My.Vista.Experience

After struggling for two days, I've finally managed to get Windows Vista to recognize my ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics card. It is a common problem for me for every operating system that I install, since my notebook comes with a widescreen and I have to get the correct driver to set the display at 1280 x 800. Otherwise, the display will be crappie.

My initial installation problems on Friday night was due to the extraction program that I used which truncates the long filenames to 8 characters. That causes the installation to throw a "Setup Loader" error everyime I run it. After realising the problem, I mounted the .iso file as a virtual drive and everything works fine.

Gettin' Started With Vista!

I did not install Windows Vista on a Virtual Machine but installed it directly on a separate partition on my notebook. The installation takes approximately 45 minutes, going through two reboots and the final configuration. Steps that require human interaction have been drastically reduced in the installation and I'm very happy with that. The screens also looks better now.

After the installation, I went on to configure the drivers for my notebook. My first attempt to use the drivers that comes with the .iso was futile. I guessed I must have corrupted the driver store and since then, no drivers can be installed. I reinstalled the whole thing again this morning and used the drivers that came with HP Compaq. Everything works fine now.

However, I noticed that the Aero Glass interface was not enabled. I immediately went to ATI's web-site but there were no updated Catalyst Drivers for my graphics card and their new drivers for Windows Vista beta 1 does not contain the drivers for my card either. To my disappointment, I discovered Radeon 9200 doesn't support DirectX 9 and therefore won't be able to support the Aero Glass interface. I need atleast a Radeon 9600 to experience the new Aero Glass interface with all those transparent and translucent effects.

I will have to stick to the plane Aero interface. By the way, Aero stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open. But I prefer the previous Slate interface better. Anyway, as long as it can run on 1280 x 800, I'm happy!

I won't be providing a lengthy review since I believe almost every web-site out there have been posting reviews on the OS. One of them is Winsupersite. You can read all about it there. So far, I have encountered several crashes and have been sending crash reports to Microsoft but the crashes are no big deal, the system is still up and running.

One feature I find very amusing with Windows Vista is the speech recognition. I have been playing with it for the whole afternoon, training it to recognise my voice. Hopefully, I don't have to type my blogs anymore in the near future ;) One thing I noticed is that IE7 runs ok on this as compared to running on WindowsXP. There were no lags. Also, the OS seems to boot faster than WindowsXP (Probably I have not installed any applications on it yet).

I will be installing Visual Studio 2005 on it next as I would love to try out XAML in the Windows Presentation Foundation. That's the new name for Avalon, and Indigo has also been renamed to Windows Communications Foundation. To start developing, you can checkout the new Windows Vista Developer site. A lot of useful resources there.

Ok, before I go, here are some screen shots I took on my notebook.


The new Start Menu, Windows Explorer and Control Panel


Internet Explorer 7 (Tabs!!!) and Windows Explorer


Media Player and Windows Explorer Showing Pictures.

Watch.This.Watch.That

Went for a 'Movie Walkathon' today - that's what I call it for watching 2 shows in a row (Marathon is 3 shows). It was planned since yesterday. The plan was to watch Stealth at 12:00 PM and Seven Swords at 3:30 PM. Too bad can't make it for The Island at night, otherwise, that will really be a Marathon. *Totally Zombied*

Woke up this morning and felt that after struggling for the whole night till 1:00 AM with Windows Vista, I think I deserve a break even more. Details on the Vista thing later but first, here are the movie reviews.

STEALTH

I would like to start my review with a lesson I learned:

"Don't turn on the computer during a storm."

This movie is pretty much ok lah - not too bad. Another one of those US Navy and Air-Force movie lah, you know those that had filled our cinemas and TV sets - Boy, I'm sure it will bring back good-old memories for my dad during his air-force days.

The story begins where it is a time where new hi-tech toys are required for modern warfare and three pilots where chosen out of 10,000 to fly futuristic looking stealth fighters (F/A-37 Talon). Two minutes into the movie and you can these warplanes in action taking out SAM sites, destroying un-animated transport vehicles and sending missiles into caves. And they consistently score a 100/100 points in their missions wan.

Now of course, having people to fly fighter planes seemed like a cruel idea because planes can crash and people can die. Therefore, to minimize the casualties, some smart-alec came up with an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) - in layman terms, an Atificial Intelligence (AI) stealth fighter lor or in lay-layman terms, a plane flown by a computer lah.

