Last Sunday (2nd August 2009), my friend, Gary Leon Robert went missing after completing a 22km marathon (Adidas King of the Road) around Shah Alam Stadium organized by none other than Adidas Malaysia. On Monday (3rd August 2009), his body was found in the Stadium basement. The cause of his death is dehydration*, however we believe that perhaps the real cause of his death is negligent.On Thursday, ‘The Star’ published 2 pages on how successful the event went but nothing on Gary.**

The Star

To be fair to the media, I believe there are a number of online articles of him but they are relatively short in details. (google them!)

Malay Mail
New Strait Times
MStar

Participating a run may seem harmless, but in the light of his death we need to take steps to improve the facilities which sport event organizers provide and the care which paramedics give. The Mayor of Majlis Bandaraya Shah Alam said the Gary was given the best medical treatment. If he had, he would still be here with us.

Wtf! Death of dehydration while under the care of paramedics? It’s an unnecessary death and it is SO SO SO avoidable. Healthy and good kid like this shouldn’t die so young.

A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of its premier products, in its current form due to patent infringement.

Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML,” according to a statement released by attorneys for the plantiff, i4i.

Microsoft said it was disappointed in the ruling and that it would appeal the verdict.

“We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” Microsoft spokesperson Kevin Kutz said in a statement.

Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the Redmond,Wash.-based software giant violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.

Micro$oft can’t seem to escape from lawsuits eh? And now they are forbidden to sell Word? Jeez…what are we supposed to use then? Alphabets?

The Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of Windows operating system) from managed code. These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework.

The individual features supported in this version (v1.0) of the library are:

• Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
• Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers.
• Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects.
• Explorer Browser Control.
• Shell property system.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
• Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)
• Sensor Platform APIs
• Extended Linguistic Services APIs
• Power Management APIs
• Application Restart and Recovery APIs
• Network List Manager APIs
• Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.

Can’t wait to get a copy of the Windows 7 and test this up. Sounds like an opportunity to crank out some utility apps.

Bracelet at Tiffany’

A lady walks into Tiffany’s.
She looks around, spots a beautiful diamond bracelet and walks over to inspect it.
As she bends over to look more closely, she lets out a fart.

Very embarrassed, she looks around nervously to see if anyone has noticed her little accident and prays that a sales person doesn’t pop up right now.

As she turns around, her worst nightmare materializes in the form of a salesman standing right behind her.

Cool as a cucumber, he displays all of the qualities one would expect of a professional salesman in a store like Tiffany’s, and greets the lady with, ‘Good day, Madam. How may we help you today?’

Feeling uncomfortable, but still hoping that the salesman may not have been there at the time of her little ‘accident’, she asks, ‘Sir, what is the price of this lovely bracelet?’

He answers, ‘Madam, if you farted just looking at it, you’re going to sh*t when I tell you the price!’

This one had me cracking. Have a nice day, folks!

However, typical PC users may not have realized the risks they are putting on themselves, families and friends when they make a post or update to their social profiles. I’ll be using Facebook as an example in this entry but to make it clear, I have nothing against Facebook. In fact, I’m an avid user.

In Facebook, there are three main features that you’d use almost everyday; Add a friend, update your status and run 3rd party applications such as games and quizzes. We’ll take a look at each of these features.

Adding a Friend

A friend is an individual on the Facebook network whom you assigned permission to view various details of your personal information such as date of birth, address, web address, groups, comments, photos and list of your other friends.

So what’s the problem with adding friends? After all, Facebook is about meeting and connecting to friends. In fact, adding a friend is the first step to social networking.

Let’s create a scenario here. You received a friend invitation from someone called Cynthia when you log into your Facebook account. Upon checking, you found that Cynthia is a friend from your elementary school who had found you through one of your mutual friends’ “Friends” list. So, without a second thought you click the [Accept] button and added her. Now, you knew that by adding her, you’ve given her access to all your personal information and vice-versa.

What you may not have realized is, you have just exposed yourself to strangers, kidnappers, robbers and conmen. “But how?”, you’d ask. Unknown to you, Cynthia may have added strangers to her “Friends” list. Many applications and games have virtual teams and she may have added her team members as friends. Bad intention individuals often use these application to lure victims into adding them so they can gain access to a larger pool of targets.

Updating your status

I don’t deny this: I like to broadcast my status. I use Twitter a lot and with a browser addon, this will update my Facebook status as well. It’s a fun and easy to share information and experience to my family and friends. Starbucks giving discount? Twitter it. There is a free gift-away from a local radio station? Twitter it. Bumped into a hot celebrity on your way to lunch? Twitter it!

Here are some status update examples from my friends:

[Friend A] is bowling.
[Friend B] tired…after work and pub.
[Friend C] is off to Singapore tomorrow!!!

These status updates look harmless enough but [Friend C] might have just captured some attention. Telling the world that he’s not going to be home the next day is like hanging a sign in front of your house saying it’s empty.

