New lifestyle starts now

I am now in the possibly the worst condition in my life in the recent times.

I’ve been out of job for one month and I have gained a bit of weight that I’m struggling to lose for the past one year. I’m  now weigh at incredibly 268 pounds and my waistline is 48.5 inches.

This has to stop now and I really need to take control of my life before it spiraling out of my control. I have decided that I should become healthier by losing more than 20 pound exactly 30 days for now.

To help me realize this, here what’s I’ve already done.

1. Make a meal/food log. Record down every single thing that I eat daily
2. Make an exercise log. Record every physical activities
3. Make a progress log. Record my weight and body measurement every day

So, here what I going to do starting now:

• No more rice
• Substitute rice with oatmeal or whole grain bread
• Eat small but frequently every 3 hours
• Do cardio on the stationary elliptical trainer for 15 mins, twice daily
• Do a body-weight workout routine every other day.

Hopefully I have what I needed to pull this through. So God please help me…

Give me email address or no Farmville for you!

I found this fascinating quote today:

Popular Facebook game Farmville has caused outrage among users who have found themselves locked out for refusing to hand over access to their email accounts to the game.shinyshiny.tv, Farmville locks out users who won’t hand over their email addresses, Apr 2010

You should read the whole article.

Happy New Year 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.