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?

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》。

Says you are working on electronic project that uses infrared LED, how can you tell if the IR LED is functioning, since IR light is invisible to us? An easy method is to use any cellphone or computer with a built-in camera to detect the IR light.

If you have a Mac, you can launch its PhotoBooth application and then position your IR LED device in front of the camera. If the IR LED is working, you will see it lights up. This method, however, cannot help you to decode the IR signals from the LED. For decoding purpose, you must use an IR receiver to capture the signals.

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;

Many of you may be wondering what I have been up to in karate. Have I stopped training? Hell no. I have been reading a lot about human anatomy and meridian pressure points these days. I find them enlightening. I became interested in human anatomy after working on a project building a gynecology website.

Using the knowledge that I have learned about human anatomy, many questions about Uechiryu techniques have been answered. These techniques are extremely dangerous and deadly when applied with medical knowledge.

What it is left now is training and more training to attain surgical precision strike in applying these techniques.

If you are in doubt of Bersih 2.0, please check out their website at http://bersih.org.
I am not going to write a long post here. The video below speaks louder than any words on earth.

Please watch the video carefully until the end then tell me which is the truth. If you have the slightest conscience, I am sure you will cry. I cried after watching the video and there is nothing shameful to tell everyone that I cried.

Fortunately, the man in the video who collapsed into unconsciousness has survived. Another man named Baharuddin Ahmad who was at KLCC during the rally, however, collapsed and died after being suffocated by the tear gas which was fired directly at his group by the FRU. A man has sacrificed his life while battling against the brutality of police and the tyranny of his own government.

Whilst one man is down, many thousands will rise for him!

Recently, before the Bersih 2.0 rally, he and his son Nor Ashman took part in a radio interview on One FM Morning Kaki program. Ashman greeted in Mandarin and the Prime Minister greeted in Cantonese.

One can easily tell that our Prime Minister is trying to impress the Chinese Malaysians how he embraces China, her language and her culture. That’s a good gesture of course. Unfortunately, the Bersih 2.0 rally which took place in Kuala Lumpur yesterday (July 9, 2011) has discredited what he has been portraying thus far.

You see, the Chinese language is not something that can be learned in a few months’ time or a few visits to China. It certainly cannot be learned using Google Translate or any other language translator on the Internet.

If our Prime Minister had studied and understood the Chinese wisdom below, what  happened yesterday would not have happened. Managing and ruling a country is not as simple as “早晨，大家好，我系Najib。” (Good morning, how is everyone? I am Najib).

Lastly, this applies to those MCA eunuchs as well. Being Chinese descendants and speaking Mandarin as your mother tongue means little or next to nothing in embracing the Chinese culture. Your mentality is only equivalent to that of the uneducated peasants in the society in ancient China.

不 尚 賢 ， 使 民 不 爭。
不 貴 難 得 之 貨 ， 使 民 不 為 盜 。
不 見 可 欲 ， 使 民 心 不 亂 。
是 以 聖 人 之 治 ，
虛 其 心 ，
實 其 腹 ，
弱 其 志 ，
強 其 骨 。
常 使 民 無 知 無 欲 。
使 夫 智 者 不 敢 為 也 。
為 無 為 ， 則 無 不 治 。

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

“猪相”：它们的吃”很省”(猪食)，它们老爱在一角落​臭挤(猪圈)，它们永远看似很”满足”(猪样)，但“开​心”是装/堆出来(猪也会涂口红)，它们甘受宰制(猪脑​)，它们有发癫的时侯(猪嚎嚎大叫时)。它们爱窝裹斗，​猪咬猪，自己打自己人。当狼来了，个个夹着尾巴鸟兽散。​可怜一两只被牺牲在狼的血盆大口之下泪流满面，认命!

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.

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.

Android has been regarded as a savior to those who hate to be controlled and tied down by Apple’s strictly guarded iPhone. It is also one of the competitors closest to iPhone. While Apple’s latest iPhone 4 has a new feature called “FaceTime”, the Android on the other hand gets Sex.

FaceTime is a feature to make video call from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. No special account or screen name is required to make video calls. Therefore, users can forget about Skype and Apple’s iChat AV. Certainly, FaceTime is a great aide for people with hearing impairment and mute to communicate using sign language.

There are plenty of sex/porn apps for Android devices. There is even an adult-exclusive app store called MiKandi to cater such need. Now the store has reached a new milestone, introducing the first live adult web-cam streaming app for mobile devices called Sex Live Chat. You can read the story here. With live sex chat, you can watch the party on the other side engaged in some actions, and vice versa, if you like to. I will let your imagination run wild.

It is pathetic for a brilliant mobile platform to resort to sexual elements to promote its use. This greatly contrasts with Apple’s iDevices where you can find a wild variety of education apps along with useful business and productivity apps, etc, more than you can imagine.

