Bukit Tinggi Paintball

I got my first taste of paintball war game at Bukit Tinggi, and it’s pretty amazing. As a guy I think I had always had a thing with guns and combat, imagining myself as a commando or sharp shooter. Paintball is fun, exhausting and had quite an adrenaline rush, but pretty expensive as well.

Charlie's Beloved Helpers

I had to wake up freaking early (5 AM in the morning, it had been a long while since I last did that), and I was told later the time had been postponed to an hour later (and no one told me about it; no one look out for my back anymore). Anyway, we meet up for breakfast and 16 of us drive up to Bukit Tinggi. Bukit Tinggi is just 5 km away from the Genting exit from KL, and the sign board is pretty obvious.

We wore our worst cloth and shoes, as we don’t want to spoil the good ones. We have to register with using IC, and we get our gun (with a number on it), a mask and a hand band to indicate our team. Long sleeve shirt/pant, vest and throat protector can be rented. I think long pant is a must (we could bring your own), and their long sleeve is pretty thick and useful. We could do without the vest and throat protector. We go through some briefing, learning that the mask should be on at all time, shouldn’t shoot each other within 30 feet distance and safety first. We bought 3000 extra bullets for our game, which is barely enough for 16 of us in a 4 hours session.

Brothers and Sisters, armed yourself

After a few round of target practice, the first game we had is Capture the Flag (CTF, reminds me of the half-life mod). 2 teams are separated by a border, and we need to rush to the front line to get our flag and return to the base. The trick is to shoot down 1 or 2 person at one side, den only rush for the flag (not too early, neither too late). This game needs a balance of offense and defense. Tang is on offence, a quick runner and a valuable asset for the game. Kenny is quite offensive as well, but perhaps not as valuable. As for me, I stick with defense and do supportive offense.

Capture the Base requires one of our team members to reach the enemy base, and is more favorable to defensive (unless you have a quick runner and element of surprise). The trick is to shoot down a few defensive guards on one flank and rush. This game is more exciting, and quite stamina demanding as well (it is pretty tiring to duck and run, especially when I am tall). Anyway, some evasive maneuver and rolling would help, though I didn’t try that.

Lastly we went for Vietnam Game, where the US team is on offense and Vietnam is on defense. As we had learned from history, the game favor Vietnam. The US need to rush in, capture a hidden flag and bail out. We put the flag on top of the tree, so we can shoot the sucker who tries to climb up and get the flag. Basically the US team had no chance of capturing the flag, thus the only way to win is to kill all of us. The US team all came in through the front, 1st focus on the left flank, den they shift a few to the right flank during the 2nd half, but all of them got creamed with minimum casualty on the Vietnam side. I only get some actions after 15 minutes (waiting is tiring) and manage to ambush a few behind the bath tub and bushes.

Basically, I could only think of 2 ways the US team could win. 1st they need the element of surprise, send 2 person around the Vietnam base and come from the back (they have to travel through some pretty thick bushes, sacrifice, guts and stealth mode required). The US shouldn’t attack too early, as Vietnam is allowed to hide in houses and had an eye at the top tower in the 1st 10 minutes. Opportunities arise after 10 minutes, where the Vietnam team must leave their houses and tower, and can take on offense (which they probably won’t, as it is unfavorable). The front assault team act as cover and decoy, and probably could move the bath tub on the ground as moving shield while pushing forward. The 2 person should sneak from behind and freeze everyone from left and right flank simultaneously. Of course, this strategy needs lots of coordination and some guts, and would probably work very well when used for the 1st time. If the US team wins, it would be such a satisfaction with great bragging right for life.

In the last game of Capture the Base, the enemy team manages to bring down 2 of our defensive guard on the right flank and rush in. Me and tang rush to stop him from the left flank, but unfortunately both our gun got jammed and luck was on their side.

