When blogging turns a tad bit sour.

I need not say more, it's written here.

Malaysian political bloggers form alliance
Group formed after personalities were demonized 'again and again'

Microsoft.. Linux..

I've been a Linux enthusiast since college days. Windows 95's blue screens of death guided me towards the Linux direction. It was RedHat 5.2 and it has been one hell of a journey since then. So much so it forms my rice bowl of today.

With the launch of Vista, something tht has taken some party to put together in about 5 years, tht is a resource guzzler but boasts beautiful user interface experience, tht would inevitably mean users of Windows XP have just abt 2 years before things start to go obsolete.

IMHO, there's one thing that forms a barrier for Linux reaching desktops by legions. Office suite. The de facto standard has formed to be Microsoft office and this gives the giant a firm grip over their users. While there are office suite alternatives such as Open Office (for Linux/Windows), they just don't do.

A noble cannot possibly say Linux sucks and Microsoft rocks. Microsoft has unlimited funds while Linux is mostly efforts of the mostly unpaid open source community. Compare both the operating systems and you'd definitely be awed.

Do we Vista-fy ourselves, or do we take these 2 years and seek alternatives?

An entertaining read. The author really did a good job on this. You could actually laugh!
Linux Desktop – Is it an Option for Normal Users?
Murmurs of revolt spread through the taverns in the Kingdom of Windows. The flashy new Vista model King William had promised the people had taken 5 years to put into production, and the price matched its splendour. During those five years, the Apple Opera Company had staged several new productions of impressive polish. The upstarts from Google were giving people free software and email services, and there were rumours that Desktop Linux was mature enough to rival Vista.

The LEAVING WINDOWS Project
As I posted here (1), last week I decided that I would NEVER upgrade to Vista as my primary operating system. I find it completely unacceptable to be subject to capricious deactivation with 3 days warning whenever Vista decides it does not like software or hardware I might install (yes, even SOFTWARE can trigger this nonsense...see (2)(3)(4)(5) ).

Linux for Beginners
Some of the greatest benefits and most confusing aspects of Linux are rooted in the fact that there's no one Linux—rather, there are many different operating systems based on the Linux kernel.

Vaio zoinked..

Finally I'm back online on my lappie. Been struggling for about 24 hours (cummulative). What happened? I killed the windows partitions on my primary sata hdd. How did tht happen? Erm.. blush*. Do I really wanna embarass myself further?

I was supposed to be gaming, instead I decided to seek some knowledge. So I booted to linux via external usb hdd and decided to configure the wireless modem. Had been wanting to do tht for ovr a mth now. I screwed the libraries up, so the easy way out would be to reinstall linux. I've been messing with linux since 2nd year of college. 8 years of so called experience got the better of me. The installation went on like a charm. Till I wanted to log back into windows did I realise the inevitable.. I zoinked the MBR of the windows hdd.

Fine, been there done tht solved it, piece of cake. This time I got a lil adventurous and tried a new 'style' of recovering the MBR. I did "dd if=/dev/zero of /dev/sda bs=512" from linux. In theory tht should work so I thought. Tht on it's own somehow, zoinked all partitions on /dev/sda which was where windows was installed.

Me heart slumped down south till it reached my groins. What flashed by:

1. Photos
2. Blog material
3. Data
4. Saved Game data, I've been playing Jade Empire for the past week
5. PHOTOS! JPEG! MRW! DNG! PSD!
6. pHoTos!
7. PhOtOs!
8. Movies! (of all sorts of coz ahem*)
9. Bookmarks, all those hours of surfing.

Steady.. I turned off me notebook and went to sleep haha! Laughter the best medicine? I would rank sleep the 2nd.

Ok on /dev/sda I had 2 partitions. The first was where the OS was installed with saved data of sorts. The second was where my prized photos were archieved and my downloads.

