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