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Thursday, July 9

AKXD is Moving!

Remember how I mentioned some posts back that I was planning to make the shift to wordpress? Under normal circumstances, I never would've gotten round to doing it anytime soon. Truth is, I was pretty apprehensive about the tediousness of everything, all the settings I have to re-tweak, all the links and widgets I have to reconfigure, and especially, the new 'about myself' paragraph I have to come up with to put under the 'About' page.

I was speaking to a particular acquaintance over Facebook PMs regarding my stormtrooper costume. He said to me,

Thanks for sharing your plans with me. I salute you for walking the talk as over here in , I've heard my fair share of youngsters older than you talk, talk, talk they want to be a Stormtrooper but at the end of the day did NOTHING.


It made me realize that the kind of people he was referring to reflected my usual character when it comes to blogging (and most other things for that matter, studying being a major example). I've kept making promises in my blog that I never fulfilled, like 'I'm gonna post about such and such next week', etc., yet that post never comes because I'd later say, "ah, too lazy. Ah, not worth it. Ah, busy lah."



Please don't say you are lazy, once sang a certain girl most of you should know. And I should learn to obey that, because that girl is worth obeying.

No, I'm kidding. I'm not that obsessed.

And so, there you have it. Instead of studying for my physics exam tomorrow, like how I intended to days ago, I spent a good part of the evening setting up my blog using an old Wordpress account which I created in a failed attempt to set up an animeblogger.net blog two years ago. I've tweaked most of the settings, put up a few pages, added all the widgets I needed, imported my old posts, and redid the blogroll. I just need to touch up on my sidebar profile, find good use for my arbitrary sidebar text box, get a new header image (and a nice blog logo while I'm at it), and secure me a domain name without the .wordpress part (will take a while). All in all, things seem to be going very nicely. The Gears program which works in conjunction with WP is a real Godsend, and also the fact that my WP account is also tied in with my Google account (which in turn is linked to my Feedburner and Blogger account), making importing old posts a cinch, and feed aggregation-altering as simple as changing a single URL.

Once the move is finalized, all homepage links on all consumer accounts I have (Facebook, Feedburner, last.fm, assorted forums) will link to akxd.com, and I will deactivate this blog. So please remember to update you blogrolls, kthx.

Consider this akxd.blogspot.com's second-last post. For more posts, stay tuned to the new site. AK signing off.

Monday, July 6

TK8315 in Active Deployment!


Credit: Keith E Moss

The no-post drought over the past weeks was due to my mid-year exams, which lasted a good part of last week, and will end this Thursday. I sit here typing this as I think to myself "I really ought to be studying for chemistry tomorrow".


Me and the respectable man I worked for over the June holidays, Reno Tan. Credit: Jason

My job commitment over the June holidays had prevented me from performing the bulk of my revi- No, it only took up my weekends. I was simply too lazy to study much in the weekda- No, I just didn't want to study. I tried to stay away from studying by doing housework, as though I do housework for a living. I simply dread revising, especially for physics, chemistry and mathematics, when I am forced to attempt questions which I have no idea to answer, or have the misconceptions to answer incorrectly. This needs to change, and fast.

Needless to say, my grades are gonna suffer. I don't need to see my results to know it. My parents are gonna be so pissed...


I'm not actually a lefty, but... Credit: Keith E Moss

Me and my badass sound system. :D Makes me sound just like a Stormie Credit: Rid Rahman

But that's besides the point. what I really want to talk about is my developments regarding the 501st Legion. After a month's worth of hard work (I shouldn't even consider it as 'hard work' since I enjoyed every session of it), I finally managed to raise a substantial amount to get done on my very first armour kit for entry into the 501st Legion, the standard and ever-popular Stormtrooper.

Over three seperate days, my fellow Legion members and I worked hand-in-hand to trim, Dremel, file, velcro, screw and paste bits of vacuum-formed ABS plastic together to get the armour into a wearable state.


After an armour-building session, it's nice to chill out and relax in a jacuzzi pool. Credit: Picture, Pool: keith E Moss

TK8316 is happy at my joining him in the legion. Credit: Rid Rahman

The photos were sent in, the application was approved, and I went home from the armour party at 12 midnight that day as the Legion's newest member, TK8315, with the Stormtrooper ID that comes just before TK8316.


Can't find me. Credit: Jason

But I'm quite easy to spot here. Credit: Brian Benitez

The very next day marked my official maiden trooping event (my unofficial one being the St. Pat's Day Parade), Toy Carnival at the Singapore Art Museum. Having put on costumes numerous times for Movie Mania, and doing minding work for my fellow troopers during previous trooping events, I had modified my armour to be more easily wearable, and dressing up as a Stormtrooper all by myself was like putting on a new set of clothes. I clocked a timing of 5 minutes, exceptional for a raw 501st recruit (I'm cheating D:). The plan for the day was basically traipsing around, 'droid hunting', posing for pictures, posing with civilians for pictures, and posing for funny pictures.


Guess which?

The 'Heaven and Hell' stance from Grenado Espada. Credits: Picture: Brian Benitez, Lightsaber: Olivine Lin

Trooping aside, the Toy Carnival was also where i made a very unexpected purchase. There were only 5 boxes when I first spotted the both while in armour, 3 when I returned during my lunch break to secure mine, and none left 15 minutes later. After all, Figma Yuki was Max Factory's very first Figma product, released around this time last year IIRC, so I should think finding her would be very difficult. The best part was that she was on sale at nearly a 40% discount. A most worthy buy. I chose her over the other models available like Mikuru (waitress ver., cheerleader ver.), Haruhi (ponytail ver., cheerleader ver.) and waitress ver. Tsuruya, since she would complete my mini collection of the humanoid interface characters in the Suzumiya Haruhi series.


The photographer. Credit: Rid Rahman

The photograph. Credit: Camera: Demonick Angel

The girls are very pleased.

Two more points of note that day:

1. One half-inactive member in the Singapore garrison lives in the same apartment block as me, on the same floor, two doors down from me. He has 3 Clone Trooper costumes, and the CT was my very first costuming objective when I joined the 501st community as a volunteer (before I had to settle for the regular TK due to time and monetary constraints). I can hopefully get tips on how I shall get about doing my own Clone Trooper in future, and maybe even hitch rides in his car if we're ever going to trooping events together, as he suggested. Very nice man indeed. It was kind of embarrassing that he recognized me when I didn't. I guess, I haven't been maintaining close relations with neighbours after my under-10 childhood days, and also, because my door is just beside the lift landing, I rarely walk down the common corridor past their gates, so I don't make any acquaintances through passing compliments and casual exchanges, etc.

2. An acquaintance of mine, this very pretty girl who was at that event, commented to a friend that I looked cute in my stormtrooper armour, as he related to me later on (he even ventured as far as to tell her that I was still a virgin @_@). If anything, that was a big morale boost for me, and it made me feel great the whole day, knowing that people have good opinions of my looks. I don't normally receive compliments like that, call me deprived of whatever, but I was still very happy about it all the same. I can't wait for my next opportunity of meeting her, when I can say, "you look very pretty too". Ah, whatever.


Dual-wielding trooper. Credit: Keith E Moss

For now, TK8315 signing off. Next stop, the trip to Batam, then Cosfest 2009. See you then.