LOTR, ATM, CNY, Lion Dance

It has been quite a long time since I last blog. Need to jot down some old stuff that has happened throughout the days that has passed.

Catch up with LORD:ROTK. Call me lame if you want. I know I'm late to watch it last week but I just don't fancy queuing and getting rotten crap seating locations. That's why I prefer to delay it and watch when the crowd for the movie has gotten more subtle and loose. Another kudos to LOTR. It was awesome eventhough I did yawn about 5-6 times throughout the movie. The movie was kinda slow pace for my liking. However the fantastic visuals, humour, depiction of fantasy characters and environment and battles really made up to it.

Okay, next. A colleague, Nicholas shown me and a couple of others the ATM accepter that he is working on. Basically from the physical point ofi t, it looks just as similar as a typical ATM machine which you can find. The catch is, it is an accepter. Where u put money in instead of cash out. He disintegrate.....unlock and open it to let everyone see and study its organs. I was astounded by the number and complexity of the rollers. I was told it was the simplest design that they offered. There was about 30-40 rollers to handle your money going into it. The paper money would need go through all these rollers before it is passed way down to the money detector and subsequently to the container. That is why sometimes this kind of machine gives out crap when the money gets jammed inside. There is a huge system unit fully equipped with the mouse and keyboard inside. It's basically a generic computer that comes with heavy armour. The keypad of the ATM is actually part of the keyboard. In fact, the top 8 buttons beside the pathetic screen seems to be somehow connected to the mouse buttons if I'm not mistaken.

Chinese New Year wasn't that great. I've got flu, cough, phlegm, sorethroat after coming back from Malacca and Kuala Pilah. Darn. I hate the one way street design of Malacca's road. It only makes us look like fools for making those extra mileage to reach to the destination.

The "Sui Yue" meal at Kuala Pilah was good nonetheless. It's called "Labi-labi". Will post the picture when I have got them sorted. As promised, here is the pic of the "Sui Yee" noodle bought from "Meng Kei" at Kuala Pilah.

Just some of my record breaking details. Reached office in 9 minutes during CNY Eve. From my car park to the office's gate. One of the Bit Torrent downloads recorded 107 Kbs. That was fast.

There was a Lion Dance at the corporate lobby downstairs at my office. All employees were invited to view the show. Will post the picture later. It was pretty amazing as it caught many people with "ooh" and "aahs" when the lion...the two guys leap around in great distance and perform stunts on the poles.

[Edited: Added 2 pics]

Testing Image hot linking

Nothing much to rant about. Probably just that the Chinese New Year celebration for this year might be damp and not as festive as it used to be. Why has it become like this? Is it affected by the economy downturn? Or could it be just me, getting older and not feeling as excited as I used to. I had a friend who asked me whether I'm looking forward to the CNY, well my answer is just plain "No". This CNY really didn't bother me at all. I'm not into the festive spirit and I didn't even bother to get some new year's clothes. It was a routine a couple a years ago but it ended now.

Okie. Now let's test the picture. I'm an ardent fan of Liverpool FC! This season kinda suck but it looks better than the previous one. It was even more horrendous. Hope the addition of Djibril Cisse would shake things up a little....Damn it....This is like the fifth time I clicked the "Post & Publish" button. The inclusion of an image seems to be buggy. It just wouldn't stay at the location that I intend it to be. Argh. So I'm just now typing some useless, inane, meaningful sentences to make this post longer so that the image will stay in place and not hanging outside or partially outside within the perimeter of this post's border. Phew!

Unable to create textfile/HTML file using ASP

Have you seen your pc not giving you any response or feedback after you've instructed it to create a textfile or pic file? Does it also affect your IIS thus prompting you a message saying that "Too much user connected to IIS?"

Well, I faced this situation about a month ago. After searching and weaving through the internet, I found some solutions to the above mentioned problem.

Step 1: Disable any Script Blocking from Anti virus software that is running

Step 2: Set permissions to write on the associated folders


I used ADODB.Stream to create a picture file on the harddisk when the user runs an ASP page. But for machines that refuse to run the code, do check that you have installed an updated MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components). I used version 2.8.

