Without me noticing, my Internet life now revolves around Google. I just like everything about Google. If Google has a branch in Malaysia, and they are looking for software engineer, I surely apply one. Hehehe. Google has so many fresh and new ideas on how they can revolutionize the world of internet, and they also seem to be a pioneer in quite a few of new technologies.

Those days, Yahoo was the very first search engine that I have come across. Search engine is one of the goddest in internet world. Without it, searching internet is impossible, and you have to rely on the published URLs list. Then came Astalavista and Hotbot and few others. But when Google came into the rivalry, I use no other than Google for my search engine.

Why Google search engine beats the others? Well. If you every use Yahoo before during those days, at the still very early age of internet, the result from Yahoo search engine really rely on their directory. Meaning people will register their website on Yahoo directory, and those URLs will be available for others to search.

What does this mean? Meaning if I have a website, and I don’t submit it to Yahoo directory, then my website will not be searchable by others.

So, when Google came it, it has this thing what we called “crawler robot”. This crawler, like the same said, will crawl the internet, visiting one webpage after another while digesting the content of the website for keywords, and that will be used for the search engine.

Again, what does this mean? It means that, I don’t have to worry about registering or submitting my website info to any search engine directory. I just wait for the crawler to visit my website, and eventually, my website will be available in the search engine. So, those days, by doing a search at Google, I get more search results. That was why I moved to Google as my favourite search engine that time.

Picasa has been around for a period of time already, and that time, you have to buy to use its full features. Since the booming of digital camera, and since I acquired one, I have plenty of digital photos that I take, and somehow, I need a way of organizing it. I tried a few other photo organizer software, but Picasa wins my heart due to its simplicity, resembling iPhoto a bit and it’s fast.

Not long after that, Google acquired Picasa, and now you can get it for free. Yay! Hail to Goole. I use Picasa extensively to manage my 8GB worth of digital photos.

Have you come across a scenario that you write something in Microsoft Word, but you forgot where you save it. Then you use Window’s built in “Search” to look for the file, you set it to search for the *.doc file in the entire harddisk. And have you ever experience how long it takes to search the whole harddisk?

In the past also, I tried to enable Indexing Services in Windows so that the search is faster in the event like this, but it is just using too much resources and slows down my computer.

And again, the super wooper Google has a solution for this by introducing Google Desktop Search. The indexing service runs in the background, and it only indexes your computer when it is idle. What does this mean? It will not interfere when you are using the CPU resources, therefore you won’t experience a slowdown.

And what’s the verdict like for the search speed? It is amazing fast. You can imagine Windows built is like a grandma with a stoller walking in the park, and Google Desktop Engine is like bullet train travelling at the speed of 186 miles an hour.

The lastest version of Google Desktop Search has the above sidebar. It is so useful and I really use it.

And what more that Google Desktop Search benefits me? At work, my Outlook inbox has approx 10,000 emails, ranging from the emails that I recieved and emails that I sent. And my boss always send me email like this :

Imran. Do you remember the hole count report that you prepared for XYZ survey last year? Can you resend it to me?

Also, most of the times when any issues arise for any of the project, I always refer back to the email chains that go back and forward between me, internal department and client. And have you tried using Outlook’s built in search? We are not talking about grandma with stroller speed here, but we are talking about the speed of tortise to get from point A to point B.

And how Google Desktop Search helps me with this? Well, I just type in the keyword that I want to search, and walla, in several seconds, all the emails containing the keyword will be displayed. I’m lovin’ it!!!

Long ago, KeyHole has this software that you can browse the globe interactively. I did get a 30 day trial account. And I was fascinated by how we can zoom the map from the outer space until we can see the roof of the building.

With Google acquiring this product, and rebrand it as Google Earth, it is now free.

It is something that I use everything, but it is fun to use during your free time. And don’t you know that Kuala Lumpur has already have high detailed map in Google Earth?

