Goodbye
Goodbye mother. Your journey here on earth may have ended, but God has called you back to his side. I know you are now in a better place and will look after your descendents here on mortal earth.
I am happy to be your daughter-in-law.
Nanoblocks, Not For The Long-Sighted
In Japan, where miniaturization of products are a norm, even lego-like building block toys are miniaturized. Enter Nanoblocks, the thing to satisfy your building lust without breaking your bank or taking up precious space.
They sell sets you can put together to make little animals, little musical instruments, and even little representations of famous buildings and landmarks like the Tokyo Tower and Neuschwanstein Castle. If you are a good creator, they also sell little boxes of building blocks so you can create your own architectural wonder.
They are real tiny, the smallest block measures 4mm by 4mm, so if you have fat fingers like me, holding and putting the pieces together can be quite a challenge. But the completed sets are small, and take up very little space around the house or office cubicle.
I first saw them sold at the toy section of my local Metro store (I was shopping for a birthday gift). Saw more being sold at specialty gift stores like Action City, so I decided to buy a polar bear set and see how easy it was to make one.
Each pack come with clear instructions, including extra pieces in case you misplace a few. The polar bear was fairly easy to make, just make sure you put the pieces in a shallow container so nothing goes missing.
My Nanoblocks polar bear, and the contents of the pack
Looks cute, doesn’t it?
Different sets have different complexity. The small animals are fairly easy, and the landmarks are a little more difficult. Nanoblocks, being a toy originating from Japan, has a few sets devoted to famous Japan buildings. They also have complex sets depicting Japanese warships like Battleship Yamato
I suppose I’ll get more of the animal sets, and start populating my cubicle with a menagerie of Nanoblock creatures.
Tea Eggs (茶叶蛋)
I know I’m a bit silly sometimes, but I never realize stores sell ingredient packs for making tea eggs at home. So imagine my surprise when the other half brought a pack of tea egg spices and excitedly showed it to me. It happens to be one of his favourite snacks, and never fails to buy some when he chances upon stores selling them, usually 3 for RM2.20. He gives me one and and will devour the other two, almost within the time it takes me to finish one.
Tea eggs are a good and (relatively) cheap snack. The only downside is of course the cholesterol content in an egg. The infusion of spices like star anise, fennel and cinnamon, and of course, tea into the eggs makes a lip-smacking snack for your afternoon tea. I hear pu-er tea is good for making tea eggs. But I’m just a newbie, so pre-packed ingredients are the way to go for me.
The pack I got includes the necessary tea leaves and Chinese herbs to make 15-20 tea eggs. You just need to add dark soy sauce, salt, and rock sugar to taste.
The steps I took:
1) Boil eggs. My technique is to place eggs and water in the pot, bring to boil, let eggs boil for 10 minutes, switch off the heat, continue to let eggs sit in hot water for another 10 minutes, then remove them.
2) Add all ingredients into another pot of water. Add dark soy sauce, salt & sugar. Bring to boil.
3) Crack each egg evenly, then place into pot of boiling herbs. Cook in medium heat for 30 minutes, then let simmer in low heat for another 3 hours.
4) Lovely tea eggs for your consumption.
The only problem now is, how do you find enough people to polish off 15-20 eggs, hehe.
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- Tea egg spices
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- Boiled eggs
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- Tea egg spices in pot
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- Cracked eggs in tea egg spice pot
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- Tea eggs
Linq – Join Example
I find I’m getting forgetful, so I’m posting a few bits of programming logic here to remind myself if I ever forget things again. This might be a common occurrence in the future, but I have yet to decide if I should mix work with pleasure.
—
Linq is a fully featured query language, which can be used to query & filter data in arrays, enumerable classes, relational DBs, and XML. I deal mostly with relational databases, so this simple example is related to a JOIN between 2 tables.
public static void SimpleJoinExample {
var productCats = from p in Products
join c in Category on p.CategoryId equals c.Id
select new { p.Id, p.Description,c.Name };
foreach (var pc in productCats ) {
Console.WriteLine("Product: {0} Category: {1}", i.Description, i.Name);
}
}
public class Category
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
}
public class Product
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public int CategoryId { get; set; }
}
  Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2010
|
  LINQ to Objects Using C# 4.0: Using and Extending LINQ to Objects and Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)
|
Angry Birds – Tips and Tricks
One of the reasons behind the success of the Angry Birds game is: it is very easy to learn, but very hard to master.
The knowledge of force, angles and trajectory forms the basic playing skills in destroying the green pigs. Even the structures sheltering the pigs have different tolerance to attacks. Stone is stronger than glass, which in turn is stronger than wood. But there is another key: master each bird and its special power, if any.
Each of the different birds – red, blue, yellow, white, black – has different powers that are very effective in certain game conditions. Master each bird, and you are on your way to master Angry Birds.
High score
You advance through each level by eliminating the pigs. But what is the fun of just going ahead, you have to do it in style, by getting high scores each time.
Kill the pigs and destroy structures with the least amount of birds possible. Each unused bird earns you an extra 10,000 points each. But its a balance between using few birds and inflicting damage on structures. You have to figure out the balance.
