Tag Archives: opportunity.

The joy of living like nomad and the ease that comes with learning to fail properly

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Yesterday I suddenly experienced a drastic paradigm shift. For the past few months, I always attempted at creating a peaceful and quiet environment back at home to allow for better concentrate while at work. It was a lost cause. The presence of mom and dad plus little blackie gave me no peace whateverso. Any attempts at doing so would have resulted in immediate failure.  Only short spans of peace could be achieved, this was when everyone was out and blackie was having his afternoon nap.

Satheesh was kind enough to pass me the use of his wireless mobile card. It had been sitting much use in my bag for the past few months excepts on occasions when I had to do some off shore co-ordination when I was at Toshiba’s data center and service center.

It was morning yesterday when I took my laptop and aigo’s demo kit for a trip to Aigo’s main office. After some hiccups here and then we managed to settle the outstanding matters with Aigo.

I met up with Alena for lunch this Taiwanese eatery near east coast beach. Shortly after lunch, I took out my laptop and started checking some mails which Kelvin sent over a short while ago. Quickly I forgot the presence of Alena and concentrate on my work at hand. After 1 hours of solid uninterrupted work I decided to take a break.

We arrived at East Coast beach where I decided read a book. It was not long before she dragged me into roller blading with her. While she attempted hard at keeping her balance and fall as little as possible, I took the more practical approach, an approach which I unconciously acquired during my work as a software developer.

I started by concentrating my efforts on learning how to fall properly while on blades. In fact I fell more 30 times during the short span of that 2 hours on blades suffering no injuries whateverso. This was totally weird in contrast to the pained expressions passerbys gave when they saw the scene.

Alena on the other hand whil attempting to stay on her foot, minimized her falls to less than 10 times during this entire period of 2 hours, managed successfully to sprain her right wrist which left her feeling somewhat hindered in her movements for the rest of the day.

One interesting thing to observe is this. Taking the notion of falling for granted, I was thereafter truly able to focus my mind on acquiring the techniques to manage the skates properly. Fear (of falling) is truly a most unneccessary distraction in this scenario. Also 40% of my time during this 2 hour period was spent sitting on the bench observing the techniques strangers while on blades as well as chatting up with any particular blader whom I wanted to clarify in more details th techniques they. In some instances, I received weird and uneasy expressions from bladers unused to speaking with total strangers on the streets. However being mechiavellic as I am, staunchly believing that the ends justify the ends, I ignored these and continued on my conquest of the blades.

After that two hours on blades, I believe given another two to three sessions on blades I should manage nicely.

Once again, I have deviated. Back to the discussion on life as a nomad, we sat down at coffee bean and enjoyed some coffee, bossa nova music and the view of the beach at night, while I once again started to work on the net. It was truly great, getting the peace and quiet I needed to concentrate on my work while not having to spend an ounce of effort at maintaining it. Alena mean while took a chinese book on Business Management from my bag which started reading it.

We left for dinner at bugis area. Thereafter I sent her home before finding a spot by the Singapore river to spend the night. Thus it is, I woke up the next day having a great view of the sun rise over the marina promenade. I was truly feeling that life for me is once now again free and the way it should be.

Now I sit just across the street from Hotel Rendevouz in the lobby of the SMU Business faculty enjoying the afternoon breeze and the lively scenary while surfing the net and charging my laptop free of charge, courtesy of  SMU. Haha. I think today I will spend once again out doors, enjoying my new found freedom and space. Life is GREAT!

A possible solution to an interesting problem

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A few months ago I was having supper with Steven and Pasha. That night we were discussing about how to make a site grow organically. Steven raised a very interesting question. Most new websites face the problem of generating new and meaningful content on a timely basis.

The ability to constantly generate new and meaning content on a site requires that the site be in the first place in the form of a content management system. [1]

The second requirement is that either the administrator or his team of people constantly login to the system to create new contents. There is the problem of training and gaining familiarity if we are engaging a team of people new to the system.[2] Also suppose if it is just one person generating the content, that person will be required to commit alot of time and effort to generate such a content. [3]

The obstacle is a formidable one for budding webmasters.

I have been helping Jim with the administration of SingaporeRental for close to a year now. Apparently we were constantly met with problems 2 and 3. This resulted in a bottle neck which slowed down the content generation speed on SingaporeRental.

Today finally being somewhat free and unoccupied with things I decided to do a little RnD. This little RnD process which I got myself engaged in proved to be fruitful afterall. Hopefully with this new implementation problems 2 and 3 can be solved for SingaporeRental.com

I have meanwhile setup the same architecture for a few more the sites under my ownership just for RnD purposes only.

