You might not know this, but our ancestors (homo erectus that is) are belived to be the cause of the extinction of the mammoth. They over-haunted. In a attempt to bring them back, scientists today believe that they could impregnate a lady-elephant with the frozen sperm of some 23000 years old mammoth.
It's like Jurassic Park, folks!

I want to share here the perfect system that I have in mind .... and how I got there.

1. HARDWARE

Between a desktop and a notebook, of course I would go for the notebook. It's portable, and you can just plug it in a monitor and have the desktop system. I am not looking for the ultimate computer powered by quad xeons ( :-d ) so core 2 duo is enough.

1.1 Manufacturer

This is the easy one. Apple. Why? Well ... let's take Dell. They are trying to cheat you and on top of that they have problems with their batteries. Yeah it's cheap, but you get what you pay for. And you can double that for Sony. Except maybe for the cheap part.
Moving next, it's Toshiba. They had a really really bad design in the past. They changed it now in the new (Quasimodo) Qosmio line, and also Sattelite line looks a little better. But they lost my trust. I had one Toshiba laptop, and I was not very impressed. Just mediocre. Ans also I have friends that had Toshiba and with that a lot of trouble. Fujitsu I guess are ok, but a little expensive for the medium cathegory I am placing them into. Nothing extraordinary, but you can get more for the same money. Acer has a great offer, but I am no fan of their keyboards. And the keyboard in a notebook is very important. And I end here with (IBM) Lenovo Thinkpad. I currently have one (Tankpad) Thinkpad and I am more than pleased with it. It's great. I love the design, I love the keyboard, I love that I had no problems with it. So in the final we have Apple and Lenovo. But Apple has some advantages. You can run one extra OS on it, and it's more "sleek". Maybe it's not so robust, but it looks better. Also, I am a little dissapointed how the new Thinkpads turned out to be. The gray color and the new keyboard layout... it's just not IBM anymore I guess.

1.2 MBP vs MB

13 > 15 ?
Now it really depends. On many things. I, for one, think that 13.3" are enough. But if you think that "Size Does Matter" than you should go for the MBP. Also, I do belive that professional photographers, for example, need more space on their desktop. So the increased resolution of MBP is a blessing. I for one am no professional photographer, so I would go for the MB.
ATI vs Intel
Here we might have a problem. I am no gamer, but I do play from time to time. Mainly "oldie but goldie" games. So I would say GMA950 is enough. But what do you know, Heroes 3 has a new brother... Heroes 5 that is, which is more 3D than ever and need a good video card. It may run on GMA950 (I have no idea), but probably on 800x600 with very low detail. I don't know if that would be enough. What's more important, I want my video card to be DirectX 10 ready. I've seen some of the things DirectX10 brings, and I want them. Also, I want to be (aqua) aero compatible. From what I understand, GMA950 runs aero. So in the end, I would say GMA950 would pass at the limit, event without DX10 support and with the low gaming performance. Like I said, I rarely play a 3D game. I do however hope that GMA3000X is not the fiasco I read it is and those hw shaders do bring some improvemnets, Because it's clear that this is the next MB videocard.
Plastic vs Aluminium
Well... I am just going to say that MB can be "assorted" with an iPod (and maybe with a future iPhone). And I like the keyboard also in the MB (I did not say I don't like the one in MBP).
Conclusion
It's definetely a Macbook (with Core 2 Duo :-d), but if in the near future we have a GMA3000X with good performance, it's worth waiting for it.

1.3 White vs Black

Well, I have to say that I'm biased. As I currently have a Thinkpad, black is my color. I would also go for a black iPod. With white, I always have that feeling "be careful... do not get it dirty...". White in MB is just too.... white.

