Vendetta

I don't read the Malaysian print press that much now after the election. I think they lost a lot of their credibility even before the election. I just perceive them to be biased.

However, when I do occasionally read them I find it amusing when I read between the lines.

Recently, the members of the press were barred from the main areas of parliament. The Barisan Backbencers Club removed the baricade after the press stopped reporting on their activities.

Read the article below from the star:

Saturday June 28, 2008 MYT 4:52:13 PM

Najib wants Nazri and Tiong to end spat

By AUDREY EDWARDS

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak wants the feud between Datuk Seri Nazri Abd Aziz and Barisan Nasional Backbenchers Club (BBC) chairman Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing to stop.

"I hope it will not continue. Arguments within any group of the Barisan Nasional is an unhealthy development," the deputy Prime Minister told reporters Saturday after opening the International Conference on "Meeting of Minds: Developing the Malaysia Master Brand."

"We must make the effort to resolve the situation so we can focus on our responsibility in Parliament, which is to debate on issues of interest to the people and how we can use our role as Members of Parliament and government to continually defend them."

The feud between Nazri, minister in charge of Parliament affairs and Tiong has gained momentum where Nazri on Friday said he expected the BBC to recommend to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to sack him as a minister.

"If they dare not do that on Monday, then shut up and don’t talk anymore,” he had said.

This was in response to Tiong's statement that BBC was upset with Nazri, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, who had called the club members childish and gangster-like after they removed the barricade at Parliament lobby on Tuesday.

The barrier was put up to ban reporters from moving freely in the lobby area.

Tiong had also said that the BBC would hold a meeting on Monday to discuss the issue and decide on the next course of action to be taken as they felt Nazri had gone overboard.

Najib, when asked whether he, as Barisan whip, would issue a directive for the matter to be resolved, he said: "It is okay. I will whisper."

I found it most amusing that a few days before that, the press has been reporting what Tiong has been saying about Nazri. I feel the press are still pissed about getting blocked out from parliament. They can't admonish Nazri directly but they can report on what others have to say about him... like Tiong here.

I wonder where this is going to go. Its been fun watching the press being biased on this story.

I also read the statutory Declaration from Raja Petra Kamarudin's statutory declaration. I found it most amusing that he's declaring that he knows something that he heard from 'reliable sources'. Don't you just love how conspiracy theories work? A 'reliable source' told someone and immediately it's the truth... what the heck is this, is this the X-Files?

Then anyone can make a statutory declaration that they read in the newspaper about RPK's declaration and they read from reliable sources (is The Star still a reliable source?) that they know something's fishy. Is that proof now?

I declare this is crap. I have spoken. Let it be the truth.

reincarnation

I was sitting back looking at my monitor wondering what else I haven't installed on my PC. I got everything running already as it was before.

I looked around and I saw a CD on my side table, it was Call of Duty 4. It was a game I put of installing for a long time. Since I didn't have any games on my PC, I thought okay... lets see if this new NVIDIA drivers work any better on the Vista with a new game.

COD4 is shooter game. I enjoyed playing COD2 a lot (COD3 was only on Playstation I think, no PC version). COD2 was based in WW2. COD4 is now set in modern day warfare in the middle east and eastern europe. Quite fun shooting up bad guys.

After a few hours of shooting people, hearing grenades exploding and dying and reincarnating a few times I realized something. I understand why the Buddhist don't want to reincarnate anymore. It's just so frustrating. I get shot, I die... I run back to the exact same point I got shot and get shot and die again. This process repeats itself numerous times until I finally shoot the bugger who's been drilling numerous bullet holes into me in my previous life.

After dying one last time, I quit the game and left it at that for today. So leaving the game is kind of like Nirvana. There is no more existence. No battles to fight. I get to leave the PC and go do other stuff like... play with my nephew and niece. At that point, you got to ask yourself, what is the point of it all? Why go through the hassle and stress of killing these polygons and spend so much time completing these tasks in the game? What tangible benefits (karma) do I bring outside when I step away from my PC? I'll just be all psyched out from all the shooting and bombings. Better to cultivate good Karma instead.

I don't think I can play this COD4 longer than an hour. I just don't have the patience anymore to shoot animated people. Now I just want to listen to some music, watch some podcast and play with photoshop.

I like watching photoshop tutorials and editing photos now. Much more peaceful. Currently playing around with the black and white settings. I like seeing how some photos look like with a tinge of sepia.

moving along

Finally got my PC up and running again just the way I want it. I formatted both the OS. The Vista I formatted by accident. I accidentally installed XP on both the hard disk. That was a stupid mistake to make.

