13 February 2002 12:32
The Chinese lunar calendar today ushers in the Year of the Horse. So
Gong Xi Fa Cai to all my Chinese friends. As is usual in every year, the
house that my family visits every year is my God Grandma's place in
Sungai Chua. Surprised that I have a Chinese God Grandma? Well, if it
weren't for her last time when I had a fit as a baby, God knows if I were
able to be here and be doing this very thing right now. Alas, she hasn't
really been in the best of health and her memory is fading in and out,
especially since she had a brain tumor removed a couple of years back.
She also used to make the best "Kaya" (a kinda paste you spread
over bread) ever! We really, really miss that.
Took some time later in the afternoon to visit my good ol' friends,
Roger and Raymond. I've known the twins (and their folks) since
kindergarten (pre-school to you Yanks!) and I'm just glad that we're
still able to keep it up to this day. Finding new friends is easy but
keeping them over the years is another thing altogether.
11 February 2002 08:37
Since I had nothing much to do today I decided to start cleaning up my
room. It's starting to look so cluttered and messed up with things
strewn all over the place. Cleaning my room has some sorta therapeutic
effect on me. Whenever I'm pissed off with something or whatever,
cleaning my room just helps and depending on the degree of cleanliness
and tidiness that I get in the end result, the cleaner and tidier the room
gets means that I was really, really pissed off! So anyways, I'm neither
angry or pissed off at the moment so it makes the starting attempt a
bit difficult so I ended up doing just my desk for now. It was the
messiest anyhow with scraps of papers, notes, cables, tools, etc. strewn
all over it. At least I can see the desk itself now so, heh! That'll do! :P
10 February 2002 13:55
Hardly a month passed by and here we have another one of my friends
from Purdue who tied the knot. So, many congratulations the both of
you! Uhmmm... I didn't bring my camera this time around so I don't
have any pictures at all for this wedding. Sorry! :P
Right after the wedding, some of us were thinking of making it up to
Genting Highlands tomorrow and spend the day there. I was really
looking forward to that until later in the evening when Amy informed
me that it was called off since Bard is down with a fever. Ickkk! Looks
like another uneventful Sunday for me tomorrow...
8 February 2002 05:54
So, nVidia today
launched the new GeForce4 graphics card. Hardly a year ago, I bought
an Asus V8200 Deluxe
card which was equipped with a GeForce3 and to date, I hardly see any
games or applications that actually take full advantage of the Geforce3
featureset like pixel shaders or such. But existing applications (mostly
games) that taxes the graphics card to the limits (like Quake,
Max Payne,
etc.) runs real sweet on it. Anyways, I don't regard the GeForce4 as
being revolutionary such as when the GeForce3 came out. No doubt the
GeForce4 is a much faster card but there's really nothing new as far as
the architecture is concerned. There are a couple of new featured
introduced in the new GeForce4 but I reckon its not so much of a
compelling reason to upgrade (Those things burn quite a big hole in
your wallet too!) so the GeForce3 card will definitely remain in my PC for
a while.
3 February 2002 01:51
I get hyped up whenever I come across a piece of news with John
Carmack in it. You would have noticed in my About
page that one of the people I look up to is John Carmack. So, just who
is this John Carmack you ask? Ever played Wolfenstein, Doom 1 & 2 or
Quake 1, 2 or 3 Arena? He's the creator of those games' engines. What
makes me look up to him is that he is a technical idealist and most of
the things that he has come up with are driven not by business but
technical correctness. I can only wish that most of the projects I work
on is just like that, 'cos most of the time, its the business requirements
that drive things and when things get tight, compromises have to be made
on the technical side of things, leaving things totally dysfunctional (I'm
tempted to drive the point home by highlighting products made by a
certain very large software company but I'll let it go for now!). He also
recognizes the fact that he is not that business savvy and thus has hired
somebody to take care of the business side of things while he concentrates
at what he does best, i.e. programming. This is of course the opposite
of what usually happens in the industry. Great engineers who were brilliant
in their field end up managing the company or such. Anyways, he has
come such a long way that people, especially those in the PC graphics
industry, regard him as an authority as to what should be right or wrong
when drivers (mostly OpenGL)
are being built or developed. I will be putting in items in here whenever
The Man is in the news from now on....
2 February 2002 14:28
It's Federal Territory Day today so it's a day off for me. Went around
KL in the afternoon and I got me The Fast And The Furious
DVD. Whilst the action was frenetic, stunts were nicely done,
soundtrack was thumping (Dang! I really dig on those tracks by BT!),
special features were worthy, some nice (not gorgeous or hot though,
heh!) babes (Jordana Brewster), it's a shame I can't say the same
about the storyline though. It's just as shallow as some Malay movies
with some lumba haram (illegal street racing) theme thrown in. Anyways,
it's a good DVD to throw in your rig, crank the volume up and bother
some neighbors on a quiet afternoon or evening. Heh! My rating: 4.5/10.
1 February 2002 13:34
Something in the news that both angered and cracked me up at the
same time. Apparently, these 24 hour eating outlets are a source of
social ills and thus the solution to overcome it is by not allowing them
to operate on a 24 hour basis. Another reason given is that rather than
having people frequenting the eating outlets in the wee hours of the
night, the time is much better spent having a good nights rest instead.
