Life Smash!!!

Recently due to HF downtime, I was hooked up with IRC. For those who doesn't know, particularly those recently using the net, IRC is an old chatting network (that exist together even before the net, I think). Anyway, not much new user like to use IRC, since everything is command-like, and without any fancy UI like the famous MSN or Yahoo. I used IRC before, not pretty much on chatting but to fetch some Nipponsei release, which only feasible there.

IRC is pretty much fun for discussion. Since I've join in part of the modders team (as a translator that is), the debate on modding and translation does happens some time, and it's fun to watch the discussion. Some of the folks I met are geeks, and I even found myself a Sensei / teacher who's also part of the team as translator. :p I think I'll hook up in IRC for now on.

Found myself an interesting blog. Gaijin Smash is about an English teacher who teaches in Japan. His point of view of Japan, as an outsider (which Japanese call gaijin) is slightly different than what we normally sees in TV. Anyway, some of his post is pretty fun, and you'll find yourself seeing Japan in another angle.

Damn hooked up with shaders programming. I intend to add shaders into my project. A last minute rush to enhance the project, but I'm only possible to program low level shaders. Yeah, it's low-level enough, that Ill have to play with ASM instructions. Dunno what ASM is? For example to declare a variable A = 3, you'll got to

TEMP A;
MOV A, 3.0;

That's the easy part. Sometimes in order to do some simple calculation, the instructions can be quite long. And don't forget that the number of instructions are pretty much limited, and with version 1.0/1.1 (which I'm programming), conditional checking (if/else) ain't available. The newer versions, such as GLSL and HLSL would surely ease things up, but unfortunately, I do not have the resource to program them.

Phong shading is complete, though I'll need some experiment on material to get the best result of the vertex shading. Nope, I'm not going with textures. Now on my way to testing out GPGPU's concept on programming GPU. Nice ideas, but I don't know how many of the concepts apply to my old GPU...

HF closing!!!!

Oh no!!!! One of my most active community site is coming to and end!!!

Oh my, the HongFire network is a welknown community site for hentai, doujin and other japanese related stuff.
And guess what, it's not because the user who complain, it's not the Japanese company who complain, nor it's the hosting company that complain... It's the forum software company (that the site use) that complain of the illegal content and moral issues (of hentai).
LOL

Catch the disussion on digg

Christmas :)

Hohoho Christmas time again! Just went over to MidValley just for some photo shooting :p. Check out the photo album for more Christmas craze.

Fancy a tasty Christmas tree?

AutoCAD closing it's format!!!!

Oh no! Autodesk (AutoCAD) is moving to close it's famous CAD file format, DWG. Hmmm... well, those who still using AutoCAD as their primary CAD tools won't be affected, but those who use other than AutoCAD will be affected, as most of them relies on Open Alliance for their reversed engineered OpenDWG format.

Being a private member of the Open Allience, I received a mail from the alliance concerning of Autodesk suing the alliance. I'm using the library for my project, and more or less is affected as well. The library is pretty much easy to use (although not quite as user friendly as one might think), and it ease my effort to implement CAD functions in my project. Hmm... I would wonder how long the suing effort will last...

The discussion on Slashdot (http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/06/12/20/1348205.shtml)

Opera? Again

I just wrote that people are arguing about Opera for it's browser capability. But yet, I just read that Opera is working fine in a new prototype system for just $100. Seems that Opera is gaining some shares in embeded systems and mobiles.

Check the original post at Opera in OLPC

Opera?

Just read up a heat discussion over the "Internet Browser" war again. And this time, it targets Opera. Opera is a nice browser that I had been using since few years back. I believe back then it was v3, and now the latest is v9. Wow, it was really quite a long time.

I love Opera for it's nice and clean interface. Nothing too fancy, no loads of toolbars or buttons that I do not need, unlike those in IE, or sometimes even Firefox got. Opera is the first to introduce tab browsing back then, and a lot of other features intergrate with it, such as e-mail client, chat client, RSS reader, and even torrent downloading. Although I'm not using most of it's features, I do support Opera for it's fast loading and cache loading.

However, there's a few known issues with Opera. ActiveX won't work in Opera, and some other internet components (not sure the names) won't work as expected in Opera. If you read the post in SlashDot, you'll find different arguments on who to blame. For me, it was both the web developer AND the browser developer. Web developer to blame if their web test only works on one browser, which would be IE. I've seen a lot of site that's been based on IE, and it's not surprised that a lot of developer used IE as a standard. Lol, there're still a lot of other users that doesn't use IE...

For some web site that doesn't load up succesfully, Opera would be the cause. Well, even so I wouldn't blame too much for my lovely Opera. Nowadays it was known that ALL software contains bugs, be it some serious bugs, or just minor glitches. It should be the user side to decide which browser that suits them most. For example, I use Opera for most of the browsing, downloads, google searching, etc, for Opera is faster than any browser out there. But for some site that's not loaded up properly, I'll had to switch to Firefox (and occasionally IE if even Firefox can't handle the site). So far, I had little problem with this sites, which mostly are just blogging site (blogger, live.com :p).

So, decide whichever that suits your needs. I'll vote for Opera for the speed. :p

the arguments on Slashdot

Tired... X2...

Just come back from Rachael's convo, and was kinda tired walking here and there, taking photos, and even have a small walk to KLCC for christmas season! Yeah, I finally see the largest christmas tree in Malaysia! LOL.

 
The largest christmas tree in the country, at KLCC Suria.

Thos who seeking for Rachael's convo photos, fear not. Although my site is down (maybe for good) I've uploaded the photos (at least those in my camera) to Dotphoto The photos are slightly resized for better uploads. If you need the actual photos, I've uploaded them at Sendspace (28.4mb RAR)

Tired...

Tired... not really from the body aspect but the heart aspect as well...
Been reading, reading and reading again on some old technologies (er... 3 years?) and looking at some damn ASM codes that's hard to understand...

LOL, that's what it has to deal with when you're looking at low-level shaders. If I got new technology in my hand, I'll sure goes for GLSL or HLSL. But unfortunately, that'll be out of the question. Upgrading is no longer possible (since the old and new platform of AGP and PCIExpress), and the possible solution is to go for a new pc (which I do not have the budget)

And now, 110mb.com sure find its way to make some headache. Hosting service down, unable to login and access the site for random times. I understand the hard time to maintain the good services, but it was getting way too much down time and problems with the hosting that I'm thinking of moving the site for good. For the time being, everyone can try login the site via backup provided by the host. But, yet, even the backup contains some errors as well. LOL.

