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The importance of knowledge management within an organization

Lawrence dropped by at my place this evening, he had some issues with a few of his software packages he apparently had problems solving. In the name of  friendship, I solved it for him. It took but a while.

I was asking about his recently operations and soon realized that he was being extremely occupied of late. Majority of the problem revolves around available resources (time Lawrence has available to him) not capable of existing supporting needs (requirements of his customers)

The secondary problem revolved around the inefficiency of information transfer based on the current most predominant long distance channels of communication, namely voice conversation and text email messages.

Suddenly it occurred to me, that a lack of proper knowledge management system might be a contributing source to his problem. He expressed that supposed he got sick one day and one of his colleagues had to take over his duties, that colleague would be suddenly lost in the midst of a strange environment his is not aware of. He said he had the same problems as well when he first took over the duties of one of his colleagues who departed to join another company.

Also there would have been no need for him to drop by at my place had he been able to effectively transfer his knowledge of the problems he was facing to me via traditional channels of communication.

Thinking back, I realized it was such a waste of the time to have to travel from one place to the next to convey a message simply because long distance communications failed.

Further pondering on this issue of knowledge transfer, it suddenly occurred to me weren’t there multiple instances of developers (me inclusive) around wasting more time than they should because of failure in the knowledge transfer process? To draw a simple example from my experience, there were in deed a few times when I had to commit hours to solve a problem that had already been solved by another of my colleague simple because his knowledge of how to solve the problem could not be effectively transferred to be. Had the transfer been successful I would have to waste tons of time attempting to figure out the solution to a problem and he would not have to waste the same amount of time attempting to guide me through the problem over the phone in real time.

What if there is a knowledge repository over the internet where people could go to for detailed instructions of how to solve their problems? What if someone could solve a problem once and thereafter have his knowledge effectively packaged, stored and there after transmitted to the people who need it without as ambiguity?

There have been past attempts to do so over the internet with the use of forums. However, ambiguity often results due to the difference in the way a message was encrypted in words for storing and thereafter decrypted from these same words for usage. The only site that came close to fulfilling this function over the internet thus far is YouTube which is actually becoming quite popular as a self learning tool used by many.

Just for experimentations sake, and partially due to the inspiration I acquired from my reading of the book “the world is flat”,  during my next IT project, I will attempt to engage a friend in India to aid me in the development of a few functions and components on Joomla. If this method which I envision to use to further promote effective long distance communications works, I might have for myself a viable outsourcing model. Then again fingers crossed.

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An interesting and perhaps useful observation

My revenue from Google adsense has suddenly fallen to a record low despite the same quantity of click throughs per day.  At first I thought it was to do with something I did and I thus went to study the data available in Google analytics. All data available shows that things were still pretty much unchanged within the sites I am maintaining.

I was puzzled. I was speculating if some advertisers managed to identify low paying keywords for their adwords campaign. I studied the advertisements on display. They were still pretty much the usual ones. I remained baffled.

Over the period of the past two week similar signs started showing up in other non related areas.

Dad commented that the stock market was experiencing diarrhea for reasons unknown. This was after slowly recovering from beginning of the year. Stock prices were falling all over again.

The volume of sales lead over various channels started to slow down after somewhat peaking from two weeks back. Potential leads that have yet to  enter into closing stage of the sale started becoming hesitant too.

A few days ago, the real cause of things finally reveal itself. The European economy was facing finanical problems within three countries that were in the peripheral regions of the union. Last reported, it seemed that Germany the main power house within Europe was in the process of being adversely affected. All these tell tale signs that were happening before were in fact somewhat related. They were symptoms for the next wave of financial crisis that will be spreading around again.

Nassim Taleb, said in his book the Black Swan that thanks to the vast improvements of our communication systems (internet being one of them), we are now experiencing increased levels of connectedness between different regions of the world. As such we are becoming more susceptible to the black swan phenomenon.

The above statement translates to mean that there has been an increase in the occurrences of  unforeseeable events, per unit time of late as compared to the last century, which affected the world on an extremely large magnitude in terms of repercussion.

