The Marktrix's Journal

My Current Dilemma

2012-02-01T22:25:00.004+08:00

iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S II

*picture courtesy of www.techbend.com

The Ne(t)ed For Speed: Take 1

2012-01-08T22:57:00.000+08:00

Ever since I succumbed myself to the beauty and addiction of the World Wide Web, I've seen how the internet service in Malaysia has 'evolved'. My first experience was the dial-up service that offered a mere speed of 56kbps, which was a theoretical value by the way, if you know what I mean. Loading videos off sites like YouTube was unthinkable. Even opening a hotmail email page (there's no gmail then) was a great test to one's patience. And most of all, it's charged by blocks in minutes. So the longer you use, the more that you have to pay. And judging by the speed at that time, it took bout 3-5 minutes just to open the said hotmail page. Well you can somehow picture in your head that the internet bill at that time was synonymous to those taxi meters. It really could give you a heart attack anytime :p

Then moving on, came Screamyx. Ooopsss.... I mean Streamyx :) Honestly speaking, the service was great at the beginning. YouTube videos loaded in a jiffy and the download speed was adequate too, seeing that I've subscribed to the 384kbps package, which happened to be the cheapest. Somewhere down the road, the market got a little saturated as more people subscribed to the service. Things got slow, and I mean reeeaaalllll slowwww. What took minutes now take hours load. The ironic thing is, I got a complementary upgrade to the 512kbps package at no extra charge and guess what??!! No change in speed!! Yahoo!!!

Lately, the speed can be unbearable at times, especially at night where I guess that most people come back home from work and more users are sharing the thread-sized bandwidth. Even more so now that they are busy promoting their new service, the ultimate broadband (so to speak) in the name of Unifi, where they integrate the TV service, phone and internet all into one line. The speed?? Awesome I would say. No, I am not a subscriber but I have experienced it before. The cheapest Unifi package provides a maximum speed of 5Mbps and that's a theoretical value. Moving up the price ladder well, you get faster network.

So there's this story. My sister was at home the other day trying to allocate herself to the new timetable for the next semester on our Streamyx network. And it's based on a first come first serve principle. Ergo, the earlier that you select your preferred allocations, the higher chance that you're gonna get it. But the funny thing is this, her friend in his own home on a Unifi network, appeared to have experienced a slower speed than my ancient dinosaur Streamyx and needless to say, he didn't get his preference. I know that things might have bottlenecked at the campus server side, but isn't it the fact that if one has a higher speed internet access, one should be able to 'park' his/her data at the server much faster? It's just like the comparison between A who travels via the expressway to work while B uses the toll-less, smaller and more busy road. Theoretically speaking, A should reach the workplace first, unless of course he is driving like a tortoise, which further strengthen my hypothesis that although a high bandwidth was provided (width of the expressway), but if the data speed isn't fast enough (tortoise driving on a highway), it's still no good. And coming from an engineering background, I know that most theoretical stuff that we study actually don't get to see the light of day.

In the next segment of my "The Ne(t)ed For Speed" series, I shall be sharing with you my latest internet speed experience. The 3 nice screenshots below shall serve as a nice teaser for all before the post :)

Till then, cheers :)

I am a Neek... or Gerd... either one :)

2012-01-06T11:05:00.000+08:00

From: MastersInIt.org

Caesar Is Home

2011-12-31T17:27:00.012+08:00

The year of 2011 has finally come to an end. After all the ups and downs, here comes the time for us to renew our resolutions, reset our take on life in 2012 and let the bygones be bygones for the things happened that did not go in our favour.

Many happy occasions came and passed by in 2011 for me. I have upgraded my status with my darling, or rather we have both upgraded our status to each other hahahaha Guess that I am now officially off the market :p We are currently awaiting the grand event in the year of the Dragon :)

Not to mention also the 3 trips that I had in 2011, definitely the most active that I had ever experienced :) Although 2 of them were business trips, but I still enjoyed them nevertheless.

My resolutions for the new year: To stay alive, to stay healthy, and to be a better person overall. Really gotta work on this bad temper of mine :p Most importantly, I am gonna cherish the loved ones who have always been there to support and to care for me :)

As for the title of my post above, well, I personally feel that "Rise of The Planet of The Apes" was definitely THE best movie in 2011, with MI4 following closely behind in 2nd place. Moral of the story: Never play the role of God. You'll never know when you are killing your own kind. Just go with the flow and let things happen naturally. Heck, that was what the Feng Shui master advised me to do earlier this year :p

Till then, Auld Lang Syne :)

Cheers to a good year that has been and to a better year that is going to be :)

The Missing Ghost of BlackBerry Future

2011-12-21T10:21:00.003+08:00

Something that I happened to bump into on the net. Quite funny but no pun intended :)

Cheers

Bliss Amongst The Thorns

2011-11-14T13:16:00.000+08:00

iMourn

2011-10-06T00:37:00.004+08:00

I guess I don't have to elaborate any further. My feeling today is exactly the same thing that I felt when MJ passed away in 2009. Today we lost a great man with great vision and wisdom. He was a charismatic keynote speaker. He was the Thomas Edison of our time. A true legend indeed. A friend who taught us to "Think different".

image from apple.com

Goodbye, The Crazy One. You'll be deeply missed.

En Route To iPhone 5 - Current Analysis

2011-09-28T11:38:00.003+08:00

I was browsing around after getting to know that Apple is gonna let the new iPhone5 out of the bag....finally yeah I know. It's happening on Oct 4th and the tech journalists in the USA have been issued official invites to the event at the Apple Campus.

*Image courtesy of www.loopinsight.com

So what I found was actually quite interesting. Although the data applies to the USA market but in general, I don't expect it to change that much for the rest of the world.

First of all, I've never expected that close to 4% of the total iPhones running about nowadays in the USA are the iPhone 2G!! Yeah, the original one with the aluminum back. I was thinking that they can't even top the 1% scale. And most surprising of all, close to 90% of all iPhones are not jailbroken!! Although the USA government has legalized jailbreaking of the iPhone in the country, but it seems like most people are still sticking to the stock good 'ol system rather than swaying to the Dark Side.

As for the rest of the data, you can get them from the infographic by paidviewpoint.com below.

Cheers

Mid-Autumn Is Here!!

2011-09-12T12:24:00.004+08:00

Yet another Mid-Autumn Festival. But somehow I feel that things are not the same anymore. During my younger days, we kids looked forward to this festival as it was one of those days where we could play with fire :p, the other one being CNY.

I used to stay in a government flat and we kids (cousins, neighbors' kids and some adults too) would light up the whole corridor with loads of candles such that if one would look down from the higher levels, it was a sight to behold. But nowadays, smartphones and tablets represent a new age of candles and lanterns. No more fish or Ultraman lanterns to play with. Heck, kids nowadays don't even know how to operate a torchlight!! They just know how to turn on that LED at the back of their phones.

Sigh... times are changing. People don't value family ties that much anymore. Money and technologies are their new families now. I find that people now are more connected with those from other parts of the world via Facebook or Twitter than the very people who are living under the same roof with them. After all, Mid-Autumn Festival is about togetherness and kindred spirit and fate which binds us together, especially our family members and great friends.

The haze has already covered the moon tonight. Let not technologies and our inner 'haze' blind us from the very human touch that keep us together.

月亮圆，月亮圆，月亮照在我的家......

Cheers

Hi! He's an Android, I'm an iOS and They're The Others

2011-08-20T09:00:00.019+08:00

Just for the fun of it. Click image to view full size.

*Infographics courtesy of Hunch Blog

Cheers

Down South To Malacca

2011-08-15T13:46:00.000+08:00

Went back to Malacca the other day. Apparently, my ancestors (few generations ago) were Babas and Nyonyas and that they lived in Malacca. It was only during my grandfather's time that they decided to come up to KL and settled here. So obviously, I didn't know the address of my ancestors' home nor did I know that if it still exists :-/ Anyhow, I've always liked going to Malacca for the food, the cleanliness and the historical heritage of it. It feels like... I'm going home :p

Cheers

Remote Control Car Using iPhone/iPod

2011-07-11T22:05:00.003+08:00

Cheers,

Mark

IMO Delicious Claypot Chicken Rice in KL

2011-06-14T20:59:00.002+08:00

Location: Taman Connaught, Cheras (click here for Google Map link)

Food: Claypot chicken rice, double-boiled soups, and frog legs porridge (the stall beside it)

Rating: 9/10

The ooo-la-la Claypot Chicken Rice

Chicken feet with groundnuts double-boiled soup

Salted vege with tauhu double-boiled soup

The tauke himself :)

Cheers and Happy Eating :)

Funny Gandalf

2011-05-14T15:20:00.002+08:00

Now this is a funny wizard to look at :p

"You shall watch in 3D!!!!!"

Image courtesy of McKellen's Flickr

Childhood

2011-04-12T17:15:00.000+08:00

Childhood...

where Dreams once filled my life

where Everyday was as worry-less as ever

where we were promised many "Happily Ever After"-s

where everyone is everyone's Neighbour

where there were no shades of gray in between Black and White

where Mom and Dad were still young and wrinkle-less

O' Childhood...

where I... could not go back again...

About Respect and Loyalty

2011-03-28T21:16:00.002+08:00

Respect and loyalty,

Just like communications,

They take 2 to tango.

