Today I managed to cash out my latest AdSense payment via Western Union. This is just to show a prove, and to motivate the unmotivated. Although the amount is not that huge, it’s still money and after subtracting the hosting cost there is some profit.
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Next objective is getting significant monthly payments (I currently put my account on hold until a few months).
Read the title again. Gmail is going offline soon and that’s the truth. Scared yet?
Gmail is actually testing out a new lab feature: Offline Gmail
The video featured in the official blog looks really cool, and they are currently opening the lab feature for testing in the UK and US. Seeing how many emails I store in my Gmail account, I am scared to test it out when it comes available for me. One thing for sure, all these emails require storage on the local hard disk.
The feature requires Google Gears to work, where local application files are cached in the local browser for immediate use. WordPress has this feature since the last available version and it has worked well for me.
I wonder if there is any option to only sync emails according to their age, so that I don’t have to sync the whole thing. I’ll wait and see.
Nevertheless, this is a very useful feature. Bravo!
For the last couple of months I realized that the world economy is heading downwards. Europe and America have had their worst moments, Asia had a taste but Malaysia didn’t really feel anything. To be really honest the first sign I saw was last week when they announced that around 100K people in the manufacturing industry was going to lose their jobs. Maybe I was ignorant enough that I didn’t realize of other related events happening in this country.
Even when that happened, it still has not touched my comfort level. Although I am working in an American company I trust the brand and the business nature enough. I was living my dreams, praying that nothing bad would ever happen.
On Wednesday the morning peace in my office was broken by a rumor that a team is going to be closed and the product they maintain is going to be discontinued. And to think that this was the team I tried to penetrate back in 2007 I was selfish enough to think that I am lucky that I didn’t really join them. At least 6 people left the building in disbelief (exaggeration). Of course they get some kind of compensation but I am not going to talk about it here.
The main reason that made this event scary and were able to shake my comfort wall (not only me!) is the fact that there was no sign, no hint, nothing. It was a sudden move. I have not had the chance to talk to one of them yet but I think they was not warned. Were they?
There is no secure place except if you work with a Government Linked Companies or are a Public Servant. I would like to hear from these people, whether or not they worry about their jobs?
Good luck ex-TRAK I hope you will find better Ruby jobs! We will certainly miss you.
While doing some work I accidentally saw that there is an update available for VirtualBox. I was still using version 1 so I decided to download it and test it out myself. In older versions running on Windows I often get corrupted OS images after an upgrade. Not anymore. My CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu virtual machines booted fine and faster.
Also, the host interface is now automatically bridged so there is no need for manual bridge setup at the OS level anymore. I don’t really have time to investigate further but I was shocked to see the battery meter inside the Ubuntu virtual machine was gauging the correct battery level. How cool is that?
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And here’s the meter while charging.
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The accuracy is amazing. There must be some kind of hardware interfacing between the host and guest OS provided by the new VirtualBox.
When I was using Europa I was baffled by the inability to get line numbers to be displayed in my Perl source codes (using EPIC). Since PDT 2.0 has been released I decided to upgrade to Ganymede (3.4.1) but I still face the same issue:
I was thinking that the right-click context menu might be defective so I decided to thoroughly dig the preferences.
Guess what? Nothing happened. I finally realized that there is a separate setting honored by EPIC:
Now I am happy. Is this only my problem or anyone out there is facing the same issue?
My overall experience so far with Ganymede is great. The software update menu works faster and the dependency solver no longer freezes my machine. Bravo to the Eclipse Foundation. I decided to upgrade my Aptana plugin as well. Let’s see how it goes.
Since Israel started to attack Gaza many parts of the world has started to organize events such as demonstration and peaceful gatherings to voice out against Israel actions, and as usual the ally – United States of America. WARNING: The fact that I am currently serving an American company might cause me to be biased and clouds my judgment.
The biggest countrywide boycott was launched against 3 major brands: Colgate (toothpaste), Coca-Cola (carbonated beverage), and Starbucks (coffee chain).
To be really honest, the first thing that crossed my mind was that whether boycotting these brands (and other brands of US origin) will be beneficial towards the objective. And my first concern was that what will happen to Malaysians who are working for these giants. Since the topic here is related directly to Islam, I am wondering how many brothers and sisters of Islam would be suffering from the loss of job that may be caused by the boycott activity. Would the effect of the boycott to the US is significant enough for us to jeopardize the life of those people we call brothers and sisters?
Don’t answer that! I don’t want to know what you think — I was just thinking aloud and asking myself.
