Rant 602 / Fungi

Just now when I was on my way to school, I saw this mother walking on the pavement with her 2 children and her maid. One was a baby being carried by the maid; the other was a little boy about 5-6 years old walking with her.

I'll cut to the point. He pissed into the drain. Next to a red light. While all the cars were stopped there waiting. I was watching. The driver was watching. Everyone in the cars and buses on the left lane were probably watching.

His maid turned around and watched while his mother was more focused on not facing the road.

I didn't know there are still parents out there who let their kids pee in the public. Now that incident where I countered faeces in the shower cubicles back in NTU makes sense!

I'm offended but mostly I'm just sad. This just reminds me of why too many parents these days just aren't meant to have children. They can't even handle teaching their kids basic proper behaviour like holding it in while outside a bathroom. I seriously hope they don't have pets and will never get one.




























Been having this very annoying problem tonight. Since about 8pm (it's 12.20pm atm) I've been unable to access the Internet via my browser even though the Network and Sharing Center says I'm connected to the web and so does my Network Magic.

The problem keeps changing all the time.

At first, I could access some websites but not most. Google was ok and so was this Spybot Search and Destroy forum which had an IP address for its URL.

I couldn't find anything on that Spybot forum and all other search results on Google were useless since I can't access them.

So I restarted the router and modem. Useless. It made even the computer outside unable to access the Internet.

Eventually I had to take my dinner so my mum got fed up and went to read. Meanwhile I stopped my search and switched off the router and modem.

At about 10pm I turned them back on again. As expected, it took like half an hour for the modem to warm up and connect to the net. When it did, it was back to the first case where I could not access the net via browser but the computer outside was fine.

All my search results (using my laptop and mobile modem) pointed at malware affecting my browsers, so I downloaded this Malwarebyte which found nothing useful except mistaking certain cracked files in my games as trojans. At the same time, I did a normal scan using NOD32 and found an actual infected file in my Supreme Commander folder that had remained after I uninstalled it. I had thought the folder only contained my save files but apparently there was a trojan too.

The whole folder was deleted.

The situation did not change. So I did a quick restart of the router and modem again.

Everything was okay! I could use the Internet... but only for about 15mins. Then I couldn't enter any websites, not even Google and the other site. Curiously, everything else said my connection was fine. I could even play my games on Steam!

So I got pretty sure it was my browsers' problem. Frustrated, I spent another hour watching one more episode of House. When I got back, everything went back to normal and I'm typing this now.

What on earth is going on?

Doing an in-depth scan using my NOD32 now. It's updated btw.

Now I'm just having this intermittent access. I have completely no idea what is wrong.

1.53am - Nope, scan gave me nothing but Internet is fine for now. Saved a few webpages to look at when things go wrong again later.













Today's (ok, technically it was yesterday) Straits Times contains an article that discussed a problem I had mentioned before - food supply problems. Like I said, we're getting low on food and there isn't yet another Green Revolution like the one we had some decades ago.

Growing food in the city is an idea that is being tested in several countries already. Benefits include not having to transport food quickly to maintain freshness. You still have to import the soil from outside but soil, seeds and manure don't need fast (read air) transportation like meat and fruits.

I can probably grow mushrooms at home but mushroom kits aren't cheap in Singapore even though it's just a log or wood shavings and some processed manure. Mainly it's because there is no supplier of such kits here and we can only order it from overseas. Prices are about S$25 for a small box of 250g containing mostly sterilized shit and they're about as large as those polystyrene boxes the Chinese mixed veg stalls use for takeaways. I can easily buy kilograms of oyster mushroom at the cost of one of those kits.