Johnson and Weiping's Wedding Worship Recording

Listen to this at SoundCloud.com

I've just uploaded this, so it may take a while to get converted and show up.

This is the description that accompanied the upload:

This is the recorded worship segment of Johnson and Weiping's wedding. This took place in Singapore at the Grace Assembly of God at Tanglin Road.

The first song "Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)", was sung live.
The following 2 songs "So You Would Come" and "Zan Mei Zhi Quan" were sung with my backing tracks, which I've also uploaded on soundcloud.com.
Singers were Peter Lim, Christina (my wife) and myself (the softer and muffled male voice).

Recording equipment used, Samsung Galaxy S2.

Recording has a break in the middle. Front part was recorded as a video (mp4) and the back part I switched to the default audio recorder and recorded only audio (3ga).

That is because the video was recorded with the phone pointing at the ground all the time while I had to play the keyboard with both hands.

Recording quality is not ideal because Peter and Christina were stage front, and my keyboard was positioned a bit behind. The phone was recording off the monitor speakers from stage front. (Yes it means I was barely hearing my own singing and playing, so please forgive my poor pitching)

For your amusement, you can watch (listen to) the video here:

There is a part in the middle where I raised my phone to take a quick look around at the congregation. ;)

My Paper Shredder: Removing Stuck Plastics Sheets

Note to self: Never put thin plastics wrappers through paper shredder.

Just now in the evening, I was at home. Thinking of clearing up some stuff that have been left lying around the house, I picked up a pile of flyers and promotional booklets that managed to find their way into our weekly mail.

Two of those booklets came wrapped up in clear wrappers with a piece of sticker with our names and address printed on it. Not wanting people to find out our address and our names, I removed those plastics wrappers and fed one of the pieces to the paper shredder. Since the shredder claimed it could even shred credit cards, I expected it to be able to work on thin plastics wrappers.

To my horror the plastics wrapper became entangled in the shredding mechanism! The motor ground to a halt and refused to advance any more.  After a few more attempts at stopping and starting the motor a few more times without getting the film out, I stopped the motor and peered into the mechanism from below.

Being able to stretch and wrap itself around, the strips of plastics clung to the mechanism. I think this happened due to the fact that unlike regular pieces of paper, and credit cards, the plastics film is stretchable, even though it may be thinner. The motors heated up after my repeated attempts to get the gears to turn after they were stuck. That did not help the situation when it further softened the plastics and make them stretch and wrap around the gears even more.

The plastics sheet that caused all the trouble! 

The clear plastics film wrapped itself around the shredding gears inside in clumps of mashed up strands. 

I spent the next hour trying to sort out this mess, untangling the stretched plastics strands wrapping itself around the shredding gears. Here's what to do if you ever find yourself in the same situation. 

Note: The following steps helped me resolve my problem. Here's the brand and model of my paper shredder. Brand: GBC, model: Alpha Confetti Cut. If you are unsure it will work for your model and make, please consult the service and support for  your respective product. 

The following steps also involve using a pair of scissors to cut and pry the plastics free from the shredding mechanism. Please do not cut yourself on the scissor blades. Also, do not apply force with the blades on the mechanism. This may dislodge them from their current alignment. It may also bend or dent them. All this may affect the proper functioning of your shredder after you've remove the offending plastics wrapper.

1) First, engage the  reverse gear to make the motor go in the opposite direction, to let the machine attempt to spew out the plastics wrapper in the reverse direction. (if your machine does not have the reverse button, find some way to make the motors advance even if in the forward direction a bit, so it exposes more of the mess that is stuck inside the unreachable areas of the gears)

2) Take a pair of scissors, open up and insert a single blade in from the loading end (on the top for me). Aim for the mess of tangled plastics and try and cut them loose with the sharp end of the blade. 

Using the blade to cut lose bits that are stuck and tightly stretched. I also usde the blade to fish out loose ends so I can pull on them to see if they could be removed. 