Not surprising to me, the list is long. Major popular brands (for the mass public not only the rich and famous) in Malaysia includes KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Huggies, Maggi, Nestle, IBM, Nokia, The Sun and countless others. And I am not even sure whether sales drop in Malaysia will have any effect for those in the States — maybe they are only collecting license fees, who knows?
If any of them are only collecting license fees and the licensee in Malaysia is not doing well I don’t reckon they will give any kind of discount to the failing company. Will they go bankrupt? Fat chance. Will the license holder in Malaysia go bankrupt? Probably. How many jobs will be affected? Plenty.
I am not saying whether the boycott is correct or wrong — I am simply saying my concern for others and one day maybe myself.
The American government is doing something we don’t like, do we punish the people? Some Americans are against the US Army invasion in Iraq and the US-Israel alliance.
One thing I am sure about, I have already been boycotting Fotopages for a couple of years now. Fotopages is owned by an Israeli company called Pidgin Technologies, based in Tel Aviv. It is a pure product of Israel. Most shocking to me is that there are more than 58,000 users registered from Malaysia. Malaysia is the winner with the most users. User count from Israel is merely around 700. Some people asked me how this company would make money when the service is free?
It’s actually very simple — from traffic. The traffic generated from users browsing the photos will cause the site ranks to increase, and in turn the advertisement revenue will also be significant. The conclusion is simple: By using Fotopages to share your photos you help fund the Israel economy and in the end the attacks against Palestine. If you really want to join the fight against Israel you should start telling your friends and deactivate your account at Fotopages. Your old photos do generate traffic from the search engines. —
I have been working from home for almost a month now, and to cope with loneliness from the lack of company and with the noise produced by the work next door I always have my TV turned on while working. I used to hear about SpongeBob and I know what he is but never bothered to watch it. I stumbled upon the cartoon series once in a while at 5.00pm at TV9 (dubbed version) so I decided to watch it. Although I usually hate dubbed versions I have to say that for this series they did it pretty well.
And now, I have learned to love Spongebob. If I have nothing important to do at 5pm everyday I will switch on TV9 and watch the yellow little guy with his friends Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, his colleague Squidward Tentacles, his boss Eugene Krabs, his pet Gary the Snail, and the unsuccessful rival of Eugene Krabs’ – Sheldon Plankton.
SpongeBob cartoon series is fun to watch, as the funny elements are intelligent enough in contrary to some cartoons (local and international).
And yes, in history it will be known that my first post for 2009 is about SpongeBob. SpongeBob is my hero, he made me laugh and this suppresses my desire to commit any kind of crime.
Spongebob names in other languages:
So in Malay language he should be “SpanBob SeluarSegiempat” ?
2009 is very near, and I am writing this post earlier for the fear of getting arrested before 2009 actually comes. 1430H arrived yesterday. Happy New Year!!
2008 was a very good year with a new job, new son, and new house purchase. The new year of 2009 is supposed to be the best new year for me and my family but it seems that now the house next door is going to spoil it for me. As I have previously mentioned in my previous post they are making so much noise that I feel really miserable. It’s gonna be the worst new year for me and my family.
On the good side, my report to MPSJ about the unbearable noise has been recorded and I have received the usual “your report has been received and is being processed for action” note.
If I manage to avoid arrest, I hope I will be a better man in 2009. A better father and husband, a better Samaritan, a better Muslim, a better Malaysian, a better employee, and a better human in general. There is no specific resolution for me except to put a strike to the word nicotine on the tag line (to be super honest removing the word nicotine has been on my mind for the last several years). And oh yes, who does not want to be a millionaire?
Take good care people and enjoy life. I hope all your wishes come true in 2009. Happy new year, and thanks for being my reader.
I have been doing groceries shopping alone for about 20 days now, and I have always done it at Jusco. However today since I had to pick up my spectacles from Focus Point I went to Carrefour instead. There were several differences between Jusco and Carrefour and to tell you the truth I prefer Jusco.
My personal opinion is that Jusco seems to have a better environment and it’s cleaner. Plus, service is very much better than Carrefour.
When I arrived home today I realized that the cashier scanned the large promotional pack (6 x 4) of Season’s Chrysanthemum tea as separate 6 packs:
When it should be at the promotion price of RM12.99 (I wasted RM6.57):
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But I guess it was an honest mistake. I hate it but they are still human. It’s also partially my fault for not checking everything (my excuse is that I was dizzy wearing the new glasses).