As a parent, I will invest in iDevices for my kids and never an Android device. The latter is well analogized to the pest in our household.

The above screenshot shows the signal bar on my iPhone 3GS with iOS 4. By comparing with the screenshot below, it is obvious that the signal bar (especially bar 1 and 2) has become taller.

At the same location (my desk), I covered the back of my iPhone 3GS with my palm, the signal would drop 1 to 3 bars after about 22 seconds. After updating to iOS 4.0.1, I repeated the test. The signal bar would reduce 1 bar after more than 25 seconds.

Well, this is a very low tech test and is not accountable to conclude that the new software in iOS 4.0.1 has displayed the signal strength more accurately. Anyway, there is a huge difference before and after.

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.”

Click on Safari menu and select Preferences. In the preferences window, select the Advanced tab and then click the checkbox for Show Develop menu in menu bar.

The Develop menu will then appear in Safari menu bar. Select Show Web Inspector to inspect your HTML code. You can also activate extensions support by selecting Enable Extensions in Develop menu. Extensions let you add those missing features.

Two years later, I bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It ran Zaurus and OPIE GUI environment. The Zaurus SL-5500 was Sharp’s first PDA to run Linux. Linux was the main reason I chose Zaurus. It was fast and colorful (at that time). It came with a couple of useful apps and desktop sync software. Syncing to a desktop running on Linux was good. After using it for a few months, some commercial apps which I bought, began to crash more often after I updated the operating system. I gave it up after a few attempts to restore the original operating system. Here is the photo of Zaurus (I managed to find its charger) with iPhone lying beside it. Well look at its size! The iPhone 3GS is half the thickness of Zaurus.

The other drawback of the Zaurus is its retractable physical keyboard. The keys are too small for my fingers and typing is real pain. So, BlackBerry with physical keyboard is totally out of the game. Here is the picture of Zaurus with its keyboard and iPhone with the virtual-touch keyboard for comparison:

I was tempted by HP and Toshiba but, hey, they ran on Windows. No way! In early 2008. I purchased a 2nd generation, 32GB iPod Touch. I was immediately captured by its charms. In December 2009, I got a 32GB iPhone 3GS. My response was: “Damn! I should have gotten it earlier.”

Both PalmPilot and Zaurus need stylus to tap on their screens. If you lose your stylus, you need to buy a new one. iPhone is more convenient because everything is manipulated with your fingers. Apple’s innovative multi-touch screen gives more user experience and more operability to the device.

All I can say, I have never used other PDAs like I use my iPhone. I mostly use my iPhone in my work (especially) and for fun during leisure (social networking, music, games and etc.) Here are some apps I use to boost my productivity while I am on the move and even at my desk.

Paymo is a free online time tracking and billing service. With a small fee, user can upgrade the service for unlimited users and invoices. I use Paymo to track my time spent on various projects and business/work related activities. The Paymo free iPhone app works in both online and offline mode. When I am out to support my clients, and/or having business or technical meeting and discussion, I can easily track my time with this tiny useful app.

With design based on the concepts and techniques described in David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done”, OmniFocus for iPhone is a powerful to-do app that let you stay focused in whatever you are doing or trying to complete. The app is priced at $19.99 which is a little bit on the high side. I was hesitating for a while because of the price. After using it, I will say, “Save your money for OmniFocus and forget about other to-do apps.” Before this, I was using Things and I am still using it. The only reason I want to keep Things is that it allows assigning teammates to your tasks. OmniFocus is more comprehensive than Things and it let you stay focused in getting your jobs done, which is most important. Besides, you can sync your data via MobileMe, Bonjour, WebDAV server or locally mounted disk on your Mac. Personally, I think it is worth the investment.

Things is an easy-to-use to-do app priced at $9.99. It’s a good alternative to OmniFocus if you are on a tight budget. The price tag of $9.99 is considered quite high especially there are some free to-do apps, but to do a good job, Things will be above average. Unlike OmniFocus, syncing can only be done with a WiFi at your local area network where your Mac is running the desktop version of Things. One feature which I don’t like is its ability to assign more than one tag to your tasks. Too many tags confuse me.

Evernote is a free online service which let you save your ideas in the form of texts, voice memos or photos. You can save a web clip or PDF. Syncing between multiple devices and Macs over the Internet is a breeze. I use it while I am writing computer codes to note down what I have done and new ideas that come along. You can tag your documents for easy retrieval later. If you would like to enjoy a larger storage and monthly usage bandwidth, you can upgrade the service to Evernote Premium for $5 a month or $45 a year. Evernote is a good companion for notetaking while you are working, engaged in meetings and discussion and even at leisure.

Invoice2Go allows me to issue invoices on the go without a notebook or desktop computer. With it, I no longer need to go back to office to issue invoices. It saves me a lot of time from traveling back and forth between office and clients. Just email the invoices to your clients and you can make the delivery right away. For only $9.99, it saves you time and gasoline.