The way I see it is that all these events (e.g. European financial crisis, Layman brothers collapse) are like the coming into existence of new strains of formidable viruses of the non biological kind. The effects you see (severe drop in stock market prices) are symptoms. The communications channels (internet, television, newspapers) we have available at our disposal are the like vectors that spread the effects around.

While our communication systems are advanced, they are not altogether perfect. Effects take time to spread still. So if its possible for you to plant a tracker somewhere further up the communications channels, you will get better data faster and make more informed decisions. Thus far it seems out of the various channels for communication available, trackers related to the internet channel seems to be the most sensitive of the lot.

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Supper club Singapore with its utterly bad service will close down very soon

It has been more than a year since I stepped into Supper club. Last time I did so was in December 2008 to do a gig. Supper club was traditionally known as a place for creative fine dinning. Back then when Stevie the creative director ran the placed, he ran Supper club with style. Any guest that went down to Supper club was definitely ensured a fun and fulfilling night.

When Mansu finally arrived in Singapore and I wanted to show him some parts of Singapore before he left. So that evening after having made arrangements with Nash, I bought Mansu, his client, Pasha and Ibraheem down to the venue. It was all in all a terrible disappointment and an embaressment. I was so surprised Supper club was fallen so far from its name under the current management. It was slowly but surely heading the same way as Ministry of Sounds Singapore.

First and foremost a guest list now in Supper club is not like a guest list. Traditionally being in a guest list in any clubs in Singapore means that you are an invited guest to the club and will enter free and without hassle into the club just by stating your name. However what awaited us at the entrance was hard selling from desperate sales man. Despite being on the guest list, we would not be allowed entrance into the place without paying for cover charge. This was the first time I heard something so nonsensical in Singapore. So basically Supper club has no guest list. And the supposed existence of a guest list in Supper Club is a fraud.

Issue number two, after having made payment at the entrance, the staff did not bother to direct us to our table. We made our way in. There in the club  was a lack of crowd. Basically we had to plead to the waitress to be attended to. We would otherwise have been ignored while she was busy chatting with her other waitresses near the bar counter.

“Just sit at any table you like. ” was what she said.

Thus we did.

So on each table was left a tub with 6 cans of red bull with no signs whatever stating the details of this tub. We were mislead to believe these can along complementary along with the table we reserved. It was only after opening the first can of red bull that the staff approached stating that this was a special promotion and that since we opened a can we are required to buy the entire tub of it. This was so low of them. The last time I came across this shady underhand method of selling was when I was in some remote parts of china when they had no customers at all.

Next, we were suddenly told that we were only allowed to occupy half of the table and in a rude manner. These people are all my guests and this idiotic waitress being so brainless as she is just went ahead to ruffle their feathers right in front of my presence.

“We have lots of guests here.” she stated.

We looked around and actually that entire stretch was empty except us. I got annoyed

“So am I right to say when more guest arrives here we are supposed to clear out of the table to facilitate your operating of your business?” I questioned

She was caught utterly speechless and left still attempting to look cool.

Ibraheem happened to leave the data DVD I past him earlier on a table adjacent to ours. Apparently for no reason whateverso, it was cleared without our notice. I got the staff here to question them about it. After some searching they found it.

“Next time keep your stuff properly!” was her response to Ibraheem.

Seriously, in any hospitality venues, in the event whereby staff attempts to clear any thing off the tables, they are supposed to ask the guest for permission before doing so even if it is shoddy dishes. This protocol was not observed. To make matters, why did she have to go ahead to tell off Ibraheem. Since when has waitressing became a profession of abusing customers after being paid to provide a hospitality service.

I stepped out of the venue for a moment with Mansu and was suddenly left standing in the queue outside, despite the fact no other guest were there. I asked the bouncer what was the issue and got a terribly rude response

“Can you please keep quiet and wait and anyway please look at the sign” he pointed to the sign stating “re-entries are not guaranteed”. At the back of my mind, I could not help recalling those SM Japanese joints where highly paid executives go to for abusive treatment.

When we finally got back to our table we were so surprised to find a whole new different group of people occupying them. We were shifted to some obscure corner of the club with extremely poor visibility of the stage. The reason given was so unacceptable.

“Sorry sir the table was already reserved. ” she stated. Did they have no proper system in place to managed the table bookings? And why was it that she did not bother to double check her bookings when we first arrived?

