Word: serendipity
Meaning: an aptitude for making desireable discoveries by accident (Dictionary.com)
Usage: Social Serendipity from MIT's Reality Mining project.
Synonyms: knowledgeable, scholastic, intellectual

Word: inane
Meaning: 1. lacking sense, significance or ideas 2. empty or void (Dictionary.com)
Usage: Inanity of statements (from this comic here).
Synonyms: empty, daft, absurd

I just went on a brief blog hiatus. Days have been quite full recently and frankly the last thing I felt like doing after a day's work was get back on the computer and write. I've started reading loads and watching the odd movie instead of spending time online.

Last week I was reading a post by Simply Geeky about Peanut Butter Sandwiches and Jelly. Yeah, peanut butter and jelly as if anything can get more disgusting than that. I was so confused with the post that I kept reading most of the comments to figure out what's the story with peanut butter and jelly. It was after wikipedia came to the rescue that I realised that jelly in the US means jam for us Europeans. The equivalent for (European) jelly in the US is jello (thanks geeky). In the US jam is jelly (US jelly) with the fruit pieces in it.

Yesterday was quite a crazy day. Milan lost to Manchester United 3-2 at Old Trafford but that was hardly the main event of the day.

It's been a while since I posted a word. Today I came across the word erudite in the ever-hilarious Twenty Major blog's post.

Word: erudite
Meaning: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly (Dictionary.com)
Usage: I hate the way I’m portrayed as this odorous retard instead of the erudite and quite fragrant person I really am.
Synonyms: knowledgeable, scholastic, intellectual

Word: poignant
Meaning:

1. keenly distressing to the feelings: poignant regret
2. keen or strong in mental appeal: a subject of poignant interest
3. affecting or moving the emotions: a poignant scene.
4. pungent to the smell: poignant cooking odours.
5. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)

Synonyms: intense, bitter, heartfelt

Word: adroit
Meaning:

1. expert or nimble in the use of the hands or body
2. cleverly skillful, resourceful or ingenious: an adroit debater
3. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)

Synonyms: skillful, clever, apt, deft

Word: loiter
Meaning:

1. To stand idly about; linger aimlessly
2. To proceed slowly or with many stops: loitered all the way home.
3. To delay or dawdle: loiter over a task.
4. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Synonyms: waste time, wait, linger
Usage: The high school students like to loiter in the Central Square.

Word: gloat
Meaning:

1. To feel or express great, often malicious, pleasure or self-satisfaction. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Synonyms: crow, brag
Usage: Don't gloat over your rival's misfortune.

Word: septic
Meaning:

1. Of, relating to, having the nature of, or affected by sepsis (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Usage: Septic Flesh
Comment: B asked what septic means after thinking about the word anti-septic in Wales due to its excessive usage on the trip

Word: sepsis
Meaning:

1. The presence of pathogenic organisms or their toxins in the blood or tissues.
2. The poisoned condition resulting from the presence of pathogens or their toxins, as in septicemia. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Word: sprog
Meaning:

1. a new military recruit
2. a child (Wordnet 2.0)

Comment: Used during a meeting at work but I can't remember why.

Word: fudge (adj)
Meaning:

1. To fake or falsify
2. To evade (an issue, for example); dodge. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Synonyms: avoid, dodge, evade
Usage: We have to fudge that point and concentrate on the rest

Word: discombobulated
Meaning:

1. To throw into a state of confusion (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Synonyms: confused, baffled

Apart from this word wisdom listening to all this English is starting to amuse me sometimes. So let's try this experiment, put on a smile and say these phrases and check whether you'll laugh at their sound

• "you cheeky fucker"
• "Frankie" … like "Hello Frankie" when greeting someone who's not named Frankie

Yesterday the RHCE exam results arrived and I just missed the RHCE passmark by a miserable 5.7 marks. I got 100% in the first session, 81.8% in the RCHT exam and 64.3% in the RCHE exam. I'm obviously a bit disappointed at not managing to get the RHCE certification especially because I got so close to the passmark. In reality I didn't think I'd do that well in the second part. Most probably I didn't pass because of the lack of motivation from my side because otherwise I could have made it.

The exam made me more conscious about the importance of security. Since I'm a developer not a systems administrator I usually tend to go towards the implementation of functionality rather than security. The more access to information people have the higher systems are at risk so it's better to close the holes before others find them. Saying this I must now learn how to use iptables.