End of War

Paint ball is a whole lot of fun, extremely exhausting with a whole lot of bruises, blue black and some blood (not kidding). And quite expensive too, our game cost us around RM 150 per person for around 7 rounds and 4 hours of play time. Perhaps another game next time, after I made enough money for it.

War Comrads, Battalion 88

Photo Link: Mich's Multiply

Yet Another Productivity Challenge Delay

Last week I gave myself another Productivity Challenge to churn out a good quality web application in the shortest time possible. Among the insane list of things to be finished in 6 days, I only manage to complete 2 and included a lot of stuff which is not in the list (it is not that they are not important, just that it kinda slip my mind).

The first thing I tackle is the feature to allow users to contribute, comment or review. It seems reasonable since I already had the interface to display them, so it’s time to have an interface to feed in the data. While working on this, I have to complete Div folding since I don’t want the data entry screen to obstruct the information display (a toggle button to show and hide the data entry screen). But one thing leads to another, as I need users before data entry. Thus I need to create a user table, which require an User Signup module, which require an Account Activation module, which require ACL for access control and Captcha to counter bot spam, and also a log in and log out module, not to mentioned “I forgot my password” module. Before I could finish my first task, I have to complete all these things under the hood of User Management. Finally I manage to complete my first Comment module just a few minutes ago, and still have Contribute and Review to go (but it should be easier from now).

Day 5-10

• Comment Module
  
• User Management Module: Signup, ACL, Captcha, Login, Logout, I forgot Password, Account Activation (Dropped)
• More CSS

In between, I found that there are 3 tasks which are extremely time consuming

• CSS and cross-browser compatibility
• Learning the CAKE PHP Framework’s in and out when using more and more of its feature
• On the go bug fixing and testing

CSS is really quite a beast and more of a nightmare when it involves cross browser compatibility. I can only care for IE 6 and Firefox 1.5, and I wonder how it looks like in Safari and Opera. God bless ...

Sometimes it can be quite an annoyance when the new framework lacks good documentation, but luckily the groups is quite active and I can still drill into the codes to find what I want at times. The framework is still young, but promising, though the adoption rate is still considerably low and the future is uncertain. I still have some difficulty finding the right way to do things, figuring how to access certain information and have to build my own module on certain tasks.

I think I read somewhere testing and bug fixing should consist of 70% of the overall time of the project, where coding is just 20%. I do agree the process is extremely time consuming and inevitable, perhaps it’s time for me to adopt some automatic testing tool, at least some unit testing.

So, how much more time do I need to finished the web application for 1st BETA. Probably around 10 days (or more). But lets push the limit slightly, as I would like to complete it before my Gunung Charlie climb next Friday, and I am busy for the weekends with Paintball War. Minus my computer teaching class, I have around 3 days to get the rest of the list up. Maybe not complete the whole things, perhaps until a satisfactory state which allow seamless users participation and contribution.

Next 3 days

• Comement
• Review
• Contribute
• Submit Links
• Submit Pictures
  

My 1st Road Accident

With so many accidents happening around KL and so many accident stories which you heard before, have you ever wonder when will be your turn? Or it had already happened to you?

I have my first major taste last weekend with Mei Ru in my car, and quite a scary one. I was taking a round-about on the outer circle, and a motorcycle hit me on my right as he was assuming I am going to take the turning out. I was shocked with the loud bang on m right, and saw him continue skidding and fall off on the pavement. I was stunt for a moment, and was then awaken by the motorist cried for help in pain.

I get down from my car and approach the man. He is still conscious, but in pain. The first thing which came to my mind was to call for an ambulance, so I check out how was the man’s injury. I call 999 and asked for an ambulance, and then 2 motorcyclists stop to help. I check the man’s injury, and another help to move his bike up to the pavement. Then I thought perhaps it’s better if I sent the man to hospital myself, since he could still move. I cancel the ambulance call, and ask for direction to the nearest hospital, which I was told is General Hospital. I ask the motorcyclists to lead me there, as I am not quite sure of the way, but they said there are still busy with work. We move out after I get a brief direction from them. I think I missed a turning out of panic and got loss again. We asked for a driver’s help at a traffic light for direction to General Hospital, and the kind man decide to lead us there. While on the way, the injured man call his uncle and I called for sister for help and advice.

