Thursday, April 30, 2009

Canned Drink ~ F&N Sarsi Light

I don't like this coz I prefer the original.
But the design of the can & colour is nice... the purple is very attractive.


Swine Flu


Yeah! I’m in the news.
But really,
from the bottom of my heart,
have a good long pig-end (weekend)
& don't eat so much.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

TVU Networks

Main Website:
http://www.tvunetworks.com/
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TV Guide Link:
http://www.tvunetworks.com/tvguide/tvGuide.do
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Official Download Link:
http://pages.tvunetworks.com/downloads/player.html#
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TVUnetworks ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVUnetworks
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TVU Networks Corporation is an Internet company that operates an Internet television broadcasting network that uses P2PTV technology to offer its broadcasters global reach and low costs. Founded in 2005, the company is based in Mountain View, California.
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Users download a freeware software application for Windows called TVUPlayer and can then watch several dozen TV channels over the internet; as of November 2008 these include the Sci Fi Channel, Spike TV, Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS, The CW, MTV Central, several of the Chinese CCTV channels as well as many others.
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Primetime Morning ~ Channel NewsAsia

Videos and information from Primetime morning, Channel NewsAsia. Go and catch what you've missed.



http://www.channelnewsasia.com/ptm/

Click on the above link to watch what's recent & current on Primetime Morning, Channel NewsAsia. Or you can click the links provided below to go directly to your interest, be it ~ Interviews, Movie Reviews, Music Hit List, Food or Exercise.

Interviews Interviews. From sports personalities to stage performers, Primetime Morning has someone on the couch every weekday morning just for you. We bring you selected interviews right here for your viewing pleasure.

Zoom In Movie Reviews. To watch or not to watch? Melanie Oliveiro gives you her take on whether these movies are worth your time and money.

Hit List Music Hit List. Confused over which albums to buy? Let MediaCorp deejays give you the give you the low-down on what's hot and what's not in Hitlist, every Monday and Friday, only on Primetime Morning.

Off The MenuFood. Joanne Leow meets some of the new breed of chefs - from big names in the global kitchen to up and coming Asian talents, we take a peek into their kitchens and their lives.

A Muscle A Day Exercise. Every day, our fitness experts give you practical tips on how to keep toned and stay healthy.

The Harlem Globetrotters ~ A 1951 Movie

Info from Wikipeida ~ The Harlem Globetrotters, a 1951 feature film starring Whitney Rumsey and other Globetrotters, also featuring Thomas Gomez, Dorothy Dandridge, Bill Walker, and Angela Clarke. Young Bill Townsend drops out of college to join the famous independent Trotter team. He also finds romance along the way. "Goose" Tatum and fancy dribbler Haynes were the star players of the Globetrotters at the time and Saperstein was the owner. Tatum, Haynes, Babe Presley, Ermer Robinson, Duke Cumberland, Clarence Wilson, Pop Gates, Frank Washington, Ted Strong and other current team members appear in the film as themselves. Also featured is a lot of actual game footage (three times against the Celtics with Tony Lavelli and Big Bob Hahn), including their famous "Sweet Georgia Brown" warm-up routine. (Along with making the film, the team toured Major League Baseball stadiums that year and went on their first tour of South America).

Info from elsewhere ~ In over 8 decades and having toured over 120 countries, the Harlem Globetrotters have charmingly dazzled millions of people with their basketball exploits that is fun-filled and entertaining.The broad smiles, infectious laughter & boisterous Cheers of the crowd are all synonymous with the way the Harlem Globetrotters team instinctively deliver the intrigue in their games. Each team member is a wizard extraordinaire in whipping out unbelievable basketball treats that’s mind-blogging, fascinating & ….. all the WOWs!! You will sense the romp of the spectators that puts you on a high-joy, as the Globetrotters, orchestrate their silky classy moves. And, at some seemingly momentous stage of the event, they will never fail to ensure that a child or an adult involvement becomes an extended, lasting impression in their memoirs. So, don’t miss this chance. An entertaining occasion, that’s bound to thrill with all the spills.

Remember Me ~ Disabling Automatic Sign-In

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To Temporay Disable it
(Here are the following steps)

• In Microsoft Internet Explorer,
'Tools → Content → AutoComplete → Clear Passwords'.
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To Permanently Disable it
(Here are the following steps)

If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer, it's possible that you've enabled the AutoComplete feature. If you don't want AutoComplete to automatically sign you in to your Google Account, please follow these steps:

1 ~ Click the ‘Tools’ menu at the top of your browser, and select ‘Internet Options’.

2 ~ Click the ‘Content’ tab at the top of the dialogue box.

