Featured on tuxmachines.org!! Hooray!! :-)

A little while ago, I posted a blog on the new Linux system that I'm using now: gOS. Since then, the readers count on my blog was shooting off the roof and I managed to find out why :-)

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/26888


My post was featured on the main page of tuxmachines.org!!! Was really happy to be able to contribute to the Linux community and am looking forward to contribute more in the future.

Go PENGUIN!!!!



Cheers

A pledge to help the China earthquake victims...

I was at my aunt's place helping my cousin set up his Streamyx connection. And my other family members were in the main hall watching this TVB show which featured celebrities doing their bits to help generate donations for the China quake victims. And throughout the show, clips taken at the location of the disaster were shown and watching it could really break a lion's heart.

Countless victims, most of them schooling children were perished in one of the latest disasters which had shocked the world. Tremors are still being felt around the world, not of the earthquake but rather the amount of lives lost which have left parents crying foul over the death of their children. Seeing them kneeling, crying beside the bodies of their loved ones, shaking the dead bodies with hope of waking them up is very saddening. There's this Chinese saying "White hair people sending off the black hair people", which clearly depicts the situation that's happening now in China for parents who mourn for their young ones. I'm not going to post pictures of the disaster here as I'm sure we've seen enough for the past couple of days.

The big question that's being asked now is that "Why children form the majority of those who had died in the unfortunate event??" Although the quake happened during schooling time, but that didn't justify the fact that most of the buildings which collapsed were schools. Parents are now questioning the quality of the school buildings that their children were studying in...Were these buildings built according to the specifications? Did the contractors use the right materials of the right quality during construction? And the list goes on... With the Beijing Olympics coming soon, this event had clearly delivered a blow to the country. Children who are participating in the games, children who are the future engineers/doctors/leaders of the country had been put at risk studying in buildings which don't meet the QA and QC standards.

At times like this, I think we should extend our help in any means possible. UNICEF volunteers are already on the sites of the disaster trying to save as many survivors as possible. For us who couldn't be there, monetary assistance is one of the better ways. Many local churches and temples are generating funds to help the victims and everyone should contribute IMHO. You don't have to go to the hundreds or thousands, even RM5 or RM10 are good enough to show your care for the victims. And with Wesak Day ushering in tomorrow, blessing and praying sessions are being held in most temples, with hope that those who are still trapped underneath the rubble and debris be found still breathing air and may all those who've lost their loved ones in the event will have the courage to move on.

And for us who still feel our hearts beating inside us, may we all value our lives and those of our loved ones more, for human lives are fragile, as proven by the string of unfortunate events since the Tsunami in 2005.

To all of you who are reading this,

May You Be Well and Happy.......Always



Mark

Goodbye PCLinuxOS!! Hello gOS!!

This happened on Friday, where my very loyal PCLinuxOS system had finally shown its age. Constant desktop freezes/crashes and the signs of slowing down prompted me to go distro-hopping again, searching for a new distro which can work flawlessly on my laptop...just like Morpheus going looking for Neo all over again :-p

The first distro that I tried was the new Kubuntu KDE4 Remix, with the latest KDE 4 which lets you import widgets from Mac. The interface is very modern (way better than Gnome 2.2 IMHO) and I actually like it very much, especially the new Dolphin File Manager which enables you to explore files on your computer like never before....a revolution to me.

The new KDE4

Dolphin File Manager at its best

But unfortunately, the distro is far from perfect. Non-KDE applications like Firefox look weird and ugly in the new environment. Not to mention also the lack of 'root' access which comes in useful at times and a PPPoe controller to connect to Streamyx. So with that I had to bid goodbye to my friend of only an hour (it took just 20 mins to install the whole system). I did try out Fedora 9 KDE (a new one...was just out a few days ago) but it feels sluggish and slow.

In then end, I stumbled upon this.....gOS. If you click on the link and go to the official website, don't be shocked thinking that you have entered the Apple website. It's actually a Linux distro which is built on top of Ubuntu, with Mac's Leopard-like GUI and interface. But most importantly, it performs blazing fast on my laptop....much faster than PCLinuxOS when I first installed it. Tried running a simulation in Matlab....man it was a screamer! And most of all, all my laptop Fn + keys now are working at last, brightness control buttons and the rest....those that never worked with PCLinuxOS. I'm not saying that gOS is better than PCLinuxOS, but at the moment, gOS does have the upper hand....at least till the next release of PCLinuxOS.

gOS Space in its full glory :-)

You're a Mac, He's a PC.....and I'm a Linux :-)

I've always been fascinated with Apple advertisements, especially the ones which feature the Mac vs PC guys. They're funny and very sarcastic towards the Microsoft Vista OS, and most of the time, it's the PC guy who vents frustration towards his own system....pure sense of irony :-p

If you have Quicktime installed, you can watch the ads here.

I really like the new one, called 'Pep Rally', which was made after Mac scored the top spot in the US among college students. I must say that the ads do work well in driving the sales of the iMacs/Macbooks.


Cheerleaders: Mac's No 1!!!!! Mac No 1!!!!

PC Guy: Hey, you should be cheering for me!

Cheerleaders: PC's No 2!!!! PC No 2!!!!!


But too bad I'm using Linux :-) It's FREE!!!! And Legal too!!

Enjoy!