Without a pilot, the fighter can be neutral, free from making moral judgement and only knows how to fulfill missions - sounds like a cool idea eh?

After returning from the training mission, our three heroes were sent to the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Philiphines sea and were introduced to their fourth wing man - EDI. Their mission is simple - teach EDI how to do the cool flying stuff but somewhere in the middle, there was an emergency and they had to go bomb a target (check out the maneuvres). Now-now, that's a very bad thing to do when you have a student around. So they put EDI on 'observatory mode'.

While returning from the mission, they were caught in a storm and EDI was struck by lightning. *Reminds me of my fried modem* Guessed what happens then? *He started downloading MP3s from the Internet*

I have to say that the movie pays emphasis on details. You can really experience all those breath-taking fighter maneuvres (including dog-fights) and feel the sound of their afterburners raking the skies. I applaud the movie for not making the stealth fighters look so invicible - otherwise, they will be like that modified bell helicopter with black top and white bottom. ;) The fighters although look futuristic, they still can be shot at, can take hits, can malfunction and can crash! And our heroes get stiches for wounds on their face - even for a lady. How about that?

However, half-way through the movie, the story seemed to have shifted to the pilots and their commanding officers, hence, it becomes a more 'human' movie rather than metal-and-steel. That's when all the fighter scenes start to reduce and things were a little 'not-nice anymore'. Nevertheless, I'm sure you will enjoy this movie if you like jets and men (or women) in uniform ;)

I shall give it a 3.5 star. And remember to watch it in THX! You wouldn't want to miss the sound of those engines.

To conclude, remember one thing ...

"3 is a prime number and good for luck. 4 is a bad number and the consequences are that your whole team could be wiped out."

SEVEN SWORDS

Ah... then come Seven Flops, Uh! I mean Seven Swords. The movie starts off with two irrelevant Korean speaking characters waking up under a snow mountain. Two minutes into the movie and you can see some sadistic, face-painted, shogun-like warriors, chopping off people's head and cutting off their arms and legs. Then, there is this slim semi-botak (bald) lady who enjoys killing and licking her blade.

*Of course like all chinese movie in cinemas, it will have to go through the ritual of getting censored for the first few minutes into the movie (like Kung-Fu Hustle, Breaking News and etc.)*

Then come this old-man (QinZhu) who is supposed to be skilled in martial-arts but doesn't want to kill people. So guessed what happened to him? While trying to escape the cluthes of the sadistic army, he stumbled upon a village girl - YuanYin. She looks like a poor hobbit who can't even save her @$$, uh! I mean her donkey but somehow, she could managed to kill one of the henchman. Now trouble will come to her village!

Confident with the old-man's advice, she went up to Mount Tian to look for help. With some bing-bang, she stumbled upon a group of swordsmen. And then we were given a speedy introduction of all the new characters in less than 1 minute and the name of their swords - Unlearnt, Dragon, Transience, Star-Chasers, Celestial Beam, Deity and Heaven's Fall. The fellowship is now formed and QinZhu is the Gandalf equilvalent - QinZhu the Brown.

You may wonder, what do the swords do? The answer: Duh! Who are these swordsmen? Answer: Duh!!! The characters in this movie are poorly introduced and the story line is lousy (damn lousy). The movie completely ignores the principles of kung-fu and focuses only on sword-fu - throw anyone a sword and they become instant martial-art heroes (loose the sword and risk being tear apart with your head, arms and legs tied to 5 horses - Ng-Ma-Fan-Si). Even pretty-face YuanYin can become an instant martial-art hero with the Heaven's Fall sword and ZhiBan, her village-mate, can become instant Conan-the-Barbarian brandishing the Deity sword.

The whole movie feels like a crappie version of Lord Of The Rings. Some characters in the fellowship were not properly introduced and it feels like they were just there to fill the numbers. And what is wrong with all the women in the movie? They all act so stupid, fall in-and-out of love so quickly. There is this Korean girl that is so used to being a slave, she can't stand living as a free human being - Duh!

There are also times where the movie tries to be artistic but it failed miserably. Not even close to what was offered in Warriors of Heaven and Earth. I think even the old Swordsmen movies were more entertaining - atleast we get to see Jet-Li in his Tuk-Koo-Kao-Kim stance and pretty Brigette Lin. But maybe, this movie expects the audience to have read the novel before watching it. Anyway, the only bonus in the movie is Leon Lai (leng-chai Lai-Meng).

