Richy Media

Exam Period

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:34:00 +0000

It's going to be the last semester of my university life. There are 5 units which i've taken his semester and so far I've finish two of them through internal work.

What's left now s 3 units which have final examinations. Haven't been concentrating much since I'm now working casually as a web developer in the uni's web development team.

Well, I better get started. I have high hopes for myself to score an honors degree

Don't Like Photoshop? Get Another Free Alternative!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:49:00 +0000

For those who just like to play and deal with photos, you wouldn't want to miss this.

PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.

On top of its basic functions of retouching and arranging photos (hey, they had a lot built in ready to be use), there are even plugins toimprove its functionality.

You can download a copy at http://www.photofiltre.com

Antoher photoshop clone I really like is GIMP. Originally written to be used on Linux, this baby has been ported to Windows and Macs. There are even so called addon programs that are built on top of GIMP. One of these that I would recommend ould be
I hope by telling this, people will get to know the power of free software. They are written by talented people who charge nothing for their effort. They are easy to use and suitable for th rest of us (professionals will still prefer photoshop of course).

Paper Batteries

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:47:00 +0000

For applications that need only small amounts of power, flexible paper batteries look promising by offering a viable alternative to current batteries. These batteries use a paper layer containing the electrolyte as the separator between the anode and the cathode. They are easy and cheap to manufacture because they are produced using printing machines and environmentally friendly because of easy disposal. And as they're thin and flexible, they can be tailored for a large variety of applications, including cosmetics, smart cards, sensors, greeting cards or semi-active RFIDs.

Live Mail (Hotmail) Spam Problem, Yahoo Mail and Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:07:00 +0000

I'm not sure if anyone faced the same problem as I do recently.

Since last week or so, after Microsoft actually redirects every Hotmail users to the live mail (www.live.com), there seems to be more spam mail getting through the spam filter into my inbox. And I don't like it.

Yahoo mail seems to be doing a better job in fighting spam currently, with spams REALLY getting filtered. I do use gmail on the other hand, but not so much compared to Live mail (previously hotmail) and Yahoo Mail.

I may have to reconsider my options no, maybe I should make Yahoo mail my primary mail and Gmail my secondary. I'll still keep hotmail just for the sake of using it in MSN messenger.

My Take To Life As A Restaurant Waiter

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 06:43:00 +0000

I got myself into a poor paying job recently, working in a restaurant. The job was tiring, and the boss was ever demanding. You have to serve customers, remember the names and price in the menus, mop the floor, wash dishes, clear tables, cash in and cash out money...

My first day was a total disaster. I had no experience working in a restaurant before this. I had to tell a white lie to the boss that I had worked in a similar position in a winery before, or else she would not had hired me (how I came up with such a lame excuse/story was another story). She was expecting something from me (since I said I had experience), but it turns out to be the opposite.

I had to learn to clean tables, which type of plates, spoon, fork, chopstick, bowls or cups to serve. Remembering the menu was also another problem, nut it turn out that several dishes had the same price, just that they have different charges for different size. Huh, that was easy, and yet it took me 2 days to get it!

It was quite a nice experience working there. I met different people, made good use and planned my time, gained a (or should i say, several) new skill, visited different places (or else I'll only be familiar with my studies area!), bought my girlfriend an ipod nano and myself a 512MBM DDR2 RAM, and got myself some pocket money. Yeah, I have to say that I enjoyed the experience.

Should I quit the job now? Well, not yet. It will still be my part time job while I'm still planning my own business at the moment. So, stay tune.
Cheers~!

Working As A Restaurant Waiter

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 06:38:00 +0000

I got myself into a poor paying job recently, working in a restaurant. The job was tiring, and the boss was ever demanding. You have to serve customers, remember the names and price in the menus, mop the floor, wash dishes, clear tables, cash in and cash out money...

