I'm back

Back to work after 1 week off. The longest leave since I have joined this company. There are several peoples who I would like to thank; first, my surgical doctor, Dr. Khor, who had carried out my operation, second, my beloved gf who takes good care about me throughout the healing week, third, my family members, friends and colleagues who support me. Alright, time for work first.....

Sinus Surgery

I will undergo Sinus surgery tomorrow morning, taken the CT scan on last Saturday and doctor’s opinion is better to have the surgery. Hope that everything will be fine then. Need around several days to fully recover from the general anesthetic. Probably, expect some bleeding as well, hopefully not a heavy one. It’s quite funny that I don’t even care about medical insurance before. My agent pursued me to buy it last year. Thinking just to entertain him, I bought one and continued it for this year. Now, I found out that you need a GL letter obtained from the insurance company before you can make any claims. One thing that worth to point out is that the clinic would not want to accept the PM Care medical card. The doctor claimed that the company is yet to release their payment for previous patient.

Pressure on Ethnic Relationship Talks

" Greetings of solidarity and peace from Y4C!
This afternoon, we received a call from the Masjid management. He told me that they received the pressures from the authority for not rent the hall to our Alternative Course on Ethnic Relationship. We are very disappointed with such unnecessary and high handed ways to stop the civil society to conduct a rationale, mature and important discussion on the ethnic relationship. The government should encourage more open dialogue and discussion on the ethnic relationship. Instead of compulsory the course in the university, the government should allow Y4C to hold the activity in the hall. Although Y4C faced these difficulties, we will continue our program as usual. We are going to move to Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. "

I had received the email from my friend regarding the ethnic relationship talks which I posted last week. Alright, it mentioned that “pressures coming from the authority”. Who pressure the Masjid management? This is indeed a big question mark. I have attended the talk for less than 20 minutes last week. A huge crowd had turned up for the event. One SB just sat beside me and kept busy writing his notes. I won’t blame him since he was carrying out his normal duty. “Was it because of his report”, question mark again. Overall, I don’t think that the contents of the talk pose any threats to current authority. At the same time, it was organized in a peaceful manner with majority of Malay and Chinese participants. Our nation will celebrate its 49 birthday at the end of this month and to discuss those ethnic issues openly and academically under the roof of the university is banned. I probably believe that we are going nowhere!

Photo at Morib Beach

Photo taken at Morib Beach a month ago!

Ethnic Relationship

My friend, Khailoon, has recently setup a youth organization, known as Youth for Change (Y4C). Y4C urges the public to attend a series of activities for strengthen the ethnic relationship in our country. He threatened me that, “our friendship will end here if you are not coming for the first talk in UIA today”. Please circulate the news to those who are interested:

Venue: Dewan Masjid UIA Matrikulasi, Petaling Jaya
Time: 8.30 p.m. – 10.30 p.m.

4 Ogos 2006 - Dasar Ekonomi Baru dan Hubungan Etnik - Dr Syed Husin Ali
10 Ogos 2006 - Peranan Mahasiswa dalam Hubungan Etnik - Hishamuddin Rais
17 Ogos 2006 - Agama dan Hubungan Etnik - Prof. Osman Bakar
24 Ogos 2006 - Isu Bahasa dan Hubungan Etnik - Lee Ban Chen, Arumugam
7 Sept 2006 - Masa Depan Negara dan Hubungan Etnik - Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim

If you still believe, please come.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Mid-week

It has been sometimes since my last writing. Work as usual but not feeling well since Monday. Thanks, for my dear who take care about me. Bought two books from MPH bookstore last Saturday, and MPH is having “Mega Sale” now, up to 30% of discount. But I wonder how many books had been sold compared to clothes, shoes and etc. keke…

So, anyone who believe in this phase:

- “Anything that can go wrong, will."

