Repeated Monotony

monumental musings from insight gradually gained in the past few months

2009-03-07T23:46:00.001+08:00

The best thing to have happened to the internet: Wikipedia
A mixed blessing: Google
The bane of the web: Online Advertising, and the selfish, greedy businesspeople that follow.

Fin.

Generate readable content, you say? No problem!

2008-09-11T02:06:00.003+08:00

After working hard at setting up niche blogs and such, all I wanted to do was to get some rest. But the blogs needed content, something that was hard to make, and very time consuming to produce, otherwise expensive to buy. I needed content and lots of it. And the content had to be unique.

There exist on the internet multiple programs that can do this task to a certain degree. I won't link to any of them, but one of them is called Blog Content Wizard. Just do a search on google for it. There are, of course, article rewriters and spinners as well, but these either do a poor job or take a long time to make your content.

So what do I do? Well, I'm a programmer. And when faced with a programming task, I jump to my feet and begin solving it! If only online business was as easy. (Sigh).

Anyway over the past few days I've more or less succeeded in my goal, and produced a piece of software that can generate unique content for use online. I wrote it in VB.NET because it was a simple and easy to use language plus it had plenty of build in functions which I found useful (particularly string splitting). I managed to develop an application that will take in phrases from a file I specify (I wrote my own phrase dictionary) and mix and mash them to form new and unique content based on a few keywords I specify. To make it even better, I developed and included spinner technology similar to the one found in Jetspinner. This means that {many|a large number of|quite a lot of} variations of {a sentence|a string of text} can be produced {quickly|with great speed} based on a list of {options|choices}. I also added the ability to load and join multiple dictionaries of phrases together. Combining these together, I get something like this:

I promise your life will improve greatly. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, don't you? Frankly speaking, The answer is surprisingly simple. Once you have fully understood Yellow Bananas, you won't go back. Believe me when I say this. The previous week, I compared some options for anyone who want to find Yellow Bananas.

Well, half a loaf is better than no bread. Thats the way things are. That is merely my kind opinion. Don't sit on the fence. There is just an overwhelming about of things to write about Red Apples. I believe that I know enough on the subject of Red Apples. Like I already mentioned, keep it in memory.

Now that may sound pretty crappy to normal readers, but it's gold if you compare it to the crap most content generators spew out. Now I'm slowly improving on it by expanding the dictionary. If all works well, I may have a whole lot less work on my hands. Who knows, I may even be able to market this product.

Another slice of life

2008-08-31T13:12:00.001+08:00

Hello everyone once again, surprised to see me? I wouldn't be surprised if you were, after all I haven't been posting here frequently. But i'm here today to announce what a few days of hard work, an old domain and some online help have produced...

If some of you remember, I bought the domain qfwr.com over a year ago. Back then my plans for it were the same as my plans for it now, create a free, easy-to-use URL shortening service that people could use create redirects to shorten their long urls. Of course back then I didn't have the resources or the motivation to actually carry out the project to completion.

Fast forward a year, and I've finally completed it enough to be released. Hopefully with this service I will be able to make a couple of extra dollars to "tide through the days" so to speak. With luck and God willing, qfwr might just be the thing that helps me gain a foothold in this harsh online world.

Until then...

So come on and visit it at qfwr.com. If you like, and I would appreciate it if you do, please link to the website at http://qfwr.com. I really really need all the support I can get.

Back after a month

2008-08-04T20:06:00.003+08:00

If you thought my 3D tank was good, then this will blow your mind.
Behold, after many hours of hard work in front of the PC...
My assignment 2 in 3D modelling...

A 3D APU (Armoured Personal Unit) I modelled and textured in just a little under 100 hours.

Now to start the rigging...

Mostly Madness, Happy 4th of July.

2008-07-04T16:37:00.006+08:00

Lionel, Sam and I built and launched more rockets after YA on last saturday. Lots of crazy fun firing them off at night, especially the loud bangs. Here's the updated table of the rockets so far.

