My side of the world and story

Eid Fitri in here again.

2006-10-20T17:01:00.000+08:00

Next week will be the biggest day for Muslims allover the world. The day we celebrate and enjoy after a month of fasting.

Last year, my wife, Husna and me celebrated Eid Fitri at Nilai, Negeri Sembilan. That was my father's hometown and boy we had great time. This year, it's my wife's turn to celebrate Eid Fitri at her hometown which is in Sungai Lembing, Pahang.

This will be our second time celebrating Eid Fitri together and we have our own "baju raya" theme, that is light yellow! Yeahh....can't wait to see Husna wearing her new baju kurung and tudung.

So, before i'm off to Sungai Lembing, i would like to say hello to my new friend Lan Bye (ex-Sil-Khannaz drummer) and his wife. To members of SVOA.com and to all my readers who kept on asking me to blog since day one.

Again, thank you to all who have donated to me. Feel free to donate to me using my StormPay account.

Lastly to Emyliza, please do contact me or at least buy me a PlayStation 2 :P.

Silicon Art; Can you find em?

2006-10-20T16:35:00.000+08:00

Saw this report about silicon art on tv last night or so. Really interesting to watch to show and the silicon art. Some silicon are smaller then your hair! How do they make those silicon art? Chipworks explained it nicely.

Kermit is one of the silicon art taken from ADI ADSP-2176 DSP. To be honest, silicon art is not allowed. It is like looking at wet cement and the first thing you want to do is, craft your own name.

The creator of the silicon art is making some statement about his work. Some just want to have fun with their circuit.

How do i defrag Linux?

2006-10-01T21:17:00.000+08:00

Long story short, you don't need to defrag your Linux. It got to do with NTFS part. Unlike Windows, Linux have a really nice data management in terms of hard disk. But if still want to know more, read a nice article from GeekBlog.

Headache? Well, it takes some time to understand to whole process. But if you're new to Linux, just have fun with your Linux without reading the article.

Yesterday, i received another package from a new Linux distro. When i looked up in the internet, i can't find any info about the distro. Must be REALLY new eh? The distro goes by the name of UniNux. From the inlay, they said it is Linux with more Unix command. Correct me if i'm wrong, will i see more command-line from this distro?

I'll test this disro once i have time. Have fun

Wohaa...living and still happy bunny.

2006-09-16T11:13:00.000+08:00

19th of August was my daughter first birthday. With her grandparents at her party, she sure looks cute with her new dress.

For me,i'm making aliving doing freelancing. Not much but it pays the bills. So many things to blog but time is not on my side.

Had some interviews with mainstream and internet company. Some decided NOT to publish the interview (i'm been too honest). Well, better luck next time.

I'm still around.

2006-08-24T12:14:00.000+08:00

It has been about a month now. Yup, i'm still breathing like a normal man and yes i'm still jobless.

Well, not entirely jobless. I have my own small tiny business and i'm happy with it for now.

For those who kept on email me, thank you so much. I can't be online too much

Darn, we should made it to the top list.

2006-06-22T17:49:00.000+08:00

Readers Digest made a poll for the world's rudest cities and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) was on the third spot. I have no idea on what facts they held the survey but i'm sure KL is not belong in the list.

Ok, maybe it should be. But again, there was no concrete explaination from this survey. New York was voted as the most polite city in the world? Ermm...i'm not going to say anything about LA but ermm...

To be honest, my mind is not in the focus level because i'm jobless now! Yup, i need some support from you guys. Just leave your suggestion or comments or anything that can give me a good boost. But if you want to show your support, you can always donate to me.

I know i'll be on my feet soon but in the mean time, i just want to be free. It's weird tho, it's just like a whole bunch of load just lifted from my shoulder and i'm smilling. God works in weird way and maybe this is the sign for me to shift my focus and energy into something else. Maybe i should focus on my art (i do draw and paint) more and start selling my art at a higher tag.

About my blog, i don't know how can i blog. Before this, i blogged from my office since witing for the telco company to install my phone connection at home still "offline".

Right now, i'm at a cyber centre in Kuantan. As i stated earlier, God works in weird way and just now, a guy whom i never met before told me that he is enjoying working with his passion making keychains. He told me that he was once a professional art director in KL and got a big pay-check every month. When our economy went slow in the mid 90's, the company he worked with decided to down-sizing.

I quit my job today!

2006-06-22T17:16:00.000+08:00

Enough is enough. I can't stand it anymore. I work hard but because of a person gave the wrong info to my boss, i got an internal memo. So i quit my job today. Right now i'm jobless and clueless.