I strongly believe that this is true. I always make a worst case assumption in my works or my daily life. Maybe it looks like a pessimistic approach. Actually, I just have a kind of thinking not to put too much expectation on others. You can put a huge pressure on yourself to deliver but not the same to the peoples surrounding you. Have they put the same amount of efforts as you? Unless you are a project leader or the one who pay their salaries, otherwise what else can you do?

- “If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it”

The above quotation is the Murphy’s Law and people have used it to relate to programming:

- “The difficulty of debugging software is directly proportional to the number of people who will ultimately use it.”

Hmm, I think that it should be written as:
The number of bugs to be found in software is directly proportional to the number of people who will ultimately use it.

So did you all read the news (www.thestar.com.my) today?

Bloggers beware
UNTRUTHS: If information in blogs, websites and online portals were incorrect, bordered on slander, caused disturbance or compelled the public to lose faith in the nation’s economic policies, their authors would be detained for investigation, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Sooner or later those in the Ministry of Internal Security will have to design a Blog crawler. But probably they will seek help from Google. Keke……

Continue my work on STREAM IO…

Market Analysis

A market survey and analysis presentation from Frost and Sullivan on “WiMax” and “Wireless Sensor Network” were conducted in my company this morning. A hugely disappointment, nothing special and nothing new, the presentation was mainly for top management peoples without any technical knowledge. It seems that the presenter thought that the target audiences are all marketing peoples. It must be a joke! He said that he doesn’t know the operators in Malaysia which offers cellular service.

Well, the conclusion for his presentation:
WiMax – 802.16d (fixed) will be died and look for research in 802.11e (mobile and fixed)
WSN – ZigBee will be in leading position compared to the other standards.

ZigBee Protocol is similar to the one used by WiFi, known as CDMA/CA. Find out more from this web-site. Interesting stuff.....

Weekly Update

I had been robbed by a Chinese guy at SS2 this Monday. I lost my RM300++ and my handphone while my gf had her handphone “taken” by the guy as well. He came with his Wira and a knife. Without thinking twice, I just fulfilled his unexpected request. We had made a police report and gave our statement. Luckily, both of us were safe but what concerns me is the safety of our country. We can use all the excuses but it seems that Klang Valley is not safe. It’s hurt and terrible!

Studied the Real Time Linux used in the current market. I managed to incorporate the patches of RTAI (a community effort for open source developer) for my host system running 2.4 kernel. Just simply run the test suite but the system crashed if running LXRT processes. For those who like to try it out, get the patches, tools and test samples from this web-site.

This week was really busy. Migrated the BSPs for two different processor architectures from older version of Tornado to the current version in my company. Then, resume my works on Linux PCI. Today, I succeeded to add the PCI-to-Local DMA transfer in my IO call with interrupt driven mechanism. The size of DMA transfer is limited to only 128K bytes from my host system’s RAM to the local device.

That's all! Enjoy the weekend

Collaborative Citizen Journalism

How does this concept work? The advent of Blogging.. Anyone who would like to contribute can access the following web-sites:

OhMyNews - http://english.ohmynews.com/
WikiNews - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

Can we trust the news? How can a person make a judgment based on his/her limited knowledge and nowadays too much information access? No answer …..

Newstrust - http://www.newstrust.net/

Earliest Sign in Time 2006

Alright, I had signed in as early as 8:05:26 AM today. After fetching my gf to her school, I had started my “sleepy” journey to my office. Apply multitasking concept on my journey, reading the report, typing the SMS….. All my colleagues (in the same lab) kept asking me, “Tak boleh tidur keh”, “Mimpi awal”. Based on my previous record, the earliest sign in time was registered on 6 March 2003. Guess? as early as 7:37:00 AM!