Dropbox is a free online storage service. You can take any file with you on your iPhone to meetings. Your co-workers or clients can drop files to your Dropbox and you can pick them up anytime, anywhere on your iDevice or Mac, provided they are connected to the Internet. It also allows you to share your files on Facebook or Twitter via link. By getting your friend to sign up you can earn 250MB of extra free disk space (up to 8GB) for every new account created. Click here to sign up.

No single person or thing is perfect. Soon after people got hold of their new iPhone, there came the reception problem. The antenna of the new iPhone 4 is located at the bottom left corner of the phone (away from the user’s skull/brain), which is a clever requirement forced by FCC. By holding the iPhone in your palm will short-circuit the antenna and the signal will be attenuated after a few seconds. Some people have even experimented on this issue so well that they have concluded that the signal (and call) will be totally attenuated within 10 seconds.

Then, there is even a Steve Jobs sham on Twitter spreading unofficial information that Apple may recall iPhone 4. And then a legitimate news media (read here) has fallen into this takeoff.

Since Steve returned to Apple and started to revamp Apple’s product lines, there have been constant stimulations and endless excitement and rumors you can religiously look forward to for every 3 months. Even if you are not an Apple user, you will be affected as well.

I am fascinated by the propelled rumors and how Steve Jobs deals with these grapevines. Steve Jobs is undoubtedly the CEO of 21st century!

This video shows the young Steve Jobs revealing the insanely great Macintosh in 1984. It is so classic and what a nostalgia!

Five philosophers sitting at a circular table do one of the two things: eating or thinking. While eating, they are not thinking, and while thinking, they are not eating. A large bowl of rice is placed at the center of the table. One chopstick is placed in between each pair of adjacent philosophers and as such, each philosopher has one chopstick to his left and another to his right. To eat, one must have a pair of chopsticks, but because there are only five chopsticks on the table, thus at most two philosophers can eat at one time.

If every philosopher takes the chopstick to his left, then no one will be able to eat throughout the dinner session. How to ensure everyone of them will have the chance to eat, if they do not talk to each other, and hence negotiation is not possible?

In retrospect to the problem statement above and to make the situation more interesting or worse:

Each philosopher thinks for t seconds and eats for n seconds. At every x seconds after eating, the philosopher begins to starve. When he is starving, he begins to grump and no longer thinks. At z seconds, the starving philosopher will die if he still does not eat. This creates competition for resources (chopsticks in this case) and prioritizes starving philosophers.

Can Chandy-Misra solution solve this problem?

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.

A week or two before Apple published Job’s open letter, I learned about an open source Flash project called Gnash from Twit. You can listen to the podcast here.

I really don’t believe in develop-once-deploy-everywhere development concept. I am more a native application guy because I only believe in native performance without relying on third party software components to run the applications. My experience with Tweedeck served as a wonderful example.

Tweetdeck was developed using Adobe’s AIR and Flash technology and is a develop-once-deploy-everywhere kind of application. Its user interface on the Mac really sucks. It looks more like a Windows application rather than Mac’s native Cocoa application. One thing annoyed me was that I had to upgrade Adobe’s AIR whenever it became available. I feel happier for not running Tweetdeck now.

A Java application has its downsides as well. It too depends on Sun’s JVM (Java Virtual Machine). Java has never become an implementation language in my software development career. Only recently when I began to involve in web application development, I have to work with JavaScript. The experience is awful, in my experience.

It is understood why Adobe is so furious about Apple’s decision not to allow Flash on its mobile platform. The reason is obvious: Adobe loses its grip on Apple’s mobile devices and has been discounted in Apple’s mobile computing gameplay. But Apple is not an easy-to-squeeze apple, it is huge and capable.

Apple has been working on an open web standard HTML5 and Apple’s own version of Flash, Gianduia. With HTML5, Apple’s computing platform becomes even more open, unlike otherwise as Adobe claimed. Both are exciting new technologies which I would like to implement to the web application I am developing.

I will write more about HTML5 and Gianduia when I have found time to research more about these two.

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.

The nuclear energy is the greenest energy currently available on Earth. James Lovelock, a scientist, environmentalist, futurologist and the father of Gaia Hypothesis wrote in his book: “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”, that the nuclear energy is indeed greener than any other form of power generating plants including solar voltaic and wind energy farm. A 1GW wind farm requires 2 millions tons of concrete, enough to build 30,000 homes for 100,000 people. That quantity of concrete would release 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

The under-construction Bakun Dam, located in Sarawak on the Balui River, will be the tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world and the largest dam in Asia outside of China. Its powerhouse with 8 penstocks to powertrains comprising 8 vertical shaft Francis turbines of 300MW each, 8 air-cooled generators of 360MVA each and 8 oil-immersed transformers (360MVA each) will generate about 2.4GW of electricity. The dam has 16.71 million cubic meters of filled volume.  With catchment area of 14,750 km square, its gross storage capacity is 43,800 million cubic meters. How much concrete is required to build this dam? How much carbon dioxide will be released by the concrete? How much biodiversity would have perished under catchment area that large?