Surprise popularity of Joomla 1.5 Component Simple Thickbox Gallery

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After being frustrated having spent a long time looking for a simple gallery component on the Extensions.Joomla.org site to display my portfolio, I decided that I should write my own. To do so, I simplying incorporated the jQuery library, the Thickbox library and created a Joomla 1.5 component that required almost zero configurations.

Users simply installed the components, select the section or category they want displayed and Viola! the page was automatically created for them.

I used it for my own company site to display my portfolio and suddenly had an interesting thought. I might as well have it packaged nicely and submitted to the Joomla Extensions directory.

It took me two weeks and some minor changes here and there (mostly paperwork) to finally get it approved.

After a few days I went and had a look at my Google analytics account which I had installed for my company site a long time ago.

I was in for a surprise. Site traffic surged from a daily volume of less than 10 visitors a few months ago to as high as 400 daily visitors these past few days. It was totally crazy. Visitors were mostly from the US and Europe. So I guess my idea of coming up with solutions to solve potentially painful situations does seem to be a very sound.

Currently I have identified a painful situation that is being experienced in SMEs. I am working on coming up with a solution for them via the use of technology. Hopefully it will help them save time, effort and lead to increased effeciency in their work process.

An evening when all things come in threes. Work productivity and the two matrix

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Since two months ago, I started putting into practise the maintenance of a time sheet. This is thanks to the need that arose due to my participation in one particular project. However not just limited to maintaining a time sheet for that particular project, I extended the use of this practise to maintain a comprehensive record of all my daily activites.

Each day of my time is divided into 30 minutes slots. Each hour will contain two time slots one ending at the 30minute mark and the other ending at the 60 minute mark. Each slot is dedicated specifically to just one activity and one activity alone. In the event whereby contingencies arise, that contingency is assigned to the next available time slot which is in best case scenario 1 minute away, in worst case scenario 30 minutes away. Such a practise while inflexible at first helped me in maintaining continuity in work hence ensured an acceptable level of productivity. I effectivly avoided the situation of having to tackle all matters while getting none done at the same time.

This evening after clocking a 9 hours working day, I sat down infront of my computer and started examining my time sheet. More specifically I matched the profit (in terms of cash in my bank account) I made over the past two months to specific time slots of specific days.

That which arose clearly before my very eyes was very interesting indeed. I observed a very clear pattern. Two patterns in fact. Profitability in terms of products sold as well as quality of customers.

The 3 businesses below are still by far the more lucrative products of my operations

  • Internet market campaigning for SMEs
  • Building DIY sites based on wordpress for SMEs
  • Building non-DIY sites based on Joomla for SMEs

Lucrativity is measured in terms of the 3 factors below

  • length of project turn around time.
  • Promptness in terms of client payment.
  • Cost in terms of time and effort spent on after sales support.

Having summarized my operations with the use of both matrixs. The images of three men suddenly popped into my head.

  • My Dad, veteren hawker who has been in business for years.
  • Master Gwee, an aged Feng Shui Master who is one of my existing clients that constantly provides me with clear insight to things in the environment as well as human physcology
  • An old Chief Marketing Officer of an IT company, which I once went for interview at, whom along with the CTO was very interested in getting me as an Executive Committee member for their company. (I finally backed out from their offer because I came to realized I wanted more from myself and that giving up the chance to bring forth my fullest potential just so as to provide security for a woman would cause be deep bitterness and hatred in me towards the latter part of my life.)

From my dad, this statement “son do not ever enter into ventures that don’t bring in money but just empty promises. Always ask your customers to show you they have money to spend and are willing to spend it.”

From Master Gwee, “always focus on where your finishing line is and do what you should do to get pass the finishing line. Avoid other side adventures that will only delay your crossing of the finishing line.”

From the CMO “you might die from prolonged starvation but you will definitely die immediately from indigestion. Despite the fact customers always attempt to beckon us to venture in a certain direction, we always politely reject them when that venture will not bring us strategic advantage but only cause the thinning of our valuable resources.”

To make a long story short, I only have a maximum of 14 possible working hours per day hence I should be spending a higher percentage of these hours milking my existing cash cows by concentrating on the sales of my most lucrative products as  well as looking for related markets to push these lucrative products to, instead of spending half of them for the creation of new products.

Creating of new products can come when I have automated the delivery process of my lucrative products through a process called leverage and have more funds and capital for RnD.

Video Conversion with Virtual Dub

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I tried to convert a video from VOB format to AVI format. It took me quite a while. This is because there are so many different softwares around and most of them at first appear to be free but attempts to force payment from the users when users really try to do any video coversion.

