Once again I have to build up a machine for OpenVPN. I have previously wrote articles about this but when I follow those instruction it still does not work. But first, let us talk about what I want to achieved. I just simply want to set up a road warrior configuration, i.e., I would like to have a machine, from any place, to securely access all the resource within our laboratory. This is not possible via public interface because the firewall rules block most of the port. Besides, it is not secure.

One of my key requirements for a phone is that it must be able to set an alarm based on specific day of week. For example, I should be able to set up an alarm such that it reminds me at 15:50 on every workday (Mon. -- Fri.). The reason behind this is that in the period of last several years, I spent most of my time at Chulalongkorn University which forbid me to park a car inside the campus. This is understandable because the space is very limited. The alternative choice would be that I have to park at roadside.

Today is my first chance to lecture for an ICE students (the international course). It turned out to be a very good one!!! Much better than I expected, the students were very involved with the class. They responded to most of my questions. They were willing to come in front of the class and did some assignment I placed upon them. To the very most of my surprise, they even ask that I should keep teaching well beyond the end of the class.

Today I have just signed a contract with Dept. of Computer Engineering. Now, I am officially a full time lecturer at Chulalongkorn University. My former adviser came and said to me that he once heard a following quote.

You are considered being successful in your academic career when your grand student got her Ph.D.

The HDD of our server is broken and I almost lost all my data. The failing drive is the OS drive, not the data drive and ,yes, I set up raid5 on my server but I forgot to put MySQL data directory (/var/lib/mysql) into the raid array (still keeping it on the OS Drive).

Currently, I am working on a Delphi project that requires movie playing in the application. Obviously, the direct approach is to use the Windows Media Player ActiveX. However, when I imported the active X and try to resizing it at runtime, strange behavior starts to happen: the control does not obey my command. After googling around, it is that I have to directly call the SetObjectRects method directly. This could be done by the following codes.

I have been stuck with Delphi 7 for a long time. It seems like most people still do the same. Say, why should we upgrade? Since D7 itself is a very good tools. Most ppl skip Delphi 8, 2005 and 2006. Now, for the CodeGear version, it is really nice. It packs a lots of new feature that an IDE should have, refactoring, smart editing, visual guide, etc. I have a pretty good reason to upgrade to Delphi 2007. However, when I tried doing so, its turn out that CodeRush is not available for Delphi 2007.

Okay, the version 2.0 of the nerd test is out and just I have just done. Thanks to kong for the link.

the result is as follows:

OK, true hispeed are good. Wait. Might correctly say that they live up and beyond my expectation. Really, I have to call them the third time to have the problem fixed. The first two result in some action but futile. At the third, they actually come to my home (again) and check almost everything. Anyway, they don't really know what happen so they just change the line from the center (somewhere around 1km from my home) to the pole in front of my house. No charge, and I am happily online.

PS. Start being a twitter-er. Let's see what it can do.

The internet at my home is down now. Called true twice but the technician who visit my home says that it is the problem of wiring (inside my home) and he can't do anything about it so I will try to fix it myself.

Will post any update soon.