BigEvilEmpire: Journal

Bondi Icebergs Club

BigEvilEmpire — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:42:08 PDT

Even if I do qualify to be a member, I am pretty sure I would not be brave enough to go swimming at the Bondi Icebergs Club. Never mind the freezing cold water, they take their swimming seriously. To be a full swimming member, one has got to swim three out of four Sundays for 5 years.

What I would want is to be there at the club on the cliff top overlooking the famous Bondi Beach, staring at the ocean as the waves repeatedly explode over at the defying sea wall. Preferably warmly clothed.

The amazing photo shown above is courtesy of Ross Zietz.

Flashcamp SF

BigEvilEmpire — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:44:31 PDT

My Friday night was spent at the FlashCamp SF. This is the second FlashCamp organized by Adobe and like its predecessor, it was held over at the Adobe San Francisco Office. For the uninitiated, the FlashCamps are free developer events focused on the Adobe Flash Platform.

This time, the event was mainly revolving around the next generation of the Flex SDK, code-named Gumbo. It was a huge night for the Flash community as Adobe presented a barrage of information on Flex 4, Flash Catalyst and the recently renamed Flash Builder.

FlashCamp came with a whole bunch of free swag: beta software (Flash Builder 4 Beta, Flash Catalyst 1.0 Beta and Flex 4), eboy stickers and a t-shirt.

For those who are yearning to lay your hands on the betas, it was alluded that they will be publicly released this coming Monday. Definitely watch for it over at the Adobe Labs.

The free t-shirt was surprisingly interesting and in all likelihood, the cream of the crop amongst the free swag.

It depicted a woman (presumably a personification of Photoshop) receiving a gift box from a suitor (predictably a male geek representing Flex). The gift box symbolizes the crown jewel of the next wave of Adobe software releases: the Flash Catalyst. All these done in eBoy-style pixel art.

I thought the illustration seemed pretty fitting, considering the role that Flash Catalyst fill, is essentially a tool that bridges the workflow between design and development. A gift from the developers to get the designers more involved.

I was a particularly happy attendee myself this time round mostly because my ticket won me a stash of ActionScript and Flex-related books at the raffle.

It was a total of 7 books, 5 of which from the O'Reilly series. Some of them were actually on my Amazon wish-list. Many thanks to Adobe and Mike Chambers who drew my raffle ticket. I can now strike these books off my list without spending a dime and they are definitely going into geek hoard. I am hopeful that the content in the Flex 3 books would still be applicable when Flex 4 is officially out.

The entire night was a series of informative sessions. Regretably for most, it was quite a challenge to hear the speakers amidst of all the ongoing chatter in the background. Despite attempts from the organizers to keep the volume down, it was really difficult to concentrate.

Generally, I think the event went quite well. Most people were pretty pleased about it and were typically curious about the new releases.

The Shareen and Joe Show

BigEvilEmpire — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:47:35 PDT

I have recently chanced upon a podcast done by some folks back in Singapore, "The Shareen And Joe Show". After listening to a few episodes, I feel that the podcast deserves more than a tweet.

As suggested by the title of the podcast, the people behind these daily episodes are Joe Augustin and Shareen Wong. Both of them were partners in crime as radio deejays for a radio station in Singapore. As as a result of an unfortunate incident, the duo departed from the radio station, moved on and started this podcast.

For someone miles away from home, this podcast is very heartwarming. The best part of it is that it has been tremendously entertaining and amusing. This podcast is my defense to why I have been laughing to myself during my daily commute to work. Both Joe and Shareen talks about everything and nothing, covering a wide range of topics from the current raves in Singapore to weird subjects like Joe's interpretation of Shareen's nightmare.

For any Singaporeans, whether you are overseas or not, this is a highly recommended podcast. Personally I find it a great way to stay in touch with things back home through this engaging and witty duo. So go on, give them your support and yourself a "keep-you-company-on-the-way-to-work" show (as Joe puts it), subscribe to "The Shareen and Joe Show" on iTunes or through their website!

Snowboarding In Tahoe

BigEvilEmpire — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:11:57 PST

Living on the equator means you do not get seasons. It is simply warm and humid all year round. No seasons also mean no snow. I grew up in Singapore (a little island on the equator) and the only experience I have of snow is what I see in movies or television programs. We don't quite get the white Christmas.