I've found a good site (or at least seems to be) for hosting the forum. JConserve claims to be the #1 phpbb hosting company, and for just the hosting, it seems fairly nice and efficient. The gallery will be either stripped, or thinking of using dotPhoto which seems to be a nice image hosting site, although got some minor problems. Well, everything shall had to wait till 110mb.com let me access my forum for good to backup, and to restore them to the new forum.

Time seems to pass up quite fast when you're either busy or hooked up with something. Recently beside reading and researching for shaders development, I've hook up with a nice little flash game. A C70 doujin hgame that is, and unlike most flash games that just provide CGs, this game requires some skills, patient, and a lot of luck in order to really beat it. Check it out.

Dillema... of old and the new

I had once said that my project is in it's completion. Yes, the basic objective is completed, but I found the project is just a collection of methods and tools that existed for the past few years. In short, nothing new in it. So, with every time I got right now, I venture into something quite new in graphic programming, shaders.

Actually, shaders is not new. It's already exist for the past few years, yet it only emerge recently with the great supporting power of technology and GPU. So, what is shaders? Shaders is a small piece of program, that instead of execute in your cpu, it is run in your gpu (graphic card). The actual implementation of the shaders is to take the heavy load out of cpu, and thus improve the performance or gaming experience (in which shaders are mostly used)

As technologies improve over the last few years, so do shaders. In the past, shaders are called low-level shaders, as the programs are mostly in ASM alike syntax, but recently GLSL and HLSL are emerging, and it ease programmers to write their shaders easily. So now I'm in a serious dillema, to learn either the new shaders (GLSL or HLSL) or the low-level shaders. GLSL / HLSL is going to be the main stream for shaders from now on, but as you know, newer technologies means newer requirement. My old Radeon 8500 doesn't support GLSL. However, low-level shaders (via ARB_vertex_program) are supported, but low-level shaders are quite hard to follow, and it doesn't worth since the introduction of GLSL. Haih... what to do now???

POV

A lot of things happens in the past few days. Well, of course not just the event of eating, drinking (and of course breathing), other events that seems to happen now and then. Most of them changes my certain point of view (POV).

To begin with, I believe everyone know the word, rats. Yeah, almost everyone hates them, or scare them. Those tiny creatures that creep around in the dark, and keeps destroying furnitures or causing havocs in house. Nope, I dun like them, and with my house full with rats, it's actually a wonder how I can live with them for so long.

Yupe, my house is full of them. I've seen some largest rats around, almost the size of a small kitten, and the smallest is just around 5cm long. Those damn rats ain't dumb, and are actually very clever, very very clever indeed. Most of the food that was stored in plastic container was bitten to holes (the only one that survived is tin container. Chili saurce anyone? Yeah, even the rats eat chili (no kidding). The most clever things that I've seen is how the rats can bypass the baricades I set to keep the rats away from entering room. The small rats lift the barricade (which is actually plastic that blocks the small space between the floor and the door), and squeeze themselves in. The same goes to "Sou kei" (the one chinese normally used to keep their food from flies), where the rats manage to find a way to get in and eat the yummy food there.

Enough of rats. (There's one that just run pass the living room now. LOL)

We have normally seen best selling books from successful bussinessman. Some of them teaches ways to do bussiness, while some teaches the way to think in bussiness. There're a lot of good examples of successful stories of those that follows the books, but like I said, they're just examples. The books are mainly used as a guide, to provide insight and examples for those who read. The readers will had to decide when and where to apply into their bussiness.

Yet, there's a lot of people who thinks the books as quick guideline to success. Seeing that people are doing great by following the books, doesn't mean you can do so as well. Like I remember my physics teacher once said, it's useless to remember the formula, if you do not know how to use them at the first place. The same method used by others to succeed doesn't mean the same will happen to yourself as well.

Ah... another rat kena tangkap. Nice, that makes 3 in cage now.

Been keeping myself hands full for the time being. Writing my thesis (reviewing my own draft and making adjustment while waiting my lecturer's approval), writing an english journal (which I'm facing trouble as it's been a long time since I used *proper* english), and took part in a translation project for wiktionary. Yeah, I never thought that I'll join the wiki project, but since I've been looking for a decent nice english-malay dictionary, why dun just join in the online dictionary? It got a long way to go, since the malay words in the dict contains barely <100 words. LOL

Buying Friends?

We often read or listen that friends are priceless. There's not a single value that can be tagged on friends (be it good or bad friends).

But yet, I recently read that people ARE paying to get their friends.

Nowadays community sites are growing bigger and bigger. More and more people get to know each other in these sites, and it was really a great way to get new friends, across the nations. Yet, paying in order to know one? It's more likely buying yourself a friend. And worst, a virtual friend that is.

I remember I used to post a lot in community sites. Most of the time, these sites kept a record of the number of posts, normally viewed as how popular or your status in the community. Sometimes they also grant you some virtual money (buying some virtual stuff?) and charma (for popularity, again). I used to keep posting useless post all over the place, such like "Thank you", "Hi there", etc, in order to push my post's numbers. Rethinking now, it was more or less a stupid action to do so.

Nowadays some of the community site that I kept visiting are HongFire (for Hgame and Jgame news), Anikei (for Nipponsei release and anime chit chat), and of course, my own community site. Although I'm not pretty much of a poster, yet, I don't think I'll pay real cash (ever) just to get myself popular.

Love in Life

Wondering what's the meaning of love
Even wonders the true meaning of life
And don't forget, what really lies in the bond of two.

Those who travel for love will put love in first place
Seeking for those they love, or in search for those that love them
Be it love or beloved, the seek never ends
As there's always new love around the corner
Even if you've found your love now

For those who travels for life
Are those whose given up their love
Most are hurted by love, scare to be love or beloved
But when love comes again
They'll continue to be hurted again

Ah~ so what's the life and love anyway~

Books... N... Books...

With my project's programming is almost over (what's left are just minor bugs findings and improvement), I found myself dealing with books in order to write my thesis and documentation. However, since it's just a basic draft, I still had the tendency to digs into old books, journals, and even thesis. Yeah, these are not pleasant if you're reading all of them in a role, with so many facts it's just impossible for anyone to chew on immediately.