My first day was a total disaster. I had no experience working in a restaurant before this. I had to tell a white lie to the boss that I had worked in a similar position in a winery before, or else she would not had hired me (how I came up with such a lame excuse/story was another story). She was expecting something from me (since I said I had experiece), but it turns out to be the opposite.

I had to learn to clean tables, which type of plates, spoon, fork, chopsticks, bowls or cups to serve. Remembering the menu was also another problem, nut it turn out that several dishes had the same price, just that they have different charges for different size. Huh, that was easy, and yet it took me 2 days to get it!

It was quite a nice experience working there. I met different people, made good use and planned my time, gained a (or should i say, several) new skill, visited different places (or else I'll only be familiar with my studies area!), bought my girlfriend an ipod nano and myself a 512MBM DDR2 RAM, and got myself some pocket money. Yeah, I have to say that I enjoyed the experience.

Cheers~!

Damn Computer Engineering!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 08:09:00 +0000

It's about two days that I've been messing around karnaugh map. It has 4 bits for the present state and 1 inout signal making up a total of 5 variables. Now, karnaugh maps are known to be inefficient with more than 4 variables. However, using a free software found in sourceforge, I got the simplified input equation. I thought I had got the right logic. It's implemented in logicworks and it was suppose to work. Nope, it didn't. No luck at all.

Maybe I should take a short rest for a while.

What The Heck Is Object Oriented Programming

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:54:00 +0000

Object oriented programming is a software design philosophy
where software is modeled after the physical world. Object
oriented programs are built using software objects which have
attributes and behaviors. As a concrete example of
this think of a typical office chair. The chair has attributes
(color, number of wheels, material type) and behaviors (spin,
roll, set height). A software object's attributes are held in
data structures called instance variables and its
behaviors are determined by code which is held in methods
(methods are similar to C Functions or BASIC Subroutines). After
an object is created it is used by sending it messages
(calling or invoking its
methods). In the case of the chair we could send it a
chair.spin(3) message which would tell the chair to spin 3
times or a chair.setHeight(32) message which would tell
the chair to set its height to 32 centimeters.

Surfing Offline, Surfing Online

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:09:00 +0000

It's summer holidays and was it hot for the past few weeks. The heat was immense and my sweat glands were more than happy to prove that they are still functioning properly. It wasn't long before I decided to give myself a brak and went surfing by the beaches down here in Bentley.

It was my first time surfing in the beach actually. I took a short course and went to the beach, having high hopes that I will stand up and surf "peacefully". It wasn't long that I knew it wasn't easy. There were many factors involved. The waves coming though your way, the type of board you are using, the steps and timing to go through from laying on the bord to standing up on the board... Being too rushy or desperate to get up without onsidering these factors woukd just make any surfer's life miserable (althoguh I'm not even considered a "surfer" yet).

It's kinda of strange why people used the word "surfing" online as well. Where is the common relationship between these two? One is offline and the other is offline. Maybe it refers to the fact that people tends to change and come and go while viewing websites, just like the way surfers looks for waves. When a suitabe waves comes aong and you know it's going to take you somewhere, just go ith it!

Is there a "more" tag in blogger?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:21:00 +0000

Well, I know people tend to wander of when posts went too long off a page. Wouldn't it be nice of we could just make a long article broken don into a few pages?

I know it can be done using the tag on most popular blogging software such as wordpress, movable types and typepad. But how can I do it in the performancing for Firefox extension?

Anyhow, I'll just give this a shot."more".
If you have seen this words here after you had pressed the read more link, that's mean my attempt has been successful. Cheers~!

Perfomancing For Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:10:00 +0000

I was wondering was there anyway that I can post news into my blogs without logging into blogger.com.

Am I lucky. After downloading firefox and searching for extensions to improve my browsing experience, I came across a nice extension called Performancing for Firefox extension. It was just what I was looking for. Just checkout out their website here. Highly recommended!