I lost all the data on the Vista hard disk, including a few projects I was working on. Other than that, I still have my music and pictures.

I even when ahead and formatted my Iphone. Yeah, it was getting buggy too so I had to format it. Its always good to format and start over again. I got rid of some of the applications and games on the Vista, XP and Iphone.

The XP runs a little faster now. Vista... not much difference. The quicktime files still hang the PC when I access them. I think it could be a Motherboard architecture problem, not the software problem. Vista just doesn't like my PC setup. XP runs everything fine.

I use Vista for almost everything now except work. XP, I have to use it because it has the AVID system in it. Vista has my games! Currently playing Call Of Duty 4. Man, I haven't played a First Person Shooter in months. So rusty.

I didn't reinstall Command and Conquer. Got bored of it. My brother's playing it now on his new Dell. Good luck to him on that!

Anyway, besides sleepless nights spend over the electronics, the wedding and renovation plans are moving along. Renovations are almost done at the apartment. Just a bit more for the electrical wiring. They did a really dodgy job, it was all miscommunication. I haven't gone back to see if they understood if the fixed the problem. Plus, they have to touch up the painting too.

I hope to buy some furniture next month. Everything is going as plan.

format

damn it. Never trust stupid keygen from the Internet.

I downloaded a keygen for a software to backup my hard disk and the damn keygen was a virus. I had to format the PC and ended up accidentally
formatting the wrong drive. I formatted the vista OS instead of the XP drive. Now I have to install both again.

I lost all the data on the vista drive including the one with some projects on it. That totally sucks.

maybe its a good thing. Now I get to start this vista drive all over again properly. I just wished I has saved the video project folders.

Istana Negara's garden tea party on Agong's birthday

I had to work today, even though it was a public holiday. It was the Agong's birthday but I had to be at his garden tea party at Istana Negara to shoot it. The dress code was suit, tie and songkok. By the time I got there, a lot of the guest had already started arriving. I drove all the way up to the back gate and the guards stopped us to verify our identity. Normally, the press had to walk in. They finally let us drive in after they confirmed who we were.

It was hot at first then it rained and I got wet. I don't think Malaysian weather is suited for wearing a long jacket and songkok. Wearing a songkok just makes me really uncomfortable in this hot humid weather.




The Agong walking in, happy birthday tuanku! Erm... I forgot Tuanku's age, I think better left unsaid.


The prime minister and wife following closely behind with the Deputy Prime Minister and wife.


I think a company sponsored this golf themed cake. I wonder what it tasted like.


The horses at the front gate of Istana Negara. Did you know that Istana Negara used to belong to a Chinese tycoon? I was talking to Tan Sri Professor Emeritus Khoo Kay Khim and he was telling me the history of the building. He was just made a Tan Sri earlier in the morning. Congratulations again Tan Sri!


The band playing Negaraku.




Tuanku getting ready to cut his birthday cake.



I saw Nurul Izzah, the Member of Parliament for Lembah Pantai there with her husband. There were quite a number of opposition MP's there too like Tian Chua. He was one of the MP's that stood out from the crowd. A lot of guest walked up to shake his hand.

I found it quite ironic that only a few months ago during the Bersih rally, the opposition leaders marched down to Istana Negara trying to pass a memorandum to the Agong. The police wouldn't let them meet the Agong and they never got pass the main gates. Today, some of the opposition members are walking around in the gardens mingling with the crowd.

It goes to show the Agong is non-political. I didn't see Karpal Singh, Wan Azizah or Tun Dr. Mahathir though. Probably elsewhere... maybe they were there but the crowd was so huge, I might have missed them.


All the guest lining up to wish the Agong happy birthday and shake his hand. Even the ambassadors and VIP's had to line up. I think there must have been at least a 1000 guest. I didn't stay until the end, I figure it must have taken at least an hour for the Agong to shake hands with everyone. By the way, the man in the suit talking to the lady in purple is Tan Sri Professor Emeritus Khoo Kay Khim with his wife.

At the end of the day, I was drenched in sweat. I have to dry clean my suit tomorrow. It was soaked in sweat. Anyway, it was fun visiting the palace and talking to some of the guest.

what's new with the Iphone

I've added some new programs to my Iphone:

Iphonevideorecorder
The unpaid version of this program only allows 30 second recordings. I found a crack online for it. Now my Iphone is complete, it is finally like a 'normal' phone with a video camera. It encodes in mp4 format. You record a video and then after you are done with it, its in an uncoded format. It takes about a minute to encode a minute of video so there is no real time encoding to mp4.