Btw, if your interested in Linux (or want to start out using it) you should try Ubuntu. They are shipping their free CD's for free.

Word of the day: Ramify

Definition (by dictionary.com):

1. To have complicating consequences or outgrowths: The problem merely ramified after the unsuccessful meeting.
2. To send out branches or subordinate branchlike parts.

3rd & 4th September

The uncertainty of stand by travel helps you appreciate aspects of travel otherwise taken foregranted. On Thursday afternoon we decided to fly on Friday instead of the planned departure on Saturday. It turned out to be a bold move because at 21:35 we were waiting at the gate of flight BA17 to Singapore. As soon as the check-in assistant called our names at the standby desk in Heathrow our cheeks touched our ears. This overjoy and Handbook for butterfly watchers were essential to alleviate the hour delay at the gate and the remaining 3 hours delay on board the aircraft due to an engine problem.

The BA 747-400 is huge compared to my previous flight experiences. We even had a TFT monitor for each passenger which makes me wonder what joys await the wealthy passengers in club class. Apart from sleeping and reading I killed the 13 hours watching parts of Kill Bill 2 and The Laws of Attraction (3 stars) as well as an episode of friends.

We arrived in Singapore at around 20:00 and to play it safe we rode a taxi ($35) from Changi Airport to the Strand at Bencoolen Street. Taxis have a wide variety of additional surcharges depending on the day and time so the price tends of vary accordingly. We could have taken the metro which is much cheaper at $1.20 and, Dhoby Ghaut stop is just a short walk from the Strand. (Dhoby Ghaut has one of its exits in Plaza Singapura, for the sake of those looking for it on a map).

The strand is a basic reasonably priced ($75 for a double room) clean hotel located in a perfect area for shopping. It is just 10/15 min away from Orchard Road and about 5 min away from Sim Lim Square.

Word of the year: Snafus

This has been the longest no blogging span since the beginning of the blog which means I'm getting a life. Today I intend to make up for it though, sparing any details about work and other disturbing events of the week.

Last Friday I spent most of the day battling with my girlfriend's n-gage because I couldn't get it to read the MMC card through the USB port. After reading the few forums that were not blocked at work I came to the conclusion that the card is corrupted and can only be accessed with an MMC card reader. The card got corrupted with some strange magnetic field which was freaking out monitors about a month ago at work.

The last two hours of the week aged me by ten years, but as soon as they passed our joy to life was restored. We lost no time and went for a game of squash which I won 2-1 after my two last defeats in last weeks. Playing squash at a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius is an arduous experience to say the least and a very sweaty one also. To cool ourselves we went to the north coast of the island for a late evening swim. Any fat lost at squash was regained with a bottle of African wine which tasted like Vermouth.

Saturday started with a struggle between going to go to work on overtime or staying at home to tidy my room, risking having to paint our front gates. I opted for staying at home avoiding dad as much as possible. I remember that the last time I ordered my room I had just started blogging (April) and since then the room became comparable to aftermath of the matrix shootout scene hall. The final outcome consisted of four bagfuls of garbage and about a kilo of dust. At least the room is now fit for human habitation again. After this we went for the Saturday volleyball match and won 6 sets to 0 (we had a very unbalanced strong team though). We finished the day couching in front of TV hoping for something decent which never materialised.

Sunday was an ultra hyper day and considering that my mate woke up before 1pm is an event in itself. We planned a day at a remote beach with my ex-work pal and his girlfriend. The beach is actually a grotto about a kilometre away from a famous crowded beach, and is accessible only by swimming to it. In order to get the bags inside the grotto, you have to hang the bags from a rope. Walking for a kilometre on a rocky path in the scorching heat is a great deterrent for normal humans. The whole day was one of the best in months, the water was crystal clear making swimming wonderful, and the whole ambient was very peaceful.

Enough of my ranting now. Take a look at these shots from National Geographic, they make great desktops too.

Some Links worth noting

i laff in de face of evil...then i run & hide 'til it goes away!!!

There are two things that are difficult to integrate into a web page, music and images. Cindy's site is the only site I ever managed to endure with the sound on and her image selection is the main driver behind my adding her to my top 15 links in the toolbar. The day to day accounts are also getting interesting as time goes by.