3rd party application and games

What makes Facebook interesting and fun is the amount of application and games that are built on its platform. FarmVille, Restaurant, 10 Things You Do Not Know About Me, How Well You Know [Name Here], just to name a few, are applications that you allowed to data mine your profile information the moment you added them to your Facebook account.

But that’s not all, a lot of us have a habit of using the same username and password for many of our logins. This can terribly put our security at risk. As a rule of thumb, never put the same login credentials for your confidential accounts and these 3rd party applications or games. We do not know who are the people behind them and Facebook are not responsible for any identity theft or loss.

Summary

As a summary, social-networking opens up a whole new window to a sea of opportunities and fun but without careful thought, it can seriously put, not only ourselves, but the people we know as well, to serious risks.

Side Note: Love this song, Wonderful by Everclear. It’s old but still wonderful.

It is not because I didn’t care.
Neither it is because I was too sad nor had I no feelings for the demise of the King of Pop.
It is not because of the scandals that tainted the last decade of his life.
It is not because of the hideous look plastic surgery had caused him.

It is because I wanted to give the man a moment of silence.
It is because I wanted to read and see how the hypocrites in the world pretend to care when just less than a decade ago, they were the extreme critics.
It is because I wanted the man to rest in peace.

I grew up with Michael’s songs. I may not be his greatest fan but without a doubt, his songs and dance moves influenced my adolescent days. The forward-leaning and moon-walking moves, were among the many things I tried, but of course failed, to mimic during those days.

He remained as one of my favourite artists until his child-molestation scandals surfaced about a decade ago. I was drawn to the news and as good as anyone guess, they poisoned my thoughts and slowly, I lost interest in him and the news altogether. What made things worse was the incident when he dangled a baby from a balcony for all his fan to see. From that moment, to me, the King of Pop has failed, both as a sane human and a legend.

On June 25th, 2009, I read about the unsuspected death of Michael. Even as I read the article from The Star newspaper, I still couldn’t believe it was him. He was trying to make a comeback, at the age of 50. I so wanted to see if he can still do all the slick moves he did a few decades back. But now he’s dead. Dead before he can recover his fame and innocence?

As I followed the news and read the testimonials from magazines, websites or books alike, only did I realized how wrong I was. He had not lost his fame. Look at the millions of fans who mourned for his death. He regained his innocence when he was not found guilty on all his charges on child-molestations. I just didn’t know; I wasn’t following the news. But it hurts to know that sub-consciously, I’ve sentenced this man to a lifetime exile from my fave list, without even giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Michael’s legacy will live on, just like Elvis before him. His contribution and love will forever immortalize him in the hearts of many children and adults alike. The story of his life reminded me of a meaningful quote:

You came into the world crying, while everyone around you were smiling. Live your life such that when you die, you leave the world smiling while everyone else are crying.

T_T

Awesome. Tier-9 sets for Patch 3.2 are just awesome in looks and style. Personally, I like the mage set but maybe broaden the shoulder pads a little wee bit. This is too feminine.

Making mind note to self: Never, never take a train in Japan during rush hour.

There is a technique called double buffering which we could turn on from Form object itself. However, under certain conditions, this does not work for me. So, after further researching into the topic, I’ve found another solution; That is to implement double buffering myself.

There are two events we can override in the Form object namely, OnPaint and OnPaintBackground. What we are trying to achieve here is to repaint the background ourselves before the Form redraw the child controls. First, we override the OnPaintBackground and make it does absolutely nothing.

protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e)
{
    // Do Nothing
}

Okay, here comes the interesting part. We will now declare a buffer to keep the background drawing, changing it only when the Form resizes. Needless to say, this would save a lot of reloading and redrawing of the image from file.

private Bitmap _dblBuffer = null;

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
{
    if (_dblBuffer == null)
    {
        _dblBuffer = new Bitmap(this.ClientSize.Width, this.ClientSize.Height);
        Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(_dblBuffer);
        g.DrawImage(_backgroundImage, 0, 0, this.ClientSize.Width, this.ClientSize.Height);
        g.Flush();
        g.Dispose();
    }

    e.Graphics.DrawImage(_dblBuffer, 0, 0, this.ClientSize.Width, this.ClientSize.Height);

    base.OnPaint(e);
}

protected override void OnSizeChanged(EventArgs e)
{
    if (_dblBuffer != null)
    {
        _dblBuffer.Dispose();
        _dblBuffer = null;
    }

    base.OnSizeChanged(e);
}

That should do it. The flickering should have dramatically improved after this. The code is not perfect, so do post it in the comments if you  have any suggestions.

By the way, if anyone knows how to preserve the codes tabbing with SyntaxHighlighter Plus, please drop me a mail. It seems to remove all my tabs after I save the post.

Update: I’m now using SyntaxHighlighter Evolved to solve the indentation issue.