Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

This is an interesting philosophical question.

The typical answer would be that someone with a positive attitude (optimist) will see the glass as half full, while someone with a negative view of life (pessimistic) will see the glass as half empty.

Posed with the questions, in a survey, it is interesting to note that most people want to be seen as optmistic. So can this question tell optimists apart from the pessimists?

Why is it we have the tendency to perceive that it is a negative thing to see a half-empty glass?

Since the glass is half empty, it has the capacity to hold more water. So what are you waiting for?!!! Go fetch more water to fill your glass.

Oops! I forgot my Maths

I have been studying MatLab these few days, going to give a lecture on "Object-Oriented Programming with MatLab" next weeks. But it has been so long since I touched this software, while I was going through the MatLab manuals.

OMG!! I found that I can't fully remember how to deal with Vectors and Matrices... Thinking hard of what are dot product "a . a" and vector cross product " a ^ a"??? Then I come across another term "Row Echelon Form" , then "Complex Numbers" and "EPS"...

All seems so similar, yet got little clue. To think that I used to consider Mathematics during my school days as my pride subject...

Look like this coming week, need more revisions. Now where i can find some reference books???:P

Sleepless in the City

Hmmm, I read with interest an newspaper report, that says "Try eating kiwi fruit 2 hours before bedtime. It improves the quality of sleep... " and that "Most Singaporean adults slept after midnight after 12... and many suffered from insomnia" Look like that there are a lot of night crawlers in Singapore:)

Every morning, I will be awake by 0730 am, my babies are my natural biological alarm clock. More than often, I slept at around 0200 am. Got myself 4-5 hours of sleep. Is it enough? I never have any problem falling asleep, once my head touched the pillow, I will be in slumberland in less than 15 minutes. Seldom dream nowadays either, creativity juices probably dried out already:P

After tucking the children to bed, I would be lucky to have the time to myself by 10 pm, but more than usual around 11pm. I would switched on the TV for the daily dose of local chinese news. Then tuned to CNBC for business news, first-hand reports on the Dow Jones and Nasdaq opening numbers.

At the same time, sitting on sofa with my notebook and a hot cuppa tea. If in the mood, probably a can of beer or a glass of fine cognac.

I like the taste of Martell Cordon Bleu best, but it is too much luxury ...

Privacy and tranquility of the night, allow me to have better concentration and focus in my work. Tonite, I am doing my lesson plan for my class next month.

The day will finally end with a nice, hot water bath. Sigh! Life is getting routine, no longer young and restless ...

New Servers

I am happy to get my hands on some refurnished Sun Enterprise 250 servers and a StorEdge D1000 external disk array. This is the first time I get these resources from our new supplier. I will be deploying the servers and storage into production in the due time.

First thing first, I will need to arrange for the hardware to be thoroughly tested because I only have one-month long one-to-one-exchange warranty. If the hardware is proven reliable, I will possibly consider them into my line of products. That will keep our prices, systems integration and services affordable!! ... Not only affordable, but also need to be unbeatable!!

I am also interested with their refurnished 3com hubs and Cisco switches as well, but most urgently, looking for an external DLT tape drive at least a 40/80 for backup purposes.

Still thinking of what to pen for this month newsletter, probably something related?

The Future is Now

Running a business is really requires a lot of work, not the least of which is planning. Planning forces me to think ahead. (And causing my hair to grey) I am in the process of reviewing my business plan, that summarizes the proposed business venture, realign the company's goals, how to achieve those goals in the honest view my existing limited resources...

It will guide our operations and outline the strategy for turning ideas into reality. No one say it will be easy... but I will try.

Yesterday, early morning at 8am, I went to Mount Alvenia hospital for a MRI scan on the recommendation of my specialist doctor. I was the first patient there, expecting a traffic jam, i took off from home earlier in my trusty old Renault van. Years of backache and numbness in my leg since my days at national service, both the NUH specialist and military doctors says there is nothing wrong with me, my leg or my back... Especially to the NUH specialist, you really sucks.

When the medical report was out, was diagnosed with L5 Spondylolysis. The back pain is due to the resultant stress placed on the lumbar disc. This could also explain for the leg pain when I was running, walking or standing too long.

I was prescribed with anti-inflammatory agents, and asked to swim instead of my regular weight exercises. Finally, I am getting a downgrade recommendation for exemption of military duties. But the price does not come cheap, the MRI alone is $600. There goes my hard-earned money.

Centrino: The Next Generation

On 7 March 2006, Intel released news on the next generation of Centrino technologies (codenamed Santa Rosa), scheduled for first quarter of year 2007. Its new Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor with 800MHz front size bus is however, expected to launch earlier, by end of August this year. A number of vendors have already unveiled plans to offer Intel's new Core 2 Duo processor inside their latest notebook PC models. Santa Rosa will combine Merom processors with a new supporting chip set code-named Crestline and an 802.11n wireless module, code-named Kedron Merom is expected to offer users extra performance - an increase of about 20 percent over its predecessor, the Core Duo, according to Intel, while holding power consumption to nearly the same level.

The Core 2 Duo also adds 64-bit addressing, something that Intel notebook chips have lacked to date.

The table below shows the Centrino Mobile Technology Roadmap Overview from the inception of Centrino 1st Generation (Carmel) in 2003 to the current dual-core 3rd Generation (Napa) in 2006 and the futuristic 4th Generation (Santa Rosa) scheduled next year.

More details on the Centrino Revolution can be found with our latest newsletter at: Milestones Aug 2006

Seagate 1 Inch Hard Disk

Seagate just unveil the new ST1.3 Series 12GB 1-inch hard disk that come with the latest perpendicular recording technology. It boosts 23% smaller footprint, 50% more storage capacity, yet 30% less power consumption than existing 1-inch hard disks in the market.

What does it meant to the people in the street? The new hard disk model is specifically targeted at embedded devices in consumer electronics, particularly mobile media applications, in the likes of digital portable media player, smart phones etc. The disk measures only 40 x 30 x 5 mm, and has a G-Force Protection feature up to 2,000G.

• Perpendicular Recording increases data density while decreasing moving parts for a more dependable drive
• G-Force Protection enables skip-free media storage and playback, with shock resistance up to 2,000G, enabling drive to survive 1.5 m drop onto hard concrete or ceramic surfaces
• RunOn technology keeps read heads on track while device is in motion

According to the news release from Seagate:

"By offering a whopping 12GB of storage in a smaller footprint, the ST1.3 Series hard drive is a powerful solution for increasingly sophisticated media devices such as digital audio players, portable media players, and mobile phones. According to IDC, the worldwide mobile phone market is expected to grow 7% in 2006 to 857.9 million units. IDC forecasts that the worldwide converged mobile device market will reach 181 million units by the end of 2009 and worldwide portable multimedia player shipments are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 95% between 2005-2009."