Sports Day 2009

February 28th, 2009 at 14:57 · Filed Under At Play, Blogging, Days in My Life, Dmitry, Family · Comment 

Today is the first time for Dmitry to involve in a sporting event organized by his school. We were up early and sent Richie and Nik to grandma’s. By the time we were at his school, there were many people already. We found a place to sit.

Dmitry took part in a multi-game and 4 x 50m event. His team was in 4th place thus he did not win anything but his old folks, LA and I won prizes in parents’ events.

LA won first place for threading a needle. She was the fastest of all leaving behind other mothers with a big gap. I won a second place for picking up a mineral water bottle using a drinking straw and ran 10 meters to the finish line. Both prices were bath towels.

The prize is not important. What important is to show Dmitry sporting spirit from his daddy and mommy.

Before the opening ceremony

Read more

Tags:

A passing star

February 16th, 2009 at 22:30 · Filed Under Blogging, Days in My Life · 1 Comment 

February 6 was a gloomy day for us. It was devastating to hear two bad news on the same hot afternoon. A family member of LA’s friend has ovary cancer with metastasis to the other ovary and the liver.

Not too long after the first news, came another one. LA’s ex-colleague and friend, madam Chua, was admitted to Malacca’s General Hospital on the second day of Chinese New Year due to lung cancer with metastasis to the bone and brain. She was literally coma laying helplessly in the bed. She has no children.

Her husband is a hemodialysis patient. He collapsed with high blood pressure (200+Hg) after hearing the news. LA’s friends were trying to seek some volunteering help to assist in taking care of her.

I called up my friend, Benji, in Kuala Lumpur and he helped to pull together some church members in Malacca to help.

This evening at 1700 hours, we were supposed to meet up with Chua’s husband and other family members at the hospital to discuss with doctors to make arrangement to send Chua to palliative care unit. I rushed home and then we sent our children to grandma’s. We were late. On our way to the hospital, we received a call from another friend informing us Chua had just passed away a while ago.

We were shocked. When we arrived at the ward at 1730 hours, the nurse told us that Chua passed away at 1700 hours. We had lots of mixed feeling. It is certainly good for her because she no longer needs to bear the sufferings in silence and in her motionless body.

Nothing ambitious, worked as a clinic nurse for more than 10 years, a passer-by has just passed the pathway of life. Gone were her agonies and yesterday tales. Finally, peace she found. We would like to thank Benji, Pastor Paul, Dr. John and a few others who have lent a helping hand and prayer. Thank you.

We were at the hospital to help her husband and her niece until the caretaker arrived. On our way back, we went to a temple to pray for her. May her soul rest in peace.

Tags:

Objectively Boolean

February 11th, 2009 at 2:34 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Cocoa, Objective-C, Software Development · 2 Comments 

I was introduced to Objective-C in a workshop organized by Apple Malaysia about 3 years ago. Read my posts here and here. No real development using Objective-C after that.

One plain reason for me to pick up Objective-C again recently is to develop Cocoa and Cocoa Touch applications for the Macs and iPhone (and iPod Touch). Trying to having nonpartisan mind after so many years of using Ada (and away from C/C++ and variants) is a difficult task to comprehend. As an individual Ada developer (having my own opinion) I am finding C/C++ very compromising in many ways, for instance, readability of codes and safety. Although Objective-C has many improvement over C/C++, it is still lacking what Ada offers.

By syntax, Objective-C is still very much like C. A few obvious clues to tell if it is an Objective-C are the use of #import, instead of #include; the @ sign; the Smalltalk-like message passing syntax and several others.

The #include statement in C/C++ has many drawbacks. One which seriously affecting compilation efficiency is the repeating includes of same header files. With #import, header files are included once only throughout entire compilation.

One deadly pitfall I have encountered so far is the way Boolean type is implemented in Objective-C. C supports Boolean data type, bool, which takes on the value of either true or false. Objective-C has similar data type, BOOL, which is 8-bit number that takes on YES as 1 and NO as 0. If you unwittingly assign a 2-byte integer to a BOOL type, the result can be catastrophic. Only the lowest byte will be used for the value of BOOL. If the lowest byte is zero, for example, 4608 which its hexadecimal value is 0×1200, BOOL will be zero or NO.

Ada’s strong-typing disallows this to happen and thus saving, possibly countless hours of debugging. Personally, I like neither bool nor BOOL. I prefer Ada’s Boolean.

