Blue Ray. Woot!

Earlier in the week, we stepped into Jusco and they were doing some sales. The DVD player - a RM200 job from 2 years back - went kaput, courtesy of my boys manhandling. Suffice to say, I was on a hunt for a new unit.

While having a look, I stumbled across a Blue-Ray player by LG going for a buck under RM400. Well, it should do the job. So far, I have bought 3 Blue-Ray discs, and Tron would be the next. Some of the special edition and bundled discs - such as the Shrek Quadrology and the Lords of the Ring Trilogy - looks really enticing. Time to start a collection I guessed.

To jog?

The weather was right gloomy and I woke up, I was contemplating whether to go for my weekly jog or to give it a miss and to do a run later in the afternoon.

Last night, Puan Anita bought a set of new trainers and clothes to join me for a jog. At 7.30, she was still asleep. Hmmm! I might as well watch some TV then. And hope it wouldn't be raining later in the day.

Homework

Children are imaginative, aren't they?

Idlan was given some homework the other day where he had to draw his parents, describing what they do for a living along the way. Initially HR was confused as to how to draw his Mum and Anita was at home all the time, occasionally doing work for my father-in-law. He however thought that she tended to shop all the time ...... and the rest they say was history!

So, Dad is a Doctor, and Mum is a shopper!

Anjung Siber

A couple of months back, I was disappointed to see one of the badminton court at UMMC - the only one as it turned out as the other one was closed last year and turned into office space - closed for good. The space was turned into an Internet space for UMMC staff and was dubbed Anjung Siber. No it was not idea to give it such a lame name. 

The area was turned into rows of PC stations, all linked to the hospital LAN, but Internet enabled. We were able to surf even Flickr and Facebook - rather lake excuse to ban Facebook when even UM have a UM Facebook Page. I had a quick look at the space yesterday. Visited the blog, my Flickr space, YouTube and Facebook. Speed-wise, there was nothing to shout about - I get faster connection on my iPhone as a modem, although I was sure that the purpose of the space was merely to provide access. Unfortunately, I was not able to access the hospital Xray system from the terminals as I was hoping to be able able to email out some of the CT report to broached into my database. I was able to log into the blood results though.  

On the whole, I think having a dedicated space for staffs to surf the net was avoid idea. The place was not air-conditioned but as it was actually shaped like an airvent, it was not warm. There were fans to keep surfer comfortable. The space was pretty tight though. So if you were looking to do some work while surfing the net, this was not the place. The space was also of available to patients or visitor as you would need the hospital login to access the stations. If the purpose was to be able to surf the net and have a quick peek at your email account, then I guessed the space did its job. 

Email anyone?

The announcement of the proposed 1malaysia email address for all Malaysians has certainly drawn a largely negative reaction amongst the cybertroopers in the local scene. The twitter discussions were certainly cautious to be politically correct, if not suspicious.

First of all, being an email service provider is not something that is simple. There was certainly no real need for one judging from the sophistication that is Gmail. And the 50 million ringgit it allegedly cost on the first glance sounded expensive, but in the real term it was cheap, and too be honest, too cheap to be true. And true to all Malaysian projects, we are always very keen to set things up, but when it came to maintenance, we tend to lag behind. I can see it as being the case here.

Every time a Minister says something, we hailed it as sage and never question it, no matter how stupid was. We put it up there as the best thing since sliced bread. This project is doomed to fail. It will at best become another one of those half-baked. It looked good on the outside, but it will be one he'll of a challenge to get it done. And the shame of it all, it was one of those challenges which was not worth the effort. We could have done much better by investing in the infrastructure of our broadband services. Look at Singapore. They are much better at broadband than us, and our Minister did not even acknowledge it as such. Once the broadband service is up to scratch, then we can have that 1malaysia email service as a beta. Learn a thing or two in terms of its viability, then launch it as at national level. No more of this Malaysia Boleh thing. We'll save that for next summer's Olympics.