Thong Kuah's blog

We have an online auction site, similar to eBay, which is called Trademe. It has been a roaring success since it’s start sometime ago. However, recently, it was in the news as there is a so-called artist who has been kicked out of Trademe for copying directly from other people’s photographs. You may ask, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, you will have to know as well, that his paintings does not seem to real paintings(more printed) and his sceneries are from anywhere other than New Zealand(which he claims-he even states a specific spot). It may be just photoshop work as well. **Advert break :P My photoblog about this. My auction! for a newspaper about this story. Fun reading! A common scenario is that this “Artist” puts up an auction for one of his “paintings” of a sunset over say, Wellington Bay. It gets eagerly snapped up as people like realistic paintings(including me). The auction gets to like thousands of dollars. When people ask him what type of media is the painting, he bans them from his auction. When people start doubting him more(because of his strange behaviour) he then accuses everyone as an “jealous artist” but half of them are not! You think this is bad? A month after the auction, someone finds a photograph on the internet exactly the same as the painting(for examples go to Scambusters - see how similar the images are!) Even worse, some of his auctions have their pictures flipped right-to-left compared to the original photo. When his buyers receive the physical painting, they find that it is the right way instead. You wonder why an honest person would do such dubious things? Oh, and he’s left the country for Holland. Read his website. Buyer beware! Just remember, do not believe everything you read, especially online, where people have no identity.

Men chat and women text - research Hehe, this is pretty true. :P Considering I prefer talking on the phone while Yi Wen texts. But 30 percent is not what I would call conclusive…

Jail for poor NS dodger who could not pay fine Looks like the Government, instead of making an example of dodgers, has made a very good example of itself, instead. This serves to highlight how the programme has been fraught with problems, from transportation problems, security and of course, rushing the bill through Parliament. We need to have a credible opposition. Where is it? Good for the Perlis Umno Youth to offer to help pay the fine. Caveat: This depends on the truth of the chap’s story though.

That’s all of my assignments all done. Now to start blogging. :) First thing to do is to hit self on head for not discovering the new features of JAVA 1.5 [new window] earlier! {whack}. A friend just mentioned that foreach is now implemented in Java. Imagine how simple would that be: foreach (Bean in Sack) do somethinginstead of for(bean =1; bean <= beans in sack; next bean) As well as generics(from C/C++), which is a very powerful feature. These two are the most useful for me….Better remember..:)

Some update about the sharks. The ever mighty Surfer(yours truly) has managed (barely) to outswim three of the four DeadLine sharks. One more to go… Until then, when I can start to blog properly! Bday update: My sweetie did a party for me! Complete with cake! and one more nice dinner! Yum, yum… Thanks, sweetie! :) A bit on the side: Here’s something I hope to complete. The Malaysian club here is refurbishing its website and i’m coordinating it. Have a look now at http://www.wmso.tk and check back after June :)

Aye! Aye! my 21st Birthday! Yi Wen and me had a nice dinner courtesy of Visa Inc. who of course sends the bill to my dad. Thanks! Unfortunately that was the only time we had, there was not much time to organise a party as I’m pretty deep in the sea of assignments, swimming as fast as I can with four DEADline sharks at my tail…:P Actually it’s now three, one down, 3 to go. I got sent a very short email from BirthdayAlarm who has a link to a “Name your star” site. Pretty harmless, as long as you don’t buy anything. Check this out!

Yay! Tonight was fun! We(my gf and me) went to a live stage acting of the Hobbit. I’m afraid to say this, but this is kind of the first time I’ve ever been to a live theatre with live actors and voice! So far, my experiences of the arts has been dance and ballet… So, for those who don’t know the story…it all starts with this, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” We then follow our main character, Bilbo, into a great adventure… The various creatures in the show were done by having humans put on costumes. There was the wacky(?) trolls with boxing gloves and head gear; flying ’eagles’ who ‘swooped’ in with long wings; and a rather impressive Gollum. However, the wolfs were horrible (wolfheads with bones?) and also the goblins! Eww..they just look like Bowser from Super Mario…. Oh, the highlight, which was Smaug, the dragon! Excellent use of light and lasers(?) to depict the eyes of the dragon. Well, of course they used a life-sized puppet dragon head as well. The dragon’s eye were kind of hypnotic (in a sense) which reflects Tolkien’s view of dragons. Beware of dragons! They can twist your mind and deceive your eyes! The show’s lighting, music and set was excellent. In the eagle scene, the lights were manipulated to depict blue sky and clouds, which is a really cool effect. Makes you feel you are up in the air. And they did all this with just a rotatable disc, a bridge and some various backgrounds. We realised also that they had to have the actors move the set around! The narrator, besides narrating, also played a role as postman, passing letters and messages to the characters(the invisible postman?). Plus, one actor has more than one role. Gandalf is also Smaug. Gollum is also Bard and also acts as a Dwarf. It was a really enjoyable show. :) I give 4.5/5. Well worth it!

Coincidence? All the clocks at uni today were all 10 minutes late. From the clock in the main lecture hall to the lab clock to the other lecture hall clock. Must be a prank. Then I went for squash and guess what? 10 minutes late as well! Now I’m thinking it might be the earthquake two days ago(can’t remember). Was sitting at home eating dinner when the ground shook a little. But big enough to stop us in the act of eating… Boy, it was fun experiencing an earthquake that was undisputable. (more than 4 seconds). :P Oh! Where’s my missing blog post. Tried to post one using email(yeah, cool feature) but no show…Anyway just a test post :P

One of my courses in uni this year is Ethical and Legal Issues for IT. This paper, I consider to be one of the few papers, which is totally out of sync with all my other courses(try comparing with Programming Languages, or even Database Systems. Still it is a very good place to discuss the many issues plaguing the IT field at the moment. Things such as privacy(supremely important in developed countries, but not so in say, Malaysia) or piracy, which is made easier by the digital format and the development of various new tools. Speaking of piracy, it seems to be the biggest thing these days. Well, more specifally file sharing. There are now two legistation news items, one is MGM vs Grokster [Mark Cuban, EFF] and the latest where the RIAA [Slashdot] has filed lawsuits against hundreds of individual students across America. The music industry there seems to be fighting back with lawsuits. What about in Malaysia? Last I heard, they were still posting losses, though it seems it not so bad now. I’ll have to find out soon about that. I wonder how do people think about piracy these days, especially with whole copies of movies being downloaded. (Imagine a $300 million film like LOTR being bought down the way of Malaysian music, more likely in the future, not now…)

Strange to start a blog at the end :P But yeah, should have started a blog at the start of holidays, not the end. It’s amazing how two weeks can just fly by. Sleep, wake, sleep…. Now I think it’s time to finish up my assignments! Third year assignments are definitely more worthwhile in the sense that I learn something from it. The past two years was not really challenging as they were just stuff that can be treated as simple facts. Just a bit of thinking to make sense and to link them together in a web of knowledge (probably) ensures good grades. No wonder, the British universities just go on straight into the second year of the CS curriculum? (It’s something I’ve heard from somewhere..) So, what do I have here…Haskell assignment, database project(interesting, about robbers..hey there’s Al Capone here!), sequence diagrams, and the monster programming project which I should have started but barely started. I’m (hopefully) aiming to fully understand it before going into coding. But ah! all my friends have started! Peer pressure…sigh…. Wait, my gf just came in with pigtails :) Bye! Ok, now she’s gone back. Now, back to my assignments :(