American Idol 7 finals ... which David will win?

Its hours before the final performances from the top two in the seventh season of American Idol and from what I've seen/heard/read, the public is pretty much divided evenly amongst both Davids. Although ratings have dropped pretty much in comparison with previous seasons, this year's final two contestants definitely have outclassed previous seasons by a long shot. Both Davids have NEVER been in the bottom group and both have their own style (which leads to their own evenly matched fan-base).

David A. is outstnadingly great and only great at ballads - his attempts at any faster, upbeat tempo songs were bland at best or sung with forgotten lyrics. He does have the advantage of youth since he's only 17 and quite a cutie. Supposedly singing with pitch perfection, he does manage to pull off the note runs and high notes quite flawlessly. Quite adept at the piano, he seems to have staved off performing with an instrument ... maybe because there's hardly any time left to practise the songs let alone practise the piano. My fave songs so far - Imagine, Love me tender, You're the voice and Stand by me.

David C. carries the rocker look well and his re-arrangements (whether original or not) are certainly his niche genre. That's not to say he can't sing ballads or pop songs well as he has shown during the Andrew Lloyd Webber week (studio recording is one word - amazing). He certainly brings on a look of arrogance whenever he performs but I'll just put that down to pure confidance for now. Fave songs so far which I can hear repeatedly - Always be my baby, Music of the night, Hello and Eleanor Rigby.

What do they have in common? Both play the guitar (although DA has only since performed on the piano), both love musicals (having appeared in many a school play). and both have earlier recordings (unsigned and not widely distributed).

Heck! I'm torn evenly between them for both their flaws and perfections but silently I'm kinda rooting ever-so-slightly more for Cook ... mostly because of stories of Jeff Archuleta being the "stage parent" which I wouldn't want befalling on anybody.

Oh well ... only time will tell, so bring on the finals!!

Blogger show/hide post hack with anchors

UPDATE 25 May - Seems the first method below only works in IE and not in Mozilla/Firefox/Opera but the second method works on multiple browser platforms. A tip for using the second method, instead of inserting additional name tags, you can make use of exsiting ones that are inserted automatically by blogger. Whenever you create a new post, look in the address bar and copy the multi-digit value after the postID. Then use this as the anchor ID instead. This will automatically redirect to the header of the post instead of the span class or first paragraph of text!!

Those following this blog would have seen that I tend to use the show/hide posts option to condense the amount of information shown. Although it has worked pretty well, I was always irked by the fact that if my posts were really long, clicking on the "Show/hide full post" option on my blog would tend to roll up the current post and show the posts at the bottom leaving the viewer behind instead of returning them back to the initial post in reduced form.

Poring through the code and referring to W3C HTML specs, I managed to find a simple way to redirect the reader back to the top alogside the hidden post with the use of anchors.

The original technique used on this site is the one described on the Blogger help pages here. The only difference is now I've made use of the span id as an anchor for redirection. Only one line is added to the Javascript function to make this hack work. The original function is written like so

<script type="text/Javascript">
function expandcollapse (postid)
   {
   whichpost = document.getElementById(postid);
   if (whichpost.className=="postshown") {
      whichpost.className="posthidden";
   }
   else {
      whichpost.className="postshown";
   }
}
</script>

The focus is in the "if" section of the function which evaluates such that when the post is currently being shown (i.e. is equal to "postshown") then the function will hide the post by setting the className to "posthidden". Here I add a line to make redirect the browser to the span id which is my anchor. The edited code is as follows

<script type="text/Javascript">
function expandcollapse (postid) {
   whichpost = document.getElementById(postid);
   if (whichpost.className=="postshown") {
      whichpost.className="posthidden";
      self.location.hash = postid;
   }
   else {
      whichpost.className="postshown";
   }
}
</script>

What this basically does is to take the postid (which will become our span id when we write the post) and redirect using the location.hash function.