Structural weaknesses
In Angry Birds, just as in real life, offsetting the balance of structures and attacking weak points will often cause massive damage. Stone walls are stronger than glass, which in turn is stronger than wood. So don’t waste birds bashing at stone walls, instead, look for the supporting wood walls or platforms, and aim for those instead. A well-aimed hit at a supporting wooden structure will offset the entire structure’s balance and bring the whole thing crashing down like humpty dumpty sitting on a wall.
The Birds – Your weapons of mass destruction
6 angry birds
Red Bird – The red bird is your bread and butter. The higher and strong you launch the red bird, the greater the force and damage when it hits the target.
Blue Bird – The blue bird will launch like the red bird, but breaks into three smaller birds when the screen is touched. These 3 in 1 blue birds are good at taking out structures made of glass. Just before it hits the glass, touch the blue bird to split it into 3. When all 3 hits the glass at once, the damage inflicted is massive, dealing a major blow to the survival of the green pigs.
Yellow Bird – The yellow bird is your long distance shooter. During the course of the game, some levels will require the special long distance power of the yellow bird to reach enemy lines. Tap on the yellow bird in mid-flight to give it a speed boost and increase its deadliness.
White Bird – The white bird deals with double blows. It has the capability to lay one egg bomb in mid air. Touch the bird in mid-flight to drop an egg bomb, and both egg and bird will cause damage to enemy and structure alike.
Black Bird – The black bird is a heavyweight bomb, and acts like one. It explodes on impact, allowing it to inflict heavy damage on big structures. Launch the black bird at steep angles, and see it blast into large enemy structures at will.
Green Bird – The green bird is touted as the boomerang bird, but it can be much more than that. You can use the bird to launch straight into a structure and deal intense damage. But remember, once the bird has touched a structure its boomerang function is no longer active.
The Big Red Bird – The big kahuna of Angry Birds. Its sheer size rips through wood and glass like butter, and handles stone walls without much problem. No need to think when you use this bird, just let loose and watch pigs fly!
General Tips
To see the whole battlefield, pinch and zoom the screen. Useful to scope enemy territory and plan your attack.
When you launch a bird, it leaves a trail of dust behind. This helps you in planning the trajectory of your next bird.
Always try to aim for the foundation of an enemy structure. Once you expose the foundation with the first bird, use the following birds to topple the whole structure.
Aim the bird high and you can attack the structure from the sky. Good for levels where structures have stone walls, but exposed roofs.
Wait until your previous bird disappears, because if you hit the bird with a new one, the effect is greatly reduced.
These tips may sound basic, but they give you a good idea on how to play the game, and play it well. No cheat sheets or walkthroughs required.
Fun facts #1: On Sept 21 2011, Finnair flew its Helsinki-Singapore flight featuring an “Angry Birds” theme. The crew wore “Angry Birds” aprons, passengers ate off an “Angry Birds” menu, an “Angry Birds” mascot walked the aisles and 50 passengers competed in an “Angry Birds” tournament midflight — all approved by Rovio, the creator of the game.
Fun facts #2: An unauthorized Angry Birds theme park has sprung up in Changsha, China. More details on CNNGo.com here
Angry Birds
If you have been living in a remote cave, up in the mountains, away from civilization for the past 2 years, you mightsay “Angry what??”
If not, the little critters may have dominated your life in one way or another, you can play Angry Birds on your iPhone, hugging an Angry Bird plush toy, wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt and Angry Birds flip flops, you get the idea. In fact, a whole industry of Angry Birds merchandise has sprung up from nowhere, making a lot of people other than the good folks at Rovio rich. Toy makesr, the big winners, have a great range of Angry Birds themed toys and games to capture the hearts of kids and dollars of parents, like the Mattel’s Angry Birds: Knock On Wood Game, or Angry Birds plush toys.
Finnish game developer Rovio first launched this game on the iOS platform in late 2009, and took it by storm. On the surface, it is a simple game: launch little birds from a slingshot to knock green pigs on the far side of the screen, with the intent to destroy. Any man, woman or child who sees the game for the first time will immediately know how to play the game. As a player advances through the game, new birds are introduced, some with special powers that can be activated by the player. Later I’ll give some tips and tricks to help you go far in this game.
Since the initial launch on the iOS, the game has been ported to other mobile phone platforms and even the PC. Special editions like Angry Birds Season and Angry Birds Rio has also been released.
Many companies have wasted no time in featuring Angry Birds in the advertising programs. I found this video from T-mobile of a real-live Angry Birds game in Barcelona:
There’s no idea how long this Angry Birds phenomenon will last. It has become the default game to be installed on smartphones, for doing demos on tablets, and also to kill some spare time. I, for one, will keep hoping for Rovio to come up with new editions and keep the birds destroying the greedy green pigs.
In my next post, I will write some tips and tricks to playing Angry Birds.
Books and Me
I have been a book reader ever since I could remember. You could put me in a bookstore, and I would scan every single shelf until whoever brought me there got fed up and pull me kicking and screaming out of the store. I read anything I can put my hands on, books, magazine, brochures, anything.