3) Turn the motor to expose the mechanism from the bottom. Use your fingers to try to pull on the tangled mess. (Caution: Beware of sharp protruding edges). Pull at different areas where the plastics go into the gears. In doing so, we are testing which parts of the gears are gripping harder on the plastics wrapper. Depending on how your mechanism was designed to shred, you will realise bits of your wrapper come off easily. For me, the middle part grips the plastic the tightest. There is no way to pull the plastics out for even an extra inch. The sides (for my machine) did not exert any pull on the plastics so it gave me a lot of freedom to remove bits of the plastics that stick out from there. 

4) For the bits that are stuck in the centre of the gears, they are stuck and cannot be moved. However there will be areas where you see the plastics material being stretched and pulled and strained. Again, use the single blade from our scissors to disentangle as them and cut them loose as much as possible, leaving no lose ends to feed back into the gears. As we are cutting them loose we can again pull on those loose ends to test the grip on the gears on those strips to see if any of the bits we cut have become loose in the process.  

Using the blade of the scissors to cut lose exposed bits that are tightly stuck and stretched

5) Now put the motor portion back upright, fixed properly in its proper position, and try to advance the motors again (try and engage the reverse gear if its avaiable to you). If you want to advance forward and the motor does not run, it may be that it is not detecting any paper to shred. so you may want to feed smaller pieces of paper for it to detect and thus trigger the motors to attempt to advance. 

Keep repeating these steps and you will gradually find that even after you've removed lots of bits of plastics from the mechanism after 1 round, more bits of plastics will appear and come around to the exposed parts of the gears next time you advance (or reverse) the mechanism and take a look again. 

More plastics being exposed after advancing the motor

Keep repeating these steps and you will find that while the motor was stuck in the beginning, it will now advance better. Soon you will find that when you advance the motor, there will be no more plastics bits churned out. That would mean that you have successfully removed all the stuck bits.

For my case, there are still a few very short bits of plastics wrapper I could not remove. They are still sticking out from one or two corners, but it is not impeding the shredder from functioning normally, so I am leaving them there. :)

Passion and Interest

Sean and I were talking about passion, interest and tenacity. He says a CG artist (or vfx artist) are one of those jobs that especially need tenacity to stay long in the industry.

Many jobs only requires you to work hard during the working hours, and you will have gained the required experience to move up and excel in your career. Not for CG. Many times we need to keep practising our craft. Especially when working in a huge pipeline, you may not always necessarily be doing the full spectrum of work you would like yourself to be doing. In many instances we are just doing a very small part, or something else entirely.

To keep ourselves relevant in the specialisation, in the capacity we want our career to move towards, we need to keep "sharpening our blades", and keep doing the things we eventually want to be doing. That is quite a tedious and joyless work if we have no passion, or if we do not have enough determination to do it till we actually get to where we want to go.

This definitely requires perseverance and tenacity.

"Interest makes you work till 8pm", says Sean in these exact words, "but fire makes you work till 4am in the morning."

Incidentally I was working on a piece of music till 5am last night. ;)

Make Magazine Website

Dominic Drane my co-worker introduced me to this website. This is the home to the magazine with the same name: Make:.

This is a very geeky magazine talking about creating your own gadgets. This can be as simple as inventions made from every-day parts found at home, to very elaborate and high-tech robotics made from programmable micro-controllers connected to a myriad of sensors.

There are different sections like the magazine sections with articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, a forum, a community projects (see the next section), and their very own store called the Maker Shed.

At the Maker Shed, they sell everything from micro controllers, craft supplies, construction kits, robotics parts, wearables, to of course, books and magazines.

This is an excellent section where the magazine hosts a huge library of user-initiated projects, documenting, instructing, updating, refining, and sharing what they've learnt from their own personal projects. It is truly putting people's brains together, and making things better. There are projects that make things that has no apparent use at this point, and there are projects that create ingenious things that simplifies our daily activities.



