End of 2011

Writing year end blog has become a must do on the new year eve for me. Looking back my previous new year eve's blog mostly are sentimental posts, a bit blue. So what about this year?

Most of the Chinese astrology have predicted 2011 an unpeaceful year, a year that will not stay calm. We saw the riots in middle east, Europe, and even US; the nuclear disaster in Japan; economy crisis everywhere; flooding at Thailand, and many many more. So what's 2011 mean to me?

First of all, the biggest changes to me is I finally promoted to father :) Thank to my wife for her hardwork to bring a lovely baby to our family, finally this year I can collect back some angpao when CNY came, wahahaha...

And finally I have resigned from the company that I have worked for 10 years. It's a bit difficult to make the decision, but once you have made up your mind, it's actually not really difficult. I always say I love the company but I hate the management, until the day I left, I still have the same feeling, especially with the new useless "top management". Anyway, as I said, I don't miss it but I will remember it.

Today I still working with my colleagues, from morning until late night. I think for the pass few years, I always working on new year eve. Anyway, it's not that bad working on new year eve if you are not alone.

So, I close my summary of 2011, and wish everyone I know and the reader a very happy 2012 new year, don't worry it will not be end of the world, and we hope for a peaceful and prosperity year. 

Full moon

Ok, that's a joke. Yesterday is my princess full moon, and thank you to everyone spending their time to attend the dinner, I hope the dinner is ok for you all. And not forget thank you for the gifts for my princess.

She still look like a boy T.T 

Hopefully she can become more feminine when she grow up 

Today is winter solstice, so I wish everyone a happy winter solstice, remember to go back early and enjoy a wonderful dinner with your family.

当我们同在一起

She got a very nice voice but too bad just doesn't get famous. Her name is 王羚柔.

Venus

If you look at the sky at west, you will see a bright "star", that "star" is Venus, the second plant from sun. It's always brighter than any star, so you wouldn't miss it.

It has phases like our moon, the picture show 87% of the phase. I can't really able to see the planet from my toy telescope since it is relatively small as compare to Jupiter or Saturn, slightly smaller than earth actually. It just look like a "star" shining brightly in the sky from my telescope.

Thanksgiving

I'm not very sure is thanksgiving is celebrate by regional tradition or because of religious. According to wiki, Canada, Liberia, Norfolk and USA celebrate thanksgiving day. Bolehland don't have thanksgiving day, so I have not much idea of what is actually being celebrated.

Again according to wiki, people celebrate thanksgiving day mostly after harvest day, to give thanks to the god for giving them a good harvest season. A very similar festival in Bolehland is Gawai Dayak celebrate by Sarawak people on 1st June.

Does Chinese has thanksgiving day? According to wiki again, winter solstice, celebrate on 21 or 22 Dec., is consider as Chinese thanksgiving day. This is really new to me, cause for the passed 34 years, I only remember winter solstice is a day that we eat tong-yuan, and school don't give holiday on that day.

Seriously, anyone knew about this Chinese thanksgiving day? So far, I only notice that Chinese festivals mostly are related to food. Like, 5th of month 5, we eat dumpling; 15th of month 8, we eat moon cake; Chinese new year, we eat new year cake. Chinese people is very good at eating, but they are very lousy at expressing appreciation.

We go to people's wedding dinner, we give money then we eat. After eating we talk about how good or how bad is the food, and complain about the event. Sound familiar? Ya, I'd done that before.

Do you ever thanks your mom for the dumping she made for you?
Do you ever thanks your mom for the lunch she cooked for you?
Do you ever thanks your dad for the CNY eve dinner he had cooked?

Or, you complain about the food?

So far, I didn't manage to thanks my grandmom for what she had prepared for me and thanks god I never complain, or else I will regret for the rest of my life. I miss those simple taste dishes, especially the dumpling, no one can make such delicious dumpling anymore.

Ok, please remember to thanks your family in the coming winter solstice, before it's too late. If you really feel shy to say thank you, at least please don't complain.

What Einstein has taught me

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. -A. Einstein

Lunar eclipse 2011

Luckily the sky is clear when the full eclipse happen. The moon is just so beautiful tonight.

Is green energy a new business?

FiT has just kick started in Bolehland, Seda has opened its counter for FiT application. We saw a tremendous excellence response from Bolehland citizen, within half day, the quota for PV has been fully taken up. According to the news, 50MW has been allocated for PV (2011/2012), however, from Seda webpage, the total allocated PV quota is 69.89MW (2011/2012). If you check again, now the total available quota for PV until 2014 left 5.76MW at the time of this writing and I believe it will go zero by end of the day.

