Monthly Archives: March 2005

Metal Matters

William and I caught Latte@8 at Sunway Pyramid’s Starbucks last Thursday.

We were pleasantly surprised to find one of the guests as Sharifah Amani, co-star of the acclaimed-by-everybody except-me-because nobody-is-able to-watch-it-with-me Sepet.

Frequency Cannon. (That’s who I was here to see.) You don’t see it, but Yuri seems to have contracted Siva’s detaching-guitar-strap syndrome!

So I may have bumped into Becky, a famous blogger, and not had the guts to say hi and make the world a better place by letting a famous blogger know that yes, a famous blogger can be recognized just like any other form of celebrity should.

I honestly like the Proton Gen 2 design (and most of the colors!) I think it’s sleek. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, someone adds to it!

I bought this second-hand from DJCS. On the left, a Sparkle GeForce 6600 GT (500/900) 128MB AGP card; on the right, my old Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro (200/400) 128MB AGP card. The Radeon 9600 Pro would replace the GeForce 2 MX I bought from Syefri on the Athlon XP 1800+ machine; the GeForce 6600 GT would sit in my Barton XP 2600+ baby. Rates? Here goes techie numbers quick: UT2004 Flyby, 165 fps; botmatch 57 fps; Doom 3 High Quality 67.6 fps; Quake 3 Max Quality 228 fps; 3D Mark 2005 3185 marks; 3D Mark 2003 7089 marks; 3D Mark 2001 13043 marks. Quick go out and buy lottery numbers. Yeah 3D Mark 2001 was disappointing; 13043 marks was something a Radeon 9700 could do! However, its performance in 3D Mark 2003 was leaps better than my Radeon’s 2589 marks.

Heavy metal guy would consider this torture. Heavy metal runs in my veins, baby! It makes for my magnetic personality!

Presenting the new Calzone, from Pizza Hut – pizza on the go. A regular-sized pizza folded into a handy taco shape. Pizza Hut is under the same stingy company that hold Ayamas Roasters and KFC, but they do not suffer from food miniaturization! Shown is a AA battery in scale. No I do not eat batteries. I am not a robot. Do not eat batteries, even if you think you are a robot. Batteries will corrode your tin can soul.

Speaking of robots, here the Autobots gang up on a Decepticon I couldn’t resist getting as it was fresh on the shelves.

Barricade, the center piece of the Transformers Energon series combiner Bruticus Maximus poses, terrified.

He is an excellent, well-articulated tribute to Onslaught (that Transformers Generation 2 yellow dude), original center piece of Bruticus.

I misplaced Onslaught’s original cannon accessory.

No, Barricade isn’t that short when his cannons are folded out.

He is also the same size as the powerlinking Transformer Energon series. Spot the Decepticon!

“Here is the armless, legless wonder of the 20th century!”
As center pieces, Onslaught and Barricade are vital. You just can’t buy the arms and legs and superglue them together.

Barricade makes a pretty totem pole.

Barricade is really my new favorite Transformer Energon figure. He’s not limited in articulation in any way compared to other Energon figures which had niggling features like legs that can’t bend at the waist, or shoulders that can’t extend… Barricade also has a solid look and feel, and every joint and flap locks into place. RAWR.

Gore Ring

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I bumped into my cousin at this gig, where he asked if I was playing. “Nah I don’t even have an electric guitar!” Fate would be that his old one was lying in a cupboard, so I borrowed his.

This is not a floating bridge. I had trouble with the 2nd string, where the ball end of the string was stuck in the back of the bridge, “a common problem with Yamaha electric guitars.”

Smokin’ pot. The volume was a tad crackly around 6-9. It works nice at 10, but we know it was meant to be turned up to 11.

Make a selection with the pickup selector. I found it best at positions two and four, in between any two pickups.

Not outback jack, output jack. Grime is not a crime.

Let’s get behind her neck. Her head was dyed purple.

Look ma, no strings attached! Of course, I got the 8-38 gauge ones. Beautiful. One-finger full-tone bends. However, the .008 string was too light and you could barely hear it when shredding with distortion, or tapping for that matter.

Fear of the dark… Fear of the dark! I like this picture because of the sticker there, and the darkness behind it.

Fret not.

I didn’t know that an electric guitar had a longer scale length than an acoustic. A cool trick to getting an acoustic tone, or at least to amplify the electric guitar without electricity, is to play the electric guitar while having its body touch the acoustic guitar’s body. Ooo how perverse. For best results, place them back to back, with the acoustic guitar facing your body. You will feel the music.

