Top Gun has always been on my Top 10 list of greatest films of all time. Even with all the special effects in films today, very few are able to beat this movie. It was also one of the two quintessential films that cemented the career of Tom Cruise.

There are a few things that I like about the film – the dog-fight scenes and the music. The dog-fight scenes were so well shot that nothing even came close to being as adrenaline inducing as this film was, until Pearl Harbour came along.

As for the music, the soundtrack gave birth to many classic songs that are still popular even today. Many of the songs are just as adrenaline pumped as the film itself but there were also a few mellow romantic tunes as well.

I have always been partial towards the F-14 Tomcat. I have had a love affair with it from the very first time I laid eyes on it. I consider its swept wing design an engineering marvel and beauty.

Why the sudden nostalgia with old films, you may ask? Well, I watched it several times last week and I thought that it was still as good today as it was 20 years ago. Top Gun made a distinct impression on an entire generation, mine included.

Speedy Video is a local chain-store that mainly sells videos and music. Another competing chain is Music Valley. In both cases, I have recently noticed a strange phenomenon. They seem to be carrying non-original discs.

At Speedy Video, I had recently come across some unfamiliar discs. The funny thing about these discs is that they all have prominent original stickers on them. On closer inspection however, I noticed that they have an ISBN number on the back. An ISBN number!

As its name suggests, ISBN numbers are used for books, not DVDs. I have only come across such discs at the pasar malam. What made things worse is that Speedy video stuck a new barcode sticker over these ISBN numbers, concealing them. This either means that Speedy is correcting a known mistake or they are fully aware that they are peddling such wares.

At Music Valley, I had come across some familiar discs instead. As these were foreign films, these discs had very weird titles on them. In fact, their stickers of authenticity printed an entirely different title. I have previously come across these discs at some less than legit outlets. So, I’m kind of shocked to find them at legit stores as well.

One thing that I have noticed is that these are appearing on Korean films. I’m guessing that this is because the enforcement is lax on Korean films. I was told by someone that they were now getting their wares from several new vendors. Maybe some of them are less than legit.

Anyway, I’m staying away from these products. Both Speedy Video and Music Valley sell plenty of fully legit products of high quality. I will continue to buy only these products. It helps that I am able to identify the markers that separate these products from the rest. Pity the rest of the people though.

This is another example of my engineer-ness. I was thinking about adding a computer to my car, what is known as a CarPC. Such a computer is typically used to provide music and videos for entertainment (it could also possibly be used to build a mobile WiFi hotspot if configured correctly).

Anyway, I was thinking about doing it. A CarPC could be installed in the boot of the car with little problem. I was thinking that an Atom based mini-itx board could be used, coupled with a small amount of memory and a solid state harddisk. Because the car will experience bumps and shocks, it is important to use a solid state drive. So, I was calculating the cost of doing this – about RM300 or so.

Then, the only trouble was with building a user interface to the computer. It has to be something that can be accessed from within the car. So, I thought of building my own little device with a screen and some buttons. Then, I suddenly realised that I could just use a PDA to control the CarPC. That was when the though hit me.

I could just use a PDA as the CarPC!

I have two old PDAs lying around, a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 and an Acer Palm S10. The choice was evident on which to use. The Zaurus is infinitely hackable and had more computing power than the Palm. It has a 200MHz ARM processor, 64Mb RAM, 320×240 LCD display, keyboard, SD card slot, CF card slot. I plan to use the SD card slot for adding storage while using the CF card for peripherals (I have a wifi card for this device).

So, I dug up my old trusty Zaurus from my box of old stuff and plugged in the power cable. Nothing happened. Then, I shook the power socket a bit and the power-LED came on. That is a good sign. Then, I tried to turn it on and again nothing happened. I kept tapping away at the different buttons until something came on screen. However, the screen was dark because the back light did not want to come on. But after more fidgeting, the entire unit came to life! The batteries were just weak.

So, I logged onto the Internet and downloaded the latest version of OpenZaurus, a Linux operating system designed for the Zaurus. I flashed the internal firmware to the latest version and everything worked. This made me infinitely happy as I now have a semi-powerful computing device that I can install in my car. It runs on a 5V power supply which is easy to tap into, in a car.

