There is no particular topic for this blog post but I just want to share with you one of my favorite rock song, “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses.

It’s November and at this time of the year, the beginning of North-Eastern monsoon, brings a lot of rains. No word in the Webster can describe the mixed feelings of listening and smelling the rain together with the music. If you are somewhere so happened to have rain outside your window in the month of November, turn up the volume and watch the rain outside.

Perhaps you want to share with me your feeling?

Dennis M. Ritchie was best known for inventing the C programming language and co-developing the UNIX operating system. Without his contributions, it’s hard to imagine the computers today, and our world which relies heavily on them.

Thanks to Hisao Yamada-san, a friend from Steply, who has helped to identify the above flower. It is one of my favorites. The name is Torenia fournieri or Wishbone flower.

Go here for more photos of flowers and plants in my garden.

It was a shocking morning when I learned about Steve’s death from a friend’s message on my iPhone 4. Then, I confirmed the news by reading Apple’s website and Twitter on my iMac.

No words can adequately express my sadness. My condolences to his family.

Steve, you have been a great inspiration to me. Well, I worked today to its fullest and always will be. ”Never settle!”

Here is a video “The Crazy Ones” with Steve Jobs voiced over.

君不见，黄河之水天上来，奔流到海不复回。
君不见，高堂明镜悲白发，朝如青丝暮成雪。
人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月。
与君歌一曲，请君为我侧耳听。
与尔同销万古愁。
－－剪取自李白的《将进酒》。

The new OSX operating system 10.7, code-named Lion, was officially released by Apple, Inc. on July 20, 2011. In astrology, it was just two days before the Sun begins occupying Leo from July 22 to August 22. And I ordered my iMac and received it before the Sun leaves Leo.

In astronomy, Regulus or Alpha Leonis is the brightest star in Leo constellation. In Chinese, it is known as 轩辕十四, the Fourteenth Star of Xuanyuan. Regulus is also one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Together, with Eta Leonis (a fourth-magnitude star), they mark the lion’s heart.

My new 27″ iMac is a top range CTO model and will be the power horse for my works which include software development, some photography and design works. It is also the most powerful personal computer I have ever owned/purchased. Thus, Regulus is the best and most beautiful name for my new iMac.

Pluto will be passed down to my wife and kids after the data has been completely migrated to Regulus and a stable working environment is established.

What is Object-Oriented?

Object-oriented technique organizes software as collection of discrete objects incorporate with data structures and behaviors. Take a software that keeps records of professors and students in a university for instance. Both professor and student are person. These three entities – professor, student and person are objects. A person has data structure such as name, gender and date of birth to make things simple. Both professor and student share the same data structure of person. A professor has employee number, salary, and room number. And a student has student number, courses and grades. Both professor and student have different behavior: to lecture and to learn respectively. We can let professor and student to inherit the same data structure and behavior from person. Person is superclass. Both professor and student are subclass. Now both professor and student can derive data structure and behavior from superclass person but at the same time, both can preserve their own data structure and behavior as professor and student respectively.

Multiple inheritance is where a subclass inherits from more than one super class. One of the most common problems with multiple inheritance is symmetry. Let subclass D inherits from superclasses B and C which inherit from another superclass A. This is called symmetric multiple inheritance.

Multiple inheritance is rather problematic at linguistic level. Many object-oriented programming languages support multiple inheritance and solve the problems in such a way that usually they cause surprises to their users. In the above example, the operations in A can be derived to B and C and overridden in any other ways by any one of them in D.

Ada provides different approach to implement multiple inheritance by simply not allowing user to get into such problem in the first place and to force the user to break the symmetry.

While I slip deeper into my software design, symmetric multiple inheritance occurs. I have two classes A and B where both of them inherit from object List.Node. Another subclass C inherits both superclass A and B. Ada forces me to break the symmetry by letting C to have a direct inheritance from A plus indirect secondary inheritance of B.

package List is
   type List is limited private;
   type Access_List is access List;

   type Node is tagged private;
   type Access_Node is access all Node'Class;

private

   type Node is tagged record
      Previous : Access_Node;
      Next       : Access_Node;
   end record;

   type List is limited record
      Head    : Access_Node := null;
      Tail       : Access_Node := null;
      Current : Access_Node := null;
      Count   : Unsigned := 0;
   end record;
end List;

   type A is new List.Node with private;

private

   type A is new List.Node with
      record
         Id   : Integer;
         Str  : String ( 1 .. 20 ) ;
      end record;

   type B is new List.Node with private;

private

   type B is new List.Node with
      record
         Precision : Float;
      end record;

   type C is new A with private;

private

   type C is new A with
      record
         Magic : B;
         Plate   : Integer;
      end record;

One thing for sure, this rally has changed my perception and the spirit of a true Malaysia, where all races – Malays, Indians and Chinese united under one cause despite of the unwarranted, tyrannical acts by the National Front government and the police. I have never felt more proud of being a Malaysian.

A quote from a friend of mine from Hong Kong:

Democracy won’t come to you, is you go and get it. if you have chance just speak out loud, or shout from the rooftop. – Atropos

And from famous actor Clint Eastwood

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands. – Clint Eastwood

What happened today on July 9, 2011 will be written in the history of Malaysia. This is the day when fellow Malaysians stood up bravely to defend their civil liberties which have long been disrespected by the ruling government since independence. I don’t want my children, when they grow up, ask me: “Dad, what had you done on July 9, 2011?” and I can’t answer them. So I decided to wear yellow (the signature color of Bersih) and walked in town to show support. Honestly, as a father of three and the breadwinner for my family, such decision was not without fear. Why fear you may ask? Perhaps Malaysia is the only region in the world where you can be arrested for merely wearing yellow. And being arrested is one thing, how you would be treated after arrest is another.

