REST IN PEACE, DEAR BROTHER VINCENT

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

REST IN PEACE, BROTHER VINCENT

It is with great sadness that we Michaelians (students and alumni of St. Michael's Institution, Ipoh) have heard that our beloved Dato' Brother Vincent Corkery passed on at Hospital Fatimah, Ipoh today, 22 March 2016. May God grant him eternal rest and bless his soul.His remains will be brought to St Michael's Church and the wake will be held tonight and Wednesday. Funeral is at 10.30am on Thursday, 24th March 2016.
http://smialumnikv.blogspot.my/

http://peterkhiew.blogspot.my/

Dato' Bro Vincent Corkery lived his commitment, dedication, personal sacrifice and perseverance which La Salle Brothers make in their lifelong quest to educate the young and to instil in them core ethics and values for success in their lives beyond school.

He was born in 1928 and grew up on his family's farm in Ireland till he joined the La Salle Brothers in 1942 and spent his Juniorate and Novitiate years in Castletown, where Brother Philip, a Brother Visitor convinced him to volunteer to serve in East Asia to help relieve the shortage of Brothers just after World War II.

He spent three more years studying for his Oxford School Certificate and his Oxford Higher School Certificate (A-Levels), then on 22 October, 1948, the start of his sea voyage to Singapore, where he taught at St. Patrick's School and later at St. Joseph's Institution.

He left to earn a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and upon his returned to Singapore, and was posted to St. Michael's Institution, Ipoh, where he arrived on 31 December, 1957 as Sub-Director, a post he held for 13 years. He also taught sixth form students and was involved in administration.

Then away again to pursue a Post Graduate Certificate of Education at Cambridge University in 1969 and 1970, then Brother Vincent took over as Brother Director from Brother Ultan Paul who himself went for further studies, then served as Brother Visitor of the Penang District.

As Director, Brother Vincent introduced several radical reforms at St. Michael's , which improved SRP (LCE) results by 10% and boosted the class spirit in sports. He also represented St. Michael's at the Annual Conference of Heads of Secondary Schools in West Malaysia, served as its Secretary-General and helped restore the Old Michaelians' Association.

Brother Paul returned as Brother Director in 1976 until he retired 10 years later, so Brother Vincent returned to teaching which he so loved and devoted time to the Catholic Charismatic Movement. Brother Vincent took over as Brother Director again in 1986 until he retired in 1988, but continued to serve the wider LaSallian organisation and community in several ways.

What's the most inspriring period of his life? “Without hesitation it is the present, truly a life ever-dawning, so full of interest and excitement, an ever expanding universe of on-going discovery and invention, a world-wide merging of people of many faiths and traditions, and the maturing spirituality of human relations,” said Brother Vincent.

He will be sadly missed by many who knew him and were touched by his unfailing commitment and dedication as an educator and friend.

Our School Rally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRabGU8Wjk

Based on the tune of O' Donnel Abu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY9jRmuVMyY


Charles F. Moreira

PS. His autobiography, Life Ever Dawning was published by the SMI Alumni Association Klang Valley and was officially launched at our Annual Dinner 2014 on 26th April.

It's available at St Michael's Institution, Ipoh (walk-in or email Peter Khiew for an appointment at peterkhiew@gmail.com).

Those in the Klang Valley can call our President Michael Lip ( 019-2225660) or Helen Lip (019-2216366) to get a copy of this marvellous book. An unsigned copy is priced at RM30 each and a signed copy at RM50.

THE SENSE OF CLOSURE AND FINALITY OF SHREDDING

Hi Folks,

I have been doing some spring cleaning during the new year - like clearing out old bills, bank and credit card statements which have over cluttered my drawer over the past months and shredding them is the most satisfying thing which gives me such a sense of finality, unlike ripping up papers, crumpling them up and throwing them in the bin.

I do not want to be like my late father who kept file folders of telephone bills going back 30 year or as far back as when Telekom Malaysia was a government department called Jabatan Talikom Malaysia (JTM), though I find myself being just as bad at collecting paper and "reference materials" which I have never looked at for 10 years or more.

I bought this used heavy duty shredder from Cash Convertors for RM395 about 10 years ago. It weighs a ton but is great for shredding large amounts of paper.

When the bag is full, I tie it up and drop it off at the home of a neighbour who goes around our area at night collecting papers, plastic and cans from the public garbage bins in our neighbourhood.