3 ~ Click the ‘AutoComplete...’ button, and diselect the checkboxes 'Usernames and passwords on forms' and 'Prompt me to save passwords.'

4 ~ Click ‘OK’.

The above was found at this link:
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39273

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ENCORE ~ Music Notation Software

http://www.gvox.com/
http://www.gvox.com/encore.php

OTHER PLACES TO BUY
GVOX products are available around the world
Singapore ~ http://www.softwareexchange.com.sg/

My favourite Music Notation Software. Probably because I'm so used to it. This Version-3 still works today and I've been using it since 1991 (started with Version-2). Only now it has problems with the lyrics in Windows Vista. I'll probably have to up-grade with the latest Version... {sigh!}.


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Anyway, here are my suggested Click Settings that I've selected for myself which are (in my opinion) better than the default Click Settings.

List of Useful Free Softwares on the Internet

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PDF reDirect
http://www.exp-systems.com/

PDFtoMusic Pro
http://store.recordare.com/pdftomusicpro.html

AVG (Anti Virus Grisoft)
http://free.grisoft.com/

Audacity (Multi-track Recording SW)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

YouTube Downloader (altervista.org)
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

Quicktime (with iTunes)
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Unlocker
Info: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000714.htm
Download Website: http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/
Supported formats:
Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

IPOD for Mums

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Here's an update 2009Jun11, 0940hrs
An iPhone would be a better buy.
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Very clever marketing.


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Video Ad

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Generator Blog ~ Interesting Softwares Online

http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

Good blog on softwares available online.

This blog is not about those machines used to change mechanical energy into electrical energy. It's about software that creates software. Software to play around and have fun with.

Sketch Generator ~ Photo To Sketch Software

Interesting software to convert your photos (JPEG format) to sketch. Here are some links. Go ahead and try.

http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php

http://sporkforge.com/imaging/sketch.php

Monday, April 20, 2009

Art ~ Tiger On The Beach ~ by Sudarsan Pattnaik





Artist Sudarsan Pattnaik created 15ft long tiger sand art with thanks to Sachin
http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowDistrictNews.asp?id=11546

Report by orissadiary correspondent; Puri: One day before Sachin dedicate his Forty-second century for Tiger. Now a sand tiger saying thanks to Sachin Tendulkar at Puri beach of Orissa. Sachin Tendulkar, a tiger on the cricket pitch is fighting a battle for another tiger. Sachin’s forty-second century scored on Friday against New Zealand was dedicated by the batsman to the cause of tiger conservation project in India. Today India also wins the 1st test match at New Zealand.

Internationally acclaimed sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik created a 15ft long tiger which holding a 5ft long cricket bat with a message “Thanks Sachin” at Golden beach of Puri, Orissa. Similipal reserve forest of Orissa is India’s biggest tiger habitat. I hope In future the tiger should not be a paper tiger for the future generation to come. The step should be taken for the increase of tiger population. I would like to tanks Sachin to dedicate his ton for increase of tiger population said Sudarsan. He uses 15 tones of sand and 7hour to complete it. Students of Sudarsan sand art school joins hand with him.

Before Sudarsan created many sculptures to promote wildlife around the World. Next month Sudarsan is going to japan to participate in World sand sculpting competing.

Sudarsan has so far participated in more than 37 international sand sculpture championships across the world and won many awards for the country. In 2008 Sudarsan won the World champion title as a first Indian at Germany.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Pig ~ One Pig To Fly

Graceful Flying...


Clumsy Flying...


An Inspiration ~ From breaking the law to fighting for it

What an inspiring true story.

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From breaking the law to fighting for it
By Jeanette Tan | Yahoo! Newsroom – Fri, Jul 6, 2012
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Picture Captions
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Darren Tan ~ 01
Now 34, Darren Tan has undergone a major transformation from convict to law student. 
(Photo courtesy of Jurong Lake Run)
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Darren Tan ~ 02
Darren (back row, second from left) takes part in the annual Yellow Ribbon Run. 
(Photo courtesy of Darren Tan)
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Darren Tan ~ 03
Darren (centre) speaks to students from Maris Stella High School in an outreach programme.
(Photo courtesy of Darren Tan)
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After four years in maximum-security prison, Darren Tan spoke so much Malay and Hokkien to fellow inmates that he lost his facility to speak English.

Now 34, he admits that no one he knew could possibly have guessed that almost a decade on, he would be studying to be a lawyer at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

An only child, Tan showed potential success in Singapore’s education system when he scored three As and one A* in his Primary School Leaving Examination.

He describes himself as a “latchkey kid”, however, saying he experienced a lonely childhood as both his parents had jobs.

