Blow wind blow!

Wow – I can finally feel the HITB competition details finally falling in together. Headed down to CT for NCC training. I was rather disappointed with their performance. No idea how some of them passed their senior spec course :\ Oh well. Both Ronald and myself were wondering why they sucked so bad when they had seen glowing examples of leadership by their seniors. Haiz. At least I can get some small comfort by telling myself the next NCC training is about 5 weeks away.

Mmm … the new Twilight movie certainly looks rather interesting! Ciao!

Comex 2009

Had a blast at Comex 2009. Met Ryan there – much to my surprise. Overall as quite fun and life actually had a purpose! Now to get into working on HITB revision. IA32 instruction set on Intel Netburst Processor anyone? Well anyhow, here’s a nice little video about google maps.

And so almost a month slips by …

Wow, time really seems to fly! Its been almost a month since my last post and it hardly feels like a week since I made the last post Alot of things have been going on lately – assignment deadlines and tests have come and went while revision is still foremost in my mind.

SAPD & Japanese tests are tommorrow! Even though SAPD is open book, I’m pretty worried about it since MY coded the Javabean part of our SAPD assignment. Oh well – the only thing I can do right now is revise as much as I can to cover all bases. After doing all that, I’ve still got to handle Japanese. GG right? Yeah I know. At least Id have a few hours to revise Japanese before the paper. I’m pretty comfortable with the vocabulary though writing is still a problem. Sometimes the characters which I need to write simply escape my mind.

Well, I’d better get cracking! Ciao!

The blue moon comes by often

Esmund is epic

Me: Sian, Kiwi only comes online once in a blue moon.

Esmund: No, the blue moon comes by often.

Lol, I was almost going to blog about my birthday when I accidentally pulled out the power for my laptop while the battery was out. After that I totally lost the mood to blog about my birthday. Finally, NETS and CLI assignments are handed in and I can heave a sigh of relief.

Theoretical situation

Esmund wants to get admitted into a private university

Interviewer: What’s your name?

Esmund: Esmund ah.

Interviewer: So what are your educational qualifications?

Esmund: Hah? Whats that ah?

Interviewer: Erm, so what are you good at?

Esmund: WoW ah.

Interviewer: Whats that ah? Oh shit, I’m starting to talk like you! No! I dont want to talk like a retard.

Esmund: Hah? I got talk like retard meh.

Lol. Justin is the best at imitating Esmund. Lols, now Ive got to get to coding some Java to hand in on Sunday.

Ciao!

As the week draws to a close …

The above cartoon is pure unadulterated win.

Its a Thursday night and surprisingly I’m already at home. Last week, for some reason or another I stayed in school until pretty late. After Japanese class ended at 1930 hours, I found Ishaan sitting in FC6 working on his Java. Naturally being such a good friend, I decided to keep him company since I wanted to build a new Anki deck for my Japanese vocabulary. Well, he didn’t last very long. Absolutely no staying power at all I must say ;P Typing in Japanese was pretty easy as it’s based on phonetics. However, having the problem of being unable to space out characters. When I press the space bar, the word changes to its next possible combination. Anyone knows how to fix that? Anyhow, after typing in the vocabulary for Chapter 2, I decided to head home as my mind was already pretty tired and nothing more would go into it.

So many things to do, so little time. Thankfully, I’ve started to use Google Calendar which really helps to give me a visual representation of the various deadlines I need to meet, assignments to submit and the events I need to attend. I swear, gmail, greader and gcal are the trinity of the g god. Simply amazing tools which are able to be accessed from anywhere as long as there is an Internet connection. I especially dig the “Next Event” countdown thing – it really helps to gauge how much time you have left to complete say a draft of a presentation or a bit of code.

Managed to get Metasploit onto the lab’s VMs during NETS practical today. Sadly while the nmap scan showed alot of possible attack vectors, all of the exploits that we tried during that short period of time failed because the systems were already patched. Well, now we know that at least sombody has been patching regularly. We still have a long way to go I guess before we can exploit systems with ease. Need to get cracking on reading up about C – sadly there is not much time to spare. Still haven’t gotten to fully understanding object serialization and linked lists in Java – doubt I can work on learning C while having the shadow of our Java Assignment looming over me.

So many things to do and so little time. Oh well, ciao!

Monday Morning Blues

The comics from xkcd.net really crack me up at times. Just thought I’d share the latest one, it has absolutely no relation to my post.

Recently, I’ve been realising that I dislike the weekends. School seems to give me a sense of structure in my life, like what NCC used to do. Waking up on a Saturday morning at 9am, having nothing to head to school for seems to be very frustrating. Or it might just be my stomach grumbling at having no breakfast available. Oh well. I really appreciate the easy availability of food, quiet study areas and the reduced chance to procrastinate. Note that I said “reduced chance to procrastinate” as opposed to “no procrastination”. More on that later. Spent majority of my morning and afternoon working on my SAPD Assignment. After lunch, ended up spending my time watching Koukaku no Regios, a series which I found interesting but for some reason or another stopped watching. In the end, I watched 20 episodes, which is about 480 minutes – 8 hours. This is what happens when you place me between a rock and a hard place – I procrastinate by checking my external hard disc for anime that I haven’t finished watching.

