Yep, the weekend is fast approaching. Can’t wait to head out with my friends to our favorite watering hole for some good ol’ fashioned whiskey and watch the world cup. So while I was searching for some interesting whiskeys to try out, I came across this incredibly ingenious geek who designed his own server with a whiskey bottle. Now how cool is that. That’s what I call inspiration while working. Jason Marton who designed this server was apparently looking for a quieter, hidden home server. Now thats what I call blending into your mini bar.

Any of you interested to build youw own server from your favorite whiskey bottle? Here’s what you need folks:

• 1.5 liter Ballantine’s bottle
• 3.5″ SBC board
• Intel P3 733EB processor
• 256MB notebook RAM
• 40GB notebook HDD
• 60W mini-ITX PSU
• 44 pin mini-IDE cable

Apparently Jason also had to take the bottle to a professional glass cutter after failing quite a few times using home tools. So unless you have some dandy tools at home, make sure you make friends with your neighborhood glass cutter.

Thanks Lifehacker

Its been a tough 3 months for me – really! Been out of blogging, been out of twitter, been out of things which I consider my passion. But now I’ve started putting things together one by one.  Out of the many motivations which have come my way I would consider reading the book Discover your Destiny with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari as one of the biggest! This book is a sequel to the ever famous The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. For those who loved Robin Sharma’s work in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari would absolutely love this book.

So what is this book all about? The story starts with a man (Dar Sanderson) who loses his wife, children, a high flying career, turns into an alcoholic and almost commits suicide. He amazingly decides to not take his life in the last minute and eventually meets Julian Mantle who is the star in the previous book. I love the way Julian Mantle explains life in a simple and easy way. After all, life is simple – it is we human beings who complicate it.

There are 7 stages to self awakening which have been explained in this book. As the cover says, this book is indeed the blueprint to a better life. Robin Sharma offers a blueprint for living a beautiful life, rich with joy, prosperity and lasting inner peace. You might be in your teens, you might be 50. But if you are serious about enriching your life and living a whole complete life try and walk the road of the 7 stages of self awakening. I would highly recommend getting Discover your Destiny with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. If you have already read it, then why don’t you leave your review about this book in the comments section?

I guess this is a question every wannabe photography junkie keeps asking himself. For many years the good old SLR camera had been the de facto standard for many a professional photographer. Then came along the digital camera in the 90′s which took the photography world by storm and revolutionized it. From being huge clumsy gadgets, these cameras soon started to evolve into sleek sexy gadgets. Now you had a choice to make – is it the standard compact point and shoot digital camera or the DSLR digital camera?

This article is not to belittle the capabilities of a DSLR camera – definitely not! I am just trying to articulate some of the points I have in mind which would help you to make a decision between a compact digital camera and a DSLR digital camera. Firstly look at your needs. Are you serious about photography? I used to own a Canon IXUS which I could pretty much take around everywhere with me. It was a great beginner’s camera as far as I was concerned. I could take some great shots even though it didn’t have all the bells and whistles of a full blown digital DSLR camera. You could play around with some of the settings and get the hang of the 3 main aspects of a camera namely aperture, shutter speed and exposure. Once you get the hang of these 3 aspects you will pretty much know what kind of settings will work best for different situations.

A sunset picture captured with a compact camera can still look good

But once you get serious about photography, then you might want to consider a DSLR digital camera. With so many choices available, you should try to get a beginner’s model. My choice would be the Nikon D3000 and I recently purchased one. Definitely worth every single cent that I paid for it. You see, the satisfaction you get by “creating” your own picture through the DSLR digital camera is priceless. You can start off with the standard 50mm lens and then move on to other kinds of lenses like telephoto lenses or macro lenses depending on your favorite photograpy subject.

But a DSLR can make it awesome by playing with the exposure

Not to forget color composition too

You might still want to keep your compact digital camera even though you might have purchased a DSLR digital camera. It certainly will come in handy when you need something small and easy to handle like an office party. If you were thinking of whether to get a DSLR digital camera I hope that this post might have helped you in some way.

My favorite DSLR camera – Nikon D3000

What’s yours?

I’ve been wanting to write something really personal on my blog and I guess this is the best time to do it. A recent incident which happened in my life has led me to write this post. Even though I didn’t get to complete my MBA due to certain personal commitments I still have an interest in picking up books on business, motivating employees etc etc. I’m sure there’s a lot to learn from these books. And I’m sure a lot of managers or entrepreneurs would love to read this book and apply it in their daily work life. I guess you can find a lot of material on the Internet on this subject too – like “10 ways to motivate your employees” or “How to build a profitable business”. I’ve been thinking that there should be some reading material on some great ways to piss your employee off since there are so many experts around in this field.

