Now that I've been working for over a month a Cyberjaya, I can safely conclude that this township is an extremely good example of extremely bad town planning. The so-called "intelligent city" isn't very intelligently implemented. I won't talk about the pros; simply because the pros like not having much traffic and being near the Puchong area and Serdang are far outweighed by the cons.
Distance
It is located 50 km away from the Kuala Lumpur. Why in the world did they build it so far? (this applies to our KLIA as well). It's like it's full of buildings. There's ample space to build it 10 km closer, and being 10 km closer may well make it 10 times better for employers and employees alike. The distance between buildings is also laughable. You'd think they were trying to fill in as big a space as they possibly could the way the buildings are spread out. Things are not within reasonable walking distance, especially so when you get scorched by the midday sun in business attire. I wonder if the city planners thought we were in a country that sees very little sun.
Public Transport
You would've thought that this being a new township and all, they'd be smart enough to incorporate efficient public transport into it. Did they? Nope. They brought in sometimes-punctual buses with poorly labeled destinations (neither the buses nor the bus stops). If they're gonna place buildings so far apart, and with Putrajaya being close by and also a new township, you'd have thought someone would be smart enough to put in a convenient LRT system. Nope. Too much to hope for. It was probably decided that everyone either drives or simply loves the (in)frequent buses. It's probably the latter since there's a lack of convenient car parks (and yes, they expect people to walk a lot).
"Intelligent"
I failed to find anything "intelligent" about the intelligent city. The broadband speed is as sucky as it is in other townships (despite the fiber optics cabling). There's absolutely no adoption of any cutting-edge technology. No intelligent traffic lights, no hi-tech security systems in the residential areas, no computer-controlled watering or drainage system... About the only techie stuff there are what the companies there have set up. Oh, and the "funky" and "hi-tech" road names like "Jalan Multimedia".... Road signs give poor directions and don't accurately tell you where's where, until after you made the turn.
Enough ranting. While I think my office is a pleasant place to work, I'm just irked by whoever designed Cyberjaya and Putrajaya. A concept that has incredible potential screwed over by people who couldn't grasp the potential.
Malaysian political oddities
on Tuesday, 23 September 2008
I can't even begin to list all the obviously politically-motivated issues that's been hogging the headlines lately. It's really tiring to keep hearing stupid statements and silly explanations being offered daily.
RPK is now being forced to serve a 2-year sentence under ISA for allegedly insulting Islam in his blog, where he mostly laments the current state of affairs of the Muslim world from his perspective. Inflammatory perhaps, but I wouldn't call it insulting or threatening national security. That article states that cabinet ministers were "shocked" at seeing the contents of the blog. Strange that no one reported them being "shocked" at seeing Teresa Kok being arrested under the ISA for having allegedly told mosque officials in Kota Damansara, Sri Serdang and Puchong Jaya to tone down the call to prayer. What's really funny about that is that the mosque's involved had actually come out and stated that nothing of that sort had happened. Apparently, according to the "wise" Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar, she was arrested for her protection. I've really never even thought that a law like the ISA, which was concepted for tackling communism, can be used for protection of an individual against an accusation that was based on a blog post and a newspaper article based on that blog post. Wow.
Oh, and what about that reporter who reported the infamous "penumpang" statement by the now-infamous Ahmad Ismail? Apparently, reporting (and being a journalist, her job) about an incendiary and insulting remark is immensely more dangerous than actually making the incendiary and insulting remark. It's like saying the reporter of a murder is more than dangerous than the murderer. I wonder why Teresa Kok was arrested for "her protection" about something she was not proven of doing but this Ahmad Ismail was not arrested for doing something he was reported to have done... confusing eh? And after Teresa Kok got released? Some are more concerned with her claims of "dog food" being served than her wrongful detention in the first place. Sad.
And there's so much more I can go about that it's depressing. Hollywood can get a lot of ideas from our politics.
RPK is now being forced to serve a 2-year sentence under ISA for allegedly insulting Islam in his blog, where he mostly laments the current state of affairs of the Muslim world from his perspective. Inflammatory perhaps, but I wouldn't call it insulting or threatening national security. That article states that cabinet ministers were "shocked" at seeing the contents of the blog. Strange that no one reported them being "shocked" at seeing Teresa Kok being arrested under the ISA for having allegedly told mosque officials in Kota Damansara, Sri Serdang and Puchong Jaya to tone down the call to prayer. What's really funny about that is that the mosque's involved had actually come out and stated that nothing of that sort had happened. Apparently, according to the "wise" Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar, she was arrested for her protection. I've really never even thought that a law like the ISA, which was concepted for tackling communism, can be used for protection of an individual against an accusation that was based on a blog post and a newspaper article based on that blog post. Wow.
Oh, and what about that reporter who reported the infamous "penumpang" statement by the now-infamous Ahmad Ismail? Apparently, reporting (and being a journalist, her job) about an incendiary and insulting remark is immensely more dangerous than actually making the incendiary and insulting remark. It's like saying the reporter of a murder is more than dangerous than the murderer. I wonder why Teresa Kok was arrested for "her protection" about something she was not proven of doing but this Ahmad Ismail was not arrested for doing something he was reported to have done... confusing eh? And after Teresa Kok got released? Some are more concerned with her claims of "dog food" being served than her wrongful detention in the first place. Sad.
And there's so much more I can go about that it's depressing. Hollywood can get a lot of ideas from our politics.
Tags are difficult
on
Lately, I've been trying to get all my Flickr photos organised but I can't even get well underway. I confess that I can be a real stickler when it comes to data or information organisation, so much so that I have "systems" for organising the books and ebooks that I possess, informal though they may be. I've also put off trying to organise all my videos, CDs, DVDs, but sooner or later, I'll probably do it.