For the last 2 weeks I've been to the 2 of the biggest bookstore in KL, Borders in Times Square and MPH over at Mid Valley. I didn't manage to catch some nice books over at Borders (since I'm overwhelm by it's new Manga division) but I manage to grab some nice books in MPH.

Who Moved My Cheese? (Amazon)
A special promotion book in MPH. The title looks interesting, and it told the story of 4 mouse, overcoming the changes of their life. Their changes of life sounds funny though, which is that their piece of cheese are moved else where :p Anyway, the book is actually a self motivating book to encourage people to move with the changes of the world. Quick a nice story, but I believe most people already learn the lesson from the book.

Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye (Amazon)
Another special promotion book for the Chrismast season. I couldn't manage to browse through the entire book, as the staff is still packing and arranging the books when I was reading this. However I manage to glimpse the introduction part, which I find quite interesting. The book starts of with an example of glass factory, with a high defect ratio. The company calls for a young engineer, where he tried every possible method - improving the machines, upgrading all the mechanics, etc. Yet, he can't solve the problem. Then the company calls for another senior manager, and he solve the problems using serious critical thinking. And guess what, the problem is solve by improving ergonomics of the machineries. I used to laugh when I took the course critical thinking back in my first degree, but nowadays I found myself thinking more and more logically, especially when facing some programming problem. I'll definitely will pick up the rest of the chapters in my next visit.

Darwath Trilogy (Barbara Hambly)
There are 3 book in Darwath Trilogy, with 2 of them read some years ago. I couldn't find the third (and the final ending) books elsewhere, until recently I found the story online. This is quite a old classic fantasy story, you can think of LOTR, yet it's different from LOTR's world. It starts where a wizard came to this world, bringing him a child to escape from the danger of the Dark. With some coincidence (and destiny it seems), he brought a man and a girl back to his world. Gradually, the man (Rudy) becomes a wizard, while the girl (Gil) became a knight, fighting against the Dark. What really thrills me is that I've finally manage to why the Dark rise, and how they're defeated in the past (or do they?) Half way through the 3rd book, and I can't stop myself reading the final few chapters. Nice fantasy story apart from the big D&D series.

More books to dig into. Hope I can find the time :p

The new and old... which will you choose?

The classic question suddenly pop up in my head, between 2 things (or conditions), one is old and the other is new, which would you choose?

For example, you have a lovely memorable cup, probably given by someone important, that you've been using all these years. But suddenly you found the cup is simply too old to be used, so you got another new cup. Will you keep using the old ones? Or simply dump the old and use the newer cup?

Perhaps you might choose the 3rd choice, keep the old cup as memoirs, and use the new cup. But in some situation, it was simply impossible to have the additional choice. What if you're already in a relationship with someone who loves you dearly, but yet you're meeting another who seems to be so much exciting than your current mate. You'll have to make a choice between the two, who will you choose then?

Choosing both? These kind of story normally happens in love stories, and some do actually end up in happy ending with 3 people living happily ever after. Yet, fiction and real world are different. You might think you're living in a virtual fiction world, but in the end, you'll find yourself facing the real fact of the world is real.

Or so, it would seems to be so.

For me, it would seems impossible for me to let go of the old. I love to collect old stuff, maybe because they usually contains precious memories that's hard to be beaten by new stuff. Some might think that I'm getting outdated (yeah, since I only looking back to the past, and had been ignoring the present and even future), yet, I believe it would be a much better way of living for me. But of course, there're certain things that I've let go (some of my darkness pass, and some pretty damn dark secret that noone knows :p)

People say you shouldn't be this, you shouldn't be that.
You should follow the trend,
You should follow the latest news,
You should know what happens in the world,
You should follow what everyone's do,
Because that's what life is.

Business people would say, if you don't like the current trend, create a new one and let others to follow the trend.
Politician would say, I'll create a new and better life for everyone to follow
Students would say, I deserve on how am I to live.

Because, that's what life is.

People are viewing life from different point of view. The latest way of life nowadays, would be "Enjoy first, let problem come later" Hmm... which is why most youngsters spend most their time entertaining themselves. And yet again, which is the cause for having so many sosial problems among the youngsters. Early marriage, and early divorce. Some say, because we're not destine to be together. Other might say, there's no more love among us. For the worst, the problem would be ignore (the painful triangle relationship, etc) till it's unavoidable some day.

The old and new. A choice between 2 that's pretty hard to answer. I would believe it was pretty much the same to another classic question, usually asked by girls in love. "If your mother and I falls to the ocean, who will you save?" Think about it. Perhaps in the future (or even now), you'll be facing the problem.

For me (jokingly), I wouldn't be able to save anyone. Coz I can't swim. :p

Old songs... old, yet nice

Listening to Zard's 15th anniversary album (Golden Best) I found myself enjoying her songs better than other artist. I first know Zard from her songs in Dragonball, and of course don't forget Slam Dunk, which is two of the oldest anime that I couldn't ever forget. Most of her songs are dated back then, although she still release some songs now and then, those old songs are still my favourite.

Thinking of old memories, the other retired artist (or actually seiryu) that I favour is Megumi Hayashibara. She voice acted a lot of anime in the old days, and she's one of the famous seiryu back then. I recognize her from Slayers, which is the only anime that I've collected all 3 seasons of it. It was pretty sad not able to listen to her beatiful (and cute) voice in latest anime, but yet new seiryu is coming evey year :p.

The most tragic lost would be Ritsuko Okazaki, as she died in an accident this year. Her voice is the most unique, and her singing style is one in a million, which is why although she sings other's singer's songs, her version normally is better than the original's. I recognize her when fetching the theme songs from a game (Symphonic Rains, I think), and I straight away far in love with her songs. Too bad that she's gone.

With more and more young artist coming out each year, it was pretty hard for old artist to keep on track. I'm not saying new artists are bad (I also enjoy new voice), but I still enjoy some oldies, which brings back memories...

Don't know Internet?

With the Internet growing as such a powerful media, everyone thought that everyone would know how to use it. Especially the youngsters, as they can easiliy reach internet nowadays. Back then not everyone can access internet, and for most time, we need to goto cyber cafe for surfing. (Yeah, back then CC is mainly for surfing internet, unlike nowadays CC had changed to become a multiplayer gaming centre.)

