On Leave But Working..... Oh no,... again !

Oh no, again, I am on leave but working just as in 2008 and in 2007. :(

Hope this is the last year having to do this. :(

On Leave But Working ... Again !!

On Leave But Working ... Again !!

Just like last year ( see HERE ) , I am officially on leave from Dec 12, 2008 to the end of 2008. However, classes need to be conducted, research needs to be done and Ph.D needs to be completed, so I am still working... :(

Let's hope this is not going to be an annual feature.

Randy Pausch Dies

Randy Pausch (1960-2008), creator of Alice dies at 47.

I have earlier in Sept 2007 blogged about his very inspiring Last Lecture HERE which is so much about living rather than dying.

See the news HERE and HERE.

If you have yet to watch the video, make sure you watch it at http://www.cmu.edu/uls/journeys/randy-pausch/index.html

Life is really fragile indeed.

The world will miss you Randy, rest in peace.

iPhone: Now You See It, Now You Don't!

Here is my iPhone...sorry...WAS my iPhone...



Now you see it, now you don't..it's SOLD for a small profit via http://forum.lowyat.net/. :)

I attended the GDCSE’08 The Third Annual Microsoft Academic Days Conference on Game Development in Computer Science Education which was sponsored by MDeC and Microsoft, and we came back with an Apple product!! :) 4 out of 5 of us who went there from Malaysia bought iPhone at Miami Beach !

The iPhone is very nice and still kind of sad having to sell it. I bought the phone without being sure I really want to keep it or not. At first I thought I could use it using my extra free (as TM staff) Celcom Sim card, but unfortunately it does not work with my 3G Sim card, the non-3G one is okay. After much thought and knowing the fact that 3G version of iPhone is coming out soon, and the fact that I still quite like my one year old Nokia N73 phone, I decided to sell it for a small profit.

Do watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs's presentation about the iPhone software roadmap, iPhone Software Development Kit and iPhone Enterprise Beta Program at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/iphoneroadmap/.

Oh, I have yet to blog about the trip which was from Feb 25,2008 to March 05,2008 on board of the Celebrity Century cruise ship. Shall blog about that when I have some free time, here is a photo:

At Last a Swimming Pool for MMU !!

At last, MMU has a swimming pool, a proper football field and running tracks !!





The new Sport Complex also has indoor badminton and basketball courts. I forgot to take picture of those. The photos above were taken using my handphone's camera, so the qualities are not so good.

Oh yes, a gym too and it is pretty well-equipped.

No news about ticketing system yet, I think they have not decided on that yet. In fact, they forgot to factor in the lifeguards issue and have not built any lifeguard post stations yet for the swimming pool! It seems they have not have the final approval from relevant authority yet because of this, I really do not know the details, so for now it is opened but "swim at your own risk" !

There is also a central Food Court there.

p.s. Kind of remind me that my choice to study in USM long time ago was partially (not entirely of course) influenced by the fact that USM was the only university in Malaysia that has a swimming pool at that time. :)

STUPID Cyberia Management !!

Never call anyone stupid publicly.. but this time I have to make an exception!

STUPID Cyberia Management !!

This video say it all:

At last Cinemas at Alamanda Putrajaya !!

At last GSC Cinemas at Alamanda Putrajaya !!

http://gsc.com.my/RD/upcoming2.asp?search=alamanda_opening :

GSC ALAMANDA PUTRAJAYA OPENING IN APRIL

In anticipation of the opening of the 5-screen GSC Alamanda Putrajaya on April 3, the public will be treated to free movies for five (5) consecutive days starting this Saturday, March 29 till April 2, 2008 (Wed).

Click the link above for more info on how to get the free tickets.

This is great news for Cyberjaya folks. :)

I am back....and I do not exist on March 5, 2008

Don't ever ask me where I was on March 5, 2008 because I do not exist on that day.... well, kind of....

Just came back from a 30-hours journey flying from Miami to KLIA, took off from Miami Airport on Tuesday March 4, 2008 (Miami time) and reach KLIA on Thursday March 6, 2008 (Malaysian time). Feeling kind of weird of having one day of my life seems unaccounted for.. of course equally weird is gaining one extra day during the trip from KLIA to Miami.

