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I did my tax filing yesterday. It was the second time I filed my taxes online. Last year the experience was horrible! The stupid e-filing system forced me to use Internet Explorer to submit my income and expenses details. It used some weird IE-only security certificate which I find very troublesome.

This year though, LHDN (Malaysia’s Inland Revenue Board) has done some major improvements to the e-Hasil e-filing system. It now supports almost all modern browsers.

I performed my income tax submission without any problems and it was much easier than last year. The deadline to file your income tax submission is until the end of this month (April 2008). If you haven’t filed your income tax submission, I suggest that you do so as soon as possible.

After moving it to its new home, the web server at my office decided not to boot up. The server runs on CentOS4 and is configured to perform updates daily. It choked during init and the last messages shown before the system froze are as follows:

VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(8,22)
Kernel panic - not synching: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,22)

Read the rest of A Tale Of An Unnecessary Linux Reinstall »

• The Unix Toolbox describes a bunch of useful Linux/Unix/BSD commands to help you use the command line more effectively.
• If you like to have a list of common (and not so common) Linux commands in alphabetical order, then check out O’Reilly’s Alphabetical Directory of Linux Commands.
• Pixelbeat also has a nice list of Linux commands grouped categorically.
• If you’ve just started with Linux, you’d appreciate Linux Newbie Guide’s Linux Shortcuts and Commands.
• Want to really get up to speed on your Unix command vocabulary? You’ll find it hard to beat Learn UNIX in 10 Minutes.
• Want a printable Linux guide? Download Unix/Linux Command Reference, a one paged PDF document that you can print out and stick somewhere near your terminal.

Read through, try out, understand, enjoy and more importantly share!

How important is instant messaging (IM) in your online life? For me, I don’t spend much time at all on IM. However, it is an important communications medium for me as a lot of my colleagues, friends and clients use it as the main method of staying in contact.

There are many popular IM protocols; Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk (which actually runs on the Jabber protocol) are among the more well-known. I have contacts on all these protocols, but running dedicated IM clients for each of them would be out of the question.

Read the rest of Miranda: The Light Instant Messaging Client »

From last Friday to Sunday, PIKOM PC Fair came to town. On Saturday, I decided to check out the wares on sale. It wasn’t a case of casual booth-hopping. I was actually looking for a specific equipment; a fan and heatsink combo for my aging (but still useful) Athlon Thunderbird processor. The processor may be old, but it runs on the still pretty common Socket A architecture.

So there I was, just in time to see the doors open for the 100 or so early birds (not really that early since the fair starts at 11:00 am). Surely I can find the heatsink of my dreams, right?

Read the rest of Malaysian PC Fairs Are Not For Techies »