The 8th Voyager

Thursday, December 30, 2010

31 Dec 2010 declared as Malaysia public holiday after winning the 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup football match

Hot news!

The Malaysian squad has just beaten Indonesian team on 4-2 aggregate in the final of 2010 ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki Cup held at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta.

As a result, PM has declared 31 December 2010 (Friday) as Malaysia public holiday.

Auspicious dates for starting new job/post/assignment in 2011

I have just posted the list of auspicious dates for opening business in 2011. And for employees, especially those in leading/managing position, here is a list of auspicious dates for starting new job/post/assignment in 2011, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.

It can be applied to first day reporting to new company/department/office/position, go for the post to lead/manage a new business unit/team/project/programme. It can also be applied to assuming new job position after promotion/restructuring/relocation exercise.

Auspicious dates for opening business in 2011

Here is the list of auspicious dates for opening business in year 2011, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. It can be applied to new business opening, or reopening of business after a break/holiday.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Auspicious dates for marriage proposal or engagement in 2011

Before becoming the life partner, marriage is proposed by lover and engagement is made.

Here is the list of auspicious dates for marriage proposal or engagement in year 2011 (year of Rabbit), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

The dates highlighted in pink are considered even more auspicious.

You might aware that the Saint Valentine's day which fall on 14 February 2011 is among the auspicious dates. Other interesting dates include Women's Day on 8 March 2011 and 11 November 2011 (11-11-11).

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Good luck in getting your right life partner.

Related articles:

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Auspicious dates for house warming, open house, party, gathering, etc. in 2011

Here is the list of auspicious dates in 2011 for organizing and hosting meet-up with friends and/or relatives (会友), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.

The dates are applicable for house warming, open house, home party, gathering, and any other similar functions to meet up with friends and/or relatives.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Auspicious dates for baby first haircut (Mundan) in 2011

In many culture, religion and/or tradition, the first haircut of a baby is considered an important milestone for his/her life. The day is known as Mundan, Chadakarana, Halaqah, Upsherin, etc.

Here is the list of auspicious dates for baby first haircut in year 2011, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Note that there is no particular auspicious date for baby first haircut in January and February of 2011.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Friday, December 17, 2010

Auspicious dates for moving to new house/office in 2011

Here is the list of auspicious dates for moving to new house/office in year 2011, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

If you are going to move to a new home, don't forget to visit the "home idea" section of my blog to find out my sharing on mortgage, renovation, furnitures, electrical appliances, pest control, etc.

Related articles:

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Inauspicious dates to avoid for wedding/marriage in 2012

I have posted the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2012 recently, and here is the reverse, namely the inauspicious dates to avoid for wedding/marriage in 2012. The list below is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

If you are concerned, then you should probably avoid getting married on the listed days above.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Monday, December 13, 2010

Auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2012

Many couples plan for their wedding more than 1 year ahead in order to have sufficient preparation time.

Here is the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in year 2012 (year of Dragon), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Note that there are 2 forth month (润四月) in the lunar year during 2012.

You might aware that the mid-autumn day which fall on 30 September 2012 is among the auspicious dates. That day will have the brightest and biggest full moon of the year and is a Sunday.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Inauspicious dates to avoid for wedding/marriage in 2011

I have posted the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2011 recently, and here is the reverse, namely the inauspicious dates to avoid for wedding/marriage in 2011. The list below is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2011

Here is the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in year 2011 (year of Rabbit), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

The dates highlighted in pink are considered even more auspicious.

You might aware that the mid-autumn day which fall on 12 September 2011 is among the auspicious dates. That day will have the brightest and biggest full moon of the year. Another interesting date is Christmas Eve which fall on 24 December 2011 and is a Saturday.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

SunCity and Sunway to merge into single entity

After SunCity (6289) and Sunway (4308) suspended for 2 trading days awaiting for this announcement, the Sunway Group has proposed to buy over SunCity (Sunway City Berhad / 双威城) and Sunway (Sunway Holdings Berhad / 双威控股) with a private company called Sunway Sdn Bhd, which is controlled by the same boss Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling (谢富年).

After the merger, the new company (newco) will be relisted.

It is proposed that:

SunCity to be bought over at the price of RM5.10 per share, a premium of RM0.61 (13.59%) to its last closing price of RM4.49.
SunCity-WA to be bought over at the price of RM1.29 per warrant, a premium of RM0.17 (15.18%) to its last closing price of RM1.12.
Sunway to be bought over at the price of RM2.60 per share, a premium of RM0.35 (15.56%) to its last closing price of RM2.25.
Sunway-WC to be bought over at the price of RM1.50 per warrant, a premium of RM0.36 (31.58%) to its last closing price of RM1.14.

Existing shareholders and warrant-holders will get:

Newco shares at the new listing price of RM2.80 representing 80% of the offer price.
Cash representing 20% of the offer price.
1 free Newco warrant for every 5 Newco shares. Exercise period for the Newco warrant is 5 years.