Did that going to give me a headache? Maybe but maybe not. I do believe God will help me out. I do believe the world is wide enough for me to play in.

If you're are from Malaysia looking for a worker, i'm all ears.

Unzip those zip. Zip tool review.

2006-06-20T15:26:00.000+08:00

I'm sure most of you use WinZip as your main arsenal for zip and unzip files. In XP, the built-in zip function is a bonus for you. Another great tool is WinRar for Windows users. Now, RAR format is widely use because of its small zipped size. Yes, it's the "Software Review" day and i hope you're hungry for some great freeware today.

IZArc and 7Zip is the best freeware zip tool for you. Handling over 50 zip formats, you can forget those paid version of your existing zip manager. Plus, both can read fairly fast media images such as ISO, BIN and IMG. In the good old days, we (*cough*) used ARJ pretty heavy and we love it. By using IZArc, i can handle my old zipped ARJ files with ease and fast unpacking.

7Zip is super cool for unpack a multi-part RAR. With multi-OS support, 7Zip can be run on GNU/Linux (Debian, Fedora, Gentoo), FreeBSD, MacOS and Windows plus for BeOS, don't worry, it runs nicely on BeOS. I've tested both for typical zip format such as ZIP, ACE, RAR, ARJ and TAR. Just drag and drop to achive feature will make WinZip users feel at home in seconds.

For me IZArc is much more customize in terms of selecting zip formats but if you want to go for maximum zipped file, use 7Zip and you will save plenty of disk space. Who said freeware is not good? Hey Lizz, lets play some tag game. I'm tagging you to use 7Zip for a week and give us your review. Tag...you next.

Americans are cowards!

2006-06-20T10:50:00.000+08:00

No, i didn't said that. My friend said that to me yesterday. We had a nice talk about the Fifa World Cup 2006 and he told me that when it comes to sports, Americans are cowards. Before you start slashing me off, please read on.

"Why are Americans cowards?" i asked him. "Just look at their world championships. They have world champ for wrestlings. They have their own world series." he told me.

"So, what is the problem?". "Didn't you know, the call it world championship but they are not playing against any country!." he told me with a chuckle and my donut in his hand. "They just play against cities or group."

Then he made an imitation of a sports announcer.

"The world wrestling champ goes to The Rock from Californiaaaaaa...!!!!"

Ermm..make sense to me. How can they be the world champ if nobody from any country in the globe compete with them? Can i call my blog as the World Blogger Champ? "Believe me, they are not so good at sports so to protect their ego, they invented the world champ title." was the last sentence from him before another donut of mine end up in his tummy. Grrr.....

It's because of race.

2006-06-20T10:35:00.000+08:00

Back in the old days in a land goes by the name of America, only white man can be racist. When they saw an Afro-American, most likely they will spit on them. Pitty Afro-American. Some, went for more extreme action such as hanging Afro-American just because of their race.

Now for the good news, everybody being racist. Yup, Afro-American sees an Arab and they spit on him. Ermm...trying to get even eh dawg? Arab sees a Jews and spit on him. Nowdays everybody spits on each other and the country that started the "spitting-game" spits the Muslims.

Now, this is not about being a racist anymore it's being mono-religion action. Nowdays, Muslims spits Jews and the Jews spits at...the rest of us. No, i'm not a racist or sort, just being sarcastic.

We're too busy spitting on each other we forget about Darfur, Somalia, Africa. We tend to forget about the wars with no purpose in it. We forget about the killing of civillions in Palestine and Myanmar. We are too busy blogging, we forget about kids in Afghanistan with no education. We are too busy making money, we forget about who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are too aragon, we forget about the landmines in Bosnia, Serbia and Vietnam. We are too busy watching the world series, we close our eyes regarding bird flu. We are too busy watching football world cup 2006, we forget about our soul.

How often do you feed your own soul? How do you take care of your inner-self? Or we just "holier than thou"? Think about it and please leave your thoughts.

Security gadget unsecured!

2006-06-19T15:52:00.000+08:00

Short post about your security camera. With some help from Google, you can play with the actuall security camera! Beware, it's illegal to play around with it. You have been warned.

To hack into those unsecure security camera, just use Google and sometimes people do weird thing infront of the camera. Some, just drop their clothes and had sex in front of the security camera or maybe they don't realized it was there.

You can zoom in, zoom out, pan, lift, move and do whatever you want to do with it.

Alky:Converts your windows neatly.

2006-06-16T16:04:00.000+08:00

Alky is a tool that allows you to converts a Windos EXE to MacOS or GNU/Linux binary stack. At this moment, Alky are focusing on high-end gaming (good news for gamers). This open source tool is different (they said) from WINE without API's hickups.

