Sunday, November 14, 2010 kennedicut said
Hey guys, i've moved blog to kennedicut.blogspot.com. This blog will continue to stay here to serve as a memory of all the weird stuff, like the bitchy aunty. haha, sayonara failed-botox, i'll miss you.

,kenneth•©
Sunday, November 14, 2010kenneth said Saturday, October 23, 2010 kennedicut said
4 days ago, Apple held a keynote conference at their Apple campus in Cupertino. The theme, Back to the Mac, with a released image of the apple logo tilted, with a lion peeking from the back.

Here's whats new from Apple.
- iLife '11
-Mac OSX 10.7 Lion
-New Macbook Air


This version of iLife features new features for iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand.

iPhoto now features a new fullscreen mode, facebook enhancements to notify you of comments on your published photos, emailing photos, new slideshows to enhance your presentations and better printing for photobooks from Apple. This version of iPhoto is not a major upgrade from the previous iPhoto '09.

iMovie did not get much of a change, except for new themes, people finder like in iPhoto which allows you to detect faces, all-new audio editing and movie trailers. What people would be most interested in would be the audio editing, finally Apple. Another interesting feature is movie trailers, where you can turn your snippets of footage into professional-looking trailers. It works by giving a storyboard, and you simply dump the needed footage and tadah! We would soon see thousands if not millions of YouTube videos with these trailers. Cool or Cheesy? You decide.

GarageBand has new features like Flex Time, Groove Matching, Guitar Amps and Effects. Many people cheer for these, which I must say is a positive thing for GarageBand in the way its heading. It also has a bumped up version of GarageBand 09's 'Learn to Play'. Hmm, seems gimicky to me. Oh well.

Here comes the anticipated moment of the keynote. Steve Job's presents to us the new verison of Mac OSX 10.7 Lion. Hmm. Lion is said to be the marriage of OSX and the iPad's iOS.
Visual changes would be launchpad. Launchpad is like the iPad's homescreen on your mac, where apps downloaded from the mac store are placed there. Mission Control is a much improved version of Exposé, allowing control of your mac, with multi touch inputs such as the magic mouse, or the magic trackpad. But what seemed to steal the show was the Mac App Store. Its like the app store, for the mac. Self explanatory. The Mac App Store seems to be created for the MacBook Air due to its lack of a CD drive, so apps can be downloaded directly to the notebook itself. Lion also does not seem like a really huge update as compared to Tiger and Leopard. It is expected to be released worldwide summer 2011 Apple states, but I predict, its coming out between September and October like Leopard did. Don't expect the price of Lion to be that of Snow Leopard, I'm guessing its going to cost as much as leopard did, so start saving your pennies.

But there's one more thing. Oh Jobs, you never failed to surprise us. Rumors of a new MacBook Air was floating around. ( Get it?) Well, they turned out to be true. The new Air is made using the same unibody technology as the Pros, making it significantly thinner. The new Air has a longer lasting battery of 7 hours of usage and 30 days of standby time. This was done by taking advantage of extra space in the notebook. The MacBook Air has a sharper display than the Pros, although not as sharp as the iPhone 4 or the iPod Touch's Retina Display. When will laptops come standard with the Retina Displays, we'll be waiting Apple. The Air also features new NVIDIA GeForce Graphics 320M. Shockingly, Apple removed all HDD and SSD drives from the notebook. What?! and replaced them with flash memory. Seems pretty cool huh? This means faster turn-on time and quicker access to files. "Apple is the largest user of flash" Seems contradictory doesn't it? Lastly, Steve unveiled an 11 inch MacBook Air. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio display as compared to its bigger brother, but still has a sharper display than the Pros. The laptops also come standard with an SD card slot, only for the 13 inchers.

The last tiny feature of the day is FaceTime for the Mac. Don't we already have Skype?

In conclusion, iLife is not a must to get if you already have iLife 09. However, if you own 08 and below, go get it. Hits shelves in Singapore in 2011. Countdown to Lion begins, and if you must get the new Air, go ahead. Anyway, isn't the 11 inch MacBook Air becoming like a netbook?


Image Source and Credits www.apple.com

Saturday, October 23, 2010kenneth said kennedicut said

This is the first in a series of tech tutorials, where I will try and help some of you readers with your tech problems.

Our first request is from Sherwin, asking how to download videos from YouTube.

What you will need (Click to download)
- Safari 4/5
- Handbrake

Lets begin. Say, we want to download the latest fail video of a guy singing the elmo song. Go to the video on YouTube using your safari browser. On the menu bar on the top of the screen, click 'Window', then under the 'Window' pane, select activity. A dialogue box should pop up. In this dialogue box, you will see many things, look on the side of each file and find the file with the biggest file size.
In this case, its the file "http://v4.cache5.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?ip=0.0.0.0&..." with the size of 6.6 mb. IMPORTANT! Click on the little triangle to expand the list, like the following.Double click on the file, and it should download it the file name of 'videoplayback.flv'. This is in a flash format.
Now, you may want to be able to play this video on your mobile device, say, an iPhone, this is where handbrake comes into play. Open handbrake from your applications folder.
In the window, click on the movie clapper icon titled 'source'. In the dropdown menu, select your video file 'videoplayback.flv'.
Now click the icon named 'toggle presets' and a sidebar should open, if it isn't. In the sidebar, click 'Apple', then click 'iPhone & iPod Touch'.
Click 'start' and you are ready to go! Enjoy your newly downloaded video.
Saturday, October 23, 2010kenneth said Saturday, October 9, 2010 kennedicut said

Saturday, October 09, 2010kenneth said Tuesday, June 1, 2010 kennedicut said
ok fine, after like super long of like so not blogging. yes im back here to blog ok? so stop with the nagging. oh gosh.
anyways, last night was like super hectic. concert here and there. okok. went for acjc's choir concert "an evening with friends" i think. to support grace. trained to esplanade. but on the train, there are many interesting characters ok.
GOLDEN RULE WHEN YOU ARE IN PUBLIC!
-----------------
behave yourself, if not, you will get stomped on by the countless number of silly singaporeans who have no better thing to do.
anyways. when the train came to tanah merah, it was not very crowded. tolerable. and there was this stupid 60 year old taitai wannabe, you know those kind that dye their hair red, and carry fake-o handbags like FRADA, or GOOCHI, and over accessorize themselves with like gold chains and gold ear rings and jade. you know how out of fashion gold jewellery and JADE is? i mean like a bit of it is acceptable, but if you wanna be a walking pawnshop, then thats not the way you do it. seeing these kind of ladies makes me feel like im the 80's. horrible red hair urgh, as if it wasnt bad enough, its freaking curled. EWW MUCH. and this pompous bitch just like hoarded up a large amount of space to put her shopping bags. no silly, the shopping bags were not from orchard, they were from the pasar malam! i didnt want to squeeze inside the train to give others more space, for fear of that walking fashion disaster from screaming molest, cos they always think they can get compensation from unsuspecting people. sickening, so cheapo. STOMP

moving on. somewhere along paya lebar mrt, this group of people boarded the train, i couldnt see who they were, but they were making a big hoolabaloo, screaming and shouting. i assumed they were like a bunch of dropouts. after a while, they started screaming like mad it chinese. one girl went "HAO TONG AH" (very pain). then they all started panicking and were like shouting at her not to give birth on the train. turned around, turns out they had down syndrome. im not being mean here okay. i felt sorry for the guy that was ditched on the train by the rest of the gang.

met suzanne at burger king. and her friend rachel. okok, clara popped in later. went to esplanade. while they were waiting for the concert to start, i went to the floating platform to see what mambo jambo was going on for the yog opening ceremony. turns out the stage is really freaking huge, and everything looks like a metal puzzle. SERIOUSLY

spoiler. i dont like concerts. so anything choir related or music related bores me, unless theres something visual like lights or like awesome stuff. that sets ndp and concerts apart. sorry grace. singing was nice, but the songs killed me. okok. cambonded. why grace's face so 亮?jialok popped by. turns out my accurate prediction of "some vs guy is nearby, i know it" is correct ok, after the concert, the girls went to mc donalds, while i went to see the padang and the yog stage. not bad. the places look really nice. but theres a white cylindrical thingy behind the stage! WTFFF. helix bridge was nice. finished touring at 11.30 pm. alone. hardcore fan! reached home at 12 on the dot.

