It was a big rush after work, got home at 6pm and i only have 1 hour to pack and have my dinner. My car wasnt fit to even drive to church. So Thank God for James and Ian. When I reached home, had my list read and started loading my bag and preparing my electronic equipments. I had a long list both of clothes and electronics.

We made our way to chuch, on the way picking up Melanie and reached church little late, to find out there was no dinner. Okay, fortunately i had my dinner. So Stephen arrived and the 2nd bus had 5 spaces, why not hop on. So here we are on a crazy ride up to Genting in the night.

Praise the Lord we reached safely. Here is the booth open and selling camp shirt. Man, those were the days when it was free.

The worship team is busy preparing the stage for service.

Sound & Light crew got busy making final checks to the system.

Campers were seaching though the list for their names, both list containing their groups and where they were about to lay their head for the next few nights.

Here is our friend Chee Lian, he’s the vice camp commander. The guy who would stand in the gap in case our camp commander gets KIA. NO we know thats not going to happen.

Alright all the busses have arrived its late past 11pm. Briefing by the camp commander himself, Randy Chew.

Yea he’s the man for this camp.

First game started off with, who has the longest tongue.

Proceeding it is…. who has the….

…yes.. *laughter on going*….

…its who has the fastest tummy. There we go, you know the winner.

Next up, this is a painful one. Loudest scream, gosh Jared…thats sharp.

Next is the sweetest game…

Who has the sweetest smile. Sharon here is the games coordinator. Very smart these days, if ladies are in charge they wont get sabotaged. If guys, then you wouldn’t want to be the one in charge.

However, with no suprise the winner goes to …. A guy! with the sweetest smile.

Then time to be serious, ground rules must be emphasied. “No smoking”

Closing the night in prayer and Opening the camp.

The day finally arrived after all the riddles and head cracking moments, its now time for the cooking showdown with whatever we’ve got. Its 4:30pm and everyone is busy setting up their tables and chairs, BBQ pits and getting their members involved.

Worship team was rehersing and preparing before the event kick start, doing their final touches.

Ming on his electric guitar, all set for kick start.

The Form 5 CG’s were present with us, so far only their leaders arrived.

Praise & Worship begun in the open air carpark of FGA KL. The amount of people turn up was a great joy.

A short 15minutes message by our pastor.

Passionate and convicted, he preached with great enthusiasm. He’s also one of the judges for the food later on.

Now came the moment to star the fire. Confident as Terry is, he has the biggest fire so far, while everyone else spent 15minutes and still trying to get the fire up.

Like i said, still trying to flame it up. Only the steam poluting the air but what they really need is the fire.

Some mascots are already ready and running around, stealing cheeze, now he wants my camera too.

Others were in the process of beautifying their mascots.

More and more people were coming and getting involved as the eating session begin drawing near

So much of workforce whereby there was time to fellowship and enjoy. Nothing wrong with fellowshiping, isn’t this whats its all about.

Some others just don’t know what to do…a waiting orders.

Night came and the moment of presenting their dishes to the judges drew close. Time was running short, so was energy. CG’s developed new ways to cook their food faster.

Others were confident they would win, like Ian and his well done chicken.

Others were almost done and ready to make their secret dish for the judges.

Some are burning their food. Jeshu, stop playing with fire.

CG members were all over crowding around to get a pinch of what they are all staring at.

Our in house chef makes final refining touches to the dish.

Here we are, fresh french dish or whatever you call it. Simple but wait till you taste that lamb.

Then came the Mascots which this one is a scary scare-crow… more like Vendetta. Anywayz…

This dish looks really good, lovely tomato although i dislike them.

Among all, Sarah put on a great show, she’s fit for the Texas country side.

The Form5’s were amazing too, did very well.

Then the feast continued, look at that… should ask him how he stays slim right

The Grand Prize winner with Uncle Dennis, a coffee shop owner beside our church.

The Judges table, look at them they do look very satisfied with their food. No they look more than satisfied… or atleast Pastor Guy does

If you had been driving for a year, you’ll probablly encounter minor moments of such cases where by one of your tires hit a pool of water.

However during my driving experience for the last 5 years i’ve come across two major cases. One of which occured last Saturday.

I picked up my friend Josh and we headed off to church, it was a wet day similar to the picture above. I was travelling at a proximately 50kmph, when the traffic light turn red. However, my distance to reach the traffic light is about 50 meters or probably even more. There was only one car in front and it was stationary.