Soft people? duh

Lina, our ISD administrator came in to announce about an upcoming tournament of Scrabble, Table Tennis, Badminton and Bowling. After she ended her announcement, she was being eloquent to get us to sign up for it. Her reason for that was being the largest department we should give some response and not let her down.

She quoted that the joke of the day was "we being the soft people" because we are in the Software Department.

World of bloggers

It seems to me that the world of bloggers is expanding really fast. The bloggers community in Malaysia is extremely huge I think. There are just so many cliques around. The most impressing thing was, the layout and the design that was created. Unbelievable. Some of them are just dead gorgeous. They even have archive of their previous layouts and designs. I felt so left out. I should make a point that the average age of these bloggers are young. They are still in their college days.

Most of the blogs owners create and maintain a few blogs. Man, I hardly could blog everday and they need to blog on three blogs. Wow! Needless to say, most of the bloggers are girls. Hmmm from how I see it, I noticed that the contents in a girl's blog are quite different from guys. Firstly they are longer. Secondly, they are more in detail. Thirdly, I don't think they sound like thoughts or opinions but more like mere diary jots. No offence though. That's from my observation.

Car Wash

Sent my car to car wash behind the Shell petrol station this afternoon. While waiting under the shade another customer came and joined me. He's in his 40s I guess wearing shirt and tie. He striked up a conversation with me. He kept on talking about his job as an Eon sales representative and that his kids are terrible. He is chinese educated and therefore he is in shit now. The jam is terrible nearby where he lives. As how he puts it "Sak Tou Hai". hehehe. I guess all salesman are abit talkative and has good social skills which I call it "Hau Choi Hou".

I was charged RM6 for my car wash. Grrrr. It went up by RM1. That's like 20% inflation man.

Stolen

Rats. While I was getting my fried meehoon and mee as well as my usual cup of tea at the company's cafeteria this morning, somebody has stolen my newspaper. I just left the newspaper on an empty table. The whole cafeteria has about 80 seat allocation and there are many other patrons. I couldn't find who that filthy scumbag is. Darn! A pissed morning.

But I'm getting more cheered up while watching "Go Chess" anime...kekekeke...I'm currently watching episode 29. Been watching Japanese anime because I've finished 3 and a half set of cantonese TVB series. I have another japanese anime in stock in my harddrive. It's supposed to be a very famous anime. I suspect it's Tenshin I guess. Well I still have to finish about 45 episodes before I proceed to digest that series.

Review of 2003

The new year has begun. It seems to be a time to reflect back things and events that happened in the year before.

In the year 2003, I was in UK until August, hence I guess most of my experiences will relate back there.

- Celebrated the new year of 2003 by walking all over Newcastle with mates. This includes Fenham and Heaton gang. Walk up from Fenham to City Centre till Quayside. Then drop by at Charles's place then to Byker finally through Heaton park and back to my house. There was a huge party going on at Quayside.

- First Semester exams and assignment due dates. It was pretty exhausting and occassionally felt under pressure. I think I was influenced by my mates for that. I'm not one who suffers under pressure especially academic works.

- First time in my life, I see snow. Snow is like sand. Had a snow ball fight. Build my first snowman. The snowman wore my scarf. I cut the carrot for the snowman's nose.

- Got involved in NCCF. Newcastle Christian Chinese Fellowship. A christian fellowship for students at St James Church. Attended the fellowship for quite a number of times. Get to know many people. Mostly are Hong Kong and Malaysian citizens.

- Need to work on my final year project. Been taking pictures of University using my webcam aka digital camera to be used for the texture for my 3D model. It was difficult to position my desired degree and alignment. People walking around also distracted me and caused me to wait longer in the cold.

- Get to know my housemates more. Been hanging out with Sing to Huxters Pub for our disappointing Liverpool vs ?? matches every week. Been whacking warcraft3 with Reagan, Ken, Charles, Sing, Liu Jian, Benson and Lee Gor. Been experimenting with cooking with Ken. Learnt guitar from Daniel To. Had some Basketball (both indoor and outdoor) games with uni mates. Not to forget some football matches with Gwei Lou (adult, children, teens). Damn, they are good. I know I suck but they are way better than Asians. A young kid about the age of 6 told me Shearer (Shee-rer) sucks. He prefers Jenas. It was hillarious.

