Sunny Chan blogs Can you see the Logic in my Madness?

Eurovision Song Contest has become a little bit of a joke last couple of years, though I still enjoy Terry Wogan's (now Graham Norton) sarcastic comment and also what those crazy Eastern European could come up with. Surprising this year I think it's pretty good (hence I would like to blog about it)

For those come who are reading this and have no idea what Eurovision Song Contest it (e.g. if you live in HK), do a google and find out what you are missing out here!

This year seems like everyone is getting really serious about this competition, for
example, Germany has Dita Von Teese on the set, while UK have Andrew
Lloyd Webber writing songs, etc. They have changed the voting system
this year as well, and it did reduced the political voting effect. (Though
Ukarine still give 12 points for Russia, etc.) and Moscow who hosted this seems to be lavishing a lot of money on the set!

 My favourite song this year is the one from Estonia (not just because she is lang lui haaa):

Another one I quite enjoyed is the Ajiberjan's entry:

I thought this is quite cheeky and the tune is quite catchy too.

I stayed in and I thought I was entartained - so good job Europe looking forward to next year.

I recently have upgraded my desktop machine to a Core 2 Quad - that by itself is quite a big change because I have been using AMD CPU for nearly 10 years, but it seems like Intel finally has a better product, so I voted with my Wallet.

Anyway so with a working Dual Core AMD Athlon x2 3800+ CPU as well as 4G DDR RAM, what shall we do with it? Of course try some new stuff. I always fancy the idea of having a hypervisor in the BIOS - althought we are not quite there yet, but the closest product we have right now.

So I downloaded the VMWare ESXi from VMWare website, burn it onto a CD and run installer. ESXi consists of a modified Linux kernel and some VMware modules. It took a minute or so to boot up. When I tried to run the installer, it comes back with an error with unsupported device. I did a quick Google on the topic and found that the installer just doesn't support IDE hard drives (which is the one that I have lying around!). You need to go to the virtual console and start hacking their installation script. That's not very nice.

Anyway, once I have installed it on the hard drive I reboot the machine - however it doesn't seems to be able to format the hard drive. After trying for half a Sunday I figure out that my drive was used to install Windows 7, and instead of standard old school partition table it now has a EFI GUID Partition Table. VMWare doesn't seems to know how to handle them. In the end I cleared the GPT using diskpart off my hard drive and now VMWare can install properly.

The one really annoy thing for me is that VMWare ESXi can only use drives formatted with VMFS - as a result I can't really share my external SATA hard drive with another Linux installation. BAD. Also it seems like you once you have created a VMWare Virtual hard drive on a data store it won't be able to shrink the disk size. Arghhhhhh. Why can't they have a straight pass through SATA? or USB? Searching in Google suggested that the only way you can let your VMWare to use a drive "natively" is to share it from a remote machine using a iSCSI intiaitor. BAD

At the moment when I need to install OS onto the server I either use a CD image or my local CD drive. This is another annoyance as I just cannot convince VMWare to assign the server's DVD ROM drive onto the virtual machine. Make it a bit slower to install the packages..

Another thing that I don't like is that there is no console directly on the server itself-  you will have to use the management client in order to connect to those console. This is okay for a headless server but for developer like me I would still prefer to have full console access to my VM the server itself.

Other than these annoying details it works pretty well with the stuff I throw at it. The CPU I use for this VMWare test machine doesn't support Pacifica technology (AMD's Vritualisation instructions set) but is still achieve a decent performance

My first PC has two floppy drive and no hard disk (how could one survive that?!), and when the floppy's step motor moving around it makes noise that can be similar to music. I always wonder whether someone will us it as a musical instrument. Someone with lots of time in their hand finally has done this impressive number with old computer bits:

This is a classic HSBC ad, blogged here for my mom:

For those who doesn't know Chinese, the English translation they give there isn't as true to the meaning. The chinese words above the "Fear" actually means "Nightmare".

4.45pm. Sunny's mobile rang.

T = T-Mobile sales. S = Sunny

T: Is this Mr. Chan?

S: Yes

T: This is T-mobile. I noticed that your discount period is coming to an end. Would you like to renew your contract or get a new phone?

S: Not at the moment. I am waiting for a phone to come out and it is not on sale yet.

T: May I ask which one?

S: Palm Pre

T: Sorry what's that?

S: Palm Pre!

T: I have never heard of it.

S: Google it!

