Jarod’s Den

Speak Engrish please…

My dear cousin was lamenting about college life in her blog the other day. College life sucks it seems. My advice to her, wait till she starts working.

Anyway, because she’s a banana (a term used for chinese who don’t speak much chinese, and I can call her that cause I’m one too.), her classmates, who are predominantly chinese speaking, like to make fun of her.

What I believe is that, one should be able to speak English decently. Any other language, is optional. Why? Because we live in a world where English has become a common language. Wherever you go, there is bound to be English translation in every billboards, roadsigns and what not. That kind of tells you that English is useful wherever you are. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that one should have a Phd in the language. Just a decent command of it will do.

Here are some pictures that shows the horror of not knowing English well enough.

Suicide made easy but with a price.

Arr… I’m lost for words…

I guess it’s not as simple as putting it in your mouth and chew.

Yeah, my friend suck too…

I think new friends are in order.

I think it means no washing was ever done here and you are to leave after ‘Pissing‘ or ‘shitting‘.

It’s an art to be able to fall carefully into a river. You need talents.

You’ll have to shoot me to make me eat those dumplings. Or you can threaten me with the “Acid food“.

There are plenty more from where that come from. But you get the idea. Whoever their teachers translators are, they need to be shot.

Tags: billboard, english, language, translation

Windows Shortcut Keys

Here’s a list of Windows shortcut keys to cut down on those mouse clicks. Sort of like a Windows cheat sheet.

Shift+F10 brings up the context menu
Ctrl + Shift + Esc - Brings up the task manager
CTRL and A Selects all the items in the active window.
CTRL and C Copies the item or items to the Clipboard and can be pasted using CTRL and V.
CTRL and F Displays the Find all files dialog box.
CTRL and G Displays the Go to folder dialog box.
CTRL and N Displays the New dialog box.
CTRL and O Displays the Open dialog box.
CTRL and P Displays the Print dialog box.
CTRL and S Displays the Save dialog box.
CTRL and V Pastes the copied item or items from the Clipboard.
CTRL and X Cuts the item or items selected to the Clipboard.
CTRL and Z Undoes the last action.
CTRL and F4 Closes the active document window.
CTRL while dragging an item Copy the selected item
CTRL+SHIFT with arrow keys Highlight a block of text
CTRL+F4 Close the active document
CTRL+ESC Display the Start menu
CTRL and F6 Opens the next document window in the active application.
ALT+ENTER View the properties for the selected item
ALT+F4 Close the active item, or quit the active program
ALT+SPACEBAR Open the shortcut menu for the active window
ALT+TAB Switch between the open items
ALT+ESC Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened
F1 key Gives help on the active window or selected item.
F2 key Rename the selected item
F3 key Search for a file or a folder
F4 key Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer
F5 key Update the active window
F6 key Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop
F10 key Activate the menu bar in the active program
Windows Logo Display or hide the Start menu
Windows Logo+BREAK Display the System Properties dialog box
Windows Logo+D Display the desktop
Windows Logo+M Minimize all of the windows
Windows Logo+SHIFT+M Restore the minimized windows
Windows Logo+E Open My Computer
Windows Logo+F Search for a file or a folder
CTRL+Windows Logo+F Search for computers
Windows Logo+F1 Display Windows Help
Windows Logo+ L Lock the keyboard
Windows Logo+R Open the Run dialog box
Windows Logo+U Open Utility Manager
TAB Move forward through the options
SHIFT+TAB Move backward through the options
CTRL+TAB Move forward through the tabs
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB Move backward through the tabs
ALT+Underlined letter Perform the corresponding command or select the corresponding option
ENTER Perform the command for the active option or button
SPACEBAR Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box
F1 key Display Help
F4 key Display the items in the active list
Arrow keys Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons
BACKSPACE Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box
END Display the bottom of the active window
HOME Display the top of the active window
NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder
NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) Display the contents of the selected folder
NUM LOCK+Minus sign (-) Collapse the selected folder
LEFT ARROW Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder
RIGHT ARROW Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC brings out Task manager
CTRL and NUMPAD ‘+’ Autosizes columns (eg explorer detail view)

Tags: key, mouse, shortcuts, windows

Mum’s Birthday

Yesterday, mum celebrated her 51st birthday.