Yesterday, I felt snow.

Even better, I snowboarded. Something I always wanted to try; one more item off the list.

Ten things I learnt from snowboarding:

Kids are naturally and literally fearless.
You need waterproof pants.
You need thick knee pads.
You need thick butt cushions.
You cannot ski or snowboard if you have acrophobia.
Hardest part of snowboarding is getting up.
Snowboarding is like swimming, u get hungry fast.
Repeated falling on snow can hurt.
Slopes are way steeper at the peak.
You can still perspire like a pig even if it is cold.

Weekend in Kuala Lumpur

BigEvilEmpire — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:49:20 PST

Back home in Singapore for my Christmas vacation and next thing I know, I am off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the weekend! Many thanks to Eric and Qinxin for organizing this crazy pig-out trip to our northern neighbour.

It was a really simple weekend that consisted of the following activities in no particular order and occurrences: eating, shopping, sleeping and driving (getting lost in the road networks of KL). There was no itinerary, no crazy schedule to follow and no tourist attractions to hit. We just roamed where we wanted and kept our eyes peeled for food that we can sink our teeth into. My kind of fun!

We nearly visited the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which was more of an accident rather than anything intentional. I blame it on the ridiculous road system that had us going in circles. It also had the retarded GPS as an accomplice.

Despite the lack of a plan and a couple of navigational mishaps, we got along pretty fine in Kuala Lumpur. We had chicken noodles soaked in Chinese wine, really expensive tea, famous Nasi Lemak, extremely unhealthy BBQ chicken wings and a lot of Japanese food. Good times.

iPhone Podcast UI

BigEvilEmpire — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:31:13 PDT

With the iPhone 2.1 Software Update, Apple made quite a few improvements to the user interface. Some of the changes may actually slipped by unnoticed. I was listening to my podcasts on the iPhone and spotted one of these.

There is a visual indicator that shows you the "played" status of the podcast. The indicator is a full blue dot to show that you have not started listening. It turns into a half-dot when you have started but not finished with the podcast. This is definitely useful but I felt it could do a lot more and decided to have a go at improving it.

I would actually leverage on the dot to reveal more information. I like that the interface displays the playback as "7m Left" instead of "00:07 Left". That is a nice touch. However, with a slight indicator tweak, I now get a visual hint of the last playback position of the podcast.

What do you think?

Word Clouds From Wordle

BigEvilEmpire — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:53:15 PDT

Wordle is a really interesting visualization tool. It extracts keywords from a block of text and generate out "word clouds". I am mostly indifferent to generative stuff like this but Wordle is really quite fascinating.

I submitted BigEvilEmpire as a text source to Wordle and it literally gave me a tree. How nice.

Vacation at Tahoe and L.A.

BigEvilEmpire — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:53:06 PDT

I had a 2-week vacation recently, a really nice respite from work. I took the chance to visit Lake Tahoe, a place I heard so much about and really wanted to check it out. Los Angeles was thrown into the mix over the two weeks.

It was a 3-hour drive to Lake Tahoe and I slipped in a pit-stop at the City of Sacramento. I was actually quite curious about Sacramento. It is, after all, the capital of California. Apart from the Tower Bridge, that was about the only interesting thing about the city. The 1-hour stopover did not really thrill me. Nothing much going on around the city. Boring.

I was promised great scenery at Lake Tahoe and I was not disappointed.

Lake Tahoe is a freshwater lake located along the border of California and Neveda, a good 250 kilometres northeast of San Francisco. The lake is surrounded by mountains on all sides. It is 514 metre deep and that makes it the second-deepest lake in America. The entire area around the lake oozes peace and serenity. It was so relaxing and quiet to just stand there, soaking in the breadth of the scenery. All troubles shriveled and died on sight. The spectacle was breathtaking and I think it would be even better during the winter.

Give me a lake-facing cabin with high speed internet access and I will retire here.

The following week after Lake Tahoe was my third trip down to Los Angeles. You always hear a lot of people spending summer at the beaches in L.A. This trip, I finally managed to get to be one of those and visit Venice Beach proper. It was relaxing to sprawl on the beach and soak in the summer rays. Happy times.