Have a look on head-butted Zidance. :)

PCI & World Cup

Writing the PCI driver for two different FPGA boards embedded with PCI bridge chip for my current assignment. Doorbell Interrupt, Mailbox Registers, I2O FIFO, DMA…..blah, blah, blah. Based on my previous experience, I was able to complete the “template” driver for Linux platform within two days. But care must be taken to provide the mechanism for accessing the unique features which is not common across all the PCI bridge chips. Both of the PCI bridges come with different features. These are the tricky parts. A glance on our testbed for E1 testing:

After all, the finalists for this year World Cup are France and Italy. How come these two teams entering the final? Italy beat Australia with a late late penalty. It will not given by Graham Poll (English Referee). Again, they beat German with a late late goal with a beautiful curling shoot from a defender. It’s a bit of luck. France, almost knock up in early group stage, beat the World Champion, Brazil.

It was pity that German could not enter the final, anti-climax. I actually don’t favor German because of the way they play the game. I still remember that I had to sacrifice my sleep just to watch them converting the penalty in 1990. Anyway, under the guidance of Juergen Klinsmann, German starts playing attractive football with a lot of pace and attacking minded. Much, much entertaining compared to last time. Hmm…there was a debate on the first choice goalkeeper during the start of the tournament. Oliver Kahn or Jens Lehmann? At the end, the long term No 2 became the No 1 and long term No 1 became No 2. Could this happen in our country? It was strange and unacceptable from Kahn’s point of view. Lehmann did say that he didn’t know the reason why he had edged out Kahn. My personal view is that Klinsmann would like to challenge the mentality of his squad and intend to reform the German football. I heard today that Lehmann is willing to offer his starting place to Kahn. Just wonder whether Lehmann will do the same if German enters the final.

Registered my second level of German course yesterday. Borrow three books (stufe 1) from the library after librarian persuaded me to do so.

World Cup Quarter Final

Today and Tomorrow Quarter Final:
England vs Portugal
France vs Brazil
Germany vs Argentina
Italy vs Ukraine

My prediction for the semi-finalists:
England vs Brazil
Germany vs Italy

Both Portugal and Ukraine haven’t won the World Cup before. So, I won’t think that they are good enough for this competition. Germany plays a very offensive style compared to the previous tournaments. They seem to pick up the momentum when times go on. However, they need to overcome Argentina which is full of talented players but always tumble in the last hurdle, same as Spain. Anyway, I believe that Germany stands a better change with home ground advantage. Unless Pekerman is brave enough to start with Messi upfront. This young talent with one or two magical moments can shape the game. Then, I pick England again. Sven and Scolari, who is better? The records favour Scolari’s team. But with Rooney in England team, everything is possible. He probably will make a big impact in the coming match. Boring tehnique but if they win, who care! Don't forget the Greece plays boring game in Euro 2004. Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough experience against Italy. With all the old folk, France is going nowhere. Even Brazil plays under par, they can simply overcome France. So, what’s your prediction?

One of two World Cup theme songs which I received from my love one, “times of our lives” from Il Divo and Toni Braxton

there was a dream
a long time a ago
there was a dream
destined to grow
into a passion
a fire within
a will to give everything
a desire to win

for the lifetime of heartbreakes
that brought us here today
we'll go all the way
It feels like we're having the time of our lives
Let there be sunshine let it rain
Let's come together as one and the same
Cause it feels like we’re having the time of our lives
We'll find the glory in the end
For all that we are
For all that we are
For the time of our lives

This is the moment
This is our chance
To do what we love and to be
What we're ment to be

for the lifetime of heartbreakes
that brought us here today
we'll go all the way

It feels like we're having the time of our lives
And I'll never forget
For as long as I live

Time for my new assignment!

Weekend Approaching....

Hardly have time to write my blog this week. I was able to solve the problem for my E1 board on Monday. Combine eight 2MHz data stream into one 16MHz data stream. Thanks God. By observing the Logical output from the PC-based logic analyzer on all the channels, I was able to understand my system and trace the correct pattern. Have a view on the diagram captured using the logic analyzer. Further verification has been done using the pattern generator developed by my colleague.

