Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008

A year of change indeed! I shall end the year's post with pictures of Adrian Junior!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The first thing I would like to do is to wish readers a Merry Christmas (I know it's a bit late) and a Happy New Year! I've been delayed in updating my blog because I was busy with many things at home.

(1) I have been fixing up the furniture we bought from Ikea. We managed to get a steal on some shelves. So that's a lot of screwing and knocking for the past week. Well... just as soon as I clear up the rubbish from the garage, I'd really like to get a snapshot cos I'm really proud of what I accomplished. Ya ya... I know... EGO!

(2) My computer that accompanied me from Singapore, died last Saturday. I had to salvage the situation by purchasing a new system since I couldn't really figure out what's wrong. The motherboard seemed to be frying every single graphics card fitted on it. So I'm now posting from my Windows Vista (yes I happen to like the UI), running on my dream machine - a Quad-core!!! I'll be installing a Linux 64-bit OS this week, as soon as I can complete all the necessary software installation for daily use. I still need to finish up my SimpleViewer album editor application and my website. :(

(3) I spent several nights rushing on a Christmas card application for my friends. I will write more on it in a separate post. But here's the output:


Since I started hosting with Easy CGI, this is the first time that I've really used the ASP.NET support. And thankfully, I could accomplish the task just before Christmas... PST!

(4) And finally, we were celebrating Christmas at home by roasting a 6kg turkey. Yummy. We were led by our chief cook SF. Who also managed a nice marble cake for breakfast everyday!


We're just so glad that we had a our first White Christmas. It started snowing on Christmas morning, and it hasn't stopped. Apparently, it'll probably snow for the rest of this year.


With the snow comes the need to shovel the pavements and driveway. So I donned my favourite aviator's cap and set out to plough the snow. SF says I looked like a

Making it easier to change your hosts file on Vista

I many people are having problems editing their hosts file on Microsoft Vista. So I have written a simple application that helps you launch a notepad with the necessary elevated rights to edit your hosts file. Please download the installer from here. Or if you prefer, you may wish to inspect the source code and build the binaries yourself.

It isn't rocket science. The console application simply forks a process to execute notepad with elevated rights to edit your hosts file. This issue arises because of the new security features built into Vista (User Access Control or UAC). There is a manifest file that specifies that the application requires administrative rights.

Hope it's useful to you.

No updates?

Not that. My shipment finally arrived from Singapore. Did you know? You can track ship movements at this website. All I needed was the name of the ship. Anyway, I had nothing better to do, and decided to plot its path using Google Maps! It was a manual effort to keep the path updated. Perhaps next time I should write some code to make it more useful. ;)

Anyway, I'm just glad that most of our life has arrived in Canada. And I'm finally more calm and adjusted... I think. I have been busy writing a little C# program to help me create online photo albums using SimpleViewer. Right now it's 70% completed. And I should be hosting it online on my website really soon. But because of this little distraction, it seems my website will not have a new look come Saturday. Too much stuff to settle at home.

After I'm done with the program, I should be blogging a little more on some tips and tricks that I came across whilst developing programs. These are common problems and solutions, and are probably usable in other projects. So in the spirit of knowledge sharing (and for me to remember what I've learnt), I should put them up on my blog.

"It's not like you died or something."

I remember a dear friend saying that to me be just before I left Singapore. And perhaps many friends don't understand why I take my goodbyes so seriously. And here's one I missed. I remember seeing him in church a few weeks before I left Singapore. But it didn't occur to me to bid farewell.

This morning, I woke to a heavy heart when I received news that Bro C has passed on. I never had the opportunity to know him well. But like Bro J's passing, it hits home, somehow. It's too late to say goodbye now, and to think the last thing I did for him was sending a goose on Superpoke.

And that's why I made it a point to say a good farewell to everyone who mattered to me. As it is written in the Gospel (Matthew 23:42), "Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come." We really do not know when's the last time we will meet. It's not ours to know.

But I shouldn't be sad. In fact, I think I should be uplifted and inspired with his life story. Reading through the wall posts on his Facebook profile, I deeply admire the kind of person that he was. It's not how you died, but how you lived.

Till we meet again my friend.

World AIDS Day 2007

"The agony of this disease is punishment enough."