With this information, and assuming that you are currently holding 1000 unit of the share or warrant of SunCity and/or Sunway, I have done a quick calculation of what you will get from this exercise.

What you will get are all the things in the last 3 columns. I think the free Newco warrant will have an initial listing price of RM0.005 and it is up to the market to give it a value during its 1st trading day.

The bad thing is, you will probably have some odd lots of NewCo and NewCo-WA after the exercise.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The end of Novell

Novell, once being extremely famous with their NetWare Operating System, and also being the pioneer in Directory Service architecture, and later shifted focus to SUSE Linux, is now going to be sold to a not so well-known company - Attachmate.

The deal worth US$2.2 billion, or $6.10 per share.

Attachmate said it plan to operate Novell as 2 divisions:

SUSE Linux
The rest of Novell, including the ZENworks virtualization software and other networking solutions

Beside that, Novell is also going to sell some of its intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings, a Microsoft-organized consortium. The deal worth another US$450 million.

With this acquisition, here come the end of Novell, once a technology giant with excellent products, but failed to compete with rivals such as Microsoft (NetWare vs Windows Server), Red Hat (SuSe vs Redhat Linux), etc.

Garmin releases MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 for free update

Garmin has made available MalSingMaps (MSM) Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 (2010-Q4) for free update now.

You can click here to download the installation file of MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 from Garmin server. The download file is split into 4, and you just need to download the file relevant to your Garmin GPS navigator:

nuvi 3790
nuvi 1460, 1350, 765 or 255w
nuvi 1250
nuvi 205 or 205w

Due to this improvement, the installation file is much more smaller than the previous version. For example, the installation file for nuvi 255w is now 237MB only (compared with previous version's 743MB)

The installation program will update gmapprom1.img, gmapprom1.unl, gmap3d.img and SGMYMAL.JCV into your Garmin GPS navigator. As nuvi 255w doesn't support 3D maps, if you are installing to this model, gmap3d.img will automatically be removed during the end of the installation process.

During the installation process, you'll be asked for the unlock key. The key is stored in the existing gmapprom1.unl file in your Garmin GPS navigator, which you can open with Notepad or any text editor. Just copy and paste the key to the installer when asked.

Version highlights:

Update Traffic Message Channel in Singapore
DPOI of Singapore
Add more POIs, postal code data and laneinfo of Singapore
Extended road shield of Singapore & Malaysia
Trails are built into the map
Road Signs value-added
Synchronize to Malsingmaps v5.00
Extending more Junction Views for complex intersection around Malaysia

Surprisingly, this version has a smaller SGMYMAL.JCV file of size 217,747kb only (compared with the previous 352,764kb), but it contains more Junction View pictures and more lane assist triggers.

It seems that the Garmin release of MSM has improved a lot over the year. However, I still prefer using MalFreeMaps (MFM) as the later contains much more POIs and also able to provide more precise route to the destination.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 in conjunction with Deliciously 1Malaysia

For the 2nd year, the Malaysian restaurant food festival and cooking competition namely Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 (一个大马。食全食美) held in conjunction with Deliciously 1Malaysia carnival is coming again.

Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 is all about food. It brings together F&B businesses, restaurateurs, tourists and consumers in celebration and recognition of Malaysia's sumptuous spread of local and international culinary delights during the festive seasons, reinforcing Malaysia as a gourmet paradise to savor fine cuisines and food delicacies.

Date: 17-19 December 2010
Time: 10:30 am - 8.00 pm
Venue: Tun Razak Hall 1, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur
Admission: Free

This event is presented by Ministry of Tourism, organized by The Malaysia Selangor and Federal Territory Ku Su Shin Choong Hung Restaurant Association (马来西亚雪隆姑苏慎忠行餐饮业公会) and co-organized by The Federation of Hawkers and Petty Traders Association of Malaysia (马来西亚贩商同业总会). It is ambitiously targetted for 120,000 visitors from local and overseas.

150 exhibition booths will be setup, and there will be cooking competitions, restaurant showcases, cooking demonstrations, food acrobats, etc.

According to statistic, 2008 tourist spending on F&B in Malaysia stood at 8.77 billion and increased to 9.29 billion in 2009.

Click here to go to the website of Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) - A Roadmap for Malaysia

Resulting from the results and targets of the 1,000-person workshop and 500-person laboratories orchestrated by the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), Najib has launched the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP): A Roadmap for Malaysia on 25 October 2010.

The ETP contains action plans, hopefully will transform Malaysia into a high-income nation by 2020. This is charted by lifting Malaysia’s gross national income (GNI) per capita from US$6,700 (RM23,700) in 2009 to more than US$15,000 (RM48,000) in 2020. In order to achieve this target, GNI need to continuously grow at the rate of at least 6% per annum.

The ETP is planned to be driven by 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) announced in the 10th Malaysia Plan, which are:

Oil, Gas and Energy
Palm Oil
Financial Services
Tourism
Business Services
Electronics and Electrical
Wholesale and Retail
Education
Healthcare
Communications Content and Infrastructure
Agriculture
Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley

It seems that areas ruled by MPSJ, including Subang Jaya, USJ, Bandar Sunway, Puchong, Kinrara, Seri Kembangan, etc. will be at the heart of Greater KL, and hopefully will be greatly benefited from the plan.

