Month: June 2003 (Page 1 of 2)

Been a while since we had a pretty exciting Formula One race of late.
The qualifying round yesterday was already exciting with the top 4
finishes qualified within a timeframe of 0.96 seconds. It doesn’t get
any closer than that! Today’s race was just as exhilirating. Kimi Raikkonen
(Mclaren Mercedes) had to retire when he was in the lead due to engine
blow up and Michael Schumacher’s (Ferarri) close brush with Juan Pablo
Montoya (BMW Williams) left the former stranded at a rather perilous
corner and got some shoving by the race marshalls to put him back
into the race (that’s still to be decided of its legitimacy since no drivers
are supposed to receive any outside assistance during the course of a
race). David Coulthard (Mclaren Mercedes) had a nasty surprise in the
form of Fernando Alonso’s (Renault) early braking maneuvre which
left David thrown out of contention in the late stages of the race. Ralf
Schumacher (BMW Williams) took the chequered flag and was followed
by teammate Juan Pablo Montoya and Reubens Barrichello (Ferarri) for
second and third places respectively.

Nurul Hanis Kamil. Audrey Melissa. Noor Suzaily Mukhtar. Now, Canny
Ong. There has been several more in between, only less publicized.
The whole country is outraged, disgusted and repulsed yet once again.
Just how many more will have to suffer the same fate as them at the
hands of sick pervertic murderers? Have we not learnt enough from the
past not to take those psychopaths for granted? Security should have
always been a priority and doesn’t need another occurence to justify
what’s most likely going to end up as a temporal increase in
surveillance. Their deaths would be in vain and will remain as just
another statistic of heinous crimes in this country should things like
this ever happen again in the future.

The office wireless access point DSL router (Linksys) that we purchased
last January tanked late this afternoon for reasons that we shall never
know. It’s been humming along nicely and reliably for the past six
months until this afternoon when connections were being very flaky. So
we decided to give the router a cold boot since it has never been turned
off or reset since the day we commissioned it. Horror of horrors, the
darned thing wouldn’t get off the diagnostics mode after powering up,
no matter what we tried (we cursed, fondled, swore, poked, caressed,
etc. etc.). Didn’t even leave us a chance to even ping the router, let
alone console into it. So we decided to call in tech support and they told
us to bring it in for repairs. Since their office is just about 10 minutes
drive away, and not wanting to leave the company’s operations
immobilized, we just packed it up and made it to their office (much to
their surprise since they didn’t expect us to come that soon!). After much
cursing, fondling, swearing, poking, caressing themselves and failing to
get it to work, they decided to swap the unit for a brand new one that’s
still in its shrinkwrapped packaging there and then, no questions asked
(much to our surprise since we didn’t expect to get a spanking new
replacement unit that soon!). Anyway, it’s good to see that some
distributors honoring their product’s warranty promise, which is almost
always a rarity in this country. Total downtime: 60-something minutes.
Beat THAT, TMNet! Heh!

I’ve got the hots for the new Apple Power Mac G5.
If there’s one thing that I find Apple to be good at is to consistently
come up with new stuff that is RIGHT the first time around. Contrast
that with Microsoft whose products have the tendency to screw up until
a few service packs or versions later. Yes, they do get it right
eventually but they’ll have to drag you through the mud before they
get you there. (Besides the Windows
OS that we’re using, the DirectX
API is another such example, which is currently at its 9th iteration.
Anybody ever tried programming stuff using DirectX 3.0 before?
OpenGL was/is
much more pleasant to work with). And I agree with Leafbug
on his point
that if it weren’t for the Open Source movement to keep Microsoft
on its toes, consumers today would still be using piss poor Windows
that is based on the 95/98/ME operating system (once said to be an
OS with 32-bit and 16-bit extensions tacked onto an 8-bit OS made
by a 2-bit company that can’t stand 1-bit of competition.)

Someone now owes me some vanilla coke
(never tasted it before. There’s always a first time for anything). It’s
one of those silly bets to prove that I *can* get by with just 2+ hours
of sleep (3:45am till 6:30am) in a night! Pity she wasn’t there when I
was about to put a stake to the claim…

Correction (7:29pm): It’s more like to prove that I can wake up at
6:30-7:00am despite turning in late at 3:45am this morning. So I
may not necessarily be thinking straight here, but hey! I’m awake
nonetheless! :P

Something struck me as I was reading Spoonfork’s entry
about blogging being so passe. Almost everyone and their kitchen sink
is into blogging these days. Some make a good read and there are
some that just make you wanna tear your hair out reading ’em. Anyways,
I reckon this site has been somewhat neglected over the past couple
of weeks and I admit I’ve been throwing in content without putting
much thought into it. Can’t help it really. I know there has been plenty
to talk about, e.g. the recent major flood in KL, VCD crackdown, my
beef with motorcyclists, some people’s birthdays, my insomnia, etc. etc.
I just didn’t feel like writing of late. And you can kinda see the trend
too. One month, you can see me write almost every other day or even
every day. But some, like this month, can be very dry (as if the content
of this website isn’t dry enough already! :P). While I don’t expect it, I
*do* appreciate people swinging by to see what mischief I’m up to! I
just took stock of the hits on this website and yes, there is an upward
trend somewhat (many thanks to those who graciously linked my site
from theirs!). Hmm. I’m not sure if that’ll motivate me to write now. As
I said before, this is just another channel of expression for me and it’s
for my own “syok”.

There is something that caters for an audience nonetheless. Had a rather
successful webcast going on over the weekend for the lack of better
thing to do. CybersoniqueFM is where it’s at. Here’s the playlist
used. A bit of a mix of everything in there. The party was over an IRC
chatroom, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, AIM and was heard by some 30 people
here in Malaysia, Singapore, USA and the UK. Winamp
(and some of its plugins), Shoutcast
and Windows Media 9
were extensively used. Still undergoing some testing. Once I can find a
good relaying server, perhaps it might just be a regular thing.

Btw, watch this space August 27, 2003! ;)

I managed to get the Waja to run at 180 kph (112 mph) when I was
heading down to JB the other day. So that makes it as the fastest
land speed I’ve ever attempted here in Malaysia. Still can’t beat my
personal fastest of 125 mph (200 kph) done on a highway stretch
between Toronto and Montreal back in the summer of ’97 in a Ford
Taurus.

Gretchen
(wife of ex-TV geek Chris Pirillo)
has gotten some flak
recently about the content of her website becoming boring. On the local
front, Lyna
also has been getting some nastiness lately about how she puts
things in her writings. I think some people who maintain weblogs have
come across such instances at one point or another. Don’t the readers
of those websites (or any other websites/blogs for that matter) realize
that they are writing for their own enjoyment and self-expression and
not really to please any other people? Just like the television or radio,
if anyone finds a particular channel entertaining or interesting, well and
good and they can keep tuning to it. If otherwise, there are plenty
other channels to watch or listen to. This website of mine too, is a
“syok sendiri” product and is as interesting as watching lint form on
people’s navels. Funny how people still keep coming though. Must be
good lint.

Serious lack of updates for the last couple of weeks, I know. Just for grins, "enjoy" the MTV screencaps that are going on all day long today (updated every 5 minutes). It's gonna be just as interesting as counting the number of times the ceiling fan can rotate in an hour when set at different speeds. Joy and rapture. NOT!

Update (6/11): Here are the screen captures. At least the ones that I managed to grab and save (yes, I'm ultra bored and will do just about anything to amuse myself). It went on fine until the electricity in my house went off at about 8:45pm and hosed my machine unbootable as it wasn't shut down properly. I know someone from TNB is reading this…