Still Making Kernels Panic

Birds Of British Columbia Part 4: Sparrows

2010-10-07T01:48:00.001-04:00

Hiding in the bushes were these little sparrows.

This is the white-crowned sparrow.

This is a golden-crowned sparrow.

Birds Of British Columbia Part 3: Geese

2010-10-07T01:43:00.001-04:00

Canadian geese can be vicious birds!

Birds Of British Columbia Part 2: Cormorants

2010-10-07T01:37:00.002-04:00

These are double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus). They were seen hanging out at Coal Harbour. Thanks to the folks at the Flickr Bird Identification Help Group for helping me identify this bird.

Birds Of British Columbia Part 1: Seagulls

2010-10-07T01:35:00.004-04:00

While in Canada, I got to do some bird photography with North American birds! The first bird I noticed was the seagull, which I had never before seen in real life. They were larger than I expected! After a while the novelty of seagulls wear off though.

Vancouver On Video

2010-10-07T01:33:00.000-04:00

This is my last day in Vancouver, so here I have a short video of my trip here. Tomorrow I leave for Alberta, where I'll meet up with my friends and have the second part of my Canadian adventure.

Walking To Granville Island

2010-10-07T01:02:00.003-04:00

After the conference was over, Noldy and I decided to walk over to Granville Island to check it out. After all, according to Wikipedia it was named "One of the World's Great Places" by the Project for Public Spaces. That sounded intriguing enough to us, so off we went!

The walk was scenic, as we got nice shots of Vancouver as we walked and walked.

To get there, we had to cross this very long bridge. It was quite a long walk, and it was already late evening as we reached halfway across.

This is a view from the bridge.

We had reached the other end of the bridge when the golden rays of the setting sun hit this dome.

Here's Noldy!

This is me as we arrived at Granville Island.

Sadly, we couldn't find any establishments open in the evening. Whether it was due to us not being able to find anything, or if things really do close early in the evening on a weekday is up for debate. However, I was there, and I have the pictures to prove it!

More Adventures In Vancouver

2010-10-07T00:57:00.002-04:00

Ah, beautiful Vancouver! Here are some more photos I took, out and about on the streets.

I'm in Canada!

This is the Vancouver Art Gallery, which I now regret not visiting. I didn't have the time, with the conference and all. Also, I had caught a mild flu and was struggling with attending the conference sessions, and they were tiring me out.

This is me near the Vancouver Art Gallery, during a conference break. It's very near the hotel where the conference is being held. You can see my USENIX name tag.

This is Howe Street, in the area where I was staying.

You can find many establishments for food and beverages here, from various cultures. It's a very metropolitan city.

Here's a restaurant that sells Indian food.

OSDI 2010

2010-10-06T22:20:00.002-04:00

This is the reason I went to Canada: The 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation. This is the first time I've attended a systems conference. There were attendees from top universities and major tech companies. This is one of the most cutting-edge systems conferences in the world, and here I was. It felt unreal.

So the past three days have been awesome. It was cool to finally meet the people who wrote all those papers that I cited a long time ago. One of the things I found out was that published work represent old research, and the hot-and-current stuff is something you find out only by attending this kind of conference and talking to people. The most useful sessions were the posters and discussions, where there was a lot of interaction with other researchers.

In the midst of the conference, I spotted Andrew Tanenbaum, the author of my favourite textbooks. Sadly I didn't get a chance to talk to him (no chance of this happening).

Stanley Park

2010-10-04T02:58:00.004-04:00

Stanley Park is a park next to downtown Vancouver (where I was staying). It's one of the loveliest places in the world with a zillion points of interest. Okay, maybe it's more like twenty (according to this map anyway), but I didn't even have time to visit them all! Seagull, Noldy, Pingu and I spent most of our time at Vancouver Aquarium (which is inside Stanley Park), but afterward we walked around the park. Here are some of the photos I took there.

The trees! They're so beautifully red!

A trolley from the Vancouver Trolley Company wheels past us. You can go on sightseeing tours on these (we didn't, though).

Salmon! Mmm, salmon.

More Canadian trees.

This is the Lions Gate Bridge, which we saw as we walked down Stanley Park seawall.

From across the shore, you can see giant piles of sulphur on the opposite bank.

This sculpture is called "Girl In A Wetsuit", and was done by Elek Imredy. It was inspired by the Little Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen.

These are some of the totem poles you can find at Brockton Point in the park.

Here are some more totem poles.

These totem poles are a major tourist attraction at the park.

Next we set off to the Lost Lagoon, with a big sploosy fountain in the middle. After sitting there for a while, we set off to look for dinner.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 4

2010-10-04T02:57:00.003-04:00

Finally, I made a video of the cool animals I saw at the aquarium, complete with a waltzy soundtrack.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 3

2010-10-04T02:55:00.004-04:00

The dolphin show was the highlight of my trip to the aquarium. The three pacific white-sided dolphins they have here were rescued from being entangled in fishing nets. Their names are Spinnaker, Hana and Helen. Apart from being valuable for dolphin research, these three are trained to do acrobatics. Nothing brings out your inner kid than the sight of a somersaulting dolphin.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 2

2010-10-04T02:53:00.004-04:00

Here are pictures from the Aquarium trip. The first picture is a sea lion, and the ones after that are beluga whales with their trainers. Adult beluga whales are white, but younger ones are grey in colour.

The Vancouver Aquarium has a Belugacam available on the web if you want to take a peek at these guys.

Vancouver Aquarium Part 1

2010-10-04T02:50:00.003-04:00

The Vancouver Aquarium is a very large centre that exhibits a variety of marine life. It is located inside Stanley Park. There are dolphin and whale shows, which were my favourite. I have a ton of pictures from the aquarium, and I'll be posting them here in four parts.

Coal Harbour, Vancouver

2010-10-04T02:41:00.019-04:00

Today I met up with Seagull, Pingu and Sarnold and had an adventure around Vancouver. Seagull was gracious enough to take sizable portion of her day to show us around, and I thank her for that. Thanks also to Pingu and Sarnold for showing up in Vancouver!

Our first stop on our adventure was Coal Harbour, which is on the way to Stanley Park from where I was staying. It's a nice scenic walk, and I got some pretty sweet pictures.

Look, I'm in Canada!

The first time I've seen a seaplane in real life! These planes fly around Vancouver a lot.

There are a multitude of boats anchored in the harbour.

It's me again, underneath a shed on stilts.

This was taken at Cardero Park, where some sculptures were being displayed for Vancouver Biennale. It is a biannual ourdoor art exhibition in Vancouver. This particular piece of art is called "Meeting", by Wang Shugang of China.

These are some flowers along the harbour. You can see the city towering behind them.

This is Coal Harbour's Fellowship Bell, with a plaque on it with the names of people and companies that have helped build Coal Harbour and the community around it.

There are more pictures coming soon!

Walking About On A Saturday Evening In Vancouver

2010-10-03T05:53:00.003-04:00

I'm still thrilled about being on another country, another continent, and in such an interesting city. Walking about the part of town where I'm staying, I took some street photos.

It's so nice and cool out here. I could walk for a long time without getting tired at all.

A woman is about to cross the street. Drivers actually respect pedestrian crossing lights here, even at busy intersections! I know that's how it should be, but I come from Penang.

Look, it's the Canadian flag!

Buildings cast shadows on each other as the sun sets.

These trolley busses are powered by overhead electric cables. You can see the funky electric terminal poles on the top of the bus.

At night, a long queue of people line up to watch the Vancouver International Film Festival.

I'm In Vancouver!

2010-10-02T19:44:00.002-04:00

I touched down in Vancouver about an hour ago, and now I'm at the hotel. Vancouver looks so green, even in fall. I guess the Pacific northwest doesn't have interesting weather.

The first thing I notice is that everyone drives the "wrong" way around here, and the cab I took had the driver's seat on the left (that is weird). The city is beautiful, and I can't wait to go exploring.

Transit In Hong Kong

2010-10-02T02:08:00.004-04:00

About half an hour ago I landed in Hong Kong. I am just passing through on the way to Vancouver. This is the farthest I have ever been from home. I feel like Samwise at the beginning of LOTR.

To Canada!

2010-10-01T12:24:00.002-04:00

In a few hours time, I'll be boarding a plane to go to Canada! I'm going to be attending OSDI 2010, then off to Canmore for some adventure.

Canada, here I come!

An Evening With Some White-Bellied Sea Eagles

2010-09-01T11:33:00.002-04:00

The white-bellied sea eagles were flocking near the coast near my house (and the university), with a few pairs of them circling the Malacca Strait and diving for fish. I got some pretty sweet video footage of them, which I'll use for my web documentary (which is hopefully coming soon).

New Arrivals

2010-08-31T13:15:00.002-04:00

From left, I introduce you to Indiana, Paddy and Charlie. I know Indiana is a dog's name, but he looks so much like his grandfather Henry that I had to call him Henry Junior, thus Indiana.

Happy 17th Birthday, Debian

2010-08-16T02:51:00.002-04:00

Happy 17th birthday to Debian, my favourite distro. It's been a while since I hopped off Slackware onto Debian, and I haven't looked back since. The recent freeze of Squeeze means a new release is due soon, and I'm trying out the nightly build and it looks good! You can go to this site and celebrate Debian Appreciation Day by sending a thank you note to the developers.

Inception

2010-07-25T10:07:00.004-04:00

Ok, today I definitely saw Inception in its entirety. This means the theatre showing it last week (GSC Midvalley, Malaysia) did cut it randomly, hence ruining the movie. I advise anyone to avoid that particular establishment, or else you'll be duped into spending 10 bucks on an incomplete movie.

Now that I've seen the whole film, it makes sense. Mostly. The parts that didn't make sense to me do bug me, but that doesn't diminish the movie by a whole lot. I would say this is not Nolan's best movie. However, it's still very remarkably put together and is the best film I've seen so far this year. The story while complex, is pretty straightforward (unlike Memento which required a ton of brain stack space). The following review is extremely spoilerific, so stop reading now and go see the film if you haven't yet (I highly recommend it).

