Month: May 2009

Alright, it is not quite a marathon, but it has been a while since I spent so much time at a cinema. Today, I watched two films in two sittings – Terminator Salvation and Monsters versus Aliens. The two films are from completely different genres but they are both equally enjoyable, albeit in very different ways.

Terminator Salvation was an action fest – lots and lots of CGI generated action. They introduced a number of interesting robots in this film. One that kills humans under water, one that kills humans in the air, and one that kills humans on wheels, on top of the humanoid models that kill humans on foot. As you can probably tell, there is a lot of human killing in this film.

Monsters versus Aliens was a laugh fest – lots and lots of CGI generated comedy. I loved the fact that Hugh Laurie (Dr House) played a major role in this film, and I have always liked Reese Witherspoon’s voice. I expected more from Stephen Colbert though. He got to play the character that he spends so much time bashing on his show. Too bad he didn’t carry if off as well as I had hoped.

Both films are surprisingly rated U – for general viewing. So, there were plenty of kids in both films, less in Terminator. The kids were a problem for Monsters, as the one who sat behind me kept talking to his dad. Actually, the kid next to me in Terminator kept asking his dad what was happening. Maybe it’s not a good idea to bring kids to Terminator as the story line is probably a bit to complex for young minds to follow.

Anyway, the next summer block buster that I’m looking forward to is Transformers – Megan Fox positively sizzles!

Spoiler: I knew that John Connor wasn’t going to die at the end because Christian Bale had already been contracted for 3 Terminator films!

Streamyx sucks big time. I have a lot of problems accessing my blog from home. For some reason, most of the Internet is fine. I say most because there are a couple of other sites that I am having problems accessing. Unfortunately, these sites are also my favourite sites – such as Stack Overflow.

The trouble is that it is really difficult to report such problems. I had tried reporting it before and goodness knows what actually gets done. You see, my internet speed isn’t compromised. I can still get downloads at the correct speeds. So, it isn’t a question of bandwidth. However, when I try to ping my blog server, the number of packets that get lost is astronomical. I get about a 80%-90% packet loss.

As a result, my connection to the blog server constantly times out or gets rejected. You may think that it might be a problem with my blog server. However, my blog server works fine from elsewhere. That is the only way that I have been able to update my blog recently. I am forced to access it from elsewhere.

I’m not really keen on investigating the source of the problem as it is my ISPs job to do so! Streamyx sucks ass. I will try making another fault report later today and see if any action is taken. Otherwise, I may just consider switching over to another ISP. Packet One has been marketing itself aggressively in recent weeks. I believe that they have a 14 day trial period.

Streamyx sucks!

PS: Their favourite trouble-shooting method is to restart the port. Damn it, that doesn’t solve the problem!

Wow! I read this article in the LA-Times today and it just occurred to me – Wow! According to the article, there is a movement among psychiatrists to classify embitterment as a psychological disorder as it is an emotional response to the environment. They say that there is an increasing number of people suffering from this disorder and so, it warrants being included as a classified psychological disorder.

The disorder is modeled after post-traumatic stress disorder because it too is a response to a trauma that endures. People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge.

The interesting thing about the article is that it is as alarming as it is funny. If this disorder is successfully classified, then it provides two things at least: first, it allows people who are having this problem to get the help that they need; second, it allows people to gain more psychological disorders than they actually have. These things are being collected like merit badges these days. It’s cool to have a cool psychological disorder.

You see, the thing with psychological disorders is that they are very difficult to measure. They are by nature, qualitative. However, I do think that it is a good idea to better understand our psychology as it is often the explanation behind our motivations. Our psychology is just as important as our physiology, when it comes to regulating our health.

Peace. Love.

I had recently been to the Road Transport Department (JPJ) to settle some details due to my road accident last month. I had gone to the Federal Territories branch at Wangsa Maju. It was there that I saw the sale of numbers for car plates. There were screens that showed the numbers available for sale and their prices, while there were numerous counters set up to handle the sale of these numbers.

This just didn’t sit right with me.

As far as I can tell, the JPJ is a government agency that is tasked with the job of licensing vehicles and drivers. As far as I can tell, it is neither a lottery (4D) seller nor an auction house. However, from the article in TheStar today, the JPJ earned a total of RM445million from the auction of numbers last year alone. People, this is just crazy and open to abuse of power and corruption.

Okay, the JPJ has never been known as a shining beacon of honesty and transparency but this is just so thoroughly open to abuse as it is not open to check and balances. Remember my earlier article about the separation of powers, there are just so many ways that things can go wrong when the people issuing the numbers are also the ones collecting the money. The system really needs to be changed.