Thereafter the show started. It was Muay Thai fighting art display. The first and second segment were good. However from the third segment onwards there were the showman ship went down the drain. Also one thing to note, acts taking place in Supper club were traditionally done by people who were really performance enthusiast. How come it was that this particular performance was done like a cheap advertisement to attract students to their fighting school?

Supper club around the world is about fine dining with style and entertainment. However this particular joint does not seem the case. Why was it that girls selling tequila shots for a commission were allowed to even operate in this venue? Traditionally these girls will pester guests in other clubs and is a chief source of annoyance if the only thing the guest wants is to chill and enjoy the ambience.

The very last thing that totally changed my opinion of Supper club was the fact that they hire girls as hostesses to go around from table to table talking to men as well as many more to dance on the podium. While this is acceptable and enjoyable for men, it does reflect something about the place. I think it is slowly headed towards the direction of the former club Momo. It eventually became a Thai live band place called Nana. The concept is almost similar to another male hostess venue called Club Versace in Excelsior hotel .

In conclusion it seems Supper club is fast losing its former style and is fast heading down the slipping slope of sleaze.

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Installation of the MSSQL server

Just a few days ago, I managed to get a cracked copy of the MSSQL 2008 server from Ibraheem, I decided to try and install it on one of my laptop just for fun. Apparently during the installation process there were so many configurations to be made I missed out on something. So basically at the end of the day, the screenshot below shows the exact configuration I decided upon to get myself a basic standalone MSSQL server with the client tools to manage the MSSQL server.

mssql configuraiton screen

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Taking a step back and enjoying the space

Suddenly, it felt as though the world around me is spinning at a faster and faster pace. Strangely, I felt increasingly detached to all these occurrences happening around me.

No longer is my cat able to stir any sense of annoyance in me when he cries out loud to be let out in the middle of the night. No longer do I get annoyed when my train of thought gets disrupted when some one around attempts to get my attention while I am in the midst of work. Perhaps what truly changed in me was the  sudden disappearance of this mysterious sense of mission that had been prodding me along for the past two years.

In retrospection, it was truly curious how it came about.

This afternoon, I took for myself a break while in the midst of drafting up a report of my findings from my survey of the staff nurses in Tan Tock Seng Hospital. I sat for 30 mintues in front of my Clavinova keyboard doodling away enjoying the disharmonic notes that were coming forth from the keyboards.

I unconsciously recalled of a time back in New Zealand, then I was sitting in the studio staring out of the window into the streets above under the gloomy skies.

I was suddenly affected by a tinge of sadness. What happened to those people from back then. It was like our paths diverged somewhere along the way and never ever crossed again, with the exception of a few.

Mansu finally got himself into Singapore for a business trip. We were out drinking last night. It felt as though it was just last week when I parted with him in Seoul. How strange the concept of time can be sometimes.

Suddenly I started laughing to myself, I remembered one phrase I plucked off hand from somewhere in the cosmos and threw to the crowd during one of my conversations.

“How do you relieve your stress? ” some one ever asked me then.

“Just start relaxing and some one else will start feeling the stress instead” I replied.

We laughed not because it was nonsense but because, as with all jokes that are ever really humorous,  it carries a grain of truth in it.

Stress is truly something perceived and an illusion like life itself.  Try as we might, the earth will still hurtle through the universe at break speed with us on it. Try as we might, it is still inevitable we continue falling through this abyss called life.

Many calls to action, but most of them a waste of effort. It is for the best to just respond to those that really matter.

Lately I started harboring deeply this notion that to work is to devote time to art and inspiration. To devote effort for monetary profits or out of fear is in essence not truly work, it falls more under the category of slavery a laborious task indeed.

If my interpretations are sound and correct, wouldn’t it be true then that there are more slaves than free man amongst us human nowadays. Nice! Modern as it may seem we are once again in the feudal age.

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Some issues with google Ajax language translator service

Apparently Google is having some issue with their language translator service. I found out about this problem when I tried to play around with the gTranslate module for Joomla.The below message got shown.

Error: The server could not complete your request. Try again later.
So it seems relying completely on third party ajax based api is pretty iffy most of the time.