I can't give the details yet because i haven't had the time to test Alky. Heck, they even didn't release it to the public yet! When Alky is ready, i'll try it to convert my Command And Conqure game to GNU/Linux.

Working directly with binary, it's hard to "learn" the apps converted to GNU/Linux or MacOS but Alky seems to do well at binary language. Alky only runs on Intel Mac and i suspect this is due to core of the chip is widely use (and becoming more for Mac's). Not much info about this tool tho and i'm walking in circles.

What about GNU/Linux? Will Alky works on AMD chip sets or will i see more "Made-for-Intel" from them? Check out Alky (al-kee) for more info (not much of course)

Look i just kill a fish.

2006-06-09T14:42:00.000+08:00

My little nephew just murdered a fish. I asked him how did he kill the poor gold fish. "I just drown it in the water by adding more water." Kids nowdays...grrrr.

I'm sure the fish was a happy swimmer when they saw more water coming in but nooooo....somebody decided to drown them with it. That's not how my nephew kill those poor fish. That little lad add ice cubes into the fish tank and after 20 seconds, he add some hot water! Uhh...instant mummified for that poor fish.

Adding some hot water after the ice will kill not only the fish but also the African lion for God sake.

Can we survive the "hot water" effect in terms of blogging? How about the "ice effect"? Can bloggers make it to see the sun tomorrow? What hot and ice effect? Figure out for yourself, i'm not telling you any.

Ok, i'll tell you. For me, more blogger are writing about things they don't completely understand. For example, a blogger that loves cat decide to write about GNU/Linux. Sure that guy can copy and paste article from the internet but in the long run, can he stick to that topic? If that guy really know what he just wrote, i'm fine with it but what if it's the other way around?

The original topic or theme is the "hot water" or "ice cube" or it can be both at the same time. Writting about things you are not really into is what this whole post about. It just like a comedian with a bad joke and try to go along with it. I know i'm talking riddle but it seems no easy way to explain it to you.

Don't buy beauty magazine just to read their "Lose weight" column.

2006-06-08T16:23:00.000+08:00

Do you realize those "Lose Weight" articles are the same with one another? In my hand right now, i have 4 magazine showing readers how to lose weight. After ten minutes, it only come down to 2 way.

1. Eat less.
2. Workout more.

Now, someone actually bought those magazine (yes, 4 of them)! Don't you feel like being cheated? The person who bought the magazines want to cut down those inches will find out they are the same tips. Happy workout.

Who change my tooth brush?

2006-06-08T15:53:00.000+08:00

Technology are getting faster and it evolves so fast even my tooth brush evolves. Who the hell invented the electrical tooth brush? Why can't they leave the simplicity of the tooth brush alone!

See how fast technology leaving us behind. Heck even after turning my computer, i know the computer is learning something behind my back!

Toys...oh boy. Remember how fun it was to play with sharp pointing metal? But kids nowdays are playing with rounded-corner-interlocking Lego. Ooo...that is so not fun. Remember how our parents forced us to play with the wooden horse? That was fun right?

I remember the good old days where encouraging our friends to hurt themself still legal. Really, it was legal back in the 70's but now we can even smack our kid at the back. Yes, the goverment actually formed a Child Act...that is not fun. Back in the 70's, we can encourage our friend to hurt themself and nobody will shout at us. If my friend is playing on the swing i can legally tell him to go faster and higher and when he reach the highest heights, i'll thell him to jump.

Linux, iPod, Vista, Wii, PSP and more weird names keep on coming. Heck, i still trying to figure out what's wrong with Windows and a new version of OS already on sale. Just install Linux and a new version just relesead to public. Same goes for Playstation, i'm not even half done reading the manual and they already selling PS3.

Can we press the pause button for technology?

I'm not listening to your music dad!

2006-06-08T15:20:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, a friend of mine brought his son along. So we talked about the good old times; picking up girls, trash talking at nerds and stuff. My friend started to talk about the music we listen to and for sudden, his son said "That sucks!".

My friend and i listen to heavy metal pretty much and his son is more into those hip-hop rap music. His son told us about how uncool it's to listen to old school heavy metal rock and roll music like Purple, Flyod or Hendrix. Ermmm.....what will happen if my daughter grow up?

There i am playing my old Purple CD when i'm 75 while my daughter sitting next to me mocking me silently. I can imagine the whole scenario when Smoke On Water is playing. "Dad, that sucks!. Try listening to some trance techno music for a change." Nobody mocks the Purple!

