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Turning sand to stone

Recently I started to realize the nature of the path I have been threading upon has shifted. More and more am I faced with tasks that require through put of more than 24 hours effort within a span of 24 hours. I started to feel strongly the limitations to being just one man.Strangely too, I started unknowingly to gather around myself a band of comrades in my conquest.

This gradual shift in the path I am threading on has slowly but surely forced me into another paradigm. No longer can I consider solving a problem when I encounter it as an acceptable method to resolve issues. Half the time, I might not even be the person handling the issue and facing the problem when it happens. This really brought the need for me to really sit and consider things thoroughly before attempting to deploy any human resources available at hand to the fields. In a sense it is a tougher job and more draining for the mind than simple physical labour. It felt almost like mentally reaching out to the psychic universe and attempting to knead the ebbs and flows to your wishes before sending your forces out for exploration.

There are a few things that I have been pondering of late. How was it that conquerors could build armies from scratch and grow them into massive forces capable of overrunning entire continents? What was it that inspired the members of these armies to such heights that they were willing to forsake their lives in battle to win a war? What was it that kept the members of these armies together despite proofs written in countless research articles stating that high level of social loafing are bound to exist in places where population density is extremely high?

While these are not important questions that I need answers to at the moment, due to the fact I am still in direct communication with each member of my band of comrades, it will so start becoming a pressing situation when I start to form a heirarchy of more than two tiers for my operational needs.

I guess it is time once again to turn to history, philosophy and religion to search for the answers I am looking for. Many before me had faced themselves with this question, and many of them had came up with their own version of what the answer should be.  To save time, I guess I should not reinvent the wheel.

However one very challenging task faced is the idea of bringing these methods to life. A simple analogy to describe this task is the phrase “when does the extent of technique ends and the realm of art really starts”?

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

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!

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Surprise popularity of Joomla 1.5 Component Simple Thickbox Gallery

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.

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The sad case of being an unfilial son once again

It was advertisements now on Channel U. The previous 15 minutes were showing how blangadeshi workers could go out of their way to help their friends in need.

Suddenly, I notice something amiss.

“Mom! How come these blangadeshi could be so willing to fork out money to help their friends in need and can be so close to each other in the community and you are preaching about being on guard against everyone around you including our own relatives??”

“Humans are selfish by nature.” mom replied

“But they don’t seem very selfish to me.” I argued.

“Me and your dad has met with enough trouble with customers who dont pay up after borrowing money even if they have money.”

“But that cannot mean all people are like that”

“Most people are like that because humans are really selfish creatures. If a person is poor, everyone will avoid him” was mom’s reply.

“Ok Mom. I will take your advice to heart. In case you get broke in the future, it is not my fault and neither am I unfilial if I choose to avoid you. I was just following your advice you know.” I said flashing my million dollar smile.

“Shut up! and watch the television! ” she ended our conversation.

Once again my mom got totally pissed off.

Sometimes I believe it is truly a failure on my part as a son, why is it not possible for me to just accept what has been told to me lock stock and barrel by my parents? Why is it that I always find it necessary to iron out all contradictions that exist within any piece of information given to me before accepting it. Why too then do I even after accepting any particular piece of information do so with a deep sense of doubt; a doubt derived from my belief that somewhere in the world some facts are going to be unearth in the future, facts of which will overturn everything which i believe to be true until now.

Perhaps if I could numb myself to such an extent of being unaware of all the contraditions that are happening around me then I might be able to live happily in blissful ignorance.

Alternatively, perhaps if I could change myself to such an extend of being able to accept the existance of contradictions without feeling the strong urge to question them and thereafter sort them out, I will be able to live happily in peace with myself too.

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Technical paper on a possible generic PHP based system

This article is for personal reference. Its creation became necessary while pondering on a certain subject, I realized my brains (as with all brains being limited to a maximum of 7+2 variables simultaneously) could not handle all the required variables at once and was therefore unable to see clearly a coherent big picture of the envisioned idea.