This change would only work if the "Show/hide full post" link is located near the top of the post. If the option is halfway through the post, there is still another way to redirect readers back to the top of the post. In each post with the show/hide option, add an additional anchor under a different name from the usual span class method so as not to have conflicting section names. For example, I could add an anchor to top of this post with the following code

<a name="postanchor"></a>

Then edit the javascript function in the template so as to be able to receive two parameters like so with the first parameter being the span id to indicate which portion of text to hide and the second parameter to indicate the anchor

<script type="text/Javascript">
function expandcollapse (postid,anchorid) {
   whichpost = document.getElementById(postid);
   if (whichpost.className=="postshown") {
      whichpost.className="posthidden";
      self.location.hash = anchorid;
   }
   else {
      whichpost.className="postshown";
   }
}
</script>

Then just change the blogger tags of posts to indicate the span areas and anchor

<a href="javascript:expandcollapse('<postid>','<anchorid>')">
Show/hide full post</a>

Here's an example of how a posts' structure would be like if using the second method mentioned above (using HTML view editing)

<a name="thispostanchor"></a>
.....
First paragraph of post or abstract
.....
<span class="posthidden" id="thispostid">
.....
Rest of the post
.....
<a href="javascript:expandcollapse('thispostid','thispostanchor')">
Show/hide full post</a>

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Another trip down to KL town

Spent Monday night wandering around Petaling Street 'cos I was accompanying my aunt there. She's staying in KL for the week but this time in the Trader's Hotel which is surprisingly good although the hotel lobby does leave a poor impression. The view from the room however is totally fantastic 'cos you're smack dab in front of the Petronas Twin Towers and KLCC.


Although it doesn't look like it, Trader's is actually taller than Mandarin Oriental by 4 floors (not so sure when in terms of actual measured height though) and their rooms seem to be ever-so-slightly larger than the ones in Mandarin - either that or their use of large floor to ceiling mirrors and built in table/consoles gives me that illusion (oh ... and perhaps the use of a flat LCD television instead of a bulky CRT one contributes to the extra space)

I haven't been to Petaling Street in four years but it hasn't changed that much since then anyways. Fake goods are still available everywhere - from Bvlgari to Channel and Adidas to Nikes, name it and they probably have it. I do miss a few stalls though, namely the 50 sen tau fu fah.


Its still as stuffy and jam-packed as I remember but one thing was hugely different when walking this time round. For the hundreds of times that I have walked through Petaling Street (just FYI I had to go past this street to get to/from school and the busstop at Kota Raya) this is the first time I've seen so many gwailos around ... in fact they probably outnumbered the locals by a fair amount. They seemed very much at home with the bargaining tactics required by the vendors and I even noticed a few that can speak quite fluent Mandarin and Cantonese. Now THAT was the eye-opener for the night. Didn't get anything though ... somehow I don't think I've ever really bought anything from Petaling Street.

We only managed to get back to the hotel at around 11pm (TIP: get a metered cab 'cos the trip is around RM4 - RM5 only. Several unscrupulous cabbies wanted unmetered rates at RM15!!). In the room, my aunt went into a fit of giggles when she started photographing Ernie all overthe room ... by the end of this session, it was almost like we had filmed Ernie's modelling portfolio (for some soft-porno perhaps :D )

Anyways, Ernie is now back home accompanying Kermit on the shelf ... Rubber duckie you're the one, you make my bathtime oh so fun ....


To end this post here are two more images of the Petronas Twin Towers, with one on a longer exposure to capture the glow from the spotlights but it does create a lot of digital noise ... oh well what d'ya expect from a consumer digicam?




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Vista how do I hate thee ... let me count the ways

After a month of living with Vista on my new PC it has started to become bearable but there are still many problems that keep making me think about 'upgrading' back to XP.

Here's a list of problems/frustrations/wierdness I face from the f**king operating system (those also using Vista may or may not agree with the following)


Vista does not play nice with region-free DVD drives
Vista MCE/WMP will NOT playback any region-coded DVDs if the DVD drive has been hacked to RPC1 status (i.e. region-free). Funny thing is, it WILL still playback non-region encoded DVD (in other words, pirated pasar malam copies). Legal copies just return an error message and stubbornly refuse to play.


