I have successfully installed 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Linux on my Mac Book. Out of my expectation, the installation was rather quick and easy compared to installing Solaris 10. I had tried installing Solaris 10 on my Mac Book. Solaris installation was successful but I couldn’t boot into it. I wondered why.
My Mac Book sports an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz with 2GB RAM and 160GB hard drive. I am too skeptical to have 2 physical partitions on my hard drive. Thanks to VMWare Fusion, I can create virtual partition with it. After I have installed VMware Fusion 1.1.1, I created a Ubuntu-64-bit virtual partition and installed Ubuntu from the ISO disk image. With VMware Fusion, I can install directly from the disk image without having to burn a CD or DVD.
Since my Mac Book is codenamed Uranus, I called my Ubuntu on Mac Book, Uranus-Zeta. The idea is from the ζ-ring of Uranus
Like Linux, Mac OS X is a UNIX like operating system. Why do I need Linux? Well, there are a number of reasons. One being you can and another to learn new things. But these are not the reasons to motivate me. Being a software developer developing cross-platform software, I do tests on multiple platforms. Having Linux to run on my MacBook means I can develop and test my software on both Mac OS X and Linux environment without switching to my Linux/Solaris boxes. Another important reason is that I see the needs to support my clients on Linux arise and soon Solaris. Having the ability to run three different operating systems on one machine can be productive and versatile for me.
The other obvious reason is that I have a Core 2 Duo. Meaning I am having two 64-bit CPUs in one processor. It will be a waste of resources if I don’t utilize the computing power I already have. Assigning each CPU to run different operating systems and tasks is called virtualization.
With VMware Fusion, I can run Linux and Solaris side-by-side with Mac OS X without the need to boot into anyone of them at one time. This is a great feature when supporting clients in Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris.
Here are some screen shots (click to enlarge) of Uranus-Zeta:
After Myanmar was hit by typhoon, China was hit by the worst earthquake in 30 years on May 12. Many people died in these disasters. International societies are offering aids to Myanmar and China. This is moved by compassion and humanity. When our friends or neighbors are in need of assistance, we help.
So, Malaysia government offers aids to Myanmar and China. Good course. But don’t ask the people to donate. Where is all the money the tax payers paid? What is all the money the country has earned from exporting oil and other commodities?
The Malaysia government can’t even take care of the scarcity of rice in the country. It can’t even feed its own people now, and yet it offers help and urge the “Rakyat” (the people) to donate! Shame on you and mind your own business!
When grandma, Dmitry and I were at the immigration department to renew our passport, I noticed a group of students from Kolej Yayasan Saad at the department to apply for their passports too. One infuriating scenario was that these students were treated like VIPs and they did not have to queue up. They were escorted by immigration officers into the counter to apply their passport. Ordinary people were waiting for their numbers to be called outside the counter.
Why did they have such privilege? Isn’t supposed to teach these school children to queue up and to play fair in the society? I guessed these students really enjoyed being a VIP and roamed in the corridor of power! What a bunch spoilt brats!
For many years I lived with a dream to build my own dream place and finally I had. The achievement was satisfying until the reality struck and I was forced to let go all I had built and owned. So, today, I broke everything into pieces. It took hard work and courage to built, but it was harder and took greater courage to break. What a short-lived dream but gratifying. I wanted to break free and I finally had my wish came through today. I am a free man, alas.
I finally got a 160GB hard drive to upgrade my MacBook. I took out the original Apple’s 120GB, put it in an external enclosure and connected it to Pluto (Mac Mini) via USB. Since I already have a 30GB hard drive (code named Nix, a small moon of Pluto) as a backup for doing file to file backup on Pluto, it is quite troublesome to do file to file backup on regular basis. The result is I seldom do backup.
This 120GB hard drive was formatted to become Time Machine hard drive. I named it Charon. Charon is a larger moon of Pluto compare to Nix. The moment I configured Charon to be used as Time Machine’s hard drive, the backup began immediately.
Time Machine is an innovative backup application in Leopard (Mac OS 10.5). The initial backup took quite a long time to complete. After it started, I went to bed as recommended by many users in Mac forums. I don’t actually know how long it took to backup.
After the first backup, the following backup is incremental. Time Machine stores hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until hard drive is full. After a few hours of running, I have got some hourly backup. I tried to restoring some files which I purposely modified. The restoration is really easy.