Hopefully in creating this technical paper could it be made visible to me any possible design flaws when I examine each part in detail.

The goal is to create a system/framework that does the following

1. Accept many user created xml documents each describing different reptitive tasks that happens in a company in XML.
2. A XML document will contain:
2.1 All fields that exist and their data type
2.2 All stages that exist and their order
2.3 Fields and Stages mapping, access permission to fields available in each stage
2.4 Each stage will provide views of the object defined in the XML document
3. Instantiates an object that holds all that is in the corresponding XML document declared as properties
4. Assign system users as personel in charge of each xml defined stage as this is not captured in the XMl document to keep XML document system independent
5. Serialize this object and store it as a record in the template database table.
6. When Template Manager Object is triggered, it retrieves this template object from the template database table and replicates a working instance which will be then stored in the object database table
7. Has a work manager object which handles the manipulation of data stored within working instance objects.
8. Has a work manager object which handles the synchronization of serialized records in the object database table and the instantiated deserialized records in the system SESSION.
9. Ideally the work manager object will have built in features that will handle concurrency issues.
10. Data types defined in the XML document as part of object property will automatically instantiate existing native classes already included in the System
11. Data types will extend a parent data type which will provide methods which child data types will have to declare. Possible methods envisioned includes
11.1 Display
11.2 Edit
11.3 Store

Potential advantages of what I have envisioned thus far.
1. Database table structure will be independent of the object structure
2. Database structure will effectively be just reduced to two tables irregardless of the variety of object structure.
2.1 template table
2.1.1 field : id -> primary key
2.1.2 field : data -> serialized object
2.2 object table
2.2.1 field : id -> primary key
2.2.2 field : data -> serialized object

3. Framework remains sufficient abstract and can be easily ported from system to system

Potential down side of what I have envisioned thus far.
1. All objects instance in the object table will be loaded into SESSION during each call. This might impose a high load on the database server during the initial loading.
2. It might be difficult to sort or do a search amongst a collection of the same objects as compared to sorting available in traditional SQL search queries.
3. Synchronization issues might arise.
4. Possible out of memory error as more object instance comes into existance.

My next step from here will be to research into design patterns to examine the possible patterns that I could apply on this framework to address issues 2 & 3.

I will also need to look into the PHP documentation to understand the factors that will cause issues 1 & 4

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Spring Singapore – LETAS grant ceases thus brings an end to the Gold Rush

With effect from 1 Feb 2010, Spring Singapore ceases supporting the Letas Grant . Instead the a new more stringent grant called the Infocomm@SME – Integrated Incentives for SME Infocomm Adoption was setup to help SMEs for computerize their operations.

This new grant limits funding of IT projects to more specific areas such as the following:

Types Of Project Support Level Qualifying Costs Packaged solutions* pre-qualified by IDA for:

• Finance/ Accounting
• Human Resources/ Payroll Up to 50% of qualifying cost, capped at S$1,500 per packaged solution • Software
• Consultancy Services
• Training Customised solutions

E.g. Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning Up to 50% of qualifying costs, capped at S$10,000 per SME Consultancy services Advanced customised solutions that requires extensive development efforts and business re-engineering

E.g. Supply Chain Management Up to 50% of qualifying costs

(Grant amount is determined based on a case-by-case basis) • Manpower-related costs
• Consultancy services
• Hardware/ software

With effect of this new more stringent critieria I foresee that most newly sprung up IT companies surviving just on grants provided by the government to help companies build up web sites will slowly but surely evaporate from the market leaving only those that have in the midst of this gold rush found a strategic foothold in the  market.

I foresaw this coming when Garis tried to persuade me into setting up an IT company with him and a recently retrenched IT sales staff. The sales staff who was so confidant during the initial meetup session with us, suddenly disappear after researching that the grant she was going for had dried out. Then again I was not really inclined towards the whole engagement in the first place.

