I Forgot!

.. to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I had a quiet Christmas. That would be because on the 23rd one of our relatives suddenly passed away. So no festivities this year.

Still, I did go visiting and it was ok on the whole.

I do like what I got myself for Christmas though. I went out and got myself an AMD64 X2 4800 and a GeForce 8600 GT. Brilliant. I can actually play Crysis and it runs at a respectable detail level at a good framerate. I can play some of my older games at full detail with anti aliasing on.

I've finally got myself a dual CPU PC. It's interesting. I'm sure there's a lot I must learn about multi processor machines. The extra power means exploring stuff that I used to play on low detail and see how it looks like on high detail. The dual processor also helps with FM2008. It's noticeably faster now. The downside to all this extra power is that my computer's temperature has gone up.

My next two home computing projects are:-

1. Dual channel RAM
2. Dual hard disk stripe RAID

These ones are for next year I guess. For some of you, I guess all this techno talk is rather dull. You have my apologies.

No girl trouble this year unfortunately, so no emo posts. Yet.

So I've been keeping myself occupied. I've also been offline for the pass 4 days so it was a complete and much needed time off from... well, everything.

I'll be quite busy in January and will continue to be busy as long as we remain short handed.

I hope the last few days of the year will be good for all of us.

Test Upload using Flickr

A bit tricky this one, took a bit longer than Facebook but the delay was caused by Flickr not Flock. The quick upload feature isn't too bad. Just make sure your photo sharing accounts are logged in before using it to avoid problems. The "web clipboard" is quite useful too.

The problem is the initial setup might be a little too much for some users.

Hopefully in the future, Flock will support more image sharing sites like Picasa.

My conclusion is Flock is an ideal browser for the avid blogger\social website user.

Will do more testing. Yes, I don't have much to do this morning at the office...

Blogged with Flock

Upload to Facebook test

The picture is cool no?

Blogged with Flock

Test Post from Flock

Yo.

Can you see this? So far, Flock's pretty neat as far as support for social stuff. Am still getting used to everything.

It has one weakness so far. No integration for Picasa. If you want to use the built in editor and upload images, it's only doable if you have Flickr or Photobucket or a Flock account apparently.

Anyway, more testing in progress.

Meanwhile, on the left is a screencap with all the social websites supported.

Blogged with Flock

Flock!

I was browsing random stuff on the web when I discovered this really neat post from Mahalo about a browser called Flock. According to the Mahalo post, this browser integrates social networking stuff like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. It apparently comes with a blog post editor. Very cool indeed.

I'm downloading it right now to try out. I use Firefox but we'll soon see how this one stacks up. Anyway, if you're a heavy social website user this should be a very useful browser.

Anyway..

I'm at work today and will be at work tomorrow. Christmas is next week. I have some time off. I won't be having any wild parties. I'll just hang out and rest. It's been a tiring couple of months.

I reinstalled GTA: San Andreas again and playing it with the graphics settings totally maxed out. It's excellent. It's also a little bit easier than I remembered. Probably because the game doesn't lag at all this time. That's what I'll be doing if I'm not going out.

Boy, I'm feeling really tired these days. I feel like going on holiday. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances at work that won't be possible well into next year...

Tired or not, overall it's been a good year like I mentioned in my last post. Hopefully the last week of the year will be just as good.

After that, we'll have January. The month of Mondays....

The Long Road Ahead

This morning the air was very, very clear. It was quite a pleasant drive home, despite the senseless yakking of Mix FM DJs coming from my speakers. Oh yeah, that He Says She Says segment on Mix is a terrible idea and completely not funny. These days we are supposed to promote understanding between men and women, not split them apart by playing the blame game. It doesn't help at all and it's a really stupid idea, in my opinion. Anyway...

It struck me how close we are to the end of what is turning out to be a pretty good year. It is the year I got myself back after so many previous years of being burdened by dysthymia. No, life hasn't gotten any better or easier than it used to be actually. There are still things that suck balls in this life.

The difference is that I no longer feel like wanting the ground to open and swallow me up. Even with all the crap that's happening and the strife of daily existence, at least I don't feel helpless anymore. Like I can make some kind of difference. Whether I can or not is a completely different story though.

I do realize some things can't be changed, certain actions can't be taken back and certain mistakes are terminal and that you will spend your whole life paying for them. I was thinking this morning maybe life is fair after all in the long run. Maybe the reason why I can't get certain things to happen in my life is because I'm just not up to standard.

