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January 9, 2010
Having recently subscribed to a new newsportal that calls it like it is (i.e. completely made up bullshit), I stumbled upon some heavily faked news about Hindus causing an uproar over usage of one of their Gods’ names on shabbily manufactured Malaysian automobiles. Highly unprobably, and decidedly untrue, Hindus have decided to retrospectively get pissed off about this sacrilegous act. You may read all about that and more finely packaged bullshit on http://harianmetroll.blogspot.com. Coincidentally, finely packaged bullshit is also what all the mainstream newspapers and media in our country serve.
In other unrelated news, Rock and Roll legend Ronnie James Dio has been approached by the Italian Diosceseses (or however the fuck you spell that) to drop the “Dio” from his name as it is confusing too many Italians into worshipping his likeness in coffeehouses all across the Peninsularish country.
92 and a half Italians responded in a completely biased poll that when they saw posters of ex-Sabbath slasher Dio’s album “Killing Dragons”, they felt a sense of awe and inspiring power that made them want to grovel on their knees and pray to it.
Fig.1: Ostensibly God, Killing The Dragon.
Which in itself seems to be quite a Godly task.
Notwithstanding that Ronnie James Dio looks more like the bastard son of Satan, various nitwits had complained of being “inexplicably compelled” to believe that Ronnie James Dio is in fact Christ reincarnate.
Fig 2: Ronnie Jamed Dio? Or Bastard Son of Satan? You decide.
In true CremeBrulee fashion, this post copied from a comment over at harianmetroll.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
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November 5, 2009
I was reading something about modern parenting over at Obefiend’s, pretty interesting discussion going on in the comments and I thought about it myself too.
I think that in being a parent you should be a buddy; be involved in the kids’ lives, listen to them, praise them when they’re outstanding, but be strict when you need to. I seem to recall Islam has pretty specific guidelines about hitting kids, so I googled something for you:
“The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) commanded us to smack children for not praying when they reach the age of ten, but this should be the last resort, when all others have failed, and there should be no harshness in the hitting, and we must not hit the face. The father should not hit his child at the time of extreme anger, or with a sharp instrument that may injure him, or with anything that may break bones, and he should not hit him in a place where a blow may be fatal. Brandishing the stick may be more effective than actually hitting. The point is that when disciplining his child, a father should follow the principle of using the gentlest means then the next gentlest; he should not resort to the harshest and most difficult means if he can achieve his aim with something that is easier and gentler.”
Now, bear in mind that this is punishment for something really bad, i.e. not praying. This is God business we’re dealing with here, yet we are told that hitting should only be used as a last resort. So putting things into perspective; do you still think you should be hitting your kid for something far less important than God like say failing an exam, when we are asked to stay our hand unless absolutely necessary in punishing your child for not doing God’s bidding?
I don’t believe in the good cop bad cop thing. Why make the kid hate either one of you? He needs you both, and he needs the both of you to love him.
Here’s one thing I hate when parents do; they ignore their kids’ inquisitiveness. Worse still when they lie about questions they don’t know the answers to. You’re only misguiding the poor sod. Have you ever seen that kid who played on his family computer, exploring the deep recesses of this wonderful machine that does calculations and makes beep beep boop boop sounds, and maybe he finds DOS and he starts fiddling with commands, or he discovers qbasic and starts programming the machine to make beep beep boop boop noises the way he wants them! Amazing! It’s doing what he wants it to! You sense the seeds of learning growing in this kid. He might be a great hacker someday! Why, he just might…
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Oh, shit. Dad just got home. “Why’s the screen black? What nonsense are you…stop FOOLING AROUND WITH THE COMPUTER BOY! Why don’t you watch porn like the rest of the normal kids your age?”.
Or how about the parent who just tells her little girl to “quit asking silly questions” after question after question about various random things?