Charon is a more affordable alternative to Apple’s Time Capsule which is selling at the price tag of RM1,199 for 500GB capacity. Of course, it comes with WIFI and USB port for network printing. I already have a WIFI router at home so getting a Time Capsule will render my current hardware redundant. After all, Time Capsule is more expensive than having Charon. 160GB hard drive costs me RM230 and the external enclosure RM75. Total is RM305. About 70% more affordable than Time Capsule. But after using Time Machine, I find Time Capsule will be a good investment for convenience and data safety. So start making more money and start saving for a Time Capsule.
My credit card statement came in this morning. I was happy to see the withdrawal from my PayPal account had been successful and reflected in the statement. Withdrawal to credit cards is a new service provided by PayPal to allow account holders in countries like Malaysia to be able to withdraw their funds. I recently decided to try this service.
This withdrawal paid off some of my credit card balance for this month. I am motivated to write more posts and also looking for new opportunities to setup online business.
Prostate cancer is non-skin cancer but carcinomatous growth in the prostate gland. It is a nut sized gland in males at the neck of urethra; produces a viscid secretion that is the fluid part of the semen.
it is the 3rd leading killer in men’s cancer. You may have or may not have any prostate cancer symptoms at all because prostate cancer is slow growing but at times it can grow quickly. African-American men have the highest risk than Caucasian or Asian men.
Fortunately, there is new prostate cancer treatment available. Sonablate 500 is a non-invasive medical device that uses HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) to treat prostate cancer. This new technology is giving new hope to men in fighting prostate cancer and BPH (enlarged prostate).
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
The Sonablate 500 is not approved for use in the U.S. The Sonablate 500 remains investigational in the U.S. and is being studied for the treatment of prostate cancer in clinical trials in the U.S. FDA has made no decision as to the safety or efficacy of the Sonablate 500 for the treatment of prostate cancer. Currently, the device is approved for the treatment of prostate cancer in Canada and the Dominican Republic, authorized in Argentina, and available in the Bahamas and Mexico.
Finally, the party hour came. This is the day Dmitry has been waiting for: presents, birthday cake and guests. Mommy ordered a Spiderman birthday cake. I had no time to collect it from the bakery so we asked uncle BS to pick it up for us
LA baked another loaf of bread this morning to make garlic bread for Dmitry’s birthday party tonight. This is the second loaf of bread she baked since our Princess’s bread maker is back last Friday. LA baked a milk bread. The house was full of fresh bread aroma.
This afternoon, when I was ready to go to customer’s place, Dmitry spotted a beetle on the ground at the car porch area. It was actually under the car and thank God I did not crush it. We became excited as it was not dead. I swiftly picked it up and put it on a brush and told Dmitry to hold it. And I dashed into the house to get my camera. Here are some photos I took. I put the beetle into a plant pot so that it would not dehydrate. I didn’t check if it was still alive. I hoped it would be still alive. I don’t know its name but I will find out later.
I had shoulder pain since March. Initially, it began at my left shoulder after waking up one morning. The pain was not too serious until recently (for the past two weeks), I had lousy sleep. Both of my shoulders were aching and often woke me up in the middle of the night. I thought it was some kind of spraining and it would go away after good rest with less training. But it seems to self-exacerbate. The pain was getting more intense every night.
Last night, I read articles about shoulder bursitis or rotator cuff injuries and treatment. After reading these articles, I decided to give it a try. I applied Fastum gel (Ketoprofen) on both shoulders. Guess what? I had the best sleep ever since March. I woke up early this morning without any pain.
Fastum is used to relief localized pain of arthritis, rheumatism or sports injury. I should have acted earlier.
On and off, I had been doing some wauke spontaneously while I was thinking or working on some programming problems. Some kind of off-my-mind of physical activities after sitting in front of computer for too long. I guess it was the effect of banging my head on the keyboard and I lost sense of safety. Without doing proper stretching, I performed wauke with speed and force as in a counter attack situation. That could have torn my muscles or tendons on the bursa and I overlook the seriousness of the pain. How insanely I was!
Alright, now I am on Ketoprofen and I am going to apply it for the second time. Hope my shoulders will recover in a month or two.
Finally, our Princess bread maker was back last Friday. The authorized service center, Pensonic, had its service man to deliver to our home. Read about the stories here and here.
Today, we woke up with a loaf of fresh and hot wholemeal bread.
