About Gabriel's Homepage and Balderdash:
Gabriel's Homepage first started in 1996 or 1997, when I had it hosted on Singnet, leading Melvin to proclaim that my father's name was "Camel Seah".
After it was taken down (since it was the corporate Singnet account it was hosted on), I had no home on the web till 1998, when I set up an account at Geocities (http://www.geocities.com/gssq/ - still used as a redirect URL today). During this period, the page began to take its present form, and most of the content dates from (or at least was begun on) then, including the (In)Famous "Improve Your English" page showcasing Bad English.
When Geocities decided to be a prick and imposed bandwith restrictions, I moved to Tripod (http://gssq.tripod.com/), where my site resided happily till one day in January 2002, when my site suddenly got pulled due to unspecified reasons (more than a year later, Lin Yucheng confessed that he had complained to Tripod about the unflattering page dedicated to him).
I then moved to Web1000 (http://gssq.web1000.com/, later http://gah.web1000.com/), which was recommended by my BMT platoon mate due to its providing of 50MB of space Ad-Free. And there it stayed, until I realised that Google (and probably many other search engines) had blacklisted Web1000 because it allowed Adult Content.
After much procrastination, I moved to http://sky.prohosting.com/gssq/ in the process paring some material and using a new layout, commissioned for $15 from someone. At first, it was excellent, offering me 50MB of server space and 5gb of bandwith a month for a one-time setup fee of US$9.95 (or thereabouts). However, they sneakily reduced the bandwith without telling me, and decided to start restricting the file types and sizes allowed, so once again it was time to move.
Johnny Malkavian then came to my rescue, providing me with hosting at the current URL: http://gssq.entryplug.org/. This is my seventh, and hopefully final, URL.
Over the years, Gabriel's Homepage has retained its unimaginative name and emphasis on content instead of attractiveness, something sorely lacking in today's (or indeed yesterday's) web.
Balderdash was started in August 2001, after I'd resisted the WebLog phenomenon for a long time, not wishing to descend into the angst, mindlessness and self-indulgent breast beating that seemed to me to gush forth from the panoply of blogs that were in existence, even then. Looking back now, I cannot say that I have totally evaded these traps, but I am reasonably satisfied with how Balderdash has turned out.
On Balderdash all manner of material
is posted - anything that looks reasonably interesting, be it my regular
rants and accounts of life as a Slave (Conscript Soldier) Student
in the Premier Institution of Social Engineering (NUS),
links to weird sites or just plain bo-liao material. Occasional contributors
put
in an appearance
from time to time, but usually I'm the one left manning the fort.
Believing in freedom of speech, I do my utmost not to censor material, though naturally some stuff is left unsaid, destined for the dank confines of my private diary, due in no small part to the amount of trouble I've gotten in over the years due to my escapades, offline or otherwise.
About Me:
It seems that vague, angsty and pretentious self-introductions on "About Me" pages (though, god forbid, they'd never be called that!) have always been in vogue and are in no danger of going out of fashion. Naturally, being the square, unhip dude that I am, I will not opt for that manner of self-introduction.
At the same time, after all has been said and done, what is there to say, really? Ho hum. Thus will follow some
Totally uninspired words about myself:
Gabriel is currently an undergraduate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore's Premier Institution of Social Engineering, having no money to seek greener pastures and lacking both the desire and ability to sell his soul. Prior to that, he was a slave in the Singapore Armed Forces. In previous years, he was a quirky student of Nanyang Primary School (NYPS) and the Raffles line of schools, and reviled where e'er he went.
Unlike most of his generation, he is decidedly out of the groove as he doesn't listen to modern music. He is even a teetotaler who has not tasted the alcohol that he's liked, which puts him squarely into a minority which is perhaps even smaller in number than the hermaphrodites. He is interested, but not necessarily knowledgeable, in a myriad of things, but not sports, (modern) music or fashion. He is also annoyed by SACSALs.
Of late, his eccentric streaks have lessened, but still manage to glimmer through on occasion. At the same time, he has been considerably less dilligent in updating this, his homepage, instead slackening and diverting his attention to his blog, which is considerably easier to update and requires less writing discipline, which is probably a bad thing.
You may also want to find out more about the select group of 5 people who are My Idols, see the quizzes I've taken, or find out Why I Dislike Modern Music.
Hopefully inspiration will strike again on a subsequent occasion. But until then, if you want to bore yourself, you can always read my overly verbose, awkwardly written and confusing old "About Me" page and various pages it links to, my special Tribute to Nanyang Primary School or the page dedicated to My Idols or Why I Dislike Modern Music.