Yet, there're actually still quite a number of people who doesn't use Internet. Mostly this group of people are senior citizens, or those who hate computer. A recent news shows that the famous Larry King, doesn't use Internet as well. Hmm... not surprising anyway.

Read more
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/15/larry-king-internet/

Thoughts on morning

It was early in the morning, but yet I'm already awake and sitting in front of the pc. My eyeside is still blur, and tears coming out once in a while to soften the pain of having not enough sleep. But yet, I can't get back to sleep after I'm awake.

Checking back on my site. The official support forum is finally back up. The team still lookings into the problem of slow access (and most time innaccessible) on members' site. So, if anyone is still trying to access, you might not able to get to it. If the situation is getting worst, I might try to seek out new free web hosting, or even just get a nice forum hosting company. Hopefully 110mb.com will solve the problems before I make my condition to switch web hosting.

My project is currently on the last phase. Most of the works left is documentation and thesis writing, which I'm going to start after writing this blog entry. My program is around 90% complete, what's left is some minor tweak, a new calculation method that I'm gonna put into one of the modules, and the help files. After that I believe I'll just wait for my viva. My project's grant is still not available yet, but my lecturer's another project got approval, and he's nice enough to include me in spending the money. I'm entitled a notebook, which I believe is what I really need right now, seeing my current pc got some pretty cute problems here and there.

Checking e-mail, reading the latest MSDN flash sent by Microsoft. It's a news letter about programming in .Net, something that I've registered quite some while ago (I believe when I was doing my first degree project where I'm using .Net 1.2) Anyway, found that Microsoft is using wiki for their MSDN site. Nice, with the powerful features of wiki, and hopefully with free access when it goes official, I don't need to spend time searching for help when programming. (http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com/)

Going over to Low Yatt this Saturday, to survey the price for the notebook. Maximum budget will be around 4k, but since one and my only single requirement is the graphic chipset, it was slightly hard to obtain a nice notebook under that price tag. I've browse through and found BenQ JoyBook S73, seems pretty nice and powerful for my use, and the price is good enough. But yet, BenQ is wellknown for their lack of support, making me hesitating whether to go for it.

I can see daylight now. Go for breakfast and will continue my project's work.

Site down...

Haih... the site is down again. Looks like the main MySQL services got some errors, causing slow downs (or like so). Anyone who visits the site please don't be shock, and I'll try to fix the site up when everything's back to normal.

Movie time

Yeah! After waiting for a while it's finally movie time! Both John and me finally went for the movie Prestige. Although I thought it would normally be 3 of us (including Keong) but it seems Keong got some *date* of his own :p

Anyway, Prestige is a movie about 2 young magician fighting with each other on magic shows. At first it was for revenge, but as it continues it seems that both doesn't wanna lose, and it finally turns up to be a tragedy. The whole movie is about finding each other's tricks, and the way they make it happens. A very nice movie with a new taste, very recommended.

More info (http://www.prestige-movie.com/)


Another new movie is coming to air is Death Note. Actually I checked out GSC site and the released date is on 9 Nov. Hmm... I can't find any banner of the movie at GSC today, maybe because it's a Japanese movie? Anyway, Death Note is originally a  manga series, that eventually made into movie (real actors airing) and anime. The story is about a Death God, that drops his notebook which was picked up by Yagami (Kira). What was interesting is that whoever's name written on the notebook will be death in the next 40 seconds. What will Yagami do? And what will the cops do? It's actually a battle of minds, of the murderer and the cop.

I've actually watched Death Note that was aired in Japan not long ago. It was a special TV programme to celebrate the TV station's anniversally (10th birthday?) I'm not sure whether it's the same movie, although the actors seems to be the same. But yet, even if they are the same, I'm definitely going to see it again. Another recommended movie, if you like the battle of minds.

More info (http://wwws.warnerbros.co.jp/deathnote/)

ネギま!? (ED) A-Ly-Ya

歌手：ネギ・スプリングフィールド(佐藤利奈),神楽坂明日菜(神田朱未),近衛木乃香(野中藍),桜咲刹那(小林ゆう)
作詞：こだまさおり
作曲：菊谷知樹

Everybody! Hi! Hi!　Everybody! Yeah! Yeah!　Hoo!!

Let's get a chance 今すぐ鳴らそ冒険ファンファーレ
さあさやりたいこと全部ならべて
Let's get a chance せーので鳴らそトキメキファンファーレ
待ち合わせのとりえ全部あつめて

胸騒ぎに呼ばれたらゲキテキな展開
トラブルミラクルまとめて楽しんじゃおHava a good time
目と目手と手重ねて生まれるパワー
会いたい時はここに集合Fly high
見たこともない場所へ連れて行ってあげる

※A LY YA! いざゆけや　A LY YA! 少女たちよ
A LY YA! いざゆけば　A LY YA! ハイ!ハイ!
A LY YA! いざゆけや　A LY YA! 少年たちよ
A LY YA! いざゆけば　Everything is OK※

Let's get a dream ピカピカ磨こ新しいシーズン
待ちくたびれている明日に Say チャオ
Let's get a dream 一緒に磨こトキメキのシーズン
笑顔はじけちゃえば心お天気

お気に入りのメロディに毎日を写せば
見慣れた景色がたちまちはしゃぎだすねDance together
声を聞くだけで勇気が湧いてくるよ
君の最高の仲間がここにいるね
ハートの女神様にありがとうのピース

(※くり返し)

Watch it at Youtube

Internet's Enemy!!!

There are enemies everywhere. Everyone got their enemies, no matter how nice, how pure you are. Even the big Internet got its worst enemies. Enemies? Thunderstorm? Nolah~ Countries that filter internet contents. I knew that China will be on the list (since they're wellknown for filtering, but I'm surprise to see Burma's name on the list as well.

Read more on (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19603)

School Rumble!

A second day off to break myself away from my current project. And guess what, a whole day of anime watching.

Yeah, I watch both seasons of School Rumble in one day. (All 52 episodes of them!)

Surprisingly, the school theme anime did take my heart away for the day. I'm almost giving up to any future school theme anime, since they are almost the same, but school rumble make it a funny comedy that I like. Yeah, some of the scenes are so funny that I still can't stop laughing till now.

