boulevard-ijab (IJA & ME) - one half completing the other half....

Cyber World Part 3...

Anyway, putting aside how crappy the website is, here's a photo of the resort, nestled within the tranquility of the Langkawi island, which is in the northern tip of Peninsular Malaysia off the coast of Kedah :-)))) Nice huh?

Labels: Cyber World, Internet, Life, Travel photos

posted by The Pisces Man @ 12:27 am 1 people talked at The Boulevard

Hush...!!! Silence of the mouths...

The year 2008 ended with a big bang, or rather, plenty of big bangs, and they still carry on till today. No, I'm not referring to any particular celebrations in conjunction with the new year. But I reckon, you could have guessed already that I was referring to the war that is happening in Palestine.

I have long given up wanting to know too much in detail about the turmoil in Palestine. Whether the news is aired over the t.v., radio or from the newspapers, or from the Internet or email, I would usually avoid reading them, let alone viewing/looking at the related videos/photos.

The only help that most of us can extend to the Palestineans is in the form of donations and prayers. True, we should never deny or dout the power of doa', but it doesn't feel enough...don't you think?

The Israhell Zionis argues that they need to defend themselves from the Hamas. Bollocks! What gave them right to kill small children anyway?

The country that they, the Israhell Zionis, proudly call Israel, was never theirs in the first place. They occupied them illegally, and through Britain (and now they are leveraging on the US), they manipulated the UN to recognise the land they live in as their own country. Now, they want to expand their border by killing, chasing off the Palestineans. As the then Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir had said, this war is about territorial, with the sole purpose of getting rid of the Palestineans.

In a recent interview by the media, a lady (I didn't get her name and her position, but I believe she was either the head of MERCY Malaysia or Islamic Relief Malaysia) said that "You can say it is collateral damange if after you bomb a building, some civilians are killed. But these children have bullet holes in their heads and bodies, this is something else." True, it's a massacre, a genocide!!! What kind of self-defense (as the Israhell argues) would that be?

This tragedy made us realise about one thing - unless we are bed-ridden with some uncured diseases, or we are so poor, that we can't afford to send our children to school, or something else which are as serious, all other problems that we encounter seem so minute, surmountable and not worth our energy worrying about.

Maybe we should just shut the hell up and realise how lucky we are compared to the Palestineans. Problems like stuck in a traffic jam, or the weather is hot, or issues with colleagues, they are nothing, considering there are not even roads in Palestine to begin with since most of them are all bombed up; the Palestineans fled their houses with only the clothes on their backs and most of them had lost somebody - families, friends and colleagues.

Of course, sometimes, we DO need to let out our frustation on life's issues, but make it a point that they will only be shared with someone you can trust, and then.... HUSH! There is no point of making our issues known to everybody. Considering we are able to voice out those issues in the first place, meaning, we are still lucky enough!

There was a point in my life when I was influenced by the behaviour of some 'makciks' (aunties) that I liked to complain and complain and complain and complain - to friends, to bosses and even wrote them in this blog, until I realised one day, this was not in my nature, and that it had to stop! Since that day, never again did I complain, especially to people of authorities. This had also prompted me to delete some entries in this blog that I considered as 'petty matters'.

Meantime, in case any of you are wondering why there's a butterfly in my cartoon (above) or the cartoon looks somewhat familiar to you, I was actually inspired by the movie poster of Silence of the Lambs (see below).

P/S: One thing that I did regret though when speaking about the Palestine tragedy - this country was willing to cancel the New Year celebrations after it was hit by tsunami some few years back. Sadly, all those sinful celebrations (most of them are anyway) were carried on as usual this year, despite the fact that Palestine was first attacked in 27 December 2008, and as the new year approached, the attacks escalated along with the number of casualties! Where was the sensitivity of this country's leaders? If tsunami was the work of nature, the Palestine tragedy is much worse as it is the work of us humans.

Are we going to respect the dead only if our own fellow people are dead? Why can't we just drop those meaningless parties and festivals once and for all? What have we got to lose anyway?

Labels: Cartoons, Cyber World, Fussy, Internet, Life, Movie photos

posted by The Pisces Man @ 1:30 pm 4 people talked at The Boulevard

Cyber World Part 2 - How 'searchable' are you?

I remember the first time when I was exposed to the world of cyber space. I was sitting next to a friend in the computer lab. He was searching for something through the Yahoo search engine. Despite knowing some basics about computers, on that day, I was rather intimidated by what appeared on his screen. They looked somehow complicated and not at all familiar to me - there was a spinning globe on the right corner of the screen (eh? what could it do?), an address bar that he typed the address in (err... what kind of address?), and with some clickable weird-looking symbols, links and photos that would direct him to new pages.

I was wondering, if I were to use the internet for the first time, what and how should I do it? Should I tinker with it the wrong way, would the PC crash or shut down or something? Or worse, would I accidentally cause a breakdown to the central system, which controlled the whole of Internet. Haha, laugh all you want, I initially thought all those websites were being monitored and programmed by some government bodies or something. Little did I know the vastness of cyber space, where I could virtually find almost anything - from facts to theories, information to stories, and stuffs that I couldn't even imagine at that time...