Inception is a heist movie, but instead of money or things our dodgy protagonists steal ideas and thoughts from within dreams. The main character is Dominic Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio), an "extractor" who specialises in pulling secrets from the mind via a shared dream state. This state is achieved with a technology developed by the military in the near future, and is used by extractors to invade the dreams of corporate moguls and perform industrial espionage. Cobb is a man on the run from the law, for he is wanted for the apparent murder of his wife.

Cobb is aided by his team, which includes a point man named Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who researches a target, an architect who thinks up the worlds for the dreamer to inhabit, and other accomplices to help with arranging a covert shared dreaming session where the subject is caught unawares. Inside a dream, a dreamer populates it with people that are 'projections of his or her subconscious'. These 'projections' can attack an invader, if they're not careful. In the universe of Inception, important people are trained to defend their mind using their subconscious, making things tough for the extraction team. Also, Cobb is haunted by memories of his late wife (Marion Cottilard); she appears in his dreams and messes with his job, making things even harder for our idea thieves.

After a failed extraction attempt on a Japanese business tycoon named Saito (Ken Watanabe), the team is offered a job by Saito to do a job for him. Instead of stealing an idea, he wants Cobb to plant an idea into a man named Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) the son of a business rival. Fischer is heir to his ailing father's company, and he would soon inherit it. Saito needs to make him break the company apart, so he would no longer have a powerful competitor. In return, Saito offers to fix all of Cobb's legal problems (he is a powerful rich man after all).

Cobb accepts, and he assembles a team, which would have a few new members. He is introduced to a brilliant young student named Ariadne (Ellen Page) by his old mentor Miles (Michael Caine), who loves the idea of creating worlds in dreams. There is a breathtaking dream sequence where Ariadne folds the world on a whim. She literally folds it. CG is used sparingly in Nolan movies; but when he does use it, it's very spectacular.

Next, Cobb looks for a 'forger', a man who can shift appearances inside a dream. The forger he's looking for is named Eames (Tom Hardy), who leads him to a chemist named Yusuf (Dileep Rao). To plant an idea inside someone's head, the dream team has to create multiple nested layers of dreams (dreams inside dreams). The chemist would make a sedative that is strong enough to keep the target under deep sleep so this can work.

So the team finds out Fischer rides long distance flights regularly, and all they have to do is get onboard with him and drug him to get into a shared dream state uninterrupted. Saito arranges for the flight by buying the whole airline and setting up the cabin so the plan can proceed.

Once the dream begins, things get weird as the characters go down deeper into nested dreams. We get to see weird architecture, freight trains appearing out of nowhere in the city, strange weather, gravity going in all directions, and other stuff you can only find in dreams. This brings up comparisons to the Matrix, but Nolan doesn't copy the visual imagery (which is now cliche), but instead the dream physics has its own unique look and feel.

The movie wins solidly on visuals, which isn't just amazing but also incredibly stylish. The acting is top notch from a very strong cast, and the story is great. Nolan is a storyteller who likes playing with the narrative's structure, and it plays out well here. However there are plot devices that don't really make sense, even if they might be internally consistent. In the movie, there is a place called 'limbo' where the mind enters if a person is killed in a dream where he or she is heavily sedated. In the climax of the movie, Saito and Fischer are killed and end up there, so Cobb and Ariadne decide to go to limbo to look for them. This is achieved simply by using the dream machine again. Why can they do this? Is 'limbo' some global layer so it is shared by default? I'm sure I'm just nitpicking, but I find the presence of jarring fridge logic annoying in an otherwise consistent plot.

In summary, Inception is one fine movie. It wasn't really a huge intellectual puzzle like I expected, but still engaging enough to rise above the other movies that have been released this year. Go see it!

This Belongs In A Museum

2010-07-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

There's a Lego shop in The Gardens, somewhere in KL. The shop is called Brickboy Toys and they had these awesome displays.

It belongs in a museum!

Indiana Jones' brick-pixellated head.

Look, a dragon!

No idea what this is.

The medieval marketplace, the set I wish I had enough parts to build. It'd be great for photo storytelling.

A distressed damsel being forced to walk the plank on a pirate ship.

Part of a Lego town diorama.

More bits of diorama.

I wish I had the space and parts to build something like this.

Google Devfest Malaysia 2010

2010-07-16T11:39:00.001-04:00

I've never been to a Google devfest, so when they had one in KL I had to go check it out. They had some great speakers: Daniels Lee, Patrick Chanezon, Timothy Jordan and Bob Aman. There were talks about Google Maps, Google App Engine (which was why I was interested to go), Google Buzz and social networking stuff. The internet service provided at Technology Park Malaysia was awful, and not even the speakers had reliable internet connections. Despite this, the Googlers managed to put on a good show anyway.

This was the Google Maps talk.

From left is my friend, Patrick Chanezon, myself and Han-son Toh (the Malaysian Google country consultant).

I Am Not Sure If I Saw Inception

2010-07-15T11:46:00.006-04:00

I have been anticipating Inception for many months now, and I got to see it today. It opens in Malaysia a day ahead of the States, so I guess most of my readers probably haven't seen it yet. I wanted this post to be a review of the film, but I can't do it because I strongly suspect that the screening I went to at Midvalley Megamall in PJ was heavily butchered. However I can't confirm or deny this until I have corroborated my experience with other folks.

As it stands, the movie was very interesting, both visually and conceptually. Visually it has parts that look and feel like an M.C. Escher painting brought to life. Conceptually, this a Matrix-like movie but with an extra layer of subtlety alongside the spectacular special effects. However, it feels like it was very badly edited and was missing entire reels of footage. If in fact I was watching the actual final cut of the film, I did not understand what happened,especially near the end. I do however have some theories:

The movie is as terrific as the critics say but something is wrong with me (maybe I am too dumb to appreciate it).

Christopher Nolan has completely lost his magic film-making skills.

The Malaysian censorship board has once again gone crazy scissor-happy and made random edits for no discernible reason.

The cinema operators cut the movie at random points for time to maximise screenings (hence profits).

The first reason is possible, the second is unlikely, the third is also possible but I strongly suspect it's the fourth reason that made my viewing experience so terrible.

I guess I can't say anything else about the movie now, because you can't do an honest review without seeing the final intended edit. Therefore, I'll sadly skip the review for Inception on this blog (for now).

A final word; throughout the film I was constantly reminded of nested virtual machines.

Film News In Brief

2010-07-06T00:00:00.005-04:00

Here are a few film news items I've talked about previously on my blog, some of which are old news now but I felt compelled to mention them anyway in case there is that one person out there who reads only this website for film news and need closure:

The new karate kid remake movie is out for a while and has had generally positive reviews, despite the fact that it sounded like a horrible idea when I first heard about it. In fact, it still sounds like a horrible idea to me, so I never went to see it. Maybe I'll catch it on DVD someday, who knows.

Guillermo Del Toro is no longer directing The Hobbit, and the film itself has spiralled into development hell. Peter Jackson himself might be directing it, if only it had any hope at all of being filmed. The latest news is that Sir Ian McKellen has threatened to walk out on the production if it's not greenlit soon. What a sad situation.

Christopher Nolan's Inception has had early reviews, and the buzz indicates it's as awesome as we hoped it'd be.

A crazy wild rumour has surfaced on the internet that Russell T. Davies is producing a Doctor Who theatrical film, with Johnny Depp as the first choice to play the Doctor. Luckily this is just a rumour and not real news, for if it were real I'd be throwing things at the screen right about now. I know Depp is supposed to be a fine actor, but he just isn't The Doctor. My irrational fanboyism dictates that I must hate the idea.

Andrew Garfield has been cast as Spider-Man in the new upcoming unnecessary reboot of the franchise. I can't say if this is good or bad, but he seems like an okay actor. Fun fact: He was in the Daleks In Manhattan two-parter episode of Doctor Who.

31 Now

2010-06-15T23:56:00.000-04:00

I'm 31 now, which means I'm deep into Dinosaurland. I do have Malaysian citizenship now (hurrah), so I can now use a Malaysian passport and go places. Watch out world, here comes Hussein.

At The Central Station In KL

2010-05-20T14:22:00.003-04:00

I went to Kuala Lumpur again, to attend VMWare's tech day. The event was mostly a product pitch, but it is a useful one to find out what virtualisation people have been up to in the industry, and what's available in Malaysia.

Anyway, on the trip back, I found these awesome automatic massage chairs at KL Sentral:

I sat in one for half an hour (It's one ringgit for every 3 minutes) and you feel great while sitting in the chair (like getting a massage from a Terminator). When you get up, you're still kind of sore all over, but less sore than before you sat in the chair.

Here are crowds of people going about their business at the station. I had a lasagna for dinner, which wasn't bad considering it's train station food.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-04T12:40:00.005-04:00

Here's one hotly-anticipated movie that's not really out yet in North America, but for some reason it opened a week early in Malaysia. With all the hype and expectations piled on it, Jon Favreau had his work cut out for him to make a comic book movie sequel that would be as awesome as Spider-Man 2, or X-Men 2, or the Dark Knight. Now that I've seen it, I can tell you this movie doesn't quite hit that mark. Perhaps I expected too much. Now that I've seen it, I can tell you that it's a pretty decent comic book flick, the level of quality being roughly the same as The Incredible Hulk movie (the one with Edward Norton). It's neither great nor terrible, but entertaining enough to spend 10 bucks on. Spoilers follow, so be warned.

The previous movie already established Iron Man as a hero. So as this sequel opens, we get to see Tony Stark be a loved celebrity, and him being the narcissistic bastard that he is, enjoys every minute of the attention he's getting. However, things aren't as happy as they seem for our techno-genius hero; his arc-reactor is slowly poisoning him to death with... lethal radiation or something. The problem is, despite his genius he can't find a workaround. Knowing that he is slowly dying, he loses control and becomes a crazy drunken party animal, much to the chagrin of his friends who know nothing of his illness. In the meantime, a Russian guy (Whiplash from the comics) who hates the Starks is building an arc-reactor of his own, and is out for blood. By the end of the first act, Whiplash and Iron Man fight it out on a racetrack in a spectacular action scene. Iron Man wins, the Russian is captured, and the second act begins.

The middle part of the movie is when the writing begins to falter, as we get to see Tony Stark go nuts. This is what bothers me about the story. Part one established that Tony is a changed man from his hostage ordeal. While he is still a crazy and smug party animal (and enjoying it), deep down he has developed resolve and determination to do what is necessary to make things right. Part two throws this out the window; Tony has apparently lost his inner hero. While this could have been an interesting character development if done right, it was an unconvincing and jarring transition for me. The crazy-Tony parts just didn't work.

By act three, Tony has figured out how to fix his arc-reactor so that it doesn't harm him, and the process of doing so depends on a McGuffin that felt incredibly forced and hokey, even for a comic book movie. Again, the film loses points here. Once Tony's pacemaker is all fixed up, he once again becomes heroic and it's final battle time! The end battle is big, loud and explosive, like you'd expect a summer action movie to be.

So that sums up the Iron Man 2 experience; big, loud and explosive. It's visually impressive, but fails in the character development department.

If you watch this movie, make sure to stay until after the credits. You'll get to see a familiar-looking item.

How To Train Your Dragon

2010-04-04T23:03:00.004-04:00

Most of my friends know that I will watch any movie with a dragon in it, no matter how horrible it is. I've endured Reign of Fire, Dungeons and Dragons and Eragon (I secretly enjoyed this one though). They were atrocious movies, but there were dragons so I just had to watch them. Come to think of it, there have been very few truly good dragon movies. The best one I've seen was Dragonheart back in 1996. Well, the best one until now.

"How To Train Your Dragon" is an animated film from Dreamworks, and is now my new favourite dragon movie. Usually, Dreamworks' animated movies aren't as good as the ones from Pixar, but with this movie Dreamworks hits the mark. This is a spoiler-light review of the movie, but stop reading now if you want to know nothing about the story.

The film is about a young viking named Hiccup who lives in a village on an island that's plagued by marauding dragons. Hiccup isn't a model viking as far as the village is concerned, being a bumbling nerd. This is made worse by the fact that his father is the leader of their viking tribe, and he isn't too proud of his son. It is every viking's ambition to kill a dragon, and Hiccup tries to prove his worth by trying to help out when defending the village from dragons, and failing comically in the process. One night, out of sheer luck, he manages to capture a dragon. He initially wants to kill it and prove himself a worthy warrior, but as he takes out his knife, he can't bring himself to kill a trapped creature. He frees the dragon instead, and they become friends. Suffice to say, this eventually causes tensions in the viking village, and estranges Hiccup from his father. The driving plot of the movie is how Hiccup's journey to prove that dragons and humans can peacefully co-exist.

The movie strikes a chord with me; Hiccup's bonding with his animal friends (the dragon reminds me so much of my cat, Henry), of being an outcast and having to prove himself and the overall theme of pacifism that threads through the film makes it a solid and satisfying (to me, at least). Sure, this kind of story has been told before countless times, but the execution is what makes or breaks the tale. Many critics have praised the stunning 3D visuals, but that's just icing on the cake. It's a sweet and fun movie, and I recommend it for all ages.

A Bird Near The Window

2010-03-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

I got the above shots of a female olive-backed sunbird from inside a window at the new workplace. She was frantically trying to get inside the room, for some strange reason. In the third picture you can see her peeking in from the other side of the glass. This is probably the best shots I've taken of the olive-backed sunbird yet.

Meet The Kitties

2010-02-05T07:48:00.000-05:00

From top, clockwise: Heathcliff Salvatore, Lucky, James Oscar Salvatore, and Hermione Jean Salvatore.

Heathcliff, Oscar and Hermione were born last August to Pepper (who has since disappeared), and Lucky just wandered into our yard and decided to stay. One day some callous idiot ran over Lucky (probably with a bicycle), but she managed to survive and we've been taking care of her ever since.

Getting Wireless To Work In USM Penang

2010-01-14T21:28:00.001-05:00

Happy new year!

I have a new job, and it's keeping me kind of busy, so I won't be blogging much in these next few months. I got a laptop from the workplace, which came with Vista. I didn't really want to format a work laptop, so I even kept it for 24 hours. After that I couldn't stand it any more, and if a computer was to be useful to me, it can't be running Windows. Therefore, I zapped it and installed Debian. One of things I had to figure out was how to get the wireless to work inside the university, so here's how to do it.

This is for my own reference, as the IT centre in my university doesn't know much about Linux and can't really support it. However, making it work is a breeze.

This assumes you're running Debian or something that works like Debian, and have wireless drivers, firmware and related utilities installed. You'll need wpa_supplicant and optionally, ifscheme.

Just stick this in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:


network={
    ssid="USMHotspot"
    key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
    eap=PEAP
    phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
    identity="yourid"
    password="supersekritpassword"
}

Replace 'yourid' with the ID that the IT centre assigns to you, and 'supersekritpassword' with the corresponding password.

Since I use ifscheme to switch between networking profiles (great tool btw, comes with Debian and examples on how to use it is here).

The entry I have in /etc/network/interfaces is as follows:


iface wlan0-usm inet dhcp
    wpa-driver wext
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
    name USM

Whenever I want to use the USM wireless, I just type ifscheme usm; ifup wlan0 and I am done!

Putrajaya and Petaling Jaya

2009-12-29T10:59:00.001-05:00

So yeah, I had to go to Putrajaya again, this time for some good news. After that business was done, I headed to the Midvalley Megamall in Petaling Jaya to have lunch before I go back home.

I had lunch in the food court. It was lunchtime and packed with people. Office workers in neatly pressed shirts and trousers, teenagers in odd fashions hanging out, and next to my table an old man is exasperated trying to get a young boy to eat his lunch.

I took a trip around the comic book store here, where the shelves were lined with overpriced comics. There were tables with little dioramas depicting warhammer 40000 battles.

Kites In The Wind

2009-12-20T04:38:00.001-05:00

I am at the seaside again. It's a weekend so there are a lot of people here, enjoying the view and the breeze. It's windy, and there are folks flying kites. I'm here to buy dinner at the mall nearby, but it's always nice to stop by the seaside.

Avatar

2009-12-18T10:50:00.004-05:00

I must admit, the only place I've read about James Cameron's new movie was the nerd news site Topless Robot, and one of the editors of that blog has preemptively hated it to no end. I usually trust nerd news sites to give me good movie recommendations, so with all the negative stuff I've read, I decided to pass on it. However, I managed to catch Avatar today with a friend who was very excited about it, and thus I thought I should give it a chance (James Cameron usually delivers an entertaining movie). I went in with no expectations and was I glad I watched this movie. It was a spectacular visual feast. There are minor spoilers in this review from this point on so be warned.

The story is about interplanetary settlers from Earth who discover a rare metal called Unobtanium (does James Cameron read TV Tropes?) on a planet called Pandora. The planet itself has an indigenous sentient species called the Na'vi, who look like tall blue-skinned humanoids. They are a gentle people who live harmoniously with nature, and the humans need them to get out of the way so they can plunder the planet's natural resources. A team of scientists (led by a woman named Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver) who want to study the native population created an avatar program, which lets humans thought-control organically-grown, genetically engineered alien bodies that resemble the natives. These avatars let the humans mingle with the local population, and a crippled ex-marine named Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) is sent out with the scientists to learn about the Na'vi culture in order to gain their trust (and thus try to persuade them to relocate from the mineral-rich areas). Jake meets a Na'vi girl named Neytiri (voiced by Zoë Saldaña), who takes him back to her clan and teaches him about their culture. Soon Jake finds himself in love with Neytiri and her people, and thus is at odds with his superiors who really just want to mine the planet.

Now, the story is something I've seen countless times before (it feels like Dances With Wolves... IN SPACE!) and I can see all the plot twists from a mile away. However, the execution is so beautiful that you can forgive Cameron for it. The planet and all the alien life on it is a magnificent treat for the eyes. The love story is a tad cliched, but it's sweet and it works. I have to give the filmmakers credit for the sheer amount of imagination that they poured into the creation of this alien world, with all the plants and creatures on it living in a vibrant ecosystem that looks so real onscreen.

I haven't seen many good movies this year, but this is definitely one of the best.

Sketch

2009-11-29T11:44:00.003-05:00

Eleven years ago, three friends and I went up Penang Hill, and spent the day having adventures there. We took along 2 cameras, and took about 4 dozen shots (they were film cameras). We discovered this creepy building near the top. It wasn't a house, but perhaps a motel or something. It was deserted, and my friends commented on how it'd be a perfect shooting location for a horror film. The photos from that trip were stolen, but I did manage to sketch the house from the photo we took. I recently found the sketch in an old notebook, so I scanned it in and uploaded it here.

Richard M. Stallman And Brian Aker At FOSS.my 2009

2009-10-25T23:14:00.004-04:00

I had a great time at FOSS.my 2009. The speakers were great, and I learned a lot from the technical talks. RMS also came down, and here's a lively exchanged I recorded with him and Brian Aker on dual-licensing of GPL-ed software.

Cat And Mouse

2009-10-22T11:02:00.001-04:00

This cat sniffed the mouse, prodded him a bit, and simply let it go. I guess the kitty was feeling generous today.

Putrajaya

2009-09-14T22:58:00.004-04:00

I took a trip to Putrajaya over the weekend for some official business. It was tiring, but I got some pretty neat photos.

Talk Accepted At FOSS.my 2009

2009-08-19T10:39:00.000-04:00

I just got an email notifying me that I've been accepted to speak at FOSS.my again this year.

My talk is going to be about System Z. Now I just have to write it...

Oriental Magpie Robin At Lake Gardens

2009-07-15T09:22:00.002-04:00

Today we went to Kuala Lumpur Lake Gardens, where I found this very friendly magpie robin. These are my best magpie robin pictures I've taken up to now.

Malaysian National Zoo

2009-07-14T11:11:00.001-04:00

I'm in Kuala Lumpur on vacation, and today I took a trip to the national zoo. However, it rained shortly after I arrived, and I ended up taking pictures of wet, grumpy animals. Here are some of the photos.

30

2009-06-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

I turn 30 this year. I look back and I realise I need to get more publications out!

I had some good pizza for dinner today :).

Star Trek

2009-05-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

I wrote this on my Flickr page when the movie came out, and I've copied it nearly verbatim here (my blog was getting neglected thanks to my photo projects).

Today I saw the new Star Trek movie which was done by J.J. Abrams. When I first heard they were recasting Captain Kirk and his crew, I thought I was going to hate it. Throughout the production of the movie, I heard of the changes they made and like a good fanboy, I fumed online about the little details and how J.J. Abrams is going to "ruin everything". When the first trailers came out with a young Jim Kirk driving a car off a cliff I was furious. How could they do this? This didn't look like Star Trek! I was ready to hate the film.

Then the second trailer appeared. I saw glimpses of Captain Pike, and the new starship, and the awesome space battles; I was intrigued, and the sight of the Enterprise gave me goosebumps.

Today I went in the theatre excited and nervous, and I spent the next two hours thrilled. Initially, I was unsure about the casting of James Kirk, but Chris Pine did a rather good job portraying a young, cocky version of the famous captain without doing any Shatner impersonations. Simon Pegg as Scotty was pure casting win, and Karl Urban isn't too bad as Bones McCoy. A lot of people liked Zachary Quinto's Spock, but it still felt a little jarring for me to see Sylar as a Vulcan. However, we still got to see the classic Spock as Leonard Nimoy returned to reprise his famous role again on screen after all these years.

As for the story, I have to hand it to J.J. Abrams for having the guts to do what he did. For a long time Star Trek has been languishing in a stagnant pool. lacking imagination and innovation (I blame Berman and Braga for this). Abrams took Star Trek and made it his own, rebooting the franchise in a manner that's plausible within continuity.

With this reboot, everything that we know about the Star Trek universe has been reset. There are events that change the course of history of the future irrevocably, and at one critical point in the movie something cataclysmic happens (you'll know when you see it) and my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe what had happened. The shockwaves from this movie will be reverberating throughout the discussion boards of Star Trek fans for many months to come.

The movie isn't without flaws. The product placement is glaringly out of place in a future where money is no longer used (and yet communicators are Nokia brand!) and some plot points are glossed over and inadequately explained (such as Spock's story of what happened in the future).

I don't think any other summer flick that follows can top this one for thrills. It was a fun movie, and it's well worth the price of admission.

Adventure Van

2009-04-30T09:24:00.001-04:00

I spotted this on the road as I went to the tax office in downtown Penang to send my forms. It looks like a big adventure van, with "Austria" written near the bumper. These people were definitely from out of town (left-hand drive). From the look of their vehicle, they are probably globetrotting adventurers, going round the world in their van.

Penang Hill

2009-04-11T10:29:00.001-04:00

It's been years since I last went up Penang hill. Today I went with my mom, and took a lot of pictures.

The train is working again after months of being under repair.

Another train passes by ours.

The view of Penang is breathtaking.

An older train car is on display on top of the hill.

The tall building is KOMTAR, Penang's administrative complex.

Huge spiders are everywhere on the hill.

A monkey sits and watches the tourists.

A Brahminy Kite Flies Overhead

2009-03-21T11:22:00.000-04:00

I got a pretty close shot of this brahminy kite as I was wandering around campus. This was near the football fields. I think there is a nest close by.

A Few More Bird Sightings

2009-03-20T10:54:00.000-04:00

I have a huge backlog of bird photos to upload!

Here are a few:

A yellow-vented bulbul sits in a tree in my garden.

Morning meal search time for this white-breasted waterhen.

This kingfisher shows us which way we should drive.

This olive-backed sunbird was chattering away at a university cafeteria.

I saw a little heron walking in a stream.

Here's a new one for this blog! A little egret!

When I first got a picture of a dollarbird I thought it was fantastic and rare. Now I find out they aren't all that rare after all. I see these birds on the hill at my university every morning.

Another Round Of Bird Photos

2009-02-22T12:58:00.005-05:00

This yellow-vented bulbul is sitting on a lamp post, but from this angle it looks like it's thwarting the invasion of tiny aliens in tiny flying saucers by sitting on their mothership.

A brahminy kite launches itself from a treetop in the distance to look for breakfast.

Here's another shot of a coppersmith barbet.

Here's a black-naped oriole.

The last two birds were sitting in a tree at VC Rock in USM. This is the last time we'll see pictures of that tree, for it was cut down over the weekend. It's a pity, since that was a favourite perch for many birds, and the leaves were sparse enough for me to see the birds in the branches. Sigh. Another tree falls victim to human axes. One of these days I'd like to see the trees get their revenge (like the ents in The Two Towers).

Debian Lenny Released!

2009-02-15T09:34:00.004-05:00

Oh, hey! New Debian stable! :)

From: Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [email blocked]
To: debian-announce@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:58:48 -1100

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released press@debian.org
February 14th, 2009 http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian
GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed "Lenny") after 22 months of constant
development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports
a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME,
Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with
the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld
systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total
of twelve architectures are supported: Sun SPARC (sparc), HP Alpha
(alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel IA-32 (i386), IA-64
(ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips, mipsel), ARM (arm, armel), IBM
S/390 (s390), and AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" adds support for Marvell's Orion platform
which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include
the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox
Pro. Additionally, "Lenny" now supports several Netbooks, in particular
the Eee PC by Asus. "Lenny" also contains the build tools for Emdebian
which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit
embedded ARM systems.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" includes the new ARM EABI port, "armel".
This new port provides a more efficient use of both modern and future ARM
processors. As a result, the old ARM port (arm) has now been deprecated.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K
Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop
environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the
GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7,
Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove
2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6,
MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel
version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl
5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios
3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11,
and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from
over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with
most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS
filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support
for Adobe(R) Flash(R) format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash
plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such
as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time
several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as
first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of "goplay", a
graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and
descriptions for games in Debian.

The availability and updates of OpenJDK, GNU Java compiler, GNU Java
bytecode interpreter, Classpath and other free versions of Sun's Java
technology, into Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 allow us to ship Java-based
applications in Debian's "main" repository.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of
available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian
Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the
standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the
builds of several security-critical packages. Various applications have
specific improvements, too. PHP for example is now built with the Suhosin
hardening patch.

For non-native English speaking users the package management systems now
support translated package descriptions and will automatically show the
description of a package in the native language of the user, if
available.

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as
DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network. GNOME is the
default desktop environment and is contained on the first CD. Other
desktop environments - KDE, Xfce, or LXDE - can be installed through two
new alternative CD images. Again available with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 are
multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting installation of multiple architectures
from a single disc; and this release adds Blu-ray Discs, allowing the
archive for an entire architecture to be shipped on a single BD.

In addition to the regular installation media, Debian GNU/Linux can now
also be directly used without prior installation. The special images
used, known as live images, are available for CDs, USB sticks, and
netboot setups. Initially, these are provided for the amd64 and i386
architectures only.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in
many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from
more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some
devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via
Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also
received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose
front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode.
The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to
63 languages.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the
recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see Debian GNU/Linux on CDs [1] for
further information. It will soon be available on DVD, CD-ROM and
Blu-ray Disc from numerous vendors [2], too.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 from the previous release, Debian
GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed "Etch") are automatically handled by the
aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a
certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always,
Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without
any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release
notes [3] for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on
installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and
translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

1: http://www.debian.org/CD/
2: http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors
3: http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/releasenotes

Dedication
----------

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian
Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident.
Thiemo was involved in Debian in many ways. He has maintained several
packages and was the main supporter of the Debian port to the MIPS
architectures. He was also a member of our kernel team, as well as a
member of the Debian Installer team. His contributions reached far
beyond the Debian project. He also worked on the MIPS port of the Linux
kernel, the MIPS emulation of qemu, and far too many smaller projects to
be named here.

Thiemo's work, commitment, broad technical knowledge and ability to share
this with others will be missed. Thiemo's contributions will not be
forgotten. The high standards of his work make it hard to pick up.

About Debian
------------

Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system, developed by more than a
thousand volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the
Internet. Debian's dedication to Free Software, its non-profit nature,
and its open development model make it unique among GNU/Linux
distributions.

The Debian project's key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication
to the Debian Social Contract, and its commitment to provide the best
operating system possible. Debian 5.0 is another important step in that
direction.

Contact Information
-------------------

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at
http://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.

Painting Your Cat In Photoshop

2009-02-12T12:03:00.014-05:00

There's a nice little gimmick you can try with Photoshop to colour your photos using the palettes of famous paintings. It's a simple three step process:

Open both your photo and a picture of the painting you wish to use. Make sure focus is on your target photo.

Go to Image->Adjustments->Match colour and select the painting in the "Source" pull-down menu near the bottom.

Fiddle with the sliders (luminance and colour intenisity) until you get the effect you want, and then hit OK.

I used the photo of Schröder above to try it out.

This picture uses the palette of René Magritte's The Treachery of Images. I was tempted to add a caption to it that says "Ceci n'est pas un chat".

This one uses J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire. It brings out the colours of the flowers decorating the couch cushion covers, although Schröder looks like he's been sprinkled with mustard powder.

Andrew Wyeth's Winter 1946 provided the palette for this picture. Andrew Wyeth passed away recently. He was a popular realist painter who loved to paint pictures of the countryside.

One caveat to this is that you can't really get a good colour match if you don't have a good scan of the paintings you want to use as your palette source. Since I got all of my source images off the internet, I don't really know if I got the images right in terms of colour. Regardless, it's still a fun thing to try if you have a copy of Photoshop CS (or better), or other software which has similar functionality.

Pied Triller

2009-02-09T07:05:00.001-05:00

I took these pictures last month, but I had no idea what this bird was until now. It's a pied triller (Lalage nigra), according to David Gardener (thanks for the identification help).

A Tribute To Robots On TV

2009-02-08T12:40:00.005-05:00

There should be more robots in television. I remember a whole bunch of them on TV when I was growing up, and how they captured my imagination back then.

Therefore, here is a list of all my ten favourites in no particular order. Some of them are rather obscure now. Click on their names to see a picture.

Lt. Cmdr. Data
Data was a robot Starfleet officer on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was an android, which means he had a human-like appearance. He is supposed to have a "positronic" brain, which is a homage to Asimov's robot stories. Data didn't have much in common with literary positronic robots, but the shout-out to Asimov was enough to impress me and thus I found the whole show that much more endearing.

Optimus Prime
Optimus Prime was more than just a giant animated toy. He was an inspiring leader to a generation of kids who watched The Transformers with rapt attention each week, and wept when he died in the animated movie. There are a whole bunch of memorable characters from The Transformers show, but Optimus is one everyone loves.

Vicki
Vicki was a robot girl on Small Wonder, a very bad 80's sitcom about a family with a robot daughter. Despite the fact that it was awful, I watched it anyway because I'll watching anything with either robots or dragons in it. I can still remember the theme song to this show, and it's one of those songs that get stuck in your head and make you want to scream.

Cameron
Terminators are probably the most badass robots ever invented. If you ask me, a Terminator TV series is long overdue. I was thrilled to know there would be a series about Sarah and John Connor and their war against Skynet. It's too bad Arnold is too old and too busy being a governor to do any more terminating, but Summer Glau makes up for it. Cameron is a small-framed terminator who is surprisingly tough. She is sent back in time to protect a whiny, emo, John Connor and unlike uncle Derek, she doesn't mind his whining. Sometimes I hear the Small Wonder theme play in my head whenever I see Cameron. It's an evil, infectious theme.

R2D2
Despite being a movie character, R2 makes the list because he had his own animated TV show together with his buddy C3P0 in Star Wars: Droids. It was an entertaining little cartoon, and I watched every week as the droids go from misadventure to misadventure. In the cartoon, R2 would pull out a variety of gadgets we never saw in the movies (rocket thrusters were not included though).

W1K1
Jason of Star Command was a short-lived live action TV show which felt a lot like a rip-off of Star Wars. The protagonist looked a lot like Han Solo, and he had a little pocket robot named W1K1. I watched the show just to see W1K1. I remember nothing else about it, although the internet tells me James Doohan was in it too. Come to think of it, W1K1 is a pretty cool name for a robot. Nowadays we can pretend that it's an allusion to Wikipedia.

Roboz
There was a show with a boat called Riptide back in the 80's, and on that boat was an orange robot named Roboz. Again, this is another TV programme I watched just because a robot was in it, and I also remember nothing else about it. Roboz didn't do much though. I wonder why I found him so fascinating as a kid.

KITT
KITT was an AI installed in a black Trans-Am in Knight Rider. KITT was both a robot and a cool 80's car, which made him doubly awesome. He was sarcastic, loaded with weaponry, and just looked badass. There were several attempts to reboot the series, the latest of which has a new KITT which is an ugly Mustang that manages to look less futuristic than the one from the 80's. Nice going, TV producers.

Bender
I haven't seen too many episodes of Futurama, but from the few I have seen, Bender has always been incredibly funny. There is just something so wrong yet so right about a dysfunctional, sarcastic robot. When I get the chance, I should catch up on my Futurama, if only to watch this guy.

K-9
There have been numerous robots on Doctor Who, most of them villains. However, K-9 is a lovable robot dog companion for the Doctor which predates the Aibo by a few decades. I'm pretty sure I've seen him in the hazy memories I have of the old Doctor Who show, since I was thrilled to see him again when he made an appearance in the new series with David Tennant.

There are other popular TV show robots out there like the Cylons and the robot from Lost In Space, but sadly I have never seen those shows.

This has probably been the dorkiest post I've ever made.

Bird Sightings This Week

2009-01-23T19:39:00.005-05:00

This week I have attempted to record more birds on video, so that I can compile them into web shorts and put them up here. In between the video shots, I took a few stills too. I've been mainly using my still camera (DSC-H2) for this, but I've also got a video camera on loan for a bird film I am making. We'll see how that project goes. In the meantime, enjoy these shots.

Olive-backed sunbirds are small and jumpy. They are hard to photograph unless they're perched high up on some antennae or treetop and chirping their lungs out.

"Astro" is the name of the satellite TV subscription service in Malaysia. It's so common that "everyone" has it, that is everyone who wants to fork out about 80 bucks a month for old, repetitive shows. Clearly this white-throated kingfisher doesn't think much of the service either, as it looks like he's pooped on the Astro dish.

Look, a team of vigilant superhero birds! On the top of the branch is the famous and heroic dollarbird (dum da da dum!) and the smaller guy at the bottom is his sidekick, coppersmith barbet!

Brahminy kites are a common sight on campus. This one is carrying a twig, probably to build a nest with.

This is a common sparrow, and he looks angry. Maybe he hates being photographed.

Roland Emmerich To Direct Asimov's Foundation

2009-01-17T09:16:00.002-05:00

Roland Emmerich, the creative genius who brought us critically-panned travesties such as "Godzilla" and "The Day After Tomorrow", is set to direct a film treatment of Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

Was it because Steven Spielberg was unavailable? Why does Hollywood do this to us? Why?

Hollywood Is About To Remake The Karate Kid

2009-01-13T22:35:00.006-05:00

First off, I am not categorically opposed to the idea of remakes. Some old premises and ideas that weren't done very well in the past can be reinterpreted and modernised. The new Battlestar Galactica TV series is an example. What was originally a cheesy rip-off of Star Wars has now be re-imagined into a slick new show. However, some things should just be left alone. Among those things is The Karate Kid.

I don't just say this because it's a childhood favourite of mine. It's because there really is nothing more you can add to that movie that wasn't said in the original. There is no need to reinterpret or modernise any of the themes; the movie was about fathers and sons, friendship and honour.

Now, not only is the film being remade, but it seems the producers want to mangle it in the most horrific ways imaginable. According to Slashfilm, Jaden Smith will be the lead actor, Jackie Chan will play Mr. Miyagi, and it'll be set in the "exotic locale" of Beijing. These production choices are highly questionable; Jaden Smith is too young, and I can't picture Jackie Chan as Mr. Miyagi. Actually, I can't imagine anyone else besides Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. It seems disrespectful to the late Mr. Morita to recast him at all, let alone recast him horribly.

What are the characters doing in Beijing, anyway? It's as if they cast a random Asian man who does martial arts, and a random location in Asia so that it looks "exotic". The director for this train wreck of an idea is Harald Zwart, the guy who helmed The Pink Panther 2 (which is a sequel to another bad remake).

I know it's not right to judge a movie before it's even made, but I have this sinking feeling in my gut that it's going to be the worst remake ever conceived. If Hollywood's history of remakes is any indicator of future production quality, then this film is doomed to be awful.

Lunar Photography Attempt III

2009-01-11T10:59:00.005-05:00

Tonight, there is a full moon and the skies are clear; a perfect opportunity to attempt lunar photography. The above picture was taken at around 11pm. Using aperture priority, F value was set to f/3.7, shutter speed was set to 1/1000, spot metering was used and the sensitivity was at ISO 200. As usual, I used my tele lens attachment with a focal length of 432*1.7 mm.

My previous attempts at lunar photography can be found here and here.

Chasing Kites

2009-01-10T10:05:00.003-05:00

It was a windy day today. I went chasing kites; the kind that has wings, feathers and fly on their own. A couple of brahminy kites were gliding on the winds, circling above VC Rock and making close passes over the treetops.

The brahminy kite is quite a beautiful bird, silhouetting the sky with its chestnut wings spread out and its sharp eyes looking down. They are a common sight in this part of the world, and they are both hunters and scavengers.

Reading List

2009-01-04T12:06:00.003-05:00

There's a long list of books I want to read (or re-read), and it's one of my resolutions this year to read more. The stack of books in the above picture is what I'd like to go through eventually. At topmost priority are my tech books, and the Terry Pratchett books that Megan was nice enough to send to me (thanks again!).

New Doctor Announced

2009-01-03T13:58:00.003-05:00

Matt Smith is the new Doctor in Doctor Who. We don't get a lot of UK television here, so I haven't seen him before. However he is the first doctor that's actually younger than me. This is so wrong. It is warping my brain. I tell myself that even though he resembles a guy born in 1982, he is over 900 years old. That makes me feel less old.

Tumblr

2009-01-03T01:16:00.007-05:00

Here is where I got myself one of those tumblelogs, which are less organised blogs you throw random junk on. The idea was pioneered by Anarchaia, and every other tumblelog is a rip-off of that site. So now I have one too. You'll also find an RSS feed to it among the little blog boxes on the right. Sometimes fun links get posted to irc (ag has consistently done this over the years, well done) and I wouldn't want my readers to miss out on that. All twelve of you. Okay my tracker says 11616 but I'm sure that's a rounding error. Also because the internet needs more random junk.

2009

2008-12-31T11:11:00.005-05:00

Happy year rollover day!

Remember, there will be a leap second added at the end of 2008 (at midnight UTC), so reset your atomic clocks accordingly.

Readership Statistics At The End Of 2008

2008-12-31T08:27:00.005-05:00

I've been using a webtracker since 15 April 2007, and I thought it'd be interesting to see the reader demographics of this blog. Some of my friends read it (thanks folks!), and some random people inadvertently stumble upon it. So far, I've gotten 11616 unique visitors, give or take some margin of error as webtrackers aren't terribly reliable.

Readership By Country

Here, we can see that most of my visitors are from the United States. Malaysia ranks second place, the UK scores third, Canada gets fourth, Australia is fifth and we have a whole bunch of other countries following behind. I've grouped the countries with a visitor ratio of less than 1% into a clump called "Other", which accounts for 16.75% of all visitors. For a map view, you can check out this site, which also tracks my visitors.

Readership By Browser Type

Gecko is the core of the Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox, Iceweasel, Seamonkey and Epiphany. Gecko is the winner here, and IE is second place. As far as my blog is concerned, Microsoft just lost the browser war. Neener.

Readership By Operating System

There's quite a number of Linux/Unix and Mac users out there visiting my blog. Maybe it's because of some of the *nix-oriented posts I have. Still, I'd say most of my blog is now general interest rather than tech-specific.

I used Google's chart API to dynamically render the pie charts you see above. If you think this entire post is just an excuse to play with it, you're probably right.

Vim For OS X

2008-12-29T11:19:00.006-05:00

Whenever I do a Google search for "Vim for OS X" or "Vim for Mac" , it links to macvim.org, which has old binaries and hasn't been updated in a while. I thought I saw someone using a shiny, tabbed-interface Vim during Foss.my last month. I could have sworn it was Toru Maesaka, but after emailling him it turns out it wasn't him.

Anyway, tonight I finally found it! The newer Vim for Mac can be found at this page. It has goodies such as OS X keyboard bindings, tabbed multiple windows and transparency.

Australia

2008-12-25T10:52:00.014-05:00

I saw Australia today (the movie, not the country). Despite lukewarm reviews by critics, I decided to go see it anyway because my friend Beachgirl liked it a lot (I trust friends more than I trust movie critics), and the trailer captured my interest with majestic landscapes and the clever allusion to The Wizard Of Oz. The movie is set during World War II, just as the Japanese are about to attack the town of Darwin. There is a love story, cattle, a charming half-aborigine boy, evil ranchers, Japanese bombers, and Hugh Jackman generally being badass throughout. Baz Luhrmann has attempted to create a grand epic, and for the most part, he does deliver. Spoilers follow, so be warned.

Lady Sarah Ashley (played by Nicole Kidman) is an Englishwoman who travels to Australia to find her husband, who owns a cattle station down under called Faraway Downs. When she arrives she finds her husband murdered, and she is stuck with the station which she tries to sell. However, she meets an adorable half-aborigine, half-white boy named Nullah who befriends her. Nullah's mother is an aborigine woman and his father is Fletcher (played by David Wenham), a jerk who works on Sarah's farm as a manager. After she finds he has been helping a rival cattle farmer steal cows from her (and his mistreatment of Nullah and his mother), an outraged Sarah fires Fletcher and decides to run the station herself.

Sarah enlists an independent cattle drover (played by Hugh Jackman), who simply calls himself "Drover", to help her drive the cattle to Darwin to be sold to the military for food. Sarah, Drover, Nullah, and a few other hands drive the cattle across a very scenic country, despite being hampered by a vengeful Fletcher throughout the journey. Sarah and Drover fall for each other after the cattle drive, and she lives at Faraway Downs with Drover and Nullah.

Nullah is kidnapped one day by the authorities during his coming-of-age "walkabout", and is forced to go live on a church mission on an island. This happened a lot to half-aborigine children back in the day, where they were forcibly removed from their families and made to live in missions. They are referred to as the "stolen generation". Anyway. an upset Sarah tries to get Nullah back, without any success. And then, the Japanese attack. The mission is hit first, and then Darwin. Amidst the chaos of the bombing, Drover goes out to sea to rescue Nullah. He succeeds, and brings Nullah home to a tearful reunion with Sarah.

The film gives us some very stunning shots of the Australian continent. It's a beautiful place and Baz Luhrmann's visuals do it justice. His story structure however, feels a bit odd. The first part of the movie is about the cattle drive, and the second part is about Nullah's capture, rescue and the attack on Darwin. This makes the film feel like two movies tacked together in the middle, and it doesn't flow quite smoothly for me. There is quite a bit of melodrama, and the villain is rather cliched in his one-dimensional portrayal. Despite all this, it doesn't fail to entertain, and even though it's very long it never gets boring. It's one of the better movies of the year, and it's a shame it didn't get more favourable reviews. Go see it if you get the chance.

Birds In Trees

2008-12-23T08:51:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, I like to look at the very tops of the trees to see if anything interesting is perched there. When I have my camera with me, I zoom up and take a picture if I see any birds.

On a bright Monday morning, I took this picture of a black-naped oriole while waiting to pick up visitors (the three French guys) from the guest house in USM.

I don't usually see Brahminy kites perched, so this picture is a rare treat. This is at maximum zoom, as the bird was quite a distance away (hence the picture quality isn't too great).

The same kite as seen from the side. It has pretty chestnut-coloured wings with black tips.

A chestnut-headed bee eater sits in the usual bee eater hangout tree.

I saw a whole bunch of coppersmith barbets! Now I know they like to gather at VC Rock

When taking this batch of photos, I took videos too. I will be making a documentary-type thing about the birds I've seen soon. Hopefully by January or February I can post it on the blog.

I Met Sparkleyone

2008-12-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

My friend from the PhDComics forums, Laura, came to visit Penang on her Southeast Asia tour. I showed her our giant lizards, turtles, birdies and walking fish. I believe she was impressed by our wildlife. In the above picture you can see her relaxing against a palm tree, on our island with blue skies and clear water. So the rest of you guys who read my blog, do come and visit us here, like Laura did.

Another Visit To UTMK

2008-12-15T10:34:00.003-05:00

Today, I had a reunion with my colleagues from UTMK, and I also met the trio of academics from France that is Christian Boitet, Mathieu Lafourcade and Didier Schwab.

We had lunch at the Red House.

Here they are discussing stuff with Lian Tze.

Mathieu Lafourcade hard at work.

At last I got to meet the famous Professor Boitet, whom I have heard so much about from Lian Tze.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

2008-12-14T13:02:00.007-05:00

Continuing the Hollywood trend of producing an endless stream of remakes, here comes a 21st century version of the 50's classic sci-fi movie. Reactions to the new movie have been mixed, with reviewers generally having a low opinion of it. I saw both versions (the 1951 movie and the 2008 remake) recently, and the 2008 version had a very different message. While I don't mind the new movie, the story in the remake doesn't appear to be as coherent as the original. It is an average sci-fi flick, when considered on it's own. It's watchable if you want to kill some time in the afternoon. Massive spoilers follow in this post, so stop reading now if you haven't seen either version.

I have no particular attachment to the 1951 version, as I've only seen it the same week I saw the remake. It feels dated and quaint now, and Klaatu's suggestion that we submit ourselves to the authority of giant killer space robots was quite disturbing. The older movie was made in a climate of fear around nuclear weapons, and the message reflected that. Today's version is the threat of ecological damage to the Earth, and Klaatu is here to remind us that we haven't been very nice to our planet.

The new movie opens with a random hiker (played by Keanu Reeves) getting his DNA sampled by an alien snow globe in 1928. Cut to the present day, where Helen Benson is an astrobiologist working for Princeton (in the original, Helen Benson was a secretary). She lives with her son, Jacob, who is an annoying bratty little kid. Government agents show up at her door and whisk her away to a lab where scientists have discovered that an object is on a collision course for Earth. This part is reminiscent of the opening scenes to Michael Bay's Armageddon, albeit not as badly directed. We later find that the object is a spaceship which doesn't collide with Earth, but lands softly in Central Park in New York. The ship looks like the alien snow globe we saw in the introduction, and a team of people consisting of armed military personnel and a bunch of scientists (Helen included) prepare to make contact. A figure appears from the ship, and as Helen approaches him, the alien gets shot by a jumpy officer. This causes a giant robot (the modernised Gort) to appear out of the ship to neutralise the weapons of the military. The injured alien is then taken to a guarded government hospital, where he is found to be a human-looking being (Keanu Reeves) in a spacesuit. This part pretty much follows the original, except that we now know why the alien's form is human-looking; he looks exactly like the hiker that got his DNA sampled in 1928.

The alien introduces himself as Klaatu, and he has an important message for the leaders of Earth. The US Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (played by Kathy Bates) will not have that, and detains him in the hospital. Klaatu escapes with the help of Helen Benson, and now he must find a way to accomplish his mission. Helen. Jacob and Klaatu end up on a road trip where Klaatu meets another human-disguised alien, and a professor by the name of Barnhardt. Helen learns the true purpose of Klaatu's visit; to eliminate humanity to ensure the continued survival of Earth. To this end, he unleashes his giant robot which is actually a swarm of nanobot insects clustered together in humanoid form. Several Earth species are saved in little glowy bubbles before the killer robot termites are activated. When the nanite swarm is unleashed, it devours everything in its path, and it is implied that more nanites are created out of the things the swarm eats.

Now Klaatu has second thoughts about destroying all humans. His alien friend has grown to love humans, and Helen and the professor both try to make him change his mind. Klaatu listens to Bach and thinks it's pretty cool, and finally Jacob's adorable antics make him decide to stop his genocidal alien robot storm. He tells Helen that saving humanity comes at a price, and when he zaps the bugs with his alien sphere, all of Earth's electrical systems grind to a halt. Disappointingly, I could not hear the classic line "Klaatu barada nikto" uttered at all during the film, although Wikipedia says it's in there somewhere.

After contemplating the motives, of Klaatu, I find that the main plot does not make much sense to me. Wiping the Earth clean of human beings is as potentially damaging to the ecosystem as it is a very sudden and disruptive change. Perhaps that is why they needed to save some Earth creatures. However, doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of trying to save the Earth? Klaatu chastises humanity for being damaging and destructive, and there he is doing exactly that. Perhaps the aliens think it's better for the long term with humans out of the picture.

If you're a fan of the old movie, you may not like the new one. They've changed the plot and the kid is annoying, but otherwise it does do a decent job at being a passably entertaining sci-fi movie.

Chestnut-Headed Bee Eater

2008-12-07T12:11:00.001-05:00

I may or may not have photographed the chestnut-headed bee eater (Merops leschenaulti) before. I have a few bee-eater pictures, but this is the first time I've managed to positively identify the species. These photos were taken on Sunday. There is a flock of chestnut-headed bee eaters sitting on the branches of the trees near VC Rock in USM. They swoop around and chase bugs.

The chestnut crown gives the bird its name, and the rest of it is mostly green with a blue rump, a yellow throat and a mask-like black stripe near the eye.