For a demo of me playing the same bad music, but amplified, invite me to a MSN Messenger audio chat. Okay so it isn’t any louder since the distortion effects on the SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 soundcard don’t come out on audio chat, but it gets higher pitched since I have no cutaway and more frets to play with.

You All Like Pictures

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A cat takes a nap near a dinky drain. Its very carpetness was hard not to picture. I mean, hard not to put in a picture.

A window of inspiration. What do you see behind your window?

Frus and I were walking to KLCC, when we saw this.

Look I’m a Force Of Nature too! (I didn’t go to many on-off complications; why do people buy tickets in odd numbers?)

We headed to The Loft in Zouk, to catch Twilight Action Girl in action. Turns out only three of the four rock deejays were there, and the one guy who was missing was the guy I could greet and thus look cool. Being attached to a record label, he would have been at the Force Of Nature concert at the exact time we were there.

They played much more British, New Age and much more alternative rock, such that I felt a bit alienated since my taste is mostly American-style rock. Still, their selection was pretty lounge-chillout and very dance-able.

We went our separate ways, and I walked along the Jalan Ampang district, when I saw two very horse-faced hookers soliciting a white guy. “Sir we give you orgy!” I saw more horse-faced hookers along the road. Scary. I wonder which was worse – horse-faced hookers or trannies. But then you know Caucasians, their women have stronger facial features.

Jerry was right – the Perodua Kenari can look nice when modified.

A&W’s Double Deluxe Burger. Check out the cheese; I had to scrape it off the cardboard box. Dudes at Amburgers & Wootbeer, the cheese goes between the buns somewhere.

I also bumped into Az‘s parents; I seem to have bumped into them as often as I bumped into their son when he was still in this country. It was like he inherited the flow from them.

On Saturday I went to Paul’s New Place to catch the final instalment of the Rock Dawg Music Fest.

Seven was their usual funky self.

The Blumps stood out as the only punk rock band in today’s lineup.

Polaris, now that was interesting; heavy progressive rock. Add organ for that Floyd-ian coolness.

I finally got to see ex-colleague Azmir in action, from his grunge days in Shoot Goat to this mathematical fretboard dance in Polaris.

Ground Xero, the all-girl band from ICOM that rocked.

SDC, hard rock all the way. Sadly I felt their set was a bit too long as it lacked dynamics – it was a hard fast song one after the other.

Outfigured; picture features an excellent screamer. (Not like death metal continuous growling, but one-off rage.) Figured out who? It’s not the dreadlocked headbanger. Sadly her vocals were drowned out.

I expected something with Seemphony, with their expensive-looking guitars. They merely did two big-hit-single covers from Incubus, but redeemed themselves with some interesting covers. The drummer was cool though; my friend said he looked stiff but I thought his hard hits looked cool. Plus the guitarist can do a House Of Pain.

It is quite scary to see Jack of Naked Breed shred with all his hair falling into the guitar. He had to keep flipping it back. Alex, the drummer tied his long hair back. Meanwhile, Justin and the bassist were bald.

Soft Touch, to me, seemed harder than their usual reggae/folk rock.

I am going to rudely end this entry… like so.

Eat Eat Eat

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The sunlamp probably made this duck’s hair expand upwards.

Frus and I met up in Low Yat to look for hard disk-based MP3 players. Since I had 19 Gigabytes of MP3s and 4 Gigabytes of pictures, I’d love to have a 40 GB MP3 player/picture viewer (and perhaps hackable to view videos). The perfect one would be the iRiver H340, but that was nowhere to be found. Its smaller 20 GB brother, the H320, was around though.

Other options?

The RM1650-costing Wealper Multimedia Viewer II (in shops it was sold under the brand Pendrive). It could view pictures and videos, plus it functioned as a card reader too! My only gripe with this was that it was 20 GB! I could transplant a 40 GB hard disk in it, but it would have to fit in a 1.8″ case. Otherwise, I’d be loading from my camera straight to this and watching re-encoded Transformers episodes.

There was also the Pendrive X’s Drive Pro; that used a 2.5″ hard disk (not included) and if I was to add a 40 GB hard disk, it would total less than RM700. Sadly, it was bulkier and did not have a color screen.

Still, all these had more features than an iPod of the same price, so eat that, brand fashionistas!