Guess what just happened? A little kitten in God’s heaven just died. As sure as whatever trace of curiosity the child might have had, and eagerness to learn. You just stopped him from learning. Still want your parent of the year award? Didn’t think so.
If you’re not feeling up for hour upon hour of non-stop 21 hundred questions from a bright, inquisitive mind seeking to know more about the world, I submit that you probably aren’t ready to be a parent yet.
Filed under: Observations, random thoughts |
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November 2, 2009
A lot of people seem to be in agreement that facebook does help you keep in touch with your friends and loved ones. However it does mean that you lose a bit of that element of surprise when you haven’t seen a guy for a while and then you bump into him on the streets and you get into a genuine “Hey, haven’t heard from you in a while” type warm conversation, and you proceed to catch up, maybe sit for a quick coffee and banter a bit. I got two kids now. Wow, who’s the lucky lady? Where you attached to nowadays? (it’s the polite way of figuring out how much he makes, as is the nature of people, so you can clear the field of landmines to drop your own “I just bought a BMW” bombs. Not everyone does that. But I know a few who do. )
With Facebook though, everything’s just out there. You now probably know more about what he’s up to than his girlfriend does. Unless his girlfriend’s on Facebook too, in which case you’re likely to know more about what he’s up to than even he does.
I suppose it might even change the player’s and playette’s game a bit. The hunt is now made a lot easier, I should imagine, with the prey’s information just a click away. Not that I’d know about these things. I’m just guessing. Let’s just say the internet hasn’t been very generous to me as a medium for ‘hooking up’ so to speak.
But in any case, the way people communicate has certainly changed. It’s evolved quite a bit in fact that actual one-on-one conversation is now given a term. It’s called “facetime” now. You used to just meet a guy and talk. Now you’ve got to book some “facetime”. Shit.
Just makes you wanna *facepalm*.
Filed under: Liberty or Death, Observations, Timewasters, Writing high, random thoughts |
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September 21, 2009
I was reading this earlier (thanks to Marilyn John for that link) and thought we could learn a thing or two about racial/religious harmony from them.
Actually, a little closer to home, I honestly believe that Malaysians need only look to where I’m from, Sabah, and they’ll have a pretty good idea of what “Muhibbah” means.
The Mosque where I used to go for Friday Prayers is situated RIGHT NEXT to, and I’m not talking 2 kilometers or 200 meters away, i’m talking SHARING THE DAMN PAGAR with, a Hindu Temple. And just down the road is a Roman Catholic church, the one my Grandma goes to. During Friday prayers, people park their cars at the temple. When there’s events at the temple, people park their cars at the mosque, and on Sundays, my mum drives my Grandma to mass. And NOBODY stomped on any bulls. EVAR. Crazy semenanjung people.
Oh, and just FYI, in case anyone wants to say something to the effect of “but that’s probably because there’s a lot of hindus in Sabah”, you might be interested to know that only 0.1% of the population in Sabah are hindus. If that ain’t a minority I don’t know WHAT is.
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September 18, 2009
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. That is, assuming it is evening. It has been such that I have started writing again.
And in as much
He huffed his smoke
He smoked his pipe
And jumped on the antelope’s rope
I am rambling.
I shall start over from the beginning. “Where beginnings aught to start”, would have said the March Hare. Or was it the Mad Hatter?
I’ve decided to start writing. Well, at least that’s what I’m telling you. I met this interesting young lady, i suppose that would be the best way to describe her; her power suit and pin stripes betrayed only by her charming, innocent laugh revealing a little girl who is eager to pursue her dreams.
“You should update your blog”, she says in her chirpy way. “I think you’re funny”.
I ask her, “Really?”.
“Yeah, you write well”, nodding her head in rhythm to her chirpy voice. I smile to myself noticing a slight quiver in it, like she’s fighting back excitement that’s longing to escape her throat. Or maybe that’s just the way she talks. I can’t say for sure. I barely know her.
Funny I should think her chirpy when the way she describes herself sounds more ‘Emily the Strange’ than ‘Mary Poppins’. I admit I think she sells herself short of what she could be having in the fun department, but I don’t know. Sometimes you sacrifice a little now for more later. I guess I just prefer having a moderate amount all the time, please, thank you God.
She has a confident air about her though. Here’s someone who can hold herself in whatever her calling… well, calls for, I suppose. I wonder how real writers who have real novels come up with that stuff they do with the putting words in front of each other and stringing them together to form such beautiful sentences. I really need the internets man. Or install a dictionary. Which I still need the internet for. More about her when the time comes, now on! To the Writing!
Man, The Shaz just buzzed, he’s disruptin’ my flow! Gonna go have a bite to eat with the man, then come back and write this here mafucker.
But I never did. It’s now close to 3 months since I wrote that. And I almost forgot who it was that I was writing about, the girl that is, until I remembered.
Selamat Hari Raya everyone! Eid Mubarak! Maaf Zahir dan Batin and the whole 9 yards.
Mummy, I’m coming home this year! I love you. I miss you. 
Filed under: Writing high, attempts at poetry, random thoughts |
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April 4, 2009
I was just thinking about plot twists, and this popped into mind:
It was him. It had been a while, but she was sure it was him. Linda Yusof just flew in from London, got held up at the metal detector, thought she had lost her baggage twice before realizing she was the one who was lost, and got into a shouting match with an immigration officer over her jar of cili jeruk. A peculiar one this Linda, never travelling abroad without her pickled chillies, and that immigration officer learnt that lesson quite promptly. She was having a pretty shitty day when her world was flipped upside down; it was him. He was just outside the arrival hall, waiting for a cab Linda supposed. The last time she saw him was the first time she’d fell in love with him. She was just a boy then.
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February 28, 2009
Since I’d already posted my prelim report on the Langkawi Ironman, I figured I might as well post my raceday report. Again, if any of you journalisty types read this, do let me know how I’m doing. Here’s the report:
The Langkawi Ironman kicked off this morning at 7.30 and saw 44 professional athletes from 13 countries taking on the waters of Langkawi, followed 15 minutes later by 600 odd amateur ironmen. Some 40 minutes later, the first breakaway group of 5 swimmers were spotted on the return leg of the 3.8km swim course a good 5 minutes ahead of the rest of the pack. It was 2 time Langkawi Ironman champ, Brian Rhodes, who set the pace getting onto his bike first followed by Luke McKenzie of Australia, Japanese Olympian Hiroyuki Nishiuchi, Canada’s Matt Ohalloran and Brazilian Olympian Reinaldo Colucci.
The second batch of athletes out the water saw Japan’s Maki Nishiuchi being the first of the women to head on to the second leg of the competition; the 180km Bike course. She was followed closely by defending champion Belinda Granger. The bike course has been changed a bit this year incorporating one big loop of the island followed by three smaller loops and features a few challenging hills that made the final lap or two a bit of an obstacle for many, but didn’t so much as faze the pros.
The first Amateur, or Age Grouper out the water was Japan’s Hirotsugu Kuwabara, and our very own Frankie Ambrose was the first Malaysian to head to the second leg after completing the swim course in just under an hour.
It proved to be quite an exciting second leg as Luke Mckenzie,Bryan Rhodes and Reinaldo Colucci took turns up front, with Luke taking lead after 30km. They were trailed closely, no more than 5 minutes behind, by Hiroyuki Nishiuchi, Mathieu Ohalloran, and Brian Fuller. Although Maki Nishiuchi paved the way for the women’s category, Belinda Granger who is very comfortable on the bike soon took the lead in the cycling stage, with Maki tailing her closely and Dona Phelan of Canada just 5 minutes behind. This picture stayed pretty much the same until the halfway mark, when for the first time, it wasn’t Luke McKenzie leading the race, but former Olympian Reynaldo Colucci. McKenzie didn’t let him get very far though, as 10 kilometers down the line, he regained pole position.