I am one of the early user of Hotmail, signing up not long after it is launched. That explains why I can secure mohd_imran [at] hotmail.com for myself (heheheh). It used to be so cool, but nowadays, what 2MB can do for you? I received a lot of junks email at that address and my 2MB storage always get full easily.

Gmail is just a revolutionary email service from Google. When it first out, the only thing that came to my mind is, Google has done it again!!! Instead of 2MB email storage, how about 1GB of space (storage offer when its first launched). And the space keeps incresing. At the time of writing, Google offers 2695.521774 megabytes of space.

I just don’t know how can they offer such a space, and I’m curious how big is their harddisk. It must be a pool of harddisks linked together (or maybe they are using some other storage media. Someone, please enlightened me).

And now we come to the lastest Google product that change the way how I express myself online – Blogger.

The term “weblog” was coined on 17th December 1997 (referring to “web log”). Then in April or May 1999 the term “weblog” is broken into to phrases, “we blog”. That was when the word BLOG became famous.

Xanga was the first blog service out there, followed by Blogger, which was purchased by Google in February 2003. So when it is purchased by Google, you can expect so many wonderful things about it. And yes. It is true. Blogger is fast, and offer a massive space for you to upload photos.

With Blogger acquired by Google, and with so many storage for storing photo, Picasa has come out with Hello, a chat software mainly to share photos with friend, but it also has Bloggerbot where you can upload photos easily to your Blogger account.

But I seldom use this now after I get myself Flickr account, and this is from Yahoo, one of Google’s direct competitor. And I wish Google will provide this kind of online photo storage service one day.

And there is also Google Maps. I don’t use this directly in my daily life, but with the comprehensize API that it has, there’s this product called gVisit that display the visitor to your blog/website graphically on Google Maps.

I really wish Google will purchase this gVisit one day.

• 3 Comments

Huhuhu. Passing by credit card booth is always a nightmare to me. Their agents will stop you and will try so many things to persuade you to sign up. And you feel it’s really hard to escape as they will keep talking and keep following you if you are stepping away from them.

Being bumped with them quite often, I have my 2 favourite lines that work most of the time to end their attempt to persuade you to sign up. Let say the agent is trying to promote XYZ Credit Card.

The first one:

“Oh. I already have XYZ Credit card”

Knowing that you already owned the card, there’s no point for them to attend you and waste their time. They will definately stop bothering you once they here this.

And the second one:

“Aiseh. I just closed my XYZ Credit Card. I don’t like it”

This one is a bit harsh, but works. They know you have XYZ Credit Card before, and you closed it. They also know that we don’t like it. And again, they don’t want to waste their time inviting us to sign up to the thing that we hate.

But prevention is better than cure. Preventing yourself from being attended by the agents is also easy. When you know that you are about to pass the credit card booth, put your most “lansi”est face, don’t stare at them and walk straight. Believe me. The agent don’t dare to call you.

• 10 Comments

At the time of this writing, you may notice that the flash video and tagboard section is showing some wierd text.

WTF!!! www.mohdimran.com is down!!! Grrrr.. This really makes me want wants to switch to different hosting even more.

The one that I’m using now is www.mesrahosting.net. It’s my second year already that I’m on this hosting.

Back then, this hosting was very realible. Everything looks fast, and when transferring files via FTP, I really get a good speeed. And back then, the Minimum Linux Package is offering 100MB webspace with unlimited bandwidth.

But after they change the Minimum Linux Package plan to 1GB web space and 10GB bandwidth, I noticed this gets slower. And believe, I went to my website regularly, mainly to check tagboard, to check blog visitor blog etc. And there are lots of number of occurance that the website just dead for a few minutes.

It is just a matter of time that I will move to a new hosting. My current hosting sux!!!

• 9 Comments

Do you use broadband internet at home? Do you hate that very long phone cable from the wall phone socket to your room lying on the floor/wall? Do you share internet connection with your housemates? And again, do you hate those long LAN cables running everywhere?