Unlike the dreaded C++, Objective-C does not support operator overloading and multiple inheritance. In Ada95, a restricted form of multiple inheritance is supported. In Ada2005, multiple inheritance is supported by new form of type called the interface type, similar to abstract tagged type with no components.

Tags: , , ,

Betrayal – when the Phoenix becomes fowl

February 6th, 2009 at 12:06 · Filed Under Blogging, Malaysia, Politics · Comment 

The people of Perak have been betrayed by the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Coalition) elected representatives who switched camp recently. It is really sickening for the attitude of Malaysia politicians and it looks very much like a bunch of uneducated and unethical ass-holes (in both camps) fuck up the feelings of the people. And they severely go against the will of the people who entrusted them with majority in last year March election.

It takes years of hard work for the People’s Coalition to win majority seats in a few states in northern peninsular. Sparrow became Phoenix by the power of people. It then betrays her own people and opts to be fowl.

Let us together despise them, spit on them.

PS: It is the fault of PKR for accepting the crossover from the other camp. They destroyed what they have sowed. Who is to be blamed?

Tags:

GPS tracking

February 6th, 2009 at 11:28 · Filed Under Blogging, Gadgets, GPS, Marketing, Technology · 1 Comment 

The GPS (Global Positioning System) can tell your exact location. If you are on the move, it can also indicate your heading and speed. With advanced GPS equipment, you can find your destination when you are lost. It is very useful when you are into unfamiliar territory. Most modern GPS equipment comes with huge memory enables you to log your journey to record and analyze your trip.

With today’s miniaturization technology, a tiny GPS tracking device has opened up new potential. You can now monitor where your kids go after school. At the size of no thicker than a golf ball, these GPS trackers can monitor in real-time, the GPS location and movement of the devices from anywhere in the world using any standard web browser.

But GPS tracking is also a very controversial debate. Although,  you are able to know the whereabout of your kids, their privacy has been violated. Nobody likes to be monitored or tracked. While some overly concerned parents are worrying their children’s safety, privacy is still a debatable issue. Parents can inform their children about the GPS tracking devices and the reasons to have one, privacy will still be an issue to older children when they begin to understand their rights about privacy.

Privacy issue is not so much of a concern in commercial sector especially in fleet tracking. Company needs to know the progress of the drivers and the exact location for planning and in case of emergency. Drivers will be informed of the GPS tracking devices and have to accept the terms when accepting the jobs.

Tags:

Discover your iPod touch

February 4th, 2009 at 2:30 · Filed Under Blogging, Call Me a Geek, Computing, Gadgets, Mac OS X, Technology · Comment 

One of my most desired applications on iPod touch is to be able to take PDF and source code anywhere I go for discussion without taking a MacBook with me. The good thing about iPod touch is its ability to sneak into my shirt pocket or in a carrying pouch on my belt. Sometimes taking a MacBook along just for the purpose of viewing a PDF or some source code is deemed to be cumbersome. One obvious problem is that I have to carry my MacBook in the bag anywhere I go, for example, shopping. It is risky to leave the MacBook in the trunk. Many theft cases have been reported.

Discover is the best application that allows me to wirelessly transfer my files to iPod touch and view it. It is free and secured. Unlike other free applications of the same class, Discover is only limited to physical storage available on your iPod touch. It supports many file formats such as PDF, Office document formats (which I don’t use), and Unicode support (C/C++, Objective-C and more). Unfortunately, it does not recognize Ada source files. I hope BBase will support Ada in coming release.

Download Discover from iTunes store and install into iPod touch. Just launch Discover and connect (using any WebDAV enabled browser) to iPod touch with the IP address provided on the iPod screen. You can setup secured access with passwords to protect your iPod touch from unauthorized access.

Tags:

Looking for a digital camera?

February 3rd, 2009 at 11:22 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Marketing, Photography · Comment 

I have friends who are looking for digital cameras for their casual uses or hobbies. They ask a lot of questions spanning across many brands and models. The problem is, I don’t use every brand and model. Although I am quite good with my Canon 350D, my experience based on this model does not apply to others.

User review is one thing. When come to pricing and offering, it is impossible to recommend a good shop offering good price. ShopWiki is a good site to shop for a digital camera. At ShopWiki, there are links to online shops offering wide range of digital cameras with good price.

At its Canon Digital Cameras page, you can select from Canon’s compact digital cameras to digital SLR cameras and a wide range of accessories, like the lenses, flashes and more. You can also browse other major brands such as Sony, Nikon and more.

With ShopWiki, shopping for a digital camera is so easy in the comfort of your home.

Tags: , ,