Bye-Bye PaintShop Pro, Hello Picasa

Just discovered this wonderful tool offered
by Google.

What's more it's free!! Being a webmaster for several hobbyist websites I usually use Jasc PaintShop Pro 7 to crop, brighten or sharpen my picture. Paintshop was perfect for quick
and dirty picture retouching.




However after using Picasa (3Mb download) I've becomed hooked.
It's just too good a tool not to use. It's 10 times smaller the PaintShop (30Mb)
and it's definitely of commercial quality.
Oh there's no nag screen to register, donate, upgrade or ad-supported
whatever.


It's 100% free.



What else can you ask for in a graphics utility ?
I don't know about you but Picasa has just become one of my essential webmaster tools.

Hungry Dog

Passed by this shop near Petaling Street on my way to my favourite corner shop and saw this dog patiently waiting in front of a chicken rice stall. Passed the dog and the shop and just couldn't resist going back and taking a picture of the dog.

Guess what? After I had my lunch, the dog was still there, though different position. That's what I call bull-dog determination! :)

Google didn't index my page

googlenoindex
Originally uploaded by andrewooi.

Well it's been over a month now and Google just doesn't want to index my page. I have other website (paid ones) that have similiar problems.

Some people I asked from forums told me that it's because they give priorities to older websites. Worse some say that Google is money minded and only concentrate on websites who pay them -- eg: using Adwords. I hope that's not true. I've sent my website URL again to Google. We'll see...

Petaling Street Hor Fun

Corner Shop Lum Hor Fun

That's my favourite food! What is it? It's just Hor Fun drenched in mouth watering sauce (donno made of what). Oh it's NOT HALAL to avoid misunderstandings with our Muslim readers.
The price is quite reasonable - RM3.50 (large)

Ingredients:

• Shredded Chicken
• Pork (not halal)
• Mushrooms

You can find it a a shop near Petaling Street.

Here's 2 pictures to guide you to exactly where you can find it.


It's sold by a nice lady and her husband there at the ground floor of "Hotel Lok Ann".


The shop (in Hotel Lok Ann) is just across Petaling Street main entrance (near the traffic lights).

Posting from mobile phone. I am posting this from my 2 year old Nokia 7650 using a DIGI prepaid.That means i can blog anywhere. Cool eh ?. This tool is offered by http://wap.ubique.ch/. Anybody else using this ?

Strongest Girl Chess Player in the world

She is the strongest female chess player in the world. She is ranked top 10 in the world!!!

That's overall World Ranking - not female chess player ranking!!

That means she can beat 99% of all men chess player's in Malaysia.

Why am I posting this? Well I'm a chess nut and have never lost (s0 far) to a woman chess player except those who are of international standard. See my previous post.

Well she has her own new fan club website with tons of pictures.

Guys, if you are thinking of going after her, give up. She's already married.

But there is another strong girl chess player who is still "available"

But I think she is over commercialised her website. Some call her the Anna Kournikova of Chess. :)

Thanks Java

Java - is just a programming language. I'm a programmer but Java was never my favourite programming language.

I hated it then when it first launched back in 1993 - I just couldn't see any real applications for Java besides running silly animation applets.

My favourite language was Pascal, later, it was
PHP - a web programming language. But never Java.

However, it was Java that paid for my living for almost 2
years.

I taught Java part time for six months. Then, taught it for another
2 years by giving Java tuition when I was jobless.

Later I tried applying for jobs involving Java but never
got hired because many employees don't trust programming
teachers. I think it's the adage "Those who can do - teach".

Later I applied and succressfully got my dream job doing web programming. Guess what?

The project I worked on was only short term so after it ended my boss threw me with a bunch of Java programmers and now I'm doing Java !!!

GilaChess.com is up!!

It took 3 days but I've finally finished writing some customised script for my new Chess website.

I was a PHP programmer but nowadays my full time job is doing Java. So I was a little rusty writing PHP again.

My website uses PostNuke which is CMS (Content Management System) which makes it easy to maintain a website without any knowledge of HTML. My old chess website started in 2001 and slowly grew to have a loyal following of chess enthusiast from Malaysia.

Check out this link. which is a page that has chess diagrams - all without any technical graphics knowledge or even HTML.

Here a video on how "easy" it is to post a Chess Diagram.

BTW this website not a commercial website - it is fully paid by donations from Malaysians chess enthusiasts (aka GilaChess!)

Smoking is hazardous to your health

Smoking is hazardous to your health
Originally uploaded by movito.

Do not smoke. I should know. No, no, no. I'm not a smoker but my lungs are damaged by a lung disease I had when I was young. Still 70% functional but I see those smokers damaging their lungs at their own free will. What a waste of lung tissue..

Chess players from China

Xie Jun, Xu Yuhua (center) and Zhao Xue

Xu Yuhua - the Chinese player I played against in a simul in August and almost drew. She is one of China's strongest players.

Belown is a picture of her in action on August 28 2004 when she was in Malaysia.


I'm hidden behind the other 2 players wearing caps. FYI, she beat everybody (about 20 boards). I was the last one playing against her. I resigned and she asked me "Why?" and proceeded to show me how I could hold a draw. Man it was embarassing ... just shows that you should never give up even if things look bad...

I've learnt from that experience and never gave up even in a losing position and have resulted in many narrow wins in my favour :)

Accidents and driving tests?

Hmmm.. looks like even google ads picked up on my morose and dull mood for the past week. Accidents and tsunami. That's not what this blog is about. At least I hope not. Promise to talk about more postive things in the coming days.

Happy New Year?

Ok the new year is here and I'm sitting in a cyber cafe typing this out. My wife is still working and I'm waiting to pick her home. We'd be too tired for any celebration. Still haven't had dinner yet. At least tomorrow we'll get to sleep late for once. No work!!!

A sombre reminder. I know. I know. We are sick of seeing pictures of death and destruction. But just one last one ...

A before and after picture of the destructive force of the Tsunami