Rocket Name	Date of Construction	Rocket Type	Date of Launch	Status
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	3 Stick, Aluminium Foil Bundle, No Nozzle	Friday, 13 June 08	Successful Failure, Flew but disintegrated, resulted in burn injury to self.
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	4 Stick, Aluminium Foil Bundle, No Nozzle	Saturday, 14 June 08	Failure, Did not launch, awesome burning.
Pioneer I	Sunday, 15 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Monday, 16 June 08	Complete Success, Successful launch. Rocket was not found.
Pioneer II	Monday, 16 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Wednesday, 25 June 08	Complete Success, Perfect Launch. Rocket was not found
Pioneer III	Monday, 16 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Partial Success, Good launch although rocket fragmented in mid-air into a few pieces.
Exodus I	21 – 22 June 2008	16cm Cardboard Cylinder, 8 Stick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Failure, Resulted in massive explosion and shockwave following hull rupture.
Pioneer IV	26/27 June 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Uncomfirmed, Lound bang and rocket disappeared. Possible launch or explosion.
Pioneer V	26/27 June 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Uncomfirmed, Lound bang and rocket disappeared. Possible launch or explosion.
The Sam Rocket	Saturday, 28 June 08	9cm Cardboard Cylinder, 19 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Partial success, Launched with many colorful trails, lost stability in midair and starting spinning.
Feeder I	Saturday, 28 June 08	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Crimp Ring Nozzle	Saturday, 28 June 08	Failure, Rocket was a dud.
X-S1	Friday, July 04, 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, T-Pressed Nozzle	N.A.	To be Launched
X-S2	Friday, July 04, 2008	8cm Cardboard Cylinder, 7 HalfStick, Open Uncrimped Nozzle	N.A.	To be Launched

A few awesome videos to accompany the text...

Exodus I, Exploding with a huge bang.

The Sam Rocket, which was the last rocket we let off, concluding the night's events in a finale shower of sparks. 4th of July comes early!

Speaking of which, today is 4th JULY! To commerate this wonderful occasion, which I have absolutely no part of and does not involve me :\, I intend to launch off the two experimental rockets I made today, X-S1 and X-S2. But the red rocket's glare always brings a wonderful feeling to us all, doesn't it :D

The final flight of Pioneer II

2008-06-25T23:29:00.003+08:00

Rocket: Pioneer II
Date of launch: 25th June 2008
Time of launch: 10:30pm
Location: Undisclosed, Relatively Empty Area
Observers: My dad and I

Like all rockets of the "Pioneer" edition, this rocket is of small stature. Composed of a mere 4 sparklers, it can fit into the nose of a regular plastic bottle, from which, in fact, it was launched.

Pioneer II is almost identical to it's predecessor, Pioneer I, except that it had a more balanced nozzle and a lower stability stick, which proved effective in stabilising it's flight (since it flew much farther and straighter than Pioneer I).

It was a cool wednesday night, and my previous launch site was locked up, so I launched the rocket Pioneer II in a different location. This launch proved to be more successful than the previous, with maximum altitude well over 30 feet. The rocket started it's fiery launch at nearly 90 degrees angle, but soon went slightly sideways (about 80 degrees) after the propellant was consumed. Last seen of Pioneer II was a smoldering trail of some rapidly descending bits some 10 metres away. The remains of this rocket were never recovered.

For the first time, here is a video of the launch! Observe the rocket frame by frame as it blasts off into the night sky and takes it's place among the stars before falling back to a cold, hard earth, never to move again.

Video is in portrait, so please tilt your head 90 degrees. Thanks.

Touching the skies

2008-06-22T22:18:00.004+08:00

Rocket Name	Date of Construction	Date of Launch	Status
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	Friday, 13 June 08	Successful Failure, Flew but disintegrated, resulted in burn injury to self.
unnamed	Friday, 13 June 08	Saturday, 14 June 08	Failure, Did not launch, awesome burning.
Pioneer I	Sunday, 15 June 08	Monday, 16 June 08	Complete Success, Successful launch. Rocket was not found.
Pioneer II	Monday, 16 June 08	N.A.	To be launched
Pioneer III	Monday, 16 June 08	N.A.	To be launched
Exodus I	21 – 22 June 2008	N.A.	To be launched

A table of my past, present and planned rocket launches. Here are some photos.

Before proceeding:

You agree that by proceeding (to view the photographs on this web page), you will not attempt to duplicate any parts of the devices shown below. Also, you agree not to store, distribute, or modify any of the photos shown below. You may not use any of these photographs as incriminating evidence against me, by proceeding to view them you agree to indemnify me from any legal liability that may arise from these photos. You also assume fully legal responsibility for any consequences that may arise from attempting to duplicate the devices and procedures depicted here.

If you do not agree, you may not proceed to view the photographs. By proceeding you agree to and accept all of the terms mentioned above.

=============================

This is the second unnamed rocket, shortly after construction.

The remains of the second unnamed rocket after its failed launch.

Pioneer I completed rocket. Skewer attached for stability in flight. It is not a firework.

Pioneer II and III, and Exodus I.

I am aware that by posting these photos I am just asking for trouble for myself. But I am so awed by the beauty of this science that it is a risk I am willing to take.