So here is my contribution to this often neglected subject. Feel free to add on if you like.

1. Call for pointless meetings
2. Say “You’re doing a great job” while in fact you’re thinking “Your so screwed!”
3. Arrange for a one to one meeting with your employee. Postpone it 20 times (minimum). Finally meet up with employee. Postpone the meeting again for an hour. Prepare to visit a client. Tell your employee “Can you walk me to the door? We can talk along the way. It takes 2 minutes to reach the door anyway”
4. Keep changing your employees product portfolio but don’t communicate it to him until he learns of it from his peers
5. Give your employee absurd quota numbers to meet
6. Give responsibility but no authority
7. Never ever respond to your employee’s emails until he reminds you at least 3 times (via email too)
8. Ignore phone calls
9. Call him anytime you like
10. Make him your personal technician to fix/upgrade your PC, mobile phone, smartphone

Nice, that makes 10 on the list. I’m sure this list is going to expand since we have so many innovative managers who don’t have any idea about what they are doing. Angry employees with tons of experience on this field can add on too!

For some comic relief, check out this video below. Beware of the pissed off employee!

Today I was chatting with someone on how I would accept a move to Europe in the blink of an eye. It all stems from the positive experience I have had from my travels there. My job requires me to travel quite a bit and I have had the opportunity to visit a few countries during my business visits. Although I don’t like all the countries that I have traveled to, I especially hold my trip to Germany close to heart. I felt very welcome in Germany and although I didn’t know a word of German, people were extremely nice to me and made me feel at home. It was during this trip to Germany that I ended up living just a few hundred meters away from Ulm Minster – the tallest church in the world!

It was an absolutely last minute trip for me to Germany as I had to attend a conference in Stuttgart. I was hurriedly booked at a hotel “near” Stuttgart according to my admin and all I knew was the phone number of the hotel and its name. I traveled with a colleague and soon we were on our way. Once we reached Stuttgart we were in for a shock. The hotel that we were booked in was actually in another town called Ulm which was a good one and a half hour train ride – and this is by express train. In Germany express means really fast unlike the ones we have in Malaysia.

Fearing the worst, my colleague and I somehow managed to catch a train to Ulm and we were reassured that the hotel was right next to the train station. I saw the train leaving Stuttgart and within a good thirty minutes we were passing through some lovely countryside. This was certainly refreshing for me and I couldn’t wait to get to Ulm now. We got to Ulm on time and managed to check in to our hotel which was a stones throw away from the railway station.

After a quick washup, we decided to check out the town of Ulm. The town is quite laid back with some very friendly and warm people. Roads were made of stone and it was like almost from another era. People were well mannered and drivers were disciplined on the road.

The laid back town of Ulm

The place was certainly paradise for me as we passed through numerous micro breweries each with their own brand of beer and dark beer. Anyone who visits Germany has to try the pork knuckles and beer! It is to die for! Ok, back to the story. My colleague and I started exploring this little town and in no time realized that Ulm was actually home to the tallest church in the world. What a privilege it was for us to actually be in this little town which was not even known outside Europe. Not wasting a single moment, we started snapping photos of this wonderful work of art.

View of Ulm Minster from outside our hotel

What a majestic sigh it was to look at the church. The view nearer to the church was even more breathtaking.

Up close and personal with Ulm Minster

I wonder why this beautiful church doesn’t get too much notice outside of Europe. Is it probably because of the fact that it is predominantly protestant? Not sure. But whatever it is, this church is a fantastic work of art. I did some research on the Ulm MInster and here’s an extract about the history of this beautiful church:

Ulm Minster (German: Ulmer Münster, literally: minster) is a Lutheran church, the tallest church in the world, with a steeple measuring 161.53 m (530 ft) and containing 768 steps. Located in Ulm, Germany. Although sometimes referred to as Ulm Cathedral because of its great size, the church is not a cathedral as it has never been the seat of a bishop. (The responsible bishop of the Evangelical State Church in Württemberg – member of the Evangelical Church in Germany – resides in Stuttgart.) Ulm Minster is a famous example of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture. Like Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) – another building begun in the Gothic era – the Ulm Münster was not completed until the 19th century. From the top level at 143m there is a panoramic view of Ulm in Baden-Württemberg and Neu-Ulm in Bavaria and, in clear weather, a vista of the Alps from Säntis to the Zugspitze. The final stairwell to the top (known as the 3rd Gallery) is a tall, spiraling staircase that has barely enough room for one person.

