Welcome, my lovely boy!

On 13th September, 2011, I'm extremely excited and blessed with the birth of my lovely little boy at SDMC. His name is Lee, Wen Xuan.

He looks exactly like his mum, from the same mold when I first saw him. One funny thing which I won't forget is, when he just came out from mother's womb, he was still sucking his little thumb.

What is success, anyway?

Came across a pretty good article recently, just for sharing with everyone.

"Our society often makes the mistake of equating success with wealth. It's not a surprise that we do this. After all, wealth has the advantage of being measurable. When we can measure something, we can rate how we're doing versus everyone else. We love to compete with each other.

But aside from providing us with a handy way to "keep up with the Jones'," what does the equation of success with wealth really do? It's commonly accepted that money doesn't buy happiness. If someone is wealthy and unhappy, is he or she successful? Of course not!

Success is less about money than it is about worth. A successful person is one who looks at what he or she contributes and is satisfied with what he or she sees. Success is recognition, even if only internal (because in the end, you're the only one who's completely a part of your life). If you're happy, then you've succeeded.

Unfortunately, while American traditions hold that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, happiness itself is far from guaranteed. Indeed, the pursuit of happiness can be a frustrating battle of competing priorities, high prices, and lost time. These very real costs give us the illusion that our unhappiness is caused by what we have spent along the way, to which we readily conclude that if we had fewer responsibilities, lower expenses, and more time, we would be happy. We devote much of our lives to attaining a level of financial independence at which we can at last retire and enjoy our hard-earned free time.

Yet, do you know that the average life expectancy of a retiree who doesn't take up a new challenge to occupy his or her time is about five years? Humans thrive on stimulation. We can't go from overwork to perpetual vacation. We get bored, and we die.

The secret to real happiness, therefore, is neither to have money nor to accumulate money for the future. Both of these may be useful (and up to a point, they're perfectly sensible), but it's much more important that you identify what it is that you like to do with your time than to find ways to free it up sooner.

If you don't know what you want to do – and especially if you're sure that whatever it is, it's not what you're doing now – you probably can't just quit, but you can start to make changes that will make you happier. Start looking for other options. Sign up for some adult education classes at a community college, the kind that have a flat fee and meet once a week for a few weeks. Study languages, maybe. Or art. Or cooking. Try everything you can. You'll know what you like when you find it.

And once you do find it, see how you can incorporate it into your life. We spend most of our lives sleeping or at work, and odds are that you need your sleep. You probably need to work to live, but you might as well be working at a job that you enjoy. Then you'll be on the road to happiness. That's success. "

AIPO Analog AS-21L

Just bought a dry cabinet from C&S, Penang to store my camera and lens. Hmmm, I'm worried that my camera and lens will be the victim of fungus attack! Though now I'm seeing some dusty stuffs inside my LCD panel already, need to bring it for service soon. This is the smallest model I purchased, since not much accessories I have now. it costs RM 220 and kinda good offer. There is several other models as well, some are equipped with multi-level racks and even bigger.

How to Create a MS-DOS Bootable USB Flash Drive

1. Download the HP Flash Utility hpflash1.zip and also download the Windows 98 MS-DOS System Files win98boot.zip. 
2. Extract hpflash1.zip to any location of your drive.
3. Double click on the executable to install.
4. Extract win98boot.zip to any location of your drive.
5. Launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that was just installed. Choose your flash drive from the drop down list at the top [Device], and ensure that the file system is set to FAT32 [File system].
6. Under [Format options] check/select "Create a DOS startup disk" option. Click on the "..." button near the text box to browse to the location of where you extracted the Windows 98 MS-DOS System Files.
7. Click on "Start" button. You're done!  

 

Configuring Microsoft Visual Studio for 64-bit Application

If you are using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005* or 2008 and will be developing 64-bit applications (for the Intel® 64 or IA-64 architectures) you may need to change the configuration of Visual Studio to add 64-bit support.

"If you do not have 64-bit support you may receive an error message such as: Build fails with message: Intel Visual Fortran Compiler for x64 not installed. Tools, options Intel Fortran, Compilers has no entry for x64."

If you are using Visual Studio 2005/2008 Standard Edition or Visual Studio 2008 Shell, no configuration is needed to build Intel® 64 architecture applications. For other editions:

1.    From Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs, select "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005" (or 2008) > Change/Remove.  The Visual Studio Maintenance Mode window will appear. Click Next.

2.    Click Add or Remove Features

3.    Under "Select features to install", expand Language Tools > Visual C++

4.    If the box "X64 Compiler and Tools" is not checked, check it, then click Update.  If the box is already checked, click Cancel.

To use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008 Team System Edition to build applications to run on IA-64 architecture systems, follow the above steps and ensure that the box "Itanium Compiler and Tools" is checked.

How to Create A Bootable Windows Vista/7 Installer

Wondering how you going to boot from an USB stick/thumbdrive/pendrive, to install the Windows Vista/7 without using a CD/DVD drive? This method indeed come in handy especially for the popular machine nowadays, Netbook which normally do not come with a CD/DVD drive. It's advisable to prepare a thumbdrive with a storage space 4GB and above.

To prepare the bootable USB thumbdrive, you need to execute following steps under Windows Vista/7 OS.

1. Insert the USB thumbdrive to the system and backup all the data from it, as you are going to FORMAT the USB thumbdrive to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, press START button, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All Programs > Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select Run As Administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following commands:
i.  DISKPART and hit enter.
ii. LIST DISK and hit enter. 
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show all the connected devices and the disk number of your USB thumbdrive. Make sure the correct USB thumbdrive is identified by looking at the Size of it.

4. In this step, you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter.
i. SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your USB thumbdrive's disk number)
ii. CLEAN
iii. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
iv. SELECT PARTITION 1
v. ACTIVE
vi. FORMAT FS=NTFS (Format process may take several minutes)
vii. ASSIGN
viii. EXIT

5. Insert your Windows Vista/7 Installer DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB thumbdrive. Here I use "D" as my optical (DVD) drive letter and "G" as my USB thumbdrive's drive letter.

6. Go back to Command Prompt and execute the following commands:
i. D: CD Boot and hit enter, where "D" is your optical drive letter.
ii. Type in the command, bootsect.exe /nt60 G: (Where "G" is your USB thumbdrive's drive letter)

7. Copy all the Windows Vista/7 Installer DVD contents to the USB thumbdrive.

You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature. 

To turn on the USB boot feature, you need to configure this setting inside the BIOS. Press "F2" or "Del" key when the computer is first boot up to enter BIOS configuration. Navigate to "Boot" page inside the BIOS, then enable "Boot to USB".

Shang-ri La Kerry Center

Venue: China, Beijing
Date: 18th May, 2010

Managed to capture few photos of the hotel I'm staying while walking back after dinner, no tripod was used. Not bad though, hahaha.