ETSR blogs

Boobuntu

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:52:28 GMT

Eternal loving embrace

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:45:03 GMT

Toss Fest?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:00:00 GMT

A rather tragic acronym: Thailand Open Source Software Festival

Let's see and cheer competitors in the NECTEC Linux Competition. This competition aims to encourage and has rewarded many students and people from over the Thailand country. In the contest, competitors are requested to set up and run the Linux operating system. The winner will receive as much as 140,000 bath reward.

Well, they certainly do need a bath after the competition.

Attack of the iPod clones

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:21:08 GMT

I was on the train to work this morning, lightly tapping my feet to the dance routine I just learned and wearing a big smile on my face as I remembered the funny music we danced to. At the next stop, a few people got on, which distracted me a little and I used that moment to do a people-watch: a brief scan of the carriage. I noticed something really strange about nearly everyone sitting around me and it took me a few glances to realise what it was:

They were all dressed professionally, on their way to work.
They all had expressionless faces, with lazy, emotionless eyes which would try to avoid contact with everyone else's.
Nobody was smiling; some looked like they were sitting on a barge pole.
They all had their iPods on with the cheap wanky white earbuds.

Sitting right in front of me was 3 brunette women of that exact description and similar build, who were all looking to their left. For a moment there, I thought I was in a scene in The Matrix. It kinda freaked me out!
In hindsight, I think I was the weirdo who was smiling on the train to work on a rainy cloudy morning. Ah well, can't help enjoying life.

You gotta look at the full package

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 04:29:10 GMT

A pretty face and nice cans just ain't enough. You gotta look at the full package.

"Click me, click me now..."

Fun Pit and Jazz Jam review

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:55:56 GMT

I had last Friday off - a long weekend for me - so I went to a number of Swing social dances: the usual Thursday night at the CBD disco and two new places that I haven't been before: Fun Pit and Jazz Jam.

Fun Pit

The Fun Pit dance floor is twice as big as the CBD, with mirrors on one side, so it looks a lot bigger and you can see better, including your fine self swinging in the mirror. There's no bar though so you need to bring your own drinks or go to the nearby 7-11. The instructors there (Brad and Jennifer) are the straightforward Swing type (versus Tim & Nicole @ the CBD who are the Funk-Swing type) and it's quite easy to follow them. Level 2 starts with a free dance instead of the usual swingout-basic-circle warm-up. The class setup is: Level 2 -> Level 1 -> Social Dance, so there are a lot of Level 1 dancers staying for the social dance. I danced with a whole lot of new follows and learnt a few new moves from the advanced dancers from observing them then tried them out later. It was the first time I could learn some moves on the fly.

Jazz Jam

Jazz Jam is purely a social dance ($14 entry inc. a half an hour fun lesson - cool moves, not the basic) with a live band in a very jazzy looking restaurant. Great environment and I reckon the live band makes you dance better. They kind of lead couples with how they play the music. It gives you some extra springs in your steps and courage to humiliate yourself in front of the crowd by trying out that cool move you've been day-dreaming about. :-D Best to dance in full view of the musicians as they will likely play and select the next songs to your mood and liking. The hardest part is that occasionally they break away from the actual song and play something really funky and you're meant to get out of your current move for a bit and, well, do something funny or funky, while preparing yourself to get back into the previous rhythm (very easy to lose control of the beats). There were also a few cool routines from Brat Pack: the same ones they did at Meet The Scene plus the Big Apple, which will be taught at the Solo Jazz workshop.

Half of the crowd at both places are the same ones I see at the CBD and the Fun Pit. I've danced with most of the rest, including a few Brats from Brat Pack. They are damn good (captain obvious!) and will inspire you to develop your own dance expressions.

Futsal Final

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:30:11 GMT

Short version: :-(

Long version: we played well, especially in the second half, but hit the post way too many times while our opponents converted every single chance they had.

Longer version: can't be fucked. Too disappointed. :-( Nah not really.

Next season starts next week, yay! The company that runs this league is good at making money and loves doing it, so we don't get any season break. Two of our main players will be gone in August so we need to get on the "transfer market" asap.

My first Run To The G

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:53:49 GMT

I participated in my first Run To The G on Sunday June 17 in the 10km event. It was a surprisingly beautiful day amid a series of very cold and wet days, otherwise I think I'd struggle a bit to get out of bed for the run! There were over 15 thousand runners from all over Australia and also some internationals crowding Federation Square to prepare for the start. One of the most memorable sights for me was some fathers running in the race while pushing their babies' prams. They were damn fast too!

