Find the last alphabet of Singapore Registered Vehicles

Always been trying to remember car number plates to check the vehicle model.
Remembering the first 3 letters + number is easy but the last alphabet tends to slip the mind!
Finally found the formula to generate the last alphabet, in short the checksum of the license plate~! It will be good if there is a website so there is no need to be dependent on anything, just go to website, input and be done with it but till then, the excel file will have to suffice for it.

Excel file here - http://www.mediafire.com/?281rvor0tii2k47

The website to check is https://vrl.lta.gov.sg/lta/vrl/action/pubfunc?ID=EnquireTransferFee

Just key in the licence plate number and a future transfer date. Any date is fine since it is fake.

Anonymous and you

No, I am not talking about the hacker group Anonymous but the many Anonymous Key Board Warriors in front of the computer screen.

After the hit and run incident, Remy Ong's wiki article was under attack. Tried to clean up thinking it could be just some vandalism but it persists after a while. I requested for semi-protection and seems like some people pulled some strings and a few administrators come along to clean it up.

Once Anonymous could not operate, as registered accounts can be banned and anonymous IPs cannot edit, the article settles down. From the attacks, some are knowledgeable in editing wikis and hiding behind an IP address. Shame on you. Rant on the forums but do not attack a neutral place like Wikipedia. Due to the name-callings, lots of change history was redacted.

Unable to run Installshield installer

Error Prompt : Error 2103 = Could not resolve path for shell folder

See follow website for resolution
http://www.appdeploy.com/msierrors/detail.asp?id=143

Alternatively like my case, the profile is corrupted so I deleted it off. Next try will take some time later but hope it works.
After login, it defaults to the basic profile and not of the normal profile loaded.
As the installer needs to refer to some registry settings for folder location. Being unable to locate the registry entry for the folders required, the installer fails.....


From OFF2000: "Internal Error 2103" Error Message Is Displayed During Setup
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q302472

This behavior can occur if the following registry key is missing or damaged:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Javascript checker

Found this site while being lazy to verify the js myself line by line.
Good parser which actually helps the lazy programmer and prevent future maintenance issues. The site is here.

Interesting image search

Tineye looks interesting as it helps you find where your image come from. So you can find the rest of the pictures together or just a verification of what you have just seen!

Some SEO tips + google recrawling rate

Re-crawl rate -
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4c78d983bd68123f&hl=en

SEO tips
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=337fa24f413c07bd&hl=en

Google vs Apple

Seems like Apple is really up against a lot of tech companies and making a closed system where apple is king!

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/google-vs-apple-round-1.html

Hmm quit facebook?

Gizmondo article here

Initially setting privacy settings to prevent others from looking is fine. But it seems like the information are leaking out via applications also...
hmmm....

New version of "MOBTV"

After MOBTV has died off as a subscription based service to watch old serials, variety programmes and even earlier for certain serials (well hardly any ppl subscribe to it unless there is free promo code for free limited subscription), a new website is up~! Now it is all free~!

I have yet to try it but comments are that it is true and free. You can watch recent episodes you have missed etc. Uploads are not that fast but since it is free, you can't hardly complain.

Anyway, it is well advertised after the showing of serials, a subtle url which I think ppl generally will not notice or bother.

You still can to go www.mobtv.sg or http://video.xin.msn.com/browse/tv. You will be re-directed to the latter url anyway.

Export/Import Data For SQL Server 2000

useful link

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1050309.html

PS3 hacked? I doubt so

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/23/ps3-finally-properly-hacked/

In a post titled "Hello hypervisor, I'm geohot," hacker George Hotz (already known in the iPhone community) has made a strong claim: that he has cracked the PS3. The system has remained (mostly) uncompromised for over three years now, with a few exceptions here and there. But, this one pledges full read/write access to the entire system memory and complete control over the processor -- all without a mod chip. Has he really done it, if so how, and what comes next? That all remains to be seen. This exploit supposedly "isn't really patchable, but [Sony] can make implementations much harder," meaning he isn't tipping his hat until he's ready, because once he does the never-ending firmware update war begins, and as we've seen on the PSP, Sony can really knock out those updates.

---------
People has been talking abt hacked ps3 soon. As far as my opinion goes, he has only claims to sneak past the security guard only. Nothing mentioned about the security systems and the vault which will leads the to final hack.

when he has that big a reputation, he claims and people believe.
if a small fry claims to have done the same, i bet there is not much of a reaction and ask him to show proof and claims.