This morning, I wore a yellow T-shirt and moved around at certain parts of the town. In the afternoon, after meeting my client at his office, I walked from Hatten Square, crossed the main road, and walked length of Dataran Pahlawan in the same T-shirt.

Having been following up the rally happenings in Kuala Lumpur since morning, I thought I could at least feel a little of the Bersih atmosphere here in Melaka. Disappointedly, I only saw large crowds, mostly Chinese, hanging out at Hatten Square and Dataran Pahlawan happily as usual. Everyone seemed carefree and undisturbed by the fact that thousands of people were being treated inhumanly by the police just because they wanted to ask for a clean democracy for all Malaysians. I hardly spotted one that wore yellow. If you look at the photos taken during the Bersih rally, you can see most of the protestors are Malays, relatively few Chinese took part in the rally. I am not being racist here, my point is there are too many Chinese Malaysians who simply don’t give a damn to the wellbeing of the country. They don’t even care to vote. All they care about are how much money they can make and how well they can live. With such attitudes, no wonder the Chinese are being called “pendatang” or squatters in spite of the fact that they are born in Malaysia. I think these people really deserve such labeling.

Although what I did was insignificant and actually nothing compared to those who had risked being arrested, injured or even losing their life to join the Bersih 2.0 movement in Kuala Lumpur today, I am glad that I have made one tiny step to conquer my fear by wearing yellow and walking on busy road and in busy malls in the heart of Melaka, with the spirit of Bersih (Clean).

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. – Dale Carnegie

Then, last night I stumbled upon an iPhone app, SkyView which uses Augmented Reality (AR) to reveal the current positions of planets, stars, constellation, satellites and even the International Space Station (ISS)!

I demonstrated the wonder of the app to my kids outside our home just now. Although the sky was cloudy, we could still see the moon so I used the moon as the reference. SkyView accurately revealed the exact position of the moon on my iPhone screen. Tonight, we found a lot of constellations, including Virgo which was behind the moon. Next to the moon was Saturn, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Virgo, moon and Saturn.

Not too far away from our moon, we found three satellites, the COSMOS 1536 (below the moon), COSMOS 1975 (slightly above the horizon but behind the apartment and MIDORI II (ADEOS-II) (further to the right of the moon). See their illustration in Figure 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

Figure 2: COSMOS 1536

Figure 3: COSMOS 1975

Figure 4: MIDORI II (ADEOS-II)

Beside these, we also found the Hubble space telescope and the ISS (International Space Station). Both of them were below the horizon and behind (or under?) our house!

Figure 5: Hubble space telescope and ISS

The SkyView app is a great iPhone app for astronomy hobbyists and perfect education tool for both parents and kids. It’s certainly worth investing. It costs only $1 and there is also a stripped down version which is free.

Although the automation of software update and restart is convenient most of the time, it can be quite an annoyance when you are in the midst of works, where the reminder window keeps popping up.

To avoid this annoying pop-up, you can run software update in Terminal (command line) and restart your Mac as you wish, using the following command:

 sudo softwareupdate -i -a 

This is also convenient for managing software update remotely over slow Internet connection. Logging in via ssh instead of remote desktop will reduce the high bandwidth requirement and yet still get the job done.

On August 27, Gustaf Thorslund contacted me about his wish to use my code and continue the development of AdaOthello. Today, I received another email from Gustaf informing me that he has revived the project.

First, I would like to express my gratitude to Gustaf to take my code, make a second home for it, and taking it to a new height. I originally released AdaOthello under GPL 2.0 or later and I continue to wish to keep it that way.

You can find AdaOthello at its second home here.

Among all I was reading, there was one that caught my attention, the one that I paused all my activities, and let it touch deeply into my heart. I can’t help to shed my tears.

This is the most beautiful and touching commercial I’ve ever watched. Besides the artistic and beautiful photography, the video portrays how beautiful life is and how fragile it can be. Take a moment off your work (yes, I know you are busy) to watch this video. I bet and I hope it will make you realize how beautiful our lives are.

Enjoy!

This is the new “wear your seatbelt” ad the UK is doing – started by a man not hired to do it, but because the cause is important to him, he came up with this idea, and now it’s being hailed across the world as a ‘beautiful’ commercial. And now the video has become so popular with the general public that people are forwarding it to friends/family on their own so quickly that it has spread all over the world in a very short time.

You can watch here too.

For the past two weeks, I had been bugged by a silly tiny bug in one of my codes. Things weren’t moving at all. They were all still and my progress in a software project was stagnant. Before the bug was identified and removed, I could not move on to other tasks as they were highly dependent on the unit testing of that particular buggy code.

Yesterday, I finally managed to debug it and deducted 5 tasks. In actual fact, I only completed one task but deleted four. The four tasks which I deleted were no longer applicable because I completed one task which was dependent on the other four. I deleted them because they became obsolete.

So, yesterday, I completed one task that would allow me to complete more tasks today. In other words, imagine that we were traveling on a time machine to yesterday, it would be: today I completed one task and tomorrow I will be able to move on to other tasks. Confusing, isn’t it?

For a software developer, someday he/she will write many lines of code, perhaps a thousand. But someday, he/she will only write just one line of code or perhaps none. When the productivity is only one line of code for a day, is it too low? It is not. Sometimes, that single line of code will serve as a connector to many pieces of code together. That one single line that software developer has produced today, will allow many tasks to be completed tomorrow.

Praise yourself if you have got only one task done today because you will complete more tomorrow. The caveat, however, is that you do not make this an excuse for not having done so much today.

