Category: Uncategorized

The new PS3 slim has been launched in Malaysia and I can say that the launch package is a big let-down. According to the Sony website, the launch package is priced at RM1399 and includes a free game, a second controller and a special t-shirt. While I can appreciate the free game, I cannot appreciate the second controller as most of the good PS3 titles are single-player titles anyway and I most certainly have no use for a free t-shirt. At RM1399, that is a whole US$100 more than what people are paying for in the states. In fact, it is the same price as in the UK but they have a better package deal.

Personally, I feel that this is a massive let-down by Sony Malaysia. The direct US$ pricing should only be RM1099. Charging an extra RM300 is a rip-off considering the fact that the states has sales taxes levied while we are free of taxes in Malaysia. In fact, the UK price includes a 17% VAT and is still cheaper than our Malaysian price. Boo! Rip-off! I just don’t understand why the price of consumer electronics products are so expensive in Malaysia, when compared to their prices overseas. The games are so expensive and the consoles are more expensive too. Now, I am seriously considering importing a unit in. The only risk would be on the warranty.

Alternatively, I should consider getting the older 80GB EU model, which has PS2 backwards-compatibility for the same price. That way, I would be able to play PS2 games on it as well. Just something to consider. Another alternative would be to investigate the bundles at one of the smaller game stores in KL that still bring in import units from Hong Kong. When I previously asked, they were bundling the 120Gb slim with two games. I already see the 250Gb version in their stores.

Karmic Koala was officially released a couple of days ago and I did not miss my opportunity to upgrade all my Kubuntu machines to it. However, my upgrade path was frought with peril and I felt that I should probably chronicle some of the lessons learned, for future reference.

My troubles started when I was unable to request a free CD from ShipIt because I had already exceeded my quota. So, I proceeded to download the alternate ISO image. Unfortunately, I had trouble with the burned media. I ended up burning 3 CDs from the image only to have 3 dodgy disks. One disk was good enough to at least go through the first stages of the installation with only a few files missing. This was when I discovered that the Debian installer could be tricked into using a ISO image loaded on a USB stick. All I had to do was to mount the ISO image under /cdrom for the first stage of the installation and then mount it under /target/cdrom for the latter stage of the installation. In fact, this was much faster than installing it using a CD.

Lesson 1: Do not use old CD-R media. I have since bought myself a 1.8″ DVD-RW media that I will use for all future kubuntu ISO image burns.

Next, I had problems with my home user files. I use the default ecryptfs to encrypt my entire home partition. For some reason, someone decided that the encryption keys should be stored in /var instead of /home, which it currently does. Since I had reformatted my entire root directory, which held everything other than the home directories, the encryption keys were totally lost (and so were my files). So, I had to spend my entire Saturday restoring my home directory from my backup. Thankfully, I backed up my entire home directory just before re-installing my laptop.

Lesson 2: Always back up my files before doing anything invasive like upgrading the operating system.

As for the new Kubuntu, I have been very happy with the upgraded user interface and utilities. Great job!

I wonder which idiot in our government came up with the dumb idea of taxing all credit cards in the country. According to the recent budget reading, beginning next year, all credit cards in Malaysia will be taxed RM50 annually regardless. The lame excuse is to help reduce debt by taxing credit cards but I have no idea how taxing credit cards helps reduce debt in any way.

Firstly, the tax is flat across all cards – regardless of whether you hold a platinum, gold or regular card. Then, the tax is flat across all users – regardless of whether you are in debt or otherwise. In fact, those people in debt are going to worst hit. Being unable to settle their debts, they would not be able to cancel their excess cards and will end up incurring even more cost with this crazy tax.

Then, let us talk about the damage to the banks. Everyone knows that banks make a lot of money off these credit cards. With people canceling their cards in droves, banks would lose millions in revenue next year. I doubt that the banks would take this lying down. In fact, my colleagues have already been informed by their banks to hold-off their cancellations first while they try to sort this out with the government.

Anyhow, I seriously hope that my bank decides to absorb any card tax, just like how they absorb the annual fees based on the amount of transactions made on the card. The banks earn between 2%-5% off all my card transactions. I pay almost everything with card these days. So, if they can make enough off my card transactions, they should be able to absorb this tax easily.

I have just come across a really useful tool called ditaa. It is a command line tool that magically converts text diagrams into graphical representations. This comes in really handy for code development purposes as diagrams are often documented within source code as text. I have been playing around with it and it seems to works as advertised. The only issue that I have found is that I cannot control the size of the fonts. Otherwise, it is really cool. I plan to use it to document my next processor architecture design.

After lunch at work, all the members of our entire division were hustled into the auditorium for a talk on ethics and integrity. Regular readers of my blog would know that I have this issue with the belief that there is anything resembling an absolute moral code. Therefore, I had a few issues with some of the things that the speaker said but generally, it was okay. In fact, I did learn a few things about ethics and integrity from the talk.

Our official hours are between 8.30am and 5.30pm. The speaker gave the example of an employee who comes to work regularly at 8.45am and returns at 9.00pm with the argument that he is more productive later in the day. The speaker then asked us if this thing that he did was right or wrong. Personally, I think that the question is malformed. However, he told us that this is a wrong thing to do because the official hours are as stipulated. If someone does not like working for a company with fixed hours he could always opt to work for one with flexible hours instead.

Lesson 1: Do not work after hours even if you are more productive then.

Next is the acronym AIDA that stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. The speaker claimed that the talk that we had was just the first stage of change – awareness. All the points that he had raised and everything that we had discussed at the talk, was for creating awareness. We would need to raise interest, desire and translate things into action. I remarked to my colleagues that these were the exact rules for attraction. Make someone aware of our existence, raise some interest, desire and then act.

Lesson 2: Management principles apply just as readily to courtship.

I have been keeping track of the fuel-consumption of my car ever since RON95 was introduced into the system. I began my measurements about two months before switching over to the new fuel. The method used is similar to the one used before. The results are both anecdotal and empirical. The RON95 fuel is more fuel-efficient than the RON97 fuel was before. This is illustrated by the chart above – the bars on the right are generally higher than the bars on the left.

So, there is no real reason to pump the RON97 fuel anymore. The RON95 fuel costs 10% less and delivers about 10% extra efficiency.

Thought this reddit alien is cool.