Fun with Sketching

Not the boring sabbatical that does absolutely nothing, but a nice blog that discuss issues seemingly pertinent to all our lives since we are all Singaporean(s) [students]. If I am not wrong, this is a WACOM tablet powered webcomic: The Students’ Sketchpad. I must say the stuff there are really well-drawn and there’s also interesting content.

Sketchpad

There tonnes of Singapore students out there expert in Arts, and I am quite sure I won’t be able to outdo them in practical arts, so I think I am better off in the Academic Arts stream in future. Then I will once again fall into the trap and become another student manipulated by the ministry as mentioned in one of their comics. I will be fooled to participate in the mini-education-ratrace and be following the ‘syllabus’ and tricked by the ‘charisma’ of the teachers into entering the politically-correct carreers such as doctors, lecturers, teachers, lawyers (not as welcomed), accountants and engineers.

Hey, artist these days get paid quite well. Of course, you have to be really good. And using a WACOM tablet and illustrating such comics probably means professionalism in Singaporean context. Nah, don’t fault me for over-generalisation – Singaporeans are like that. ‘Not all the Hwa Chong type are very Chinese’ – a statement to counter the Singaporean-styled generalisation that Hwa Chong people are always Chinese-type.

This advertisement is brought to you by Vib – do go and take a look at that blog.

Further Findings (3 September 2005):

I realised that they aren’t using WACOM, they are working with a tablet. I guess I was acting a little too pro when I made that guess. I found out the truth here.

Browsing Happily

I rarely do propaganda for others, but I seriously think that Internet Explorer is screwed. Browser Happy is a site dedicated to educating people about the harms that Internet Explorer brings and promote alternative browser softwares. Do visit it and download the suitable browser for your browsing experience.

By the way, if you browse this site with Internet Explorer, and then compare it with the view on Mozilla Firefox, you will realise that there seems to be a difference in the way they process the colour codes of the background. I am not sure why but it doesn’t make a single sense. Basically, Internet Explorer doesn’t really deliver the content as desired by the programmer at times, in fact, most of the times.

Personally, I use Firefox as a primary browser, with Internet Explorer as the secondary. This is mainly because of the large number of Visual Basic driven site, which I have to access. Firefox don’t seem to be able to process certain of the Visual Basic coding. Too bad. Nonetheless, Internet Explorer is still giving me problems like crazy pop-ups. In school, we also see those computer-dumb (not illiterate, just dumb) teachers who have tonnes of spywares and virus on their computers, the explanation – Internet Explorer.

So the final message: Avoid the Blue ‘E’, Down with ‘IE’.

Nonsense

Somehow, this PC Show post got posted about 7 times on my blog. I have no idea why. I probably clicked the publish button a little too many times (my sister disconnected my computer from the net at the exact moment when I clicked publish for the first time).

Mib’s life is screwed. So is US actually any better than Singapore? Probably not. But still, we are screwed by the system over here. This is a great example. As for Terry, he is so screwed by his power supply. Okay, enough of screwed stuff. For those so wants peace, with nothing exciting, please vist Newspeaker. Given the little crap there, I doubt anyone actually discovered that Newspeaker have existed for almost a month already!

Propagation

After taking about 5 minutes to admire the review Terry has done of my blog, I felt rather dismayed by the fact that I scored the same ratings as Weixiang. Well, it isn’t that bad though I have to say that my blog is definitely more readable than Weixiang’s. Nonetheless, I seem to fare batter than Bingyuan and Mib, so I am rather satisfied.

The holidays are coming and I probably spend more time blogging. During the December holidays last year, I churned out tonnes of political post, which is now in an archive word document stored in my computer. Those were pretty crappy now that I look back at them and laugh at the lame jokes I have cracked about the school and fat people.