And They are not demanded or forced upon,

They are earned.

*Picture courtesy of jemima.files.wordpress.com

QuickCam on The iPhone: A Personal Review

2011-03-18T12:29:00.001+08:00

Yo people! What's up? :)

Today I'm gonna blog about this new app that has just arrived on to the App Store. It's called QuickCam, written by those guys who did the ClearCam, another great camera app for the iPhone of which I have also reviewed here.

I've been testing it for a week now and I find myself using QuickCam more than the stock Camera app by Apple. One thing that you'll notice when you first open this app is the speed. While it takes a couple of seconds for the stock Camera to fire up, QuickCam only needs 1 to 2 seconds on my iPhone 3GS.

Once the app has started, you'll be greeted by this user-friendly interface:

Well, I admit that this is not the best looking GUI for a camera app, but hey it's fast! How many times have you found yourself missing on some quality shots just because you were waiting for your camera app to start? I've been through a few myself.

Besides, the GUI is very self-explanatory too. And that is the reason I think that the developer didn't include a Help/Info button on QuickCam :)

The button on the right is used to take still shots. Tapping it once takes a single shot where you'll see a white flash on the screen together with the shutter sound. If you would like to take multiple shots, just hold your tap onto the button and voila, multiple shots without even lifting your fingers!

The button on the left is for taking videos. Tapping the button once automates the recording process, of which the button will turn red. Tap the button again, its colour turns back to blue and the recording stops.

I think the biggest selling point of this app is that you can take video and still shots at the same time. Yes, you read that right! While video taking, tapping the camera button takes still shots of that particular moment without stopping the video recording! And I think that at this point of time, this is the only app which is capable of doing this.

The magnifying glass slider in the middle, needless to say is the zoom button. Alternatively, you can also zoom in and out via the pinching 'viewfinder'. While the slider has a limit on how much you can zoom in, the pinching action doesn't. This means that you can zoom in all that you want to while taking videos or photos, albeit compromising on the quality once you zoom in too much.

Since I was only testing it on a 3GS, some of the features included such as flash, switch-to-front-camera and video light could not be tested. However, they should be able to work on the iPhone 4.

Overall, this is a pretty solid app if you need to take videos and pictures in a jiffy with its fast start up time. However, features wise, I think ClearCam still stands out. But then again, these 2 apps are targeting different users and of course, different operating conditions. For speed, QuickCam is the way to go.

The app is now available on the App Store at a special launching price of $0.99.

Cheers,

Mark

忍

2011-03-03T08:57:00.001+08:00

忍得一时风平浪尽,

退得一步海阔天空…

但是忍无可忍就无许再忍

Hong Kong & Macau Trip

2011-02-23T22:09:00.006+08:00

After so many years and after so many discussions on the intention to go to HK, I somehow managed to go there in the end, last month :)

A very nice 5 days and 4 nights trip with very pleasant places to stay in. Most notable was the stay at Butterfly On The Prat at Tsim Sha Tsui. It's very near to the MTR station and is within walking distance to Temple Street as well as Ladies Street. I managed to visit most of the places on the map and it was a very great trip indeed. Do note that Disneyland is a MUST GO! It's very much worth your money and do allocate 1 full day just to visit Disneyland. You won't regret it for sure :D

Pictures time :p Clicking on the pictures will take you to my Flickr page.

Room 5 on the 9th floor :)

No, I'm not staying here :p

Silence is golden :p

Hong Kong street. Familiar sight for those who watch TVB dramas :)

The tortoise building :p

Avenue of Stars

Taken from Central, after coming down from The Peak.

You see Mandarin Oriental there, that's where Leslie Cheung took his own life in 2003.

I think this is the best pic that I've taken during this trip. And the best pano that I've done too :)

Can't wait for the animated movie that's coming out this year :)

Part of the puppets at the It's A Small Small World ride.

Street parade in conjunction with the 5th Anniversary of Disneyland

They really do spend loads of money on costumes and colourful floats! These were for Winnie The Pooh.

The Lion King troupe.

No, those weren't skins. They're skin-coloured fabrics with painted on tattoos :)

Look closer and see what you find around her legs :)

Lilo and Stitch troupe.

Bokeh!! It would be a perfect pic if not for the hand that blocked the man's face :-/

The Lion King stage play. Absolutely fabulous.

It's the circle of life....

...and there's wireworks as well.

You see those deco lines on the floor? Those are actually rails for these floats to go around! Great engineering design!

The quite empty Main Street at night.

The Sleeping Beauty Castle :)

The nightly fireworks on display hehehe :p

They coordinated that when the pink fireworks went up, the castle would be adorned with pink spotlights as well :)

The fireworks shots would be perfect if the exposure time was longer. But with no tripod and handheld, they are passable la :p

Some fountain in front of some hotel in Macau.

Stanley Ho's legacy.

En route to get my almond cookies.

Simply awesome crystals!!

I think that's all for now. All in all, I took 1000+ photos. So I chose the best few to be put up here. The next time I go HK, I'll visit the Giant Buddha for sure :) One of the very few places that I've missed out this time round.

Cheers

Fixed: Greenpois0n RC5 Bugs and Issues

2011-02-06T13:53:00.004+08:00

Everyone was pretty excited when the untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 came out in the form of Greenpois0n RC5. However, that excitement soon fell into a puddle of disappointment when many encountered problems while executing the jailbreak process, from some weird verbose errors to sudden crashes of the Greenpois0n program.

The following method to make it works is applicable to the Mac platform and it has been confirmed to work (at least on my side here who have encountered those earlier problems). And I have tried it on iDevices which were both freshly restored or just a direct jailbreak on a system which is already on 4.2.1 and even over a RedSn0w jailbroken one.

1) Open terminal

2) Key in "sudo " (note the space after the command)

3) Right-click on the Greenpois0n app, select "Show Package Contents"

4) Go deep into the MacOS folder and drag the "greenpois0n" app into the terminal

5) Press "Enter", enter your password and proceed with the jailbreaking process

It should work now. The same verbose errors might appear again, but as you will see in the terminal, the jailbreaking process is actually going on :)

Cheers

It's New Year 1-1-11!! And the iPhone alarm didn't go off!!

2011-01-01T12:08:00.002+08:00

It's been a great end to 2010 and we ushered in 2011 in style. However, iPhone users woke up today realizing that they've missed their appointments because the alarm didn't go off! It happened to me too.

Apparently, this problem is similar to the one affecting daylight saving mode a couple of months back, but this time round, it's affecting all single non-repeating alarms.

One way to get around this bug, according to Engadget, is to set all your alarm as recurring alarm. Just that you'll have to turn the recurring setting off when your alarm sounds.

According to a post by 9to5Mac, the bug will fix itself in 2 days time, that's on the 3rd day of this new year. Until then, you'll have to use the above mentioned method to get your alarms working. My personal advice is that since this is just an experiment done by the guys at 9to5Mac and not an official solution offered by Apple itself, I'll recommend that you keep the above solution active till Apple provides an update for all of us :)

Until then, Happy New Year to you and God Bless!

Melbourne Trip

2010-12-18T21:22:00.007+08:00

*Click here for my review on ClearCam

From my disappearance from the blogging scene for the past 3 months, it looks as though my very existence was entirely wiped out from the surface of this Earth. Well, according to a Chinese saying, "I rather be dead now as I have no time to fall ill". Loads of work to do with me doing the work of at least 3 persons has left me losing my usually-working-multitasking-ability skills and flaring up my fiery temper. Anyhow, amidst the never ending workloads, I still managed to spend about 10 days abroad, in Melbourne again (my second one this year) for some research work with my friends from the Land Down Under. Something to take me out of the predicament that's haunting back home here.

Airborne on Emirates! And I came back in Business Class!! Woohoo!!!!

Sunset onboard the 777...

...the freedom beyond reach

Don't scream pls! It's the unisex toilet :p

It looks as though that guy was gonna commit suicide :p

Melbourne City

At Deakin University

This guy (or maybe gal) has no PhD, but I'm sure he has no worries nor crazy deadlines to meet :)

Lunching by the lake...nice, real nice

...and that's the restaurant by the lake which serves nice kangaroo kebab and superb Hot Choc!

Cheers

Kukup Trip

2010-09-13T13:55:00.001+08:00

*Click here for my review on ClearCam

So I went to Kukup during the Raya weekend with my darling and her family. Nice to be far away from the chaotic city life and enjoyed some kampung lifestyle :)

No internet, no work and heck, no reception on my phone either! It felt great but weird to get disconnected from the outside world hahaha

Stars at night had never been clearer, air had never been fresher and my mood somehow had never been better :p Must be due to the absence of stress while being far away from my work. I did bring my laptop along, but it was for the sole purpose of watching movies :)

Did you have a great Raya? I did :)

Cheers

Lee Hom Showcase 2010 @ 1U, Malaysia

2010-08-23T08:27:00.008+08:00

*Click here for my review on ClearCam

This is my third time bringing my Sis to her idol's showcase-cum-autograph session. I would say that the organiser this time round was way much better than Galaxy's, albeit the sound system is a little on the poor side.