So there you go - 1 star from me (or 5 rotten tomatoes). I will recommend that you skip this one unless you have a lot of free time. And don't mind the THX, it doesn't support that.

Paladin.0.9.0.RC3.Ready

With all those high-profile releases like Windows Vista Beta 1 and IE 7 Beta 1 under the microscope of almost everyone on the web, over here in a little corner, I have also made my own release - Paladin RAD Framework 0.9.0 RC3 is now available! You can download it from my project workspace.

This release stabilizes the architectural changes that were introduced in RC1 and further enhances the functionality of the framework. A lot of the internals have been re-organized and their code refactored to make the implementation cleaner. There are also minor changes to the BusinessComponent and ServicedBusinessComponent classes.

As for the more sophisticated part of the framework, the Component Workflow architecture has been completely revised. It can now support basic sequential invocation of business components and handling exceptional cases. Passing of state information between the business components in the workflow chain is also enhanced.

This release also introduces an experimental version of the UI Process Controller that can be used to manage the interactions between .aspx pages. It can support basic text query strings and encrypted query strings (supported by the SecuredQueryString class).

On the tools end, the BEWizard has been updated to support views and was fine-tuned to match the revised many-to-many implementations in the framework. The artwork has also been updated - check out the knight icon provided by Shunjie! The SampleKit has also been updated to contain close to 30 examples.

I hope I have got you excited up to here. For more information on the changes, visit the project workspace or better still, download and test it! :)

I would like to thank all my beta-testers for continuously providing feedback to me on the framework and I hope to do my best in future versions.

Amboi.Vista

As scheduled, Windows Vista Beta 1 is released today on the MSDN and Microsoft Connect web-site. While the whole world has started to talk and blog about it, I'm still waiting patiently here for the 2.47 GB DVD .iso to download *Grrrrr* Anyway, you can read all about it here in winsupersite.

I noticed that on MSDN, it is published as Windows Longhorn Professional Edition Beta 1 whereas on the Microsoft Connect site, it is published as Windows Vista Beta 1. I guessed both should be the same.

So far, I have only managed to test out Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 1 for Windows XP (cos it was only a 10MB file). I think it still needs alot of work. So far, it has screwed up my browsing experience on SGDOTNET and Yahoo! mail. I also noticed that it loads web pages very slowly. The user interface looks odd to me and took me a while to get used to it. Overall, I'm not very excited over it.

My.Box.of.Frameworks

While driving to work today, I was thinking about what I have been doing (or building) for my past near-decade experience. It looks like my life has been a 'box of frameworks'.

Here is a historical list of what I have built throughout the years:

1996-1997 - General Methods Library (GML) 2.0 [Built on SAS platform using SAS/AF and SCL] Contains a library of methods for standard development functions.

1997 - General Methods Library (GML) 3.0 - Extension of GML 2.0. More common functions! Explorer-style Treeview menu builder. Error message library builder. Application Launcher. Reusable Logon screens (User Authentication). Used in several applications built for my customers.

1998 - General Methods Library (GML) 4.0 - Enhancement to GML 3.0. UI controls i.e. Dual-List Boxes, Grids and etc. Not completed.

1999-2000 - GO2020 Commerce Engine (GCE) 4.0/4.1 [Built on Windows NT platform using Visual Basic 6.0, COM and SQL Server 7.0] A basic framework for developing standard e-commerce (B2C) application. Contains modules for Storefronts, Consumer Profiles, Shopping Carts, Products, Merchants, Order processing and integration to shipping. Supports localization. Provides Visual Basic code templates. Fully documented - .CHM help file and design specifications. Filed as Company's IP. Powered all company's applications i.e. B2C and Auctions portals.

2000 - Spartan.Commerce [Built on Windows 2000 platform using Visual Basic 6.0, COM+ and SQL Server 2000] The next generation of GCE that contains more advance implementations such as Promotions (Up-selling, Cross-selling), Supplier and etc. Filed as Company's IP. Not completed.