The reason i wrote about my friends' son because as a blogger i need to step one step futher then my readers. Readers are not idiots and they can bring down my blog in seconds. Blogging about the same monotous topic will make readers take wings and fly away.

Try to be different--that was repeatly stated but hard to do. Being different IS hard unless you blog about something specific. For me (and the rest of us) i just can't stay off from other topics that came across my mind. I'll write about almost anything and i do enjoy it.

Can you stay focus with on topic? Not me and and not planning to do so. Unless my blog title is "Making money from internet", till then, i'm off topic.

666--The Satanic way to blog.

2006-06-08T13:10:00.000+08:00

Call it the omen or headless harry, but this is the best way to gain more readers. Follow the instruction and in no time, you'll see result. No, this is not an April Fool prank, this is the real thing. If you want more traffic, read my tips and don't skip any of the tips. Don't follow Seth Godins' 56 ways of getting traffic.

Ready? Ok, i'll wait for you. Done with the toilet-thing? Can we move on?

1. Update your blog every 2 months. - This is the secret of the big boys to get more traffic to their blog.
2. Write 2 or 3 line per post. - Another killer secret by the pros.
3. Rip someone elses' content. - Easy and you'll never get traced by the original author.
4. Use alien-SMS-type of language. - I'm sure most of you already the Grand Master of this type of language.
5. Blog in riddle and point to nowhere. - Another great solution or alternative to point #4.
6. Post about your smelly toe or your deepest personal life. - People really care about each other and we have all the time to read the post.

So, i hope you guys can follow my tips and don't shy to pass it to your friends.

Need to improve your memory fast?

2006-06-07T16:44:00.000+08:00

Improving our memory for some mean big business. The growth of magic-memory-pills is getting bigger in figure. Why not try to improve your meory for free and fast? BuildYourMemory is a good start.

Many people claim that they possess a poor memory. Indeed you may even be one of those people yourself. Well whether you are or not, the simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the population have perfectly good memories. The problem is that they just don’t know how to use them properly- via BuildYourMemory.

So, no more lame "i'm-too-old-to-remember-things" excuses. Get up and flex those neurons.

Mel Gibson runs as Governor?

2006-06-07T15:53:00.000+08:00

Some fanatic fan of Mel Gibson is trying to get Mel to run the house if Governor Schwarzenegger decided not to run for re-election.

Reading Mel's blog is interesting. Even if both of us are not the same religion (i'm a Muslim), still, his view about things are interesting and sometimes shocking. I don't have to disagree to agree (vice versa) with his view and i do respect him and his view. Being one of the top actor in Holywood, i'm sure plentty of fan loves to see Mel as governor.

Hack of the day--PECompact (Win only).

2006-06-07T15:07:00.000+08:00

Today i'm going to give you a tip on how to save your disk space from those huge bulky software or game. Why not keep it small and compact? PECompact is the right tool to compress those bulky software or game laying around your hard drive. You can get their trial version or Student Version but i'm going to use Student Version for this tutorial.

First off, what is PECompact?

PECompact is an advanced Windows executable compressor. Executable packers compress executable modules (EXE, DLL, etc..) so that their physical size is considerably smaller. At runtime, compressed modules are rapidly decompressed and reconstructed in memory.

Used on Google Desktop, DivX Player 6.0, µTorrent, and hundreds of other popular titles, PECompact has real-world exposure and testing beyond competing products. With PECompact, you can rest assured your compressed software will be trouble free. - via Bitsum

It's fairly simple to use PECompact but i took some time to make a flash tutorial for you. Click here to view the tutorial.

If you hate command-line compressor like UPX (which is great tool), PECompact's GUI is easy to master. Hope this tutorial helps you in saving more space in your hard drive.

The Fast and Furious--Tokyo Drift.

2006-06-06T17:01:00.001+08:00

Can't wait to watch this movie. I've seen the first and second Fast and Furious and i want more speed! Drifting race is hot here in Malaysia. More drivers and more drifting track. Heck, even old Nissan cars drifted too.

Where have i been? All over the place with no internet connection. Now, back to normal.

Introducing....Belacan; the most famoust ingredient in our local food.

2006-05-25T15:30:00.000+08:00

Call it full-flavoured, aromatic, spicy or downright nasty, Malaysian cuisine boasts more pungent varieties than arguably any other country in the world. This piquant character manifests itself in various forms, in fresh fruits (durian and jackfruit), in condiments (budu), preserves (cincaluk and tempoyak) and the innocuous looking belacan or shrimp paste. The last item is as indispensible to Malaysian cooking as herbs are to Italian cuisine or soya sauce to Chinese. Why, some purists go as far as to declare that your 'Malaysianess' hinges on whether or not you like belacan! - via Best Of Langkawi.