Thanks to Wikipedia.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to visit the inside of the church during this trip. I hope I will be able to make a trip to Germany sometime in the near future so that I will be able to look at the inside as well! Hats off to medieval architecture!

So are you one of those social media expert bloggers? Well try to match up to the dude in this video – pretty hilarious to say the least!

Now, who’s the expert? You tell me!

After spending countless weekends in KL due to my work commitments I finally had the time to spend some time with the family in Penang. It was a great weekend and boy am I glad we decided to go to the beach. Not just any tourist spots that you would normally find in Penang, but one little obscure beach in Teluk Kumbar. This little town in Penang in known more for its Mee Udang rather than the beach. The beach here faces the open sea and one can look at airplanes landing at the Penang International Airport quite regularly. The beach is quite scenic and free from any kind of water sports, foot massages and tourists too. How do you get to this beach? Very simple… read on!

Head towards the airport from Bayan Baru. You will need to pass the airport and will reach Bayan Lepas town. Go straight further and soon you will be in Teluk Kumbar. The road is kind of windy and you will need to take care while driving. Keep a lookout for a mosque on your left which will be visible when you get to sungai batu. Turn left when you see the mosque and drive in all the way straight until you hit the end of the road. Park your vehicle by the side of the road and prepare to walk in about 500 meters to get to the beach. Don’t bother to don any fancy shoes as the trek is nothing close to comfortable. Prepare to rough it out and wear a regular slippers/sandals for the walk. Better to be wearing shorts too.

The walk will be through a small Malay kampung and the residents there are quite friendly. You will be greeted with a warm smile from time to time. Keep a lookout for little chicken! Once you reach the beach you will definitely be able to able to see the local residents there relaxing by the beach with their family. You might also be able to watch a game of sepak takraw which I guess is a popular pastime among the residents here. There are also small drink stalls in case you feel a bit worn out from the trek and the sun beating down on you. Best time to be there is around 5.30 in the evening and you can watch some brilliant scenes.

View of the open sea at Teluk Kumbar

This was also a perfect opportunity for me to practice my photography skills with my canon ixus 860 IS. Although I want to get a DSLR soon (probably a Nikon D3000) I am currently using the manual mode on my Canon IXUS to get the basics first. It was a pretty fun evening as my kids were playing in the beach and I could take photographs to my heart’s content.

Not only can you enjoy the beach, but you can also enjoy a bit of fishing if you are an avid angler. My friends and I have gone fishing quite a few times and have landed puffer fish, stingray and some smaller fish as well. We’re still waiting for our big catch . This is quite a famous spot for fishing for the locals here too. According to them the fish here could be quite big if you are lucky enough to land one. Use prawns or cuttlefish for bait.

Local residents enjoying fishing on the rocks

The picture looks a bit grainy as I had to use maximum zoom (digital zoom) to get a decent picture.

So what’s a trip to the beach without a picturesque scenery? I managed to capture one of the finest moments of the evening before returning. It was a nice picture of the sun peeking from the clouds (it was a cloudy day) and the sun’s reflection on the water which looked like a bridge of light.

The bridge of light

I hope these pictures would entice you to visit this small but picturesque part of Penang. I’m very sure you will not be disappointed especially if you are a nature lover and would like to get away from the hustle and bustle of Georgetown. The place looks like it has almost frozen in time (except for the new housing developments happening around the area). Let’s hope that the beach will not be commercialized like the rest of the beaches around Penang and will still maintain its innocence for years to come!

Not going to say much here! Walt Mospuppet sure has the hots for Steve Jobs… Oh by the way, DO NOT I repeat DO NOT watch the video at work. There’s a lot of geeky humor in this video, so if you don’t get it you know you’re not one of us. All the same, enjoy the video!

Thanks to The iPhone Blog.

I had a Homer Simpson moment today – I actually screwed up on the most commonly used application at my workplace, NETMEETING! Its really unbelievable how I actually managed to do it though! Ok here’s the thing, I’ve been having serious network problems at my workplace for the past few days. I called up IT last week and they changed some stupid settings on Internet Explorer and it seemed to work fine for two minutes until the support staff put down the phone. I just couldn’t believe my arse luck and I thought its probably going to get better soon. But then the next day I was on leave and tried to login from home. Everything was fine – I mean even though I was logged in via VPN things were smooth. So my assumption was the network was fine at work too.

