Archive | 2005

Roasted Shaolin..

Posted January 24, 2005 at 10:06 pm in Food/Eating, Movies

I am boiling, literally it’s like a sauna in here..

It’s a public holiday in Selangor, but my company follows KL holidays so here I am in an office block that is virtually empty, the food court is closed and the management decided not switching on the aircon would be a smart thing to do..

*wipes a bead of sweat off his forehead*

We have no fans as we don’t generally need them, the problems we’ve had here are more on the cold side (the aircon used to be set to 18 not 21, which was chilly especially on overcast days).

Am so hungry too…was lusting after a roti kosong and a nescafe ais..

Oh well what to do, I guess Nestum to the rescue again 🙂

Had numerous complaints about lack of food pics on my blog lately, well I do apologise but I’ve been broke and eating very uninteresting stuff…I did have some good food last night though at a place famous for it’s Tiramisu[/url]..I’ve yet to have real Tiramisu[/url] in Malaysia yet, always end up with some fake creamery cake kind of deal that tastes nothing like the real McCoy.

The original recipe called for custard and only recently has Mascarpone cheese been substituted. The basic ingredients are eggs, mascarpone cheese, ladyfingers, cream, espresso coffee, liquor — brandy, marsala, rum are some of the spirits used — a little bit of sugar, and cocoa or shaved chocolate. Mascarpone is a triple-creme cheese. It’s made from the milk of cows that have been fed special grasses filled with herbs and flowers. This special diet creates a unique taste that has been described as “fresh and delicious.” Ladyfingers — known in Italy as “savoiardi” — are sweet, little, fairly dry, finger-shaped sponge cakes.

It’s a heavenly dessert, truly, I’ll have to practise making it again…wonder if you can get real Mascarpone here..

Italian food…of course a prerequisite is garlic bread, it was good

The 3 main courses we had were…of course the staple Carbonara, which was good, nice and creamy but the pasta was very slightly overcooked..

Tomatoe heaven in the form of Marinara (served with fettucini rather than the standard spaghetti), this was also good, a little more salt would have been nice and more seafood.

And one of my all time favourites, Lasagne bolognese, this was a tiny portion but it tasted delicious, much like when I make it myself. Good job!

If only they served wine too, unfortunately only beer and fruit juice..

Then of course the Tiramisu…which we pre-booked as we arrived, if you go late it tends to be sold out as it’s freshly made every day..

It was indeed good, will practise a little and see if I can make one better though 🙂

After that felt like watching a horror movie..

Went back, closed the curtains, turned off the lights and watched Face, which turned out to be more of a thriller than a out and out horror, but it was enjoyable although the ‘twist’ was rather predictable.

Shutter has still been my favourite recent film of this genre (long-hair horror all spawned from Ringu).

Acacia is also on the same disk, so maybe I’ll check that out tonight.

I had a Hong Kong trilogy of horror shorts called 3 (San Geng)[/url], but I can’t for the life of me find it anywhere..No it’s not Haunted Office as previously though with Karen Mok..

Anyway after that passed out early as I was exhausted, feel better today for sure 🙂

Continue Reading · 5 Comments · Food/Eating, Movies

Personal Trainer or Torture Master?

Posted January 23, 2005 at 11:37 pm in General Nonsense

Man I’m aching, I have muscles aching in places I didn’t even know existed.

Had a rigourous pounding on Saturday night from my ‘personal trainer’ the second of two free sessions I got from joining Celebrity Fitness[/url] in 1U.

The first time wasn’t too bad, he took it pretty easy just to assess our fitness and check our strengths. Saturday was a little different as I was alone, he was like yeah your arms are really strong and your front is good, but not your leg or backs..

So he took me to a squat machine where you sit with your legs pointing up and have a huge slightly intimidating plate loom above you with some monstrous amount of weights on it, he kept adding 40kg at a time…I was like erm…that looks like a lot, he smiled and said ‘Yeah, 120KG plus the plate is 30KG so it’s about 150KG’

Man that was tough, apparently you should be able to squat double your weight, then it’s ‘ok’.

Did a load of shoulder excercises too, I always neglect to do those..

My resting heart rate is a bit high aswell, 86bpm, obviously a testament to my lack of current cardio-vascular fitness.

My blood pressure is a little high too, but it always has been, at least not quite reaching hypertension which is 140, mine is 130+ so it’s not far away.

The aim of this is to lose a little weight perhaps, especially my ravishing love handles, let’s just call them untrained muscle.

Flatten my stomach a little….my 6-pack is currently in stealth mode (yes it is there, honest, underneath it’s protective layer).