Well, I attended the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE'08) ( https://www.msadgd08.net/Main.aspx ) and just landed at KLIA less than 4 hours ago and just reached home less than half an hour ago. First thing I did when I reached home was to check that my fishes are still in good condition, thanks to my niece who feed them during my trip. Second thing i did is to check my email box and found more than 200++ emails. Third thing is writing this blog, the purpose is not to tell the story of my trip which I will do much later, instead this blog entry is to tell everyone that i am back and request everyone to give me some time to read and reply the emails much later and for me to return all the missed calls. Since the conference was on a cruise at the West Carribean Sea, I do not have assess to internet and no phone assess too.

Anyway, more on this later..now got to unpack and take some rest...and figure out what I need to do next...reply emails? ...return missed calls? catch up with tons of overdue works? Hmm.. I think I will just take take a bath and take a nap....

Blessed Christmas 2007 !

Ya I know I know... it is a little late ....

Well, Christmas is traditionally celebrated for 12 days (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas), so I guess it is not too late to wish everyone:

BLESSED CHRISTMAS !

Well, this year I didn't have the time to set up my Christmas tree mainly for the same reason that I set it up very late on Christmas Eve last year ( see http://ypwong.blogspot.com/2006/12/blessed-and-merry-christmas.html.
). However, the real reason I did not manage to set it up at all was because I spent the few days before Christmas and also Christmas Day at my brother's place at Damansara Perdana and my sister's place at Bandar Utama.

Well, Christmas is not about Christmas tree and all the 'celebration', Christmas is not Christmas if it is Christmas in our hearts, the tree and the rest are just the 'fun' factors.

Though there were no Christmas tree at home, this year Christmas was a meaningful one, one which I enjoyed very much. It is a good thing that I escaped from the Siberia Cyberia at Cyberjaya and came to PJ, I attended the Christmas celebration at my younger sister's church on Saturday evening (Dec 22, 2007); on Christmas morning itself, I attended the celebration at Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC), which my the other sister attends. It is especially meaningful that my mother went along with us too, though she attended the Chinese session while me and my sister attended the English session.

Christmas is always a time to refresh ourselves, to reflect on the year about to end and re-evaluate our life goals. Most importantly, it is a celebration of the Greatest Gift of Christ that life can be lived to the fullness for each one of us.

My main Christmas prayers and my prayers through all the days of the years is for my mother and all my family members to know personally and to have a wonderful relationship with this Child that was born on Christmas Day. This has always been my main prayers for more than half my life so far and always will be my main prayers.

To all my friends, my Christmas prayers are also for you, and also for myself that all of us may live our lives to the fullness, wonderfully and meaningfully,

There is this one particularly Christmas Song which I like the most every year, I managed to find one video of it at YouTube, here it is below, enjoy!



Here are the lyrics:

Christmas isn’t Christmas ‘til it’s happens in your heart
Somewhere, deep inside you, is where Christmas really starts
So, give your heart to Jesus, you’ll discover when you do
That’s it Christmas, really Christmas for you.

Jesus brings warmth like a winter fire, a light like a candle’s glow
He’s waiting now to come inside, like He did so long ago
Jesus brings gifts of truth and life and makes them bloom and grow
So welcome Him with a song of joy, and when He comes you’ll know….

That Christmas isn’t Christmas ‘til it’s happens in your heart
Somewhere, deep inside you, is where Christmas really starts
So, give your heart to Jesus, you’ll discover when you do
That’s it Christmas, really Christmas for you.

On Leave But Working !

The picture say it all!























In fact it is the busiest time of the year :(

In case you didn't see this...

Alright... I almost never blog about politics, but today I felt compelled to make an exception!

So many things happened in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur (KL) this afternoon and yet most main stream media was silent about it and gave the diluted "news" later the day as if nothing have happened.

Thanks to the information age, news blockage is the thing in the past.

In case you missed it, here are news coverage (mostly foreign) on the BERSIH Rally to deliver Memorandum to the Agong (King) of Malaysia:

AlJareeza News:


Malaysia Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin's comments on AlJazeera:

, aiks...what he said is so embarrassing that Malaysia has such a minister!