Cheers

For my mom :-)

Mother's Day has just passed and my mom was reading her beloved son's blog one day and she said that my blog talks about everything under the sun, from food to computers to my 'wives' (my handphone), but nothing about her. So this 'jealous' Mother-In-Law (hehe) was complaining that I should blog about her in at least one post instead of bragging so much about my 'darlings'. So that's what today's blog is all about...:-p

For today, I'll focus mainly on her magnificent driving skills :-p

To start things off, mom has been having her driving license for the past 20+ years and had only started driving (mainly to fetch my sis to and from school) when we moved into our new home. Throughout the 1.5 years that she has started on this daily mission of hers, she had never failed to amaze me on how she develops new skills while driving. FYI, all news came from my sis in her daily "Sandy's Express News Channel" (my mom's name is Sandy). The list below shows the stunts that my mum had successfully pulled off so far :-p

1) Driving with arms crossed while holding the steering (extraordinary but still quite acceptable)

2) Admiring her pretty manicure designs while on the road (still not as bad as talking on the phone without the handsfree kit), but the car went a bit senget la :-p

3) Hitting the gas while releasing the handbrake and nearly hit the divider (most probably inspired from the Fast and Furious movies wakakakak)

4) Couldn't get within distance with the smartcard sensor at the guard post, either too far or too near. I think she needs the fly beater like the one used in the Digi advertisement. Usually, the guard will just 'bagi muka' and opens the boomgate for her of which she'll say, "I feel like a Princess". Power!!!!

5) The latest addition to Sandy's Express archive is driving with legs crossed!!! Now, even Michael Schumacher couldn't achieved that. I'm shocked, amazed and freaked out all at the same time!!!

As you can see, I think that she is way better than any Hollywood stunt drivers when it comes to innovation and creativity in driving. But nevertheless, I still think that she's the best and most superb MOM in the whole wide world :-). Thanks for bringing me up and guiding me to where I am today and a very Happy Belated Mother's Day.

Will love you always, mom. Muacks!! 我为你钟情, 永远爱你, 妈妈. (taken from 1 of Leslie Cheung's songs :-) )

小二!!!!! 加酒!!!! Oh I mean 加茶!!!

So near and yet so far.....tried looking for this restaurant called "Good old days" (舊陣時) somewhere near Atria last Sunday but to no avail. We managed to find "Damansara Village" but not the one that we were looking for. Ironically, this restaurant was just about 100m from Damansara Village. Why didn't we see it?

Anyhow, I related the story to my colleagues during tea time on Thursday and they suggested that we'd go there on Friday night (yesterday). Then they started to, should I say interrogate (:-p) or rather just asked me the direction to the area. Being the "The Ah Pek from Cheras" me who couldn't tell the difference between Atria and Taman Megah, I think I had successfully confused them to the point that the daily "Shooting Mark" session had advanced to the 2nd Episode (the first session was during lunch time). So I called the restaurant on Friday afternoon, obtained the address from them and my colleagues had actually printed out the map of the area as though we were heading off to the Amazon for a treasure hunt. :-p Yeah....the latest Indiana Jones movie is hitting the cinemas soon but that's another story. :-)

We reached the place at about 8.15pm. At the entrance we found these

Smelly tauhu anyone??? haha

Tong Fang Bu Bai's favourite drink :-p

There's real water in the well, but it didn't look that clean. Royan checking the pH of the water

The inside of the restaurant is air-conditioned and there's even a TV tuned to the ASTRO channel (talking bout modern-epic fusion) and there're rambutan and mango trees as well right in the middle. The ambience really was not bad, giving you the feel of movies ala "Dragon Inn" or the Ling Wu Zhong character. 

Rambutan and mango trees growing together side-by-side...but fake ones :-p

And to complete the whole set-up, all the waiters/waitresses are dressed in this uniform

I tried calling them "小二" (name for waiter in olden chinese) but it didn't work out that well....joke backfired :-p

Time for food and drinks....

That's how you drink your tea!! True classic style

Vege and tauhu and another tauhu

Steamed black "Talapia"

 

Don't ask me what this was cuz I honestly dunno....my guess it's a tauhu :-p

 

Claypot duck with ginger

Claypot pork leg with vinegar and ginger (would be nicer if they'd used old/grown ginger)

All in all, the food was not bad and the price was reasonable too. After makan, we stayed on for another hour to talk and after some encore "Shooting Mark" sessions, we finally called it a day. A great dinner to celebrate the farewell of a colleague and to Penny and Eliz, hope you enjoyed the pics. :-)

Greedy airline

The next time you board a plane, please bring along some cash....just in case. You'll never know :-p

First post using my "wife" :-)

Yeah, am sitting at Starbucks after the Iron Man show (superb cool movie....worth a second watch :-) ) and blogging using my iPhone. Yeah...darn happy :-p

Have a great weekend. :-)

Cheers

Prof smashes laptop in class!!

I know this comes in a bit the late, but it's a good watch.....serious! Enjoy with the nicest popcorns in town :-)

Cheers

Happy Labour Day!!

It's Labour Day!!!

A good day to rest and escape from my work, and in fact the first day that I do really rest for many weeks now. Been working on weekends too for the past few weeks and I do feel a bit worn down (based on some feedbacks from my family and some friends).

So I slept at 12.30am last night after trying to solve my simulation problem and woke up at 1pm today. Man!! It's been such a long time since I've done that....hahaha

So what am I doing now? Working on my simulation :-p


Happy Labour Day to you too and to Sheau Chyi, Happy Birthday!!!