Bandung Trip

Arrived at LCCT from Bandung 6 hours ago.

Again, this was an opportunity for me to travel to our neighboring country. This trip was purposely to study the wireless solution in one of the leading company in Bandung, Indonesia. I have heard the prestigious Institute Technology Bandung before but hardly have any knowledge on the standard of Wireless technologies there. After visiting that company, I have been a little bit worry about Malaysia. Country like Indonesia, their government is putting faith on their own local company for providing their own solution, although they are not developing from the scratch. But credit to them since they are working hard to get the things done. Here, peoples are depending too much on foreigners’ technologies and seems reluctant to give opportunities to local peoples. I am sorry to say that the Indon guys are much better than us in terms of their work rate. I have had the time to talk to one of fresh graduate from ITB and he said that those who graduate from IBT are encouraged to go oversea for their study. I can say that his technical skill is much better than any fresh graduate from our local university. Sigh of worry! I can’t imagine but I think that I have to believe that Indonesia will soon overshadow Malaysia in technology if we do nothing.

I had arrived at the Bandung airport on Sunday morning. Stayed in Jayakarta Hotel and it is quite near to the city center. Bandung is famous for its textile industry. My colleagues and I had spent our time in Rumah Mode and Cihampelas Street (famous for its Jean) looking for some clothes and etc. It is a paradise for those shopping kaki since there are a lot of factory outlets there. During this short stay, I had found out quite a number of foods which are synonym to Chinese foods, such as CapCay, Siomay (Siu-mai in Cantonese) , Mie Dago (like watan mee here) and etc. Some of the interesting snacks are Durian with ice cream, Batagor (fish ball mixed with Taufu), Siomay ( ), Mie Baso (noodle served with beef meat ball) ….But if you are talking about hygiene, than you probably won’t dare enough to taste these! Anyway, try to understand what the peoples are saying is difficult, especially when the terms can be interpreted as different meaning, such as:

lumayan – jauh
bisa – biasa
ceker – kaki
pak – cik
….

Here the Photos

A View on Hill Site

Jayakarta Hotel

Rumah Mode - A Famous Factory Outlet in Bandung

Durian mixed with Ice Cream

Batagor - A Famous Snack there

They are selling rifles openly


Taking picture at Bandung airport

Too much assumption.....

Worked on the protocol stacks integration, combining both two signaling stacks, NBAP (Node-B Application Part) and ALCAP, with the user plane protocol, FP (Framing Protocol). The FP is resided in peripheral card with PowerPC core while the signaling stacks are both running in main card with Intel Pentium core. Both of these two cards use different operating systems, one is RTOS and another one is traditional UNIX-based OS. The channel cards are not ready and this coz the implementation work based on too much assumptions. It’s really difficult…

Welcome the New Comer

My sister gave birth to a baby last Saturday. Probably will pay a visit within one or two weeks time. Guess whether is a girl or a boy?

Last Week Activities

Technical talk about Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC) was held in UNITEN last Wednesday. We have invited Dr. Daniel Wong, one of the guest editors from IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine for special issue on “Inter-Vehicular Communications” and his student, Miss Bhawani. There are many similarities between the ad-hoc networks and vehicular-to-vehicular communication. However, there are different problems faced in VANET, such as rapid changing of topology. The speakers addressed two important research issues, security and routing algorithm. More on IVC can be found here.

Last week, I have been assigned a temporary task regarding WiMax solution. This solution consists of three main boards: processor board, modem board and RF board, connected via passive PCI backplane. I am asked to reengineer back the processor board. This board comes along with Intel IXP425 network processor running Timesys Linux. Since the tools are not ready for the time being, I worked most of time identifying the mechanism for re-loading the binary. The board contains a 16M Bytes boot flash that is used to store the bootloader, kernel image and root file system. The bootloader, Redboot was successfully built using the available tar package. However, the linux image is not built for the time being due to the unavailability of Timesys SDK. The JFFS2 root file system was built using the buildroot by choosing the uClibc library which is smaller than the libc. I found out that this tool is really helpful and you can add any new modules to your root file system pretty easy. Anyway, you have to add all the necessary device nodes by yourself. The Abatron BDI2000 will be used to download the bootloader. Subsequently, the redboot contains the command to transfer the image and root file system via TFTP. There are 5 MTD partitions in the flash and thus the root file system is mapped to root=/dev/mtdblock/2. To ease the development phase, mounting the file system is done via NFS.

Name FLASH addr Mem addr Length Entry point
RedBoot 0x50000000 0x50000000 0x00020000 0x00000000
zImage 0x50040000 0x01600000 0x00120000 0x01600000
RfsLinux 0x50160000 0x50160000 0x00E60000 0x00000000
RedBoot config 0x50FC0000 0x50FC0000 0x00001000 0x00000000
FIS directory 0x50FE0000 0x50FE0000 0x00020000 0x00000000

Twin Tower at Night and My Recent Photos

These photos were taken at KLCC Twin Tower last Wednesday. There were 6 trainers from Korea coming to our premise to conduct the training. They eagerly want to have a look on our Twin Tower – a mega project by our desperate Dr. M. So, we spent around 1 hour time there and had a cup of coffee at Coffee Bean.....