2002 - Sparrow [Built on Windows 2000 platform using Visual Basic.NET, COM+, .NET 1.0 and SQL Server 2000] A generic application framework for building database-in-database-out applications. Proof-of-concept for using Windows DNA concepts (N-tier) in .NET. Uses Enterprise Services.

2002 - R2 (Sparrow) - Improved version of Sparrow that contains more .NET-like implementations. Implemented concept of Data Extractor and Processor for CRUD functions. Used in company's products.

2002 - Salamander V3 [Built on Windows 2000/XP platform using Visual Basic.NET, .NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000] A full-fledge application framework with built-in CRUD functions, Product License Manager, Alert-Engine and builder, ASP.NET Server Controls, Data layer code-generator, Strongly-typed DataTable generator, Form generator (Not completed) and Reporting Engine (Not completed).

2003 - Grandeur RAD Engine (GRADE) 1.0 [Built on Windows 2000/XP platform using Visual C# .NET, .NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000] A proof-of-concept object-oriented application framework to speed up application development on .NET. Contains Entity Generator (Not completed).

2004 - Paladin RAD Framework (Release 0.4 - 0.8.9) [Built on Windows XP/2003 platform using Visual C# .NET, .NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000] An object persistent framework (OPF) that provides basic O/R Mapping functions. Contains Entity Generator.

2005 - Paladin RAD Framework (Release 0.9.0). Enhancement to 0.8.9. An object-oriented Rapid Application Development (RAD) framework that provides O/R Mapping facilities. Revised Application Architecture. Enhanced Entity Generator and O/R Mapping. Component Workflow (Experimental). UI Process Controller (Experimental) and many more! Check out the project workspace.

2006 - Paladin II ??? - [Built on Windows XP/2003/Vista? platform using Visual C# .NET, .NET 2.0 and SQL 2000/2005] Migration of 0.9.0. *Was wondering if I will be able to build this next???* *Sigh*


I have learned a lot from building all these libraries and frameworks and in-return, each was built on the lessons that I learned.

Wannabe.An.Architect?

Discovered this post while browsing through SGDOTNET - Become a Certified Architect.

The requirements look tough and it should take quite a while to accumulate all the necessary skills and experiences for it.

Microsoft.Solutions.Framework

I am reading up on Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) nowadays to refresh my memory and to see how it differs from Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). It has greatly evolved since the last time I attended the course.

Here are some resources that are useful for learning MSF:

Microsoft Solutions Framework 4.0 Web-site
This is where you can read and get a preview of MSF 4.0 which is still under works. They have now, MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. You can download the process guidance (beta) from here and read about it.

Microsoft Solutions Framework 3.0 Web-site
If you want to get started with MSF 3.0, this is where you can get all the whitepapers and resources. Get the Overview whitepaper if you are new to MSF. You can also read about the MSF Process Model, Team Model and the Diciplines involved.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Microsoft Solutions Framework
Read about how Visual Studio 2005 Team System makes MSF (or other process) adoption less painful.

Microsoft Solutions Framework Forum
Have a question on MSF? Why not post it in this forum?


There are some good changes in MSF 4.0. I guessed it is more aligned with the current industrial trends now.

Duh.Why.Vista?

In case you are wondering (like me) why they called the next generation of Windows, Windows Vista, here's an explanation - Microsoft Explains Windows Vista Name

The name however, does not apply to the server edition - Microsoft: No 'Vista' for Windows Server. I'm really glad to hear that!

Direct.Selling.Tactics.101

Sometime back, I've some encounters with direct-selling people. Their objective is usually to get you to buy a product and then get you into their league (becoming a downline). It usually starts with a concern of your well-being (health, career, desires etc.) and then selling you their product or get you to attend one of their meetings so that you can be quickly brainwashed.

Here is a compilation of tactics which I have encountered:

Tactic #1 - When You Are Sick

As human-beings, whenever we are sick, instinctively we will want to look for the fastest way to cure the sickness. This is also the time when we are most vulnerable. They will approach you with great concern about your health, reminding you when was the last time you had the sickness (or symptoms) and give you the impression that they care.

Some will present you with scientific facts to tell you that you are probably lacking in some nutrition or have toxins in your body. This will then be followed by an introduction of their 'miracle products' to cleanse your body of all toxins and heal you from all sickness.

To me, when a person uses this tactic, it immediately voids the good impression he/she gave me in the beginning. I will put the person on my caution list.

