“Earth Hour?”, he says with a muffle as he tries to pry some candy from a sticky wrapper with his lips, “what’s that all about?” He seems almost interested, but then he sticks his hand out the window and drops the candy wrapper and I know he’s only being polite.

“Do you know what planet you’re on?”, I ask with a tone in my voice akin to that you would use to address a dog who just puddled on the carpet.

“Well,” I continue, “this planet is unable to deal with the rubbish that we are discarding into the environment.” He chews his candy with his mouth half open and loud smacking noises. A piece of candy is stuck to his bottom lip.

“We’ve been clogging the environment for years, and”, I pause for dramatic effect which goes unnoticed, “we might already be unable to reverse the damage.” He looks at me and blinks, then chokes, not because of what I’ve said, but because the tangy candy unwittingly created more saliva than he realised and that ran down his windpipe.

“But,” I continue while tears stream down his cheeks, “we have to do whatever we can. And Earth Hour is a tiny step in the right direction.”

But I know it’s like talking to a stack of rice bags. It will make no difference to him. He grew up without direction; without education of what consequence his actions carry. Dropping his paper out the window is as natural to him as burning plastic together with dry leaves in his back yard. Fire. Smoke. And the rubbish is gone. Never mind that it fogs up the entire neighbourhood for hours.

He doesn’t think twice about chucking a bag full of rubbish into the nearby gutter, or pouring the oil he just drained from his 20 year old car’s engine into the storm water pipe. He buys something wrapped in plastic at the store and puts it into a small plastic bag before putting a lot of small plastic bags into several bigger plastic bags, which he will later throw in the gutter or burn in his back yard.

There’s seems to be little incentive from the government to recycle. In fact, there seems to be little incentive to discard rubbish properly at all. In the meantime rubbish wash into the sea and tourists have to wade through it when they participate in water sports, or the ferry to the island has to stop to clear plastic from the engine, or when they see it while snorkelling on the chocking reefs.

He doesn’t realise that when he drops that wrapper out the window he’s adding to the destruction of the tourism industry that is the lifeblood of his tour company.

He’ll go home tonight and switch on every air-con unit in his house. The fancy array of 100w back-lights sets the mood in his living room, the 2000w halogen spotlights on the exterior of his house ensures that his shiny burglar-bars are visible to criminals in nearby countries. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere? He paid for the electricity, he doesn’t care.

“So how long will this Earth Hour last?”, he says picking at the piece of candy stuck to his lip. I hum Heal The World in my head.

A Small Step in the Right Direction

Kota Kinabalu took one of those small steps on Saturday when Earth Hour was observed for the first time here. The Loft in KK’s Waterfront played host to this event that started in Sydney last year.

There they managed to get 2.2 million people and 2,100 business involved and figured out that if that amount of people participated for only one hour every day for a year by switching off their lights, it would be like removing nearly 49,000 cars from the roads for a whole year.

KK’s Earth Hour was a little smaller than that, but considering that only a few days of organisation went into the event, the turn-out was quite astounding. The Loft was literally packed from the front right through and out the back.

Guys were strumming their guitars to hundreds of candles, every seat was occupied for the entire duration of the ‘black out’ from 8am to 9pm. Simon dressed up as a Roman Candle and conducted an environment centric quiz and Helle and Becky, the organisers, handed out of bags of prizes, some sponsored by WWF who provided materials and information on environmental issues.

Small effort, but a big impact. If only everybody would realise how desperately our planet needs these small gestures on a regular basis. Governments won’t do it, hell, it costs too much. Rather milk the Earth for what it’s worth until it’s gone. Most people in top government positions will be dead before the Earth becomes unliveable, so they don’t care much; it seems.

But for the rest of us, if we don’t do something ourselves, we will have nobody else to blame.

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There I was killing myself searching for free page turning software that can accept PDFs as a source. Thankfully, I found solace before death.

Where I work, we do a lot of brochures, booklets, collaterals and things that needs to be paged through. As a resort hotel, we generate a lot of interest from overseas, and it’s not always possible to get these things that needs to be paged through to everyone, so a digital version is a great solution.

But if you’ve ever tried to look for page turning software, you’ll know that it’s really expensive, especially if you want the fancy page-turning effect. There are some free solutions out there that uses JPG files, but they are limited in function and use. If you want page turning software that can use PDFs as it’s source, usually it’s big money.

Previously we used a company that charged per year for a set amount of issues and a set amount of pages per issue. It was a frightfully expensive exercise and when it became time to renew, it was my task to find alternatives.

Dabbling in the world of open source software, I knew there was a free alternative, but search as I might, I couldn’t get the page turning software that gave everything I wanted. I wanted it to be able to use PDFs for source, have cool zoom and navigation features and, of course, I wanted it all for free.

