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."

A long time

Oh well, it seems like my blog updates are loosing momentum. Not that I'm too busy, but because I'm too lazy. Sidetrack... a while ago, I received an email newsletter with a very interesting topic on "What If You Wrote A Blog Post, And No One Read It?". That set me pondering over what I write and who wants to read them. Right now, I'm just rattling for fun and just to keep some memories of my time in Canada. So I do hope you enjoy catching up on what I'm doing and the little techie stuff that I put up just to remind myself of little tweaks and solutions.

So what's been going on for me over these past few days? To kick off, SF made a nice orange cake for me to cut on 20th November.


She's cute in every way.


And skilled in culinary arts (she made dao sa piah that was delicious).


On Sunday morning, it was strangely warm enough for SF to say, "Let's go out for a walk!" And so we did. Along the way, we snap a few photos including the woods that's just around the corner. We also took photos of this humongous detached house just up the slope where we live. If you're interested, it's on sale (at the time when the picture was taken)!

And oh, I must say this... it snowed, yesterday! Okay, I'm getting excited over nothing. But seriously, I wonder how I'm going to cope walking the steep slopes covered in snow. It's a matter of time before I find out. This morning, whilst on the West Coast Express (that's how I get to work), I noticed the mountains on the north-side of Vancouver was now covered in snow. It must have been a harsh winter night.


SF took a video of the snowfall, so if you're keen to watch it, please drop me an email/comment. I have it on YouTube.

Visual Studio Express 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 now ready for download

I have been anxiously waiting for it's release since the announcement this month. I'm glad the wait is over, and Visual Studio Express 2008 was made available way ahead of schedule.

Download now:
1. Visual Studio Express 2008
2. .NET Framework 3.5 (Final)

All I need now is for my web-hosting provider Easy CGI to provide the necessary framework support. Yay!

Taxiway lights

So besides making tables and cupboards, we bought for the house, a set of 10 solar-powered landscape lights to brighten the driveways and walkways.


Nice ya?

Anyway, after beautifying the house, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice evening BBQ. The resident Bak Gua (肉干) chef:

We froze our butts off trying to BBQ at near zero degrees. But we couldn't help but fully utilise the fine sunny weather we had today! See how delicious our pork patties turned out?

Mmm...

It's been a week...

Since I last posted... and a month since I arrived in Canada. Not that I was busy, but really because I was lazy. I had quite a lot happening this week, but didn't have the energy to write my blog. Work, commuting, constructing furnitures, cleaning up dishes and reading up on Drupal... quite a bit of energy sucked out this short work week.


Over the long holiday last weekend, we went for another two Geocaches in Coquitlam. We found both caches successfully but couldn't sign the second as it was soaked (see inset).

And... on Thursday, we had a birthday celebration! We had DQ's Reese cake, and it was... EXCELLENT!


No prizes for guessing who the Birthday kid was!

And, this being a very distorted society, Man must have the strength to slaughter cows and ICE CREAM cakes. So who's the garang hero to part the cake? ME! Notice how the fun became real effort. Next time I need to use an ice pick.

An eventful Saturday... finally!

Given an extra holiday this weekend, we decided to make a fresh trip to Brackendale [map]. We had hoped for a better chance at catching the bald eagles feeding and taking shelter at the Eagle Run. But one of the locals told me that their numbers peaked to about 300 only in December. And that's when we plan to make a second attempt this year. So here's a little photolog of our short day trip.

Photo (1): SF gets trapped by Cocoa at a camping site in Garibaldi Provincial Park.

Photos (2 & 3): Seagulls in flight. They were hunting for salmons swimming in the cold rushing waters below.

Photo (4): And this is my well-rewarded picture after countless attempt at snipping photos of a bald eagle perched on a tree across the stream.

Photo (5 & 6): We made a stop to view Shannon Falls.

Photo (7): We made a planned stop at Porteau Cove [map] - a divers' haunt as there is a ship wrecked for their leisure. But we were here to hunt terrestrial treasures. This would be my first Geocache find upon returning to Canada this year. More to come I hope!

Photo (8): I made the find, hooray! But the cache was very well-sealed.

Photo (9): And as usual, you can see the "gian" look!

Photo(10): The last picture I would like to share was taken at a uptown district pier in North Vancouver. It's entitled "Going Home".