UMTS LTE

Recently, our local mobile operators are busy of launching the 3G services and also the HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). 3G offers the data rate of 384 kpbs while HSDPA offers a 2 Mbps. However, the current research on UMTS Long Term Evaluation are looking for more high speed data rate and can be considered as 4G after all. One of the major different of UMTS-LTE compared to the current 3G is the radio interface technology. UMTS-LTE applies OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) and not CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). If this is really the case and our mobile operators is going to shift to the new technologies maybe in 20 years time, then we all need to buy a new handphone again. Anyway, I am more concern about the research opportunities...

Attractive Peoples = Non-Productive

A light moment on the weekend....... what do you think :-)

Weekly Update - Working on BTS

Spent almost the entire week on the new arrival BTS system. Study the technical specification. Figure out the mechanism of message exchanging between the channel card and main controller. Try to understand the software resided in the channel card and main controller. Manage to dig out the information on how the information elements in the signaling message are applied to actual configuration of the modulator/demudalotor and encoder/decoder. This week, start to plug the visionICE emulator on the 8260 board and have to figure out the HRCW and correct memory mapping for SDRAM, EEPROM and Flash. After manipulating OR and BR registers, manage to inspect the original dumped image in the flash. Then, bring out the board with my own downloadable image. So, this will ensure the re-loading of the new firmware and software for future enhancement. Still need to figure out the correct flash algorithm since the part number of the flash memory used in the board is not available in the visionICE.

Watched the match between England vs Macedonia and I was not convinced with their performance under the new coach. Again, they failed to impress with too many long ball to Peter Crouch. If you have ever watched the England vs Crotia match on Thursday, you will then laugh at the disgraceful moment by Robinson. You won’t believe that he can let a back-pass to defeat him. Gary Neville scored his first international goal not for his country but for Croatia. He should be proud of that ;-) Hope that he will not do the same to ManU. But I am quite sure that Van dar Saar is not Robinson. See the EPL league table and you will find out why.....

Badminton Friendly Match

Yesterday, we had a friendly match in SRJK© Serdang 2. It was an invitation from Goi friend. I had met with one of ex-schoolmate who I used to play football with. He said that he just took up this sport 2 or 3 month time. Actually, he asked me to join him while we met at Maybank ATM machine. However, I lost his phone number which I stored in the handphone. So, each team was allowed to form 5 double pairs. I had been asked to partner with John. Keke… just to cover me up. We played really bad and made too many unforced errors. We lost the first game after leading 7-4 and were behind 13-0 in the second game. But all of sudden, we managed to steal the game beating them 15-13 after exchanging three services. Maybe we had not enough warm up before the match. Just an excuse…

1st pair – GoiBM/Dr Lee - Lost
2nd pair – GoiBJ /SL - Draw
3rd pair – Ronney/Lam - Win
4th pair – John/Yeoh - Draw
5th pair – Kelvin/LipNgee - Lost

It was really tough yesterday. At the end, our team lost. Maybe we are not used to play in a competitive environment ;)

Presentation at IEEE Conference

Did my presentation at IEEE conference on RF and Microwave in Palm Garden Hotel, PutraJaya yesterday. The paper entitled “Performance Evaluation of FP/ATM Integration in MPC8260” is discussing the effort of putting the 3GPP Framing Protocol in the Motorola SBC8260 supporting AAL2 SAR and calculating the number of simultaneous DCHs affordable by the system. I had been assigned to make the presentation at Microwave Photonic session, which is irrelevant to my paper topic. At the end, there is no question and no response from the attendee. Anyway, I had did my job.

Curry Sausage

Curry sausage, have you all heard about it before? I was amazed to find out that it has been listed as one of the 50 groundbreaking inventions in German History by Partner fur Innovation. So, what is curry sausage all about? It is just a bite-size pieces of sausage covered with tomato-curry sauce. Imagine that 800 million are consumed throughout Germany each year. I have tasted it before in Berlin, because it is cheap and yes it taste delicious. So, do you all think that we can make this as one of the popular fast foods here? The main problem that I think is probably getting the main ingredient, the “pork” sausage. By the way, Herta Heuwer is the inventor for this favourite fast food. She made this culinary dish in 4th September 1949.

Look at the picture of curry sausage. Would you like to taste it?

IEEE Teacher In Service Program

Spent the weekend in Mariot PutraJaya for IEEE Techer In Service Program (TIPS). This program is the initiative of IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB). The major purpose of this program is to increase the number of student in Engineering by facilitating the volunteer-teacher mechanism. This 2 days program provides the platform for me to contribute to my society based on my profession. We will be called out to be the presenter or “coaches” for future TISP presentation. A small number of teachers attended this conference and found out that the lesson plans are indeed very useful as part of their teaching materials. We have exposed to two lesson plans: “Building the Robot Arm” and “Design a Candy Bag”. The lessons are designed to provide an early exposure for any pre-university students to engineering world. We all have to think how to first meet the design specification, costing issues, testing method, redesign and etc. All of these lesson plans are carefully planned to use low-cost materials, not more than USD100. Besides, the organizer invited the Curriculum Development Center director from Ministry of Education and he has said that it is possible that part of the lesson plans can be included as Living Skill modules. Anyway, we believe that we should start in small scale or pilot projects first. Try out the lesson plans yourselves in www.tryEngineering.com

Mr. Doug Gorham gave TISP Introduction

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