However, the planned MRT system under Greater KL, where the Red Line linking Damansara to Serdang, and the Green Line linking Kepong to Kajang, seems to have bypassed the heart!

Under the ETP, 131 Entry Point Projects (EPP) and and 60 Business Opportunities (BO) were planned, spanning across the 12 NKEAs. They include:

Expanding the production of swiftlet bird nests (燕窝)
Seaweed farming in Sabah
Mushroom project
Establishing dairy clusters in Malaysia
Growing aviation support services
Building globally-competitive outsourcing services
Data centre and green technology
Islamic financial services
Launching EduCity @ Iskandar
Solid state lighting (SSL)
Home appliances and semi-conductors
Solar energy
Developing health metropolis
Connecting to Singapore via a high-speed rail system
Deploying nuclear energy for power generation
Building a regional oil storage and trading hub
e-Healthcare, e-Learning and e-Government
Positioning Malaysia as a duty free shopping destination for tourist goods
etc.

Click here to go to the download page of The Economic Transformation Programme: A Roadmap for Malaysia

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A furniture stock called LIIHEN

There are plenty of furniture stocks listed in Bursa Malaysia, including the recently listed HOMERITZ. Most of them are majoritically doing export business, and hence, furniture stocks are known to be cyclical and buoyed by the worldwide economic sentiment.

You would probably not be interested in furniture stock at the moment, especially when the Ringgit is going high against USD, which is not so good for export industries. However, there is one called LIIHEN (7089, 利兴) which attracted my attention.

Located in Muar the "furniture town" in Johor, Lii Hen has been around for decades since 1985, and now their furniture plants spans across an area if approximately 30 acres, undertake the full range of wood-based manufacturing activities from timber processing up to manufacturing and packaging of finished goods.

This is their corporate structure:

The boss, Mr Chua Lee Seng (蔡利成) has been active in local, state as well as national level of furniture associations, and has taken significant roles including executive advisor of Muar Furniture Association, president of Federation of Johore Furniture Manufacturers & Traders Association, etc.

Lii Hen was first listed in 2nd Board in April 2000, and transferred to Main Board in 2002. Most of the time, Lii Hen was a dull counter, except once been "goreng" around October 2004. However, it shows remarkable fundamental improvement since 2009, despite the global economic downturn.

As you can see, from 2009 onwards, its EPS surges, boosting its ROE to above 15%. And then, Lii Hen paid dividend every single quarter. If this is sustainable, it would become a dividend stock too.

Note that there was a fire incident on 28 October 2009 night at one of their main premises, and it was covered by insurance. The fire caused the total loss of buildings, inventories, plant & machinery and factory equipments amounted to RM8.3 million. The fire had caused lost of sales in 2009 Q4, and you can see that quarter has some figures gone red in the table above.

Anyhow, Lii Hen started to show better result a few months prior to the fire incident. After the fire, they promptly recovered and resume the up-trend again, as the disruption of the production capacity due to the fire incident occurred in the preceding quarter had been fully restored at rented premises in 2010 Q1. You see another red in the net profit of 2010 Q2 "due to the erosion of profit margin resulting from the depreciation of USD against RM".

Based on its closing price of RM1.23 on 9 November 2010, and using the figure of its rolling quarter:

PE = 1.23/0.35 = 3.51
DY = 0.145/1.23 = 12%

That's why it attracted my attention.

Click here to visit the website of LIIHEN.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Friday, November 5, 2010

How to make your boss like you

The November 2010 issue of Personal Money magazine has an article titled "9 Ways To Get Into Your Boss' Good Books" which I believe is very advisable for all employee to read, understand and practise in order to excel in their career.

The 9 tips to let your boss like you are:

Make your boss look good
Understand your boss
Understand your boss' expectations and do more than is expected of you
Provide solutions rather than problems
Working independently on the job
Make your time count
Communicate with your boss
Watch your code of conduct
Showing positivism in your life and work

Beside that, the following are something usually done by employee to please their boss, but might not work at all:

Trying to look productive but nothing is happening
Making your boss look good in the wrong way
Tripod-ding and apple-polishing
Working overly independent of your boss

For detailed explanation of all the above points, grab yourself a copy of November 2010 Personal Money magazine and read through page 59-61.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Using Dropbox service to sync, backup, share and publish files

Nowadays most of us have more than one computing devices - desktop, laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablet (eg. iPad), etc.

It would be nice if we can seamlessly synchronize some of our commonly accessed data files across those computing devices, so that the file will store in each (or some) of them, and always be accessible to us regardly we are at home, at work, at other place, or even on the road.

If the file is updated by us in one of the computing devices, we would like the same file storing in our other computing devices to also be updated to the latest. Technically, we call this as "synchronize" or "sync".

Dropbox is among the services that can answer that need. It uses cloud computing technology to enable users to store and share files and folders across the Internet with synchronization.

