My new kuda kerja (that's work horse to BM illiterate)!!

Been 2 weeks since my last post and it has been busy every weekend. My cousin and aunt from down under is back in KL for a month and staying at the Mandarin Oriental KLCC so weekends have been spent over there. Its good to take advantage of free hotel parking to go shopping and sightseeing in KLCC area although it is packed with tourists. I've been there so often now, I can probably drive there and back blindfolded through all the back roads and guest entrances ... hee hee. I still prefer shopping in 1U and Sunway in comparison though.

This pic was taken - believe it or not - whilst I was in the car (not driving ler ... waiting for the traffic lights). Its a nice shot considering the fact that it was taken using a compact digicam sans pro settings. Note to those interested : best place to take the profile of the Petronas Twin Towers is across the road at the British Council building. Anywhere else and you'd get a lot of obstructions in your pic or the incomplete building. Too bad it was a cloudy day though ... I have other pics at different angles but I kinda liked this one with the tree in the pic.


This is my cousin Chloe. She's three years old, full of energy and also nonsense. Her likes are Disney channel, Pocoyo, Angelina Ballerina, chocolate ice cream and balloons for now.



Last week was spent at the PC Fair 2008. I finally gave in an bought a new Acer Aspire desktop computer to replace my old faithful (which I've been using for the past 10 years). The offer was too good to resist as it had everything I wanted/needed for a price that was bearable. Throw in freebies and I was sold with total wallet damages for CPU and monitor at RM3697.

Meet my new "Alan Wake"-ready baby ...


My new workstation specs:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz CPU (four cores!!)
  
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz memory (satisfies Vista happily)
  
• 500GB SATA NCQ harddrive (roomy yet silent ... thankfully)
  
• nVidia GeForce 8600GS graphics with 512MB dedicated memory (hmm ... thats the same amount of OS memory in my old PC)
  
• 20× DVD writer (so tempted to get a bluray drive but a RM1900 price tag is really prohibitive)
  
• 7.1 HD Audio
  
• Hauppauge HVR1200 hybrid analogue/digital TV/radio tuner with hardware MPEG1/2 capture (I loved their PVR-350 series but this is even better!!)
  
• Wireless RF keyboard/mouse and MCE remote control
  
• 9 USB ports and 2 IEEE1394/firewire ports
  
• 10/100/1000Mb Ethernet
  
• 5 monitor/TV outputs (yeah ... overkill I know)
  
• Built-in 15-in-one card reader
  
• Dell 19" wide flat panel LCD monitor with independent switchable analog/DVI inputs (and extended 5 years 1-to-1 warranty)
  
• Edifier 2.1 speakers (to be replaced with a 6.1 set coming soon!)
  
• Microsoft Vista premium (also have my own valid license for Vista Business!!)
  
• Dlink 802.11N wireless router + 802.11N USB adapter (freebies worth RM500++!!)
  

What I like about this workstation is the inclusion of a hardware based capture card cum TV tuner. It is also digital TV ready so its relatively future proof in terms of TV reception. Additionally it also has a card reader for camera transfers. Bad points : wireless mice and keyboards. Although handy and reduces cable mess, it requires batteries to run and there's a small lag between action and response. I also have to get to grips with the changes in Vista.

The old PC is now delegated to the living room as a secondary PC and connects to the Internet wirelessly (the free bundled 802.11N hardware really came in handy here ... lucky huh?!). It still has plenty of kick and I did nearly all of my media work on it - every single Feseni video disc to date was authored/burned using that PC. All past UMSO/choir scores were also arranged/transcribed using that PC. My old PC specs for comparison:

• Intel PIII 600E CPU overclocked to 720MHz (ahh ... the good old megahertz days)
  
• 512MB PC100/133 SDRAM (mostly taken from older thrown away PCs ... I still have 5 sticks to spare)
  
• Asus nVidia TNT2 graphics with 32MB SGRAM (no one uses SGRAM anymore do they?)
  
• Dual Soundblaster Live! value soundcards (first and second generation ... also have another as spare from a discarded spoilt Dell PC)
  
• 120GB ATA harddisk
  
• 17" CRT monitor
  
• 18× DVD writer and 16×DVD-ROM (both region free!!)
  
• Internal hardware modem (extremely rare version)
  
• Cambridge Soundworks 2.1 speakers (these are amazing and sound much better than any Altec Lansing set I've heard before)
  
• Dlink 10/100Mb Ethernet

It still holds up pretty well and runs comfortably with XP SP3 and will even manage Max Payne at 1024×768 resolution (which reminds me I still have to finish that game)

What remains now is to manage the cable hell on two PCs and also the transfer to 100GBs of data from one PC to the other ... that's another 2 weeks of work *sheesh*. For now its back to another session with Grim Fandango Year 2!!

