My 1st Google Paycheck…

My first paycheck from Google.. how am i going to spent this? Well.. since i’ve already bought one 500GB Seagate 3.5′ SATA storage (for friggin $139 + $28 external casing damn!) so.. hmm.. … How bout a tattoo?, i had always wanted a tatoo ever since I could ever remember. People always told me that if you wanted to get one, it had to be something that represented you and that you would never want to get rid of. One thing that I had felt always represented me, my whole life..

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Asus Eee PC – hated?

Who in the hell is Asustek, and why does Microsoft hate them more than any other company in the industry? Why does Apple, Dell and Palm Computing hate them?

And why does Intel love them?

Taiwan’s Asustek — better known as ASUS — is one of the most interesting, innovative and fastest-growing companies in technology. At its core, Asustek makes motherboards — more than any other company. Asustek motherboards are the heart of Sony’s PlayStation 2 consoles, Apple MacBooks, Alienware PCs, and some HP computers.

But that’s not why they’re hated. The source of ire is a tiny laptop called the ASUS Eee PC. This open, flexible, relatively powerful, and very small laptop is notable for one feature above all: Its price. The Eee PC can be had for as little as $299. (Go here to read the reviews — they’re all positive.)

Let’s take a moment to ponder how cheap that is. This full-featured laptop costs $69 less than the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch. It’s $100 less than an Amazon Kindle e-book reader. The most expensive configuration for the ASUS Eee PC on Amazon.com is $499.The reason Microsoft hates Asustek couldn’t be more obvious. The Eee PC runs Linux (Xandros running KDE) and uses an appealing and innovative tabbed-based user interface developed by Asustek. The device also comes with OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office replacement, and Firefox. The entire system — hardware, OS, office suite and applications — costs $30 less than Amazon.com’s discounted price for Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate alone. The Asus Eee PC is demonstrating to the world that its success depends on aggressively *avoiding* any Microsoft product.

Meanwhile, Intel loves Asustek. The ASUS Eee PC is powered by — you guessed it! — an Intel processor, namely the 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M. More than that, Intel respects Asustek for its engineering prowess. Intel discovered this fact when the company was struggling in the 1990s to fix a range of design flaws in its own 486 motherboard prototypes. Asustek was able to fix it, and in fact already had a fully operational motherboard for the chipset before Intel did. Since then, the companies have been very close.

There’s no question about it — Asustek is the most hated company in the industry. Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Palm hate Asustek because the company can give us something they can’t: A super cheap, flexible, powerful mobile computer. At $299, why would anyone not buy one?

Source : here

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svchost.exe

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can’t kill them, and you don’t remember starting them… so what are they?

So What Is It?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

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不孝有三。。

不孝有三，无后为大”出自《孟子·离娄上》。原文是：“不孝有三，无后为大，舜不告而娶，为无后也，君子以为犹告也”。 《十三经注疏》中在“无后为大”下面有注云：“于礼有不孝者三，事谓阿意曲从，陷亲不义，一不孝也；家贫亲老，不为禄仕，二不孝也；不娶无子，绝先祖祀， 三不孝也。三者之中无后为大。” 白话问解释就是：一味顺从，见父母有过错而不劝说，使他们陷入不义之中，这是第一种不孝；家境贫穷，父母年老，自己却不去当官吃俸禄来供养父母，这是第二 种不孝；不娶妻生子，断绝后代，这是第三种不孝

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Didn’t do well on SFEN final

I didn’t do well on the last SFEN paper.. and in fact i screwed it up big time.. kinda sad now, and wished i can retake the exam.. sigh.. I’m becoming more and more concerned each day as I think about the past and regretting about my poor academic performance and trying to deflect the blame onto anything and everyone but myself.. T_T.. it’s sickening i know but it’s hard to admit “Yea, I just didn’t study enough, or I just didn’t pay enough attention in class, or I just didn’t show up to enough class.”

What if i know i studied enough, paid and attend class, but the fact that i screwed up the exam only? is there any reason to believe such excuses that me myself found it hard to believe.. well… life can be a real bitch sometimes, and sometimes it does pile up on you and sometimes it piles up at what seems like the worst possible time but hey…. you gotta deal with it, man! well, there’s no reason for look back now.. strive best for the future as it matters..

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Bart’s Punishment For Asking Dumb Questions

What is your favorite Bart Simpson Chalkboard quote?

Using Google to find answers is a good idea, but when it comes to finding answers to technical questions, hitting the documentation first is a very smart move that may save you some humiliation later on.

When you ask “obvious” questions on forums or mailing lists, there is a good chance that the more experienced forum contributors will hit you with an answer like this one: RTFM before asking dumb questions.

 

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my cute nephew..

I’ve attended the my bro’s wedding party and kinda feel the “pressure”….. /insert shy emoticon here/.. well.. both of my big bro and sis have already married and yet i’m still left behind loveless, clueless and heartless (lol)…

btw here’s the pic of me holding my nephew Vincent !

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Benchmarking Tool

Another great tool for Benchmarking…

CPU-Z is a freeware system profiler application for Microsoft Windows (for all versions from 95 on) that detects the central processing unit, RAM, motherboard chipset, and other hardware features of a modern personal computer, and presents the information in one window. CPU-Z is more in-depth in some areas than the features that Windows XP provides to identify various hardware components, and is thus needed to identify certain components without opening the case, especially the core revision and RAM clock rate. It has an unusual ability to directly detect hardware features, especially the ability to access, read and display the SPD data from memory modules. The ability to document clock speed makes it an important tool for motherboard overclockers, as a way of proving the CPU speeds achieved by various experiments.

