New Year Resolutions 2016 report card

Don't squander time. I wasted much time surfing net or watching YouTube videos. Much of my idle time was fragmented, so I couldn't work on serious stuff. Excuses, excuses.

Exercise. 0%. The potato couch association is sending me its membership application soon. I did walk a lot, though.

Keep track of tasks/schedules. I use S Planner. It helps, will continue to use it.

Housekeeping. Sorted letters, threw away empty boxes, gave away old stuff, optimized storage space.

Expenses visibility. None. My expenses this year is extremely high, but I have no clue where the money went. Sure, I bought some frivolous stuff, but did I overspend? No idea.

Simplify bill payment. Done.

Incremental clothing replacement. I've mended all my old pants. However, my t-shirts are falling apart more than ever.

Home Improvement Project. The biggest one was replacing the living room and study room windows. The rooms are now much brighter. Have installed living room curtains as well.

Endless bills, updated

One of the first things I did this year was to automate my remaining bill payments. Good news is that there are no new bills.

(Green = automated. Blue = changed.)

General

The annual CC fees must be waived manually, which is very annoying. OCBC auto-waived mine this year. Perhaps I spent above their auto-waive threshold.

Transport

I pay office parking manually because I need the receipt to claim.

Motor insurance premiums cannot be paid using GIRO. I mistakenly thought I had automated it, and as a result, I did not renew my YBR road tax in time.

Ad-hoc GIRO

Recurring Funds Transfer

The FTs are scheduled one year at a time.

To-do

• Scrutinize expenses
• Optimize credit card usage
• Look at insurance cost

Obsoleting archival CDRs

15 years ago, HDD had low capacity (on the order of 250 GB?), so it made sense to move non-essential old data to offline storage. Now, HDD is cheap enough that most contents can be moved back for online access.

I spent a few days to copy most of my old contents out of CDRs. The transfer rate is very slow (1 to 3.5 MB/s) and the discs must be swapped manually. 5 discs had errors (probably damaged in storage); the contents were irrecoverable.

I threw away 13 VCDs without bothering to copy them. They are too low-res to watch on modern displays.

The total size is ~217 GB, which means I used some 333 CDRs!

650 MB CDR is obsolete for archival purposes. Even 4.3 GB DVD-R is too small. Only 25 GB BD-R still make sense.

Note: double-layer DVD-R and BD-R are very expensive. A 25-pack BD-R costs US$21.55 on Amazon. A 25-pack DL BD-R costs US$73!

Google Singapore

Google recently moved to Mapletree Business City II, occupying two entire blocks, and employs almost 1,000 people. It declined to disclose how many are engineers, though. (My guess: less than 50.)

The working environment is superb: extremely beautiful and comfortable office, free food, coffee and snack bars, free seating, flexible hours.

What's the catch?

Working in such a place sounds like a fantasy, especially to office workers who are chained to their desk, not everyone can adapt to such an environment. Without any rules in place, you need strong discipline and concrete goals to work effectively. It is extremely easy to get side-tracked. You might even forget you need to work! :lol:

My department offers extraordinary flexibility in time management. Some people just take advantage of it and has always contributed less than their "fair share". One thing many people overlook is that the amount of work remains the same. You just shift it around to fit your personal schedule.

Also, even with such superb environment and complete freedom, there is still one great source of stress: the annual work appraisal. I can foresee the Millennial generation dilly-dally the whole year (since they are big into work-life balance) and when it is time for the appraisal, it is like sitting for the final exam that they did not study for. Oops.

China's master stroke

After a tip-off from Chinese authorities, Hong Kong seized 9 Singapore armoured vehicles (Terrex Infantry Carrier Vehicle) en-route from Taiwan back to Singapore after overseas military training service, citing lack of proper documentation.

This is an International incident.

It later transpired that it is common for MINDEF (Ministry of Defense) to ship using commercial shipping services, and that it is usual to transit in HK. And in fact, the ship went to Xiamen first, where the vehicles were first detected.

So, why now?

That is obvious, given Singapore's recent stance on South China Seas and the regional China-driven trade pacts.

In one fell swoop, China has dealt with Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

It demonstrated control over Hong Kong, embarassed Singapore and has asked Singapore to re-affirm its One-China policy, which will strain Singapore-Taiwan's relation and further isolate Taiwan.

Singapore is really in a catch-22.

China is asserting itself in the region. It is good towards the countries that are friendly to it. For those that oppose (basically just Singapore), it will show who's the new boss in town.