Either that or I give the bag to the recycling man when he comes around.

I also separate my discarded plastic, bottles and metal can's into separate bags and drop them off at her home on the next road from mine.

I must make sure to remove all staples, paper clips and any metal from the paper before shredding or it could damage the blades. The cost to repair this shredder would most probably be more than what I paid for it.

It needs maintenance though, like regular oiling of the blades and perhaps also greasing. Anyway, that's no big deal for a technical guy like me.

Cheers

Charles

DIY - MAKE YOUR OWN SMART TV & MEDIA CENTRE

Many owners of flatscreen TVs may not realise that these multi-input display platforms can also be used as a large screen display for their desktop or notebook PC, so they can turn it into a DIY smart TV & a media centre.

In fact, many such TVs come with an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port which connects to the HDMI port on your satellite or fibre TV set top box, a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port perhaps and quite often, also with a VGA (Video Graphics Array) port found on almost all desktop PCs and on many notebook PCs. All you need do is to switch the input on your TV to either the HDMI or VGA port to which your PC is connected. On some TV remote controls, you press the "Source" button and select the input.

One of my friends connected his Hisense large screen LED TV to his compact desktop PC (under the TV stand), which in turn is connected to his Unifi fibre-Internet router and he controls the PC using a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Thus the TV can be used to play You Tube, Vimeo and other streaming videos, listen to online streaming radio, podcasts, etc. in any language from around the world, it can play downloaded video and music files as well as view photos on your hard disk, send and receive e-mail, access social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc., all from your couch and who knows, you may even end up writing letters, creating spreadsheets and presentation graphic presentations all from your couch.

You can also install the open source Kodi (formerly XBMC) media available for Linux, Mac OS, Windows, etc. and turn your Into -- well a media centre.

http://kodi.tv/download/

And when you're done with running the PC, you can always switch your TV back to your satellite or fibre TV provider.

At first, he was running Windows on the PC and I found it's response rather sluggish and advised him to install a Linux on instead and after trying out a few Linux distributions, he settled on Pearl Linux with a MATE user interface.

COULD THIS BE A PART OF MH370?

At long last there could be hope of solving mystery of the whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines MH370 which went missing on 8 March, 2014.

There are several media reports posted within the past four or so hours about the discovery of a part of an aircraft wing which had washed up on La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa.

Former military pilot Xavier Tytelman believes that it could be a wing flap from a Boeing 777. (Screen cap of his Tweet below)
https://twitter.com/PeurAvion/status/626391215349612544

From the sea shell encrustations which have built up on the part, Police in Reunion believe that it has been in the water for over a year which fits the time of disappearance of MH370.





"UPDATE 17:30UTC Experts: debris found on Reunion Island show 'incredible similarities with Boeing 777."
http://www.airlive.net/2015/07/breaking-piece-of-wing-found-on-la.html

IF YOU GET A MESSAGE WITH A WHATS APP SCREENSHOT DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY

Dear Relies and friends,

If you receive a message with a Whats App image like the one I screen captured below which asks you to click on a Play button, pleased DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY and DO NOT click the Play button and DO NOT REPLY to the sender even if they are close to or well known to you.

If you want to communicate with the sender about it, CREATE A NEW EMAIL MESSAGE to them like I am doing now.

I had an e-mail message dated May 13th 2015 at 19:36 hours (7.36pm) purportedly from a friend and fellow alumni association committee member with a supposed Whats App screen asking me to click on the Play button to play a video as in the screen cap attached.

Thinking it to be a legitimate message, I clicked on the play button and it opened a browser and played a video advertisement for a health product extracted from what looks like a mangosteen fruit.

I then replied to the message thank her and a doctor friend called me about the product and asked me to buy some for him.

Several others also replied to me in response and one was alerted to the danger by the anti virus or anti spam on her computer and instead e-mailed me separately instead of replying to me.

Admittedly, I was a bit curious since the purported sender does not have a WhatsApp account as far as I know but I understand that one can still send and receive WhatApp from a web browser like one sends and receives Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc,. so I did not think further about it.

I have done a Google search on "Whats App virus" and it is confirmed to be a known virus.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/dlKKBID9JWw

If you use a web mail service such as Gmail like I do, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and others, it would be best to purge all your old messages and messages in your deleted, spam and other folders to deny the virus access to e-mail addresses.