T: Tell me the name once more?

S: (Annoyed tone) PALM PRE.

T: How do you spell it?

S: (Very Annoyed) P-A-L-M P-R-E

T: What make is it?

S: (Thinking "D**khead" in his head) Palm

T: I am sorry?

S: (Are you wasting my time?) PALM!

T: Oh Palm. I never heard of it before - Okay let me see.

T: (Looking at Google, found the Palm's website) Oh is it US only?

S: Nope they are going to make a GSM version (Note: I mean 3G - I won't buy a phone without 3G HSPDA!)

S: So can I just keep the contract as is.

T: Yes

S: Okay.

T: Thanks for your time.

This guy should be layed off in this kind of economic environment. Palm Pre is like the best phone since iPhone. He is so not going to sell any phone to me

No, I am not talking about Hard drive backup. Although if you are not you should. RAID will not help you.

Over the years, there has been a number of my female friends who jokingly/seriously say that they would want me to be their backup, and would like a pact with me if they can't find someone by 35 then I should married them. That makes me wonder: what makes me such a good backup? If I am such a good backup, why don't they want to make me the main man? Am I good enough but not good enough?

Answer on a post card please.

I did have agreed to one of these pact long ago, but fortunately (or unfortunately) she has found someone and is now engaged. So I am free to make another pact!

Well, Windows 7 Beta is out and thinking that I have a spare machine I would give it a try - I have downloaded Windows 7 and then install it from DVD. The installation was pretty quick and painless. I decided to wipe the machine clean rather than doing an upgrade, as my out Windows XP setup has too much crap in it.

This machine is an old single core Pentium M 1.7G, with 2G of RAM. Once the installation completes it boots up fairly quickly, and much more reponsive then Vista on the same machine - the hard drive doesn't work as hard as Vista, and it seems that it doesn't work the CPU as hard.

Interface wise it is not that much different from Vista, however, they copied some of the elements from Mac, for example, you can now pinned the Icon onto the task bar, and you can organised a whole bunch of Windows according to app - just like Mac OS X Tiger.

Out of the box it has already contained most of the driver I need for the Thinkpad, and they are available via Windows Update. However to my surprised they dopn't have Intel Pro Wireless drivers isn't available - considering that Intel is a close partner for Microsoft I would have thought that it should work straight out of them box. Luckily, it seems like Vista driver works fine on Windows 7 so I just download the driver from Lenovo and the wireless works fine.

One of the main problem is that I spend most of the Sunday afternoon trying to sort out is trying to connect to Samba shares. It seems like Windows 7 has tightened up much of the security in terms of SMB shares. Most of the instructions on the net says you need to change the security policy manager, Local Policy to allow NTLM authentication. However it didn't work and after switching off most of the encryption and security options for SMB it finally works.

So I will spend a couple of days with Windows 7 and see how it goes - I am impressed so far. 

I always want to do an Italian Job, but I always find the driving a bit daunting - Although my trip to Monaco with Mini went okay, I think Italy is stretching my ability to stay awake to the max. However, fear not! I have been surfing on the Internet and discovered Auto Train by SNCF which takes your Car all the way down to Nice. Now that would save 13 hours of driving! There is also train from Holland to Livrno so that makes going to Rome certainly a lot easier!

There are so many places I want to take my Mini to! I would love to see the roof top track feature in the old Fiat factory in Turin, as feature in the film. Also if possible I would like to drive in the Stelvio Pass, Northern Italy/Swiss boarder, voted by the presenters of Top Gear as the best road in Europe. As well as visiting Rome of course!

I don't know how many days it is going to take but it should probably be 10 days or something like that. Anyone fancy this?

Rather mad about certain email I received. I deal with issues in my own way and I just do not understand why someone have to impose "their idea" onto me. "I buggered off with your friend in your birthday party but I would still like be your friend. So please talk to me". What do people expect. Didn't I made it clear? Just get out of my life.

Certain friend of mine has been commenting that maybe I am not letting go, but this is the way I deal with this kind of things. She has found someone else and I don't think too highly of the guy but I leave them alone. But just don't expect things will get back to the way it is, I don't have any obligation to be anyone's friend. Those of you who really know me, I am a person of extremes: When I love something, I love it with passion. When I hate something I hate it with passion as well. If people can't deal with that then that's tough.