The main story evolve around 4 good friends, Tenma, Mikoto, Akira, and Eri, about their school life, and their love stories. Although the main theme normally evolves around Harima and Tenma (which is propably the funniest) but I prefer the story around Harima and Eri (where they keep fighting), or even with Yakumo, Tenma's little sister. Hmm... it's pretty hard to explain the funny scenes, but I would recommend this for the crazy laugh.

Also thanks to Yakumo, I begin to notice Mamiko Noto, the seiyuu who voiced Yakumo. In fact, to be exact, I recognize her voice from voicing Reiko in The Laws of Ueki (which is currently airing over at Animax) Anyway, her voice is unique, and is suitable for characters with unique mysterious background (such as Yakumo in School Rumble, or even Renma Ai in Jigoku Shoujo). She'll be in my list of noticeable voice actor, apart from Megumi Hayashibara, Yui Horie, and also singers Kotoko, and Mai Kuraki.

Now, back to my working on the last few parts of my project. Gambate!



More info:
School Rumble season 1 (ANN)
School Rumble season 2 (ANN)
School Rumble on wikipedia

Day Off?

After weeks of seeking and debugging my CAD module for the project, I was dragged to take my day off for the day.
Yeah... If you call driving almost an hour to Klang is for day off.

Anyway, I went over to visit my uncle at Klang with my mother. Nothing much happens, just that it was quite a hot day over at the living room, where I spent most time sleeping at the sofa there . Anyway, I manage to taste the real taste of pure vegetarian food. My aunt cook a special feast of vegetables, and everything is vegetables and nothing else (including the sup, which is vegetables blended into sup



All Vege...

CAD module... Haih...

Yeah! *sort of* ...

After works and works on the example projects, with trial and error testing, I manage to get the project running, but there're still a lot of mysterious bugs here and there. Yeah, those bugs are really mysterious (you can't even know where they happens...) Anyway, I posted the problems over to the support forum, and hopefully someone will help me (fast).

For the time being, I'm gonna rest for a while, and play some games.

Module... Stink...

Haiya... Thinking that my testing module works fine, when combining with the grand project, all hells broke up.

Errors here, errors there, haiya, sian liao.

Worst of all, I can't seems to find the problem to those errors. Doesn't seems to be my part of custom programming, either it's the DWG Direct framework or QT locking something the framework need to work with.

Ah~~~ Some more down and dirty into lower level debugging...

Yahoo! CAD module!

Yahoo! I've finally manage to rewrite a module (or actually modify the module) to display the CAD dwg files on QT's widget system. Yupe, after working (even during the holidays) for so long, I manage to display CAD files correctly. Although I'm having some problem with the viewport in order to show the geometries correctly. But after some trial and error (and even reading the OpenGL red book) I've finally manage to put everything back right. Yet, a lot of work still needs to be done. Gambate!

Negima!?

Yeah!!! Magister Negi Magi is back! Yeah!!!

That's what I think when I read the news of new seasons of Magister Negi Magi from Anidb.

But wait... it's not really the second season, but actually a remake.

So far, with 3 episodes aired, the style and story had changed a bit. The most surprising element, would be that Asuna (the number one main heroine), where her eyes sre different in colors in the original manga/anime, but it's not shown in the new remake. I'm not sure if Asuna still has the ultimate power to repel magic in the new remake, but that sure would be cool...


Check out Asuna's knight's look

All the 3 episodes aired so far was about the 600 years old vampire Evangelion (one of my favourite characters). But it seems that the 3 episodes are just introduction, and the real story will start then (the 3rd semester). Hopefully it'll follow where the last anime end up, or at least follow the manga's story (which is exciting for the time being).

Another interesting add up in the new anime, is that a lot of cosplay and funny elements from other anime/manga shows up here. It was pretty hard to find them all, as they are just too many! Hope that the real story will be interesting as well! :p


Yue drinking the 100% pure fruit juice from Air


And now another drink from Dragonball? :p

(p/s: found some more information from Wikipedia :p)

Damn CAD module...

Yeah... It's project time again... A lot happened lately that makes me moody in doing my master project, but no matter what, I need to continue on (maybe the progress will be slow, as now).

Anyway, I'm still working on the CAD module for my project. Export my medical model doesn't seems to got problem, although got some slight slowness due to one of the process during export. Anyhow, I'm having problem to import CAD files into my application, or to be exact, I can't get the CAD files to show in my Qt Widget GUI.

Well, I'm using Trolltech's QT (http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt) GUI library to handle my GUI components. To be honest, at first I was quite scare in using Qt (Afterall, it's not quite widely used for windows applications) Anyway, after reading tutorials, documentation (yeah, their documentation is good) and example, I found myself working comfortably with Qt. In fact, my DICOM module was build entirely atop qt framework (but it's not Qt's plugin). On the other hand, since CAD module will be difficult, I had to join Open Design Alliance (http://www.opendesign.com/) in order to use their CAD library. Their modules (DirectDWG) are good, providing some simplicity for applications to read/write CAD files. However, since DirectDWG does not natively support Qt in vectorization process (process of showing CAD files graphically), I'm on my own to write custome modules.

So far, I manage to do some extra work to somehow use OpenGL to draw the CAD objects on QtGLWidget. Well, although the end result seems nice, but it doesn't fully ultilise the DirectDWG vectorization framework. Hmm... I manage to think some new ideas to try out, and if those can't work, then I think I'll had to stick with the useful ones.

Human species going to be split into two?

This morning I read a shocking news. Human species is going to be split into two sub species? A what?

Yeah, according to the research (and prediction), human species will be splitting out in the next 100,000 years. It is said that human beings are getting choosy on their mates, and causing this phenomenon. In short, there'll be two type of human then, one is "upper class", while the other one is "lower class". I guess we don't need to wait so long, since the phenomena is already well seen in the society nowadays.

For more information, read the news from BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm).

红楼梦

Recently reading some post over at HF forum, I found a very special post about 红楼梦, which is consider to be one of the chinese's literature treasure. Well, a japanese company is using 红楼梦 and it's characters in making a hgame... Yeah, although the game is not sold over at China or Taiwan, the chinese are furious about this. I have neither read the book before, or the game itself, since I'm not really interest anyway.