Anyhow, brought my 55-200 along and here are 5 of the 60 odds that I've captured, with about 90% of them of Lee Hom for my Sis's collection :)

Got an inspiration for my logo from this pic :p

Cheers

ClearCam on AppStore - A Personal Review

2010-07-24T00:50:00.008+08:00

*Update*

ClearCam is now 1.5.5 with the following new features:

Touch-to-focus now has visual feedback*
Double-tap for exposure control*
Triple-tap for LED flash*
New info screens to help you learn all the features quickly

* If supported by your iPhone's hardware (iPhone 4 for all and iPhone 3GS for first 2 enhancements)

One of the best camera app that I've ever used during my Jailbreak (pre-iOS4) days was ClearCam. Everyone knows that the camera on the iPhone produces lots of noise, especially in low light conditions. Coupled with the low megapixels count, it's certainly not something that all of us would want to brag about. Don't get me wrong though, for I still think that the iPhone camera produces great shots, albeit a little high on the noise side to my liking. With sufficient light, the camera performs well and I have no complaints.

So in May this year, Occipital had finally brought ClearCam upon the doors of the AppStore to be enjoyed by all iPhone users, not just for the jailbreakers. As of today, it's already matured to version 1.5.1.

Generally ClearCam is able to push up the resolution of your pictures by 2X, up to 11 Megapixels if you have an iPhone 4 and about 6-7 Megapixels on the iPhone 3G/3GS. Not only does it increase the pixels of your shots, but the app also produces sharper images with less noise as well.

The main UI of the app looks like the first screenshot shown below. A single 'glowing' button for you to press to take a shot, easy and fast and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. 2 modes are available for you to choose from: Quick and Enhanced.

Quick mode - ClearCam takes 3 consecutive shots and stored the clearest image into the Camera Roll. Pictures saved using default megapixels count of the camera.

Enhanced - ClearCam takes 6 consecutive shots of which you have the options to enhance them to produce a clearer and sharper image at up to 2X the default megapixels value.

The function of each mode is not explained in the app but you can get the descriptions off the ClearCam page on the AppStore while you are at it.

Do note that unlike the stock Camera app, you can't zoom nor tap to focus on this app. So it's back to the iPhone 2G days where you could just tap the button to capture the shot and nothing more. Also, I found out that it's best to set the phone to Silent while using the app as the shutter sound during each shot (6 of them if you are using Enhanced mode) could cause some noticeable lag in between shots. Maybe iPhone 4 users will not experience this due to the newer and faster A4 processor.

To view the photos taken using the Enhanced mode, tap on the folder icon on the lower right of the screen.

Main UI of the app

ClearCam saving pictures taken on Enhanced mode into the Queue

Tapping onto the folder icon will bring you to this UI shown below. Basically, all the images that you've captured using the Enhanced mode will be listed here.

List of photos taken on Enhanced mode

Selecting any of the images in the list will bring you to the 6 captured photos during that particular instance. You can choose to save any of the 6 images into the Camera Roll or you could align them, the first step towards the enhancement process and is really useful to reduce the shake effect while you were capturing all the shots.

Align the 6 shots before producing the final output

Once you have aligned all the 6 of them, ClearCam will now superimpose the images on top of each other to produce a clearer and sharper (and way less noise!) version of the shots. It might take a little while to for the process to complete so my suggestion is to capture all the shots that you would like to make and to only enhance them at a later time. As mentioned earlier, you can find all captured images in the list shown above.

Now let's pump it up, babey!!

The screenshots below show the differences between the original shots (left) and the enhanced ones (right), with obvious improvements noted on the noise side. You might want to open the images in a new tab to see the differences more clearly.

In conclusion, I think that ClearCam is great and could appeal to most iPhone users who want something better other than the stock Camera app as it really produces way better images captured on the iPhone camera and at $1.99, it's worth the price. You can get it off the AppStore here.

But I do hope that the developers will add the following in the next release as these will definitely add great values to this already great app

1) zoom and tap to focus in the main camera capture UI

2) automatically rotate and save pictures taken under landscape profile (currently all pictures taken on landscape are saved as portraits)
3) a help page within the app to explain the functions of different modes and how-tos would be good

Cheers

Nikon D3000 + Nikkor 35mm f/1.8

2010-07-11T04:01:00.004+08:00

Got a new addition to my gears lately, a 35mm f/1.8 lens for my beloved Niki :) It's a prime lens from Nikon itself and it's the cheaper (roughly half the price) compared to the 50mm f/1.4. The good thing about this 35mm is that it is AF-S, which means that it has a built in autofocus motor that works well with my motor-less D3000.

So it got delivered, safely, to my home on Thursday and I've been experimenting with it since, especially on its bokeh capabilities. A very sharp lens by itself, it captures great shots even at low lights. This is good news for me since it's a known fact that D3000 does not perform well in low light and at high ISO settings. The maximum that I've ever used is 800, unless it is really necessary to use 1600 and I don't even touch Hi1/3200. Below are some of the sample shots that I captured with the 35mm. I think that it compensates for the weaknesses of the D3000 at low light and high ISO for me and I hope that it'll complement well with my existing 18-55 and 55-200.

Cheers

The Fever Is On, Again!!

2010-06-11T09:35:00.005+08:00

Once every four years, there's this fever that hits most part of the world and it is so contagious that it hits people from all walks of life, from the young to the not so young, men and women. And for the past 12 years, from the 3 rounds of this breakout, I have celebrated as well as have been disappointed. Let's hope that I shall celebrate this year :)

Welcome, to the fever of the World Cup 2010 South Africa hehehehe Brazil supporter here :) Bought a jersey for myself, but what surprised me the most was that Mum actually went and bought a cap for me too. It's a genuine merchandise item, but for less than RM30 sold at an official World Cup booth at Giant, I think that it's a Grade C merchandise. Since it came with a hologram, I'm pretty convinced that it's not a counterfeit.

Let all of humanity unite, even only for this short period of time, to celebrate equality and that no one man's integrity is higher than the other.

Cheers

Lil' Howard - A Prodigy In The Making

2010-06-06T14:40:00.004+08:00

While many of us adults are finding it hard to even keeping a beat with our hands, this young talented boy here could accompany a complete song on the drums. He's even got the looks of a bad boy drummer hahaha I'll definitely be looking forward to seeing him in the entertainment scene in the not so distant future :)

Cheers

Wesak Day 2010

2010-05-31T12:30:00.005+08:00

This year marks the 10th anniversary that I've been a volunteer at the temple during key events, such as Wesak Day. I could still remember exactly 10 years ago today, I came to Brickfields Maha Vihara (BMV), as a student helper, with my friends from the Buddhist Society all the way back during the good ol' MBS days. After that year, came the Novitiate Program in 2002 where I was a novice monk for 10 days. Looking back hahaha... how time flies...

So this year, without fail, I was there at BMV as a volunteer again, distributing holy water and strings as well as helping out a little at the oil lamp section :-) Having time to do some charity work amongst my crazy and busy schedule keeps me sane and reminds me that after all that I have achieved today, I'm blessed and most of all, I'm only human. This picture was taken 2 years ago today, also at BMV. I think that I looked even more like a kid back then :p

And these are the pics taken this year.

I am very happy this year that besides me and Sis, we have a new member joining our little charity gang hehehe Darling...

We did not join the procession as we were quite exhausted and so we went for dinner with Mom and Dad instead, at Dragon-i. No photos of food here as I think the food is just average and highly overrated. Really not up to my expectations. But I shall not complain any further as the bill was settled via cash vouchers redeemed from credit card points. So if you ask me if I shall go to Dragon-i again, the answer is a definite No! Thank you :)

Happy Wesak Day to you and your family. May you all be well and happy... always.

Jailbreaking iPhone OS 3.1.3 with Spirit

2010-05-03T19:42:00.006+08:00

For iPhone 3GS owners who were being held back from jailbreaking their devices running on 3.1.3, you can now celebrate with champagne as the new jailbreak software, called Spirit is out today!!

All it takes is you downloading the software from here and run it on your computer. You do not have to restore your device whatsoever. All it takes is to run the software and your device will reboot and upon rebooting, you'll see Cydia sitting handsomely on your Springboard :-) And most of all, it's untethered! So you do not have to run the jailbreak software everytime you restart your device... sweet...

As you can see, the program has only one button and the process takes less than 10secs to complete.

The Spirit is unleashed!!

... and your device is freed :p

*Kindly be forewarned that jailbreaking with Spirit clears all your pictures in the Camera Roll folder. So remember to do a final Backup via iTunes before jailbreaking and to Restore from Backup to get the pics back later.

*Spirit does not unlock your phone. And if you have used an unlock on your device, or that you are using tethered jailbreak at the moment, kindly read the instructions on the Spirit website here.

Cheers to the freed

Treasure The Earth

2010-05-02T16:54:00.002+08:00

Captured this one Friday after work while walking to my car. I wonder how long before there will be no more such beautiful natural paintings for us and our future generations to enjoy and treasure.

Heal The World

Pillow Case

2010-04-21T21:51:00.003+08:00

For one I especially love this pillow case that I have at home. I feel that the design is quite unique, as though it's made of rags being stitched together.

Cheers

IPhone Flies RC Chopper!!