Data transmission of Dropbox is encrypted with SSL, and data stored in Dropbox cloud service is encrypted with AES-256. Dropbox uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for storage, which is the same cloud backend storage used by Ubuntu One.

One of the advantage of Dropbox is it supports multiple platform, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), Android devices, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc.

All files stored in Dropbox cloud storage are automatically backup. You have the option to undelete the files in your Dropbox folder. If you make changes to the files, you can also retrieve back earlier version of the files. For free account, Dropbox keeps 30 days of your files undo history. You can opt to have unlimited undo history by subscribing to their Pack-Rat service.

Beside synchronizing files and folders among your own computing devices, you can also share out one or more folders in your Dropbox with other Dropbox user(s). You control who to share the folder with by inviting them with a special link, and the invitee has to Accept your invitation to initiate the sharing.

There is no special ACL in Dropbox sharing. Everybody who is sharing the folder can make changes in that folder. Anyhow, all the changes will be versioned and kept in history, and can be undone if necessary. In the event 2 or more persons are editing the same file in the shared folder, Dropbox will save the file in different filename to avoid overwriting.

Once you installed Dropbox, you'll notice there are 2 default special folders automatically created - Public and Photos. Files and folders resided in the Public folder can be shared out even to non-Dropbox users. This is made possible as the file there is accessible with a unique special URL, which you can disclose in email, instant message conversations, blogs, etc. However, the files will not be searcheable by search engine like Google.

The sharing concept of the Photos folder is similar to Public. In addition to that, Photos sharing enables you to have an online gallery of your shared photos with unique special URL to each of the folders inside as individual Album.

Dropbox provides 3 account options. The Basic account is free, and started with 2GB online storage. The other 2 are paid Pro account with 50GB or 100GB online storage.

The Basic account storage is expandable for another 8GB up to a total of 10GB by:

Creating your account with a referal link (add 250MB once you installed your Dropbox client)
Inviting your friends to create their own Dropbox account (add 250MB each after they've installed their Dropbox client)
Becoming a Dropbox Guru (add 250MB, refer to the "Get Started" tab in your Dropbox web interface)

Microsoft has just released Windows Live Mesh 2011 (after long period of beta of Live Mesh, Windows Live Sync and Windows Live FolderShare) with similar function and providing 5GB free online storage in SkyDrive. However, Windows Live Mesh 2011 does not support Linux. Worse still, it also does not support Windows XP and earlier version of Windows. Currently, it also doesn't support any mobile devices.

Therefore, if you are upset with the limitation of Windows Live Mesh 2011, perhaps Dropbox is your alternative.

Click here to open your free Dropbox account with 2.250 GB free initial Cloud storage.

Click here for a list of interesting Dropbox Addons. For example, Dropbox Folder Sync can make your live easier to sync folders into Dropbox, and they can still reside in their original location. This is useful for you to sync your IE Favorites, Firefox Profiles, etc.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Playing chess games with my Dell SX2210T multi-touch monitor

I realized that touch screen monitors such as my Dell SX2210T is pretty useful when using applications that requires a lot of point and click/tap actions. A typical example of such application is computer games.

I like to play chess games and card games, either with human or with computer AI.

Windows 7 Home Premium (and above) comes with a pretty nice game called Chess Titans. Its AI isn't that strong and you can easily defeat the computer.

Beside Western Chess, I also like to play Chinese chess. There is an open source Chinese chess game for Windows called Qianhong (浅红) by Jeremy Craner, which you can download here.

The GUI of Qianhong isn't great at all, but I care more about its features. Qianhong supports severate modes of playing including human-human, human-computer, and computer-computer. It also supports playing across the network.

Its 3-level AI is pretty weak not challenging at all. However, Qianhong supports AI plugins which you can download from their website, including 10-level Ki11egg AI by Tzer-jen Wei, 5-level VSCCPW by Pham Hong Nguyen, 5-level ElephantEye by Morning Yellow, etc.

By using the computer-computer mode, you can let the same or different AI of same or different level to compete between themselves, and you be the observer to learn their tactics.

Another free Chinese chess game I like is XieXie Master (谢谢大师) by Pascal Tang.

XieXie Master has a better looking GUI than Qianhong, but it doesn't have computer-computer mode. However, it has features that Qianhong doesn't have, including "handicap", etc.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

MyConstitution Campaign (Kempen PerlembagaanKu)

MyConstitution Campaign (Kempen PerlembagaanKu) is an initiative by the Bar Council's Constitutional Law Committee to simplify the Federal Constitution of Malaysia so that it can reach out to the general public.

The committee is formed to:

Promote the concept of constitutionalism and the rule of just law;
Raise awareness of, and educate the rakyat on provisions of the Federal Constitution and thereby to empower the rakyat;
Document and respond to constitutional issues that arise; and
Conduct research on matters relating to the Federal Constitution and/or State Constitutions and where necessary, make recommendations for constitutional reform.

