So.. How was YOUR Monday?

My weekend : bike riding & 10,000 b.c.

At the crack of noon Saturday my girlfriend and I went bike riding at taman pertanian, Sham Alam, which is apparently an agricultural park, (whatever that means).



We had a great time riding around, sweating profusely and exploring some of the strange attractions.


For example, the four-seasons house (which apparently is perpetually stuck on Spring for financial reasons, and is brilliantly, startlingly freezing cold inside, .. especially when you're soaked with sweat from riding outside for an hour in 35 degrees C)
.. and the rabbit garden, which is more of a rabbit battery caged jail in hell.


.. Poor rabbits.

I did however also manage to finally get a photo of a Malaysian squirrel, which I am very proud of considering how fast the little blighters move. Observe.


After a well earned shower and a powernap we trekked off to Times Square again for our weekly movie, this time the Roland Emmerich blockbuster 10,000 B.C.



I wasn't expecting a great deal of cohesion or brains in the plot, and it delivered on my expectations.

I felt a little more cro-magnon after watching it, but as big and dumb and mixed-up as it was, it was visually spectacular, which was exactly what I wanted.

Voting in Malaysia

Tomorrow is polling day in Malaysia. I just had to post the above photo taken on Jalan Ceylon of some overly-zealous advertising for the current ruling party.

You just have to love the way it forces the pedestrians off the footpath and onto the road. If you look closely, you'll see they've done the same again, further up the road.

I'm not sure if that's really sending the right message, do you?

iPhone musicians

A trio of tabletop musicians have turned their gadget lust into an art form, using two iPhones and an iPod Touch to form the "iBand".

The three art students from Vienna in Austria have eschewed roadies and regular instruments in favour of custom music applications loaded on to the touch-screen gizmos from Apple.

Seb, 24, is the drummer, Roger, 25, is on bass and guitar while Marina, 26, is the vocalist and pianist. They declined to give their surnames for privacy reasons.

The iBand's first video, uploaded to YouTube two weeks ago as a demonstration of what could be done with new music applications, jumped from 20,000 to 300,000 views within the first three days.

After spreading virally across the internet and being linked to on various gadget blogs, the clip now has just over two million views.

The band's first real song, Life is greater than the internet, appeared on YouTube six days ago and has attracted over 60,000 views so far.

"Of all possible things you can do with a mobile phone, what could be more meaningful than to create music," Seb said in an email interview.

"We have been thinking about forming a band that would only use iPhones as musical instruments for a long time now, since the possibilities of the iPhone as a programmable, customisable platform became obvious with the first wave of third-party applications."

The custom music applications, which are unauthorised by Apple but can be used after performing a simple software hack, are called MooCowMusic Pianist, MooCowMusic Drummer and PocketGuitar.

Buttons displayed on the touch screens correspond to different sounds, allowing the band to emulate a range of real musical instruments. All three band members play conventional instruments but decided to form the iBand to "create a new type of sound".

"To use the iPhone as a musical instrument isn't about getting a technically perfect song together," said Seb.

"It has very innovative input methods, but we could also use any sort of synthesizer and full band equipment; with today's technology there are no limitations."

To create their music, the iBand connects the iPhones and iPod Touch to a mixing table, which is in turn connected to a regular stereo hifi system so the trio can hear what they're playing. Everything is recorded and mixed live, except for vocals which are added afterwards.

The band plans to continue churning out tracks but Seb insists they are more than just gadget freaks having fun. He said the iBand's first song seeks to express the message that real life is just as important as virtual life.

The track is available as a free download from the iBand website and the band is asking those who like it to donate through PayPal.

"It seems that many people are sucked into the black hole of the web too deeply, losing their idea of what life can really be," Seb said.

"We think that although the internet comprises the possibility to lose oneself within it, the technical developments of our world can also be used to realise the potential of oneself and the life that is given to every one of us; to realise that there is something higher to be sought and found in life."

.. from smh

Hack into a Windows PC - no password needed

A security consultant based in New Zealand has released a tool that can unlock Windows computers in seconds without the need for a password.

Adam Boileau first demonstrated the hack, which affects Windows XP computers but has not yet been tested with Windows Vista, at a security conference in Sydney in 2006, but Microsoft has yet to develop a fix.

Interviewed in ITRadio's Risky Business podcast, Boileau said the tool, released to the public today, could "unlock locked Windows machines or login without a password ... merely by plugging in your Firewire cable and running a command".

Boileau, a consultant with Immunity Inc., said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because "Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn't want to cause any real trouble".

But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website.

To use the tool, hackers must connect a Linux-based computer to a Firewire port on the target machine. The machine is then tricked into allowing the attacking computer to have read and write access to its memory.

With full access to the memory, the tool can then modify Windows' password protection code, which is stored there, and render it ineffective.

Older desktop computers do not come equipped with Firewire ports, which are needed for the hack to work, but many recent models do. Most laptops made in the last few years include Firewire ports.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology for security firm Sophos, said the security hole found by Boileau was not a vulnerability or bug in the traditional sense, because the ability to use the Firewire port to access a computer's memory was actually a feature of Firewire.

"If you have a Firewire port, disable it when you aren't using it," Ducklin said.

"That way, if someone does plug into your port unexpectedly, your side of the Firewire link is dead, so they can't interact with your PC, legitimately or otherwise."

Ducklin also advised people to be careful when giving others physical access to their computer.

"I know people who'd think three times about asking passing strangers to take their photo in front of the Opera House in case they did a runner with the camera, yet who are much more casual with their laptop PC, as long as it's software-locked, even though the hardware alone is worth five times as much as the camera," he said.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

.. from smh