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Retro gaming at its best!!

I've been feeling all nostalgic ever since I got my new copies of two classic Lucasarts games - Sam & Max Hit the Road and Grim Fandango. Both are from a dying genre known as adventure gaming which unfortunately has since lost its charm to 3-D shooters and MMORPG. Don't get me wrong, I love a good 3D shooter but have a soft spot for adventure games that need more thinking and less trigger happy mouse action.


I remember playing S&M back when I was in Form 2 or 3 when it came on 7 floppy disks and ran in DOS (ahhh ... configuring EMM and XMM memory just to start programs). It was one of the larger games to be released because of its increased resolution and full colour graphics which was unheard of way back then. Heck! Windows only came on 6 diskettes so you can see what a big deal it was.

I saw this exact game in a Times warehouse sale last year and it was actually the original box set release. It was complete (with manuals and quickcard), pretty battered and not torn but it was only the diskette version. I was soooooo tempted since it was only RM5, but in the end I didn't get it 'cos of the risk of faulty diskettes (and also the fact that I don't have a working floppy drive -hee hee)

The version I now have is a 2007 re-release of the game for modern platforms and even runs in Vista and XP. Even better is that it is the enhanced CD talkie version in which all characters now have spoken dialog AND comes with the soundtrack to the game (woo hoo!!).


I've never played Grim Fandango before but I've heard various comments about the game. It was probably one of the two games that Lucasarts released in the adventure game genre in 3D. The entire game is played with either the keyboard or a joypad in comparison with S&M which is played with the mouse. It still has a pretty big fan base and just had a write-up as recently as 3 days ago in The Escapist!! (view article here) So it seems that a lot of my time is now going to be devoted to retro gaming and reminiscing of DOS days.


Final damages from 2 games purchases = RM70 inclusive shipping.

Oh well, they add to my collection anyways. I'm only looking for 3 more

• Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis
• Day of the Tentacle
• Monkey Island 4 : Escape from Monkey Island.

Other Lucasarts games I currently possess

• Monkey Island 1 : Secret of Monkey Island
• Monkey Island 2 : Le Chuck's Revenge
• Monkey Island 3 : The Curse of Monkey Island
• The Dig
• Full Throttle

As Max so eloquently puts it "I may weep openly"
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清明节 - All souls day prayers

Its been roughly 2 weeks since my last post but not much to update on anyways. Today took a drive back to my dad's hometown in Sungkai, Perak for the Qīngmíng festival. Starting the journey at 11.54am, we managed to reach at 1pm and being the first ones there (again) we had to wait for the other relatives before proceeding to the cemetary for prayers.

We decided to take a walk around the town to pass the time. Mum bought an cast iron griddle- the ones used to make Indian tosai and chapatis - to replace the one she gave away to a friend. According to that friend, the ones she bought were very good in quality. It was smooth, polished with an almost non-stick like quality ... in comparison, hers (bought in KL) was rough and really heavy even after 2 years of constant use and polishing. A bargain really 'cos it costs less than RM20. Anyways, it was interesting to see those quaint shophouses and whatever they sold - the Dishy Mickey Mouse dolls and Queksilver bags were an interesting find.

We only made it to the cemetary for prayers at 3pm once everyone had arrived but then the rain began to pour heavily. Luckily for us it only lasted 15 mins and cleared enough for us to finish the prayers. No pics of the day though, 'cos I didn't bring a camera plus I didn't want to offend anyone who might have been pantang about capturing images in a cemetary ... who knows, might have photographed a spirit :)

After that, it was a quick (late) lunch before making our way back home in the heavy rain, reaching KL only at 7pm. I'm now tired and worn out with neckache ... need sleep ... will post more soon ... zzzzzz

730 done ... next up, paper 731

FINALLY took the certification for the db 2 fundamentals paper today after such a long delay (supposedly there were some issues with the changeover to Prometrics as their certification provider and also the schedules of staff here). I passed with moderately bright colours (not 'flying' ler...) with 73.4% which I consider OK for a weekends' worth of studying. The paper wasn't hard, just really confusing, especially the questions about SQL of which I bombed quite badly; scoring 4/7 only. There were literally subnested-subnested-subnested-nested queries which really got me so riled up until I just tembak a few of them.