Car Insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:58:00 +0000

I bought a car lately. Guess what model it was? Proton Wira 1.6 Automatic a second hand car. It's amazing to know that even in Australia, i did find a second hand car dealer selling Malaysian made Proton!

The buying part was damn easy. I went to select the car with my gf and she liked what she saw. Well, we end up signin the ontract and agreed to buy it for AUSD3500.

The headache was selecting which type of car insurance we should buy to protect ourselves. Being a copule starting out new, i seemed blurred with a sea of options. I did know Geico was one of the most famous car insurer in the US (btw, Warren Buffet is my favorite here and he's on the board of Geico), but I had no idea of who should I trust here in Australia.

What i want is a car insurance that is:
1) cheap and affordable.
2) covering self and third party in case of any acidents.
3) easy, honest and professional.

Simple, and yet hard to find. While the salespeople in the car insurance industry always looking to get ore commission from sgning up new insurers, we consumers must be always smart to choose what is right for us at the most affordable preice.

Oh well. Maybe I should just look up in a insurance directory and get some recommendations from friends on which car insurance to buy. Word of mouth and reference groups are often more reliable than to listen to salespeople.

Console Watcher

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 05:08:00 +0000

After 2 months of studying, learning and writing in the blogging world, I had decided to set up my first personal website. The title of this site is Console Watcher and it will be covering news, headlines, business trends and development, tech and games of major video game consoles.

Xbox 360

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:34:00 +0000

The wait is over. Microsoft has officialy launched the Xbox 360 and major stores nationwide are selling it like hot cakes. It's time to own one. What are you waiting for?

Low Cost Domains Registration at Yahoo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:02:00 +0000

Have you register a new domain recently? Or do you have a new business idea that just popped out from your mind, and your next step is to get it online. Getting a cheap domain name is the way to go. Currently, the price is set at $2.99 and it will last until 31-12-2005. Register your domain today!

Bill Gates on Education

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:24:00 +0000

I came across a interview with Warren Buffet where he mentioned that Bill Gates said that the America's Education is falling behind. Do you think so? Warren Buffet mentioned that he was fortunate enough to grow up being taught by female lecturers, and that the numbers of such potential lecturers are shrinking. Do women make greater teachers than men? At least, when it comes to engineering stuffs and lectures, it was the male lecturers who taught most of what I was interested to know. Female lecturers were fine in defining science and chemical subjects, and they would like to explain theoritical issues and aspects more than the technical part of a matter, which would be quite boring for someone who prefer more on practical then theoritical.

The Programmer's Channel

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 07:50:00 +0000

Programmers:Just wonder where there will be people around you when you needed help. No, seriously. Not the boring lecturer who knows nothing but reading notes, not your coworkers that may to be too busy to help you, not even your spouse who may not know nothing about your difficulty... I'm talking about real help!

Well, you're in luck today. Just go join #winprog channel in IRC. There are people who are willing to give a helping hand on your programming problems, really. Not impressed? What if i tell you that even the creators of Napster and Gnutella and Winamp visits this channel to discuss their problems and ideas? How about telling you that it's the favorite place for developers from Microsoft, Google, Nasa to hang out. Aren't you on yet?

Korea to Unify Olympic Team

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 07:48:00 +0000

The news are out. Korea North and South Korea have
agreed to compete as a single team in the 2006 Asian
Games and the 2008 Olympics, according to a South
Korean official. The two sides have competed
separately since the 1950-53 Korean War, though they
have marched together at some recent sports events.

Thoughts:
It's nice to see them coming together as a nation
again. I admire the advancement of this country in
terms of their technolgy, people, living lifestyles,
food, and their entertainment industry of course.
Let's just hope they get it right this time.

Vefication and Validation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:53:00 +0000

These two terms has been bothering me for a while: Verification and Validation.

To me, it sounds so much alike and should bring the same meaning. However, since I'm in the computer and software engineering field, these two terms can mean something different from what others may want to think it may be.