There are some comments online that PAP is getting a dose of their own medicine. They regularly use bullying tactics on the (weak) opposition. And now the tables are turned on them.

Still under attack!

My server continues to be under constant attack since a year ago... while I do nothing about it. (It has been under attack since day one. I only knew how bad it was last year.)

I'm generally not that worried about the high numbers because most of them are root, and that is denied over Internet.

In any case, I finally decided to put in a simple defense mechanism.

Rate limit

The first thing to do is to rate-limit SSH attempts. I'm surprised this is not done by default. Some zombies hit-and-run, others try at a rate of 20+ per minute. This limits to 4 SSH connections per IP address per minute:

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth0 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set
iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth0 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 -j DROP

SSH allows 3 tries per connection, so the max rate is now 12 every two minutes.

Auto-blocking

The next step is to block top offending IP addresses. The basic command is simple:

iptables -I INPUT -s $ip_addr -j DROP

But it needs to be automated. I wrote a few scripts that:

• count IP addresses that failed to login in a 10-min window
• block IP addresses that exceed a preset threshold (e.g. 30 failed attempts in the past one day, 60 in the past 3 days)
• count number of attempts from blocked IP addresses in a 10-min window (track active attackers)

This is still in beta, but it looks like it is working well. The nice thing about it is that it is self-adapting. Even after a power cycle and I don't reload the blocked list, it will fill up on its own again. :thumbsup:

War on cash

India banned 500 and 1,000 rupee notes as of 8 November — with immediate effect. Given that 1,000 rupee is only US$15, there is a lot of such notes out there. A BBC news report says these two notes account for ~85% of the cash in circulation.

This is a big reset, and is almost akin to cash confiscation. You still have all your money, just not in cash form. You need to deposit all your cash, and then you can only withdraw up to 20,000 rupees per week.

India is still very much a cash economy. And people avoid taxes by making their transactions in cash. And in one fell swoop, all that money is rendered worthless.

This is a lesson.

We cannot keep all our money in the bank because they can "bail-in". Yet, we cannot keep all cash because they are only as good as the Government says so.

We need something that has intrinsic value... or rather, something that has universally recognized value...

Or better: diversify.

But that doesn't solve the day-to-day operations. You can have millions of rupees in the bank (one million = US$14,802), but what good are they in a cash-based economy and you only have 4,000 rupees in cash? You are effectively a pauper.

The people strike back

This has been an interesting year: Duterte (of Philippines), Brexit and now Trump.

It is elites vs non-elites.

Mr Trump Goes To Washington

Build the Wall.

Rule of the Law.

Drain the swamp.

Victory is just the beginning.

The journey ends

Make America Great Again!

Will justice trump?

HDD SMART data

^* infplus1 is an internal drive, but I use it with a trayless hot-swap mobile rack.

From April 2014:

Note that I have named my drives, with the exception of the primary drive. :lol:

A few stats stand out:

• How come my primary drive's power-cycle value is so high? ^*
• data2 is now on 24/7
• Transporter has been left on for pretty long

^* It probably happened when my previous m/b spoiled and entered an endless reboot cycle.

Amazon is coming to Singapore!

It was reported last week that Amazon is coming to Singapore in Q1 2017! Good news?

Maybe not. First, it is probably Prime delivery service and groceries, at least initially.

Second, judging by other country-specific Amazons, the prices will probably be localized as well, meaning they will be more expensive compared to the US price.

And lastly, free shipping from US (above US$125) will probably be discontinued. :cry:

However, it is undeniably another nail into the lackluster retail scene.

File server disk allocation 2016

Slight tweaks to my home file server disk allocation. I have used the current scheme for years, but there was very little headroom sometimes.

I came out with this new scheme in Feb 2015, but I have only resized the partitions on my live server now! It took over 10 hours to resize/move the home partition.

¹ Before reallocation.
² I now have 4 GB RAM, but I didn't resize this since I don't hibernate my PC.

All partitions are made slightly bigger. The biggest change is to split /home and /data.

Note: I have not split /home and /data yet.

This scheme is designed to be used with a 128 GB SSD for the OS/apps and a large spinning HD for data.

Overdue retirement

These sets are scheduled for retirement:

When will these sets actually retire? IMO, the Retiring Soon label means there are no more production runs, so it depends how quickly the sets sell out.

Ideas sets only have a shelf-life of only one year, with the exception of Ecto-1, to accompany GBHQ.