But then I had the same issue yesterday when I got back to work. I kind of ignored it and continued the day and when the network started to crawl at a snail’s pace today I lost it! I called up IT and was hoping for the dude at the other end of the phone to give me a bunch of settings to change and hopefully everything was going to be fine. But unfortunatly he just said that this was not his problem and he was going to refer it to the smart asses at the network group. Ok, this was getting a bit annoying but I just had to get through with it as diplomatically as possible. He gave me a “ticket number” and told me that someone will be contacting me soon.

Soon enough, another dude called me at my desk. For some reason he was really cheerful that my network was slow – that was REALLY ANNOYING! He started asking me the normal questions like “How long has it been slow?”, “When was the last time you tried?” etc etc and all this with a chuckle. Doesn’t he understand the seriousness of the situation? He even made a comment like “Probably some underwater cable was damaged…” to which I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Dude, the network is fine at home! Does the office have a dedicated cable running underwater to Alaska? Anyways, he was then kind enough to finally ask me for my IP address and start netmeeting.

I started netmeeting, shared my desktop and allowed control. He checked on the settings, and decided to type in the name of the proxy server – with a HUGE typo! I mean he couldn’t spell proxy! He said “I think that should work, give me a call if it doesn’t. Check again tomorrow”. Ok I’ve had enough of his incompetency but I decided to try it out myself (after I’d like to think I’m techie too!). Just then my friend pinged me on yahoo messenger. I typed to him like “Sorry for the delay in replying… A dumb #$@@#$ was fixing my network”. Guess what, I didn’t log off Netmeeting! I thought I was screwed. As soon as I realized that I was actually sharing my desktop with the dumb #$@@#$ I felt I was him already! Fearing the worst I rang up my best friend to share the “news” with him. Frankly I wasnt worried about the dude but more for the strict adherence to protocol at my workplace. But in a few minutes I received an email from him asking whether my network was ok… blah blah! Maybe he didn’t notice? Well that’s all I can wish for. But seriously I can’t believe how I could screw up on a Netmeeting session! This is something I won’t forget in a while!

After giving a lot of thought I’ve decided to dedicate my blog to a technology+lifestyle blog. I guess that will actually let me share quite a lot more events in my life rather than just mundane topics pertaining to technology, gadgets, geeks, nerds and… (you get the drift I suppose). So my first lifestyle post is actually going to be on my experience at the Guinness 250 years celebration at the Mines Convention Center. It certainly was an event that I won’t forget in a while.

The event happened on the 22nd of August 2009 – my best friend and I were excited for quite some time for this event. I was lucky that I was on a business trip to KL during that time so that I could actually make it for the event. I thought I was excited but boy was I wrong! My best friend was very well prepared for this event. He had actually made specially designed t-shirts for us to wear at the event. I couldn’t believe the amount of effort that he had actually put in to make this a memorable event for us. Talk about being a Guinness fan!

Check out our “designer” t shirts:

Front view:

Back View:

Cool huh? That’s what the folks at the event actually thought too. They were like… “You guys must either be hardcore Guinness fans or must be working for Guinness!”. Yep they were right, we are hardcore Guinness fans (and secretly hoping to work for Guinness one day). The event started off quite slowly actually. I was looking for more like a party atmosphere but was kind of disappointed to see that the event was arranged more like a Chinese wedding. There were about 150 tables and 10 people were randomly assigned to each table. This was a far cry from our experience at St Patrick’s day a few months ago.

The Emcee made most of the announcement in mandarin and there were quite a few Chinese shows. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anything against it. Just that my expectation was totally different from the atmosphere at the event that night. The food was OK and nothing to shout about. But here comes the best part – the free flow of Guinness Stout. Even though it would have been cool to have been sipping on some Guinness draught I believe it might have been a logistic nightmare to be serving glasses of draught beer to more than 1500 people at the event.

Now back to the table that we were sitting at. Initially we didn’t have much to talk about. I mean imagine 10 complete strangers sitting in the same table with nothing in common except – Guinness. But that was the magic touch. After a couple of bottles, we were talking practically anything from grandmother stories to crazy drunken night stories. The best part – we didn’t even know each others’ names. Everyone seemed to know when they were required to respond and what to respond like magic.

Towards the end of the event, we were pretty much warmed up and it was almost like we had forged some kind of a brotherhood. Around midnight we exchanged pleasantries and a brief good night with the ever famous last words – “Drive Safe!”. Yes, we enjoy Guinness responsibly. My best friend and I were well prepared for the event. We actually took a cab to the event and hence we weren’t required to drive back home. We were pretty much one of the last to leave the convention center and I leave you with some final pictures of us posing proudly in front of our favorite brand in the world – Guinness! Yes, and that’s me on the left !