I'm trying to get the photos and video clips all organised but I'm stuck at tagging. Here's Flickr's help on tags. I can get collections and sets mostly figured out on what I want, but tags is really elusive. I think the primary reason is because it's the nature of folksonomy to defy rules. Trying to put in "rules" for how I tag stuff is driving me nuts. Everytime I record down some guidelines for myself, as I work it in, something comes up and puts a damper on my guidelines, forcing me to review again. Argh!!
I suppose having board guidelines is more than enough for tagging and just forget about the specifics and the resultant disorganisation, but I can't help wanting to put in some order. Chaotic alignment I'm not. I really have to settle for guidelines so I can actually finish organising my backlog of "photos to organise"...
I'm trying to get the photos and video clips all organised but I'm stuck at tagging. Here's Flickr's help on tags. I can get collections and sets mostly figured out on what I want, but tags is really elusive. I think the primary reason is because it's the nature of folksonomy to defy rules. Trying to put in "rules" for how I tag stuff is driving me nuts. Everytime I record down some guidelines for myself, as I work it in, something comes up and puts a damper on my guidelines, forcing me to review again. Argh!!
I suppose having board guidelines is more than enough for tagging and just forget about the specifics and the resultant disorganisation, but I can't help wanting to put in some order. Chaotic alignment I'm not. I really have to settle for guidelines so I can actually finish organising my backlog of "photos to organise"...
Free Teresa Kok, Abolish ISA
on Wednesday, 17 September 2008
To all Malaysians concerned about our freedom and future, and friends of other countries, please join our petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/freetkok/petition.html
UPDATE: Good news, she has been released.
http://www.petitiononline.com/freetkok/petition.html
UPDATE: Good news, she has been released.
Want To, Have To
on Friday, 12 September 2008
Things you want to do and things you have to do. It would be ideal if your to-dos can fit into both. Our present society makes it a fact of life that you have to put aside things you want to do for things that you have to do.
Lucky are those who managed to find a large intersection between things they want to do and things they have to do. Blessed are those who find satisfaction and reconciliation with themselves for doing things they have to do instead of things they want to do. These people will find less frustration in life each time they look at the clock at night.
Are these people in better control of their time? Could they possibly have more time to spend? Do these people simply require less to feel content and satisfied? Perhaps the things they want to do are quickly accomplished? Or do they simply have less things they want to do? Perhaps it is a measure of selfishness. To be selfish is to want more for yourself. To be unselfish is to want less for yourself. A person is satisfied by getting what one wants. In that light, a selfish person is harder to satisfy, simply because it takes more to satisfy them. It is rather ironic that unselfish people are satisfied because they want others to have more. But are they really satisfied by the thought of others getting more? Or are they satisfied because their feelings of want are more easily quelled?
How do you make yourself want less? How do you make yourself happy by wanting less? The proper answer is that you should not want in the first place; and to be happy of what you have, not envious of what you don't. Sound advice indeed, but I cannot help asking: Are you happy because, deep down, you already have what you want and want what you already have?
Lucky are those who managed to find a large intersection between things they want to do and things they have to do. Blessed are those who find satisfaction and reconciliation with themselves for doing things they have to do instead of things they want to do. These people will find less frustration in life each time they look at the clock at night.
Are these people in better control of their time? Could they possibly have more time to spend? Do these people simply require less to feel content and satisfied? Perhaps the things they want to do are quickly accomplished? Or do they simply have less things they want to do? Perhaps it is a measure of selfishness. To be selfish is to want more for yourself. To be unselfish is to want less for yourself. A person is satisfied by getting what one wants. In that light, a selfish person is harder to satisfy, simply because it takes more to satisfy them. It is rather ironic that unselfish people are satisfied because they want others to have more. But are they really satisfied by the thought of others getting more? Or are they satisfied because their feelings of want are more easily quelled?
How do you make yourself want less? How do you make yourself happy by wanting less? The proper answer is that you should not want in the first place; and to be happy of what you have, not envious of what you don't. Sound advice indeed, but I cannot help asking: Are you happy because, deep down, you already have what you want and want what you already have?
Golden Boy of MAS
on Friday, 22 August 2008
After reading that news article, I don't know what which I found more amusing: that the resulting ad hoc produced system sounds suspiciously like an amalgamation of open source software, or that MAS, as the national airlines, is still using a paper-based system for maintenance management!!! No wonder the national carrier has always been plagued by financial issues.
I just found it a little ridiculous that the reporter would choose to use a phrase like "design a database solution that rivals commercial systems". If that were true, don't companies around the world feel stupid to have bought all those commercial systems? And just to be helpful to many would-be programmers, try searching for inventory-related management software on Sourceforge.net. You'll be surprised. And want to manage a database? Try phpMyAdmin. Either the reporter or the subject of the feature article had been exaggerating when mentioning "zero knowledge in programming". He studied in APIIT, so come on, no knowledge at all? What exactly do they teach in an information technology-related institute of education? Of course, I'm not trying to dumb down the accomplishments of that MAS employee and his team, it is certainly a strong showing of their dedication and passion for improving their job environment. I'm just a little miffed at the exaggerations of the article.
And for MAS itself? I'm stumped as to how their management had managed to go that many years without even hitting upon the thought that maybe, just maybe, an IT solution would help reduce their cost. That feature article certainly opened up my eyes as to why MAS kept reporting losses - they seem not to have improved with the times. It's rather sad that it had fallen on an engineer of the company to take it upon himself to improve the company's competitiveness. I hope that same management would reward the man and his team handsomely for their dedication and freelance work, rather than just reap the profits. I suppose MAS is happy to know that they hired a group of people willing to sacrifice for their company without expecting remuneration.
I just found it a little ridiculous that the reporter would choose to use a phrase like "design a database solution that rivals commercial systems". If that were true, don't companies around the world feel stupid to have bought all those commercial systems? And just to be helpful to many would-be programmers, try searching for inventory-related management software on Sourceforge.net. You'll be surprised. And want to manage a database? Try phpMyAdmin. Either the reporter or the subject of the feature article had been exaggerating when mentioning "zero knowledge in programming". He studied in APIIT, so come on, no knowledge at all? What exactly do they teach in an information technology-related institute of education? Of course, I'm not trying to dumb down the accomplishments of that MAS employee and his team, it is certainly a strong showing of their dedication and passion for improving their job environment. I'm just a little miffed at the exaggerations of the article.