Like any other ordinary case i stepped the breaks. This time it hadn’t slown down much, instead it picked up speed. I knew i was on water then. Remaining clam my instincts took over, as much as people say im a pesimistic person… i looked for opportunity there was no car behind or on my right nor any on the right lane infront. That gives me the space and that was my target. Gently, nudge my steering to the right, nothing changed and a bit more and even more. I felt my car started swaving to the right but in a manner that I was a bout to  spin, so quickly spun it back in the opposite way to ensure i kept the car straight. Then back the other way gently.

My car did reduce speed and finally as it came to a close halt i nudged the car infront on the right back side. We got down and Praise God, nothing was damaged. Fortunately Josh did not panic, it might make situations worst when a passenger panics. For the driver, never panic, because you haven’t hit anything yet, even if you spin, you’re still alive … you still have chance.

Looking back and analysing what I could have done better, I shouldn’t step on the breaks and turn. I could have slown down faster if I had released the accelerators, kept the car straight and allow the car to gain grip before stepping the breaks.

To confirm that i checked the web:

lift off the gas, and wait for the vehicle to settle back down onto the road. Do not for any reason make any large movements with thesteering wheel. Try to avoid braking. Once the car is back under control, keep the speed low … -wrinkly

However this only works for straight roads, with less cars in the front and at the back. It won’t work when you’re having a heavy traffic or hydroplaning at conners.

Well i’ve had my experience hydroplaning at conners at speeds of 45-50kmph with heavy traffic on my side and back. This how it works, i felt my car lifted, gliding to the right as i made a though the bend of the road which is a 180* degrees turn (Highway). My car was about to go into a spin, gliding right  I instantly turn my wheel right in the direction of the slide (occassionally to the left to keep my car gliding in that position without going into a spin though the curve road), while keep my breaks pressed at about 70% (NOT FULL) and down shifiting my gear to the 2nd gear (without engaging).

As my car continue gliding towards the straight road without spining and hitting the car on my left … it finally gain grip once it reached the straight and it instantly spun right so i had to turn left to get the car straight, immediately engage gear2.

If you must know both situations took place in seconds, the key is remaining calm at all times and I would add, know your car and you need to feel your car in those situations.

The main thing to remember when a car hydroplanes is to remain relaxed and be confident that you can retrieve the situation without great drama. The problems really start when a driver panics and makes erratic inputs to the car’s controls. Better still, slow down, keep your car well maintained, and you may well never experience it.

-Kevin Guthrie

Usually in hydroplaning situations, you dont have much control but if faced by those situations, you still have a chance to that you can take advantage of. Instincts may not always be good… like flooring the breaks or making sudden turns. Yet it depends on situations.

Bare in mind that my situations I’ve encountered, i’ve used a manual car which gave me much advantage in hydroplaning and especially at conners.

Was I lucky? yea i probably was, Thank God.

It is perhaps comforting to know that even the best drivers in the world can find it to be a frightening situation, although they are travelling at far greater speed. Triple Formula 1 World Champion Sir Jackie Stewart

-Kevin Guthrie

Besides all the skill, last Saturday was a reminder to me that God is still in control and He deserves the credit for saving our lives.

Its been a week since I started work as an intern. It’s has been a new feeling yet interesting one. Getting to meet new people, and new environment. It did not take long for me to get used to the comfortable environment although the temperature is pretty cold.

I was first given this computer since the actual computer was being repaired. Don’t know why but it took a week for them to get it done. However…

I got my computer replaced yesterday and thank God for even the LCD monitor, so now I won’t have to worry so much about my eye sight degrading. Well I was fortunate even be able to visit a pretty hi-tech datacenter, impresive, it was. Moving walls and tight security.

Anyway today was the serious work, thats what im talking about.

Got the opportunity to play around with this devices, commonly known as routers. They weren’t Cisco, so I got a chance to learn new command lines. Its surprisingly fast and I would say commands are a bit more convient too, in comparison with Cisco.

However switching from work to final year project is a bit difficult, spent my day with router and switches command line, come home, have to deal with programming…its a bit more fustrating programming.

As for now, hitting my second week of work, I do enjoy it here. Thank also goes to my wonderful work mates who are always willing to help.

Right after exams before my friend Joseph left for Australia and Shoban whom just got back from UK, we decided to meet up. We havent meet ever since 2003. Its been about 6 years we never seen nor conversed with one another -other than through the net.