In my design, I break down the HTML template into header, body and footer so that I can reuse the common codes in header and footer. That means, all the body templates are without <html> tag. This missing <html> tag disables the syntax-coloring feature of code editor, leading to a more laborious code reading.

Before this, I had gone through every line of html source code in the template file umpteen times. This “obscure” bug, if not removed, would throw a monkey wrench in my works. I browsed the Internet and read articles in hope that I would get some clues. So, I was reading a few articles about Extensions in Safari 5. Extensions are not really impressive to me as I do not need to add missing functionalities to my browser. Safari itself is more than enough for my daily browsing activities. Somehow, my curiosity had driven me to enable the Develop menu in Safari 5. After activating it, I noticed some debugging tools in the menu. I enabled the web inspector by selecting Show Web Inspector in the Develop menu (Figure 1) then navigated to the web page I wanted to debug. To use these debugging tools, the Develop menu must first be activated. Here is a simple guide to enabling the menu.

Figure 1

Safari 5 immediately detected two error messages as shown in Figure 2. These two errors were easily corrected. After removing these unmatched </div> tags, my web page still did not show up properly with the intended layout.

Figure 2

Then I selected the Elements tab and it showed me the page source in debugging mode as shown in Figure 3. I instantly spotted the <div class=”data-base-layer”> tag which was supposed to be in the <div id=”container”> tag.

Figure 3

I clicked on the little grey triangles in the left pane to expand the <div id=”container”> tag and the <form> tag. There were two <div class=”data-base-layer”> tags (labelled as “1″ in Figure 4) and the one in label “2″ was supposed to be right after them.

Figure 4

I checked the source file again and they seemed to be in the correct place. Further investigation finally reviewed that there were two very tiny typos lurking somewhere within the second <div class=”data-base-layer”> tag as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

The web inspector in Safari 5 has helped me to identify errors effortlessly. If only I had such inquisitiveness two weeks ago, I would have saved so much time and efforts in debugging my HTML codes. An proverb says: “Curiosity killed the cat.” It is not always true, at least in this case. I will say: “Curiosity saved the donkey.”

His doctor came in when I was there. He said my uncle suffers from acute Transverse Myelitis.

Transverse Myelitis (TM) is a neurological syndrome caused by the inflammation of spinal cord. It is a complicated disease and takes times to eradicate inflammation. His doctor has done lumbar MRI today. They will do another thoracic MRI tomorrow to confirm clinical diagnosis.

I like to be preserved this way after my death. My children can have a portion of “me” in a nice decorative glass flower in their home, if they want to.

Mine is a 32GB Black iPhone. The specifications can be found on Apple website so I am not going to repeat them again here. I used a sleek Nokia 6300 before this so it took me some time to adapt to the bigger/wider iPhone. This is not really a problem to get used to, actually. So, let’s put aside the physical differences.

I had been looking into various smart phones by Nokia and Sony Ericsson before I settled for Nokia 6300 almost two years ago. Well, nothing is comparable to iPhone as I find today.

On the 4th day, I had already got a chance to take my brand new iPhone into action. I completed a task outside and needed to go back to my home/office. I usually made payment to my suppliers at the bank. Then I would go back home/office to scan and email my suppliers before they could send me the goods. This usually would happen a few hours later or in the evening because I have the habit of being cost-effective when running errands outside. With iPhone, I snapped a photo of the bank transaction slip with its built-in 3 megapixels camera and emailed the photo to my supplier immediately. By the time I stepped out the bank, my supplier had called me and confirmed receipt of the fund. Everything was done on the iPhone at the bank.

While the competition in smartphone market is mounting with Google’s Nexus One and Android enabled phones with attempt to take down iPhone, nothing has come closer to the 3 billion downloads of iPhone apps at Apple’s App Store.

I am using quite a number of applications for productivity and I find them all useful. I am able to check my schedule and make appointment, follow my to-do list, review some documents (PDF, graphics etc,) which my co-workers and I shared. More, I can email, facebook and tweet anytime, anywhere with the iPhone (the list goes on.) These tasks are a little over killed on a MacBook I can say.

When my dad was in the hospital a few months ago (I still had not had my iPhone then), I had been in and out of the hospital with my backpack. It was quite annoying trying to find a good spot where I could sit down, open up my 13″ MacBook and connect it with a 3G broadband. Sometimes, the seat had been taken by patients’ relatives. Most of the time, my MacBook and I became the attraction of bored people sitting around me. Some nosy people would peep at my screen. Checking and replying business emails had became a difficult task as my privacy was invaded. It was like houseflies buzzing around while you were eating your chicken pie. Were you able to enjoy anyway?

With iPhone, this scenario has changed a little bit. I am still able to communicate and do some light tasks without the need of my MacBook and houseflies peeping. I can add, modify or delete appointments and contacts on iPhone and sync with my Macs via MobileMe. I am also able to update my to-do list and sync with my Macs via WiFi later when I am home.

As a software developer, I spend most of my time at the keyboard spewing codes other than blogging, emailing, facebooking and tweeting. I would rather save this coding task on my Macs if there is any code editing app available for iPhone. When I am not at my desk, I would want to follow up with tasks like the reviewing of drawings/images (icons, logo etc), design and technical documents on iPhone.

The iPhone is handy during short discussion sessions (less than 15 minutes) with co-workers and clients. A relatively large MacBook would look clumsy in this situation.

I can also use iPhone as a remote controller to navigate Keynote presentation slides using Apple’s Remote. This app makes me look more professional (and well, cooler) when presenting because I need not walk to my MacBook to press a key every each time I want to change the slide. I can do it on my iPhone.

Well, the list goes on and on so long you have not run out of imagination of  how to utilize your iPhone. I would never go back to Nokia or Sony or anything else except iPhone.