So, the plan is to install a media player onto the Zaurus and test it to see if it can play MP3s and OGGs. If that works, the next thing to do would be to find a nice way to interface the Zaurus’ headphone socket to the car radio and provide a suitable 5V power supply. If that works, then it’s done!

In addition to playing media, I can install the wifi card onto the Zaurus and use it as a mobile way to say, check emails and such at public hotspots like at McDonalds or some other cafe. Now, that would be a real accomplishment. Wardriving is also a potential plus!
as

Since I was in Bandar Utama yesterday, I decided to pop by 1U just for the heck of it. Since it’s just days before Chinese New Year, the whole place was decorated for the festive season and I was even lucky enough to be there for the lion dance performance. This actually brought back some memories of my days with the CULDT. I could actually identify about half of the music.

Before that, when I first arrived, I bumped into someone whom I’ve not seen in 6 years or so. She’s two years my senior at university and we were friends and group mates at one time. It took me a few moments before realising whom it was. So, I then went up to her and called, “CC!”. Turns out that she’s actually working around the area and hangs out in 1U quite a bit. Even so, it’s still quite lucky for me to bump into her like that.

Then, I went off to watch the lion dance performance by our national lion dance champions. I ran back to my car (in the parking lot) to get my camera to take some photos. So, I was watching most of the performance through my camera lens. It was a rather dramatic performance. At one point, one of the poles that the lion was jumping on was felled by the act. As a result, the lion was trapped at the highest end of the poles and was ‘trembling’ there from fear. Then, after contemplating the wide chasm, the lion jumped and landed on the poles on the other side. That brought a rousing applause from the audience.

After the show, I went off to see another show – of Honda Citys! They had a number of the new Honda cars on display at their 1U roadshow. I got into one just to see how spacious the new model was – it was surprisingly very spacious. I sometimes wonder how these Honda engineers did it – built a car that looks so small from the outside but is so spacious inside. Honda cars have always been engineered well and it shows.

Randomness@1U. I think that I will probably hang out there a bit more in the near future.

I was feeling a little sien today and decided to go run out somewhere. After all, I’ve got a new set of wheels and there is no reason for me to stay at home all the time now. So, I made the suicidal decision to go to 1Utama this afternoon – suicidal because anyone who knows 1U, knows that you should never go there on a weekend. However, I made the decision to go because the last time that I was there, the new wing had barely just opened and there were two MPHs in 1U (meaning that it was an awfully long time ago).

So, I drove down from my place onto Old Klang Road and took the normal route I used to take in the past – i.e. down OKR all the way to the end, slipping into the LDP highway thru the Federal Highway and then straight on until Bandar Utama and 1U. Okay, my first surprise was that they actually placed a toll-booth at the end of Old Klang Road. It’s called the PJS2 gate or something like that. I got my first hint that something wasn’t quite right when I passed the Jalan Templar junction and saw the Lebuhraya Bermula (Highway Begins) sign. Shortly after paying the toll, I saw the Lebuhraya Tamat (Highway Ends) sign. I had to pay RM1.60 for the privilege of using barely a 1km stretch of highway. Note to self – avoid this toll by cutting down Templar Road onto the Federal Highway.

Then, after I got onto the LDP, it was slow traffic almost all the way until it reached the Sprint Highway interchange. I remembered that I used to speed down the LDP on my way up to Ipoh (via the Damansara toll-gate) at much higher speeds than this. So, it was kind of sad that traffic was so slow these days. You cannot really call the LDP a highway anymore if the traffic slows down to 60kmph. I used to be able to reach 1U within 30 mins of leaving my home but I spent almost just as long, trudging along the LDP today. In addition, I must have made a mistake somewhere as I ended up reaching the PLUS toll-gate instead of Bandar Utama, and had to use the back-route of getting into 1U (passing Centrepoint). Note to self – avoid the LDP at all costs!