It had been such a great flash back in time. At first after so long, it took some effort to get to know where we missed out in each of our lives but eventually we did refresh ourselves to our present day.

We had a fantastic time…getting lost twice…lol, we got lost finding a place to dine, landed in KFC. Then couldn’t find Digital Mall, my embarressment. Eventually we found it, with the help of GPS. Joseph got some of his stuff he needed to get before heading back to Aussie. We then paid a visit to church before departing our saperate ways.

It’s been a great time and really wish we could continue to stay in touch.

]]> http://sambeyond21.com/main/2009/07/met-old-friends/feed/ http://sambeyond21.com/main/2009/07/after-exams/ http://sambeyond21.com/main/2009/07/after-exams/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:37:14 +0000 Sam http://sambeyond21.com/main/?p=305

It was after one of our toughest papers, the last and final paper of the sem. All of us are Network Degree students and for some of them its their last at univeristy. When I first joined this course, i was wondering how was I going to do by the end of it, man all guys and from totally different culture. Right here now at almost the end, I think I did well. They are a great bunch of friends. I wouldn’t trade them for a bunch of totally local students, not that locals are bad just that here are my Uni friends, my classmates and we have fun and stress together.

Here we have old time classmates.

Here are two locals whom we just got to know they are all done with University life.

This dude, who always has his ears pluged, seems like he’s chatting with some spirit or something. He has very nice bluetooth ear phones that are connected to his mobile phone. When he as his music on, feel free to say what ever you wanna so to him … *laughs.

After lunch we went down for a game of pool for an hour. Here you have a paintball champion and marshal, now… he’s a noob. *grins.

Here you have a dude who occassionally comes to class, here… he’s da pro…its obvious isn’t it?

And here, … Fahmi who still is deciding which one goes next. Well He’s good too.

It has been a wonderful time studying with all of you, life will so take us our saperate ways. We didn’t quite like studying but now… we feel we are all going to miss it. Hope we still stay in touch in the years to come and may you all do well at work life.

peace out - sam.

Shots here are taken under challenging dark light conditions at ISO 1600, 1000% unedited, Manual Mode, Some on Manual Focus. For more photos and EXIF visit my photo album.

Its been quite a while since i shot my last event. Last night was fantastic, Pastor Andrew Gray was with us and with a prophesy. It time we rise up and take the challenge to change. So in line with our camp theme, Dare to Move. This evening he was with us and above is us preparing.

Service kicked started as usual with the worship team and Joe leading.

Darren is on the keyboards. Raymond on the Bass, Rose on the drums, Min & Josh on the guitars.

This one of those shots i tried with fast shutter speed, bringing Joe out and keeping the background dark.

A shot without tripod. It was very dark actually, the house lights were off.

A close up shot of Joe on his guitar.

Daniel, passionately singing and deeply in worship.

The view from the crowd.

Pastor Andrew Gray, it was two years back when he was with us at L5. He never fails not to keep anything back.

He brought along a friend, his associate pastor, Douglas.

A passionate speaker to the younger age group, when he says now, its now.

Illustrating a story of Jesus forgiveness and how God see’s time.

His grace never fails, he forgave us yesterday, today and the days to come.

The power and anointing of the Holy Spirit filled the place and everyone in there.

For more photos and EXIF visit my photo album.

So above are the statistics from Adrian’s blog post on ZDNet and Im glad im one of the 45% of the 1738 voters to say Yes. It’s not that difficult if you were to use Linux Ubuntu. Its just a flop in the CD and install. Its very similar to windows and it has way cooler effects, if you computer supports it. All you would need to have is a little courage.

Why I choose Fedora? Well each Linux distribution or what they say have different flavours like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mandriva and many others. They all are very similar, but vary in functionality and its user friendliness. I choose Fedora because its branched out closest from RedHat. Yes im a big fan of RedHat since my web servers run on them.

Fedora would require a little more tweaking for it to suit your needs, unlike Ubuntu. That could be good and could be bad, depends, good if you know how.

Above picture is my Fedora 11: Reign. It takes time to tweak it but I’ve managed to get Remote Desktop to work and Samba file sharing, so now i could remote in to my Windows PC or even share files with my Windows PC’s. Firefox works, Thunderbird Mail works, Twitter client works, MSN works, even Google Talk & Skype works and I can even make calls with it. I could even run some windows Softwares with the help of WineHQ. Im about to try out windows games but im sure you can run Microsoft Office but sounds really rediculous because if you love Microsoft so much, you wouldn’t install Linux. Of cause you still could, well its always good to stay original. However openSource offers you openOffice that would be your daily business or personal needs.