I deleted everything from my Gmail web mail,including the over 5000 contacts since I receive and send my Gmail messages using an e-mail client, so I do not need the contacts in my Gmail web mail.

Apologies for any inconvenience I may have caused on my part by not being more suspicious about this message I had received purportedly from this friend.

Regards

Charles

 

THREE DAYS OF TYRE PROBLEMS

I thought I would like to share this experience with you.

On Monday I drove my car into the city and noticed that my front right tyre was soft so I went to the petrol station and pumped it up.

While going out that evening I noticed the car pulling to the left and after I stopped for tea with a friend I noticed that the front left tyre was now soft, so I drove to a 24 hours petrol station and pumped it up, intending to go to the mechanic the next day to have it checked.

I was about to go out Tuesday afternoon and noticed that the  front left tyre had gone almost flat, so I jacked the car up and replaced it with the spare and went straight to the mechanic and asked his workers to check both tyres to see what was wrong.

They later informed me that they had replaced the valve of the left front tyre but found nothing wrong with the right front tyre.

Yesterday (Wednesday) evening I got a call from the secretary of my school alumni association to inform me that we had a committee meeting which was about to start. I was confused by the exchange of e-mails that the meeting was this evening so I had a bath, got ready and when i got to my car, I found that my right front tyre was almost flat but short of time, I drove slowly to a petrol station and pumped it up and then went looking for a mechanic but all were closed as it was past 7 pm, so I proceeded to the meeting and kept my fingers crossed that the tyre would not go flat.

After the meeting, I pumped up the tyre again and decided to replace it with the spare when I got home and stopped by a coffee shop for a bite on the way back and parked my car under some trees.

When I got back to my car, I felt a plop on my left shoulder and a bird nestling in the tree for the night had shat on me, so I quickly drove the car out from under the tree. By then, there was bird shit on my windscreen and car as well but I decided to go to a petrol station to pump up the tyre again before I went home.

FOUND A GREAT HOME FOR THIS PC

I had been trying to find a home for this Pentium III PC for a long time and by a happy coincidence I found it one of the best homes - i.e. a centre for autistic children.

I bought this old PC at a give away price of RM90 from a used PC shop in Amcorp Mall some years ago and enhanced it to 512MB of RAM, 80GB hard drive and replaced the ropey CD ROM drive with a working used unit.

It came with Windows XP but I soon got rid of that and installed Linux on it.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE FOR A CLEARER VIEW

On Sunday 18th of January afternoon I took a friend who was in pain to Assunta Hospital and waited for about four hours until he was admitted.

It was evening and I felt like having some of those delicious curry puffs at Raju's Restaurant, so went there and by chance met the director of an autistic home whom I had not met for several years.

Raju's did not have any curry puffs that Sunday but we got chatting about computers, etc. and luckily I had my netbook in my car, so I showed the director DouDou Linux for children and invited him to come by by home to view this Pentium III PC.

He came by that evening with one of their PCs on which they were having problems opening Word documents.

I fired up the PC which runs PicarOS Diego Linux especially developed for children in Spain and let him try it out and the director said that the games and educational programs were ideal for autistic children.

The screen cap below is old. Since I captured it, I have customised PicarOS Diego further to be in English as much as possible.

He then took it away and installed it in the centre the next day and informed me that the children loved it though the teaching staff found it a bit intimidating, since it is not Windows which they are familiar with.

Anyway, I am happy that I finally found this PC a very good home for it to serve out the remainder of its useful life benefiting autistic children.

TESS further spreads its wings worldwide

MSC Malaysia Success Stories
TESS Innovation
By Charles F. Moreira

TESS Innovation has established itself as a leading developer and provider of financial crime solutions in South East Asia, with plans to have at least one or two customers in each Asia-Pacific country by 2016. Beyond that, it aims to penetrate the Middle East and the US markets.

TESS CEO B.Y. Liew

Besides Malaysia where it has a well-established market presence, TESS also has customers in Thailand and the Philippines, already has partners in Indonesia and Vietnam, and is in negotiations with potential partners to help it penetrate the China and Taiwan markets.