I read from various sources about people’s objections (including politicians’) of this nuclear energy project. This should not be a political issue and never be one. This should be an environmental, safety and social-economic issues at top.

TNB, the sole electricity distributor/supplier in Malaysia is not the sole energy producer. TNB buys, under contract, energy from many other producers. Unfair advantages, unscrupulous practice and increasing fuel cost in the produce-supply chain have contributed to rising energy cost, leading Malaysians to cry foul. The substandard service provided by TNB worsens the situation. As a corporation with revenue of MYR25.75 billion and net income of MYR2.6 billion as of fiscal year 2008, TNB is cutting more corners to reduce its operating costs and to maximize its profit with unhealthy practices, e.g. bi-monthly meter reading practice has stirred uproars in recent week. Being greenest, nuclear energy is more profitable than any other energy production. Could this help to reduce electricity cost for Malaysians considering the unhealthy practices and unfair advantages TNB has in its glossary bag?

I am not going to write more about TNB’s malpractice and sluggish substandard service. Ask any Malaysians, they will be able to tell you stories whole day and night. Instead, I am going to write more about safety.

The next question: Is it really safe to have nuclear power plant in Malaysia? This question does not imply that nuclear power plant is not safe. Rather, the human factors in managing and operating the nuclear power plant.

Alongside the nuclear physics in the power plant is the safety critical computer system, which includes both hardware and software, that is used to control and monitor the nuclear power plant. This safety critical system is the most crucial part and the entire operation of a nuclear power plant heavily relies on it.

Safety critical system is a computer (including software), electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may be a catastrophe, causing injury or death to human beings. This safety critical system comprises high integrity software. The safety critical system, both hardware and software, will likely be integrated and maintained by foreign contractors.

Nuclear power plant software are developed using Ada and/or SPARK programming language. SPARK is a subset of Ada. In the mid 1990s, UTM (University Technology Malaysia) KL campus was teaching Ada in CASE (Center for Advanced Software Engineering). At that time, CASE was a collaboration between UTM and Thomson CSF under special arrangement between the government of France and Malaysia. The Ada course was not long lived. Two years later, it was replaced by Java due to ignorance and market driven trends. Java is not a suitable candidate for high integrity, safety critical, real-time and distributed application development. Today, none of the universities in Malaysia is teaching Ada. According to my hitherto knowledge, apparently none of the Malaysia academies have submitted any high integrity and safety critical system related papers in international conferences and scientific journals.

It does not only require software engineers with Ada or SPARK knowledge. In safety critical software engineering, the individual developers, the entire team and organization are required to go through rigorous software development and safety critical validation processes. It takes years to achieve Carnegie-Mellon’s SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 5. Safety critical system development requires utterly strong discipline and engineering ethics in every requirement, design, development, testing and maintenance process and every process needs to be validated. Other than software process, there are many other non-software related risk assessments to comply.

Malaysia lacks qualified software engineers of such competency to develop and to maintain high integrity software system. It is costly to maintain such system by contract. The maintenance will increase the cost of energy production and hence will be borne by consumers.

The safety critical system of a nuclear power plant must be thoroughly tested with proven track records. With the loosey-goosey attitude of many Malaysians, will they have capability to manage the system and safety critical issues? Will they be effective to respond to emergencies, for example, system shutdown or nuclear melt down?

The disposal of nuclear waste poses another safety issue. If the engine of a RMAF (Royal Malaysia Air Force) fighter jet could go missing and be exported, can you imagine the potential hazard of missing nuclear waste?

Objection should be rational, not emotional. It is imbecilic to politicize the objection without scrutinizing facts. I, in my book, embrace nuclear energy for it is the greenest energy. On the contrary, I do not have any confidence in the management of safety related issues in Malaysia.

The candidate from Pakatan Rakyat or People’s Coalition is Zaid Ibrahim, a well known household name to every Malaysians. He quit Barisan Nasional or National Coalition and later joined PKR because he found BN’s doings are against his principle. A man of principle, he is.

What is the reason for PKR to field Zaid in this by-election? Zaid is an intellectual man. He will be best known and accepted in a city constituency where more working professionals or literates can easily understand his capabilities and visions. I have no intention to scorn the intelligence or intellectual level of the people of Hulu Selangor. There may be many professionals working in the city are from Hulu Selangor.

Is Zaid Ibrahim a sure win by PR? Or is PR desperate to find a good candidate from its arsenal, looking at the number of PR’s members turned “Froggies”?