The family, consisting of mum, myself, uncle and his wife, had a simple dinner at a Taiwanese steamboat restaurant. I’m not sure if it’s authentic Taiwanese steamboat but that’s what I was told.

It has been some time since the four of us got together to have dinner. So mum’s birthday was as good an excuse as any.

The Food.

That’s the food up there. Don’t be fooled by the size of the dishes. It’s actually a lot of cabbage at the bottom that made it look like a lot. The food is pretty decent though. Everything is fresh. I had the prawns set while uncle had the beef set. Since women tend to eat less, both ladies shared the fish set.
We had a great time eating and laughing. Unlike other steamboat, this one gives each customer their own pot to cook their own food. It was quite an experience seeing how each of us cook our own food. Of course the ladies excel in this area. We guys just dumped everything into the pot. Since I had prawns, pork meatballs, and the beef and fish stolen from the others, my soup was the best. At least in my opinion since the others all claimed theirs is the best.

The Guys.

Here’s the men. Don’t ask me who he’s feeding. I can assure you it’s not me. We finished up everything. At least I finished up everything. Uncle had some pieces here and there leftover. The ladies, however, struggled to finish their shared dish.

The Gals.

As you can see, we haven’t eaten much yet but the ladies seems to be stopping already. Is it really that much food? They eat so little and yet complain the most about getting fat. I eat so much but yet can never be any where near the ‘fat‘ category.

The Weirdo.

That’s the weird uncle every family has one. You don’t? Oh…

You sure?

Overall, we had a great time. Our tummy was satisfactorily filled. Since we had no birthday cake (by choice), we went for durians. We had very, very good durians (and ridiculously expensive too!). Then we all gulped down a can of 7-UP and had a burping contest to burp out the excellent (debatable) aroma.

Yup, it was fun.

Tags: birthday, celebration, dinner, family, mum

Your Face is Your Password!

First it’s text, then it’s fingerprints. Now it’s your face!

Secured access to notebooks used to be just using passwords. In recent years, certain brands of notebook began introducing biometic fingerprints security. Now, it’s using your face.

FTEC Systems Sdn Bhd in collaboration with RC Group Holdings Ltd will provide notebook users with face-recognition technology for login access. It is claimed that this technology is superior to conventional password login systems.

How it works? Well, you will need a webcam and obviously your face. What is does is that it will capture the user’s facial features and then compared it to a saved template.

I can already see the flaws in this technology. First of all, what’s stopping me from putting a user’s portrait in front of the camera? Will it be able to tell the difference between a real face and a picture?

Also, consider this scenario; If I have already set up the security system and then I had an accident and scarred my face. Or someone punched me and my face got bloated. What happens then?

In an extreme (and exaggerated) scenerio, if the bad guys wanted the data from the notebook bad enough, they might cut off my fingers or gorge out my eye to access the data depending on the type of security system I used. So in this case, will they cut off my head?!

It will be interesting to see how they’re going to market this.

Full story here.

Tags: face, password, security

UPM Hooligans

Of late we have been seeing a number of video clips taken from camera phones or vidcams on ‘weird’ police interrogation methods, bullying in boys school, bullying in girls school etc. Recently, one clip that is making its way around the cyberspace is the alleged racism in UPM (University Putra Malaysia).

Having seen this clip, I find it disturbing. I can understand those hooligans in secondary schools. But for students studying in Universities to act like that is ridiculous. These people can be considered as young adults by the society but yet they act like, as what some forumer calls them, monkeys.

Although you can see a big group of malays harassing a small group of chinese, I highly doubt it is about racism here. Just a coincidence on the race ‘thingy’. The matter is about the group of chinese not having obtain the proper permission from the hostel ‘authorities’ to set up a counter in the canteen for some charity purposes. However, it is the method they used to “get rid” of the “chinese” group that is sickening.

It is no wonder that Malaysia is dubbed as the 3rd most rudest country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx9nuRVTKAM

Tags: bully, hooligans, racism, upm