Facebook has shrunk the world more than what the invention of internet has done.
At first, emails, newsgroups and IRC (internet relay chat) made information sharing fast and easy enough such that human beings were amazed and impressed.
When Facebook comes into action, it starts to attract users to an extent that most internet users own an account and many cannot miss logging into the social networking site at least once a day. Great amount of personal information and whereabouts is being released every moment. Some users even update their statuses before they go to the washroom.
You do not even need to click on anything to view your friends’ latest statuses. Facebook’s Ajax feature helps to insert latest data from the database into the home page. Facebook has helped to link up everyone from every part of the world (probably not so much of China residents though) that has internet access.
Great things do come with negative impacts sometimes. Users join random groups and pages created to raise awareness or vent anger, creating a stir. Many groups are created for good purposes, such as quit smoking and saving the ozone layer, but some are just some wrong assumptions that many users are influenced and thus joined.
“my school cares more about my appearance, than my education”
Many students are unaware of the importance of their appearance and many hope to detach that from their education. They do not see the overall picture. They are expecting more from others and also things to work in their own ways, in this case, they want school to provide education in their own ways too. One day, they would even expect themselves to take over the principal or the ministry’s positions.
The educational systems in the entire the world are facing a great challenge.
I met up with Caiping at Cityhall MRT in the afternoon. After reaching the National Library at the level 5, we were so disappointed with the Wireless@SG’s connection over there that it kept dying off within a few seconds. The power point by the side of the outdoor area was powerless.
We walked back to Citylink but the Starbucks was crowded and we found ourselves luckier at the Starbucks at Marina Square. I was quite amazed by the design of the mall for it was the first time I really took a detailed looks around there while sitting down. So much for the late night sleep, I was not as noisy as usual.
After that, she did some researches for her project, we decided not to go for movie and instead, we went back to Citylink to the New York New York for dinner. I took my usual fish and chips and it proved the restaurant was a disappointment. When we told the manager we had found a bone inside the food, he merely told us it was some plastic materials, and nothing was done for service recovery. If Dorothy were around, she would definitely write a long and detailed email to complain about the lousy service.
Other than the service issue, the dinner was great and we had a long chat.
On Friday, I woke up early in the morning again. I had only three hours of sleep as my old habit returned to haunt the night, refusing to let me go to bed before it was satisfied with the amount of work I could do.
It was not a good start of the day to face a colleague who seemed to have suffered from PMS. I was taking over Weiming’s class, which I was not familiar with as compared to all the other seven classes. On the bus towards Singapore Flyer, the fun was too short for celebration.
I was very used to seeing ugly students among the angels but the shame of Singapore joining in my group worsened my foul mood. Having twenty-five people squeezing inside a capsule was pathetic. The half an hour stay in the air was the longest thirty minutes I had ever spent.
My lunch was at Popeye at the cost of thirty-five bucks. I joined Joy’s girls at the Esplanade later for a walk. My mind was in a dilemma since I wanted to join the KO students at Marina Barrage and yet, I wanted to reach home by 3pm as to go to the chalet with my brothers. It was not long before the fatigue ruled my head and wiped out my brain. My eyes were closing and my skull was unbalanced. Nevertheless, I had some moments of relaxing periods.
I reached home just in time when my brothers were going off. Since I had not packed my stuffs and that my brain was losing to the gravitational effect, I decided to join them at night even though I could have gotten a free ride by my elder brother’s friend.
I concussed on the mattress and woke up in the evening. After dragging for a long time, I finally started leaving my house in my backpack. My younger brother picked me up near Pasir Ris MRT in the double bicycle but he got the shock of his life when we started moving off. It was difficult to balance. I took the front seat when I went East Coast Park with Wanling long ago and I supposed it was easier to team up with a non-cyclist. Alas, we got used to it and got back to the chalet.
My cross cable was put in good use when we started LAN gaming, joining my younger brother and my laptop together. However, I was very disappointed that there was no wireless internet connection within Costa Sands Resort and thus I could not do my work. My younger brother could plug in his iPhone to access the internet but mine did not work.
I managed to pull through my Sunday outside when I was not feeling well. The usual weekend burnt was back again for my studies.
As Soon Siong had predicted, the meeting would drag for an hour before everyone was present. We met up at the usual place, at The Cathay Starbucks, but the seats with power source were all taken up and the guests did not seem to be leaving after standing there together with Soon Siong for nearly forty-five minutes. A group of youngsters were playing Dota while another ang moh lady occupied two tables with five chairs, and she reminded me of those Dracula shows in her red and curly hair.