Source: Seda Portal 7/12/2011 9am

According to the news, there are total of 229 applications for FiT and 201 of it are applied for PV. Let’s do a simple calculation. Total of 201 applications for 69.89MW, which mean average of 348kW for each application. You may say this might not be the case cause for solar farm, one application may reach up to 5MW. Ok, let’s re-do it again. Now assume that 201 applications are all individuals that want to install PV at their house, so 201 applications for 7.14MW, which come to 35.5kW per application. Does it look normal?

For those who don’t understand PV, let me explain something on the PV installation.

PV is one of the simplest RE, it does not require heavy maintenance and it is clean and safe to install at any place. But one of the major constrains of PV is that it require spaces. From current technology, it can only generate around 140-150Wp per m2. Now, let’s us calculate the space required for 35.5kW PV by assume that the PV module can generate 145Wp per m2, so for 35.5kW you need 244.8m2 (2635sq.ft). It’s almost double of my house’s land area.

Something is not correct here, something fishy.

I have talked to one of the PV manufacturer, and he was shocked seeing this situation. It means they can’t sell any more PV for the next 3 years cause no one want to install PV anymore, since the quota has been taken up. There is no way to sell this technology to household that really want to contribute to the environment by hoping that they can at least recover their investment through FiT. Only those really rich people can afford to install without consider the rebate. For your information, PV is still talking about RM15k++ per kWp of installation.

I personally do not agree on PV farm, it is not green technology; it's destroying our environment, our mother nature. Imaging a 1MW solar farm needs to take up at least 7000m2++ or near to 2 acres of land. How cans a technology is called green but it needs to chop the trees and destroy a huge jungle area in order to install the so call green energy? It’s just bullshit to me.

Bolehland authority is killing this wonderful technology of PV, a green technology that really available to us for us to share our effort to help to improve the environment. But someone just kill it for the sick of their wealthiness .

Maxis new plan - Value Plus Internet

For those who like to on their mobile online all-day but don't want to pay extra for data package, this should be the one that you are waiting for. Maxis finally come out with new value package for internet.

But is this plan cheap enough for you?

Lets say you are previously a Value Plus 80 plan, and each month you make 300 minutes of calls, and lets assume that 1/2 of the call is to Maxis and 1/2 is to other operator, and we assume the same to SMS.

So, 150 minutes x RM0.12 + 150 minutes x RM0.15 + 150 SMS x RM0.05 + 150 SMS * RM0.15, which total up to RM70.50. Look pretty cheap if I upgrade to the new plan, with additional of RM9.50, I can enjoy 500MB of data every month.

However, have you checked your bill? I checked mine, and I found that I seldom use SMS especially to those non-Maxis line, but I call a lot, sometime reach up to 400-500 minutes, the lowest I manage to go is around 200 minutes. So, lets calculate my bill,

200 minutes x RM0.12 + 200 minutes x RM0.15 + 100 SMS x RM0.05 + 50 SMS x RM0.15 = RM66.50

If I change to the new plan, what is the bill? Now we have extra 100 minutes to pay, which come up to RM15 on top of RM80 committed charge. Total of RM28.50 extra with new plan, if I manage to share my balance with my family members.

Relatively, it is still consider acceptable if you hunger for internet on your phone. Just study your bills and see is it acceptable for you.

By the way, please take note that the Value Plus Internet plan does not allow credit sharing among family members, but calling to family member is still free (if within the limited calls period).

The last lunar eclipse of the year 2011

This will be the last total lunar eclipse of the year 2011, and it is one of the most beautiful lunar eclipse since y2k. If you missed the 15 June eclipse, then make sure you don't miss this one, cause once you'd missed it, you need to wait until year 2014 and buy a air ticket to fly to the big apple land to see the event.

Just add 8 hours to the UT time, and that's the time you have to prepare yourself at your garden to witness the nature show.

Just pray that day will be a clear day.

Have you Chrome?

I got this news and I try to extrapolate the line, I believe in Sept. 2012, Chrome will overtake IE. Nothing personal here, just I think IE has been there for too long and it is time for her to go down.

I don't hate IE, I just don't like to use it. It's like Bolehland national car, it's just rubbish. Nothing personal here.