Well, I have only one New Year resolution for 2010, to fully implement my MIS (Medical Information System) at client’s site before 2010 ends. Simple as that.

Well, I admit that I was wrong. I am developing a cloud/web-based MIS (Medical Information System) which enables patient to be able to view certain information and interact with the clinic/doctor from anywhere. Likewise, it also provides doctors greater mobility and still are able to care for their patients while they are away.

After reading articles (on Apple’s website) how iPhones help hospitals in the U.S. to provide better healthcare at lower cost, I decided to build the MIS with iPhone support. I based my decision on these reasons:

1. Ease of use. I have been toying/using around with an iPod Touch for a few months and I find that it is easy to navigate/use. iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without the phone. You get what I mean.
2. Beautiful UI. Apple is well known for its brilliant UI (User Interface) in Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Nothing else comes closer to it.
3. Security. All applications must be approved by Apple and be signed with license keys issued by Apple. Apple’s iTunes Store is the only place to download applications. I can be rest assured  to have less (or none) headache about spooky applications from unreliable sources. Of course, there are jail broken iPhones which do not play by the rules but I am not too worried about that.

So, I went ahead ordering one last week. Last night, I went to Maxis center to collect my 32GB Black iPhone. It is such a beauty.

Give me a couple of weeks mingling with it and I promise you I will write about my experience.

Heredity, diet and health condition can affect a young woman’s menarche. This is something most parents with growing young daughters have overlook. Diet plays a very important part in young women especially teenage girls. Many teenage girls despite of having their menarche years earlier, neglects or intentionally limit their dietary intakes for body slimming purposes. This ignorance can seriously affect their reproductive system.

One most interesting fact I learned about menstruation is the term “Nightlighting”.

The word “menstruation” is etymologically related to “moon”. The terms “menstruation” and “menses” are derived from the Latin mensis (month), which in turn relates to the Greek mene (moon) and to the roots of the English words month and moon—reflecting the fact that the moon also takes close to 28 days to revolve around the Earth (actually 27.32 days). The synodical lunar month, the period between two new moons (or full moons), is 29.53 days long. — Wikipedia

In some traditional societies without nightlighting believe that women ovulate in full moon and menstruate in new moon. There are studies in both humans and animals where artificial lighting at night does alter the menstruation cycle. While none of the studies have suggested the lunar phase affects the ovulation cycle, bright light exposure in the morning stimulates more regular cycles.

Research also suggested that sensitivity of women’s cycles to nightlighting is related to nutritional deficiencies of certain minerals and vitamins. Again, balanced and healthy diet is utmost important to women’s health.

接下来的，不会只是一场暴风骤雨这么简单。现在最重要的是把手上的软件工程开发出来，抢先把一却安顿下来再说。

My dad has been admitted to hospital for 8 days. He has been diagnosed hepatoma with huge lesions in both right and left lobe, metabolic syndrome X (full house), and renal impairment. Last Saturday, sonogram confirmed his hepatoma and renal impairment are in the end stage. His doctor started him on hemodialysis last week and he was doing really badly with all the reactions: fever and vomiting. Today he did much better after his 4th hemodialysis.

Yesterday, he told my sister, Mee, and I his last wishes. We broke into tears and this was the first time I saw my dad crying. I did not sleep at all last night thinking a lot of things. There are many problems interwoven and almost impossible to resolve. 4 A.M. in the morning, this idea suddenly flashed through my mind. I wanted to present him the certificate which I earned after passing a professional examination.

Actually, I intended to present to mom and dad after I acquired all three diplomas. But I should do it now to cheer him up a little and to keep his fighting spirit burning. Although the doctors said he has 3 to 6 months to live, we think that dad may do better if he hasn’t given up. You see, our dad is a fighter.

So was my decision. I went to the hospital very early at 5:30 A.M. Came home for a short morning nap at 10:30 A.M. After lunch, I was out to send lunch to Mee and to pick Dmitry from school. Then I went downtown to frame my diploma and to do other chores.

LA got the kids ready and we went to the hospital around 8 P.M. Dad was having satay for his supper. He had been taking satay as supper for the last few days. Satay is his favorite food since young. I have his influence. After he was done with his supper, I showed my diploma to him and mom.

Well, what diploma is this?

To be honest, I am no longer particular at how people see me and when they ask me question like “Where do you graduate from?”

Today, I proudly announced to the world that I am a self-trained software engineer without any tertiary education. And the diploma I am having is the certificate (level 4) accorded by the British Computer Society (BCS) after passing the level 4 professional examination in April this year. After completing the diploma (level 5) and the professional graudate diploma or PGdip (level 6), I will be able to do my Master in some accredited universities in UK.

I have three very good reasons to pursue BCS diplomas:

1. My commitment to my clients for continual acquisition of new knowledge and skills in computer science and information technology.
2. To pursue further in the field of Computer Science.
3. I have proven to be able to achieve to some extent without a formal tertiary education in Computer Science. (I actually showed him my posts and photos giving seminars and judging university students’ final year project at http://adrianhoe.com and explained to him how some students and lecturers feared my questions when judging their projects. He jokingly said I like to scold them.)

When I told dad, he was very happy and gave me a thumb up. He also told me that he dreamed of me receiving my Master degree. And now I have to live his dream and take it further.

I wish he can see me living his dream and going further. I wish, I wish and I wish!

And I also like to thank mom and dad for their support as well as many those who have inspired me and given me the will to start studying again.

Explaining to dad (with his intra jugular catheter or IJC on his neck) that I have two more to go.

Dad told me that he dreamed of me getting a Master. Now I have to fulfill his dream and take it further.