We moved to SMU where Jeremy met up with us. Jeremy and I formed a recce team in search of a better place. We shifted to the accountancy’s study table to realize that there was no Wireless@SG connection. After wasting so much time, we set off for early dinner at the Kopi Tiam across the road after some discussion. I had a big plate of char siew rice, which was very rare, yet I was not full after finishing the entire plate. It was probably due to the bad diarrhoea the night before. In fact, I was feeling very weak, moreover, with the muscle aches from the continuous days of sports for the past few days.
We moved to the first level of SMU after dining. I bought a cup of soya bean drink and Jeremy soon admitted that he could not withstand the heat. We decided to move to some café instead of going down to the SMU’s basement that was secluded from the free internet access.
Our first station at the Coffee Bean café was a disappointment with the number of students occupying the tables. After that, we decided to try our luck back to our usual meeting place again. We split into two tables until the sofa seats were empty, and we finally merged together as a team. I was exhausted by the. This day, Andy seemed to have come to enlightenment that he managed to spot some major flaws, which we could have improved a lot. I was very glad that he had pointed them out, but at the same time, I was very disappointed with the continuous changes of our project game play. It had been months and we had been making major changes for almost every meeting. We were too short of time.
I tried to read up about the sockets notes given by Jingkun in my tiredness and discomfort body, and it spelled only exhaustion. I had been missing Java programming for years and the basics were enough to give me problems.
The meeting lasted until 10.30pm and the preparation for the next day was a phobia and caused frustration.
Following the past two weeks of slow internet experience, the Starhub cable modem demonstrated the “excellent” service from Starhub Max-online. The “POWER” LED was lighted but “DS” was blinking. The following LEDs were all dead except for the “LINK”.
It was 2.30am in the morning, I was typing an important email, and doing other stuffs as well, that required internet access of course.
I started calling 1633 for Starhub’s assistance soon using my mobile phone because the home phone was connected to the modem and was completely dead. It took me around a minute before I could start to wait for the operator to get on the line. Nobody picked up the phone like the previous time I called them and I got so irritated when I heard from the recorded voice “Alternatively, you may drop us an email via customerservice@starhub.com.sg” – If I could email them, I would not even have called. After a while, my phone died on me due to the extremely poor reception from the Starhub mobile service.
I tried my luck for the second time at 2.51am and they managed to hold me up for more than ten minutes before an operator finally picked up the phone. As the reception over my side was terrible, I could not really catch his name - he said something like “Daniel”. Anyway, he went to check for a minute and returned to tell me that it was due to maintenance between 2am to 6am. He assured me that the connection would be up after 6am.
I questioned him, “So, you mean Starhub doesn’t inform us before the maintenance?”
His reply was, “By right we should…”
I knew it was not his fault and thus I did not make it difficult for him. It was 3.14am and I put down the call.
It was less than two minutes after I rested my ears, I noticed that the connection was up. It could never be such a coincident and I strongly suspected the downtime was not due to maintenance.
This article is specially dedicated to all Starhub users.
If you are using both Starhub Max-online and mobile service together, you may be one of the fools around.
Starhub mobile line is known to be less stable than both SingTel and M1 services; in fact, it has ridiculously weak reception at many areas. If you are using their line at Tanjong Pagar, you may be finding yourself being in a lost world at certain areas. Starhub’s explanation is that their stations, which produce and receive the signals are far apart just enough to lose coverage of the area. You may imagine yourself standing at a point where ten metres away from the west has a piece of shit, whereas ten metres towards the east has lay shit, and you are just in good distance to avoid the smell, except for a little pungent which strong wind manages to blow it over occasionally. However, if the same situation happens to the mobile phone, the reception is also an on and off situation.
If you are subscribing to the SCV Cable TV or the Max-Online service, you can apply for free home telephone service. The phone line will be connected to the modem itself and all communication will be via the same medium, and Starhub does not get to lose much. By offering this extra service, they can probably attract more users to subscribe to their services. SingTel owns most households’ phone lines since it has started since before I’m even born. The subscription fee together with the count-by-second call rate are wastage of consumers’ money since they can easily get everything for free. Not many people know that by porting over from SingTel to Starhub, they can still keep their home number without extra charge.
However, if you are subscribed to the above services from Starhub, you may face this problem of when the Max-online or Cable TV is or are down, the phone line is being cut off as well. At this point of time, you can only use your mobile phone to call up Starhub customer service care centre.