Of course, everyone was aware that cycling happens to be 2 time Langkawi Ironman Bryan Rhodes’ favourite discipline, and he showed it at the 140km mark, when he broke away, leaving behind Luke McKenzie and reinaldo. In the meantime, The Belinda show seemed to roll on as Granger widened the gap of her lead with each passing kilometer. And at the 170km mark, Donna Phelan overtook Maki to be in second spot.
The placings from the cycling stage didn’t change much in the transition to the final leg of the competition, the 42.2 km marathon. But about 5 km thru the run, Luke McKenzie who’d won the japan Ironman last year, decided he couldn’t have Bryan Rhodes showing him up with a hattrick Ironman win and pulled away to lead the pack. Luke McKenzie and Belinda Granger were scorching the track in their categories respectively, with Bryan Rhodes and Donna Phelan playing catch up. Donna Phelan couldn’t maintain her pace, and was soon overtook by German Nicole Leder, while Maki Nishiuchi regained second place. Leder soon destroyed the tarmac however, with a blazing run and took second place behind overall leader in the women’s, Belinda Granger. About 20 minutes before the first competitor was due at the finish line, rain started pouring. But Luke McKenzie made a quick call to the clouds saying “I’m not done yet!” and the rain promptly stopped, clearing the skies for McKenzie and a victorious Langkawi Ironman championship in the Australian’s hand. He clocked 8 hours 26 minutes and dashed the hopes of a hattrick for Bryan Rhodes, who came in 6 minutes later, followed by Brian Fuller of Australia, who was in the leading pack all the way. A little over an hour later, defending champion Belinda Granger proved that she still is THE Langkawi Ironman as she broke the course record and clocked in an impressive 9 hours and 21 minutes, 8 minutes faster than her previous record. 15 minutes later, Leder arrived, clocking in at 9 hours and 36 minutes. Japanese Maki Nishiuci completed her ironman at third place, in just over 10 hours. And our very own Iron Man, Jasmi Sarael became the first Malaysian Iron man to finish the race, clocking 10 hours and 6 minutes. Each of the top winners take away 8500 usd in prize money, out of a total of 50000 usd in prize money for this, the 10th edition of the iron man langkawi. We’ll look forward to another edition of the toughest show on earth next year.
Filed under: TraxxFM |
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February 27, 2009
I was writing my report for my crossover tonight, and after reading it again, I thought it read like a professional news story that might come out in the newspapers. If you’re a journalisty type person, I’d appreciate comments on how I can Improve my writing. Here’s my report:
Fad da dilly’o reporting from the beautiful island city of Langkawi, where the 10th Langkawi Ironman Triathlon will be commencing tomorrow, the 28th of February. Last night witnessed the official launch of the Langkawi Ironman 2009 at the Carbo Night at the Anjung Jetty. Participants and media were treated to a smorgasboard of food, mostly carbs, for the energy that they’ll need on race day. Present for the ceremony were race director A. Chandrakumanan, and Kedah Youth and Sports Exco, Datuk Othman Aziz who is expected to see the racers off on race day.
The inaugural langkawi Ironman was held in 2000, and thousands have crossed the finish line since then. Tomorrow another 735 participants are expected to run the race, and Malaysia being the host is fielding the largest number of ironmen followed by Japan and Germany. But the Ironman is no walk in the park; with a 3.8km swimming course, 180km bike trail, topped off with a 42.2 km marathon, it’s quite plain to see why the Ironman event is dubbed “the toughest show on earth”. We’ll have to wait and see at the end of tomorrow how many manage to cross the finish line to add to the tally.
Of the total contestants taking part, 44 Professional entries from 13 countries are currently preparing themselves mentally and physically for the gruelling test tomorrow. Competition will be super tough, with Canadian team TVB not taking any chances by fielding 6 of their Ironmen; 3 men and 3 ladies. Also present will be ex-TVB athlete, and last year’s champion, Belinda Granger who’s here for the third time and this time she’s got her title to defend.