“I spent my time on the streets a lot,” he tells Yahoo! Singapore in a candid interview. “I think the culture then was such that it’s like a natural progression — in secondary school, you get involved in gang-related activity. I don’t think it’s the case now, but I think that’s how it was back then.”

He said the gang of friends he hung out with was a large group of more than 10 people, all of whom he grew up with living in the western part of Singapore, where he still stays today.

• A wayward youth
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Gang life for Tan was everything your tattoo-ridden, beer-drinking uncle could have told you about in the past — fighting, extortion, dabbling in an array of drugs — you name it.
His first experience with drugs was a sneak of marijuana when he was 14, stolen from the drawer of his friend’s brother. Tan and his friends then moved on to sniffing glue and popping sleeping pills, which he says were both very easily obtainable — in particular glue because it was cheaper, and at the time one did not need to register when buying it.

“(We did it) to get high, and to outdo each other — I think to show who was more daring,” he said. “(Drugs were) actually quite prevalent,” he added, explaining that one simply had to ask around, find out who was selling it or if anyone had a contact, in order to get some.

He was also first arrested at that age, on charges of rioting, but those were dropped and he was released after one night because the police lacked sufficient evidence.

“After my first police lockup, my mother was very concerned so she tried to impose some restrictions on my freedom… and then I think it just got worse from there,” he said.

To his principal’s surprise, Tan scraped through his ‘O’ Levels with a respectable 20 points for his best six subjects even though he “didn’t go to school much”, and secured a spot in the electronics, computer and communications engineering course at Singapore Polytechnic.

He soon stopped going home, however, and lived the proverbial nomadic life with his friends, staying either in hotels in Geylang and Joo Chiat, or at other people’s houses.

They paid their way dealing in drugs, extortion and robbery. “We didn’t really share it; we just used it up. It’s a very communitarian lifestyle,” he added.

Naturally, school had once again fallen by the wayside for Tan, and he dropped out from his polytechnic course after skipping too many classes.

Tan says he can’t remember how many times he was arrested in all, but he was detained three times — amounting to some 10 years and eight months of prison time altogether. The first two of these were spent in a reformative training centre, a sort of “middle ground” between Boys’ Home and prison, as he was 18 years old at the time.

By the time he was put behind bars in 2000 for his second sentence, Tan was 21, and he had in his words “graduated” to Ice, after taking and dealing in a host of other drugs including ecstasy and erimin, a tranquiliser. 

“It (Ice) was killing me,” he admitted. “I was very thin and malnourished (by then), and would have probably died if I wasn’t caught.” 

Tan’s second sentence was his longest, spanning eight years, and though he was eventually released early, he had only been out of reformatory for 11 months when he was caught for trafficking, possession and consumption of various drugs.

Tan’s jail sentences came with caning as well — and he was given a total of 19 strokes throughout his time there.

• Breakthrough
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It was during his second sentence that he experienced what he describes as a “breakthrough” with himself.

“I was very disillusioned with my past, and by then I had seen enough of this circle to really want to disassociate myself from it,” he said.

When faced with four walls in his maximum security prison cell, Tan said he started to think more deeply about himself, his thoughts and his faith. It was then that he decided to make a change, and to work toward becoming a lawyer.

“I felt like God was asking me what I wanted to be, and I said ‘If you really are so great, you would make me a lawyer’, because back at that time if I had told anyone I wanted to be a lawyer I would've just been laughed at because I had nothing, I couldn't even speak English. And I felt peace after that. It was Him telling me he accepted my challenge and one day I would be a lawyer,” he recalled.

To regain his English-speaking ability, Tan put himself through a strict regime of reading English and Chinese newspapers every day, alongside books on topics ranging from food recipes to quantum mechanics.

He said he kept a dictionary beside him to check and remember the meanings of words he did not understand, and studied nuances in writing, as well as sentence and paragraph structures, but the use of the language became much clearer to him after he borrowed a book on grammar from the prison library.

Tan also joined the weekly toastmasters programme while in prison school, and became the president of the toastmasters chapter in prison, and practiced his spoken English further during a stint as a newscaster on an inmate-produced television news programme called News Behind Bars.

From there on out, Tan’s life unfolded in ways that one can only describe as amazing — taking the ‘A’ Levels after just nine months of intensive studying, scoring A, A, B, A1 in General Paper and A2 in Chinese, sitting for the NUS Law admission test and being interviewed in prison and gaining acceptance into the course in 2009. 