Hmmm.. Funny after a while it works????

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A very familiar prose

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

After many years, I can finally across the above again, this time while reading through the book Dune by Frank Herbert at page 6. The first time I did so was when I went sky diving in New Zealand. There is really great truth to be found in this 8 sentences. Even Sun Tze ever spoke about it, though in another form, popularly known as Sun Tze’s death ground theory.

Take away all the gimmicks that has been flooding the time and space of our age and the underlying wisdom remains unchanged through the ages.  In a sense, as a species though we might have made advancement in terms of science and technology, we did not really progress in terms of other arena.

Then again the advancement in terms of science and technology is much debateable, historians has made findings that hinted at the existance of technologically advanced civilisations that existed prior to ours.

Maybe we have been and will always be doomed to go around in this meaningless cycle. Well at least if there is any consolation to be had from this time and age, we could at least be happy with the fact that unlike those who past before us, we have the ipod and blackberry to keep us entertained while the merry go round continues.

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Experimentations with Artisteer

Today I decided I wanted to give my blog a new look and feel. I had the fortune to meet Kelvin the other day who introduced to me this new tool called artisteer. It was impressive. I could create a new wordpress theme in minutes. Thus I did. However I still needed some programming as it does not allow the creation of widget blocks at certain unstandardized locations. But nevertheless, it did cut down on a lot of time.

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Huge influx of opportunites and the hidden opportunity cost

Suddenly I experienced a surge in the amount of opportunities coming my way these few weeks. Being faithful to the teachings in the topic of Economy during my times in the commerce faculty back in Junior college and in the stream of electronic commerce  back while I was doing my honours in the university, I understood and felt strongly the other side of the equation.

Opportunity cost!

Opportunity cost is defined as the lost incurred when you forego the next best alternative in the process of deciding on one of the available opportunities.

Let me talk in layman terms for your better understanding. Suppose one day you decide to spend 5 hours of your time reading a book in the library instead of spending those 5 hours sitting by the beach and reading the same book. The opportunity cost to you in this situation is the joy you feel when you sit by the beach. In this scenario, the cost is hard to quantify.

Let me illustrate for you a better example which I will draw from a real life situation.

Client A approaches me presenting before me a deal that could potentially make $4000. It requires an upfront investment of my real time of 80 hours. (as opposed to virtual time – aka asynchronous delay or some one else’s time) There exist 2% chance of complications happening. (this we will define as risk)

Client B approaches me at the same time presenting me another deal that could potentially make $10,000. It requires an upfront investment of my real time of 300 hours. (as opposed to virtual time – aka asynchronous delay or some one else’s time) There exist 10% chance of complications happening. (this we will define as risk)

As both clients came to me at the same time in need of my real time immediately, I am now faced with a situation whereby I will need to choose one and forego the other. To a normal person, he would very likely choose the deal that offers $10,000. However on closer inspection, the second deal is not actually a very good deal as compared to the other.

Let me work out the mathetics

Total likely incurrable man hours for deal A – 80 hours X 1.02 = 82 hours
Total revenue receivable $4000
Actual hourly rate for real time sold = $48.5

Total likely incurrable man hours for deal B – 300 X 1.05 = 315 hours
Total revenue receivable $10,000
Actual hourly rate for real time sold = $31.75

Some might explain that the lower rate justifies for the large sum of potential revenue receiveable in deal A. Ok then lets do the math for the other part of the equation still left invisible.

Given this active period in the market, the percentage of closing more deals simlar to A in nature is around 60%. Translated into hours it would be estimated at  (315-82 hours) * 0.60 = 140 hours

Appling the prevailings rates in deal A to this equation, I will get 140hours X 48.5 = $6,790

So if I choose to take up deal A and forego deal B, below are the mathematics:

I will have saved [315 – (140+82 )] 93 hours of my precious time and still potentially make [$10,790 – $10,000] $790 more.