What a load of crap, I'd say. Eating outlets as a cause of social ills?
Gimme a break! Just how many incidences have been reported so far
about eating outlets being vice dens? People don't go mugging,
gambling or get laid at those eating outlets! They go there to get food!
And the time is better spent sleeping so that they can come to work
"feeling fresh"? Hello, Minister! What about those people who work on
shifts? Are you going to deprive them of their basic need to live? Not
everyone has a 9-to-5 job, y'know. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a
classic example of how shallow minded some of our ministers can be.
It's just plain, downright stupid. People go to these places to get food,
to ease the hunger pangs that come to them in the middle of the night,
to meet friends, to wind down after a whole day and evening's work. At
the same time, these eating outlets have become part of the unique
Malaysian culture and thus taking them down would mean taking part
of our culture down as well. As far as social ills are concerned, has there
been any statistics compiled to show the correlation between the
existence of these 24 hour eateries with the number of immoral
activities? I certainly don't think so. Y'know what? If they're really intent
on not wanting people to go out at night and engage in those
unhealthy activities, why not just impose a curfew? Simpler innit? The
people aren't kids, for heaven's sake! I just hope whatever plans they
have to put a stop to the 24 hour eateries will fall through. At the same
time, The Star
is running a public opinion poll
on whether or not the authorities should ban those eating outlets. Go
do some justice...
27 January 2002 18:31
Whoohoohoo! I've never laughed so hard for four straight hours in my
lifetime ever! And I never thought I could break a sweat from laughing
too! I just came back from watching Malaysian Comedy Pest 2002
at The
Actor's Studio, Bangsar. It was certainly worth all the money spent!
The performers, Patrick Teoh, Comedy Court, Harith Iskandar and
Afdlin Shauki, are certainly the best and just damn good! How I wish
there were more performances like this! Patrick Teoh kicked the show
off introducing the line up and also a cheque presentation to Vision
Homes in Ipoh, to which proceeds from the show are forwarded to.
Comedy Court (featuring "Two Indian Fellas") then took the stage and
they had a skit in which a female reporter from the BBC came down to
Malaysia to interview the person on the street. They mocked just about
every Malaysian on the street that we'd typically find (a Chinese
businessman, a Malay politician, an Indian lawyer, a Chinese pimp and
two Auntie characters) and it was certainly dead on! (One of their more
memorable lines being "Malaysia, truly Asia!", "Can lah!") Harith
Iskandar was up next with his stand up comedy act which again pokes
fun at Malaysians. Guys learnt a thing or two from his "Zen of Stillness"
in a relationship! After the intermission, Patrick Teoh and Jo Kukathas
took the stage, first Teoh as himself and Kukathas as a Y.B. (Yang
Berhormat) in a talk show skit and then Teoh as a Security Guard and
Kukathas in a character that can be implied as Dato' Shahrizat Jalil
(her favorite line being "You are so ignorated/ignoration!" just brought
the whole house down!) was in a cloning lab/clinic. Afdlin Shauki was
definitely the best of the best! His jab at himself for being fat, his
liking for Angelina Jolie, at Siti Nurhaliza (complete with a parody of
'Percayalah'), some inconviniences faced by our Sikh friends after the
events of 9/11 (with his spoofing R. Kelly's number to "How I Wish I
Can Fly" and Britney Spears' "I'm A Slave For You"), and the rendition
of "We Are The World" as would be sung by the original artists,
Bollywood artists (imagine We Are The World sung to the tune of "Mein
Shayar Tou Nahi" from the movie Bobby), Hong Kong artists and of
course, Malaysian artists (We Are The World to the tune of S.M. Salim's
Apa Dah Jadi, Search's Isabella, Ella's Layar Impian and Raihan's
Bismillah!). Man! Never had I thought Malaysian comedy can be this
good! All the thumbs I can get up to all of them for putting a blast of a
performace!
26 January 2002 15:15
Came across this piece of write up whilst checking up on stuff I'd miss
during the week. I'd say, how true! I can relate to the experience at
various points in time, past and present. Whenever a Company Big
Shot has a problem with the computer, we're supposed to drop
everything and attend to the issue at once, only to find out that the
person forgot to issue the "Save" command, plug in a cord, move the
mouse back to the center of the mousepad after it got to the edge
(okay, so I exaggerated the last one there! still...) etc. etc. Compared
to five years ago, software developers have made such big strides in
making their products as user friendly and smart as possible, yet
people still fumble about. I guess my theory on "Make something as
idiot proof as possible and they'd come up with better idiots" holds
true then. Heh!
25 January 2002 03:27
Ickk! Did the deejay really have to play that "Can't Get You Outta My
Head" song by Kylie Minogue in the morning when people are just
about to wake up? That song really lives up to its name. You know
how the first thing that you listen to in the morning can stick in your
head for the rest of the day? Well now, I just can't get the bloody ditty
out of my head! And it's pissing me off! While we're still on topic,
there's another song I heard the other day that made me cringe,
"Stupid Cupid" by Mandy Moore.
Why oh why does she hafta squeal the 'cupid' part in the chorus?! It's
worse than the sound of fingernails across a blackboard, if you know
what I mean. Urgghhh! Alright, alright. Something to calm me down...
Listening to Olivia - Bizounce