The Sixth Edition

I first started playing the Civilisation series during my first year in University. I remembered the network had the program installed and one just had to go out searching for a clean one to start playing. Failing that, I always had a copy of it in my bag but installing it could be a pain. It was fun times especially after my end of year exam while waiting to return home for the summer break.

Then came the second version - aptly called CIV 2 - which was even better. New instalments came every few years and about 5 years ago I remembered playing Civilisation IV on my Mac.

The creator if the series, Sid Meier had always been my favourite designer. It stemmed back from his 1988 release, Pirates! I remembered spending many weekends at home for break from MRSM enjoying it, sometime playing it through the night.

Then came Railroad Tycoon which I played while waiting for my SPM results and Colonization. Then came the spin-off Alpha Centauri which I played in between my calls as a Houseman in England. All were great franchises and I must say were my favourite games.

Civilisation VI was a big jump from the previous version. Very detailed and as result time-consuming. I have yet to complete a game. I spend a few hours last weekend after the instal exploring the game and it was huge! I wished that I have more spare time to play.Mayne in one of those spare weekend I could binge on it ….

Today's Menu

With her Mum staying over at our apartment while recovering from her angiogram, Anita had been busy planning her meals. For Sunday, her Dad and brother would be coming over to join us for lunch and Anita spent the morning planning what to cook.

By the time I was done with my rounds - I was on call that day as well - they had already eaten. It was crab curry and there were still plenty left for me. Oh the joy of preparation …. I could only admire the coordination.

The New Mix

It was time to update my blog. Giving it some face lift. Over the last couple of weeks I have been exploring other provider and looking around if it would be easy to port my blog.

Unfortunately it wasn't as straight forward as I thought.

My blog is now seven and a half years old with more than 1500 entries. It had been running on the Version 5 of Squarespace since day one. The current Squarespace version is version 7. I was given a special discount for a version 6 account after doing some beta testing for the company. And all version 6s were automatically upgraded to version 7. Version 5 however ran on a completely different architecture. Upgrading would take a lot of effort, not to mention having to reformat all my extensions and links. It was just an impossible task.

So, I explored format.com among others and felt that they had potential, and that was before I decided to have another look at my discounted account.

After fiddling with them for a while, I decided to run it as a parallel blog, concentrating on photography. And fotobyharis.com was conceived. To be honest I was rather surprised at what the new Squarespace features were capable of. The blog look mighty impressive compared to the basic tools of 2009. Editing was slightly complicated, but once mastered, it was much more logical than I thought.

For the time being, all the photoblog contents were the ones already uploaded to the main blog. But should there have any photography slant to them - which would be the majority - they get ported across to the photoblog, with higher resolution photos, as well as a more expansive layout.

The site still needed some tweaking, and I had been taking lessons from Lynda.com to sharpen up my skills. Hopefully with more practice, I could make the design look a lot better …..

First Time at MARA Digital

This article was originally written in August 2016

MARA Digital was launched in a big fanfare, dubbed at the Low Yat killer. I suspect it was hastily planned, after there was an incident at Low Yat. And the Menteri trying to prove that Low Yat Plaza was just a flook and given the right resources, there could be another IT hub in town. And his vision was for the business to be controlled by Bumiputera.

This was almost about it ....So, after almost a year after the launch, I went to have a look.

And it was lame! I wanted to look for a new mouse, but they couldn't give me what I wanted. I wanted a gaming mouse from Razer. One of the vendor even pretended that he never heard of the brand! OMG!

The shops occupied one of the middle floors, and I was done after 10 minutes. It was that bad. I ended up spending more time at Permata Complex next door afterwards. And there were even more selection of hand phones there!

I don't think that MARA Digital will be anything near a success. With news that the stock was controlled by a single supplier - to make sure that the stock were all "original" - you could already see the corruption and monopoly there. Business will not prosper with such control, and I predict that it would die a slow death.

Working Sundays

I will be doing two Sunday calls in a row at the beginning of the month and then will be in JB the weekend after to attend a conference in JB. Anita wanted to join me there but after going through the itinerary decided against it. My schedule then would be packed and I planned to take the first flight back on the Sunday to do my rounds.

Upon hearing that, she scrapped the plan.

Wouldn’t mind working Sundays but I would make sure that the Monday after that would be a light day. No procedures or clinic. If possible.

Working Sundays also meant that there would be no afternoon photowalk for the week.