What did I learn out of all of this? Well ...

• No two books and/or web sources actually say the same thing. At times, reading one book will contradict the contents of the other. This is true even for references such as the IBM tutorials and IBM DB2 help center. Its just plain wierd.
• Many people attempting this test would probably have located and downloaded the e-book version of the book "DB2 9 Fundamentals Certification Study Guide" by Roger E. Sanders. Word to the wise, buy the original to study else take everything you read in this pirated copy with a large pinch of salt. There are many mistakes in the book but the sample questions and paper do help you to gauge how much you need to know about each chapter. Those looking for this e-book can probably try here
• There are 7 chapters in the IBM tutorials but only 6 are covered in the exam. Mistake or a lucky break for exam takers? No such luck unfortunately because chapter 7 covering XML using Xquery and XML extenders is actually listed under the SQL chapter. I think I got 6 questions using XML extenders/Xquery.
• Can't find a DB2 9 reference book? Use a DB2 8 one for the majority of the text since the same SQL concepts still apply. Then just use chapters 1 and 7 to cover the changes in the latest version. I got a copy of SAMs Teach Yourself DB2 UDB for RM10 only ... a bargain really since the original price was RM179.00!!

There were a few people seated in front of me during the exam who failed the paper. This makes me wonder whether it was because they did not study or did not read the questions carefully. My second round of checking revealed so many blunders which I missed out during the first round. which brings me to the last point

• Always read the questions and answers multiple times.

Now that thats done, its off for the next paper in June - DBAM 731 for Linux/Windows. Ughs

P/S: Turns out I have a paper published in the MJCS journal vol 20 and I didn't even know about it ... go figure. Hee hee hee

UKM-UM Choir get together was tiring ... but fun !!

After many discussions and meetings, finally the teams from UM and UKM/Artisukma got together for an informal session cum concert at the UKM campus on March 9th. There were gossip and discussions on the previous days' elections (of which BN suffered major losses) but that wasn't the main agenda of the day.

After a period of pemecahan air batu, we had an intimate session to get to know each other. Mainly, things are very much different in UKM as they (the choir there) do not face the same stress as the kolej choir do for the Feseni competitions in UM. Instead they are stressed out over events such as the convocation ceremony (which I fully understand after going through it twice in UMSO ... tiring + boring = no fun). They also suffer the same problems of attendance and discipline as we do ... small world isn't it?

But best conclusion, every member there is also is definitely gila 'cos the SS habit runs wild there too :D

If only they saw the reminders we stick in our practise rooms (i.e. "Don't SS"). Anyways, here are more pics from the event.










There are better (and more) pics on other this blog -> the Cross-Junction
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Voting fever!!!

Everywhere its voting, voting, and more voting. There's the US Presidential elections, the Malaysian General Elections, American Idol selections and UK elections. First things first, US Presidential elections which are of no major concern to me ... too lazy to read up on the voting rights, details, constitutions etc (unlike my cousin 'cos its part of her ADP core subjects, hee hee hee). What I do like however is seeing how people make fun of these elections. MadTV (of which I was and still am a big fan of) had a hilarious sketch that parodied Hilary Clinton and Obama with the song Umbrella (Under-ba-rack-O-ba-ma, ba-ma, ba-ma hey hey hey).

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Next up are the American Idol competitions. This week the guys were once again stronger than the girls in my opinion. The one Idol that got my vote this week was David Cook with his rendition of Lionel Ritchie's classic 'Hello' in rock ballad style ... top marks for reinventing the song and giving it a new edge. Who'd have thought that such a slow ballad could work so well with a nasty bass line with electric guitars and drums. In one word ... cool. You can view that video clip here

Looking back, I realised how much I love remakes and rearrangements of classic songs such as

• Blake Lewis and his own beat-boxing style to Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name.
• Baz Luhrman remixing and fusing various songs in Moulin Rouge.
• Whitney Houston and Brandy with Rodger & Hammerstein's classic Cinderella in the Disney TV remake.
• Paul Oakenfold's remix of Elvis' Rubberneckin
• Jay Z and Linkin Park's Numb Encore
• THe OST to Alvin & the Chipmunks with their takes on Daniel Powter's Bad Day and their own classic Witch Doctor (so cute)
• Marié Digby's Umbrella ... 'ella ... 'ella

But then there are the bad ones too

• Britney's retake on I love rock & roll was a poor copy of Joan Jett's version
• Meatloaf's horrendous Its all coming back to me now
• MSP's Umbrella

Anyways, to sum it up ... I love the concept of remixing and rearranging a song to make it fresh. Those familar with my arrangements will notice this very obviously in my scores. Its always great to have that surprise factor running alongside familiarity of a song.