Waiting for a real hack to come out~! But I think I will still buy original.

some John Terry jokes after the scandal broke

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2836377/Fans-jokes-put-boot-into-love-rat-John-Terry.html

some selected nice jokes ahahhaah

Ashley Cole was caught doing 104mph in a 50mph zone. When questioned by police as to why he was speeding, he said: "l've just heard JT is parked outside my house!"

England manager Fabio Capello phoned Wayne Bridge and said: "JT's lost the captain's armband. Can you do me a favour and have a good look under your bed for it?"

What have Wayne's ex-missus and the 2008 Champions League final goalpost got in common? They've both been banged by JT.

Wise girls settle for Mr Good Enough

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article7009556.ece

January 31, 2010
Wise girls settle for Mr Good Enough - Leah McLaren
Lori Gottlieb’s marriage advice has caused a storm. She tells us why women should get real about romance.

anyone who sets up three successful matches secures a place in heaven. If that’s so, the queen of heavenly matchmakers must be Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough. Indeed, I owe my own marriage, in part, to Gottlieb. It wasn’t her match-making skills but her straight talk that helped me down the aisle.

The point of her new book, due out in Britain this spring, is that many single women get to a state of desperation in searching for a husband because they don’t make wise decisions early on, such as dating dependable men rather than handsome cads — the sort who take you to bed for six months, spend your money, rip out your heart and stomp it to a bloody pulp.

When I speak to Gottlieb for her first British interview, I tell her that my mother sent me the original 2008 magazine article on which her book is based within, oh, about five minutes of publication. In the article Gottlieb wrote of her deep regret at having passed on all the nice guys in her thirties in the search for allconsuming love.

Her stark message ran directly counter to the neofeminist Sex and the Cityperpetuated mantra that we should all hold out for The One because we’re worth it. “Don’t worry about passion or intense connection,” Gottlieb wrote, “because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

“Based on my observations, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.”

Her words set off a furore that the book has now reignited. Last week, as Marry Him came out in America, the papers were full of thirtysomethings passionately arguing that every girl should hold out for Mr Perfect against others who believe practicality rules: that Mr Second Best is better than Mr Nobody.

I married my husband for love but I’d be lying if I said that Gottlieb’s dry-eyed observation that family life is not about bodice-ripping passion but akin to “running a small tedious non-profit business” didn’t affect me. Besides, at 33 I wasn’t getting any younger. Woe betide the naive singleton who assumes her choice of men will widen, rather than narrow, with time.

“The truth is, once you’re closing in on 40 you can certainly find love and companionship and all those things but it’s probably going to look different from what you imagined,” Gottlieb says. “I look at my friends who got married later on and I look at who they married and let me tell you, it’s very different from who they would have married 10 years earlier.”

It’s a bitter pill and one that Gottlieb, 42, has herself been forced to swallow. Having accepted that she would not find a man in time to have a conventional family, she had a baby using donor sperm in her late thirties. She then resumed dating as a single mother, banking on the idea that a toddler-friendly George Clooney would materialise now that she was older, wiser and without a loudly ticking biological clock.

As Marry Him chronicles, she was wrong — brutally so. She began to see all those empowering, so-called truisms about women reaching their sexual prime in middle age as a load of hooey. Today she is still single and on a mission to prevent young women interested in having a conventional family from making the same mistakes.

“I’m all for the feminist movement but I think what happened is we took certain feminist ideals — for instance, the idea of ‘you can have it all’, or ‘you deserve the best’, or girl power in general — and we applied that to dating,” she says. “That doesn’t work because we’re dealing with real life and where human beings are concerned you have to make a compromise.”

Gottlieb doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the competitive reality of trying to find a mate. The problem is not, she says, that there’s an epidemic of commitment phobia among the males.

“If you think all men are commitment-phobes, then commitment-phobes are clearly the only kind of man you date,” she says tartly.

Rather, women don’t know how to manage their own expectations when it comes to looking for a suitable man. Single women often declare they’d “rather be alone” than settle for someone who doesn’t fill out their (usually unrealistic) checklist. Gottlieb’s advice is: think carefully, ladies. Because, with that mentality, alone is how you’re probably going to end up.