That email ruined my day. But I am calm down a bit and after I sleep over it I decided that I shouldn't raise my blood pressure over it. This is the last time I will talk about this.

One of my favourite at the moment:

 Closer by Ne-Yo

For those of you who didn't notice, I am back home in Hong Kong for three weeks at the moment. I haven't had a holiday for a long time and I am definitely enjoy my time not thinking about JVMs, Java Plug-ins and Java Webstart. Thought I have to admit that having bring my Blackberry I do find myself checking work email during the day time.

Anyway, visiting home is a bit mixed feeling for me. Althought it's great to see my parents (even my mom has a blog!) and my sister, but wondering around Luk Yeung makes me feel a bit weird and uncomfortable. Maybe I remember the good time I had with Miss CX, and all that happens afterwards. I don't want to eleborate too much, but things just doesn't work out and I do feel pretty sad about it.

I was having dinner with Dr & Dr W this weekend, and Dr W. has a very good observation for me: It's fine to concentrate on your career, however you have to consider that most girls at our age who is still single are career minded and definitely won't have time to entartain the idea of migrating to another country. She has suggested that I should consider moving back to Hong Kong for a while and see what happens.

That certainly has crossed my mind. I think the last couple of years has proved to me that I would like to meet someone like Miss CX, and I am not sure whether someone like her exists in London. I had so much fun with her and I had that falling in love feeling with her which I didn't feel for a long time. Sometimes I wonder whether I should said yes to that question she asked and maybe we will live happily ever after, but I am certainly would not like to pushed into a big decision like that.

In terms of Miss Solicitor, it's another really really bad habit of mine. I push people away when they intrude into my space and I closed up. I think if I actually try harder maybe it would work out. I was thinking of trying to get back together with her, but as my shared class team mate has said, once she's hurt it's not a great advertisment to come back for more - then she start dating another guy that she met in my birthday party - I think that just get a bit too much for me. The moral of the story? NEVER EVER BRING EX TO YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY.

2008 definitely has been challenging, emotional wise. I had made some bad choices in 2007 and I have suffered for it this year. I just hope that things will improve next year.

BTW, there are two people (Miss PCCW and Mrs. Accountant) who knows for sure who are Miss CX and Miss Solicitor :-) Others are welcome to speculate but you have by now worked out how the system works here.

Finally I have manage to upgrade my blogging software to Roller 4.0, as well as uplifting all the infrastructure to the latest version - I have also applies a new theme too. The old on get on my nerves as the calendar never layout at the right place.

Let's see whether this will motivate me to blog more.

I am really happy for Nadine and Steve finally getting hitched finally!  Contrary to some of the things he says, he is a loyal and a loving guy and Nadine is lucky to have bag someone like him. Congratulations!

 

I bought myself a set of BOSE 3.2.1 GSX system over the christmas to replace my 5 years old integrated DVD system and I have been really impressed so far. I am no Audiophile so I was looking for a set of speaker system that has a good general performance. I reckon with the money I spent on it I could have get a really good set of Amps and stuff, but I thought I would save myself the trouble and get the BOSE instead. And I wasn't been disappointed. I pipe my XBox, and PS3 and watch Blu-ray disc on it, and has performed really really well. I notice a big difference from my old system that I had.

They are showing Celine Dion's A New Day show from Las Vegas on BBC2 and the sound is amazing. I just wish they have rolled out BBC HD on DVB-T soon. So the next challenge for Bose will be Grand Theft Auto IV, and I will definitely report my verdict next week.

Guess not. I have posted quite a few things that is quite controversial but no one comments :-) Either I am boring or no one cares?

 I am still trying to recover from everything that happened since the beginning of the year. It is really heart breaking when you know that you have put a lot into something but end up with nothing. Well, I guess I get to taste my own medicine.

It's hard to meet someone that you have so much rapport with - I tried my best to hold onto it but I need to protect myself. Some decisions is for lifetime and should not be taken lightly or being threaten into doing it. Maybe that person is not as mature as I first thought. Would it make any difference if I do something more drastic? Did I not communicate how much I value it? Maybe not.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I have done things that I am not proud of but they have all moved on, which is fine with me. I just get back to my old self and there is nothing to see, so move along.

 Don't really want to speak to my mom at the moment - she is giving me "pressure" but I just don't want to hear about it anymore.

 Anyone care to be my travel partner so that I can fulfill my plans for this year? Would be helpful if my travel partner can drive and don't mind driving.