During the snow hazard in China this February, the Chinese government had successfully managed the natural disaster and crisis with much professionalism in such a short period of time. According to an unconfirmed source, the Chinese government managed to develop a Disaster Management System in just 5 days. 75 software engineers from the Chinese military worked around the clock for 5 days to bring up a web based Disaster Management System to collect, manage, disseminate, coordinate, and to provide command and control to the military disaster relieve team during the recent snow hazard.
The system was developed using Ada, AWS (Ada Web Server) with a little of PHP and Perl. The system deploys a MySQL database running on Linux. The system is hooked up to air-borne SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) for real-time acquisition of landscaping information in snow hazard affected area to help assessing the damage of rail ways, roads, housing and forest. The Chinese army engineering company was dispatched by the system to areas in need of assistance.
I have yet to receive further details of how the system works and probably will not. Anyway, that shows the Chinese ability and responsiveness in dealing with natural disaster. Hail China!
Fast-Teks is a north-america based company offering convenient, easy and low cost business computer repair and residential computer repair. With their certified technicians, Fast-Teks provides best in class computer repair service and other computing services at the lowest affordable rate. Short to long term computer and software training support are just a phone call away. Fast-Teks also offers franchise opportunity if you are looking for a business opportunity in computer hardware repair and support services.
Payment agent such as PayPal has become very popular over the few years. It has been an easy and convenient way to perform online monetary transactions. Whether you are buying or selling on the Internet, PayPal has been your pal to help you disbursing or accepting funds.
I have received funds from writing marketing posts but the withdrawal process has been daunting. PayPal does not payout via wire transfer to banks in Malaysia. The only way was to open a bank account in countries like Hong Kong or Singapore being the nearest.
Now, PayPal offers to pay to your credit cards with a minimum fee of US$5 per transaction. That provides an easy and convenient way for bloggers like me in Malaysia to receive funds.
If you Google for “Windows web hosting”, it returns 3,260,000 or more of possible websites providing Windows base web hosting services. These web hosting company offers a wide range of hosting plans and offers. To skim through all these searches for a right plan is not an easy task and usually daunting.
WebHostingChoice.com provides you a competitive list of windows hosting plans and company. The website also provides information about scam, domains, dedicated server, and a lot more in its learning center to help you understand jargons of the web hosting. You can search or browse web hosting services by features. Perfect for beginners to learn about web hosting to avoid pitfalls that could possibly hamper your website traffic and popularity. It saves you time and money. Try it out today.
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It has been a couple of months since my last article on paid post. One absolute reason is the quality of assignments. There has been lacking of interesting topics to write about and most of the assignments are about loans, gambling and insurance. Most of the time, I ran out of ideas writing the almost identical assignments.
Today, I checked PayPerPost again to see if there is any interesting assignments to write about and I found some. I begin to monetize my blog again!
All living things suffer the process of aging. The aging process begins when our body produces less hormone. Human Growth Hormone or HGH is a natural hormone produced by the pituitary gland. In children, this hormone is a messenger protein to make a child grows larger and stronger. Without this hormone, the child can never grow larger. In adults, this hormone regulates body metabolism and maintain good body composition. HGH promotes muscle development, regulates fat usage and converts fat into energy. HGH also regulates body’s ratio of good and bad cholesterol, bone density and rejuvenates the body.
When a body has HGH deficiency, symptoms of weak bones, poor muscle development, increase waist size and body’s fat ratio, unusual body’s ratio of good and bad cholesterol, depression and isolation will develop. Some people do not naturally produce enough HGH.
Hypertropin, an rdna origin and injectable delivery, is a way to supplement the natural human growth hormone for people who may be deficient in this hormone. Hypertropin made by secretion technology, is identical to the natural human growth hormone that is produced by the pituitary gland. It is safely synthesized. It is almost safe if it is used as directed although some side-effects are possible. Hypertropin rejuvenate your body and let you feel younger and more energetic. It helps you to lead a youthful life. Consult your doctor before use.
The 2008 Olympic games in Beijing is approaching. The Olympic torch relay has began its journey. Anyhow, the torch relay is very eventful with protesters protesting China regarding Tibet’s issues. This is rather very disheartening. Have these people forgotten the spirit of Olympic?
The five rings in the Olympic flag signifies the people from five continents, united together to persevere in sports for humanity. The Olympic game is a way to bring nations closer together, to have the youth of the world compete in sports, rather than fight in war.
