International Hacking Competition 2006 at UiTM

Yesterday after my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) class, I went to an event at the main hall of the university. If you didn't know, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) was my former university where I did my diploma there. During my years there, the facilities were being upgraded and there were a lot of development for new building and infrastructure. I could only experience a few of them before I finished my studies there back in 2003. This year, I'm back again as a student eventhough I'm not taking a major course.

The event I went was:

You can click on the image above to see some pictures the student have taken. I'm just giving out my reviews on what I saw and experience yesterday. Firstly, I wonder why they call it 'International Hacking Competition' when there was no international people participating. However, I do want to congratulate the effort that was done by the organizers. There were a few other organizations that opened up their booth. I didn't go the talks they've conducted because of time constraint but I wish I had went to the 'hacking class' on Friday.

Overall, I could see how hacking is an interesting subject. Hacking is not a bad thing, it maybe useful in an event of certain circumstances. I can pretty much do hacking myself given time and determinations. Hacking is learnable if you have the will, the brain power and creativity to resort on other alternatives. The key is to try, try and try until you succeed. You'll never know what you can achieve when you never done it. So, DO IT!!

Experiencing Back The Bus Ride in Kuala Lumpur

It's the month of September already. My schedule are so packed already eventhough it's a new month. Anyway, I got back my car after nearly 2 months of waiting for it to be restored. I'll write about my restored car it in my next post.

Last 26th August 2006, since nobody was available to send me to pick up my car at Setapak (the workshop appointed under my insurance policy) I decided to go to the place by bus. Eversince Rapid KL took over from Intrakota, I have no idea of how their latest bus fare is like. So, I did a bit of digging on the net before I got on the bus, but the official website of Rapid KL is so confusing. The maps were too small for me to see and it dissapointed me because I had to search for the information. I have no clue about their bus sytem eventhough I got off the bus. I then found that Wikipedia provide a better more comprehensible information about Rapid KL System. I'm puzzled of why is a big corporate government owned body could not provide the essential information about their own services on their own website. Why?

How To Get To Taman Danau Kota From Sungai Mas Plaza, Jalan Ipoh.

I live nearby Sg. Mas Plaza, Jalan Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur. The bus station is a 10 minutes walk from my house. It would cost me RM3 if I were to take a taxi just to get to get to the bus stand. This is the landmark of my place:

Here is the place where I took the Rapid KL bus. It is one the hub in my area:

The routes available here are:

210: Sungai Mas - Taman Batu/Taman Muda/Ampat Tin - Warta Lama
222: Sungai Mas - Jinjang Utara/Taman Beringin
225: Sungai Mas - Taman Bukit Permai
234: Titiwangsa - Jalan Ipoh - Sungai Mas
236: Sungai Mas - Jalan Kepong - Metro Prima

I need to go to Titiwangsa and switch to another bus to get to Taman Danau Kota. Here's the bus I took:

The journey then took about 20 minutes before I arrived at Titiwangsa bus stand. I was glad that the bus stick with its routine unlike the old days where some buses waited for people to cramp into the bus before they took off.

At first I thought I just paid the bus fares once and I can just go anywhere using the ticket I bought for the whole day. That is what Rapid KL advertised on the radio, television and their brochures or billboard. I then found out that it was just for certain travel within the zone. I got confused but I paid the fares while switching the bus. I couldn't figure out what buses is available at Titiwangsa because there were too many of them.

The above picture is how to spot the colour codes that Rapid KL has implemented in their network routes. To read more about the colour codes, read all about it here.

The above image was the ticket I bought. To get to Titiwangsa, I paid RM1 which I can use to get back to where I was from. I then bought the RM2 to get to the destination to pick up my car.

I didn't sweat much since the bus is air conditioned and it was comfortable enough despite of the crowd. If I'm not mistaken, I took the bus number T20 (Titiwangsa Jln Pahang - Jln Genting Kelang - LRT Wangsa Maju Giant: Hulu Kelang). The journey lasted around 15 minutes.

Glad to found my car has been restored before I went up to the workshop's office. I don't really mind walking a few distance as long I can get there. The whole journey took me about 55 minutes. Compared that to if I'm driving, I could have save 20 minutes. Oh well, at least is comfortable and safer than riding the motorcycle. I saw two minor motorcycle accident this week. I also save money by taking the bus. A taxi ride would have cost me around RM20 from my house to the destination I was heading.

As a conclusion, I still prefer if I had the bus information earlier instead of trying to figure it out by asking people and observation.