Fast forward to Sunday. I made an agreement with Esmund the night before that I’d go to school and work on my SAPD. By the way, SAPD refers to Server Applications Development. SP on Sundays sucks. Why you may ask – easy availability of food, quiet study areas and the reduced chance to procrastinate correct? Well on Sundays, the food courts aren’t open! That kinda screws everything up. Anyhow, I got there at about 1145 hours – supposed to be there at 1100 hours *laugh*. Yeah, I woke up late. Song Lin arrived a bit after me. Thinking about SAPD Task 2 made me feel really emo so I decided to complete watching the last 4 episodes of Regios. Yep, I procrastinated yet again – this time in school. It’s really a matter of willpower to get the job done, especially in the case of something as annoying as SAPD. After we ate lunch, I continued procrastinating by watching Bakemonogatari, Princess Lover and then Valkyria Chronicles, about 10 episodes. In the midst of all this, Saifu came along, went off and I did some of my work. Left the school at about 2100hours, ate dinner at LJS with Esmund then went home. Bleh, got to go for another class now.

And so I became a teacher for 2 hours

Yesterday was pretty awesome. I dragged myself to school for Java and was pleasantly surprised to see that I got a B+ for my Java practical exam. That certainly perked up my day. After Java grabbed a quick lunch then headed to the Main Library to get some SAPD done. So freaking cold that I was shivering after about an hour in. Really got to remember to pack a jacket in my bag for such scenarios. Esmund was with me, both of us working on SAPD. The funny thing was that his code never seems to work while mine works fine. Weird huh. Yeah.

Just then Ronald called saying that he had reached CTSS and was hanging out with Zhen Ning. It happened to coincide with the time that I really could’nt stand the cold anymore. So happily got out of the library and headed to CTSS. Met up with Mr Chin at about 1630 hrs then he handed me my “Friends of CTSS” plaque and certificate. Suprisingly the plaque was of glass – was expecting it to be plastic. While we were discussing the post rotation, my aunt called me asking if I wanted to relief teach at SINDA for about 2 hours. The speed at which everything got handled was pretty shocking.

Relief teaching was pretty interesting. Had 1 Secondary One boy, 1 Sec 2 girl and two Sec2 Express girls in my class. Naturally, none of them were studying the same topic. At the start, they were all doing their own work until my aunt came in to pass me markers. Then she scolded all of them and we finally got to proper revision. Social engineered the two girls to tell me more about Pythagoras theorem as I had totally forgot all about it. Rather than c^2=a^2+b^2, my brain is full of <c:set var=” ” value=” ” /> and the like. The sec 1 dude was pretty cool and was working on percentages. The other girl was really ~. Don’t know why people want to spend time and money to come to the center then not study at all. Overall, it wasn’t too bad, earned $62 for two hours.

By the time I got home it was 2130 hours. The WoW server was going under hardware maintenance so the server was down from 5am PDT to 8am PDT. 5am PDT is about 2000 hrs GMT+8. By the time the server goes up, it would already be 2300 hours. I weighed my options and hit the pillows. If I had stayed up, I wouldnt have been able to concentrate at all during the raid as I would be too sleepy. If I slept, I could concentrate more the next day. The choice was obvious.

Got back my NETS paper today. I actually scored an 80. Wow. I totally didnt revise anything about IPSEC so lost a fair bit there. Ming Yi scored a freaking 96. Amazing. Realised that I really need to get around to working on my Java practicals if not I’m gonna get pwned during the course of the second part of the assignment. Also really need to spend time on my Japanese. Getting sick of Aik looking down on my reading speed. Bleh, so I have to work on assignments, practice Japanese, learn skills for HITB while getting ready for Semestral Examinations.

Well thats all for now. Ciao.

A Tale of SQL and Databases

Exploits of a Mom

Came across this really funny image on xkcd while researching on SQL injection.

I Killed Someone ….

…. to get some studying done. Well, when you need a day off with no questions asked the easiest way is to kill off a fictional distant relative.

I’ve got my Network Security(NETS) MST today at 1100 hrs. 5 chapters ranging from Network Traffic Analysis to VPN Implementation to Wireless. Each chapter has about 50-60 slides. The thing is, usually in poly the lecturer would help focus down the areas you need to study. The reason being that honestly, majority of the stuff is fluff that you don’t need to know in order. The scope per chapter is immense and it’s almost impossible to memorise and regurgitate the whole chapter out. But nope, not this time. No focus. So we have to fly blind and cover the objectives and anything we find important. Oh well – it’s time to go in and get pwned.

