning on at all times. With my Triple.fi’s hooked on, the presence of skull-banging bass is immediately felt (I never heard/feel such powerful, lean [non-bloated] bass before) the moment X-Fi Crystalizer is activated. Besides that, the highs are also polished into sparkling splendor – all without overwhelming or distorting the quality of mids.

This is waaaaaaaaay better than tweaking the equalizer as equalizer only lets you tweak the quantity instead of improving the quality of frequency ranges.

The provided el-cheapo earphones that came with the X-Fi GO! really sucks. To truly enjoy the audio quality, use better earphones/headphones.

Highly recommended for gaming audiophiles who don’t want to buy two different DACs (digital-to-analog converter) for different purposes (music and gaming).

Another thing to note: The HRTF processor in X-Fi - CMSS-3D is good for gaming and movies (IMO, better than Dolby headphones as the rear channels in DH is too ‘near’) – providing pseudo surround on earphones, but not for music as it seriously distorts the audio signal.

Along with other L Series products (LT-Genesis, LT-Zero: Neutron Accelerator et. al.), here is a preview of the prototype LGS featuring adaptive mapping system with Mode 7 capability. Additionally, it features camera Y-coordinate handling as well as rotation on the X-axis and Y-axis. Rotation on the Z-axis (yaw) is not supported due to the complexity involved (mapping the horizontal scanlines is already hard enough, thank you).

It took me a week to figure out a suitable mathematical model for this system. Note I have a few constraints involving the lack of floating-point processing capability and inability to use vectors and matrices. Performance considerations on KVM makes things worst.

In the end, I developed an algorithm that uses only trigonometry and linear interpolation (with a bit of precision trade-off involving bigger angles) on a fixed-point math foundation.

So far it runs smoothly on my N82, have yet to test it on my sluggish A1000 though (if it runs smoothly on that, it’ll run on any device xD).

明けましてをおめでとうございます．．．とかも知らない。

The dawn of a new year signifies the end of yet another year, joining the leagues of my childhood years. Placing in front of me is a brand new path, a path with endless possibilities. Once the first step is taken, there will be no turning back, as with the end of my teenage years.

From cradle to grave, the time seems long – enough for me to savor each moment. But without realizing, one-fourth of my lifespan had already washed away. The remaining three-fourth is still a mystery, and might just end anytime unexpectedly.

One by one, people leaving my sight – I can’t help but feel time is rushing by at an enormous pace. Though I wished I could face the future with anticipation, I really hope the arms of seconds, minutes and hours would just stop here eternally.

Those words might only be heard by a dying man, until you stop and think: aren’t we already dying since the day we were born? As biological products, time is killing us slowly, softly – but I rather not be the one who kills time, unlike them, my time is not indefinite.

Alright. Enough emo stuff. I only have a piece of potato (fan shu - lit: potato; trans: crappy) photo taken during the countdown on the rooftop of my aunt’s house.

And a few days before at a different location: