Here’s a video to my favorite game during my high-school days. It reach Malaysia in 1993-1994. The name of the game is UFO Defense: Enemy Unknown, published by Microprose.

It is a turn-based game, but unlike any typical turn-base game it includes elements of real-time action

The premise of this game is the aliens are invading Earth, and it is up to X-COM, an elite black-ops organization funded by UN to protect the planet from the Alien terror. The alien uses advance weaponry and genetic engineering to achieve their goals, while the humans with organized efforts from several countries would attempt to stop the invaders from succeeding in their plans.

Screenshots

 

More information about this game:
ufopaedia.org
XCOM UFO

If you happen to download the Windows version, then you should also download the bugfix for a bug that caused video display garble error during the game start-up.

Download the bugfix here…

You can get the game from Amazon :

X-Com: UFO Defense or from some other shady places….

Enjoy!

Tags: Computers, game, games, pc, personal, windows

I was searching for some information when I encountered these warning from Google. Apparently our SIRIM website security has been compromised and was spreading malwares to viewers around the world. Upon closer inspection, SIRIM seems to have taken down its website as of May 30,2008.

Probably SIRIM should perform a thorough checking on its website before publishing it to the internet, there must be a “Standard” for website security I assume?

Tags: Internet, malaysia, security, sirim, standard, standards, website

Eager to practice your CW skills but you have nobody to practice with? In some countries like Malaysia, CW knowledge and proficiency is still required to operated HF portion (except 10 meter) of the Amateur Radio band.

Having said that, I’d like to present CWirc, an XChat irc client plugin which enables you to send and receive morse code through IRC. Developed by a fellow ham F8EJF, CWIrc has a lot of features which really enhance your CW experience on the internet, including the option of hooking up a real CW keyer using serial port interface.

CWIrc enables you to exchange morse code with fellow irc users on the internet, provided that the other users also knows morse code and has installed CWIrc. Though this might sound a little bit of a stretch when thinking the odds of meeting people with both requirements, it is actually not so in reality. You can find those kind of people exactly in #cwirc on irc.freenode.net server who are eager to chat with you in CW.

Screenshot

Requirements

• Linux (or Unix based) machines (I personally used Ubuntu)
• XChat IRC Client
• CWIRc plugin

Both XChat and CWIrc are included in Ubuntu (as well as Debian) software repository, so you don’t need to compile or download separate package from their respective websites.

Tags: amateur radio, Computers, cwirc, hamradio, irc, linux, morse, plugin, qso, ubuntu

As promised in the previous post,Simple Morse Practice Oscillator Circuit has been completed. Sorry, I cant do anything much with the photo quality as it was taken using my stupid mobile phone.

I promise to include a Youtube video demonstrating its sound and operation. Next, I need to get a decent casing and some cheap morse keyer to go with this oscillator. I might be planning to make one that could interface with CWirc too.

Tags: amateur radio, cw, hamradio, homebrew, morse, morse code

I finally had the time to upgrade Please Name My blog to Wordpress 2.5 today (or rather tonight). I noticed the blog runs much faster and smoother with the latest release of Wordpress, though I hope they would fix the upload file script which I find it a bit buggy for my use.

If you running Wordpress, then I suggest you upgrade your Wordpress installation the latest release as there are many bugfix and features in this release. Not to mention about the potential security issues when running older Wordpress installation.

Expect to see newer posts after this.

Tags: blog, blogs, Computers, personal, wordpress

Today I want to share with you a great Yagi Uda Antenna modeling software for amateur radio operator and enthusiast.

The most interesting part of the software is, it can help you to improve your design by projecting the antenna radiation pattern and estimating the radiation resistance (impudence) at any given frequency.

The application is created for the venerable DOS environment, thus some of the operating system might not be able to run it natively. However I found out that I can run the application successfully using DOSBox DOS emulator software under Ubuntu Linux. For your information, DOSBox is also available for Windows operating system too.

YagiMAX Screenshots

Here’s a couple of YagiMAX screenshot taken from my computer (running Linux, Ubuntu Gutsy). The antenna shown here is a 6 Element OWA Yagi for 2 Meter amateur radio band, scaled from its 6 meter counterpart, the design was taken from L.B Cebik website

Download YagiMAX

Here is a download link to YagiMAX 3.11. Hope that will help you in your work !

Tags: amateur radio, antenna, Ham Radio, hamradio, yagi

Some of my friends were wondering why I did not log in my Friendster account for a long period of time considering that I worked in front of a PC all the time.

Well, I leave it up to these screenshots to answer those questions

FYI, most of these people have at least completed college-level education and are supposed to understand that forwading junk messages could disrupt any sort of communication network.

Oh well I might as well redirect people who questioned my long absence from Friendster account to this page next time. Boohoo social networking, I’ll be screening my FaceBook contact to avoid this sort of problem.

Tags: friendster, Internet, myspace, social networking, spam

Darn, guess I’ve to get myself a new mouse. Among most the things I hate to replace, I hate getting a new mouse the most. Probably it going to take me some time to get use to a new mouse in order to be more productive.

The current mouse still works, but its left button seems a little bit “trigger-happy” and I’m having trouble to perform drag+selecting text action. This might impair me when I’m manipulating graphics too.

Oh well better get a new mouse btw rather than complaining, probably I should get a new keyboard too..

Tags: computer, keyboard, mouse, pc, personal, workstation

I haven’t attended paper based examination for quite some time now, especially when it involve me answering hundreds of objective questions. To be honest, I’m not that confident with this examination.

Don’t get me wrong. it is not that I doubt my electronic and radio communication skills, but its more to my self doubt when confronted with a bunch of objective questions, especially when I studied a lot of questions (but with confusing answers) regarding the examination tomorrow.

I’ve been preparing for a couple of weeks for this exam, it will be attended by a lot of candidates, and I suspect that the venue would be filled with amateur radio old-timers or ham radio rig sellers that would try to persuade candidates to buy them.

For those who are new to this, amateur radio examination is a must for those who are interested to operate an amateur radio station. The examination will determine if you are qualified to earn a license to communicate with other amateur radio operator (hams).

Although radio communication is considered an “old fashioned” way to communicate since we already have internet and mobile phones, ham radio is still favored by enthusiast as a way to meet new friends and organise activities over the radio. Currently, Malaysia has at least 4,000 licensed ham radio operator across the country.

Please refer to wikipedia page for more information about Amateur Radio in general, and MARTS website for Malaysian ham radio-specific information.

p/s: Ham radio operator is not a paid job, its a hobby. Any body can participate as long as they are licensed.

Tags: amateur radio, Ham Radio, hobby, malaysia, radio

FInally after more than 5 years, that I’ve the time to add the-easy-to-use online Contact Form to my own personal website.

The site has been around since 2002 and has been relocated to 3 different web servers since its establishment. Previously the website serves as my online portfolio where it serves as a point of contact for potential employers to reach me.

Now I guess it is just a personal website where people can get to know me or contact me through the web page as I am not actively seeking for job right now (yes I am still voluntarily unemployed!)

For the curious mind, I’ve use some of the techniques describe here to create the Contact Form, enjoy!

Tags: contact, contact form, personal, php, web site, webpage, website