The first 2km was easy and fun as I raced pass a lot more people than I had ever run with! The next 3km was quite tough as my feet were adapting to the harder surface outdoor, since I'd only been running indoor after Boot Camp finished in early March. They got much better in the last half of the race and my speed slowly picked up towards the end, when I went for the last 500m sprint. I did exactly what I hoped to achieve before the race and better than what I thought I could do during the race. My result was just over 50 mins for the 10km run. I hope to get it down to 45 mins next year.

Unfortunately, my personal journalist aka my old man visiting from overseas jumped up and cheered me instead of taking the bloody photos, so that effort was kinda wasted! I'm still grilling him for it, especially since he did manage to take a lot of photos of female runners with bouncing tits (nah he didn't). I still have a slim chance to get my photos from sportingimages.com.au, if I'm lucky.

Futsal semi-final

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:35:30 GMT

We played the only semi-final of this season, as the other one didn't happen due to a team pulling out because of the lack of players. We were in front for the whole game with some slick passing and really good team goals. I got one of those and it's the best one I've scored for the team. Thomas sent a long ball from our end to Stef at the left corner, who immediately lifted the ball to the right corner for me to volley home with my left foot. The ball was kept in the air through the whole move. 8-)

The opponents were the dirtiest little bastards we've played against. They resorted to tripping or kicking us even when the ball was nowhere near, while acting as if they were being severely fouled whenever they got a perfectly legitimate shoulder-to-shoulder push. They lost 11-5. Ha-ha! Take that, bitches.

Tap Patrol

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:04:33 GMT

I just started doing tap dancing with Tap Patrol, which is a part of Swing Patrol. At first I signed up for the Beginners Level 1 class but they didn't have enough people and gave me 3 options: a refund, to wait until next semester or to switch to Beginners Level 2. Without a second thought, I picked the last one. :-D

It is easily the hardest style I've ever tried. The number of basic moves is quite high compared to other dances I've done and it didn't help that I started with Beginners Level 2 where things go at 5 times the speed of Beginners Level 1. I was wearing my runners to the first class because of the timetable change (Beginners 1 -> 2) which made it even worse. After that, I had to go buy a pair of proper tap shoes asap. It was much easier with that pair as there's enough weight on it to perform the moves. It's very slippery though and I'm still not quite used to balancing on it yet.

Lesson 2 went much better. I started to "get" it. The hardest part of tap dancing for beginners is that every wrong move you make is amplified by the sound coming from the shoes, so there's no hiding! On the bright side, you have one additional way to learn the moves: through sound, beside obviously the visual one. We started with some basic warm-up moves then went on to learn the routine that Tap Patrol troupe did at Meet The Scene, the one that made me so excited that I signed up for the class.

I believe tap dancing will help my footwork in other dances a lot (other than providing me with more solo moves in my repertoire).

Very clear distinctions between basic moves: step, heel, dig, stomp, brush, slap etc. If you screw up, you'll hear it!
The importance of weight changes and relaxed upper body. I knew that from other dances (and Wing Chun) but in this one, if you don't do them properly, the execution of the moves will look - and sound - a lot worse, or very very hard to do well.
Keeping the tempo. Another thing that beginners always screw up (understandably) in every dance, but in this one, you'll hear it (again!) and it will sound horrible together with the music.

Now I can do some of the basic moves with normal shoes and even slippers! :-) I'm incorporating some into my Lindy Hop 8-beat routines and will test them out at the next social dance.

Fishermen Sea DOS Vietnam

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:40:41 GMT

Vietnamese fishermen are catching up with the script kiddy fad, and decided that they could do way better than pimple-faced fat western kids or Brazilian bums:

Vietnam telecom officials estimate it will take at least a month and cost over $5.84m to fix damaged undersea fiber-optic cables stolen by fishermen for salvage.

Viet Nam News reports an 11km section of the 560Mb/s cable that connects Vietnam with Thailand and Hong Kong was stolen by copper-hungry fishermen last March. The loss of the cable system, called TVH, has made the country almost completely dependent on a single 10Gb/s cable that links Vietnam to China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Under normal conditions, the country sends more than 80 per cent of its information to the outside world through the two cables.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has rallied authorities to crack down on cable thefts after documenting at least five cases of overenthusiastic scrappers since January. Authorities have seized nearly 1,500 tons of stolen cable in the process.

