I’m going to have to put my quest for home cooked Japanese food on hold at least until middle of next month after one of my exam. There’s just too many things to do at the moment. Since this semester started, almost everyone in class has lost their direction in the course. The management of our course has messed up very badly in terms of hiring good tutors and schedules. Thus, we’re all forced to rush and improvise on our assignments and timing. Frankly, it’s also messing up our personal time. Not to mention that work is also getting a little more heavy nowadays.

So, I guess that I’ll have to find something simpler to do.  Hmm… Can we sue our training institutions for bad management?

errr… soli wrong number.

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When it comes to buying computer components and hardware, I tend to spend on a certain brand which is usually more expensive then average. For example, Anyone can get a set of Keyboard and Mouse for RM50 but I will never be satisfied with a normal set. For me, I have to get myself Logitech MX 3200. Even for printers, I could have gotten myself any cheap RM200 Canon or Epson printer. Instead, I got myself an RM600 Pixma IP4500.

And now, the time has come again. I’m faced with the problem where cables are so extremely messy around my desktop area. I’m now looking to get myself a pair of WiFi PCI cards from Linksys just to get rid of the messy Cat 5 cables around the area and another set of wireless desktop to get rid of the mouse and keyboard wires.

I really need more self control and discipline.
Maybe I’ll keep telling myself to save up for a laptop.

A few days ago, my friend told me that she found a fake “50 sen” coin. She even tried to tell me in detail how it compares to a real “50 sen” coin. Well, nothing tells better then pictures in cases like this.

The left shows the real coin while the right shows the fake coin.

Well, the noticeable difference are

1. Lighter by weight.
2. Designs on the “WAU BULAN” are not as detailed.
3. Font for “BANK NEGARA MALAYSIA” is BOLD?
4. Petals for “Bunga Raya” is wide apart and not as detailed.
5. The 5 in the “50″ is more roundish.
6. Frames on the side is crooked.
7. The “SEN” font looks more like a “5EN”.

There are also other people posting about the fake “50 sen” coins in their blog such as spontaneous insignificancy, Patrick and DT. However, in a press statement by Bank Negara Malaysia dated 22nd June 2006, they said that those statements are fake.

So, if they are real, why can’t they be used on the vending machines? Similarly, why is the RM5 note out so long and yet still unable to be accepted by the machines?

Adding to the complication of things, the “1 sen” coin will soon cease to have any trade value. Any products still priced with any value which will cause the use of “1 sen” will be rounded according to this rounding table.

As if surviving in Malaysia isn’t complicating enough, we now have to bare with complicated money issues even if you’re a simple “aunty” or “uncle” trading in a common wet market.

I’ve always wanted to install my own youtube like player and files in my own website without the need to have my media controlled and deleted by 3rd party hosting services. After much searching, I finally found wordTube.

Although it doesn’t really have it’s own encoding feature, it really is easy enough to manage. I am required to download a stand alone flv encoding software called Riva FLV encoder to encode the video into flv then upload it using the plugin.

Okay. So now I’ve installed my own online media player, let’s try it out starting with this really cute video from Brookie trying to act as a cute Japanese girl!
[Video Removed]

The media play is also compatible with MP3 and jpg files and is able to put a bunch of these media into a playlist.
[Video Removed]

*Note: The plugin has some compatability issues with my wordpress updates and I’m just too lazy to troubleshoot and fix the problem. So I’m removing all the videos and this plugin from my blog and will use Wordpress’ own Video or just link from Youtube.

Me and my friend spotted a small camera shop inside Giant Penang while we were looking for something to eat for our dinner. Since she was looking for a small table tripod to be used with her Canon IXUS, we went to ask around. We were expecting any mini tripod which we will find will cost us around the range of RM30 to RM60. Instead, we found this for RM10. Even when we were just looking around at first dug into our wallets just to play around with this thing.

Keep Mini Tripod TR-0200.

My friend was kind enough to lend me the tripod to see if it was suitable with my Canon PowerShot A550 since I told her I might need one as well.

Well, the tripod is made out of plastic and it was very light. The paint was low quality but the important thing was that it was stable enough and sturdy.

This tripod can hold my camera with 2 AA batteries straight but it wont keep itself straight when the camera was tilted. So, it’s mostly only good for taking normal pictures with my heavier camera.

In fact, it’s good enough with a more smaller and lighter IXUS or a small Sony digital camera. When taking group pictures with friends, you can attach the camera to this tripod and place it on a table.

You must be wondering why don’t just place the camera directly on the table. Actually, the table is fine for most situation when you clear it of all the mess after a party. Also, you can not angle the camera properly with just a table. So this RM10 investment is good just for that.

Okay, let me show a few examples.

This is a clear picture taken using macro mode. To keep the camera sturdy enough, I had to either look for suitable boxes or hold on to something tall enough to position my camera. The result is having to see my own reflection on the shiny part of the tripod. Not very nice. It could be slightly better when you have a tripod which could be easier to ignore.

On the other hand, with the camera attached to the tripod, I can position my camera just beside my LCD camera for a great angle which would be hard trying to balance the camera with boxes or pencils. You can click on the pictures to load the bigger version of the picture.

This is one lovely printer.

It has the ability to print directly onto CDs, print directly from a camera or camera phone and has Duplex Mode (Both sides of the paper)

It also uses smart individual ink tanks with cool looking lights to sense the ink level.

And the print quality is superb.

Unfortunately, the printer broke down barely even a month after I bought it directly from Canon’s concept store. See? Even the plastic protective layer isn’t peeled off yet! Is this what Canon is trying to do to defend its market against HP and Epson?

It showed the same symptoms as my old IP4000 which was out of warranty which was why I decided to upgrade to IP4500. I loved the quality and features of IP4000 very much and that was why I didn’t changed to any other brand or type of printer. But why does the build quality of Canon’s printer so bad now? I needed the printer urgently for printing my assignments which is going to be due soon but it seems like I’m going to have to go through a few more weeks of waiting. *Sigh*

First thing to do tomorrow: Call Canon’s service technician. Good thing they have an on-site warranty system so I don’t have to carry the printer all the way to their service center anymore.