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• smallcaps 04:00 on January 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Epitaph for Eugene Koh 

  I think I was his first student in which he would practice a budding career on, and dad was practically my google when I was growing up. I remember sitting in our first family car – a beat-up, rusty, silver Mazda 323. In order to distract us from the extreme cold he would spout stories of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Many of my playthings as a child, along with huge stuffed animals and drum set pots and pans included classic Victorian novels, and my first encounter with Thomas Hardy was The Woodlanders pulled and stolen away from my father’s bookshelf.

  As a child I also remember his collection of classical records which he was so fond of listening to. His love of Chinese opera would also extend to western counterparts, and my mom would tell me stories about their first dates seeing the opera in Edmonton. This passion of his was so strong it even touched him subconsciously; often when my dad was deeply sleeping we could hear him singing in both English and Chinese, with intermissions of reflection between snores.

  My dad’s passions serve as a solid foundation for my own life. His travels and experiences a framework for me to model myself upon. I lived in Europe in reflection of my dad’s fond travels there as a young man. I pursue a PhD because I remember my father’s own dedication of bettering himself and those around him through education. His own drive to leave an impoverished life in a developing Singapore so long ago to forge his way through Europe and find love and life in Canada is truly the hero’s journey. His mentor-ship provided me the means to trace his footsteps back through Europe to ultimately find myself building a life in Singapore – my father’s motherland.

  Husband, father, brother, friend. Just 4 of the ways Eugene expressed himself so adeptly. I have never known anyone to be so selfless and full of life, passion and dedication in service to the ones in his charge. His bother’s and sister can attest to this and my mother and I have never known otherwise. Eugene Koh was a man who defined himself through his commitment to others. Such is the type of life we should all celebrate and remember. Dad I love you so much and I miss you.

  Jeffrey Koh Dec. 2009

  
   

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• smallcaps 22:30 on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: drawing video boingboing   

  @maedelmaedel http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/23/milton-glaser-on-dra.html

  
   

• smallcaps 05:55 on August 15, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: CNM, FASS, NM5210, NUS   

  Do Android Rats Dream of Electric Cheese? 

  this week was the first session of Dr. Kevin McGee‘s graduate course: Critical Interactive Media Design Issues, at the Communications and New Media Department, Faculty of Arts & Social Science, National University of Singapore.

  its only been the first week and already there are some interesting discussions forming on the course forum. our first assignment was to briefly describe one activity that is a self-fulfilling activity (that is: an activity that you will always want to do – and would not like a machine to “replace” you.).

  my response to this on the forum:

  the one activity that i would always like to do and not like a machine to replace me doing would probably be the act of slacking although i fear that one day robots will inherit the earth and place us all in work camps where we will no longer be able to slack for efficiency sake.

  slacking in some ways facilitates day-dreaming, which is an essential and required practice for my personal creative process. if robots ever come to realize this i am sure they will also long for the need to slack, thereby enslaving us to do their bidding in order to achieve what we currently enjoy because of their sacrifice and hard work.

  is this poetic justice? only time will tell…

  what would be the one activity you would not like a robot to replace you doing? comment or tweet your responses… i would be very interested in what everyone thinks!

  

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  • smallcaps 06:01 on August 15, 2009 Permalink

    and in response to a fellow student regarding his un-replaceable activity – Dreaming:

    dreaming for me means the subconscious and involuntary activity that your mind engages in during sleep or particularly boring lectures. let me know if this also fits in your definition, Lu Weiquan.

    i personally would welcome any type of technologies that would facilitate dreaming in a conscious state. from a personal view, some of my very best and most memorable dreams are in that grey area between sleeping and waking, usually denoted by my alarm clock ripping me up and out of this state to go to school! during those lucid moments i am pretty sure i know in the dream that i am dreaming. this was discussed quite thoroughly in the film Waking Life.

    of course types of “dream states” have been explored using assistive technologies (read: LSD, DMT and others) by people like Carlos Castaneda, Aldus Huxley, etc. – this does not mean i condone the use of drugs for recreational purposes (especially in singapore!) but that i mean to say is that people have been looking into this for quite some time

    regarding computers that dream, i think it can be argued that in a sense the brain is a carbon-based, digital device so it is only a matter of time till we get silicone to do the same thing. i mean, scientists have already digitally created a rat brain…

    … and who are we to say that rats don’t dream of cheese once in a while.