World Cup Update…. All the group matches will be ended this Friday. No Asian teams had been qualified for the knock-out stage for the time being, unless you want to include Australia. Australia joined the AFC and will be part of the Asian Family. Just to improve their changes for the next World Cup qualification. Saudi Arabia and South Korea both will play tonight. South Korea stands a better change for knock-out stage provided they can beat Switzerland, a draw simply not good enough. France will beat Togo, a team surrounded with players’ payment problem. Just hope that at least one Asian team makes it.

Countries qualify for the knock-out stage:
Germany – Europe
Ecuador – South America
Argentine – South America
Netherlands – Europe
Portugal – Europe
Mexico – North America
Italy – Europe
Ghana – Africa
Brazil – South America
Australia – Ocean
Spain - Europe
Ukraine – Europe

Couldn’t believe it if there is no Asian team in the Last 16…..

Finally, receive my German Language result from my teacher, Frau Lenz. I managed to score “Gut”. For your information, mark given in Germany is as listed below:

1 – sehr gut (very good)
2 – gut (good)
3 – befriedigend (satisfactory)
4 – ausreichend (sufficient)
5 – ungenügend (insufficient)

You must score at least 4 to pass your examination. Not bad… Yeh

Endlich

Finally, I finished my German EI level by sitting the Examination on Saturday morning. The day after German had won its group match, 4 – 2. Vemal said that we should have the luck since German won that day. The exam is composed of five sections: Listening, Comprehension, Writing, Grammar and Dictation. Each section takes about half an hour. The most difficult part for me was the Listening section. It was a conversation between an interviewer and a student about her study, living and etc. I hardly understand what they are saying and making a lot of wild guess. But quite confident that I can at least pass the exam and moving up to EII which will starts during the end of July.

Now, I had to wake up early on Saturday and Sunday morning since I have to be more discipline on my life now. FYI, I usually have my lunch as my first meal on Sunday. Anyway, I am willing and more than happy to do so. The answer is simple. Girl can make a guy change! Keke…..

I only managed to watch the match between England and Paraguay. Not an interesting match in my opinion. England seems desperate to field Wayne Rooney in the upcoming match. They need the inspiration from him. Tomorrow, there will be a match between South Korea vs Togo. Hope that Ji-sung and co. play well. Iran was beaten yesterday 1-3 by Mexico. How about Japan today?

Or “desperate” former PM said that his press statements are hardly seen in newspaper nowadays. Then, I heard from my colleague that he has a Blog. But I couldn’t find it in Google search engine. Anyone knows that? Perhaps, he also had his blog been googlewashed! He should be felt sorry for himself…..

Mid-week

Received a new E1 board and started my task on providing the correct setting for interfacing with baseband module. We have managed to bring up the previous E1 board but due to the limitation on the development tools, it is hard to modify the firmware to suit to our application. I am delight with this new E1 board since the development tools, such as the user interface to the chip, the portable device driver, the scripts and etc. are more powerful compared to the previous E1 board. Once we are able to solve the system interface, then we can start putting up more features for our product.

I am invited to join a sharing section on “football mania for upcoming World Cup” in Dema house. I don’t know why they asked me to do so. I just can talk about all the players, staffs, issues, and many others associated to my beloved club, Manchester United. :)

Alright…. List all the venues of the upcoming World Cup, which cities that you love?

Hamburg
Hanover
Berlin
Gelsenkirchen
Dortmund
Leipzig
Cologne
Frankfurt
Kaiserslautern
Nuremberg
Stuttgart
Munich

I will pay most of attention on the following teams:

South Korea, Japan, Iran, except Saudi Arabia - Carry the Asian hopes

England - Watch too much EPL, and recognize all the players

Netherlands - I love Total Football, and I love their Orange color!

That’s all….. Hmm… a lyric to share with you all, a Scottish folk song, recommended from the one who I love. Hope to share the rest of my life with her!