“Feminism gave women this sense of entitlement that we deserve someone who’s perfect. And then we meet the so-called perfect guy and he’s out of our league and has no interest in us and we tell our girlfriends, ‘He must be secretly gay’ when in fact he’s just really not that into us,” she says.

Add to this the heart-sinking demographics. Gottlieb likens being single in your late thirties to a terrifying game of musical chairs in which the options keep narrowing the longer you refuse to sit down. In other words, the more stubbornly you hold out for The One and the more you invest in that particular fantasy, the less likely he is to appear. Even if he did miraculously appear in a white convertible Porsche, who is more likely to be The One’s One? You or the carefree 25-year-old who’s putting herself through university by doing a bit of modelling on the side?

“Some people think it’s horrible to talk about it, but I think it’s actually really empowering,” Gottlieb insists.

“If you are in denial of this you will make bad decisions and end up single. Whereas if you look at the reality and say: okay, the reality is, as I get older there are going to be fewer available men because people are going to be married; there are going to be fewer available men in my age group because men would like to date someone who is younger and more fertile; there will be fewer available men that I will be interested in because the best guys have already been married. Then maybe you can make an informed choice while you still have time.”

This is wisdom born of Gottlieb’s struggle to come to grips with her own diminishing value on the dating market. It involved taking an honest look in the mirror, literally and figuratively: “A lot of it was about self-perception. I kept looking at profiles of these guys online and thinking: they look middle-aged, yuck! But then I realised that I probably look middle-aged to them, too. I’m frozen in time in my own mind. I picture myself at 30. But the truth is I have wrinkles and jowls and grey hairs. Everything’s changed.”

Her book chronicles her search for a husband. She travels around the United States talking to experts, she hires a dating coach, she consults a professional matchmaker and trawls the internet, always coming back to the same home truth. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood: when it comes to dating, deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

“The issue of disappointment is real. There was one moment with my dating coach when I was looking over the profiles of potential dates and he was trying to get me to change my settings in terms of height and age and I said, ‘This sucks!’ and he said, ‘Well, this is reality’. And I said, ‘Reality sucks!’ and he said, ‘If you didn’t have the fantasy, the reality would be just fine’.”

As for Gottlieb’s reality, she’s got a hit book, a Hollywood movie deal and a son she adores — everything, in other words, except the very thing she has made a career of advising others how to obtain. But she’s not giving up the search for Mr Good Enough. Not just yet.

My vote counts: 10 reasons why I cannot vote for the PAP in the next election.

An insightful commentary actually.

Credits to the original write, I will not reproduce in full.
Do read the full article at the author's site.

http://yaevlejunce.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/my-vote-counts-10-reasons-why-i-cannot-vote-for-the-pap-in-the-next-election/

Article on Facebook

1. I will not render unto Caesar what is not Caesar’s
2. Incompetence
3. Double standards
4. Blatant lies
5. Operation Coldstore and the 1963 General Elections
6. Lim Chin Siong
7. Singaporean students need to learn a fair and accurate history in school
8. Traumatic MP-experiences and MPs who fear death by The Chair
9. Money. Of course it’s all about money.
10. What Singapore needs is change

Understanding Transformers 2 : The Revenge of the Fallen

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/bonus_robs_transformers_2_faqs.php

Nice faq on transformers 2. crap show to me actually

Stylish script for hardwarezone

Stylish add on for hardwarezone

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("forums.hardwarezone.com.sg") {

div[class="hwz-ad-postbit"]
{
display:none !important;
}
}

Mapking and Garmin settings for Omnia

Found this wordpress guide for Mapking and Garmin settings for Omnia.

A word of advise. To off the com splitter after user mapking. It is still working in the background and will cause your Omnia to be very hot.

Online conversion guide

Was looking for a square meter to square foot conversion and found this on google.

Looks like a decent site with lotsof conversion.

Taking anote here for easy reference. =)

This site is here~!

Can you RUN It?

Good website to test whether your computer can play certain computer games or not.
Avoid the money lost and frustration that you may encounter when you realised the game you bought cannot be played.

The site will test the minimum and also the recommended requirements and assess whether your computer can play or not.

Do drop by there and have a look.

Online Surveys

Actually accumulated enough points to redeem items for a long time but never do it.

Decided to try redeeming the items form the points I accumulated and the most practical thing and of value is 2 movies tickets. Valid for any day for 1 year.

Attached are pictures of the redemption letter and the tix~!