Noughts

Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12 Suite coupon code

2012-09-08T14:43:00.001+08:00

In the midst of migrating Windows 7 from HD to SSD, and found this nifty tool called
Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 2.0. Decided to buy the whole suite, and found that there's a discount for it. Use coupon code ASPO_NV_20OFF when checking out

Playing Rage of Bahamut on an incompatible Andoid phone

2012-09-02T00:44:00.000+08:00

Want to play Rage of Bahamut on your Android phone, but found out it appears in Google Play as incompatible? Well, here's a way to install it.

Download the APK. (Version 1.6.5.10 as of 02-Sep-2012)
Transfer it to your phone, preferably to the SD card. Android sometimes get wonky about where you can install your app from.
Allow installation of non-market apps. On Froyo or Gingerbread, go to Settings>> Applications>>Tick"Unknown sources". On Ice Cream Sandwich, go to Settings>> Security>>Check "Unknown sources".
Use some sort of file explorer or app manager to find the APK and install it.
Play the game :) When the game starts, it will tell you that your device is not supported, but you should still be able to proceed as normal.
If this helps you, please enter my referral code ( vhv85153 ) at the end of the tutorial! You'll get some in-game items and a rare card as well :)

Have fun!

Adonit Jot Pro Stylus

2012-04-28T17:29:00.001+08:00

I've caught the Draw Something bug recently. I liked to doodle when I was in lectures back in the past, so this game is a nice distraction when I'm on my daily commute. However, drawing with my fat finger doesn't give me as much satisfaction. So I got an Adonit Jot Pro stylus so I can express myself better.

The rubberised grip is comfortable and it's not too light-weight, so it feels quite like a quality pen. The tip slides smoothly across my phone's touch surface, theres no danger of scratching it. There's a transparent disc at the tips as well so it's not entirely frictionless, making it easier to draw.

It just feels that much better when you can execute your ideas as you want them.

Lol.

Google Finance: Cash-linking all transactions

2012-04-15T16:42:00.002+08:00

I've been using Google Finance to keep track of my transactions in US stocks. Its a pretty nifty tool, and it's simple to use. However, one feature that is sorely lacking is the ability to mark all the transactions in your portfolio as cash-linked. I've come up with a simple script to do this. Just copy and paste the following code while you're in the transactions page of your portfolio, and press "Enter". One thing to take note is that your browser may remove the "javascript:" part of the script. If this happens, just type it in and continue.

javascript:var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName("input");var tickAll = function(){for (var i=0; i<inputs.length; i++){var input = inputs[i];if (input.name.indexOf("edit_is_cash_synced")>=0){input.checked="checked";}} alert("Done");};tickAll();

Thoughts on Charlie Rose's interview with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg

2011-11-20T18:38:00.001+08:00

Really insightful interview by Charlie Rose with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Some thoughts after watching the interview:

Facebook's strategy - cooperation vs competition
It seems like most of the bigwigs in the tech industry are engaging in multiple fronts of war with some other company. Apple is having this iPhone/iPad war with Google/Amazon/Microsoft, and another dimension of this is the iTunes vs Google Market/Amazon. Google/Amazon/Microsoft is also into cloud computing, putting it in direct competition with Oracle, Salesforce, Rackspace. The list goes on and on. TechCrunch has a great article on the challenges faced by Google. It does seem that other tech giants face similar issues as they expand the ranges of their products and services.

Meanwhile, Facebook has really just stuck to one product/service as they grow. What we see here is a laser-sharp focus on their core competency. And rather than spend the resources to fight off the other tech heavy-weights, Facebook is making the effort to ensure they have their finger in every pie out there. Additionally, by opening up it's platform architecture to other developers/companies, it allows a rich user experience where users can not only socialize, but also to enjoy games, music, videos and services that they couldn't have otherwise. By enhancing the experience, it makes users find Facebook so much more addictive.

But while Facebook has no intention of getting into a fight, Google is taking the fight to them in the form of Google+. While Google hasn't been particularly successful with their social networking projects in the past, no one can really write them off given the amount of resources and talent they possess.

Employing talented engineers
Every company in Silicon Valley wishes to hire more talented engineers than there are available. Zuckerberg and Sandberg are pointing to both the US education system failing to produce enough engineers and immigration policies that restrict the number of engineers they can employ. As they said in the video, it's first, second and third on their priority list.

This is an interesting problem because companies in Singapore also have problems with finding enough engineers, and fewer Singaporeans study engineering or stay in the industry. Former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister's Office, Mr Ngiam Tong Dow is wary of Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech. As he wisely notes, we cannot become a knowledge-based economy except through science and technology.

Sonic Generations Cutscene 01 - Abducted Friends

2011-11-12T02:13:00.001+08:00

I've gotten the PC version of Sonic Generations from Steam, and man it's been a blast! The game brings you two Sonics - Classic and Modern. Classic Sonic basically plays like a 2D platformer while Modern is 3D, but the graphics are rendered in glorious 3D for both.

