boon's log stardate 3503.05
Mars Sighting! Three of us went on top the PG8 Multistorey Carpark, equipped with our faithful Canon PowerShot A40s hoping to catch a good glimpse and pic of the red planet. What we saw was just a small orange-y star, directly above Pulau Jerejak. Polar Ice Caps?! What polar ice caps?! Beansprouts are at least 3-4 times bigger than the planet from where we were standing. Ambitious...? Most definitely!

Anyway, in honour of our efforts (to the extend of braving 2 security guards), here are the images that we were able to capture with a slight mist reflecting the lamps from the carpark...


Shooting Date/Time: 8/28/2003 10:26:21 PM
Shooting Mode: Manual
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 15
Av( Aperture Value ): 4.8
Metering Mode: Evaluative
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: 5.4 - 16.2mm
Focal Length: 16.2mm
Digital Zoom: None
AF Mode: Single


Shooting Date/Time: 8/28/2003 10:22:08 PM
Shooting Mode: Manual
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 15
Av( Aperture Value ): 4.8
Metering Mode: Evaluative
ISO Speed: 200
Lens: 5.4 - 16.2mm
Focal Length: 16.2mm
Digital Zoom: None
AF Mode: Single

Mars Facts and Figures
1. Between Aug 26th to 28th, Mars gets as close to Earth as it has been in 60,000 years - a gigantuous (NASA calls it "mere") 55.8 million km (34.6 million miles). The next one will be in the year 2287.
2. Temperature in Mars rarely rises above freezing temp and can fall to a low of -225degF (-143degC). Even on the hottest days, it only sometimes climbs to 0degF (-18degC). From day to night it can drop as much as 212degF (100degC).
3. A 100-pound person would weigh only about 38 pounds on Mars. (yeah, baby!)
4. Martian atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide; with only small amounts of oxygen. Nitrogen, carbon monoxide, argon, neon and krypton are also present.
5. Why does Mars appears to be red? The reddish soil takes its color from the oxidized iron.The Martian sky is pinkish because of the red dust that is in the atmosphere.

Extra:
In the midst of taking multiple images of Mars, we saw some strange phenomenon up in the sky. We were unsure of what it was, but we just took some images of this unique sighting. It is too premature to classify this as a UFO sighting. It does look like some sort of unidentified lifeform - like some jelly fish or something. any ideas?




boon out...

boon's log stardate 3503.03
Woke up this morning and found that the last suckermouth catfish was stuck between the wood and the pebbles at the bottom. Darn! What kind of fish would actually get stuck in between the wood and the pebbles? Anyway, thus is life. Sometimes we just think we can squeeze through some problems or hit a certain target, knowing well there is a high chance we may not make it, but we still want to do it. My suckermouth catfish is a great risk taker, man!

OR probably the fish is pretty tired of my measly little tank that it decided to call it quits and just kicked the bucket! "I'm just gonna stick me head into that chunk of wood and DIE! DIE KIMOSABE!"

Anyway, here is a pic of me tank after having a few more plants in there. Bought the Corkscrew Vallisneria and another red-coloured plant which I thin is called Broad Leaf Ludwigia, but I have yet to find out the name or a pic.


Day 19. The Tank - Front view.


Day 19. The Tank - Side view.

Notice in the second pic, that the initial plant cabomba caroliniana has roots growing out of the middle of the plant. This is interesting, creating a weeping willow kind of view in the tank.

boon out...

boon's log stardate 3503.01
Patriotism or something else?

Check out this car! Imagine how dangerous it is for this car to be rolling around on the streets!? And the enforcement officers or the police actually allows this car to be running around, endangering the lives of others and rather be spending time catching people holding hands in the park? Aiyiyiyiyi...

Was at the MATTA Fair last weekend and did not find anything interesting except for the Sony Mini DV DCR-PC105E which was going for RM3599.99 (promotional price, orig. was RM3999.99) PLUS a free Remote-Controlled Tripod Stand (VCT-D480RM) and a Original Semi-Hard Case which comes up to about RM600 - reducing the price of the cam to a smacking RM3000.00. It was quite a bargain. But... the Federation council has decided against it. Anyway...

lots to do today, more later. boon out...

boon's log stardate 3403.04 supplementary B
One cool thing we discussed yesterday is about how the Seal Script Chinese characters were developed/generated. The first script that is still of relevance today is the "Seal Script" zhuan4shu1. It is the result of the efforts of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di (The Tiger Emperor), in the standardization of the Chinese script when he united the Warring States into a magnificent empire. The Seal Script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read the seal script, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the seal script remains an art in China today.

According to legend, one day, the emperor went to pay his top calligrapher a surprised visit - the one empowered to standardize the Chinese Calligraphic characters, but the assistant found out that the calligrapher was asleep. To avoid disappointing the emperor, the assistant collected some scripts that were in the midst of being created from the calligrapher's drawing-board for the emperor for examination. In the process, there may have been a mixed up between the meanings of the words with the words themselves. We all know that the Chinese characters are very closely related with the shape of what the words stands for. For example, this word


This is tian2, meaning padi field. Observe the shape of the square-ish padi fields?

Here is another one. The very basic "Man" or ren2. The character replicates a human walking.


However, check these out...

The "tian2" in the middle with the 4 legs at the bottom would have suggested an animal who works in the field (tian2) or a Cow (niu2). But the actual meaning of the character is fish or yu2

Compare with this one

Rotate it 90degC to the right and connect the lines, you will get the shape of a fish.

But the actual meaning of the character is Cow...

Spot anything similar yourselves? Let me know. Write to boon

Amazing? Believe it or not...

boon out...

boon's log stardate 3403.04 supplementary A
One of the guppies died last night while I was half way watching tele and generating burn-in sequences. When I went home, I noticed that one of the guppies had some sort of infection on the outer layer just above the left pectoral fins, with some sort of fungus that can be observed with the naked eye. This was around 2300hours. At about 0100hours, the fish was swimming vertically. At about 0200 hours, the guppy was found resting, motionless in between the leaves of the cabomba caroliniana. The guppy was immediately evacuated from the Tank. Tank population is down to 3 Guppies, 4 Neon Tetras, 4 Cardinal Tetras, 3 Albino Tetras and 2 Midget Suckermouth Catfishes.

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boon's log stardate 3403.04
Sun Tzu's Art of War was quite interesting, but I still cannot put my finger onto how this "art of war" can be applied onto my daily work life. Anyways, out of the 13 chapters, the trainer only managed to reach Chapter 3: Attack by Strategem. He spent most his time talking about his life experiences and what he has read before somewhere, sometime ago. For instance, did you know that McDonald's was really setup in the 50's by a Mr. McDonald? And the latest owner of McDonald's (before he died some years ago) was actually a milkshake machine salesman, Raymond Kroc, who later joined Mr. McDonald in expanding McDonald's as a franchising multi-million dollar fastfood chain? The current overall owner of the McDonald's chain is his widowed wife, Mrs. Raymond Kroc, who lives in Chicago and earns USD$45,000,000.00 a month and, check this out - during McDonald's peak, there is a McDonald's Restaurant being opened on the globe every 7 minutes. Imagine, the time needed to order a plate of Char Koay Teow and then eat it - voila! another McDonald's is set up! Apparently, for every cent that Kroc earns, Bill gates earns USD$200. Amazing? Believe it or not... Well, all these stories were interesting at first, but it gets kinda boring when you are ovedosed with it, especially after lunch.

Okay.

Read in the newspapers yesterday that the infamous Penthouse Magazine (or General Media Inc.) is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection on Tuesday so it can restructure debt and operations. Can you imagine that? You (or at least myself) would have though that folks in the porn industry will survive the storm no matter what the economy's condition is. Some media sources said that it is mainly due online competitors and also bond payments that really "choked off" the company. The headline was quite ironic, "Penthouse goes Bust". Read more? Check it out HERE.

