Life & Me

A few days back, I suddenly popped a question to Steph. No, not that question, but simply,

“Do you know how spider makes the web between two tree trunks/poles?”

Well, isn’t it amazing how they manage that? Anyway, after few guesses, such as Spiderman style of shooting the web across the tree (Did Stan Lee believe that?), or climbing down and up the tree, she gave up. Well, me being nasty, I simply refused to reveal the answer. That kinda pissed her off.

So I guess I might as well blog it down, as one of those meaningless but fun post. Spiders actually allow their webs to be blown across the trees. While producing the web, they’d let the wind stream carry the web along, all the while testing (like flying a kite) whether the web is taut. If it is, it means the web has reached a trunk/wall/pole. It would then tie the other end to the current trunk, and start to walk across the web, while counting the steps. After it reaches the end, it would start walking back towards its half way point. Then it would release another web downwards, so that it would form a 3-edges star. That would be the basic formation, from which the web can be built.

Amazing isn’t it? Spider can do arithmetic!

Another lesson I learnt – don’t piss your girlfriend off.

I wanted to blog about this last week. But since the whole world has been talking about it, and hasn’t stopped now, I figure it’s not too late to join in the discussion.

It’s about the iPad (*groan, not again?!!). It’s true that everywhere I look, articles upon articles have been written about it. Personally, I waited upon it with anticipation mainly because I was looking for a tablet or netbook as well. I knew I probably won’t buy it, but I was worried that it’d be such a good product that competitors would be forced to lower their prices or even come out with new products. In that case, I’d not want to be caught having an old expensive product.

As it turned out, it was a nice product, but far from great. As it turns out, millions have expressed the same sentiment, while millions others are convinced of the opposite. One thing I’ve learnt through observation is that – you don’t have to convince the whole market. The iPad won’t be a flop as long as a few percent of the market are convinced of its greatness, or “magical and revolutionary”, as Steve Jobs put it. Me though, has been a big skeptic of the company. Let me explain why.

In the past 10 years, Apple has managed to transform themselves into a cult movement, and you might indeed be one of them. What is the defining character of a cult? Fanaticism. That’s a strong word I know, maybe passion would be a more suitable word. It’s true that Apple has come out with many amazing products throughout the years. I remember arguing (I like good arguments) with my brother (who is a member of the cult) many years ago about the merits of a Mac and come out slightly convinced by it.

However, as the company grows bigger, so has its grasp on the mind. Nowadays it’s hard to have a sensible argument with an Apple fan. Any merits would be elevated to the stratosphere while any obvious disadvantages would be brushed aside or deemed irrelevant.

And that is a cult. Because in reality, although many don’t realize it, Apple users are actually giving up many computing technology for the few that Apple does better. They are being conditioned, just like a cult religion do to you (giving up the social norm for the out-of-body experience, for example). No SD-Card, who needs one? No USB? I don’t use it anyway. Can’t change the battery? Apple will take care of it. No network facility? Who wants to join a network?! No flash? What’s Flash? And so on and so forth. I’m not making this up, because that’s exactly what I read from articles from Apple fans in the past two weeks.

Apple has of course, done nothing to discourage this. Almost every single aspect of the products is controlled. You use what the company asks you to use, nothing more. To be sure, what they offer is really attractive, but I feel really uncomfortable about this arrangement.

The winner writes history, right? So if Apple managed to take over the world one day, we’d celebrate the coming of a new era, right? The effects are slowly showing, because Apple uses different interface from everyone else, Apple customers will find it hard to switch back one they’re used to it (Think: coffee addiction). You have a Mac, then an iPod, then an iPhone, soon an iPad?

For this reason, I prefer “the rest of the world, where you can configure anything you like. Surely it’d cause some accidents once in a while (the notoriety of Windows), just like the difference between driving on a free way or a go-kart track. I prefer freedom to safety, I guess.

So in my search for the ideal Pad, I settled for the ideaPad from Lenovo. It’s a netbook, “better in nothing”, according to Steve Jobs. True, but it’s cheaper, lighter and last longer, the major reason why anyone would purchase one. Moreover, it has a webcam, a keyboard, tons of data space, 3G UMTS (what’s the fuss about 3G in iPhone or iPad? Everyone else has it since ages ago.) and most of all, it’s so cheap that no Apple fans would like to hear about it, just say that it’s about half the price of the cheapest iPad.

To balance the bias of this post a little, I have to say, the iPhone, iPods and iPad have a really really attractive interface with the multi-touch screen. That’s one thing I really wish to have. So maybe when iPad does come out to Europe soon, I might eat my words……… and join the cult.

We’ll see.

text to come

When I was young, I always thought things were right or wrong, black or white. If it’s not wrong, then it must be right.