Speaking of eating, we then went to Steak & Goreng for dinner where my Teh O Ais Limau (Iced Lemon Tea) had an interesting deformation at the straw. I then realized that this was intentional! Such geniuses. Ever drank your Teh O Ais Limau slowly because you were afraid to suck up seeds? This straw crease prevents it!

We also found the black album – the soundtrack to This Is Spinal Tap! I didn’t even know it existed. Now I’ve gotta get speakers that go to 11. Unlike Metallica’s black album, which had a snake, this was really black. How much more black can it get? None more black.

I’m going on a search to locate the other albums (in the bottom-right inlay). Sadly, no lyrics were included.

If you are a rocker and do not know of this legendary rock band and their rockumentary, you should swap your leather pants for baggy jeans.

Side trivia: I didn’t know that double-bass-playing (it’s a double-neck bass with the exact same neck… geddit?) Derek Smalls also did many voices in The Simpsons!

I Deserve A Star For This

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“What if… according to the stars, we are not meant to be?”

So that sentence was nicked from my friend’s nick.

“Sagittarians are freedom-loving, fun-loving… I don’t think I could deal with that, being insecure and all.”

So that sentence was nicked from a voice in some girl’s head.

What is it with girls and horoscopes?

So I was in MPH with this chick, who looked for horoscope books for my sign – Sagittarius. We found that it was harder to find than books for any other horoscope, even in the same shelf. That could mean that:

– Sagittarians don’t give flying horse manure about horoscopes, so Sagittarius books don’t sell. Yes I asked some female Sagittarians as well.
– girls are too busy buying Sagittarian guys Sagittarius books, so they can tell us to read yesterday’s prediction and see how supposedly accurate it is… so that we may believe!

I haven’t been getting Sagittarius books, so I decided to call upon Google to prove my first theory. I searched for each horoscope (the word ‘horoscope‘ was added to avoid searching for testicular cancer as well).

Sorted in most popular order:

Results 1 – 10 of about 1

Trapped In A Box

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The theme for today’s picture blog is Trapped In A Box.

Friday, 4th March

An innocuous Japanese stuffed toy shows where he needs his Tee-Pee.

Saturday, 5th March

The fishtank, also known as the Xfresh Headquarters, undergoes renovation. We vacate the place and stick an “Out To Lunch” sign. My idea. 🙂

This was my desktop.

We moved to the small conference room upstairs. Major fire hazard. At least we are warm and cosy inside, with the heat of monitors to keep us from cryogenic preservation.

The cameraman makes a cameo.

Sunday, 6th March

My old strings were rusting, so I got yet another Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky set. Yeah those that have the smooth bending light .009 strings and have three heavier ones from the .046 end. But hey, check out the light that shines through, under the bridge.

I went freeloading at Fitness First, Wisma Consplant with Leech.

“Er, I’m here for my free trial.”
“Who referred you?”
“Some guy named Aaron… he said he’d call back on Friday to confirm but he didn’t.”
“Oh he’s not in today so why don’t you just come in? Here’s your visitor pass. Feel free to explore the facilities.”

And so, I walked in with no identification whatsoever.

I tried the treadmill, finding 5 kilometers per hour to be a drag. 10 was proper haste, while 14 was a good run. I stepped aside to the side to max out the speed and see how fast it could go, when a guy tapped me on my shoulder… shocking me.

I thought it was a guard about to tell me off. “Oi jangan main main niii… nanti jatuh baru tau…”

It was Yit Weng, thankfully. We then met up with Leech for Body Combat class, a class of uncoordinated men and women kicking and punching air. It also featured the fat screeching voice dude with a top that exposed his unsightly belly. I say top and not shirt because it was feminine. Well, at least you know that after a while, these people will look better, right?

Leech: “My friend says he’s been here a while, and they’ve only seen him get fatter.”

I looked at Leech, and she was flushed red. She looked at me and said I didn’t sweat. Which really, was because of a loose shirt that fooled everyone! On a side note, I think I sweat less than the average guy and thus do not stink when I’m overnighting. Yes girls that means you can bring me home.

I then went into the sauna with the only guy I knew was straight – Yit Weng. Just in case. Even if he wasn’t well we’d be too embarrassed to face each other in the office, yes? I only felt the heat on my nose. I didn’t feel as sweaty as the other dudes looked, but a touch of myself (er… I mean, I touched myself… er, I mean, I felt my hand) proved that I was indeed damp. We sat a full ten minutes and I came out unsatisfied. Is that what you call hot? My mom’s Perodua Rusa is almost as hot inside, with the engine being in the middle and all. The only sign that I’d been in a sauna was that my lips were very salty.

