barghers.com

No, this is not an entry about the Survivor Rap from Phua Chu Kang. This is an entry about my new Corsair Survivor (non-GT) 8GB USB flash drive that just arrived less than 3 hours ago. I’ve been waiting for this baby to arrive for almost an entire week, and naturally I’m excited.

If you’re wondering about what got me so excited, for one, it’s the price – I paid about RM 250 or £39 for my Survivor. Now, why on Earth would someone in their sane mind purchase something that costs more than 2.5x of any other fully-functional, albeit ordinary USB stick which can be purchased for less than RM 100?

Lo and behold the world’s most rugged USB flash drive:

The Survivor is encased in CNC-milled, anodized aircraft-grade aluminum, which provides the foundation for its extreme ruggedness. Needless to say, it is both shock resistant and water resistant up to 200 meters. Revealing the contents of the package, we have a Corsair dog tag and a USB extension cable along with the Survivor itself.

To use the Survivor requires one to unscrew one side of the casing. I cannot help to notice that Survivor is indeed built to precision as everytime I screw the cap back, it always ends up at the same spot.

There are tonnes of glorious reviews on the ruggedness of Survivor available on the Internet, most of it done by professional reviewers and thus, I shall skip the ruggedness test. For your convenience, I have provided links below to those reviews so that you can view them at your pleasure. Instead, I shall just mention in brief about the survivor instincts of Survivor:

• It survived the pressure test of being run over multiple times by a 2 tonne four-wheel drive.
• It passed the crucial washing machine and dryer test
• It still works perfectly after staying inside a cube of ice in the freezer for more than 12 hour
• It refuses to be cooked by boiling water

Although I skipped the ruggedness test, I did do a speed test to see the real world performance of Survivor. After all, what use does it do if it function like a giant tortoise when plugged into the USB port? Armed with a stopwatch, I conducted 3 tests:

1. Copying many MP3 files (total size 1.03 GB, average MP3 file of size 4 MB) from my computer to Survivor took 196 seconds – An average write speed of 5.38 MB/s
2. Copying one large AVI file (size 700 MB) into Survivor took 89 seconds – An average write speed of 7.87 MB/s
3. Copying one large AVI file (size 700 MB) from the Survivor into my laptop took 39 seconds – An average read speed of 17.94 MB/s

I don’t really have a yardstick to measure as this is the only flash drive that I have at the moment, but do feel free to test the speed of your flash drive and post comments below.

Official Site: Corsair Memory – Survivor

Reviews: Everything USB, Phoronix

Comparison Reviews: Core Computers, Driver Heaven

Some of the reviews above are for the Survivor GT version, which is a faster version of Survivor. However, mine is a non-GT version (GT version costs more than twice of the non-GTs, can’t afford them) and thus, the speed review is not a description of the Survivor that I currently own. Nevertheless, the ruggedness and everything else are the same for both editions.

As a final note, I’ve read Corsair’s support forum and they seems to have a great support for their product range. Did I mention that the Survivor comes with a 10-year warranty? This means that if there are problems with your Survivor even after using it for 2 years, they will replace them for free.

Hey my dearest barghers,

First of all, I do apologise for my late post regarding what’s going on with my life here. Sorry that I didnt get to keep in touch much as lots were going on with me here.

One of the main events that took place last few weeks were a theatre of my production in the University of Melbourne, Chinese Theatre Group. In this production, I play one of the minor casting roles and as the Production Manager as well. I think some of you has already know about this. Well, the whole production was an excellent experience and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself !

I will talk more about my casting role, which i think is more interesting ~ In Act1, Scene2 I played as the main cast’s ‘mother’(see below) . I wear this really detailed red dress (we have colours representation for each casts) all made by our student costume designers.

Here, I was talking to my son while patting my new-born baby daughter, I was supposedly a gentle mom yet strict in some ways of talking to my children. hehehe..me gentle ? Oh btw, the play is in Cantonese…yea. me speaking canto ? i get that alot..

Coming up after this photo s a pic of my ‘son’ and I. She is a female acting as a male cast in this production.

If you see clearly, the make-up on my face are only strictly for theatre make-up. The kits they were using in the make-up were really serious stuffs that gives you pimples right after the next day! ( From left, Evelyn (stage Manager), myself and Nok (the main cast, Yat Hang)).