Anyway, I finally arrived at 1U and proceeded into the parking. Some things never change. It took me almost 40 minutes of driving around the multiple levels of parking until I finally found a space. At least this didn’t break a previous record I had of driving around for 45 minutes before finding a parking space there. Good thing that 1U charges a token fee for the first 6 hours of parking. There would be riots if they charged by the hour. Finally, I was there and I proceeded to have a look around the place.

I immediately went off shopping. Those of you who know me will know that there are very few things that I actually bother to buy – DVDs, CDs, electronic gadgets and books. In the end, I spent some money on more Korean DVDs and one music CD. I had actually managed to track down 2 copies of Suki’s Akhirnya album. This is surprising because she is practically sold out everywhere else – in both large and small record stores. However, it was very sad for me to see Tower Records reduced to selling Japanese Anime in order to survive. The bulk of the shelf-space seems to be taken up by nothing but Japanese Anime. So, I got to listen to a lot of Suki on my drive back through Section 16.

For dinner, I was a little tempted by laksa as I have not had any for quite some time. So, I proceeded to my regular laksa shack and ordered my favourite Laksam Kelantan. This was when I noticed that their selection of laksa has shrunk considerably since I was last there. They used to have every conceivable kind of laksa from each state in Malaysia (including those from Borneo). However, it’s now become fairly limited to the more commercial varieties only. Thankfully they still had my favourite and so I had it for dinner.

After dinner, I visited the Science Fiction section of MPH to see if they could qualify as Science Fiction. Personally, I do not consider a bookstore as having a SciFi section unless they at least carried books by William Gibson or Neal Stephenson. The good news is that the MPH at 1U carries both these authors but the bad news is that they only had one book from each. How sad! Maybe I should pay Kinokuniya a visit one of these days to check out its SciFi section. I have a recollection of it being fairly big and extensive.

Then, while strolling around the place, I noticed that there was a ‘free wifi’ area that was sponsored by Maybank2U. When I was in Malaysia a few years ago, broadband and wifi was very difficult to come by. Everyone was trying to sell you hotspot packages from different telcos. However, you are able to get free wifi everywhere these days, even at the local fast food joint. I have never actually tried any of them but I think that I will pay my local Kopitiam a visit one of these days to see if it is any fun blogging while having lunch.

According to MalaysiaKini, Wee Meng Chee (aka NameWee) is once again embroiled in another stupid saga. However, I personally think that he is acting like an idiot now. I think that his touch with fame has gone to his head and he is now attention hungry. It speaks volumes of his musical talents if he has to resort to constant controversy in order to sell his music.

According to the article, “The video featured a school teacher teaching English in a class, using vulgar words. The clip also included several semi-naked scenes. The first part of the video was four minutes and 54 seconds long, the second was four minutes and 47 seconds and the third clip was three minutes and 3 seconds long. Wee had shown the name of the school in the third clipping.”

Personally, I have not seen the video myself as it has been flagged as inappropriate on YouTube. However, I can already draw some conclusions from the news article. They quoted him as saying that, “I think the school wanting to take action against me is a good thing because this will allow more people to get a chance to see the video and understand the issues.”

He claims that the education system in Malaysia is all screwed up for Chinese schools. The example given was for mathematics. The students learn it in Mandarin in primary school, switch over to Malay in secondary school and then switch over to English again at the tertiery level. While I totally agree with his observation, he should not blame the government entirely for the predicament.

At present, Mathematics is taught in English at all levels but there are certain quarters who want to revert the teaching of it back to Mandarin. These quarters claim that it is easier to switch the students over to English at the secondary level while maintaining Mandarin as the language in primary. To these people, I say “hogwash”. If the foundations were built with Mandarin, they would have to play catch up with the rest when they get to secondary school, which isn’t all that easy.

However, I think that NameWee is an idiot. While I think that he is free to comment on a pertinent issue, I vehemently disagree with him using the footage of his school in the video. There is absolutely no reason for him to do so. He can still raise awareness on the issue without naming any specific school. Afterall, this is a national issue, not a specific issue with the teachers in a specific school. This smacks of idiocy to me. I thought that after his Negarakuku saga, he would have learned to put a little more effort into his work.

