Sybreon Ones Nought

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Disoriented musings of a technology romantic. Copious amounts of salt recommended with each reading.

Compaq Nettop

I passed by Harvey Norman today and decided to drop in to look at the new Compaq Nettop. Let me just say that I am quite taken in by the price of the thing. It is much cheaper than I had expected. Internet reports claim that the price of the high end model (2030) is about US$386 (RM1355) but they are only selling it for RM998 (US$285) here. The ...

Brandless Home Theatre

Seems like it does not have to cost a bomb to build a decent home theatre system these days. I just returned from the local Carrefour after shopping for sundries and noticed that they were selling a 32" LCD screen at only RM1299 (£256), which is a fairly decent price. It is not a 'branded' product but that is really a non-issue for me. The LCD display market ...

Maxis Broadband

I had the chance to use the Maxis wireless broadband service recently. My sister has subscribed to it and since I was the IT support at home, I took the liberty of setting it up for them and testing it out. I had also been planning on signing up and dumping my Streamyx service if it worked out. I had to test a couple of things: whether the modem ...

The Confusion

Yes, that is the title of the next Neal Stephenson novel that I consumed. This is also part of the Baroque Cycle of which Quicksilver is the overture. There is nothing confusing about the book as the title is drawn from the metallurgical meaning of the word, con-fused - for the process of mingling two metals into an alloy. Like the previous novel, this one is made up ...

New Year’s Fireworks

I found our New Year's celebration and fireworks display at Merdeka Square a little sad. Thankfully I was not there in person as I could watch the other celebrations on TV. When the stroke of midnight struck in Malaysia and the fireworks went off, I was taken aback by the odd camera angle of the live broadcast of Ambang 2009. The cameraman was actually standing in Merdeka Square and ...

Megasale Culture

According to a recent article from TheStar, we Malaysians suffer from a 'mega sale' culture. There is plenty of evidence to support this, especially in KL. As evidenced by this photo that I took on Christmas eve at MidValley, the shopping malls are thronging with shoppers and practically every car park bay is full. When I got to Zone A, the counter outside was only showing 10 lots ...

Dear Uncle

The most significant thing that happened to me today was being addressed as 'uncle' by some girl who worked at the local Carrefour. I was in the store shopping for some daily provisions. I paid for my purchases at the cashier counter and the girl who worked there asked me, "uncle, do you want the 5 sen back?". Uncle??!! I didn't know that I looked old enough to ...

Quicksilver

I have just finished reading a good novel, Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. This novel was a gift from a good friend of mine. I like the author and while there are those who have complained about the book, it was not such a torture for me to read because I took several months to finish it as I have been writing my thesis before. The tome, is actually made ...

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