It's like sports. You can try hard but if you're simply not good enough you can't win no matter how hard you try.

The difference these days is that truths like that no longer plunge me into a dark place. It's the truth after all. Accept it and no need to get upset over it.

Anyway, for me 2007 is a year of drastic change and freedom from the personal prison that I've been in. It is a year to be grateful for and to be pleased about. Christmas is next week and I'm on leave as usual this time of year. I hope to relax and be happy with people who are important to me.

Next year? I hope 2008 is the year I make up for lost time. Despite my own feelings about it, I hope it's not too late to salvage some of those lost plans. It will be a long road again. Only this time, I'm really looking forward to it. This time there is no demon trying to trip me up.

It's nice to not be depressed anymore.

A Documentary Hosted by Jeremy Clarkson...

... only he's not talking about cars this time.




A excellent documentary about the commando raid on St. Nazaire in the 2nd World War.

Impotent Rage...

... is a most unsettling feeling.

More Distractions

I don't have much time to blog these days. Not when I have games like Hellgate London to play.

Produced by the same team responsible for games like Diablo 2, the game is bloody brilliant. It works like Diablo 2 too. Diablo 2 was a simple but oddly addictive game that can be played over and over and over again. Now imagine the same thing but in 3d and in 3rd/1st person perspective.

Just like Diablo2 the object of the game is quite simple; kill demons and save the world.

I'm playing a Marksman character at the moment. No magic, just guns. I love the idea of using guns against demons from Hell. Kinda makes me feel like Blade hehe..

I also like the how the game is set in London.

Anyway for those of you who loved Diablo and Diablo 2, this game will be right up your alley. I'm actually thinking about getting this game original. The thought of playing this thing multiplayer makes me drool.

It'll have to wait though. I have Christmas shopping to do first. Or maybe I could integrate this with the rest of my shopping? Hehehe..

I got this game on Sunday. I also got Crysis. Looks pretty cool too. No rush to play it though, Hellgate will keep me busy for at least a month. I'll probably install it when I change my graphics card, which will happen when my check clears. Which is taking too long to be honest. Must call admin and chase after this, I need my dual core CPU and 8600GT fast!

In other news, I haven't done much lately aside from playing games and drooling over other people's notebooks. Not that I don't enjoy it of course.

Even during my off days I'm kinda tired. Ever since that colleague of ours quite, I've had to come back to work for a good number of days. Tiring. So, I plan to buy something kool with the extra money that I'll be getting.

The question is: What eh?

Ok, must get back to work now...

PS: I've read some very bad reviews about the multiplayer part of Hellgate. So I guess I won't be playing it multiplayer then.

Enemies

http://www.darnmalaysia.com/2007/11/23/morons-of-parliament-demolish-christian-statues-destroy-the-crosses/

I'm an ex-Thomian. Many of my friends, including many Muslims, are ex-mission kids as well. So, obviously this kind of bullshit makes me want to tear my hair out. I'm very certain that many of my former schoolmates aren't happy to hear about this either, regardless of race and creed.

How am I supposed to react to this kind of thing?

How on earth is this kind of talk tolerated in Parliament? No wait, I know why. These people are UMNO stooges. No way is anyone going to do anything about it. If you are an UMNO stooge, everyone and his dog knows that means you can say whatever the fuck you want. Especially when you talk about people who are not UMNO members. Especially Chinese people.

Many people wrote blog posts calling for some kind of action against the two MPs who brought this up. *Snort* You know and I know nothing will be done about this. UMNO bah... If you read all the stuff about this, you will also note that they are not the least bit concerned about people's reaction.

Even more sad is when I think of those people who would actually agree with these two. Poor uncle Max, he tries so hard to create programs to increase racial integration in this country.

Sorry uncle, not if people like these two keep getting voted into office.

If you were to look deeper into the matter, this is just a symptom of an even bigger problem. There are people in this country (specifically those people who vote racist, bigoted idiots like these into office) who hate the fact that they are so many non-Muslims around. I know, I've met them.

We must prevent these people from gaining too much power. The question is, will the sane half of the country prevail? Or will the country split down the middle just like some countries in the Balkans back in the 90s?

To be honest, if it did happen I wouldn't mind at all. At least I won't have to call UMNO bastards my fellow countrymen anymore if that were to happen...

By the way, I know that the Deputy Education Minister already quashed this motion. That's not the point of this post. The point of this post and my unhappiness is the fact that this matter was brought up in the first place...

