www.darylim.com

Maybe it’s time for a change to this page, and to revisit writing all over again.. We shall see..????

My first Apple product was….. iTunes, which was obviously a free download. A clean and simple Music tool that organise your music on the computer..

Slowly, i realised that it’s more than what it is. iTunes grew into a programme that connects all your Apple devices together, and also a place to shop for iPhone applications and music; which the latter is not available in Singapore. No idea why though.

Then i got the 1st Generation iPod Nano. A free gift from SingTel though. It was able to withstand the years and weathering. Still my source of music.

I got the iPhone about 1 year ago. Something which didn’t come by cheap and easy as it was not launched in Asia then. Totally blew off by it’s capabilities, though it couldn’t function some of the things that people expect to have in their phones. Such as bluetooth and transferring of files

If one uses their brain and think, if Apple operates iTunes Store by selling music. Does it makes sense if their device could download the music and bluetooth it to another party out there?

I sold my 2G and got myself the iPhone 3G. Not a very big difference with the old one but it has better network speed. Galore myself in the 10,000 apps and counting that Apple and other 3rd party developers are creating. Of cause that comes with the JB tool that one has to be equipped with. Though i have to agree that some of the terms and condition set by Apple are pretty erm.. which restricts more creativity and development.

Not long ago..  I successfully built myself a Hackintosh. Well, if i had the bucks. I would have gotten myself a iMac, which saves myself all the hassle.

Who wouldn’t want to own something as pretty as this..?

or this..

After being disturbed by one of the wisdom tooth that has caused myself pretty much agony for a while. Today is the day where i would remove the root of the problem and other underlying pain that would come by my way in the near future.

It started off with a pain in the jaw which i though initially, where by i went to a Polyclinic and they referred me to the National Dental Centre. After one session of consultant, the dentists informed that it was due to the wisdom tooth problem, and it would be best if i could remove all 4 of them.

Since i’m currently serving my National Service, i would not have to pay a single cent for the whole surgery, which could easily amount up to 900bucks for a simple day surgery.

It’s interesting that for such a surgery, i even had to wear the patient’s robes. Somehow it feels weird as there are no buttons and its very easily exposed.

These are the remains of my 4 wisdom teeth. There’s the 2 big ones and the rest are the other 2 which are the debris of the other 2 teeth. Pretty disgusting to know about what they did to it to remove them.

But well, now it’s where the difficult part begins. No hot steamy food, no hard food for the time being. Until then, i have 8days of Hospitalization Leave to spend.

A well deserved break definitely!

So what’s a prime number.

A positive integer that’s only divisible by 1 and itself.

That it is, the first thing i learnt in Secondary One. Later i realised they’re are good for tortures as well.

It would be quite a torture itself to ask someone to list the first 100 prime numbers in ascending series. Let’s try..

2..3..5..7..11..13..17..19..23..29..31..37..41..43..brain dead

There is something that was created by George Woltmon, who made use of prime numbers to conduct the stress tests. This particular software “Prime95″ was written to test how well can your computer system work when it is put onto a 100% workload, to calculate as many prime numbers, bigger and bigger. Due to the fact that the bigger the number grows, it will be more difficult to determine if the particular number is a prime number.

More readings can be obtained @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95

On August 23rd, a UCLA computer in the GIMPS PrimeNet network discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime, 2^43,112,609-1, a mammoth 12,978,189 digit number! The prime number qualifies for the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s $100,000 award for discovery of the first 10 million digit prime number.

[extracted from http://www.mersenne.org/]

So, i tried this software on my new PC, just to test my maximum temperature my PC will hit when put all my 4 Cores at their maximum. Here are the results.

It reads a Maximum Temperature of 60degrees, from the idling temperature of 47degrees. Pretty decent work done by my 14cm CPU Fan and the other peripheral fans.

Anyway to sidetrack a little, i finally played the Red Alert 3 that i have gotten recently. The graphics is love.

First time i could proudly put the video settings of the game, details and resolution to “Ultra High” mode. Details such as water ripples, shadows and wind direction can be easily spotted and clearly seen running without hiccups.

