Let’s all welcome young Emma-Grace Ting ChangXin who was born on 26th October, at 3.555 kg and 51.5 cm. News has it her big sister Ashley-Joan has already requested to carry and help feed her. Congrats to Michelle and Teik Sing!
Continue readingAuthor Archive: hisham
Sixty Symbols
From the Sixty Symbols Introduction page: Ever been confused by all the letters and squiggles used by scientists? Hopefully this site will unravel some of those mysteries. Sixty Symbols is a collection of videos about physics and astronomy presented by experts from The University of Nottingham. They aren’t lessons or lectures – and this site has never tried to be an online reference book. The films are just fun chats with men and women who love their subject and know a lot about it! I don’t know about you, but I am going to enjoy watching these videos. Click here to view the fascinating and easily-understood scientific talks they have there. [[image:sixty-symbols.gif:Sixty Symbols:center:0]]
Continue reading
Year Nine Celebratory Dinner
Here we are at Year Nine. That means it’s been a year since this blog entry, which is Year Eight. Instead of relaxing at home, or both of us forgetting about it (which has happened before believe you me) Irfan and I went to pick up Ain after work and headed to Midvalley Megamall for an anniversary dinner. We decided on eating at Secret Recipe. I had no complaints because MPH was right beside us. The smell of books always gives me a good appetite. One more year before we reach the decade-mark!
Continue reading
Irfan’s Fighting Fish
Our recent foray back to Kelantan during Aidilfitri rewarded Irfan with a new responsibility. A Siamese fighting fish, given to him by his Tok Cik Mi. I told him don’t, because the car is not really equipped to physically hold a live fish travelling eight hours at night, rocking and rolling over the mountain road. Irfan would be (and was) asleep for most of the trip because of our nocturnal journey. Despite all that, the fish survived all the way to Kuala Lumpur. The following week, it survived a two-way journey between Kuala Lumpur and Sitiawan, which was nothing compared to its previous adventure. Today, Irfan and I went to an aquarium shop and bought some stuff to beautify the fish’s otherwise spartan living environment. What else does a fish need in its aquarium? A phone extension? Hair curlers? Drapes?
Continue readingShudde M’ell Loves You
As Ain and I was walking on the beach on Lumut, we spotted this little creature on the sand. It had been deposited at the high tide mark, and it was presently low tide. Since the sun was about to climb into its maximum scorching position, I balanced the little dude on a driftwood twig and dropped it into a stream that flowed out to the sea. Any ideas as to what this worm is? [[image:annelid01.jpg::center:0]] [[image:annelid02.jpg::center:0]] Wherever it came from, I hope it didn’t leave its kettle on when it left home.
Continue reading
Khairul The Rodian Carbineer
I’m finally a Rodian. Not really. But props to Asok Yeesrim the Gran, another Agent of SWAG, for illustrating a Rodian carbineer by the name of Khairul. Khairul was named in honour of myself. The artwork looks badass, with fantastic costume and prop design. Also of note is the Rodian’s lack of flexible spines on his scalp, which coincidentally I have doodled before to draw a “bald” Rodian. Click here to view a larger image on DeviantArt. Thanks, man. I really dig your Mike Allred-esque style. Here’s hoping Khairul the Rodian has more luck bringing in the credits than I do.