Only workaround is to install software to circumvent the region coding on discs such as AnyDVD or install additional DVD playback software like PowerDVD.

Built-in Firewall
Vista's buit-in firewall is a considerable improvement over the one included with XP SP2 but it is still woefully inadequate and is overly complex to handle. By default it seems to still allow outgoing connections from programs installed on your PC (including spyware/loggers/etc) and closing them requires setting numerous rules.

I gave in trying to understand the settings and installed Zonealarm Personal ... nice, simple ... 'nuff said.

Aero effects
Vista's Aero feature works on my new PC (it requires a WEI minimum of 3.0 for graphics in order to run and mine scored a 5.0) but it is pure eye candy and does not really offer much improvement to the interface. The 3D program switcher is nifty but pretty useless.



Aero also keeps disabling itself whenever I run older programs. This is understandably so because most older programs won't work very well on the translucent 3D-like desktop.

Vista the memory hog I
Previously, whenever I encountered computers running Vista, I'd used to complain about its inherent sluggishness. It was like driving uphill to Genting Highlands in an automatic Kancil that is loaded with 6 people. Thankfully, this PC changed my perception of that because it manages to deliver the snappiness I like. Why this change of heart? It all boils down to the amount of available system memory. Upon bootup Vista already uses up 956MB of memory and on average it constantly uses around 800MB, so those people using Vista laptops and 1GB of RAM know what they need to upgrade first.


I currently have 2GB of DDR2 RAM and so far have only once managed to exceed this value and start using page memory instead. As a test, I removed a stick of memory to leave behind 1GB and Vista slowed down to a crawl and required nearly 3 minutes to bootup. Restoring 2GB of memory reduced the startup time to around 20 seconds!! Other tricks that one might try can be found here

Vista the memory hog II
What if you don't have any more available memory slots for an upgrade? Next best thing is to enable Vista Readyboost on your PC. If you have any external drive (e.g. thumbdrive, memory stick, flash drive) that meets the Readyboost specs, this will definitely improve the overall performance of the PC. In my case, the least likely candidate for a Readyboost device was a 3 year old compact flash card which I got for free when I bought a 40-in-one memory card reader. Plugging it in increases available system memory by 256MB ... performance boost for free, so I can't complain.

Only problem with Readyboost are its strict requirements and most, if not all, devices unfortunately fail the Readyboost tests. Somehow I got lucky with this one.



Update (12/05) : Seems that my 1GB Kingston SD card also meets Readyboost requirements ... not bad for RM29.

Auto eject CD/DVD drives
I tend to muck about in Windows Explorer a lot and keep on accidently clicking on the DVD drive. In this scenario, Vista automatically ejects the drive expecting you to insert a disc in if it is empty. After a dozen times or so, it gets very annoying having to bend down to close the drive door.


It seems that this 'feature' only will occur if your drive is a writer (CD, DVD or BD) and Vista will not auto eject if it is a read-only drive. So the only workround in this case is to disable the built-in disc burning feature of Vista and use an external application instead (which I already do anyways) ... which brings me to the next point

Where the f**k is the GP editor?
Turns out in Vista Home and Premium editions, there is no group policy editor because it seems that the big guys at Micro$oft decided that home users will never make use of it. So the only way to affect any changes to items such as the one above is to directly edit the registry. Now, I'm pretty comfortable editing the registry (been doing it since Windows 95) but for novice users, the registry can be a confusing and scary place.


Built-in applications
Having built-in zip/unzip capabilities in Windows XP was considered a big step as it remove the necessity of having to install applications like Winzip or Winrar. You'd think that at least they could have support for opening other compressed formats such as RAR, 7ZIP or TAR files. For now I just make use of tugzip to handle these files.

Other sadly out-of-date applications are the Paint program (replaceable with Paint.net), calculator (upgradable with Microsoft's Power Calculator) and Disk defragementer (currently evaluating IOBit Smart Defrag)

Redundant directories everywhere
If anyone has noticed, XP started this phenomena by creating directories that are hardly ever used but cannot be deleted. These directories are under Program Files and include Xerox, movie maker, gaming zone, netmeeting etc. There are supposedly long-winded workarounds to permanently remove the directories at the expense of system stability.