And for MAS itself? I'm stumped as to how their management had managed to go that many years without even hitting upon the thought that maybe, just maybe, an IT solution would help reduce their cost. That feature article certainly opened up my eyes as to why MAS kept reporting losses - they seem not to have improved with the times. It's rather sad that it had fallen on an engineer of the company to take it upon himself to improve the company's competitiveness. I hope that same management would reward the man and his team handsomely for their dedication and freelance work, rather than just reap the profits. I suppose MAS is happy to know that they hired a group of people willing to sacrifice for their company without expecting remuneration.
Do not watch Cloverfield
on Monday, 28 January 2008
I repeat. Do not watch Cloverfield. Go ahead, click that link and watch the trailer there. Feeling nauseated yet? For those who cannot stand FPS games or are prone to "digicam-motion sickness", do not watch this movie. Keep the contents of your wallet in your wallet, and you'll keep the contents of your stomach in your stomach.
I made another mistake of trusting the advertisement as shown on TV - never ever trust those on movies you don't really hear about much, at least not in Malaysia. According to this reviewer, a lot of hype has been generated by this movie, produced by J. J. "Lost" Abrams.
Too bad. The concept of a huge alien attacking New York (as usual, it's in the US - Malaysia is very safe) is nothing new but can certainly have a lot of potential if carried out right. Unfortunately, it sucks big time. It's a really obvious attempt to ape the Blair Witch Project (I didn't like that one too) but falls flat in terms of execution. First off, the Blair Witch Project is a known budget movie, so the less-than-stellar work is understandable. Cloverfield (the name is apparently a government code name) on the other hand, has a much bigger budget.
It's one thing to use the "digicam style" for effect. It's extremely unwise to use it throughout the whole movie, especially when the whole movie is more about monster effect than suspense (except that one tunnel scene where it was actually decent). What's worse? It took a whole 20 minutes or so for even a hint of a monster. What's in the first 20 minutes? A whole lot of silly and rather poorly executed "character development", which coupled with the dizzying effect, made me totally unable to empathize with the characters. The gist of it? A bunch of friends decides to tromp right into monster avenue to rescue another friend whom one of them had slept with... once apparently. Yes, it sounds silly. The dialogue doesn't even make it seem like it's a true love lost thing - felt much more like infatuation or fling rather.
And the monster? Yea, it's pretty interesting, and the monster kinda looked cool - the few glimpses I've had of it. Where did it come from? Apparently, nobody knows. Yep, I looked around for reviews to see what I missed but apparently, the monster is just an arbitrary monster who decided arbitrarily to stop at New York and arbitrarily start destroying things arbitrarily... even the Statue of Liberty headshot felt really weak - an effect for the sake of making an effect. It seems not to make sense for a monster to surface next to the Statue of Liberty, give it a thwack on the head, and then get back into the water and continue swimming towards the city proper... And oh, the monster likes to chase fleeing unarmed civilians even though soldiers nearby are emptying their ammunition and rockets into its body. *shrugs*
Perhaps refreshingly, unlike Transformers and the previous Americanised Godzilla, the US military portrayed in this movie appears to be quite useless, using rather "mundane" weaponry compared to all the high-tech equipment we've been seeing in many other recent movies.
Anyway, I've drubbed it enough. Enough ranting from me. Just read other reviews if you need more convincing that this is a "sucky" movie. Tolerable when not considering the digicam style; plainly sucks when taken together.
I'll end with one last kick: (SPOILER WARNING - for what it's worth) If I was a dull-witted man who isn't really familiar with a digicam in the first place, I wouldn't be holding it up and trying to film every single second of running around while scared silly. I most especially would not bother to when I'm walking along a very dark tunnel, or when trying to run from creepy crawly spider things, or when the woman I love is in danger, or when climbing tall crumbly buildings, or when the helicopter I'm in is about to drop out of the sky.
I made another mistake of trusting the advertisement as shown on TV - never ever trust those on movies you don't really hear about much, at least not in Malaysia. According to this reviewer, a lot of hype has been generated by this movie, produced by J. J. "Lost" Abrams.
Too bad. The concept of a huge alien attacking New York (as usual, it's in the US - Malaysia is very safe) is nothing new but can certainly have a lot of potential if carried out right. Unfortunately, it sucks big time. It's a really obvious attempt to ape the Blair Witch Project (I didn't like that one too) but falls flat in terms of execution. First off, the Blair Witch Project is a known budget movie, so the less-than-stellar work is understandable. Cloverfield (the name is apparently a government code name) on the other hand, has a much bigger budget.
It's one thing to use the "digicam style" for effect. It's extremely unwise to use it throughout the whole movie, especially when the whole movie is more about monster effect than suspense (except that one tunnel scene where it was actually decent). What's worse? It took a whole 20 minutes or so for even a hint of a monster. What's in the first 20 minutes? A whole lot of silly and rather poorly executed "character development", which coupled with the dizzying effect, made me totally unable to empathize with the characters. The gist of it? A bunch of friends decides to tromp right into monster avenue to rescue another friend whom one of them had slept with... once apparently. Yes, it sounds silly. The dialogue doesn't even make it seem like it's a true love lost thing - felt much more like infatuation or fling rather.
And the monster? Yea, it's pretty interesting, and the monster kinda looked cool - the few glimpses I've had of it. Where did it come from? Apparently, nobody knows. Yep, I looked around for reviews to see what I missed but apparently, the monster is just an arbitrary monster who decided arbitrarily to stop at New York and arbitrarily start destroying things arbitrarily... even the Statue of Liberty headshot felt really weak - an effect for the sake of making an effect. It seems not to make sense for a monster to surface next to the Statue of Liberty, give it a thwack on the head, and then get back into the water and continue swimming towards the city proper... And oh, the monster likes to chase fleeing unarmed civilians even though soldiers nearby are emptying their ammunition and rockets into its body. *shrugs*
Perhaps refreshingly, unlike Transformers and the previous Americanised Godzilla, the US military portrayed in this movie appears to be quite useless, using rather "mundane" weaponry compared to all the high-tech equipment we've been seeing in many other recent movies.
