Thank you, Mozilla!

Today, Thunderbird hung up on me and then crashed, losing an unsaved and unsent message. This came shortly after one of the way too frequent upgrades.

I abandoned Firefox, which I had enthusiastically used for many years, a while ago. Now Thunderbird seems to be going down a similar drain. Too bad. Thank you, Mozilla, for turning great products into crap!

Going to Bangkok soon

24 hours from now I will be in Bangkok, the city I originally planned not to come back to. But that’s just how life plays, and we are encouraged to embrace the opportunities life gives us.

I wanted to travel so much from my Singapore base. Fact is, I haven’t gotten around to leaving this island at all. There are still so many things I have yet to do/see/experience in Singapore as well so why travel? I am already at my preferred holiday destination…

Nevertheless, the chance of getting to places around South East Asia is just too good to let it pass by. I wanted to go to so many places already and I almost ended up not even using my two-week break to do so until my friend told me he was going to Bangkok and invited me along. So, here we go. Three days, two nights and nothing planned. I will just go and let myself drift along the streets, living in the moment, eating weird stuff that will surely give me diarrhea. Who cares, this life is too short to worry. And I am sure there are plenty of nice things to see and do, I just didn’t find them during my last disappointing visit to Bangkok.
The important thing is getting out and seeing something else but Serangoon for a change. And those plans to go to Brunei, Indonesia or Kuala Lumpur – they can easily be implemented during any weekend.

My first error message in Windows 7!

I have owned Windows 7 for about three hours now and it took this long to actually produce an error message. I am currently trying to install Ubuntu 11.04 through Wubi but for some reason it doesn’t work. Windows is nice enough to hint me towards the protocol file it produced – and placed in a folder I can not figure out how to access!

Back in Windows XP (the version I previously used) you could just type a file path in the address bar but that does not seem to be possible in W7. There is a steep learning curve ahead of me…
Just FYI, I did not buy Windows 7 on purpose. It was pre-installed on the laptop I bought today. As I will primarily be running Xubuntu anyway, and want to install Ubuntu to try and get used to the new Unity skin without being forced to use it, I do not need Windows 7 at all and hence my motivation to familiarize myself with it is low. Another funny fact about this new laptop came with Windows pre-installed, but no recovery CD! Microsoft seems to be very confident in the stability of its operating system nowadays if it thinks that users do not need the possibility to reinstall it after a crash or accident.

The Downeaster Alexa

It has been on my mind for quite a while and I just had to lose some thoughts about this great song and the well deserved fame it recently gained.

When I watched The Hangover 2 this was really the last song I was expecting in the sound track, and I was quite surprised that this was the makers’ choice for opening the second act. I recall thinking “wow, they really could have used some better song, there are plenty about Bangkok.”

However, when I thought about it a little more later, I found that it is indeed a very clever choice. Of course, the sound and mood of this song are important to the scene, but the lyrics fit just as nicely. They just have to be interpreted as metaphorical. And in doing so, I even found some association with myself in there. I will spare out the long written interpretation. Just listen closely, remember the scene and the background story, and it becomes obvious that this song is the perfect choice, as was Danzig’s “Thirteen” in the first movie.
Generally, whoever is responsible for choosing and matching the songs in both these movies did a magnificent job. It really lifts them up to an even higher level of filmmaking. Maybe, yes maybe they can even pull off another sequel and not make it suck. That would be an achievement even the genius makers of The Lion King were not capable of. But I don’t want to jinx it…

Weird dream

Last night I had one of those weird dreams you just die telling people about.

I was a passenger on a bus on the freeway which was followed by a bunch of guys on Harleys who suddenly threw stuff to burst the windows. They managed to board the bus and take everyone hostage. They gave everyone the choice: either sign up as a volunteer for the fight in Iraq or get electric shocks. I think I voted for Iraq, since I could always revoke that volunteering as I had been forced to do it.
Meanwhile, we were at a house (don’t ask me how we got there, dreams are like that) and the shocking began. They had tasers which wich they took one by one down. Finally, police arrived, special forces even, and I took the chance to intervene, try to attack one of the criminals so the police could take them out. But the police did not act. And so, of course, I had given myself a free ride for tasing.

The next morning the situation had cooled down and I think I talked to the boss and asked him why they even did this. I don’t remember his answer. But I saw that most of the gang were relaxing in the pool outside. I had left my cellphone off all the time because calling seemed too risky, but now I slipped into my shoes and ran out on the street and away in order to get help and call police.

That’s when the alarm clock went off. As usual, it did so when the dream was most thrilling and exciting. Too bad.

EDIT:
A few days after this, my girlfriend told me that I was apparently really jumpy while I was asleep. She said she tried to touch me during sleep a few nights back and I had jumped. So maybe the element of tasing in the dream was caused by her trying to gently touch me.

So here we go…

… starting a blog. Just recently (meaning, back in the old school days – May) I gave a presentation in Government & Economics class about the Web 2.0 and the opportunities and dangers arising for modern journalism and media. Of course, I focused on blogs, too.

I doubt that this will ever be of public or even personal interest though. I won’t reveal any political scandals or change the public’s way of thinking. I will not be one of those bloggers mentioned in the newspaper.

Frankly, I have no idea what to use this for anyway. Frankly, my girlfriend urged me to get a blog.
I had a blog a while ago, being inspired by the discussions we had in Philosophy class (ah, the old school days – “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”, should have listened to Cinderella more) I wanted to put my own philosophical thoughts to public channels. I ended up not writing a thing, because by the time I got home the inspiration would have been gone. And so this blog is not entitled to Philosphy or anything (although I often rant about the most different subjects ranging from Apple to Weather) in the hope that I might actually end up writing anything at least once in a while. Let’s see how it works out.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!