Happy New Year!

Happy 2006 everyone! I am really looking forward to this new and happy year. For one thing, it is the year of the dog, I am turning 24 this year and everything feels just great! Of course every new year is nothing without the usual new year resolutions and this time I have already made mine. So here goes,

1) To lose at least 10kg this year
2) To spend more quality time with Chuen
3) To spend my money wisely
4) To contribute more to society
5) To help more people
6) To be a better cell leader

There you go, all six of them for 2006. Now only 12 more months to go before 2007. The truth is that 2006 is a new beginning for me in so many areas, a new working environment, new colleagues and even new cell members. I have so many friends getting married this year and the first one will be this weekend, so its time for a road trip down to Johor!

I am a car thief

Ok, I admit it. Sometimes I look up "Mark Leo" in Google, well actually I do that to see if my blog actually comes up but something really funny came up instead.

CAR CRIME

Attempted break in
Lock up, hide contents and park in a safe place.

West Midlands Police are cracking down on car crime and Inside Out investigates the problem and reports on some of the solutions.

Mark Leo was a car thief. He is banned from every car park in the country until 2007.

Since leaving prison, in December 2002, Mark Leo has gone straight.

During his crime spree he was, previously, responsible for breaking into one in twenty of the cars in Wolverhampton city centre.

Nothing would deter him, not even closed circuit television cameras.

"Soon as they turn back round, duck, hide behind the car," explains Mark.

" Soon as they turn back round again, jump in and do what you got to do and go. So cameras are no deterrent really."

- Source

Man, I am a car thief, all the way in the UK. Eeeek! Of course that isn't me, its actually some weird parralel universe where everyone is named Mark Leo. That doesn't really help one bit for me here though. I really do need to find something else to do other then looking up my name in Google or lepaking around. Productivity is the key word for me next year!

Darn it, why are there sirens outside my house now???







Just kidding, Happy New Year everybody!

Remember the good old days?

Remember the times during "Kemahiran Hidup" or Life Skills classes when you were in form 3, you had to solder some electronics project? For me that was over 6 years ago but I clearly remembering having plenty of fun soldering those LEDs together and creating an array of wonderful coloured lights powered by a 12 volt battery. Then, components were quite big. Even the one depicted below is rather small but at about 1cm in length it is easy to solder them.


All you had to do was to insert these components into the breadboard and solder the legs at the other end. Very simple and easy. No hassle and no need for extra help.

But times have most certainly changed. Everything is becoming so small nowadays. It takes two soldering irons to solder components now. Right now as I type this, I am trying to let my sore fingers and frustrated brain relax a little before I attempt another mission, to try to solder these capacitors!


They are so ^$&@%!^$*@#$% small!!! Sigh, if only I could turn myself small enough to solder these components.

If you are curious about these components, they are capacitors and you can most probably find these types in your cell phones.

Do not Pass Go!

"Do not pass go, do not collect $200", doesn't this phrase sound just familiar? Of course, its from the world's best selling boardgame in the world. With over millions and millions of copies sold (over 200million), Monopoly has become a household name and is sold in over 80 countries and in 26 different languages.

Here is a brief history of Monopoly taken from Hasbro's website.

It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce it on his own.

With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved it! But as demand grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to Parker Brothers again. The rest, as they say, is history! In its first year, 1935, the MONOPOLY game was the best-selling game in America. And over its 65-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played!

* Over 200 million games have been sold worldwide.
* More than five billion little green houses have been "built" since 1935.
* A set made by my friends at Alfred Dunhill, with gold houses and silver hotels, sold for $25,000.
* The longest game in history lasted 70 straight days.
* The longest game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours!

The MONOPOLY game is so much a part of today's popular culture that my lawyers have trademarked many of its graphic elements. The tokens, Railroad, COMMUNITY CHEST, CHANCE, and Title Deed designs, as well as BOARDWALK and all four gameboard corners are legally protected.

Contrary to what you just read, I heard that the true creator of Monopoly didn't get a single cent out of it. Who knows, or could it be just another urban legend?

Ok, so what have been going on and on talking about Monopoly after playing Eurogames and being a judge at GameCon-1? Well something caught my eye last night while I was shopping at 1 Utama.


Yes, it is a life-size Monopoly! Huge isn't it? Why am I getting all excited over it? Well I am not. Just that I happen to walk by it when I was heading towards the parking lot.


Sponsored by Hasbro and Nokia, I really wonder what this exhibition is all about? Will it be played? Will there be a competition? How are we going to throw the die? Will it be the size of a exercise ball? Are there any prizes?


If you look really close, it seems that this version is our very own local version with many local locations. It is not really centered on any city here in Malaysia but rather more of it as a whole because I think I did see Langkawi somewhere on the board.


Somewhere at the bottom left corner of the image above. Anyhow it did fascinate me, although many small things like an arcade centre might fascinate me for quite a bit.

Monday on the other hand was good because I managed to learn to play a new game called PowerGrid thanks to Boon. I believe the game was very tactical and lots of future planning is needed in order to win. Its a game I definitely want to play again!

