Harvey Norman 15cents digital 4R print is back! Yeah!! I just went there this afternoon and printed 80 photos which I prepared last time but missed out last time.
It's half price!! Until 28/5/2006.
I may go back for more. Haha!!
Check out their website to confirm if you like:
Harvey Norman
Google launch another interesting tool Google Trends
Shih Ching told us that and we tried some searches like Beijing 2008, terrorism, bali, etc. and Perth turned out quite high in the ranking!!
Then even more absurd is when I tried searching for mahathir, Batu Pahat came out as the top?! A small town in Johor, not even the capital, why is that? Does Batu Pahat has a national internet exchange or what?
By the way, it's not the number of search but the ratio of number of search divided by the total search give the ranking. So, I guess it's because that's the thing that we are familiar with and search, that's why it's the "trend" in town...
I'm reading David Suzuki's books "The sacred balance" and "Naked apes to super species" and came across this document it mentioned in the books.
1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
I went to AMWA luncheon at Satay Fiesta at Mt Pleasant. Today's event is general network plus meeting with actor Craig Fong.
Craig is born and raised in WA but spent his past 10 years in Asia (mainly KL) as an actor/tv host. He recently also published 3 books on romance titled "The adventure of Jerry and Jane".
His highest profile movie is Entrapment that's shot in KL twin tower by Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Can't remember there's this Craig Fong guy in that movie? Or don't even know this movie? Haha! I knew this movie but don't remember Craig is in it. He shared a brief moment with Catherine Zeta-Jones as a character (kaylayfair?) Cage.
He's got another better movie which he played lead called Spinning Gasing (a Malaysian production) which won some awards. A nice guy, pretty charming in real person too.
The satay and curry at Satay Fiesta is great too. I like it. And if you had read this and wonder if it's vegetarian, no it's not. It's my first big chuck of meat in 2 weeks. Tasty! But I was very sleepy later on when I got back to office. :P
The owner of the small Satay Fiesta is a light hearted uncle, Teddy Lim. He used to be a lawyer, now retired to Perth and started running this satay place since last year. Cool uh!
Got a photo with Craig, maybe can show off later when he really become famous!! Wish you best of luck, Craig! 
More photos are at AMWA Photo Gallery.
I was plotting some graph in MATLAB (R14) and was using the Show/Hide Plot Tool button.
When I toggled between show and hide plot, suddenly the mouse pointer become a smiley face!!! 
I later found that I need to use the Rotate 3D function first, then toggle show and hide plot for it to happen. Is it an easter egg in Matlab? It's funny.
In order to get this screenshot, I tried to use PrintScreen but the very mouse cursor that I want is not included in the captured image. So I did a quick search and found ACA Capture, a shareware that does the job.
More screen capture softwares can be found on download-by.net.
I'm obsessed with 3D modelling! And the new Sketch Up 3D modelling software released by Google is a great tool to use. It's a lot easier to model than anim8or I used before. Though it lacks the precise dimension and placement functionality in this version (not sure if it is included in the comercial version), general modeling of house and stuffs is pretty easy. And it has some sample texture that is good enough to make the model look real in an hour or first trial.
I started learning it and tried modeling my old house in Malaysia from memory. It turned out to be very satisfying. Simple, clean and the file size is manageable (~1MB) so far.
Here are some picture of it to show off my ~15hours of work.
Same view but different rendering modes
Non-perspetive view of floor plan and standard engineering drawign views
A view from my parents' room into the living room. Doors, windows and furniture haven't been modelled.
I'll have to stop being so obsessed with it otherwise my phd will be at stake. No more suicidal 5 hours straight late night modelling!!! Good night.
I was coding up perspective transformation for my research and it turns out to be quite handy at doing my own photos.
When you take a photo of a painting or some flat pattern on the wall or on the floor, it's never easy to line up perfectly perpendicular to the object, so the result is usually a slightly side-on view. The square is slightly skewed and circle not really round.
Here's what it does.
Original photo:
Rectified and cropped version of the artwork from my grandma. 
It's very useful for getting texture to put on 3D models. More on this later.
I shall post the matlab source code to my matlab page when it's up to release standard.
It's unreal!
Imagine on the bank of Swan River, second floor fine restaurant besides the Bell Tower.
Imagine beautiful basmati rice, spicy curry, fresh vegetables, fine indian cuisine.
Imagine endless helpings, eat to your heart's content.
How much do you think a meal like that will cost you?
On the front page of Annalakshmi brochure it writes
Eat
to your heart's content and
pay
what your heart feels
You cannot put a price on the food prepared by a mother or a wife, and this is why at Annalakshmi you - eat as you like and pay as you feel.
This is the Welcome back to Perth present I get (stuck on my wall) from Shih Ching and Danno. It does look like me if I am to appear in South Park. Haha! My 'lightning' yellow jumper, yellow nike cap (it'd be perfect if the tick is there), and my green pants. And yes, I'm too lazy to shave every day.
I like it, I like it a lot, it's a good picture.
You can draw one for yourself at South Park Studio.
Went to watched Eight below last night. Great show. The super air-con made the cinema feel like the freezing antarctic too.
Continued from previous story a while ago.
So after the wedding, I stayed in JB for another night and followed a KL friend's car to get to Seremban (about 1 hour south of KL). Got to Seremban at 5pm+ and I set off with my girlfriend and some of her friends to KL to attend a forum discussing about a current issue of Chinese primary school internal corruption cases. Got back and had some further chat with the friends and finally went to bed at 2am+, and the next morning, we had planned to go to the east coast for vacations. Oh....
