Monday, March 26, 2018

So I purchased a fancy perfume the other day...

Ingredients list on L'eau D'issey Pour Homme by Issey Miyake:

  1. alcohol
  2. parfum (fragrance)
  3. aqua (water)
  4. dipropylene glycol
  5. butylphenyl methylpropional
  6. limonene
  7. linalool
  8. ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate
  9. butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane
  10. eugenol
  11. citronellol
  12. geraniol
  13. citral
  14. coumarin
  15. hydroxycitronellal
  16. farnesol
  17. cinnamal
  18. isoeugenol
  19. bht

125ml Eau De Toilette costs $59 at Venus Beauty.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

MacOS Sierra - A Bootable USB Installer

The final version of MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 was released today. To facilitate a clean installation, I had to update the installer on my flash drive. This requires a copy of the installer to be downloaded from the App Store, and to execute the following command in a terminal:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app --nointeraction &&say Done
Note that as the command points to the flash drive at /Volumes/Untitled, it needs to be labelled as Untitled.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

FLAC/ CUE Splitting

sudo apt-get install cuetools shntool flac
cuebreakpoints filename.cue | shnsplit -o flac filename.flac
cuetag filename.cue split-track*.flac
(Ensure the files you are working on are placed in the HOME directory.)

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Friend Codes in Pokémon Shuffle Mobile

Version 1.6.0 of Pokémon Shuffle Mobile introduces friend codes. Every mobile player is assigned a unique 8-character alphanumeric code. Friends are added by copying their code into your application. There is a limit of 30 friends per player and it appears to be locked by region. This means that if you live in Asia as I do, you will be limited to Asian friends. The following codes are what I could gather thus far. Add if you are a regular gamer!
  1. BQDQ-HDV9
  2. ALU8-29ZZ
  3. X2ZR-TEFS
  4. SCZ2-HBJG
  5. ZYAV-Z8YH
  6. YNXD-Z8ND
  7. 2Y5C-RMJF
  8. 8AFM-R2F5
  9. JGR6-X8XE
  10. QKC4-3RZ8
  11. 83SC-BUL4

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Visiting Thailand for Ingress Event

I decided to take a trip to Bangkok Thailand to support the Abaddon anomaly series for Ingress. It was a rather hasty decision, but seeing that my new job would be starting in late November, there was no better time to unwind.

My fellow Ingress agents took care of most of the details of the holiday. Dominic booked return air tickets with AirAsia.com for a low price of $150. (An additional $23.80 for travel insurance.) Alisa got us cheap accommodations at Red Planet Asok for 600 THB per pax per night. Over the course of 3 days, I spent approximately 4000 THB ($160).

Game-wise, we were meeting up for farms and cluster walks. It was tiring, but walking the grounds was important to familiarise oneself with the new surroundings. Moving between places was made easier with the skytrain/ MRT. Note to self: If you're staying in Bangkok for an extended period of time, get the multi-use rabbit card. Otherwise, we'd be exchanging coins to purchase single use tickets all the time.

Friday, June 5, 2015

TomorrowLand - Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

A number of reviewers have criticised that this movie seems half-baked. The stunning visuals could not compensate for the apparent lack of plot. I beg to differ. The entire premise of the movie hinges upon theoretical particles called tachyons and the idea of multiple parallel universes. All very new concepts in modern Physics.

The problem was, these ideas were unveiled in their entirety in a very short amount of time. There was this scene where David Nix explained that Man simply lapped up the idea of an impending doom, and refuses to mend his destructive ways. The viewer is left wondering if this is merely self-fulfilling prophecy wapped in a coat of fancy scientific jargon.

Casey Newton realised that the tower was projecting a version of the future that was simply one of the many other possible futures. But by repeatedly reinforcing the outcome with current world events, this would eventually cause the other possible futures to collapse and end up with the one being projected. In quantum mechanics, this is known as the many-worlds interpretation, a.k.a. "Schrödinger's cat" paradox.

I left the movie feeling a sense of awe and wonder. Perhaps I'm a sucker for these feel-good type of shows. (I am a dreamer!) Where can I get my very own TomorrowLand pin?

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Getting Past Product Key in Windows 8.1

With 8.1, it is now mandatory to enter a product key during installation. This requirement helps Setup determine the version of Windows to be installed onto the computing device. If, for whatever reason you wish to bypass this, there is a lengthy document over at Microsoft's TechNet titled "Windows Setup Edition Configuration and Product ID Files (EI.cfg and PID.txt)" that details the technique needed for the circumvention.

To accomplish this, navigate to \Sources folder on the installation medium (i.e. the flash drive containing the bootable 8.1 ISO) and create a file named "ei.cfg". This may be done with Notepad. Note that the file created by Notepad will be "efi.cfg.txt". Remove the .txt extension with File Explorer/ Manager.

Enter the following template.

[EditionID]
Professional
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

Depending on the ISO in question, the tags may be set as:
  • [EditionID] - Core, Enterprise or Professional (Leave [EditionID] empty if you prefer Setup to ask which edition you want installed)
  • [Channel] - OEM or Retail
  • [VL] - 0 or 1
Please note that this merely automates the product-key entry page in Windows Setup and does not activate Windows 8.1. The user is still required to activate Windows on a later date.