But I can safely say that I have taken all necessary steps to prevent probable hurt or injury to other people, and have taken precautions to prevent probable danger to others, such as carrying out the experiment in an area without combustible matter, ensuring that the launch site is clear and that everyone else is a safe distance away, and wearing a fire proof jacket when lighting the rocket's fuse (except for the first two rockets). Also take note that the rocket does not have any payload and does not explode, nor does it produce any pyrotechnic effects, the only visible output is the light produced from the combustion of the propellant in the rocket. Therefore, it is technically not a firework either.

The price to pay

2008-06-13T19:00:00.002+08:00

Earlier today, the two hours I spent working on a photoshop assignment for diploma plus was totally wasted when I accidentally closed the window containing the image I spent two hours working in (go ahead, laugh). It was a lousy mistake, not saving at all during the entire time. I have no choice but to redo the entire thing from the start. And it's entirely my fault.

But it gets better - The nonsense of this holiday is building sparkler rockets. My previous attempts at such feats of rocketry usually resulted in a little melted pile shooting out sparkles. Well today I decided to make something different. Rather than grinding up the sparklers and tamping the powder into aluminium foil tubes, I tightly wrapped three of them in multiple layers of aluminium foil (which surprisingly, held better than I expected). The nozzles were the gaps between the sparklers. The top was sealed, and I made a crude wire platform on which to launch it.

I have no photos since I didn't bother taking any, and I've already disposed of the remains of the rocket. I will, however, take some photos the next time I attempt such a feat again.

T minus 15 seconds - Rocket on launchpad and ready for launch. All nearby flammables are removed as a safety precaution (which would prove invaluable later). I use a lighter to light a single sparkler which I will use as a match to ignite the propellant.

T minus 7 seconds - Eight seconds later, the sparkler has reached ignition temperature and combusts into a bright shower of sparks. I place the lighter aside.

T minus 5 seconds - I place the lighted sparkler next to the short "fuse" for my rocket which in reality is just the ends of the sparklers sticking out of the crude foil tube.

T minus 3 seconds - Due to the high temperature, the propellant rapidly ignites. What happens next happened so fast, it was almost a blur.

T minus 1 second - The tiny and closely packed sparkler fuse burns out in a mere 2 seconds, faster than I expected. I don't even have time to get back.

T minus 0 seconds - The propellant has reached the "nozzle" of the rocket. A bright flash floods the area. "This can't be good", I think.

T plus 0.5 seconds - I hear a loud fizzing sound.

T plus 1 second - The rocket takes off. My fear turns to amazement.

T plus 2 seconds - The rocket hits my arm and lands on the floor. I am surprised that the rocket actually worked even though it flew chaotically.

T plus 3 seconds - The remains rocket is smoldering on the floor. The pungent smell of ammonia fills the air. My senses kick in, and a sharp, searing pain fills my arm, and I hurry off to treat my 2nd degree burns.

I never expected the rocket to actually liftoff, and it did. Therefore, I consider this experiment a success.

To whom it may concern: The sparkler powder is not used for improvised explosives. They are used a propellant for rockets. These rockets are not weapons. They are intended to fly into the sky, not to injure people.

A stitch in time saves nine

2008-06-03T01:34:00.000+08:00

Spent the entire day trying to clear my laptop of a very persistent and irritating piece of malware. I've been looking for a no compact disc "patch" for caesar 3 ever since I upgraded to version 1.0.1 and have had little success until then, all the "patches" i found were only for version 1.0. Finally I found this link from a suspicious looking website. By then, I had exhausted all other possible options such as trying to make a mini image, copying various files... nothing worked. I knew if I really wanted to I could copy the entire image from the CD but that would take up too much space. So I downloaded the "patch". This patch was probably the fifth or sixth one that I tried and my guard was down. My antivirus was outdated and I did not bother to scan it online ( I did so for the first few ones). Opening the file, a command prompt popped out... and stayed longer than it should. A feeling of dread filled me as I noticed multiple popup windows appearing across the screen. Spyware. Adware. Malware. The scourge of the internet, and one of the things I detest. Little message boxes started popping out and balloon bubbles containing ads floated up from the taskbar. It was going to be a long, long day.

Here I am, nearly 12 hours later with my PC finally clean again (hopefully). The malware deleted all my system restore points and fixing it was tricky. But I finally managed. Lesson learned: Prevention is better than cure. And now, it's time to go to bed.