All in all, this website is really a paradise for inventors wannabe, product designers, creative tech geeks, people who love hands-on crafts, and those who want be inspired by the creativity of the modern human race!



This website is definitely worth checking out!

Playing for Service, Saturday and Sunday

Worship leading with Freda's team. Saturday night at Grace Assembly of God, Tanglin Road, Level 3 hall. Johan was leading the worship.

Service closing, people praying.

Sunday morning at the main chapel. Pastor was leading and playing accoustic guitar. Charles on electric guitar, Freda on 1st keys, myself on 2nd keys, Jeremy on Bass and Jonathan on Drums.

Pre-service, when people were slowly filling up...

Service starting, people standing up...

Closing, when Pastor Calvin Lee was praying

Its been almost a year since I last played in church. Last one was a live worship recording serviec for Grace Assembly's very own original worship album, More Like You (I think).

Moving My Workspace

I've finally decided to move my workspace from a make-shift ironing board (yes you heard right!), to a proper desk, where I used to work before I went to London in 2011, when my desktop computer was still working.

So here is a comparison.

Before:

After:

The move was in response to my wife urging me to get my stuff off her ironing board. (I was using it since early December, so that makes 2 months). Each time she needed to use the ironing board, I would have to shut down the externally powered hard-disk and my laptop, disconnect my cables, take away everything from the board. Then I would move the board out from against the wall, plug in the iron to the wall socket for her, so she can use it.

Johnson's getting married in 2 weeks time and Peter (Jamie's husband) and I are supposed to play for worship. With 2 instruments, it probably isn't going to be the most immersive worship (technically speaking, not spiritually speaking, if you know what I mean). So I was thinking of blessing him with the back-up of a full band. ie, working overtime like crazy and churning out about 3-4 worship songs.

The things that can go wrong, ranking according to the seriousness of consequential extent, are:

1) they (the couple) decide to change the song, after I am halfway into the sequencing

2) they decide to change the sequence to the song (we want 2 choruses at the end instead of 1)

3) they decide to change the key to the song (techincally this can be quickly fixed by an unelegant

 transpose to the notes)

I will go by faith and hope it works out!

A Few Articles on Christian Music from ChristianityToday.com

I was searching for contemporary composition and found this article on christiantoday.com: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/june/varietyreligious.html (Lawrence R Mumford, 22-Jun-2011)

This article talks about the Christian music / contemporary Christian music or Worship songs of today.

In the article, there are 3 more links to music and songs in worship. I have not had the time to read these, but I will get around to doing that.

ChristianityToday.com - What Happened to Amazing Grace (Robert T. Coote, 8-Mar-2011)
ChristianityToday.com - Pop Goes the Worship (Mark Moring, 9-Mar-2011)

ChristianityToday.com - The Trajectory of Worship  (John Koessler, 11-Mar-2011)

ChristianityToday.com - The End of Worship Wars (Mark Galli, 11-Mar-2011)

This is the first time I've visited this Christian portal. This is certainly of interest to me, since I have been playing and exposed to worship music for about 15 years. I'll definitely check back on this site now and then!

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Image acquired from the web. Original site here: http://webclipart.about.com/od/building/ss/2012-Year-Of-The-Dragon.htm

For all the Chinese people out there, have a very happy year of the dragon this year!

I am born in the year of the dragon myself, and this is the third cycle for me. So you can guess my age. Haha :)

If you are unfamiliar with the significance and cultural meaning of the Chinese New Year for the Chinese culture, you can go to the wikipedia page here to have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_new_year

At work on Friday 20-01-2012 my head of 3D and HR came along to give out red packets (with chocolate coins inside) and 2 Chinese oranges. They went around wishing people prosperity, health and soaring career.

My colleague cheekily told me "They (the management) cannot control our health, but they can control the part about the soaring career and prosperity (amount of money we get). Since they can control it, why do they have to wish us all that? Just give us a title raise and a pay raise!" :)

Happy Lunar New Year!