For the past 2 to 3 months or so, I’ve been searching the web, the forums to get extra cheap deals to build my next PC. Not really a PC, but not really a Mac as well because it it doesnt have the brand of Apple. It’s a Hackintosh!

For those who aren’t so sure.. A Hackintosh is..

A computer built to run Apple Mac OS X is also known as a Hackintosh, which is a recycled term originally denoting the modified Lisa 2/10 running Mac System, or Macintosh.

Well, let’s not delve into the very technical parts of it. In layman terms, it’s having Apple Mac’s Operating System on a PC, which natively only can be used on Apple’s Computers.

“The internet is for porn”, other than porn as quoted by Monster Trekkie in AvenueQ, it’s a good place for good deals. Almost every part of the build was gotten off eBays and forums. It’s seriously a place for great deals.

The humble specs are as follows.. some of them are bought off the shelves though.

• Gigabyte P35-DS3R Motherboard
• Core 2 Quad Q9450 Processor
• 4GB Kingston Ram
• XFX XXX 8800GT 512MB GPU
• PC Power and Cooling Silencer 500W PSU
• SIlverstone Casing
• LG 19″inch TV
• Scythe Zipang PSU Cooler (a really BIG one)
• Many other fans and coolers..

The build will looks something like this..

Imagine squeezing all these nonsense into one small casing.

The massive 14cm Scythe Heatsink Fan..

Zalman cooling GPU

Delta fans, and the 2 HDD fans at the back.

Thanks to Felix, with his help i managed to put all these parts together. Not a easy feat considering the constrain space in the Silverstone Casing and the amount of components we are trying to squeeze inside the unit.

After the hardware aspects, here comes the software part of the Hackintosh, equally challenging or more i should say.

After extensive reading on www.insanelymac.com i managed to acquire some basic knowledge on installing MAC on a PC using distro genius like kalyway and leo4all created, which makes installation so much simpler and direct. But it’s not as simple as installing other OS’s like XP or Ubuntu. The installation is more complex as the drivers are not so compatible and easily available.

After 3 days of installing and reinstalling, formatting and testing, 3 days of research and trying, I have successfully installed a OSx86 Leopard onto the PC which i have built. It is also dual boot with Windows XP SP3 so that i can play my games that require Windows platform. The sense of achievement is almost unbelievable.

The beautiful wallpaper with the dock.

Expose; one of the software to easily choose the current window u are working with..

And this is the final product… Round of applause.. :D

All the hype about how successful China had been in hosting the Olympics is now forgotten as the issue on poisonous Milk Powder hovers around the mind of almost every individual in the world.

Though this might seem like something that wouldn’t concern that many people out there. But considering the number of distinct features that comes out of people mind when we think of China, we would probably get a clearer picture of what is going on.

• China being the biggest nation in the world, has one of the biggest manufacturing industries. The label “Made in China” has almost transformed into something that we are expecting to see when viewing the side/bottom of a product. It wouldn’t be surprising to know that their products have transcend beyond boundaries to other nations out of China.
• The high demand for milk. Milk could be consume as a primary product, or from a secondary product. The number of food products out there in the market that has milk content in it. Though it could be arguably said that the product is manufactured in Singapore or any other country, but the primary source of milk could well come from China. Turning white, grey. Not forgetting our famous Chocolates and yogurt are modifications of milk as well.

Now the air is starting to rumour the fact that these milk diseases have already been circulating ever since before Olympics started or even much before it. It is believed that they are trying to cover in order to build up trust and reputation before the Olympic. Though the Tibetan issues have already dirt them a little.

Skeptical it might seem to be able to keep away such a big thing from the public. But if China can ban the word “Democracy” on Google, there’s nothing much they can’t do. 

Until the verdict is set, there is no concrete evidence to pinpoint the Chinese officals in misappropriating handling this incident. Just to keep people’s views about China on a fluctuate axis.

So till then, try something else for calcium. For babies, go breast feed then.

Life is pretty shit, shit in a sense where it’s starting to get monotonous. The same whole routine follows everyday, day in day out.

