Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Here In My Home - Malaysian Artistes For Unity

free download

A song that truely warms my heart. I think it speaks the voice of many Malaysians, home or abroad.


Video, music, lyrics Downloads at their site. Spread the words fellow Malaysians. Sing along!

Update: Check here for the writer Pete Teo's interview, and Pete Teo unscripted video

Monday, May 26, 2008

Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables

Processed tomato products have higher lycopene content than fresh tomatoes.

Boiling was better for carrots, zucchini and broccoli than steaming, frying or serving them raw.
Trade off: boiling carrots significantly increased measurable carotenoid levels, but resulted in the complete loss of polyphenols compared with raw carrots.

When salsa or salad were served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with low-fat dressing.


Source: New York Times: Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables

Saturday, May 24, 2008

New umbrella!

Funny new umbrella - "Nubrella".



Right click and click play to see video.



The website: nubrella.com

Will it take off like the new rotary can opener?

Friday, May 16, 2008

Donations for China and Burma disasters

Donations for the Quake Relief in Sichuan, China:

Account Name: Embassy of The People's Republic of China in Australia
Earthquake Relief Fund
Account No. BSB:352-000 A/C: 126512
Bank Name: Bank of China, Sydney Branch.
***Telephone No. of the Embassy: 0414880919; 0408784630;0414793168

More information and other method of donation see the China ambassy website: English version | Chinese version


Donation for he Burma cyclone:

I chose Avaaz as my channel, as they claim that the money go straight to the International Burmese Monks Organization, which will transmit funds directly to monasteries in affected areas.
Burma cyclone site on Avaaz.com

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Feedback from giving talks

I have followed Jayjay (our CSSE ex-school manager, now school manager at Physics) to present at many talks he organised. At the beginning it was outreach program to high school where I showed high school students computer graphics stuffs like image morphing, video-based rendering, perspective rectification, etc.. Recently we had been going around to show the virtual 3D UWA with the new Google crown.

We did one at the UniClub auditorium to 170 high school students. And here are what they write down in the feedback form about us.

Feedback from students:
* Life is about reflecting light into dark places by using the resources you have as best as possible;
* I will remember the speakers and how they were all unique;
* My favourite was Jay Jay because I am interested in that career path;
* Tzu Yen was my favourite because he was funny and informative;
* Jay Jay and his gang because what they spoke about was cool;
* Tzu Yen, his virtual universe project was very interesting;
* The 3-D computer group was so interesting! Explored new boundaries;
* I found the computing group interesting;
* Did not enjoy the virtual tour as I found it not stimulating enough;
* The favourite was the Asian guy who showed us the designing thing on the sketch pad; ("Asian guy" I guess refer to me, and the "sketch pad" must be SketchUp)
* My favourite was Jay Jay and Gary;
* The computer man with the T-shirt was my favourite; (I'm the computer man with this :) T-shirt)
* Speakers were all awesome but Tzu Yen was awesome more; (Oh Yeah! Awesome more! I like that. Hear that Barney?)
* Some of the speeches went for a while longer than expected and got boring at some point – although they were all worth it in the end;
* I think we should have had more breaks and some speeches were too long;
* The best thing about the visit today was the speakers; they really do give us something to think about, to aspire to.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Randy Pausch reprising his "Last Lecture"



There's a 76mins full version on his CMU website - CMU website with a full transcript.