Selamat Hari Merdeka!

Happy Independence Day, Malaysia! May today be free of opposition vs the government, racial bickering and whatever bad. May today be the first day of peace, harmony and prosperity for eternity. Hahaha... a little too greedy there but yeah, don't we all wish that.

Four Cows

These coasters were put upright to dry after a nice bath. :P

The €500 Maemo 5 Nokia N900

News abuzz everywhere, Nokia finally made the N900 internet tablet-smart phone official and it will be running on a 600MHz processor with the name Cortex which reminded me of something else but anyway, here's the video:

Other specs worth mentioning: Carl Zeiss 5 megapixels camera with dual-LED flash, 3.5" 800x480 WVGA screen, 1GB application memory (wow!) and slide out QWERTY keyboard.

Here's a hands-on video from which I noticed an interesting way to zoom in and out of the Mozilla based browser with one finger since N900 still do not have multi-touch:

Another thing that caught my attention was that assuming this whole demo was recorded in a room, I was quite amazed how the GPS could tag the photo... maybe from last known position when the phone was outdoors? :P

First read about it from Mobile Industry Review.

My Ingenious Junk Mail Colleague

A couple of days ago, another one of my colleagues called my extension and asked why had one of her legitimate e-mail gone into her Outlook Junk Mail folder. I told her these kind of things happen all the time, that the filter was not perfect and no way will it ever be. Time may have stood still when I was explaining to her because she asked me the same question again after I was done explaining.

Since she repeated her question, I repeated my answer and this time, I suppose she got it. She said she would check with our other colleagues if their e-mail also went into the junk folder. She was also worried that she had to check her junk folder all the time just in case more of her serious e-mails are sent there. I told her if she wanted to be safe, she had better do that. We left it at that.

On a different note, it is interesting to find that most of my colleagues receive plenty of junk e-mails. I suspect one of the major reasons would be that they forward a lot of junks or jokes or whatever to their friends and somehow, these e-mails with their addresses on got into the hands of those spammers. I've been here for over a year and not received any junk e-mails although I did get a few e-mails that were automatically sent to the junk folder. ;)

My Ingenious Wifi Colleague

Yesterday, my workplace was having issues with Streamyx - no ADSL signal for almost 3/4 of the day. One of my colleagues needed to surf the net (or send and check for some really important e-mails out as he claimed) and he became irritated after the first two hours of no internet. He called my extension to first complain about the internet connection and then asked if we had wifi.

Told him we do and he immediately jumped into high gear and asked me for the SSID and key. I asked him why since he is generally always sitting at one place anyway. He said he need to go online to send and check for important e-mails. Feeling a little perplexed, I reminded him that our internet connection was down. He must be confused by the wifi waves around or something because he didn't seem to understand that our wifi and LAN were all linked to the same single ISP account. After quite some minutes, he finally hung up but I am not sure if he really got it...

Booklet 3G from Nokia

There were rumours that Nokia will be coming up with a netbook and those rumours got stronger when Nokia and Intel announced they are working together. Well, now, those rumours have become facts. Nokia will be launching their first netbook the Booklet 3G soon enough.

I'm not sure why Nokia would want to join in the crowd especially when the netbook market is already saturated and there were many reports that people regretted buying netbooks. Looking at the video, the Booklet 3G does look captivating with plenty of connectivity options and visually pleasing plus a 12-hour battery life. It will be running on Windows. Which Windows? Don't know.

Will be expecting the full announcement later in Nokia World early next month. Only if I get to go but I guess I will just be here waiting for the www to announce the news. I'm looking forward to the E72 announcement, too!

First heard of this from Engadget.

Sex Act Captured With MRI

Not as saucy as the title may lead you to believe, the following is a video of the sex organs during intercourse recorded using MRI machines. The video shows the history of this project followed by the organs in action:

via LiveScience.

Oxycholestrol, the All New Deadly Heart Stopper

According to a study presented by Chinese scientists at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, oxycholestrol (found in fried and processed food) boosts total cholesterol levels (both the evil LDL and the good HDL) and promotes "atherosclerosis" - the hardening of the arteries.

Apparently, food manufacturers intentionally produce oxycholestrol in the form of trans-fatty acids and partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils to enhance the taste of their food. Devils!

As usual, eating healthy, anti-oxidant rich food such as grains, fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts would promote a healthy heart and kick oxycholestrol's ass.

Much more info from the source: ScienceDaily.

CSI: Mushroom Continues...

