My First Violin Lesson – Basics

Finally started my first violin lesson since interest struck me few months ago. My handsome best friend Alex Chan will be my teacher.

There are a couple of things to learn at the start, the first is how to hold the bow properly. It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t too hard either, just need to remember and practice alot of the holding position everyday.

Next was holding the violin on my neck. Unfortunately, my neck is longer than my friend and his shoulder rest couldn’t fit me properly. Guess I’ll need to get another one pretty soon. Well I just hold the violin with one palm at the body at the mean time. Standing position is also another basic after holding the violin, imagine the violin is pointing 90 degree to the left and I’ll be standing 45 degree.

After that it was pulling the bow on the violin, Alex taught me that it is best to have a big mirror infront and properly align the bow and the violin at a cross and practice on that everyday as well. That explains why his home has a big mirror in front of his practice place.

So this morning, I waste no time and rearrange my room abit so that I can use the old monitor to act as a mirror so I can see myself practicing. He also told me that it is best to have a very solid basic so that I can pickup playing many songs later. Basic practicing should last around 6 months according to him.

Hopefully I’ll keep learning and not stop halfway like what I did to my piano and guitar long long time ago. Also will have to save up money as I progress to get a better violin next time, can’t always borrow stuffs from my friend.

Stay tune for more!!!

Exploring My Dell Studio

It was in the box since I got my laptop, then suddenly the remote control came to my mind. So I go take it out from the box it was sleeping in. Below is the picture of the remote, well my one kinda got colors on it =)

Next I went on to put in the batteries, and then started playing with the remote control. Little did I know that the remote can remotely shutdown/sleep (I dunno which one) my computer. That screws up my unsaved work that time (=P juz chats and web surfing).

Next I went to press on the window logo on the remote, guess what? It was for the Windows Media Center YAY!!! Now I can listen to music without moving my butt off the bed by just pressing the remote.

Other stuffs is just like a normal remote control, guess now I got a reason to get a good wireless keyboard. As for remote mouse controling, either I use the extension that came with my new logitec laser mouse or my Sony Ericsson phone as the mouse. Pretty cool huh?

Now I wish I can use the Wiimote as a mouse replacement. Then I wont be needing so much gadgets in my bed next time. I also wonder is there any replacement software of Windows Media Center for OpenSuSE ^-^ that will be a good thing to have too!

World’s First Lesbian Prime Minister

Guess what, history is in the making for Iceland Prime Minister! A “Lesbian”!

What has the world become? We have bank closing down, Insurance company going down, automakers going down, semi con going down, whats next? Alien invasion? Men turns into women & women turn into men?

Feels like living in a era of weirdness world now. Well I hope she would be able to handle the situation in Iceland as the world is taking a big change lately, we too had Obama President of US making history.

I hope we Malaysia will create some form of new history and bring new changes and benefit everyone as a nation. Malaysia BOLEH! Faster boleh lah, 2020 soon and now we are already in 2009, 11 years left.

Click here to read more about it.

Happy Chinese New Year

Yawn… nothing but eat sleep and play. Feel more tired than normal days.

Been hitting on my Go books reviewing LeeChangHo’s past Samsung Cup games. Pretty impressive and learned a few new tactical moves that should be very useful.

Other than that, I am also hitting on my RPG game, The Legend of Heroes 6. This is an addictive game, this will be the 4th time i am replaying and its just chapter one and I have the second chapter too.

Kinda feel bad for not playing more Go and doing my opensource project too. too lazy I guess during Chinese New Year.

New Year New Hope!!! But same old wishes that has YET to come true!!!

A night to remember

On 20th Jan 2009, it was my first night listening to a live orchestra in KLCC.

My friend Alex suddently called & invited me the day before the show. It only cost me RM10 for the tickets.

It was damn pretty when we enter the music hall, so artistic and I feel some comfortable sitting there and feel the atmosphere.

The music is so smoothing that it cured a slight headache of mine when I enter the hall. The musical instrument was so pretty and nice, wish I could play one of them.

I also notice there is a very young girl performing on the stage, my guess is she might be 15 years old, I was impressed by how she manage to play that well in that age. I wonder what was I doing when I was 15, maybe playing computer games… lol

Next one will be another live orchestra in KLCC again either Feb or March ^-^ I sure love good music and look at the pretty girls performing on stage… LOL

My New Baby

Been a week since I got my new Dell Studio 15 from PCFair. I wasn’t planning to buy a laptop this early in pcfair. It was just my friend idea to get me to touch and feel the laptop that I am planning to buy next year.

The first thing I notice when I reach Dell’s booth, hey this Dell Studio looks damn nice! Ontop of that, a cute little girl came infront of me and start trying to get me to buy a laptop from her (hehe). She told me the specs and which are free upgrades. Main Specs of my new baby below:-

• Centrino 2 – Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26Ghz (Latest cpu, what more can I ask for)
• 4gb DDR2 ram (I have tons of ram to waste)
• 320GB HDD (alot of space to store my animes)
• 256MB ATi Radeon HD 3450 (at least can play some game anywhere)

After knowing the specs, it gets very tempting to get it straight. I give a few hours for myself to think about it while having lunch and went shopping in KLCC.

