Monday, October 24, 2005

Me and my Darling

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This a photo of me (guy in red shirt, in case you don't know) and my girlfriend at KL international airport. It was just before she boarded the plane to Auckland for 6 months. As you can see, her eyes a bif puffy from tearful goodbyes:P Me? Eyes always puffy, so not much difference. Hahaha

Woohoo...radical F1 changes for 2008

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Check out the new rear wings proposed by FIA for 2008. Awesome! For more details, go to FIA website. This design should greatly reduce the air turbulence caused when a F1 car gets too near to another car in front. Should greatly improve overtaking. Not so sure if one can built such wings and yet still maintain structural integrity though. Don want a wing to be ripped off by wind and kill some poor guy in the crowd.

Confidence boost for Malaysian aerospace industry

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Just went for a meeting with a company today. This company is supposedly an important player in our Malaysian aerospace industry (name shall not be revealed), which might need our supercomputing solutions. Me and my bosses arrived at the office in Mont Kiara at about 12pm and were greeted by this sight:


Company name obfuscated but check out the lock on the door
handle
! Got "No Salesman" sign lagi. Who wanna sell anything with that lock around?

Close up:



Wow, monday 12pm and office fully locked. No need to do business ah? Turns out the director we're meeting forgot all about our appointment. With this type of professionalism in our aerospace industry, I think those who are currently in the race to be the first Malaysian to go to outer space shouldnt be worried about winning the competition, he/she should be worried what happens if he/she wins!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Accessing Ext2/Ext3 Filesystems on Windows

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If you understand the title, then you should read on:)

Just found a program, Ext2fsd, that can read/write ext2/ext3 on Windows. Seems pretty stable. I tried playing a video file in Windows from the ext3 drive (USB2.0 external drive lagi) and there's no major issues, now copying 4G worth of files from the drive to another Windows machine. Seems ok as well. After you've installed the software, you wont get any GUI to do the dirty job though. You need to whip out a command prompt (if you're still reading, this probably didnt scare you anyway).

Before we talk about mounting, you gotta know the drive/partition convention this program uses, which ala grub style. Drives starts counting from 0 and partitions start from 1. Hence drive 1 partion 2 will be "0 2"

To mount a drive, type:

mount DriveNumber PartitionNumber VolumeLetter:

for example, drive 2, partition 2 to be mounted as E drive:

mount 1 2 e:

To unmount:
mount /unmount e:

The cool thing is you can also use this command on Windows drives (which i accidentally did while finding out which was my Linux partitions. Hahaha)

Now, why is this useful? Well if you have an external drive that you wanna access via Linux/Windows and by access, I mean reading/writing, your options are a lot. Worse if you have an OBD (obscenely big drive). I found this out through the tough way. The most straight forward FS would be Fat32 but Fat32 partitions has size limitation of 32G and I had a 120G drive. I wanted to use this drive to archive stuff from Linux/Windows system. Of course, if you have a Mac, apparently taht's not an issue as you can use your Mac to format it in Fat32 with no size limitation. Unfortunately, there was a slight problem with the drive I formatted, the directories created in a Mac-created Fat32 partition is not case-sensitive, which is a big no-no for archiving stuff from Linux systems. So, in a moment of desparation, I just formatted the OBD as ext3 and left the Windows Part till later. I started adding lots of files on it and was too lazy to reformat the partition anymore. So, ext2fsd saved my life. So I could spend more time watching Desperate Housewives:P

Friday, October 21, 2005

Last Power Update from Apple

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Straight after launching the new Video Ipod and iMac G5, Apple is really on a roll. Last updates for the PowerMac and Powerbooks were out before the Mactels start to roll out June 2006. Hopefully the price for the Mactels will be easier on the pocket. Locally, only CG Computers have the latest prices. Other major Apple stores like MacAsia, MacStudio and Gallant havent released any new prices yet. For comparison's sake, the 12-in Powerbook costs USD1499 which should be about RM6k here. Unfortunately, price is RM6.4k ++. Go figure!

Try that, Tiger

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Great as Tiger woods is, I doubt if he could have made this birdie shot. Speaking of Tiger, it seems he will not just take away the No 1 spot from Vijay but even the record earning in a season as well. Bad Tiger!

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Bizarre Incident at F1 Shanghai GP 2005

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You can never say you've seen it all in F1 even if you're Murray Walker. This just tops it all for the 2005 season. Last race of a long season (19 races) at major economic potential China. Big accident? Major takeovers? Nope. Drain cover came off at a important corner. Yup, you've heard it right. Apparently turn 9's chicane consists of drain covers and one of them just decided to pop up and said hi to all the drivers. Biggest losers? Montoya who being the bull that he is, ran over the drain cover and burst his right front tyre. Btw, Michael Schumacher, 7-time world champion also spun out during the safety car period, day-dreaming about his upcoming holiday I guess.

And as it turns out, MS did manage to do the impossible: maintaining his 2-point lead over a much much faster Montoya. All because of a bloody drain cover. That's F1 for you.