I was of the opinion that Pet Shop, SOH and Ewok Village would never retire. :lol:

I still believe that TLG has changed its retirement strategy. In the past, most sets have a strict 2-year lifespan. Now, for the large sets, it depends on the sales and have a yearly or bi-yearly renewal option.

It will be interesting to see the prices on the secondary market. Some of these sets would have been "sure winners" in the past, hence were heavily hoarded.

The 10th Anniversary Modular Building

Assembly Square (#10255)

TLG has outdone themselves with this set, as the 10th Anniversary of Modular Building line. Highlights:

• Three 16x32 buildings for variety
• Fully loaded with shops¹
• Jam-packed with details
• Very creative building techniques
• Several new useful parts for MOC'ing
• Nod to previous Modular buildings
• Well-suited to be XL'ed using a second set

¹ Bakery, Florist's shop, Cafe, Music store, Photo studio, Dental office, Dance studio, AFOL apartment

There is a rumor that this is the Modular Building to end the series. While I like the line, I don't mind if it ends. My reasons:

• Fixed 16x32 or 32x32 layout with 8-stud sidewalk
• Shop-front format
• Facade is repetitive to build
• Layered "cake" modularity

Perhaps TLG will loosen some of the rules. It has come out with doll-houses such as the Haunted House, the Simpsons House and the GBHQ, which open up on the side and allow all levels to be played with at once.

How Trump should respond

Bring It On!

Last week, the mainstream media went wild with Trump's illegally leaked tax returns. The fact that he could avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years because he declared a $916 mil loss on his 1995 income tax returns.

You know, he lost a good sum of money to do so. And it is entirely legal. So, what's the problem?

And this week, everyone worked themselves into a frenzy because of Trump's lewd remarks, in a private conversation, a decade ago. He may be pretty crude, but any guy who criticize and denounce him is a hypocrite. They are the people I would stay away from.

You know it is damaging when Trump has to apologize. But after that, he said,

This is only the first week of October, it is going to get worse...

To the opponents of Mr Trump, I'll say, Bring It On!

Update: four days after the so-called tape scandal, it seems Mr Trump has done it again — there has been little to no fallout. He has survived the first attack. To all the Republicans who dropped him like a hot potato at the first opportunity — they thought he was done — I'll love to see their faces when they have to un-unendorse him.

It is in time of peril that you find out who are your true allies.

Lepin Modular Buildings, phase 2

After exhausting Lego's range of eleven Modular buildings in five months, Lepin now goes after MOCs! MOC (My Own Creation) are fan-designed sets.

The first set is twice as big as the usual Modulars at 4,616 pieces. The price is also doubled at RMB 440 (US$66) instead of the usual RMB 210.

The designer of this set released the instructions in 2013 and he has come out to say he is pissed off — he is a hard-core Lego fan and will not use non-Lego bricks at all. Needless to say, he is not involved in this.

The back of the box shows four buildings. Apparently they are quite well-known in the AFOL community — they were identified within a day:

• The L. Rivendell Museum of Natural History (2014; expired Lego Ideas 57773)
• LEGO Set MOC-1820 - Apple Square University (2012; instructions for sale)
• Lego International Hotel - Anastasia Astoria (2010)
• Barnes & Noble / Starbucks Store (2013; expired Lego CUUSOO 36775)

At least two of them were failed Lego Ideas submissions. They did not reach the required 10,000 votes — by far — for TLG to consider them. This makes me wonder just how commercially successful the Lepin sets will be.

While it is a shame that Lepin copies MOC designs, this offers a glimpse of the future of MOC: find a brick supplier and create your own sets. There is no need to depend on Lego anymore.

Lepin plays by different rules. There is no use whining. Sticking to self-imposed rules / limitations is to risk extinction.

A minor grail

Model Town House (#4954)

This is Lego's first Creator 3-in-1 house set, released in 2007. This is the one that started it all.

The early Creator house sets are meant to be pure display pieces. As such, they are bigger compared to current ones, with bare interior and no minifigs.

Its RRP was just US$70. Due to its rarity, its after-market price has been very high — over US$300 new.

As a rule, I refuse to buy from resellers. :lol:

However, I have decided to relax the rule a little: used, with or without box, and oh, the price must be reasonable (for some definition of "reasonable").

I like these early sets because they are from a simpler era and they do not use much advanced techniques. It is often possible to build the model from the box art alone — most of it anyway. It is a good challenge! :lol: