Masjid Al-Bukhary - Revisited

It is Ramadhan 1430 and Masjid Al-Bukhary is the place to be for Iftar in Kuala Lumpur. Not just because of the best Lambok porridge in town but for the well organized Iftar and the hard working volunteers. Yes my post about Al-Bukhary this year is about the dedicated people behind it especially those who are responsible for the fine food.

When talking about food I definitely have to sneak into the kitchen except that it is not like the normal indoor kitchen. It is a tent erected behind the masjid. This is a large area for preparing the food for the large crowd. All made possible by the generous contribution from a prominent philanthropist as mentioned by brother Yusuf, the head cook. As I heard they received the biggest budget for Iftar in town. There is no need to mention name but jazakallah khair.

Here is brother Yusuf giving some instructions to his assistant brother Ismail. These are the two guys that are responsible for the best Lambok porridge in Kuala Lumpur (Sorry Kampung Baru). They have to prepare three big pots everyday. I was also able to snoop around for the secret recipe. I guessed it right. Besides the porridge they have to prepare other dishes later that involves five cooks.

Here is Ismail and Yusuf paddling their way to a culinary delight of Lambok porridge. Oh those spices and herbs working their magic on me. A year in waiting and I am finally here witnessing a miracle happening before my eyes. Steadfast patient I say and it was just noon on a Ramadhan day.

Here is the porridge laid out on the mat served in a foamed polystyrene bowl at the dinning hall. Though it is not served in fine china like in fancy restaurants but it is delicious and free. I am most humbled by His Grace. Complimented with some starters of curry puff, papaya and dates. That changes everyday and all were surprisingly delightful. But we will always have the wholesome dates and porridge.

Here are some other hard working volunteers serving food for the second session of Iftar after Maghrib prayers. All working like a clockwork. There was actually a long queue on the left. All anxiously waiting for the tasty delight after a long day fasting. The size of the crowd seems to doubled compared to last year. Could this because of my post I did last year? I wonder.

Though food seems to be the focus of Ramadhan that is between refrain and indulgence, but it brought people together from all walks of life. From people who are ever willing to serve and the people who are waiting to be served. It is a synergy beyond any other religious practices or celebrations not just for a day or two but for a full month. It is when friends meet friends and strangers meet strangers that may bloom into friendship in a peaceful and mutual environment. A glimpse of paradise perhaps.

My SX-424 - From Rock To Ramadhan

Recently I had a bit of free time at home with family. Since I was in a mood of resurrecting old stuffs so I laid down my old Pioneer SX-424 receiver on my workbench. It still look good for a vintage. I had not been listening to it for decades. One of the channel was off. The station indicator was broken due to prolonged heat. Below is how the original indicator looks like from a photo I got from the net. It was a long amber coloured plastic with hidden small bulb on top reflecting the light at the bottom tip.


There was no trace of it. Probably it just vaporized. No need to be CSI about it. Lets move on to the millennium. Most of the indicators nowadays are LEDs and some are super bright. I found some of those in my tool box. LEDs work on DC (Direct Current) that has polarity while the original bulb voltage supply of 7 volts is AC (Alternating Current) that has no polarity. All of the bulbs including the bulbs for blue silkscreen panel are AC based. Amazingly those bulbs are still alive after 4 decades. A simple solution of connecting a bridge rectifier to the AC supply did the job coupled with a resistor to the LED. Actually it just need a half bridge but I only have a full bridge in my toolbox. Looking from the top here is the rectifier soldered at the top of the VU meter pins.

Update (19/1/2010): I have found the SX-424 schematics from the net. The voltage supply for the bulbs are DC and not AC. Since I have the full schematics now I can totally overhauled it. More news update in the future.

Here is the assembly with the LED connected to a small strip of Veroboard and wired through a trimmed mixer fader knob. The white wire is the original wire which is attached (not electrically) to a metal slider at the top of the silkscreen panel.

Here is the final assembly properly placed with the Veroboard been pushed inside the plastic fader which is glued to the metal slider. The LED pins are purposely bend in that way so that it stays close to the silkscreen panel and not protrude out.