So, stop sabotaging the Chinese Olympic for the good course of humanity. Let the politic dissolves on alternate track.
The increasing buzz about the omnipotence of Google and Open Source projects has left us wondering, what do students do with their research and course assignments today?
The Internet has become a huge reservoir of knowledge since the past two decades. The use of this knowledge has widen the gap in students thinking about traditional working environment, processes and ethics as well as their awareness of copyright laws and humanistic behavior and obligation. Unfortunately, many youngsters studying in local colleges and universities are not well aware of the pitfalls of using such information and open source projects.
With many years of software development (in both closed- and open- source) and research experience, I am able to quickly identify a genuine work or an adaptation of works from other people. I have seen many copy-and-paste work by students and even received copy-and-paste (exact copy-and-paste and adaptation) works by students applying for internship.
During a FYP judging 3 days ago, I had encountered a project which a student had adapted someone’s work as his own. With two simple questions, I established a firm “confidence” of plagiarism. The abridged story goes:
I was invited by FICT of UTAR to be a judge for the FYP (Final Year Projects) 2008. Three judges and six finalist projects. I saw some little improvement this time compared to the other two I attended previously. I stopped visiting universities, especially UTAR, after the incident of my eye. More here.
The main basic goal of any martial art training is to learn the fundamental method of using our muscle effectively. During training, it is important to concentrate in the movement of every muscles and to feel exactly which muscles are moving.
By controlling the proper contraction of each muscles, one will gradually learn to use the muscles efficiently and to achieve motion economy. Many people neglects this part of training. A few of them learn to use their muscle without knowing it. If you start your training by learning to use your muscle, you will achieve better result much sooner than the others who don’t.
But how? I remembered my uncle used to talk about some training movement in Taijiquan when I was starting to learn karate. I felt boring listening to his stories. A couple of months ago, my interest sparked again. I talked to him regarding training and learn some secrets from him. Not because I don’t trust him, I reconfirm with dragon to make sure I have a more precise understanding of my uncle’s explanation. He used to brag a lot unnecessarily.
I will write a series of posts here for the methods to develop muscle, especially the waist, which is the most powerful and every martial artists rely so much.
I have been tunneling X from Linux to Tiger for almost two years without any problems and happy with it. After upgrading to Leopard, a disaster struck me. I was unable to access my Linux applications on my Ubuntu box. I used to do it with Tiger without any problems. When I ssh tunnel X from Gutsy to Leopard, I had keyboard problem. When I pressed some keys on the keyboard, I got numbers and some weird characters like close windows and minimize windows.
The problem lies within Apple’s new X11 in Leopard. The keyboard is not properly mapped after establishing the X tunnel. After searching the web and Ubuntu forum, I found a solution:
Our Princess bread maker came back yesterday from Pensonic service center after almost 4 weeks of warranty claim. Read about the first warranty claim here. According to the service center, they had baked a cake to test if it was working. So, I went home with the bread maker happily. But when I was coaching half way through, LA called to let me know that it was not working. The kneading blades were not turning at all. Another waste of ingredients.
This morning I switched on the bread maker without any ingredients in it. It was not working. I left it turned on for almost an hour and it was not working. So I called the Pensonic service center and one of the lady told me immediately that their headquarters called them to get the unit back to have the circuit board replaced. They offered to collect from my house. Hmm… otherwise I would have the chance to shoot them.
Anyway, Pensonic service vehicle came to collect after noon. Next time when it comes back, it better works. Otherwise, I am going to take this to consumer court and have them to reimburse the material wasted.
If you are planning to buy a bread maker, don’t buy Princess bread maker! I hope Princess will be reading this blog. Beef up your quality, Princess!
I had a laser surgery for my right eye this afternoon. It is an outpatient procedure. It took me about 5 minutes or less but I had to wait from 10AM till 1:30PM. That was a long wait.
I had my cataract surgery on June 19, 2007. Read here. I also posted a video of a cataract surgery here. The surgery removed my natural lens which had been clouded by the penta-fluoro carbon (C3F8) gas in the retina repair surgery. A new artificial lens was inserted to replace my natural lens. The only consolation reward I could think of was that my short-sightedness was reduced by half, as my doctor told me.