2010-04-19T10:26:00.002+08:00

This is cool stuff :-D

Cheers

F1 Sepang 2010

2010-04-05T15:19:00.005+08:00

Was there at the race, got some discounts as it was a field trip for some of the students to conduct their noise measurements :-)

So I brought Niki along and was lucky to be able to capture some prized moments... e.g. M. Schumacher's car broke down right in front of me etc. Sad for that guy though, as he remains as one of the best drivers during late 90's and early 2000's.

Cheers

Peace...

2010-03-28T15:01:00.002+08:00

Earth Hour 2010

2010-03-28T00:52:00.006+08:00

So what have you been doing during the Earth Hour? Have you been good to turn off all your lights? :-p

I personally feel that we are not doing this for the Earth but rather for our future generations. I was reading this article on Stephen Hawking some time back and he predicted that mankind will have trouble surviving past a 100 years from now. I'm sure that the Earth will still be here by then, albeit with all the heat and pollution and stuff, but it is the survival of our own kind that forms the big question now!

Since last year, I have pledged to switch off the lights for an hour once a week and I'm trying to increase that to 2 hours starting this year.

Let's heal the world to save our future....

Trying to be artistic... :-p

2010-03-22T19:58:00.004+08:00

Markaholic...

2010-03-21T20:58:00.005+08:00

Was chatting with Mom one day over tea time and out of a sudden she gave me 7 very funny but intriguing questions. The questions were pretty easy, it's either a 'Yes' or a 'No'. And out of that 7 questions, I answered 'Yes' to more than 4 of them. And you know what Mom told me?? That I'm a workaholic.

She went on and commented (and I realised too) that I have not really relaxed myself since I started working almost a year ago. I never really had any holiday... most of the trips that I've been to were business trips and if they weren't, I would take my laptop on the road with me, just in case I could find time to work on my paper or my simulations or to prepare some teaching materials. I had not jogged for more than 6 months!! And the list goes on....

This reminds me of what I was during high school. I was always in the team who was in charged of the PA system for the whole school during key events and many a times, I would skipped my meals during those events as I was busy working at my station or I would be running all over the school to set up the mics and speakers and amplifiers. Looks like some old habits indeed die hard...

Even during my recent trip up north (again...) for my girlfriend's graduation, my laptop was with me and I was working on some lecture materials when everyone (she and her family) was asleep at night.

Gotta learn to let go and relax I think... :-/

Cheers

Do you have what it takes to be a student? :-p

2010-03-11T11:30:00.002+08:00

MCSI (Mark CSI) :-p

2010-03-06T21:42:00.004+08:00

Victim: Ng Hiu Yuk (not related in any manner to my family :-p)

Sex: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Cause of death: Snapped tail caused by the exhaust fan

Potential homicide? Still under investigation :-p

Skeletor???

2010-03-03T12:03:00.002+08:00

Found this on the net, thought that it was hilarious :-p

Cheers

Tian Hou Temple

2010-02-24T10:31:00.017+08:00

Day of 8s

2010-02-23T22:20:00.008+08:00

Day: 8th Day of CNY 2010

Venue: Tian Hou Gong Temple

It's been 8 years since I've been to this temple. Remember that I last came here towards the end of 2001 after my novitiate program as a novice monk :-p And now back here after 8 years, not much changes around the temple, except for some new renovation works and also the shifting of the statues of the 12 zodiac animals, I think. Went there with Mei, Sis and Cousin Jasmine. Sis and Jasmine were there for a calligraphy competition and I was the driver of the day and Mei just tagged along for the fun of it :-)

Me and my long lost brother :-p

Mei with her sister :-p

... and Trin went cuckoo hehehe

Some high school kids performing

And we managed to take a photo with 月老爷爷

For lunch, we went to Papa Rich in Taman Shamelin Perkasa and we took a drive around my old neighbourhood before heading home :-)

It was a great day really... got to spend time with loved ones... a great day indeed :-)

Cheers

Flinders Street Station

2010-02-22T00:21:00.006+08:00

Of Tigers, Roses, Chocs and Soft Toys...

2010-02-14T02:29:00.004+08:00

And there goes the year of the Great Ox as we welcome the year of the Golden Tiger. According to Feng Shui predictions for those born in 1983, the little Boars (like me :-p), 2010 holds a great year for us in terms of career achievements and wealth generations *wink wink ^^* However, we need to beware while travelling as we are prone to accidents and mishaps... Hmmm... guess that we need to stay alert at all times then :-) Other than that, it doesn't sound too bad eh?? :-p So to my buddies Chickuboy, CiB Henry and Tard Yuan Wu, may we enjoy the best as the lucky Piggies this year :-D

This was taken last month while shopping at Mid Valley

May you and your family be blessed with good health and happiness in this new lunar year :-D

GONG XI FA CAI!!

And of couse, CNY this year falls on the same date as Valentine's Day hehehe and I'll be celebrating it for the first time :-p hahaha

Really am grateful to have found a decent and good girl and I'm gonna cherish her for many more Valentine's to come :-)

Hopefully both of them will get along well hehehe

...and this is my Valentine's gift from her :-)

To my Dear Mei,

Je t'aime ;-)

Through Niki's eyes...

2010-01-30T20:12:00.006+08:00

Some of the shots taken with my new dSLR :-)

Cheers and have a pleasant weekend :-)

Geek Level Up!!

2010-01-30T19:37:00.005+08:00

Was sent to Melbourne on official business (as well as some leisure time for myself :-p) and I came back making a large purchase, one that will stop all other major purchase plans for the year. I finally got myself a dSLR. I guess the only geek gadget missing in my stable is a GPS system.

Was surfing around in Melbourne where I stumbled upon this promotion that they have at the airport. Nikon D3000 going off for AUD899, and mind you it's a twin lens kit!! So I got the whole thing there itself; the camera body, 18-55mm VR + 55-200mm VR lenses and a 4GB Sandisk memory card. With that price, it's about RM300-RM400 cheaper than what most retailers are selling back in Malaysia. The only thing not included in the package was a bag and so I got a Sony (so what if it's a Sony? like.no.other mah :-p) bag for AUD53, which is large to fit a twin lens kit :-)

This is my new wife... I call her Niki hehe

...and with the new year, comes a new look hehehe please have a paper bag ready... you know, just in case :-p

Cheers

Great Trip to Penang... again...

2010-01-16T21:46:00.003+08:00

This was my second trip to Penang in a month! While the earlier one was on leisure with my dear family, this time round it was a business trip with all expenses being paid for. Was flown there on an AirAsia, being my maiden flight on AA and the plane was late for more than an hour :-/ Bad first impressions....

But well, all my frustrations were gone by the time I stepped into this hotel that I was staying in. It's called B-Suite and should I say that this place rocks!!! The huge space that I have in this room was enough to hold a party for more than 10 pax!! Though I did not pay for the accommodation, but I personally think that this place is worth staying. With the end of the school holidays, it costs only RM135 per night to stay in this hotel, including breakfast!

My only minor complaint of this place is that the TV was a tad too small and the distance between the TV and my bed was a little far. Other than that, I strongly recommend this place to anyone who's coming to Penang during the off-peak season. As for the hotel that I was staying in my previous trip, it was BAD!! But then again, that's another story :-)

Enjoy the pics below :-)

One person staying and I was given a twin-sharing room!! Woohooo!!!

That's how far away the TV was from the bed... No major complaints though :-)

Looking at the main door from the balcony

One of the best bathrooms that I've seen in a hotel ;-)

The nice view from my room on the 12th floor

The same views during the day

Cheers

iPhone Pilotting AR.Drone!!

2010-01-12T11:55:00.006+08:00

This is so awesomely cool!!! CES 2010 was held just last week and this was one of the main highlight. There's even a prototype being released by the company to potential game developers!! Man.... in the future gaming with iPhone will be a real life thing rather than just being seen on the LCD screen. Just can't wait for that :-p

Now... if I can get my hands on this thing for my research or even as a student FYP project...

Cheers

Another Day.... Another Year....

2010-01-01T08:22:00.003+08:00

... and there goes 2009... went passed us as swift as the fastest train system in China. But I shall not rant for I am counting the blessings that I got in 2009. Blessings from God and from my loved ones, supporting me throughout the last lap of my PhD studies and of course, my new job :-) Not to mention also that I managed to achieve all of my resolutions last year and so for 2010, I am not placing large bets on anything nor am I setting lots of difficult resolutions to achieve :-p I'm just gonna keep things nice and simple, and most importantly, happy and healthy. So here are mine for this year:

a) To stay alive (have been my prime resolution for many years now :-p)
b) To stay healthy (gotta start exercising again and to cut down on my diet hahahaha)
c) To spend more time with family
d) To achieve certain goals in my career
e) Lastly, to be happy and to control my bad temper :-)

Well, of course there's 1 or 2 hidden resolutions (hehe) and some additional ones that I shall be adding on to the list as the year goes along.

Wishing you a Very Happy New Year and may 2010 be a blessed one for you and your family :-)

Mark

ProSwitcher 1.0 Released!!! Multitasking Made Easy On The iPhone!!