• smallcaps 13:03 on July 29, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Ferrofluid temporal sculptures 

  
   

• smallcaps 07:42 on July 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  how to make the most of Singapore’s free, ubiquitous wireless internet on your iphone 

  Disclaimer

  First: BACK-UP YOUR IPHONE!

  Second: This guide is heavily dependent on jailbreaking your iphone. If you are uncomfortable with a) hacking your iphone with unsupported software, b) doing something that is possibly illegal in your country and c) voiding the hell out of your warranty, this guide is not for you. You have been warned and I take no responsibility for your own personal choices and experiences. this is simply a personal account of how I managed to make the most of Singapore’s free, ubiquitous wireless internet service. YMMV!

  Things you will need to get up and running:

  An iphone – I use an iphone 3G but I imagine that if you can jailbreak your version of the iphone, you can use this guide.

  An account to access Singapore’s free wireless network – An excellent guide can be found here.

  An internet connection with something other then your iphone to read pages on, such as your computer – as one famous russian hacker friend of mine has always said, You need internet to get internet! I assume you have some type of access as you are reading this post.

  A computer – This can be a Mac or PC running OSX or Windows. I haven’t tried jailbreaking on *nix boxes but I am sure the dev community has figured or is on the way to figuring something out. This guide was formulated on an MSI Wind Hackintosh using OSX Leopard.

  A sync cable – To attach your iphone to your computer for jailbreaking.

  Step 1

  Sign up for an account to access Singapore’s free wireless network. An excellent guide can be found here. You will need a Singapore phone number to do so. After I jailbroke and unlocked my UK iphone I purchased a Singtel pay-as-you-go sim card to acquire a singapore phone number.

  Step 2 – Back-up your iphone

  This guide assumes that you have secured your data. I personally did a fresh install of iphoneOS 3.0 using itunes, after which i jailbroke using Quickpwn and Ultrasn0w, then synced my contacts, calenders, links and mail accounts using my MobileMe account. Just sign up for a free trial if you don’t actually want to pay for an account.

  All my applications are installed through itunes so I have a back-up of all the apps I use. After you jailbreak just sync your apps, data and media as you normally would.

  Step 3 – Jailbreak your phone (with the option to unlock if desired/supported)

  
  

  You can find all the information on how to jailbreak and unlock your iphone on the iphone dev-team blog. Find the guide that works best with your version of the iphone.

  Step 4 – Install the app “Backgrounder” using Cydia after you have jailbroken your iphone.

  

  from the developer’s google code page:

  Backgrounder is a Mobile Substrate-based extension to iPhone/iPod Touch’s SpringBoard application launcher that allows applications to run in the Background (applications are normally terminated upon suspension).

  Backgrounder is the keystone application in using Singapore’s free, ubiquitous wireless internet. The iphone does not currently support multitasking. Once you log into the free wireless network using Safari, a cookie is downloaded into your cache telling the server that you are logged in and are free to use the service. Once you leave Safari the cookie is deleted, therefore logging you out of the server resulting in disconnection from internet access. Backgrounder enables you to minimize Safari without actually closing it so that you can use other internet dependent applications such as Tweetie, Truphone, Fring and Brightkite.

  Step 5 – Turn on your wifi, authenticate with the server and milk Singapore’s bandwidth for all its worth!

  Once you have logged into the network using Safari, enable Backgrounder and minimize safari. At this point you can use other internet dependent applications so long as you are logged in and Safari is minimized in the background. Some of my favorites are:

  Tweetie – an excellent and inexpensive iphone twitter app that supports multiple accounts.

  

  Truphone – voip on the cheap (much cheaper for international calls then my pay-as-you-go plan) and supports messaging with multiple services such as icq, msn, ichat, gtalk, etc.

  

  Fring – another voip and messaging applications that support skype and twitter.