Since I’ll be getting a laptop soon and with such tempting specs, JUST GET IT!!! Head for the ATM machine and head back to Dell’s booth and that set my wallet back RM3299.

Whats even more great is that when I reach home and check back Dell’s website and configure the same specs on the website, guess what? The website is quoting me around RM4000++ and I got it for RM3299, I’ve gain extra value by buying from pcfair. Good investment I should say ^-^

The design is nice and artistic, the speed is good, I can use it anywhere and anytime. Best still its not heavy despite its a 15.4″ model, my mom and friends said its kinda big laptop.

Oh yeah forgot to mention this baby has a HDMI port. With that port, it makes me forget to get the 22″ LCD monitor that I was planning to buy, I’ll be going for a 32″ LCD TV instead and watch all the nice high defination videos from my baby LOL.

Lastly, if anyone wants to get a laptop, this is a model I’ll recommend people to buy if they ask me for tips ^-^. The only thing to complain is the speakers, sounds lame but no big deal as I can get a good set next time that can create a small earth quake ^0^

Phillip, Australian Capital Territory

A place that I OWN! LOL ^-^ ! Man I am RICH =D ! See here Phillip, Australian Capital Territory

Nah,actually I don’t own that place =( .How I came across this site? I was random typing stuffs into Google and stumble on that website. Pretty cool!

Heading to Anime Festival Asia

Tomorrow night will be heading down to Singapore Finally!!! Been waiting for this chance for so long ever since I am a fan of Japanese Anime!!!

Am too lazy to blog much and have to pack abit more stuffs before I go sleep… hehehe

HERE I COME SINGAPORE!!!

Testing 1,2,3

Last Friday when I got home, my brother told me that the router doesn’t have any power! WHAT?!?! I quickly rush to try different power plug hoping that it hasn’t died just like that. After several tries running up and down the house, I hereby confirm its dead, may my DLink 524UP rest in peace after serving me since Feb 2007.

Luckily my home network is well setup if things like this happens. Which is always have a separate modem router + router switch setup. I enable my router in the modem which I kinda hate the features in it since it doesn’t have QoS (Quality of Service) and the performance of a modem router issn’t on par with a standalone router.

So I did some research and found DLink DIR300. It is an entry level router which comes with QoS, supports wireless G and it looks very cool in black.

It was easy to setup out of the box, just use the wizard and key in your broadband details, username, password and you’re connected to the Internet without complex settings.

Okay, maybe till now you’ll be wondering what good is QoS gonna do at all. In this DIR300, just enable QoS and it’ll do the performance optimization. You’ll notice the difference while surfing the net when someone else is doing BT download on another computer using the same network. The QoS engine will reserve bandwidth for every computer that is connected to the router and this gives everyone fair share of the line. I had to set it manually on my old 524UP router. This makes DIR300 a even better worthwhile router to get if anyone wants to get one.

After about 3 days of usage, I am very satisfied with this new router. I get to set my firewall to block ports easily, QoS is auto-pilot, enable/disable wireless is just a click away too. Only thing I must complain is I can’t set static IP for each computer from the router which my old 524UP can! Oh well, I can’t have everything, I get some and lose some.

Anyway, its better to change your network devices about 1-2 years once for best performance. IC chips are not meant to last long and the more you use the shorter the life span it will have. The older the device goes the less sensitive to the noise from the line and you’ll start cursing why the line is sooooo slowwwwww!!! But even with new device, the line is still SUPER SLOW!!! So its still alright to curse you ISP!

Study Study Study & Study

It is just 11 days after I came back from China Beijing, and still I didn’t have enough of Go! Even though I get to play online on KGS (but streamyx is freaking SLOW lately and laggy that made it near impossible to play even a game at night).

End up studying my new Go books that I have bought from China, which was very cheap. Got myself ‘Gen WuQingYuan Dashi XueWeiQi’, Yose Dictionary, Korean Style Life & Death and Go Exam from 30kyu to 1dan. Phew! Tons of books to study, I think the amount I read will be alot higher than the average a Malaysian read per year!

How much I study & effort I put in on a daily basis? Well basically I study almost every night for about 30mins to 2 hours of tesuji, yose, life & death and joseki depending on my energy level on weekdays. On weekends, I can study for whole day sometimes on opening concepts (fuseki), midgame strategies and replying pro games. Also lately I been researching my own joseki, which is very fun to play in my games, it has high win rate at the moment but time will tell whether this new joseki is actually good or bad.

Also I came across International Baduk Academy’s (IBA) website and found out that they also offer scholarships to students that wish to study there. There are 4 types of scholarship, they are:-
a) High-level player scholarship
b) Working scholarship
c) IBA scholarship
d) Special scholarship

More details can be found here in IBA’s website. After reading that, it got me to consider planning to study there for at least a month to three months. This can happen in the future but currently just not able to do it with so many real life issues to attend to.

So many things to study yet so little time! I need more than 24 hours per day!