I am sure some of you will be wondering how the stories go in this theare show. Well as I said just now, I have a newly born baby daughter. Next scene after the above scene, was a fire incident that was deliberately caused by another family to kidnap my daughter away! Hence, I died in the fire, my husband became blind and as a consequence of immediate lost of family love, Yat Hang became mentally distressed. He thought that due to his lack of attention to his father’s clothes business, everyone just went away. Also, he still thinks that his mother is around (there was a manequin in a torn red dress that he thinks is his mother).

Basically, the show goes on about the boy went psycho and killing people using their blood to make dyes for his clothes. Then during the course of the show, we see another family’s tribulation of discovering that their daughter was not their biological. This then led the son (below is a pic of him) to approach their parents to ask his non-biological sister to marry him ( he had been very possessive of his sister) !

just before I go off, this is our casts group photo (Patrick is in too~ ) hehehe..

to be continue…..

Goodness sake. I really cannot believe my eyes when I discovered that not all bloggers are geeks. Ok, let’s begin from the start. Back in 2003/2004 when Tai Leong was fooling around with blogs, I knew believe that ALL blogger are either geeks, nerds, or socially retarded people who looks like this:

They are either those who really love computers, have too much free time in their hands or have a vendetta against their ex-girlfriends. Back then, bloggers = guys. Not just regular guys, mind you, but those are guys who are socially inept.

My surprise began when I read a post on KennySia.com about Malaysian Dreamgirl (MDG), and naturally, being The Great Pervert, I decided to look it up. And boy, I am in for a surprise. Those girls that are in the Top 12 are hot girls, and guess what, at least 2 of them are bloggers. One of them is even the winner of the MDG contest. Here’s a picture of them:

Seriously, check them out! No more is blogging exclusively the realm of society’s rejects. It’s an open market where flocks of folks who, for myriad reasons, want to share things with the general public.

I guess my computing and Internet knowledge is still very much trapped in the wormhole of year 2003; how naive of me. I think it’s a sign that I’m beginning to lose touch with the forefront of technological fads, which I think could be good! It means that I’m no more a mere teenage brat, and I’m moving onto the adult world. Adults are naturally a bit slower in their adoption of newer things, as we know, so it’s only natural that I’m slower in knowing about this, right?

But I really think I should do more reading. Otherwise, I’ll really lag behind. I guess it’s high time to upgrade my brain from Pentium 3 to the latest Pentium 6. Or is it Pentium 5 now?

Ah Beng bought a new mobile.
He sent a message to everyone from his Phone Book & said, “My mobile no. has changed. Earlier it was Nokia 3310. Now it is 6610.”

Ah Beng: I am a proud, coz my son is in Medical College.
Friend: Really, what is he studying?
Ah Beng: No, he is not studying, they are studying him.

Ah Beng: Doctor, in my dreams, I play football every night.
Doctor: Take this tablet, you will be ok.
Ah Beng: Can I take tomorrow? Tonight is final game.

Ah Beng: If I die, will u remarry?
Wife: No! I’ll stay with my sister. But if I die will u remarry?
Ah Beng: No, I’ll also stay with your sister.

Ah Beng: People consider me as a ‘GOD’.
Wife: How do you know?
Ah Beng: When I went to the park today, everybody said, “Oh GOD! You have come again.”

Ah Beng complained to a police: “Sir, all items are missing, except the TV in my house.”
Police: “How come the thief did not take your TV?”
Ah Beng: “I was watching TV news…”

Ah Beng came back 2 his car & found a note saying “Parking Fine”.
He wrote a note and stuck it to a pole, saying ”Thanks for complement.”

How do you recognize an Ah Beng in school?
He is the one who erases the notes from the book when the teacher erases the board.

Once, an Ah Beng was walking. He had a glove on one hand and not on other.
A man asked him why he did so.
He replied that the weather forecast announced that on one hand it would be cold and on the other hand it would be hot.

Ah Beng is in a bar when his cellular phone rings.
He picks it up and says “Hello, how did you know I was here?”

Ah Beng: Why are all these people running?
Man: This is a race, the winner will get the cup.
Ah Beng: If only the winner will get the cup, why are others running?

Teacher: “I killed a person.” Convert this sentence into future tense.
Ah Beng: The future tense is “You will go to jail”.

Ah Beng told his servant: “Go and water the plants!”
Servant: “It’s already raining.”
Ah Beng: “So what? Take an umbrella and go.”

A man asked Ah Beng why Ahmad Badawi goes walking in the evening and not in the morning.
Ah Beng replied ”Ahmad Badawi is PM not AM.”

* The contents of this post are fully based on a forwarded mail from Shar Ren, titled “Ah Beng (Latest Version)” *