TESS CEO B.Y. Liew (left) with Peter Ong, Chief Technical Officer and Executive Director (seated) and Y.S. Yap, Head of Research and Development

“Our vision is to make Malaysia a recognised model in Asia for combating financial crime”, said B.Y. Liew, its chief executive officer. He also wants TESS to be recognised as a supplier of anti-financial crime solutions and to be a leading anti-money laundering solutions providers in Asia and the world. Liew is grateful for all the assistance TESS received from the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), which has helped it in its long and ongoing journey to achieve great heights.

Founded on 22 March 2000 and now trading under the name TESS International, it initially developed Internet banking solutions and began marketing them but found it tough trying to convince local banks that a home-grown solution was as good if not better than the foreign ones which they tended to prefer.

TESS was awarded MSC Malaysia status in 2001 and that same year, it shifted its focus and adapted its Internet banking platform for unit trust management companies. Today, TESS' platforms are used by four of the five top unit trust companies in Malaysia, as well as a unit trust industry association.

TESS participated in a tender many years back to supply an Internet banking solution to a local financial institution and found that it was competing against 45 other companies offering the solution. Realising that this was a glutted market, in which competition was fierce and it would be hard to survive and grow, TESS made a shift.

We are not a “me too”

So in 2009, TESS decided to specialise on providing solutions to combat financial crime - a very niche market - and armed with RM1.2 million in funding from the MSC Malaysia Research and Development Grant Scheme (MGS Grant) - a matching grant which helped TESS develop CORAL iSEMTM (Intelligent Sensor for Money Laundering), its anti-money laundering solution, which it launched in mid 2010.

Enlinea aims be South-East Asia's leading portals operator for women

MSC Malaysia Success Stories

Enlinea

By Charles F. Moreira

The Wedding is one of the most important milestones in every young man's and young woman's life. It is the point from which they begin their lifelong journey together as husband and wife, have children, raise and educate them till they can stand on their own two feet in life, and in the mean time, also provide a suitable home for themselves, their children and perhaps their aged parents.

With that in mind, MSC Malaysia status company Enlinea Sdn. Bhd., aims to operate South-East Asia's leading  portals focusing on ladies, which cater to the three main stages of women's lives - namely their wedding, young motherhood and family home life.

Established  in early 2012, Enlinea initially developed high-volume, high traffic, electronic-commerce sites for many clients, including real estate agencies, hospitality service providers, airlines, banks, florists and others.

Later in 2012, the company decided to create and run its own electronic-commerce portal, so it developed Wedding.com.my to cater to the first main stage of women's lives, inspired by personal experience.

“And, today, we are fully committed to Wedding.com.my, which helps couples plan and coordinate all stages of their wedding, according to their likes, tastes and budget, with plans to expand beyond Malaysia into Singapore next year, and into Indonesia and Taiwan after that”, said Petrina Goh, Enlinea's Chief of Finance & Strategy.

“With the help of technology, the industry will evolve to be more transparent and will provide brides-to-be and new mothers the information they need when they begin the next stages in their lives.

“Our vision is to be South East Asia's leading female portal guiding women through the three important stages of her life, and we aim to launch our Motherhood.com.my online shop by early next year, to expand into other regions by the middle of next year, followed by portals catering to the third stage of women's lives - namely, home décor, living and lifestyle”, Petrina added.  

Enlinea, which means 'online' in Spanish, launched Wedding.com.my in beta format in September 2012, and patterns the site according to the wedding site TheKnot.com in the United States. Since then, the company has established itself as the premier and leading wedding site in Malaysia, and aims to reach eight out of 10 brides in Malaysia. It officially launched Wedding.com.my in 2013.

CONGRATULATIONS! TO VENEZUELA ON CANAIMA LINUX

Hello! Folks.

This Canaima Linux from Venezuela looks really cool and great, with its soothing and calming green and forest themes.

It can be installed in English and other languages besides Spanish and Portuguese and is running right now within an Oracle Virtualbox virtual machine, hosted on my PC running Linux Mint.

Canaima uses the Gnome 3 desktop with the classic look over here. Click on the images below to enlarge.

When you launch Cunaguaro, its web browser based upon Firefox, it takes you to a page honouring late Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

It also comes with LibreOffice 4, which is great, since LibreOffice3 has some issues with retaining embedded pictures in documents after they were saved and reopened.

I am seriously thinking of installing Canaima native on one of my PCs but meanwhile, I'll continue testing it out within a virtual machine.

Congratulations! Venezuela on Canaima Linux.

Cheers

Charles F. Moreira
eSoapBox Mobile
http://aidmap227.blogspot.com/