Angkasawan Lift-Off in Retrospect

Watching history unfolding before your eyes is always interesting especially when it has got to do with space travel.

I watched the lift-off of the Soyuz TMA-11 via live TV coverage on Astro on October 10 with much anticipation.  Malaysia's first spaceman (Angkasawan) Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor looked like a happy camper as he boarded the Soyuz.  He was always smiling!

Before the lift-off, Astro was carrying live telecast of scenes inside the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) where Malaysian PM, dignitaries, and schoolchildren were set to witness the lift-off event via video link. 

The Lift-Off

Then came the moment of history -- the lift-off at 9:22 p.m. Malaysian time.  The telecast switched to the live feed from NASA TV with professional commentary on the lift-off sequence of events.

All was good and exciting...until.....

The Anti-Climax

Moments before and after lift-off....our hyped-up dear MC (Mahadzir Lokman) at KLCC just have to "dub" over NASA's expert commentary with his own version.

Also, he was getting the audience to repeat MalaysiaKu Gemilang patriotic cheers after him...which actually was a cheesy thing to do at that critical moment in time (not that I'm not patriotic).

There were lots of interesting things going on like communications between ground control and the Soyuz which I'm sure viewers at home and the 500 schoolchildren at KLCC would be more eager to hear.

Angkasawan - You're the Man!

Anyway, congratulations to Malaysia's first man in space.  I can see he has trained hard for the mission.  With his kind of spirit, I'm sure he'll do the nation proud.

See also:

• Touchdown Discovery!

Technorati tags: angkasawan, soyuz, expedition 16, nasa, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, cosmonaut, astronaut

Windows Vista Launch Flashback

It's coming to 8 months since Windows Vista was launched in KL.  I thought I share some of the pictures I randomly caught on launch day (Feb 3, 2007).  By the way, the launch venue was Low Yat Plaza.

See more of my Windows Vista Launch Day pictures here!

 

My Vista Experience: The Story So Far...

I bought my copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (genuine copy...mind you!) on May 22 -- just about the time when my then existing Windows Vista Ultimate RC1 copy was about to expire.

My experience with Vista has been mixed.  While I love a lot of things about Vista, some features take some getting used to. e.g. the UAC (User Account Control) feature.  

The Blue Screens

I've been getting frequent mysterious BSODs (blue-screen-of-death) and I couldn't pinpoint on what is really at fault.  Perhaps it's a driver issue, or perhaps it's a hardware issue...I don't know. 

The Vista problem reporting logs did record down the "unexpected shutdowns" but the log details were too cryptic for me to interpret.  I did a chkdsk ... no problem.  I did a RAM test ... no problem.  I checked my motherboard temperature and voltage parameters... don't see any problem there.  However, my chipset fan has been giving me this grinding noise but looking at the chipset temperatures, nothing indicates there's a problem.

Windows Update Problem

Recently, I've been encountering error 80073712 (yeah...go figure!) in Windows Update.  Some googling led me to a few possible solutions but none of them worked. 

I did a scan (using sfc) to check the integrity of the system files and indeed, some corruption had occurred and the errors couldn't be fixed.  I suppose the frequent BSODs might have caused some system files to be thrown into a zombie state.

In-place Upgrade

This prompted me to do an in-place upgrade i.e. upgrade Vista with Vista. I pop in my Vista DVD and after two hours, the upgrade successfully completed.  I got my Windows Update functioning again and all of my previously installed applications seemed to work fine except for one -- Visual Studio 2008 Team System Beta 2.

I uninstalled VS2008 beta and attempted to reinstall it but .NET Framework 3.5 beta failed to install.  So, I went back to scouring the web for possible solutions and I found one. I uninstalled IIS7, installed .NET Framework 3.5 beta manually, reinstalled IIS7, and then pop in the beta DVD and to my relief, the installation went smoothly.

I guess I'll stop here before I start to rant endlessly. :-)

Read also:

• Evaluating Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600

Technorati tags: windows vista