Anyway, I've drubbed it enough. Enough ranting from me. Just read other reviews if you need more convincing that this is a "sucky" movie. Tolerable when not considering the digicam style; plainly sucks when taken together.
I'll end with one last kick: (SPOILER WARNING - for what it's worth) If I was a dull-witted man who isn't really familiar with a digicam in the first place, I wouldn't be holding it up and trying to film every single second of running around while scared silly. I most especially would not bother to when I'm walking along a very dark tunnel, or when trying to run from creepy crawly spider things, or when the woman I love is in danger, or when climbing tall crumbly buildings, or when the helicopter I'm in is about to drop out of the sky.
Java Swing Layout made extremely easy
on Monday, 14 January 2008
If you're a Java developer working on desktop applications that require you to code the interfaces (especially the really complex ones), you'll love what I found.
First, take a look at this page. See that complex looking list? It's made with a custom
Unfortunately,
You go and download
Impressive, no? Check out the website for guides and Java Web Start demos.
First, take a look at this page. See that complex looking list? It's made with a custom
ListCellRenderer which was created using GroupLayout. Really nice-looking doesn't it? (see the layout tutorial here)GroupLayout was specifically designed for use with Project Matisse, the GUI builder for the Netbeans IDE, which by the way, is extremely impressive.Unfortunately,
GroupLayout is complex to use and difficult to read if you do not have access to Netbeans and do not wish to use/learn Netbeans solely for the purpose of designing the GUIs. Or maybe you're just old school and prefer to build GUIs by hand (I know, some of the generated code can be icky). What do you do?You go and download
MigLayout of course! Why? Well, go back and look at that fancy list above again and try to estimate how many nested panels you might need should you use the standard layouts, or how many lines of code and the calculations you need for GridBagLayout. Finished? Guess how many lines it takes for MigLayout... seven. Yes, you read it right, just seven simple lines:cell.setLayout(new MigLayout("nogrid, fillx"));
cell.add(pic, "dock west");
cell.add(title, "growx");
cell.add(count, "wrap");
cell.add(line1, "growx, wrap");
cell.add(line2, "growx");
cell.add(email);
Impressive, no? Check out the website for guides and Java Web Start demos.
Kongregate
on Tuesday, 16 October 2007
I'm currently quite involved in playing Flash games on Kongregate. Let me be your referral.
It is still in development since last year but much of the site and its features are already up and running very smoothly. What is it? It's a outlet for both players and game designers. A place where you can play games and upload your own Flash games for others to play. If your games get rated 3 stars and above, you're entitled to some of the revenue earned from advertisements.
What's different about this Flash games website and numerous others out there are three things (for me anyway). One is that the interface is clean. I don't like cluttered webpages that put in too many obstrusive links too close together, and not enough clear space.
The second is they have both a system for points and a system for achievements. While nothing concrete on how to use points yet, the achievements are pretty fine. Some of the more popular games get badges that are awarded to you when you achieve a certain objective. It makes it a nice target to play towards. Oh sure, it has the usual high score tables and such but those are usually too huge, too dynamic, and too impersonal. I dunno, I just like the idea of having a objectives to a game rather just playing for the sake of playing.
And thirdly, the most compelling reason, is that they're developing a card game for their site. By completing game challenges (special objectives for certain games), players (i.e. accounts) are rewarded with access to a game for the upcoming card game (yea, it's not ready yet). so far there have been like about 30 challenges. I have 3 cards, so yea, I joined pretty late and missed alot. I hope there'll be a challenge that allows latecomers to obtain the older bonus cards. The card game system itself sounds pretty interesting and I'm definitely eager to try it out.
You can also check some blogs on the games or the site in general. COCAK is a good start. And remember, use this link to join :P Being your referral gives me a small number of points, heheh.
It is still in development since last year but much of the site and its features are already up and running very smoothly. What is it? It's a outlet for both players and game designers. A place where you can play games and upload your own Flash games for others to play. If your games get rated 3 stars and above, you're entitled to some of the revenue earned from advertisements.
What's different about this Flash games website and numerous others out there are three things (for me anyway). One is that the interface is clean. I don't like cluttered webpages that put in too many obstrusive links too close together, and not enough clear space.
The second is they have both a system for points and a system for achievements. While nothing concrete on how to use points yet, the achievements are pretty fine. Some of the more popular games get badges that are awarded to you when you achieve a certain objective. It makes it a nice target to play towards. Oh sure, it has the usual high score tables and such but those are usually too huge, too dynamic, and too impersonal. I dunno, I just like the idea of having a objectives to a game rather just playing for the sake of playing.
And thirdly, the most compelling reason, is that they're developing a card game for their site. By completing game challenges (special objectives for certain games), players (i.e. accounts) are rewarded with access to a game for the upcoming card game (yea, it's not ready yet). so far there have been like about 30 challenges. I have 3 cards, so yea, I joined pretty late and missed alot. I hope there'll be a challenge that allows latecomers to obtain the older bonus cards. The card game system itself sounds pretty interesting and I'm definitely eager to try it out.
You can also check some blogs on the games or the site in general. COCAK is a good start. And remember, use this link to join :P Being your referral gives me a small number of points, heheh.
Media collection organizer
on Thursday, 20 September 2007
Libra is a free collection organizer software does tracks your books, audio CDs, movies, and games (for now apparently). It is only free for non-commercial use of course.
It hooks up to the Amazon database for its searches, although there's nothing stopping you from adding you own stuff.
