Protected: Dinos sleeping postures

October 31st, 2006 at 23:58 · Filed Under Dietrich, Dmitry, Dominik, Family · Enter your password to view comments. 

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My first post from mobile phone

October 31st, 2006 at 10:36 · Filed Under Just in... · 2 Comments 

I am waiting at the MBMB (Malacca City Hall) to pay some bills and
there is a long queue. I feel boring so I think of trying to post
from my mobile phone. I am subscribed to GPRS and am able to send and
receive email on my cell phone.

So, I am writing my first post on my cell phone while I sit at the
city hall cashier counter waiting for my number. Let see how much
will it cost me to send post via email on my cell.

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Dangerous exposure

October 31st, 2006 at 0:58 · Filed Under Critiques, Malacca · 2 Comments 

It was Monday morning after the long festive break and many people were waiting at the Ayer Keroh Community Clinic. It was Dominik’s inoculation day. D and R had become restless after awhile so I brought D and R to the clinic playground while N and mommy were waiting at the clinic.

While both of them were enjoying the playground, I noticed some of the aluminum columns had no plastic covers on them, exposing the edges. The edges were not sharp but if any kid fell and hit on the edges, it sure would cut the kid badly.

The clinic is nice and clean with air-conditioner but the playground lacks maintenance. Malaysians are good at building nice building/places but when come to maintenance, they do a lousy job.

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Protected: Dominik’s inoculation

October 30th, 2006 at 23:55 · Filed Under Dietrich, Dmitry, Dominik, Family, Medical · Enter your password to view comments. 

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Licensed to pill

October 30th, 2006 at 10:07 · Filed Under Funny · Comment 

My sister, Mee, sent me this really funny link. Have a good laugh here. :D

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Solaris 10

October 30th, 2006 at 0:02 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Hacking, Solaris · 1 Comment 

Pyxis1 was down two months ago. I decided to try to revive it last Friday. At first, I was thinking of installing either FC5 (Fedora Core 5) or Debian. On second thought, I have had enough with Linux. I am running SPARC/Solaris 9 on Pyxis2 (Sun Blade 150). I always wanted to try out Solaris 10 but I don’t want to mess with the existing Solaris 9 on Pyxis2. There is a saying, “Don’t fix thing if it ain’t broken.” and I always reminded myself. Pyxis1 has provided an opportunity to try out Solaris 10. So I started to search for the CDs which I received from Sun Microsystems. I found it but it was quite outdated compare to the 6/06 version on Sun’s server. I immediately began downloading 6 CDs.

The problem with Linux is that every distro has their own way of doing things. This is pretty obvious in configuration and config files. Although all distros are based on the same kernel, yet every distro has different kernel version and variation in configurtion of their kernel and software components. Another dreadful problem is the online updates which break the integrity of Linux and software components. A few weeks after my first successful installation of FC5, I performed an online updates and it instantly broke some working components. Although my FC5 is still working, I have problem with Desktop Login, displaying .png files, and some administration applications stop working as well.

Solaris 10 is an excellent UNIX operating system. It is currently free. The release and Sun’s OpenSolaris has stirred some uproar in the Open Source community and IT industry as a whole. Solaris 10 is a very impressive operating system in terms of some features no other operating system can claim and some are not necessarily new, but have been implemented in an excellent way. But yet it is not perfect. An obvious example is the detection and configuration of hardware, such as NIC and sound card, are not polished.

It is assumed that Solaris will not be installed by novice. The installation need humongous effort and is painful. The graphical installtion is resource hungry. Without the minimum 400MB RAM, the installation resort to console installation. The installation process is not well polished as aforementioned. But I believe, the future Solaris will receive plenty of improvement if Sun is heading to Linux territory. By that time, even the faint hearted novice would be able to install Solaris effortlessly.

Once the installation is completed, the operating system whirs swiftly, making the its old nickname “Slowlaris” not applicable.

Saturday evening I began the installation. After the first installation, I could not get my networking to work. I searched for posts and articles about problems with installing Solaris 10 on x86. I thought it might be some steps which I had overlook. At night, I installed it for second time. It was getting too late and I was tired and I left the installation to go on while I went to bed. I woke up early Sunday morning to finish the installation. Again, I was still having networking problem. After reading some posts, I started my own investigation.

First, I found out that the Solaris installation failed to detect and to configure my NIC. It was an integrated Intel 10/100 on Compaq Evo D510 Small Form Factor PC. I performed an “ifconfig -a” and only showed the loopback.