When I've done the work o day,
And I row my boat away,
Down the waters o Loch Tay,
When the evening light is fallin',
And I look towards Ben lawyers,
Where the after glory glow,
And I dream on two Bright eyes,
With a merry mouth below,
Shes my beauteous nigh-ean ruadh,
Shes my joy and sorrow too,
And although she is untrue,
Well I cannot live without her,
For my hearts a boat in tow,
And Id give the world to know,
If she means to let me go,
As I sing hee-re, ho-ro

Nighean ruadh your lovely hair,
Has more beauty I declare,
Than all the trasses fair,
From Killin and Aberfeldy,
Be they lint white, Brown or gold,
Be they blacker than the sloe,

They mean not as much to me,
Than the melting flake of snow,
Her dance is like the gleam,
O the sunlight on the stream,
And the song the wee folks sing,
Oh, they're the songs she sings at milking,
But my heart is full of woe,
For last night she bade me go,
And the tears begin to flow,
As I sing Hee-ree,Ho-ro

Light Moments

Attended a patent drafting seminar in Menara TM on Monday. It was my first experience to be in 50th floor of Menara TM, my parent company. The training is conducted by an oversea firm. Anyway, it is not easy to understand all the presented contents and materials. Reading the material is similar to reading the terms inside a contract. Conclusion from the patents drafting seminar is “Any inventory must not based on the hindsight”. Dilbert's comic strip to share....



I found a good web-site for those who like to take up German language.

And if you feel boring and want to test yourself on the maps quiz although I don’t find this interesting!

I can’t stop laughing with this Dilbert comic strip. If you can punch anyone in your office, that’s great!!!!!

~_~ -- @_@ -- *_* -- ^__^ -- o_o

A teacher’s pet is a student who is favoured and given special attention by the teacher. “I am worried that the other kids might get jealous if they think I am teacher’s pet,” Teddy said. I don’t think Teddy has to worry, for even though the students can see that he is teacher’s pet, they know there are serious disadvantages to that. “That’s because Professor Oxbridge can be pretty difficult to please!” Teddy explained.

World Cup Fever!

World Cup is approaching. There will be three more weeks before we all have the football fever. It’s hard and ridiculous to miss the match. The simple excuse is “once in 4 years time”. The first match of the day will kick off at around 9 p.m. Malaysia time and the second match at 3 a.m. morning Malaysia time. The major problem now is that Astro gets the right for exclusive telecast for certain matches. I hate this! Why we need to pay to watch WC matches? Yes, Astro is not free! Astro also gains the income for all sorts of advertisements during the matches so why we as the consumers need to pay double. Seem that my only choice is watch the matches in the Mamak stall again. As Vemal said, once we finish our German final exam, we will celebrate with the opening match in Munchen.

Share a really good posting on the Internet :)

ATTENTION all women –
this story just might save your marriage, relationship or boyfriend's sanity during the World Cup. Below is a list of vital rules for girls wanting to share a home with a footie-mad fella this summer. In an emotional plea, the men of the world have laid out the dos and don't-you-bloody-dares of tournament viewing which you can print out and stick by your telly.
These include vital pieces of etiquette from beer-in-fridge planning to schoolboy rules like when not to say 'it's just a game'. And here we've picked the best - doing the rounds on the web as an open letter to the world's women - to ensure the nation's guys and girls make the perfect team this summer.

LIST OF RULES

1. From 9 June to 9 July 2006, you should read the The Sun's sport pages so you are aware of what's going on regarding the World Cup and will be able to join in conversations. If you fail to do this, you'll be looked at in a bad way or be totally ignored. DO NOT complain about not receiving any attention.

2. During the World Cup the television is mine at all times - without any exceptions.

3. I don't mind if you have to pass by in front of the TV during a game - as long as you do it crawling on the floor and without distracting me. If you decide to stand naked in front of the TV, make sure you put clothes on right after because if you catch a cold, I won't have time to take you to the doctor or look after you during the World Cup month.

4. During the games I will be blind, deaf and mute - unless I require a refill of my drink or something to eat. You are out of your mind if you expect me to listen to you, open the door, answer the telephone, or pick up the baby that just fell from the second floor....it won't happen.