Tank you

2008-05-28T00:22:00.003+08:00

At last, after a couple of hours doing texturing, my tank is fully texture mapped. For your information, all textures were created by myself with photoshop. No external images or brushes, just some good filter usage, brushing and filling. Behold, the German Panther in it's full glory (or at least about the best it's going to get).

Just following suit

2008-05-22T22:40:00.004+08:00

If two people wrote something, it might be worth reading. If three people wrote something, it must be really good.

So here I am, after a really long break, coming back just for a slice of the action and the fun in following suit.

It's really really overdue but what the hey, last sunday we (me, hoho, lionel, sam and jeanie) finally made our trip to St. John's island! It's really small if you look at it from the map, i think the whole island takes up less and one page in the street directory, but on the island itself it actually feels quite sizable. The island used to be a detention and quarantine camp, so there's a lot of fenced up zones with sentry posts and barbed wire, though it's supposedly no longer in use. Then again, who can tell? The government is probably doing some stuff there that they don't want the public to know about. Who cares though.

The island is your stereotypical storybook tropical paradise. First time I’d ever been there, and I would have taken a lot more photos had my phone camera battery not given up on me. The beach was just so undisturbed and lush and wonderful. The sea was really clear and sparkled in the sun. The grass was so soft and smooth, like a putting green. Lionel brought a hammock and I made sandwiches. It was really a day just set for rest and relaxation, though ironically, I found it tiring. But it was truly worth it and I’d do it all over again if I had the chance. Took a walk with lionel and for the first time in my life, I actually got to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of nature. Tropical islets covered in lush green flora, coconut trees and mangrove swamps. There was this part where the ground was covered in thousands of brilliant yellow leaves and the trees with red flowers, it felt so surreal. It's natural beauty easily surpasses any beach or park found in mainland singapore. My only disappointment was the mosquito bites, which still plague me up till now. Leaving the island, we got to see a magnificent sunset coloring the sky a rich orange and the waters sparkling golden.

Everyone else has posted the exact same photos in one order or another, but for the sake of amusement and completeness I shall dutifully post them here as well.

Just arrived mid-morning after a 30 minute ferry ride.

At the jetty.

The only official entrance to the island, and we proceed...

....but oops, suddenly it's time to go already with no photos of the actual outing itself.

Sunset and goodbye.

Is it already nearly june holidays? Feels like the term started not too long ago, and its already week 6. Time really flies. I just realised from hong en today that the runescape economy has been totally scrapped, making the game more like Soloscape or some social gathering game instead of a real MMORPG. I’m really glad I quit the game ages ago, it’s just getting from good to bad to really really horrible. I’ll admit merchanting has it’s risks (like my loss in cabal), but it also makes the game dynamic and interesting. A MMORPG without trading and economy is like a car without wheels, it’s comfy and safe, you won’t get hurt, but it’s pretty boring and useless for all purposes that matter.

Anyway i've got to finish up all my remaining projects by the week's end.

P.S. We did have lunch on the island! Yummy white bread with a generous spread of some mildly radioactive something goop! If it looks like spinach, it must be as good as spinach!

P.P.S. The above photo is not edited... sort of

P.P.P.S. I might be having you on. Or not. Heh.

How do you know

2008-05-08T21:45:00.001+08:00

Third Day - How do you know

I've got my doubts and I've got my questions
It's nothing new 'cause I've seen them before
I've had my share of false revelations
It always seems they're knockin' on my door

You said that I should see the light
But sometimes faith is blind

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

You're thinking that you've got all the answers
You've got my situation figured out
But you're only seeing part of the picture
There's so much more that you don't know about

And here you come to speak your mind
But I'll say one more time

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

How do you know, how do you know
What I'm suppose to be doing
Why do you go, why do you go on
Thinking you know my fate
So many times I've lost my step
But never lost my way
How do you know, how do you know
When I don't know myself

Welcome to the Real World

2008-05-02T22:12:00.003+08:00

It's the end of week three of the new semester and things are as boring as ever. C++ programming is bad once you get to know the higher level languages, interesting how I found it fun last year in innova. Well anyway right now I'm studying 3D Modelling and here's what I'm going to do for my assignment:

Taadaa, a 3D model of a WWII German Panther Tank. It's meant to be low polygon so it renders fast in games, so don't expect too much detail. At 1040 polygons, this is some 3D eye candy. Don't let the simplistic looks fool you, slip on a good texture and this tank will be perfect for a casual java game.

Interestingly, the main frame takes up only around 200 polygons! The bulk of the polygon count comes from the tank tracks and wheels. Thats the bane of polygonal modelling - circles.