I don't know about you but this is probably just yet another effect of rushed construction works in China, now brought live to the world audience. China, please don't cut any corners (literally or figuratively) in your push to be an economic power:))

Friday, October 14, 2005

Isn't it a Wie bit too early

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Couldnt help but join the bandwagon of comments on the hottest thing in golf after Tiger Woods (he's still the man to beat in PGA, of course, relently pursuing the Golden Bear's 18 majors victory but this is another story by itself, actually). Yes, I am talking about Miss Michelle Wie. First round of professional competition saw her shot a two-under 70 score. Not bad but not spectacular, considering that Annika Sorenstam shot an eight-under 64. But can Annika tahan for long a 6-foot-1 16-year-old Korean chick who looks as good as she drives. Only time can tell. But as things stay, the crowd are chanting "Wie want more!" and "We want Wie!". Me too, I've joined the bandwagon already. Along with Nike's boss and a few Sony executives. For more Michelle Wie juicy bits, click here and here.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

My Blessed Cell Group Members

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Kajang CG 2 Family Photo. Uai Uai (crooked) a bit. Hehehe

You know, I've been very blessed to be placed by the Lord under my current cell group, Kajang 2 under a very lovely lady called Chong Moi Moi. We meet every Friday night at Moi Moi's place in Country Heights, Kajang. Normally before going there, I'll be like "aiyak, tired la. Why still have to go out at Friday night. Wanna sleep already la". Somehow, after reaching MM's place, all these feelings normally disappear automagically. Hehehe. Guess God's power just restores my soul and spirit and naturally my body just rejuvenates by itself;)

Anyway, the photo you see here are all my members (I'm the intern assistant to MM, btw). Seated from left to right are Serena, Madam Ng (serena's mum), Moi Moi (CL), Pohar (left for Nz already:((, photo was taken because it was our Cell's farewell for her actually), Ann, Judy and Audrey. Standing from left to right are Wai Meng (Serena's husband), Danny (yet another intern:P), Kennedy (Judy's husband), Me (hopefully Pohar's future husband:P), Joey (Audrey's husband) and Francis (Ann's husband). As you can probably tell, members in the group are all somebody's husband or wife i.e. all got family aready la. I really get a lot of spiritual support from them. These are mighty prayer warriors who have helped me prayed for breakthroughs especially when there's major problems in my life. Really love them all!!

So, what do we do every friday? If you click on the photo and go through the slides, you'll probably get a clear idea. Anyway, we will always start with an ice-breaker just to like relieve all the stress of the week. Then we will sing some songs to sing praise and worship the Lord. After that, we'll discuss about the sermon we attended last week at DUMC, discuss on things to do for the church, the group etc. Lastly, the most powerful session of all will be the prayer session where we will highlight the problems we have, the country has, the church has and we will pray for these items 1 by 1, sometimes men to men and women to women if we were running late. I've seen so many prayers answered and breakthroughs, not just for myself and Pohar but for everyone else. I really pray that whatever's God purpose and plan for our group, we will realise it for Him!

Ok ok! That's actually not the last session. The last session is normally where we forget totally what we've done for the past hour and go back to our glutton self by walloping supper. Word has it that our group's supper session is the most elaborate one, especially when Kennedy is the man in charge. Hahaha. Well, what we can do? Still flesh while we're on earth what!

Malaysia's very own Oktoberfest!

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We're having our very own Oktoberfest at One-Utama on 21-23 October. Definitely not your standard buka puasa kinda place;)

First Post

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Hello world! Once again, I'm trying to start a blog. Hope this one wont be like the other efforts. Why now, you might ask. Well, most people mark a special milestone in their lives by doing something out of the ordinary. Well, some major events have just happened to my life. Biggest impactful one is that the love of my life will be away from me for at least 6 months. She's just on flight MH0131 for Auckland on 13th October 2005 8.50pm. Arriving in Auckland at 12.50pm local time. She's there on a working holiday visa for 6 months. Going for job interview on Monday at Roche (All the best and God bless to her!).

After three years of being together, going through thick and thin, this is the first time we're not gonna see each other for more than a week. Imagine that 3 years (52x3=156 weeks) we've been together and now I can only see her on the computer screen and/or hear her voice only. Kinda scary. But I believe God created this whole thing for a purpose and I believe that He will help us honor this relationship and make us stronger as a result.

Well, the good thing (still debating with myself if it's good or not) is I got a lot of time on my hand now. So, why not start a blog. The thing is with responsibilities in my work increasing quite drastically, I got a feeling I wont have the chance to catch up with lots of friends. So might as well make this like an infohub of where and when Alan is doing what.

So what's the basic theme of this blog, if you're still interested at this point. Well nothing specific. Probably will complain about my colleagues a bit, ejek some customers a bit, air my humble opinion on politics, movies and the stuff I do in church. We'll see la. So here goes...first post is up... now!