Fring
Fring offers VOIP for the Iphone. I came across their application as I was surfing the net. I was wondering if Iphone has such a large sofware community developer out there, someone must have developed a VOIP software for it... and someone just did. Fring offers Skype calls over the Iphone. What this means is, if you have free wifi connection, you can use the fring account on your Iphone to make a call. I haven't tried calling anyone with the Fring yet (no one to call!). Another added bonus of the Fring account is that you get to also add all your chat contacts from MSN, Yahoo, etc.

Meebo
Meebo is actually just a bookmark to a website which allows you to chat online with your MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Gtalk, etc friends. Doesn't work in my office wifi, they blocked all the chat websites. If I really want to chat with someone, I have to walk to One Utama to use their free wifi.

Docs
This is a utility tool. With this program, you can open up the directories in your Iphone. So basically, the Iphone turns into a large storage device (kind of like a thumb drive). To access it, you need to connect to it through SSH. I upload my PDF photoshop tutorial files into it so when I'm in the office editing photos, I can refer to my Iphone.

The Iphone can't open PDF files larger than 6MB so I have to break down the files into every ten pages. Kind of tedious but at least I can read the files.

There are other programs I have on the Iphone like MxTube, Convert (it's a measurement converter), gemlogic, OrbLive, etc. All this are pretty common programs.

I don't really like this OrbLive program as I'm afraid of privacy issues. How it works is you install it on the Desktop PC at home and leave it connected to the internet. It will stream media to your Iphone through the internet. It works better if you have a TV Card tuner so it will allow you to watch TV on the Iphone. I don't have a TV Card Tuner so I can only stream photos, videos and music. I'm afraid someone might get into my Orb account and they'll get my private media files.

I also bought 24, Season 6 on DVD. It comes in 3 disk. All the episodes are highly compressed but that's okay as I was going to convert it to the Iphone format. The conversion program I used, Handshake had a problem recognizing the chapters in the disk. It could only convert the first four chapters and missed out on the other four on each disk. At least now I can watch some TV programs on the Iphone.

It's a bit tedious to watch TV shows longer than 30 minutes on the Iphone, my hand gets tired from holding it and the volume is too low in a noisy room. The only time its fun to watch is when I'm in bed hiding under the covers in the dark. I hide under the covers as the acoustic sounds better. I feel like a little kid again.

Most of the time now I just watch the podcast news video I download. I have CBS Evening news with Katie Couric, ABC podcasts and CNN podcasts. I don't really like listening to audio podcast, I prefer video podcast... much more fun. It's also very distracting. I tried watching it at a traffic light once while driving, I almost missed the green light. I don't think I'll do it again.

Seeding Life

If you ever read the "Hitchiker's Guide To Life" series, you'll know the book is basically about the search for the question to 42. A large super computer comes up with the answer to The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. They never found out the ultimate question to it though, which would give meaning to 42. Earth turns out to be a giant experiment created by aliens to find out this ultimate question. A girl does come up with the question and just as she was about the place a phone call to ask the question, the earth gets destroyed.

Sometimes I wonder, what if the ultimate question actually occurred to me. Today, was such an instance.

Today, I was driving back to the office in the rain thinking to myself when the thought seeped into my mind. It wasn't a drive I had to take if I didn't make a silly mistake today. I had gone to UIA in Gombak for an interview in a colleague's car think how lucky I was as I didn't have to pay for the fuel as it was a long drive. After the interview, I returned to the office in another colleague's car. Only when I reached my office did I realize I forgot to get back my IC from the UIA's guard house. I had to make another return trip in my own car which took an hour both ways. It was on the return trip that something occurred to me.

I was listening to the radio and it was a Public Service Announcement about the environment. The announcer said this was the only planet we have. I thought, hey... there are probably a lot more planets out there a million light years away that we can colonize. We just won't live long enough to see the results. Assuming we haven't mastered the technology of faster than light travel or teleportation, we're never going to colonize another planet similar to earth fast enough so we can see the fruit's of our results. By the time we do get there, life on earth would have already extinguished.

I imagined that by the time if we do send living settlers in a large spaceship, by the time they do reach the planet, they would have evolved into another creature that we won't be able to call humans. If we have put them into statis form, it might work but then it would still be too risky to send something so far for over such a long period of time, we could be talking million of years here, anything could go wrong.