Truly, this is evidence that brains are optional if you want to be a Member of Parliament.

Finally, I want to say one last thing. UMNO people often say that they know amuk and other violent stuff like that if they are challenged. So I guess if they "amuk" other people just sit still and let them do it? Is that what they think?

Well, I would like to tell UMNO that you people aren't the only ones who can get violent and people are not just going to sit there and do nothing.

Try lah.

At The Fair

Only 7 posts in November. Must do something about that.

Firstly, some news from work. Our new boy has been offered another opportunity to work for far more money. From the outside. Looks like we'll need to look for another new boy\girl. Which also means that I'll have to play teacher to said new boy\girl. Which means work overtime and less time to hang out and do nothing.

Sigh...

I went to the PC fair yesterday. It was BIG. Much bigger than the last one. I'm not sure how cheap it was though. It really doesn't matter much since a lot of consumer computer stuff these days is quite cheapish already to begin with.

It's still amazing how notebook prices have fallen. A brand new notebook costing a mere RM1700 would have been impossible only a year ago. I saw one low spec notebook at the fair going for about that much and when I say low spec I mean relatively speaking. For most people, even the most "sluggish" Celeron or Sempron notebook will have more than enough horsepower to handle most regular computer work. As long as you have enough RAM. RAM is life! Especially if you want to run MS Vista!

The great news is that RAM is so cheap at the moment it's bordering on the absurd. So in conclusion, now is a really good time to get into mobile computing.

Hard disks are extremely cheap these days too. I mean, RM285 for 350Gb? Sounds pretty good to me...

And the various types of flash memory are getting cheaper as well. Except for XD cards which are crazy expensive (1Gb = RM160!). I bought two USB drives yesterday, one for me and one for a friend. I got myself one of those teeny tiny Migo DT 2Gb Kingston mini drives. Despite knowing roughly how flash drives work, I'm mystified at how something so tiny can hold 2-4Gbs of data. It's bloody amazing when you think about it. For my friend, I got her a DT100 1Gb one. Quite nice and very simple.

It just occurred to me that I have a total of 4Gb of space with me all the time, 2 in my phone (M2 card which is smaller than my pinky fingernail) and 2 in the USB drive attached to my keychain...

I also bought a card reader. 15 bucks. Very cheap again.

I bumped into some friends and one of them just ordered a HP notebook. It's one of those tablet ones with the swivelly screen. Good deal at 2.7k. And I just found out yesterday that you can use a stylus directly on the display...

And all those brand new graphics cards...

Yeah, I had a good time at the fair yesterday and I could write thousands of words about it, which I won't because I'm at the office and I have to do some work.

I'm going back to the fair later to arrange an upgrade for my DSL connection. It's getting bumped up to 1Mbps.

A pretty good start to December I think...

Hiatus

I've logged in to Blogger repeatedly over the last few days but can't think of anything to write about at all.

The only thing I can think right now is the weather. It's been raining and raining and raining... It's a good thing I actually quite like rain.

What else eh?

I've been watching Dogfights videos on Youtube. Very cool. The computer generated scenes remind me of games like Ace Combat on PS2 and Il2 Sturmovik which I'm contemplating of reinstalling. I'm holding off for the time being while I wait for my PC upgrade check to come out. Like I expected it's been delayed and hopefully it will come out next week. I'm getting really itchy for high detail on my PC. Once I get the new graphics card I will reinstall something like 100 Gb of old games...

I want to get a card reader. Using Bluetooth to transfer things to my PC is doable but too slow for my liking.

Last night I went to a family dinner. An annual affair featuring ourselves and my dad's sister and extended family. When I was a kid I used to sleep over their house all the time during school holidays.

One of my cousins had this scrawny little daughter some years back. I haven't seen her in a long time. I didn't realize just how long...

Last night I saw her again and she's not scrawny anymore... In fact, she has become quite the hottie. I'm actually quite proud to have a niece that hot, strange as that may sound. I can imagine the number of boys she has to fend off.

She brought along a friend and she wasn't bad either.

From scrawny kid to very attractive young woman in what seems like a flash. If that's not a sign of time flying by I don't what is.

God, I feel so old at the moment.

Near the restaurant we were having dinner at was a gift shop with many giant statues of Jesus and Mary and other Christian paraphernalia. It made me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Yes I'm beginning to feel the Christmas vibe. I hope it doesn't rain as much come Christmas.