Not only do I think that it is stupid, I also think that it borders on illegal. Schools are not public grounds where one can freely enter or exit. Moreover, his school is not a public school and I am sure that he has no grounds to use footage of his school in his video. Any person with half a brain should know that you will need to apply for permission from a school before you can shoot footage on their ground. I know because I had done it before in the past.

So, I think that NameWee is an idiot. He hungers for publicity, has to sell his songs through controversy, and has no respect for the law at all. I personally hope that the school sues him for every last sen that he has.

My sister is Suki crazy. Well, I was not around to watch the One in a Million singing competition. So, I did not even know who this person “Suki” was. Since my sister is one of her many fans, my sister introduced her songs to me. After listening to her debut album, I would have to agree with my sister that Suki is quite good and probably has a bright future ahead of her, assuming that she does not screw it up along the way.

One of the very first things that struck me when I first heard her album was that, this girl can really sing Malay songs (like Jaclyn Victor, not like the other Malaysian Idol winner). She has a good way of enunciating the Malay words. I have always found Malay a very lyrical language and it suits her very well in this case. According to my sister, who watched the competition each week, the judges actually said that Suki’s Malay pronunciation was better than the rest of the participants in the competition.

I can also tell that this girl has definitely got some Japanese influence. Her name is Low Soke Yee but she chose to use the name “Suki”, which is a dead giveaway. However, the Japanese influence goes much deeper and is evident on “Hidup Ini”, which was a song that she composed, wrote and sang herself. Listening to it immediately evoked a lot of J-pop images in my head. There’s nothing wrong with it of course, as it just shows her influences.

However, her English pronunciation is quite another matter totally. While not entirely bad, there is still a lot of room for improvement. She was recently awarded Malaysia’s most promising new artist and I can clearly understand why. This girl is barely out of high school and is already a rising star in the local scene.

Another thing that struck me was her image. The producers have decided that for her to sell, they have got to get rid of the innocent Chinese girl look and replace it with something much sexier and bolder. Not quite sure if that is a good or bad thing but I certainly understand the motivation behind it. It would probably help her reach a wider audience.

Anyway, here is her song “Usah”, which I think is one of her better songs in the entire album. Both Malay and English versions are found on her album and I think that the Malay one sounds better as the song was probably written for Malay lyrics – the English one sounds a little forced and padded.

This is originally a song by Stephanie Sun (another singer I like) but they wrote some new Malay lyrics for it instead.

In colloquial terms, my hands are itchy (sau han). The other day, I saw this digital audio player from Samsung, affectionately known as the Yepp. It is a chewing gum stick styled audio player and it comes in a whole range of colours. The model that is being sold in Malaysia is the YP-U3 model and has a number of useful features.

There is nothing wrong with my existing MP3 player from Creative except for one tiny problem. It does not support Ogg playback. In my zealous drive for intellectual property purity, which includes staying away from all dodgy pirated DVD stalls in the pasar malam, I have begun to encode the music CDs that I own, into Ogg-Vorbis files.

So, it is starting to become a chore to encode my music in both, MP3 for my audio player, and Ogg for my computer. It would be so much easier to just do everything in Ogg.

The price of the 4Gb model is RM299 (£49) or thereabouts. It even has an FM radio, which the Creative model lacks. The only thing that is stopping me from outright buying it is the fact that my Zen is still in perfect working condition. The batteries even last for more than 10 hours. So, there is really no reason why it needs to be thrown away.

So, I guess that I will not be buying a new player anytime soon. I should probably wait till the battery life starts to go down to about 6-7 hours. Then, it would be pretty useless for long journeys or long days out. Furthermore, the new version of Amarok still does not support audio players that well yet. So, I should also let that mature first.

When I heard that there was going to be a concert in the famous Wren Library, I decided to go attend it, even if only to be able to see the inside of the library. As far as I know, entry into the Wren Library is fairly restricted, just like the Pepys Library at Magdalene. So, it was an opportunity to see the insides, and hopefully catch a glimpse of the Principia Mathematica penned by Newton, centuries ago.