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Moving on, the Malaysian general elections. What can I say about this ... I'm neither pro or against any party though I do have some opinions on what the candidates are talking about. I won't voice them out here though as they are my own thoughts and I don't intend this to be a political blog. With two days to go, things are still pretty low-key except for a few issues such as the last minute decision of not using indelible ink to mark voters thus resulting in the EC chief's property being vandalised.

The banners, flags and colours have been flying everywhere for the past two weeks but I'm estimating the bulk of it represents the BN party. Not only content with on road advertising, they have TV ads, online ads and emails coming in ... sheesh talk about mass campaigning efforts. It's literarily stuffing information down my throat (which by the way is still VERY sore).

Driving around to and from work its obvious to see which housing areas have more Chinese, Malay or Indians based on the flags. Places like Puchong and Damansara areas are very Chinese biased with majority of BN and DAP banners but go into places like Pulau Meranti and Kayu Ara is where you start seeing flags or green moons and blue eyes (PAS and PKR for those not in the know). Funny thing is, drive all the way to Cyberjaya and you see absolutely nothing ... not one flag, not one banner. Its like the place has been excluded from the elections chaos, else nobody is bothered. I think it falls under the Sepang district so I guess their efforts of campaigning is probably more focused at housing areas.

We're entering PAS country here ... plus you can now get a car wash too!!

So can anyone tell me what THIS banner means?? And who the heck is BilliLim??

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American Idol Season 7

Haven't been really following the latest season of American Idol but yesterday's performance by David Archuleta really blew me away. Compared to the other earlier male contestants, the simplest and least flashy song actually came away bearing the most impact on the judges (especially Paula who cried). A definite possibility for the next American Idol if he continues his performance style. A quick search on Google came up with this amateur video on Imeem which proves his talent at live acoustic performances ... near flawless is what I can say.

Watch his full performances of the competition on the American Idol website at http://www.americanidol.com

It had to happen soon ... HD-DVD R.I.P.

Ever since the announcement that Toshiba was withdrawing from the high-def market, things took a turn for the worse in the HD-DVD camp. A 3-year format war finally comes to an end with Blu-ray emerging the winner. Parent company Sony is obviously happy with this outcome alongside other partners such as Buena Vista/Disney and SPE.

The first nail in this coffin was the announcement made over new years when Warner Bros. defected to the BD camp after sitting on the fence. An earlier annoucement by fence-sitter Paramount to support only HD-DVD also garnered some attention but not to this extent ... mostly because WB had more titles in comparison and predictably more market share. Supposedly Paramount had an escape clause in their T&C when they went over to the HD-DVD camp, but they got egg on their faces these past few weeks. Soon after Toshiba's announcement, Paramount had to release another statement that they were returning to the BD camp alongside Dreamworks and another company that I forget (Google if you want to know).

So what happens now? HD-DVD players will still continue to play until they break down and releases will be sold until stocks run out. This will probably be VERY soon as most stores are slashing ... no ... obliterating their profits to get rid of stocks. Previously priced HD-DVDs at US$39 now go for as low as US$4. Scary huh? Its a FIFO war now at video stores to stock up whatever titles that remain. The same scenario is happening in UK and Australia.


What about Malaysia, some may ask? A better question would be HD-what? High-def probably runs a low priority here plus with the price of players remaining quite high (Toshiba's AX player still runs around RM3k) the uptake in the market is comparatively slow. I think there was even an ad in the local newspaper promoting a full-priced Toshiba HD-DVD player with 3 free titles on the day the annoucement was made in Japan ... talk about slow response.

Another thing is that most households are NOT fully HD ready ... even those with plasmas and LCD screens are the ones with the WXGA resolutions that cannot display the minimum resolution required to view TRUE high-def (min 1080p resolution people!!). Budget screens .... *sigh* Can't blame them though, a standard 32" WXGA LCD panel can be bought for as little as RM1899 (approx US$590)

Additionally, piracy still reigns supreme. Legal high-def discs now retail are RM139 onwards per title (for both HD and BD) but the neighborhood pasar-malam vendor sells DVDs for RM6 onwards ... a pittance in comparison. Heck, VCDs still sell quite well here so high-def still has a long way to go in the SE Asia region. Legal DVDs range from RM12 to RM129 per title depending on whether they are Region-3 or Region-1 or special editions.