Reading Terry’s post on his site stats, I should perhaps, subscribe more such information so that I can have a better picture of how my site fare against others. Nonetheless, they are just pure tools of amusement that bring nothing much to life anyway. I initially typed a Chinese Article but that was on my auntie’s laptop, and I forgot to send it back to my email so alas, I am not able to post it here today. It talks about ‘substance’, the thing we should have before going on to do anything.

After I realised that people have the tendency to auto-skip Chinese posts, I am injected with a dose of confidence in criticising the school or whatever organisation with Chinese instead of English, since those big shot people most probably do not really understand Chinese. Hehe. Who really cares about the blog of a non-scholarship holder anyway. We are regarded as humans with low intellect, who deserves no attention.

Bok’s Calamity

In case you haven’t noticed, Bingyuan has just put back all the ‘censored stuff back on to his blog. That’s supposed to be good news unless he accidentally revealed them and would be switched the posts back to hidden mode. I really thought he was afraid that his form teacher or whatever would go to his blog and realised how critical and lame he is. Well, it appears that he have had his fears removed. Or perhaps it is because he has no wonderful content to show lately so he decided that the ‘censored’ stuff aren’t really that censor-deserving after all.

It appears that people are now discussing a great deal of stuff on blogging stuff that may be ‘dangerous’ due to political or defaming nature. Well, I thought this is pretty lame because I believe in the Internet, there is no way of control. When a site goes down, another one comes on again. Most importantly, you are not able to punish certain people who may have been blogging somewhere else in another nation where certain laws probably doesn’t apply. The deterence isn’t going to work.

As for non-political or defaming stuff, they are starting to get a little bored. Terry seems to be running out of ideas, especially when he is the type of blogger, who does it everyday unless he has no access to a computer. This is probably a down time for him and other of those bloggers. I probably should switch off my system too.

Bok's Calamity

In case you haven’t noticed, Bingyuan has just put back all the ‘censored stuff back on to his blog. That’s supposed to be good news unless he accidentally revealed them and would be switched the posts back to hidden mode. I really thought he was afraid that his form teacher or whatever would go to his blog and realised how critical and lame he is. Well, it appears that he have had his fears removed. Or perhaps it is because he has no wonderful content to show lately so he decided that the ‘censored’ stuff aren’t really that censor-deserving after all.

It appears that people are now discussing a great deal of stuff on blogging stuff that may be ‘dangerous’ due to political or defaming nature. Well, I thought this is pretty lame because I believe in the Internet, there is no way of control. When a site goes down, another one comes on again. Most importantly, you are not able to punish certain people who may have been blogging somewhere else in another nation where certain laws probably doesn’t apply. The deterence isn’t going to work.

As for non-political or defaming stuff, they are starting to get a little bored. Terry seems to be running out of ideas, especially when he is the type of blogger, who does it everyday unless he has no access to a computer. This is probably a down time for him and other of those bloggers. I probably should switch off my system too.

Crocodile’s Eyes

For those who are observant enough, you would realise at once that I have changed the Propagator’s Croc a little, adding ‘eyes’ to make it look a little friendlier. I started off with this idea of making an proper avatar for myself in different places. Unfortunately, I have my identity hidden for certain places and not for certain websites. So I decided that the avatar will solely be for my participation in more crappy, techie websites. Here it is, the 50px by 50px version of it:

The first look of it give me an impression that it is a sign warning children to have parent guidance when viewing anything that is posted by me. Originally, I was using the old unfriendly croc’s eye and it looked really evil. Hence, I decided to amend a little to appeal to children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the letters ‘P’ and ‘G’. They were in caps at first but I quickly change them to small letters. I guess you guys should know why.

The ‘croc’ looks as though it portrays the parents eyes looking at everyone – especially for the children; with the purpose to instil fear in them and deter them from doing wrong things. To a large extent, the avatar seem to work well with such a feature to scare children. The things I write is not immoral, not as evil and extreme as what Mib normally writes about, but they are usually not suitable for children since it has a high tendency of distorting their perception about the world – I don’t want to make them unhappy.