Introduce to you, the engineer's princess

Country of origin: Bolehland 

Manufacturer: SK & SY JV

Model name: To be advice

Type: Girl

Date of production starts: Feb 2011

Manufactured date: 21 Nov 2011 01:57AM

Length of production time: 40 weeks and 2 days

Dimension: 51cm (Length), 34cm (Head Circumference)

Wight: 3.4kg

My sister said she look like me, I'm not so sure about that, but if she look like me then I hope she will look like my sister, just don't behave like her will do :)

We just hope she can grow up healthily and happily, that's the only wish from us. 

My princess

I'm not going to write long post today, cause i'm nearly exhausted these few days. Luckily everything turn out at good site. My wife just gave me a beautiful daughter after so many 'scary' processes. Thank you for your concern and i appreciate that. And no forget to thanks Sam, Ng, Cheong, Peter, Huan, Toh, Ryan, Wong (CAD), Chin, Lum and Elaine, and JJ for the gifts

How to reset Toshiba Satellite L645 bios password

Just in case you are using this notebook, and you had accidentally set the bios password and unfortunately you had forgotten the password.

I have tried to search for a simple method from Internet on how to reset this model but what I got are methods for old models and they are using very odd way to reset the bios password. I really can't found anything useful from the Internet on this. So, I got no choice but to try my luck to reset the bios using very old way, disconnect the RTC battery.

First you have to disconnect the battery and the power supply. Then unscrew the two small screws below the power battery in order to dismantle the keyboard's.top cover. Once you have unscrewed the two screws, carefully take out the keyboard's top cover. Then unscrew the three small screws that holding the keyboard.

Once the keyboard can be detached, you can unscrew all the screws marked as F5 and F3 and three small stainless steel screws under the power battery. Remember to put all these screws at a proper place so that you wouldn't loss it.

Once it is unscrewed, you can easily open the notebook cover. The RTC battery is located under the keyboard, about the size of 5 cents Bolehland money. Use a small screw driver and take out the battery and let it discharge for few minutes.

After that, put all the screws back following reverse order. After done, on the power and waola, the bios setting has been reset.

I do not know is it work for other model of notebook of not, you may try it if that is the only you have. Good luck.

You are the apple of my eye

It's just so hot these days, the novel, the movie, the song and the memory. Just finish reading the novel, a very lovely story. Still not yet got chance to see the movie, but definitely a must watch movie for me.

There is always 沈佳宜 in our's memory :)

Jangan Ada Dusta Diantara Kita

A very old love song.

Does God Play Dice?

Just want to share with you all about a book that I just read - Does God Play Dice? If you search the net, you will found two books that have same title, one is from Ian Stewart with subtitle The Mathematics of Chaos, and the other book is from a China electrical engineer, 曹天元 Capo, with subtitle 量子物理史話. I haven't read Ian Stewart version, but I was very impress with this Chinese version. Basically it is two book, it is not the translated version from Ian Stewart.

The book is similar to Steven Hawking's The Brief History of Time, and it does not required complicated maths or physics to understand the contents. What impress me and make this book interesting is that, the author is Chinese WuXia or KongFu story way of writing to describe the history of quantum mechanics. It's not science fiction, nor boring physics theory book, it is just a science history with very interesting writing method. You wouldn't want to put the book down until you have finished it, especially for someone who like physics.

I do not know whether there is any English version of this book in the market now or in near future. But if you know Chinese, and you love physics, you should put this book on your book rack.

Canon Photo Marathon

I suppose to post this yesterday night, but I just don't have enough energy to move my finger, so I post it a day later.

After missed the event for the pass two years due to work, finally this year I managed to attend the event with my shuttermate. We all start with full of energy and "sure win" spirit. Well, sometime become photographer is not that as easy as camera owner. We end out with very miserable look. Without much experience and skill, I took tonne of crap photos, but the fire in my heart will never extinguished.

After looking at my crap photos on my PC, I got no face to upload it, so I only choose an easy group photo to share with you all.

 
Looking forward to next year event and hope within this year, we all can practice our skill so that we can take less crap photos next time.

Jupiter

It has been sometime I observe the sky, partly because busy and the sky is very cloudy at night. Today, I saw a bright "star" next to the moon, and I know it's time for me to look at Jupiter. So, I took out my toy telescope and point to the brightest star that next to the moon and I saw this.

There are four moons for Jupiter, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa, now Jupiter is in the middle of these moons, two at the left and two and the right. I checked with wiki, the moons are so beautiful, too bad I can only see a dot on my telescope.

From left, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

For such a big planet, I can only see a bluish and brownish planet on my telescope, need a more powerful telescope soon ;) 

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