Catch blogger B Mahendran live on RTM 1 talking in Blog, this evening at 8pm.

Check it out! Click on the image :D

Did you had a look at Google today? Well, this was the logo!

In case you wonder what's the rocket look a like thingy that circles around the Google and sparks out when collide with each another - it's the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC for short.

The LHC is European Organization of Nuclear Research's (CERN) new flagship research facility. As the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, it is poised to provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe. And, half the world's particle physicists hope to achieve by triggering the LHD machine to drive two beams of particles in opposite directions around this 27km ring at 99.9999991% of the speed of light, steering the beams at four points during their circuit into head-on collisions with enough energy to recreate in miniature the cosmic circumstances that exist one trillionth of a second after the big bang. I wonder why!

If you still blur of what happened at the 27km (17-mile) circular tunnel beneath the Geneva countryside this morning at the start of an experiment which has been suggested, will unlock the secrets of the universe, then click for more details, HERE and HERE.

• Pump up your tyres. Keeping your tyres inflated is one of the easiest and most important things one can do to improve fuel economy. If a range is recommended by the manufacturer, the higher pressure should be used to maximize fuel efficiency. Lower pressure hurt the fuel economy by increasing the rolling resistance.

• Drive at moderate speed. In highway driving, over 50% of the power produced by the engine is used to overcome aerodynamic drag. Drag and thus fuel consumption increases rapidly at speeds above 90km/h. On the average, a car uses about 15% more fuel at 100km/h, and 25% more fuel at 110km/h compared to when it is doing only 90km/h.

• Clean the air-filter regularly. Clogged air filters increase fuel consumption by restricting airflow to the engine, and thus should be cleaned/replaced when necessary. Clogged air filters can increase fuel consumption by up to 10%.

• Start up the car properly. With today's cars, it is not necessary to prime the engine first by pumping the accelerator pedal repeatedly. Do not crank the engine excessively. This only wastes fuel. When starting the engine, idle it no more than 30 seconds to warm it up. An engine will warm up faster on the road. However, avoid sudden acceleration before the engine has warmed up sufficiently.

• Drive in high gear (overdrive). The engine runs most efficiently between around 1,500 and 2,500 rpm. To maintain these low revs you should change up through the gears as soon as practical and before the revs reach 2500 rpm. For automatic transmission cars, you should always switch on your overdrive to help saving fuel.

• Travel light. Avoid carrying any unnecessary weight in your car. On the average, every 50kg added load in your car will increase fuel consumption by 2%.

• Anticipate traffic ahead. A driver can reduce fuel consumption by up to 10% by anticipating traffic conditions ahead and adjusting the speed accordingly, and avoiding tailgating and thus unnecessary braking and acceleration.

• Avoid strong acceleration. The fuel consumption remains at a minimum during steady driving at a moderate speed of about 90km/h. Keep in mind that every time the accelerator is hard pressed, the engine goes into a "fuel-enrichment" mode of operation that wastes fuel. The vehicle should always be gradually and smoothly accelerated.

• Minimise aerodynamic drag. Additional parts on the exterior of a vehicle such as roof racks and spoilers, or having the window open, Roof racks are bad for fuel economy increases air resistance and fuel consumption, in some cases by over 20%.

• Don't let your engine idle. Minimize fuel wasted in idling by stopping the engine whenever your car is stopped or held up for an extended period of time. Idling more than a minute consumes much more fuel than restarting the engine.

• Use the air-con sparingly. Air conditioners can use about 10 per cent extra fuel when operating. However, at speeds of over 80 km/h, use of air conditioning is better for fuel economy than an open window.

• Make new friends and later add them to your Facebook. (Randomly met at Petrol station?)
• Once in a line, burp every 10 seconds or sneeze very often and very loud
• Secretly fling coins into the air and have them land on people waiting in line in front of you.
• In line, have a conversation with a friend who isn't there.
• Suddenly do a tarzan yell really loud.
• Place your laptop on top of your car's hood and start playing solitaire.
  
• Eat up your dinner packed from the nearest McD drive through.
• As the midnight approaches, look straight up with a shocked look on your face and yell, "Malaysia Boleh!!!"

This weekend marks a double celebration :)

To my Kadazan-Dusun buddies, I'm wishing you a Happy Kaamatan (May 30-31). May the harvest festival bring you more prosperity, happiness and good luck.

Also, best wishes to all Sarawakians celebrating Gawai on the 1st and 2nd June. I wish for the happiness and joy of this festival to be yours forever.

For the rest of you all, it's wonderful for us to be blessed with many different cultures and occasions side by side. Let's learn and enjoy the cultural diversities and uniqueness of them which make Malaysia what it is - a land of many colorful festivals and celebrations.