It is important for us to understand the Federal Constitution, as it is the most important document in our country which determines what kind of country we live in.

As part of the initiative, the committee has published a series of Rakyat Guides (RG) to explain the Federal Constitution in layman's terms (click the links to download/access).

The Rakyat Guides #1: What is the Federal Constitution? [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #2: Constitutional Institutions & Separation of Powers
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #3: Federal – State Relations
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #4: Parliament
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #5: The Executive
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #6: The Judiciary
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
The Rakyat Guides #7: Sabah & Sarawak
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Video Ads]
人民手冊 #1: 联邦宪法是什么 [第一页] [第二页]

Click here to visit the official website of MyConstitution (PerlembagaanKu)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

World Vision [Change A Life, Change Your Own] Campaign

There is a line from a well-known pop song which declares: "I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives." How true, indeed!

For many of us, life is all the more meaningful because of some kind act, word or touch from people we come across daily, some of whom are complete strangers to us. Indeed, history is full of extraordinary events created when ordinary people act.

World Vision Malaysia's latest campaign Change A Life, Change Your Own is a tribute to the 32,000 and more Malaysians who have acted and are bringing hope and joy to children and communities in need. More importantly, this campaign is about the journey of these individuals - how their respective lives were changed (and still are!) even as they seek to change the lives of those whom they are reaching out to help.

Change A Life, Change Your Own is about ordinary Malaysians from diverse backgrounds living extraordinary lives. Truly, it only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Campaign Kick-Off Roadshow
Date: 28-31 October 2010
Time: 10am - 10pm
Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Ground Floor, Promenade (in front of T.G.I. FRIDAY's restaurant)

Sharing sessions by child sponsors:

28/10 8pm: Mei Sim (云美鑫) - "More than raising my own children"
29/10 8pm: William Yap (叶伟良) - "There is no law in the joy of sharing lives"
30/10 2pm: Owen Yap (叶剑锋) - "People matter"
30/10 8pm: Niki Cheong - "Never too young to start changing lives"
31/10 12pm: Danell Lee (李桀汉) & William Lee (李威廷) - "A simple kind of happiness"
31/10 4pm: Roshan & Yise (罗忆诗) - "Changing 101 + 1 lives"

Click here to download the Child Sponsorship Flyer

You might probably be interested to also read about:

I started sponsoring a child in Laos through World Vision

Sunday, October 17, 2010

What are the 300 products have import duty abolished in 2011 National Budget

The 2011 National Budget speech by Najib on 15 October 2010 evening proposed that the import duty of approximately 300 goods preferred by tourists and locals be abolished with immediate effect.

Those items are:

Handbags, wallets, suitcases, briefcases, apparel, suits, children's apparel, shirts, undergarments, lingerie, nightwear, footwear, shoes and hats (duty between 5%-20%)
Jewellery, costume jewellery and ornaments (duty between 5%-20%)
Golf balls, toys such as dolls and small scale recreational models (duty between 5%-20%)
Talcum powder, face powder, shampoo, hair colourants and perfume (duty between 10%-20%)
Bedspreads, blankets, bed sheets, curtains, table cloth and mosquito nettings (duty between 10%-20%)

The detail listis said to be available in a so-called Appendix A, which I still can't find downloadabale in any government websites now.

Click here to download the speech of 2011 National Budget

Click here to download the 16 appendixes of 2011 National Budget (but without the Appendix A)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

27 winners in Oracle Magazine Editors Choice Awards 2010

It has come to the 9th year for the editors of Oracle Magazine to present the Editors’ Choice Awards to people who exemplify leadership, vision, and dedication in working with and managing Oracle technology.

And the winners for year 2010 are:

Alexandre Vasconcellos from Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Brazil - CIO of the Year, Latin America
PeiHui Wang from China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd., Hong Kong - CIO of the Year, Asia Pacific
Yasutomo Fukui from Panasonic, Japan - CIO of the Year, Japan
Rob James from Novartis, Switzerland - CIO of the Year, Europe, Middle East, and Africa
Fjeldheim from Qualcomm, California - CIO of the Year, North America
Ipolani Tano from VeriFone, Hawaii - CTO of the Year
Vinod Haval from Bank of America, North Carolina - DBA of the Year
Francisco Munoz Alvarez from Database Integrated Solutions, New Zealand - Oracle ACE Director of the Year
Roxanne Shelton from AT&T, Texas - Oracle Applications Implementer of the Year
Rodrigo Benzaquen from MercadoLibre, Argentina - Virtualization Architect of the Year
Jim Duffy from BNP Paribas, France - Data Warehouse Architect of the Year
Theresa Enebo and Aaron Seabaugh from TeleTech Holdings, Colorado - Cloud Architects of the Year
Keiichiro Shimizu from SoftBank Mobile, Japan - IT Manager of the Year
Rajeev Agrawal, Brian Deegan, Kathy Josephson, and Ajay Yelne from General Dynamics Information Technology, Virginia - Enterprise Performance Management / Business Intelligence Architects of the Year
Yekesa Kosuru from Nokia, Massachusetts - MySQL Developer of the Year
Adam Bien from adam-bien.com, Germany - Java Developer of the Year
Gary Clark, Gregory Hansen, Ali Pasham, Sean Shilton, and Alex Whitehurst from Liberty AV Solutions, Colorado - Oracle Database Developers of the Year
John O’Donnell from Deutsche Bank, New York - Security Architect of the Year
Yamil Ahuatzin from Grupo Actinver, Mexico - Oracle Fusion Middleware Architect of the Year

Monday, October 11, 2010

Google conducts R&D on self-driving automated cars

Recently, there are some news about Google test driving their new innovative toy - self-driving automated cars that can start, stop, steer and run without any human intervention.