With Rich and Nik on his bed.

With Mee and dad stroking Nik's head.

Nik, the little "Monster", was sharing his cheers.

Nik: What's up? Huh?

Dmitry was admiring the diploma with auntie Mee.

About 30 minutes to midnight, the nurse came in to give dad some medication and his nebulizer. I told the nurse about the glucose level and she took the reading after everything was settled. I reminded the nurse to take note that the glucose level was taken post-supper. Then we tucked my dad to bed.

Half an hour later, he said he wanted to pass motion. I called the nurse to get help. Then there was some commotion. Two nurses and I helped my dad to get up the bed to sit on the commode. While waiting, the nurses changed the bed linen. Unfortunately, nothing had been passed out. Dad actually fell asleep around midnight.

Around 1:45A.M. this morning, he woke up again. He wanted to pee and to have some water. Then he went back to sleep. He was sleeping quite soundly that I could hear him snoring.

He woke up again at 3A.M. complaining his back was itching. He told me to rub some Betamethasone cream. He went back to sleep only this time he was sleeping sounder. Unfortunately, he was disturbed by the nurse again 5A.M. in the morning. The nurse took his blood pressure and glucose level reading. His glucose level was 6.5 compared to 13.5 at 11:30P.M. After the nurse gave him medication and empty his urine bag, he went back to sleep.

At 7A.M. another nurse came in trying to wake him up for a morning wash, I told the nurse to allow him to sleep. The nurse told me that there would be no student nurses today because of the Merdeka holiday. I replied without hesitation, “Then the nurse can do it. That’s what the nurses are for.” The nurse wasn’t quite happy getting a whack (literally) from me. She stood there for a while then took off.

As there were college students came to do their internship with me before, I really dislike the idea that businesses and company take advantage on interns as a damn cheap labor to do all sort of donkey jobs. I can imagine how these in-house nurses take advantages on training nurses and get them to do all sort of donkey jobs the in-house nurses won’t like to do. I think that nurse deserves a whack from me.

He woke up at 8A.M. to wash, took his breakfast and medication and watch the live telecast of Merdeka celebration on TV.

Mom, Mee and BS came so I went home at 9A.M. Before I went home, a nurse came to assist my dad to the washroom for passing motion and then gave him a morning bath.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

I called ISEC emergency number and spoke to a nurse on duty. She advised me to go to A&E of a nearby hospital to have my eye checked. One of the factor could be infection.

LA took me to Pantai Hospital. After the medical officer had examined my eye, he rang the opthalmologist on-call, Dr. Lim.

From their phone conversation, we could tell that he was reluctant to come. After many times of persuasion and insistance by the medical officer, he finally agreed to come. But we were told that we would have to wait. What an arrogant bastard!

A doctor on-call is a doctor on night duty. He has to respond to emergency cases at night regardless of the parient’s condition. This doctor’s attitude was really irritating. WTF! After some thoughts, I decided to go home without seeing him. I did not want this irresponsible doctor to earn my money. Furthermore, my pain had subsided due to the paracetamol I took before we left home.

Here’s the screenshots (click to enlarge):

On this page, it says “iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod Touch – Already have an iPhone? Update it with new features, free.

On the other page, it says “Download software update. Only US$9.95.”

On the page found at Singapore site, it says “Buy now for $9.95″

I hate misleading advertisement. I checked various websites and found out that iPhone owners are entitled for free update but the iPod Touch owners are not. What the ….

I am not going to pay for the f&$@*?# update so I searched the web. I found one blogger from Sarawak has written a blog entry about this. I also found some links to download the free iPhone 3.0 here.

It seems like, according to dzimonotion, Apple has mistaken published a free upgrade for download but the link has been taken down later. Someone was quick enough to discover that and downloaded the free upgrade and sharing it now.

You can download the iPhone 3.0 free upgrade here or here is a torrent link.

After downloading, connect your iPod Touch and option click the Update button in iTunes (8.2 or later). Look for a .ipsw file and select. The upgrade will begin immediately. The upgrading process will take a while. Do not disconnect your iPod Touch. When the upgrading process is completed, your iPod Touch will reboot. Enjoy!

Now, I can connect a bluetooth stereo headset (I don’t have one now), I can do copy-cut-paste, etc. Check the Apple website for new features in iPhone 3.0 Update.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article about Apple’s business practice, Is Apple Dirty? Why iPhone owners are entitled for free upgrade? Why iPod Touch owners are not? Now, you judge.

Upon hearing his comment, what I feared most had stricken down my spine. It was inevitable finally. What has to come, has come. I had to accept the reality. My mood swung 180 degrees.

We rushed home to have a quick lunch, called my mom to ask her to help MIL to take care of the three dinos at home. It was a public holiday tomorrow, so we had to rush to make it to the clinic before the clinic closes in the evening. LA drove and I guided her into KL and to the clinic at Mid Valley Mega Mall.

It was about 1:30 P.M. when we arrived at the clinic. The VR specialist confirmed the detachment area which was holding up by previous and fresh laser retinopexy scars. He strongly recommended vitrectomy to repair the detached retina. The story goes this way:

Last evening, we were told by the doctor in Melaka that everything was stable and the tear was held up by the laser and there was no detachment. But this VR specialist told me the other story. There was a big detachment area and fresh laser mark surrounding that detachment area. One question: Why did the doctor in Melaka give me more laser?

Obviously, (in my opinion) the doctor in Melaka had denied us the truth. I am damn f@$&#*? sure that he did not mention about any detachment in progress at all and what LA and I heard was that “Everything is stable but I just need (and feel better) to put more laser surrounding the blood vessel.”

