Entering the Frugal Age (and happy new year!)

Bam! Quite a lot happened since my previous post. In brief, I resigned from my VoIP network job, got a new car had a small operation, and going through some cost cutting measures.

So firstly, I've ended my tenure as a VoIP Network engineer after one year, will be joining a telco equipment maker next week (won't be hard to guess who considering there are only a few here in Malaysia). Been an interesting journey... the transition from uni to work was quite smooth, and its been great working with my colleagues there. My new company is going to be more demanding, but I always love a new challenge. So lets see how it goes!

Got a new black Myvi SE. Though admittedly the extra body kit was quite overpriced, it does look somewhat unique. Handling not as good as the previous Satria Neo, but 4 doors and great fuel consumption makes it worth (at least, thats what I try convincing myself with every time the car gets a little unstable at high speeds =P ). I'll probably try to stick with this car for the next 5 years throughout the installment period. Hope the future wifey doesn't mind ;) If I do have a kid or two by then, the car is still somewhat usable.. albeit without much space for luggage. By 2016, lets see if Proton or Perodua releases a great car.. at least Proton should, considering their recent unveiling of the concept cars. Gotta support the local industry! (Though one can always dream of driving a VW Golf R32)

Last month I had an small appendectomy operation. The appendicitis was quite sudden, just a few hours after my night shift ended at work. It was the first time being under general anesthetic, and by the time when they wheeled me in the operating theater (and signing all sorts of liability documentation), I was admittedly scared. Though, the fear ended right as it began. Knocked out by the anesthetic, the operation was complete under an hour. Woke up and felt as if nothing happened. Alhamdulillah it went without any complications, and within 10 days I'm back eating normal diet. However, I'm sorta confined from heavy physical activities for another month.. so no bballing for me =(

After working for a year, my finances have not improved by much. Savings were negligible no thanks to the car loan, petrol and toll costs (and frivolous spending on project components *ahem* ). With the Myvi having an even higher installment, I decided that 2011 and 2012 will be the Frugal Age. My plans with the new computer build and miscellaneous projects (car telemetry, house networking, etc) and gadgets will be deferred indefinitely. Food expenditure will be cut more (which can probably assist my diet plans). Masters is on a fine line.. quite unsure how much longer I should postpone it. By 2013, I could probably have a decent amount in the bank. Which is important, considering I plan to get married at 26 or 27. Of course, I need to find a girl first and do the necessary dating rituals that associates with it, but I'll give that phase around 2-3months. Dating earlier might compromise the funds that I would have saved up, so its good to remain a bachelor as long as possible before 26. If the girl is an engineer too, she would understand the logic behind it perhaps =P

As with the ending of a whirlwind year, this will be the last post of this blog. If I'm to continue to blog again, it'll be at a new website with a different domain name. I hope to actually start a proper tech / engineering research blog, so what better than to start with a clean slate.

And I hate to admit, I've succumbed to pressure and may reactivate my Facebook account soon after a haitus of two years. I guess I was fine without its distraction, but over time many of my friends rely too much on FB that it was difficuilt to keep in touch with them via other means like email, IM (and real life). So yeah.. what to do? ;)

Alrighty, happy new year folks. Hopefully 2011 will be an awesome year!

GPS data plot

Earlier this year my friend Zuhaili suggested purchasing a cheap GPS USB receiver that went for under RM 100, which he saw online. I couldn't believe one would actually exist with that price point, but after searching in Lelong, it was quite a deal (got it for under RM 90) . You can check it here for more details

I thought of trying it out on the way home from work back in March, with the laptop on the passenger seat. It took a while to initialize from cold start, and pretty much blanks out when the car is under flyovers or tolls. Anyhow, only I bothered to parse the NMEA data today 'cause I was so darn lazy before. Below is the Google Earth track (Cyberjaya office to Shah Alam) and a plot of speed and elevation.

I noticed I drove up to 125 km/h at some point. I believe this could have been a GPS error =P There were many zero data points in the NMEA log when the GPS receiver lost its signal, so I removed them to ensure a somewhat less erratic plot. The GPS receiver struggled to keep a lock on the minimum 3 satellites during the first few minutes, so data wasn't so reliable.

The data over all could have been improved upon if I placed the receiver more optimally (it was basically just stuck to the laptop's USB port). But it was just supposed to be a trial run, so I'm quite pleased with the results. It does give some hope for the car telemetry project!

But before that, I was planning to use the GPS receiver with the ARM board. I doubt the board can run Google Earth, but it does more than well enough to parse data and plot real time. Lets see how it goes eh?

Nearing the end?

Ah, I might finally decide to close this blog soon, and shift to another site. I'm running out of reasons on maintaining this type of blog, considering the lack of posts ;)

Anyhow, we were discussing about Google's robot car at CrazyEngineers (click here), and Durga posted a neat video about on of DARPA Grand Challenge robot car race:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoiJeIb0wBA

Its great stuff, wonderful to see the progress of teams as they faced the trials and tribulations of developing their own unique approach to winning the race. Quite inspiring to see the awesome technology used and how practical they were on the field. However, as much as the engineer in me was (drooling?) throughout the vid, there was a point where Sebastian Thrun (Stanford University) said with regards to adaption:

"Making a car really intelligent requires giving it an ability to adapt. Its just like in human life, we don't enable kids to have a rule for every contigency. We tell them how to learn from contigencies and make them smarter, and then we trust them to learn."