My father's mushroom has evolved and now looks like this:
It is really beginning to have a life of its own. I'm thinking that its evolving consciousness is planning to take over the world... starting by sending its spores through the air to turn humans into zombies...

CSI: Mushroom

My dad went for his usual morning walk and found this dude:

He proceeded to bring it home and put it in one of our pots and, for the first time, took my Panasonic DMC-FZ30 to snap the above photo.

The moment I reached home from work, he eagerly came and showed me the brain. My first thought was why would he want to put a coral in the pot. On closer inspection, it appeared quite like a brain, you know.

I have my reasons for the CSI title above - I took a photo of it with my Canon A400 with a ruler to show the size of it and uploaded to Twitpic to seek the Twitter community's help to identify this species.

The Panda, The Dog and Their Counterparts

Nice!

Bulldog photo via Cute Overload.

Pandas Cheer Up My Working Saturday

This week's working Saturday would have been terrible if not for these photos of Adorable Pandas:

More E72

Update Sunday, 16 August 2009: One thing I forgot to mention is that the E72 is expected to have this really cool function to turn on the LED to use as a flashlight buy pressing the spacebar. Woohooooo! I'm flashlight obsessed!

After vaguely describing my dream from two nights ago, I thought I should share with you what phone I was talking about:

IonBuck and the E72 Dream

I had a dream last night and it was quite a pleasant one: I somehow bought the upcoming Nokia E72 and went around snapping photos with the built-in 5 megapixels digital camera and was rather pleased with the results. This was probably due to some acceptable sample images (in terms of camera phone standards) that I saw some days ago. The rest of the dream vaporised as soon as I woke up but I am sure I would have surfed the net and checked some e-mails with it. Definitely would have blogged using the QWERTY keyboard, too.

Yeah, I know. Why would I still want to dream about a Symbian S60 phone. Many people are saying Symbian is an aging OS. I really don't know. I've not used any Symbian phones before and I am a Nokia fan. I've had two classic Nokias before and was satisfied with them. Plus, I can't afford the iPhone and was quite disappointed with the Nokia N97 - hardware vs price. If I can't afford the iPhone, I also won't be able to afford the N97 anyway.

Even before news of N97 came about, I was a fan of E72's predecessor - the E71. So, yeah, after reading about the E72 with improved camera and a processor upgrade, it is now the phone that I would want to have. Not necessarily the phone that I would buy, though. :P

I am ok with my current Sony Ericsson T303 but lately I found the web surfing experience to be very limited. I couldn't go to many websites with it. At first, Twitter and the mobile version of The Onion were sufficient but lately, I ventured to other websites and these either did not come out at all or were rendered badly... even with Opera Mini. :(

50 million women in Asia are at risk of being infected with HIV because of the risky sexual behaviour of their husbands or boyfriends

Sorry that I couldn't make the subject shorter but I feel this would explain the whole situation even if you decided not to read the rest of this post. Unabridged via The Star Online:

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Fifty million women in Asia are at risk of being infected with HIV because of the risky sexual behaviour of their husbands or boyfriends, leading health experts said in a report on Tuesday.

More than 90 percent of the 1.7 million women now living with HIV in Asia became infected while being in monogamous, long-term relationships with men who engaged in risky sex behaviour, the report launched by UNAIDS said.

These include men who had other sexual partners or who were drug users.

"We need to target men who engage in paid sex, injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, who can transmit the virus to their partners," Jean D'Cunha, regional director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women in South Asia, told a news conference held on the margins of an HIV/AIDS conference in Bali.

"We need to question the attitudes, values and behaviour and transform these so that women would be less vulnerable to HIV/AIDS."

While the issue of gender inequality is often ignored or laughed off, experts say it cannot be taken lightly in the context of HIV/AIDS, a disease that can be transmitted through sexual contact and which is incurable.

Sex workers, who have very little bargaining power to begin with, are usually forced to comply when their clients refuse to use condoms. Back home, the wives of these men too have no power to demand that condoms be used even if they know about the risky sexual behaviour of their husbands.

While the fight against the AIDS epidemic has seen progress on some fronts, women continue to bear the brunt of it. Women make up 35 percent of all adult HIV infections in Asia now, up from 17 percent in 1990.

REVERSING A CULTURE

Maire Bopp-Allport, head of the Pacific Islands Aids Foundation, contracted the AIDS virus from her boyfriend around 1996. Today, she is a familiar figure in the global fight against the disease.

"At the heart of the issue is thousands of years of education to our males that it's okay to think that women are there to simply serve them and do everything they want. We need to bring a new culture where it's not okay," she told Reuters.

