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Spending money always makes me happy. So, I have recently started shopping around for a new car. While there are many el-cheapo local cars to buy, I have decided to go for something a little better. So, I have been going around and visiting the showrooms of various car manufacturers.

While shopping around for a car, I have noticed several things. The Proton showroom that I went to has the worst sales people around. While sales people normally talk my ears off, there were a lot of long silent moments when I was speaking to the Proton sales person. I was waiting for him to tell me things about the car but he just kept silent while I looked at the brochure. According to my parents, this is the normal situation for Proton sales people. How sad.

Anyway, the car that I am looking for is a fairly basic sedan car. I am looking for an starter car and that is what I tell everyone when I step into the showroom. I tell them that I am looking for a basic entry level car. So, that means something in the range of a Toyota Vios, Honda City, Nissan Latio, Proton Persona, Kia Spectra, Hyundai Accent. However, most of the sales people did not understand what I meant.

I found it weird that people don’t normally buy cars like that, which was the impression that I had. I could literally see the confused look on their faces. I guess that they must have been trying to figure out which one of their models was called Starter. Most of them adapted quite quickly and introduced me to a suitable range of cars with a 1.5L engine.

A funny thing happened when I went to the Kia showroom. The sales person decided to introduce me to the new Spectra5, which is like a 5-seater MPV. It even comes with a RM5,000 Samsung voucher that I can use to buy myself a home theatre system if I wanted to. The sales person mentioned that they would normally introduce a 1.1L car as a basic starter car but seeing that I have kids, there is no point buying the small one and upgrading it later to a family car. So, the Spectra5 was a better car.

I then mentioned that I was not married, which resulted in the sudden change of expression on the sales person and silenced that topic immediately. The reason for the misunderstanding was because I had my 2 year old niece and nephew with me. The two kids were having a wonderful time running around and trying out all the different cars. The sales people were also kind enough to be nice to the kids and let them try out all the different cars.

My family feels that I should buy my car before I get a job simply because, it takes a while to get a car. There is always a short waiting period and you cannot really get around Malaysia without a car. Because my family has normally bought local cars, they are now advising me to get a foreign car as local cars will usually have more problems.

Anyway, after seeing 6 different brands, I have a rough idea of what cars are available and what are their prices. I have also learned a thing or two about buying cars. In fact, I have more or less made a choice of which car to get and I will probably go and test drive one next week. As usual, I believe in utilitarianism. So, it will probably not be the most beautiful thing to look at but it will be more than enough to get me from A to B.

/>My nephew celebrated his seventh birthday a few days ago. For his birthday gift I decided to buy him a chess set. I felt that it was a good time to learn how to play. On my part, this is a fairly long term commitment because I was the only one in my family who plays chess. So, it would be up to me to teach him how to play and also to play a game with him from time to time.

Today, I taught him how to play. Seeing that I have never actually been through a formal training method, I decided to just make stuff up as I went along. This was the scheme that I had come up with.

1. I started by introducing the different chess pieces to him and also their different values. I know that some people will say that the values do not reflect the actual strength of the pieces but I felt that this was the easiest way to teach a kid how to evaluate simple situations, by the numbers.
2. Then, I showed him how each piece moved and captured other pieces. I kept the rules simple and didn’t include more obscure situations such as en passant or even the rather common castling move. I’ll keep these other things for a later time.
3. Next, I wanted to test his understanding of the what I had already taught him and also teach him how to evaluate simple chess positions. I did this by setting up some simple scenarios. Then, I would ask him what the problem was, what are the different possible moves, and what were the consequences of each move.
4. In each situation, he had to work out what the final points were after the different pieces were captured. To keep things simple, I limited it to only a 2 move depth. So, in the end, he would choose the best move to make based on the points. I know that this isn’t always the case, but it is the simplest way of teaching chess in the beginning. Strategy would have to come later.
5. Finally, we had an actual match where I played white and he played black. When he made any move, I would ask him why he decided to make the move and what would he gain or lose by making each move. I would also explain every single move that I made and showed him the thought process that went into making each move.
6. In the end, I ended up playing both white and black, by actually showing him the different possible moves he could make and introducing a couple of new strategies such as forks and pins. All in all, I felt that it was a fairly good attacking game with neither side ever gaining a serious upper hand. After about an hour, he lost focus and I ended up playing the game myself.

All in all, I felt that it was good to play a familiar game again, after so many years. Chess is one of those few board games that I have always liked playing. When I was little, I have always dreamed of owning a fine chess set and board. Now that I can afford one, I am merely waiting for the right time to buy one. I had actually come across a good one while I was in Salzburg but the prospect of transporting it around for the rest of my holiday did not particularly appeal to me.

I have also realised that teaching the game is a very good way of improving my game. When playing the game, one mainly sees the board from one side but while teaching it, I had to see the board from both sides. So, I ended up making a lot of rather risky moves because I was interested in seeing where the game would go.

So, I guess that I will have to play a few more rounds with him to ensure that he has learned all the basic rules. Then I plan to introduce him to playing chess on computers so that he can gain some practice with beating the computer. I would need to find a chess software for windows that can have its AI calibrated to different levels. He needs to be able to win a game once in a while for him to build his confidence.

Okay, it’s been a while since I stopped writing temporarily. I think that I the short hiatus from blogging was a good one. I can now return to writing about totally random and impersonal stuff like I used to. So, I think that I will kick things off by talking about recent developments on the aeMB processor.