When I was slightly older and smarter, I realized that this is called a digital thinking. Most of us know that computers can only think 0 and 1. In technical terms, it’s called a digital system.

But the older I become, the more I fall, the trouble that I got myself in, the more I see the world, the more I realized the world is more than just right or wrong.

Lying is wrong. But what about white lies?

Stealing is wrong. But what about Robin Hood?

Killing is wrong. But what about defending your country?

Then I discover something, called the analog thinking.

Unlike digital , an analog system can take any value between a given range. It’s not just 0 or 1, but also 0.5, or 0.233333…. you get the idea.

Sometimes things don’t have a definite standard. Sometimes you can’t judge a person as a scum before looking into the situation. Sometimes you can’t be so sure of everything.

Declaimer :

1. Of course, everyone of us should pursuit their own standards to help them judge better. For me, the standards are from the bestselling book in the history of human kind.

2. Now, please don’t misunderstand that digital systems are weak systems. Everything that we do today, from computer to washing machine, relies a lot of digital system. I was referring to 1-bit digital system, which can only be 0 and 1. A conventional computer has a 32-bit processing system, equivalent to 4294967296 states. Some computer has a 64-bit processing system, you get the idea.

My Brother sent me an email a few days ago to ask me how to set up a blog with your own domain. Domain simply means stuff like .com, .biz, .net and so on. And rather than writing him an email, I decided to blog it down and hopefully it will benefit some of you.

It’s important to remember that there are lots of resources in the net to guide you with your first website. What I’ll write will simply be my own experience. It was hard for me going from unknown to amatuer in website making, so I hope this blog will take away some of that fear.

To set up your own website, you’d first need some webspace. Yes, you can find free webspace in the internet. But as there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you’d be given an advertisement-laden webpage. (Well, there’s however a thing called free salvation, but let’s talk about that some other time) Alternatively, you can get a free webspace from servers like www.geocities.com but that’s probably not better than a normal Blog. Free webspace also provide non-existence service and limited functions. What kind of functions? For example, you’d need a SQL Database to set up a blog with wordpress.

Beside webspace, you’d also need a domain. And you’d have to pay for this no matter how. “.com” will set back around $7 a year while “.biz” can be as cheap as $3. After checking for availability, you can register something like www.imasmartnerd.com and it’d belong to you. Go here to read more about it.

As you need both webspace and a domain, there are companies who call themselves webhost. They offer packages that includes not just webspace, domain, but also functions like pre-build websites, blog, statistics watch and of course the all-important SQL database.

There are loads of webhost in the market. You can read about them here. I personally use the 1&1. They have good reputation. If you are from Germany, you can check them out here. If you’re from Malaysia, you’d be referred to the US website here. They have a lot of packages on offer, starting from $2 per month.

I chose the 5€ package. It’s the cheapest package that provides the SQL database. I have 500mb of webspace plus 3 free domains. If you compare the US offers and the Germany offers, you’d realized that US website has much better offers. But you’d need a valid address and identification in the States to take those offers. They’d do an identity check, so don’t try to cheat… as i did. I guess people in Malaysia or Singapore could still take the offer as international customers.

So what’s this SQL Database??? Well, I have no idea. I just know that it’s a requirement if you want to set up the Wordpress blog in your website. It’s a database to store all your blog entries. You can read more about SQL here, but i don’t recommend you to do so.

Wordpress is a tool to blog. It’s comparable to MovableType, which is much more harder to install (cost me 3 days and I still failed). It’s much more powerful and flexible than normal pre set-up blog provider like Blogger, Tabulas and so on. Wordpress has their own pre set-up blog as well, so don’t get confused.

You need to install Wordpress in your website. To do that, I found a nice guide on how to do it with my webhost 1&1. If you happen to use 1&1 as well, this might be for you. It provides a detailed guide to do it and it’s pretty much painless.

Of course, having your own domain and webspace means you can set up your own webpage. That’s what I’m trying to do now, which is why typing www.bargerbarger.com in your browser will give you nothing (yet).

You’d need a few tools to set up a webpage and a FTP to upload them. But you can learn about them in the internet.

What is random? When we set the music player to “shuffle” mode, the player will pick the songs randomly. But is it really random? Purist will definitely say “no”, as the player is generating a string of numbers by a predefined function. In technical jargons, that’s called quasi-random or pseudo random.

So what’s the point? It means that technology cannot yet replicate the randomness of our mind. We can’t ask the computer (yet) to randomly pick a card from a stack like we can.

So when i say random thoughts, i really mean, disarranged and unsorted thoughts.

I was surfing You Tube yesterday and i noticed the large amount of “chain mailers” and “haters”. It really makes you wonder what their purposes are. But then again, when i twist the thought around, why am I so free to read their comments?