My childhood is filled with Enid Blyton: Famous Five, Secret Seven, then Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. My favourite activity was to thumb through old copies of Reader’s Digest, even during primary school, Reader’s Digest wasn’t a problem for me.
Mills & Boon/Harlequin romance novels, Sweet Valley High and V.C. Andrews dominated the early part of my secondary schools years. Vampire madness then ensued with Anne Rice and the Vampire Chronicles. It didn’t help that the 1st book was immortalized on film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. You Twilight fans, I was way ahead of you with Lestat and his ilk.
Somehow, during my university years, I got hooked with Sci-Fi, especially Isaac Asimov. The Foundation series was great, but I really loved his stories on Elijah Baley solving crime with his robot partner. The library’s fiction section became a favourite haunt, and for some reason not many students check out books from there. On a good year, I will go through 30-40 books a year.
Yes, I have bought and read all 7 Harry Potter books. Goblet of Fire is my favourite.
When I have read a book by an author, and loved it, I would seek to read all his other works. This happened to the great Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin, John Irving, Murakami, Jane Austen, Gaiman, and Anne Rice. An author’s writing style, apart from his stories, must appeal to me. The author’s style must be able to bring me into the world he/she is writing about. When I can understand the mind of the protagonist, I will sacrifice precious sleep to get to the end of the story.
Popular fiction is more my cup of tea, I like to be entertained with good stories. Heavy classics are a bit too ‘heavy’ to go through. Some classics are ok, but even those are deemed ‘popular’ classics, like works from Jane Austen.
I have started to read non-fiction like autobiographies. Some of the lives described in them are larger than life. Maybe that’s why this genre appeals to me too.
To keep track of my reading, I’ll maintain a page here, and list a book each time I finish one. Click here to view the page.
Have not discovered any new authors that catches my eye. Think I’ll get Murakami’s new book, IQ84.
My favourite book of all time?
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”
Jigsaw Puzzles
Jigsaw puzzles feature very greatly during the first few years of our lives, when parents would buy those giant puzzles for us to play with. And kids will not tire of one puzzle, they can assemble it, mess it up, and assemble it again many many times and not get bored with it, until the day one or two pieces disappear, and Donald’s eyes are never seen again.
Mom used to love getting those 1000pcs – 3000pcs behemoths. For days, we would sit, hunching over the puzzle on the floor, sorting puzzle pieces into colours or patterns, and our eyes would water, and we would promise to go to bed once we’ve completed this portion here, and we’d get chased to bed anyhow. I got quite good at it; I would commit some colour or pattern to memory, scan the pieces, and after a short while, could pick out the correct piece to be fitted on the puzzle. I would yearn to finish a puzzle as quick as possible, but also dread the day the final piece gets laid down on the puzzle, as it would mark the end of a good time (at least for me). Finished puzzles get framed and hung on walls in the house. Soon, we ran out of walls, and the puzzle-buying stopped.
Later on 3D puzzles came out, usually made of wood or foam board. Every friend’s house had a few sitting prominently in display cases, akin to works of art. The foam ones are interesting, they have famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building and more. But I suspect dusting duties are made harder with these fragile works lying around the house.
There are no jigsaw puzzles in my current home, the other half has no interest in it, and I want to save the walls for future cross-stitch works. Instead, I play jigsaw puzzles online, yeah, that’s lame, but it’s my idea of a lunchtime break. I play this game called PuzzleBee in Facebook, and I’ve spent $$ buying credits to continue playing puzzles posted by other users.
Recently, came across a set of mini jigsaws called MasterPieces World’s Smallest 1000 piece puzzle series, featuring artwork by artists Bonnie White. Each 1000pc puzzle in the series are about 11.5″x16.5″ in size, that’s quite small. I have not seen an image of how small the pieces are. Each puzzle comes in an attractive tin, great for collectors. I am quite intrigued with this set, and have contemplated buying at least one. But I doubt the tin would last the hot and humid weather here, it will surely turn rusty in a few years.
Found a video posted by an online toy company showing the size of the tin:
I have found 6 in the series so far, don’t exactly what is the final number.
Captain Bob’s Harbour
Captain Bob’s Harbor 1000 Piece Mini Jigsaw Puzzle
Mermaid’s Cove  Mermaids Cove 1000 pc World’s Smallest Tin |
The Whale Watchers  The Whale Watchers 1000 pc Mini Tin |
Colors of Fall  Colors of Fall 1000 pc Mini Tin |
Waiting to Cross  Waiting to Cross 1000 pc World’s Smallest Tin |
Watching Over the Bay  Watching Over the Bay,1000 pc Worlds Smallest Tin |
Clicking on the pictures or links will bring you to Amazon.com, you could purchase it there if you want I wish you hours of fun ahead.
I might just buy one in the next few weeks. When I do, I’ll post more updates here.
Iron Man
I don’t know where this came from but saw it on my FB feed, and is too funny to ignore.
iron man
If anyone knows who made this, I’ll be glad to put credits on the picture
Self-promotion
Doing some self-promotion here, please visit my blogshop at http://store.furrymaisy.com, you can find iPhone cases for sale for now. We will slowly expand the range of products. Aimed at customers in Singapore.