• The onset of more setbacks
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All this, of course, did not come with its own set of challenges and setbacks. In the wake of his revelation of his new goal in life, Tan initially applied at least three times to go to prison school, in order to take the ‘A’ levels but was rejected partly because he was too early into his jail sentence to be shifted to prison school, which is located elsewhere, and partly for committing offences while in prison.

Tan explained that while in his first years in maximum security, he ran into a friend who had more or less told on him to the police, and ended up getting into a fight with him. That encounter delayed his entry into prison school, and even when he was finally approved for a transfer, Tan was placed into a two-year NITEC course in electronics, which further slowed him down. 
Although Tan received his ‘A’ level results outside prison, he was arrested again about six months after his release when he got into trouble trying to help a friend who was in debt. This time, his jail sentence — for possession of erimin, as well as long-term imprisonment for being caught the third time for drug consumption — lasted five years, putting the brakes yet again on his entry to law school, although in his last year in the lockup, Tan was able to take his NUS Law admission test and interview.

• From prison to the deep end
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Even when he did start out in school, Tan said he felt like he was thrown into the deep end — lessons had started two weeks before he was released from prison, and he suspects he was the only student in his class who started classes sans a laptop and textbooks.

“I felt so lost in school. I was this guy sporting a weird hairstyle and wearing clothes from a long-forgotten era,” he said, adding that he was even asked on several occasions whether he was an exchange student from China.

He shared that during his first semester, he would make trips to the Botanic Gardens between classes and sit alone in the park, not making friends as he was conscious of his background, even relating an incident where he was not aware of a change in classroom venue (due to his limited access to email) and had to scour all the classrooms in the building to find it.

Things got better for Tan, though. His studies at NUS are currently being sponsored by the Yellow Ribbon Fund Star Bursary Programme, allowing him to take on less jobs on the side and focus on his schoolwork. He also found friends who reached out to him to sponsor his textbooks, his stationery, and guarantee his laptop loan, among other things he needed for school.

• More challenges ahead
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Now on the cusp of his final year, Tan has secured his practice training contract with one of Singapore’s top 15 law firms, in the field of commercial litigation.

His last hurdle in his journey toward becoming a full-fledged lawyer here is, apart from graduating, in being called to the bar.

To do that, Tan says Singapore’s Supreme Court has to approve his being called to be an officer to it. While Law Minister K Shanmugam, whom he met once, had been very encouraging of Tan’s endeavour, Tan says things still remain uncertain for him.

“(Mine) could be a test case as I am not aware of any precedents,” he said. This means that Tan could potentially be the first convict-turned-lawyer in Singapore who has “such a long string of convictions”, provided he is called to the bar.

Despite the challenges he continues to face, Tan gives back to the society that provided the help he needed before. 

Since two years ago, Tan has been volunteering with Beacon of Life, a self-help group that reaches out to wayward youth. Initiated by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s wife, the group is now working with inmates at the Singapore Boys’ Home.

Separately, Tan is also involved in Jurong GRC’s community outreach programme, which helps newly-convicted prison inmates and their families. When authorised by inmates, Tan and his fellow volunteers, who are made up of former convicts or veteran prison officers, visit families to see how they are holding up.

“We are suitable (for this) because we can advise the parents (of inmates) and tell them that prison isn’t bad, we went through it, and to answer some of their queries and allay their fears,” he said.

At the same time, Tan helps out with Architects of Life and Movementor Consultancy, groups involved in mentoring youth at risk, although his involvement here is on an ad-hoc basis, where projects come up.

“I think it’s mostly that I’ve been helped that much that I want to give back to society as well,” he says. “I’ve been given a lot of chances, some of which shouldn’t have been given to me at all, and I’m really thankful.”

Darren Tan is one of the “heroes” of the Jurong Lake Run, which will take place on Sunday, 8 July, between Jurong Lake Park, Japanese Garden and Chinese Gardens. Click here (http://www.juronglakerun.com/) for more information.
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Other Links.
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• He went from jail to NUS law school
http://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/news/2013/ST030313.pdf
Ex-offender turns his life around in jail and is currently in his final year at NUS Law. Darren Tan ’13 spent more than 10 years of his life in jail and received 19 strokes of the cane for drug and gang-related offences. Assoc Prof Eleanor Wong who interviewed Darren for a place in the faculty says he demonstrated maturity and humility. Come July 2013, Darren will be graduating with an LL.B. from the NUS Faculty of Law.
3 March 2013, The Sunday Times, Top News, Pg3

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• Once in jail, but he's now a law grad
http://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/news/2013/ST090713.jpg
Article features interview with Darren Tan'13, who graduates from NUS Law this week, and how he has worked towards his achievements.
9 July 2013, The Straits Times, Home, Page B4
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