Comparing prices I found out that the price of Mamy Poko New Born (pack of 52) differs significantly! Since I bought 3 packs at Carrefour I wasted RM14.76 compared to buying them at Jusco:
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However if you’re a cranberry juice lover like moi, you’ll find that the price is cheaper by RM2.00 in Carrefour. So if you’re looking into buying bulk let’s say for a party you should head to Carrefour:
Carrefour:
Jusco:
WordPress keeps being updated but your themes rarely change unless you’re a theme developer. I wanted to add a leaderboard but I was delaying because I am too lazy to add any custom code to my theme. Silly me I forgot that I have already added an extra “sidebar” when I developed the theme for this website. So all I had to do was paste my code to a text widget and save.
I know we are actually misusing the sidebar via the “dynamic_sidebar” and “register_sidebar” API. It’s fairly straightforward but you do need to have a sense of position in your layout (you need to know where the leaderboard needs to appear).
First we add the sidebar in the /wp-content/THEME/functions.php:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | register_sidebar(array( 'name' => 'Leaderboard', 'before_widget' => '<div align="center">', 'before_title' => '', 'after_title' => '', 'after_widget' => '</div>', )); |
I think the options are self-explanatory but if you’re confused do ask. One important thing for me is the name – it will be displayed in the widget control panel so it would help to use a descriptive name.
The next file(s) to be edited depends on where you want the new “sidebar” to be located and how the theme are made. A simple standard is that if you want it to be included in all page you just edit /wp-content/THEME/header.php
dynamic_sidebar('Leaderboard'); |
Normally these are the file name convention used by theme developers:
Enjoy!
As some of you might already know I bought a property in August, and the banking procedures were dragged until September where RHB Bank suddenly wished to change the loan amount. My agent, agent S was a 22 year old mobile agent I found through word of mouth. She was not helpful because she didn’t really know what she was selling, and I suspect she is new in the field. Right now I realized how dumb I am not to realize with that age she must be a fresh graduate. (I have nothing against fresh graduates in other fields but I do think experience is critical when it comes to money related matters).
I was afraid that RHB bank will impose the 1% penalty to me because I wanted to cancel the loan (how can I proceed there is not enough loan amount!?) so she gave me her best advice – keep quiet so that the bank will cancel the loan. And I did just that and got off the wagon without having to pay any penalty. I also immediately looked for other options.
Al-Rajhi was fast, they contacted me immediately after I filled in the web form but too bad they currently don’t provide loans for properties under construction although the property was 90% completed back then.
And then I contacted Money3. They were also very fast and with the network they have with banks they were able to assess my loan requirements and made several applications. Agent K was helping me with everything and he was very professional. OCBC Bank approved my loan in September and it was time for signing the offer letter but agent K was not available because he was on paternity leave. Agent J took over and it was overall a pleasurable experience as he handled everything for me.
Everything were excellent until it was time for the MRTA (Mortgage Reducing Term Assurance). He was also an AIA agent and tried to sell the Wholelife package (payable yearly) to me which was quite a good package as I will be able to break even and get some profit after ~15 years. He was stressing on how important to get an insurance otherwise OCBC will not be releasing my funds. If the bank does not release my funds on time there will be interest to pay to the developer. When he first prepared a quote, I had to pay ~RM3600 yearly but when he called me back in early November it was at ~RM4969 so I told him I want to look for other options. He said that is not possible, the bank will block my funds. He never called me back until today.
I made the ultimately correct decision when I decided to call OCBC directly and I was told that OCBC does not have any requirements for me to have the insurance. It was optional! So agent J lied to me in my face. At that moment I lost all my respect for the guy. When OCBC released the funds to the developer it was proof that agent J was lying.
I realize the importance of MRTA and I was planning to take it via OCBC itself or using Prudential but I suddenly went busy. I will do that soon.
Back to the RHB issue, it was such as a waste of time and money. For instance agent S took RM10 for account opening and never returned it (she called me afterward telling me I had to open a current account because of the facility I requested). RHB bank penalized me RM20 for closing the current account earlier than 3 months. The lawyers charged me RM160 for the cancellation. That’s already RM190 there not including my gas cost for traveling. And the worst case of all is that the developer is now charging me with ~RM4280 for the late interest fee (period between when RHB approved my loan until when OCBC released my funds). I have already sent them an appeal to remind them my case and can only hope that they can consider exempting the fees.
That’s it people, my only advice is to find the right people (agents) and even if you find a good one please avoid trusting them 100% as when it comes to money people will try to trick you. In the RHB case I do blame agent S and the bank itself and in the Money3 case I don’t blame Money3 but the agent himself for being an as***le. And if you’re wondering, you don’t pay Money3 for the services. The bank pays them commissions.
