Chillies aid Sumatra jail break

Eighteen Indonesian prisoners broke out of jail using an unusual weapon - the chilli pepper.
Prisoners at Pematang Siantar jail in Sumatra mixed hot chillies with water in plastic bottles to spray at guards.

The fiery liquid temporarily blinded the guards, allowing prisoners to grab their keys and make the break for freedom.

Sixteen of the inmates had now been recaptured, a police official said, but two were still on the run.

The men were meant to be on their way to breakfast but instead stormed the prison gate, Detective Den Martin told the Associated Press news agency.

They were spraying the chilli water and shouting “attack, attack”, he said.

A prison warder, Harianaja, told the Jakarta Post newspaper that the guards could not fight back because they were outnumbered.

“The is the first time chilli has been used to get out of this penitentiary,” the daily quoted him as saying.

So why is it that Prison Break’s Michael Scofield and company took an entire Season One to break out? Because they’re not going to get caught and Prison Break is what you call an amazing TV series. The bottom line is: Prison Break rocks, and our Sumatra Chilli Boys don’t.

I ordered my Ubuntu CDs on the 24 July 2006, and although I had pretty much forgotten about them, I finally received my package today. It took just under a month for them to arrive in Hong Kong! I’m taking it for a spin now, so stay tuned for my “Ubuntu - First impressions” post, coming soon!

P.S. Don’t call me greedy - 7 of the ordered CDs are for my friends!

When I look at music equipment, it takes a lot for me to go “wow, that’s really amazing. I want it”. But when I saw this, I was super-impressed. You’ve just got to watch it. I can’t believe Rico Loop isn’t more famous. He was on fire and rocked the show! Not that I’m his standard, but the Boss RC-50 is probably the next thing I’m going to buy. If I ever manage to save up US$499.

Click here to view the video

Product Description
For those awaiting the arrival of a new industry-leading looper, the wait is finally over. Introducing the RC-50 — the most feature-laden Loop Station BOSS has ever built. It’s the best live looping tool ever built for that matter. Housed in a spacious seven-footswitch floor unit, the RC-50 lets you manipulate three stereo phrase tracks simultaneously, with each track supporting multiple overdubs. In other words, you can record phrase upon phrase, one by one, on each track, resulting in a monstrous stack!

Features
The new industry-leading looping tool for live performance!

7 footswitches for intuitive control; realtime control of playback speed

Play up to 3 stereo phrase tracks simultaneously, all synced to an internal or MIDI clock

Ultra-long recording time (up to 49 min., mono), 99 patches (3 master loops per patch)

Undo/Redo function for recording and overdubbing

Center-cancellation feature, “flat” amplifier simulation feature

Stereo input, dual stereo output, XLR phantom-powered mic input, stereo mini-jack Aux input (for recording from an MP3 players, etc.)

USB port for data/audio backup, import/export of loops as WAV files

Loop, Layer, Rock!
Ready to blow your audience away? With a single RC-50, a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, or vocalist can create a perfectly synced wall of sound live onstage. There are three simultaneous stereo phrase tracks on the RC-50, each with a dedicated footswitch. Each track can contain dozens of loops/phrases that you stack one by one, so you can imagine how massive your arrangements or solos can become!

In Sync
Whether used as a master or slave, the RC-50 can be connected and synced to a MIDI network. For bands that incorporate digital audio tracks, sequences, and/or video elements into their live gigs, sync is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. For scenarios such as these, the RC-50 can be locked to a master sequencer or clock source, ensuring that your loop performances are absolutely locked. Internally, the RC-50 offers Loop Quantize for easy loop recording, Loop Sync (which enables all phrases to start in sync), and Tempo Sync (which matches the tempo of multiple phrases during playback).

Rhythm Guide
To make recording as fun and inspiring as possible, the RC-50 provides a total of 379 play-along Rhythm Guide Patterns in a wide variety of time signatures. Why record to a stale click track when you can jam with rockin’ grooves instead?

Impressive I/O
The RC-50’s rear panel is well stocked with connectors, offering a true stereo input and output path, but that’s only the beginning. There are four ways to get audio into the RC-50: 1/4 in. Inst input (L, R/mono), XLR input with 48V phantom power (great for vocal mics), mini-jack aux input, and USB for importing WAV files from computers. Audio can be output via 1/4 in. main stereo outs (L, R/mono), plus 1/4 in. sub stereo outs (L, R/mono), headphone out, and USB for data/audio backup. MIDI in and out jacks are provided. Two 1/4 in. TRS inputs are also provided to accommodate an optional Expression pedal and footswitches; up to four footswitches can be used simultaneously.