AWESOME DAY!
KENNETH•©
Tuesday, June 01, 2010kenneth said Saturday, April 3, 2010 kennedicut said
Hello people. Im back to blogging, after my super long hiatus of excuses, such as nemation, ca1, camp. blah blah. but im back. and as you have noticed, this new layout and design for my blog. It is totally different, because i have decided to use a different style of blogging, which is letting my readers choose what they want to read. ok, enough of the small talk. lets get down to business.

SEC 3 OVERSEAS CAMP 2010 (SUPER LATE ENTRY)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

i believe people dreaded that camp, lots of people did, and i was no exception. ok, so like 2 weeks before the camp, i was like freaking out already, about how icky and dirty the place would be and all that mambo jambo. to make sure that i would stay clean at camp, i went all out for supplies. 6 packs of wet wipes, baby powder and all the other stuff. and i ziplocked every single item. yes i did.

DAY 1
Fast forward. day one of the camp. assembled in school with my super huge bag, and waited. went through assembly like usual. then sec 3s stayed in the hall.
where they seperated us, and assigned us out trainers. we got balmond, big guy. ok, so we were given instructions about the camp and they gave out the camp shirt, which was designed by me! so we got ready to board the bus. at that time, i was feeling like "fck" knowing i was going to malaysia, and leaving singapore.
dumped our bags into the bus and got on. i sat beside tomus. 1 hr ride to tuas checkpoint. peed there. went through customs, knowing i was going to a dirtier place. then it was a short journey to malaysia customs, and my god, i can tel you, there is a stark contrast in cleanliness when you travel across the causeway. like seriously. malaysia checkpoint is like so different from singapores. its so filthy that there are houseflies swarming the area and manifesting on the customs officers back. i mean like seriously, if they really want to get more tourists, first thing is to up the hygiene level.
took an even longer bus ride to kahang. the bus ride was filled with sheikh jokes. kuakua. boring to the max, should have brought my ipod along. oh well
reached the camp site. looked as terrible as i had imagined it to be. the place was dusty and dirty. but what would you expect from a farm right?. to make matters worse, we were greeted by a shower of rain. boooooo. so we gathered in the multi purpose hall, while watching other classes scramble to get under the shelter. anyways, we got to eat lunch first, because we were closest to the serving area. food was mediocre, better than i expected, spicy sardines, vegetables, pumpkin, and the rice. surprisingly the rice is better than the rice you would get in singapore. but thats because they specialise in rice farming. maybe they added drugs to it. haha. so anyways, after lunch, we were supposed to pitch our tents, but there were no available tent kits to pitch, so we just had to choose pitched tents that were available. i was in the same tent as keith, joshua, andy, javyn and athanasius. being the cleanliness freak, i made sure that the tent was spotless, or at least cleaner than other tents.
the first activity of the day was raft building. it was non water based, at least for those not going in the water. tied bamboo poles and water drums together with pathetic pieces of twine. i suppose none of us were listening to the instructions on how to build the raft, as we kept screwing it up. the raft failed in the end anyways, even before we put it in the water. group C got to bathe first, which means that i would have high chance of bathing. yes, and i did get to bathe. the toilet is relatively big, but 1/4 of the space is taken up by a mini garden, yes, a mini garden. the door was gonna fall off, and the amenities were like siap siap one. but i got to bathe. after that wasnt as exciting. dinner > class performance planning > go to tents to sleep. the tent was infested with bloody mosquitoes, so different from mozzies in singapore. they are fricking brown in colour. i took the honour of spraying 3 different kinds of insect repellent and insecticide, which the entire tent claims to have gotten high from it.

