Movie Review - Transformers 3 Dark of The Moon - post mortem

Yes guys ! I have finally watched arguably the most-awaited movie for 2011 and that is Optimus Prime and his Autobots having a go at one of the most nastiest fights against their long-time enemy , The Decepticons.

The movie was officially launched on 29th June 2011 in Malaysia and honestly, being the cautious me, I always want to book first before actually going to the movies. I tried booking the movie on the 27th itself(which is 2 days before the official launch, and guess what! Its fully booked!!!). That's how bad people really want to go and watch it. I somehow managed to obtain the tickets by forcing my wife who works at Mutiara Damansara to go and buy the tickets during her lunch time. While queuing up for popcorn, I noticed they were selling this combo that includes a Transformers cup that has a transformers toy on top of it(yes! on top of it). I decided to go for it since its supposedly the last installment for the film. It costs RM 16.50 and I only managed to get "Megatron" as the rest is out of stock.

Yes, I only managed to get 'Megatron' ..the rest is out of stock.. =(

The movie started strongly with the main point of impressing the audience on how huge the transformers compared to us humans by showing Neil Armstrong's first step to the moon and relating it to him discovering alien lifeforms who turns out to be a transformer. Not forgetting Optimus Prime's story-telling about the war that went on at Cybertron and how the Autobots finally lost the war. Then comes in the main characters of Carly and Sam played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Shia LeBouef respectedly, who I might say, plays the role of Cary and Sam really well throughout the entire movie. They both adds seriousness and humor to the movie and its always important to keep the crowd entertained. Rosie mostly defied my judgement that she might just be another "Megan Fox" who cannot act and just filling the role of "female heroin" kinda role just to show a bit of skin, however, she has proven otherwise by showing some strong acting in the movie(she does play an important role towards the end of the movie at a particular point).

Another surprise inclusion is the role for Dylan, who is played by Patrick Dempsey. In an active attempt to join forces with The Decepticons so just to make sure they spare him when they take over the world, he was the bad guy in this movie other than Megatron himself and Sentinel Prime. Speaking of Megatron, his role in this third installment went to a bit-part role and Sentinel Prime instead took the main role of destroying the Autobots. They did destroy the entire Chicago City and manage to take control of it in the movie.

To summarise things up, the entire show will keep you at the edge of your seats, hope each of you manage to get a comfortable cushion as it will be a long 2 and a half hours of action-packed robot bustling and violent fights, not forgetting building tumbling action once the war starts. Michael Bay this time took the effort to actually go into little details about the storyline and involved more humans in the fight. Soldiers are becoming more and more significant during the war and they are very important indeed in turning the tide against the Decepticons.

I am praying and hoping there will be a fourth installment in the horizon, but as Michael Bay said, he wont be directing it, and so does Shia LeBouef who also said that he might not want to do a fourth installment. However, if the sales is good, and the reviews are good, why not go for a fourth ? I guess it all bores down to the money.

Joomla! Day 2011 Malaysia - post mortem

Was getting all excited about the Joomla Day Malaysia 2011, that was being held in KLCC Tower 2, Microsoft HQ, Level 29. Registration starts at 8.15 am so I left home at around 5.45 am in the morning. Reached the Seremban station at around 6 am and was told that the first train was initially at 5.30 am and I missed second train which is the 6 pm train, so I had to wait for the 6.30 am train instead. While was waiting for the train, I was told by one of the passengers that it took him at least 8 am to reach KL Sentral, if he took the 6.30 train. I was like in shock knowing that I will be late for the event. I still needed to take the LRT to KLCC once I reach KL Sentral.

The ride indeed took one and a half hours and so I decided to catch the taxi instead to KLCC. At KLCC Tower 2, I then had to line up for a good 15-20 mins for the temporary Petronas Tower pass. A good long queue was already forming and you can see from their faces they are as anxious as I am to attend the event. But something caught my eye during the queue, some of them was already wearing the Joomla Day T-shirt which they should have given us prior to the event like delivering it to our houses so we can at least wear it to the event !(it needs to be washed first since it smells like it just came out of the coloring machine or something)

I then went through the security checks(just like the airport ones), and took the elevator all the way up to 29th floor. There, once the elevator door opens, you can easily notice that you are at the Microsoft Malaysia Office, and wow, the feeling is indeed awesome. If only they had or require technical people to work for them in their Malaysia HQ.