This is the typical problem that I myself face. Usually, all the cablings at the house has been sealed behind that concrete walls of yours. So for the additional things that you add (internet cable for examle), somehow you have to nail down those cables to the wall (which will damage it), or leave it running all over your floor.

So, the first solution is to go wireless, by means of using Wifi. But you have to do some investments for this, to get Wireless router or wireless access point, and also to get the Wireless receiver on the other side.

I’ve been using wireless internet connection for a while already. It is cool really, if you have notebook. You can simple bring your notebook anywhere in your house, and get online. But the drawback of Wifi is, the transfer rate is slow. For internet use, it is faster enough to accomodate your Streamyx 1Mbps broadband line. But what if you transfer files from PC to PC a lot? Wireless B is just too slow. Wireless G costs more, but still, it is quite slow compared to normal 100Mbps LAN speed.

And there is new alternatives now available to you. Remember. Our idea is to get fast LAN speed, without the need to drill or nailing the walls to install that additional cable to network several computers together. This new technology is called Broadband over Powerline (or generally Ethernet over Powerline).

As the name says, this technology uses your existing power lines that you have in your house to deliver the broadband internet service. Picture worths a thousands words. The picture below practically explains of what this is all about.

And good news is, TMNet also has a product for this, which they call Streamyx HomePlug. Hurry up. It is at offer price of RM188 per set now. I’m thinking of getting 1 too. The package will contain 2 units of homeplug, one to be used on the sender side (i.e your broadband modem) and the other one to be used at the receiver side (i.e you computer)

Now, I can hooked up my Xbox to the LAN too, and transfer those Divx movies to the Xbox’s harddisk to be watched in at the leisure of wathing it in the living room.

p/s: Broadband Over Powerline is not a wireless solution. Meaning there is still cable to be used connecting from the power plug to your laptop/pc. Broadband Over Powerline just eliminates the need to do seperate network wiring. If you want a total wireless freedom with your notebook when accessing internet, you have to go to Wifi solution for that.

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Yes. I have two people already “beta testing” my tagboard. The first person is Eisz and the second person is Nobita.

Obviously, this tagboard is undergoing teething problem, a normal thing that we can see for any new system. It might take a while for it to become stable, and for that, I need beta tester for my program.

As a matter of fact, by giving both of them the access to the tagboard, I really get to know a few bugs that my tagboard has. And that’s what beta test is all about, asking the public to test your software and to report back the error/bug/problem that they face.

And I’d also like to thanks to others for trying the tagboard too. Too much to mention here. You know who you are ;)

Why Eisz and Nobita first?? So “pilih bulu” one
No. No “pilih bulu” one. As a matter of fact, Nobita was the first person that said that he would like to use the tagboard once it’s ready. Eisz is good friend of Nobita, of which both of them are good friends of mine. Guess at this early stage, it’s easier to have close buddies to use and test first.

Will there be the third beta tester that you will give the code to, and who will it be?
Yes. There will. I have this girl in mind actually. As a matter of fact, she kept testing my tagboard, and report all the error/bugs/problem that she faced to me (without me asking for it). Thanks to this lady. Guess she will be the third one (kalau dia naklah). And that girl is Fizz

If your new tagboard is still full of bugs, don’t you think that it is too early to announce it to eveybody? Why announce it?
This tagboard originally created for personal use only, replacing the very basic tagboard that I use before. Didn’t really expect that a few people would like to use it. Then the idea of hosting it and make it available popped up in my head. I am struggling very hard to get all the bugs fixed, and to sort out the hosting issue of this tagboard pretty soon.

Ok! Ok! So when will it be available for others to use?
I can’t tell really. There are still so much things to do and to fine tune. I just have a feeling that it is not suitable yet for others to use. Maybe, in a month time??!!!

