the personal blog of C.K.Koay
I’ve been religiously keeping a close watch on my Flickr stats page this week because I am nearing the 100k views landmark.
As of today, I officially did.
Wow…100,967 unique people from around the world actually viewed my photos, collections or sets.
I’ve been using Spotify for a couple of months now and I have to say that is one of the best music service out there, bar none. Of course, when I said bar none, I meant bar none if you happened to live in the UK.
Unfortunately, customers outside the UK can only select from a limited number of content due to licensing restrictions. This has severely impacted the user experience of the service. I created an account (don’t ask me how) and was presented with an impressive collection of songs. After a few days, the server prompted me that it detected that I was “roaming” and asked if I wanted to change my country in my Spotify user settings.
I did that and I came to regret it as it removed more than 3/4 of the songs that I had put in my playlist. Drats!!!!
But I digress because the reason I’m writing this is because of this:-
Could it really be that Spotify is coming to the iPhone? How about latency over EDGE? Will it work the same way as the desktop client (ie. download music file to local harddisk and then obtain DRM play key from server for every play)? So many questions, so little facts.
Wow…I really can’t wait (even with the limited content now)
At the end of 2007 and in search of a new home, we looked around from Taman Tun Dr. Ismail to the myriads of new and confusingly named Damansaras but somehow Lake Fields always had a spot in our hearts due to its contemporary design and finishing. At that time, the realtor had 2 units from us to choose from: a Feng Shui friendly one (which had the entrance to the powder room sealed and hence not facing the main door) and another one which didn’t. In the end, Feng Shui played no part in our decision and we chose the one that was nearer to the guard house and the water tower. We figured then that the clear unblocked path from the main door to the powder room would work out well in cases of emergencies that couldn’t wait.
Flash forward to roughly 7 months ago, which is the amount of time required to “complete” a purchase of the property (which warrants another rant), we appointed a contractor to perform some renovation work on the house for us. Perhaps “some” is relative as the work turned out to be quite major indeed. In addition to sealing the powder room entrance (after reassuring ourselves that the odds of the sort of emergencies that would actually occur in which such a configuration would serve to be beneficial is quite infinitesimal), we decided to include a show piece in the house.
One idea that immediately struck us was that our new place has a double volume living area. This would look very nice if the house that we got was a corner unit like below:-
But unfortunately, we got a non-corner unit so it unexcitingly looked like this:-
Which wasn’t too bad but we wanted to explore what we could do with all the space. That was when the thought of building a loft came to us. The more we thought about it, the more we fell in love with the concept of having a loft overlooking the living room. To build the loft, our contractor first built the structure of the platform with wood (as a mold for the concrete) and reinforced the stucture with intenal steel wireframes.
Next, they poured the first layer of concrete onto the structure. The holes in the walkway are for the downlights below. The white pipes contained electrical wirings.
Once the initial layer is set, another layer is added on top to even up the surface.
The whole concrete structure was allowed to dry. (I resisted the temptation to run into the area to jump up and down).
And penultimately, they’ve added the railings recently which made it safe(r) for me to climb over there to perform my jump tests. I did and the new loft was strong enough to withstand my jumps.
The whole process of building the loft took place over the span of 4 months. The final step will be to add in the wood railing and the timber floor which will take up another 4 to 6 weeks.
Hopefully, we will be able to move into the new place before June this year (fingers crossed so very tight!)
The unfolding events of yesterday in Perak deserve to be captured in the annals of history so that our future generations will know how brave our people were in fighting for truth, honesty and liberty.
It all started when BN seized the state government after securing of pledges of loyalty from 3 Pakatan Rakyat assembly persons who had quit their respective political parties and became independents.
The 3 defectors had earlier signed undated letters of resignation which had been accepted by the Speaker of the Perak State Assembly, V. Sivakumar. The Speaker then informed the Elections Commission to run by-elections in those vacated constituencies. However, the Elections Commission declined by deeming undated letters as unacceptable. The Menteri Besar of Perak, Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, then advised the Sultan of Perak to dissolve the state assembly to pave way for fresh elections. The Sultan declined and instead swore in Datuk Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir from BN as the new Menteri Besar without Nizar having actually resigning from the post. These contentious series of events had led to a constitutional (and some would say, institutional) crisis in Perak.
The Perak Assembly Speaker, V. Sivakumar then suspended Datuk Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir and 6 other BN member for failing to answer adequately to charges of contempt of the State Assembly when they were sworn in via unconstitutional means. Lawsuits from all sides followed.
But nothing prepared the nation for what happened yesterday.
The stage for yesterday’s showdown was set by Sivakumar who had earlier called for an emergency sitting of the State Assembly. The BN lawmakers filed a suit the night before the emergency sitting to seek an injunction to this emergency sitting.
The State Secretary, a civil servant, stepped beyond his jurisdiction by not following the instructions of the State Speaker. He instead sent orders to seal off the State Assembly building. The police also side stepped the law when they stopped lawmakers from entering the State Assembly building to conduct the emergency sitting.
A group of alleged “supporters” of UMNO also turned up for the party to block the lawmakers from going into the building.
While allowing Sivakumar to enter the State Assembly, the 27 other lawmakers were barred entry into the building. Unperturbed, Sivakumar and the lawmakers, including Menteri Besar Nizar, walked to find a place where they can hold the emergency meeting.
They found a spot near some residential houses around 100 meters away from the State Assembly building. In that spot stood an old rain tree. And under the tree, the State Assembly met and conducted their Emergency Sitting.
3 motions were passed: Nizar retained the confidence of the Assembly as the rightful Menteri Besar of Perak, the suspension of Zamry and 6 others was upheld and power was given to Nizar to once again to seek the grace of the Sultan to dissolve the assembly paving the way for fresh elections.
Under that grand old rain tree, the will and the voice of the people reigned supreme.
History was truly made.
Pictures (c) Reuters and AFP/Vincent Thian
London Bridge Model, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.
I first read and saw a fake (or digital) tilt-shift photography in Wired Magazine. It is a technique that manipulates life-size locations or objects so that they look like miniature models.
I have a rough theoretical idea on how to do it but had never tried it as I was too lazy to find suitable shots that I can use to clearly demonstrate this technique.
So it was in one quiet Friday evening when I was diligently seated in front of my PC (while waiting for the 5GB Victoria Secret Fashion Show to be split and copied to my thumb drive) that I decided to give this a try.
I must say that I am quite pleased with the results.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred and sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”- Chinese Proverb
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is thin in terms of pages but not short on great and entertaining bits. It explores the phenomenon of human outliers, i.e. individuals or groups that stand out significantly from the accepted norm. Ironically, at the end of the book, Gladwell hopes to have persuaded you that there are no such things as human outliers.
His premise is simple: great success comes to those who are born at the right time, brought up in the right environment and are hardworking. Having a high IQ or an innate talent helps but one just have to be smart or talented enough to be successful.
He weaves interesting tales about Canadian hockey players, Silicon Valley technoprenuers, The Beatles, Asian math whizzes, Korean Airlines, among others, to make his point quite convincingly. And he tells a pretty personal story at the end of the book on the journey of a hardworking Jamaican girl who was born at the right time and brought up in the right environment who eventually became his mother.
Maybe I was reading Outliers through a pair of slanty Chinese eyes because I find some of his conclusions as nothing more than common sense, or at least, common sense that I grew up with. It seems painlessly simple but every Asian that I know, knows that no success can come without hard work (and a little bit of luck) and the right roots.
Exerpts:-