Tactic #2 - When You Are Down

Supposed you have a tough time in your career and you wish things could be better. You know, to get that big car, get that big house and spend more time with your family. You don't want to put up with your demanding boss, working late and etc. They will come by telling you how sad your life is for choosing the career you are in.

"Look at me! I work for myself.", they will tell you. "I can wake up anytime and do whatever I like.", they will continue giving you an impression that they live in heaven and you live in hell. Then, they will tell you about the glamorous lifestyles that their 'Diamond' managers are living. When you agree that you career is damn worhtless and your life is damn miserable, they will start telling you their 'marketing plan'.

Note: This is the most common tactic used to lure IT people away from the industry.

Tactic #3 - The Invitation

Ocassionally, you could be invited to some events (for free). My experience is further probing (or cross-checking) could lead you to discover the true purpose of the event - one of those Multi-level Marketing (MLM) talks. The events can be manifested in many forms. Once, I was invited to a fashion show in a shopping mall with the direct-seller performing her make-up skills on stage. Further investigations revealed that it is actually a MLM seminar.

There was also a time when I was asked to join a holiday trip. It looks pretty harmless among colleagues but then, further investigations revealed that it was actually an off-site 'brainwashing session'.

Tactic #4 - The Cassette (or CD)

Sometimes you will receive a cassette (or CD) in your mailbox sent to you by a direct-seller and no, you will not be cursed by Samara if you listen or watch it - Trust me, it will be much worse. The idea is to get you to listen to some bullshit and force you to return the cassette to the owner. You will then get more of the bullshit upon returning the cassette. So, the next time you receive things like these, toss it into the trashcan (if you did not order it). You never know if someone may call you up and tell you - "Seven Days".

Tactic #5 - The Miracle Product

Recently, I encountered an unethical form of bait tactics being used. Knowing that I'm pursuing a slimming program, I was being hard-sold a product that cost 4 digits that will speed up my weight loss. "It is absolutely made from natural ingredients", the seller claimed (Don't they all claim to be?). However, I'm wary of products which I need to ingest. *I don't want to end up damaging my liver or kidney. I do not have a Phua Chu Beng to donate his organs to me!*. So, I declined.

A few days back, I discovered that the same direct-seller was selling to my friend. To describe my friend, she is extremely slim and she constantly complained that she could not gain weight *Lucky her!*. The same product that was hard-sold to me for slimming is now being hard-sold to her as a weight-gain product (I guessed to some people, the product could be anti-cancer or anti-diabetic too).


So there you go - my list of encounters. I don't know about you but to me, people who use such tactics are very annoying to me. They look very fake and they make me question the friendship.

How.Do.I...

Found this interesting link from SGDOTNET - How to ask a question? I was surprised it was filed as a KB article in Microsoft Help and Support but I have to say that it really makes sense.

Bye.Longhorn.Hello.Vista

Windows Longhorn has been officially named Windows Vista. Check out the official site or download the video. Weird huh?

Letter.Of.The.Day

Something nice happened today! I received an e-mail from the training division of my HR department after announcing my resignation. Below is the e-mail snippet:

All the best to you in your future undertaking but we less one expertise in this organization. [Name Removed] and myself would like to take this opportunity to thank for all the support you gave to me and my department. We really appreciate it so much and we want more staff like you which are really supportive in every way.

Thank you once again.

It had really made my day and I'm glad my contributions were appreciated.

The.8th.Habit

Was walking around MPH Midvalley yesterday and I stumbled upon this book - The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. The one I saw was the Paperback edition.

I have been keeping the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People close at heart (in a summarized form) ever since I went for the training many years ago. I can still recite them.

The 7 Habits :-
1. Be Proactive
2. Begin With The End In Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First To Understand, Then Be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen The Saw!

And now the 8th Habit - Find Your Voice And Inspire Others To Find Theirs

Fantastic.Four

Just came back from watching Empat Sekawan ...oops! I mean Fantastic Four. I kinda like the movie very much. I will give it 4.5 stars.

The story was quick to deliver us the superheroes (and the super villain) without wasting any time. In less than 15 minutes into the movie, our fabulous 4+1 were launched into outer space and fed into a cosmic storm - which unknowingly altered their DNA. They returned to earth and things started to become fantastic (except for The 'poor' Thing).