At the reception, the Joomla Day team had another round of checks to identify that we are the right people who are attending it and THEN they start giving out the T-shirts. We are then ushered inside a Session Room called Session A where Ryan Ozimek gave his introduction speech about Joomla's outlook in the current market and etc. I was actually quite impressed on how he manage to attract enough attention so we all would actually PAY ATTENTION to what he was saying. Maybe his presentation is indeed 'different' than the others.

Ryan Ozimek and his presentation

To cut this short, I was actually quite impressed with only 2 presenters which is Ryan Ozimek and none other than Chris Roult who actually rocked the Joomla Designers world by showing his Morph Framework. This framework is so user friendly that it looks easy to design a joomla template. It would take weeks to design a template and this MORPH framework looks like it can actually cut the time frame to half. In my mind, I would definitely go home and try this out, but even before I can actually think how am I going to download it knowing it could either be a Commercial software or free, Chris announced that its going to be released as a free software under the GPL Open source license. This is even better news for all of us. Support and FREE !

A serious full house...

The day went on with JomSocial trying to coax us to buying the software and I had to actually do some deep thinking, why do we need JomSocial when we have things out there like Facebook ? Even if we developers actually manage to build something like another version of Facebook, what makes you think users would join the social network you created ? Its like reinventing the wheel eh ? Nothing against JomSocial and its team, but that's my 2 cents breakdown opinion. Going ahead, some session were going about Joomla Security and how to apply it to your sites and backing it up using Akeeba Backup Pro. I however, could not get the frameworks out of my head, I was already thinking nothing other than the frameworks.

Ryan asking us to contribute to the development of Joomla 1.7 onwards...

The event ended with a bomb with Ryan Ozimek giving his full powered shouts and that sums it up. I really regret not having the chance to take a photo with him( I was never a photogenic dude anywayz) but to miss a chance to have a photo with the President of Open Source Matters.org is a regret I have to live with for the rest of my life. Hopefully he does come down again for the next Joomla Day Malaysia 2013 ? Who knows ?

Till next time..

P/S : Not forgetting Yusof Firdaus, Omar Mahdzan and Neyra who made the event extremely fun. Thanks for the company guys. There's nothing more fun like knowing a few bloggers along the way...

Movie Review - Green Lantern

On 16th June 2011, I have successfully allocated a time slot for myself and wifey for the show called "Green Lantern".

The movie started with a good dogfight between fighter jets. This is a good indication of what's to come with them starting early with the CGI for the jets. It already kept us at the edge of our seats with the fight. This introduced us to the 2 jet fighter pilot couple who is Hal Jordan and Blake Lively, who I personally think make a good tag-team for the show. They have this good chemistry between them to make this movie work.

Being the guy who watches the movie without even actually reading the comic itself, this movie's introduction did well enough to inform the viewers who the 'Green Lantern Corps' were and their responsibility towards the universe which is to protect its peace and oppose any sort of oppression and evil.

This movie too showed that this is NO-TYPICAL-ONE-HERO show movie where one guy goes gung-ho and whacks the crap out of everyone and saves the day. It consists of multiple superhero's in the corp itself where Hal Jordan is just one of them. He slowly learns how to use his superpowers inherited from the dead Abin Sur, who is the strongest Green Lantern killed by Parallex, who is one evil villain for the corps.

Ryan Reynolds acting coupled with some humor from him. Not forgetting for the girls who went ga-ga over his abs, he really helped bring the show to great heights, however, I do doubt that there will be a sequel to the movie as the director Martin Campbell did not actually leave any unfinished ending where it can catch up where it left off.

Racism in Malaysia

We have all heard about 'racism' in Malaysia. It has become a parody to some, a joke to most of us, and a sensitive issue to all. We live in a multi-cultural country comprising of Bumis, Malays, Chinese, and Indians and etc. Sometimes, we tend to crack stupid jokes about the other races and how their traditions are, maybe to some the way they speak as well, and maybe to imitate how they would react to certain situations, and we do laugh like hell about it if we do discuss it.

However, there are some parties who just cant stand looking at peace and prosperity amongst the races and had to break it. They bring up issues such as questioning Bumi's rights and why shouldnt other races be able to be Prime Minister and etc. We have been living peacefully and together in our small little country for almost 54 years since our independence in 1957, can't we just continue living in peace ?