Continue reading
Ubuntu Miscellanea
Three things come to mind. Flash Problems I’ve been having some problems with browser-embedded flash files. Those of you who notice my reluctance to click on Youtube links during chat will be pleased to know that I’ve gotten Youtube working on this browser, as well as the new Photobucket user interface. It took me quite a while to hunt down the solution at the Ubuntu forums. There were several false leads, but finally flash is free to be fully-utilized by Firefox. What I did was to input the following commands line-by-line on Terminal and follow whatever instructions that was displayed. sudo apt-get remove swfdec-mozilla sudo apt-get remove mozilla-plugin-gnash sudo apt-get remove adobe-flashplugin sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree Never Doubt The Weather Applet This morning when I sat down at this computer, I saw that the gnome-clock weather applet said it was raining. I looked out the window […]
Continue reading
Eid Mubarak & Happy 7th Birthday
Aidilfitri greetings to everyone from us who are spending the holidays in Pasir Mas this year. This year, our family was garbed in black on Aidilfitri morning. The next day was Irfan’s seventh birthday. There was no place in the fridge to store the cake so we cut the cake that morning. Irfan’s cake was very nicely decorated by the cake shop, complete with edible Donald Duck, Doraemon, Ultraman, some funky cat and for some reason, an unidentifiable Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with a goatee. He must be evil. Meanwhile in the kitchen, Ain was leading the team to cook her nasi dagang, which I sampled quite a lot of before the end of the day. Later that afternoon, Aiman came to visit from Salor with his parents, so Irfan and Aiman did their regular things together, watching TV, chasing each other all over the house and playing with the […]
Continue reading
The Interactive Dan Brown Plot Generator
Do you wish to write and be as successful as bestselling authour of titles such as Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown? Don’t fret, because now you can thanks to Slate.com’s The Interactive Dan Brown Plot Generator. All you have to do is to select the city and then the arcane organisation whose devious plot drives the story, and voila! You have an automatically generated plot which can serve as a blurb for your back cover! I chose “Dallas” for the city, and for the ancient and mysterious organisation I picked the Kiwanis Club: An ancient puzzle at the heart of Dallas. A ruthless cult determined to protect it. A frantic race to uncover the Kiwanis Club’s darkest secret. The Forgotten Mark When world-famous Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the Carousel Club to analyze a mysterious rune—imprinted on a gold ring lying next to […]
Continue reading
365 Days of Stormtroopers
Thanks to the Official Star Wars Blog, I’ve come across the photo-adventures of a pair of hapless Imperial Stormtroopers on Flickr, TK-479 and TK-455, as they undergo a series of entertaining adventures. The photos are taken by Stéfan Le Dû, who will release one photo a day for a year. Some of the scenes are downright hilarious. Here is a selection: Above: This explains the anonymous messages Luke’s been receiving. It got so bad that he had to hurl his phone on the far side of Nirauan. Above: The Imperial fleet could use a few good carrier pigeons if the HoloNet craps out. Above: You can’t go on vacation without an astromech droid to navigate your camper. Above: Do you need hats if you’re wearing friggin’ helmets? You do if you want to get the chicks on the beach. Above: He’d better get the hell out before a horse shows […]
Continue reading
Secret Library Revamped and Re-released
After a long time taken out of the market, I’ve finally re-released the old The Secret Library children’s book as Irfan’s Secret Library. The story is basically the same, with some edits to the body text. There are no new artwork. Everything is from the older version of the book. It’s up on the Products page here [Page no longer exists]. You can see samples of the interior at its Lulu page here. It’s been a while since I worked to create a brand new children’s book. I should get back to it. The next one should concern animals or dinosaurs or something.
Continue reading
Irfan Draws Again
Note the day-old mustache and stubble I have.
Continue reading
Prawn-flavoured Keropok: A District 9 review
A gigantic spaceship appears in the skies above Johannesburg 28 years ago. A million starving insectoid sapients are found in the ship, and ferried ground-side. Now, a guarded slum area called District 9 exists in Johannesburg that tries to keep these alien “prawns” away from humans, while the Multinational United (MNU) administrates District 9 as it attempts to pry secrets of alien technology from the dumb prawns for profit. The movie District 9 doesn’t have a particularly original storyline. In fact its premise is largely based on and a commentary on the apartheid in South Africa. It’s not really very hard sci-fi, with a lot of the science relegated to background. We see and marvel at alien technology and its effect but we don’t go into details. Its hand-held shakycam effects are not as motion sickness-inducing as say The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, but it does have some jitter […]
Continue reading
Cody and Rex, Best of Friends
Once upon a time… THE END
Continue reading
Strikeforce Enteague: The Pioneer Team
Once upon a time I had a Geocities Page, where upon I uploaded a lot of Star Wars artwork. Soon the plug will be pulled on Geocities, so a link there from here is a futile gesture. However, there are a bunch of drawings of my first ever Strikeforce Enteague campaign character for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game from back in 1989. The game started in 1989, but these drawings are from 2001 – 2002, by the way. I thought I’d upload them on here for posterity’s sake. (Note: this is not every player character of that era. Someday, I’ll get around to drawing everyone.) Players, you know who you are. Later additions to the pioneer team…
Continue reading
Gauntlet Starfighter
Gauntlet starfighter, manufactured by Shobquix Yards, was created a long time ago by West End Games for their Star Wars Roleplaying Game line as can be seen here at Wookieepedia. It first appeared in Planets of the Galaxy, Vol 1 in the “Isen IV” chapter. And in its début, it was only a tiny little stat block. No image at all. So I thought to myself the other day, why don’t I try to draw one based on the plans seen in the Wookieepedia entry above which was later released in a later publication. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger picture.
Continue reading