National Gallery Singapore closes art exhibit by young artists

So after a lot of pomp and splendour, the Singapore National Gallery opens but leaves an ugly taste in the mouth for some young artists, one of them reduced to tears. According to the Straits Times:

When Renndom Met Airany: A Visual Duologue by Renn and Aira Lim, about the siblings growing up together and inspiring each other, had to be taken down due to a “fatal error” on Gallery & Co’s part, the cafe said in a statement on Facebook on Sunday afternoon.

Gallery & Co is a cafe in the National Gallery that exhibited the exhibits but apparently, the National Gallery did not agree with them exhibiting art.

I agree with the kids father, Pann Lim when he wrote in his Facebook post:

This morning I was talked down like a fourth class citizen by one of the directors of the gallery because I am a nobody to him. But I chose to stay composed because I am way pass this phase in my life to be confrontational because raising your voice does not make you right. This week has taught us a lot. Maybe a little too much for you 2 kids, at this tender age to be emotionally crushed by giants, but that’s how ugly the world is sometimes. Kids, always remember people at the top have the birds eye view but at most times they will never understand how people move on the ground. And the higher they fly the harder they will fall one day.

Honestly National Gallery, you could have been a bit more discreet and magnanimous. What a way to be remembered for your opening. I can safely say that I for one will not bother going there or giving you any business. You fellas leave a bad taste in the mouth

The police car revolving light

Remember the police action dramas of old, in the 70s? Plain-clothes detectives riding in their unmarked police cars, probably munching on donuts when they receive a call on their CB radios. Immediately they spring into action, one of them rolling their windscreen down and then sticking a revolving light on top of the car, making it an instant police car with the sirens blaring. It always fascinated me as a kid to see that. Today, while on the bus, I came across one such light. You can see the cable linking into what is presumably the car’s cigarette lighter socket that is on the dashboard. But this is not a police car. It was a car parked at the side of the road. bit of an anti-climax for me but what the heck, it sure brought back those memories…

Malaysia has a new invention…scissor salad

One of my friends shared this with me on Facebook and when I saw it I damn near busted a gut laughing at it. This was for a Malaysian Parliamentary dinner…of sorts with some VIPs in attendance. And there it is…the first line…listed as an appetizer. Scissors salad. Oh man….that cracked me up!

But all is good. Some of my Malaysian friends laughed along with it and some even said that that is the reason why Sarawak wants to have English as the first language. But it sure made my day when I saw it. I needed a laugh and this was it

Train horn on an electric car

When I sa this, I really had a fit of the giggles. Imagine…this small car, an electric one furthermore, armed with a train horn, scaring the shit out of people nearby. It seems…so…unexpected…that a car like this has a big-ass train horn. LOL!

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Nowadays, laptops and desktops are starting to come without built-in CD drives. So what happens when you want to re-install your operating system. never fear. Enter this tool from Microsoft. What it does is to “burn” your ISO of the operating system into a USB drive and make it bootable. After that, you can boot from the USB drive and install your operating system. This tool also allows you to “burn” a bootable CD or DVD  of your operating system but since we are on the topic of USB drives, this is not important. But it is useful to know that the capability to do so is in this tool. I have used this to create bootable Linux USB thumb drives with no issue as well. Yes, it’s that good and did I mention it’s free?

Serial port gender changer

When I wrote in a previous post about finding my old USB to serial port converter some time back, I realised that in some instances, I might need gender changers. Now some of you may be wondering what gender changers are. Basically, they change my male serial port into a female one. That is required sometimes when I connect my converter to equipment like projectors and such. So instead of carrying serial cables of all types (male, female and the like) I just carry a male to male serial cable and have the gender changer plugged in. Voila! Issue solved!

Get some of these. They are not expensive and are smaller to pack in your bag than a whole host of serial cables

Toshiba Hayabusa USB drive

I knew a person once who had a Suzuki Hayabusa motorbike. That motorbike was a beast…a real beast. At one time, it was one of the fastest motorcycles of its time and it really could shift if you wanted it to. The the other day, I came across another Hayabusa…of sorts. This time something smaller…a Hayabusa thumb drive. My colleague bought this thumb drive because the store had run out of the popular SanDisk ones. They cost about the same as the SanDisk ones but as for being faster, I do not know. My colleague seems happy with them and they seem to do the job. Why Toshiba named them after a very fast motorbike I have no idea.

JBL SRX728S dual 18″ subwoofer

I was the soucd technician at an event last night and they were using this monstrous subwoofer by JBL to power the front-of-house (FOH) system. These dual 18″ subs were fantastic…going really low and giving some terrific subsonic bass that really made the floor and the glass doors rattle. I mean, with dual 18″ subwoofers, this thing had better do its job…and that it certainly did. My only complaint was that we were not driving it to its full capacity. To be honest, I kinda like it but its a bit too big and heavy.

Electro-Voice DC-One 2-in/6-out sound system processor

In the course of my work, and also in the course of my event life, I have come across these processors powering the speakers, especially Electro-Voice speakers that I use. I have been a fan of speaker processors for some time so it comes as no surprise that these are some of the processors that I like, apart from the Xilica that I wrote about some time back. I saw these DC-One processors controlling two pairs of ELX-115p powered speakers and from what I heard, they did a damn good job. This processor cannot be compared to the Xilica though. This processor has only 24 kHz sampling rates, versus the Xilica which has up to 96 kHz. Also it has only two inputs. But it has six outputs and all the presets for Electro-Voice speakers…of course. Some features of this processor are:

• DC-One Editor software control via USB port
• Analog or AES/EBU Inputs
• Switchable -6 dB pre-A/D converter pad
• 24-bit AD/DA conversion
• 32-bit floating point internal processing
• 111 dB dynamic range
• Six predefined operation configurations
• Contact closure interface for remote preset recall
• 60 factory presets, 20 user presets
• Unique edit/compare mode for audible parameter adjustment
• Highly-customizable security settings

So it does the job…and very well in fact. I was quite happy with the sound. So if you run Electro-Voice speakers, it will be worthwhile for you to get these.

Quantum Fireball 1.2Gb hard drive

We will have to go back at least 20 years here. I remember that during the time when 32mb of RAM on your computer was great, and that 540Mb hard drives were the norm then. A whopping (by those standards at that time anyway) 1.2Gb seemed like heaven. That is what I bought to prep up the storage on my PC back then. Cost me about $340 from a shop in Sim Lim Square then. I remember saying that 1.2Gb of hard drive space would be perfect for me…and it was, for the time. I had space to store all my backups and stuff, Then Quantum was swallowed up by Seagate and there went a brand that I loved very much. I mean…1.2Gb. You can get more storage in a thumb drive nowadays but when I think back, of those halcyon days, it always makes me smile