This project involved 7 cars (6 Toyota Priuses and 1 Audi TT) that have mostly been driven without any human assistance for at least 1000 miles (or 1609 kilometers) on major California roads. In fact, they've already gone through more than 140,000 miles (or 225,260 kilometers) with only occasional human control.

The cars know speed limits, traffic patterns and road maps. This is made possible by a rotating sensor on the roof to create an environment around the car, a video-camera behind the windshield for pedestrians and traffic lights, radar on the front and back bumper, GPS and motion sensors, controlled by computer with artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.

Google claimed that these automated self-driving cars can react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated. As a result, this can reduce accident on the road.

The car can even be programmed for different driving personalities — from "cautious" to "aggressive" mode.

This project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, 43, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the co-inventor of the Street View mapping service.

Though this invention is still far from production yet, we can probably foresee the automated car KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) that we watched in the TV show Knight Rider to come into reality in the near future.

Guidelines for Gated Community and Guarded Neighbourhood by JPBD

The Department of Town and Country Planning Peninsular Malaysia (Jabatan Perancangan Bandar dan Desa Semenanjung Malaysia, JPBD) has finally published the Guidelines for Gated Community (GC) and Guarded Neighbourhood (GN) in their website.

By definition, "Gated Community" refers to a gated and guarded residential community, either in highrise or landed properties. The properties in a Gated Community need to have strata title (including landed strata). This kind of community is only allowed in limited location in urban area.

Meanwhile, "Guarded Neighbourhood" refers to residential community with individual land title properties which has security service either with or without security house. It can be of "guarded only" (without fence) and "guarded and gated" (with fence).

For Gated Community:

Minimum area under the scheme is 1 hectar and maximum is 10 hectar (200-500 house units)
The roads and shared amenities inside the GC belong to the community, and managed by Management Corporation elected by the residents
Building of wall to separate the community from its neighbourhood is not allowed
Social Impact Analysis needs to be carried out before the establishment of GC be considered
Need to have 2 entrances/exits (one for main usage, another for emergency)
Perimeter fencing of height not more than 9 feets and at least 50% visible from outside is allowed
Boom gate is not allowed
Guard house of 1.8m x 2.4m
The houses cannot be more than 4 levels (18.5 meters) from basement
Visitors' parking must be allocated

For Guarded Neighbourhood:

Only allowed in urban area
Establishment of GN needs to be proposed by Residents Association and supported by majority of the residents
Guard house of 1.8m x 2.4m or smaller
Manual boom gate with 24 hours security control can be considered
Guards need to registered with Home Ministry

Click here to download the Guidelines for Gated Community and Guarded Neighbourhood by JPBD.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice.org and be independent from Oracle

Over the last decades, Sun Microsystems has supported a lot to OpenOffice.org, and successfully made it the world's leading open-source productivity suite nowadays.

That was happened after they acquired StarDivision in 1999, forking out OpenOffice.org from the proprietary StarOffice by releasing its source code to the public. Sun continued selling StarOffice, which then based heavily on the development of OpenOffice.org by the community.

10 years later in 2009, Sun Microsystems was in turn acquired by Oracle. Oracle has then rebranded the proprietary StarOffice to be Oracle Open Office. At the same time, Oracle announced their intention for "Oracle Cloud Office" as a cloud-computing suite, a similar approach like Microsoft Office 2010 Live. The future of OpenOffice.org remains uncertain.

As contributions to OpenOffice.org project requires copyright assignment to Sun (now Oracle), which the community has faith with Sun but might not remains at the same level with Oracle, it is this critical moment that some lead developers of OpenOffice.org had just made a critical decision, to form a new group called The Document Foundation and to fork a rebranded OpenOffice.org called LibreOffice. The historical moment was 28 September 2010 .

The Document Foundation will continue to be focused on developing, supporting, and promoting "the same software", now known as LibreOffice as the OpenOffice.org trademark is legally owned by Oracle.

In fact, this move also resolved some of the former disputes in the project. For example, LibreOffice will now incorporate all the enhancements produced by the Go-oo team (with Novell behind the scene). Go-oo was forked earlier from OpenOffice.org as Sun refused to put in some of the contributions such as better support to Microsoft's OOXML into OpenOffice.org. With this latest move, Go-oo might be obsoleted by LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation and its LibreOffice have received support from Red Hat, Canonical (maker of Ubuntu), Novell (maker of SUSE), Google, Free Software Foundation (FSF, which Richard Stallman is the president), The GNOME Foundation, The Open Source Initiative (OSI), etc.