Soon we reached the General Hospital emergency ward, where there is a critical and non-critical section. The man is categorized as non-critical and has to be seated to wait for his turn. I can't park outside, and have to find my own parking somewhere around the hospital vicinity (I wonder why there isn’t reserved parking for emergency case? Perhaps too many accidents happening everyday and it’s too common until no special treatment for parking can be given). I asked Mei Ru to accompanied the man while I look for parking which are full most of the time, thus have to illegal-park slightly.

When I went back to the ward, the man is still waiting there. It seems like for emergency case, firstly the nurse will check your wound, then you have to register, given a number and wait for your turn with the doctor. We are 7 numbers away, but it took us 90 minutes before we get to see the doctor. There are about 30-40 people around us. There is a sign there which said the standard acceptable time is supposed to be 20-30 minutes, but luckily the man’s injury wasn’t serious. His name is MI, who had been just in town for 6 months to look for a job. So right arm hurts, and have a few spot of scratches over his body.

So, his uncle and aunt arrive to check him out. They seem calm, as it seems his uncle had his own fair share of accidents. The doctor (he seems skilful and experience) check him out , sent him for x-rays, come back for 2nd consultancy, found a minor crack in his bone (not broken), send him for cement casting and collect some medicine. One thing good about government hospital is cost saving. In only cost RM 1 to register, the rest is free (including consultancy, x-ray, cement casting, medicine). It would easily cost more than 1K in private hospital.

Next, we discuss how to settle this incident. Do we want to make a police report and file for insurance claim (which is lengthy and painful), or we settled by a mutually agreeable sum. We went back to check the damage of his bike, which was extremely minor (my car damage more as he bang into me). His uncle demanded RM 1,000, and that amount is too much for a settlement, thus we have no choice but to make a police report.

Somehow, we arrange for a 2nd negotiation outside of the police station. Perhaps we both know how painful and lengthy the process of reporting and claim could take. He brought his cousins along for negotiation, where he had his fare share of motorcycle accident as well (we was so fed up with motorcycle accident that he decided to buy a car instead). We settle for a mutually agreeable sum, which some went for the motorcycle damage and some went for his pain. It is kinda sadden me to see him in such a state, so I don’t mind the little extra and make it easy for us. The shake hand in goodwill and make a written agreement, and end the day and close the case.

Based on the advice I get, it is only worth settling if it is RM 300 or less. Even if I am the guilty party, I shall be fined RM 150. The rest of the payment shall be settled by insurance, and I get to repair my car free of charge as well. Only things that suffer are the NCB, but the victim gets the claim as much as legally possible (from the insurance company, of course).

Frankly, I am not quite interested to find out which party is at fault. I am wrong for being at the outer circle, and he was wrong for cutting on the right side and knock into me. Of course we were more sympathetic which him as he gets hurt.

Anyway, I guess we are lucky in the certain sense in this case.

• No one got hurt seriously, but it does ache us to see him in pain
• We are good people with common sense, thus didn’t try to put blame on each other and try to resolve this issue in a civilized manner
• Material damage could be resolved with money, and it isn’t too serious as well (someone told me problems which could be solved with money is not a problem, but I say that is given that we had a lot of money)

I think this incident will continue to haunt me in times to come. It was quite horrified to felt someone knock into you and see another person in pain. Luckily everyone is safe this time. I have heard of more horrifying experience, with bone sticking out and blood spilling continuously. Perhaps it shall change my feelings towards driving from now on.

I ask myself, how could this accident happen? My carelessness? His carelessness? Fate? Luck? The law of probability? The unsafe round-about? Perhaps a little bit of everything. Let’s pray for everyone’s safety on the road, for whoever next it shall be.