DAY 2
woke up at 4 something in the morning, then assembled in the multi purpose hall at 6.30. went for morning exercise before having our breakfast, which was supposedly nasi lemak. the nasi lemak consisted of rice, which had no taste like nasi lemak at all, peanuts and ikan billis, chilli, cucumber, and egg, which i didnt get by the way. couldnt even eat the food, cos i had a stomach ache, as usual. pooped in the toilet. got on the bus with an empty stomach to go to gunung lembak. reached there. i under estimated the bloody mountain. it didnt look high from the ground level, thats because it was blocked by trees.
took a horrible walk up the steep slope to the gate. that walk alone killed me. i thought the gate was the base of the mountain. wrong. walked up the hill thingy, and i thought i had reached the top of the mountain, until i saw the sign. "welcome to gunung lembak". i was cursing already at that point. but i did try to climb it, the first part was manageable for me. but it was freaking steep. like really steep. then it came the part where we needed ropes to pull ourselves up. it was really straining on me, cos im unfit. so i had to take short rests to drink water. but it came to the point where i couldnt climb anymore, or so i thought.
I took a rest there, sitting on a sheet of plastic one of the trainers lent me. i was going to throw up, mainly because i didnt eat anything at all. but one of the trainers was nice enough to give me a strawberry granola bar. totally helped. climbed up with the help of sunjay and jaren. they really encouraged and pushed me to climb up. when i reached the top, the people were already coming down. gasps. top of the mountain had an ok ok view. like what you would see on a postcard. i had an in-grown toenail on both feet, which hurt like mad. went down the mountain. it took a shorter time, but it was trickier. i had to grab on to everything i could. i was really afraid to get dirty, but at that point, i was like fck everything and just grab on to the tree, rocks, ground and roots etc. jaren and sunjay really helped me. and when i went down to the base of the mountain, my class wasnt there, but 3F was. they were cheering for me. so touched. going down that hill wasnt any easier either. the road was super bumpy which meant toe hurting like mad. fangqi was helping me get down that hill. so nice of her. while her boyfriend was complaining about how she held me and not him. so to spite her, he told me a story. like she dropped her toothbrush in the toilet bowl, and still used it. reached the bottom, where my class was cheering for me. i was already tearing up. bussed back to camp site. couldnt take part in the nature walk and rice farming. stayed in the mph with yogesh and jaren. talking, playing finger games. didnt get to bathe that day, apparently, they ran out of water. so thats where wet wipes came in handy. and powder too. had dinner, and then went for nightwalk. nightwalk was really boring and dark. but your eyes could adjust to see in the dark. no torchlights allowed. basically it was just a walk around the farm. kuakua. after that, we had campfire preparation before going back to our tents. it rained twice at night. and i had to be the one sleeping at the opening of the tent. and keith.

DAY 3
Woke up even earlier, had breakfast. then went for first activity of the day, which was water volleyball. quite fun. next activity was the orang asli water obstacles. i fell in the mud twice. but i finished it. and third activity was bamboo rafting. campfire preparations while waiting for our turn. i would have to say, bamboo rafting was quite fun, although the activity was quite short. went to bathe. waited for terrence from 3F to bathe. apparently, he was bathing with someone else. packed up our tents, because they wanted us to sleep in the mph to save time the next day. i was freaking out, cos there were so many bugs and insects there. like how to sleep. changed into a new pair of shoes. had dinner before going to campfire. campfire was quite cool, considering they had a stereo system, and fireworks. our performance was quite screwed up. but anyways, had quite some fun. went back to mph, where we gathered in our classes with only our small bags. slept at 1am + because they were busy coordinating our sleeping positions.

DAY 4
woke up again, had breakfast, and got ready to go back to singapore. quite glad to go back though. said bye to sunjay and balmond and fangqi.

END
so i have blogged about sec 3 camp. at least most of it. i left out some parts since it was not interesting at all.
BYE!
KENNETH•©
Saturday, April 03, 2010kenneth said