Reminder: Always Leave the Office on Time!

Here's something a colleague sent me. For all of us workaholics out there!

It's Like Talking to the Wall

My colleague in the London office told me today:

J: The guy sitting beside me smells so bad, I had to enjoy my breakfast in the (company) kitchen.

Me: So what does he smell like? Did you not tell him about his smell? Didn't the people sitting on his other side tell him?

J: Today it's a different smell. This time it's sweat. And, he's sitting next to the wall.

Me: Well ask the wall to tell him!

J: I would, but it's like talking to the wall.

Busy Hands Make Idle Minds

"Busy hands make idle minds". I hope I heard it right.

This is one of the phrases my colleague said to me this morning. He happened to see an origami book on my desk. Darryl gave it to me during Christmas.

It looks like an idiom so I tried to look it up online. I got only 1 result from this blog post: http://stressdom.blogspot.com/2005/02/busy-hands-make-idle-minds.html

From www.idiomsite.com that say: "Idle hands are the devil's workshop". Other sites say "Idle hands are the devil's tools".  The definition from idiomsite.com for that phrase: we are more likely to get into trouble if we have nothing to do. :)

Thus, "busy hands make idles minds", I think, means that if we just exercise our hands doing brainless stuff that do not engage the brain, we may be wasting our time day-dreaming and not fully utilising our minds? Haha!

Sounds a bit too literal doesn't it? Anybody's got a better suggestion on the meaning of "busy hands make idle minds"?

The Coffee Shop at Holland Village

Just now after work my wife came over to look for me, and we decided to have dinner at Holland Village.

Got this picture off Google Maps' photos. Copyright belongs to the original photographer

We went to the Holland Village Food Court for dinner. Christina had Hor Fun. We had beer and pizza friday at work just before I met up with her. I was pretty stuffed after 2.5 slices of pizza, so I did not want to have a heavy meal. 


Deciding to get some chicken wings, I went to the western food stall and ordered 4 chicken wings. Each cost $1.50. 


I went to stand at the stall for 3 minutes. The stall was empty. I waited and nobody came around. After a while I felt I could do without eating anything, and so I returned to my table. The minute I returned to my table I saw the stall keeper walk to the stall. I was a bit annoyed that the timing was so bad. Almost seemed like the guy waited for me to walk off before going to his stall, but that was just probably me.


The man tending to the stall was a man slightly sized above average, about 50 years old with a moustache. His eyes were a bit unfocused. I could not tell his ethnicity. He looked a bit Indian but could be Chinese as well. 


As soon as I gave the orders to the man at the stall, he did not say anything, and his fingers made a pinching motion that told me he wanted the money now. It was not a very polite gesture. And it had a feeling of urgency, that he needed it fast, needed it now. He would probably have taken it if I could produce it right there and then, before going to process my order. 


There was a Malay guy before me, and he received the same treatment. He gave the payment, followed by me. 


I got my wings on the spot because they were already barbecued waiting to be served. After I took the wings I emptied some chilli sauce from a bottled dispenser. This was the same kind of sauce that is served with local chicken rice. The chilli sauce was very watery and liquid. I was growing increasingly annoyed at the service and quality of the stall. I did not remember it being like that the last time ate here.


When I went to my table with the chicken wings, I realised that I had forgotten to take utensils to tear the wings. I went back to the stall and grabbed 2 sets of forks, spoons and knives. These were disposable utensils. I was already quite displeased with the whole policy of the stall, the low-quality service and the watered down chilli sauce. Now I see they were just using plastics utensils. What happened to people who order steak and chicken wings? The plastics utensils probably have a high chance of breaking when force is applied during cutting and tearing. I  had the irrational impulse to take a few more pieces just to spite the stall keeper. 


The man was serving another customer when I was doing that. As soon as I took the 6 pieces of utensils the stall keeper told me "boss, you need spoons? If don't need don't take la. Actually you only need forks to eat chicken wings right?" His tone managed to be accusing and whining at the same time.