5. It would be a good idea for you to keep at least two six packs in the fridge at all times, as well as plenty of things to nibble on. And please do not make any funny faces to my friends when they come over to watch the games. In return, you will be allowed to use the TV between 12am and 6am, unless they replay a good game that I missed during the day.

6. Please, please, please if you see me upset because one of my teams is losing, DO NOT say "get over it, its only a game" or "don't worry, they'll win next time". If you say these things, you will only make me angrier and I will love you less. Remember, you will never ever know more about football than me and your so called "words of encouragement" will only lead to a break-up or divorce.

7. You are welcome to sit with me to watch one game and you can talk to me during half-time but only when the adverts are on, and only if the score is pleasing me. In addition, please note I am saying "one" game, hence do not use the World Cup as a nice cheesy excuse to "spend time together".

8. The replays of the goals are very important. I don't care if I have seen them or I haven't seen them, I want to see them again. Many times.

9. Tell your friends NOT to have any babies, or any other child related parties or gatherings that requires my attendance because: a) I will not go, b) I will not go, and c) I will not go.

10. But, if a friend of mine invites us to his house on a Sunday to watch a game, we will be there in a flash.

11. The daily World Cup highlights show on TV every night is just as important as the games themselves. Do not even think about saying "but you have already seen this...why don't you change the channel to something we can all watch?" The reply will be: "Refer to Rule #2 of this list".

12. And finally, please save your expressions such as "Thank God the World Cup is only every 4 years". I am immune to these words, because after this comes the Champions League, Italian League, Spanish League, Premier League, etc etc.
Thank you for your co-operation.

Regards,
Men of the World

Interesting Debate on Kernel

I believe that most peoples recognize the name of Linus Benedict Torvalds better than Andy S.Tanenbaum. Maybe I am wrong in this. Linus is the one who created the Unix-style operating system known as Linux, a monolithic OS. Tanenbaum is the one who created the Minix, a micro-kernel based operating system. I still have Tanenbaum’s book ”Computer Networks” on my desk. It was well written and easy to understand. Anyway, I just recently dug out the debate between Linus and Tanenbaum in 1992. I just cannot believe that these two smart guys are so defensive and hot-headed.

Tanenbaum:
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design. Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second 'F' for this term. But if you do real well on the final exam, you can still pass the course.

Linus:
Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated - not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn.

Why all of sudden Tanenbaum popped up with the comment that Linus won’t get a higher grade? Is this some kind of old mentality that we should do thing according to our professor or else we won’t get a higher grade? Anyway, Tanenbaum has a good advice to the public “use it before making any comments”. He looked frustration that a lot of peoples haven’t used his MINIX and kept on complaining that it was sluggish. I observed that many claims from the Linux developers (1992) have solved by minix developers. Read the latest posting from Tanenbaum about the Minix vs Linux.

Life

Received the E1 Evaluation board last week. Took three days to bring up the board and there are still plenty of features to explore! I spent time reading the data sheet which provides insufficient information (according to my perception). This company seems not too good in preparing the technical documents. You always find one or two mistakes, such as the block diagram, pin direction and etc.

There was a three-day break last week due to the Wesak day. Had a basketball game with the Church’s friends in the playground not too far away from my home in PJ. Not a good game for me. I was merely a spectator throughout the match. I couldn’t know how to position myself and get myself into the game. Since I cannot jump high enough, so I cannot get the rebound. My shooting was also terrible. I shot six or seven times and some of them could not even reach the basket. Sigh…… But it’s glad to meet some new friends. Then, we went to MidValley for Japanese food. It costs me around RM60++. Ended up in my senior home watching a Korean movie entitled “Lover”. The movie was all about a guy cheated and dumped by a girl.

A bad new from my ex-housemate, Yungyit, his father passed away on last Wednesday and I was not able to attend the funeral. My deep condolences to his families. I really understand how the feeling losing someone who is particularly important to your life. I had experienced it before - my dad who gives his undivided support throughout my life. I miss him …..