The background is not black. It is a dark shade of brown that is blend with a light gray. It does look simple here but it is supposed to achieve the effect of a warm feeling despite the color being a dark one. It blends in better with the green of the crocodile and the orange text, making it the perfect background for the avatar. The orange text, of course, is to mix with the green to achieve the similar effect that my website’s design is built upon.

That’s the problem when you have a strange logo coupled with a dubious name; you produce an avatar that makes no sense or connection to your original idea. I guess you guys would soon see this avatar appearing on certain forums or communities, that’s me – unless one of you decides to pass off as me and kope this avatar. Sometimes, you may see this avatar appearing but the name isn’t ‘Vib’. It probably isn’t me, though I didn’t really fully adopt the screen name, ‘Vib’ yet. I have so many other accounts that uses purely my own name. I guess it will take another year or 2 before I use it for everything I register.

Crocodile's Eyes

For those who are observant enough, you would realise at once that I have changed the Propagator’s Croc a little, adding ‘eyes’ to make it look a little friendlier. I started off with this idea of making an proper avatar for myself in different places. Unfortunately, I have my identity hidden for certain places and not for certain websites. So I decided that the avatar will solely be for my participation in more crappy, techie websites. Here it is, the 50px by 50px version of it:

The first look of it give me an impression that it is a sign warning children to have parent guidance when viewing anything that is posted by me. Originally, I was using the old unfriendly croc’s eye and it looked really evil. Hence, I decided to amend a little to appeal to children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the letters ‘P’ and ‘G’. They were in caps at first but I quickly change them to small letters. I guess you guys should know why.

The ‘croc’ looks as though it portrays the parents eyes looking at everyone – especially for the children; with the purpose to instil fear in them and deter them from doing wrong things. To a large extent, the avatar seem to work well with such a feature to scare children. The things I write is not immoral, not as evil and extreme as what Mib normally writes about, but they are usually not suitable for children since it has a high tendency of distorting their perception about the world – I don’t want to make them unhappy.

The background is not black. It is a dark shade of brown that is blend with a light gray. It does look simple here but it is supposed to achieve the effect of a warm feeling despite the color being a dark one. It blends in better with the green of the crocodile and the orange text, making it the perfect background for the avatar. The orange text, of course, is to mix with the green to achieve the similar effect that my website’s design is built upon.

That’s the problem when you have a strange logo coupled with a dubious name; you produce an avatar that makes no sense or connection to your original idea. I guess you guys would soon see this avatar appearing on certain forums or communities, that’s me – unless one of you decides to pass off as me and kope this avatar. Sometimes, you may see this avatar appearing but the name isn’t ‘Vib’. It probably isn’t me, though I didn’t really fully adopt the screen name, ‘Vib’ yet. I have so many other accounts that uses purely my own name. I guess it will take another year or 2 before I use it for everything I register.

Mac OS X Tiger

Finally unleashed, yesterday, when I was still stoning in school after a receiving a stream of terrible grades for tests this term. It is extremely cool and is probably considered the best operating system of current times, given the slow development of operating system that arise after Window XP got attacked violently in the past 2 years. Check it out!

If you are considering getting yourself a laptop or a perfect personal desktop, get a Mac quickly. First, it is cheaper than Dell given the performance and stability of Mac. Second, it looks better than any Windows Machine. Third, Mib haven’t got a Mac yet! Get one before he does.

Inactivity

Please pardon the inactivity on this site. It is due to a combination of my slacking and mugging, which will end around week 7 in this term. Meanwhile, people should visit thePropagandaMachine. For some anti-Jap stuff or more political nonsense. It appears that erpz.net is far from being politics-free because of the mindsets of the owner(s).

By the way, a new homepage will be designed for erpz.net soon. I thought it would be best if we incorporate a geeklog there and put more political stuff. Wonder if Mib would agree. Anyway, he has also set up a rather lame gallery, an idea which I conceived previously but had no time to realise. I would say, good job, Mib. But it wasn’t really what I had in mind.