Asked how it feels to be competing against her ex teammates from TVB, Granger admitted she is slightly nervous not being in the team because she knows how hard they train. However she said she left the team purely due to sponsorship reasons and is still maintaing good rappor with her former team.
Adding to the pool of athletic talent in this years Ironman are ex-Olympians, Japanese Hiroyuki Nishiuchi and Reynaldo from Brazil. Olympians though they may be, this is not some regular marathon. They’re up against former Ironmen champions, including 2 time Langkawi Ironman champ, Bryan Rhodes. He’ll be taking on Last years Ironman Japan winner Luke McKenzie and perenntial top five Ironman Petr Vabrousek.
The event will also see the participation of PC, or physically challenged competitors. In an exclusive interview with Traxxfm this afternoon after the press conference, Amy Palmiero-Winters, 36 year old native of new york who had her left leg amputated below the knee after a motorcycle accident in 1994, said this would be her 2nd Ironman event and her 1st time in Malaysia. Asked if she’s ready to deal with the Malaysian Heat she said “in any race, the one element you can’t control is mother nature, so you have to make the best of it and take it in stride”. Wearing a custom made prosthetic, she’s got 9 world records under her belt. And to top that, Amy tells me she’s hoping to make it to the Kona Hawaii Ironman, and she plans to get there in her age group category, and not in the PC category as we might have expected. How about that? You can tell that it takes a constitution made of steel, in order to test your mettle, and prove yourself to be the real Ironman. Fad da Dilly’o reporting LIVE from Langkawi, for the 10th, Langkawi Ironman.
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November 27, 2008
After more than a month of not going through my favourite blogs, I recently found some time to go visit my ol’ pal, Obefiend. Hilarious stuff that.
He was ranting (as he is wont to do) about some comment on a piece of his that denounced the mystical qualities of those magnet bands/necklaces/trinkets that can supposedly (not supposably, dumbfucks. English, learn it!) heal you magically. Of course, I wasn’t able to verify that was exactly what his post was about, since it isn’t bloody there anymore! (Note to Obefiend, you should have a look at that, good sir!).
In said comment the commenter, one not so bright DIQ360, wrote
“ko igt ni magnet yg beli kat kedai hardware or yg dlm speaker tu ke bodoh?? mmg la zaman skang bnyk gelang tiruan! ni magnet neodymium, ND60!”
Ooooo, neodymium magnets. Shame on me, I thought they actually were regular typed magnets you’d find in hardware stores and in speakers. Wonder what this neodymium magnet is. Being the regular sleuth that I am, I decide to find out. But how?
I know! Wikipedia knows all!
5 seconds later, I find myself here (Neodymium – Wikipedia) where I stumble upon this:
“Neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets known – Nd2Fe14B. These magnets are cheaper, lighter, and stronger than samarium-cobalt magnets. Neodymium magnets appear in products such as microphones, professional loudspeakers, in-ear headphones, guitar and bass guitar pick-ups and computer hard disks where low mass, small volume, or strong magnetic fields are required.”
You don’t say? I ROTFLMAO at you DIQ360, for not even bothering to find out what the fuck it is you just bought for 800 bucks; glorified speaker magnets. Dumbshit.
I then proceeded to comment on Obefiends post about said comment. And that comment turned out so nice, I decided to copy that comment and make it this post. Ingenious!
At the end of the comment that became this post, I wrote the following:
I laud you yet again, Obefiend, for a fine rant and altogether delightful rip on yet another idiot who probably says “Thats mean” instead of “That means”. Always a mood uplifter you are. Cheers!
And thus did it end.