Getting JBoss Seam to redirect SSL requests for development environments

1. Add the navigation namespace and schema location to components.xml.
   
2. Add the tag to configure HTTP and HTTPS ports.

• Example: <navigation:pages port="8080" port="8443">

There, I finally found the time (and courage) to take a photo of our feeble Halloween decorations. What I couldn't include was the hideous laughter that we played to scare the kiddos.


We got a treat for Sunday morning.


I finally got to taste what Krispy Kreme is all about (after hearing so many people talk about it). We ate it cold at first, but soon discovered the side of the box said, "Microwave for 8 seconds." Damn! It tastes so ordinary cold, but when warmed just a little it was heavenly. But KK is just a little too far for us to buy a box. So we just might try it with Tim Hortons' doughnuts instead.

On Saturday, we met up with some relatives to eat at downtown Vancouver. It was a perfect opportunity to bring SF out and at the same time, utilize my 28-Day WCE pass. We ate at the famous (okay, I'm assuming) Prima Taste restaurant.



We had a nice plate of satay (really succulent meat) and a big glass of Chendol, although I regretted not getting the Sago Gula Melaka instead.

Well if you are visiting Vancouver soon. You might want to just give it a try. It isn't too bad, but I think nothing beats the real thing. But just try lah, for the experience. ;)
[Google Map Link]

What else... oh, I met up with the NUS Alumni champion in BC. Nice man! Which reminds me, I was planning to write to him... okay, good night then.

Today's prayer: Lord make me an incense.

Halloween

And as my SIL pointed out... time flies. It's been a year since my first Halloween. This year, we put in more effort to decorate the doorway. Plus! We set up a speaker to blast an evil laughter each time the kiddos came to knock on our door (insert e[v]il.bunny laughter).

That's SF trying to smoke a hunchback kid. No sweets! Trick can?

Too lazy to write today, so I'll leave you with a picture of a cold foggy morning.

Back to more RDF...

It's almost Halloween

And it seems our room is getting creepier. A few days ago, I woke up in fright - as if someone was pressing me down on the bed. My sister suggested it might have been due to the stress of moving... maybe. I guess I have to take her psychoanalysis very seriously. But yes, it has been a stressful two weeks before and now after the move. Will it get better soon? By God's grace yes.

Anyway, some friends have been asking me on Facebook (what's that? You ought to jump off the 6th floor)... what is this new toy? Well... some of you know what a gadget geek I can be, and how hopelessly lost I am without a GPS. My Garmin 10X finally arrived with Fedex Ground shipping on Monday. And now, after installing the North American maps, I don't feel so lost. Especially when it comes to finding places to fill my hungry tummy.

Affordable meals are such rare commodities, for example, SUBWAY!!!

We spend a good evening trying to put up some scary shit for Halloween tomorrow (or today if you live in Singapore). You'll be amazed at how much a dollar store can bring fun. Anyway, I'll have a line-up of pictures for tomorrow to show. So stay tuned!

It's turning colder now, and while I listen and pray with the song "Brother Sun Sister Moon", I think about what life is in simplicity. A joy so hard to find that perhaps needs a lifetime to find. Alas, it is almost midnight. But before I put my head to rest, to the friends I love and cherish so much, I want to wish you Jesus. :)

It's the weekend!

Here's a picture of the Airbus A380 in our living room. It's a 1:200 scale model of the mammoth plane that I bought on my way to Candyland. At first, I was rather disappointed that the model wasn't made of die-cast material, and almost wanted it refunded or exchanged for die-cast models instead. But... it ain't so bad after all. It's made of solid wood with optional landing wheels that you can choose not to attach. And did I mention? The turbines actually turn. The only thing I don't like about it is the flimsy wings made of plastic. The vertical fins at the wing tips are extremely fragile. I chose to angle the aircraft in mild ascent and banking right.

Here's another little collection I'm making. The Royal Canadian Mint has issued series of quarters (25 cents) to commemorate the Winter Olympics to be held in Vancouver in 2010. So far I've got the "Biathlon" only. Many more to keep an eye for.

We went for our grocery shopping spree today! And look at the pile of junk we loaded in the CRV. SF's going to have a good week searching out her different recipe books and websites.

The early morning weather also permitted a long distance snapshot of Mount Baker, USA.


And it was really difficult after a night of fun and games at home. That's us in the living area, squinting at little characters running around tennis courts avoiding tennis balls and chasing pineapples.

And yes, I took an updated picture of the house today. Still looks very much the same, with the maple leaves turning red already. The past few days we had temperatures associated with winter... will the season come early again like it did last year?


Ok... FB's going to sleep soon... ciao.