During the phacoemulsification procedure, the lens is removed but not the posterior lens capsule. It has to be left there to hold the new artificial lens. Not all lens cells can be completely removed. Some are left behind. Sometimes, the lens cells grow across the new lens. It is more likely to grow back if you are younger. Sometimes this happens in a few months after the cataract surgery, sometimes years. This is not a re-growth of cataract. It is the thickening of the back of the lens capsule. It is called the posterior lens capsular opacification. The picture shows the posterior capsular opacification on retroillumination.
Frequency-doubled Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet; Nd:Y3Al5O12) laser with a wave length of 532nm is used to make a “hole” in part of the capsule to allow light to pass through the lens directly. This procedure is called YAG laser capsulotomy. The doctor aims the laser exactly onto the posterior lens capsule and fires very short pulses of laser to blast off the part of the capsule and make a small circle shaped area. This leaves some of the capsule intact to hold the lens. The very small part of the lens capsule which is cut away falls harmlessly inside the eye.
The laser capsulotomy is very quick and not painful at all. I only heard some clicking noise as the laser was working. My vision on my right eye became clear again immediately after the procedure. The only discomfort I had was when my doctor attached a contact lens onto my eye.
In January, I failed 3 students during their grading test. There were 5 kids from Jasin testing for hachi-kyu. 2 passed and 3 failed. Although the 3 kids were not up to the grading standard, I deliberately tested and failed them. Why?
I am repeating again and again during training every Sunday but they take training very lightly. They don’t pay attention while training and not to mention practicing at home. These kids, including their parents, think it is enough coming for training once a week. Their concepts are wrong, so do many other people in martial arts training. The kids, including adults, come to training not to learn but to prepare their body and mind. The actual training begins when they achieve black belt sho-dan. But many people thinks they are learning which I don’t agree. Yes, learning it is, but to learn how to control our body, every single muscles and mind. That’s the learning I am talking about.
So, tonight, the grading has shown good improvement. 4 kids took the grading. The 3 kids who failed in January had retest and passed at border line and earned their hachi-kyu. The other little girl (8-year-old) had earned her nana-kyu. This girl is improving very fast.
After the grading, their parents arrived to take them home. I took the opportunity to explain to all of them the concept of training and their children’s progress, advantage and weakness. I hope these kids will continue to excel and improve.
WTF! It is only about one month old and LA had only baked 3 loafs of bread and the spinners was dead! She got it on February 11. Read here. She discovered that this morning when she was trying to bake a loaf of bread for her mother and all of us.
We chose Princess among other brands like Kenwood and Sharp. We chose Princess because it was better (solid) built (and look nicer) and the pan was bigger. But it is so fragile and of low quality. It is dead for just one month and baked 3 loafs!
I will send the unit back for warranty claim this afternoon. I will demand a new unit swap. No repair is acceptable by my standard.
Last June, I had phaco to remove cataract on my right eye due to retina repair. Read more here. While surfing for some information, I found this video showing how this modern cataract surgery was done. It is very educational. I feel eerie while watching the video but it is rather educational. After watching the video, I appreciate my eyes more. And the video satisfies my curious appetite too.
Cheers! Sooner or later everyone has to go through this surgery. It is part of the natural aging process. Mine is caused by the retina repair surgery.
Bukit Bendera or Penang Hill is one of the famous tourist spot. The weather is cooler up there. We took the 2:00PM funicular train up the hill. Single trip takes about half an hour to reach the top. It was the first time for my kids and I to go up the hill. The first time I visited Penang about 30 years (and the last time was about 10 years) ago I did not go to Penang Hill due to some reasons I could not remember. It has got great views along the track and on top of the hill. I recommend to go Penang Hill off peak season when the funicular train is not packed by tourists, otherwise it will be a humid and uneasy experience especially with younger children.
At about 410 meters above sea level, the weather is cooler but no cooler than Fraser Hill. The visibility is not good, indicates pollution on the island. Here you can see the Penang Bridge and Komtar.
During the phacoemulsification procedure, the lens is removed but not the posterior lens capsule. It has to be left there to hold the new artificial lens. Not all lens cells can be completely removed. Some are left behind. Sometimes, the lens cells grow across the new lens. It is more likely to grow back if you are younger. Sometimes this happens in a few months after the cataract surgery, sometimes years. This is not a re-growth of cataract. It is the thickening of the back of the lens capsule. It is called the posterior lens capsular opacification. The picture shows the posterior capsular opacification on retroillumination.
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