Now why do people surf the internet? Different people have different reasons for doing so:

1. for students, they may rely on the net to help them in their study; in completing their thesis or to further enhance their understanding on a certain topic.

2. for workers, having knowledge about the net may be part of their work scopes, like to design and maintain a company's websites; to respond to customers' enquiries or complaints; to know competitors' marketing strategies or to get the right materials for their next writing endeavour.

3. some of us may use the net to keep in touch with their friends and families or to make new friends via means of emails, IM's or chat rooms (by the way, my Yahoo IM is abdunmy, hehe).

4. some may prefer the internet to get the latest updates in news, weather, sports and entertainment.

5. for some, internet can provide the means for shopping where all they need to do is to click on the shopping carts instead of pushing them.

6. internet can also provide the means to generate main or additional sources of income - some already make millions through it (heck! the founders of YouTube are now worth billions, thanx to the power of internet), while others are slowly realising the potentials (for fellow Muslims, just make sure they are halal, ok... don't do some online gambling or anything like that).

7. there are those who surf websites to learn about religions (however, be extra careful if you fall into this category, as you have to ensure that you are not learning from the wrong sources); get cooking recipes; share experiences in children development or to seek advice for tax matters.

8. there are also those who log in to satisfy their sickening lust for porn, sex and graphic images or videos (Nau'zubillah....)

Whichever the reason(s) may be, the internet has become part of daily activities for most people in the world, including the elderlies. Don't be surprised if grandparents these days, know how to keep in touch with their grand-children and see each other's faces via the internet.

Search engine is one of the most used internet tools. In fact, there are those who use the tool as an alternative way to find their long-lost school mates or families.

Famous search engines like Google or Yahoo always rank their most popular searches. Most of the time, celebrities (actors, singers, athletes) top the chart, if not world's richest people or some high profile companies. However, some much-publicised incidents/tragedies may also shoot straight to the top of the rank from time to time.

Ask anyone who has their presence on the internet, they would most likely want to be one of the most searchable items, if not in the world, at least regionally or locally. Whether in promoting their companies, their businesses, their ideas/products/services or simply their personal websites and blogs, many of them put the right keywords in their metatags so that the search engines can detect them and/or submit their websites to those search engines.

If you were to enter or perform a web search based on your name, whether wholly or partly, what would the results be? Of all those (probably countless) results that you get, how many of them are accurate (i.e. actually relate to you)? And for these accurate ones, where do they appear among those other results which do not concern you?

Read Cyber World Part 1 here.

Labels: Cartoons, Cyber World

posted by The Pisces Man @ 6:14 pm 3 people talked at The Boulevard

Cyber World Part 1 - Ghost in the machine? (updated)

The night started like most other nights. Apart from my brother in law and his friend visiting over, other activities were quite norm. My wife and I reached home quite early that evening, due to us wanting to be home when our guests arrived.

Brother and his friend arrived later than we anticipated. After having some refreshments and chit chatting with them for a while, I then excused myself to use the PC. My wife was in the kitchen, washing the dishes, while brother and his friend watching the TV.

Microsof Word was the first programme I opened. It was a blank new document. I was staring 'blankly'to the screen, not sure of what to write about or how to start. The black cursor, blinking in its timely manner against the programme's empty white background, as though waiting for me to type something, or perhaps, it was actually blinking back at me.

Then I logged into the Internet. I entered the Google's web page, with the intention of searching for something. My mind was still wandering about, somehow still not quite focused with the task at hand.

I heard their guffaw broke from the living room and my wife closing the door of the refrigerator. One leg was slightly shorter than the others, making the fridge rather unstable and wobbled everytime the door was opened and closed.

My attention immediately went back to my PC when suddenly a 'wooing' sound came out from the speakers. The sound was subtle at first but grew louder as it progressed. No doubt it was a howling of a wolf. As my ears caught the eerie sound of the 'wolf', my eyes glanced to the screen. The active windows were still a blank empty document of Word and the front page of Google, with no search term having been entered or typed.

Where did the sound come from? In my mind, a virus must be the culprit, but when I asked the tech expert at the office the next day, he doubted so and claimed of not knowing any computer viruses capable of producing such sounds.

Could it be some supernatural being trying to communicate with me from the underworld (a good job at that huh?) Or it was a gimmick by Google to scare the crap out of their visitors despite it was not a Halloween?

When I shared the experience during our trip back to hometown together, my brother in law believed it was a virus, while my wife thought I was imagining stuffs.

What I heard was true and real, real enough to give me goose bumps. If only it had repeated, I would have asked all others in the house at that time to listen to it. It was not a short 'wooolf'or 'wooolf wooolf' sound. If that was the case, my mind must be playing tricks on me.

But it was a long 'awoooooo awooooooo awoooooooooooo ooooooooo ooooooooo oooooo....' Just like in one of those horror movies, where from deep in the woods or from the top of some mountains, with a bright, yellow full moon to lighten up the night, a wolf or a pack of wolves gave you the chill with their distant cries.

The question remains - is there a Ghost in my machine? I shudder to think..

Labels: Cyber World

posted by The Pisces Man @ 12:56 pm 8 people talked at The Boulevard