Happy 2013!

Consciousness without Physical Basis?

Restoran Wau Penyu

Solaris Dutamas, Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur. There is a Malay restaurant serving east coast Malay cusine here with the name Restoran Wau Penyu. Wau (Malay kites) comes from Kelantan, Penyu (Turtle) come from Trengganu.

If you are not familiar with Kuala Lumpur, it is not easy for you to find the place. Sri Hartamas and its nearby Mont Kiara are prime residential area with lots of new shopping malls. If you have difficulty, look out for the new National Palace on top of a hill. When you are near the National Palace, you can call the restaurant and they are very friendly and helpful in telling you the way to get to their place.

The restaurant is spacious and decorated like a Malay kampong household. There are lots of decorative items with wau and penyu motif.

There is one section of the restaurant with lots of keris (Malay daggers) hanging on the wall.

The menu of the restaurant looks like an old newspaper with a photo showing some Malay aristocrats entertaining their European guests.

Nasi dagang is a Malaysian and Southern Thai dish popular in the states on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia, such as Terengganu and Kelantan and Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat in Southern Thailand. The dish consisting of rice steamed in coconut milk, fish curry and extra ingredients such as fried shaved coconut, hard-boiled eggs and vegetable pickles. Nasi Dagang literally means "Trading Rice"

Nasi kerabu is another dish popular in the east coast states of Trengganu and kelantan. It is a rice dish that is originally bluish in colour and eaten with dried fish, fried chicken, fish crackers (keropok) and other condiments. The blue colour of the rice come from a kind of blue flower called bunga telang that is also used also in the Nyonya kuih like blue glutinous rice with kaya.

This dish is called Laksam. Laksam is a unique dish found in northen states of Kelantan, Trengganu and Kedah. A delightful yet simple dish, laksam is prepared using both wheat and rice flours. The gravy is made from fish meat which is boiled, pureed, and later mixed with coconut milk.

Laksam looks, feels and tastes like Chee Cheong Fun. Only that it is in a thick cylindrical shape. It is so tender that it melts in your mouth. If you have not eaten Laksam before, I would recommend Restoran Wau Penyu. The laksam here alone is worth the trip.

Ribena with Laichi. Surprisingly, the two matches quite well.

For dessrt, I ordered Sago pudding with gula melaka. Not bad at all.

The food was tasty and I was satisfied.

The Finer Points in Using Facebook

Facebook as a communication and social tool is fast catching up with the use of hand phones. However, Facebook also has its disadvantages and privacy problems. Here are some finer points in using Facebook that I would like to share with everybody.

Trick 1 :- How to prevent certain people from seeing what you have updated in Facebook.

Of course, the simplest way is to click onto the tiny lock in whatever you want to update and select Customize.

You can then make what you have updated visible or not visible to specific persons that you have selected.

It is quite troublesome if you always have to do things this way to make what you have updated visible to some and not visible to some. The convenient way is to group your friends into different lists. For example, you can create a colleague list, a close friends list, a family members list, etc.

To do this, select Edit Friends from the Account drop down menu.

After that, click onto the Friends tab under Lists on the left hand side.

On top your friend list, there is a Create New List button. Click onto the button.

You can then create a new list by giving the new list a name on top and select the persons that belong to this list.

You can create as many new lists as you like.

After creating the new lists, you will be able to see your new lists in your friend list.

You can then group each of your friends into the corresponding list one by one.

With your lists created, you will be able to make what you have updated in Facebook visible to one group of friends and hidden from to another group of friends.

As a matter of fact, from now on, you can go to Privacy Settings and customize all your previous Facebook content to be visible to some and not visible to some.

Click onto Customize settings.

You can then configure your privacy settings so that you can share or not share certain things with some people.

As a matter of fact, under Customize Settings, you can click onto the Preview My Profile button on top to see how other people see you in Facebook. You can key in each of your friend's name to see how they will see you in Facebook.

Trick 2 :- How not to let your friends (particularly your boss) know that you are playing Facebook games.

A lot of Facebook games will publicize to all your friends after you have achieved a high score and advanced to certain stage. For example, below is a published message that Amelia Chan Sook Fun had just claimed some ice-cream on 12:37pm on August 10.

To avoid such publicity, select Application Settings from the Account drop down menu.

In Application Settings, select Authorized from the Show: pull down menu.

The Authorized list contains all the applications that you have authorized to publish information on your Wall.

For each of the application (particularly those games that you always play), click Edit Settings.

Click onto the Additional Permissions tab.

Uncheck Publish content to my Wall and then click the Okay button. Nobody will know you have been playing games after that.

Trick 3 :- How not to let people add you in Facebook.

In order not to let people find you and add you in Facebook, you have to hide yourself. To do so, click onto Privacy Settings.

After that, click onto Edit your settings under Applications and Websites at the bottom left.
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Click onto the Edit Settings button of Public search.

Uncheck the radio button of Enable public search.

After unchecking, you can see a preview of your search result.

You can see the message on the right that you have turned public search off.

Trick 4 : How not to let other people see your friends.

If you do not want other people to see all your friends, the best is to click onto the little pen on the top right corner of Friends and just key in the persons that you always want other people to see. If you show 6 friends,  you have to make 6 friends to be permanent. If you show 9 or 12, you have put accordingly. There is no option to show 0 friends though.

Facebook is a tool for us to socialize and communicate with friends. It really defeats the purpose if you put in too many protection and restrictions. If there is someone who is not really a friend, you just simply delete him or her from your Facebook. That is the simplest thing to do I guess.

All in 1 HDD Docking Station

I have quite a number (about 20) of 3½ inch hard disks at home. Some are IDE hard disks and some are SATA hard disks. Putting each of them into casing is just too costly. Further more, 3½ inch hard disks are not really that portable as they need external power.

For those SATA hard disks, I have been using NexStar docking stations which cost about $50 each. I have a white one and a black one.

The NexStar docking station comes with both USB and eSATA interface and an ON/OFF button.

However, NexStar docking station only supports SATA hard disks.

I have been using my two NexStar docking stations with all my 3½ inch SATA hard disks as storage media. Network storage station which costs about $150 to $200  for one hard disk is just too expensive as a solution.

However, those 3½ inch IDE hard disks are really problematic. To throw away IDE hard disks with storage capacity about 250G to 300G is just too wasteful. I have been looking for docking station for 3½ inch IDE hard disks for quite a while but could not find any. The solution till now is to use those cheapo IDE to USB connectors that do not really function well and cost about $10 to $20 each..

I was in Sim Lim Square today and it was a pleasant surprise that I found an All in 1 HDD Docking Station that supports two 3½ inch hard disks, one SATA and one IDE.

On top of that, it also supports xD, compact flash, memory stick, SD and TC multimedia flash memory cards. There are 2 USB connections too.

There is an ON/OFF switch at the back. It comes with both USB and eSATA interface.

On top of that, the docking station comes with a red button for one button backup and high speed disk cloning which can be done offline too. The price tag was $72 but the shop owner sold it to me for $70 and replace the original power cable with a three pin plug that has no fuse to one that comes with fuse. Wonderful, but it is made in China of course. Let me try it out and see how reliable it is. If it is good, I will get one more for sure.