Anyway, not enough sleep, but my girlfriend and myself are still very excited about it. So we set off a little later than planned, and had 3 days of very sweet and relaxing stay in Kijal and Teluk Cempedak on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia.
Beautiful resort, nice warm water, big waves of South China Sea, bright hot sun for perfect photographs...
The food there are great too. We had breakfast included in the accommodation and it's buffet style. I got to sample a great range of Malaysian food that I had long for ages all at the same time - roti canai, nasi lemak, rendang, ketupat... Yumm.
And we went out for some local specialities hunt as well. One of the special food at Kijal/Cukai area is stuffed crab - stir fry crab meat with some vegies stuffed back into crab shell and covered with egg, then the whole thing deep fried to seal up. Pretty cool.
And the coffee and charcoal toasted bread at Hai Peng in Cukai is not to be missed. Thick pieces of white bread toasted and top with butter and kaya... absolutely delicious!
Satay Zul near Teluk Cempedak has great Satay and Nasi lemak. It's at the intersection (T-junction) of two main streets.
There's this "durian bom" and BBQ bun in Kuantan.
Tired again. That's about my busy schedule. After the trip, it was a bit more relax and I have time to go back to YongPeng and rest for a while...
Now I'm in Seremban again, at my brother's place, enjoying his wireless broadband in aircon room. Hahaha!!! Sweet!
It's been a very tight schedule I had since flying off from Perth. And finally today I have access to internet ( dial up, Xb ) and can post some updates.
I touched down KLIA on 24/3 10pm. Got out and my family were there to fetch me. So touched, Papa mama came up from Yongpeng, and my sister came down from KL, my brother drove from Senawang to take all of us. And they were rewarded by the famous Corica apple strudle from Perth. :a
I had a good sleep that night. The next morning, we have a yumcha brunch with Tanliang and her mom in Seremban. Koko missed out because he had to work that day. Then we went back to YongPeng that afternoon.
Reached home at 5pm, I started packing my bag and eat "big bun" at the same time as Yekleng was coming to pick me up at 6pm to go JB. He arrived on time and we set off to his base to prepare for his wedding ceremony on Sunday...
I met quite a few old highschool friends and had long chat with Yekleng as I was in his car most of the time... Slept at 3am that night and had to wake up at 6am to go fight our way through to get the bride.
Sunday was a long day, but real fun, though I was extremely tired. The sister gang of the bride set up some tough challenges, eg to eat real salty egg, drink crazy sauces and drink mixture, singing and dancing to prove the worthiness of our friend to get the girl. It was good fun. Then the tea ceremony... rest, photos, and at 5pm we got to the wedding dinner place.
I started drafting my MC speeches and I was glad that the night went well. :)
Tired.... To be continued
I'm off to Malaysia on Friday 24/3.
Many things to do back in my hometown. First thing would be YekLeng's wedding. I'm his MC and I haven't been to many wedding reception dinner myself, so I'm doing some last minute research on what to say... If you understand Chinese, here's some resources.
Then I'll go to some nice beaches on the east coast of Malaysia with my girlfriend and family. I shall visit my high school as it has been my regular activity over every holiday back home. Have some chat with my teachers and see how the school is doing, maybe have a little chat session with the students, let them inspire me.
And I bring all my matlab codes and research literature with me and hope over the 5 weeks, I'll get 2 weeks to keep working on my research, otherwise by the time I'm back, I'll have to spend a while to get back into where I left off. I'd like to do some writing there. As the thesis is going to be due in not very distant future.
And of course spending lots of quality time with the people I love would make the trip worth.
I'd also get my a good supply of the thing I need to last me till the next time I get back, which I predict would be when I finish my PhD.
And I won't forget to bring back the armouring Tshirt to protect myself.
Lastly, why flying banana? Because I bring out my yellow jumper today as the weather turns really cold. So I'm back to my banana look. Haha!! Well, folks in Perth, you'll see this bright yellow happy face back in May.
Depending on how the internet is, I'd try to keep you posted with my holiday back in Malaysia. Take care.
I'm a one year old blogger on 10th March 2006. Missed the actual date by one week. Well, it's probably a good thing showing that I actually has something else to do than remembering the anniversary of my blog. :P
The first post - Lalilaza daily: Where it all begins - saw the world on 10/03/2005. In this past year, 10/3/2005 till 10/3/2006, there were 287 posts.
Some statistics:
0.786 post/day
5.5 posts/week
23.5 posts/month
a post every 30.5 hours
Jayjay, our new school manager is doing a fantastic job at lifting up the school image, getting together all the good things happening around the school and letting everyone knows.
Here's a photo gallery link: The Wonderful World of Computer Science, which I contributed several of them.
And here's the awesome animation page showcasting many cool animations made under the school. I have a couple there too. :)
I'm writing up my annual report and have to trace back to what I've done in the past year. Then I want to put a link to the DICTA paper in the report and I remember I've been to the IEEE Xplore page that has my paper. But I can't find it, so I think I'll put a link here for future reference and for your reading pleasure.
T.Y. Wong, P. Kovesi, A. Datta. Towards Quantitative Measures of Image Morphng Quality. In B. Lovell, etc., editor, Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications, 2005. DICTA ' 05. Proceedings, pages 126-133, Cairns, Australia. IEEE Computer Society. 2005.
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