So, I could wait to see if the laser marks would hold or the detachment would progress slowly until it would need a repair. I made the decision on the spot to be vitrectomized based on several reasons:

• if the detachment has been progressive, it will eventually need a repair.
• the longer I wait, the lower chance I have to have a better recovery because the longer the retina is detached, the retina cells will die and I will loose partial vision.
• since I am already consulting a VR specialist and he can immediate vitrectomize my eye, why wait until Monday or so? It is a long weekend and God knows what will happen during the weekend.

So the decision was made. The doctor immediately picked up his phone and arranged for a vitrectomy procedure. The vitrectomy is done as out-patient procedure with local anesthetic. The entire procedure takes only about 30 minutes and I can go home after that.

The doctor took me to another room to take some photos of my retina. Here are some snapshots of my retina. The first photo was taken in March this year at an optometrist shop. The “X” roughly marks where the tear and detachment area is.

Taken in March this year at an optometrist shop

The photo appears to be cloudy due to the blood and debris in the vitreous humor

The white dots are fresh laser marks surrounding the detachment area (U shape)

After the photography session, they sent me to consult a surgery consultant. At her office, she explained to us what the procedure is and what I shall do after the procedure. I have to sit, sleep, stand and walk with my head facing down so that the air bubble in my eye will push against my retina. Not so bad though, I thought. At least better than the previous one (on my right eye) which I had to sleep only on my left all the time. While she explained to me, my nervousness struck me and sent me a great chill. I was shivering with very obvious tremor.

We went for quick lunch at Gardens and went back to the operation floor. I felt warmer with a sweater which LA brought along. It was 3 P.M. Not long after we arrived at the operation floor, the nurses got me ready into surgical gown. Very soon, a nurse came out from an operating theater and called me in. Why so soon? We were told that my procedure would be around 4 P.M.!

I went into the operating theater and was told to lay down on the operating bed. Then the nurse put on a blanket on my body to keep me warm. Not long after, the door opened and my doctor entered. He gave me a warm greeting and ditto. We started some conversation while he and his surgical team were preparing.

The doctor instilled two drops of anesthetic into my left eye. After a minute, he returned to give me a local anesthetic injection. He pulled down my lower eye lid and poke the needle into my eye. Ouch! He told me to breathe in and out for him while he performed the injection slowly. When it was done, he applied a gauze and pressed on my eye. After a while, a nurse took over. I began to feel numb on my left eye. Later, a nurse wrapped my face with an adhesive film and then cover the other eye of mine with a cloth.

After a while, the doctor came back and started to cut a hole on the film to expose my left eye. I could hear the sound of the instrument knocking on the table and some noises from some equipment. While the doctor was operating on my eye, we chatted. He is from a small town called Jasin in Melaka. He has two daughters. And the gas he is going to inject into my eye is Sulphur Hexa-fluoride (SF6) and it will only last for 2 weeks instead of 4 weeks for C3F8.

I did not feel any pain except some pressures during the surgery. With our conversation, the surgery was over very quickly. It seemed like only 5 to 10 minutes having a chat with a friend. The experience was much better than the cataract surgery I had in 2007. My body wasn’t tensed this time. Perhaps, I am more prepared after the two surgeries previously.

If you are curious about what the doctor did to me, click here. It is the same procedure without the scleral buckle thing.

After the surgery, we went over to Borders at Gardens to browse some books. We left for home afterward and arrived around 8 P.M.

By the time we arrived at his clinic, all his staff had gone back after clinic hour. He was waiting in his office. After the examination, he told us everything was stable and nothing to worry about and he gave me another (4th) round of laser retinopexy. According to him, he felt better to give me another laser to secure the area surrounding the broken capillary which ruptured last Wednesday.

After the laser, he assured us again everything was stable and I would be fine. He sent us home and told me to check in again the next day for a follow up. He also told us that he would not be in so another doctor from Terendak Military Hospital would replace him.

We went home happily and had a good relieve. LA and I had been in and out of the clinic for almost three weeks since I had PVD (Posterior Vitreous Detachment) and retina tear on May 18. I guessed, at least for this moment, nothing to worry about.

After lunch, I took one tablet and felt very relaxing and fell asleep very soon. For almost two weeks, I have had too much bed rest and it becomes quite difficult for me to fall asleep. Xanax has been a great temporary relief.

After returning home from the clinic, I sat at the couch talking to my mum. We were catching up what had happened in the family and the conversation was delight and relax. At about 3PM, I got up and went to the bathroom to take a leak. Then I got some drink and went back to the couch. Not long after I had seated, through my vision, I could see stream of blood oozing out. I knew I was having a bad tear and a blood vessel on my retina had ruptured. That’s why I could see a stream of blood was flowing.

LA called my doctor and rushed me to his clinic. On the way there, the bleeding did not stop and I was extremely freaked out. LA was freaked out by my worries. When we arrived at the clinic, the bleeding stop. At this time, the blood in my eye was enough to cloud my vision.

The bleeding stopped shortly after our arrival. After the examination by the doctor, he gave me another round of laser retinopexy to reinforce the area surrounding the blood vessel. The doctor ensured us the situation was under control and we could return home but to come back for a follow-up the next day.

The market surveyor was taking too much time and when he was finally finished with LA about the survey, I told LA about it and we were worried.

We rushed to the clinic this morning and the doctor gave me second round of laser retinopexy. He said there was a large tear and required more laser to hold up the area to prevent retina detachment. He also said that there was no detachment as yet and not to worried. We went home after that.

I quickly returned home and told LA about my condition. We decided not to wait until the next day so she quickly contacted some people and got an appointment with a consultant eye surgeon in the town.

She sent me to the clinic and then went to pick up Dmitry with grandma. While she settled down with the kids at home, I waited for examination.