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000

Next, I needed to determine if my NIC was there. So I did:

# prtconf -pv

It returned some results and I look for “Ethernet controller”:

Node 0x000011
assigned-addresses:  82054010.00000000.f8500000.00000000.0000100
0.81054014.00000000.00001000.00000000.00000040
reg: 00054000.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000.02054010.0000
0000.00000000.00000000.00001000.01054014.00000000.00000000.000
00000.00000040
compatible: 'pci8086,103b.e11.12.81' + 'pci8086,103b.e11.12' +
' pcie11,12' + 'pci8086,103b.81' + 'pci8086,103b' + 'pciclass,020000' +
'pciclass, 0200'
model:  'Ethernet controller'
power-consumption:  00000001.00000001
fast-back-to-back:
devsel-speed:  00000001
interrupts:  00000001
max-latency:  00000038
min-grant:  00000008
subsystem-vendor-id:  00000e11
subsystem-id:  00000012
unit-address:  '8'
class-code:  00020000
revision-id:  00000081
vendor-id:  00008086
device-id:  0000103b
name:  'pcie11,12'

With this output, I was sure that I had my NIC on Pyxis1. From the identifying handle, “pci8086″, I was certain to use iprb interface for the configuration. These are the steps which I followed:

  1. In /etc/driver_aliases, add 
    iprb "pci8086,103b"
  2. Reboot the system with 
    # touch /reconfigure; reboot
  3. Setup iprb with 
    # ifconfig iprb0 plumb
# ifconfig iprb0 inet 195.168.24.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast +
# ifconfig iprb0 up
  4. Creeat /etc/hostname.iprb0 
    # echo pyxis1 > /etc/hostname.iprb0
  5. In /etc/hosts, add 
    195.168.24.4     pyxis1   pyxis1
  6. Create two files in /etc 
    # echo 195.168.24.1 > /etc/defaultrouter
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_1 >> /etc/resolv.conf
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_2 >> /etc/resolv.conf
  7. Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and add dns to line 
    host:         files dns
  8. lastly 
    # route add deafult 195.168.24.1

After murdering millions of brain cells, the fun finally began. I login remotely from Pluto. Here are some screenshots of Solaris 10 on Pyxis1:

Solaris 10 x86

Solaris 10 x86

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5 weeks after surgery

October 29th, 2006 at 14:35 · Filed Under At Home, Days in My Life, Family, Medical · Comment 

The air bubble in my eye is getting smaller. It is covering less than half of my vision now. My vision is getting brighter but still veil. At times, I can see, although blurry, but clearer without much debris. My eye is not as red as wo weeks ago. I also feel less irritation.

My doctor told me that I could sleep on my right occassionaly but strictly not facing up. At least, it would not be so sore for me sleeping only on left side. :) The first 10 days sleeping strictly on left side was a terrible experience.

On October 20, I started to drive. I went out for a business appointment alone in the car. At that time, my stereoscopic vision was still not at par. I had to judge the distance using cues like the broken lines on the road, lamp posts and etc. Last week my stereoscopic vision was getting better as my vision on both eyes were overlapping closer.

It is more comfortable to drive in day time compare to night time. At night, lights from the cars and lamp posts reflect on the surface of the air bubble giving me two images and leaving two long vertical tails on every light I see.

I trimmed my nails myself today. These improvement makes me feel like a normal person again although I am still temprorary a partially disabled person. :) It was frightening to think about having total lost of vision even on one eye.

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A fussy and stingy customer

October 27th, 2006 at 11:33 · Filed Under At Work, Days in My Life · 1 Comment 

I just finished calling a client a moment ago. The boss is a fussy and stingy man. He is experiencing frequent downtime at his web site and oftentimes his email service is out of service. He is furious because his customers are unable to contact him via his email.

I was introduced to him to help solving his problem couple weeks ago. I quoted him my web hosting packages which obviously are much cheaper than his current hosting service. In terms of dollars, my price is higher. He is complaining that I am quoting much higher price than his current hosting service. I explained to him about the bigger capacity of web space and the benefits of managed hosting service. He agreed with that but still insisted the price was too high.

I don’t know what to say anymore. Perhaps, I am not a good salesman when come to deal with people like this stingy man. I hate this whole process. Unfortunately, this is the business and I have to live with it. :(

It is tough to be on my own as a developer and a sales person. I enjoy developing more than sales.

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Testing, 1, 2, 3

October 27th, 2006 at 9:43 · Filed Under Blogging, Just in... · Comment 

This is a test to post via email.