More information can be found here.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060924_1.htm

Additional notable new series

With the new season coming, there's some additional notable anime series that caught up my eye.

009-1
A spy theme anime. Sort of like Charlie's Angel, with pretty spies and high tech gadgets.

Death Note
From the famous Sunday Shounen manga, here comes the anime. I didn't read the manga, but the anime looks promising. The story is about a notebook that was dropped to our world from the death world. Anyone with his name that was written in the notebook will be death (in 40 seconds time I think). Seems interesting though.

Jigoku Shoujo 2
The second season of Jigoku Shoujo. It's almost like Death Note, but just that instead of a notebook, anyone who write their enemies name on the website will be sent to hell...

Megadere

I dun really know the full name of this series (it's sort of long~) but it looks promising. A young boy who just exchanged to a new school, found himself watching a pretty girl in front of a sakura tree (although sakura shouldn't be blossom at that season) But what surprised him the most is that the girl ask to be his boyfriend :p? Hmm...

Pumpkin Scissors
A big war broke out some years ago, and when it ends, it's already near the end of the world. After the big war a special unit was formed to handle problems aroused from the war... The hero here, is one of the members of former anti tank group during wartime, and was invited to join the unit.

Yamanade

Another long title~ (I dun remember the actual name~) At first, I thought this will be another bishoujo love story with handsome guys and girls fallen for them... Haha... The theme is almost like so, except that 4 handsome guys was asked to change a girl (who seems more like a ghost than a girl) to a pretty girl.

Yoakena

Ya~ Another long title~ (So many this time...) A princess from the moon has come to earth and was living together with the main character? Hmm... I'm not sure how far the story might go, but it might be interesting.

Animax

To all anime fans... Animax is finally here! Yeah, this news is sortof old, and I've been watching Animax channel for more than a month now.

It was actually a nice move that Astro take to include Animax into it's package. Now there're more and more people watching anime (including me). However, I found out that the subtitles are sometimes, well, sort of funny. I do not know about the english voice act (since I'm listening to the original japanese voice act), but the malay subtitle is sometimes wrong, and the meanings are misleading... Although it won't effect the storyline much, yet it's sort of annoying sometimes.

Anyway, I found out a few worth noteable anime that's currently airing on Animax:~

The Law Of Ueki

Huh? The power to change trash into trees? What's that?
The story evolve around Ueki, who took part in a competition to get the title 'God'. At first, the series pretty much reminds me of Shaman King, which offers almost the same feeling. However, this is the only anime so far, that I found myself like the support character (Mori Ai, a busybody girl) more than the main hero.

Kyou Kara Maou

A boy was flushed into the toilet? That's what the advertisement said...
I didn't manage to catch the first few episodes... and I believe Animax is airing the last 10+ episodes right now... But it was fun to see the boy that was flushed to another world, and become the king.

Honey & Clover

Basically, I don't really like purely love story anime, but this anime is funny enough to drag me in. I personally like the chibi effect. The story is about the love and life of a group of art students.

Flame of Recca

I've read the manga, and I love the story! It was quite a long time ago, as the artist or Flame of Recca is now drawing MAR, which I believe is almost at it's end now. Anyway, the story evolve around Recca, a ninja from a mysterious family background. I do not know how far the anime will go, so I'll stop here (and let everyone guessing...)

For more information, logon over to Animax (http://www.animax-asia.com/)

Haze!!!

Haze!!! Haze!!! Haze is back at KL again!!!

 

Ah, I really hate the smoke smell, making myself really hard to breathe. And it was pretty much difficult to drive if the condition is getting worst. Check out the photo I shot in the afternoon when the haze is at its worst. Photo was taken using my phone's camera.

 

October ~ Anime Feast!!!

Time pass so fast, and now it's October! And guess what? Another good anime feast!

A quick check over at AniDB and found that there's quite a number of interesting anime going on air in this month. Checked the whole list out and some caught up my interest.

Galaxy Angel II

Being a good old Galaxy Angel fan, I surely can't miss out the new Galaxy Angel II. I believe the original Galaxy Angel I is going away anytime soon, but anyway, GAII does seems to drag me in as well. It's just too bad that the new GAII games are just for PS2 only... sob...

D Gray Man


Yupe, it's finally here. I've been it's manga fan ever since the beginning, and it's a must see if you like demon hunters story.

Negima

Well, to be honest, I didn't know that the second season of Negima Sensei will be airing this October, although I know that the Negima Haru OVA will be out in the corner. But hey, this is a nice story of a 11 years old teacher, with his 31 students, which at the same time was dragged by situation becoming his magical companions. A must see for its fun storyline.

Happiness!

Another anime from a famous AVG game. I've only played the fandisk Happiness Relucks!, and it's character design is pretty much better than most of other AVG games I played. There's 7 main girls, each with different background and storyline with the theme magical school.

Kanon

After finishing the game Kanon by Key not long ago, I found Key's games' storyline is mostly on the same track, sad and touching. The Kanon anime TV series is one of the long awaited titles. Hope that it'll be as good as the game.

There you go, some of the new TV series that caught my eyes. Of course there's other new series that I might be interest of (I need to preview them first). See the whole latest anime series over at AniDB.

Not for good boys... (Sexy Beach 3)

Yes, if you think yourself is a good boy (or good girl) you shouldn't be reading this.


And yes, the long awaited game is finally out. Illusion, one of my favourite Japanese game company finally release the newest game ~ Sexy Beach 3. I've never play the series before, but as with other games by Illusion, this should be a high quality one. The last game by Illusion, Rapelay is pretty much better than any other previous illusion games, and yet the newest Sexy Beach 3 will be using a new engine, so I can't wait to test it out. The only thing that excite me the most will be the characters, Esk especially, will be back in the game (Esk is from a previous Illusion game ~ Dessblood 4)


I just hope that Streamyx's service will be better by the time I'm ready to fetch the game. Nope, this won't be available in Low Yatt or online store (since as with most Japanese games, it's only available in Japan only!)


For more information check out Sexy Beach 3

Sick...

After being sick (headache, migraine) for almost 2 days, I finally decided to see the doctor.

To my surprise, the clinic that I used to go had lost my records. What? I've been going to the same clinic ever since I was a small kid and now all my previous medical records are lost? Hmmm... Yes, it's been quite some time since I go see the doctor (the last time I believe would be the medical checkup for my master intake, which is around a year ago) Haih... what la...

