Find Out More About Your Site Visitors from IP Addresses

In blogging engine like WordPress, each comment is recorded with its associative commenter's IP address, to safe-guard blogger's right if any dispute arises from sensitive comments. If your blog is using eXTReMe site stats tracking, you will be able to find out the IP addresses of your 20 most recent visitors as well.

Oh well, what can IP address reveal, if you're wondering. For the uninitiated ones, IP address comprises of 4 octets (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), 3 digits each. Formation of the octets is uniquely identifiable by geographical location. Thus, no surprise, that each and every IP address can reveal its geographical location.

How to Lookup IP Address

At present, I'm out-station for a career fair as exhibitor, and my IP is 203.106.59.248 (ooooops, I've just revealed my location).

Just to prove that geographical location is identifiable from an IP address, I did the following check:

1. Go to IP Lookup Tool
2. Type in my present IP address in the text field provided, and press "Lookup IP Address" button
3. Once the search is completed, I was presented with a result page, which displays the following summary:
   • Country: Malaysia
   • State/Region: 04
   • City: Melaka
   • Latitude: 2.1969
   • Longitude: 102.2481

Yes, the above summary about my present geographical location is valid and accurate :) I'm not sure how about the accuracy of latitude and longitude reported though hehe, a bit lazy to fire up my GPS now :p

If any legal disputes arises, we can even take the IP address to internet service provider, and we will be able to know more about the user's identity, based on the specific date/time recorded. Never under estimate how much identity an IP address could tell ;)

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I'm GPS-enabled with SE P1i and Qstarz 818

Nowadays, with the price of GPS devices getting more appealing to general mass, and community-driven GPS maps getting actively maintained, GPS becomes a common commodity among many urban folks.

Just in my workplace which comprises of 80 employees, at least 20% of my colleagues own a GPS device, either a smart phone/PDA phone with built-in GPS chipset or external bluetooth GPS receiver, or a dedicated GPS navigator for vehicles. These gadgets are proven useful when we convoy for weekend trips to places that we have never explored before.

Last year, when we visited Krabi as company trip, 16 of us actually convoy in the foreign land on a free-and-easy day, to visit outskirt areas far away from the Krabi town. I don't think that would be easily done without GPS devices and maps.

I'm currently using Sony Ericsson P1i, which doesn't have a built-in GPS chipset. But, not a big deal; I've bought a bluetooth GPS receiver - Qstarz BT-Q818, pair it to my phone with Garmin XT software, using GPS maps provided by Malsingmaps community.

What's your GPS configuration? Are you happy with yours?

Putrajaya Fireworks Photography on Merdeka Eve

The Malaysia International Fireworks Competition currently held at Putrajaya is no longer a new story. Beginning from 18th Aug 2007, a series of fireworks displays are executed at Jambatan Seri Gemilang to light up the August night sky.

A theme park was setup at PICC (Putrajaya International Convention Centre) as the official viewing deck. But, the entrance is quite expensive! Even with entitlement for discount, each person will still need to pay about RM40 for entrance!!

“What if we go in a group of 20 persons? That gonna cost a whopping RM800!”

Luckily, this is a fireworks event. By the nature of it, fireworks are meant to be viewable from miles away hahaha.

Thanks to Joe Seah and John Lim, they have scouted out the Cyberjaya area on 25th Aug when Italy was performing fireworks show, and concluded a super dooper strategic location – Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview.



You may refer to this map for its location. It located within a minute of driving distance from Cyberview Lodge.









The roadside lakeview is furnished with long-stretch of corridor and some seats. The closest landmark caught in sight is the magnificent Jambatan Seri Saujana. Towards the right, is where the fireworks firing zone located – Jambatan Seri Gemilang. All are clearly visible across a lake without obstacle. Without paying a single cent and we enjoyed the same fireworks display, only without musical pleasure.

A Troop of 25 Youngsters

Don’t get a shock, but we actually went Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview on Merdeka even in a group of 25 people! If you were there, and you’ve seen a big crowd making noise on a strategic ground laid with plenty of posters as mats, that was me and my friends haha

After work, we left office in a few cars between 6.30pm to 7pm, and most of reached our destination by 8pm. There was quite a jam in LDP and Subang Jaya, but the traffic from LDP Sunway toll towards Cyberjaya was smooth.

No Toilet

At the Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview, no public toilet was caught in sight. So, the first thing we did at Cyberjaya, was to “settle our business” at MDEC headquarter :p

Picnic and Entertainment

At around 8.30pm, some small crowds were spotted at Perdana Lakeview. But, soon by 9pm, the roadside is already full of double-parked cars.

Some of my other friends (didn’t join us one) were questioning how we could spend our time till 12midnight from 8pm. But seriously, no worry for boredom when I’m with this gang of friends. When we are around, we will definitely have lots of craps to share and do, even for 5 hours.