I was quite surprised he was actually paying attention to how many I pieces of utensils I was taking, how many forks, how many spoons and how many knives. He managed that while serving another customer. That drove me quite mad. 


Raising the utensils in my hand, I showed them to him and I told him, "Boss, how little do these cost? Why do you want to be stingy with them?" He said something in defence about not wasting something we don't need." 


His food prices are not the cheapest and still he was so stingy with his supplies. I saw other customers who ordered a main dish for their meals get a set of utensils plus 2 packets of chilli sauce and a piece of paper napkin. I did not even have a piece of napkin for my 4 pieces of chicken wings. 4 chicken wings totaled up to $6 which is even more expensive than some of the main items they sell. 


He told me that chicken wings only need forks to eat. Why should he dictate how I eat my chicken wings? Why do I not need spoons? What if I have a small kid I need to feed the chicken to with a spoon?


There was something about this food court that borders on getting on my nerves -- the music was blasting to the point I had to raise my voice when talking, in order to be heard by my wife sitting across the standard-sized coffee shop table. I cannot be sure if this was already the case when I last ate at the place.


It definitely did not help my mood and maybe it darkened his mood and made him treat customers the way he did too. Maybe they are trying to deter customers from having a long meal with a slow chat after. This would free up the tables and seats for more new customers. That's just my wild guess.


After the incident I remembered another encounter with this same man just a week ago at his stall. I was planning to order some calamari rings to take away to a new year party at a church mate's house. I asked if he had calamari rings. He told "Look at the menu. If you see I have, then I have.". Again that was hardly the proper way to do business. 


A polite "Sorry I don't do calamari" would be much more polite, direct, economical with words and efficiently get the message across, than saying what he said. I just don't understand him. 


He is definitely not happy with his job. Maybe he is not even the owner of the stall. Maybe it's his character to be always grumpy and rude. 


In any case, I would think twice buying from this stall again.

Dreaming of Sponge!

Last night my wife burst out laughing in the middle of her sleep.

She dreamt that I was showing her something on my laptop. It was a row of blocks of sponge in different colours (complete with the green abrasive layer).

I was somehow making them lie down, stand up, and turning them left and right (interactive animation?). I also asked her if we owned a particular colour of sponge at home.

Yes it is weird. When she burst out laughing it got me worried for a moment. I was sitting up in my bed reading my ebook on my phone.

Happy New Year 2012

Happy new year folks! I wish one and all a very blessed new year ahead. 


I pray all of you get to move towards your goals and do the things you've always wanted to do. 


God bless you all! 

Round-Robin and the Elevators Scheduling at My Block

Talking about round-robin, I am reminded of the elevators at the block of flats where I live.


I've been frustrated at the elevators before. Sometimes when I call for the elevator, I can tell that 2 of the lifts are in transit (going somewhere, with or without passangers).


Sometimes only 1 out of 3 is in transit.


When I call the lifts, I expect one of the lifts that are parked to be mobilised. Instead, the logic that drives the lifts assignment lets that lift go in the opposite direction, then come to a rest, (either to drop off some passenger or park itself), then wakes itself again, to come to my level. There are many other cases of combination of the lifts doing different things mid-way, and reacted in a very inefficient manner, resulting in my having to wait a huge amount of time before a lift picks me up. Now I realise this has totally got to do with the concept of round-robin (or the lack of) assignment.


This is the same for the elevators at work. There are at least 4 elevators serving the levels of my current workplace. Most of the time I don't need to wait an awful long time to get an elevator, but sometimes they are really inefficient.


Elevators may be using another set of rules to guide the scheduling algorithm to decide upon which lifts to activate for all I know. Maybe I should go and read up a bit of elevator scheduling just to clear my doubts. :)

Definition of Round-Robin & EastWest's Play Engine

In the course of reading the manuals of EastWest virtual instruments plug-ins, I keep coming across the term "round-robin".