Defective Yeti

Matthew Baldwin's site has become a daily click. If you've never been there go there and read today's post. If you've already been there, go there and read today's post.

Word Count

Word Count is an experiment to rank the most 86,800 most frequently used words from a corpus of 100 million word collection. The simplistic yet appealing flash display is extremely effective and addictive. My name ranks at 2303.

Disturbing Auctions  Snap Club

Two sites highlighting the stupidity of humans. God forbid aliens ever get access to the internet or we'd be doomed forever.

Twiz TV  Awesome film

Ever wanted to impress your friends with your movie/TV premonitions?

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I got two new words which have been scribbled on the whiteboard for quite some time now:-

Word: fickle
Meaning:

1. Characterized by erratic changeableness or instability, especially with regard to affections or attachments; capricious (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)
2. Not fixed or firm; liable to change; unstable; of a changeable mind; not firm in opinion or purpose; inconstant; capricious (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary)

Synonyms: capricious, erratic, unsteady, untrue, variable, volatile, casual
Usage: They know how fickle common lovers are. -- Dryden.
Comment: Used to describe our boss

Word: guano
Meaning:

1. A substance composed chiefly of the dung of sea birds or bats, accumulated along certain coastal areas or in caves and used as fertilizer
2. Any of various similar substances, such as a fertilizer prepared from ground fish parts.

Synonyms: manure, maul, mulch, dung

The long awaited news officially broke out – somebody is coming to replace my old beloved pal at work. The logical follow up to the news was that they want to place him in my room, something I've been dreading from my ex's departure. We've got a saying in our country "if you're prepared you're half there", and I didn't mean to lose the solemnity of my room without battle.

As part of the plan to ward of potential intruders, I had already placed 3 PC's on his table to imply that I'm using it, and the hint hit the target. Another point in my favour was that there already is an empty room left by the secretary, so there is no question of lack of space elsewhere. To this they responded that they intend to user the spare room as a meeting room. This is plain pure bullocks, because we only have small meetings which are well hosted in our rooms, or at the manager's meeting table which suits the purpose fine.

The debate continued for some time, and in the heat of the argument I managed to impress myself. At one time I got so taken over that I bluntly told my boss "why don't you station him in your room?" With great pride and conceitedness she replied "I expect that in my position, I must have a room all by myself", to which I replied, "The reason I prefer to be alone is that since I'm less distracted, I feel that I'm more productive". The bull fight ended here however the verdict is still pending for tomorrow.

After the over active morning we had two good news; we've got a wedding and our boss is going to Tunis. Fingers crossed maybe she'll come back with a newcomer in her uterus.

My four day food abstinence gloriously ended yesterday with a pizza meal with my ex-pal and his miss. We've been wanting to meet for some time and at last our busy schedules met. It was a great night, getting up to date with each other's lives and describing our Romania holiday.

Word: dogged
Meaning:

1. Stubbornly persevering; Tenacious
2. Sullenly obstinate; obstinately determined or persistent

Synonyms: dour, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding
Usage: The sulky spite of a temper naturally dogged. -- Sir W. Scott.
Comment: An apt description of my brother

Life seems to be so normal that it is feeling sinister. I'm waiting for the life disaster time bomb to explode any moment. Death and sickness are creeping from the horizon towards the present. The myriad deaths and heart attacks afflicting people indirectly related yet close enough to know about, are burdening my thoughts, and reality is not so promising either. My parents have hit the fiftieth mark, my loved one's parents even more, and three of my grandparents are now in their late eighties. I think I must busy myself more and think a little less.

I've been pestering these blog sites for the past two days so I thought they were worth mentioning:-

• Defective yeti – This site has great content seeping out of every orifice. If you like anything ranging from opinions with humours observations, book and movie reviews, board game reviews or just a good read you should point your cursor through this link.
• Jeffrey Veen - Jeffrey Veen went touring to Costa Rica and is reading "the art and science of web design" so you must visit.
• Trek Diary – A more static site than the rest but has a number of diary accounts on wild life places on my to visit list, Borneo is up now.

Word: indemnity
Meaning:

1. Security against damage, loss, or injury.
2. A legal exemption from liability for damages.
3. Compensation for damage, loss, or injury suffered

Synonyms: recompense, reimbursement, remittance
Usage: Having first obtained a promise of indemnity for the riot they had committed. --Sir W. Scott.
Comment: A word generally used in contracts