I hope democracy will prevail this Sunday.

Before our former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad stepped down, he made a radical change to our education – the use of English language to teach math and science subjects in all primary and secondary schools. His change was immediately welcome by many Malaysians, I was for one of them. This, of course, was disagreed by many other parties who champion pro-ethnic education. Dong Jiao Zhong (the association of Chinese vernacular school boards and teachers) is one of them to loudly protest.

Before we get deeper into education, it is worthwhile to mention a few racial and religious pandemonium which happened recently. One most recent uproar is the protest of the ruling of court over the use of the word “Allah” in a Catholic newspapers, Herald. Churches were bombed and torched by some unscrupulous citizens. Before this, a group of Muslim protesters trampled a severed cow head to protest the building of Hindu temple near their residences. You can find many reports on disheartening eruptions of racial and religious matters besides politics on the Internet so I am not writing the entire length and breadth but to mention one or two as examples.

Malaysia advertises herself as a beautiful country with multi races living together in harmony and tolerance. Where is the noble tolerance between different races and religions? What is contributing to this separation of ethnicity and religion?

Let us ask ourselves a very simple question: What has happened to Malaysia? This simple question has no easy answer. The answer is multifold and viciously lurking and recycling in every layers of Malaysian society.

If you ask me what my answer is, I think the best analogy to describe this is cancer! Yes, multi-stream education in Malaysia is like cancer, slowly suffocating and envenoming the pure untouched minds, silently consuming ethnic unity in Malaysia.

Before I go further, I would like to boldly correct a common mistake and suggest a term to address Chinese descendants or Malaysia-born Chinese as “ orang Cina” or “Cina” for short. In my opinion, only the native inhabitant of China can be entitled as “Chinese”. Like Peranakan, “Cina” will be the proper localized term to classify our ethnicity. While for Malaysia Indian, I would address them as “orang India” or “India” and Malays as “orang Melayu” or “Melayu”. To be fair.

As a Cina myself who has received 6 years of primary Cina education, I generalized the grass root Cina community as conservative and hardworking with narrow and superficial thinking and vision. Close minded, emotional and shallow. I personally have experienced these many years ago during school days.

I was a town boy and lived among grass root Cina. I had never communicated with a Melayu or India until I was in secondary school. I would see some Melayu ladies passing by my house every morning and evening.

In primary school, I was among the 100% Cina students except a few Melayu teachers and staffs. My limited exposure to other races did not come to the end when I went to secondary school. All students coming from Cina primary school would be put together in “Remove” class, 100% Cina with no India at all. I only began to have Melayu classmates during Form 1 and I could tell you, they were fun to call them friends compared to other Cina peers. This racial mixture had to come to the end when I entered Form 4. I was in Science 1 class and there was not a single Melayu classmate, only 1 India. In Form 6, again I was in Science 1 doing double math, my classmates were 100% Cina.

After more than 20 years, I can still remember an experience during my upper 6. Our teachers always advised and encouraged us to speak English in school and of course I was the only “stupid” Cina student to comply. As the result, one of my female classmate called me “Banana Man” （a racial discrimination term used by Cina to call other Cina who does not speak Cina, it is like banana, yellow (Chinese skin) on the outside, white (English) on the inside) and together with other classmates as well as our peers from other classes to desist from speaking to me. How shallow she and the others could be? This is the malignant product of multi-stream education. These shallow and superficial minds are poisoned and shaped by the monotonous environment.

About 5 years ago, my wife and I were to decide which school we should send our children to. Being a Cina educated who did not have confidence in Cina vernacular education and my wife received her education from national school, we decided to send our children to national school based on a few observations.

I was back to my former secondary school and coaching karate there. In my class, I had both Cina and Melayu students. And the Cina students were from both Cina and national school. I observed them for very long time and these were what I concluded:

1. the Cina students coming from national school are more willing to interact with their Melayu peers.
2. the Cina students coming from national school are more communicable and possess good interpersonal skill far better than those coming from Cina stream.
3. the Cina school educated students demonstrate self centered attitude.
4. the Cina school educated students shun themselves away from dialog.
5. the Cina students from national school are more active and socializing.

As a software engineer, I have not used Mandarin to communicate despite the fact that many years ago I had collaborated with software developers and engineers from China and Taiwan. Based on personal experience and observation, we decided not to send our children to Cina-stream school.

But to be fair, ethnic and religious demarcation happens in national school. This Chinese New Year, my wife prepared some cookies for our eldest son to bring to school and to share with his classmates. None of his Melayu friends ate or touched the cookies. It is pathetic to see how religion separates Malaysian children at such a young age!

Multi-stream education is the separatist which divides the ethnicity at the very young age. Children are separated by ethnic idealism in the name of education. And Malaysia is the only country in the world which practices multi-stream education.