2009-12-25T17:29:00.007+08:00

It's Christmas Day and to all Jailbroken iPhone users, we've got the best gift of all - ProSwitcher 1.0!!! Yup, ProSwitcher is out of beta now and version 1.0 was released on Christmas Day Year 2009 :-D

So for those who are still in the oblivion and don't know what this ProSwitcher thing is all about, picture this situation:

You are playing one of your favourites games on your iPhone when a very important text message ust came in and you need to reply it ASAP. And when you re-open your game, all the progress is lost and you need to restart that particular level again.

You'll then imagine how good will it be if you can multitask on your iPhone and that you could just resume to that very moment in your game when you are done with your texting. Well, now you can with ProSwitcher!

You might say that there are already apps like Backgrounder and MultiFlow that deals with multitasking on the iPhone, so why would you need ProSwitcher?? That's correct, but let's not forget that
1) To use Backgrounder, you still need to go back to the Springboard, scroll through the pages to switch between active apps.
2) MultiFlow, though is useful, but it's not free. And for those who prefer a cheaper (and in this case, FREE) alternatives, there's ProSwitcher.

The interface of ProSwitcher is like what you saw on the Palm Pre, where apps are arranged as cards and you cycle through the active apps to use them. Sounds simple? It really is and the GUI works flawlessly on my iPhone 2G. I'm sure that it's even faster and smoother on the 3GS.

OK, to start things of, you need to install ProSwitcher via Cydia and to do that, you'll need to add this repo into the Cydia sources:

http://booleanmagic.com/repo

Once you're done, search for ProSwitcher and install it. You'll see that Backgrounder as well as LibActivator will be in the queue list as well. So just go with it and install them too.

Once you've installed them and respringed your Springboard, go to Settings and you'll find ProSwitcher in the list.

Basically, here is where you customize this app to your likings and here is mine. You don't have to follow exactly what I've done here as there are just my personal preferences.

But just a personal recommendation, I turned "Become Home Screen" ON so that whenever I press the Home Button in any app, it will bring forward the ProSwitcher app GUI and the default Springboard will be shown as one of the active apps. Tapping on any active apps will bring you to that particular app. It's just like Expose for existing Mac users :-) To quit/close any of the active apps, just swipe them upwards and voila!! They're gone :-)

In order to make sure that the active apps are shown in the list, just hold down your Home Button while on any apps except the default ones (eg. Phone, iPod, Mail and Safari) until you see the label "Backgrounding enabled". Going back to the app and doing the same procedure will turn the Backgrounding off. Existing Backgrounder users should be familiar with this procedure.

So there you go! Multitasking finally been made easy and FREE using ProSwitcher. Just bear in mind that you should not leave too many apps active in the background as this will seriously make your battery die faster and also to save some precious memory for other apps.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and Happ MultiTasking on your iPhone :-)

Mark

It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year....

2009-12-23T07:59:00.017+08:00

Yay!!! It's X'mas again :-) But first of all, sorry for the long long delay in the update of my blog. Been bugged by lots of work lately that I could hardly breathe, well at least not literally :-p

So, I've been going round town to most shopping complexes, just to walk around and to exercise my legs hehehe It's been a long time that I've done that and since it's the holiday seasons, the complexes were dressed up to the nines. I think I'll just let the photos do the talking :-p As usual, the photos were taken using Belle and it's just 2MP quality, but I guess it's OK :-)

The Snowmen @ Pyramid Skating Ring

Pyramid New Wing

The non-working clock :-p

Pavilion Entrance

New York-style decos in front of Pavilion (my personal fav :-) )

The lit-up reindeers and sleigh :-)

The ever popular colour-changing fountain

The majestic deco inside

Front view of the main centre court

Just inside the main entrance

...oooooooOOOOooooooo the flying reindeers :-)

Mid Valley with their Hogwarts-style (castles and floating candles) deco

@1U

Was there to support a colleague who was in the choir. Fabulous performance from them!!

It turned out that this was not a performance... just a sound-check. What a disappointment...

Berjaya Times Square with their cottage deco

Unlike the one in Pyramid, the clocks here actually works!! :-p Typical engineer hehehehe

The rotating X'mas tree at the entrance with a cottage shop underneath it. Absolutely fascinated by the support of this whole thing...

And there you go... with the year 2009 coming to an end and what a blessed year it has been!

Happy X'mas to you and may all your dreams come true :-)

HoHoHo

Mark

Should I or should I not? :-p

2009-12-07T14:14:00.003+08:00

Something to share with you all :-)

Cheers

珍惜眼前人...

2009-10-28T08:05:00.004+08:00

Got this from a local forum post that was forwarded to me by a friend....hahaha thanks mate :-)

--------------------------------------------------------

Pada suatu pagi di satu sekolah menengah, ada seorang pelajar bertanya pada seorang guru yang sedang mengajar. Ketika itu, guru tersebut sedang menyentuh mengenai kasih dan sayang secara am. Dialog di antara pelajar dan guru tersebut berbunyi begini :

Pelajar : Cikgu, macam mana kita nak pilih seseorang yang terbaik sebagai orang paling kita sayang?. Macam mana juga kasih sayang itu nak berkekalan?

Cikgu : Oh, awak nak tahu ke?.Emmm...baiklah, sekarang kamu buat apa yang saya suruh. Ikut je ye...mungkin kamu akan dapat apa jawapannya.

Pelajar : Baiklah...apa yang saya harus buat?

Cikgu : Kamu pergi ke padang sekolah yang berada di luar kelas sekarang juga.Kamu berjalan di atas rumput di situ dan sambil memandang rumput didepan kamu, pilih mana yang PALING cantik tanpa menoleh ke belakang lagi walaupun sekali. Dan kamu petiklah rumput yang PALING cantik yang berada di depan kamu tersebut dan selepas itu bawa balik ke kelas.

Pelajar : Ok. Saya pergi sekarang dan buat apa yang cikgu suruh.

Apabila pelajar tersebut balik semula ke kelas, tiada pun rumput yang berada di tangannya. Maka cikgu pun bertanya kepada pelajar tersebut.

Cikgu : Mana rumput yang cikgu suruh petik?

Pelajar : Oh, tadi saya berjalan di atas rumput dan sambil memandang rumput yang berada di situ, saya carilah rumput yang paling cantik. Memang ada banyak yang cantik tapi cikgu kata petik yang paling cantik maka saya pun terus berjalan ke depan sambil mencari yang paling cantik tanpa menoleh ke belakang lagi. Tapi sampai di penghujung padang , saya tak jumpa pun yang paling cantik. Mungkin ada di antara yang di belakang saya sebelum itu tapi dah cikgu cakap tak boleh menoleh ke belakang semula, jadi tiadalah rumput yang saya boleh petik.

Cikgu : Ya, itulah jawapannya. Maknanya, apabila kita telah berjumpa dengan seseorang yang kita sayang, janganlah kita hendak mencari lagi yang lebih baik daripada itu. Kita patut hargai orang yang berada di depan kita sebaik-baiknya. Janganlah kita menoleh ke belakang lagi kerana yang berlaku tetap dah berlaku. Dan semoga yang berlalu tidak lagi berulang. Jika kita berselisih faham dengan orang yang kita sayang itu, kita boleh perbetulkan keadaan dan cuba teruskan perhubungan tersebut walaupun banyak perkara yang menggugat perhubungan tersebut. Dan ingatlah orang yang kita sayang itulah kita jumpa paling cantik dan paling baik pada MULAnya walaupun nak ikutkan banyak lagi yang cantik dan baik seperti rumput tadi. KECUALILAH jika perhubungan tersebut tak boleh diselamatkan lagi, maka barulah kita mulakan sekali lagi. Maka sayangilah orang yang berada di depan kita dengan tulus dan ikhlas.

--------------------------------------------------------

Wow...so true indeed :-p

P.S. And I just realised that my BM isn't that 'karat' after all :-p

Cheers

Fruits Festival!!

2009-10-18T21:25:00.002+08:00

OK...I was just eyeing the Durians :-p

One of the many rounds that I had :-p

What you see here is only a small portion of the whole supply

The only thing that's missing on this hot day was coconut water!!

Cheers

Mark

Happy Birthday, Gary Boy!!

2009-09-30T21:07:00.001+08:00

Gary boy is now 26 years old. One year older and hopefully he enjoys great health and happiness in abundance :-)

Not bad, this year a good year it has been. Almost all of the resolutions were achieved before the first half of the year was due, with only one or two still left unresolved . Maybe the time has not come yet or maybe Gary boy hasn't been working hard on them :-p Overall, this year so far was like a repeat of 2007, above average :-)

That's how the day started.... Training :-/

Brownie as birthday cake :-p Thanks Mom and Dad and Sis :-) Love you all always :-)

The big boy :-p

Then came another few rounds of celebrations, thanks to buddy Chickuboy for the dinner at Manhattan Fish Market and also to fellow colleagues for the treat at Neway :-) And not forgetting the very early celebration in Cherating :-)

Let's toast to a better year ahead and may all of Gary boy's dreams come true :-)

Cheers

Cherating Trip 2009

2009-09-28T18:17:00.003+08:00

Finally had my long awaited holiday after the submission of my thesis. The pre-planned trip to Phuket in July was called off during the last minute due to the H1N1 scare. Managed to get a 80% refund of the hotel booking but none of the flight one :-(

As for this Cherating trip, I said yes to it about 1 week before the actual trip, thinking that I could unwind after years of hard work and sacrifices... and also to clear my mind off of certain things, things that happened just 2-3 days before I took the plunge and informed my colleague that I wanted in. It was a good and pleasant trip, went on a Saturday and came back on Monday. Maybe I'll just let the photos to do the talking :-)

Inside the compound of the chalet

The chalet

One of the animals that you can find within the vicinity of the resort

One cute fella here :-)

Another shot of Jack (that's what I called it) :-p

Endangered species Size M

Endangered species Size S

And the animals from outside - Colleague with her furkids

Wooo....10 years old! I think I qualify!! :-p

The overall look of the resort from outside

...and it has a tree-house!!