Venice beach has got a very vibrant feel to it, With its Venice Broadwalk, paddle tennis courts, basketball courts and all kinds of facilities, it was bustling with activities all day long. You cannot help but to feel chirpy.

A perfect venue to laze the day away and people (or mostly babe) watch. It is totally like one of the beach settings portrayed in Baywatch.

I was coerced (or convinced, depending on who you talk to) into visiting Disney California Adventure Park, a theme park right next to Disneyland Park in Anaheim.

This place validated my views that kids have absolutely no concept of fear. It does not exist in their young minds. For me, on the other hand, it is a whole different story. Took me a while to get hold of my nerves. Perhaps a sign that I am getting too old for such rides. To my credit, I was actually desensitised to it all after my third California Screamin' ride.

We took a lot of adrenaline-pumping and nerve-wrecking rides for the entire day. The rides at California Screamin' and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror are unmistakably not for the faint-hearted.

You are warned!

In between bumming at the beach and screaming my lungs off at the theme park, I also dropped by at the museum over at the Getty Center. I was not big on the whole art culture affair but the architecture of the center was well worth the trip. It was quite a exhilarating geometrical experience; the melding of lines, circles and rectangular blocks. Richard Meier did a great job.

I have my issues with Los Angeles. The entire place is just way too huge; makes it very bleak to live here. I am too used to living in a compact city, filled with tall skyscrapers everywhere. This vast emptiness scares me. People spend half their day on the freeways just commuting between places. it is at least 45 minutes of driving between each stop. Even though, I am usually quite oblivious to the environment, the air quality here is bad and the smog gets to me.

Nasal issues aside, overall it was still an extremely enjoyable vacation. I was really looking forward to the break. Good fun.

More photos can be found at my photosets on Flickr: Trip to Lake Tahoe and Trip to Los Angeles.

Meet the Luna Racer

BigEvilEmpire — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:29:00 PDT

It is official. I am addicted to buying shoes. Just got myself another pair of Nikes. This time, it is one of the newest designs from Nike, specially made for the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Ladies and gentleman, meet the Luna Racer.

The science behind the engineering of these shoes is incredible. Nike married two of the most amazing technology together: Flywire and Lunarlite foam.

This baby only weighs a mere 155 grams but yet provides great support for the feet. The Lunarlite foam, Nike's most advanced cushioning system is amazingly comfortable. I am always curious about the motivation behind shoe designs and was totally enthralled by the designer interview for this pair of shoes over at Nike Labs. In the interview, the designer responsible for the innovation shares more about the intricacies of the design and technologies invested in these shoes.

And yes. I am not running in these. I will leave the running to the Olympians.

Cycling to Tiburon

BigEvilEmpire — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:54:26 PDT

In the past ten months, I have had many firsts. Last Thursday was another one. I had a company picnic over at Paradise Beach County Park, Tiburon. The more exciting first was that a bunch of coworkers organized a cycling trip to the park and I joined them.

Putting some things into perspective. Cycling is, of course, not a first for me. However, the route and the distance were indeed firsts for me. Tiburon is located at Marin County, north of San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Cycling across this famous tourist landmark is also a first for me.

Hmm. Okay seems like I failed my math, last Thursday had more than one first for me.

The entire route from my apartment to the park is around 20 miles (around 32 kilometers). Cycling is definitely not one of my strengths so this is definitely a big deal for me and my legs.

The whole route happened over two excruciating hours. My lungs and legs burned and went into overtime. I was reminded umpteen times by the punishing uphill slopes how unprepared I am.

For the most part I was huffing and puffing my way, trying to keep up with the group. I was consistent... consistently last in the pack.

Lucky for me I had really patient coworkers who made numerous stops and waited for me to catch up. Many thanks to Charles for organizing the whole trip and being so patient with me along the way. He literally waited, made sure I was able to catch up and did not get lost along the way.

The second leg of the trip was a lot shorter for some of us.

After the picnic has ended, we cycled to the Tiburon Ferry. The route ended there for three of us where we waited for the ferry service back to the Ferry Building at San Francisco. After shepherding us to the ferry, the rest of the group pushed on and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge back to city.

I was totally exhausted, the entire body was aching in retaliation but I am definitely glad I went for it. A good first.