The JPJ is not in the job of selling numbers. It’s job is to license vehicles and charge the gazetted licensing fees. It should not be selling off the licenses to the highest bidder. This is the job of an after-market numbers market. Let the private sector handle the sales and transactions just like any other form of sales. The JPJ has no expertise in doing this anyway.

Finally, I think that people should just get smart. This idea of having ‘lucky’ numbers on the car number plates is just dumb. Plain and simple dumb. There is no evidence to suggest that one set of numbers are better than another. If you believe that a certain set of numbers has the magical power of granting you fortune and fame, you deserve to be fleeced of every last sen that you have.

People are dumb.

Just found out that there is a new and exciting player in the low-end X86 market, today! NorhTec, a Thai company, has come out with a small netbook powered by 8 AA sized batteries. I checked out their product website and the netbook has a very exciting architecture. The main thing that made it stand out was that the entire PC motherboard + CPU platform consumes barely 1.2W of power. This beats even the numbers from AMD/Intel/VIA. Being the processor geek that I am, I decided to investigate further.

The netbook is based off a Xcore86 System-on-Chip, which contains a 586 class processor, audio, video, network, storage, and I/O all on one chip. From a purely technical perspective, this would actually be a whole PC-on-chip. All you would need to get it to run is to add some memory, monitor, keyboard and mouse. This got me thinking that it would be an excellent candidate for a variety of other PC-based products.

So, investigating further, this Xcore86 is a re-branded Vortex86 System-on-Chip. Again, checking out the information on the website, this chip reminded me of some of the older 386 based SiS System-on-Chips operating in the embedded market. So, doing a little more digging, it turns out that I was right! It is the SiS based system. It was the former SiS division that was sold off to a Taiwanese company. So, these babies are essentially the new and improved SiS chips.

Personally, I think that it is great that the SiS chips are still alive – rise from the dead. They had a very specific niche market segment – embedded x86 applications. However, with the present boom in netbooks, they seem to have found a new market segment. However, I don’t see Intel taking this lying down. The situation with x86 patents is rather murky. They may or may not have the legal right to actually produce x86 processors.

Regardless of the legal issues, you can expect this processor to be slower than the offerings from any other company. However, they should be able to compete on cost – shrinking a whole motherboard of chips into one. Couple that with a sightly older manufacturing process, the prices should be competitive for the low-cost segment. Performance while running Linux should be perfectly fine. I am also running Linux on a similar class machine at home.

All in all, an interesting development. I like this NorhTec company. They have been at the fringe of my radar for quite a while now. They’ve got a bunch of other small-form factor PC products, including a couple that I am interested in.

I finally took the plunge today. I bought myself a 1080p capable HDTV. It was the model that I had been eyeing for a while – the 32LG53FR. This model has a RRP of about RM2,300 but most outlets have sold it for just under RM2,000 – making it the cheapest 1080p HDTV in the market. I had been waiting for the price to drop a little more before making the purchase.

I went shopping today and I checked out the recent prices. Carrefour was doing it for RM1,900. I then went to Harvey Norman who told me that they were all sold out and that the line had be discontinued. There weren’t any new units coming in. So, I went to Best, who were selling it at RM1,850. I got them to lower the price a little and settled at just under RM1,800. That was the price-point I was happy with.

So, I am now happily watching a DVD on my new HDTV.

Now, the next thing to do would be to buy myself a suitable HTPC platform. I had already tried out XBMC the other day and it seems to work okay. Obviously, it was slick as well. However, getting a suitable HTPC platform has not been as easy. I would preferably like to purchase it from a store that accepts credit card purchases without a surcharge. Not many of those around in Malaysia!

Well, that’s what the translated title says – Between Angels and Demons. Anyway, I watched the film tonight. I decided on a whim to just go watch it at the cinema and I picked an obscure cinema near my place to watch it. I even managed to get good seats at a cheap price.

The film was quite predictable, from the very beginning. They gave the bad guy away within the first 20 minutes of the show. That was not very nice of them. They should have at least kept it a secret until the very end. There was seriously no need to give it away at the start. All they had to do was to make Robert Langdon look serious instead of astonished. That would have made things lot less obvious.

Regardless, the film was mostly enjoyable. There isn’t much thinking needed in the film as the plot moves from one location to another. You know from the very beginning that there will be four cardinals executed, one each hour. So, the film moves from one cardinal to the next. Thank goodness Dan Brown released this book after the Da Vinci Code. Otherwise, he may not have gotten quite as famous.

The thing that made the film less enjoyable for me was the guy sitting next to me. He kept making annoying guttural noises in his throat for quite a bit. However, I still managed to distance myself away from him for a large part of the show except when he decides to clear his throat and rip me away from the realm of illusion for a bit.

Personally, I agree that this is not nearly as good as Star Trek. Maybe I’ll go watch it again this weekend. I wonder if it will still hold its magic the second time around.