Posting with WordPress is rather easy but the login and navigate through WordPress’s Dashboard is rather tedious. sometimes. My laziness drives me to test out the post-by-email feature of WordPress.

All posts via email will be categorized under “Just in…” This allows me to come back later to reclassify them again when my laziness and time permit me to do so. Gosh! Technology makes me lazier.

Posting via email also allows me to post while I am away. I can write about my thoughts and send to my blog server. I can edit my email posts whenever it is convenient for me.

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Dmitry was disappointed

October 26th, 2006 at 21:43 · Filed Under At the Movies, Days in My Life, Dmitry, Eating Out, Family, Food · Comment 

Open SeasonDmitry and I had a date for a movie, Open Season. You know, it’s dad-and-son kind of thing.

We were very excited from home and Dmitry behaved very well in the car. We left our home at 16:30. We were to catch the 17:40 show. When we arrived at the ticket counter at 17:05, there was only one ticket left. Third row from the screen. I hate to sit so close to the screen. There was no choice left and I decided not to go for it. Dmitry was quite disappointed as I could see it through his eyes. :(

However, we decided to go to our usual hang out place (Coffee Bean) to get a drink. I ordered a Taro Ice Blended. Not bad the taste. After the drink, we went hope.

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Mac OS X got Dtrace

October 26th, 2006 at 15:03 · Filed Under Computing, Mac OS X, Software Development, Solaris · Comment 

The open source DTrace which has been part of Solaris has made its way into Mac OS X, Leopard.

Track down problems

When you need a bit more help in debugging, Xcode 3.0 offers an extraordinary new program, Xray. Taking its interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand, now you can visualize application performance like nothing you’ve seen before. Add different instruments so you can instantly see the results of code analyzers. Truly track read/write actions, UI events, and CPU load at the same time, so you can more easily determine relationships between them. Many such Xray instruments leverage the open source DTrace, now built into Mac OS X Leopard. Xray. Because it’s 2006.

I am looking forward to Leopard, Xcode 3.0 and Xray.

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Apple’s Core 2 Duo updates

October 26th, 2006 at 10:55 · Filed Under Computing, Mac OS X · Comment 

Finally the Apple has rolled out Intel Core 2 Duo in Mac Book Pro.

The spec:

  • Core 2 Duo up to 2.33 GHz
  • Up to 200GB hard drive
  • Up to 3GB ram (2GB is standard in the big 15.4″)
  • FireWire 800
  • 6x double-layer-burning SuperDrive (In 15.4″)
  • 8x double-layer-burning SuperDrive (In 17″)

    • I am still waiting…. actually the price is too high for my budget. Let’s wait a little longer… (sigh)

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    All weblogs have successfully been migrated!

    October 26th, 2006 at 0:31 · Filed Under Blogging · Comment 

    What a job! I have finally migrated all my weblogs. I can now easily manage all my blogs under one administration. My blog become more organized with categories and therefore easier to search and read.

    I still need to migrate some of my other web pages. I did not realize my web site and blogs were so big. I had underestimated the difficulties and amount of effort and time required to migrate them all. Well, at least I have moved all my blogs during the long festive holiday. I will redesign (if I have to) and move other pages as well.

    I hope you enjoy reading my weblog and the new design.

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    Migrated to WordPress

    October 24th, 2006 at 22:59 · Filed Under Blogging, Call Me a Geek, Computing, Hacking, Web · Comment 

    I accidentally deleted my personal website directory two days ago. Since I had deleted the directory, I took this opportunity to redesign my personal web site during this festive season. I installed WordPress to my personal directory and migrated two blogs, Tech Grotto and Malacca’s Glog. The migration was successful.

    I had 94 posts in Tech Grotto which made categorizing difficult. Anyhow, I managed to categorized posts from both blogs. Later in the evening, I hacked the Water theme and WordPress PHP source to modify the Water theme and moved About and Project page to the new site.

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    Massive traffic jam in Malacca during festive season

    October 23rd, 2006 at 19:51 · Filed Under Malacca, Malaysia, Travel · 4 Comments 

    During this Deepa-Raya festive season, the Malacca town was experiencing massive traffic jam. Affected areas were J. Bunga Raya, J. Bendahala, J. Temenggong, Lrg. Bukit Cina, Stadhuys to Mahkota Parade, Jonker Walk.

    If nothing absolutely necessary, avoid these areas. The city council should have better traffic planning and have more police personnel to man the traffic.

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