the personal blog of C.K.Koay
An arm-chair punter’s view on his world.
In a further erosion of our rights to free expression on the Internet, all Malaysians should oppose the newly enacted Section 114A of the Malaysian Evidence Act 2012.
This new law is unprecedented in the sense that the innocent are presumed guilty first and the burden of proof is shifted from the prosecutor to the prosecuted. This law has no place in a modern civil society and should be repealed.
More Information can be found at this link: http://stop114a.wordpress.com
Chinese New Year 2012, a set on Flickr.
Some photos taken during this year’s Chinese New Year celebration.
Even though I love Apple’s iWork, I’ve always had a soft spot for Microsoft Office. In my mind, iWork is like a sleek Ferrari—fun, stylish, and exhilarating for the occasional joyride—whereas Office is the reliable Toyota you use daily to get from point A to B.
That’s why any new release of Microsoft Office for Mac piques my interest. It’s the collision of two ideologies: Apple, the temple of aesthetics, meets Microsoft, the creator of Fisher-Price-themed operating systems like Windows XP (we all remember the bright blues and lime greens). Their offspring can sometimes be spectacular—like the very first version of Microsoft Excel for Mac—or an absolute train wreck, like Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.
To give credit where it’s due, Microsoft writes excellent code for office productivity software. I can’t imagine a workday without Microsoft Outlook keeping my schedule in check or Excel helping me wrestle meaning out of chaotic data dumps with complex pivot tables.
But that’s the office.
At home, in front of my big-screen Mac, I just want to enjoy my work. I want to cleanse my brain of Windows’ clunky interface and bask in beautifully crafted icons. When I do need to handle office tasks, I prefer to use elegantly designed software like iWork. But Pages and Numbers can only take me so far. Sometimes, I have to brace myself, fire up Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and get the job done.
And that’s when my Mac transforms into something unholy—a Windows PC.
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is so poorly designed, so utterly perplexing—especially on big-screen Macs—that J.J. Abrams could have set Lost on its interface. Common features are buried so deep within the labyrinthine menus that they rarely, if ever, see the light of day.
Thankfully, this may finally change with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. It’s not quite a Lexus, but Microsoft has clearly learned a few lessons. After taking it for a test drive, here are the key improvements I loved:-
Fast and more responsive: I’m blown away by the speed. Applications load up almost instantly, and within seconds, you can dive into Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. Typing in Word feels snappy—letters appear instantly as you type. Compared to the sluggish, unresponsive mess that was Office 2008, this alone is a compelling reason to upgrade.
Snazzier Templates: Okay, Steve Jobs probably wouldn’t be caught dead using any of these PowerPoint templates, but they’re the best I’ve seen in Microsoft Office—hands down. In fact, they’re even better than the ones in the PC version. The best part? Full compatibility. No more exporting beautifully crafted Keynote presentations just to make them PowerPoint-friendly.
Improved User Interface: The dreaded floating “palette” is gone! In its place, we now have the ribbon, which first appeared in Microsoft Office 2010 for PC. Some people love it, others hate it—but personally, I’ve grown to appreciate it. When you’ve got 12 different windows open at once, the ribbon’s structured layout makes life much easier.
Astro compared the launch of B.yond, its HDTV service in Malaysia, to the arrival of color television broadcasting. That’s quite a claim. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m old enough to remember the day RTM first switched to color. I recall the excitement—curious neighbors cramming into the living room, eyes glued to the rare color TV set, gasping in awe at every vibrant hue. We didn’t care what was on—we religiously tuned in to any program that aired in color, even if it was just a news anchor talking about rubber exports.
Astro B.yond, on the other hand, while delivering on its HD promise, isn’t nearly as revolutionary.
High-definition content is nothing new. If your PC runs at a resolution higher than 1280 x 720 pixels, congratulations—you’ve been enjoying 720p HD for years. If your puny 2-megapixel camera takes images at 1600 x 1200 pixels, you already have more height resolution than 1080p, the current gold standard for HD. Blu-ray discs (and before them, HD-DVD), gaming consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360—they’ve all been HD for ages.
So unlike the color TV era, Astro B.yond doesn’t have a major novelty factor. It’s hard to imagine your neighbors barging into your living room just to witness the breathtaking detail of David Letterman’s forehead wrinkles.
At launch, B.yond offers just four HD channels—NatGeo HD, History HD, HBO HD, and Astro Supersport HD—with ESPN HD “coming soon.” To access them, Astro requires you to replace almost everything: the dish, decoder, smart card, and even the remote control. The new Set-Top Box (STB) is smaller and sleeker, with a redesigned on-screen menu system. It also has a front-facing USB port, possibly for future TiVo-like features—if Astro ever decides to roll those out.
Originally, I had stripped my Astro subscription down to the bare minimum, partly as a protest against their ever-increasing prices. This left me with mostly documentary channels, so my TV diet consisted of Mega Disasters, Ice Road Truckers, and Mega Movers. What I quickly discovered is that the HD versions of NatGeo and History don’t just offer higher resolution; they actually have different programming schedules from their SD counterparts. HBO HD, on the other hand, is just HBO SD with a 60-minute delay, while Supersport HD is essentially Supersport 2 in HD.