Also since, I have a few channels which I could devote my time to build up recurring  income, this 93 hours extra time available at my disposal could thus be used to expose myself to the effects of the positive black swan, with zero opportunity cost incurred by me. So basically, the net comparison will be as per below :

[$10,790 +++ versus $10,000 nett]

Actually the equation that brought me to the conclusion of never getting myself employed into a full time job and a fix salary per month is almost similar to this. Get employed with a fix salary of $3000 per month and the possible financial situation you will be facing for the next 12 months will likely be

($3,000 X 12 ) = $36, 000 —

  • The minus sign is just in case your boss decides to fire your ass before the year ends.
  • also your maximum potential income has been capped at $36,000

Go about living life as a free bird

$0+++ = ???

  • Don’t worry God is kind
  • you normally won’t die from what you already, it is usually what you don’t know that will kill you.
  • You know what is your base but your upper boundary has no limits!

Life is great live free!!!!!

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I will kill 75 Singapore Dogs and they will die on the 17th of May

Social loathing is a proven phenomena that happens when lots  of people get together. What is social loathing? A simple example is this.

If one person exerts an effort 5 newton of work is done
If another person exerts an equal amount of effort 4 newton of work gets done

Logically speaking if both people were to work together to exert their effort, it is not possible to achieve 9 newton of effort. The output will likely range around 6 to 7 newton of effort.

Another example, if a lady were to fall in a deserted area where there is only one other person around, the chances of this person coming forth to provide aid is 75% and the chances of this fallen person receiving aid is 75%.

However if a lady were to fall in a crowded area where there are hundreds of other people around, the chances each person will come forth to provide aid will be 5% (majority assumes that someone else will step forth) and the chances of this fallen person receiving aid is actually lower than 75%.

A few days ago I received a message from Kirk stating that twenty or more dogs will be put to sleep on the 13th of May 2010 if no one step forth to adopt them by then. The reason of their death is because the owner of the pet shop they were kept at decided to run off due to financial difficulties . These dogs were left to fend for themselves, it was simply not possible. The only option thus was for them to all be put to sleep if no one came to adopt them by the 13th of May 2010.

This situation fitted perfectly with the illustration provided by the analogy of the lady falling in the middle of the shopping mall. The owner who should have a 75% chance of feeling responsible fled the scene thereby creating a situation where there is only us people who will only have an average of 5% chance of feeling responsible on the scene.

After I received the message from Kirk, I did a logical calculation. It was simply not possible for me to adopt a dog without causing a major commotion at home. The chances of me actually taking action to adopt a dog is thus 5% if not lesser. I instead forwarded this message to some of my friends. However the forwarding of this message is beside the point. From a moral point of view it does not in any way alleviate the sense of guilt I should be feeling thus.

The main point I am driving at is that we are all potentially very selfish and cruel at heart. Let me state the most optimal premise where this inherent selfishness and cruelty in us will most likely show.

  • When the living  being who is to be the receiptient of the pain, torture and potential lost of life is far removed from all of us.
  • When the relationship between the act of causing pain and suffering on this unfortunate recipient and the resultant pain and suffering felt by this unfortunate recipient is vague and far removed
  • When the person enforcing the pain and suffering has more pressing and urgent matters to attend to, such as appeasing the demands of an authoritative figure. (your boss or client perhaps? :P)

The perfect proof for the validity my argument is the Milgram experiment an experiment conducting shortly after the end of world war 2 to find out how was it possible that so many Jewish were exterminated by the Nazi’s and no one involved bothered to step up and do something about it.

Back to my argument, speaking from a practical point of view,  I should just do what I did, simply forwarding the message on and assume someone else will come forth and adopt the dogs. The responsibility is not mine anyway it is too troublesome to save a life.

However from a moral point of view, I did what I did with the deep down knowledge that I will be cursed for even ever harbouring the thought that something material could be worth even more than precious life itself, even worst acting upon it without a second thought.

I am going to hell. Hell cant be that bad a place. If there is any consolation at all it is at least filled with drugs sex and alcohol. And also see all of you there too. We are all Nazi’s at heart. Hail Hitler for that! Alright people hurl me your verbal abuses and send me hate letters if you will.I will gladly accept them, even laughing merrily when I read them.

However if you are seriously not convinced by my lame argument about how great hell is and would really like to stay out of that horrible place with a special seat all reserved for you by the devil himself , then please Pasir Ris Pet Farm Kennel 9 and save as much dogs as you can.

ecipient