In case you're wondering what I used to model this tank, its a program called 3ds Max (also known as 3D Studio MAX), a nifty 3000 dollar application that will eventually be used to create the matrix. Fortunately, this program is available in the school computer labs for me to use. Unfortunately, it cannot be legally transferred to my laptop via the school. READ: Legally and school.

Anyways, here is the photograph of a real panther tank which I used as a reference for my model. (For all I know it could be itself a photorealistic 3d model, thats the thing which those high end models these days, which such hyperreality you cannot differentiate the real from the unreal anymore...)

I'm pretty sure this photograph is authentic, though.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Thats all for now. Are you disappointed? Heh.

Circles and Lines

2008-04-16T21:44:00.002+08:00

It's been a really long time since I last wrote here. Just two days short of a month, to be precise. Holidays are over, and everything I ever wanted to do during the holidays has not taken shape. In fact, I'd say i've achieved practically nothing meaningful and wasted the past two months away.

School started and this is the end of the third day already. It's tiring and I can only expect more work in the days to come. I did manage to get into diploma plus, which means I take double diplomas and have to attend night classes. My bag is heavy, my laptop is cluttered and i'm pretty exhausted.

My chilli plant is growing well, far better than i expected it to be. When i planted it I thought to myself "this will symbolize my online venture into monetary blogging". Well that stuff is all in shambles and totally another one of my unfinished abandoned projects.

Sigh.

How to Get Properly Indexed by Google

2008-03-18T12:38:00.002+08:00

Alright I've been tinkering and experimenting for the past month and a half and have finally gotten an idea of how google has been working recently, and I thought I should share my discoveries.

Anyway for those of you who don't already know, I've been working on this thing called niche blogging, which is basically setting up a blog with a particular focal point, slapping on relevant posts that are keyword optimized for search engines and trying to make money with adsense. I can't say i've had much success, but there again I'm a stubborn/determined person and I won't/can't give up that easily.

I can't dispense advice on how to get top rankings, because hell, I can't do that myself. But I can tell you how I get my blogs indexed.

Google has been recently following this pattern, which I'll describe to you. Basically, You make a blog and fill it with posts. Googlebot will find your blog via a backlink, so gathering a few will help your blog get crawled by googlebot faster (note that it doesn't mean it will be indexed). Never, never add your blog with the google addurl page, it sucks big time and is completely useless. A quick way to get a few backlinks is to link to it from an existing blog, or if you don't have one, try do-follow commenting, meaning leaving good relevant and meaningful comments on related blogs which are already in the index and allow do-follow in the comments (DON'T OVERDO THIS OR YOU WILL REGRET). If you don't know what do-follow is, it's basically the absence of it's opposite, the no-follow. No-follow is just a link relation telling google not to credit the link, making the link effectively useless.

Do not dump many posts all at once. You might raise a spam flag and delay your indexing. Do not add adsense before you are indexed, that will slow down indexing and purportedly give a lower ranking than what you could have gotten otherwise.

Keep a lookout for your site by querying google, helpful commands are info:yoursite.blogspot.com ,which will help you determine if googlebot visited(if it did, there will be some info), site:yoursite.blogspot.com will show if you have been indexed or not, but even if you are indexed, you won't rank if you are in the google pit hole aka google hell aka the supplementals (to check if you are in the MAIN index, search and add two trailing slashes like this site:yoursite.blogspot.com// ) Finally there's cache:yoursite.blogspot.com which will show you the cache that google has of your site. THE CACHE IS NOT UPDATED UNTIL SIGNIFICANT CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO YOUR BLOG.

When you know for sure you site has been crawled, add a post or two (preferably long posts with pictures) and check the google cache of your site.

Now google will find and possibly index your site in roughly two days if you get enough backlinks. It might take longer but it should take less than a week.

Tricky part - The dreaded DE-INDEX. Google has recently adopted a new system in which they DE-INDEX some recently indexed sites. I'm not sure what their reasons for doing so are, but it really sucks. Either that or they visit your site once, decides it sucks and don't come back for a long time, leaving your site in suspended animation in their serps.

The cure? Update about once in three days. Whenever, and whenever you update, use PINGOMATIC (http://pingomatic.com) to ping your blog. Add all services to the ping, especially weblogs and google blog search, very important to keep pinging those.

If you do that for about two weeks, google will (and it's happened for every one of my 5 niche blogs) come back and totally index your site, shift some pages out from the supplementals.

This does not happen gradually, it will come in one shot. So you might be trying for a week and seems like nothing is happening, do not stop. Keep updating and pinging, it will work.

If I helped you, feel free to link to this blog.