After a thorough examination, the doctor told me that I had weak retina and the gel in my eye was liquefying and it was going to tear my retina. No tear had occurred yet but impending. He suggested laser retinopexy to seal off those weak areas to prevent tearing.

Laser retinopexy is a procedure using short pulses of green Argon laser to make tiny burns on the retina. It is like stitching the retina to the wall. I hate this part. To perform the procedure, the eye has to be dilated first. Then, the doctor will apply gel onto a ring and attach it to my eyeball. I have to set my head and chin steadily onto the apparatus. The doctor will manipulate the ring so he can look into my eye and to search for the area to be treated. Laser will be targeted and fired in short pulses. Some discomfort can be felt when the laser power is too high or at sensitive areas.

This time I did rather well although my whole body froze as stiff as a wooden log. I managed to relax by taking deep breath and talking to the doctor, but still, I let out “Ouch!” occasionally. The entire procedure took less than 20 minutes and I received over 600 laser stitches, according to my doctor.

The doctor advised against strenuous activities at least for a week until the doctor examine my condition again next Monday.

My previous research indicates that retina detachment may occur when the head is traumatized or with high-powered myopia and aging. But how does this actually happen? I have done another research and the finding is very interesting. Of course, this is also partly due to my high-powered myopia.

The gel in the eye is called vitreous humor. The collagen fibers of the vitreous are held apart by electrical charges. The collagen fibers clump together when electrical charges decrease during aging. The gel will also liquefy when the electrical charges decrease. A condition called syneresis (in chemistry, the extraction or expulsion of liquid from gel) occurred, allowing cells and other organic cluster to float freely within the vitreous humor. These floaters are perceived as spots or fibrous strands in the vision. Floaters are generally harmless. A sudden onset of recurring floaters may signify a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) or other diseases of the eye. A doctor specialized in this area is called vitreo-retina specialist.

My previous experience was due to ignorant. I hope my posts will give you an idea so at least when you see sudden onset of floaters in your vision, you can seek immediate medical attention to save your eyes.

Ok. I am lazy. I have been using rsync to sync folders I am working on between my Macs. I have been using command line scripts in Terminal for almost two years and finally I have gotten lazy over the task.

The thing is, I need to execute the scripts in Terminal every time I want to synch my folders. Of course, I could simply use cron to automate the tasks at specific time but I ran the risk to cause havoc between the folders on different Macs. It is best not to cron the task.

So, I learned up AppleScript and after a ten-minute hack, I wrote a nice AppleScripts to do the job. It is quick and dirty.

set debug to false

with timeout of (30 * 60) seconds
	tell application "Terminal"
		set Window_Title to "Sync Documents"
		set Rsync_Cmd to "rsync -acrtv --delete
			/Users/username/Documents/
			username@xxx:Documents"
		set output_doc to do shell script Rsync_Cmd
		choose from list paragraphs of output_doc with prompt
			"Result:" with title Window_Title with empty
			selection allowed
	end tell
end timeout

Copy the script to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder and save it as “sync documents.scpt”. Then launch Script Editor to edit username to your login name and xxx to your Mac IP address or computer name. This script will sync your Documents folder under your user home directory. To execute this AppleScript, at Finder, click on the script icon on the menu bar and select the script to launch.

rsync uses ssh. If you have not setup a password-less ssh login, you will need ssh-askpass in /usr/libexec. Unfortunately, it does not ship with Mac OS X. You can get it at Joe Mocker’s weblog.

I have several reasons to buy an iPod Touch but I am not going to talk about them here. One most ostensible use of it is that I am no longer required to lug my MacBook (code-named Uranus) everywhere I go. Since it replaces the function of Uranus when it is not with me, I name my iPod Touch, Miranda, one of the five moons of Uranus. Miranda is the inner most and smallest moon of Uranus and is also referred to Uranus V.

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

Line up and get ready

In a multi-sport event

D was in action in 4 x 50m event

The organizer explained how to play the game

1, 2, GO!

Got tanned under the hot sun.

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.

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.

The idea is to design different programs with advertisements and messages interleaved among documentary and his own educational videos for playback on different days of the week. And the most important thing is to allow the doctor himself to easily update his educational videos and advertisements anytime as he wishes from his new 24″ iMac.

After I installed Apple TV a few days ago, I realized it did not have movie playlist. After Googling for a while, I wasn’t alone. Here is a blog entry with the same problem. And I found out the Apple TV Software Update 2.3 allows movie playlist in iTunes to be seen on Apple TV. I downloaded the 2.3 update this afternoon, and after I activated the movie playlist in Apple TV settings, it is now able to play the movies in the playlist as desired.

I pondered why Apple did not ship Apple TV with new software update 2.3. It was released in November 2008. About the Apple TV software update can be found here.

Almost a month after Nik was born, I suffered from retina detachment and had to undergo a surgery to repair it. That was myself experiencing the first surgery of my life. The experience was really awesome and I had some mixed feeling.

This afternoon, I had to test out some equipment in the OT while the doctor was performing laparoscopic surgery. Like the second experience, I had to put on the surgical gown and mask before entering the OT. Only this time I was with the doctor.

That's me in surgical clothing

Although the laparoscopic surgery was not invasive, it was thrilling enough to witness the live performance before my own eyes. At least, it has proven I have a strong stomach up to this level.

Back to the serious stuff. The purpose of the test was to make sure the process could be streamlined with Mac computers. Before this, the doctor’s assistant would have to push a rather big and clumsy caddy with PC, a LCD monitor and some other equipment from consultation suite to OT prior to every surgery. By using a Mac, they would no longer need the chunky caddy. A MacBook snugged nicely into a carrying bag together with the little device would perform the tasks.