Bernama Mandarin News (at Astro's AEC News Channel 301) :

Oops...in Mandarin, just see the picture if you can't understand.

BBC:


CNN:


NTV7:


If by now you still do not know what the heck all these about, go to:Malaysia-Today website.

Update:
More news at:
- http://jeffooi.com/
- http://www.harakahdaily.net/bm/
- http://www.englishsection.com/
- http://bersih.org/
- http://www.malaysiakini.com/

Other news official information:

- http://www.thestar.com.my/

- http://www.nst.com.my/
- http://www.nanyang.com/
- http://www.sinchew.com.my/

Yellow Day!

My Chinese name is 黄耶斌, 黄 is my surname and literary means yellow.

You may notice, my blog is going Yellow today (Nov 10, 2007) BUT it has nothing to do with my surname.

If you are a Malaysian and you do not know why I am going Yellow today, then let me tell you that THE FACT THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW IS THE REASON WHY I AM GOING YELLOW TODAY. Go figure....

The Winds of Change is blowing everywhere, let's pray for Malaysia, let's hope for Malaysia.

p.s. I am not a heavy blog reader due to time constraints, but I notice a few site that I read turning into yellow today as well, check out:
- Marina Mahathir's Blog (MM is Former PM Tun Mahathir's daughter)
- My colleague John See's Blog
- may add more later.

Hooray! Secret Recipe is now at Cyberjaya!!

Yes, you read it right!

Hooray! Secret Recipe now has a branch in Cyberjaya !!

We discovered it by accident!

Today when me and the new tutor (William) went hunting for food, we decided to go to the relatively new mamak stall opposite Street Mall since it was at about 9pm and there won't be food left at Street Mall.

To our surprise, we saw the Secret Recipe restaurant near that place! Here it is:



Oops... sorry, kind of hard to see since the photo was taken using my handphone.

Here are some photos of the inside:





The location:



It seems it just opened 4 days ago.

I took the "long black coffee" and lasagne, well, this is the first time I took Lasagne from Secret Recipe... nice! The coffee came with a free brownie as a promotional item.

Now we have OldTown, Secret Recipe..... where is KFC, McDonald, Pizza Hut? :)

Flickr Rocks!

I have never used the photos sharing Flickr though I have heard of it long long time ago. Yahoo who owns Flickr had announced that they are closing down their old Yahoo Photos, of course this is a smart move.

With that all Yahoo Photos users were given an option to migrate all their photos to the Flickr site. We were given a free three months Pro Account which allows unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Well, after transferring my photos from Yahoo Photos and trying to upload the fireworks photos, I think i am getting hooked to it, it is really easy to use, upload and share photos, link the photos to the blog, tagging and labelling them etc. It allows viewers to comment on the photos as well!

Really cool !

Okay, here is my flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/wongyaping/

Do visit and leave your comments. Well, not much photos yet, shall upload all my other collections into it. I intend to continue the Pro Account once the free three months is over, it will be USD$24.95 per year. :)

New LCD Monitor!

I just bought a new Dell 22 inches Wide Screen Flat Panel LCD monitor (Model E228WFP). Here it is:












The photo above shows the LCD along with my old 17" monitor. Previously I was using one 21" CRT monitor and one 17" CRT monitor (shown above), When I assembled my PC two or three years ago, I already spent too much money already on the PC that I can't afford a LCD monitor, so I bought the two second hand CRT monitors costing RM450 and RM150 respectively. I was actually waiting for the LCD price to come down so that I can buy a bigger one such as the one I just bought.

The offer price is RM899, quite a good deal, it came with a FREE webcam somemore!. You may see the offer at Dell's Website. I paid extra RM65 to get 5 years warranty instead of the usual 3 years warranty.

Now i got plenty of space to open multiple windows (if not of course I still have my secondary monitor). The quality is not bad but one would need to get used with looking at LCD screen after half a life looking at CRT.