Holidays are almost over, I hope to spend these last few weeks doing something meaningful.

Paper Cranes

2008-03-13T02:06:00.003+08:00

I think google is one of the toughest nuts to crack because I still haven't gotten much out of my attempt at online niche blogging for money. I'm beginning to get discouraged but I'm not going to give up just yet.

I've been sick with the flu for the past few days, probably due to me constantly staying up late (which i'm doing now - again!) It's 2.09am and I intend to wake up at 9am tomorrow. I'm better already actually, but last few days was hell with chapped lips, a sore throat and a really stuffed nose.

Anyway it's been a while since I last updated properly, so I thought i'd just post here that I've gotten my exam results back, and I have a final GPA of 3.48 points, bringing my average GPA as yet to a nice 3.41 points, up from 3.32 points last semester (I would link to that post, but i've been linking so much for SEO i really can't be bothered to do so now. Ironic that google actually discounts your efforts cause this blog has some solid spots in the SERPS without even trying).

Perhaps ironically, my worst subject turned out to be.... online entrepreneurship. Yep, i got a straight A for java program but as it turns out, I probably wouldn't be trusted to sell food to starving millionaires. What a bummer.

I made an application for the diploma plus scheme, so I'll be taking two diplomas at once if i'm successful. The other diploma is some stuff in digital media creation which i'm not really interested in since I already know a lot about it and can learn it much faster online on my own, but my parents convinced me that it would be helpful when I applied for a job in the future (which by looking at my pathetic attempt at online entrepreneurship, i probably would).

Anyway to end off and justify the title, let's just make this page relevant to Paper Cranes. I folded a massive paper crane out of mahjong paper just now. This crane made of paper is nearly as large as a puppy and makes you want to laugh when you look at it.

Trust me, look at this picture of my brother holding the paper crane and laugh.

I suppose this page is pretty relevant to paper cranes by now, so if you found this page with that term then i've succeeded, if not then at least i tried.

Have a nice day!

Cashing in on a current event

2008-03-06T02:10:00.001+08:00

Well if you havn't already known, I've been busy trying to make money off niche blogging. And tonight, as I was at my pc, a wonderful idea popped into my head. There's this terrorist that escaped from detention a few days ago called Mas Selamat, so why I don't I make money off him by providing general information from web sources on a blog, then adding adsense? Sure it's like ethical, after all I'm helping bring a terrorist to justice. So chip in and let the link juice flow, and join in the hunt for mas selamat.

Crack the code and Win $5

2008-02-22T22:18:00.003+08:00

Hello you people! I've just finished writing my fourth encryption tool, called 4CRYPT, the successor to the Enigma, D3N0V0crypt and 3NCRYPT0R. It's written in JAVA and probably the most advanced one of the four. Unlike the first three (Enigma has very limited and basic numeric key support, the first two didn't have any.) 4CRYPT has support for any ASCII based key of arbitrary length. It does encryption on a binary level, I can't tell you more or it will not be fun. (Hint: I didn't use native bit shifts, but I created my own shifting functions.)

Well good luck! Email me at hochanhong at yahoo dot com dot sg with your answer. If it's correct, you get $5 SGD, payable through either cash (if you're from singapore and I know you) or PayPal (this challenge is open globally).

You must get the original message by decrypting this. The key used here is "cheesesticks".

795A351318708679634545A16FBABEEFD0EDEB6320DC2FADC9B17B7BC
F3297A290FA50DFC018F6D3184BB160D4AC60043A302926097A9BCE28
76488473DAF68DC8EBB9383F5F66F2CF6C7B83C3299745963C4E1BD5CE
B74E4A5BA425D4C46E117F152F1B4A749F6B26091CA37FBAA1E7D2E0EB
6027DB7CF9D5B12369862B80A29DE11CC4CE04F1D74A41A4709ABE2E56
52322D224A70D2CE263559CC7EC8AFC9

(Line breaks do not matter, it is a continuous string.)

To help you, here is some text encrypted with the same algorithms.

The plaintext is:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

and the key used is "apple".
And encrypting will get you the string:

403D68BA0B61C3203887C2D8E924BD083307E26F3A2059D69A25C5A
6289BA2DE72B16F66346013F3253AB7

Good luck! First person will get the prize!

Google likes junk food?

2008-02-17T11:23:00.000+08:00

I know that this post may not appeal to the people who have no interest in SEO, but I'd like to share a revelation I had. Anyone who is more enlightened, maybe you could shed some light on this situation because I find it rather puzzling, to say the least.