When 13th May 1969 broke out, everybody was scared and the country was in total chaos, would you want history to repeat itself ? The answer is a big NO. This is not a threat, but more of a warning to those who dare ruin that peace in this country.

The Government of Malaysia

During my younger days in secondary school, or even college/university period, I was never really into politics. Unlike my parents, who are avid supporters of the Barisan Nasional political party, I was avoiding to discuss politics and even talk about it in public as it was a sensitive issue. Discussing it in public and sometimes amongst friends can cause potential fights and arguments as everyone has their own opinions on who is right and who is wrong. OK, fuck that now, I hated politics! To me, at the time, when Tun Mahathir was in power, the country was flourishing and doing well. Too well in fact that the people took it for granted and hoped that Tun himself can handle the country alone. He did handle it well by himself actually, until he made the grave mistake of passing the position to his deputy who is at the time was Pak Lah @ Badawi.

Since then, the country went into 'Reverse Mode' and he took all of us back to the times of Melacca where it was all about Muslim and Religion. The other races was feeling bored and fedup with all this Islam Hadhari crap..so do we muslims actually. Its not that I have anything against my own religion but then it has to have a balance between religion and development of the country.

After realising this mistake, Tun Mahathir, who was then a retired PM, decided to go all out and gung-ho to reverse his decision and asked for a step-down from Pak Lah and asked Najib to take his throne to become PM. So Pak Lah then stepped down, and Najib became PM. And now, here goes the roller coaster ride, 1Malaysia is implemented and everywhere seems to be 1Malaysia concept. Najib keep stressing to the people that the country has no money and has limited resources to work with and started charging unnecessary taxes everywhere to collect money to fund his next general election. BN = money oriented!

Where else, PKR, is more of an unstable political party consisting of 3 major political party who joined together under 1 motto and that is to overthrow Barisan Nasional. However, have they ever thought in the long run, maybe shall we say in 30-40 years time, if they somehow managed to overthrow BN, will they be able to handle the country well ? I for once, am very much siding towards PKR since I lost my trust in the BN principle of 'crony first, people second' but can PKR handle the country !?

Conclusion : Can PKR handle the country once they down BN ? Can BN change and reform ? Who shall I vote then for something to happen ??? I guess none of those 2 parties can make any difference. I seriously have no more faith in Malaysia's political agendas.

How can I be so stupid

The title says it all, I am feeling very down recently and maybe this is contributing to the lack of ideas for me to blog about. I guess I will just blog about this 'disappointment'.

I would not disclose exactly what, but sometimes people tend to not appreciate what you do. It does not matter whether you are doing it for the company you work with, for your friends or colleagues, family, and etc , sometimes you just want to feel appreciated. But what I am feeling is "USED" and "FORGOTTEN". Before everything happened, I was promised beautiful and wonderful things, but when it happened and it finally dawned, at the end of the day, the loser was ME.

I will NEVER, EVER, want to feel like this again. NEVER.

I have to learn from my mistakes.

Go Anonymous ! Hack the site !

This is the recent response of a hacker group who calls themselves as 'Anonymous' towards the censorship applied by the Malaysian government on its citizens. I am seriously not proud to be a Malaysian after this issue. Its getting to be a hassle living here day by day. Here it is:-

Greetings, Malaysia,

We have seen the censorship taken by the Malaysian government, blocking sites like The Pirate Bay, and WikiLeaks. Malaysia is one of the world's strictest governments, even blocking out movies, and television shows. These acts of censorship are inexcusable. You are taking away a basic human right. The internet is here for freedom, without fear of government interference. Do not think that no one else notices. Your structured government has done the talking, and we hear loud and clear. Let this be an announcement to all your people. This is a sign, a warning, and an opportunity to listen to ideas above your own. In a way you are being stubborn. But how will this help anyone or your country. We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom. We are obligated to act fast and have no mercy. For rules were meant to be broken. And corruption was meant to be washed away and forgiven. Now we will wash your corruption away so be prepared. Take this as a favor.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect Us.

I for one, am really looking forward to them hacking the hell out of the site. Defaced it and tell the world how cruel the Malaysian government is. GO ANONYMOUS !