I would wonder if next time I sick and goto the same clinic, will my record still exist there?

Site's Name...

With my new site is coming up, a new name is needed.

Last time, I just *tembak* a name and named it Memorial's World. Now thinking back, it's not quite a good name after all.

Since it got something to do with Life, Photo's, etc, I was thinking of just naming it
"Journey of Life".

But yet... perhaps someone got much better ideas

Memorial's World

Yes! Finally, after some days of hard work, I've finally finish setting up the new site for Memorial's World.
It's been several months since the old gallery sites down, and I'm actually kinda lost the spirits to remake everything again.
Fortunately, I sort of got the spirit back when I found a pretty nice free webhosting, and decide to make a shot.

And whola! Here you go, the new Memorial's World.

Go register yourself at http://pchan.110mb.com

Streamyx...

Yeah, it's Streamyx problem again, making some web pages unaccessible again.
For a whole month I was happy for it's good and smooth performance, but now the problem exists again.

I check a local forum, and seems that there's so many people scolding Streamyx as well.
But I'm blaming it for poor performance in accessing sites (since I'm making my new site now, I can't seems to access it and the dateline is drawing near.) The other guys are blaming Streamyx for slow performance in BT.

Yeah, people are paying for their bandwidth. They expect to use at least 80% of their top speed, including me. But to be honest, BT is something that's really bad to ISP. It draws a lot of unecessary bandwidth, which is bad for normal user. Yeah (again) I'm also a BT user, but I've been switching over to ED2K network (another P2P) where it won't eat so many connection and bandwidth as BT.

But, what I'm really impress by these people is that they still bragging about their BT speed, as they are downloading drama or warez most of the time. Do they really notice that it's actually illegal to download these at first? Although, some torrents contains legal stuff, for example, in a recent game I played Summerdays, it contains some patch that is so huge (>1.5gb) that it's almost impossible to supply direct download. So, the company supply torrents instead.

Rrr... I just hope that Streamyx will fix the problem soon (Streamyx guys, you can keeps on capping P2P, but don't cap my normal surfing speed please...)

Utawarerumono

It's been quite some while since I touch some actual games, and I've finally have some mood for some AVG games again.

 

Or, to be exact, with no mood and idea to continue my project, I took some time off to rest my old brain a bit.

 

Anyway, Utawarerumono is the second AVG games that I played because of anime. Yupe, I play the game because I liked the anime pretty much. The first game that I played because of anime would be Key's Air, one of Key's superd AVG game. Some might ask, AVG? Is that suppose to be a game? For most time, AVG is normally refer as visual novel. Yes, for most time you just keep reading the story text again and again, and perhaps until some part you got some choice of the path you choose. It sounds boring, but what keeps player to go on is the sory itself (at least its the story that keeps me playing).

 

I won't be talking about the story here, if anyone interest, go grab a copy of the anime. The anime TV series is almost in it's end by the time I writing this, so the DVD version shouldn't be far from launch. Anyway, apart of the story, I like it's battle system (I believe it's call SVG, or something like that) Nowadays not much company create this kind of games anymore, except Japanese companies, and ocassionally some Chinese companies. Hmm... the western big games' company pay too much attention to the graphic than the real gameplay...

 

Anyway, I've attach the CGs in my photo album. Unfortunately, some cgs are 18sx so I'll have to exclude them. Both the design in game and anime is almost the same, unlike some where anime and game differs.

Health

Going over to hospital for the second time, makes me rethink a lot of things that never thought of before. Sometimes it does feels like human life is as fragile as glass. It is pretty, but at the same time easy to be broken.

 

I used to think why human beings can live so long. Comparing to other life forms, human beings does indeed live quite long enough. I remember I read a story before about how human beings are greedy, and took other animal's life to live longer... Greedy... Hmm... The nature of human...

 

Anyway, just to remind everyone to take good care of your health. It's the only thing that's hard to get even with money.

Project Status

Hmm... after working so hard for the few previous week, I decided to unroll more about my project.

Yupe, it's nothing much since it's not a new method or new ideas, just a couple of old technologies combine together.

Yupe, it's just a dicom file viewer, packed with simple 3d surface reconstruction, and *perhaps* some CAD operations as well.

By the time of writing, I'm almost 50% into the whole project, with each module's progress as following~
DICOM 100%
3D 50%
CAD 0%

There's still a lot more to deal with, since I've change some basic structure of my application (just to overcome some stupid bug) But so far, most of the important features are covered, and hopefully, I can complete it by end of this year.

Breakthrough!

Hahaha! Finally, I've make a new record!

 

What breakthrough? New medicine? New games? Nolah...

 

Just that my song collections finally reach 20k! Hohoho, think of the number!

 

Of course, 90% of them are anime and japanese songs, ost. It's been quite a while since I actually hear Chinese and English songs.

 

Hmm... I wonder how long will it take me to reach 30k of songs...

Carrefour

Hohohoho... hohohoho...

Yupe, it's here, finally here...

Carrefour is finally here...

 

Today I finally got the time to go there, or to be exact, wait for the shop to open.

You can see the number of people waiting for the shop to open... It's pretty rediculous to think of it...

Hmmm... how to say...

It doesn't seem that everyone comes to shop, but more like *jalan jalan* or window shopping...

Hai...

 

I didn't manage to get any special prizc item of the day, only the grape which my parents were lucky enough to get when they just put it out. I was thinking of getting the car oil which was almost 30% cheaper than standard price. Unfortunately, it's all gone (or to be exact, the items are not yet available) Well, perhaps if I keeps waiting there for a few hours, maybe they'll put them out...

 

To anyone who wish to try out the new Carrefour outlet, one and only advice... GO EARLY. If not, you won't be able to get in.

Frustrated...

Ah... who can help me... Frustrated to see that damn problem in my project...

The dicom module, which was suppose to read dicom images, was acting kinda strangely enough.