After googling around, here are the definitions that I had found:

Verification:
The act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing, or otherwise establishing and documenting whether items, processes, services, or documents conform to specified requirements.

Validation:
1)Determination of the correctness of the products of software development with respect to the user needs and requirements.
2)The process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified requirements.

Ok, don't think you understand? How about this:
Verification = Build the thing right (correctly)
Validation = Built the right thing

Isn't that much simpler? Just remember that and it should be fine.

Why Most Bloggers Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:43:00 +0000

Sometimes, it's not reading of how others have come to success that will lead us to the road of glory. Personally, i consider that reading how failures fail is an important factor as well.

Firstly, trying to earn as much as they can. People are greedy. They want to make as much as possible with the least amount of effort and time. They register all kinds of affiliates programs, adsense, adbrites, fastclick...and tons of others u can think of. They focus on there earnings, instead of on their contents. They put up as little contents they could possibly can, and pump the whole page with ads. They could be excited for the first few minutes, since they finish their "design", but i'm sure no one will ever wanna visit these type of sites.

Second, trying to do it all. I call this the "I want this and I want that" attitude. Yup, i can have a forum in my website. I want RSS feeds as well. How about a newsletter to promote our new product? I heard that they say CMS is better than blogging (oopss...) OK, it all sounds good, so LET'S DO IT!

Well, sorry, in case u're not a professional or someone who had been doing for years, or you have the money to hire others to do this stuffs (that's a clue there), u won't be able to do EVERYTHING at once. We are not Pentium 4, no multithreading plz.

Thirdly, starting big. There's nothing wrong with having a big plan (haven't u plan one yet?) But the problem lies in starting BIG. Remember, big != good and small != bad. History has shown over again and again that starting small is always the best approach to achieve your target. As you gain more knowledge and insight of your interest and business, you get bigger. So, a better advice would be "think big and start small".

Fourth, time and courage. These are the two most limiting factor i've seen so far. Couldn't find the time? Well, find some. Even if you think you can't, there probably is, it just take some time management.

What's courage going to do with this? Well, it has a damn lot to do with anything!

Am i capable of writing? My english sucks.
What should i write? Will anyone read it?
I don't think there will be anyone interested at my posts?
I know nothing about the internet...

As you see, it will take some time for these folks to coorect their attitude before they can make it. Be passionate and confident of what you are doing. If there's a will, there's a way. Live your dreams.

Until next time. Good luck in the blogging world.

Freeware: Design And Image

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 07:22:00 +0000

Download.com has done a good job in listing out some of the freeware tools in the image and design category.

Give them a visit. You won't be disappointed.

What? U Blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 13:18:00 +0000

Some friends think i'm crazy to start blogging. Ain't you busy enough to take up another hobby? (some call it waste of time, duh~!)

Well, like i mention in my first post, i'm here to stay. Sorry, my friends, u guys can go on studying (I do!), play ball (i do!), watch movies and girls (i do!), while i do something more interesting, blogging!

Keep on moving!

A Good Start is a Good Start indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 04:48:00 +0000

The Year is 2005. The date today is 10th of October and it's the 2nd Monday of the month. As usual, I woke up, had my breakfast, got my bike, cycled for 10 mintues, and arrived at college, just in time to attend my lecture. Well, maybe I was a 15 mintues late actually.

But, today is different. I've made up my mind to start a new life. I've been dreaming of doing something different and something interesting. I don't want to just attend boring lectures and write unsatsfying reports that just goes through the eyes of one or two lecturers and then be dumped into waste bin (or wherever places they may choose to place them, but I don't think they will ever place it under there pillow, that's for sure!). Instead, I had made up my mind to start... BLOGGING!

At least, I know that what i'm writting here will have some true value. True values for myself, and for those of you who might enjoy reading my blog.

Welcome! It's probably the first day, but I'm gonna stay, for sure! Cheers~!