Happy New Year 2009 December 31, 2008

It’s seemed like just few weeks ago we celebrated 2008. Time passes by so fast and tomorrow we will celebrate a new year of 2009. End of last year, I made a post of this about what I want to achieve in 2008. Let see how many things I have managed to fulfill

1. Persuade my boss to give me an increment
2. Get a new car (most probably BLM)
3. Increase my monthly study loan repayment from RM 100.30 to at least RM 150
4. Lose my weight, at least 5 kilos a month
5. Learn a third language, probably either Mandarin or Japanese
6. Enroll myself in a “kelas mengaji”
7. Get a Microsoft certification

Out of the 7 items in my wishful list, I only managed to complete the first two. So, I will carry on the rest five and add a bit modification as my New Year resolution.

So here’s my 2009 resolution:

1. Increase my monthly study loan repayment from RM 100.30 to at least RM 150 – Current situation, RM0.00 every month
2. Lose fat of my body, at least 1 inches from my tummy every month
3. Learn a third language, probably either Mandarin or Japanese and Cantonese
4. Enroll myself in a “kelas mengaji”
5. Get a Microsoft certification – This probably hard, unless my company somehow sponsor even half of the fees

So, I sincerely hope that I at least fulfill half of the resolution by the end of fist quarter of 2009. Wish me luck and hopefully your’s will come true also.

Happy New Year!

Getting latitude and longitude readings in Google Maps July 12, 2008

Yesterday my manager asked me for help. We’re required by our client to provide coordinates reading for few places and she has pinpoint the locations in Google Maps and now she need to find out the coordinates of those places.

The problem is, Google Maps doesn’t provide you with coordinates reading unlike Google other similar application, Google Earth. Actually there is a way to find it out as I believe this is included in the application itself. After not so much googling, I’ve found out the way to get those coordinates

First you need to make sure that the point or placemark is centre on the map by right-click on it and choose center map here option. After that, copy this JavaScript code and paste it on your browser’s address bar.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Press enter and a pop-up window with latitude and longitude values will appear. That’s all, it is that easy J.

Of getting fit and gym membership June 29, 2008

I must admit that I’m not physically fit and my body is far from perfect condition. That’s why I force myself for jogging and do brisk walking every day after work. But lately the whether condition in Kelana Jaya is a bit unpredictable and it always rain every late afternoon. Sometimes I had to stay back until 8pm because of sudden work that needed to be done urgently. Thus, jogging in Kelana Jaya Lake every evening after works is no longer a feasible option for me anymore to get my body fit.

So to get fit,  the only option left  is to join any gym or fitness centre so that I can do my workouts without ever worry abut the whether condition. The only thing stopping me from joining one because the fee might be damn expensive and I don’t own any credit card to pay via monthly installment (but the truth was I quite shy on going to those places). Then the chance I’ve been waiting for came to me in a form of a gift voucher.

So I won a free one month of Celebrity Fitness membership from a lucky draw organized by my company. So I went to the 1 Utama branch to cash my voucher and I was greeted by a quite pretty sales person named Charmine (if I remember correctly). After a brief tour of the facilities and measuring my weight and body fat, she started to sell the membership package to me. But as I’m a though nut to crack, I told her I won’t be joining nor sign anything until I get my free one month membership. So she called her manager, (same old sales pitch they used on everyone else) to give me a better deal.

Get Smart review June 25, 2008

The first time I watched Steve Carell was when he played Evan Baxter, opposite Jim Carrey    in Bruce Almighty. That time I believe most people hardly know him until he come out in the Americanized version of The Office. Since then, he starred in many mostly successful comedy movies and the latest one is Get Smart

Get Smart is actually a remake of the same title tv series which was quite popular in the sixties. I’m not gonna waste my time comparing this movie with the original one because first, I never watched the tv series. Secondly, I was not even born yet in during the tv series heyday and third, I don’t give a crap about sixties tv series as most of them are crap anyway (except for I dream of genie)

This time around, as Maxwell Smart a.k.a agent 86. Carell is cast together with other great ensemble such as Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. IMHO all the cast are great and you can even see everyone’s favourite “Heroes” Masi Oka played as a small supporting role in this movie.

The “not so happening” at GSC Mid Valley June 15, 2008

Last Wednesday I was given free ticket to another screening again. This time it’s a thriller by one of my favourite director, M Night Shyamalan. The only difference in this screening from others that I’ve attended to, was this time it’s free seating. So by the time the ushers let us in, we scrammed like mad trying to secure best seats in the hall. We managed to get the C row, the third top row from top of the hall. It’s was a good change because before this I always given row closer to the screen.

The movie started 10 minutes late even though there was no security checks like they always did in previous “blockbuster” screening. I don’t know why this time they just stationed 2-3 Rela officers in every hall instead of full-blown security checks at the point of entry. Maybe the distributors confident enough people would not try to “piratize” this movie because lack of commercial values in it or the recent oil price increase has forced them to do some cost-cutting measures .

The Happening features Mark Wahlberg in the lead role as a science teacher. I really like this guy especially in Four Brothers and The Italian Job. This time instead of the usual tough guy role, his role in this movie is a bit geeky and soft spoken guy.

My new ride April 6, 2008

Yesterday after almost 3 months of waiting, finally my new car arrived at my doorstep. The Saga BLM is a metallic-black, manual transmission medium-line variant. Actually I booked a white colour but since my brother a.k.a the salesman itself said I can get the car faster if I change to black because the immediate manual transmission stocks available is either in black or blue, so I opted for black.

And it turned out my decision is correct; the Saga BLM is simply stunning in black, much better than the white one. The black tone is different for the one used in the old Saga and it’s look a bit brownish under the sunlight. I was impressed with the exterior look of the car even though it’s a tad smaller that what I’d imagined. Interior parts are much better and look higher quality than the old ‘kereta kebal’ Saga. No complaints except for the glove box doesn’t aligned properly with the dashboard line when it’s closed and obviously the material used look ‘el cheapo’ compared to my bro’s Gen.2.

Microsoft Silverlight March 15, 2008

Quoted from silverlight.net: ” Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”

Interested in lerarning more about silverlight? Head down to these sites below
http://www.silverlight.net
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Silverlight
http://epymotion.wordpress.com

Goodbye 2007, Welcome 2008! December 30, 2007

This year is a quite memorable for me. Although nothing big happened to my personal life, something big and significant happened to me in my career life.

After quitting the job as a Singtel/Singnet technical support end of last year, I was jobless for about two months until I came across a job advertisement in forum.lowyat.net. The job position was a Web Developer. Even though I out of programming field for almost 6 months, thank God I managed to secure the job. Now living my dream working as a web developer and hopefully I will become a more “well-developed” web developer in this coming new year.

Inserting page number in OpenOffice Writer December 19, 2007

Inserting page number in OpenOffice Writer is not as straight-forward process as in Microsoft Word. But never fret, the process is quite easy actually but just involved extra steps in OpenOffice. First we need to add header or footer in our pages depending on where we want the page number to appear. Do this by clicking:

Insert > Header > Default or Insert > Footer > Default

Next, add the page number by doing this:

Insert > Fields > Page Number

That’s all it takes to add page number in OpenOffice Writer.

ASP.Net (VS 2005): This address is restricted in Firefox error December 16, 2007

Yesterday when I debugged my website in Visual Web Developer Express, I was greeted by this error “This address is restricted: This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection”. There’s even a try again button but same result appear even though I clicked it repeatedly. For almost one year I’ve been using VWD 2005 Express for developing web application never once I’ve encountered such problem.