Inside the tree-house

The main support of this nice and cozy place :-)

...and most of all, THE BEACH BABBEEEYYY!!!

I think that this will make a very nice wallpaper :-)

Ahhhh.... the ultimate solitude of life!! :-)

Being spy-shot-ed while looking for treasures (a message in a bottle perhaps) :-p

Toast with half-boiled egg and special curry!

Ice-blended choc lava! :-D

Nice....just nice...

My mark on the beach with my errr.... footsteps :-p

Loads of these over here...

...and time for ATVs!!!!

Is there something wrong with my eyes or did I look like a small kid in this pic?? :-p

Mom said that I looked like a kampung kid here :-/

Group photo, courtesy of Jason :-)

:-)

On the second night, my colleagues celebrated my birthday, by bringing me out to this pub called Little Bali. To cut the story short, I came out feeling tipsy but sober :-p hehehehe

Really nice holiday indeed for me. Reflected lots about life during my long hours sitting on the beach alone, and thinking bout the thing that happened earlier :-) Life....

Cheers

Mark

September'09 - An Unhappy Month

2009-09-19T22:10:00.004+08:00

This month has been an up and down one for me. Good news and bad news come one right after another and my emotions have been going uphill and downhill like a sine wave :-(

The latest one really broke my heart. Here at one moment, we were celebrating the lives of 5 birthday boys and girls at a poolside party and on the very next day, we were mourning the passing of an ex-student and friend of mine.

"Life it seems, is not without its sense of irony"

In short, this friend of mine met with an accident, got knocked down by a car, was in coma for 3 days without gaining consciousness, and he's gone... just like that. I've been in a very deep sad of mood the whole of yesterday, especially after paying a last visit to him at the hospital. Is life really that fragile? Is life really that short? And it's so unpredictable!! I mean, he's already in his final year of uni life!! Why?? WHY??!!! There are so many people out there, criminals and terrorists who deserve to die, but not him, a young man with a bright future ahead of him. He hasn't even enjoyed his life yet! Looking at his family members, as well as the loads of friends that he had, I'm sure that we all are gonna miss him.

Let us all treasure every moment in our lives, work hard, play harder and love even more. After all, we will not know what is set upon us the very next minute of our lives.

人生有多少个十年?? 珍惜眼前人.... 珍惜一切...

RIP Choo Jian Yi

Gary

Merdeka!!!

2009-08-29T10:22:00.006+08:00

Wooohooo Tanggal Tiga Puluh Satu, Bulan Lapan Lima Puluh Tujuh.... :-p

Long weekend for most of us haha Not a bad one for me too I hope, starting off with replacement classes on Saturday morn :-(....but what happens after that will surely bring all the high blood pressure accumulated throughout the past few months to come down drastically :-p

Knowing that I'm quite a picky person, my friends had actually 'booked' me for this weekend 2 weeks ago hahahaa but the schedule sounds fun also-lah :-p

Sat - Replacement classes till 12pm. Then, I'll be off to watch UP in 3D and Karaoke session after that till night :-D

Didn't ask for this. My bunch of friends wanted me to show proof that I've indeed been to the movie :-/

Happy moments before got allergic to the oysters and my ears got itchy and throat got swollen :-/

Sun - Picnic-cum-Zorbing session at Lake Titiwangsa. Going to experience how fun it is being a hamster in a globe :-p Followed by a prawn-fishing thingy :-/

Prawn ah prawn.... where are thee?

In the orb, before the roll.

During the roll. Trust me... this is not for the faint hearted! It's comparable to a roller coaster ride!

Chilling out while waiting for others to finish their rolls :-p

Mon - ~~Futsal!!!~~ Dim Sum Buffet @ Mandarin Palace, Federal Hotel with family :-D

Very nice environment indeed. Classic Chinese style and atmosphere :-D

One of the many rounds that we've gone through. Personally, I've consumed 6-7 baskets of 'Siu Mai', amongst other delicacies :-p

With Grandpa. Love this pic a lot. Very Nyonya-ish :-p

I guess these 3 days will drain my battery like nobody's business and I'll be left wondering what to do for Tuesday :-p Well, on another note, this will look like a proper holiday for me in a very long time :-D

WOOOHOOOO!!!!! A 'High' weekend indeed!! :-D

Hope that you have a great weekend and Happy Merdeka to Malaysia :-)

Mark

August - Money Sucking Month

2009-08-23T22:26:00.006+08:00

That how I describe August 2009, a month where my wallet is sucked dry and I'm left with nothing to save :-(

But some of the spendings were well spent actually. For instance, the money spent on buying the past years SPM papers for my Sis. I could still remember being in MPH Jusco Maluri, browsing through the tech mags when I stumbled upon the piles of the past exam papers. Automatically, the Aunty mode was turned on and I found myself squeezing in between the other real aunties there to get hold of the books for my Sis hahaha Well, not bad that I managed to get everything except for the Sejarah papers. I could now just hope that Trin will do her best in her exams and not trying too hard to compare with my past achievements :-) Remember Sis, you are who you are and you are special & unique in your own way :-)

The other well spent item would be the dinner at Sakae Sushi, Pavilion to celebrate Dad's bday! I happened just a while ago actually hahaha Brought the whole family to Pavilion together with a close family friend and we did had a real hearty meal and really enjoyed ourselves big time. The food was nice, the ambience was good, and most importantly, there was no crowd! Bon Appetit indeed....ooops I meant Itadakimasu :-p

Then there were some unexpected and kinda unecessary spendings such as the suit from G2000. Me, who had never owned any piece of suit or any business jacket before, have to buy one this time round because this special event that I'm bout to attend clearly states that the dresscode is Business Attire. And it'll happen on top of a building, that's right... on a rooftop. Just hope that the weather will be gentle on me that day, seeing that I sweat very easily :-/ And while I was there at Mid Valley, I got myself another 2 additional G2000 working shirts = more money spent. Well, just hope that I can still fit into the suit on my wedding day which will happen.... errrr.... we'll get to that when it comes, shall we? hahaha

As for the other spendings, I don't think it would be good to disclose them here but all I can say is that I'm currently broke for the month. But with Snow Leopard coming up in late August and also the extended warranty for my MacBook deadline creeping up in November, I guess that I won't be able to save for another month or two.... :'( If only money grows on trees or drops from the sky hahaha

That's all folks from me now. Hope that you had a great weekend. I had a great one indeed :-)

Cheers

Mark

Breaking the silence...

2009-08-11T15:45:00.003+08:00

Been busy with work for the past 3 weeks or so. So for those who are following this blog (of which I think would be the selected few :-p ), just wanna let you guys (and girls if there's any haha) know that I'm very much alive and kicking, and am counting my blessings daily for the things that I have, my friends and family who care for me as well as my work.

I think that the best thing that could happen to anyone would to be able to do what you enjoy :-) And fortunately for me, I have the privilege to enjoy that.

OK gotta go now, am just straying away for 10mins from my work for some relaxation :-p

God bless you and Cheers

Mark

The Elite Feeling

2009-07-23T22:10:00.004+08:00

She's such a beauty
The aura she oozes
Her lines
And her curves
The feeling of lust grows in me
Prompted me to part with my Papillon
Thanks for the time together
Your love
And your affection
You shall always be my first
You shall live in my heart forever
I shall always remember
Viva la Papillon Mi Corazon
Je t'aime

Mark Gary

Microsoft vs Apple (The Battle of Retail Stores)

2009-07-17T07:39:00.014+08:00

Got this off PCWorld and I think that it is quite a good and funny share with you all :-)

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1) Instead of Apple's sheer walls of glass, Microsoft's stores will have brushed steel walls dotted with holes -- reminiscent of Windows security.

2) The store will have six different entrances: Starter, Basic, Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. While all six doors will lead into the same store, the Ultimate door requires a fee of $100 for no apparent reason.

3) Instead of a "Genius Bar" (as Apple provides) Microsoft will offer an Excuse Bar. It will be staffed by Microsofties trained in the art of evading questions, directing you to complicated and obscure fixes, and explaining it's a problem with the hardware -- not a software bug.

4) The Windows Genuine Advantage team will run storefront security, assuming everybody is a thief until they can prove otherwise.

5) Store hours are undetermined. At any given time the store mysteriously shuts down instantaneously for no apparent reason. (No word yet on what happens to customers inside).

6) Stores will be named Microsoft Live Retail Store with PC Services for Digital Lifestyle Enthusiasts.

7) Fashioned after Microsoft's User Account Control (UAC) in Vista, sales personnel will ask you whether you're positive you want to purchase something at least twice.

8) Xbox 360 section of the store will be organized in a ring -- which will inexplicably go red occasionally.

