Yen Kai's Idea Cast

Lazarus reviewed

yenkai — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:46:16 +0800

Having dabbled with Lazarus for a month, i can conclude that Lazarus is a viable RAD platform. Here are some of the features of Lazarus/Free Pascal that make application development easy (in comparison to the Java platform):

S$ to appreciate

yenkai — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:13:27 +0800

MAS has just announced it will “increase the slope of its policy band slightly for a modest and gradual appreciation of the Singapore dollar”. Two days before the announcement, the USD/SGD rate already started to decline from the recent high of 1.26. This bodes well for home loan rates, where SOR has already fallen below Sibor for 3 weeks. Given the Fed’s apparent commitment to keep rates low through 2014, which is actually just a forecast and not set in stone, it appears that interest rates will probably remain subdued for a while at least. Meanwhile, despite repeated attempts to suppress oil price, it managed to stay above US$102. This could be a sign of QE3?

Oil price tussle

yenkai — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:00:53 +0800

It’s been a tug-of-war on oil price recently that saw oil price see-sawing. Here’s the chart showing oil price movement over the past week:

CRUD at the speed of light

yenkai — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:51:07 +0800

At the request of a friend, i started working on a small application to meet a specific need of his business, out of fun mostly. Part of the fun to me was to find out the fastest way to get the application development done.

Libor rigged

yenkai — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:45:34 +0800

The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) came into the limelight recently. As mentioned in the news articles, the US Dollar Libor affects the cost of borrowing $10 trillion worth of loan and another $350 trillion in derivatives.

SOR falls below 0.4%

yenkai — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:10:47 +0800

The fall in USD/SGD exchange rates over the last few days (from 1.3 to 1.256), coupled with the Fed’s commitment that they will hold rates low through to at least late 2014 resulted in a significant fall in the SOR. As an analyst in the article points out, “What they’re doing is setting the table for some sort of additional monetary easing”.

Truly Useful Android Apps

yenkai — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:49:50 +0800

I’ve been wanting to write this article for some time but interestingly, i’ve just lost my Android phone! So this is a bit like a post-mortem dump. After the excitement of getting a new phone and experimenting with Apps has worn out, the Apps i found myself using frequently were:

What to do when you lose your phone

yenkai — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:17:09 +0800

Sigh. Buy a new one. Sad to say, i lost my phone barely just two must months after losing my laptop, though this time not due to my own fault. I think the greater loss in these incidences is the weakness of the persons who picked up the laptop or phone who decided to keep it for themselves rather than return them to their owner.

Don’t take security for granted

yenkai — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:02:33 +0800

It seems strangely coincidental, my webhosting account was suspended for almost a full day due to the presence of suspicious malicious scripts (which were actually uploaded by myself), and this happens around the same time that 400 DBS/POSB customers experienced ATM fraud and NUS servers were hacked into.

UOB Gold and Silver Prices chart launched

yenkai — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:51:41 +0800

Since i have just opened both the UOB Gold and Silver savings accounts recently, i decided to create a chart to track the prices. Though charts for spot prices of Gold and Silver are available, they are denominated in USD. The prices as published by UOB probably has some transaction fee built into it, but nevertheless, they are useful for tracking the movement of Gold and Silver prices in SGD, not just for those who actually hold such accounts. So, there you go, the UOB Gold and Silver Prices chart!