Although the concert was free, the snag I hit was that the concert was only for members of the Trinity College Musical Society, for which I’m not. Anyone can join the society for a £11 membership fee. But I decided to put on a different hat and talk my way into a free ticket, which I got. So, the moment that I got in, I started snapping away with my camera and was promptly approached by one of the librarians who told me to stop taking any photographs. How sad.

The concert started with the Brandenburg Concerto #3, which is a rather famous piece. It was the first time that I had actually heard a harpsichord being played live. I’ve only ever heard it on CDs before. However, I could easily tell when the performer actually made mistakes, which he did several times. And I can also appreciate how different it is to play a harpsichord from any other keyboard instrument from the way it sounds.

The next performance was Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by a former Trinity student who died 50 years ago. The piece was extremely haunting and brought on a lot of sad emotions in me. It even almost brought me to tears. It was surprisingly good. Unfortunately, it would have been better if the orchestra actually arranged themselves differently as the piece was obviously written with an echoing effect in mind.

The final piece was Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss, written towards the end of WWII. However, I couldn’t appreciate it as much, seeing that I had never been in a war before. Death and destruction doesn’t quite do it for me, especially not after the emotionally draining second piece.

Anyway, the concert was good, and I managed to get one good photo of the place. It could have been better but I did not have time to calibrate my camera inside the library. I had wanted to experiment with some HDR photography inside and I have learned one thing. Never shoot at a high ISO for HDR photos because the noise just gets amplified during tone-mapping.

Her voice is a thing of beauty.

I do not discriminate against any language when I listen to music. So, I have listened to many singers from many nationalities and of them all, I still find her singing to be the best. The only other singer that I’d put in the same class would be Jacky Cheung, and that’s saying something. But she is different from him. She has a sound that is very unique and different from other commercially successful singers. I am truly awed. If I was a man of God, I would think that He put her here with us so that she can sing to us and remind us of the beauty of Heaven.

But she has one flaw, that is she can only sing in Malay. In recent years, she has attempted to sing some English and Mandarin songs, to hopefully introduce her voice to a new audience. It’s usually a duet with some established foreign artiste. However, her struggle with the lyrics is obvious and she is unable to deliver the proper emotions to the song, even though her voice still delivers. This ultimately limits her main audience to the few SEA countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei.

This is not to say that music cannot transcend geographical and language boundaries. But, retailers don’t really care about the quality of the artists as long as they help move merchandise off the shelves. So, if they wanted to sell her in any other country, the record label would have to throw in serious marketing dollars to push her albums or you would be hard pressed to find any of her albums on the shelf. Ultimately, I don’t think that anyone believes enough to do it.

Which leads me to a rather confounding problem. I tried to google for an online store that may carry her DVDs but I failed to find any. I was hoping that YesAsia or some of the other stores might carry her songs. I even tried looking for her songs, at some rather unsavoury sites, with many dodgy popup ads but I still failed to find any useful ones either. So, the only channel left for me to whet my appetite for her songs, is YouTube, which is also where I find most of the other Malay songs that I like to listen to.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering why I like listening to Malay songs, the reason is because I feel that the language is a very beautiful one, much like French. It isn’t my mother tongue, it isn’t even my second language. Malay is my third language but I speak it well enough to pass off as a native. So, I just love it when it’s put to song, more so than English or Chinese songs. Don’t ask me how or why, but there is just a very poetic and lyrical feel to the language. If it were to take on physical form, she would be it, totally and purely.

This video is from part of her concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005. She was invited to sing as part of the Royal Albert’s programme on Asian artists. If the Wikipedia entry is correct, this concert was also the first time that the London Symphony Orchestra accompanied an Asian singer on stage. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend at the time. Otherwise, I would most certainly have gone.

This video is an excerpt of a longer song, also from the same concert. That’s a very nice kebaya, by the way. Did I happen to say that she’s not too bad on the eyes either? Obviously, that has not affected my judgement on her singing in any way whatsoever. It doesn’t change the fact that she has a beautiful voice.

More of her, from the same concert.

And just to show you that she’s not all about lovey-dovey balads. Jom Joget! This song’s melody and rhythm is probably quite close to being traditional Malay music. You may have noticed that the scale is not so regular.