If you guys decided to come to Malaysia for a vacation, don't forget to order sambal belacan.

Is this relevance result from Google Video?

2006-05-25T15:03:00.000+08:00

I'm searching for how to make potato chips from Google Video and the result......i'm not going to spoil the thrill.

Do we need a super hero blogger or they just stupid people in tight pants?

2006-05-25T14:45:00.000+08:00

Had this conversation with my friend (who hates blogging) several days ago. Talked about open source, making money from internet and for no reason he said "Who is your super hero blogger?"

It took me some time to think the answer and to be honest; didn't have one! So i went back home with his question still in my mind. This time i decided to follow Edward de Bono advice--reverse the question. So i did and came up with "Do we need a super hero blogger?"

In order to answer the question, i have to look deep into what my blog topic are and were about. Yes, most of it were about computer and internet related topics and the rest were a mixture between making money from internet, personal thoughts and silly stuff.

Why must i have a super hero? I'm sure you too have your own super hero in life. I guess the answer would be the same as yours. We all need someone to look up to and in this case i would say Jeff Jarvis would be in my list. He can be a nutcase and sometimes a preecher in his own weird way.

I used to read Slashdot but now i'm turning to Digg and Delicious. I don't see any direct connection between Slashdot and this post but half of me kept on telling me to write it and so here it is.

Copyblogger is a great place to gain info about writing and i read Brian's opinion about blogging. His post that gave me a huge electric shock was the two most important words in blogging. Try reading it and i'm sure you'll fall from your chair.

I'm a foolish guy if i didn't mention Radar. Nothing escapes the radar in terms of new technology or service. A part of the most famous O'Reilly network, this is a must for me as i read it daily.

Problogger used to be in my "favourite" list but after the post about being an elite in blogsphere, i decided it's time for me to move on. I'm not that elite to play with the big boys so i'm off with the smaller fish. But, this is my view and not a "trashing-point" for Darren. Not just my type of coffee now.

Still, i can't figure out who is my super hero blogger! All above are great people and their blogs being read by thousand (millions?) daily but it is crazy to fit a shirt for everybody. So, who is your super hero blogger?

PS: Maybe some of you haven't notice that my blog now are open for comment. So, stop nagging at me to allow public commenting :P

Who said running OpenBSD needs huge hardware?

2006-05-24T17:33:00.000+08:00

This morning, a close friend of mine told me that his customer doesn't want OpenBSD in their system. Instead they shift to RedHat because they *thought* GNU/Linux will run on less hardware requirements.

I told my friend that i have an old P2 450 with 64Mb (yes, it's an old lad) running OpenBSD smoothly and i haven't upgrade it to the latest version since..ermmm years ago!

A huge myth about BSD OS is "If it's fo server, it's expensive on hardware". True if you want to run several huge server supporting 80 million hits per day but for a small server, OpenBSD is the rock-solid choice.

I'm not saying GNU/Linux sucks at this area but we have tested Red Hat (at their early stage) running side-by side with OpenBSD and OpenBSD shows no break in. Red Hat got ping-bombed after a week of getting it config. I'm sure Red Hat getting better nowdays but with only one security hole in 8 years, you have to give OpenBSD credit.

[A few] years ago I was just getting into system administration. I learned Linux first. Then one of our old (I mean *really* old) BSDi servers crashed, and it was up to me to rebuild the system.

I looked at FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux. In the end, it came down to "secure and stable" that took the prize. OpenBSD 2.1 was installed.
Since then, I've run 2.1-2.5 on everything from production servers to laptops. We've never (repeat: NEVER) had a break-in.

A coworker setup a RedHat based box to test his skills at setting up SSL and a secure web site. It was hacked literally overnight, and by the next morning was attacking other sites.

Our OpenBSD servers were probed and then left alone. In the intervening two years, that original server got upgraded and patched several times and the OS never gave us reason to question the reliability or security of OpenBSD.

We have another box, acting as a router for about 800 workstations doing very basic filtering and NAT. It's on a P120 with 32MB RAM and typically the uptime would look like this:

% uptime
9:05PM up 266 days, 4:23, 1 user, load averages: 0.06, 0.06, 0.06
%

As well, OpenBSD runs on my laptop. A Gateway Solo 2500 with a Xircom modem, and a Linksys fast Ethernet NIC. And it never crashes :) - via OpenBSd

BSD community is head to head with GNU/Linux now and i do hope BSD will hit the checkered flag. If OpenBSD (or any BSD flavour) wants to win desktop market and users, it is important to update their hardware support.