edward’s few and rare thoughts

Since my dearie’s going back early this year to spend Xmas at home, i asked if she was gonna get me anything for xmas first before she leaves. and she said “no”. how sad. And so I demanded for one haha, and said I’ll let her know if I see anything.

This conversation happened while we were checking out the new Somerset 313, very nice place, look forward to a full blown post at her blog (http://www.tingpinggggg.com) about it. Within 3 minutes of walking into Harris bookstore at 313, I found this! a Big sign which said:

“Magic Fish”

Of course, I had to check it out. Other keywords started popping out: instant fish! miracle of life! just add water!

Suddenly all the feelings of first discovering “Sea Monkeys” came flooding back hehehe.. so, even though I know the only few fishes that can achieve such a feat of having eggs in diapause like the Seamonkeys were killifishes, I JUST HAD TO GET IT.

It’s magic fun! instant fun! wahahahaha and its been a long time since a cool toy like this came out.

So the dearie promptly grabbed it, bought it, (it was a costly $30 small box) and there I was grinning happily at the cool xmas present I got this year. Though she kinda banned me from taking the toy out to check it out again after the 3rd time =P

Shall update more on tiny fishes pics and hope they actually survive. and that I get one of a cool colour =)

The box itself

The insides, separated into many boxes

The bag of substrate with fish eggs inside

The possible colours of adult fish!

Ahh.. Where else can you do smth like:

awk ‘/PAGE\[Q/ {split($4,fields,"[");print fields[2];}’ dts.output | awk -F, ‘{print $1;}’ | sort | uniq > filtered.output

To take in a page of 3000+ lines messy text n info and get exactly what you want in 218 lines.

Monday was great! tp finally brought us to this little hidden tea place she has been talking about previously.

It’s hidden in a small corner of Taka, but has great view of Orchard outside and luckily when we were there it was pretty empty.

The food was very very shiok, very strong tasting so you really have to eat each dish one by one, if not your tastebuds are gonna get very confused.

Had the herring dish for starts, it was so huge and it wa really shiok eating the well seasoned fresh fish. However I didn’t really like the plum parts so tp had them :)

tp had the steak risotto while I had the cod with rosemary. Both rich and flavourful, and intially I complained the portion was too small, but don’t be fooled. The richness and quantity will fill you up to the brim.

We rushed to 2012, after a short 15mins baby feeding session. Yea, we bring them even on dates.

2012 was very satisfying as an action show, almost 3hrs of high quality action and effects. But disappointingly too politically correct and naive in my opinion. None of the human nature showing itself, degradation of morals, anarchy, etc etc which I had expected from an apocalyptic show. It was a bit like watching a Carebears episode.

Oh well shall update this post when i get to a laptop.

Bah. Dammit. Just got news one baby died. Hope the last egg still hatches tmr. :(

Having discovered Dina in Windows, wanted to try installing in Ubuntu back home. Hellish nightmare. Font support in Ubuntu is pretty bad, Windows does it so much better. Just a quick note here to record things I’ve found out which works, before I forget again.

Most old (2005-07) results on Google will point to using “sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config” to get a prompt which allow you to enable Bitmap Fonts (*.pcf). However, like me, some Ubuntu users enter that line and nothing happens. You get sent back to the prompt.

I finally found a sweet and easy way to install fonts:

1) Create a directory called “.fonts” in your home directory
2) Drop .ttf and .pcf files alike into the directory
3) Run:

$ sudo rm /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf
$ sudo fc-cache -f -v

and Voila! It works! Restart the program to see the new fonts in them =)

The original post is here: http://www.alanbriolat.co.uk/2009/04/enable-bitmap-fonts-on-ubuntu-jaunty/

Sadly, Dina looks pretty -errmm- on Ubuntu.. the original built-in Monospace 9 still looks better to me. and of cuz, Fixedsys =)

Oohh created my very first GUI app, right now playing with Python and Perl.

The indentation rule kinda sucks when you decide to wrap everything in a while loop, then change your mind.

There must be an easier way to do so

Btw, Spooktacular this weekend! Woot! Better not be less impressive than Sheares Hall fright night.

And here’s a capture of where I’m interning.

Cool.

One of the most unique Google logos I’ve seen hehe.

Apparently today marks the day where a patent for barcodes was issued to a group of three some 57 years ago after a 1932 thesis on an automated grocery store.

Barcodes were initially used to label railroad cars, but didn’t take off until their use in grocery stores. Info here: Barcode Wiki

Yep! after such a long break, I’ll be back soon!

Just been at a 9 to 5 internship, and busy coding on a pet project.

Soon soon!

Tomorrow is the day where we’re gonna start the 3 weeks Eurotrip! So many months of planning.. I really hope nothing goes wrong.. =) and most imptly.. I’d be seeing my dearie after more than half a yr!! AAAHHH =)

Gonna pack now, and then settle + go through again all the paperwork to be done.

Lastly, some Google Chrome love: Whilst researching for Eurotrip, up to 35 window tabs have to be open at all times.. and I doubt many other browsers can do that simple and fast =)

Screenshot: