Month: September 2006

A Book or a Sony® Reader?

For those who likes to read like myself (if only I could find the time), there’s now an option for keeping multiple books in one digital device. According to Sony®, the device can store hundreds of book titles. Now I’ll say that will be great if you need to move; instead of carrying those heavy boxes and bookshelves now you only have to bring along the nifty device which is more or less the size of a normal paperback.

Traditionally, I’d prefer the old way but from the pics posted at their site the e Ink® technology is really something:

e-Ink

I’ve never seen the actual device anywhere, but from the image above you can see what I am talking about. The quality is really impressive. The cost? Well… for $349 you can buy about 50 normal sized paperbacks. It’s not really that expensive. So people, which do you prefer?

DVC SR

To read more about this product, go to: http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/…

No, I am not paid by Sony®. I don’t even think that this product is available in my country yet.

Lack Of Sleep

I am really really sleep deprived this first week of Ramadhan. This is due to the fact that I have to wake up in the middle of the night for sahur. Also, I am struggling to finish up a freelance work for a Singapore client; I am lagging behind the schedule because of the hard disk incident. That reminds me that I have yet to make a post about that 😉

Sleep has been my main problem every Ramadhan, not hunger. I have trouble falling asleep so when it takes only 30 minutes to take a meal, I might be awake for 2 hours. Anyone want to share their experience?

Take care, people. Sleep well. Maybe tonight I’ll take a break from the extra work and go to bed early.

Pacific Regency Hotel Apartments

I am writing this post from Pacific Regency Apartments, in KL. It’s a new experience for me to spend time during Ramadhan in a hotel apartment. I have CCSA training tomorrow, and since I hate driving / commuting so much (especially in Ramadhan), I’ve decided to stay 2 nights here.

The hotel is really great, and the price is right too since it’s not peak season and they have a promotion. Here’s a picture from the website (I am sitting in front of the TV with my laptop):

Pacific Regency One Bedroom Apartment

Despite of a bad experience at the reception with a female staff, the other staff seems to be very helpful and polite. Just about ten minutes ago I received a phone call from them to confirm about the time for sahur.

Lucky for me, the training is actually in the same building, on the 20th floor of Menara Pan Global.

Room Shots

Continue reading Pacific Regency Hotel Apartments

Ramadhan Is Back

Just a few hours earlier, I bet every Muslim in Malaysia sat in front (or near) the TV while watching the news. Even those who have never watched news most probably waited as well 😉

We were all waiting for the starting of Ramadhan announcement. Yes, as anticipated it’s going to start tomorrow, Sunday 24 of September 2006.

I can already imagine what it’s going to be like at the Baazars, in late afternoon where people will rush to buy food for break fast.

As for me, this Ramadhan I’ll be working 2 weeks of 7am-4pm and 2 weeks of 3pm-12am. It is going to be a new experience. Hopefully everything goes well. I’ll try to get myself to go for Tadarus during lunch hours, and perhaps steal some time to update this blog…

Selamat berpuasa semua!

WordPress Posting Problem

I’ve seen some WordPress users complaining that after they post something, sometimes their browser gave them a blank page, or an error. Many blamed it on the plugins. I had the same problem, and deactivating or removing plugins didn’t help.

I found out the real problem: Update services (Options – Writing – Update Services)

Try to root out the problematic site; they are indeed just normal websites so some of them might be outdated or dead. Your pages timed out, that’s why.

I just removed the entire list, and maybe look for a reliable list later. Now, I am posting without any problems. See me smiling? 🙂

PHP 4.4.4 and Apache 2.2 on Win32

I have just spent more than the normal time to install Apache + PHP on Windows. Well, for me at least, as a PHP trainer. It’s quite embarassing if you ask me.

Anyway, I am writing this quick post just to let you know which Apache to download. In Apache download page today, there’s a few versions available – version 1.3, version 2.0, and version 2.2

Usually I will just fetch Apache 1.3 directly, and configure PHP as module. But currently Apache only provides version 1.3 as unix source – which is fine on my Linux box. So I went to fetch Apache 2.2 – just to find that it won’t load PHP.

So to cut in short, if you are using Windows, download Apache version 2.0 and you’ll have Apache + PHP running in no time.

Why the hell am I installing Apache + PHP on Windows? Well that’s another long story I will keep for another post. My laptop hard disk crashed on me and I decided to run fully on Windows, especially I will need a lot of digital imaging capabilities on the slow laptop – I’ve just taken photography as another hobby that I hope will make me money some day.

Update 23 September 2006:

As it turns out, when downloading MySQL you might as well go for the latest version. This is why:

MySQL currently only provides version 4.1 and above. The difference can’t be seen by anyone else except those using PHP. For MySQL versions >= 4.1 PHP utilizes the mysqli extension, because the default built-in API in PHP (MySQL 3.x) doesn’t work very well (MySQL changed certain things). The problem: PHP 4.x does not provide libmysqli.dll. Only PHP 5.x does. So the final summary is:

  1. PHP 5.x
  2. MySQL 5.x
  3. Apache 2.x

The obvious thing that I noticed is the problem with MySQL passwords. If you’re worried that your host server might have older versions, you can always write your code by utilizing ADOdb.

The problems described above does not effect *NIX users, as all modules can be compiled manually along with PHP.

Kittens in The Backyard

While cleaning up our backyard last weekend, we found these little kittens hiding under some grasses. Luckily we found them on time otherwise they’ll be chopped up by the grass cutter. Here’s a video I uploaded on YouTube:

For unfortunate ones who can’t view YouTube, here’s an image. Click on it for larger picture.

Kittens