Happy holidays and have a great weekend :)

And this semester on the 5th of May we had a very special guest speaker - His Royal Highness, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, the erudite, urbane Regent of Perak who has won the support of many with his common touch and willingness to speak candidly on a range of delicate issues. It was my first time witnessing a function or rather a lecture full of royal protocols. The presence of orchestra, huge yellow chair on stage, beautiful flower decorations, yellow carpets all the way, the traditional and musical welcome, thousands of people including lecturers, students, teachers, professionals, school kids, and not forgetting the protocols and police officers, all gave a real different aura to the ceremony. And, since I left my primary school years ago, I had never actually heard some of the rarely used array of Malay words such as patik, hamba, mencemar duli, titah, beta and baginda. May be that's what made the real difference in the hall this time, despite the presence of a royal figure on the stage. And, those words were for real instead of some examples on books. The way the MC conducted the ceremony with full blast royal protocols and the style of Raja Nazrin addressed himself as Beta was something totally strange for me to witness. Well, I have only seen those words on blackboards and school books and never heard it for real until then.

Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah has shared his views many times before on topics related to The Constitution, race relation, good governance, and role model, in the absence of any other leaders speaking on these topics so passionately. And this time, Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah delivered his text on "The Challenges of Human Capital Development". Raja Nazrin opines that the challenges of human capital development lie in enhancing knowledge, skills and abilities and in imbibing sound values, beliefs and attitudes.

His speech was short and sweet; right to the points. Let me give you some of his inputs from my notepad:

The process of human capital development works best where policies are strongly encouraging and supportive and not dispiriting and coercive. We must also be strongly oriented towards achievement. It is imperative that its linkage with advancement be an unshakable one.

Human Capital Development lies in active participation of individual themselves. Developing human Capital is also about building characters. It's the DNA of success, protocol and basis of establishing interpersonal relationships. And the value transformation towards human capital can be from family, colleagues, school, face-to-face and cyberspace. The Government and Monarch are also responsible in playing important roles in value transformation - The government must increase it degree of transparency and accountability should be demanded in public offices.

Money alone is not enough but, skillful human professionals. These concrete changes require more than concepts and we must give our knowledge institutions the critically needed space to work for it. In order to meet the challenges of Human Capital Development, we must empower Knowledge institutes or we may need to suffer the consequences. It's important to raise the number of knowledge institutes and increase the standards of local universities to match the foreign education institutes. We must close the gaps between them if the nation's vision is to increase size and standards.

Raja Nazrin suggested three goals -- learning culture, analytical culture and intellectual culture -- that we as a nation have to achieve in facing the challenges of human capital development.

• People need to look at ways to instill values and beliefs that promote learning among Malaysians. A true learning culture includes overeating sense of questioning, welcoming new perspectives or different ideas and the ability to actively debate all kind of topics' Learning makes us change and changes make us learn - this is the whole cycle that could contribute to human capital development. Once knowledge is acquired, it motivates people to take action. With such we can improve the present and make the future better.

• Malaysians needed also to develop an analytical culture so that they could be vastly more reflective and to understand the "what", the "how" and the "why" of the things they did. With such culture, people will consider methods with objective and will be able to draw a logical conclusion on anything the venture in. By developing analytical culture, it's important for us to review, debate and critic on issues and minimizes weaknesses

• People needed to develop an intellectual culture though intellectuals were no longer highly regarded in most societies and even many rich countries were seemingly reluctant to support their work. If a nation is not intellectual, then the blossoming of knowledge would never occur in it. By acquiring knowledge we could create and creations are often come from those who ready to push their boundaries and limits. Also, learn to question, challenge and think. It is out of a sense of wonder or doubt with the conventional wisdom that new paths of knowledge emerge.

He concluded,

Providing the Knowledge institutes the needed space to meet the above goals will make Malaysians developed with their fullest capacity to benefit the nation and world.

I've been absent from blogging for past few days. I had to deal with a couple of hectic weeks till I had no choice but to take this blog out from my priority list for a short period of time. These are my final few weeks in university, which means I have to settle everything once and for all before I leave this place for good. I am sprinting my last four weeks of my four years race. The previous two weeks, I have been dealing with tons and tons of works and projects and paper reviews together with more and more counting datelines approaching my way. Looking at my calendar now reminds me of time bombs waiting turns to explode along the next few days. There are too many to handle!

And, to make things from bad to worse, my hard drive decided to crash a few days back, six days to be exact for no reason, on the minute I needed it the most. Too bad, I couldn't recover any single file. All my bits and bytes gone forever leaving me losing some of my recent works. Thank God, I had my important data and documents backed up in my external hard disks. If not, that would have been a real nightmare for me!

Being the only and very last electromagnetic device on computers (I guess no one uses floppy anymore, do you?) the reliability of hard drives is always a big question mark. I learned my lesson from previous damages happened last year when my Maxtor crashed. And, now my Seagate died in less than year - with the warranty is still way too long to expire. Currently I'm surviving on a brand new Western Digital. Reinstalling everything from scratch and customizing my system to suite my need is another headache. I've lost some of my precious downloads and yet to install my engineering soft wares. :( Well, shit happens now and then. We can't run away from it but we can always learn to flush it away.

For now, I need a break. Excuse me for a few more days. But, thanks to all those funky online gadgets - you can now catch me on Twitter even while I'm offline. Cool uh? And.. in case you are not aware, we have another new blogger in town. I think he doesn't need an introduction. Check it out for yourself at http://www.chedet.com.

p/s: Happy Labor Day to all! But, it's not a holiday for me. I had a test this morning and having a presentation right after this :| And, I don't wanna talk about tomorrow! T_T Like I said, too many to handle!