First and foremost Garis was trying to target a part of the IT market that had little to no barrier to entry and relatively low profit margins. 5 web pages for $2000-$2500 sales price. While it might sound lucrative up front. On further calculation it was a really bad deal.

Profit per person would be approximately 1/3 of the sales price  hence around $600++ for me per site. However  based on my previous experience I will likely have to spend up to 4 man days ($400 per day are my usual rates) for each site. This was inclusive of the back and forth liaising process with each clients which Garis and the potential sales girl had already declared a lack of interest in being involved in.

Garis was also having the idea that we would each only draw out a small sum per month as salary which will cut further more into my potential return in each deal. To top it all up, Garis was of the opinion that I should stop engaging clients independently and just concentrate fully on this venture, if not direct these clients to obtain service from this venture.

Directing of clients to this venture was not a feasible option. What my clients required of me was more than just simple 5 page websites. Most of what was required by them were comprehensive e-commerce solutions or backend operations systems. To have done as Garis intended would have meant to commit corporate suicide by introducing 2 redundant free riders to the process as well as complicating the picture.

Also based on information gleaned while furthering the conversation between us, I realized the sales girl was only confidant  in bringing  3 to 4 projects per month and at the  same time not really experienced in the pre-sales of systems more complicated that 5 pages web sites.

After the discussion amongst the three of us, I begged to be excluded from the partnership. As to do so was to incur huge potential loses on my side.

This new scheme that Enterprise One will be finalizing in March 2010 seems to be very promising as the barrier to entry for creating the mentioned systems are high in contrast to the creation of 5 pages websites. I will meanwhile look forward to what Enterprise One has to say.

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New Zealand is calling!

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.

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Using statcounter.com concurrently with Google Analytics

These two days I got really puzzled with Google Adsense. My page impressions were really high but apparently no clicks were registered on my page for the adsense. I wonder what went wrong. So ended up I started researching over the internet about Google Adsense click not registered. This was when I chanced upon this new tool called statcounter.com

This is a real time tool that shows you where visitors came into the site from and where they exited the site to. One of the really useful things about this is the fact that they could help track if someone actually clicked on the links in your adsense. This does provide a counter as to whether Google Adsense if just simply faking your click rates.

I would not have changed upon this site had I not found my adsense revenue to be suspiciously non-existant

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Improving the performance of Ajax on ThingsToDoSingapore.com

Recently I started working on Things To Do Singapore again.

Apparently the javascript libraries were getting quite thick and this was affecting the loading of the interface.

There is the use of the following :

  1. Xajax Library
  2. Jquery Library
  3. Google friends Connect Api
  4. Facebook Connect Api
  5. SWFUpload Library

After much observation I realised the SWFUpload Library sometimes takes too long to load and fails as well causing the whole interface to fail loading at time seriously affecting usability of the site. Perhaps this might be to cause of the high bounce rate I observer from my Google Analytics of 80%.

I spent this morning thinking how to go about solving this problem and this was the method I came to

Javascript library should be classify into two groups as critical and non-critical to user experience.

The Xajax Library, jQuery library are considered critical to user experience

The Google Friends Connect library as well as the Facebook Connect library are not often employed. though these two library are too tightly integrated with the core achitecture. Perhaps it was a bad design choice.

SWFUpload is not often used by other users and hence rarely employed.

Having done the proper classification, I next work  on loading the SWFUpload asynchronously after the other library and interface has loaded. This in face drastically reduced improved useer experience. It reduced user waiting time as well as at the same time reduced the error rate of the loading interface.

This was how I did it.

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/swfupload.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/swfupload.queue.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/fileprogress.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/handlers.js”);
//alert(“swf loaded”);
});

function loadScript(sScriptSrc) {
var oHead = document.getElementById(‘head’);
var oScript = document.createElement(‘script’);
oScript.type = ‘text/javascript’;
oScript.src = sScriptSrc;
oHead.appendChild(oScript);
}

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Capitalism : A love story

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?