Waahhhh!!! Why so long one?
Heh. I can’t seem to keep a balance between my career life (things that I do at office that generate money at the end of the month) and my hobby life (internet, creating mini software / web application that everybody can use). It seems that my career life is taking most of my time.

Oklah. So how do I know that your tagboard is ready for others to register
Hhhmm.. Guess you have to visit my blog regularlylah. Hehehehe. The announcement can go out anytime.

• 3 Comments

Once again, the header of my blog template has changed again. I made this template changes in tribute to the 2 cockroaches that I killed in the past 2 weeks.

My heart is filled with gentleness in nature (people who knows me can tell. hehehehe). I have voilence, and as a matter of fact, I hate it so much. I very hate those killings that I see on the television. I hate to see things get killed. Anyway, this is already on the bigger scale. Lets go to the smaller scale hatred towards killing, shall we….

Whether you believe or not, all in my life, during Hari Raya Haji, I never been to the place where people slaughtered the cow. I don’t know, I just have this eerie feeling. It is not that I’m afraid of the blood, but I feel so pity looking at those alive and healthy cows had to end their lives at the tip of the knife. I can’t bare seeing those cows being slaughtered alive.

And shall we go to even smaller scale? A week and half ago (I think), while unpacking my stuff from the box, I found this very big cockroach. I couldn’t find my Ridsect Cockroach Killer, and I’m afraid the cockroach will run away. You know, cockroach can grows exponentially in number. I don’t want my new house is infested with cockroaches. I have no choice but to hit the cockroach, but I miss. The cockroach run like hell, very fast, faster that I ever see cockroach runs before. I chase the cockroach and give a second hit. I hit the bull, when I found out that cockroach is carrying an egg. No wonder. It tried to protect its egg. See. Even cockroaches take a good care of their eggs.

And 3 days ago, another cockroach came out from the bedside drawer. This time I have Ridsect nearby already. Without further ado, I spray the cockroach. But I feel guilty so guilty after that. I see that cockroach strugling like it in really deep pain. I not dare too look at the cockroach, but I can’t help it. Really. The cockroach really look at it is suffering big time from the pain. I keep thinking what if I’m at that cockroach place. I rather die quickly than has to suffer the pain for quite a long time. I end up hitting the cockroach with the book again, let it died quickly rather that it is suffering like that.

Well… That is one of the strange thing about me, that I myself don’t understand it.

View my other template changes

• Aquarium fish
• Have a great weekend
• On Vacation
• April Fool
• Bubble Bear
• M’re Goes Dirty
• Chinese New Year 2006
• Happy New Year 2006
• Christmas 2005
• Fish
• More template tweaks
• Scroller added
• Template finalized

View my past template header in action at
http://www.mohdimran.com/_blog_header_/

• 6 Comments

It’s the epidemic time of the year again. I really hate this. It all started with one or two people having flu and cough. Eventually, everybody got infected, including me.

Last Friday, I started to cough, and my throat starts to generate a lot of mucus. And at the same time, I have a runny nose also. Kept sneezing and sometimes I get stuffed nose too.

The weather is not being easy on me too. It is very hot during the day time, and quite chilled during the night. Several times I woke up during my sleep in the night, feeling so cold with pain in my chest. It is not due to the heart burn, but due to mass amount of mucus in my throat where I need to go to toilet. cough up and spit the mucus out.

Guess I will pay a visit to the nearby doctor later today.

• 5 Comments

I have Streamyx 1.0M installed at my house last Monday. Anyway, this is the first time I’m using Streamyx for my broadband needs. When I was at my old house, Maxis was the phone line provider there, and I can’t get Streamyx, and ended up using broadband service for some other company which their fastest package is only 256kbps.

By subscribing to Streamyx 1.0M package, I really expected that it should be lighting fast. But it’s really irritating, when I did the bandwidth check last Monday, I only get around 380kbps. Maybe they just activate my line, and needs time for the speed to come to the full throttle.