When high-def players drop to the sub RM500 range and titles go for RM60 and below then we can talk people .... anything before that, just shaddup and just enjoy the movie (pirated or legal your choice!)

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Java game frenzy .... ooh my poor thumbs

After a week with the 6610 and getting to grips with its interface and requirements, here's a quick post of what Java midlet games I've found that are worth installing and playing or at least taking a look at. Here are 8 out of the 36 I've tried ...

<- This game was one of my favorites on the Linux/Unix platform. I could play it for hours as my NS simulations ran in the background :) Much to my amazement, there was a Java port of the game for the S40 series of Nokia handphones. The orientation of the game is turned 90 degrees (it shoots right instead of up) but it is still fun to play although it is sometimes hard to see where the cannon is pointing to.

Basically a bling-bling version of tetris with several new variations - not only can you rotate the blocks but also cycle the arrangement of the jewels to suit the built up pattern. Slows down occasionally whenever the number of gems on screen increase but otherwise is quite a pretty game to look at. ->

<- Lara "Size D" Croft is back on the small screen and in 2D!!! I thought the idea of changing a first person shooter/adventure into a 2D platform game was going to be a disaster ... but after 3 levels, I was hooked. A nice blend of button mashing, button combos and puzzle solving makes the Osiris Codex a interesting one. Only problem is that you are forced to go through the "Training" level and you can't save/return or start a new game (not that I can see, but I'm still stuck at level 6)

Not the same mahjong that Asians are used to but the American match-up style game. Also another staple game on many Linux/Unix platforms and the new Vista operating system. Good game for those non-hectic moments but using the directional pad to move between tiles is pretty frustrating after a while. ->

<- A simple kids' side scroller based on one of my favourite movies "Finding Nemo". Use keys to guide Marlin across the ocean avoiding obstacles such as puffer fish, sharks, jelly fish and coral reefs. Wrecks havoc on the palms as this game constantly uses the vibrate function on the phone (lucky there is the option to turn it off though)

Yet another sideways scroller action game based on the PC version of "Prince of Persia". It remains quite faithful to the original in terms of gameplay although it misses out on a lot of the ingame actions (i.e. fighting sequences have been undestandably simplified). This is the only game so far that makes use of full in-game MIDI music on the 6610 platform. It does get kinda cheesy after a while but makes it unique compared to the rest ->

<- Another Prince of Persia game, this time subtitled "The Two Thrones". This version has updated graphics and uses a slightly isometric view compared to the flat 2D version earlier. This makes for prettier graphics but slows down gameplay whenever action increases on screen

Platinum Sudoku was my first install of any Sudoku game and it actually worked quite well. However, since then I've preferred "5ud0ku" released by a wintermute.de which has support for full screen graphics without borders and more customizable options. Additionally it is open source and completely free. ->

Note that some of these games are freeware whilst others are demos or *ahem* versions. Anyways, I've had my share of games to last me for the next few months ... if the keypad lasts that long :D

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恭喜发财—新年快樂 (i.e. Gong Xi Fa Cai, Xin Nian Kuai Le)

It's a week after Chinese New Year 2008 and back to work/studies again ... you can almost hear the groans from everyone across Malaysia :)

Hmmm ... so what happened over the CNY weekend? Well, I finally got my stuff from Australia - two DVD boxsets and two DVD movies, plenty of angpows and the bloaty feeling from eating too much CNY stuff.



Took over a handphone from my aunt from Singapore - she has since upgraded to a Nokia N80 (I think) so the phone was basically draining batteries doing absolutely nothing. It ain't top of the line (model 6610) but will do nicely since my life doesn't revolve around the capability of people being able to contact me 24/7.

Since then I've been busy playing around with the stuff inside - uploading Java apps and games just to see what it can handle. With the limited memory on board, I've only managed test about a dozen or so full games (namely Bubble Bobble, Gem Jam, Tomb Raider, Frozen Bubble Micro, Sudoku, Prince of Persia, Finding Nemo etc.). I've also been trying out the MIDI capabilities too with several self-written ringtones (with help of Nokia's Audio Suite and MobiMB) ... gawd it has been years since I've written a ringtone let alone a polyphonic one for a Java platform.

My room is still (since Dec 2007) a mess after rearranging the stuff around 'cos I haven't really gotten to storing the stuff away. Add to the fact that there are additional items brought over from my neighbours' house (they migrated to Singapore and sold the house) ... really have to stop procrastinating and once-and-for-all tidy up my room :P