Empty Promises

Its been awhile since I last blog, and honestly, I need to set something straight, I will only blog when there is really an issue that I need to get it out of my freakin' chest and this is another of it. As everyone should know, the current company I'm working with is really one ambitions company. We are of course doing well in terms of getting business in(and also chasing away our customers!), however, our MD just don't see the reality in these sort of economy where people are just not into spending money.

Just imagine, we bought and entire 2 shoplots consisting of 6 columns which will be our new office right next door to where we are now which costs us easily between RM 2 million to RM 3 million. Nobody does that in these uncertain market! Nobody!. Thats just one of the issue. Another is, he keeps giving empty promises to all departments where once we shift, we will get what we wanted for example allocated budgets to designated departments. In my case, the IT Department, where there are certain things that needs to be acquired for the entire office to benefit from.

Part of my job is to get quotations from suppliers and vendors before acquiring any IT related items and one of it currently is the UPS. Due to the recent blackout, one of our UPS has broken down which requires replacement. When I got the quotation totaled up to RM 1,600, my MD freaked out saying "Asal mahal sangat?!", I was like SHOCKED !? RM 1,600 mahal sangat!? You must be kiddin' me, you are paying millions of ringgit for a damn building and you can't come out with RM 1.6k ??? This is absurd ! Before he said, to do what I can to improve the infrastructure and he's already complaining when asked to pay RM 1.6k for the UPS !?? If the UPS is not acquired, if it blacked out again, the servers will start to fail one by one and data will be lost forever.

In malay there's this saying for those who don't know, and it is also to describe my MD, nothing else then, "KEDEKUT TAK BERTEMPAT". That's what I call him now.

EPL Season is officially over ! Transfer window looms..

To all football fans, the season is over ! Accept it with open arms that now you can look forward to the transfer window that's looming this coming July 1st. With the respect to your own favourite football teams, I for one, a truly, out and out, nothing then, a MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB fan.

There you have it, thats the football club that I have supported since I was born. Its been brought down throughout generations of my father's where all my uncle's support the club, my grandpa(even though he recently switched sides to Arsenal! He's old, so he's forgiven to switch anyway he wants.)

Now, the topic is to predict and discuss all the rumours thats been going around on who will arrive and who is going to leave ? With Paul Scholes retiring, I seriously wonder who is good enough to actually take up the mantle from him. He is a legend nonetheless, with the likes of David Beckham, Roy Keane, Eric Cantona and the list can go on..an extremely good passer/long passer of the ball, possesses an eagle-eyed vision to spot players going up the field so he can long pass to them and a goal-scorer from long range during his younger days. He scores much less during his recent seasons basically u can blame it on his age i suppose, but he still can be a handful for opposing teams. There's no doubt that most of us will remember him as a lousy and ugly tackler of the ball(he really is an awful tackler!) but he made it up by passing and vision which people will miss terribly in Old Trafford.

So who is suitable to replace him ? I am all out rooting for Wesley Sneijder. He is the most sensible replacement for Paul Scholes in the long run, he is only after all 26 this year. A very much suitable age for midfielders who needs to run box-to-box and requires much stamina.

Compaq Presario CQ40

My mom owns a laptop which is a Compaq Presario CQ40 and it recently died on her. The screen went completely blank when switched on and start showing some white blinking lights on the Num Lock and Caps Lock. Not that I know that is the blinking lights were blinking 4 times and stopped for a second or two, and it blinked 4 times again.

Actually the reason for this was HP has already implemented a symptom optimization feature in all its recent laptops to show what is spoilt by counting the number blinks the white light gives. For example, in my mom's case was the white light blinks 4 times which indicates the "graphic controller" was spoilt.

What I did next was to check whether the laptop is still under warranty or not on the official HP website using its serial number and found out that the laptop is indeed under warranty until August 2012(Lucky Me!). Straight off to HP Malaysia Tower, Jalan Siantan, Bukit Damansara to get it fixed. Went to the counter and told the officer we need it to be fixed and replaced. He recommended instead to check with the technician on the other side of the office and get back to him if it cannot be fixed on the spot.

After checking with the technician, it seems that its not the "graphics controller" but it was the Memory(RAM) that needs dusting. From what I read on the HP website, if it blinks 3 times THEN its Memory giving trouble, but in this case it blinks 4 times and its still the Memory ????? HP's symptom analyzer not doing too well i guess ?????

