Cortina Goes For Surgery.

for those of you who are still in the dark that i have a cortina that's being restored, check out my blog on that HERE as the project is picking up pace.

IMU Ball 2007, Legend Hotel.

after a mad night of nonsense, rain and other stuff...it turned out ok i guess.

so let's see, we got there wayyyyy ahead of time. was chilling with hans in the hotel room and watching some stupid taiwanese/singaporean game show where the games are designed so that no one wins. pfft.

we went backstage the first time to see Mia Palencia (miapalencia.com)

Mia Palencia.


her band.


her autograph


then up came the aspiring pianist and violinist of IMU. i could tell they're all violinist because of the way they looked. ok honestly, no offense to violinist but do you even think that THESE guys WANTED to learn how to play the violin? i don't think so. i bet it's their parents. it's always the parents...they probably were like, "mummy, i don't want to play violin..." then *SMACK!* "you don't talk lidat to me you little brat!" and then he/she/both start beating their kid to the ground unconscious. hahah.


minutes before the show began, we were walking around setting stuff up and guess who decides to pose.


then before this, we figured that i'd go on stage to do a cameo appearence. so we came up with this. i go on stage and do a super magnificant drum roll and then stand up and shout to the crowd "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HANSEL TAN!!!!" with my drumsticks crossed in the air ala rockstar style. and then, i do a silly dance while getting off the stage while hansel does a similarly ridiculous dance onto the stage. well, we managed to pull it off, but the part where i stand up got messed up because i left my cam on my lap, and in the heat of the moment i forgot about it and thus dropped it which caused the audience to laugh. oh well, part of the show ma. hahah. so as i go off stage to start filming, my cam isn't switching on! i then check the batt area only to find that the batt isn't there. so it must've popped out when i dropped it at the drums earlier...true enough. so started it and fired up the camera to start filming and this is what you get:



and here's some pics i took while filming hans and jo.

hans during wheelchair-man.


hans and jo take the stage


jo: hmmm, what comes next ar?


still rocking away with cannonball.


after that to cut a long story short, we stole a box 'gold'. i'm not saying what happened to it, but let's say it went to a good cause la.

then i was so fucking hungry because all i had was a filet-o-fish at 6 something pm (i know it's not a spartan diet but no choice ma). so after the gig, we decided to hunt for food. it was 1am already.

we circled around and eventually wound out at chow kit where i accidentally found the way to the spicy pan mee! and hans pointed at an 'agua' who was soliciting a customer and i was yelling at him like "wtf! don't point at them weh, i don't want to die in chow kit!" hahah.

so anyway, we ended up having the famous beef noodles around jalan alor. and it's really good! the beef slices were very tender and tasty...end of discussion.

prices are as follows, small:RM4.50 medium:RM5.00 and large:RM5.50.
iced chinese tea is RM0.50 so it's alot cheaper and filling compared to eating at the shops along jalan alor. you can expect to pay minimum RM7.00 for something good but small portions.





end.

Garage.

i've finally got my work table. now i can do all the wood/metal work i need in piece of mind. designed by me, and very functional.

what my 'work' area looked like before. not much space to do anything.


out with the old, in with the new.


ample workspace.


neat, tidy, accessible.


among other things, here's the new RC shell. out with the old orange subaru and in with the 'new' s15 shell. (thanks to justin for giving it to me FOC, great paintwork too, better than mine by leaps and bounds).



here's a pic i took in uni that gave me a feeling of vertigo. monash-ians should be able to locate this spot. (hint: it's in a high place)


that's all for now. expect updates tomorrow as i'll be with hans covering the IMU ball which he will be performing at. apparently he wasn't supposed to perform, and i quote "it's a long story la...". so we'll find out more about that story later on.

Nottingham Ball 2007, Shangri-La KL.

ah, what a night. a night of music, belly dancing and pompous rockstars.

anyway, our performance was well recieved by the ~800 strong crowd of nottingham people and our vocallist got a rose from one guy as well in the middle of alicia key's "if i ain't got you". here's the video. might take awhile to load but it's worth it i guess. :D



the sound engineers were really helpful in getting our sound right and the instruments provided were top notch. it's fun not having to worry about setting up the instruments and do the sound check by yourself but instead have these pros do everything for you. all you've got to do is sit and play and the rest will be adjusted by them. ah, the life of a pro. :P

why pro you ask? well, hans and myself can be considered pro musicians because we got paid RM 5/min! so we made RM50 per person. it's a pretty sweet deal if you asked me. plus all the pizza backstage one could ask for (which we only managed to finish 1.5 pizzas).

here's some pics to put things into perspective.