Last year, the southern province of Ba Ria Vung Tau resolved to let soldiers and fishermen salvage unused undersea cables laid before 1975 for scrap metal. Unfortunately, identifying pre-1975 cables underwater proved tricky for several fishermen in the area who reportedly "mistook" active cables for abandoned ones.

The province shortly withdrew the decision and banned cable salvaging altogether.

Vietnam's Ministry of Posts and Telematics officials are doubtful the cable raids are anything but deliberate, as the operational cables are buried 1-2m under the seabed. The same officials came up with the latest cable theft price tag Tuesday and resolved to enhance sea patrols to protect their remaining cable.

Vietnam National Youth Federation publication, Thanh Nien reports that one kilogram of cable fetches less than one US dollar while costing $13,000 to lay beneath the seabed.

In total, Vietnam has eight underwater cable systems; six of which are under foreign ownership and two owned by Vietnam — one of those being broken.

Thanh Nien said earlier deputy Telematics minister Le Nam Thang warned cable thefts qualify for the charge of destroying national communications and can result in the death sentence. ®

The Register

I have some friends and family back there and they've been bitching non-stop about this. They all want the bastard fishermen to get the death penalty. They do take their Internet very seriously. :-P

Futsal game 18

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 05:02:35 GMT

This was our last league game of the season before the finals. We had the full team there so there were more subs than usual. It was a slow first half as we didn't warm up properly, and struggled a little with the opponents' long ball tactics. In the second half, we fired up (or warmed up, most likely) and crushed them easily, especially since we were so used to the way they were playing (long balls, and more long balls). I missed two glorious chances (including one open goal :( ) in the first half right after I came on for the first time, which I'm still kicking myself about - and I did receive a kick from one player from the other team on my ankle to remind me of that. I managed to get one in the second half though to make up for some of it. We won 8-4 in the end and will play in the semi-final next week. We beat the team we're playing 10-3 in a recent game, but we still must be careful and at our best.

We should buy William Hung and Pop Idol contestants a holiday in the Phillipines

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 05:05:38 GMT

We should send them there and get them into karaoke bars. Overthere they have a policy of shooting patrons who sing badly out of tune or abuse certain cliched songs.

Man shot dead for bad karaoke

Thursday May 31 17:49 AEST

A jobless man was shot dead by a security guard for singing out of tune in a Philippine karaoke bar, police said Thursday.

Romy Baligula, 29, was halfway through his song on Tuesday night in a bar in San Mateo town, east of Manila, when 43-year-old security guard Robilito Ortega yelled that he was out of tune.

As Baligula ignored his comments and continued singing, Ortega pulled out his revolver and shot him in the chest.

Senior Superintendent Felipe Rojas said Baligula died instantly.

The security guard was detained by an off-duty policeman shortly after the shooting.

Deaths and violence are not uncommon in Philippine karaoke bars.

The popular Frank Sinatra song "My Way" has been taken off many karaoke bars in Manila after it was found to be the cause of fights and even deaths when patrons sang out of tune.

NineMSN

We've got muthafukin' TRex on da muthafukin' Ark!

Wed, 30 May 2007 16:10:22 GMT

Internet forums are going hot with the Creation Museum topic. Some Christian groups with too much money built such a museum for $25M with random bible references but most notably a supposedly green herb and coconut eating TRex living peacefully with Adam and Eve and even getting on the ark. Some crazy Canadian followed suit and built a smaller but similar museum for $300K. Warning Master Noah! We've got muthafukin' TRex on da muthafukin' Ark!

Futsal game 17

Wed, 30 May 2007 16:04:56 GMT

I played the 2nd last league indoor soccer game tonight. It wasn't a final nor was it a fight for a top spot or final spot, but the other team went at it as if their lives depended on it. Nothing new really, but I can never understand why people get so worked up while playing. The opponents were going nuts with their shoving and tackling, to the point that they actually took out their own team mates! :-D We held our ground and won in the end anyway. Bunch of pricks and the fucking ref is consistently useless as usual.

XenServer part 7: Windows P2V

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:01:40 GMT

I was given a tight deadline to move some of our Windows servers (read: server OSes installed on crappy desktops sitting in the corner of the server room) to XenEnterprise. I delegated some to my colleagues to rebuild from scratch on a XenEnterprise server and had one for myself: a box that was such a PITA to build that it would take weeks of my time. There was only one thing I could think of: using a Physical To Virtual conversion tool to convert this bitch into a XenVM.