The top two birds are chestnut-headed bee eaters, and the one below them is an immature black-naped oriole.

Schröder

2008-12-06T09:57:00.003-05:00

Schröder wasn't feeling too well last week. He slept all day, didn't eat much and wasn't playing with his friends. However, he's fully recovered now, and up to mischief again. Luckily he got better all on his own without needing a trip to the vet. I'd hate to have to medicate two cats. Sally is still on his antibiotics, although he appears to have fully recovered too. Still, the doctor says he has to finish his medicine.

ASIMO

2008-11-30T10:59:00.002-05:00

Japan has all the awesome robots. ASIMO is a walking, bipedal, humanoid robot designed by Honda as a way of showing the world just how cool they are. ASIMO is going on an international tour, and he stopped by in Penang at Queensbay Mall. I managed to catch the show on the last day (the 30th of November), and here is a video clip I mashed together of footage I took of the robot.

ASIMO himself "talks" with the human host, but it is most probably a scripted pre-recorded presentation as we can't actually talk to machines in natural language reliably yet. The kids in the audience (that includes me I suppose) were enthralled by the robot as it demonstrated walking, ball-kicking, drink-serving, painting and dancing.

And Now For Some Birds

2008-11-29T10:39:00.002-05:00

A rock pigeon walks around with some of those myna birds, looking for food.

Crows tend to flock around urban centres and places with lots of garbage and litter. Crows are kind of boring since they are so commonplace, but there are so many species of crow (and I know there are at least two different types in Malaysia).

This is a black-naped oriole sitting on a wire. It was dark and cloudy day, thus this isn't a very cheerful picture.

A creepy crawly is a victim to this white-breasted waterhen's breakfast hunt.

Some kind of pipit hops about in the sun.

Vet

2008-11-26T04:13:00.005-05:00

First off, Sally's a boy cat. I thought he was a girl before, hence the name. But I have retconned his name to be a short nickname for "Henry Salvatore". "Sally" can be short for "Salvatore", and "Henry" because "Indiana" is a dog's name.

Anyway, I had to take Sal to the vet today. He wasn't moving much, and coughing. I was afraid something might be lodged in his throat. This was the first time I've taken any animal to the vet, so I had to buy a cat carrier for Sally. He was a good lad, and stayed calm throughout the whole process. It turns out his throat is clear, but he is sick and needs antibiotics for 20 days. The vet taught me how to feed pills to a cat (here is a quick online guide).

It was hard to put Sally in the carrier, not because he put up a fight but because it's upsetting for me to cage an animal, even temporarily. Sally is a brave little cat though. What a trooper.

FOSS.my 2008

2008-11-09T11:12:00.004-05:00

I just returned from FOSS.my 2008, a Free/Open Source conference in Kuala Lumpur. This is the first open source conference I've attended after many years since FOSSCON in '03, which MIMOS gave up on afterwards (epic fail there, MIMOS).

It's great to attend a tech conference again after a long absence from conferences in general. I met some awesome folks, listened to some talks, and ate some good food. Fun times. Here are some pictures.

Yoon Kit gives his keynote speech, which describes the wicked web of drama around ISO voting for ODF vs OOXML.

Colin Charles of Sun/MySQL and Daniel CerVentus of Earth247.tv.

Toru Maesaka, the memcached guy from Japan.

Toru Maesaka and Fajar Priyanto from IBM.

Pia Waugh giving a talk on the OLPC XO. She's a consultant from Australia, and knows kung fu (seriously).

This is the first time I've seen an OLPC XO in real life. Pia dropped these a few times, demonstrating its toughness to a shocked audience.

Here I am, posing with an OLPC XO. Some of my friends on IRC joke that whenever I get disconnected (which happens a lot on the lousy internet connection I used to have at USM), it's because I needed to crank the power on my OLPC to charge it up again (very funny, guys).

This was taken at the speakers' dinner. From left is Yoon Kit, Han and Pamela Fox. Pamela is from Google (how cool is that?).

Here's James Morris, a Linux kernel hacker from Australia.

James Morris speaks about Fedora Kiosk Mode.

White-Bellied Sea Eagle

2008-11-02T08:55:00.002-05:00

I've been looking for the white-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) for ages now. I see one occasionally near Queensbay Mall, but I never have my camera handy when I spot it. It taunts me by flying all majestically when I don't have my camera with me.

For a long time, the only raptors I seem to be able to take pictures of is the brahminy kite. When I first saw this bird I thought it was yet another brahminy kite, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be that elusive white-bellied sea eagle! I am very pleased with these photos (taken at Gurney Drive).

Birds Near The Shore

2008-11-02T07:47:00.002-05:00

Migrant birds are a fun sight to see in the tropics during winter in the north, when they all come down here to enjoy the sun. Egrets can be seen along the shoreline lazing about. These photos were taken at Gurney Drive.

These are great white egrets (I think).

Here's another of those egrets.

I have no ideas what these are. They look like sandpipers or plovers. I can't really tell at this resolution.

The collared kingfisher is a coastal bird. Here it is waiting to prey on crabs.

Forest Wagtail

2008-10-26T06:24:00.002-04:00

The forest wagtail (Dendronanthus indicus) is a rare migrant visitor to these parts. Therefore these are extremely lucky shots I got. This little bird seemed unfazed by my presence and went about his business, wagging his tail (from side to side). I also have some video footage of him, but I'd like to make that into a full documentary-type show complete with a cool voice-over (my voice-over person still needs to buy a microphone). Until then, enjoy these still photos.

Behold! The forest wagtail!

A closeup of his mug.

Off he goes into the wild blue yonder.

Brown Shrike

2008-10-25T10:14:00.002-04:00

The brown shrike (Lanius cristatus) is a passerine bird that is a common migrant to Penang around this time of year. They make chirrupy little noises that some folks might find cute (or not, the sounds can be a bit annoying). These are the first decent shots I've taken of the bird.

Chestnut Munia

2008-10-25T09:19:00.001-04:00

The bird guides say the chestnut munia (Lonchura atricapilla) is easy to find in open country. Clearly the books underestimate their hiding ability, because this is the first time I've seen one for sure. There were actually a whole flock of them, but I could only get one or two on camera.

This guy isn't as scared as the rest of the flock.

They may not exactly be birds of a feather, but the chestnut munia and the scaly-breasted munia do flock together.

The chestnut munia is also known as the black-headed munia.

Bridge Under Construction

2008-10-25T08:26:00.004-04:00

They are upgrading the Penang bridge from 4 lanes to 6 by adding an extension on either side of it. The construction work is annoying though, and traffic is horrible even on a weekend. We had to cross the bridge to attend a wedding on the peninsular, and I got a few photos of the bridge being worked on.

Coppersmith Barbet

2008-10-24T11:11:00.001-04:00

Occasionally I can see a winged speck perched high up in the branches of a tree. I'll take a picture with zoom and usually I won't find out what it is until later when I have a chance to study the picture. Early this month I got a picture of a coppersmith barbet (Megalaima haemacephala) sitting in a tree at VC Rock in USM. This is the first time I've ever photographed a barbet. If you look closely, you can see its whiskers.

Kingfishers Galore

2008-10-24T10:10:00.006-04:00

The kingfishers are plentiful again in my university campus. The migrant common kingfishers have arrived, and Billy the stork-billed kingfisher can be seen fishing illegally in the lakes.

The common kingfisher flits about on poles at Tasik Harapan.

My friend, Billy the stork-billed kingfisher. He's a welcome sight whenever I pass Tasik Aman.

Two white-throated kingfishers are sitting in a mangrove.

This white-throated kingfisher is pondering why I am pointing a camera at him. Little does he know that his pictures are all over the internet now.

I Got My Monitor Stand Back

2008-10-11T03:51:00.007-04:00

The stand for my Samsung SyncMaster 943NWX monitor is back from the shop, and it is fully operational. I can use my new widescreen display now! My cat, Schröder, approves of it. Debian Lenny is also installed on this machine, since Etch has trouble getting the native resolution to scale right. The downside is that I have to download a ton of updates every other day until Lenny goes stable. But hey, it's shiny.

Chirpy Things

2008-10-05T11:09:00.002-04:00

The long holidays this week means the campus is relatively free of humans. Thus, the birdies own the place when nobody's about. Here are a few of them, happily chirping away.

I don't know why I can never get a solid focus lock on a magpie robin. This shot isn't too bad but I've love to have a nice, large, crisp shot of one.

I think this is the best picture of the pied fantail I've taken. It was flitting around near a small puddle and splashing around happily in it.

I have no idea what this bird is. When birds are perched high up in branches it's hard to get a decent shot from below, since the sky is always going to be overly-bright. If anyone knows what this bird is, let me know.

Creatures From The Green Lagoon

2008-10-05T10:28:00.003-04:00

I returned to the lake today to get some better turtle shots. I was somewhat successful at this. I did get two turtles, but not the large ones.

Here's one lazing about on a branch.

I think I haven't seen this type before.

This catfish is aggressive. I put a piece of bread at the very edge of the water, just out of reach. This guy hops onto a rock, grabs it, and hops back into the water.

The Case Against Robin

2008-09-30T04:33:00.010-04:00

Will there be a Robin in the future installments of the Nolanverse Batman saga? Some arguments have been tossed around in the media. Christian Bale threatened to quit the franchise if they ever introduced Robin. Jeph Loeb, however, defends Robin. I can see where both of these guys are coming from, though I must admit I've never liked Robin.

The idea of Robin as Batman's little teenage sidekick has always bugged me. Why would a crazy loner vigilante hang out with some kid? There's Batman, a terrifying figure wrapped in a black cloak stealthily lurking in the darkest shadows...and then there's his teenage sidekick, dressed in bright primary colours and sticking out like a sore thumb. The original rationale for his introduction was to "brighten up" the gloomy atmosphere of the original Batman comics, which were seen as being too grim for its time. There was also a need for Batman to discuss his detective work with, like Watson for Holmes. Neither of these two points are relevant in the Nolanverse.