The following photos showed the chunky caddy and my MacBook.

Chunky caddy and the Potato Computer (PC)

The sleek and sexy MacBook

Mounted on the wall to save space

It costs me RM2,400 for the unit and extra RM100 for the wall mount. It is not a full HD model as I decided that we do not need one. Of course a full HD model will be nice to have for watching movies on Blu-ray disc. The player is still very expensive, more than RM2,000 and the original movies titles are also expensive. Unless till Blu-ray hack is widely available and the equipment and software prices have come down tremendously like the DVD, full HD is not our utmost priority.

It seems like a good head start for me. Everything I planned for today seems to be smooth sailing although I am having one problem which I do not know why it happens. I guess I will need to toy with it and/or hack it to learn why it isn’t behaving as it supposed to be. If everything is running perfect before end of this month, I will acquire an iPod Touch to proceed further. This will be my first wish on this very first day of 2009.

First, a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009 to family, friends and readers. I also wish all of you best of health.

Secondly, eat more chocolate. It is good for your immune system and increases your brain cells. But don’t forget to brush your teeth after eating. Well, this is a fact which I learned from Dean Ornish a few days ago.

Third and so on, I have not got any clues to write about. So, I wish all of you a wonderful 2009 ahead! Cheers!

Some days ago, our friend recommended a Hakka restaurant at Taman Merdeka, Batu Berendam. We were very eager to try out this restaurant.

We arrived at the restaurant around 1915 hours. It was quite well decorated and look clean. We went in and found a table. But the waitress gave us the menu rather late. We had to wait for about 20 minutes (or more) for the menu. The waitress was then quick to take our orders. She could speak Hakka. She is a da pu ke (大埔客). Apparently, she is the owner or the wife of the restaurant owner or the chef who is a hai luk feng ke (海陆凤客). I asked her to recommend some dishes. I ordered four simple dishes: braised pork belly, salt baked chicken, a vegetable and tou fu with basil and peppermint. These are the indigenous Hakka dishes. So, we were happily waiting for the food to be served.

The time passed minute after minute. We waited until 2000 hours still not sight of our food nor a pot of hot water we requested. Nowadays, we will bring our own good quality tea leaves to restaurant and ask for a pot of hot water to make our own tea. Finally, when I caught one of the waitress’ attention and asked her where was the pot of hot water, it seemed like she didn’t understand what I had requested. Anyway, the pot of hot water arrived without tea cups! Can you imagine making a pot of tea and drinking without tea cups?

I called the waitress and another waitress came. Obviously she is a foreign worker. This time, she brought us four tea cups. We needed five and she only brought us four. Hello! Does she know how to count? Worst thing was that, one of the tea cup had two baby cockroaches crawling on it! Yucks!

LA went to complain and to ask for new one. One good thing is that, Dmitry is now able to complain and make suggestion! He told me earlier that we should go to the other restaurant at Bukit Baru. The kids loves the food there and the service is good and the price is very reasonable. After hearing the fuss, he said, “See! I told you to go to the other restaurant.” Yeah. He was right but we never know if we didn’t try, right?

Alright, after some more minutes of waiting, the dishes finally arrived. It was almost 2015 and all of us were very hungry. The two younger boys were impatient. We dug in like backhoes. The foods were quite delicious though but talking about the service, sigh….

Four simple dishes took ages to come out of the kitchen. Can you imagine that? The workforce (waitresses) is very disoriented and unorganized. Everything is a massive lump of mess like the traffic in the town.

We filled our tummy and washed down with a few cups of Chinese tea. When the bill came, it was ridiculously expensive in our dining experience. The bill was RM62 for four simple dishes and the portion were not big enough for four adults and three kids! At the Bukit Baru restaurant, it only costs us less than RM60 for five adults and three kids with five dishes and we can go home with absolute satisfaction of our taste buds and tummies. This? I still needed a supper and LA desperately needed a supper, definitely! The supper cost another RM5!

This is our first time and also the last time to patron this restaurant. We thought we could have a nice and enjoyable dinner on the last Sunday of 2008 but unfortunately it turned otherwise.

We headed to Neway Karaoke Box in One Utama at 1700. The karaoke box was huge. The lounge was big enough to fit in all 20+ of us. It was a buffet dinner with free karaoke. The food was very nice and everyone was enjoying and had a full tummy.

As for our boys, this was their new experience, a new one. They had no idea what karaoke was about. Dmitry was really enjoying singing with his cousins. He sang Beauty and the Beast and Reflection (theme song in Mulan). I would say not bad at all at his age. He could recognize all the words in the lyrics. He was good comparing to his old daddy. Ha.. ha..

Dietrich joined him for a few kid’s songs. Dominik roaming around and having fun with all sort of food. He really enjoyed the food and the noises there.

We left for Melaka at 2245 and touched base at 0115. The kids were soundly asleep after a fun karaoke and tummy filling buffet session.

We decided to stay home this Christmas. The main reason was recession and heavy traffic everywhere. The price of petrol had fallen to RM1.80 per litter causing everyone to start taking to the roads with this more affordable price. Our petrol consumption has become even lower because of the cheaper price and the driving habit we picked up after the price hike a few months back. We planned our outings and routes so that we hit the roads less often.

On Sunday night, we went to the Portuguese Settlement to see Christmas decoration. Nothing unusual, same as it is every year, but for the fun of the kids. It was a four days before Christmas and the traffic there already built up. Some silly-no-brain drivers were part of the cause of the traffic jam in the settlement.

We spent whole day watching movies and listening to Christmas carols at home. What a relaxing Christmas.

Oh yea! My wishes this time… you know, don’t you?