"They need to be able to think that the abuse of a woman is the abuse of their daughters when their daughters become women," she added.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

World's First Swine Flu (Influenza A (H1N1)?) Vaccine Trials

Approximately 400 healthy children across Australia will take part in the world's first swine flu (note: throughout this news article, there was no mention of Influenza A (H1N1) but instead, was referred to as swine flu. As far as I know, they are the same) vaccine trial. Trials on adults had already begun. Hopefully, the vaccine will be available for distribution come October.

The trials will be based on proven technology, i.e. through the seasonal flu vaccination method.

Source: Yahoo!7 News via @easyrecipes.

Web Browsing: iPhone 3G S vs Nokia N97

I'm sure Nokia N97 fans and iPhone 3G S fans are having some little "my phone is better than yours" squabble for quite some time now. Here's a video from The Nokia Blog showing which one is more superior in terms of web browsing, so no more fighting necessary. ;)

Based on the video, I noticed the N97 screen flickered, so I suppose the refresh rate was lower. There's no multi-touch for N97 - which we all know. Web page scrolling/zooming were a little sluggish and loading of web pages was also slightly slower.

Sam the Koala Dies

Remember Sam? The Koala that was saved by fireman Tree in the Australian bushfire earlier this year? You can refresh your memory here. I regret to inform that Sam was euthanised due to complications from cysts that are linked to the life-threatening disease chlamydia. This cruel condition is a bacterium infection that causes infertility, blindness and ultimately death. It is not feasible to to treat wild animals for chlamydia, as effective treatment requires extended use of antibiotics.

Source: TreeHugger.

Case Closed, Got It?

All in a day's news:

The sale of alcohol in Muslim populated areas in Selangor will be self-regulated, Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim said. Alcohol sale to Muslims remains illegal. Case closed, got it?

Meanwhile, in Pulau Pinang, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng considers the “case closed” as his chief of staff Jeff Ooi has withdrawn his statement labeling Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM) an extremist organisation. Another case closed, got it?

Internet should never be censored in Malaysia, said Dr. M. Even our current prime minister said the cabinet have no plans to do it. Please close this case... FOREVER!

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Hello, world! It's 12:34 and 56 seconds today, 7/8/09. :D

Ok, I cheated. I scheduled this post to appear at that time. *SHY!*

OpenOffice and the New Face

I was quite pleased to have read that OpenOffice.org is in the process of changing its user-interface - away from the shadows of the older versions of Microsoft Office. Currently, I have version 3.1 installed in my home computer and version 3.0 installed all over the place. Even installed a copy for my colleague because she needed to do some slides for the boss and most of us only have Microsoft Office Basic (Word, Excel and Outlook).

Hah, this opens up the opportunity for me to whine: My colleague is using Microsoft Office 2007 Basic while I'm only using Microsoft Office 2000. I would have done away with Microsoft Office at work if not for compatibility problems, especially with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer. Things tend to run about (especially with formatting and embedded images) when I open a document done on the other version. Sigh. I don't have this luxury at home and didn't want to pay for Microsoft Office, so OpenOffice.org it is (by the way, for those that didn't know, OpenOffice.org is FREE!).

Anyway, back to the new UI... currently, OpenOffice.org Impress (equivalent of Microsoft's Powerpoint) looks like this:
And the new prototype shown in one of Sun's blogs looks like this:
Compare the toolbars. They look unique to each other and significantly different enough from Microsoft's Fluent UI. I hope not worse, though.

via OSNews.

Update: Great. After reading through OSNews, it seems the new OpenOffice.org looks like Microsoft's Fluent UI after all. I'm screwed! I thought they looked different! Looks like there's no escape from Microsoft's shadows. :(

IonBuck and those Meetings

I used to like going into meetings mainly because they waste time. Lots of time. I like wasting time just like most people here on earth. But lately, things have changed. My feelings for attending meetings are now... mixed. Sometimes, I like meetings and sometimes, I dread them. Still like meetings because they waste time, but now, a new factor has formed in my mind.

The meetings that I attend are still old fashioned. We still use pen and paper to write notes and distribute stuff in printed form. Mostly notes that I don't refer to after that or things that I totally did not remember because I was not paying attention (told you, I waste time in there). Those poor trees! Now this where a super hi-tech smart phone comes in. Don't have one yet, but thankfully, my T303 still can tweet. ;)

IonBuck and Acetone Beauty Products

WARNING! ACETONE IS HIGHLY FLAMMABLE AND IS NOT A BEAUTY PRODUCT AS INDICATED IN THE TITLE!