Yes, thats the best part about Linux, its FREE but there are versions which you have to pay because those are heavily customized for you to either use as a Desktop or Server. However free ones could do equally as good, just that you’ll have to customize it yourself.

I like using Linux for its graphical animation, that just that is way cool but it has high productivity. I’ll show you why below.

By just moving your mouse to the top right conner of the screen you can get to see all your working windows in a grid. Makes life easier, rather than searching through your task manager. With Linux you’ll also get a full multi tasking system like multiple desktops on a same machine. The best part, you don’t need a high performance computer to run that.

Its now really not that difficult to use, just be a little bolder, have a dual boot for the first start, then try using linux more often and soon, im sure you can wave goodbye to Microsoft.

Alright, my personal stand on Microsoft, I think its still is good, they are a wonderful company which transformed the computing industry. I do favour the new Windows 7 but just that its quite costly and open source can assist you here with tonnes of interesting features hidden for you to find out.

The glorious days where men made huge chunks of metal fly with man inside, launches itself to space and come back with style, gliding though the atmosphere and land like any other plane, and where no country has done, is all about to end. This would only be in our memories.

 We would soon miss the days where man will fly to space and fly back to earth surface. The US government and NASA has just crashed all space flight dreams. Men would soon be lauched to space and drop back like the old days. The space shuttles last few flights is projected to end in 2010, up till today. However some US Congress is requesting them to keep the shuttles going until the replacement is launched but thats not going to change the fact that it won’t be any more glamours going to space and coming back.

Anyway lets see how US space flights evolved.

1. Firstly we have the space capsule which rain down from space.

2. Then comes the glorious space flight with space shuttle, a plane like orbiter.

3. Now NASA new orbiter that would replace the space shuttle is known as Orion. It’s going to drop from space like before.

Progression? No its not, its an alternative way to send people to space and bring them back down with a proven method. I’m not sure how comfortable it’s going to be, but I doubt it is as comfortable as flying and landing. This new Orion is projected to be completed in 2013. Up till today, they have successfuly landed the Orion on water.

I don’t like the idea of falling, flying seems cooler.

Anyway if you must know what happen to the nice plane like shuttle replacement we use to see on the web? Well here’s the story.

The future of space flight was in the hands of Venture Star and Lockhead Martin, both companies tried to develop a new way of reusing rocket fuel tanks but it did not favour the satelite industry. However, it was a failure bottom line, it did not meet safety standards and was nothing but a gigantic flying fuel tank. It carried extra load during flights and did not pass its preasure test. NASA closed the project by noting that they do not have the sufficient technology to date to produce a space craft of such a kind. This shuttle was supposed to take off like a rocket without falling parts and land like a plane. Sound really cool isn’t it.

So as for now, we are back to square-one, falling from the sky. Except now we could fit more people into the falling object at the expense of billions of tax dollars.

I present to you the future of NASA Space Travel, The Orion:

For more information you could also read up NASA website or here.

Im just disappointed, i dreamt that in my generation planes would fly to space. I guess I’ve gotta dream longer.

So enjoy days where you’ll have photos of space shuttle flights, it would soon all be just memories… hopefully one day, we’ll go back to the future … space flights. I’m glad i lived to see the space shuttle.

Its taking a bit too long and too much delay for Fedora 11 to be released. Whats wrong? Common quickly I can’t wait so long.

From end May target its been draged on to 9th June ‘09.

See time line below.

Key Milestones

2008-11-25	Fedora 10 Release
	Planning & Development Begins
2009-01-09	FUDCon Fedora 11 (Boston: January 9-11, 2009)
2009-01-20	Alpha Freeze - test freeze policy
2009-02-03 2009-02-05	Alpha Release - release notes
2009-03-03	Feature Freeze–Planning & Development Ends
2009-03-10	Beta Freeze - devel freeze policy
	Software String Freeze
2009-03-24 2009-03-31	Beta Release
2009-04-07	Software Translation Deadline
2009-04-14	Final Development Freeze - final freeze policy
2009-04-28	Preview Release
2009-05-12	Compose & Stage Release Candidate
2009-05-26 2009-06-02 2009-06-09	Fedora 11 Final Release

Taken from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule [on May 29, 2009]