On the Merdeka eve, we’re all organized into a few groups with varying tasks:

• Foods and beverages
• Entertainment and birthday bash (make sure we never cornered into boredom till 12midnight)
• On-site convenience (prepare things like mat and resolve as many convenience issue as possible)
  

In summary, this is how we spent our time from till fireworks display started:

• Laid out plenty of posters on the ground as mats
• We’ve ordered pizzas for dinner, and prepared Carlsberg beers and 100 Plus in ice-box.
• Watched ‘Just Follow Law’ and Taiwanese entertainment shows with notebook PCs
• Played Big Two (Choh Dai Di) card game
• Camwhoring at the lake side
• Celebrated birthday for Janet (31st Aug), Calvin (1st Sept) and Paullie (5th Sept)
  

Now you know how easy we could spend our time? ;)

















First Attempt to Fireworks Photography

For a year as the owner of Lumix FZ30, this is my very first attempt to fireworks photography. Though I’ve learned some best practices from online resources, but theory is never fully applicable in practice. I didn’t put too much expectation on this first attempt of fireworks photography, but trying my best to learn another new photography domain.

At 11.30pm, I started setting up my camera on tripod. But I did a silly offence. Being too excited, I didn’t realize that I was blocking the view of another 2 girls sitting behind me, but they didn’t hesitate pointing out my mistake as well :) My apology to the 2 girls, if you so happen to read this post haha

These are the initial setting I prepared before the fireworks display started:

• Manual mode - F/5 aperture and 4 sec exposure
• Manual focus
• ISO100
• Landscape composition
  

The exposure works well when the fireworks first started. But I was soon proven wrong, when the fireworks were getting brighter and fired in more combinations. 4 second was too long and resulted in over-exposed shots.

Then, I have to quickly bring down the exposure to 3.2 sec, then later 2.5 sec, and 2 sec when firework explosions were getting even brighter and patterns were changing at faster pace, and even down to 1.6 sec when it came to ending.

Composition wise, landscape was fine in the first few shots. However, soon I realized the fireworks were fired only from one end, and thus leaving my shots loosely composed! Ended up no object of interest is found on the right side of the landscape composition.

Again, I got to quickly reacted and adjusted the tripod head to fit portrait composition. Yes, from my shots, most of the acceptable ones were composed vertically.





















Overall, I’m not satisfied with my fireworks shot. There’s only about 20% of success rate in this first attempt hahah. But, none the less, it is a great experience. It’s not easy to stumble upon 20-minute fireworks display.

Skills aside, weather condition of the day has slightly ruined up the shots as well. There was no decent wind-blow on the Merdeka eve fireworks night. Thus, layers of thick smokes were accumulated and stationed in the air. Quite a number of my shots towards the last 7 minutes were “artistically and naturally” brushed by the smokes.



Yooooo Merdeka~! We met a group of people carrying Jalur Gemilang, and so they joined us for this group photo to add in Merdeka element to the shot.

Jam Jam Jam



As highlighted in newspapers and blogsphere, there was massive jam right after the fireworks show. Instead of rushing into the jam to waste petrol, we again, stayed at the lake side and camwhore.



Our friend's FTO also got to snail on the road :p







But it doesn’t take a long time for traffic at Cyberjaya to be leveled. At about 1.10am, the lakeside road was almost totally cleared from traffic jam. However, traffic was slow moving at the joint from Putrajaya side, after Lim Kok Wing campus.

The Myth about Sungai Jagung in Kedah Malaysia

I’m pretty sure many of you have received chained email featuring pictures of the breath-taking scenery, claimed to be portraying a nature wonder in Kedah, called Sungai Jagung.





I’m sure you would agree that the pictures look so great to be true. Just a fantastic picturesque nature wonder, but why never seen it promoted by tourism board of Malaysia? I guarantee, our government wouldn’t let go any chance of promoting such an amazing place, if it exists in Malaysia.

But, if we don’t believe that the place shown in pictures exist in Malaysia, how does non-jungle-people like me could provide strong reasoning to justify?

The myth is finally unearthed! The author of ForestExplorers.com has written a good article to conclude that this chained email is a spam, and such nature wonder doesn’t exist in Kedah, neither in Malaysia!

In fact, the place is actually called Plitvice Lake National Park, located in Croatia.

How many email readers were fooled? And how much bandwidth were wasted on this spam?

How to Crash Windows Vista with 2 Fingers

Wow, I couldn’t believe that Windows Vista is vulnerable to “denial of service attack”, which can be done by anyone, practically anyone, even a kid!

Most of you might know that, pressing Windows key + E is a handy shortcut combination to bring up Windows Explorer in Windows operating system, including Vista.

But, could you ever imagine that, the simple Windows key + E shortcut, which is easily achievable with 2 fingers, is the source of vulnerability or the shortcut key to Windows Vista crash?

According to a news article at Softpedia:

Keeping the two keys pressed will open a large volume of Computer windows. Want to crush Windows Vista? Nothing could be simpler. Just keep the two keys pressed for more than 20 – 30 seconds.

Frankly, I couldn’t believe this. So, itchy hand of mine, I tried to execute the said procedure.

What the hell, I only pressed Windows key + E for a slight fraction more than a second, and my Windows Vista Business was already hogging the computing resources, leaving everything inaccessible, and I was staring speechlessly at the LCD.

It hogs too much more of computing resources than my expectation.



I just can’t imagine what would happen, if I actually pressed the Windows key + E for another 2 seconds.

What is someone silly actually wrote a simple program to iteratively issue Windows key + E keys?