It’s a shame though, how religion is being wielded as a weapon to cheat the masses. I think I heard or read somewhere, that one of the signs of the end of times would be when people sell religion, menjaja agama. I wrote a poem once about this very thing, sort of. You may read it here, if it so pleases you. If it doesn’t, it suits me fine. I’m pretty sure there was a lesson in all of this, but I can’t seem to find it. Maybe something about using your brain every once in a while, so as not to be too gullible or appear too stupid. Something like that.
Filed under: Observations, random thoughts |
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October 22, 2008
My wireless got messed up for some reason over the weekend. I’d left my laptop over at a friend’s for a couple of days while I hung out with my brother, and when I got back and powered it up, wireless was mysteriously not working (maybe NOT mysteriously since I vaguely remember doing a dist-upgrade before shutting down the last time, but anyway). I’d been using ndiswrapper with WinXP drivers I downloaded from the Compaq driver site (my laptop is a Compaq Presario V3000 – Broadcom 4312 Wireless).
Here’s what it says from lspci:
01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)
If you’ve got the same controller or laptop, then this might be useful.
So anyway, I tried uninstalling ndiswrapper, reinstalling it, no go. Tried purging all my old ndiswrapper configs and such, grabbed new drivers from Compaq, reinstalled ndiswrapper, and for a while it worked. Then after a few more power cycles, it went missing again. Tried b43-fwcutter, which detected my controllers nicely, but wouldn’t let me connect to any wireless networks.
That’s when I tried looking for other drivers, other than from the Compaq site (I heard Dell drivers would work as well), in the hopes of using those with my ndiswrapper, when lo and behold! I stumbled upon this bit of news! Oh joy! Excited, I hurried over to their download page here and downloaded the 32-bit version and read the readme while waiting.
Here’s the gist of what the instructions were:
Untar the file hybrid-portsrc-x86_32_5_10_27_6.tar.gz (hybrid-portsrc-x86_64_5_10_27_6.tar.gz if you’re running on a 64-bit kernel) in its own folder:
tar -xvzf hybrid-portsrc-x86_32_5_10_27_6.tar.gz
You should now see this in your directory listing:
hybrid-portsrc-x86_32_5_10_27_6.tar.gz
lib
Makefile
src
Now build the Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) like so:
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`
Of course, you need to make sure you have all the required kernel headers before building it. Once that’s done, your directory listing should look like this:
built-in.o
hybrid-portsrc-x86_32_5_10_27_6.tar.gz
lib
Makefile
modules.order
Module.symvers
src
wl.ko
wl.mod.c
wl.mod.o
wl.o
The magic file we need is wl.ko. Make sure you don’t have b43, b43legacy or b43xx loaded by running this:
rmmod bcm43xx; rmmod b43; rmmod b43legacy
And for good measure remove ndiswrapper modules:
rmmod ndiswrapper
Now load the module ieee80211_crypt_tkip:
modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip
And finally load the wl.ko module:
insmod wl.ko
Now if you do an ifconfig, you should see wlan0 right after your eth0 and lo devices. Yippee-kay-yay! Test it out by scanning and connecting to a network. If it works, then you might want your module to load upon boot, which is something the Broadcom readme doesn’t touch on. Let me school you how.
Copy the wl.ko file to /lib/modules/2.6.26-1-686/kernel/net/wireless/
cp wl.ko /lib/modules/2.6.26-1-686/kernel/net/wireless/
Create the module dependencies:
depmod -a
Try loading your new module!:
modprobe wl
If you get no error on modprobe, then it worked perfectly! Next you have to tell your system to load the module at startup. On my debian system, I do this by editing the file /etc/modules to include the following:
ieee80211_crypt_tkip
wl
Now, reboot and you’ve got official Broadcom wifi goodness! Hooray! Ubuntu 8.10 (due out the end of this month) will have this driver bundled with it, here’s hoping that Debian will have it in its repositories soon! Of course, all the above was done on my GNU/Debian Lenny/Sid system, so let me know if you tried it out on yours and tell me how it worked for you. Cheers!
Filed under: Jomcode, Linux |
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