Did some hardcore tricept pulldowns aswell, and dips but my arms are pretty sturdy so not too much pain there…but man my butt is killing me.

I feel like an old man today, it’s an effort to stand up 😀

Went on one of the crunch machines too, stacked on some weight and kept on crunching, trainer was like ‘dude, you’re scaring me’ Then after a while we stopped, he said ‘hmm I don’t think these machines are for you’

Then took me to matt and made me do some ‘advanced’ abdominal excercises, those were tough..

One consists of something like this, you lie flat on your stomach, raise yourself resting on your forearms (forearms crossed in front of you so your elbows and hands are both on the floor) then raise yourself on your toes till your body is parallel with the floor. Keep this position for 30 seconds. It’s pretty good, try it. After this slightly more advanced, same thing but with 1 leg raised, I could only keep this one for about 20+ seconds..

There is one more totally advanced one, one leg up and one arm up…that required balance and muscles in all kinds of places, I could only do that for about 5 seconds.

After that came some medicine ball punishment, lying flat on your back with your arms extended above your head lift your arms and legs in a synchronised fashion, then pass the ball to your feet, then lower arms and legs, raise again (without touching the floor) then pass the ball back to arms, rinse and repeat.

Yes all this is akin to torture but I dig it, I’m always like yeah, more give me more weight, yeah I can do some more..

Apart from that the weekend consistent of doing work, more work and more work and eating the more economic range of food available in KL (mee goreng, roti pisang, nasi kandar etc). Played some good fairly high level inhouse DOTA games over the weekend too which was fun, and some outrageous pub bashes. Still can’t host really well though, people always complain of lag..stupid Stimx upstream latency..

Only 5 more days of martyrdom left..

Work is almost done, will be happy when this monkey is off my back…need to get onto some other projects, and get some Book Reviews for SFDC[/url] done!

Continue Reading · 12 Comments · General Nonsense

The Evolution of Language, or is that Devolution?

Posted January 22, 2005 at 1:57 am in Deep Thoughts

Following the recent debates in the Summons post[/url] (Woo 59 comments), I was thinking about language and semantics, there are always debates about what is a word or not, the correct usage and so on. This is due to the fact even language itself it’s partially subjective. There is room for adding your own personality to the way you write or speak.

But how can one person say it’s right or wrong, I am fond of a saying (as is KY), if the other person can understand your meaning, what you are trying to convey, then it’s correct. This is the purpose of language no? To convey information or feelings or something at least to another being.

Much like computer programming, computers also have languages so when you transfer these procedures between machines they are still understood by the interpreter (C++, Java, Delphi etc.). There are ‘proper’ ways to write code and not so proper ways, but if the program works and doesn’t crash it’s good no?

The same goes for the spoken word, we all speak differently, we all interpret things differently, this is what gives us character and personality and stops the world from being a place full of replication and let’s face it, it would be boring.

An example would be this (a pretty extreme example):

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Information: https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~matt.davis/Cmabrigde/[/url]

If you look at it, it’s a complete mess, but if you try and read it, it’s not actually that difficult.

Anyway back to the original point, sometimes I use words that totally don’t exist, I just made up on the spot, generally extensions of existing words…and people understand the, so surely that’s ok? It’s correct usage of language as it’s intended, to convey a message.

Language evolves, that’s what at does. With each language, there are many dialects, these are proofs of the evolution, there are colloquialisms, localised versions and many other weird and wonderful variations. For example even in the UK, get a Geordie talking to a Londoner and they will have trouble talking to each other, even though they both speak ‘English’.

One of the most famous recent example would the term Google, it has seemingly replaced the phrase ‘Search the Web’. Now the majority of people simply say ‘Google it’.

This is reinforced with such images:

And sites such as https://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/ [/url]

As can be seen from the Oxford English Dictionary many new words are considered for addition to the dictionary, thus defining them in many peoples eyes as truly real words.

The list of recent editions can be found HERE at AskOxford.com.

Notable ones being..

blogosphere
n. (the blogosphere) informal personal websites and weblogs collectively.

bumsters
pl. n. trousers that are cut very low on the hips.

cybercrime
n. criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the Internet.

designer baby
n. a baby whose genetic make-up has been selected in order to eradicate a particular defect, or to ensure that a particular gene is present.

health tourism
n. the practice of travelling abroad in order to receive medical treatment.

metrosexual
n. informal a heterosexual urban man who enjoys shopping, fashion, and similar interests traditionally associated with women or homosexual men.

spyware
n. Computing software that enables a user to obtain covert information about someone’s computer activities by transmitting data covertly from their hard drive.