The story focuses on building the characters, understanding their powers and developing the fellowship. Even with some scars in the past, they managed to overcome it and finally, work as a team. The focus on friendship is great (a friend who is always watching out your back) and the message to accept ourselves for being different (or even enjoy it) is very meaningful. There were also candid scenes and jokes in the movie that blew the cinema with laughters.

I strongly recommend to go watch it! ... And make sure it is in THX!

MCP.Program.Changes

Looks like there will be some interesting changes to the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) program after the release of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 at the end of this year. They will now categorize candidates into IT Professionals and Professional Developers. From there, candidates can choose from a range of specializations to pursue.



The database track has been split into 3 specializations - Database Administrator, Database Developer and Business Intelligence Developer. So there is no longer a Pao-Kar-Liow MCDBA who is expected to know everything from database backups to data-mining. And the same applies for the developer track. There will now be a Windows Developer, Web Developer and Enterprise Application Developer specialization.

The windows track has yet to be formalize pending the release of Longhorn. Read all about the news here.

Of course, if you ask me, the mother of all the certifications will definitely be the Microsoft Certified Architect program which is conducted in a much different manner. You can read about it here.

I guessed it will be a challenge for me to upgrade my certs. Looking at the following chart, I need to go through atleast 4 exams (or maybe 6).



Whatever it is, I hope they will give some free/discount vouchers (like what they did to MCSDs last time) for existing certified professionals to upgrade their certifications. ;)

An.'A'.Should.Suffice

My exam results were released today and I did not ace my Advanced Systems Analysis and Design (ASAD) paper that well. Like my other technical papers, I was aiming for a High Distinction (HD) but I had only manage to get a Distinction (A) this time. Nevertheless, I'm still happy that I have got a good grade despite screwing up the last part in the exam due to lack of time.

Semester two has already started and I will be doing a very theorectical paper - Network Management. I heard from the others that it requires tremendous amount of memorization. Hopefully, my memory won't fail me.

The.Journey.On.The.Train

In life, Working is like taking a long journey on a train. As it moves from stop to stop, commuters get on and off the train. We may initially feel a little shy when we get onboard as there are so many new faces to get adjusted to. Some may greet us with a smile, a few may offer us a seat beside them and others may just leave us to our own business.

As the journey continues, we will slowly blend in and become part of the commuter community that is on board. We may start making friends with the commuters who are sitting beside us. Some adventurous visits to other coaches and the ocassional visits to the warm-and-cozzy canteen coach may land us with some new friends too.

As time passes, we get to know more people on the train and we may treat some of them like our family members. There is absolutely nothing under the sun that cannot be talked about during all those breakfasts and lunches in the canteen coach. From the latest news to past experiences and even juicy gossips about the commuter in the next coach.

However, like ourselves, everyone has a destination to reach and there is bound to be a day when they will need to get off the train - either take the next train or to celebrate the end of their journey. People come and go, but the train keeps going. This is how the journey works.

I need to get ready now. My stop is coming up next. ;)

Learning.Web.Services

I have been reading up more on Web Services lately and following closely the articles on Web Service Basics. Managed to pick up some knowledge but still have to digest slowly.

Batman.Begins

Just came back from watching Batman Begins. I have always like Batman because he is the only superhero who isn't super - he doesn't have any super powers, didn't get mutated by any radio-active rays (or spider) and don't come from outer space. He is just a rich man with lots of high tech gadgets.

In this movie, the story is done much properly than the previous Batman series. It resembles more reality than comic - the police officers aren't imbeciles anymore and Batman actually relies on Alfred and the police force for help. He can also be set on fire, fall down from buildings, get walloped by zombified people and poisoned by illusinating drugs. The bat signal shone to the sky is also more realistic with the light blending into the clouds and less cartoonish.

However, there are a few let downs in this movie. Firstly, I think Bruce Wayne being trained by a ninja is kinda crap. Batman doesn't fight with swords so does he really need the training? Also, he doesn't need all that training just to throw bat-shape shurikens.

I think the introductory scenes of how he learned his martial arts was uncalled for and should be taken away from the movie. And the phrase, 'To conquer fear you must become fear" is total crap. That's not something we put into children's mind.