Blogging completes me

I have always been skeptical towards bloggers who blog, telling them its a waste of time and energy doing all the necessary thinking on "What do I blog today?" , "What sensational topic do I need to blog to entertain my followers?".

However, recently I have found my reason to blog. And I have tons of ideas on what topics it will be from day to day. Blogging is not about struggling to think of a topic or ideas to share but more of an "opinion & debate" sharing session with the public or your followers. This way I can fully express my frustrations with the current happenings and also the world without bugging my only beloved wife(yea, women can easily get pissed with your rantings if its too often!). Did you know it also helps to improve your English indirectly when you blog ? Yes, it does.

So, here I am, blogging away and squeezing all my juicy ideas on what to write about every next day of my life. I hope whoever reads this blog will enjoy it. =)

Joomla! Day 2011 Malaysia

Checked my gmail this morning and saw this invitation to this superb event for Joomla Developers and also users in Malaysia. In Malaysia, we have always felt left out in all the IT events as they are all held mostly in either the US or UK and some say Russia and so forth. However, with people such as Microsoft and iJoomler being one of the major sponsors for this event, I am very much excited and can't wait to attend it.

Just imagine the vast amount of information and knowledge I can gain by being with other Joomla Developers all in one place and to be able to communicate with experts and also the speakers.

Together we can make Joomla a more popular and well-known CMS in Malaysia. Proud to be a Joomla Developer !

Debts haunts all of us

When I mention "debts!", everyone will give a sigh of pressure and tension, as if they wish they don't have it or it does not exist in their lives. But let me get this straight, there is no such thing as life without debts, yes, there's no way one can live without debts. We are only human and human have needs and wants. Once there is a 'want' in our dictionary, we will result to all sorts of alternative ways to obtain the things we want even though we know deep inside our hearts we cannot really afford it.

Debts are an amount of money we owe to someone(this could be a person/organization/bank and etc) that requires to be paid back in a certain given time set by the creditor(a person who is owed money to).

This issue has been haunting us for most of our lives, where each person can decide for themselves when debts start being relevant at some point. There are also different ways of handling debts, you can either accept it as part of your lives or despise it and just tend to ignore its existence and not deal with it. The latter is usually the one that creates problems is one's life and also for most families suffering from financial problems.

The lesson here is, we are judged from one's eyes from by the way we address a certain situation. The way we handle problems and also how do we solve it. Always try to find the best solution and stay calm even with facing a serious situation as you think better when you are calm. When facing with massive debt problem, try to evaluate all necessary options on how to solve it. The biggest problem faced by a person in settling debts is to accept the fact that YOU HAVE TO SACRIFICE A FEW GOOD THINGS !. For most people, sacrificing something to settle something else is the hardest thing to do.

For example, credit cards debts, the situation is you have more than 1 credit card and have a problem settling your credit card debts and paying it off on time which results in accumulating interest incrementally as the month goes by. In this case, take a payment plan ! If you have the option to pay it off all together with either borrowing from someone is better. However, if you cant seem to find someone who is willing to lend you the money, then it is always better taking the payment plan as it will total up the interest and make you pay in installment monthly. This way is a lot better in managing your daily expenses and you can plan ahead.

It is only a matter of whether do you want the problem to be solved or not.

Believe or not to believe ?

This is my first post for this blog. I hope I can make it a good one. I seriously don't care whether if there are readers for my blog but as long as I can say and put what I feel, what I think its right, and what I feel should be done, somewhere, I will be at peace.

First things first, my beloved country, Malaysia. I have been living here since the day I was born. My parents are from here as well. It is a great country nonetheless, however, in every great country, there are some things that the people can accept and close one eye on, and some we just cannot ignore. In Malaysia, we, the people, are no longer complacent to the things that are happening within the politics of our country.

The people have spoken to their leaders by not shouting and voicing out verbally, but by through their actions. The voting process of our country and the political tsunami that happened a few years back shows that a weakening government within the 'Barisan National' political party agenda is failing slowly.

I do believe that the current political situation in our country will not side well with Barisan Nasional in the coming General Election, which are yet to be announced the date and time. Our PM, Dato' Seri Najib Abdul Razak needs more time to implant this mentality within the society and its people that the Malays, Chinese and Indians and also not forgetting the other Bumiputra's that they can each have their own benefits and importance in this multicultural country.