Next, we should look at treacherous political influence and the historical mistakes in multi-stream education.

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.

Religion is a fraternity of politics which is engineered by politicians to control people’s behaviors and minds. — Adrian Hoe 2010.

This is why “Religion” has initial “R” which comes after “P”.

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.

翯和合鹤
霞顺十鸣
霓蔼礼一
虹祥拜声
万气佛冲
里薿如云
暄重来霄
。，，，

诗里的藏头为贺姓氏的藏音。大儿子和二儿子的名字再以藏音各自藏二、藏三于第一和第二行里。第三儿子藏六在第三行，暄就藏七在第四行。

鹤为中华文化里的吉祥之鸟。鹤响亮的鸣叫声冲上了云霄而得到了光明（阳光）。是以明白事理的先导，要冲破隔障（云霄）才能看清楚（阳光）一切事理的对与错。

第二行看似有点佛教的味道。它是以佛学（非宗教）里的哲学为基础。在佛学和这诗里，佛的意义博大精深，指的是有高等智慧而非一般凡夫之人类。如来是指大自然宇宙里头的一切知识和定律。这第二行意味深长。指的是以底姿态、诚恳地追寻大自然宇宙里头的一切知识和定律以增加本身和人类的智慧。

第三行则有和气、顺利、慈悲和吉祥之气薿薿。兄弟姐妹之间和周边人和蔼地相处。

当之前所有三大条件达成之后，三兄弟不只德高望重，人人敬仰，还让贺氏的声望气势如虹，名扬万里。

他们能不能做到，那就要看看他们长大后对这诗的领悟和造化了。或许他们做不来也无所谓，但愿他们努力为达成诗意，将之传承于后代。

献丑了。

现代佛教看是昌盛，几乎全世界各地都有佛教的踪迹。但是若干都已偏离原本的佛学。在这金钱为上的现代社会里，没有钱，出家人哪来饭吃？出家人也还是凡夫一位，也会肚子饿，要吃饭。寺庙需要钱维持。水电费、杂物费等等，都是钱。出家人就好比生意人，只不过方法不同。出家人出外到处为人做法事，不为是赚钱维持生活。有的寺庙也有出售骨灰阁，从而赚取金钱以维持寺庙和众僧的开销。

让我先说怎么样无知，不过先说无礼，因为无知乃无礼的因；无礼乃无知的果。

在第一章里提到，很多素不相识的“念佛人”来到我父亲家，礼了佛就坐下开始念佛。他们会尊敬佛而向佛礼拜，却没向逝者家属问候安慰。连这个基本礼仪也没有，难道这些人知道入庙拜佛要恭敬，不知道进屋敬人的礼仪？好歹都得问候和安慰一下家属。毕竟家属都是凡人有七情六欲，难免丧亲之痛。

今天是我父亲的头七。我们到家里拜了之后，就到释迦院的骨灰阁祭拜。当周围没人祭拜时，我走到我父亲的骨灰龕前瞻仰。由于我父亲的骨灰龕很靠近位于正中的地藏王菩萨像，我所站位置差不多就在佛像的前面。这时一位青年人手持一柱香悄悄地走到我身后，也没请我暂时避开好让他膜拜，就这样跪下膜拜。究竟他是在膜拜地藏王菩萨还是我的屁股？正当我要退后离开时，我哥哥喝住了我。幸好没有撞上那青年人手里的香。这是对地藏王菩萨无礼，因为该青年人没请我回避就贸然向地藏王菩萨膜拜。该青年人无知因为他不晓社会礼仪风范，不顾及他人的安全（万一手里的香灼伤了人怎么办？）。

好了。说完无礼和无知，现在要说这些“念佛人”如何玩弄佛法。

我父亲于星期四入棺。入棺前，仵工问我哥哥要不要替我父亲遗体注射防腐剂放干冰。我小姑和她的弟弟坚持不要。我小姑说，多念佛求佛菩萨加持，没事的。准备棺木时，她的弟弟还自以为是的向仵工交代该怎么处理。究竟谁才是仵工？连瞎子都可以看得出来那仵工心里不高兴，但他还是忍了下去。我哥哥没出声，我看在她是我小姑也是出家人份上，也不出声。当晚，我注意到我父亲的面有尸水冒出，我告诉哥哥和姐姐。姐姐说待会她会看看。我哥哥却说这是水分蒸发，没大碍。隔天早上，我看见棺材里已经放了干冰。

我小姑和她的弟弟的行为乃无礼、无知和玩弄佛法。无礼是不尊重仵工的专业知识而冒犯仵工。无知是对尸体自然腐化过程和防腐处理缺乏知识。那几天天气酷热。我父亲的遗体还未入棺前是放在客厅的床上，至少有风扇让空气流通，使腐化过程缓慢下来。当遗体入棺上了盖之后，里面密不通风闷热，就会加速了尸体的腐化过程。生死是自然过程。尸体腐化也是自然过程。佛菩萨都不能防止死亡，更何况能防止腐化？这岂不是玩弄佛法？他们的无知种下了因，得了无礼的果，也得了玩弄佛法的果。