What Round-Robin Means


At first it seemed to be a recording technique, or some kind of microphone set-up. I searched google.com for "round-robin mic techniques", and found nothing. Closest results relevant to audio processing was a a "round-robin" setting in protools configuration that allows Protools to be configured to read/write audio data from an array of hard-disks to ensure stability of glitch-less recording. 


After I watched the videos from Youtube (from the previous blog entry), they used the term to describe the way samples are triggered.




Here's what I found on Answers.com:
http://www.answers.com/topic/round-robin


and from wikipedia.org: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin


The original meaning is to describe the signing of a petition in a way that signatures are passed around in a circle to make it impossible to know was which signature belongs to whom.


In sports terms, it is the matching of every contestant against every other contestant.


In programming terms, it is the simplest scheduling algorithm that for every time a resource is needed for a task, the round-robin algorithm selects which supplier to pull a certain resource from, out of a list of resource suppliers. This ensures that every resource provider is used the same number of times over a given period. This means that if there are 4 resource providers, each will be taxed equally over a period of time.


As I am re-phrasing this definition, I am imagining 4 missile barrels triggered by software, controlling which barrel to fire each time. If there is a need to continuously fire off 50 missiles, we could use the round-robin method to assign which barrel to fire each missile off.


An extreme case of imbalanced load assignment would be to fire all 50 rounds from tube 1. That would leave the other 3 tubes totally idle. Therefore an example of round-robin style assignment would be to fire off tubes in the sequence of tube numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc... There could be a more complex assignment based on random values, like 1, 4, 2, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, etc... It could even be based on rules. If each tube takes a slightly different time to reload, our algorithm would have to query which tube is available and loaded, then assign that tube to be the next to fire.


The aim is to balance the load on each of the resource provider. Therefore at the end of a fixed duration, the number of times each resource (or tube) is being used, would be about the same. (This duration could be at the end of the hour, or at the end of 50 rounds of firing, or at the end of a day, etc).


I think the sports and programming terminology for round-robin is quite similar. It ensures every request (or sportsman) is matched with every other resource (or opponents, in sports) in the same number of times of events that calls for the resource (or matches, in sports).


So how does that apply to the virtual instrument plugin situation?


Round Robin in EastWest's "Play" Engine


It seems that EastWest is employing this round robin kind of task-versus-resource assignment to allocate which samples to trigger when you issue a MIDI note event (ie, when you hit a key on the MIDI controller). 



This is one of the EastWest videos showing the Fab Four virtual instruments library and its instruments in great detail. This is part 2 of 3.


Watch the video at 2mins 27secs, when round-robin is mentioned. It is used to trigger the samples from alternate takes of the same note to play, when you repeatedly play on the same note on the virtual instrument.


At 1min 09secs, the hi-hats from the drumkit when played, will automatically trigger off left- and right-handed sampled hi-hat hits to play when you play that midi note repeatedly.


That is one of the many supported features of the EastWest play engine. Its really simple and intuitive, but yet it has all the features you'll ever need from a virtual instrument.

UK / USA Keyboards!

I've been using UK keyboards for the majority of the year, when I was in London. While I was there, I bought a Dell laptop. Naturally the keyboard is a UK one. The last time I was in London for a year, 2007, I also got used to the UK keyboard.

Now I'm still using the UK lay-out keyboard at home on my laptop, so I am really comfortable with it. 

When I came back to work, at dneg Singapore, I was given a US keyboard. I found myself hitting the wrong keys time and again. 

Strangely in Singapore, we all adopt the USA keyboard. I suspect its the case because UK keyboard has a pound sign (£) assigned to shift-3 on the alphabetical keys. Since Singapore uses the dollar ($), having the "£" is just wasting that key it's assigned to.

I never thought I would do this, but I have just written to Tech to get my keyboard changed to one with a UK layout. heh heh ;)

Limescale in The Kettle?