Below is the shot of the LED been lighted behind the tinted plastic panel. The pins were painted black giving the illusion that it is floating. The super bright LED has a glassy look compared to the normal LED which looks flat. The illumination looks quite close to the original amber plastic but without the long strip.

So what the big fuss about this receiver unit you may ask. It was the most priced item when I was a teenager. Paired with the turntable and the speakers I could stay in my room for hours and perhaps days and annoyed my neighbours. I could feel the earth moved and even my walls. That was how loud it was and it is only 12 watts RMS per channel.

This is how the tuner unit looks like. All analog and mechanical. Those metal plates are the variable capacitors that tune the frequency of the reciever. It had hosted many legendary music and voices. The legendary voices of Brian Matthew, John Peel and even American Forces Radio in Vietnam had gone through it. Those were the real rock days.

The resurrection of the receiver is not for rock. Rock is dead long time ago. It is for the Ramadhan month. I really missed the radio especially listening to the Adzan during Iftar. It was a tradition many years ago before TV and video took over our lives and we are glued to the tube.

Palm Vx - My 'Girlfriend' Is Back

Since the last get together of my Palm Users Group - PalmX, I felt a real yearning for my Palm PDAs which are all in a comma. My first Palm Pilot that I bought in 1996 is broken badly with a cracked chassis and a totally dead black screen. That needs major replacements. My Palm III was sold to a friend because I was not happy with the weak IR and probably retiring in India. My Palm Vx is totally neglected after I bought the Palm TX. Despite its full multimedia feature Palm TX had a major touchscreen problem. The replacement is costly and need to be specially ordered. The feel is also different. It is flimsy and not as firm as Palm Vx.

Of all the Palm PDA I have I really love the Palm Vx. It is the best engineered Palm physically. Some says it is the most sexiest. It upheld the initial principal of Palm PDA that is to keep things simple. It should not be anything else but just a Personal Digital Assistant with the emphasis on 'personal'. It should not be a phone that intrudes every minute or trying to be a Walkman or a video player or a net browser till we go blind and most of all it must be absolutely Microsoft-Free.


For those reasons I need to bring back the romance that I felt back in November 1996. Since there was nothing really wrong with my Palm Vx except a real flat battery that been lying dead for 4 years or so. I needed to recharge the battery. The charger that connects to the cradle is not working and had been for long. It was designed to supply two voltages. One connects to pin 2 on the cradle that is 4 volts for charging and the other connects to pin 8 which is 5.5 volts to light up the LEDs when the Palm is docked. When I checked recently the voltage at pin 8 read 5.76 volts. That probably caused the Palm screen to go black. But I have a portable charger that uses two AA batteries. It is a reliable device. After docking it for 12 hours it only managed to charge the Palm for only 5%. Though the Palm was resurrected but the power was not enough to make it fully operative. The combined power of the AA batteries of 2.8 volts was probably not enough to supercharge a real flat battery. The Palm Li-ion battery rating is 4 volt. So I need something equal. The only available power I had was from my USB port on my computers.

The USB power output is 5 volt and that is slightly higher than needed. I do not want to take a risk and connect the USB power directly to my Palm. I need to use the charger as a buffer. It might heat up the charger electronics. So I opened up the charger and hooked the USB cable directly to the charger electronic board. With the USB plugged to my laptop I pressed my fingers on the components. I felt no over heating and it was safe to slot in the PDA. Some insulation was needed because the Palm Vx chassis is made of metal and was resting on the charger electronic board. A multimeter is needed in this kind of situation to check for short circuits and voltage reading.

After 2 hours the Palm Vx was fully charged and working. I managed to reinstall all the software and data that I backed up on my laptop. I created a new user profile on the Palm Desktop so that it is not the same as the one that I used for my Palm TX. In that way it will not install Palm TX specific software on my Palm Vx. Some software crashed the Palm and after a reset the touchscreen went out of alignment. If this happens it is better to do a hard reset and delete the 'Backup' and 'Upgrade' folders on your computer Palm folder.