hans is thrilled with the stacks...a lifelong dream


mr. singapore himself during sound check


the backstage pizza. semi rockstar-ish


jules and prem from fly.fm were the MCs for the night


group shot: (L-R) Nick, Seng Chye, Joanna Hans


another shot:


singapore, singapore!


dear² giving support all the way. also she and vanessa as camerawomen of the night


guess who was there! percy the belly dancer!!!! wooooooooo!!!


ps. i know damn potong stim la the pics. when i get better ones i'll post them here k

on the way home, i just couldn't understand this sign. look at the bottom sign. does it mean no fires allowed? but then it's just silly, cause who'd start a camp fire in the tunnel? or if your car catches fire then can the cops give you a ticket for open burning there?


it was a good night despite some minor setbacks not worth mentioning. but i do wish to say that pop shuvit can shuvit up theirs (at least their vocallist la).

thanks to foo for giving us the gig, thanks to the sound-engineer uncle and his family for setting up our sound real good and all the people who supported and laughed with us before the show. :D

Resurrection Of Apexi Power Intake Filter.

decided that it was time for me to put the old filter (~4 years old now) to good use in the putra after having been used in the wira for ages.

had to fly to sunway N1 racing to get the MAF type adapter since the old adapter was only useful as a template for me to make the gasket between the filter and the adapter.

you'd be surprised to know that the stock air filter box weighs around 2.x kg (including MAF sensor) and the new (er...old) apexi unit only at ~1.5 kg including MAF sensor. and thus, i've managed to shave somemore weight of the putra. however, due to limited materials, i could only come up with some simply fabricated brackets to keep the filter in place and not let in swing or bounce around while the car's moving. which would give you the result of a mangled filter (see pics for further detail).

stock air filter



apexi power intake



end product


hopefully when my worktable arrives and in the coming months i'll get more tools to help me in fabricating nicer/cleaner looking stuff. then you'll see stuff like an aluminium heat shield installed. since most ppl say that there's a difference in the engine not sucking in hot air and that cold air is more saturated with 02 molecules.

first impressions after the filter, it works! not sure how much whp was gained but in terms of throttle response it's definitely quicker at climbing the revs since there's hardly anything frictional losses because it's air filter->intake hose. unlike previously which had this configuration: 3" hole->space in air box before filter->air filter->fill in resonator space in air box + fill overall space in air box after filter->intake hose.

so as you can see where losses may occur. the may be miniscule but i'll take even .25 whp gained as an improvement. :)

here's a random pic i snapped somewhere near bukit jalil.

it may not look bad form this angle, but from the other side, the whole driver side front suspension was fucked. imagine this, the wheel was perpendicular to the fender. hmmm, talk about full-lock. :P

Mid-Sem 1 Break 2007

it's already wednesday of the mid sem break and i've amazingly started my assignments. i seem to have procrastinated less lately. i've even managed to finish reading 3 novels which are: The Alchemist, A Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Time and the first of many in the discworld series, The Colour of Magic. i read all those in a week and am fucking proud of myself.

another thing that made me proud of myself was that i just managed to remove a sheared bolt from the putra. it sheared because the bolt was rusty and was actually used past its service life. so i had to use a 2-3mm diameteer cylindrical metal file and a hammer to slowly tap the tangent of the sheared bolt out of it's hole. the situation was not easy because it was located on the firewall and the only room i had was between the intake manifold and the firewall...which give and take would be about 10 cm to manouver clumsily. however, i persevered and perfected my technique and walla! it's out! i know there are other methods such as welding a rod, grinding a slot, but i do not have access to such tools so i use what i have. and it works. period.

friday's the big day, so expect full event coverage the following day after the gig.

Nothing Without Balls.

preparing for nottingham's ball. man, the jamming schedule is really tight, but it's something that must be done.

i just finished studying for my test tmrw at 8 a.m. so, i'm friggin tired and going to bed. but first, some random pics of the day.

yesterday's jam session in IMU's LT3


'toilet' Hong getting pinched


the new bassist, seng chye with his 'kerbau' bass

*kerbau means buffalo in bahasa malaysia

Are You Ready For ReadyBoost?

this section will focus on thumbdrives that are capable of running ReadyBoost. it'll be updated from time to time as i obtain more thumbdrives from friends to test.

results posted are solely based on the reports that are generated by event viewer unless stated.

test setup:
a) any thumbdrive (readyboost capable or not)
b) complete format with default settings applied
c) tests are repeated a total of 3 times to get stable values

let's begin,
* O = compatible ; X = not compatible

1. 256 MB Apacer Handy Steno HN212 (2483 kB/s read ; 3795 kB/s write ; O)

2. 2 GB Kingston DataTraveler DT1/2GB (1616 kB/s write; X)

that's all for now. let me know if you guys wanna let me test your thumbdrives ya. :)