A Hungry Christmas?

A friend asked me what would it take to make this Christmas perfect? Well I did mention a lot of things but of course I could never leave out those wonderful christmas goodies.

Now this would definitely make this christmas perfect! Thinking about it has already made me hungry. Only but a couple more hours till dinner time!




































Okay, you can stop drooling all over your keyboard. Will have more interesting updates after Christmas. Till then, have a very blessed Christmas. God bless!

Note:
Unfortunately I received these images from my friend through a forwarded email. I would definitely like to give credit where it is due so if you are the owner of this pictures please inform me and I will take them down or give you the credit.

Child Porn?

As I sit behind my computer staring at the screen, reading an article which caused much emotions within my very being, my mind lost in thought amidst a busy workplace. Written by Kurt Eichenwald and published on the New York Times, this article shocked the very core of my being. After receiving this link from a friend through my email, I started to read the article only to expect another case of a crazed paedophile trying to coax young children with sweets and then ending up molesting them.

No, this time the situation proved completely different or shocking. Entitled, "Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World", this article tells a story of a young boy whose life was changed with the very aspect of technology that was created to bring the world closer together. Young and innocent, this boy was entrapped in a world that I never would have imagined existed. It is in this world that kids solicit money by exposing themselves through webcams to whoever would pay them money.

Now, on an afternoon in 2000, one member of his audience sent a proposal: he would pay Justin $50 to sit bare-chested in front of his Webcam for three minutes. The man explained that Justin could receive the money instantly and helped him open an account on PayPal.com, an online payment system.

The power of money allows even the most grevious occurrences that haunt the inner most soul of any being. With that began a horrifying experience for Justin and also the beginning of his walk towards the dark path. Technology meant to help reduce work for men is now being abused for our own wicked desires. Justin's answer to that?

"I figured, I took off my shirt at the pool for nothing," he said recently. "So, I was kind of like, what's the difference?"

Justin removed his T-shirt. The men watching him oozed compliments.

So from just removing a shirt, his life continued to dwell deeper in these activities nourishing his hunger for love and acceptance as well as money. In truth, if these cases were isolated I wouldn't be this much affected but as I continue reading the article, things just really went out of hand.

The scale of Webcam child pornography is unknown, because it is new and extremely secretive. One online portal that advertises for-pay Webcam sites, many of them pornographic, lists at least 585 sites created by teenagers, internal site records show. At one computer bulletin board for adults attracted to adolescents, a review of postings over the course of a week revealed Webcam image postings of at least 98 minors.

The numbers do not lie and more of these sites are coming up because of how easy it is for a young teenager who craves for more spending cash to set one up. Its as simple as heading down to Lowyat plaza and buying the cheapest webcam around and start stripping in front of a PC connected via Streamyx.

Entry into this side of cyberspace is simplicity itself. Webcams cost as little as $20, and the number of them being used has mushroomed to 15 million, according to IDC, an industry consulting group. At the same time, instant messaging programs have become ubiquitous, and high-speed connections, allowing for rapid image transmission, are common.

Evidences shown by federal investigators reveal that several professionals such as doctors, lawyers and even teachers are culprits. Why this is terrible is that these people deal with children one way or another in their jobs thus allowing them to build communication skills with children. Using these skills, they are able to coax children and kids online to force them to strip or reveal themselves.

A $35 Asante four-port hub, which allowed for the use of multiple cameras, was bought by someone calling himself Wesley Taylor, Amazon receipts show. For $45, a fan nicknamed tuckertheboy bought a Viking memory upgrade to speed up Justin's broadcast. And then there were cameras - a $60 color Webcam by Hawking Technologies from banjo000; a $60 Intel Deluxe USB camera from boyking12; and a $150 Hewlett-Packard camera from eplayernine.

This excerpt reveal that nothing will stop these paedophiles from satisfying their lust for child porn. Because of this trend, kids will post their wish-list on an online account whereby these offenders will then purchase the necessary equipment for them.

But the scariest of things is that stuff like this is kept hidden, really well.

His mother saw little evidence of a boy in trouble. Justin's grades stayed good - mostly A's and B's, although his school attendance declined as he faked illness to spend time with his Webcam.

It is all about problems with acceptance, love and materialism. Children of young age crave for attention and there are more and more stories whereby university students sell their bodies to fund their cravings for luxury items such as designer goods and the latest gadgets.

The daily interviewed a 22-year-old student who confessed that she was willing to sell herself because she was envious of some of her friends leading extravagant lives.

“Moreover, she admitted that she and six of her friends earned about RM4,000 a month or RM250 for a weekend session,” Kosmo! said.

The student, who claimed to be from a poor family, said she started becoming a call girl when she was in her first year.

The report said what lured her into the “profession” was seeing her friends wearing branded clothes, driving cars, having mobile phones and always having cash in hand.
- The Star

If things like this continue to go on without any form of intervention, I am really concerned about what is to come, judgement? I am afraid so.

To read the full article from the New York Times, please click here.

Source:
New York Times
The Star Online