一位北京的朋友得知我父亲病危，送了我一句话：“缘起缘灭，了脱一切众生苦。”。她是一位军人、一位博士生和一位无神论者。她家人都是文武双全的世家。她的寄语包含了众生面对生死的大智慧。

缘起缘灭，了脱一切众生苦。缘就是一切因果。有了因就有果。有了父母，就有我。缘起就是当我母亲怀孕有了我开始，他们就成了我的父母亲。缘灭就是我父亲要与世长辞了，不能再看到他了。因（父亲）了果（我）还在。不过他在我心里还是我父亲，到我与世长辞为止。缘起缘灭即是一切没有永恒不变的也不虚无的，也有生生不息的意思。现在，轮到我（因）和我孩子（果）缘起缘灭，一代接一代的传承下去。到时候缘灭，就放下一切，不畏死亡，勇敢面对。这就是了脱一切众生苦。当然这是我凡夫的理解。要是用般若来理解这一句，焉此简单？

试问，一位无神论者以佛学的智慧来开解我这位信佛者，我何等惭愧？我宁愿做个无神论者。无神论者不一定不能学佛。念佛的人不一定是学佛的人。当我二姐往生时，我把佛学看做为哲学而非宗教。现在，我要以无神论者学佛。

前文我提到这些所谓的“念佛人”，常把佛号挂在口边，去到那，念到那。念佛消遣，消遣念佛。颠倒是非、对人体器官医学狗屁不通，玩弄佛法。何谓佛号？为何念佛？什么是佛？阿弥陀经是为何物？地藏菩萨本愿经又为何物？

我父亲在九月中旬再度入院。9月18日我得到吉隆坡复疹，刚好我大姐要回来看父亲，可以搭我的车一道回来。在车里，我听到她向“念佛”的朋友在电话里说道：“今天是地藏菩萨诞，念一句南无地藏王菩萨相等于念两句。”哗！念佛也有搞积分的吗？好像去某某购物中心用它的购物卡购物，每花费一元得两分。念一万句相等于念两万句的功德？还不快快念！

我记得小时侯（六到十岁左右），我父亲常带我到青云亭拜佛、吃斋和听禅道老法师讲经。禅道老法师说，烧香是为了驱虫、记时和提神。所以烧一柱香就够了。烧太多很多烟，对呼吸系统不好。禅道老法师也说，念佛要慢慢的念和用心的念，不能急。能够念到一心不乱才是真的，而非念越多越好。念佛也无需大声地念，无声胜有声。能念一句就达成一心不乱，那就是无量功德。

佛学的衰亡，就是取决于这些无知、念佛消遣和玩弄佛法的人。

怎么样无知？怎么样玩弄佛法？

母亲告诉我父亲的心愿是要在家里往生。可是父亲向我说他要去医院。我向母亲解释说：“让我带爸爸去医院让医生检验。要是医生说不行了，马上送爸爸回家。”最终母亲也答应送父亲去医院。

这时来了好多“念佛人”。有男的，有女的。全都是素不相识的人。他们都是我堂弟召来的。他们有多大声就念多大声。好刺耳。

不到一会，救护车来了。医护人员把我父亲抬上担架之际，这些念佛人就马上停止念佛号匆匆离去。我堂弟也马上收拾东西离开。之后就没再回来。我堂兄向我说道：“医院你要去你去，我不去。”

到了医院，医生给我父亲做检验告知我父亲不行了。从他的生理信号看来，他有可能今晚就走了。为达父亲的心愿，我即刻替他办出院送他回家。医生说父亲的肺开始积水呼吸困难，输氧气能舒解他的痛苦。我就决定向医院租用氧气筒，可是父亲他坚持不用，所以就退还了。

回到家，我小姑（我祖母领养的）的弟弟和弟妇也到了。我小姑是方外，他们此时赶来其中目的自然也是念佛，有多大声就念多大声。到了凌晨3时还在念。我眼看我太太和三个孩子都疲倦了（老实说我也很疲倦），就带他们回家。这时父亲向我大声说：“回去吧。”他也三番四次要说话，可是却没力气说也说得有点含糊，加上念佛和法器铿锵大声刺耳，很难听清楚他的说话。

早上我们过来时，他们还在念。这时父亲他已经不省人事了，呼吸也很吃力。不过他的左手时不时都要拿起来又力不从心，好象是想唤我们那样。我看了都快哭出来了。等到我的大儿子放学，我们逗留一阵子，我就送他们回家吃饭。我们离开的时侯大概是2时。这时我大姐已经回来了。她马上加入念佛。当我们回家时，只剩我大姐一人在念。其他“念佛人”呢？都不见踪影了！3时10分父亲就往生了。我们没亲眼看着他往生。