For English, please press “1” For Starhub Mobile service, press “!” For Starhub Cable TV, press “2” For Starhub Max-online service, press “3” .. .. ..
The long flow goes by. When you opt for the technical issue, using recorded voice, they try to tell you to check your modem for problems. You are already so agitated and you still have to wait for the craps to finish off before they let you know you have to press “0” to speak to the customer service officer. In the midst of waiting, the recorded message suggests that you can leave your number and name with them through fax machine and then you realise most households in Singapore do not own a fax machine. Another suggestion from them is to email to them via customerservice@starhub.com.sg and you probably feel like screaming to tell them the freaking internet service provided by them is down; but too bad they still do not pick up the call. Ten minutes later, someone finally picks up the phone and the line cuts off because you are using Starhub mobile phone line and the reception happens to die off totally. You have no choice but to call back and the same process happens again. Another ten minutes later, a woman picks up the phone and you know obviously she is not from Singapore for her accent and mumbling that it kills lots of brain cells and saliva to get her repeat her words. Then, she says they need around three hours more to fix the problem, or rather, she is saying other things, which cannot be heard.
The two-day internet “camp” had finally ended. Mike paid around two hundred bucks for me to attend it with him.
I tried to go home as early as possible on Friday night but could only doze off for three hours. The heavy rain after daylight was a huge turn-off and I got my shoes and socks wet.
The seminar was at Riverfront hotel and I was surprised with the overwhelming response from so many people. I estimated there were around three hundreds participants, inclusive of a few young children.
People were puzzled over why they wanted to conduct such seminar to teach people how to make money and somehow I got the answer. After all, it was a kind of advertising and promoting of their fame and moreover, they were selling their software, videos and books much more expensive than you could imagine after teaching everyone the usefulness.
I skipped volleyball on Saturday evening so as to rest properly since I had to answer to Mike to learn but I couldn’t doze off at all. I was in a pretty bad shape but could manage to keep myself awake.
Lunch was on Mike for both days. The first day was a buffet lunch at the hotel, which was a waste of money since we were in a rush. I guessed that probably had helped the organiser earn more money by getting commission from the restaurant.
I managed to learn quite a number of stuffs even though at times I got so sleepy when they taught stuffs which I had already known. Overall, it was quite worth the money. It was all thanks to Mike that I was able to attend it.
Weitat was sending Junrong, Jingkun, Junyang and I home. He went to Beach Road first before taking the ECP to my house. I was a road idiot and since it was at night and my eyes were so tired after swimming and playing volleyball, I was unable to guide the way. The problem with me was that I rarely take that route since I was always taking public transport but not cab. Moreover, I was sitting at the back with my astigmatism.
First, we took the wrong exit out and Weitat drove towards ECP once again by making a right turn instead of going straight. We went back to Forte Road once again and passed by Suntec City. When we were near the MRT station, I told Weitat to keep left and be prepared to turn left. However, he did not catch that small path and we went into Ah Moy Street instead and had to take the Chinatown road back to my house. It was really challenging to drive to my house for each path taken wrongly would require you to make a big round.
Blogging and updating of my websites took hours and thus I did not get to sleep early again. This time, I went to my brother’s room and joined him so that I could have a peaceful morning. I was waked up by an asshole of unfamiliar number. I supposed the previous owner of my phone number did not notify her colleagues and friends one year after changing her number and I was the unlucky Starhub subscriber to get that number.
In the afternoon, I sent an email to Kaven but there was a big error. Afterwards, we discussed over the cash he had to prepare but it did not tally. Suddenly, I realised it was communication problem again between Kelly and I. I was so disappointed with myself.
My younger brother and my mum were packing the room and dumping many of my mum’s junks. I was pretty distracted by them. I spent the afternoon chatting with Mike and Kaven and also, editing of websites as usual.
This night, the speed of my computer and internet pissed me off once again. Perhaps I should try to reformat my windows after years of untouched.
Mike told me he was going to find an office space the week after but I did not want to give myself too high hopes for the moment. We had some discussions again and I worked till late as usual. I was waked up by Kelly to get CPF statement from Kaven and then I went back to sleep as usual.
I woke up late and my mum called home to check if I was hungry a not and I answered “no” for I thought she have important thing to do but would be home soon. Eventually, she came home at 3am and I really regretted it. I had just finished two slices of breads and thus had no appetite for the packet rice by then.