Anonymous coward – this is the default user name that is displayed on Slashdot for users who wishes to post comments anonymously. It’s really an appropriate term. Why would you want to be anonymous if you really believe what you’re talking about?
I am mainly disappointed with people who are promoting racial tension in Malaysia. If you really want to do it then you will need to be prepared for ISA (Internal Security Act).
Remember the road sign issue between Teresa Kok and Khir Toyo? There was a website that reported all sort of racial news called pembelamelayu.com and there was actually a police report lodged against this site. It was only after the police report was made the site was brought down.
I somehow have a feeling that I may probably know which group is behind the site, but who knows I might be wrong. This proves my point that there are many anonymous cowards who likes to talk but not take responsibility. I can’t provide any prove and I don’t have any further details about the website so you don’t need to contact me to ask for any details. Ask yourself one question – if someone is hurt mentally or physically as an outcome from the things you write in your blog are you willing to take the responsibility and guilt? Only write if your answer is YES.
Same goes to those who have been hanging pig heads all over the place in Melaka. What the hell??? If they really believe that it’s the correct thing to do, stand there and wait after hanging the pig heads. Of course they will be arrested but then again it’s what you are fighting for why be afraid?
Right now we can’t be sure who hung those, it might even be a member of the committee against the building of pig farms – just to increase tension. Who knows?
Although I don’t necessarily agree with all blog writers such as Raja Petra or the others who have been arrested before, there is only one thing I respect the most – the willingness to go out with their own name and not be anonymous cowards.
I am neither a political writer nor a political enthusiast but I do read (and watch) the news. And I hate racism. Why can’t we learn to live together?
Anyway the point here is that if you really believe what you are talking about (and fighting for), use your own name instead of dumb aliases or being anonymous. Take responsibility. Period.
After I wrote about Ocropus and Tesseract in July, I received 4 requests for the binaries. Two requested using the comments and two requested via email.
The truth is that it ain’t easy to upload files that big because my upload speed is 1/4 of my download speed. It’s worst today (see the previous post).
However since I promised to upload them here they are, uploaded in rapidshare. I am avoiding to use my hosting bandwidth just in case these become too popular.
Downloads:
Tesseract binaries e7c90901a896eb44ffb500d4e8831bdf
Ocropus binaries c46466b7626436d797425f09e5b2fc7f
To install Tesseract you only need the normal make installed:
$ tar xfvz tesseract-2.01-compiled.tar.gz $ cd tesseract-2.01 $ make install |
To install Ocropus you would need Jam. Download and install it.
After jam has been installed:
$ tar xfvz ocropus-0.2-compiled.tar.gz $ cd ocropus-0.2 $ jam install |
Please take note that this is an old version of Ocropus (0.2) there is a new version available (0.3.1). The same goes for Tesseract (2.01 compared to 2.03). I simply have no time to work on the new version and I am not going to use it for my OCR related personal project.
And oh yes… please remember that since these were compiled under Cygwin you will definitely need to run them with Cygwin DLL due to dynamic linking.
I don’t have any guarantee or support whatsoever for the files, and you are using them at your own risk. These are NOT official builds.
Enjoy!
For quite some time I have been working from home with no difficulties, and I am happy with the speed. Sometimes I even have 3 or 4 terminal service windows open, juggling between them to complete my tasks.
However this morning when I tried to utilize my Nortel IP Softphone 2050 to call my boss for the weekly 1 to 1 meeting the software kept crashing on me. It was the same case when I called my cell as a test.
And so I decided to poke around everything and digging up stats for my home network. Do you know what I found? I found out that my upload speed has been capped to 64kbps. What the hell happened? Rebooting the modem didn’t help.
Here is a screen capture from my AM300 router:
I am too old to rant too much, and I am too tired to give them a call just to have them go through the usual routine of plugging and unplugging.
This is the moment where I really pray that a better service would be introduced. I am truly tired with TMNET’s incompetent service. This is a low class service. And because it’s government linked we have no choice. Two of the Internet giants are both government linked. I am sad.
One fine day, I accidentally switched to the movie Outsourced on HBO. I decided to see what’s it about. It was a fine movie about real outsourcing situations in India and it was quite fun.
I really enjoyed the last scene at the airport when the American manager is sending off the Indian manager he recommended to China.
American: Break a leg!
(Indian manager looks confused)
American: (smiling) It means good luck.
Indian: Oh! Then I hope both of your legs get broken!
This is what my team mates in the States was concerned about when I told them we used to watch Cheers during our childhood. They asked, what about the language? They don’t mean English but captions or phrases like this.
Well, it’s what makes the world colorful 🙂