The features highlighted on its website are:
Other stuff not mentioned include a built-in browser for their forums and the ability to edit item details (and reset, based on Amazon) as well as adding your own notes. A feature I found to be very very useful is being able to specify custom actions to items, such as creating a command that automatically fires up a playlist or opens up the PDF of a book. Another thing I like is that I actually like the cheeky tone they used for their website. Nice touch, hehe.
All-in-all, I'm quite impressed. I'm gonna keep it around and catalogue my collection of stuffs using it. I'll probably merge all my other mechanisms for keeping track of stuff into this!
It hooks up to the Amazon database for its searches, although there's nothing stopping you from adding you own stuff.
The features highlighted on its website are:
- Turn your webcam into a barcode scanner (sounds impressive! no webcam to try...)
- Lightning speed database (not exactly lightning, but fast nonetheless)
- Track who borrowed your stuff (nice! provided I remember who borrowed what prior to this...)
- Print beautiful catalogs (interesting, those I prefer to save on ink ;)
- Share your collection online (I'll have to get some friends to try this)
- Attention to detail (yes, it looks prefer good, supports custom skins too)
- Import existing collection (from a couple of applications, most notably MS Excel)
- Extensible & Flexible (claims it is designed to support any collection)
Other stuff not mentioned include a built-in browser for their forums and the ability to edit item details (and reset, based on Amazon) as well as adding your own notes. A feature I found to be very very useful is being able to specify custom actions to items, such as creating a command that automatically fires up a playlist or opens up the PDF of a book. Another thing I like is that I actually like the cheeky tone they used for their website. Nice touch, hehe.
All-in-all, I'm quite impressed. I'm gonna keep it around and catalogue my collection of stuffs using it. I'll probably merge all my other mechanisms for keeping track of stuff into this!
The mourning of Robert Jordan
on Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Robert Jordan has sadly succumbed to his illness and died 2 days ago. He was the author of many well-known books including some on Conan the Barbarian and the famous the Wheel of Time series. The final book of that 12-part series remains unfinished. A moment of silence for an author whose books I thoroughly enjoy reading.
Online Games Galore
on Wednesday, 11 July 2007
It seems that there's a whole slew of online games that got me piqued have been released and will soon be released these days.
Ever since I chose Guild Wars over D&D Online, I've been pretty watchful of new massively-multiplayer online games (MMOG). I have not regretted my choice, despite D&D Online shaping up to be something that seems to be pretty impressive (doubtless due to me being a D&D fan). Guild Wars is still keeping me stuck to it, no less thanks to the impending release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North (the first true expansion) at the end of this coming August and Guild Wars 2 around 2009 - 2010.
And to think I haven't actually tried World of Warcraft yet... I really wanted to but after registering for the trial, the huge download put me off. But I have seen friends playing it before and I can certainly understand the addiction there. Something I'd rather not get into.
Of late, I've tried the beta of the newly-released Sword of the New World (called Granada Espada in Korea), and while the graphics is certainly very impressive, the gameplay falls quite short of other recently-released and soon-to-be-released games.
I keep getting tempted to try all those new and impressive games but being pampered with the business model adopted for Guild Wars (not monthly access fees!), I'm slightly abhorrent of having to actually pay monthly. Games like Lord of the Rings Online is certainly at the top of my tempted-to-play list. Other upcoming and definitely promising MMOGs like Age of Conan (a unique and involved combat system), Hellgate: London (FPS), Fury (PvP CORPG), Tabula Rasa (futuristic action RPG), Aion (RvR), Warhammer Online (you don't know Warhammer?!), Vanguard (traditional style), Gods & Heroes (squad-based), and Dungeon Runners (free-to-play business model) all look soooo delicious. Too bad I'd probably have only enough time and money to just play one or two or them at most. Life is about choices indeed, heh. I wonder if I'll get around to previewing each of them...
Ever since I chose Guild Wars over D&D Online, I've been pretty watchful of new massively-multiplayer online games (MMOG). I have not regretted my choice, despite D&D Online shaping up to be something that seems to be pretty impressive (doubtless due to me being a D&D fan). Guild Wars is still keeping me stuck to it, no less thanks to the impending release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North (the first true expansion) at the end of this coming August and Guild Wars 2 around 2009 - 2010.
And to think I haven't actually tried World of Warcraft yet... I really wanted to but after registering for the trial, the huge download put me off. But I have seen friends playing it before and I can certainly understand the addiction there. Something I'd rather not get into.
Of late, I've tried the beta of the newly-released Sword of the New World (called Granada Espada in Korea), and while the graphics is certainly very impressive, the gameplay falls quite short of other recently-released and soon-to-be-released games.
I keep getting tempted to try all those new and impressive games but being pampered with the business model adopted for Guild Wars (not monthly access fees!), I'm slightly abhorrent of having to actually pay monthly. Games like Lord of the Rings Online is certainly at the top of my tempted-to-play list. Other upcoming and definitely promising MMOGs like Age of Conan (a unique and involved combat system), Hellgate: London (FPS), Fury (PvP CORPG), Tabula Rasa (futuristic action RPG), Aion (RvR), Warhammer Online (you don't know Warhammer?!), Vanguard (traditional style), Gods & Heroes (squad-based), and Dungeon Runners (free-to-play business model) all look soooo delicious. Too bad I'd probably have only enough time and money to just play one or two or them at most. Life is about choices indeed, heh. I wonder if I'll get around to previewing each of them...
PDF Reader
on Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Goodbye Adobe Acrobat Reader..... and a wonderful good riddance. What have I got against that oh-so-pervasive PDF reader software? I installed Adobe Reader 8. The following is a rant.
Huh? Why? Two words: It sucks. Why does it suck? Well, first off, Reader 7 adds something called the "Adobe Speed Launch" into your Windows startup folder. Reader 8 does that too in addition to also add something called "Adobe Reader Synchronizer". What does that do? It's supposed to synchronised shared documents or collaborative documents... uh... right... but I only use Reader to read PDF files, I don't care about these features. And I'm not alone seeing all the comments in this blog post.