9) DreamWorks will design a scary in-store theme park ride called "blue screen of death."

10) Store emergency exits will be unlocked at all times so people can get in anytime they want even if the front doors are locked.

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Cheers

Mental Health Vaccine

2009-07-10T13:26:00.004+08:00

OK...this would be the third and last of the Mental Health Series (Part 1 and Part 2). Basically, some basic housekeeping rules that we need to keep in check to prevent our minds to stray to the dark side :-p

1) Sense of god/spirituality

- sense of belonging to your religion, something that you can fall back to and seek refuge if things don't work out the way they should

2) Sense of responsibility

- as we grow up (not older :-p), we need to understand that we bear heavier responsibilities and whatever that we do will have its consequences, be it at work or in our own family. And we must be responsible for what we do.

3) Sense of reality

- not everything that we hope for will just come out of thin air. We need to work hard for it and always hope for the best and expect the worst :-) We need to know that we are not living in Wonderland after all...

4) Common sense

- sometimes, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the things that are going on around us. In fact, most of the time, we just need to analyse and see things through with nothing other than our common senses. It's not really that difficult, really :-)

5) Sense of humour

- as has been stressed in the previous 2 series, having a sense of humour would seriously do our minds good. Having something to laugh about, no matter how ridiculous, man...it feels good :-)

So that's all folks. Hope that you benefited from these information as much as I did :-)

Cheers

The Geek War

2009-07-07T15:21:00.004+08:00

Prior to 2007, I was a PC guy, working with Windows XP and beta-testing Vista before I started to get frust over the slowness of the Windows (both) while compiling my LaTeX codes for my postgraduate studies. That's when I started to switch to Linux, trying most of the famous distros out there, i.e. Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, gOS, PCLinuxOS etc.

And hence, I turned into a Linux guy. And honestly, I found that Linux is better than Windows in many ways, except for playing games. The system seldom hangs, there's Compiz-Fusion (now that's what I call Wow!!!), the fonts look nicer onscreen and most importantly, whenever I format the HD and reinstall the system, I don't have to spend like half a day to find and install all the drivers of the hardware that I have.

After 2 years of playing with Linux, I finally took the plunge and got myself a MacBook late last year. So I've been a Mac guy since (man... imagine the identity crisis that I, a geek had to go through :-p). So how does Mac compared to Linux? Well, in terms of stability and security, both are free most malicious stuff out there at the moment, so both are equal on this part. But for practicality and ease of use, Mac has a slight upperhand over Linux. For instance, getting Chinese input support in Linux is still not that easy to setup. And for newbies, working with the Terminal in Linux is quite cumbersome and is not something that most people would like doing. But overall, I still think that both are better than Windows, unless if you are talking bout playing games.

So here's my ranking list for the 3 OS'es (just my personal opinion, no pun intended :-) ):

1) Mac (Leopard)

2) Linux

a) gOS Space (the last that I used before switching to Mac)

b) gOS 3.0 Gadgets

c) PCLinuxOS 2007

d) Ubuntu

e) and the rest of the distros that I've tried in no specific order

3) Windows

a) XP...duh!!

b) 7 beta (better than Vista but still hanging)

c) 98 (the King before XP)

d) 95 Plus! (could still remember the hype back then)

e) 2000

f) Vista and Me (equally bad and frustrating to use to me)

Cheers

Cool Place to Hang Out

2009-07-06T15:07:00.001+08:00

It's Sunday yesterday!! Yippiee!!! Was taking a break from my busy schedule and decided to try this new place outside my house, bout 2 mins drive from home :-) It's called "Victoria Bakery Cafe", a sorta pastry cafe with a cosy environment and some nice jazz music (and free WiFi too). Well, when I was there, they were playing some numbers by Louis Armstrong mah.... :-p

Overall, the food was not too bad too. At least, the price is cheaper than Secret Recipe and the more commercialised likes. I had an Iced Lemon Tea (RM2.80) and a piece of Opera cake (RM5.00). They even had a special Weekend Set which comprises a glass of Iced Lemon Tea and a Spaghetti for just RM7.90. But no Brownies :-(

So my dear Crappers' Gang, looks like we have a new place to 'Blow Water' now hehehe.... the only cons is that the cafe closes at 9.30pm, not a problem since I seldom stay out too at night often :-p

So let's have it there the next time we have our 'meeting' :-p Will try to post more pics of the cafe soon :-)

Cheers

iPhone OS 3.0: A Personal Review

2009-07-05T16:09:00.017+08:00

Updated Belle to OS 3.0 recently and have been spending some time to testdrive it ever since. First impression wise, it's much faster than 2.2 before this (I didn't upgrade to 2.2.1). And most of all, not sure if I'm the only one with this experience, the battery lasts longer too, not that much, maybe bout 10% or so (that's 1-2 hours in my chart). But hey, it's better than nothing, rite? :-)

I think the first thing that you would notice on the Springboard of OS 3.0 is the new app called 'Voice Memos'. Basically, those voice recorders that are being sold on the AppStore can close shop now that Apple had made an official one being part of the core apps offered as default in OS 3.0.

The Voice Memos app on the Springboard with a very nice Mic icon

The main interface of the app

Tap the button on the left to record and the right button to view all saved voice clips. With your audio memos, there are few things that you can do. For instance, tapping onto the blue arrow beside your recording gives you options to trim your clip, throwing away the parts that you don't want.

The collection of saved memos

And of course, you can even share your audio clip, via email.

Not bad given that sometimes, it's faster and more efficient having voice memos rather than typing them out using Notes. Comes in real useful especially to record the minutes of a meeting.

OK...to the core applications now. First thing that you might notice is the landscape view support for the core apps, i.e. Mail, Stocks, Notes and SMS. Remember the time when almost every user find the landscape keyboard in Safari is so much easier to tap on compared to the portrait one? Well, now you got it. You can now key in your SMS-es, notes and emails on the landscape keyboard in 3.0.

A nice touch really. Not only that, Stocks can now be viewed in landscape mode, showing a fullscreen of the graph. And in Stocks too (portrait view), you can now access more info about the company of interest via the new section where the graph used to be. Swiping left or right now reveals more stats values as well as the latest news about the company.

New info at the bottom of the Stocks app

As for the camera app, there's a slight change in the interface, most notably is the thumbnail of the latest photo taken, located at the bottom left of the app. However, since Belle is an iPhone 2G, there's no video recording support :-( This looks quite ridiculous to me as I personally think that it's more of a software matter than a hardware one. If I could record video using Cycorder from Cydia, I don't see any reason why Apple can't make one for the 2G version as well.

OK...I shall rant no more. Now let's look at another upgrade found in OS 3.0, one that should have existed since 1.x IMHO - Cut, Copy and Paste (nope, I'm not ranting :-p).

Basically, this function lets you to cut, copy and paste text on the iPhone, and it's not just limited to one app at a time. You can copy a string of text in Safari and paste them into Mail, for example. So, it's applicable across all platforms, supposedly. Haven't tested it on all Cydia apps that I have yet.

But now that it has finally arrived on 3.0, I shall complain no more. To undo the changes, just give your iPhone a shake. That's it.

The other upgrades that I welcome with open arms were SMS forwarding and individual SMS deleting. In the SMS app, just tap onto the 'Edit' button on the top right and you can select whichever SMS that you would like to delete/forward. Again, these functions should have been there from the start, so I'm quite happy that they are here now at last.

And for those who make use of the Push notification on their apps, i.e. IM+ or Beejive, you can now access the setting under Settings > Notifications. Was testing with IM+ the other day, but the Push notifications didn't work for me. Maybe I was trying to Push through Gmail and not YahooMail...not sure. Gotta experiment further and see how it goes :-/

And lastly, the implementation of the famous Spotlight on Leopard into iPhone. On the Springboard, just swipe to the left of Page 1 and you'll find a page for the Spotlight. Tapping in the keywords to search for will return the results from all possible resources, i.e. Contacts, Mail, Notes, iPod etc. Not that you'll use it often, but then it does come in useful when you need it.

On top of that, not sure if this has been there since 2.x, whenever you scroll up in Mail or Notes, it has a Search spot for that particular app.

So what are my final verdict on the iPhone OS 3.0? Although the upgrades should've been there since the beginning of the birth of the iPhone, but I do welcome them happily and that has set my foot deeper into the Belle, just gotta love her more now :-p The only thing that can separate us at this moment would be none other than the iPhone 3GS hehehehe

Cheers

Mental Muscle Makers

2009-06-27T18:10:00.005+08:00

This would be the second of the three series of posts of mine which focus on Mental Health. The first one being a survey/questionnaire kinda thing here.

For this post, I'll share with you this part of the seminar on building Mental Muscle, things that would enhance our mental health and to stay healthily, mentally :-)

1) Have a good opinion of self

- you need to have a positive opinion of yourself. You need to have the self-confidence to live each day as it is. It's like, people always complain that I have loads of acne on my face, but hey, that shows that I'm still young right? :p

2) Learn to kill fears

- kill all your fears, be it fear of growing old, fear of height or just fear bout anything. Learn to overcome your fear by means of positive energies, encouragement or even activities :-)

3) Create heaven

- nothing about religions here. Heaven here means your personal place or feeling of Zen. Your own heaven that it. What places, food, activities, music or movies that make you feel calm and relaxed. That's your heaven. And embrace it whenever you can :-)

4) Don't let life short-change you

- life is forever changing. Humans are forever changing. Don't let it bind you into the past or let it control who you are. Remember, we are in control of our life, and through these changes, we grow to be stronger and more mature. Accept the changes in life, knowing that some of them are inevitable.

