What I Have Been Doing

It’s a new month (ok, some 4 days into the month), which also means a month of holidays have really and already gone by, leaving some 2 months before it’s back to school and projects (yeah, project-oriented semester ahead for me).

So what have I been doing? Unfortunately I’ve not exactly been concentrating on clearing my backlog for the past few days, and still isn’t quite in the right mood to do so for some odd reason. Maybe it’s because my mind is occupied by other things or have been going out to see see look look a bit too hard.

Let’s see, I’ve recently picked up playing daily puzzles at Kenken.com, a game (wiki article link goes here) pointed out to me by Ken, probably due to certain similarities between his name and the game’s name. Unfortunately, being the genre of puzzles that I used to bother to try slashing my timings for, I’m currently quite hooked on the game. Took a while to read through the rules (which isn’t much), took a LONG while on my first attempt of a 9×9 puzzle. You might not believe it, but I took some 1.5hours for that, but managed to learn quite a few tricks eventually. Just today, my 9×9 puzzle has a timing of less than 9 minutes. Lol, but of course, some puzzles will be easier than others, so it’s not a very good gauge except that I know I have gotten a much better grasp on how the game works.

Good thing the kenken website only updates daily so I won’t be sinking too much time into it per day. The website offers puzzles ranging from 4 through 9, with of course 9×9 puzzles being the hardest of the lot, though it may not necessarily be the one I spend the most time on. Sometimes I can be quite “blind” and not see obvious numbers, making me think I’m actually “stuck” when I’m not. Lol, but 4×4 puzzles are safely sub 1 minute puzzles for me now =D Pretty fun I must say. For me, I tend to use some strategies from Sudoku + Kakuro + some elimination techniques that I have learnt over the past few days solely by doing these daily puzzles. Having a decent mental sum and ability to retain short-term information in some corner of your mind be definitely be a plus, but even I am too lazy to calculate those huge product numbers by head, so I normally use a calculator to get a feel of the factors that roughly make up the product since there’s usually at least 2 or 3 combinations for a huge product. I highly recommend it to all those who have a liking of puzzles like Sudoku or Kakuro to attempt this. It’s fun, though in the beginning it might be a little painful to fill in all 81 boxes. Hahaha.

Right, I’ve also been running around electrical stores looking at TV because my mom is intending to get a new one so I just tagged along, trying to look out for any noticeable differences etc, as well as being a “calculator” at hand. Hahaha. Unfortunately, I must say that older staff should not take the role of introducing TVs to customers, especially when TVs these days are actually quite high-tech liao, with all those specs and features and whatnot which I can find quite foreign too. Of course, those who are actually able to keep up with the times are welcome, but the one I got a few days back just doesn’t cut it. On top of that her arithmetic needs some revision. But, since I’m not the one with the intention to buy I never bothered to shoot her down or anything. Well, I would also like to add that looking at all the various TV screens can be quite tiring on the eyes as well while trying to take note which screen appears to be have better colour/brightness/contrast and whatnot. Though there are specifications, it is often quite troublesome to read through all of them. Looking at the real thing showing the same video footage is probably a faster choice. Oh, recommendations for TVs are always welcome. Drop me a msg on msn or something. =)

Yup, those who have me on msn should have noticed my nick. Mainly intending to go there to see if there’s any huge price differential that should not be missed. Of course, I wouldn’t mind looking out for other things like maybe a console, though I’ve really been fighting off the idea of owning one. The consequences that come with it is highly predictable and probably accurate predictions at that. Hahaha. On a note, I probably would be going on one of the weekdays the PC show has to offer. Don’t really want the weekend crowd, though weekdays aren’t really spared with so many people having holidays this season. For those who are interested, we can arrange a time to go down together, or else it’s a solo adventure I suppose. =D

Now for the most “life-changing” thing that I’ve done over the past few days is probably getting a new mouse. Yeah, long overdue. And it sure feels good having a mouse that doesn’t double/triple/multi-click at the touch of a button. Can be really annoying at times if you get what I mean. For those who are wondering, it’s just some budget and economical one that’s comfortably below $20. Now that I’ve changed my mouse, most of the items on my desk that is IT-related are dominantly black, except for my 8 year old keyboard that is of the contrasting colour – white with some stains that have gathered over the years of usage. Amazingly with the kind of usage I have on the keyboard (think of all the combos I’ve done so far + random KOF playing), the keys still respond so well. No doubt it’s my trusty keyboard but it is looking even more out of place now. However, I know nuts about a good and cheap keyboard that will meet my must-haves: namely:
1) must be able to play KOF with key clashes. Though one would expect it wouldn’t be hard to see such keyboards around, I still have experiences with (much newer) keyboards that fail to do so.
2) cheap. lol.
3) the keys must not be those that are too squishy and soft type. Takes away the feel of typing (or playing games for that matter). I did mess around with some keyboards while at one of the electrical stores and found that quite a number of keyboards have squishy soft kind of keys, which I don’t really like. The worst thing is that I have never heard of people testing a keyboard before buying it, nor do I think that there’s really such a service. Hic. Headache. Headache. If anyone has a good recommendation of the above-mentioned, please do let me know.

Right, moving on, I’ve been trying to look out for suitable background music for my upcoming video, but it seems that I haven’t come across really suitable and nice ones. Any suggestion is appreciated. As for my video, I do have some fuzzy idea on how it should be like, though I’m not quite sure if I will have the patience and the technical affinity in this aspect to be able to, for once, finish a video that’s actually close to what I envision. Heh. Oh well, it’s not going to be released public, probably. So how it turns out is really just for personal satisfaction. Final decisions can be made later on, but don’t go having too much hopes.

Yep, that’s about the more significant and non-trivial things that I’ve been involved over the past few days. Can’t expect very much from a person who doesn’t have very much of a life. *Cough* So much for now. More of me and my life (or what there is to it) next time~ Meanwhile, enjoy your holidays for those who on vacation. Work hard if you’re tasked with a job to complete.

p.s. wall of text dmg +9999!