But what do you think about the government's strict law against/banning pornography? I remember when I was in college, one of the lecturers who read E&E Engineering in college(Masters, Berkeley), said that he does not think that it is wise to have a strict law governing pornography - giving an example that if you are walking in a park and there is a whole row of beautiful roses, daisies, carnations, etc.. AND then there is this sign, "Please do not pluck the flowers". Tendency is that more people will pluck the flowers - being human and all that - as compared if there is no sign. It is either a classic case of rebellion or a "Cuba Try" attitude (or an inquisitive attitude). He went on saying that without the ban, and when people are given the rights to choose what they think is good for them, it will help in terms of building the overall maturity of the person and perhaps it will also minimize on harrasment issues. Well, let me know what you think... vote buttons are to the right of the screen.

boon out...

boon's log stardate 3403.2
Fishes are still going on strong. The Tank has (I believe) come to an ecological equilibrium. Need to get more plants though. Went to the shop at the Sunrise round-a-bout near Gurney Drive last weekend (the place where I bought my new guppies). They are selling some sort of anti-ammonia balls that can be dumped into the tank - regardless of whether there is excessive ammonia in the tank. Balls cost RM6 each and from now until the end of the month, there is a promo of buy-one-get-one-free. Not a bad bargain. But since I already have my SeaChem Ammonia Indicator thingy, I did not get it last weekend. Perhaps at the end of the month, when the indicator shows ALERT or ALARM.

The shop (Rainbow Angel) is loaded with guppies and tetras! Guppies ranging from RM1.20 each to RM35 each. Amazing... ly expensive! Also, there is a new batch of tetras arriving this Wednesday.

They also sell dogs. There is this extremely cute (not forgetting expensive(!!!) - a whopping RM1200) Shih Tzu in the shop that keeps nibbling on your fingers when you hand it to him. We like the dog a lot but are having problems getting & keeping the dog due to maternal conlflicts with the idea of keeping a dog... at home.

Anyways, here are some pictures I took last weekend.


This sunset photo was taken outside Rasa Sayang Hotel, Batu Ferringhi.


Dinosaur eggs?

EXTRA: Wanna know how one of London's top Radio Station studio looks like, 24hours a day? Fancy checking out Capital FM's Live webcam feed link at boon's webcam links...

by the way, be sure you be careful when you are hunting for webcams over the internet. What happened yesterday was I clicked on a xxx site webcam! And whoa momma! Lo and behold, naked ladies started to pop-up on my screen! It was like playing Gophers, trying to close the windows as fast as I can! Darn... I am sure there were at least 5-6 windows opened with undressed women... geezzz....

boon out...

Funny signs & brands


This one was detected at the back of PG12 building. Just imagine, 42000 gals....

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Friday, August 15, 2003

TANK DEATH RATE UNDER CONTROL

TANK, Batu Ferringhi (TP) - The death toll remains at 5 last night in
the Tank, here at Batu Ferringhi, Penang. Tank City NTHD (National Tank Health Dept.)
believes that the Flex GEO Liquid might have just done the trick in controlling the number
of deaths in the Tank.

"We believe we have the situation under control," Prof. Bo, representative of the NTHD
said in a press conference outside the Tank here yesterday. "We will continue to monitor
the overall health of the Tank for the next few days. Ammonia level is also healthy," he
continued.

Autopsy results show that the 4 initial guppies that died were most probably caused by
old age. This was further confirmed by lab experts from another community similar to that
of the Tank.

Population of the Tank has also increased to 17 from 13 last night with 4 new Guppy
immigrants that has joined the Tank community. After stringent health checks by the NTHD,
the new comers were happily welcomed into the community by the sity dwellers.

Tank dwellers are seen to be more relaxed and relieved with the death rate controlled.

"Let's hope that we can sustain this," said Mayor Be Kay. - (TankPress)


The Tank Community - Looking healthy.


SeaChem Ammonia Alert Sensor with Suckermouth Catfish below.


New Guppy Immigrants.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

DEATH TOLL AT TANK RISES, CAUSE IS STILL UNKNOWN

TANK, Batu Ferringhi (TP) - The death toll rises to 5 last night in
the Tank, here at Batu Ferringhi, Penang. The 5 were 2 Male Guppies that died on
Wednesday, and 2 more Guppies and 1 Albino Tetra last night. The cause of the
mysterious deaths is still unknown. Authorities have quarantined the area and
the National Tank Health Department (NTHD) has been summoned to investigate on
the alarming issue.

The NTHD representative, Prof. Bo bin Fan, said that the first suspect was
that the tank had excessive ammonia content. However, the environment in the
tank has been screened with NTHD's latest technology known as the SeaChem
Ammonia Alert Sensor 2003 and according to the data collected, the level of
ammonia in the tank is still within the "SAFE" region.

The SeaChem Ammonia Alert Sensor is an innovative color device that detects
and monitors toxic free ammonia.