- Talking about football. I attended my first ever English Premiership League match which is Liverpool vs Newcastle. Newcastle won by 1 - 0 from a freekick. Newcastle fans were intense.

- Went to NEEC. A christian camp. Got to know some fellow liverpudlians. Got to comprehend and imitate their scouse accent. Saw some fine BBCs (British Born Chinese).

- Went to Scotland. Short but definitely fun trip. Exciting trip right from the start of the first few hours due to poor planning and some mishaps. We were very worried around 6:30 AM of not having bus service. Then we need to run all the way to the train station coz we might miss the train. Fortunately, a taxi passed by us and we took its service. Successfully reached Edinburgh station but we miss our next train to Aberdeen becoz we were chatting in Burger King and enjoying our breakfast. We bought new tickets from Edinburgh Station but missed our second train trip to Aberdeen. My friends went to buy playing cards. We missed the train for waiting for them. Finally, we successfully reached Aberdeen but renting a car was no trivial stuff and it's costly. Took bus instead to Inverness. Had some cool time in Inverness, Fort Williams, Lochness and Nairn. Our adventurous trip in our rented Mazda Mpv was a blast. It seems our sixth sense works like a map when we are in Scotland. Learnt ancient scottish language for numbers. It supposed to be from the vikings. Unh, Ga, Thresz, Kie, Quik, Shiak, Shiork, Orchk, Nuoin, Jiez.

- Graduation ceremony. My mom and my mom's sister and my 2 cousins came to visit and attend the ceremony. Wearing the robe makes me feel heavy. The atmosphere was lively
and the mood of friends and families are gleeful. Got lots of congratulations from friends and their families for my First Class Honours.

- Went to Europe Tour. Tour guide Woulter and driver Francesco. Woulter was given the name "Ting Sin Pun". Muahahahaha. Learnt a couple of phrases in Italian and French but couldn't really remember them now. For Italian, i still know "Gra cie" = thanks. "Bon Journo" = Morning / Hello, "Pollo" = chicken, "Ta ba chi" = shops which sells cigarettes and subway tickets, "Spagna" = famous place in Rome for shopping, "Fredo" = hot, "Kaldo" = cold, "Agua" = water, "Si" = Italian. For french, "Mierci Boucoup" = Thanks very much, "Le Poulle" = chicken, "Le Poisson" = fish, "Bon Jour" = Hello, "Unh Pahleh Ongele" = Do you speak english?, "Wit" = yes. For German, "Dangke" = Thanks. Well let's ignore spelling, I only remember the pronounciation for it.

- Notes for Europe Tour. Finally I saw the notorious Amsterdam "Hung Tang Khui". I was pretty surprised when it is really red. The atmosphere was really vice. I learnt that Italy is hot. Man it's really hot. I also learnt that Italians don't speak english. Italians drive smart cars and all of their bikes has windshield. Their petrol station is cute. Just by the road side. Paris is lovely. The architecture, buildings, museum and city impressed me. Switzerland is a fine place. It's beautiful. It's expensive though. Germany, hmmm boring place!. kakakaka.

- Started my full time job in a medium-to-large-sized company in Technology Park Malaysia as a Software Engineer. Social life at the end of 2003 deteriorate greatly. Things were just not the same when I left here in 2002.

- Lost my uncle "Tai Kiew". He died in a car wreck. It was sad.

- Celebrated countdown to New Year at Times Square. Spectacular fireworks. But I hate the crowd. Full of "lalajai" and "lalamui". The crowd is very young. Proceeded to Bar Med in Sri Hartamas. Boozed the nite out.

** will need to update this post when I found some notes which I written back then.

Gaim 0.74 Yahoo Bug

To those who uses GAIM 0.74 and below. If you encountered some contact list bugs of Yahoo account, here is what you should do.

Go to Tools > Accounts > Modify Yahoo Account. Then at the settings below, change scs.yahoo.com to scs.msg.yahoo.com and your problem will be instantly solved.