Eventually I came across this post http://tigredefogo.blogspot.com/2007/05/tutorial-how-to-convert-dvd-vob-mpeg-2.html. It was a life saver. I managed to download the version of  VirtualDub MPEG-2 that can edit Mpeg 2 files. as well as the necessary codec AC-3 ACM Codec.

Once done I not only could VOB files to AVI files without stupid watermarks, I could also indicate the exact range of frames (time in minutes and seconds) to include for conversion.

Pasha did recommened it to me before. But I guess the version i downloaded was not extensive enough and I did  not configure it properly too. Anyways two thumbs up for Virtual Dub!

New Zealand is calling!

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Pasha went tracking in New Zealand in December and brought back a bone penchant from the Maori’s. It is now hanging off my neck along with the previous one I acquired years ago before I left the land. This new penchant symbolizes a new beginning.

14th of January 2010, inevitably I was brought out of Singapore, if not Philippines then Korea.  I eventually arrived in Korea and dropped by at Mansu’s place. We met when we were back in Auckland for student exchange.

Upon my return to Singapore Joseph another friend whom I met back in Auckland dropped by in Singapore for a visit.

The name New Zealand seems very visible of late. Just a while ago, I saw this advertisement by the New Zealand Government specifically targetted at Singaporeans. It was like an open invitation to drop by in Kiwiland to stay for long if we want to.

The northern winds has been blowing incessantly still, despite the fact that it is now February nearing the end of its season. Strangely, I have always this acute case of wanderlust when the winds from the north come visiting in Singapore.

Over supper, I kept turning these occurrences one after the other in the back of my mind. Is this a sign? Has Fortuna finally shuffled her cards and dealt a card from a new deck. This new path seems so clear all of a sudden and it is beckoning me along. And it seems to be pointing to the land of the Long White Clouds once again. Perhaps the stars have finally shifted. Coincidentally it occurred just when the predestined quest of aiding Alena in Singapore came to an end.

Inshallah as Sean always says. Perhaps I should settle all outstanding matters over here in Singapore and explore what New Zealand has to offer. If there is one thing Alena has giving me during the past one year’s quest, it is the knowledge that while my ascendence is ruled by Saggittarius (one constantly struck with an incessant wanderlust), my house of Sun ruled by Leo (The eternal pilgrim seeking the Holy Grail) deems that I will start craving for a glorious battle when the time comes.

I wonder what is the possibility of setting up a supply chain to New Zealand and Australia?

Already I have set my eyes on this office space which I am planning to occupy soon when the next project comes in.

PHP set to further penetrate Enterprise solutions arena

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What is Enterprise Application?
Enterprise Applications are software which provides business logic support functionality for an enterprise, typically in commercial organizations, which aims to improve the enterprise’s productivity and efficiency.

Characteristics of enterprise software:
Characteristics of enterprise software are performance, scalability, and robustness. Enterprise software typically has interfaces to other enterprise software.

Services provided by enterprise software are typically business-oriented tools such as online shopping and online payment processing, interactive product catalogue, automated billing systems, security, content management, CRM, ERP, Business Intelligence, HR Management, Manufacturing, EAI etc.

What is Scalability?
There are a number of different aspects of scalability. It always starts with performance, code maintainability, fault tolerance, and the availability of programming staff.

Why people has negative impression that PHP is only for small scale web-sites?
PHP is a language for the rapid development of dynamic Websites. It also has many features that are friendly to beginning programmers, such as the fact that it doesn’t require variable declarations. However, many of these features can lead a programmer inadvertently to allow security holes to creep into a Web application. The popular security mailing lists teem with notes of flaws identified in PHP applications, but PHP can be as secure as any other language once you understand the basic types of flaws PHP applications tend to exhibit.

PHP is an open source programming language that is widely popular on the web. However because PHP so popular in shared hosting environments, many people have an impression that PHP is only for small scale web-sites. This is patently untrue, and PHP is in use in many large scale web sites such as Yahoo, wikipedia and Lufthansa Online Ticketing for the creation of large web applications such as IMP.

Enterprises want to have specific assurances about a web technology they use in the following areas:

  • performance and fast development
  • reliability and security
  • extensibility – able to use industry standards to communicate with other software systems.
  • scalability – able to add additional servers as the load increases.
  • load balancing – ability to distribute the load so no single server is overloaded
  • high availability – ability to survive failure of server components transparently.

Conclusion:
To achieve high performance and scalability – it not only depend on language, it also depend on the developers.

Cited from Why not PHP for enterprise applications?