The documentary channels look phenomenal. The colors are richer, and the level of detail is incredible—you can read tiny background text, spot imperfections in ancient artifacts, or count the number of wrinkles on the expert’s forehead as they discuss the fall of the Roman Empire.
Feeling optimistic, I upgraded to the movie package to check out HBO HD.
That’s when my excitement took a hit. Unlike the razor-sharp clarity of the documentaries, HBO HD looked… soft. The compression Astro uses for this channel seems aggressive—action scenes suffer from blocky artifacts, making them resemble poorly compressed pirated DVDs. Some sequences are downright unwatchable, especially when there’s a lot of movement on screen.
Astro B.yond boasts Dolby Digital sound, but in practice, it’s a hot mess. The audio channels are often encoded incorrectly. The most common issue? Voices don’t just come from the center speaker—they’re also leaking into the left and right speakers. And to make matters worse, the vocal track isn’t even properly synchronized across the channels, creating a weird out-of-phase effect that makes dialogue sound echoey and unnatural. It’s like listening to an interview inside a tin can.
For Astro to succeed, they need to fine-tune this service. With just four HD channels at launch, it’s unlikely they’ll attract the masses—except maybe during World Cup 2010, when all matches will be broadcast in HD. Right now, early adopters like me are willing to pay the extra RM20 a month for the technology, but for mass adoption, they need to:
Because after watching HD, one thing becomes painfully clear—Astro’s standard-definition channels look really, really bad.
For those who are coming to the morning session of Celeste and Ming Han’s wedding, here are some quick directions to Lake Fields.
Directions from Kesas (Lebuhraya Shah Alam) to Lake Fields
|
1. |
After the KESAS toll, travel eastward on KESAS towards KL |
4.0 km |
|
2. |
Take right fork towards Cheras. You will be now on Middle Ring Road 2 (MRR 2) |
2.0 km |
|
3. |
Look out for Bandar Tasik Selatan LRT station on left. Take left ramp and make a U-turn to the other side of MRR 2 |
0.3 km |
|
4. |
Continue on MRR 2 until you see the turning to Serdang, Balakong, UPM on the left |
1.7 km |
|
5. |
Take that turning and continue straight. You will come across a traffic light. The Sg Besi LRT station is on your left |
0.2 km |
|
6. |
Continue straight and take flyover on the left that says Lake Fields |
0.3 km |
Directions from Federal Highway to Lake Fields
|
1. |
Head east on Lebuhraya Persekutuan towards Kuala Lumpur |
0.2 km |
|
2. |
As you pass MidValley on your left, take the exit onto Jalan Klang Lama |
3.1 km |
|
3. |
Travel straight and turn left at Jalan Kuchai Lama |
2.6 km |
|
4. |
Continue straight all the way and you will be travelling on Lebuhraya Sungai Besi |
4.0 km |
|
5. |
Take “Lake Fields” ramp when you come to a 3-fork that says Sg. Besi/Cheras (left), Lake Fields (centre) and Serdang/Balakong (right) |
0.4 km |
Directions from KL Seremban Highway to Lake Fields
| Take the Cheras exit from KL-Seremban Highway |
0.1 km |
| Take the left ramp to Sungai Besi (via Lebuhraya Sungai Besi) *warning: do not take leftest ramp to Putrajaya |
56 m |
| Keep right at the fork to continue toward Lebuhraya Sungai Besi (towards KL) |
1.0 km |
| Make a U-turn |
2.5 km |
| Continue straight on Lebuhraya Sungai Besi (towards Serdang) |
4.1 km |
| Take “Lake Fields” ramp when you come to a 3-fork that says Sg. Besi/Cheras (left), Lake Fields (centre) and Serdang/Balakong (right) |
0.4 km |
When you reach Lake Fields, you will see white 3 storey houses that look something like this:-
I have a confession to make.
I would lust after Kentucky Fried Chicken and would feel really bad after eating it. Not from a guilt point of view due to unhealthy indulgence. Nope, I really do physically feel bad after finishing the last piece of fried chicken that has been secretly embalmed with 11 herbs and spices. It always leaves a peculiar after-taste that can be described as a bad combination of sickeningly creamy grease, refrigerated overnight chicken soup and sweaty salty skin.
Which is like the new Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. While I couldn’t resist the marketing messages which promoted this book like it is the sequel to the Holy Bible, the feeling that I get after completing it can be described as a bad combination of sickeningly ill-constructed scenes and dialogues, refrigerated plots from previous books and conspiracy theories and non-sweaty predictable plot twists.
In this novel, Dan Brown took familiar plot elements from The DaVinci Code, Angels & Demons, Deception Point and Digital Fortress and transported the story to Washington D.C. This time around, a diabolical and murderous villain with the moniker of Mal’akh forces Robert Langdon to once again solve puzzles based on long lost symbols. I wouldn’t write anything more about the plot because the book has nothing else going for it and I do not want to spoil it in case one wants to read this book or wait for the Tom Hanks movie version of the book.
What I’ve discovered when reading The Lost Symbol is that Dan Brown has unabashedly recycled plot elements and characters from his old novels. (For those who do not like spoilers, skip to the last paragraph now).
For instance:-
The saving grace to this book is that with all the flaws it is still fun to read. That is if one lowers one’s expectations enough to read it for the pulp fiction value that it is and nothing more.
