nature gateway...

I love Kuching dude... its a cool, refreshing and relaxing place. Was there for the ArcGIS 9.2 update to SAINS Sarawak team. The trip began badly because Air Asia was late for 5 hours from LCCT Terminal in KLIA. They really need to improve on the timing lah. Once touchdown in Sarawak, my mood immediately improved. Nice to be back here. The first thing you can feel about Sarawak is the air, its very fresh and there is no much pollution here. You can take deep breaths and inhale the cool and crisp air here. Nice.

Its actually my fourth time to Sarawak... the first being a student exchange program organised by Ministry of Education called Titian Emas. The program in selected best students from Peninsular Malaysia (after SRP exams) and live with natives in Sarawak. There were 5 selected from Selangor. If any of you guys reading this, drop a line okei?? I was there for 2 months, living with a Melanau family in Sarikei. I learnt to appreciate the simple and immensely satisfying lifestyle of the Sarawak natives. I was 15 then and the experience in Sarawak was surely a defining moment.

We can learn a lot from the natives in Sarawak. One of the most important aspect of their life is to appreciate and respect nature. They have traditions and 'pantangs' to walk in the jungle, to swim in the river, to respect elders or to hunt for food. I attended a few traditional ceremonies there and drank the infamous 'tuak' more than I should ;-)

For those who want to know more about Sarawak, check it out here:

http://www.sarawaktourism.com/

me on the far left... job done in Sains

Lessons in Fishing - Part 2

Its exhaustive, lotsa work, lotsa skill, tiring... but the thrill of fishing is like no other.

The Catch.

Gelama Fish - its about 5 to 7 inches long. To eat this you need to deep fry it.

Sam Ngah Fish a.k.a. 3 Tooth Fish - it looks a lot like the Gelama fish... slightly longer... but it has 3 teeth... seriously ;-)

Snapper Fish - its about 8-10 inches long. Its actually the best catch.

You can see we also caught stingray and a 'dragon fish'... looks like an eel.

This is the boat ride back to Kuala Selangor, Sasaran jetty. By now, 8-9 hours in the sea... we are half dead.

This is a view of Pulau Angsa, a small island off the coast. You can see some chalets there and a lighthouse nearby.

That's my rod. Teik Mun help me buy it.

The Joy of Fishing - Part 1

I have never been good in fishing, trust me... but the deep sea fishing trips thought me a lesson or two in patience, hard work and more patience. Since a kid, I used to fish at the ponds behind my house... not so successful. Also in Penang, I tried to follow the guys to the jetty by the harbour... still not much luck. I mean... I catch some... but nothing to shout about. Most times, I just fish for the sake of relaxing by the lake, pond or sea.

This time, I took the offer to go deep sea fishing. Been doing this a few times already. Man... this is real fun. It really helps you relax and unwind. There are minimum 8 of us on each trip. Sometimes if there is more we rent another boat. We leave from Sasaran in Kuala Selangor and it takes around 2-3 hours to reach the fishing spot.



Thats me, tired after 5 hours in the sun... trying to act cool. That cowboy hat is from Australia but its not really suitable for the hot and humid weather... its better to get a straw hat.







The boys ... back to land.















This is the tekong ('captain') of the boat and myself. His boat is right behind us. We call him "Ah Pek". He is 70 years old and has been a fisherman all his life. He has a great sense of humour and smokes non-stop. Super macho grandpa.

what's new and cool with ASP.NET 2.0 ?? Part 1

Hi there, the new buzz in the GIS community is the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Studio 2005. I am not about to compare it with Java, PHP, Macromedia etc but its worth knowing and learning the new features in ASP.NET. Why?? Because ArcGIS Server 9.2 is using a lot of its cool features. So maybe its worthwhile listing it:

Application-wide registration of custom controls
These are controls in web forms that we normally use - like menus and buttons. What if you have custom controls and wanna declare them globally - you can use add the Register directives to the web.config

Web Part controls
This is like a personalisation tool we use for each user's preference. Let me gice you an example: A user would like to log on to ArcGIS Server and selected a few tools he likes to use. Everytime he logs on, this is personalised for him.

With Web Parts, the ASP.NET team has given us a way to do that without writing any additional code. The WebPartZone control is used to define an “area” of the page that can be customized. Each zone can be made up of multiple parts which can be a ContentWebPart control, a custom control, or a UserControl. Used in conjunction with the WebPartManager controls, you can give your end users the ability to change where the controls in their page are displayed.

Posting to other pages
This is something web programmers scratch their heads with. Normally in application programming, we can send variables to other forms by declaring module or class based variables... its all in the same memory. Enterprise Web applications are not the same, the variables and results are in the server... server side programming.

ASP.NET 2.0 gives controls that cause a post-back to the server the ability to change the action of the form in the HTML page, causing the page’s state and data to be posted directly to an ASP.NET page other than the one that created it.

Master Pages

How many of you used Master Slides in Powerpoint presentations?? You can create a Master Slide and then add more content slides to your presentations. All the format, colouring, logo and design looks the same across all.

Well... in ASP.NET 2.0 there is a new feature called Master Pages. Master Pages are essentially ASP.NET syntax in a file with the .master extension. A Master Page can be created and serves the same purpose as the “master base class”. There are two main differences with the Master Page model in ASP.NET 1.1

One, the .master pages are visually designable. Not only that, when a .aspx page uses a Master Page, the visual elements from the Master Page are displayed in the design view of the .aspx page – grayed out. Two, the Master Page isn’t used as the base class for the .aspx file.


Check out these sites, there were developed using ASP.NET 2.0:

LondonStockExchange.com

Dell.com

Monster.com