I went to find Kaven at 4pm. This time, I cycled in my singlet into the crowded business district. Even though it was such a short distance, I was dead beat upon reaching there. After giving back his bank loan papers and collecting his CPF statement, I took the route at Ah Moy Street home. Just after passing by the food centre, a driver of a parked car opened the door when I was so near. Luckily I performed stun by braking and twisting the bicycle to the right side, managed to continue the journey without stopping for a second. I was basically keeping to the left since the lane was small and the car owner should really look behind before opening the door.
After reaching home, I rested to wait for my sweat to dry up before taking my bath. Then, I remembered I had forgotten to finish up my lunch again but luckily the food did not turn bad. I spent the afternoon editing my websites as usual and had half an hour game of Condition Zero. I dozed off eventually for around half an hour but the loud sound from the other room woke me up many times for my younger brother had returned home from camp and was watching movie.
Into evening, I gave up sleeping and continued with my work. I called into the room but the volume of the loud noise was not lowered that I had to go and close the door, feeling so irritated. I tried to read up on a website recommended by Mike but I was distracted with other work and that reading was a torture to me.
At night, Kelly called me regarding Kaven’s stuffs and we had some chat. She told me I should not stay too close to my clients such that I would be placed in difficult position like when Kaven’s mum requested me to push the appointment earlier I could not reject her immediately.
At the same time, Suimin messaged me again to ask me for an English song. I seemed to be pierced somehow and felt so sad. It was almost every time she contacted me, she was simply asking me to help her with all sorts of things. Apart from I was not into any English song, I was very clueless about where to find them.
Peh messaged me so coincidentally to complain about MaxOnline. The network was slow for these few days but at least I was able to connect to MSN and other websites. Perhaps, it could be problems with my own computer or even the router and thus I did not know what to reply to him.
This moment when I was so pissed off with my half done work, and had to settle some money (my most sensitive hatred) problems with Kaven in the MSN and Kelly over the phone, while being unable to find the song for Suimin and did not know how to reply Peh, I seemed to be massacred.
Afterwards, I got more irritated when I was unable to do my work efficiently for the wait for everything to finish loading was long. It was so bad that I nodded my head a few times. Then, I started uninstalling Yahoo Messenger and running all the system clean up programs.
I had to believe I was unable to concentrate with the MSN opened, even though very few people had bothered to message me or reply my messages anymore; the more than two hundreds and fifty of contacts seemed to be decoration except when my need was required. In future I might consider not switching it on.
I was lack of sleep as usual from the sleep-late-wake-up-early routine.
I dropped by Uncle Sam’s shop and Lulu claimed that he was back and was settling his flat. I went up and only saw an Indian resting there. The condition of the house was lousy still.
I went back to the office for a number of tasks; I had to get the Shunfu keys from Louis, submit the valuation request, submit the block 219 Ang Mo Kio’s OTP and submit invoice form for Jenny.
Problems aroused and I was in quite a mess over deciding which task to accomplish. I could not find James and Jenny’s invoice required another invoice from her co-broke agent. Shunfu’s keys were not back yet. Suddenly, a hypocrite messaged me to fax valuation report over. Jolee suddenly told me she would collect hundred bucks if she had to go down for anyone’s appointment through using her resale net transaction account. Winnie had been a very good help this afternoon.
As it started to rain, I took my leave from the office. I went down to meet up with David and Kelly. We were so disappointed and Lulu was obviously not doing her work well. We could only feel sad for Uncle Sam but Lulu’s attitude was really very pissing.
When I got home, Justus came over again for mathematics problems. However, there was one question with broken English and I could not solve it for him. He had brought over some snacks bought from Japan but he refused to give me until I finished helping him. In the end, this stingy boy opened one out of the four packets and put into his mouth.
I did some complaints to Kaven afterwards about the bad people I had met these few days. At night, internet connection was down again.
If you have been wondering about how online user counters work, I would share my five cents worth of knowledge.
It detects the number of users online by tracking their IP addresses. Each IP address will be stored for an amount of time, unless the visitor triggers the script again and the counter restarts. At the same time, the script will count for the number of IP addresses stored to determine the number of users “online”.
A problem arouses when multiple IP addresses are detected from a visitor and the number of count exceeds the correct amount. This is the reason why a few months ago, sometimes you can see the number of my website’s online visitors reaching more than twenty.
For most free online scripts hosted by free service providers, they store each visiting IP address for fifteen minutes; however, in order to save bandwidth, they do not provide auto refreshing. A regular visitor will not stay in a blog for more than five minutes and thus the storing of IP addresses for fifteen minutes will be very inaccurate, on the other hand, will be very flattering for the owner.