I don't know why. I was quite perplexed why I felt the lesson in parenthood was a lot more significant than the actual point of Sebastian's robot car adapting to conditions. Am I looking forward for the future? or.. I must be going crazy. Yes, definitely the latter (I hope).

A few weeks back my office had a potluck lunch thing. Food was great, it was a blend of Pakistani and Malay dishes. I brought along some vanilla cupcakes that my mom helped me with, turned out to be a unexpected hit. I made a second batch for my own family, and I realized that I quite enjoy baking stuff.. as long as they are simple! That day was also the farewell for our remaining interns at office, after working there for four months. I kind of miss them, since they had helped with our workload =P Nah, what I missed more was being a sort of mentor and able to teach them how to do the tasks. I do hope in the future I can balance my career with teaching at my alma matter. Teaching hopeless students (like I was last year) not to slack off ;)

As part of the customary rare photo of me in this blog, below is a team shot at office (mixed NOC and business departments). Im the one with glasses and dark blue shirt. I guess I lost a bit of weight eh? The two sitting in front were the interns.

Call me

Come on now won't you

Ease my mind

Reasons for me to find you

Peace of mind

What can I do

To get me to you

Chilling out

Its just past half way through my vacation, and I'm trying to chillax on every minute of it before going back to work =( Time flies too fast when you don't want it to.

Dad had a golfing hangout with his buddies to Hua Hin (some 200 km south of Bangkok), so I tagged along since I've never been there. Despite their attempts to convert me to play golf (though I might consider having a go once in while), I just spent some time chilling at the beach resort and also hanging out at some of the Hua Hin attractions, such as the Maruekhathaiyawan Palace. Made out of teakwood, its located right next to the beach, which was quite awesome. This palace is actually situated in a military camp, which also houses a center for sustainable energy development. This reminds me that I've still need to re-ignite the Earth Initiative discussions in the CE forum. I've already got the energy meter, so will need to finish compiling a list of power consumption of devices.

Its been almost a week since my mobile phones (personal + work) were switched off. Since both didn't have roaming, they are pretty much useless.. just draining the battery in search of a signal. At first I cursed myself for not being foresighted enough to activate it, but now its actually very peaceful not to have people calling or sms'ing (Not sure if my company is trying to contact me though =P). I probably can expect a barrage of messages to flood them when I arrive back to KL though.

Just turned 24 today. Man.. didn't I turn only 20 last year? Getting old too fast for sure! (or maybe my job is making me feel that way).

Eid Mubarak!

Wishing my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world a blessed Eid Mubarak!

Hari Raya at Bangkok was good, a lot of guests came for the open house. Food was awesome as usual, though I need to practice some prudence on eating moderately. Hope I can spend the rest of my time in Thailand productively =)

I think I need to get a new mp3 player. I do try to be a miser when it comes to electronic goods, since I can effectively budget for more important things (I've indefinitely postponed getting a new computer rig). My current Sony NW-A805 plays music and video perfectly, but its just that the proprietary cable and software is counterproductive to transfer songs quickly. My sis's Samsung player only requires a drag and drop approach and even uses the common mini USB cable (which I have tons of at home). I once misplaced the Sony cable and had to order another one from China, which is just inconvenient.Oh well, gotta wait till the end of the month to get the funds for this. I pray that my current mobile phone will last long so I don't need to buy a new one anytime soon.

new site?

*sigh*

Ya know, as much as I like the ashytized name (come on, its unique!), its just far too long.. or perhaps a little conceited ;)

Just thinking of a new name that's shorter. The new site its definitely going to be more informative (engineering wise) and at least a little less-boring side content. I'm definitely going to use the Wordpress platform on it. Perhaps subdomains will have different side projects, or even target a mini linux server at home (non existent as of now).

I'll probably plan a bit more over the Raya break and check out possible hosting alternatives. Will get the more stable and expensive ones.. at least that way I should try to be more dedicated in blogging. What I also hope to do is collaborate with other Bloggers so our contents can compliment each other (if its even possible).

Oh snap! .. and damn drivers

I knew I should have paid more attention in ITC (Information, Theory and Coding) class last year. One of my friends had presented a class project on a novel way of removing redundant frames (or at least frames void of humans) in surveillance videos using some algorithms. The compression result was remarkable, and now after 40+ hours of recording footage from the IP camera, I realize how super useful it could be.. not only in saving space, but also time in viewing the important events in the video footage.

This morning I went to the Packet One HQ office (PacketHUB) for the first time, to inquire about some Wimax subscription. Parking wasn't easy, but the ground floor counter area was quite nice. But I do wonder why they moved to PJ. Its such a congested area. A better location of the HQ would be Cyberjaya, seeing its the nucleus of the IT industry (well.. after Penang perhaps).

I remember when I first started driving, I started a SDC (stupid driver count) after meeting some brainless people on the road. Years have passed and the SDC tally became to big to keep track of. I do try hard to adapt and understand what the drivers go through.. maybe they are desperate to rush to the toilet, or their signal indicators happen to malfunction, or they have absolute trust and respect with my driving skills that I can avoid their car (*cough* to the latter). There's just too many vehicles on the road. Its going to be a long wait till the proposed MRT system encircling the city to start construction (let alone finish).. it'll provide the much needed relief of residents in the Klang Valley. I'm just glad that I drive to Cyberjaya for work and not KL like my sis!