Sybreon Ones Nought

This just strikes fear into my heart when I hear our most loved and honoured Prime Minister say the following words:

Nevertheless, as we know freedom of speech is not absolute, it must come with responsibility, (because) what is illegal and immoral should be the same for both the online and offline environment,

I am totally in agreement with the fact that freedom of speech is not absolute. With great freedom comes great responsibility as well. What is illegal should be taken care of, whether it is on-line or off. However, I worry about that which are deemed immoral because, morality is not absolute either.

My dearest and most beloved Prime Minister, there is no such thing as a universal moral code. Morality is not black-and-white. What is deemed immoral by one person could very well be deemed by another to be moral. That is why I have always been against the idea of teaching a set of ‘universal morals’ in our schools to non-muslim students.

What I fear most is that ‘morality’ will be used as the yard-stick to judge and punish people who are deemed a nuisance to public order. My morals ‘are between me and my maker’ so to speak (not that I believe in a maker). As humans are inherently weak, I am sure that whomever is chosen to judge over any sort of ‘moral crime’ would be just as liable (if not more so) of said moral crimes.

Personally, I agree that while there are limits to free speech, those limits do not extend into the domain of morality. When we do that, we risk blurring the line that separates law and religion. I certainly would agree to making some provisional changes to the laws in order to extend their reach onto the Internet but I would be very careful about using them.

“We are all Cylons”

I have a long vacation coming up towards the end of the month – due to Eid. So, I was just wondering what to do with my time. I will be going for a holiday with my family for 2 nights but that still leaves an entire week for me to do as I please. Instead of bumming around all day, I may want to do something interesting.

• Catch up on my reading. I have been roped into my friend’s book club. Well, I do like reading and I like supporting my friends in doing useful things. So, that is one possibility. I could spend a day or two finishing up the assigned book (or one of the other books on my ‘to-read’ shelf).
• Build my car-pc. I found a couple of computers at home that accept 12VDC@3.6A power, which is something that can be supplied directly from a car battery. All that I would need is a converter that also protects against ignition over-voltage and I am done.
• Design my super-hybrid processor. I have been planning on designing a new processor architecture that I have been working on secretly for a while now. It will be a hybrid heterogeneous computing angel. I may even have a useful application for it.
• Organise my workspace. My workspace at home is in some serious need of re-organisation. I might need to buy some extra pieces of furniture to do that. Might be a good time to visit a local furniture shop or even IKEA!

Well. Seems like a week off is just not enough time for myself!

Thought I should share this: Top 10 DIY Projects for an Extra Day Off

UP has to be the saddest Pixar film ever. I managed to catch it yesterday evening and it brought more than a tear to my eye. Throughout most of the film, I felt as though the Pixar crew were making it into a swan song. Afterall, there isn’t much of a story to speak of except the fulfilling of a life-long dream and the adventure that entailed.

Basically, the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it’s so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they’re gone. More often than not I don’t really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they’re either moved or passed away. So if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, “Wow, I’ve got some really cool stuff around me every day”, then that’s what the movie’s about.

UP is really good stuff. It is something that appeals to both kids and adults. Kids will enjoy the many comedic sequences and the adults should be able to understand the underlying message really well – and hopefully be touched by it. In my opinion, the best part of the film was also the most cruel thing that Pixar has ever done to me. It lasted only for 4 minutes and did not have a single word of dialogue, but it made me cry.

I attended my friend’s wedding solemnisation ceremony last night and it was quite dramatic. The venue was at the Banker’s Club in KL and it was an interesting enough venue. However, I would not recommend that place for a large wedding banquet as the hall is quite small and split into two levels.

Any hoo, my friend literally choked while reciting his marriage vows. It was quite dramatic. He was choking up with so much emotion that he had trouble saying all those words. He must have been really really happy about marrying his wife (or he must be really really regretting it!). So, it was a really hilarious thing for the rest of us watching. People literally started laughing when his wife had to console him. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?!

Overall, it was a beautiful wedding. During the banquet, I managed to catch up with some of my old friends. Turns out that everyone’s lives have been undergoing a lot of change. People have changed jobs, and some have even changed countries of residence. So, it was all very interesting to me, catching up with all my old friends. Better weddings than funerals.

Anyway, maybe I should start organising something at home and inviting people over. I wonder if we should do something like a poker-night or lan-party. I already have the necessary setup for a lan-party. In fact, I probably have enough servers to run a dedicated server for one of the more traditional games. I should really consider it I think.

Not sure if I have enough friends though! Gaming as a way of life!

My previous wireless router decided to die on me, one morning last month. I liked to joke that it was the result of too much web-cam streaming action. Incidentally, a friend of mine was doing that with his girlfriend the night before. When I woke up the morning after, the wireless router just refused to start and the diagnostic page showed 100% transmission errors. So, I went out and got myself a brand new wireless router instead.

So, what do I do with the old router?

I decided to turn it into a switch. Although the wireless action was shoddy, it still had 5 good ethernet ports on it. However, before doing that, I decided to flash a new upgraded firmware onto it. During the upgrade, I instructed the router to reset its configuration data to factory defaults. After successfully completing the flash, it started to work, wireless operations inclusive! Mysterious.

So, I have two working wireless routers at home now – both are Buffalo routers running dd-wrt. One is actually just the newer model of the other one, with an upgraded processor from 200MHz to 240MHz. So, I decided to use the second router to extend my network. One would immediately think of using WDS to extend the wireless network but after a quick read, I decided against it and decided to build a wireless bridge instead. What this means is that I can connect any number of ethernet devices to it and have them connect to the rest of my network.

This would be useful as I have a bunch of older machines at home that do not have wireless capabilities. Currently, whenever I need to setup these machines, I pull a long network cable from the server rack into my workbench. That is no longer necessary with my new wireless bridge. I can keep the bridge on my workbench and just run short length cables to my workbench machines. Basically, I have got an over-glorified wireless card that can connect up to 5 other machines through ethernet. This would be useful in so many different ways. I might want to think of ways to re-arrange my home network.

I was given a premium ergonomic keyboard at work today. I’ve been fooling around with it and I like it a lot. I would need to make some slight adjustments to my typing but overall, I found it very useful. The only issue is with the few middle keys. Sometimes, I catch my hands trying to hit keys that belong to the other side but most of the time, it is alright. Good thing is that I am used to typing with all my ten fingers. These keyboards are not made for anything other than touch typists.

Talking about typing styles, I actually saw someone at work who typed with one finger – literally typing with the right-pointer only. This surprised me because this person was obviously someone who had been doing a lot of coding work and now I see her typing with one finger only. I cannot even begin to imagine doing coding with only one finger. It would be extremely slow for me. I do not think that this person would like to use the ergonomic keyboard that I have been given today.

Talking about work, I managed to complete the first tasks assigned to me last week. However, we are not letting our boss know about it first and we will continue to work on some extra stuff after this. The basic thing is already working and I will try to add some optional functions to it over the next couple of days. Since I am ahead of schedule, I will hopefully have some extra time to do some reading. I really need to be catching up on my technical reading after this.

Update: Damn, boss came around at the end of the day. Somehow, he knew that it was done. Lucky guess, or does he subscribe to my blog feed?

I have been accumulating sleep debt for quite a while now. At some point, I will need to repay that debt. I have this really bad habit of not sleeping enough. There are just too many interesting things to do besides sleep. As a result, I gradually accumulate sleep debt until I cannot take it any longer.

I wish that sleep came easier to me.