So Leech and I went for an un-hot flaming hot peri-peri at Nando’s for a long chat that will remain undisclosed. Timely indeed that Hanna and Nabila would call and land in Subang Parade themselves, where I took this picture of a lamppost near Secret Recipe (ISO settings 50; it’s not as dark):

An ATM machine runs on Windows 2000 and has a corrupted file.

Monday, 7th March

This was what was left of the server room behind the Xfresh Headquarters. The racks have since been cleared off, leaving a nice security-camera-less room to chill in.

The floor panels can be opened! How cool is that? It would make a nice place to stash your weed.

Shaz and I went to watch Hitch. Major inspirational movie. Anyway he forgot to look up an exit in the One Utama parking lot!

We reversed, drove around to find a guard to open it, and found this poor sod trying his luck. No sir it does not have an automatic sensor. A guard finally opened it for both cars. 🙂

Tuesday, 8th March

Aini Nadia, beloved Xfresh Street Surfer, gets trapped in the back of the Xfresh Street Surfers Proton Arena… with the keys.

Um gee, how do we open this? Clockwise or anti-clockwise?

Freedom!

Wednesday, 9th March

I did it again. I bought another car.

An all-American Corvette Z06. In blue.

With red leather seats.

The Transformer Alternator, Autobot Tracks, looks sleek but his legs aren’t as poseable as Meister‘s.

Look who’s the poser now.

Thursday, 10th March

Shisha! Ask me for videos of me playing the malfunctioning robot. We were at bird-shit-land Rasta’s in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, smoking up what was still legal and apparently not proven unhealthy yet.

Saturday, 12th March

Well I’ll be. Something smaller than a Reduced Size Multimedia Card. The TransFlash, a wee 64 Megabyte midget that fit in Jerry‘s Motorola E398. Obviously my RS-MMC wasn’t in the picture as it was in the camera taking this picture, yes?

Far Knee

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An addition to Saturday 5th March’s blog:

I was bumming around alone most of Saturday, walking aimlessly in Bintang Walk. Fate it was that I didn’t hop on the bus that would take me home; instead, I bought guitar strings and stared at my shredding shredder friend/Bentley guitar salesman. I then went to Lot 10 where I saw a new OSIM massage chair complete with lower arm massage, like it was a blood pressure machine or something!

One 15-minute round of freeloading wasn’t enough, so I hit the button for another. Thank goodness I took such a leisurely pace, that my German-Indian drinking machine friend called me up, offering a free ticket for The Actorlympics!

(Her name has been withheld lest you know her and think you deserve the ticket more than I do.)

I didn’t get to have dinner with my friend as intended, so I gobbled a McValue Meal quick, and as I walked towards The Actor’s Studio I bumped into DJCS… who had two free tickets.

It was good. Like Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but by the Instant Cafe Theatre. Afdlin Shauki was bad at accents though, and his George Bush impersonation didn’t sound Texan nor stupid, but he had classic Ah-Ha moments. Gavin, I felt, wasn’t as quick with his wit, but when he was, it shone and reminded me why I’d watch Sketches regularly. The best bits had to be the ambiguously homosexual tendencies of the troupe and their sense of humor about it. Yes some gay dudes can be darned quick-witted.

Muse It Curls

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1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
19 Gigabytes. 5

Religion Realism

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My preferred definition of Altruism: Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.

I think I can safely say that altruism is my religion. God, or the natural goodness, exists in everybody, and it wouldn’t hurt to be excellent to each other. It’s like karma in a way. What’s good… no wait, what’s bad goes around. Bad things tend to snowball.

What about life and death? I’ve had this theory since I was 13. There is no hell or heaven. Life is a form of energy (closest in form to chemical energy), and as energy cannot be created or destroyed, when we die we are merely reborn in the nearest lifeform, like the bacteria feeding on our dead body. When that bacteria dies, you may be reborn as another bacteria. If you’re lucky, you’ll cross over to being a fly. How do you become human again? Die as your parents’ pubic lice.

Now given that the world’s population is increasing, where is this extra energy coming from? The trees and animals that we make extinct from expanding our backyards. Don’t forget the millions of microorganisms in a cubic centimeter. I haven’t even taken into consideration that energy can change from one form to another.

Glaring Notebook

Pressed For Words