Here is the photo of the portable charger which is also known as 'SyncCharger'. The red LED is ON if the charger batteries are flat or no power connected to it. Once new batteries are inserted or power is connected the red LED will turn off and the green LED will be ON when the Palm is docked and the charging starts.

Here is how the USB cable is connected to the charger by hooking it to the opposite ends of the battery clips finally. During the test it was connected to the PCB's terminal directly. It is not rocket science but polarity and level of voltage need to be monitored. Do not take things for granted. For example the black wire on this USB is positive and the orange wire is negative. For this experiment I only secured it with Scotch tape so that I could detach it quickly if things start smoking. I will solder it permanently and cut the cable shorter so that it can be folded into the the battery compartment. Normal batteries still can be used in times when no other power sources are available. I usually used rechargeables. The SyncCharger is a handy device because it is slim and not as bulky as the original Palm Vx cradle. The primary feature of the SyncCharger is it is cordless. But with the USB cable connected it is not considered as fully cordless anymore but it is still portable.

One of the new found software for my Palm Vx is HiBattery. It displays more detail info about the Palm battery status compared to the Palm built-in battery graphic monitor. For a 10 year old device with an ageing battery I find it useful. According to it my Palm battery is still going on strong. As I had mentioned Palm Vx is the best engineered Palm PDA ever. But every palm PDA will eventually develops its own personality that reflects the owner. My Palm PDA is dear to me because of the things that I put into it. My little notes and thoughts over 13 years since the first Palm Pilot are all there even my collection of recipes and bookmarks of my ebooks. Hundreds of little bit of pieces that may mean nothing to others but are precious to me. That was how I perceived Palm when I first bought it. Something really personal and little parts of me. Though it may not has all the bells and whistles of the present technology but it is still Mi enamorada.

Sometime in life it is possible to reclaim lost moments. New does not mean it is better. The best things in life are usually simple.

Palm X - 'Black Thing Meeting'

Two weekends ago I attended my gadget Yahoo group - PalmX get together that they casually named 'BTM' or the 'Black Thing Meeting'. It is nothing dark about the occasion except the dark gadgets that we all carry around in our pockets like PDAs, handphones and the likes. Though the Palm hipness has faded the friendship still shines. Nobody flashes their Palm nowadays or even carry it anymore. It was just a reason to get together based on a some common interests like gadgets or even art.

I managed to talk about 'Palestine 3000 A.D.' and showed some futuristic gadgets that I designed. I didn't managed to show all because as usual there are excitements and digressions. But there was some focused moments like above when one of our member talked about Petronas. It was about oil and we just got to listen ;). There are many other casual moments but my camera almost flat battery allowed me to capture only that one shot and it became a moment.

I was informed today that Palmx is 9 years old. Hope there will be many more BTM to come. It all started on a window browsing day in Singapore and I felt in love with the first Palm Pilot. Never realized that 13 years later I ended up with a group of guys in a coffee shop in KL. I am not weird after all. Happy Birthday Palmx.

KEMAS - 'Getting To Know ICT' Lecture

On the 16th May 2009 I was invited by KEMAS to give a lecture on 'Getting To Know ICT' to young students in a small town in Batu Pahat, Johor. It was a full day lecture in Bahasa Malaysia and that was tough, Not just because of the duration but also the language medium especially when it has to be formal. Not to mention that I was on medication because of the allergy attack I had few days ago. It was quite a trip not only because of the drug but also reminiscing about on how ICT was inspired by the generation of the 60s. From the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey' , Douglas Engelbart -the inventor of the mouse, Intel chip 4004 - First commercial microprocessor, the Altair 8800 that sparks the personal computer revolution, Microsoft and Apple, the Amiga, the first Mac, IBM PC, the first Windows and finally Windows XP in 2001.

As a kid who grew up in the 60s I thought 2001 and beyond was like the sci-fi movie. But there I was standing at the podium in 2009 talking to a generation of my future who has little knowledge of the magic in their hands. The magic that was inspired by a colourful generation. So I asked them "What will you give to your future generation?" I looked into their eyes for some answers. Like I was when I was a kid their age, I had no idea what would the future brings.