Why can't I recover the lost data? After all it was a mere partition f*ck up. Assumingly the 1st partition would be from the early sectors of the hdd till somewhere in the middle with the 2nd partition taking on from there till the end of the disc.

I then recreated a partition of 4096000 (40GB), formatted it and lef the rest of the hdd unpartitioned. Installed windows and used GetDataBack (GDB). Somehow GDB was unable to sweep unpartitioned space. So I created another partition with what was left. I did not format this new partition. Said some silent prayers and reran GDB.

Voila! GDB managed to recover all the data which was sitting on me 2nd partition! Well as of now, I've only checked the JPEGs and some installation files. In time I'll check the RAW (from my Dynax 5D) files as I'm yet to install Adobe Lightroom. Since there's some uncertainty of the quality of the recovery, I'll be leaving this partition unformatted until I've verified most of the files. If the files are more corrupt than useful, then I'd try using another recovery software.

I managed to save:

1. Photos (JPEG)
2. Movies

The accuracy of recovery softwares greatly depend on the built in algorithms. It's rumoured some fair better in mp3 recovery and so on.

Right now, I'm connected to windows update downloading the numerous amount of patches and updates. A whole 78 of em! Estimated time, 1 hour 10 mins.

Oh boy, a long and tiring journey lays ahead. Would take me hours to bring this baby back to it's former self.. with lots of lost data..

YvesSaintLaurent YSL LIP TWINS

When I first laid eyes on this product I was awed! Immediately reminded me of the Cryptex in Da Vinci Code.

This innovation is at it's best! 2 colors (satiny & gloss texture)(thus the twin naming), mirror and a brush all conveniently in 1 package! For those ladies on the move, this seems to be the perfect tiny thing to fit nicely in the handbag.

With these 2 colors/texture it is more than possible for the adventurous embrace dual tones and sweep em' men off their feet with lust colors.

Reapplying lipstick in public a no no? Ain't tht gonna be something of the past. With Lip Twins, I'd imagine ladies flaunting it! Well, if u hv it, flaunt it!

Wanna have one? Hold ya horses ppl! It'll only be available over the counters(Malaysia) in May!

Taken with kit lens 18-70mm.











Taken with Pentacon 50mm/f1.8 (M42 lens)

Age creeps on..

Those were the days when we thought of zippo lighters, rocker t-shirts, condoms, cheap hard liquor, etc as gifts to our pals.

My latest gift to a pal.

(of coz I didn't do the wrapping, my lil' princess did.)

This is what we call a gr8 sense of humour.

Proudly located in the heart of Puchong.

Shift leadless for 4 days..

These few days my shift lead Vilves has a workshop to attend, thereafter she celebrated her mom's birthday down south. Tht left us shift leadless for erm.. thurs, fri, sat.. surprisingly she turned up on sun(thank gawd) and tonight (mon) she's resting from an exerting med. checkup from the morning. So tht's 4 days... whoopie! HOLIDAY!

Tough luck dude.. she was so kind as to pass on the responsibility onto my fragile shoulders.

Managing ppl ain't anything new to me. Ppl are the most challenging and interesting part of managing making it kind of a mysterious art, an art tht is never mastered. An art tht tickles me left right center upside down inside out.

The toughest part was to manage the tickets and emails whilst dwelling into the technical details of some tickets. I couldn't sit back and just manage, I had my usual role to fulfill, which is to solve em darn tickets a.s.a.p!

Conclusion? It's tough juggling the mind from one role to another. However the fulfillment is amazing, being able to walk off from shift smiling knowing the team had did well!

Oh blimey I did it again!

What happens when u allow an important date to slip ur mind? Like a birthday of someone u luv? Or perhaps an anniversary? Simply put u'r in deep sh*t ain't u? Ok tht's done, how do u make up for what u so embarrassingly committed?

Sorry(s) won't b enuf.
Present(s) won't b enuf.
Hug(s) won't do it.
Ignoring it would even b worse.

It hurts to have done so. It's inexcusable!

So how now brown cow?