As you’ll notice most of these terms are already accepted in informal language usage, everyone understands their meanings, when this happens language has evolved and when they are inserted into the OED, this truly means they have become part of the English language. Most languages are Creoles anyway, meaning they are mixtures of other languages. A brief history of the English language can be found HERE.

There are also words I believe should not be uttered, for me they are mostly MBA graduate, pseudo-marketing bullshit words that don’t really mean anything like SYNERGY and CHANNEL..fuck off please.

Lake Superior State University[/url] has a nice list of banished words HERE.

Highlights for me are:

ENEMY COMBATANT — “Makes no sense. Do we have friendly combatants? Neutral combatants? Or how about enemy bystanders? If they are your enemy, just say so.” — Bill Sellers, Hampton, Va.

‘IZZLE’ — SPEAK — By far, the abomination that received the most nominations. Some sort of ‘Rap-Latin’ suffix, as in fa’shizzle, which means ‘for sure.’ “It was clever for about five minutes, or should I say five ‘minizzles?’” — R. Glover, Waterford, Mich.

ALL NEW — referring to television shows… “Of course it’s all new. Why can’t they just say ‘new’? There are no partially-new episodes, no repeat of last Tuesday’s episode with a slightly reworked Act 2.” — Greg Ellis, Bellevue, Wash.

You can submit your nominations for 2006 HERE.

There are also some notable example of devolution of language, such as the great George Dumbya Bush. His saying of dumb things has been so prolific they are acutally known as Bushisms.

There is a good collection here https://supak.com/bush.htm

Google for the term Miserable Failure and see where you end up..

Anyway back to the point, language is language, if you understand what I’m saying it’s all good. Pedants are everywhere.

What are your thoughts on this?

Continue Reading · 8 Comments · Deep Thoughts

The Miscalculation & Malaysia Blogs

Posted January 19, 2005 at 11:52 pm in General Nonsense, Site News

Oh dear, I’m left 4 bucks in my wallet…not even enough for lunch..

Is it wrong that I buy cigarettes rather than food?

Definately?

But who cares..

It’s been an expensive month with the sofa..the summons[/url], getting a phone line, streamyx, eating too much good food..oh well it’s been enjoyable, but I’m feeling the bite now.

I guess it’s Nestum for lunch again.

I only have like 150 bucks left in my bank too, which is kind of sad, I think my petrol and toll comes to about that for next week..luckily it’s a public holiday tommorow so I don’t have to go anywhere..

Was funny just now aswell, for me anyway, the lady selling cigarettes didn’t have any small change, so she gave me my change in sweets…first time for me.

I got my new card from UK yesterday aswell, which had been scammed in Thailand, Tescos of all places, so I can always use that if I’m about to expire from malnutrition.

Malaysia blogs[/url] has gotten quite a bit of interest, but haven’t actually gotten anyone new signed up yet, just me and suan[/url] still.

The package will be something like this:

  • 150MB Diskspace
  • 2.5GB Bandwidth
  • MySQL
  • PHP
  • Cpanel
  • Fantastico
  • 3 FTP accounts
  • 20 E-mail addreses
  • 5 Subdomains
  • 2 Parked Domains
  • 1 Addon Domain

For a measly 100RM per year, I know it’s cheap, but well am not really aiming to make money, just to cover the costs. Just don’t expect mega tech-support for this price 😉

I have some kind of plan for the domain, like a community portal for Malaysian blogs with group blogging, blog reviews and ratings, blog directory, feed aggregation and so on.

It’s not only limited to Blogs, can be used for forums, community sites, personal sites, business sites anything, just low cost hosting 🙂

Work is still looming, with the deadline now only a mere 2 days away..48 more hours of hell, and so many more pages to write..Oh well, will be SO glad when it’s over.

I woke up rather late this morning, lying on my phone…which also happens to be my alarm clock..not a good sign, meaning I turned it off whilst asleep without evening stirring, definately not a good sign…perhaps I am sleep deprived. I certainly feel that way.

I feel something like this chick looks..

Maybe I’ll post again later about how I pwned TheStar’s[/url] e-mail system 😉

The Summons post[/url] also has broken all my records with over 40 comments, thanks Arwen[/url] for proving unequivocally that you truly are an idiot, it would show sense if you admitted you were wrong..but well that’s not going to happen is it 😉 Perhaps you should argue with the dictionary about the fact ‘fast lane’ is a non-existent term (it’s also known as the express lane too). BTW if you are having problems with insomnia, go check out her blog[/url]..