One of my buds asked me what is acetone and I told him "some beauty stuff kwa" before I googled for more information. Acetone is actually "the simplest ketone; a highly inflammable liquid widely used as an organic solvent and as material for making plastics".

Ladies, are you not glad that I do not work for any cosmetics company?

"Why Are You Like This?"

I wish I have the ability to do this to some of my evil colleagues... hmph!

The Salak Fruit

Had an interesting encounter earlier today when I went to look for my colleagues in another office. Upon entering, I noticed some weird looking objects lying on the table and after closer inspection, I thought they looked like some shell-like reptile. After a few pokes with my finger, half expecting some head to pop out, I concluded that they were some kind of fruit.

My colleagues questioned if I am Malaysian since these were supposed to be common fruits. I HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THESE BEFORE IN MY LIFE!
They did not remember the name of these fruits until one of my colleagues shouted out SALAK! Huh! So much for teasing my nationality. Naturally, I took one, opened it up and ate it. My first impression after opening it was... GARLIC! But no, it was different from it. The fruit was crispy, sour and kind of sweet at the same time. Researching online, I found the trees to be like these:
The fruits grow in clusters like these:
A brief description from Wikipedia:

Salak (Salacca zalacca) is a species of palm tree (family Arecaceae) native to Indonesia and Malaysia. It is a very short-stemmed palm, with leaves up to 6m long; each leaf has a 2m long petiole with spines up to 15cm long, and numerous leaflets. The fruit grow in clusters at the base of the palm, and are also known as snake fruit due to the reddish-brown scaly skin. They are about the size and shape of a ripe fig, with a distinct tip. The pulp is edible.

Photos from Wikipedia.

MIX fm's Dearly Deported

Just finished listening to the first Dearly Deported and it ended with a happy two weeks reunion for sisters Tan Chiu Por and Tan Chiu Pih and their family plus baby sitter. This is what Dearly Deported is about (taken from MIX fm's website):

For two weeks this August, MIX fm is flying the loved one to Kuala Lumpur and we will take them straight to the MIX fm studio. We’ll put the overseas relative in one studio and the Malaysian-based relative in an adjoining studio. They will be able to see each other, but won’t be able to talk to each other.

And then the Malaysian-based relative will have to answer 3 questions about their overseas relative.
· Get ONE right – they spend 10 minutes together;
· Get TWO right – they get 1 hour together;
· Get all THREE right – they are reunited for 2 weeks!

But if he or she gets none of the questions right – we will instantly deport the loved one. No hugs, not even a chance to say hello... we take them straight back to the airport and put them on a flight back home!

Update 9:40pm: Gallery and video uploaded on MIX fm's website. Here's the video:

It was July 2009...

The beginning month of the second half of 2009 just passed and here's what my mind remembers (in no particular order):

1. A political secretary's murder was politicised to the max by both opposition and ruling government. There were multiple visits to the victim's family and our government's big boss even asked them to their office so that he could sympathise with them.
2. The Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional whack-em-up continues without relenting.
   
3. Nikon launched the entry level of all entry level DSLRs - the D3000 - 10 megapixels with 11 focus points but of course, there won't be video recording else they might risk overlapping with the D5000. I'm disappointed that it doesn't come with Live View. The company also launched the D300s but that couldn't get me excited because it is something I couldn't afford.
4. We be getting the new RM50 notes but that would take some time before it becomes general availability.
5. Maxis launched the iPhone 3G S, much to the anticipation of my bud Andrewk.
6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince! I've not watched it yet, though.
7. Not a very good month for some of my friends. I hope they will all do better from now on.
8. I did a claypot in 3D.
9. A crazy ex-big guy was exposed to have built a RM20 million resort for himself. Did that happen in July? Or was it in June? No matter. Dentistry and politics earn a lot.
10. RIP Yasmin Ahmad.
11. Olympus launched the smallest interchangeable lens camera of all time (ok, so it was not in July but it sure felt like it was only yesterday)! The PEN EP-1. Wow. But slow auto-focus and no flash could turn some people away. I for one would only want it as a secondary camera to my DSLR. However, I have no DSLR.
12. Microsoft and Yahoo looked set to combine their resources and will seek to search and destroy Google and then rule the world. Google's been keeping silent on this. Wonder if the search giant will mount protests and candlelight vigils like what we do here.
13. Haze, haze, haze.
14. Work, work, work during weekend.