2. SOFTWARE

Here I got it all figured it out, because of my previous experiences with Linux and Windows.
As my hardware (1.) permits it, I would go for Mac OS X as my primary OS (don't ask me if it works on my Thinkpad... you know the answer to that. YES it's FULLY supported! wireless, QE, you name it!).
Now I would have, of course, multiple virtual desktops. With that nice cube rotating when you switch them. I would use Mac OS for music (iTunes), photos (iPhoto), movies (frontrow), chatting + some fun (YM, iChat, photobooth), mail (Mail.app). These are all fantastic applications. But summing it up I am not too pleased with Mac OS X. Finder and the Dock are not for me. So one of my virtual desktops would run a full-screen virtual machine with Ubuntu. That's because I love Gnome. It's so.... productive. I hope for some 3D support in the virtualization, so I would have XGL's expose in the VM. Why is Gnome so great? Well... it's best at what I hate more about Mac OS: it has a very customizable "dock" and also I find Nautilus very nice, with the built-in search and the little things (for example, one feature that is also present in Leopard is renaming a file, when it is selected only the filename, and not the extension).
Let's not forget Microsoft. True, Windows sucks - internet explorer, media player are really bad. But they have nice things. Microsoft Office is one of them. Have you seen Office 2007? Really cool. I can't wait for the UB. Or it that turns out bad, I hope for a good wine/crossover office. And of course Windows might still be handy for those cases when virtualization is no solution and wine does not work. Mac OS X would be primary, used daily for entertainment and such, Ubuntu for work and Windows for gaming.

To sum all up:
Mac OS X (+iLife) dual boot with XP(Vista maybe) and a Ubuntu VM shared between those two. All on a Macbook. Black.

Movie review

Bleah. Horrible. You call that comedy?! Better write a research paper than watch this crap.

Movie review

"But it did happen"
One movie that you HAVE to see ONCE. Complicated and catching, if you like the type. Music is nice, you always think that something awful is going to happen next, and waiting to see what it is. Reminds me of Crash.

Ok guys and girls .... here it is ... new and shiny:

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~marianmi

Enjoy :)

Sunset on Pra Nang beach
Originally uploaded by The appie appie penguin.

I couldn't let the time pass and not write here about the beautiful holiday in Krabi. Mostly on Tonsai and Railey beaches, but Pra Nang Beach and Phi Phi Don Island should be also mentioned.
Paradise!

.

Here is a pic with my new climbing shoes: Rock Pillars Zeal

In Malacca
Originally uploaded by Sheep in the big city.

Two rules of thumb about cabs:
- wait them in a taxi station; trust me, it's better than waiting on the street, trying to get that taxi that you think would evantually get to the station
- if you are really in a hurry and you see that the driver is a woman, don't dispare :) just tell her to go faster...

This is an extraordinary concept. We would be able to preserve time. Make it go faster when we are waiting, slow it down when we need it most. Time reuse.

Tonight I found my secret place. It was so close, right under my nose. Tonight I sat on grass with my bare feet. It's been a while since I did that the last time. Tonight I listened to music like I've never listened before. What shall I do? Half of me wants to bring her, to show her the lost paradise. Half of my wants to keep it secret and unspoiled. Somehow one half will have to go away...

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

It's not long since Lenovo acquired Thinkpad, and already they are trying to destroy it.
Step 1: change the black to silver - the new models of Lenovo Thinkpad will have silver something-alloy case
Step 2: stay up-to-past with technology - only 2 models with Intel Core Duo, and those without ATI graphics - just that Intel shared "accelerator"
Step 3: make a duplicate with another name - the new Lenovo C3000 series, with its full-size Thinkpad keyboard. Interesting design changes, though again no ATI graphics.
Sad what the name Thinkpad become.

Yesterday I had a rare sight: 3 stray dogs in Singapore. Had to write abou this.

Eventually it did turn out rather fine (with the simulator I mean), but I decided to write my own. In Java. And what I discovered, while working with threads, is this: make some threads, add them as observers to an object, terminate the threads (from the run() method I mean), and still your threads can wake up and do something when someone sends a message through the object observed. This is pretty cool...

I managed to install some goodies in Tiger. Now it becomed my main operating system. Between those goodies: a blog poster inside dashboard. Maybe I will be able to blog more often ;). This is my first post where I'm using it. Hope it works! Meantime, still trying to install the Network Simulator in Mac OS. Hope it will work eventually.

A strange thing I thought of today. I've seen whites converted to muslim, I've seen Christian chinese, but I have never ever seen a muslim chinese. If any of you have seen one, please send me a pic. I have still have 6 lives.

It's been a while now, almost a week, since I managed to install Mac OS X 10.4.3 (Tiger). It is soo cool :) I will write more on this in a next blog. For now, I must go and count: 1, 2, 3, ...

You can say that most of the good things you got, just came to you. You didn't have to sweat. What about when you try and try and try something and it's just not working out? Is it worth it? Or are they good?

Intel decided to bite the Apple. Or it is the Apple who decided to get biten. Either way, the result it is the one that matters: Mac with Intel Core Duo.

What's an Intel Chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it's ever done in a PC.