Secondly, I think the Bat mobile is ugly although the scenes of it was nice but it is what the movie says it is - a tank. If you look at Batman and you look at the car - both don't match. *Imagine Rambo riding scooter* I still like the old bat-mobile better. The design of the new bat-mobile doesn't look bat-ty at all. With two huge tyres at the front, I think it can easily be punctured by gunshots. (But the vehicle did not take any bullets in the movie so it is safe.)

Finally, there aren't any super-villains. What a bummer?! So, that's 0.5 star deducted for each let down. But overall, it is considered a worth-watch. You get to see how the bat cave was built and how his bat suit evolved (Initially, he just look like a ninja).

Batman done! Coming up next - Fantastic 4!

Web.Services.Resources

Here are some useful Web Services resources that I have found on MSDN:

- An Introduction to the Web Services Architecture and Its Specifications
- Why WSE?
- What's New in WSE 2.0
- What's New in Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0

And to learn about SOAP, WSDL and XML in a less intimidating way, try this:
- W3Schools


PS. I'm still reading the first article and I *gong* liow.

SQL.Brain.Teaser

While browsing through some stored procedures in my current system today, I came across the following 'complex' WHERE condition:

((StartDate BETWEEN @DateFrom AND @DateTo AND EndDate BETWEEN @DateFrom AND @DateTo) OR
(StartDate BETWEEN @DateFrom AND @DateTo AND EndDate IS NULL) OR
(StartDate BETWEEN @DateFrom AND @DateTo AND EndDate > @DateTo) OR
(StartDate < @DateFrom AND EndDate IS NULL) OR (StartDate < @DateFrom AND EndDate BETWEEN @DateFrom AND @DateTo) OR (StartDate < @DateFrom AND EndDate > @DateTo))

Can you figure out the logic and simplify the code?


PS. I'll post the answer later.

I.Am.A.MPV?

This morning I was listening to Mix.FM and they were talking about funny names. Well, I don't have a funny name but I guessed a combination of my name with intelligently swapped characters in the MVP award title can be humurous at times.

Just two days ago, my colleague introduced me to another colleague from another project. Innocently, she said, "This is Serena the MPV" *HaHaHa ... Woo... tears flying out* and I had to correct her, "It's MVP". She is not the first who made that mistake. I have encountered that many times from my other colleagues and friends. Once, it was done in front of a customer and we all laughed.

Even the local MVPs had a fun time laughing. During the ASIA MVP Summit in Singapore, someone actually suggested that we take Wei Min's Serena MPV down south and our Biztalk Server MVP candidly mention, "That's Serena the MPV and not our Serena the MVP right?"

Anyway, it is always good for a laugh... *HeHe*

Note: Incase you guys are wondering, a Serena MPV looks like this. Quite a beauty eh?

Unleashed.Danny.Duh.Dog

I went to watch Unleashed (Danny The Dog) yesterday. The whole theatre only had less than ten people watching. I was thinking in my head, "That bad ah the movie?". I guessed everyone went to watch War of the Worlds in the THX Theatre.

In this movie, poor Jet-Li had to be treated like a beasts. *I think the movie makers are getting 'very creative' with Hong Kong actors that don't speak English too well nowadays*. I'm glad there wasn't any Wong-Fei-Hung stance in this movie. The fighting scenes are not too many - just enough I would say. All the fighting styles were plain-simple street fighting styles (and also toilet-fighting *Watch it and you will know what I mean*).

The story-line is pretty weird if you ask me. Who would want to wear a dog-collar from young? Without a chain somemore? *If got no chain, run lah* Duh! But then, the story says he was 'trained' to live like that so ok lor. As anyone can predict, the story is about Danny (Jet Li) transforming from a beast to a gentleman. *HeHe* Overall, I will give 3.5 stars because there is something of value between the story-line. *I don't understand why they censored the scene where Jet-Li swallowed a scoop of ice-cream.*

I think only my mom enjoyed the whole movie. She didn't fall asleep this time. Dad and I had the same thought, "We should have watched Batman Begins instead".

The.Power.Of.Forgiveness

I found this very nice article - Forgive and Forget.

Some.Deep.Thoughts

Some thoughts I would like to share...

"A friend will pick you up when you are down, protect you, tell you where you did wrong so that you can be better. A friend does not step on you when you are hurt or encourage others to hate you."

also...

"When a person dislikes you, whatever you do will always be wrong, whatever you like will always be bad and however you live will always be abnormal to them."