Well here's the deal. I'm still expanding on my niche blogging empire. I have a few white hat blogs (there are links to them scattered on this blog, go find them if you will), and a few black hat blogs (which I will not link to to avoid incriminating evidence). I set up the blogs in batches of threes. Here are the major differences between those blogs.

White Hat Blogs

Three of them in this batch
Set up between 7th and 9th February
Good, Meaningful niches
Adsense implemented very early (around 2 days after creation)
Full of quality original content that I took time to research and write myself
Content added slowly in a post every few days.
Well optimized for keywords in content, title and URL
Obtained a few backlinks by answering Yahoo! Answers and friends blogs (related).

Black Hat Blogs

Three of them in this batch
All set up on 15th February
Optimized for keywords in search terms that don't make sense but get traffic
All content dumped in in 10 minutes
Content is badly written and mostly scraped and rearraged (scrape and rearrage the words), keywords rich content.
Obtained quite a lot of crappy backlinks through comment spam (on a do-follow site)

Now the weird thing is, up till now (17 Feb 08), only 1 out of 3 of my whitehat blogs (i must have spent over 5 hours on each one) have been indexed by google. That blog took 6 days to get indexed.

My Blackhat blogs, on the other hand, are faring much better. Two out of three are already indexed, and it took less than 2 days. I'm shocked and appalled by this, because it means that google actually likes to eat crap instead of the good food that I'm offering it.

If this goes on in this trend then I guess I'll favor the dark side, because they have money (and cookies too).

Burn out Bright

2008-02-11T19:03:00.001+08:00

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you are here and i've got something exciting to show you. For those of you that have been subscribing to this blog's atom feed, here's a reason to celebrate - repeated monotony now has it's own Burned RSS Feed! Yes, i've decided to burn my feed and you can find the burned feed right here (note that the anchor text isnt even keyword optimized! Now why would i do that?) (p.s. those who have no idea what i'm talking about go google "SEO").

For those that already subscribe to my blog's feed you may consider adding the burned version. For those that don't know what a feed is, think of it as a kind of "detached" blog. Posts are literally "fed" to feedreaders (there can be many types of them) who process it and display it. Okay that explaination wasn't too useful. What the hell. Read this.

Have fun and enjoy!
Feeeeeder :)

Sowing seeds and putting eggs in baskets

2008-02-11T15:09:00.000+08:00

After reading up on SEO such an irrelevant post title makes me feel uncomfortable but this blog isn't trying for the SERPS so it's okay. Anyway i've spent most of my free time these few days trying to kickstart my online passive income via blogging. I've created three blogs in completely different and unrelated niches. I don't know if putting them here is shooting myself in the foot but I guess this is the only way to get them indexed fast. A risk I'm willing to take.

So what's new? Well the latest coming up are two brand new blogs. The first is a guide on how to get better sleep. Content is, as of yet, 100% original (meaning i put in good time to write it, readers better be happy i'm giving you good stuff). The second is on fun stuff to do on the computer. Both are basically just some tips and tricks and mostly the common sense that some people lack.

I'm aiming to churn out some content (posts), optimize keywords for search engines, get good traffic via social bookmarking and slap on adsense and leave it to rot, hopefully all done by the end of the third week of february, so i can claim passive earnings while i pursue other fun things during the remainder of my holidays.

More Green Stuff

2008-02-08T15:34:00.000+08:00

So I was reading some articles on the internet about making money online, search engine optimization and such (ive been reading that stuff for days already.) So since I felt I had a good amount of head knowledge already I thought it was time to put that into practice. Thus, for the first time yet, I've decided to put in some effort into making passive online income. James is already making good bucks and I figure I can pocket a few easy dollars if I put in a little effort. But I'm not ready to invest in my own private servers and I don't intend to put in hours on end to create some wonder php project again.

This time, I created a little gardening blog called Gardening For Beginners. I know thats probably one of the nuttiest niches to try to get into but I'll never know if I don't give it a shot. A blogger blog is free and has practically no upkeep cost, takes minutes to setup and lasts indeterminably. Basically I plan to slap the blog with some tips and tricks for noob gardeners and leave it to rot, after optimizing it for keywords and slapping ads on it. No harm checking it out, and if it works then I'm on to making the internet a worse place.

After all, there's only enough space for either money or morals. And sure I want people to get relevant, useful search results. But am I willing to give that up for some of the "green stuff?" (heh heh).

So just check it out and feel free to give me a few relevant backlinks too, if you wish.

P.S. this post is also to help those nice search engines find this site, and a stepping stone to greater success.