Things get worse in Vista as additional default directories are required to get the OS running properly. There are too many of them to list here.

Vista Explorer is no elephant
I must be doing something wrong 'cos I can't seem to get Vista to remember the visual settings for Explorer. It seems to take on a mind of its own whenever I traverse directories in Explorer with one directory opening in "List view" whilst another in "Extra large icons". Minor annoyance but still an annoyance in my book.

Vista SP1 woes
After downloading the 434MB package, it happily informs me that the service pack will take around an hour to install at which I can't use the computer. Why the hell does it need that long? I can't slipstream the service pack onto the restore discs 'cos Acer uses a different method of restoring the factory image settings. What I could do is take my Vista Business copy and slipstream SP1 onto that disc but then I'd lose the MCE features found only on Premium ... frustrating. This basically means formatting the PC will take three times as long.

To date I've already formatted this PC three times (in a month, yeah ... I know I'm wierd like that, but I usually experiment until the system crashes) and only installed SP1 once with no noticeable changes in OS performance/features. Its still just as unstable/stable as before ... which basically means I can get it to crash just as easily.

Windows Mail
Windows mail replaces Outlook Express 6 which is found on XP but it has lost many of the features that I use especially the multiple account handling (it only handle multiple accounts by creating an entirely new user name/account on the operating system itself and I DO NOT want that). It does have improved security and better main handling which is a big plus though but its file format is not backward compatible with earlier versions of Outlook/OE.

An alternative is to use Windows Live Mail which is supposed to replace OE6 on XP. I'm still exploring this program but it seems promising and also has support to download from web based mail servers.

Drivers, drivers, drivers
Most people 'upgrading' to Vista probably would have faced this scenario of driver unavailability for older hardware. I face this situation with an old Soundblaster Live! soundcard which I have because there are no available drivers. I haven't tried installing it yet though but some reports online have stated that there are workarounds to getting the card to play nice in Vista though.

The problem here basically is that the integrated audio sucks big time - a Realtek HD audio ALC888S chip that provides 7.1 surround which is nice and all that shit. MIDI-wise it falls flat on its face by relying on the crap Micro$oft GS wavetable synthesis. Using the integrated audio with sequencing/composition software such as Cakewalk, Cubase, Finale or Sibelius results in really horrible sounds that are akin to an early model Nokia handphone MIDI capability. Finale isn't that bad if I use its own Smartsound libraries but that option fails too easily and MIDI notes tend to get stuck in playback until I reboot the PC. I have yet to try the Garritan sound libraries on this PC though but from past experience it would definitely be a marked improvement at the cost of processing power and memory.

Guess I'm forced to getting either a new SB X-fi or EMu soundcard to replace it soon but I'll give the SB Live option a go soon.

WMP11 crash
Vista comes with Windows Media Player 11. It works, it crashes and it can't be repaired/reinstalled/uninstalled. So what I'm left with is a buggy WMP shell which can no longer play video files. The program that caused this? I'm guessing its the latest PowerDVD v8 which forces the installation of unwanted codecs with no option of removal. Uninstalling the program also leaves the codecs behind.

Its so sad that Cyberlink had to go the dark side and followed in the footsteps of Ahead Nero and WinDVD. From a simple, lightweight and functioning application, these programs are now full-blown suites with numerous additional functions which are useless, create problems and are often complained about. Nero has the useless Nero scout service which does nothing but take up CPU cycles ... I do not know of anyone, anywhere in the world that actually uses Scout in real-life. Now PowerDVD has the utterly useless Moovie and remix option. Why would I want to rate a movie and upload the results for anyone to see? If I wanted to do that I'd join a site/forum/magazine and write about it and probably get paid.

*************************

So that's 12 'problems' with Vista after one month of use ... and I'm sure I'll find more. What's stopping me from installing XP SP3? I can't drivers to support the mobo and integrated network card. Heck, I might just install Linux or Mac OSX to replace Vista, but for now I'm coping with it.

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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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