Here comes my 2009 resolutions.

1. Work out more, be healthier. Health is always important.
2. Revive my analytical thinking. I am happy with my brain now but I must do more intense mental workouts, otherwise it will get rusty. Solve difficult mathematical puzzles or problems, play board games, or anything that is mentally challenging.
3. Organize my belongings properly. Must organize my belongings better. E.g., I don't know where I have kept my collection of classical music CDs now!
4. Write a program making use of existing utilities or libraries to calculate the positions of all planets and Pluto in our solar system. Wanted to do this in 2008, but no time. Still hope to do it.
5. Extend my program for Astrological charts. When my program is able to calculate planet positions, it is just a step away from producing Astrological charts. Astrological interpretation? Not sure. If time permits, I may study it and see how much I can do.
6. Improve my piano playing. I have started this since early November 2008 following the 3-level Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course. I am in the middle of level two now. The skills and pieces are getting challenging. I aim to complete the whole course along with other pieces (such as the studies by Czerny) by the end of 2009. I can then play a lot of nice pieces.
7. Learn more about investment. Hmm... Can I make some good money out of it? I am especially interested in technical analysis.
8. Improve my program to make money. I have written one for my secret project in 2008. But I want to improve it further.
9. Read at least ten new books. Any book less than 100 pages is not counted. Must read at least two detective stories and crack the cases!
10. Improve computing knowledge. This is good for my job.

Happy Ox Year!

I have set my a year ago. Let's see how much I have done.

• Work out more, be healthier. Not much progress for this one, too bad. Worst, when I want to resume my Yoga practice, the Yogazone runs into financial problem and has ceased operations! Anyway, I must find some ways to work out more... Score: 0.0.
• Organize my belongings properly. I have organized a lot of them, but there are still things not that organized. Score: 0.8.
• Produce a human-digestible English text-to-speech rules and learn them. Haven't done it yet, too bad. May not include it in 2009 resolutions as I have more important things to do. Score: 0.0.
• Revive my analytical thinking by playing chess games. Not really restarted it yet. However, I have tried a bit on Go (Wei Qi) and find it rather interesting. Score: 0.1.
• Extend my solar system simulation program to be able to calculate the positions of all planets and Pluto in our solar system. Didn't do it yet. It's probably better to do this on top of some existing programs or libraries instead of reinventing the wheel. Score: 0.0.
• Extend my program for Astrological charts. Oh no, didn't do it yet due to the above. Score: 0.0.
• Read at least ten new books. Achieved this. Score: 1.0.
• Write a program to help earn some money, if I am lucky! Intended to write one for a purpose, but later changed my mind to write a different one but for the same purpose. Still keep it as a secret first. Score: 0.8.
• Write computer-related articles for general public. Still did not do it yet! Score: 0.0.
• Organize this home page better. Have done a bit, but still not that good. Score: 0.2.

Total score: 2.9 ?? Ha, this is hardly acceptable!

Anyway, my life has changed a lot this year. Most notably, I have quit my previous job and work 'freely' now. Besides, I am picking up two interesting skills these days:

• Investment. I like figures and this interests me. I'm still learning it and hope that I can make some good money out of it.
• Piano. I know several musical instruments but only suddenly got interested in Piano. Heard about many people spend many hard years with tears to learn it, and such stories scare me. But when I try to start it I find it not that bad, probably due to my musical background and my good teacher! I think I am progressing at a good rate and I'll track my progress on my home page. I have started for 2 months and I'm learning to play a music with two-part writing now.

So if I add these two 'bonuses', I'll give myself a score of 4.9 / 12.0. :)

I don't like to eat meats since I was a kid as I really don't like their taste, while my family members are ok with them. I vomited a few times trying to take meats. Wonder if this is fated? I recall an interesting incident many years ago that might probably tell.

One day, my family went to buy satay to eat together at home. We hardly had satay at home in my hometown, and this is in fact the only time I also ate together as I can remember. (I just enjoy chewing the satay but not really its taste. Odd huh?) Something interesting then happened. Well, you normally will not find any bone from satay, unless the hawker had missed it accidentally. Now the incident:

We bought 20 satay sticks altogether. I took 4 sticks to eat, and I found real 'genuine' chicken bones (later examined by my family members too) in 3 out of that 4 sticks! While they didn't find any bone in other sticks! I swear that I did not choose them purposely as I didn't see the bones before I eat them. I treat it as a sign that I was fated to be discouraged from taking meats, ha... So now the mathematical questions:

• There are 20 satay sticks, and bones are found in 3 of them. What is the probability that, when you choose 4 of them randomly, you picked up the 3 sticks with bone?
• Given the same scenario, what is the probability if you choose only 3 of them randomly but happened to picked up all the 3 sticks with bone? (I might have picked those 3 too if I only choose 3 of them. Unfortunately this cannot be verified now.)

Check below for the solution. Think first if you can!

Problem

If you run a fullscreen Windows application in Linux using wine, the desktop panel sometimes overlaps your application. You are then unable to see or click the part of the interface that is covered.

Note that this problem exists only when (in winecfg)

1. "Emulate a virtual desktop" (under Graphics tab) is disabled, and
2. "Allow the window manager to control the windows" (under Graphics tab) is enabled.

Workaround

I discover this one by accident. I personally think that it is less troublesome than others. Here it goes:

Last Updated: 01-Dec-2008

After installing Ubuntu on a desktop PC, you may want use a bootloader other than GRUB for some reasons. (And this, a very nasty one, is mine.) You can choose to use extlinux [syslinux.zytor.com], which is a variant of the famous syslinux [syslinux.zytor.com] bootloader for ext2/ext3 filesystems. The steps here have been tested on Ubuntu 8.10 but should be applicable to other Linux distros as well.

1. Preparation

You need to have a Ubuntu Live Installation CD / USB stick to do the job.

Things I have done to install my GNU/Linux boxes with Ubuntu 8.10.

Last Updated: 01-Dec-2008

1. Requirements

My requirements for my GNU/Linux box:

• Do not compromise system performance for fancier graphics
• A comfortable environment for software development + entertainment!

I read from a newspaper that there would be a blood donation drive in Cheras Leisure Mall on 21-Sep-08, and I went there for my 32nd donation. I reached there in the morning to hopefully get my turn in shorter time. I did.

As usual, I registered for donation and answered the questionnaire prepared. I'm worried about my blood pressure but it was within the normal range, great! Everything proceeded as usual. It took about 5 minutes for me to donate 450ml of blood.

I observe something in my recent blood donations. Well, before that I have to make a very absolute and clear clarification that my main motivation of donating blood is to help myself and help others who need it. Don't misunderstand my intention and motivation! :) What I observe is: A few years ago, many organizations or companies sponsored donation drive generously, so donors would get some gifts as bonus after donation. However, very few or even nobody sponsor donation drives these days. Of course this will not stop regular donors from donating blood. I just wonder that, this phenomenon is most probably due to economic recession. Global economic recession is really there!

If you wonder why I always write about blood donation, I was actually inspired by a secondary teacher who is also a blogger a few years ago. I don't know him in person, but just happened to read a few posts by him about blood donation. He is blogging in Cikgu Lee (in Malay) and Cikgu Lee (in English). I think it's good to spread the message about blood donation around. Anyway he writes more and better than me about blood donation, check it out if you like.