Insert relevant search keyword here

2008-02-06T23:55:00.000+08:00

Chinese new year has been pretty busy. The usual visitations and such. In perspective, the money from the ang baos and such become pretty irrelevant. I think I'm eating too much heaty food, I hope I don't fall sick. Anyway it's day 2 of the chinese new year and we're relaxing at home because we've done all the bai nian yesterday.

A little peek on what i've been up to:

Switchfoot concert! One night of insane fun! Doubt they would be coming back to singapore in a good while but it was fun while it lasted.

Oil lamp! I made an oil lamp out of an old chicken essence bottle which runs on a mixture of used and unused cooking oil. With mop hair as a wick, it burns extremely well, it is resistant to slight winds and does not extinguish easily. It is also very efficient, being able to burn for well over 8 hours on a full bottle. It smells like oily food too. The flame size can be adjusted by the wick length. The only disadvantage is that oil flames are very, very sooty.

Random.

My chili plant! Got it from a YA service (everyone got one). It's now about a week old already and growing at a good rate. For the first few days it didn't germinate and I thought it had died. But I kept watering it and about three days ago it sprouted. It's now roughly 4cm and I'm going to transplant it soon. Got a bag of topsoil already.

ARROWS! I've not stopped playing with them. As I experimented, my arrows grew in complexity. These two are my latest arrows. As you can see, I've switched back to my 2 fletches instead of 3 fletches because it seemed that they were actually more stable and gave less drag too. To compensate for the loss of 1 fin, I made the remaining ones thicker and slightly wider. I bought a new pack of 12 inch skewers, longer and thicker than the old 8 inch ones. I'm now using 5 rubber bands to launch my new arrows, most of them can punch clean through shoeboxes and tissue boxes, penetrating up to 4 tissue boxes in a row. It's getting increasing difficult to draw back on so many rubber bands but it's worth it. Metal tips allow my new arrows to last longer (since they don't blunt as much as wooden tips) and penetrate harder material, up to 1/4 inch into wood boards and can shatter glass. One problem was that if the arrow impacted a hard surface or hit at an angle, it was prone to warp or even snap. Often the arrowheads would break off with a portion of the shaft. To strengthen my arrows, I duct taped to tip just like people used to use hardwood. The grooves allow the arrow to be properly attached.

I also made signal flares - arrows that have sparkler heads. Since sparklers do not extinguish easily under strong winds, these were perfect for lighting up the night sky. As of now I've only fired one flare since firing it would mean losing the entire arrow as well. The main problem is getting the sparkler to ignite, this was partially solved by strapping on a few match heads to provide ignition heat. Once the sparkler was alight, the arrow could be fired normally or vertically and would create a fiery trail as it traversed across the sky. The short bit of sparkler meant that the arrow would usually be extinguished by the time it hit the ground.

I want to make some passive online income. A few months ago I used google adsense on this blog, however I didnt optimize it and since this is a personal blog I didn't really earn much, in fact, slightly over three dollars to be exact. Disheartened, I removed the ads. Well the ads are not coming back here. Instead, I'm going to create some niche sites, optimize them for keywords and get a few backlinks, hopefully get into page 1 of the SERPs, then monetize them with ads.

Well long post. Goodbye!

Uncle Sam Says...

2008-02-02T01:24:00.001+08:00

Hahahaha.... Switchfoot concert was fun!

It's a wrap

2008-01-28T23:19:00.000+08:00

Well tomorrow is the last day of the semester, and the last paper for this year. Year 1 has been pretty eventful, i've learned quite a bit in the area of object oriented programming. I dare say that the best is yet to come, and I'm hopeful for a bright future ahead.

Going to the class chalet tomorrow, the final time the class will be gathered together before streaming into different specializations. Probably game development for me. Don't really know how to react to this. I guess i've grown closer to a few classmates over this year, through didn't really get to know the class as a whole that well. Maybe they're not my type.

Excited about the night cycling I plan to embark on, a long bike ride across three beaches around east coast.

Oh yeah, my parents wanted me to join them on some special program on newsradio. My dad helps out at Reach FSC and they are conducting some sort of parenting talk show every saturday. My dad has been invited as a guest speaker and they want me to join in too. Well I'm not too comfortable with airing my views out in the open, especially those pertaining to personal life (ironic that I'm writing here on this blog which is technically viewable worldwide, but that is a different sense of "public"). I mean, being on air for the whole nation to hear about your life can be too much to take. Either way, if i accept I will feel uncomfortable and if I decline then I let those people down. Argh. Well I decided that I'd rather not, better to remain silent and hold my peace than to speak folly and forever regret.