I had several hit and misses with dumbed down free versions of paid-for software, which I still had to host on my own site. That isn’t great for bandwidth and all but kills searchability and makes it difficult to share. I nearly settled on a not-so-great-but-free-JPG-based option. Exasperated I typed in some fresh keywords and lo and behold, stumbled across issuu.com.

Issuu.com is like the YouTube of the book world. You can upload your publication in PDF format (although it has to be one, multi-page PDF) and issuu.com’s software does the rest. You can share it much like you would a YouTube video by sending it to friends, embedding it on your own website, or even linking to it through Facebook.

One of the big features I was looking for is that page turning effect and issuu.com automatically creates that for the publication. And using PDFs as source files for the pages, it can zoom and make even small print clear to read. The added benefit of PDFs are that the text contained within is searchable, enabling your publication to be found for relevant searches.

That only works if you don’t convert the text to curves of course. On my first upload to issuu.com, some of the fonts didn’t display correctly, but that could be because of some advanced effects that didn’t export well from CorelDraw. I converted the problem text to curves, which then displayed fine after upload.

Once uploaded, it creates a miniature version for you to embed in your webpage as an icon. You can actually page through the little icon too. Clicking on the centre of the mini-book launches the big book for full-screen browsing and reading.

The mini version is customisable so far as size and background colour is concerned, and with the big version there’s about 5 choices for background colours. The big version also has an OSX style navigation bar at the bottom to make it easy to jump to a particular page.

And the most amazing part of all this is that it’s absolutely free. The mini version comes with some buttons that can be removed, leaving only a small icon for issuu.com - and the large version has non-obtrusive links to issuu.com, so perfect for professional use.

I’m stoked. It means a big saving for us, it enables us to upload ALL our publications, plus it’s accessible to the world at large and searchable, which is great, because it’s promotional material anyway (although interesting, readable content nevertheless). It also enables our sales team to access the publications on sales calls and exhibitions.

All that, the fancy page turning effect, PDFs as source files AND free. Easy to see why issuu.com is my new best friend.

Ps. This is not a paid post, I’m genuinely this excited about it

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Here’s a worthwhile cause - Earth Hour.

Our planet is in trouble, you know it, I know it. The people in government of the countries who pollute the most know it, yet nobody seems to do anything about it. Too much and too little rain, droughts, floods, winter in summer, summer in winter. The climate is sick an it’s us humans who are doing it.

But what can I, the little guy, do? You might be surprised how a little gesture can literally make the world of difference.

Earth Hour was first observed in Sydney last year. Australia is one of the top four biggest polluting nations in the world, but their citizens are inflicting the most radical policy change in government of any of the big polluters.

The idea behind Earth Hour is a simple one; for 1 hour on one day of the year, simply switch off the lights. Of course, go ahead an switch off all the electricity. Last year in Sydney 2.2 million people participated in this event. 2,100 business where in on the deal and even the lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House were switched off on 31 March, between 8pm and 9pm.

The effect from Sydney alone, they said, if sustained throughout the year (only one hour per day), would be equivalent to removing 48,000 cars from the road for one whole year.

Continue below…

Last year it was only in Sydney, but this year it’s global and here in Kota Kinabalu there will also be an event. Becky and Helle are hosting an Earth Hour event at The Loft in KK’s Waterfront this Saturday, 29 March. Between 8pm and 9pm the lights will go out and if you want to join to show your support and commitment to reducing global warming, then be there.

They’ve organised acoustic music entertainment and there will be a quiz with prizes, so make sure you know the facts about global warming.

If you’re keen to be part of Earth Hour, register your commitment. You can also view a map of the earth which depicts where people are committing. There’s a list of countries and how many people have enlisted and if you want to host your own Earth Hour event, you can register for that too.

If everyone does a little, the effect will be a lot. It really is that simple.

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At any point of time in your life you should have something to look forward to.

Yes, it’s true, otherwise you might wake up in the morning and ask yourself questions like ‘why should I bother to get out of bed today?‘.  Currently I have quite a lot to look forward to.

Mission: Quite Possible

Most pressing is my mission at work.  Recently I have been handed the tools I require to produce in-house what would have cost near RM100k to produce outside.   The tools come in the form of a Sony HDR-FX7E pro-sumer camera, and a spanking new box set of Adobe CS3 Production Premium.

My computer needs a few adjustments (as in adjust it to be a totally different computer), but the planning stages have commenced and I’m on a steep learning curve, consuming anything that looks like learning material.  Exciting times ahead.

Flying Disc

Then there’s the upcoming Malaysian Ultimate Open.  It’s an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, but we limit the use of frisbee to the minimum seeing as how it’s a registered trademark and all.  Anyway, it’s a flying disc tournament and Sabah’s sending a team.  I’ve been fiddling around with a logo for the team and it has been handed to our team captain for approval.

Once the logo is a go, which will hopefully be tomorrow, we will have to find 1 more sponsor and have our t-shirts printed.  Richie, one of our top-drawer team members and owner of a guest-house, has graciously agreed to sponsor part of the costs of the t-shirts.