Capitalism : A love story

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I just saw the greatest love story ever on Capitalism. It is a must watch, extremely satirical, but accurate and information giving us a good overview of why the US is in the state it is in today.

It is puzzling sometimes wondering how come humans do not conform to the normal behavior of natural predators. It was ever reported that lions, tigers and wolves normally leave their prey alone once they are done with their meals.

Are we really cursed with the inexplicable drive towards converting every known resource on earth into dollars and cents? What the hell is wrong with us?

PHP set to be the disruptive innovation in the ERP arena

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Cited from WikiPedia ;

“A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers.

Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption (i.e., consumers who would not have used the products already on the market), whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality.

Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction. A disruptive technology can come to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as cheaper, lower capacity but smaller-sized flash memory is doing for personal data storage in the 2000s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has largely replaced film photography).”

Currently when talking about large scale corporate used systems in the commercial arena, the first thing that comes to mind is either Java Enterprise Systems from Sun MicroSystems or Share Point from Microsoft Systems.

While the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySql, Php) has been the main market technology used by SMEs and web hosting server, no big firms thus far has yet been braved enough to take the next big step into to the new frontier which is often the large scale extensive use of this open source technology.

Cited from my interview session with a developer from National Computer Systems the number biggest IT company in Singapore

“Yes it is the truth, no big companies has yet attempted to launch PHP as a platform for large scale enterprise use. However as soon as one of the big boys in the market does so the rest will soon follow.”

What he says can indeed be explained via the use of institutional theory. Assume a big company after going through a normative processes decides to adopt PHP on a large scale basis and successfully does so, others companies compelled by mimetic processes will follow along too.

Also due to the fact that this company might be a dominant supplier or client of other companies, they might via coercive forces be forced to adopt the same technology.

Another company CBS an MNC advertising firm which I went for interview the yesterday does has indeed developed a large scale system based on PHP with built in extensive workflow controls.

As commented by Senior Manager e-marketing for Sanofi Aventis Mr Bernard Grellier

“We are now looking at building sites that can be rapid, easily deployable, with low investment cost and discardable. That is why PHP might be a viable solution for this arena as compared to solutions from other vendors.”

So what is it that is preventing from big companies from hoping on to the PHP bandwagon?

Accountability is Key!

Big firms have a need for stability more so than small firms. They require that a party be accountable for technical support should an adopted technology malfunction during operations.

This is not simply possible when dealing with open source technology. What revolves around PHP is a community of people and not a single firm. In the event of a malfunction problem, the adoptee has no one to turn to for the solution.

However the day might not be long before big firms has a finger to point to.

Microsoft seeing the potential of tapping on the PHP community is already in the process of adopting it as a viable technology and attempting to scale it up. The day might not be long before big firms start seeing PHP as a viable technology for their operations as well thereby displacing mainstream technologies used in large scale corporate environments.

Haka (KA MATE! KA MATE! KA ORA! KA ORA! …)

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Seems like a tough year, this one.

Things were pretty messy for me this year. I don’t know whether it is good or whether it is bad.

I managed to get myself involved in a good paying IT project at the beginning of the year for two months for a pharmaceutical firm. The pay I ‘ve got would have been enough to get me to Europe and start the next leg of my journey downwards to Africa.

However, I got myself involved with a girl the second day I got back to Singapore. Ouch! I was having a lot of dilemma deciding between her and my dreams all these while. I couldn’t just leave her and pursue dreams of my own, it would have been too selfish. But having her around requires that I provide a certain level of security and comfort, which she wouldn’t have been able to provide herself in this city. She is from the rural areas. It was pretty stressful financially for me. We sometimes quarrel over these things as well, when her wants are too much for me to provide.

So what happened next was that I got myself involved with another project which was even more lucrative but involved a certain amount of risk.

That one blew up in my face. My client became illiquid and I had no choice but to pay up the team of staffs I hired for the project from my own pocket which pretty much amounts to what I have earned from my previous one.

So basically it got me nicely back to square one all over again. Now I am half decided between looking for a full time job which would be highly torturous or hanging on with my existing group of clients. The income I get is about the same either way.

However considering the fact that my girlfriend would be getting back to Singapore soon and I would need to rent a house, pay for both our daily expense until she gets work(if she does), plus giving allowances to my parents, it is a lot of stress for some one who is incomes is irregular.

Then again if I do indeed get myself a full time job, the salary I do get would be just enough for all these expenses I I listed above, nothing more to finance my dreams. It is really like becoming a wage slave.

My heart is divided. I am still stuck with this question everyday. Having sleepless nights still. Constantly I pray for a possible path to open up before me or for death to come swiftly…