Ever since Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns became a huge hit, we've seen comic book characters become darker and grittier. Granted, this isn't always a good thing, but for Batman it just suits the character. The dark, grim Batman lives in a world populated by insane people, and whether or not our hero is just as insane as the criminals he catches is open for debate. It's this darkness that was captured so well by Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. There is no place for a colourful sidekick in that world. It would just break the subdued, realistic picture that Nolan brilliantly painted as a backdrop for the world of Batman.

Secondly, Alfred already serves as a great sounding board for Batman. The Alfred we see in the Nolanverse is wise, insightful and sarcastic. The banter between Bruce Wayne and his butler is brilliant and funny, and serves both for exposition and character development. Alfred is the voice of reason, the foil to Bruce Wayne's single-minded craziness, and has saved Bruce's life on more than one occasion.

Robin can be a good character when written well, in the comics. He works well as a standalone character too, if ever there is a movie to be made with him in it (perhaps a live action Teen Titans?). However, I sincerely hope Christopher Nolan leaves Robin out of his Batman movies. Perhaps it's time Robin is dropped from the Batman mythos. There is no reason canon can't be revamped.

This has been your Batman-related post for this week. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, check out Kirsty's article on the Joker for more Batman goodness.

Computer Woes

2008-09-29T11:27:00.003-04:00

Last week wasn't a good one. I've had to put up with an annoying cold and even more annoying computer problems.

On the 21st I had bought an LCD monitor for my desktop. It's a nice 19" widescreen Syncmaster 943NW. When I reached home, I encountered 2 problems with it. Firstly, the hinge on the stand just couldn't move. I couldn't adjust the viewing angle, which is frustrating. Secondly, Debian Etch refused to correctly display the native resolution. It works fine in the latest Ubuntu, so it had to be my X server being too ancient.

The solution is simple, in theory. All I had to do was return the stand thing to the shop to have it replaced, and then upgrade Debian from Etch to Lenny. I went to the shop first. The sales attendant did offer to replace or repair the stand, and it'd take 2 weeks (although he frowned at the thought of having to do this for me). My LCD monitor is now in a box and is unusable for the next 2 weeks.

Next was the problem of upgrading Debian. The official way to do this is to change all references of etch to lenny in the sources.list file. Then just do an apt-get update and an apt-get dist-upgrade. Simple, right? What could go wrong? Apparently, plenty. The installed borked, and now I can't even login.

Rather than spending hours to try to fix the problem, I just decided to wipe my root directory and install from a beta Lenny CD. However, the process of downloading updates to Lenny on this awful Malaysian internet line is estimated to take more than eight hours. Right now I'm just waiting for it to be done while typing this entry on a Mac, eating pizza. I love the pizza delivery service. At least that works right. Here's a safety tip though, the soda that the pizza guy delivers is going to be well shaken on the bike ride to your house. Opening it may lead to fizzy stuff flying everywhere.

My cat's asleep. I had to write this blog entry on my own. Sigh. It hasn't been a good week at all.

On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Cat

2008-09-20T05:17:00.005-04:00

It's true. I don't blog anymore. I leave the writing to Schröder. I just take the pretty pictures. Someday I'll let my cat do even that, and I'll just sit back and watch the site magically update itself.

If you find any factual errors in any of my posts, you know whom to blame.

Lunar Photography Attempt II

2008-09-18T13:16:00.002-04:00

I'd say this is better than my first attempt. Too bad I missed the full moon, though.

F value at f/3.7, 1/640 seconds shutter speed, spot metering and ISO 200. I used my tele lens attachment to get a better shot so the focal length is 432*1.7 mm.

Cross The Streams

2008-09-10T23:07:00.005-04:00

CERN's Large Hadron Collider has successfully come online! With a circumference of 27 kilometres, this is the world's largest particle accelerator. Located deep underground near the Swiss-French border, scientists will be able to shoot protons at mind-bogglingly high speeds and make them collide. One of the goals of these experiments is to find that elusive Higg's boson, the elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model but has never been observed.

For a nice cliff-notes overview of the LHC, there's an ongoing series of comics by Jorge Cham over at Piled Higher and Deeper about his trip there (Part 1 starts here). Also, check out the highly amusing LHC rap video.

The title of the this blog entry comes from the 1984 movie "Ghostbusters", which incidentally featured high energy proton streams being used to catch ghosts (yeah, I know, fake science). Interestingly, the character Dr. Egon Spengler warns against colliding the streams ("don't cross the streams!") because it would be "bad". However, they eventually have to cross the streams at the end to defeat the Big Bad (spoiler, sorry).

To the team at CERN, good luck!

The photo above is derived from The Large Hadron Collider by Sarvagya Kochak, distributed under the Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic).

Squirrels!

2008-08-31T11:41:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine once told me that my blog "needed more squirrels". So here they are, in their full squirrely glory! Behold, the plantain squirrel (Callosciurus notatus), scurrying around in the trees outside the garden. At least I think that's a plantain squirrel.

Bug Eyes

2008-08-31T11:36:00.000-04:00

Also out and about in the morning was this praying mantis. It looked me right in the lens as I took its photo.

Urban Monkeys

2008-08-31T11:26:00.004-04:00

I was in Kuala Lumpur for the weekend, and I spent independence day at my friend's house in Damansara. In the mornings, monkeys climb all over his backyard.

They have Spock ears!

I am no good at identifying monkeys. Can anyone tell me what species they are? Are they the same as these Penang monkeys? I'm guessing they're Macaca fascicularis but then again I'm no Jane Goodall.

Wall-E

2008-08-17T08:08:00.006-04:00

Pixar can't seem to make a bad movie (so far). Once again they've come up with a moving and delightfully cute tale; this time with a trash-collecting robot. Wall-E is the movie's titular protagonist, one of a series of garbage-disposal robots that's been doing his job for over 700 years. The story takes place in the future where Earth has been overrun by garbage, and all the humans have long since left in spaceships.

Wall-E seems to be the only robot left still running, patiently cleaning up the mountains of garbage. He looks like a little worn-down cube with cutesy eyes and treads, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. He gets his power from solar panels which charges him up daily, and he gets replacement parts from other Wall-E units long since shut down across the trash-filed landscape of Earth.

Over the centuries Wall-E has developed a personality, and a sense of curiosity. During his garbage-collection duties, he sometimes finds trinkets which he likes, and he takes them back to his little hideout where he keeps his little treasures. His only companion is a little roach sidekick who lives with him and accompanies him to work. One day, a probe robot lands on Earth, a girl bot named EVE whom Wall-E takes a liking to immediately. EVE looks like a shiny Apple product, with a badass arm-cannon that looks kind of like a USB stick. EVE and Wall-E strike up a friendship, and one of his treasures hold the key to EVE's quest and to humankind's return to Earth.

The first part of the movie is done almost entirely without dialogue. In fact, the robot protagonists hardly speak at all. It's great storytelling by Andrew Stanton, and this part of the film has been praised by every film critic. Wall-E's misadventures lead him into space along with EVE, and we get to see what humanity has turned into during the long voyage out in space. The humans have become bloated, helpless baby-like creatures entirely dependent on the spaceship's automation system to survive. Wall-E, EVE and the captain of the human starship must steer the spaceship back to Earth, and free humanity from the shackles of automation. It's harder than it sounds; the spaceship is run by an intelligent robot AI that has plans of its own.

The movie has an obvious (although not heavy-handed) ecological message, and warns us of the pitfalls of the excesses of consumerism. Wall-E is an intelligent, charming and thought-provoking movie that I'd highly recommend viewing.

A Dedicated Batman Fan Builds His Own Tumbler

2008-08-06T23:59:00.004-04:00

A guy named Bob Dullam has built his very own Tumbler, the Batmobile from Chris Nolan's Batman movies. The estimated cost is around $50,000 to $70,000. He sure has a lot of time and patience. I wonder if the rocket booster works or if the cops will let him drive it on the roads of wherever he lives.

Fans without that kind of money to spend on a custom Batvehicle can always attempt something like this.

Introducing Schröder's Family

2008-08-04T10:57:00.007-04:00

Schröder is a kitty that adopted me (people don't adopt cats, cats adopt people). Not just him, his whole family. His siblings, Frankie and Sally, have taken up residence in my yard. Together with Pepper and Linus, I have a bigger family now.

Schröder, my little buddy.

The sleepy kitty.

Schröder's brother, Frankie.

Sally, the prettiest cat in the neighbourhood.

Schröder and Sally having a brawl.

Pepper (on the left) and Linus (on the right), who are Riffraff's little siblings. Schröder's family and Linus and Pepper are from different mothers. However they all eat and play together. Five cats are a handful.

Giant Reptiles In The Lake

2008-08-03T09:56:00.004-04:00

USM's lakes are home to many reptiles. I've posted numerous pictures of monitor lizards and turtles. The water monitors are a common sight, basking on the bank.

However there's also another type of large reptile in the lake. I've seen large shadowy shapes in the water but I've never seen it emerge from the depths until now. I was determined to catch them on camera; they were my own personal Loch Ness monster. Elusive and shy, I finally got a glimpse on Saturday. They are huge turtles.

See, it's smiling to the camera, as if it's saying "why so serious?". I couldn't get a full shot because I had my zoom lens attached, and by the time I unscrewed the lens the turtle had disappeared. I don't know how people with DSLRs take nature photos with equipment even more cumbersome than my compact. Fiddling with things just makes you lose the shot.

Return Of The Stork-Billed Kingfisher

2008-08-03T09:40:00.007-04:00

For many months, William the stork-billed kingfisher that lived near the USM lakes was missing. I figured he left for greener pastures (or less green waters, considering what the USM lakes look like) but now he's back (or another one that looks just like it). Strangely, his return coincides a bit with the new semester. Could it be that this bird is a registered student?

I also found a bird I've never photographed before; a common tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius). Thanks to Sandeep for helping me identify it.

Here it is looking for bugs to eat.

You can't really see the rufous crown on this birdy yet, and the tail is a bit short. However as it matures it'll look something like this.

These photos where taken with my brand new zoom attachment lens for the Sony H2. That, plus a tripod really help in taking birdy shots.