Ah, Christmas is always early in Malaysia for the PC geek. Yes, I’m talking about PIKOM’s PC Fair. Booth babes, bargains on PC hardware, IT magazines, MP3 players and more are norms in the thrice per year event. This year was a change for me. Instead of going in the morning or noon, I went in the evening. I reached the area about 6pm and thus got cheap parking. It was a challenge looking for one because the surrounding areas ran out of car parks (I am not joking). The other good thing was the crowd is less at night so you actually can walk around without bumping into people every 2 seconds.

Got myself a 1TB Maxtor Basic External hard drive to replace the 2-year-old primary backup drive in the house. The older one is just a 250GB drive so this is a welcomed upgrade. The irony is of course I paid almost the same amount as the old drive (and the old one is a WD housed in a cheap external case). The Maxtor is better built (dare I say sexier?) with a puny power supply, draws less power, quieter and runs cooler. Maybe I should clarify, I didn’t buy this thing. It’s an early birthday gift ;). Total damage: RM 366 inclusive of credit card charges. There’s another more expensive model with a longer warranty period (5 vs 3) and backup software but I didn’t go for that. 2 reasons - firstly, it doesn’t matter how long the warranty is. Using a backup HD for more than a couple of years is just data-suicide. Secondly, rsync works fine for me as a backup software.

The second thing I had wanted to buy was a better mouse for my desktop. My current one acts as if it is possessed (it jumps around for no apparent reason). Lucky me I came across a Bluetooth mouse selling for only RM49.90. It’s by Kensington so it shouldn’t be too shabby. I’ve sworn off MS mice because of how the rubber peals off after a year. Logitech mice is what I usually go for but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to experience the convenience of a wireless mouse without the need for a dongle. Hence, I’m replacing my laptop mouse with the BT one (the laptop has built-in BT) and will now use the excellenct Logitech wireless mice for my desktop. Yipee! For comparison, MS and Logitech BT mice usually range from RM2xx and above.

Sidenote: this year’s booth babes waere just as hot or hotter compared to the previous years. No photos this time around though. Wasn’t in the mood.

When you try to run Compiz-Fusion and Oracle SQL Developer you will (might?) get a blank screen (the program, not your desktop). To fix this, add the line below to sqldeveloper.sh.

export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"

So there. Now you won’t need to disable Compiz to run SQL Developer.

Unlike generics which I have have given up trying to understand in-depth (simple generics is easy enough though), closures might be of actual use in my daily programming. Might. I have still yet to grasp completely what it does.

Read: Closures for the Java Programming Language (v0.5)

ATI has just announced a price slash that will result in the price of the oh, ever so appealing HD4870 512MB for $199. Assuming an exchange rate of 3.5x, that means high-end DX10 card can be yours for RM700. The 1GB version will sell for slightly more at $239.

Source: X-bit labs - AMD Reduces Pricing of ATI Radeon HD 4870 to $199

Came across a simple how-to on inter portlet communication. I’ve dealt only with portlet (1.x) briefly so I didn’t know that there was not a standard way to ‘communicate’ between portlets. Because portlets are like tiny programs running on (Java) web servers, without a standard way of sending data to each other, functionality is limited or you’ll need workarounds, which would lead to 101 ways to send data, non of which is compatible. Portlet 2.0 it seems are standardizing on JAXB (Java XML binding) to send data. It’s a publisher-subscriber model, which means you declare events (they’re ‘published’ when the events fire) and portlets can ’subscribe’ to the events. It seems pretty straight forward so it seems this is a Good Thing.

Read the article: The Portlet Packet: Inter-portlet communication in Portlet 2.0 - JavaWorld

Went to my friend’s wedding last weekend. I brought all my gear back home this time around. Don’t know why though. But as it turns out, it was lucky I did, because my friend didn’t hire a wedding photog and was relying on his (new) wife’s brother with a D40x, kit lens and 55-200VR to shoot the entire thing. No flash. The photog within just cringed.

As fate would have it, my SB600’s batteries are fresh, and I had borrowed my girlfriend’s 17-50 f2.8 before returning to Sungai Petani. Throw in 3 more lenses - 30mm f1.4, 10-20 f4-5.6 and 85mm f1.4 - I was prepared. Well, maybe I’m short of another body and an assistant but what the hell.

After a day of shooting and deleting a lot of junk photos, I was quite happy with the result. Wished I had a little more time to use my 85mm and 30mm to get more creative shots but I didn’t have the time. Boy things move fast in weddings. I had to choose between the essential & creative shots later. No brainer of course that I had to get the essentials nailed first.

Amateurish as it may be (hey, 2nd time shooting a wedding, and I wasn’t even trying on the first time), I hope I manage to provide my friend with memories of his big day.

And yes, I still dislike shooting weddings.