A French company had decided to take the aeMB and build a modular routing platform around it. The platform is intended to work as a network router that can be used for mesh Wi-Fi networks, as an alternative to ISPs home gateways, and as a development platform for SoC projects. They have not reported any bugs and have instead been reporting a string of successes with the aeMB.

Firstly, on the hardware front. As a result of using my processor, they were able to reduce their total resource consumption. They previously used a Microblaze based platform that consumed about 67% of the total FPGA resources but by building an equivalent platform around the aeMB, they ended up only using about 40% of the FPGA resources. This is a very significant savings which gives them plenty of room for expansion.

In fact the US company that chose to use the aeMB at the heart of their platform, also chose it because of its small size and performance. This was done after comparing it with offerings from other people. The small size comes from the fact that care was taken while designing it to differentiate the aeMB from other embedded processors by being small and efficient instead of being a raw number cruncher.

Next, on the software front. The French company had previously used Linux on their platform and they have reported success with running Linux on the aeMB. Put differently, the aeMB is capable of booting Linux, today! Although I have always been confident that the aeMB can run Linux, I have never actually tried it before as none of the other users have needed to use Linux in their applications.

This has always been a sticking point at my side and has always stayed on my long TODO list. However, this French company has just saved me a tonne of time by actually proving that Linux works on it. They are planning to run OpenWRT on the aeMB, which is a Linux distribution originally made for Linksys routers but is now available on a variety of platforms.

Finally, on the enhancement front, everyone wants something different. This means that the TODO list is just getting longer and longer. The US people want to have a faster algorithm performance while the French people want to have better memory protection and some other people have asked for hardware debugging support.

For the moment, I don’t really have the time to actually work on any of the enhancements. So, I will just continue to let them use it as is, and work out any existing bugs. Then, at some point in the future, I will definitely find ways to add in all those things. At that time, it would become a full featured high performance embedded processor.

Both the US and French companies would like to see their enhancements built in and have offered to help in whatever way they can. I think that I will take them up on their offers at some point in the future. I just want to grow the aeMB thoughtfully and not jump into any random decisions on where to take it. Maybe it’s time that I published a road map and solicit some feedback on it.

It is evident that I am not fit to do anything right now, particularly blogging. So, until further notice, this blog is currently suspended.

I’m sorry for being an idiot and writing about things that I should not have written. Although I have taken it off, what is done cannot be undone. I hope that the person who was slighted, will accept my sincerest apologies. I will understand it if we never speak again. I can only plead temporary insanity and that is a lame excuse, I know. Once again, accept my humblest apologies for lashing out.

My question was simple enough and I was perfectly prepared for a no or a yes but what I got instead was an ambiguous answer that leaves more questions than it answers. I had sent my question and her reply to 3 different people who came back with 4 different interpretations. Plus mine, that gives at least 5 possible interpretations. That’s just how ambiguous the answer is that I have no idea what to do next.

She is a close friend and wishes to continue to be one. However, I don’t understand how she could give me such an answer knowing full well all the previous experiences that I have had. Getting an ambiguous answer like the one she gave me just hurts the hell out of me. Coming from someone who knows better than to do that just pains me even more.

While I would like to continue to be close friends, how does one continue to be close friends with someone who has knowingly inflicted so much hurt and pain?

Yesterday was a very bad day for me, having lost my entire Tier 1 support network in a day. This is not a good time to lose my support network but I guess that it is the price that I pay for being the foolish idiot that I am.

Anyway, I mentioned at the beginning that I will not turn this blog into the emotional basket case that the previous one was and I intend to keep it that way. This one is going to be kept clean. Your regular programming will return very soon.

A friend once told me that I am a diva, in the sense that the way I do things is often very dramatic. Well, my life has always been a very dramatic one, regardless of what it is that I do or not do. So it was, with recent events. I needed to ask this person how she felt about me, about how ngam key she felt we were.

First, I wanted to ask her the question face-to-face so I was hoping to meet up with her on a certain weekend. However, she fell sick and so we were unable to meet up and I was unable to ask her the question face-to-face.

Next, I decided to send her a box of tasty hand made Belgian chocolates and ask the question in the gift message. The delivery tracking code says that the chocolates were delivered but for some reason, the chocolates decided to take a walk as she did not receive them even after a week.

So, I decided to just ask her directly the next time I saw her online. Then, the very next day, I got an email from her saying that her computer had crashed and she cannot get online. I knew then that the gods must be playing games with me. Once is chance, twice is coincidence and thrice is a conspiracy.

Then, I decided to send her another gift with the same message, this time a rose in a vase hugged by a bear. This was going to be last attempt and if this gift went missing again, I would have to revert to some other more subversive means of getting the message across.

However, she actually ended up receiving both the gifts in the end. For some reason, the chocolates had decided to make their way to her after all, just a day before the other one was delivered. I certainly hope that the chocolates had not gone bad after wandering around town for more than a week.

Anyway, some of you must be wondering why I just didn’t pick up the phone and ask her directly on the phone.

I am terrible on the phone as I rarely ever use it for communication (my friends will know this). My primary means of communication is face-to-face and online. I can neither convey nor pick up on emotions through the phone. It is always my last choice of communication for these kinds of things.

For some reason, things like this always happen to me and a day hardly ever goes by without something interesting happening in my life. Not quite sure yet if this is a good or bad thing.