Documentary about Cambodia on the ABC, Australia

I have just finished watching a documentary about Khmer Ballet Dancing (Royal Ballet Dancing. It’s about how important the dance is so important for our Khmer culture. Unfortunately, according to the documentation, the Royal palace is distance itself from this great cultural dance. However, the desire for this dance is very strong indeed.

I was surprised that people still use the burn national theatre (Sall Mo Ho Srab) to rehearse the dance. The place is still a spiritual place for these amazing and dedicated artists.

I went there a couple of times when I was young. It was heart broken when a fire took place over there around in 1997. There were many events happened in this year.

The URL on the ABC website is:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/abc2/200907/programs/ZY9894A001D26072009T213000.htm

This URL should allow you to see the documentary briefly.

http://www.realscreen.com/screeningroom/20080402/girlandmonkey.html

Article explaining Thailand-Cambodia Relationship

http://kyotoreview.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/issue/issue2/

This article explained the relationship between Thailand and Cambodia. I was written after the burning of the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh in Jan. 2003.

Cleanest car – Honda Civic Gx

Honda Civic Gx runs on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), containing mostly methane (CH4). Burning natural gas is less polluted than petrol making Honda Civic Gx even cleaner than Toyota Prius according to 2008 Greenest Vehicles. Honda Civic Gx (USD 25,000) is likely to be more affordable than Toyota Prius (about AUD 50,000) since it does not rely on the fancy battery technology. Using CNG in vehicles is common for buses and industry vehicles.

Although Honda Civic Gx is a perfect vehicle in terms of economic and environment, it is not available in Australia. In my perception, the Commonwealth Government of Australia does not have the courage to make Australian household cars less reliant on petrol. They are talking about excise and GST on petrol without mentioning the use of natural gas in vehicles. Sometimes because the November 2007 federal election, the Howard government introduced rebate for people who convert their cars from petrol to Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG). Since the engine was designed for petrol, it is perfect for LPG. It would be foolish to buy a band-new car and covert it to LPG. Now the new labor government and the opposition have no mention about this type of vehicles running on natural gas, which can be better than LPG.

Other people to blame is of course the Oil companies. They are making a whole lot of profit when the oil price is rising since people need cars to carry not only themselves but also other stuff. I think in Australia, oil companies are blinding the government of this development of Honda Civic Gx. Australia has significant amount of natural gas deposit making CNG is an alternative fuel during a transition time before a renewable fuel is found for cars.

Links:

Honda Civic Gx in Australia

Past Interviews with Donald Ervin Knuth

Donald E. Knuth is a legendary figure of the open-source community. A number of people in the community regards him as god of computer programming. He is the author of the multi-volume “The Art of Computer Programming”.

I found two interview transcripts with him.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856

http://www.advogato.org/article/28.html

Hello World

This is my hello world post. Every programmer including myself must have done it many times for every new programming language they learn.