In 2001 I was in in L.A. attending the computer graphic conference 'Siggraph 2001'. I had a chance in meeting the futurists of the 60s in a special session reflecting the time when '2001: A Space Odyssey' was screened. We remembered the Vietnam war and the protests. Yet during those troubled times there was hope for a better future. Man landed on the moon the next year and many other events followed. In the following photo in front of the L.A Convention Center I felt that I finally arrived. It was the end of a revolution and a dream. A rainbow's end in la-la land.

I hope the kids that I spoke to will arrive at their own dreams. I hope they don't waste their times on the internet and computer games. We will be arriving in 2010 soon. It was also a Space Odyssey about it but it is not the same. Dreamers are too few nowadays. It is just about getting bigger or smaller, better and faster and cheaper in China.

The 3rd Year in Incubation @ MSC Cybercentre

This is my third year working and living in the incubator at MSC Malaysia's Cybercentre in KL Sentral. A business hub which is designed to be bomb and earthquake proof. A perfect place for an Incubator. I had wasted the first year because of other distractions. It was a two year contract so I had requested for another year extension. MSC-MDEC was kind enough to extend my stay. It is nice to have people believe in what I do though it may seems crazy sometime but it is an organized madness. I had traveled a long journey for this and deep in my heart I am sure this is my destiny. There will be many more lonely nights but in my mind I am in a retro future.

Sometime I have to come down to earth at the CIC(Creative Innovation Centre) located at the ground floor. The above photo was shot at the display area where you can see my work 'Palestine 3000 A.D.' is displayed. In United States probably some people may shoot me for doing this and perhaps Big Brother is watching me.

Here is the CIC's control centre that manage the CIC and also the incubator. I call it 'Ground Control'. Beverly the lady in black is 'the mother' that manages the centre. In this photo she looks pretty busy preparing the paper work for the new batch of 'freaks' that will be joining us soon. Well I hope they are. Life can be boring when it become too sane. We need to loose ourselves sometime.

After what been said MSC Malaysia is not a looney institution. It has helped many technical and creative innovators, not just Malaysians but also foreigners like me who are based here. Ideas can be worth more than gold or oil. It is a little diamond that shines in the human head. It can be on the left or right. But this centre is strictly for the right brain people. One thing for sure I know I have come to the right place.

Tanjung Piai - At The Tip Of Asia

Last Sunday I traveled south, really south to the southern most tip of the Asia continent to a remote place called Tanjung Piai. The first time when I was there it was ten years ago. I remember that the weather was wet then and it was wet again last Sunday. It is a kind of chill that you'll feel near Bermuda Triangle. Rumour has it that Tanjung Piai shared the same mystery. But if you disregard all that Tanjung Piai can be a tranquil place to get away from it all.

It is also a rustic fishing village where time stood still and you don't feel like getting older. Everyday is just the sky, the sea and the clean air that you breathe. It is not National Geographic but it can be unreal to be there. It is not the DVD, it is real life

Things have improved much since my last visit. The resort has a proper entrance without the toilet by the side to welcome you. I was there with my sister to meet with a motivation group to discuss some travel business plan. It is a new area of market that we are developing. Travel business in Johor is not the same as in Kuala Lumpur or other big cities. There are many unexplored areas that you can go and staying away from the usual tourists hotspots. Though it can be rustic and remote but it can be a perfect place to conduct workshops at an affordable price and stay focus.

Beside the old dorms that they have the resort has build a new extension on the south side with more decent rooms. If you are into fishing you probably can bring your fishing rod and fish from your bedroom window. But one experience that I had last Sunday that I can't get at Disneyland is the full double layered rainbow. It was a complete arc end to end cradled on the horizon facing the equator. It was so huge that the top was around 11 o'clock high. It was impossible to capture the visual with my camera. I probably need a super wide angle lens or a fish-eye. The full arc lasted around 5 minutes. Looking at it straight I really felt that I was looking at the gateway to another dimension. For a momemt I was lost.