LibreOffice 3.3.0 is currently on beta, and has been downloaded for over 80,000 in a week time. People have started to contribute to the code, suggesting features, committing patches and filing bugs. In just one week, around 80 code contributions (patches, and direct commits) have been accepted in LibreOffice from a total of 27 volunteers, several of them newly-won, with around 100 developers hanging out on the #libreoffice irc channel which is buzzing with activity (around 14,000 messages sent).

Click here for more information about The Document Foundation and LibreOffice.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

My Dell Studio XPS 8100 home PC (Part 4)

... continues from Part 3 ...

Keyboard

The Dell SK-8165 Studio Consumer Multimedia USB Keyboard (OEM by Silitek of Lite-On Group) that comes with Studio XPS 8100 has a compact keyboard layout similar to laptop keyboard.

This is a nice keyboard with 12 multimedia buttons on it, which provide one-key shortcut to open your web browser, email client, Computer Explorer, Calculator, Media Player, sound control and DVD player control.

Mouse

The Dell M-UAV-DEL8 6-button Laser USB Mouse (OEM by Logitech) that comes with Studio XPS 8100 is a Class 1 laser device. Unlike those infra-red optical mouses which you can see the red light at the bottom, its laser beam is too tiny to be easily seen though.

This is a nice mouse with 4 adjustable DPI speeds (400, 800, 1200, 1600) which can be switched with a single button and indicated by nice LED lights on top of it.

It also has 2 side buttons for the function of "Previous" (left side button) and "Next" (right side button).

I have tested this mouse on glass surface, and yes, it can still function on the glass.

19-in-1 media card reader

Despite some other branded PC comes with 40-in-1 media card reader, Dell Studio XPS 8100 only comes with a 19-in-1 media card reader. Supported flash memory cards are:

Secure Digital (SD) Memory Card
MiniSD
Hi-Capacity Secure Digital (SDHC) class2
Hi-Capacity Secure Digital (SDHC) class4
Hi-Capacity Secure Digital (SDHC) class6
Multi Media Card (MMC)
RS Multimedia Card (RS-MMC)
Multimedia Card Plus (MMC+)
Multimedia card Mobile
Memory Stick (MS)
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO)
Memory Stick PRO Duo
Memory Stick Micro
Compact Flash I
Compact Flash II
Smart Media Card (SM)
xD Picture Card (xD)
Micro Drive (MD)

USB ports

The Dell Studio XPS 8100 has 8 USB 2.0 ports. 4 are behind the chasis, 2 on top of it, and another 2 are concealed behind a sliding bay door in front of it.

Note that the keyboard and mouse already used up 2 of the USB ports.

Casing, power supply unit and fan

The casing cover of Dell Studio XPS 8100 is just secured with one easily removable knob. You can easily inspect what is inside it. Anyhow, there are handles for you to lock the casing with external lock if you want.

The power supply unit (PSU) of this Dell Studio XPS 8100 is pretty small at 350 Watt only. It does not have power output socket to monitor. Interestingly, Dell provides you a separate power cord in the package, beside the power cord for computer to connect to wall socket) for you to connect your monitor to the wall socket directly.

Anyhow, so far I don't have any problem with my Dell Studio XPS 8100 using this 350 Watt PSU. I think this PC is quite "green" and save electricity consumption.

Inside the casing, below the PSU, you'll find a standard fan as cooling measure, blowing hot air out from behind of it.

Preinstalled software

Beside the Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition, and McAfee Security Center, other pre-installed software are:

Adobe Reader 9 - to read some of the documentations shipped in softcopy format
Dell Getting Started Guide - this will run right after the first time OS configuration is completed
Dell Dock - can keep the Desktop cleaner by organizing the frequently used applications in this Dock and removing their shortcut links from Desktop
Dell Support Center
Dell DataSafe Local Backup - I don't find any use of this, other than to create the System Recovery Media. Other feature such as system backup or file backup would require additional payment to upgrade to Premium Version of it.
Dell DataSafe Online - This is the tools for me to backup my files to the 2GB online backup storage in the Internet.
Intel Repid Storage Technology - Utility for the Intel RAID controller
Modem Diagnostic Tool
NetWaiting - This is a tool to temporary put the dial-up Internet on hold when there is incoming call. No use for DSL connections.
Roxio Easy CD & DVD Burning
Cyberlink PowerDVD DX
Skype

Saturday, October 2, 2010

My Dell Studio XPS 8100 home PC (Part 3)

... continues from Part 2 ...

Video card

The default NVidia GeForce GT220 with 1GB DDR3 memory isn't exciting at all.

However, at the cost of just RM34 only, I can upgrade it to ATI Radeon HD5770 with 1GB GDDR5 memory, which has much better performance than GT220.