Any takers for the other half?

80’s Party Bus

Tiff is back in town this week and that in itself is a reason to party - the woman don’t need no other reason.  True to Tiff-style, she’s chartering a bus and we’re going party cruising around KK and inevitably pub-hopping.  Theme for the bus (with Tiff, there’s always a theme), is 80’s - so everyone is already scampering to get their fashion disasters dusted and ready for action.

If you see a bus full of party people crawling about KK this Friday, just remember you read it here first.

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I’m sitting with a mixed basket of emotions at the moment. An ominous cloud is looming large, one that I’d rather not talk about lest attempts be made to mud my name for talking about it.

As always, it tends to hit me hardest the nearer it looms. It has however gathered on the horizon a few times, threaten to bring a thunder storm, only to back down again with a promise to reappear at a later date.

But dwelling on these things only gets me down, so I don’t.

Anyway, here’s a few snippets from the weekend gone.

Rubbing away a week of holiday stress

The weekend started on a lovely relaxing note with a massage at the Mandara Spa in The Magellan Sutera. Of course, being an upmarket spa it’s a little beyond my budget, but one of the perks of working where I do is that when trial-week comes along, I get asked to come.

And I’m always willing to offer my body for science experiments and for the benefit of my fellow humans, so it was with pleasure that I submitted to the Mandara Spa to have them try out their new recruits on me. And if that is what fresh-from-college trainees can do, I’d love to revisit again soon. Bliss.

Flushing out the Ninja Turtles

Crossing from Warisan Square over to Centrepoint on Saturday I stumbled upon this lovely mess. The drains were backed-up and water gushed out the man-hole, which flooded the taxi stand and didn’t give off the best of odours either.

These incidents are always interesting, because it exposes how the city’s infrastructure is linked, and it’s actually quite facinating to imagine these intricate layers of sewers, electricity and other pipes underlying the city. When we reached Asia City it had flooded a bit there too. There’s a big storm drain nearby, so I wonder where the blockage was and why.

Indian Food the Indian Way

To give Ian a bit of a send-off (quasi, he’ll be back again in a week), we ended up at Devi’s Corner in Api Api. Good Indian food, although not as spicy as I thought it would be and I was quite keen on a wee bit of spice.

Ian and I had banana leaf with mutton briyani rice, Julia had some roti. It was well decent, if a little expensive. I ate Indian food with my hand for the first time ever. A little old lady sitting opposite us had the skill, as Julia described, to somehow only get tips of her fingers full of food. Ian and I each managed to cover our entire hand and make a right mess of ourselves. Takes practice I guess.

Ensuring your car doesn’t get scratched

At Karamunsing on Sunday Julia and I went browsing around for nothing in particular, also seeing if perhaps there were good bunny ears to be found for Sascha’s birthday party that evening. As usual, parking was a night mare, but eventually we found some on the 5th floor.

We drove past this guy a few times looking for parking wishing we could tip his little car over freeing up one of two spaces he so graciously occupied. Perhaps, I thought, he usually drives a bus and forgot that today he used his little sister’s Kelisa, or the car is brand new.

Either way, he gave himself loads of room for error. I appreciate this kind of parking so much more when there is no other parking around. Oi, Kelisa driver - learn how to drive and consider your fellow road-users, eh?

Easter, Birthdays and ManU

On Sunday Sacha turned 23 and we helped celebrate. The Loft in the Waterfront was once again the chosen venue and the celebrations involved yummy food, apple pie, Man U vs. Liverpool, drinks and Marcus’ German parents.

The birthday cake was the aforementioned apple pie, which I believe Sacha made herself - well done, but way too much effort on ones birthday - we’ll have words with Marcus about this birthday-girl slave labour. Nevertheless, the apple pie didn’t make two rounds before it was finished.

The theme for the night, not unexpectedly, was Easter. Bunny ears and bunny tails were the order of the night.

Refraining from donning the full bunny costume that everyone knows she has, Julia settled for more subtle clip-on-ears approach.

Another friend (who’s name and number I will consider handing over on request and after extensive screen to make sure you’ll actually have a conversation after I introduce you ) sported a hair-band with subtle bunny-ears and this bunny tail.

If it was anywhere else other than in Malaysia and amongst good friends, it could have landed her in all sorts of trouble, which apparently it did before, she said, as she recalled a night out in the UK with a similar prop.

At the end of the night Man U beat Liverpool 3 nothing. Wow, I hope Sacha doesn’t support Liverpool.

And that about wraps it up. Today was the first day back at school work and I finally got all the high-tech toys I requested about 2 months ago. Now the work starts to do what I said I could do if I had all these high-tec toys.

In and of itself, these new toys will spawn new categories on this blog, as they present a considerable learning curve and lots need to be discovered.

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