The internet allows such “haters” to flourish. Who would dare to call a supermodel FAT face to face when he or she is totally from another league. Who would dare to call some scientist stupid when he or she is not even a graduate? But you don’t even need an identity to do that in internet. You can trash someone’s work, just for the fun of it. You can call a model a piece of meat, just to gain the temporary satisfaction, all without any cost attached to it, except a internet connection.

This thought led me to wonder what everyone (including me) is doing in their life? Some are stuck in a job, some stuck in the chase for the next drama series (I’m part of it..), some stuck surfing the net, giving comments…

Pretty meaningless, I’d say.

Looked at the map in front of my desk. I love map, always ponder where I’d go next … or what type of people stay in that seemingly abandoned island in that part of world. Wiki them on the net and found out that most of the islands are pretty large and have some nice histories.

I wonder how the sailors centuries ago drew the World Map.

So the world is so darn big, what makes me then? It can be very humbling just by pondering my own significance in the world. Social researchers say that the average “clan” of a person is usually limited to 150 people. I wonder I’m below or above the average. To put it in a simpler way. The average person would have less than 150 people attending their funeral.

But there are 6 billion people in the world? To grasp this huge amount, I’ve devised some ways to illustrate this number so you can a feel of it. If you start counting a person in the world per second, It’d take you around 200 years. You know what’s the irony? Even if you live that long, the world’s population will probably double by then. So you have to keep counting.

Thinking it’s sad that i actually took my time to do that maths? Pretty simple actually. 31536000 is the amount of seconds in a year (Don’t ask me how i remember that, it’s just there) that’s 30 million, so a hundred year will take you to 3 billion, and huolah! 200 years will take you to 6307200000!

Gee… so that’s how insignificant we are? What’s the point of living then?

Easy, because we have God. And those who know don’t need explanation. Those who don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d be so willing to talk it through with you.

So you want more random thoughts? Just click “shuffle” on your MP3 player and relax.

was on the way back from Brussel last week, we stopped at burger king to catch a supper. Well, a TRIPPLE WHOPPER is not really a supper eh.. if you don’t know how big a Tripple Whopper is, just imagine a Quarter Pounder from McD.. TIMES 3.5..

Anyway, the waitress wasn’t friendly. The grumple face common for late shift workers. So my friend was cursing on the way out, citing that Customere is king and she should quit if she has no desire of working anymore. I remembered myself smiling beside. Truthfully, i was annoyed, but not angry. As my friend was cursing away, i sink into the world of my own and start thinking about the reason and effects of such unfriendliness.

A strict management can encourage reluctantly “on-time” but grumpy workers, a relaxed management can produce highly motivated and happy workers, but it can backfire to form a bunch of lazy workers. So keeping workers happy and effective is indeed essential isn’t it? Just as product can reflect a brandname, an employee’s smile can do the same. Like air hostress for an airline, though unfair, the prettiest faces and the sweetest voices will get the job. Further on, a superb effort in developing a product ( Tripple Whopper!! in my case ) can easily ruined by lack of efforts in employee’s and internal management. Organization Behaviour is indeed interesting isn’t it. I guess that’s the reason why a top CEO is paid much more than a top Engineer.

Screw me for thinking like a nerd.

130 am again…. nothing much to be said about my life this time.. no too much to be worried about as well.. not too bad as a whole…

So this entry is probably gonna be jst me talking about my thoughts through, as some of you might have noticed, my thoughts can be a little baffling sometimes.. let´s check it out. LOL..

i want to talk about water, not sure whether i´ve been through this or not. I always find water an amazing element, so amazing that it requires a creator, well, let´s check it out.

Water is liquid during the room temperature right?.. If not, we would be steamed off. But a closer look at its structure shows that it´s not much different from CO2 or H2 or etc. which are gasses at room temperature.

Before i go all mysterious about it, it´s because there´s another bond called the Hydrogenbond that makes the water strong enough to stay together as liquid and not steam off…. C02 has all the condition to form this kind of bond, just for some reason (Electronegativity), it don´t…. so becuase of that, we blow out gas instead of liquid C02…

all those above are basics really, then comes the density. Density simply means compactness… so if something is less dense, it floats on something denser… So you sink in the water.. and if u heat something up, it becomes bigger and hence less dense… so cold air goes down… hot air goes up… and all normal solid sinks in their liquid form… except of course.. water. I find this amazing.. Ice floats on water. Sceintifically, it´s due to the hydrogen bond again which somehow stretched itself and makes itself bigger (less dense) when it becomes solid.

Jst put some thought in it, because of this, the fish don´t die during winter when the lake or sea freeze up because the water stays down.

And there´s something more amazing, as water cool, they should become denser and then sinks down right? So do they first sink down, then freeze, then floats up? perhaps bringing some dead fish up as well?… Apparently someone put some thought into it where Water is created. So water actually becomes denser as it cools down (sinks down) until 4 degree Celcius, then it bloats up ( less dense ) and floats up.

When i first learned about it, i remember thinking What The Heck?.. I hope i don´t sound like a nerd, but such things don´t exist in any other material. And it don´t make any sense that such things can form itself up naturally. It sounds like more like a conscious software programming.

But still, i´ve found something a few days ago to expand my fascination of this water. Heat convey. Alright, some basics here, heat conveys is 3 ways, conduction ( thru medium, the gas burns the wok, the wok becomes hot), convection (thru medium, hot air does up, cold air comes down), and radiation ( don´t need medium, the sun shines thru the vacuuum thru earth).

I feel like elaborating, but let me get straight to the point. Water conveys heat primarily thru convection. The other two ways are negligible.

Have you ever wonder why the lake don´t freeze all the fish all the way to the bottom during those darn long winter when the temperature is bout -20°C on surface? Therefore again, killing all the fishes.. lol… Because at the area of 0 degrees, the water actually convects badly. Why?.. because the water at 0,1,2 and 3 degrees are less dense. Therefore the really cold water stays up!!.. Convection only happens when the cold does down and hot comes up… Forgive me if i really sound nerdy, but i am really fascinated.

I know the reason why ice should be lighter… Now i understand why the water at 4 degrees should be densest and not 0 degree…

not to mention the universal solubilty of water, the darn large specific heat capacity of water… i´ll save them for next time.

If i´m a nerd, the greatest nerd of all is apparently my Big Boss up there…

till next blog

jst found out this in my Chemistry lecture… the signs tat we commonly use today as man and woman ( a round thing with an arrow above for man and a round thing with a cross beneath for woman )… were actually used as symbol for elements in the 18th century…

so for the man symbol … it’s IRON… and for the woman symbol… it’s COPPER… and as everyone … iron turns into rust ( men die earlier gua… ) when met with oxygen and water…. while copper turns green when oxidised ( women are always always jealous… lol )….

nah.. jst some food for thought…

i’m not sure whether anyone ever experience this kind of stuff or not…. but i do…
wat do i mean by this?… i feel tat there are a large amount of infos and datas and experiences in mind, mostly useless and unsorted, roaming around uncontrolled, decomposing and short circuiting the links and connections around the way…

and i dun like it… i haven’t been able to absorb any stuff for the past day… and i’m very sure it’s not stress… it’s not stress when i can cook a nice meal for myself slowly and then watch “futurama” while eatting, dragging the dinner time for hours..

but yet, exams is around the corner…. what should i do or more precisely, what can i do?… i decide to unload all those stuff in my mind.. here and now…

if u can’t bear it… skip this entry k?….

here it goes… do you know tat when you chuck a lot of ice into a big bowl filled with water… the ice floats… ice as a solid, is less dense then water, which defies normal laws of solid materials… and this is one real good example of God’s creation, imagine ice tat will drown under water… all under sea creature will not be able to survive during winter.. die straight… even the evolution theory won’t sustain( creatures come from water).. the reason lies in the hydrogen bond between the water molekules.. let’s not get into tat.. and the density of water will rise as it approach zero celcius till 4 celcius then rise… so the densest water in at 4 celcius..

another stuff with ice.. if chuck a lot of ice into a big bowl filled with water, and tat the ice swims… the water level before and after the meltin of ice … is completely the same…. tat lies in the archimedes law then… let’s not get into tat.. so the question is.. the global warming effect in which the north pole is melting.. will the water level rise??… the answer is if only north pole melts.. no!!.. because the antartic continent is floating on water… hmm .. then why is everyone worrying bout the rising of water level… the reason of water level rising is because island like south pole and green land melts.. they don’t float, rather they are land by itself, which means when they melt the water level will rise…. threatenin places like maldives island…

by the way, greenland is the largest island in the world, followed by Papua New Guinea and our own Borneo island… aus is not an island rather continent… and also the cartoon madagascar, was not bad.. not spectacular though….

durin old times… people are named by their profession, some not all… not us chinese probably.. but the western world… like smith for blacksmith and schuhmacher for shoe maker (in german)…. not sure where does the surname Brown, Whites or Blacks come from though… but anyway, i just met in my text book this law tat is called the FICK’s law…. ermm… fick is … fuck in german… so i wonder wat is his profession if the name equals profession law holds true…..

i just though of this… when i eat in those coffee shop and order some soup mee… they always add the soup after the mee is cook in water… well… i didn’t know… so i cook the mee hun in the soup today… so there was no soup left…. mee hun is a darn good water sucker….

phew…. well… i guess my brain is becoming normal again….. time to sleep… lol…

till next blog…