5) Sense of humour

- need I say more? hahaha life without laughter and jokes isn't life at all!! Come on!!! Flex that humour bone of yours and you'll soon find that life is not that dull and gloomy :-) After all, laughing for 20 minutes a day could lengthen your life :-)

6) Grow up, not old :-)

- who cares bout age? It's just a number :-p We grow up, not old. Growing is just a normal process of life and we should make full use of the time we have to strive for the best that we could :-)

7) A good relationship

- not necessary a love relationship. Any healthy relationship, be it with your wife/husband, family or friends could enhance your mental health and keep it in-check :-) It's not that hard to develop a happy relationship in my opinion. Just need to flex that smile of yours and have a common topic of conversations...that's all :-)

Cheers to a stronger Mental Muscle :-)

The day I lost part of my childhood...

2009-06-26T23:00:00.003+08:00

Woke up as usual today early in the morning and went to Uni. Reached there right before the clock struck 7am (no news on radio before 7am). But I got a shock when a few friends SMS-ed me that Michael Jackson had passed away. They knew that I am a die-hard fan of his and well.... real bad news early in the morning, just a day after I got one of the good news in my life.

For the whole day, my spirit was quite down actually. Greatly saddened by the news. Grew up listening to his songs and watching his MVs and I felt like part of my childhood had died with him. Am gonna miss this great legend and his contributions towards the entertainment industry (not so much for his various physical enhancements).

Although the final years of his life was plagued by various legal, health and financial problems, he had done lots to promote world peace and also for the environment. Songs like "Heal The World" and "Man In The Mirror" had touched the hearts of many people around the world, including mine.

So for today, I mourn for one of the greatest entertainers of all times, a true legend and all-around performer. The King of Pop - Michael Jackson. May you rest in peace, MJ.

For my lost childhood

A Psychological Test

2009-06-21T12:23:00.006+08:00

This will be the first part of a series of posts about mental health by me. Don't be alarmed!! I'm not down with depression nor am I suffering from any psychological disorder. It just so happens that I attended a talk some time back on 'Mental Health' and the speaker was throwing these quizzes and questions to us participants while we were starving, waiting for him to finish so that we could enjoy the free dinner :-p

Good presentation and insight by the speaker nevertheless :-)

The first part of the seminar was about the following Psychological Test:

1) Are you happy?
- a general very easy to ask type of question and yet a very hard to answer question too.

2) Do you have a zest for living?
- do you feel that each day in life is special in its own way and that there's something to learn everyday? Or are you just sitting in front of your PC/laptop 24/7/365 working on projects or Facebook-ing? :-p

3) Are you socially adjusted?
- do you have friends? Very simple! People around you who are willing to talk to you, share your happiness and sadness and are good listeners. Or do you have trouble mixing with and talking to people?

4) Do you have unity and balance?
- the balance in life! The balance between work and play, work and sleep...even your diet!

5) Can you live with each problem in your life as it arises?
- are you able to cope with the new challenges that come your way or will you confine yourself to your own state of mind, puffing or drinking away and slacking into a state of depression? And is the glass half full or half empyty?

6) Do you have insight?
- can you foresee some of the things that are bound to happen? Do you understand the people around you? Your friends, family or even yourself? Do you understand the problem that comes your way?

7) Do you have a confidential relationship with some other person?
- not necessary a romantic friend.. but rather a friend whom you can really talk to. A good listener. Someone who can provide you with rational and insightful points of view.

8) Do you have a sense of the ridiculous?
- have fun!! In Cantonese we call it the 'Fai'-ness. Have a good laugh from time to time. When was the last time you had a good laugh?

9) Are you engaged in satisfying work?
- do you enjoy your working life? And work here doesn't necessary mean something that enables you to pay the bills at the end of the month. It could be some charity work that you are doing. It could be your hobbies. And the big question is "Do you have a hobby?"

10) Do you know how to worry effectively?
- worrying is OK but over-worrying can lead to mental breakdown and subsequently, depression. Are you just worried for the sake of worrying or are you thinking prudently in the process?

So how many of those questions have you said "Yes" to? Well, Im proud to say that I could answer "Yes" to most of them, especially on the one asking about being ridiculous :-p

Basically, if you answer "Yes" to most of the questions up there, your psychological self is still healthy, and I hope that all of us will get to enjoy that :-)

To a healthier and happier life.... Cheers

Mark

Cool Apple AppWall

2009-06-11T13:32:00.004+08:00

We all know that the annual WWDC organised by Apple was held on Monday and that there were several updates to the products that they are offering, mainly the MacBook Pro and of course the iPhone 3GS with the latest OS 3.0. But what really caught my eyes was this AppWall that were on display on about 20 Apple Cinema HD Displays powered by 20 Mac Pro's running on the latest Mac OSX Snow Leopard.

What it's showing are about 20,000 apps available on the AppStore and each time an app is downloaded off iTunes or via the iPhone/iPod Touch, the respective app will create a ripple kinda effect on the AppWall. And the best part is that this happened about after only 5mins of delay, which to me is considered realtime. To me, this created an almost same cool effect as the Matrix codes that Morpheus and gang were looking at in that famous movie.

Cheers

Powerful Eyebrows

2009-05-30T15:58:00.002+08:00

An ex-classmate of mine MSN-ed me today, sending me a link to this video on YouTube, saying that the video reminded him of me. It seems that the way the children playing with their eyebrows in this advertisement video somehow brought back memories of how I played with mine during the good ol' high school days hahaha

Thanks Lee Ong for the share :-)

Enjoy :-)

Cheers

Spec-sticks-cles

2009-05-26T10:15:00.002+08:00

Would like to share this piece of invention with you guys. It is called the Chopsticks integrated eyewear. Credits go to CNET.com

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Who says Germans have no sense of silliness? Berlin firm ic! berlin has designed eyewear with built-in chopsticks where the frame arms detach to double as utensils. Designer Ralph Anderl says his Sushi specs "fly out of the shops", which isn't so hard to believe given the Japanese's love for Chindogu (un-useless inventions). In that vein, why not double the lenses as soya sauce containers? However, we'll have to say no thanks to those Sushi specs unless you like your fish delicately flavored with a touch of hair grease. (Picture from Ananova Web site)

Price: US$330
Availability: Selected opticians in Europe, the US and Japan
Device: Chopstick-integrated eyewear
Basic specs: N.A.

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As for me, I have no comments. I prefer to eat sushi with my hands :-p

Cheers

Nice Clay Pot Chicken Rice @ Tmn Connaught

2009-05-18T08:30:00.006+08:00

I was out with my family (as usual) the other day, in search for some nice food to eat for dinner. Most of the times, we would just settle for one of our favourite “Dai Chao” (Chinese dish order-to-cook stalls/mini restaurants), but on that particular day, we wanted to try something different. So off we went to Taman Connaught to this very nice Clay Pot Chicken Rice stall that we’ve heard about.

The stall is located at the corner of a row of shoplots, under the banner of “A You Lee Restaurant”. It shares the same row as the Suzuki showroom, i.e. about 50 metres after you pass by BHP petrol kiosk on your left, assuming that you come from the Bandar Tun Razak or the 50 cents toll of the Lingkaran Timur-Barat or even the MRR2.

We found ourselves a nice spot to park and once inside, we started to ferret about, looking for this stall :-p

Aaaahhhhhaaaaa!!! Here it is...

So we went up to the tauke there and ordered 2 medium pots with some additional offerings - salted fish! So while waiting for the main meal to come, we decided to get some double-boiled soup too, since the tauke said that his are true double-boiled soup with each urn being boiled separately rather than boiling the soup from one big pot and then only distribute them to the many urns. So Sis got herself the Groundnuts with Lotus Roots and I got the Ginseng Whiskers with Chicken Legs. Great idea for those who can’t find the time to cook/boil soup at home and yet craving for one :-p The price is reasonable too. And the taste….yummy…. None of the chicken legs nor the ginseng whiskers were spared by me. Muahahaha

And then came our main meal!

Really not bad at all!! There’s enough sauce in the rice, not too much, but just nice. The chicken cutlets were juicy too. And there’s some Chinese sausages inside too… oh and the salted fish, man it really added additional taste to the whole thing, again the amount was just right as not to cover the original taste of the chicken rice. And most of all, the price is really reasonable for a hearty and delicious meal. Before we left, Sis and Dad ordered another 2 urns of double-boiled soup.

It seems that his Pork Ribs Rice is not bad too. So I bought enough for 1 pax as lunch on the following day and indeed it was good :-)

Another thing to add, it seems that the stall next to it, selling all sorts of porridge is very delicious too, especially the Frog Leg cooked with Dried Chillies Porridge. Must try it next time round :-)

On how to get there, maybe this Google Map image (click for hyperlink) can help you out :-)

And before we left, I managed to get a shot of the tauke with his oooo-laaa-laaaa super nice cooking crock pots chicken rice :-)

Cheers