Anyway I would like to thank Arwen[/url] for making such stupid statements and stirring up a comment whirlwind, it was interesting and enjoyable, although rather frustrating as trying to hold a debate with Arwen[/url] is something like trying to suck blood out of a marble.

I have some other stuff in my head, and something I felt like ranting about..but it seems to have gone missing in action..

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Continue Reading · 16 Comments · General Nonsense, Site News

I am 77% Nerdish

Posted January 19, 2005 at 10:00 pm in Stupid Me Mes


I am nerdier than 77% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Overall, you scored as follows:

23% scored higher (more nerdy), and
77% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Mid-Level Nerd. Wow, it takes a lot of hard nerdy practice to reach this level.

Cos stupid meme’s like this are so prolific in the blogging world…I’ve added a new category so they can be archived all on their own in a special place.

Continue Reading · 5 Comments · Stupid Me Mes

I’m a Psycho happy bunny..

Posted January 19, 2005 at 12:35 am in Stupid Me Mes

Another gay meme…

cute but psycho
you are the cute but psycho happy bunny. You’re
adorable, but a little out there. It’s alright,
you might not have it all, but there are worse

which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Continue Reading · 1 Comment · Stupid Me Mes

General Midweek Geekery – Malaysia Ebay and more

Posted January 18, 2005 at 10:18 pm in Hacking & Infosec

So what’s up in the tech world?

One big thing I only just found out yesterday…is Ebay[/url] has finally reached Malaysia! Wow!

https://www.ebay.com.my/[/url]

I used to use Ebay quite a lot back in the UK, you can get some cheap second hand computer parts, things that are no longer produced or in circulation (useful when stuff burns)..

You can also pick up some weird and rare collectors items like special edition DVD’s and various other film related nerd stuff (signatures, signed shirts/posters etc.).

Also useful for selling off random crap that is worth something but you don’t want any more..

Let’s hope it’s takes off as Lelong[/url] IMHO is a piece of crap, but it’s busy.

Apparently it’s been around since 24-Jun-2004 according to the whois record..

MYNIC Registration No.: D1A043173
Record created on 24-Jun-2004
Record expires on 24-Jun-2005
Record last updated on 17-Aug-2004

And it was registered by High Options Sdn Bhd, active since November apparently.

There is a good article from the Star on it HERE.

There has been no press release, and very little awareness AFAIK, so well I’m just trying to spread the word a little.

On another note, if you have a digital camera, and you have problems organising photos, you probably need Picasa!

Google has bought out Picasa 2 (which used to be $29.95) and is now releasing it for free, it’s a great piece of software.

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures — you can email, print at home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Helloâ„¢, and even put pictures on your own blog.

If you want to be scared, depressed or feel like punching your boss in the face..

Check out the Salary Clock[/url]..

In the time it takes me to earn $1 (That’s RM aswell), Michael Dell has earnt about $4000USD…

Also if you have a web-page, business site or blog you should check out this..

Biggest Web-design Mistakes in 2004

Along with the 10 Pillars of Web-mastery you should be ok.

I would mention aswell probably the best resource for all around web-stuff including programming, HTML, look and feel, search engine optimisation and the whole package is https://www.webmasterworld.com/[/url]

Hope you learnt something new or found something interesting in this post..any new stuff to share?

Post it in comments. Cheers!

Continue Reading · 6 Comments · Hacking & Infosec

Malaysian Bureaucracy and the Summons Fiasco

Posted January 18, 2005 at 12:40 am in Ranting

Well the clampdown has finally begun as reported by The Star today..

KUALA LUMPUR: Ong Tze Chiang was rudely awakened at about 1pm by his father who told him that a group of people wanted to meet him outside his house at the Sri Johor flats in Cheras here.

Clad only in his shorts, the 26-year-old man came out to greet his “visitors,” but was shocked to be met by blinding flashes from the cameras of photographers, a horde of journalists and police officers.

Not knowing what they were there for, Ong was momentarily stunned until police informed him of his outstanding summons for a traffic offence.

Chief Insp Badrul Azham Baharom from the city traffic police headquarters identified himself and said: “Encik Ong, kami ada waran tangkap atas nama Encik Ong kerana gagal menyelesaikan saman kemalangan kereta yang dikeluarkan pada 2hb Oct 2004.”

“Encik Ong dikehendaki datang ke balai bersama seorang penjamin.”

(Mr Ong, we have a warrant of arrest under your name for failing to settle a summons in relation to a car accident which was issued on Oct 2, 2004. You are required to come to the police station with a bailor.)

Ong was the first person to be arrested under Ops Warta IV.