What’s more shit is when there are people that are working with you, “working” i mean, people who are just around because they are around. If sleeping around and getting people to do their job is a kind of work done, i don’t mind doing that as well. All the excuses, to cover up his own ass, and making people around follow nonsensical instructions. We are all here to work, why make life difficult for us. So they higher the hierarchy of ranks one achieve, doesn’t one have to make more contribution, serve more..? Since you are  proven to be able to hold that stupid rank on your shoulder, then prove your capabilities, rather than make people prove yours and turn yourself into a laughing stock. ..

Well.. What to do..? I am serving my term, not as if i had a choice.

It’s almost 10months since i was recruited. A couple more to go..

Like many other guys out there, we look forward to collecting back our Pink IC. That is the end of the challenge, and the start of another. For me, it’s still a path of unknown. All lies ahead is a misty road, where i’m not even sure if its a road or is it the verge of a cliff. It’s not within what i can control.

It’s going to be another birthday in one day’s time, another one i mean. 18 one of them have passed and what have i really achieved in those 18years of life. Mostly uncertainties i suppose. It probably time to think about the future, of the next 18years of my life what do i really want to achieve.

Life is like a race, make sure every pit stop you make is worth it, so that the drive thereafter would be smoother.

Some rebates that you’ll get by donating blood.. A Free Trip To the Zoo on 14/6/08. I was thinking that it would be another boring treat, as there’s nothing really interesting in the zoo. Well, since it’s the World Blood Donor Day, might as well just go for it and make my little cousin all so hyped and excited about the trip. Seems that he’s a little deprived to be so excited about such thing, especially at his age of 12.

Alright then, seriously it has been like almost a decade since i last visited the zoo. I remembered my mum to frequent that place with me and my siblings when we were young. Apparently, we were the “Friends of the Zoo” then, so i guess we only had to pay one lump sum and visit the zoo unlimited times a year or so. It was all a matter of making things worthwhile i think.

According to what other said, there has been tremendous changes in the zoo. I shall witness it myself. Pretty impressive i must say, at the entrance. I kind of miss the “SINGAPORE ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN” old sign which was like the trademark of the zoo when i visited it aeons ago.

Somehow, i feel old. My energy level can’t be rivaled against a 12 year old kid. After walking around the zoo for like 4-5 hours, he’s still alive and kicking.

We spotted this tinny weeny snake on some leaf in the vicinity of the zoo not under captivity. It’s really small and cute. HAHAH, if u had a bottle, probably you could placed it inside and bring it home. Then you can proudly say..

” I’ve got a snake as my Pet”

I think the conception of tigers being ferocious animals is pretty deceiving in this context. They don’t seem to be even moving. Unless you tell me they are nocturnal animals and only exercise at night. But they are well fed, so why bother? If i’m the tiger, i would become demure and let the zookeeper feed me.  

This kangaroo’s smart. He purposely stand so close to the enclosure, posing and letting us take photo of him. What vain kangaroo it is.

Anyone remember that i once called my Chinese teacher this animal and got myself into deep trouble? The monkey that has a red mouth and red butt.

This one of my favourite animal, look at it’s posture. So elegant and demure.

There’s this quest around the zoo called the zoolympics, apparently it require the kids to move about the zoo and complete “missions” to win the game. Stuffs like crawling like a crocodile, eating leaves on a branch like a giraffe. I signed my cousin up for it and it seemed that he is pretty proud of himself that he made it onto the hall of fame for several stations. He himself forgetting that he a 12 year old kid pitting against other children of half his age. Shame Shame.. hahaha

However drastic the zoo has changed, they still haven’t revamped the playground. This playground and the ball pool has been around since god knows when. Ever since the first time i went to the zoo until now.

Doesn’t this animal look like the fierce snow leopard in the “Kungfu Panda” hahh.

For a free trip, it’s definitely worth it. Hah, but there were other reaps other than animals though. For me to know, for you to find out.

Maybe there’ll be better treats next time, remember to give blood and you shall be rewarded..

till then..