There is actually a 20" model (2007WFP) that is a UltraSharp model, which means much sharper display especially good if you are watching video a lot (not for me) but the response time is slower (may not be as good if you are playing games). Though I do not watch video much on my PC (I got TV and DVD player) and almost never play games, this may not means much to me. Nevertheless the 22" model that I am having now is not as sharp as I hope it is, thus I am now tempted to return this (Dell allows us to return within 7 days) and get the 20" UltraSharp model instead. It is smaller and more expensive, the price is RM1199 (also offer price).

Hmmm... should I change? What do you think? Help me out please... I got only 7 more days to think about this.

Correction: Actually I think the issue is not the sharpness, I think LCDs generally have less color dynamic range and color depth than CRT.

New, new, new.....

Wow.....! It has been so long I didn't write anything. Not that I do not have anything to write, in fact it is because there are too much to write that I hope to find some longer free time to write them... only that nowadays there are simply no such things as real long free time, one simply got to make time to do the little little things amidst all the important things that we need to do.

In the northern hemisphere, the winter is turning into spring and yet though there is no winter in Malaysia, I seems to be hibernating in this blog-space.. hopefully I shall be back to active blogging again. :)

Okay..what happened to me and around me lately....let's see...

New office, new friends, new club house in Cyberjaya, new job .....

Oh okay... the new job part was an April Fool joke. I put up my yahoo status as "At last a new job and leave this place for good." on April Fool day. There were many people asking me (even a week after that day) if I really going to change job or not, some people even fooled by me despite the fact that I was talking with them (on April Fool day itself) about Google's having April Day jokes every year :). In case you didn't know yet, Google's April joke this year was Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) and Gmail Paper !

Second thought, may be I should consider getting new job :) If I do, I think it will not be in Malaysia...! Seriously... !

Speaking of job... I did not choose to teach Computer Programing I next trimester, hopefully I won't be forced to teach it. Why? Well, long story... the secondary reason is that I wish to teach some new course such as mathematics subjects for a change, after all I am a maths guy.. :)

Oh yes, we (Faculty of I.T.) moved into our new building...FINALLY!

Here is a photo of my new office:












It was taken just after I moved in, I will try to post better photos later.

My new office is just in front of my condo, here it is as seen from my balcony:























The new building is quite nice (but not without problem though), do visit us when you are free.. :)

I am still kind of surprise I was able to move so many things over to the new building (Facilities Management Division only move tables and 2 boxes for us) ... aha... that was made possible after I throw (sent for recycle to be exact) many stuff such as this:












Btw, there are many new building in Phase II of MMU including a nice grand hall which was used in the last convo. The new MMU gate would eventually be at this side of the university.

Right in front of the soon-to-be new gate, there is this new Cyberjaya Lake Garden Community Club House (which consist the previously Cyberpark). It is equipped with Golf (driving range only), 2 futsal fields, 3 badminton courts, pool tables, dance studio, swimming pool, lakes, jogging path, basket ball courts, tennis courts and best of all (for me) 2 squash courts !!

The place is too big for me to capture in one single photo, you just have to come here to see it :)

Oh..I did put the photos in my home webserver, here it is:
http://ypwong.homeip.net/CyberjayaClubHouseLaunching/

What else is new...? Oh yes, I bought a new phone (Nokia N73) :












For your information, this is the FIRST handphone that I have ever bought in my whole life !! My first phone was a free phone come with the credit card (CitiBank) and service provider (Celcom) package.

Hey, I got a new 'friend', here he is:












Haha... he is of course Tun Dr. Mahathir, the previous PM of Malaysia. He is more-or-less my neighbour too, his mansion is on the same road as my condo... at the other end of the same road !!

Okay, if you hate him (as many people do), please do not spam at the comments. As for me, I may not agree with many of his policies, but I do think he has been a great leader, a great visionary and without him there is no MMU and no Cyberjaya !!

We were at the MMU 10 years anniversary dinner actually :)

Here are the rest of the photos for that event:
http://ypwong.homeip.net/MMU10thAnniversary/

Oh yes, I was wearing my new batik shirt .. the first and only batik shirt I have :)

I also got a new pair of spectacles :)

Also bought new shoes.

What else is new? Hmm..many things...but I can't write all of them here I suppose... :)

Now I need a new watch, a new LCD monitor and many new stuff .. hey, looks like I really need a new job... :))

Btw, Blessed Easter to everyone !