Blake’s Code Studio

I just discovered a free service which provide you with a temporary email address. When will this kind of service be useful? For example, you wanna read something on this forum. But the forum requires you to register for “FREE” first before you can access it. You can then put for example… blake@dontreg.com as the email address. Then goto dontreg.com and input “blake” as the mailbox Id. No password is required. Click on the activation link, then volla you got access to the forum. Of course, remember to delete the post in the mailbox as anyone can access the mailbox by simply inputing “blake” as the mailbox Id. Therefore, this service is not SECURE, and it is meant to be that way. You shouldn’t be sending sensitive information to this mailbox… just use it as a temporary email to get access to forums and sites which requires a “FREE” registration.

Anyone read about news about yet another protest at KLCC? I guess not. Malaysia with towering skyscrapers, nice shopping centers, friendly people but with a restricted mass media. Before I know about MalaysiaKini, my only digest are newspapers and TV. But sadly, they only show what they are “allowed” to show.

This photo was taken by DEMA of a man… a man with a bloody head injury. That’s not even the main messege which is being potrait by this photo. How can anyone be injured in a peaceful demostration? A group of people with no weapons or intention to cause damage, they just want to voice out their opinion.

“I was alone (when the FRU charged) and was very scared,” said Mohd Zafran, whose father Amran Zulkifli was hospitalised after being repeatedly clubbed by the police. - MalaysiaKini

Forget about paying RM1.20 for The Star newspaper, subscribe to MalaysiaKini for RM15 a month and save more when you go for the annual subscription. I am not getting paid or anything…I just want people of our generation to understand our country more and to know the truth.

Thank god for “The Internet”, as more and more people start surfing the web, the easier for them to access uncensored news. On the other hand, fanatic propaganda can be transmitted this way as well. We should always listen to both side of the story and please use at least 5% of your brain when making a judgement.

I have just integrated Technorati into my blog. Basically, it is a tool which helps u keep track of your blogs, tags them, ranking… By properly integrating into Technorati, it is possible to get increased traffic which enables you to share your opinion and knowledge to more people.

If you need help setting it up, (for me… it involve editing my template) just let me know and I will help you personally.

I was looking around for a budgeting software… well, I found a couple last time but never really use them. But starting from next month, June of 2006, I will start recording every little thing I spend on… yes even on that teh oh ais limau. I found a useful “office template” but you need to have Microsoft Excel installed and open the link with Internet Explorer for problem free usage of the budget template.

Microsoft Office template website is one of the hidden gems for many of us. You can find almost anything there. Some might not be really usable, but it really helps to get you started. And best of all, it is one of the few “free” stuff from Microsoft.

Flu… me……
me got flu….

btw, I am selling my World of Warcraft original PC game. Anyone interested can drop me a mail.

The Canadian Cancer Society’s online smoking calculator. To all the smokers out there… here is an interesting calculator which might change your life.

World Cup is finally here. Although the game only comes once every four years, it has an effect which last a lifetime and unite people like no other game.

I was reading the latest Asia edition of Reader’s Digest just now, and one article in particular ticks me… “The Goal Is Peace”. This is an article about how football helps unite… or reduce tension and discrimination of Arab Israelis in Israel. Although Israel did not qualify for the World Cup even when they did not lose a single game, the two Arab Israelis made an impact on the state where Arab Isrealis which made up 20% of its population are being discrimated in life, politics and education. But it looks like the citizen has an easier time getting along than the politician.

The Multi-racial Country
I see some similarity in Malaysia as well. I really don’t understand how can there be two definition of “Malaysian”. Yes, you can have Chinese Malaysian, Indian Malayisan, Malay Malaysian and etc… it’s ok, cause sometimes people just want to differentiate the races in Malaysia (I am a Chinese but some strangers ask me for direction in Malay… get what i mean?). But to me, it’s wrong to have 2 Malaysians having different “benefits” of being a Malaysian. How can one Malaysian get discriminated by another from things like education? or buy a house with discounts? No, I am not talking about Chinese, Malay or Indian… I am talking about being a Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera. In our generation now, they shouldn’t be two definition of “Malaysian” - Bumiputera Malaysian and Non-Bumiputera Malaysian. Most of us are BORN here…. born in Malaysia…. AFTER the independence…. after the existence of a country named “Malaysia”. There should be only one definition of Malaysian… only 1 group… united. Of course, it’s difficult to dissolve the benefits of being a Bumiputera… how about… giving all Malaysian the benefits of being a Bumiputera? It will still be fair to everyone.

In education, there shouldn’t be a quota system in place. You want a place in the university? well… fight for it! Study harder. Anyone watched the movie “Sepet” uncensored? Orkid (malaysian who didnt have straight As) get a scholarship to study overseas… while the straight As chinese guy (malaysian) is selling pirated VCDs in pasar malam? It doesn’t make sense huh? I read a forum once…. a long time ago i think… a group of Malaysian were debating… A non-bumi was arguing about how unfair the system was…. then a bumi say something like this…

“If the government did not place those policies, I wouldn’t have a chance to study and be what I am today. My parents didn’t have that kind of money to send me overseas.”

Now my dear fellow readers, what is wrong with that statement? The non-bumi replied…”My parents work twice as hard to fund for my education… I work after class…. I take out a commercial loan….”

I don’t blame the bumi who somehow thinks he was right to depend on the government. The government should be imposing policies to close the gap between the rich and the poor…. NOT imposing policies which benefit one race over the other. They have weaken a group of Malaysian who depend on those discriminating policies…. and strengthen another group who work harder to stay on top. It’s like a sling shot…. those policies are like the hands pulling the sling….. trying to slow a group down so another can catch up…. but 1 FAIR day when those policies are no longer around…. the hands will be gone… and the sling will fire the non-bumi group much more further ahead.

I should’nt be discussing politics here… which I am not. I am just against discrimination. There are hardworking bumis out there as well. There shouldn’t be non-bumiputera and bumiputera Malaysians…. There should only be Malaysians. From today onwards, the word bumiputera will not be in my shortlist of vocab anymore. If I see that word in forms, RFP or when pitching a project… I will draw a fucking middle finger on the proposal.

For uncensored Malaysian News:
MalaysiaKini

Got more source? Let me know.

pitAuth is a user authentication implementation for CakePHP, ya ya… there are some implementations out there already.. like othAuth, and rdAuth. Although I do support the open source community, I got a company to grow. @_@ I also want to have a more secure implementation.

Drafted feature:

• “salted” SHA1 encryption instead of MD5 (would probably use more resources than MD5)
• User can be in one or more Group
• Each user and group might have one or more permission
• Integration with CakePHP ACL
• Generate new password for password retrieval
• Plugin-ready for LDAP and other method

I will continue to add once I figure them out. The comments on PHP Manual on SHA1 has some useful information on security and improving performance.

My childhood friend Elaine is Mitsubushi’s ambassador for the upcoming KL International Motorshow (26th May - 4th June) event. Go look for her at Mitsubushi’s booth, she will pass u something and remember to SMS vote for her. =) erm… sorry she is not single but hey, she might have some chicks to intro to you.

After intensive research on full-text search engine for PHP, I found the following solutions if I want to use CakePHP as the main underlying framework.
Utilize Java Lucene by using a PHP JAVA Bridge

This is quite challenging. The performance seems promising, but it does look complicated. Basically we will have to develop the indexing with Java and process input/display results with PHP. Now… will I wanna do that?

Pros

• You can use a unported Apache Lucene
• Tons of resources on using Lucene
• Can upgrade Lucene libraries and use it. Rather than waiting for the ported version to be fix

Cons

• Complicated
• Too many technologies to master

Zend Framework integration with CakePHP

The strong point of Zend Framework is the ported Apache Lucene, the zend_search_lucene library. That’s about the only thing I like about Zend Framework, that’s why I might wanna integrate this zend library into CakePHP, this tutorial about using zend lucene looks familiar enough.

Pros

• Those who used Apache Lucene before will feel like home
• Lucene IS the best Java full-text search engine out there

Cons

• Works only in PHP5, CakePHP works on both PHP4 and PHP5. The integration will kill one of CakePHP’s strong point
• Have to learn another framework. We had enough right?

MySQL full-text searching capabilities

MySQL has a built-in full text search feature. This article here has some information about it. But I would need to write MySQL statements rather than using CakePHP ActiveRecord pattern, and the application would be MySQL database-dependent.

Pros

• Should be quite fast, since it is a native MySQL operation
• Can be converted to a plugin for various framework

Cons

• Will be lock down to MySQL
• Building a search engine is not a fun task

Xapian using PHP-Binding

Xapian looks promising as well. I think the performance of Xapian should be quite good as it is programmed with C++. I can’t comment much on this. You guys might wanna check it out and probably help me out.

Solr

I just found this a minute ago. Solr is built based on Lucene by CNET Networks who donated the source code to Apache. The unqiue feature of Solr is the XML/HTTP APIs and it is actually a server! So you can have a Java application… a PHP application or any type of application which is capable of handling XML, all of those application can access Solr. This looks like a good solution, but I am a bit worried about the security of transfering XML between servers. I will keep an extra eye on this one.