晚上又来了好多“念佛人”，又大声大声的念。我的孩子生性好动活泼，最小的三岁，最大的才七岁。他们都还年幼不懂事，坐不久就到处跑玩耍去了。我和太太拿他们没办法。小孩玩耍时，笑声大了点。过后有位念佛人过来向我堂兄问道：”我们在为这位念佛的叫什么名？“。我的天！连往生者的名字都还没搞清楚就大念小念，正如小和尚念经－有口无心！过后他又向我说道：”我们在为他念佛好让他安祥，叫你孩子不要吵闹。”。我即刻回顶了他一句，“你们念你们的”。小孩天真无邪，不知生死何谓，不能怪他们。念佛念到连小孩的习性也不理解，可哀！

我二姐在五年前也往生了。她走的时侯也一样，一大堆人大声念佛念到她断气为止。而且不让亲人接近她，连小孩都不能在场。

他们这些“念佛人”说，往生者要是听到亲人对他们说话、哭或笑（小孩的笑声），那他们就不舍得离开。而且念佛能让他们尽快往生。

自从我姐姐往生那天，我既笑看这些信佛庸众。他们把念佛当消遣吗？他们把念佛当做把人快快送西的工具吗？这是无知的念佛。读者要是“念佛人”看了这文章之后，若生气、若说我业障深重，那我就对你说，你也是愚昧的“念佛人”。

照医学来说，人要死时，肾脏功能衰退，肺功能大幅降低，导致脑缺氧。此时，人进入昏迷状态，五觉尽失。心脏和肺还在自律性的工作。自律性指心肌细胞不需意识来支配，就可以产生动作电位。心脏和肺功能不受大脑控制。它们此时会很吃力的工作至其功能完全衰退停顿为止。这是一切生命必经之路，也是宇宙万物的定律。既然五觉尽失，那逝者又怎能听到这些念佛之音呢？不管你念多么大声他也听不到，那又何必？

还有，如依佛经里说的，若是你造的业，你得自己来承担。那么，念了经，回向给亡者得以减轻他生前所造的业，这又如何说得过去？佛都说了，你造的业，你得自己来承担，那这些凡夫又哪来无边法力，念几篇经回向给死者，得以减轻他生前所造的业得生西方净土？这不是矛盾吗？还是笑话？

那晚，当务之急是给医生看看我父亲。要是还有得救，那就要救。要是不行了，就想尽办法让他过得舒服点，而不是叫这些“念佛人”来大声无知的念佛号。

I have been using Apple’s iDisk to sync and share files among my computers, iPod Touch (iPhone) and as well as clients and co-workers. Two days ago, I discovered Dropbox and I now find it easier to use than iDisk and it is faster! It is free for a 2GB storage or upgrade with a small monthly fee.

One cool feature of Dropbox is that when someone drops you a file in your folder, Dropbox notifies you using Growl. iDisk lacks this notification feature and usually the file arrives silently unless the sender texts or emails you.

Dropbox can work offline. Dropbox on Mac will sync your files and folders to your local hard disks and allows you to access later even when offline. The sync is done automatically.

I used to copy some files on my USB drive and take them to my clients. Now I no longer need to bring anything. Just use my client’s Internet browser to access my Dropbox and viola! The files will be transfered to my client’s Mac.

Of course, there are many ways to use Dropbox for your productivity. For example, taking your lecture notes to the lecture hall without carrying anything at all, not even USB pen drive. There are some other ways of using Dropbox, read here. But that’s not all. Please tell me if you find any other use of it.

Sign up here for extra 250MB of disk space!

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。

Fornax is a 6-year old PC running Ubuntu. It wasn’t working properly due to the cooling fan in its power supply unit. Until about two weeks ago, I replaced the old fan. I am not very confident about the replacement because it is a third party part and the replacement isn’t as good as expected, but it works. I have to shut it down every night before going to bed.

So, the last thing before I go to bed is to backup the svn directory and then shutdown the server. I am quite fed up with this extra manual works. Last night, before going to bed, I decided to automate this process. And I did it this morning.

I wrote a simple bash shell script to do the backup. I cron it so that the process will start automatically at 2300 hours and then shutdown.

#!/bin/bash

BACKUPFILE=/tmp/backups/svn-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz

rm /tmp/backups/svn-*.gz
tar -cj /svn > $BACKUPFILE
for COMPUTER in host1 host2
do
   scp $BACKUPFILE user@$COMPUTER:Desktop/
done
/sbin/shutdown -h +5

UPDATE (05/10/2009): I setup a password-less ssh login so that no password is required for scp (secured copy). Now, after the backup, the backup file will be copied automatically to two other computers for safe keeping.