For those of you who didn't even realise that Reader has "Adobe Speed Launch", here's a primer: It pre-loads part of Reader into your memory... regardless of whether you'd actually use Reader or not. As such, it hogs memory that it doesn't use and slows down Windows startup. What's worse is that the so-called "speed launch" gives an almost negligible improvement given the processing capabilities of even an "average" computer these days.
If Adobe really thinks that these are useful, it should be an option. How hard is it to make a little checkbox on the installer to ask whether people want to use it or not? A forceful approach is almost always a bad idea.
Do you know what's even worse about Reader 8? For some reason, it's check-for-update keeps creating weird directory names like "Updater5" on my hard disk. I was worried that my computer got infected by some kind of trojan or virus because I recently reinstalled it and was slow in getting an anti-virus software in place. Luckily for me, another commentor in the above blog post link confirmed that it Reader 8's problem. I'm beginning to think that strange slowdowns and unresponsiveness on my PC might be Reader 8-related... only one way to find out.... uninstall it!
End rant.
How am I gonna read PDF files? Well, I found Foxit Reader. It's afree PDF reader from another PDF software company. According to this and this, it sounded too good to be true, so I just downloaded it, installed it, and whoa! Finally! A PDF reader that does just what I want it to do: read PDF files!
The latest version 2.0 is only 1.67 MB, compared to the 21 MB Reader 8 installer. It installs easily and very quickly. It doesn't have a tonne of so-called features that I almost will never ever use. The interface is simple. And most importantly, it opens all the PDF files I tested on (from tiny to huge) very very quickly. I should have looked for PDF reader alternatives even before Reader 7.
Huh? Why? Two words: It sucks. Why does it suck? Well, first off, Reader 7 adds something called the "Adobe Speed Launch" into your Windows startup folder. Reader 8 does that too in addition to also add something called "Adobe Reader Synchronizer". What does that do? It's supposed to synchronised shared documents or collaborative documents... uh... right... but I only use Reader to read PDF files, I don't care about these features. And I'm not alone seeing all the comments in this blog post.
For those of you who didn't even realise that Reader has "Adobe Speed Launch", here's a primer: It pre-loads part of Reader into your memory... regardless of whether you'd actually use Reader or not. As such, it hogs memory that it doesn't use and slows down Windows startup. What's worse is that the so-called "speed launch" gives an almost negligible improvement given the processing capabilities of even an "average" computer these days.
If Adobe really thinks that these are useful, it should be an option. How hard is it to make a little checkbox on the installer to ask whether people want to use it or not? A forceful approach is almost always a bad idea.
Do you know what's even worse about Reader 8? For some reason, it's check-for-update keeps creating weird directory names like "Updater5" on my hard disk. I was worried that my computer got infected by some kind of trojan or virus because I recently reinstalled it and was slow in getting an anti-virus software in place. Luckily for me, another commentor in the above blog post link confirmed that it Reader 8's problem. I'm beginning to think that strange slowdowns and unresponsiveness on my PC might be Reader 8-related... only one way to find out.... uninstall it!
End rant.
How am I gonna read PDF files? Well, I found Foxit Reader. It's afree PDF reader from another PDF software company. According to this and this, it sounded too good to be true, so I just downloaded it, installed it, and whoa! Finally! A PDF reader that does just what I want it to do: read PDF files!
The latest version 2.0 is only 1.67 MB, compared to the 21 MB Reader 8 installer. It installs easily and very quickly. It doesn't have a tonne of so-called features that I almost will never ever use. The interface is simple. And most importantly, it opens all the PDF files I tested on (from tiny to huge) very very quickly. I should have looked for PDF reader alternatives even before Reader 7.
Launchy
on Sunday, 8 April 2007
Do you find yourself going the same routine of traversing the Start menu of Windows daily? Go to Start, go to All Programs, go to some company name that provided you with the tool, and finally the launcher for the tool or application you want to execute. I found that pretty tedious and plain sucks.
Which is why I use the Windows XP Start menu pin-up, recent documents, the quick launch taskbar, and the desktop alot. I also use RK Launcher, a little docking program where you add shortcuts to it. But these shortcuts had shortcomings too. I have to manually set up all the shortcuts, for each computer that I use regularly.
Now I don't have to anymore. Check out Launchy, an application launcher for Windows. It automatically indexes your Start menu by default and all you need to do is hit ALT-Space to bring up its window, type in some combination of characters that match the application you want, and it'll find the application you want. Useful no? Especially so for a "keyboarder" like me. It's pretty too, with its own site for user-submitted skins. And it doesn't just indexes your Start menu. By default it supports the Firefox keywords I mentioned in my previous post! It also has it's own quick search for several useful sites plus a simple built-in calculator. Hate the daily digging down into your personal directory of files that's over 5 levels deep? Well, Launchy can browse directly to the directory you want; all you need to do is type out c: and use the tab key for auto-completion. That's not all! You can have Launchy index whatever directory you want, for whatever file extension you want. No more having to locate that one particular ebook or mp3 or movie that you have among thousands of similar files. And finally, you can even install Launchy on your pendrive and have it work (once you rebuild the index, which is fast) on any computer!
See also:
Which is why I use the Windows XP Start menu pin-up, recent documents, the quick launch taskbar, and the desktop alot. I also use RK Launcher, a little docking program where you add shortcuts to it. But these shortcuts had shortcomings too. I have to manually set up all the shortcuts, for each computer that I use regularly.
Now I don't have to anymore. Check out Launchy, an application launcher for Windows. It automatically indexes your Start menu by default and all you need to do is hit ALT-Space to bring up its window, type in some combination of characters that match the application you want, and it'll find the application you want. Useful no? Especially so for a "keyboarder" like me. It's pretty too, with its own site for user-submitted skins. And it doesn't just indexes your Start menu. By default it supports the Firefox keywords I mentioned in my previous post! It also has it's own quick search for several useful sites plus a simple built-in calculator. Hate the daily digging down into your personal directory of files that's over 5 levels deep? Well, Launchy can browse directly to the directory you want; all you need to do is type out c: and use the tab key for auto-completion. That's not all! You can have Launchy index whatever directory you want, for whatever file extension you want. No more having to locate that one particular ebook or mp3 or movie that you have among thousands of similar files. And finally, you can even install Launchy on your pendrive and have it work (once you rebuild the index, which is fast) on any computer!