Bonus Features
The RC-50 has plenty of other noteworthy features on offer, for example: Phrases can be played forward or backward. Phrases can be retriggered in “free time” or on a time-aligned grid. Errors can be corrected on the fly with the Undo/Redo switch.

Check out this video my fellow blog readers. A truck tips over and crushes a car, but the guy who’s driving the crushed car gets out and walks as if nothing actually happened. Amazing.

Who agrees?

Wednesday 16th August 2006. A wonderful day indeed. Hit off with a three-hour hike to a beach many would think did not exist in Hong Kong. From here, I spent some quality time with my lady.

Despite Christy applying several layers of sun cream on my body, I ended up being fried… With pretty much all of my body burnt red, including my hands. On the other hand, Christy’s perfectly (not) tanned body remained unharmed.

I wish I could post up many more high quality pictures, just to show the beauty of the beach; but the Internet has too many sick people, including those who take joy in making up “you spammed my website” stories.

Some highlights of the day:

– My cool drink cooling invention made from entirely beach-found equipment. Involved anchoring a bottle onto the seabed and allowing the water to cool it. Despite being an amazing invention, the blazing sun seemed to boil the water, and hence the drink and my body.
– Christy writing a big fat message in the sand for me
– Playing in the waves with Christy
– Releasing a substance known as urine into the sea
– Trying to do flips on flat ground but killign myself instead
– Christy appearing out of the water, with a hair-covered, ugly face
– Watching Christy hike for three hours through mountains wearing her $12,000 4-inch Prada Stilettos (Kidding)
– and many more.

Thanks for being my date and happy 10 months. As you would say, “you’re the best, dude!”.

P.S. Stitch can still kick Doraemon’s butt.

The most valuable part of my website is my domain name. Firstly, it’s super short – it stands at a bold 4 characters long. Secondly, it represents me – I am Timothy Wong. Thirdly, it took me a long time to get it. There’s probably a few more reasons why its so valuable to me, but I guess you now understand how Timothy Wong (I) might have a close emotional bond with timw.com. Alright, enough emotional talk and boasting.

Everyday I dig through around 100 emails, spread across several accounts (personal, business, etc.). Yesterday, one particular email caught my attention. It was sent through this website’s contact form and is as follows (names and emails censored for privacy reasons):

—– Original Message —–
From: ********@*******.com
To: *@timw.com
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2006 3:06 PM
Subject: Contact Form: Offer for domain www.timw.com

Dear Timothy Wong,

I am interested in acquiring your domain, [http://www.timw.com] for US$1000 (One Thousand US Dollars). I understand that you currently have a website under this domain name, but I strongly believe that my offer is sufficient in getting you set with another domain, as well as leaving you with quite a nice sum of cash.

Please let me know what you think ASAP. I am willing to negotiate for the domain in question.

Regards,
T***** W*********

I have sold about 6 domain names in my time, but I have never even considered selling timw.com. It doesn’t matter what price you throw at me, timw.com is not available. I’m going to sit on it until I die.

P.S. Please excuse my excessive use of ‘Timothy Wong’ in the first paragraph - I’m trying to increase my search engine ranking for the keyword “Timothy Wong”

This is my third update in less than 24-hours. I was going to save it, but couldn’s resist sharing.

Swiss-manufacturer VIPN has just confirmed the availability of Jaren Goh’s “Black Diamond” Smartphone. This Windows Mobile 5.0-powered handset features a 2-inch display, 400MHz XScale processor, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 128MB of internal memory, an SD memory card slot, and a touch-sensitive keypad. Production will be limited to just 5 units and each will cost a hefty US$300,000. It goes on sale next year.

The touch sensitive keypad is Chocolate-esque, completely disappearing when not lit, while SIP is thrown in to keep your GSM usage minimum when you’re in WiFi range

cPanel is great - its one of the many (or should I say few?) things I have a legitimate license for. They recently revamped their entire website, and I think the new site looks fantastic.

Old Website:

New Website:

I’m glad I quickly grabbed a screenshot of the old cPanel website, it’s now a piece of Internet history!

What do you guys think?

Vurta has been up for a while now, our datacenter is the core to our business. Without it, there would be no Vurta. Our servers power our business. Because of this, we have strict guidelines on how our systems are setup, managed, and kept. As always, safety is a priority too. Take a look:

Actually, the above pictures have nothing to do with Vurta. You’ll be glad to know that we’re located in the NAC datacenter; a much safer, trustable and reliable place. Let me repeat, the above pictures are not related to Vurta! So what does Vurta and its services sit on top of? Look below:

No actually’s. Vurta is serious.
Visit Vurta