Why Does Your Laptop Battery Deteriorates

My Dell Inspiron 630m is 7 months old (I've blogged about it here). It belongs to the company I work with. Before I even use a laptop, I was using an old Pentium 3 500MHz Optiplex to do all kind of stuff including developing the company's website. For me, as long as it is a computer, I can do a lot of things with it.

After 7 months of usage, shortly after Dell recalls it's 4 million laptop batteries (Click Here to read about My Dell Laptop Survived The Battery Recall, I got this message on my Dell laptop:

It had just been 7 months, why is it that my battery's life is coming to its end? So, I clicked on the more information link to get more information.

Oh no! my laptop battery is not covered under the warranty. What did I do wrong? Is the battery manufacturer is trying to get extra profit by reducing the battery's life span?

I was losing 2 hours of battery usage compared to when I first got my hand on the laptop. I also noticed the past few weeks, my Dell laptop is generating some excessive heat but I ignored it because here in Malaysia, it is always hot and humid. Little do I realized that heat dissipation consume a lot of energy thus reducing it's life span.

Laptop batteries are expensive. Being dissapointed, I searched for some resources which hopefully could revive back my poor Dell laptop battery. I found this article:

How To Prolong Lithium-Based Batteries

Based on my reading from the above article, I've concluded what I've done wrong:

1. Heat: I contained my laptop from dissipating it's heat. My house is really warm and humid. I'll sweat like crazy if the ceiling or the standing fans is not operating. What I should have done: Only use my laptop in a cool place or in an air conditioned room. Keep it COOL!
   
2. Choose between Battery or AC Power: I'm just too lazy to took out my batteries while pluggin in to the AC Power simultaneously. I spent countless of hours on AC Power while neglecting my batteries. The laptop just baked the batteries and I thought it wouldn't do no harm. What I should have done: I should have just stored away my laptop battery in a cool safe place and use the AC Power adaptor instead.
3. Charging Up and Fully Discharge: I thought the way to make a laptop battery longer was to discharge it frequently so that it doesn't remain dormant. I was constantly charging the batteries at it fullest. Lucky it didn't burned out. What I should have done: I shouldn't frequently rely on my batteries since my house has extra electricity cord all over. In my office, I don't do mobile computing much often, my laptop is always plugged in most of the time. My batteries were suppose to be just on standby whenever I needed to go mobile. That's it..
   

Since the damage is already done. I can only minimize the damage and make sure that my spare battery (I'm considering to buy one) would not go to through same thing again. I hope by sharing this experience, I hope my readers would appreciate take care of their laptops better than what I've done.

My Dell Laptop Survived The Battery Recall

A colleague of mine last week asked around if there was anyone that is using a Dell laptop. He told me that Dell was recalling back laptops. I thought it was no big deal until I read this. I then immediately checked my laptop to see if my Dell Inspiron 630m battery needs to be handed over or not. I wasn't so happy if I needed to hand over my stuff to someone because I know I wouldn't get it back so soon. It is almost like my car where it has been stored in a warehouse waiting for my insurance claim repair for more than a month already. Now the car workshop couldn't give me a time estimation over my car repair eventhough they are for sure will get the money from the insurance company. Companies are so corrupted these days.

Back to Dell Laptops. From my experience, laptops can get very hot when they are crunching a lot of datas. They also get hot when you use the CD ROM and if the air ventilation on the side near the CPU is blocked. If you live in a country where the atmosphere has a high level of humidity, it can get even hotter. So, it is recommended that you use your computer or laptop in an air conditioned room if you want maximum performance. Well, that would compromise my mobility because in my bedroom, I don't have air conditioner, only a small fan.

Never mind that. Here's a few shots of my Dell Laptop Inspiron 630m and let's see if my battery needs to be replaced or not:

My Dell Laptop Model

I've removed my battery to check out the battery model.

Logged on to Dell Battery Recall.

Compared my Dell laptop battery and..


my Dell laptop battery doesn't match.

So, I don't have to return my laptop and I'm saved by a Korean battery. I happen to love watching to Korean Soap Drama. I've never noticed that my laptop battery is made in Korea. Now I know. Funny how we didn't even notice the thing in front of us until when something happen.

SEO-I Should Practice More Of It

As someone who is practicing blogging and website writing as a hobby, the excitement of finding my pages and writing in search engines is just exhilarating. recently, I found my page to rank first in MSN Search:

I read about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) all the time since I've subscribed to a couple of SEO blogs on my RSS reader. However, I seem to spend more time reading and submerge in the topic. I should have start practicing while still keeping myself updated about it. Discipline is an area where I still lack. Maybe I should join the military to get hold of 'discipline' more firmly..Nahh..I'm not joining the military. I wouldn't qualify..I think.. :-p