See also:
Firefox Tips
on Thursday, 5 April 2007
Are you a Firefox user? If not, you might want to give it a try. Are you comfortable and content with using your mouse for everything? If yes, then I think you can stop reading. For those of you, like me, who prefer to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, read on. We use shortcuts for two reasons I think, either we just want to do things quicker or we are just lazy to take our hands off the keyboard and move it to the mouse to move cursor.
For starters, here are two very useful shortcuts:
That's it? That's the tip? Of course not. Next up is... bookmarks. We all know what browser bookmarks are. But did you notice a little field labeled "Keyword" when you add a new bookmark or open up the properties of a bookmark? (see image on the right)
Take a wild guess what it's for. And no, it's not for tagging the bookmark. If you create a bookmark like the one shown (or add a short keyword to a bookmark you already have), do the following and be pleasantly surprised:
Press CTRL-L, type gm, hit ENTER
Tada! Gmail login screen! (Replace "gm" with whatever keyword you decided on). Sheer convenience. Obviously you shouldn't add keywords to all your shortcuts, just add them to sites that you visit daily.
One last tip is about something called a "Quick Search". Give it a try first, press CTRL-L again and this time type "google
Another thing is, it's not limited to search engines. You can add whatever quick search you want. See the image on the right for the dictionary quick search. A quick CTRL-L and "dict
See also:
For starters, here are two very useful shortcuts:
- CTRL-L - this focuses on the location bar, or the URL address bar.
- CTRL-K - this goes to the little search bar on the top right.
That's it? That's the tip? Of course not. Next up is... bookmarks. We all know what browser bookmarks are. But did you notice a little field labeled "Keyword" when you add a new bookmark or open up the properties of a bookmark? (see image on the right)Take a wild guess what it's for. And no, it's not for tagging the bookmark. If you create a bookmark like the one shown (or add a short keyword to a bookmark you already have), do the following and be pleasantly surprised:
Press CTRL-L, type gm, hit ENTER
Tada! Gmail login screen! (Replace "gm" with whatever keyword you decided on). Sheer convenience. Obviously you shouldn't add keywords to all your shortcuts, just add them to sites that you visit daily.
One last tip is about something called a "Quick Search". Give it a try first, press CTRL-L again and this time type "google Another thing is, it's not limited to search engines. You can add whatever quick search you want. See the image on the right for the dictionary quick search. A quick CTRL-L and "dict
See also:
Guild Wars 2
on Tuesday, 27 March 2007
ArenaNet has announced the upcoming Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Guild War's first expansion (note: not standalone). Information regarding Guild Wars 2 were also announced. Exclusive interviews:
Much more details can be found in the PC Gamer May Issue #161, which has an exclusive article on the upcoming plans for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. A summary and lively discussion can be found here.
I'd rather not summarise all that I've read (I haven't got my hands on the magazine yet though) but I'm both excited and sad at the same time. Excited because the new promises ArenaNet is making all sound wonderful. Sad that I'm unable to transfer stuff over. But at least they're designing a feature in the upcoming GW: Eye of the North (GWEN! GW players would know the significance of that ;) will make sure that veterans get recognised for the time they spent in Guild Wars. I hope they get more details out soon. I'm dying to know more!
Much more details can be found in the PC Gamer May Issue #161, which has an exclusive article on the upcoming plans for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. A summary and lively discussion can be found here.
I'd rather not summarise all that I've read (I haven't got my hands on the magazine yet though) but I'm both excited and sad at the same time. Excited because the new promises ArenaNet is making all sound wonderful. Sad that I'm unable to transfer stuff over. But at least they're designing a feature in the upcoming GW: Eye of the North (GWEN! GW players would know the significance of that ;) will make sure that veterans get recognised for the time they spent in Guild Wars. I hope they get more details out soon. I'm dying to know more!
Audition
on Monday, 19 March 2007
Seeing that I'm kinda taking a break from Guild Wars, I actually started playing other games. Why did I break from Guild Wars? No Internet access for over a week. Why? Because lightning fried my modem, my router, and the network card socket on my motherboard... poor oh wallet of mine.
Anyway, about the only good thing about that is that I actually started playing other games :p Aside from continuing the campaign in Dragonshard that I started over a year ago and abandoned, and doing a little practicing on DotA, I actually registered for and tried out Audition.
My sister was pretty addicted to it so I got curious. Boy was it addictive. It's a dancing MMORPG where you compete with others in sort of dancing stage. How you dance is basically by hitting the direction keys in the sequence shown on the screen and being able to finish on the correct beat. So it's a game where finger-eye coordination is extremely important. After playing it for several hours (!), my fingers were pretty tired. Apparently, it's not as boring as I thought as I watched my sister play. Not a whole lot of play styles and content, but still pretty addictive. The forum for it is here.
Aside from not having much content, keyboard longevity is affected, not to mention finger-aches. The number of songs available isn't really that large. I keep hearing the same songs over and over on random mode. The patching software sucks. Each patch averages around 30-40 MBs! And they expect you to download all available patches in one go. Something fails while you downloading the last one of the set? Too bad, you have to start all over.
The game is being distributed and maintained by AsiaSoft. They utilize a sort passport system that gives you a master account for all AsiaSoft games (you still need to create individual game accounts). That's another of my peeves with it. Just to create my Audition account, I've suddenly increased the things I need to remember by 4 - the password to the passport account, an authentication PIN number to that account, a password to a playing account for AsiaSoft games, and a password for my Audition account... Crazy. It's worse than my banking accounts.