PS: Somehow, I felt thankful with my father for not letting me take a motorcycle license - it is a smart choice. Though motorcycle is cheap, cost saving and convinient, but it's dangerous.

Yet Another Productivity Challenge

Due to the overwhelmed success of my last self-challenge (Ahem!), I decide to give it another try. Since I am the boss, there is no one to watch over me except myself. But I can’t really trust myself fully, thus this blog post shall be my witness.

When I created MMW Property, I took 3 months or more because I developed a lot of the stuffs from scratch, including the Framework and UI (bad move). Now, with a new framework (quite up to speed now), using some free templates and reusing some of the existing codes, I should have better productivity and better quality of codes.

After MMW Property and Software, here comes MMW ProjectX. ProjectX should take around 3 weeks to complete, but I decide to throw in some challenges and make it 2 weeks (around 5 days per week). 4 days had passed, and I got the basic information page up with some pretty cool features. Now it is time to push it further and polished it at the end.

Day 1-4 (Completed)

• Meddling with the new framework
• Get the basic Information Page up
• Playing with CSS the beast
• Build a neat image viewer
• Find a neat markup language

Day 5-10

• Google Map integration
• Javascript Tag Selector
• Contribute/Comment/Review feature
• Identify changes by user & date
• Intuitive search feature
• Main page design
• Div Folding
• URL Click Tracking

After Day 10

• Data Mining & Data Entry
• PR Work

Come to think of it, ProjectX is quite a beast to handle, sometimes it’s hard to keep things small and slick. Wish me luck to finish in time, as I still have a business proposal to rush for September.

Malaysian need to feel safe and shoot the bad people

Denny Crane said, what does Americans want?

• A safe home
• Keep the money they earned
• Shoot the bad people
• Protect the people they love

I think Malaysians want that as well (at least I do). A safe place where I don’t need layers of iron grills and locks to protect the house, and neither should I worry someone would rob or snatch when I have a walk around. No tax perhaps, as we all want to keep all the money we earned. I guess we didn’t get to shoot the bad people as we are not allowed to carry firearms, but wouldn’t it be great to strike fear into the criminals rather than letting them strike fears into us. Protect the people we loved? I only hope we are capable of doing so in times of needs.

I guess this country pretty much felt like an unsafe place to live in lately, where there are fears among the citizen. Look around you:

• Every house is grilled up with layers of locks
• We have easily detachable handbags to keep yourself from being harmed by snatch thieves
• We panics when we heard motorcycle sounds from behind
• No one dare to have a walk too early in the day or too late in the night
• Multiple layers of security is required for our cars
• We must remember to lock our cars once we get in or get out
• It is depressing to read newspaper with some many crimes and death happening
• People are getting killed and raped in robbery incidents
• More and more dead bodies are being found around the city

I guess we are in the defensive and haunted with constant amount of fear. We need to make this country a safer place to live, where our children can roam freely without us worrying about harms brought by others. We need to feel safe even though we forgot to lock the doors, we need to feel safe even when we don’t have fences and grills, and we need to feel safe when we have a walk with our loves one.

We need a safe country, and more happy news when reading the newspaper. We need to feel safe. We need a safe home, keep the money we earned, shoot the bad people and protect the people we love :)

Gunung Datuk: Quick & Steep with Nice Scenery

In preparation for the Gunung Charlie Trekking, we had a training session at Gunung Datuk near Rembau and Seremban (Direction is here). I somehow missed the alarm clock and didn’t wakeup on time until Tang gave me a rang wondering where I am. So we are late and have to resort to meeting them on the R&R along the highway.

It had been quite a while since my last Gunung Rajah climb, and I didn’t get to exercise much since then (so the stamina kinda deteriorate). Anyway, Datuk is a short and challenging climb, it takes around 2 hours to reach the top, but 1st half of the journey is definitely quite steep. Datuk literally take the breathe out of you, so it should be a good weekend training ground if you wish to build up your stamina for bigger climbs.