The greatest problem about free service providers is that when their bandwidth has reached the limit or their server is down, the browser will take some time to try and load the script before it gives up, such that, visitors might think it is the problem with your website and give up waiting.
In order to solve the problems of inaccuracy, especially for the multiple IP addresses problem, I have implemented a free online PHP script in my webhost, which is adjustable. Since I have limited each storing of IP address to be only five seconds and with its auto-refresh function, the inaccuracy counted by time is at most five seconds.
For my website, it is displayed as “X readers online”.
A respectable person, whom I could not remember, had told me before that the internet was so solid built that even an atomic bomb could not destroy it. This was quite true for the network was laid all over the world, interconnecting each other, that there were always multiple routes for the signals to be travelled; but I always reserved my doubts.
I was totally amazed when the MSN was down that was caused by the earthquake in Taiwan and I had never thought of the impact could be so big. There was no connection to several websites and I almost thought Max-Online was giving the problems.
There were lesser people coming online and blogs were not updated. Reports showed that more earthquakes would continue to strike Taiwan and I was not sure what other problems would it cost.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Natural Disasters, please do not take away our privilege of using the internet!
After all, I get to learn that the laying of physical network is magnificent work that it will take at least three months to fully stabilize the network. Whereas, ships are transporting diver cable men to repair all the damages, which is so cool.
Hopefully those lamers in the internet will learn to appreciate internet and stop causing annoyance to others. If you cannot contribute, at least do not destroy.
This night when Wenhao suddenly messaged me in MSN to say “good night”, a recurrence of the past internet life came into my mind.
That was the time when ICQ was ruling, other than IRC.
There were fewer online chatters when unlimited internet account was not so widely used, and at late hours, usually the ICQ list would be very empty; most of the late sleepers would bid their online contacts goodbye before logging off.
At this era when technology has fully merged into everyone’s life, internet was reachable to most families in Singapore. However, at the convenience of able to chat with more friends online, you get to ignore more and more friends as you cannot spend your time with everyone.
The internet, supposing to link people up and fasten communication, apparently starts to distant friends.
As I was downloading latest version of NVIDIA graphics card driver, the process stopped upon six minutes to completion. At the same time, I had finished a blog entry and was waiting for Blogger site to load. It was around three plus in the early morning and later, I gave up since the internet connection seemed helpless.
Hours later, after I caught a little sleep, went for my medical appointment and finally returned, I had totally forgotten about the internet connection problem. It did not bother me at first since I was able to connect and check my emails like usual until minutes later, it died on me again.
This waiting was horrible. I did try shutting down the computers and modem, and after some time switching them on again. It did work for the past but not this time round.
It bothered me tremendously since I was on the verge to launch my new site which required a minor edition and information from the internet. I was so eager to spread it while inviting my guests for the birthday chalet since it provided more than sufficient information and help that I needed.
Gilbert had witnessed the site and I was absolutely delighted to hear him sing compliments; his standard had been high and all my websites were not even up to borderline marks. Of course, I had some doubts that he was trying to not stress me so much like usual but there was this possibility that he adopted only formal looking websites.
I had a few blog entries to work on but the internet was pulling me away from the monitor; I was restless to fight and eventually dozed off in front of the television. Vivi woke me up soon and then the second time just minutes after.
I got up to bath and play game since I was unable to doze off again. Romance of the three kingdoms series three kept me occupied until my elder brother returned. Near midnight, internet connection resumed.
He told me he had only updated the version of the router. It could be new updates on the Max-Online side that the router’s software was incompatible and thus required updating.
Normal life resumed then. Life without internet connection was hell for a cripple.
Do you know how the internet has polluted youngsters nowadays?
Try going to Google and do a search with “cartoon animal family”. It sounds so clean and innocent and yet more than half of the top thirty search results are porn.
It is absolutely sick when we are researching for projects.
“Online gaming in crisis over U.S. ban” - This is the latest news I get from the internet.
For whoever is reading this post, I assume this will affect you in one or another way, because you are an internet user.
How often have you seen popup poker or casino advertisement when you are surfing the net? Some free software is also mounted with spy-ware which will invest your windows and slow the system down.
With the ban of online gaming over U.S, it will greatly reduce the needs of advertising for the money-seeking companies. The redundant of the advertising will reduce the availability of the popup advertisements and spy-wares.
In my next assumption, with no survey or research done, online gambling is one of the biggest advertisement-paying industries other than porn. It may then affect many revenue seekers who provide free services and also the industries’ affiliates.
However, since most decent and well established websites do not use online gaming advertisement, the impact may not be big.