Since coming back to Dneg's Singapore office, I've started making my own coffee, just like in London. I guess its a good habit I've picked up because it forces me to stand up, walk around and maybe talk to people in the pantry. Also, it would save me some money buying drinks from the food court downstairs.

I was with Janson at the pantry today and I was checking on the water in the electric kettle. Everything was so familiar, similar to how I made coffee in Dneg London, that when I opened up the lid of the kettle to check how much water was inside, I expected to see lime-scale coating the inside of the kettle. :)

It's a small thing but this is the first time I am aware of myself remembering London. After all, I did spend the last 6 months of my life there. I do still think of the colleagues over there and when I watch the work done by the London office I am naturally reminded of the time spent there.

Before this, I was quite surprised why I was not reminded of London in any way. I did not think about it much, and I did not remember dreaming about it. I don't dislike the place at all. That is why I am puzzled why I don't find myself thinking of London.

Come to think of it, I was actually watching the company's demo reel for one of the upcoming films before I went into the pantry. That could be the reason for me expecting to see lime-scale along the inner walls of the kettle.

The New Circle Line, and My Way Home

I was working late last night. When I went home it was already 10.20pm.

The opening of One North MRT station has provided many of us tremendous convenience in terms of travelling to and from work.

This is due to the fact that one of the exits of the One North MRT station links directly to the basement of Fusionopolis. That's the building where Dneg Singapore lives, and that's where I work.

Before the opening of the One North Station, I used to take the North East Line from Farrer Park Station to Outram Park Station. From there I change to the East-West Line and take the train to Buona Vista Station, where I'll have to exit, cross the road and then take a bus to Fusionopolis. The bus comes once every 12-15 minutes. This was a huge inconvenience for people working here.

Amazingly, the operation of One North MRT station has opened up 3 routes by which I can now go to work by.

Out of the 3 routes, I have unknowingly favoured one route over the others. A few days ago my wife discovered a route I have never considered before. That aroused my curiosity, made me want to find out which route is the shortest and which one the longest.

As I was going into the station last night I made an effort to download the SMRT network map find out just how many stations each of the routes needed to take me to my destination.

Here are the routes,  in descending order of numbers-of-stations:

Route 3: from Farrer Park station take the North-East line to Serangoon Station (4 stops), switch to the Circle Line and travel via Bishan and Holland Village stations to One-North Station (9 stops). Total of 13 stops. This is the route I tend to take without thinking.

Route 2: from the Farrer Park Station take the North-East Line to Harbourfront Station (the last station on the line). (That's 6 stops). From there change lines to the Circle Line and then travel via Labrador Park and Kent Ridge Stations to One North Station (6 more stops). Its a total of 12 stops.

Route 1: from Farrer Park Station take the North East Line to Outram Park Station (5 stops), get onto the East-West Line, travel via Tiong Bahru Station to Buona Vista Station (5 more stops), then switch lines again to the Circle Line, and finally take the Circle Line to One North Station (1 stop). This winning route totals 11 stops. However it is also the route with the most number of line-changes.

It is interesting to note that the  difference between the number of stations is only 1 station from one option to the next. I believe that route 3 with the most number of stops also has the longest distance between the stops. I feel the Labrador Park and Kent Ridge part of the journey from Route 2 also has longer distances between the Circle Line Stations.

Therefore, Route 1 which has the least number of stations would also probably have the shortest distance between stations overall. I will have to measure the distances with Google Maps when I have more time.

As I am writing this, I am on the way to work. Without realising it I've just found myself on Route 3 with the most number of stops, approaching Woodleigh Station. The other shorter routes involve going in the opposite direction down to Outram Park and Harbourfront Stations, so its too late to go back now. Oh well... ;)

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.1

The Xbox360 HDMI Mystery

OK. So I checked the HDMI cable at the back of my Xbox 360 and guess what? It was not fully plugged into the port! So it WAS my mistake. Hm. It was working perfectly before the updated the OS. 


But I am a happy man. Saved me the trouble of having it replaced! Yippee!