Source: https://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/1/18/nation/9926600&sec=nation

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll have noticed I had some summons, and I had to work my ass off to get them paid…they make it so fucking difficult.

Now this whole shennanigan hasn’t exactly been well publicised, I’ve seen one tiny 1/4 column text only piece in the paper mentioning the fact that summons need to be paid before January 2nd or you might get hauled off to prison..

I wonder why they would do that? Oh yeah…if they publicised it, people might actually pay, there would be less opportunity for bribes and getting people into court for ridiculous crimes such as parking in the wrong places, or in my case exceeding the speed limit by not more than 30km/h…

The paper also published the fact that all counters would be open ’til 6pm so people could pay easier, I mean wtf? Most people finish work at 6pm, some of us work in a freakin jungle (Cyberjaya) and are miles away from the nearest Balai (Police Station)..How exactly are we supposed to pay?

Even though that was complete bullshit anyway as I went to the PJ police headquarters and was duley informed the counter had closed at 3pm….waste of time or what.

There are counters in shopping malls too, I’ve visited the one in 1 Utama about 5 times, all of which the computer was ‘offline’. For anyone who’s interested, it’s in the old wing, Eneos car centre..I mean for the love of monkeys, I am trying to give them money, it’s like they don’t want people to pay, they want us to be arrested and beaten on the soles of the feet with bamboo canes.

So, what’s the deal here in Malaysia..

Deal 1 – Common Occurence (see Mr. Ong above)

1. You do something naughty, like going a bit fast
2. Some(one|thing) sees the naughty act
3. You get a summons
4. You get 0 notification, yes I mean NONE
5. Unless you check yourself, online you don’t even know you’ve gotten any summons
6. You don’t check online, you get some fat officer knocking on your door wanting to arrest you
7. Rinse and Repeat

Deal 2 – My Case

1. You do something naughty, like going a bit fast
2. Some(one|thing) sees the naughty act
3. You get a summons
4. You get 0 notification, yes I mean NONE
5. You check online and find you have summons against your car
6. You spend 2 weeks trying to pay the damn summons and waste like 2 days of annual leave
7. Eventually persuade someone else to pay the summons because you have a job you wish to keep
8. Have the summons paid with the realisation you will have to go through the whole shitty affair again
9. Rinse and Repeat

In UK it’s like this.

1. Speed
2. Get Caught
3. Get a notice through the post 2 days later with the location and offence
4. Have 30 days to pay with discount, 90 days to pay before court appearance
5. Pay by cheque through the post, by credit card over the phone or cash at the nearest police station
6. Don’t speed again because you’ll get 3 points on your licence (12 is a 1 year ban)

Don’t get me wrong, I love this country I really do, but there are still a lot of things that have to change…the bureaucratic system, customer service (or lack of it), racial bias in the education system and in general (both positive and negative racism), sexual crime, business attitudes and various others things such as the attitudes of civil servants and other workers Tidak Apa, which means never mind or it doesn’t matter (stems from other issues previously mentioned).

Will blog about all these topics as they unravel in my mind..

The lesson to be learnt is, don’t get summons, check regularly online just in case you did, keep your ears open for clampdowns (I heard about this one on IRC) and finally don’t expect to be able to pay your summons easily..

For those who want to check their summons online you can do so via Rilek/Catcha HERE.

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Continue Reading · 61 Comments · Ranting

DOTA Wallpaper

Posted January 17, 2005 at 8:34 pm in DOTA Classic

Well I’m gonna go ahead with the smallerseperatepoststhing and see how that goes. This will be the first, have split yesterdays post up aswell.

Just discovered a neat DOTA wallpaper, so nice in fact I am using it on my laptop now.

Nice eh?

Was made by raydex2000 the original skin-master (no that’s not a p0rn term) from TWC.

3 versions are available in the Gallery HERE.

Played some hardcore inhouse DOTA games last night at home with the faggot, my PD needs a bit of work though, out of practise I guess 🙂

Will post again later..

Continue Reading · 15 Comments · DOTA Classic

Link to me – New Banners

Posted January 17, 2005 at 8:23 pm in Site News

I made a cheesy animated banner too for usage on BlockClicker and BlogExplosion to see if I can get my click-through rate above 1%…which would be nice.

I also have the small one which you can use to link to me.

Or just a plain text link something like:

<a href=”https://www.shaolintiger.com” TARGET=”_blank”>ShaolinTiger – Kung-Fu Geekery</a>

So link to me, now you can do it and look all at once, you know you want to 😉

Continue Reading · 3 Comments · Site News