 

Since my actual data taken from hospital was slightly large (>10mb per image), I usually use dummy data fetch from the internet for testing and debug purpose. The test data seems fine enough, and I've manage to display the image (including a *sort of* 3D reconstruction object)

 

The odd thing is, of 2 sets of real data that I obtained, 1 of them is unabled to show up perfectly. Checking here and there confirms that the I've extract the image data perfectly from dicom, and I even found someway to improve the performance as well. But just for some reason it just dun wanna display correctly on screen (showing up jagged image)

 

So, I turn to check the display functions. Changing from OpenGL functions back to GDI functions (since it's 2D), I check, try to manipulate the data a bit here and there, but yet the result is the same... Haii... for a week, I've keep seeing the same coding again and again.... all with no vain...

 

Untill...

 

I was playing around the variables around my display functions. I exchanged the image's witdh and image height. Binbong! It display nicely! Omg... A quick check shows that I've mistakenly decode the image's width and height wrongly.... What about the test data that seems ok? It's because for those data, their image width and height is the same (which makes no difference if they're swapped)

 

Dunno what to say... Just wanna hang myself for frustrated because of just 2 variables...

School Days

Well, I don't usually play AVG games too much... except if the game was very famous or the storyline is superb.

Since it was pretty much hard to understand written Japanese (my level is still far from recognizing most of the characters) I usually wait for translation groups to translate the storyline (This goes to KFC's great translation, tq)

 

Anyway, it was not long ago I found out this game School Days, which I believe is quite famous by the time it's out (around a year ago). Actually I've played it's sequence SummerDays, but School Days is much much better than the sequence (odd...)

 

The main guy, Makoto, is trapped between 2 girls' love (actually 4, but 2 of them hide it very well). And so the battle begins between them...

Some of the stories are very very funny, such as Sekai wanna *battle* with Kotonoha with breast  (which apparently fails...) Also to note is that so far, this is the only game that provides so many endings (30++) and it really took a lot of time and patience to find them all. Well, although I manage to see most of the endings, some story are yet unexplored...

 

The endings, ranging from Makoto choosing either one of the girls, to having killed by Sekai, or Sekai killed by Kotonoha (gross) It was pretty good of how the guys from 0verflow (the company that produce School Days) can manage to link all of them together. This is surely a nice game to play (for the storyline, that is).

 

Check out the few girls' banner I made in my album.

 

Too bad is that the image file is in my burned hard drive... Rrrrr.... Reget it...

Sad sad sad

It's been some times since I wrote blog... and now when I plans to write one, my dear pc begins to falls on me... sob sob... My 160 gb hard disk got burn somehow, and it's impossible to use it now. Too shocking is that it was somehow short circuit... no kidding, since the IC is burned to a hole... and I could still remember seeing sparks when I just start my pc... sob sob... RIP...

The meet

"I heard there's a new pussy coming today" said the barkeeper, as he finishes his last chores to clean up the glasses of the day.

Drinking his drink, P follows. "Yeah, should be the last of the commandos intake."

"The last of the team?"
"Should be. There ain't many of us left."
"Then won't be that a problem?"
"With the Commando's team in rest than 50 people? Perhaps."
Finishing the last drop of his drink, P slowly moves turns his view towards the new girl that just entered the pub.

"Looks like a kawaii girl"
"Don't use languages that I don't know."
"Haha, I thought that you understand that."
"Cute girls ain't suitable for this job."
"But females do have the tendency for finishing tough jobs with higher ratings."
"Because they're careful enough..."
"Unlike someone that likes to just rush to the field and kill everything there..."

No answer from P.

***

"Hah? What's with the look, little pussy? Can't stand with the smoke? Go back home and cry to your mama. Hahaha..." Baret pump out another breath of tobacco smoke towards Sam.

Baret, one of the elite Commandos that join in the early days. Make it to the top 10 in the team. The team leader of Eliminator team, which specialist in eliminating everything in the field. The team are normally called for one and only cause, to destroy everything. As the team leader, Baret is famous for one thing, aggresive.

Looks like the trouble to get information on Commandos does has it's uses now. Sam thought. She take some time just to get the correct contacter from the underworld, just in order to get some information of the existing Commando's team. The price is high, but it's worth it. After all, Commando's team is a secret team.

But all doesn't mean much then. Sam can take them all.

"Ooi ooi, don't make this place a bloodshed. I had a hard time keeping everything up and tidy!" Shout the barkeeper.

"Don't worry. It'll end up fast enough"
"Rap up the little pussy, Baret"
"Let us has a nice show, Baret"
Shouts from all over the bar. Looks like these peoples really wanna have a show.

The Pub

The air is dense with smoke, foggy for Sam to look through the room in detail. The cabin isn't the right place for the right job. One can see clearly that the metallic room itself was brutally enhanced with pipes and pipes of unknown uses, and water drippings everywhere on the floor. The air ventilation unit is almost non-functional, as Sam can barely see the fan moving, probably moved by the density of the smoke itself in the room.

The aura is unpleasant. She can sense that everybody's eyes is watching at her, some with the questionable view, while some with the eye of an eagle, watching the movement of its prey. No matter how their view, it's unpleasant.

Sam feels like she's a small prey, waiting to be catched and eaten.

"So, you're the new little Missy that joins in ah~?"
Sam looks towards the man that approaches her. The man is huge, significant taller and broader than any other man she browse through in the pub, or any other man that she ever known. One can see bruises all over his body, for he's wearing only a thin singlet that barely covers his body fully. Sam couldn't stop studying the big man's right hand, apparently is an artificial metal hand which is slightly larger in probationer than his left's. The hand, or barely of what left of it, is full with patches and patches of unknown works. Sam knows not much of mechanical stuff, but she clearly knows that, this hand is dangerous.

"The name is Sam. Is this the Commando's quarters?" Sam spoke, loudly, eye scanning everyone she can possible scan, in case of emergency.

"Ah haha, little Sammy is it. Such a tiny little girl, wants to be a Commando. Little gal should go home and make pretty clothes for us to wear." The big man's tease.

Teasing me again, and you gonna have it. Sam though. Looks like it's gonna be a though day today.

Entering Commando

Sam walks herself bravely, down towards the long unknown corridors. "I won't be a stranger here anymore." Sam murmured to herself. After all the long years she was finally here. It was a long and tough journey, starting from the academy's hard training, till recognize and proposed to join in the Commando's team. The route is tough, but she was finally joyed, for she had finally fulfilled her father wish.

"Join the commando. Open your heart, see the world with your own eyes. Don't let the death be your only concern. Go with the last of the kenjutsu. Be proud, my love."

Those were the last words of her father.