I thought the solution would be this, we would send asteroids out that are seeded with the basic cocktails to start life. Some amino acids stored inside some asteroids or chemicals that were similar to how life started on earth. We'll shoot a lot of these asteroids out to space and hopefully, they'll fall on a new planet similar to earth and after a few million years... humans will appear on it.

That led me to another thought... what if that was what happened to us... what if life on earth was the result on another planet's dominant species seeding life on this planet? What if somewhere out there, is another planet, similar to us with creatures almost similar to humans waiting for us to evolve so that we can develope space travel and then contact them back?

What if we are the result of a planet colonization program? The end result of our destiny is to develope space travel technology or deep space communication tools so we can reach back to our creators and confirm the success of their colonization program.

Or, it could be that, they just wanted to continue life. Our creators were part of an endless string of life seeding programs that span millions of years over millions of planets. Each planet in the string evolves to the point they can seed life on another planet and 'pro-create'.

So the planet in itself becomes a huge living being mass, its society serving as one large sentient being for the planet. Even though each individual on the planet is also a sentient being, this large sentient being feels the need to pro-create and seeds out life to other planets.

Ever seen how plants just want to pro-create? Everything on this planet is about the continuation of life... life will find a way to continue. It will find ways to multiply and continue. My theory states that planets such as earth is a type of sentient being that wants to multiply. It will seek out ways to multiply.

In Buddhism, I learn that there life is an endless cycle of reincarnation... what if this endless cycle of reincarnation is like that? As a new galaxy forms with new planets and life seeds on it... after many years the planet falls back into the sun and life dies out on it. Our essence just continues on another planet that we have seeded, we live out everything again. It's an endless cycle of life.

It was only after endless planets seeded that the Buddha realized how to end this cycle. He saw to the very beginning what it was like and he could see into the future. He found a way to step out of this never ending cycle. Could it be for every planet that was seeded with life, there was a Buddha, someone who saw this trend and wanted a way out of it?

What if 'live' is actually a parasite? What if there another sentient planet out there that is the opposite of us, they want to stop this endless seeding of life on other planets? They could be 'predators' going around the universe destroying planets already seeded with life. Their mission is to end this endless cycle.

Well, that was the thoughts that were running through my head today while I was driving. Driving makes me think a lot.

Goodbye Toni

Today the government raised the fuel prices at the pump to RM2.70, up by 78 cents. There was a huge jam all over as people lined up to pump up their car tanks.

My car was only 1/3 full and I calculated I'll only save RM20 so I gave it a miss considering the long line at the stations.

Everyone is just going to be talking about this fuel price for a long time, however something else caught my attention in the news. It was the passing of Zaitun 'Toni' Kassim. She was an activist I got to know when I was producing a women's talk show. She was outspoken on women's rights and trully insprational to hear. Not many television shows wanted to invite her as some of her ideas were against the conservative norms. At least I'm proud to say I gave her the platform to reach out.

When I first met Toni, she came on my show representing a women's NGO. I can't remember what was the topic but I think it was about family law. A lot of viewers called in to attack her views. I had a hard time screening her calls but deep down I knew I had touched a spot among the viewers. A lot of other female viewers shared her feminist viewed.

I invited her back a few more times because she spoke with clarity and bravery. Through the other 'radical' feminist organizations I got to know many other activist like her. I admire their conviction.



Goodbye Toni, I'll miss you. It was such a shock to hear you were gone and I don't get to call you anymore. Thank you for the good work you have done, and all the people you have helped. I'll remember you for your bravery and standing up for women's rights.

Portable Hard Disk corrupt

Yesterday, I was editing on the AVID system at work. I use this huge 1TB portable Maxtor Hard Disk. It must weigh about 5KGs. Anyway, half way through the editing, I accidentally drag the OMFI Mediafiles folder into another folder. Usually, you can just undo it but I think the folder was so large in size (500G), there was a file error. The whole folder got corrupted.

The data wasn't missing as the total Hard Disk size said there was still 500G of data used. I defragment it and it still didn't find the data. I brought it home and downloaded EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. It takes a very long time to just scan the file directory.

Its got another 3 hours plus to go and its raining now... that means the thunderstorm might trip the power in my house, and when the power goes I have to start all over again! Shit!

I hope the thunderstorm doesn't get too close to my house.

If this fails, all the stuff I ingested for the last month is gone. I'll have to ingest everything again, that's like 30 tapes I think. This better work!