We had a group discussion yesterday regarding HITB. Seems that Ishaan, Daniel, Kiwi, LL, Cheng Shen, Justin, Ming Yi and myself are all interested in taking part. That’s pretty awesome! Now we need to find out more about the competiton – how its being structured, how much/do we need to pay, what do we need to know etc. After Syscan, my interest in my course has been revitalised. There is alot more motivation to learn hacking related skills. Conversely, there is lack of interest to login to WoW.

We have alot of assignment deadlines coming up. I’ve got no idea how to manage my time to study, revise japanese, learn “hacking skills” and raid.

SAPD	13/07/09
NETS	26/07/09
Java	02/08/09

It’s not that I hate raiding. I really enjoy working together with 24 other people to take down a boss but with my schedule right now … Argh. Frustrating. Blocking off 2100hrs to 0100 hrs every Wednesday/Thursday/Sunday/Monday was not hard before the mid semester but now there are more assignments, deadlines and more things that require my time. Not to mention that being at home and ready to play at 2100hrs means I need to reach home by about 1945 hrs then take a shower, eat dinner then set up my laptop and then wait. I honestly find that it’s very irritating to have people take their own sweet time to showup. Since I’m running WoW on a laptop, I can hardly keep the game window open while turning on Netbeans to code a little. Not to mention that I don’t like having to do a mindset change. After having made the effort to get home on time and feeling very motivated to down X boss, having to swap to say reading notes or coding really sucks. All the motivation gets sucked away into some vast black pit in my heart and turns into irritation. Finally by the time we get started on the first attempt for the day, it’s already 2300 hrs and I’m full of this negative energy. Totally spoils my mood.

Esmund said something really funny while we were studying for the exam in school yesterday evening:

Esmund: I’m going home now. I want to watch the 9pm tv show.

Ishaan: So which one is more important, the MST or the tv show?

Esmund: THE TV SHOW OF COURSE!

Ishaan: (looks towards me) Wtf, I was expecting him to say the MST!

I was laughing my head off at the exchange. Esmund my man, you sometimes say the most random stuff. Props to you for all the funny blog worthy material. Now, time to get cracking on revision!

Of Guitars & Babes

Naturally I dont have either. However, I did tag along with Hiro, Leong Aik(Aik) and Zhen Ming(ZM) to Bras Basah to take a look at guitars. Aik and ZM both want to buy guitars. I think both of them have been watching too much K-On *laugh*. On the way up the escalator, a girl approached us to try and get us to buy some ticket thing to support some charitable cause. She wasnt really making any sense. I think her native tongue isnt English because she was rambling incoherrently. I looked at the rest of the guys to gauge their mood towards putting out some money. Nope, not likely. I then politely told the girl that we were kinda busy and walked off. That gave the rest of them an excuse to leave as well.

In such a situation would you have donated?

After spending a fair bit of time looking at guitars, we decided to walk to Suntec to meet Joshua and grab a bite to eat as well. It really wasnt that far though the combination of the lack of shelter and the heat was killing us. We headed to Pastamania where we ordered some chicken thing which tasted pretty nice with the cheesy hotdogs. Anyhow, we hooked up with Joshua and proceeded to the fourth level of the convention center. Thats where the Singapore Finals of the WCG was taking place. We knew there was a cosplay event going on at 1500hrs. Our primary objective – laugh at the bad cosplayers. I really wish that I had a decent camera on me to take some pictures to spice up these posts. Really hard to verbalise how fail some of the cosplay was. I’ve come to the conclusion that for some reason, majority of the people who cosplay Shana from Shakugan no Shana happen to be a little on the chubby side. No idea why, but everyone whom I’ve ever seen cosplay Shana has been that way. Saw a fail Haruhi but saw this really cute girl dressed in a frilly black dress. The kicker was that she was wearing nekomimi. Cat ears. Looked awesome. Easily the best damn thing there. We also saw a group of girls cosplaying as the K-On band, complete with guitars and “L A Z Y” sign. Awesome.

After we got out, Hiro suggested that we head to Liang Court since it was pretty early. Aik had the bright idea of walking there and so we did. Tried to cut through Marina Square but the whole place was blocked off. Damn NDP rehearsal. Whole place locked down. Had to make one big round just to get to the Esplanade where we started walking. Walk and walk and walk. So bloody hot. Whole place was crawling with tourists doing touristy things. By the time we reached Liang Court the rest of the guys were half dead. Aik was 3/4 dead. So hot and sticky that we had to head to the toilet to freshen up before heading to Mac to get some drinks. After stoning there for awhile we finally went to Kino where Hiro wanted to get his magazine. Went hunting around for some books to improve my Japanese. Didnt realise Kino had a whole section specifically devoted to learning Japanese. Found some books which were interesting but WAY over my budget. I think I’m going to have to really scrimp and save to buy anything since my pay packet still hasnt come in. Oh well, guess I’ll have to make do for now!

NETS MST on Tuesday and I still havent started revising properly. GO TEAM RUBERN! TARGET ACQUIRED - ALL SYSTEMS GO! PEW PEW!