"We have removed the unfortunate individuals from the tank and they were
sent to our labs for autopsy," Prof. Bo said.

"In the meantime as a precaution, we have treated all the remaining
dwellers of Tank with Japan's No.1 treatment solution, Flex Geo Liquid.
Historically, Geo Liquid has proven to create ideal water environment conditions,
neutralizes chlorine, buffers pH, recreates natural balance in closed
environments," Prof. Bo added.

The dwellers have expressed concerns with the alarming death rate at the Tank.
Tank Mayor, Sir Bee Kay has advised the dwellers not to be too worried and
stressed as this will only make matters worse.

"We are doing whatever we can," he said.

Tank is a new community, recently set up in Batu Ferringhi and had a
population of 18. - (TankPress)

Kualiti baik punya...


A scene at one of the hot spots for VCDs in Penang... Nearly lost my life taking this photo, though...

Fire in the Sky

A picture I took a while back, on top of the PG8 Multistorey carpark... This is actually a real photograph, despite claims that this was taken somewhere else other than in Intel! Sometimes we just have to look and at the most unexpected time, in the most unexpected place, there you will find "a sight for sore eyes*"

*MOVIE TEASER: do you know which movie this phrase was taken from?

Sunset at Ferringhi

Tazty Cafe!



In honour of the restaurant that we frequent a lot for lunch! Nice food, reasonable prices... They even have their own website.

http://www.heilongjiangsoya.com/tasty.html

boon out...

Presenting...... My Tank


Here is a picture of the tank that we set up last weekend. We have 4 Guppies (Red Mosaic), 4 Cardinal Tetras, 4 Albino Tetras, 4 Neon Tetras and 2 Midget Suckermouth Catfish

The sad thing is that 2 of the male guppies died this morning. Last night, the tail of one of the guppies started to break into pieces. When I woke up this morning, that guy died - together with the other male. Rootcause of the death is still yet to be determined. The other two female guppies are not doing that well either - does not look good, they look depressed. I fear that they are the next to go. Could be the water. Planning to get some indicator chart of some sort tonight for the tank. Perhaps more plants.

As a memorial of our guppies, here is a photograph of them 2 days ago. They look so healthy and happy swimming about in the tank....



Not planning to get any new guppies until we find out what is happening in the tank that is causing the pioneer guppies to die. Investigation goes on...

The tetras are really cool fishes. They are not as depressed-looking as the guppies. Really lively bunch of fellas. Hope that they will be strong enough and live longer than the guppies. The cool thing is the way they swim in schools or packs...

The suckermouth catfishes? They are doing great! Sucking here and there. I am just afraid that I do not have enough algae for those "suckers" to consume. That is why I am planning to get some more plants for them. They been doing a good job in cleaning up the left overs as well. Good thing is that they do not grow any bigger than what they are now.

Anyway, here are some good sites where you can find more information about setting up a tank and about fishes that I found useful.

http://www.aquahobby.com/
http://www.liveaquaria.com/
http://www.guppies.com/
http://www.aaquaria.com/aquasource/cycling.shtml
http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/Setting.htm
http://www.petfish.net/equip.htm

boon out...

"... Mine! Mine! Mine!..."
Close-up photo a cool Steven "Seagull" at La Jolla, San Diego. :) I guess it is the extensive interaction with people over here at the La Jolla beach front, that these cute guys are not afraid of people....

Here is a picture of a squirrel which I saw in La Jolla, San Diego while attending the IAA 2003 Banquet.
This little fella is really adorable - it just sat there and let's you take a photo of it - ...or perhaps it is too fat to move. The cool thing is, when you point the camera at it, it turns to you and then just..... freezes.

Boon's first log in blog spot

Introduced by Kew, I find that this is a pretty cool way of expressing stuffs (well, not all of 'em - if you know what I mean. Ahem!) and share some cool stuffs over the web with all the fellows in the same ship or fellowship, for short. Also a good way to share some photographs and stuffs like that over the web.

I shall be returning in here quite frequently, as they always say, "Hangat-hangat tahi ayam!" (Hot-Hot Chicken Shit, in Malay) or how the Chinese put it, "San See Hang!" (New WC!). Well, we'll see how this goes. Hope it works out...

So, let me know what do you think of this place...

boon out...