Rest and Makan!

Datuk’s mountain top is quite a reward as well. There is quite a large area of flat ground on top for resting and cooking. The scenic views lies on the rock platform, which you’ll have to climb further up with the help of ropes and ladders which is already available there. Since there might be a lot of people, do expect quite a lot of traffic jam (one way path). The view is quite magnificent, windy with a lot of openness. Beautiful greenery, rock platform and able to see some small towns afar. There is quite a few interesting spot to lay back and enjoy your victorious moment at the top.

Sex Predators

Rock Platform (Heaven is up there!)

The Peak and the 3 wise girls

Help!

I guess trekking had always been such.

• In the beginning, you are determined to conquer the mountain.
• When you start trekking, you start to wonder why you are here and wanted to give up.
• Then you realize you have not much of a choice but keep going.
• When you felt that the top is near, you are all charged up and rush forward
• When you are up there, you finally get your much deserved rest and food (Reward No 1)
• If you are lucky, there are some superb scenery up there (Reward No 2)
• Then the feeling that you are on the of the world and have a nice nap (Reward No 3)
• Then start packing and going downhill, and it isn’t as difficult as going up
• Lastly, the satisfaction of conquering and didn’t give up (I ain’t no quitter)
• Then you look forward to the next climb, thinking it would be fun (and totally forget about the pain)

Photo Links: Mich's Multiply, Mei Ru's Multiply

New Blogger in Beta: Support for categorisation!

After some rambling to find a better blog software because blogger kinda sucks, I found that my prayers had answered in an unexpected way. A new Blogger is available in Beta version! Somehow, I could always depend on Google, though they are quite slow this time, but better late than never.

What’s new?

• Support for blog categorization using labels
• Access control for blogs (think private blog)
• A more intuitive layout and templating system (think drag and drop)
• More feed options
• A more powerful dashboard?
• Dynamic Publishing (faster?)
• And more (I’m not quite sure what’s more)

The new version is in kinda closed beta, so I can’t migrate yet until I am invited. Though I am allowed to create a new account and try out the new feature, but I am just not that enthusiastic. I just wanna make Blue Dragon better. Fingers crossed and hope for the best :)

XNA Game Studio Express: Easy and cheap way to build a game

Talking about the ever rising skill and resource requirement of game development, it might seem that Microsoft might have done something right for the game industry with XNA Game Studio Express. It is free and enables quick game development on PC Platform, and might support portability and distribution channel to XBOX 360 in the near future. Good news huh? Imagine building my own game and share it among friends easily.

I think this is quite a good move, giving a free and easy tool, and creating a community and sharing of resources for faster and easier development. It kinda bring a new life to Indies game developers, and hopefully a lot of weird and innovative game titles will pop up at the Xbox Live distribution channel to add more varieties to the genres and styles of games. I believe innovations shows out most frequently with Indies developers (though might not be polished), because they want and can afford to take risk.

I still remember the days where the Tribes 2 engines is offered at only USD 100, later renamed to Torque Game Engine and it help Indies game developers publish games with the help of GarageGames. I was so tempted to buy it and build a cool games with some friends, but I guess the project is still too huge for us to handle. Perhaps XNA could reduce the challenges and effort required in order to build a fun game.

What is XNA Game Studio Express?

• A development IDE based on Visual C# Express 2005, bundled with XNA Framework, 3D tools, starter-kits and demo for easy game development on Windows and Xbox 360.
• You can build commercial Windows game using the express edition, but not for Xbox (you’ll need the professional edition)
• To develop, debug and/or play games on Xbox 360, you will need to purchase a XNA “Creator’s Club” subscription (USD 99 per year).
• More FAQ.
  

The effort is still at its early stage, thus a lot of infrastructure is not ready yet, but the future looks promising for Indies developers, hobbyist and most of all, Xbox 360 and Windows.