Tuesday, I did the test again. Still the same range,, varying from 330kbps to 380kbps, and never get over 400kbps. Anyway, my line was only activated around 7:45 yesterday, which is after office hour already. Guess it takes 1 day before they configure the speed of my connection.

Wednesday, back from work, did the same bandwidth test again. What the. I’m still getting the same speed. Tak boleh jadi ni. I asked my friend, who is using 512kbps package, and who lived at the same block as mine, to do the same bandwidth test. He said that he gets 415kbps from his test.

Waaa.. This is absurd. How come his 512k package gets faster rate that my 1M package.

Thurday, I keep thinking about what’s wrong with my Streamyx. 4:30pm, fed up and annoyed with the problem, let’s give Streamyx’s Customer Interaction Center at 1-300-88-9515 a call, when I realize that they only operates from 8am to 12noon. I have no choice than to left email to them.

Friday (todaylah), woke up late for work. Hehehe. But I still manage to get online for several minutes before heading to shower. As usual, the very first thing that I do every morning for the past 3 days is to test the bandwidth.

Wooaa.. I suddenly not feel sleepy at all by looking at the result of the bandwidth speed from JARING Bandwidth Test

Just to make sure, did another test at TM Net Speedometer.

Yippe.. I guess the problem has been solved already. I guess I’m lucky that it didn’t take too long before the customer care centre attend to my email.

Below is the PDF printout of my Streamyx installation that I ask the technician to print last Monday from his Streamyx Appoinment Management System (SAMS)

Looking at it, speed status is Not Configure. Perhaps that guy forgot to configure my speed, that’s why I’m not getting the speed that I should get. I might be wrong about it, but who cares. As long as my internet speed is fast now ;)

• 10 Comments

Aahhh… Now I can have a long exhale seeing M’re’s Tag Board (name subject to change in the future) has finally up and running with most of its basic features (more advance features will be coming soon)

My blog started with no tagboard in at the start. Main reason, I don’t want to use ready made tagboard out there. You see, as programmer, you have this ego, where if you can program it yourself, why use others?

So below is the very first tagboard that I have program, with very minimal features, but it serves its purpose as a tagboard.

After using it for a while, I just get sick the the plain look of it, and the lack of features that it have. Then in October last year, I made another searching on the web to find if there is any cool tagboard codes out there, when I stumble upon Leospirit Chatter Box.

Wow. It’s really cool. I like the smilies bit. Very cute. Judging at the messages in the forum, it seems that the creator of Leospirit Chatter Box is Malaysian. But hey, there’s this ego again on why using the one that has been programmed by others? Furthermore, it’s not free.

Many of you has probably come across Junaidix’s Msjbox. Man… This guy is quite a phenomenal tagboard creator too, and he is Malaysian too. Malaysian rocks!!! There are so many people using his Msjbox, and a few of Msjbox Officials and users are good blog friend of mine too.

And there was this time when my tagboard is down, due to my hosting reaching its bandwidth limit (as the result of people leeching my Flash Video).

I got invitation from Noush and Meera to join Msjbox that time. Sorry girls I didn’t actually sign up. It is not that I don’t want, but it’s the ego thing that I mentioned earlier ;) No heart feelings ya!!!

So, let see what my new tag board has to offer. We can look at the features from two views

• Blog visitor side (user features)
• Blog owner side (admin features)

For blog visitor
Below is what all of your blog visitors will see:

1. The information about the blog visitor that left the message is displayed
   graphically here. Country will be detected based on the visitor’s IP address. WWW and/or email icons will be displayed if visitors left his/her URL and/or email
2. After leaving a message on the tagboard, the visitor has the ability to delete the message, in the event the visitor change his/her mind of not posting the message, or there is an error in the message and the visitor wants to delete and retype the correct one. This option is only valid within 1 hour after the message has been left
3. Blog visitor can see the reply to his/her message in its own thread. Meaning, there’s no need for the blog owner to open up another message thread just to reply to the message left by the visitor
4. Finally, smilies are easily accessible right at where the visitor will be writing the message. No more pop up window

For blog owner
The admin feature for the blog owner to administer his/her tagboard is designed so that everything takes place in the tagboard window itself. There’s no need for the blog owner to visit some other page to do basic day to day administration tasks.