This software is a portable application — installation does not generate complex interdependencies with the operation system; the resulting executable file can simply be copied to any data storage device and executed on any Windows computer.

My computer’s info @ Here
Download at http://www.cpuid.com

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不平“烦“

想起上个礼拜的事情，那时看到眼前的“美景“，我真有点乐不思蜀了。虽然一瞬间快乐，可是对而后的影响庞大。一直挂念不忘那张小脸蛋。唉。。再过两天我就要回国咯。想带着些衣服，没用的书本回家。可是我想带回家也最后会堆在那里如高山。

我房东的中介人上礼拜天来到我家，碰巧有我表妹父母亲在，易于解释一切。他们好像不怎么担心价钱，价钱涨到2300也束手无策，把全部责任放在我身上一人。哇靠。真的是烦死了。。什么东西现在也跟着涨价。租金，生活用品，食品等。大家越来越对这通货膨胀问题似乎有一种日渐增长的不满情绪。唉。烦烦烦。。。

哦对，我下载过得那些电影还没看完，的确是因为没时间啊。我玩过三国时代的群雄割据，等不着看将来会上映的“赤壁“电影。日前，中影集团董事长韩三平宣布“赤壁“，吴宇森执导的历史大片上部（三部曲？- 我的上映档期已确定），将于7月上旬投入公映。内地、香港、台湾三地将同时隆重上映

快点快点。。等不及。。

记叙文 抒情文 论文 语说文 应用文　－　合成一体称之为国文基本教材。

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Rojak Language?

读完了这篇短文，我能猜得出作者不是新加坡人而且从名字一看就能分辨得出。作者放”Liang Ding Zi”，这是汉语拼音。可能拼成 “梁鼎子“，或者 “梁定子“有可能啦。反正不是新加坡人就是了。

读整个新闻短篇: Here
（星期一，二零零八年五月五日）

 

国内标准的翻译方法是 姓 + 空格 + 名字 的汉语拼音，如胡锦涛，翻成Hu Jintao。这个规则简单规范，所以不管你的华语姓名多么特别，到了国外要用想翻成英文，都不用头痛，轻轻松松就搞定了。这就是标准化的好处。

可新加坡的华人就没这么幸运了，谁让他们在汉语拼音发明之前就飘洋过海的呢？

这里的华语姓名英译格式是三段式，姓 + 空格 + 名的第一个字 + 空格 + 名的第二个字。这里的华人姓名都是三个字，没有国内的两个字的情况。这种格式保持了姓在前名在后的顺序。如果洋名也成为正式姓名的一部分，则洋名跟在名的 后面，比如Lee Yew Kian Daniel。在称呼洋名时，有两种情况。一是直接叫洋名，比如Daniel。二是洋名加姓，比如Daniel Lee，这时姓就跑到后面去了。

有了格式，接下来就是要把每个字的英文拼写填进去。先说姓吧，比较流行的大姓没什么问题，比如，刘拼成Lau，陈拼成Tan，李拼成Lee，林拼成 Lim。但对一些小姓就比较麻烦。据说以前医院里很多接生护士都是马来人，孩子出生了，要填报生纸，而很多父母不懂英文，直接用福建话报孩子的姓名，马来 护士也是听得懵懵懂懂，如果不熟悉的话，只能根据福建话的发音杜撰个英文拼写。问题的是给儿子接生的护士和给老爸接生的护士不是同一个人，结果就出现了儿 子不姓老爸的姓的情况，当然这种情况现在比较少了。与姓相比较，名字的拼写就更是没什么章法，只要发音相近就可以了，由于福建话，广东话，潮州话，海南 话，客家话发音各不相同，所以同样的华语名字，可能有很多种不同的英文拼法。如果说你只是看到姓名的英文拼写，就能猜出华语的原文，那我真是太佩服你呢。 想试试吗？猜猜看Meng Chin Heng的华语姓名是什么？

与英译姓名的发音相比，拼写翻译方面的这些困难就不值一提了。我说的发音方面的困难主要是针对我们这些学过汉语拼音又不懂福建话的人而言。你不能照汉语拼音的发声方法来念，而要跟着特定的方言来念。

举个例子，“陈”翻成Tan，照汉语拼音念成一声是“滩”，没错，但这里没人知道你在叫谁，你非要念成“丹”才有人答应你。“唐”或“董”都翻成 Tang，但要念成一个介于Den和Ten之间的音——中文里都没这个音，非常难以拿捏。还有一个常用的音是Teng，我都闹不清是哪个字，只知道得念成 “厅”才行。更不要提诸如 Ng，Eng，Ang，Ong 和 Chia，Chua，Chew，Chiew 以及 Theng，Tham 这种类型的超级无敌组合，没点儿说绕口令的天分是甭想念得灵清的。

我在新加坡已经差不多快要四年了，发现社会已经有这种现象已经很久，也就是大致上人们如果碰到较罕见的词语，而不知那特殊的词怎么说成中文，他们直接用英语字词来表达。

我已体验到这点。完全精通两种语言(英语，汉语）根本不可能的是，有可能，可是艰难矣。譬如说，中文 Ozone Layer 怎么说？很少有人会直接讲臭氧层的。唉。。

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