Anyway, about the only good thing about that is that I actually started playing other games :p Aside from continuing the campaign in Dragonshard that I started over a year ago and abandoned, and doing a little practicing on DotA, I actually registered for and tried out Audition.
My sister was pretty addicted to it so I got curious. Boy was it addictive. It's a dancing MMORPG where you compete with others in sort of dancing stage. How you dance is basically by hitting the direction keys in the sequence shown on the screen and being able to finish on the correct beat. So it's a game where finger-eye coordination is extremely important. After playing it for several hours (!), my fingers were pretty tired. Apparently, it's not as boring as I thought as I watched my sister play. Not a whole lot of play styles and content, but still pretty addictive. The forum for it is here.
Aside from not having much content, keyboard longevity is affected, not to mention finger-aches. The number of songs available isn't really that large. I keep hearing the same songs over and over on random mode. The patching software sucks. Each patch averages around 30-40 MBs! And they expect you to download all available patches in one go. Something fails while you downloading the last one of the set? Too bad, you have to start all over.
The game is being distributed and maintained by AsiaSoft. They utilize a sort passport system that gives you a master account for all AsiaSoft games (you still need to create individual game accounts). That's another of my peeves with it. Just to create my Audition account, I've suddenly increased the things I need to remember by 4 - the password to the passport account, an authentication PIN number to that account, a password to a playing account for AsiaSoft games, and a password for my Audition account... Crazy. It's worse than my banking accounts.
From Eclipse to Netbeans... and back
on Sunday, 18 March 2007
After a bit more use of Netbeans...
On the other hand, I did like several of the managers provided in Netbeans, particularly the Template Manager. Very useful and flexible. But on the whole, I think Netbeans is not for me, as it does not have features that I've come to expect when I'm working on something. I'll think wait for the much touted Netbeans 6 before trying out Netbeans again.
- There doesn't seem to be any window that shows all errors and warnings currently in the project. Which means any problems introduced from refactorings won't show up until I actually manually build the project.
- Maybe I'm just blind but the wizard for creating a new interface doesn't seem to allow me to specify a parent interface to extend from...
- Configuration for the autoformatting of code is very, very, limited. Taking my current company's code style, Netbeans is unable to produce a format that conforms to it.
- There doesn't seem to be any "quick fix" option for unrecognised classes that allows me to jump to the create class wizard with a simple shortcut.
- Trivial, but I can't collapse the empty packages in the hierarchy view. It's just a little unfamiliar I suppose, given that I'm used to the more space-conserving collapsible package tree in Eclipse.
On the other hand, I did like several of the managers provided in Netbeans, particularly the Template Manager. Very useful and flexible. But on the whole, I think Netbeans is not for me, as it does not have features that I've come to expect when I'm working on something. I'll think wait for the much touted Netbeans 6 before trying out Netbeans again.
From Eclipse to Netbeans
on Tuesday, 13 March 2007
I've been using Eclipse as my IDE of choice ever since I switch over from Netbeans version 3. But after attending the Sun Tech Days 2007 Kuala Lumpur, I can see that the latest release version, Netbeans 5.5, has been tremendously improved. I daresay that I think it's coming on par with the capabilities of Eclipse, even if you take MyEclipse into consideration. I'm actually giving Netbeans 5.5 a go with my current development work and first impressions are both good and bad. I'm not really attempting a critical and in-depth comparison of both IDEs (since I just started on using Netbeans) but just presenting how Netbeans impressed on me when compared to my experience on Eclipse.
I'll start with the negative impressions:
Biased? Yea, looks like it, since I'm way more familiar with Eclipse than Netbeans. But looking at the features list of Netbeans 6, it looks like those are just the polish Netbeans needs to make it much more persuasive for me.
EDIT: 15/3/07 Fixed the subversion issue on Netbeans.
I'll start with the negative impressions:
- Personalization and syntax coloring is something I'm particular about. Netbeans has very few customisation options and syntax coloring is very limited. But the good thing over Eclipse is that you can save the colour scheme as a profile, so that's a small plus.
- There's no easy way to change look-and-feel; have to much command line parameters. Although projects like this makes things much better.
- Seeing what compile errors I have is a pain in Netbeans. Code errors don't show up in the project or file hierarchy trees. I can only see errors in the current file I'm looking at and if I rebuild the project. Eclipse shows errors in the project tree and traces it from the offending file all the way to the root project container.
- "Find Usages" is very limited compared to the similar search references function in Eclipse. It also forces me to still have to click on "Next" before the search actually takes place. Why can't it search by default?
- There's no shortcut to jumping quickly to methods in a class. You have to either use the standard find text or use the navigator window. No biggie, but one gets used to being able to jump directly to a method from anywhere else in a class.
- I don't like the fact code errors don't show up immediately. Maybe it only checks for errors while you've slowed down your typing for better performance but it does mean I have to move my cursor back. The slight pause before the error appears is sometimes disruptive.
- I find the configuration options window baffling. Is it really necessary to separate basic and advanced? The basic version is much easier to use and navigate, but mostly useless. The options that really help with personalisation and customisation are all in the advanced. Can't better forms and dialogs be designed for the so-called advanced options?
- Speed. I just can't help but notice that Netbeans works much faster than Eclipse. It even exits much faster. This is a huge plus.
- I found the wide array of tools that comes with the basic installation very impressive. The additional packs are even better - the web designer, the mobility pack, the Java EE designers, the profiler... very nice.
- Built-in mapping for Eclipse shortcuts. Which really helps transition from Eclipse to Netbeans, although I'm using my own slightly-tweaked Eclipse keymap.
Biased? Yea, looks like it, since I'm way more familiar with Eclipse than Netbeans. But looking at the features list of Netbeans 6, it looks like those are just the polish Netbeans needs to make it much more persuasive for me.
EDIT: 15/3/07 Fixed the subversion issue on Netbeans.
Focus...
on Thursday, 8 February 2007
I am unfocused, unable to focus, fail to focus. How do I focus?
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