The ATI Radeon HD5770 takes up 2 PCI-E slots. It has 2 DVI, 1 HDMI and 1 DisplayPort. It supports DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.2, ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology, ATI Avivo HD video display technology, ATI PowerPlay power management technology, etc.

It is well-known to have a very decent power consumption rate. No wonder it can fit in Dell Studio XPS 8100 which has a relatively low PSU of 350 Watt only.

On 29 July 2010, I wrote about "Top 20 display cards as of end-July 2010".

On 28 July 2010, I wrote about "Calculate the recommended power supply wattage for desktop computer".

Sound card

I have chosen to use the default onboard integrated high definition 7.1 channel audio of this Dell 0T568R motherboard. It is a Realtek ALC887 chipset.

As I only have a normal 2.1 speaker set, this onboard sound card is sufficient to me.

Microsoft Office 2010

This Dell Studio XPS 8100 comes with Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition, which consists of scaled down Word and Excel, with ads running.

There is an upgrade option to Microsoft Office 2010 Home & Student (SEA) Edition for RM274, which is an OEM version and can only be installed in 1 computer only.

I ended up buying a boxed Microsoft Office 2010 Home & Student Edition with license for 3 computers at the price of RM239 only from Digital Mall. It contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Beside Microsoft Office 2010, I also downloaded and installed the free OpenOffice.org 3.2.1.

Modem

I have opted to include the Conexant D850 PCI V.92 56kbps soft modem by adding RM42 to the package.

This price is a bit high, and I found out that it is only a data/fax modem and does not support full voice command sets. This means you cannot use it to handle voice (like using with IVR).

I need this modem as occasionally I'll need to fax out documents. Windows 7 has a nice Fax and Scan application for use together with this data/fax modem to turn the computer into fax machine.

The modem also acts as a backup Internet connection device, in case the ADSL link is down.

Network card

This Dell 0T568R motherboard comes with integrated Broadcom Netlink BCM57780 gigabit ethernet controller with one RJ-45 fast gigabit ethernet port.

This is good enough for me to connect the computer to my D-Link DSL-G604T wireless ADSL router.

Wireless solution

This Dell Studio XPS 8100 provides an option for Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCI-E card for RM102.

I find this to be expensive, as I've bought a Dlink DWA-125 wireless N-150 USB adapter for RM60 only.

... continues to Part 4...

Thursday, September 30, 2010

My Dell Studio XPS 8100 home PC (Part 2)

... continues from Part 1 ...

Memory

The Dell 0T568R motherboard (OEM by Foxconn) in Studio XPS 8100 computer has 4 slots for DDR3 SDRAM 1333Mhz dual channel memory. This motherboard can support up to 16GB of memory.

I have chosen 8GB (4 x 2GB) of memory for my computer. In fact, the default 4GB (2 x 2GB) is already sufficient for normal use, but I planned to use virtualization with VirtualBox and allocate 2GB for each virtual machine, therefore I go for 8GB at additional cost of RM390 from the default 4GB configuration. Anything above 8GB will need to buy for the 4GB RAM module and the price will be very high.

Dell equipped my computer with 4 Kingston KP223C-ELD PC3-10700 dual channel DDR3 memories, running at 9-9-9-24-2T 667MHz with Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP).

Hard drive

The Dell 0T568R motherboard (OEM by Foxconn) with Intel H57 chipset in Studio XPS 8100 computer has an Intel SATA RAID controller which supports for either RAID 0 or 1 only.

By default, it comes with 1 x 1TB Seagate 3.5" ST31000528AS Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3GB/s hard drive with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and 32MB cache. Its maximum data transfer rate can go up to 300MB/s.

I've decided to get another 1TB hard drive for additional RM481 and go for RAID 1 for data protection against hardware failure. (Now I realized that this cost is actually very high, as we can get the same hard drive for less than RM200 in DIY market.)

Dell formatted the hard drive into 3 partitions, one is for its utility and diagnostic tools, another is used to store a factory installation of OS image (and those pre-installed software) for disaster recovery purpose. The main partition is a big C:.

It is simple and easy to separate the C: partition into two (C: and D:) and can be done within minutes.

On 20 September 2010, I wrote about "Resizing harddisk partition in Windows Vista or Windows 7".

Optical drive

By default, Dell Studio XPS 8100 is equipped with single 16X CD/DVD burner with double layer write capability. It is a Hitachi-LG HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N SATA writer.

There are options for Blue-Ray reader, Blue-Ray writer, either in combo drive or dual drives. However, the cost is pretty high.

It is good to have Blue-Ray together with display card and monitor that supports HD, but as the Blue-Ray movie discs are selling at high price, and the Blue-Ray data discs are also selling at high price. Considering that I might not be keen on Blue-Ray products due to its price at the moment, I've decided to stick with the default DVD+-RW writer.

Note that the reading and/or burning speed of a combo drive is slower than the single drive in those Dell's optical drive options.

Interestingly, the DVD+-RW writer of this Dell Studio XPS 8100 is concealed behind a cover, with its open/close toggle button beside that cover.

... continues to Part 3...