XenEnterprise comes with no P2V for Windows, only one for Linux (which only supports a handful of OSes: RedHat, CentOS and Suse). The manual refers to a number of Xen partners which offer commercial tools for this. I went with one called Leostream. They have a P2V product which has a free trial limited to 1 server - perfect for my need!

Installation is a two-step process. 1: install the Leostream Host Agent on the XenEnterprise box to receive the original Windows installation and convert it into a XenVM and 2: install the Leostream Client Agent on the original Windows server. Afterwards, just launch the Client Agent and follow a dumb wizard.

There are a few gotchas:

You're given the choice to muck around with the partitions before the conversion process, but doing so will screw up a lot of applications, so don't do it.
Write down the partition or drive letters of the original setup before you start, because after conversion, they will be different and you'll need to change them back to what they were originally.
The Emergency HVM boot is great to diagnose some problems. In my case, it was a faulty installation CD (and ISO) that wouldn't boot.
Booting from an ISO is possible (so that you don't have to go to the server room to change CD) but only if the ISO is on the server itself (i.e under /opt/xensource/packages/iso). It won't work if the ISO is under a NFS mount (i.e /var/lib/xen/iso_import) although you can select it.

In the end, it was all smooth. The original box was a Dell SC430 Pentium D 2.8Ghz dual core with 512MB of RAM and the XenVM was a single virtual CPU (the server is a dual dual core 1.8GHz Opteron 2210) with 512MB of RAM. The XenVM is just as fast, or at least more than fast enough for our needs, and the server room is a little bit neater now. :-)

The day I took on my hyphenated identity

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:36:56 GMT

Friday May 25th, 2007. It's the day I was granted Australian citizenship and the day I took on my hyphenated identity as a Vietnamese-Australian. I won't officially be until the ceremony though, which is 2-3 months away, but it was pretty much confirmed last Friday. Good celebration, good beers, good food.

Futsal game 16

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:24:25 GMT

We played a team called Dogsbrekki, hoping to score as many goals as we could to catch up with Rongo Town (who beat Polka Dots 15-1 to render our efforts useless). We bombarded their goals but weren't accurate enough. I've never unleashed more powerful shots but unfortunately they either hit the frame of the goal or flew just wide. We still managed to score a few and won 10-3 in the end. My fitness, running and tackling improved from last time and I won a lot of balls for my team. There are two games left before the semis then the finals, and I hope to get a few more goals to my name. :-)

Wing Chun grading night

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:20:03 GMT

Finally I got to do my first Wing Chun grading. As I joined on the last day of the second semester, I had to do one more semester than usual to get to grading. I didn't do any revision which is typical of me when I was a student. :-D We did a lot of training for the grading during the session though before it started at the end of normal time. I did alright, was a bit overexcited but not at all nervous. The best part of the night was to watch Adam, who's been doing it for 30 years, going for Black belt. He went through various forms and theory stuff, fought all reds and 3 blacks - and got belted by 2 of them. I've never seen sparring at faster speed with my own eyes. It was quite incredible to watch the whole show. The Grandmaster, Barry Pang, capped the grading night off with a speech on respect and martial arts.

Meet The Scene Ball and Tap Patrol

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:14:47 GMT

Meet The Scene is the annual Swing ball run by Swing Patrol. This year it was at Malvern Town Hall on May 19th. About 600 people were there swinging for 5 hours. It was my first ever Swing ball and the biggest Swing social dance I've ever been to. It started out with 1 hour of beginner class to get everyone warmed up and into the mood, then it's free for all. We had a live band playing which was also a first for me.

The dance floor was always very crowded and it made it hard for beginners to perform their moves, but that made it the perfect learning environment. I had to improvise upon my moves as frequently I had to change the original intention half way through, and that's the most important skill to learn at a social dance. I made up a lot of moves and brought in some moves from Street Latin as well. I did stuff up a lot but I kept my steps to the music and tried not to miss any beat, so it ended up looking quite smooth.

There were quite many more follows than leads and so I was not allowed to leave the dance floor even for drinks. :-) In fact, I didn't even get to have a break for 3 hours and didn't get to sit down for the whole night. It was fantastic and I enjoyed every moment of it. My feet were very sore the next day and ManUtd lost to Chelski in the FA Cup Final that night, but it was still a great night to remember.

Swing Patrol trouples put in some fantastic performances, from the Show Girls Dream cheerleaders, Scat Pack with their Lindy Battle and Tap Patrol with their routines. I love Tap Patrol work so much that I've signed up for the class!

Next step is to buy two decent pairs of shoes: one for Swing and one for Tap Patrol. I can hear my bank account complain already.