The admin login icon is neatly placed at the bottom right hand side of the tagboard.

Clicking the said button, you will be presented with the login window to the admin side of the tagboard.

Once you have successfully logged in, you will see there are additional buttons are displayed, and you can administer your tagboard right from your own blog without needing to go to seperate admin page.

1. All the day-to-day use basic admin tasks are right there for you to use. You can reply, edit or delete the message that has been left of your tagboard
2. You can also edit or delete the reply that you have left to the messages left by your blog visitor

Replying to the message is simple. A pop up window will be displayed showing the original message that you are trying to reply. And you will be presented with the same text entering and smilies system as what your blog visitors are using to left message on your tagboard.

It goes the same to editing the message/reply. You will be using the same text entering and smilies system.

Finally, if you ever had a bad relationship with your blog visitor, and they left messages that wasn’t suppose to be said at all, get rid of those by deleting them. No worries, all delete task will be presented with confirmation message. So you don’t have to worry of accidently clicking the delete button.

Do expect to see more advance features in the nearest future.

Want to get one??????

Errr… I’m afraid currently this tagboard is not opened yet for registration. You see. There are quite many things that take place on my web hosting. My bandwidth is very limited (really wish I have more to spare). But I’ll try my best to get this available for the rest to use (errr.. kalau ada yg nak guna lah)

Finally, some credits that I would like to give, as a token of appreciation from me

• Junaidix’s Msjbox to inspire me of creating a Malaysian grown web application. You rock, and your Msjbox is rocker and your Msjbox friends are rockest. Hope that you finally can pinpoint the irresponsible person that did the DoS attack to your hosting
• Hotscripts for having a wonderful PHP codes repository, which I can get idea on how to get my tagboard done
• Shouthuns for idea on how tagboard with reply system should looks like. I even steal this cute smile icon
• phpBB for that cute WWW, email, reply, edit, delete, about and admin icons
• IP-to-Country for having a very comprehensive database and sample implementation on how to translate IP address into country code
• NeoWORX for that cute looking flag icons
• Nobta, [ed], moon, m@rts & meera for keep asking me when the tagboard is going to finish. That really drives me to complete this thing
• And to all my blog visitors. You all make me keep going in this blogging world

p/s: isk.. cam ucapan menang anugerah plak

• 16 Comments

To view the video for this, select Final Fantasy X – Suteki da ne from the dropdown list of this page.

Artist  :  Final Fantasy X Song  :  Suteki da ne Album  :  Final Fantasy X

Kaze ga yoseta kotoba ni
Oyoida kokoro
Kumo ga hakobu ashita ni
Hazunda koe

Tsuki ga yureru kagami ni
Furueta kokoro
Hoshi ga nagare koboreta
Yawarakai namida

Suteki da ne
Futari te wo tori aruketa nara
Ikitai yo
Kimi no machi, ie, ude no naka

Sono mune
Karada azuke
Yoi ni magire
Yume miru

Kaze ga tomari kotoba wa
Yasashii maboroshi
Kumo wa yabure ashita wa
Tooku no koe

Tsuki ga nijimu kagami wo
Nagareta kokoro
Hoshi ga yurete koboreta
Kakusenai namida

Suteki da ne
Futari te wo tori aruketa nara
Ikitai yo
Kimi no machi, ie, ude no naka

Sono kao
Sotto furete
Asa ni tokeru
Yume miru

Meta Tag: rikki, suteki, da, ne, lirik, lyric, lyrics

• 0 Comments