  

  Brightkite – a location-based social networking service.

  

  Thanks to Singapore’s wifi network coverage I don’t need to spend money on costly data-plans. If you are looking for good connectivity with your iphone on the cheap, I hope this guide helps you! For questions or help, please don’t hesitate to contact me through this webpage or email me at smallcaps – at – gmail – dot – com.

  

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  • maedelmaedel 17:03 on July 25, 2009 Permalink

    Sounds great!

    well, but there is the rest of us who are not living in Singapore. And all those who are either not so web and device savvy to do or want to do all the jailbreaking, hacking, installing and so forth.Well – And still we selfishly enough want the same luxury! What about us?

    Can’t there be simply free wifi anywhere – at least within given city limits? As some kind of basic service, like running water, street lights and canalization. Arguably wifi might not be as basic and fundamentally needed for a functioning society as canalization….but its getting there And still it would definitely raise the quality of living immensely. And if having the choice – I’d rather pay a monthly fee for city wide wifi than for supposedly state funded TV broadcast with more than lame and out of date programming.

  • smallcaps 04:30 on July 26, 2009 Permalink

    The French judicial system has recently declared internet access a basic human right. i think that the united nations should also include it in the “declaration of human rights”.

    http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6478542.ece

    i absolutely agree that it would raise the quality of living immensely. the main hindrance i can see tho is that in order to provide this seemingly, most basic of human needs for interaction, many other types of infrastructure must be put into place such as access to power, telecommunication services, etc. unfortunately most countries lack these basic necessities that the “1st world” takes for granted.

• smallcaps 06:21 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Crash Proof, by Peter Schiff:

  “Let’s suppose six castaways are stranded on a desert island, five Asians and one American. Their problem is hunger.

  So they sit down and divide labor as follows: One Asian will do the hunting, another will fish, the third will scrounge for vegetation, the fourth will cook dinner, and the fifth will gather firewood and tend the fire. The sixth, the American, is given the job of eating.

  So five Asians work all day to feed one American, who spends his day sunning himself on the beach. The American is employed in the equivalent of the service sector, operating a tanning salon that has one customer: himself. At the end of the day, the five Asians present a painstakingly prepared feast to the American, who sits at the head of a special table built by the Asians specifically for this purpose.

  Now the American is practical enough to know that if the Asians are going to continue providing banquets they must also be fed, so he allows them just enough scraps from his table to sustain them for the following day’s labor.

  Modern-day economists would have you look at the situation just described and believe that the American is the lone engine of growth driving the island’s economy; that without the American and his ravenous appetite, the Asians on the island would all be unemployed.

  The reality, of course, is that the American is not the engine of growth, but the caboose, and the best thing the Asians could do would be to vote the American off the island—decoupling the caboose from the gravy train. Without the American to consume most of their food, they’d have a lot more to eat themselves. Then the Asians could spend less time working on food-related tasks and devote more time to leisure or to satisfying other needs that now go unfulfilled because so many of their scarce resources are devoted to feeding the American.

  Ah, you say, but that analogy is flawed because in the real world the United States does pay for its “food” and Asians do receive value in exchange for their effort.

  Okay, then let’s assume the American on the island pays for his food the same way real-world Americans pay, by issuing IOUs. At the end of each meal, the Asians present the American with a bill, which he pays by issuing IOUs claiming to represent future payments of food.

  The castaways all know that the IOUs can never be collected, since the American not only produces no food to back them up, but also lacks the means and the intention of ever providing any. But the Asians accept them anyway, each day adding to the accumulation of worthless IOUs. Are the Asians any better off as a result of this accumulation? Are they any less hungry? Of course not.”

  

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  • smallcaps 06:26 on July 24, 2009 Permalink

    America has 300 million citizens yet consumes 1/6 of the world’s food.

• smallcaps 00:05 on July 5, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: pool loop zurich switzerland rote fabrik media arts performance electronic music hacking festival confrence smallcaps   

  pool/loop 2009 

  caught a great media arts festival in Zurich, CH.

  http://pool09.ch/

  
   

• smallcaps 15:22 on June 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Hello World!