Why are there 2 Sonics? Well, here's a little clip to give you some hints.

Get iT @ Expo and Metro Expo Sale

2011-11-05T18:42:00.000+08:00

I got some hands on for Sonic Generations at a game store the other day, it's pretty fun so I got it from Steam. I decided to get a Logitech F710 at the PlayCraft game fair at Expo to play it.

What did I see there? Fifa 09, Left 4 Dead (without the 2), Company of Heroes (good game, but dated). You get the idea. While the PC offerings were weak, the games for console appear to be better. But, no Logitech. No Razer. So I just roamed about for while.

Turns out there's a Metro Expo Sale a few halls down, so it was a good chance to find a replacement for my beat up wallet.

100% Bug Powered Smartphone

2011-10-20T21:54:00.001+08:00

No one likes bugs in the smartphones's OS or apps, but what about an actual phone powered by real bugs? Check out Qualcomm's video where a circus of bugs perform tricks and power up a phone!

Dead Fantasy - Gee

2011-10-15T02:44:00.000+08:00

SNSD's Gee is one of the most overplayed songs in recent times, but it's still interesting to see the girls of Final Fantasy and Dead Or Alive dance to beats of Gee.

Google Finance: Bug when imported transactions with value of 500

2011-10-08T14:25:00.000+08:00

I've been using Google Finance to keep track of my shares and it's been a very useful tool. Today I've discovered a bug in the system when I tried to import transactions into my portfolio.

The number of shares is greyed out for the value of 500, the 450 is in black. If you play around with the column header, you'll realize for purchase price and commission, 500 will still be greyed out and 450 will be black. When you try to import them, an error will occur. It's one of those very common bugs for all those doing programming.

I've already sent in an email informing the Google guys about the bug, hope they'll fix it soon :)

Learn almost anything for free.

2011-09-18T16:11:00.000+08:00

One of the traits of a great teacher is that he can take an idea, distil it's essence, and communicate it to his audience in an easy to understand way. Recently, I've found such a mentor at the Khan Academy. Basically it's this site with a vast collection of Youtube videos (more than 2400 at this junction) on a whole lot of diverse topics, all created by one man - Salman Khan. Most of the videos are just him speaking in the background, along with some doodling on screen, there's no fancy animation or things like that to distract you.

Some may question if you can ever learn something useful from these short clips. But hey, if even Bill Gates is a fan, this guy must be doing something right.

Danny MacAskill - Way Back Home

2011-05-15T12:41:00.000+08:00

An amazing video showcasing excellent cycling skills and beautiful scenery and landscapes.

Danny MacAskill - "Way Back Home" from Dave Sowerby on Vimeo.

Who cried during campaigning in GE 2011?

2011-05-07T03:27:00.002+08:00

One thing that surprised me during the General Election campaigning was how many people were crying. I don't think there was any of that last time round. Here's a round-up of the emotional candidates. I think there may be more tears after tallying vote count today.

PAP, Lim Boon Heng, when refuting claims about groupthink within the PAP.
Source

PAP, Lim Swee Say, when he sang along with residents at a farewell party thrown by residents at Commonwealth Crescent.
Source

PAP, Khaw Boon Wan, when he recalled residents asking him how he was after his heart bypass surgery.
Source

WP, Watson Chong Cham Weng, when he disclosed the resistance he faced from his family when they learnt he was joining the opposition.
Source
Video

NSP, Nicole Seah, twice. First, when she spoke with a female resident in MacPherson who was facing financial problems. Second, when she recounted the incident in a rally.
Source
Video

Worker's Party GE rally @ Bedok Stadium (30 Apr 2011)

2011-04-30T22:18:00.000+08:00

Some scenes from the rally.

The Brothers Mario

2011-02-27T13:27:00.000+08:00

Saw this cool machinima on the Mario Bros, and had to share this. It's what happens when you cross the classic game with GTA.

Cheer Chen Qizhen - A Piece Of Summer II ( 陈绮贞 - 夏季练习曲 )

2010-11-28T19:30:00.000+08:00

Some selected photos from Cheer Chen's memorable concert on 13 Nov 2010 at the Max Pavilion, taken using Panasonic TZ-10.

Deleting Windows system folders on an old hard drive

2010-11-07T21:13:00.000+08:00

I had to install Windows 7 on a new hard drive after my computer died. The installation went well and I wanted to reclaim some hard disk space from the hard disk where I had installed Vista. However, I couldn't delete some of the system folders. If you're having the same problem, you can try what I did.

Right-click the folder.

From the context menu, click on "Properties".

Click on the "Security" tab.

Click on the "Advanced" button.

Click on the "Owner" tab.

Click on the "Edit" button.

Change the owner to the current logged in user. If user is not found, try to find it by clicking on the "Other users or groups" button.

Check the box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects".

Click on the "Apply" button.

An alert box will appear with the message "If you have just taken ownership of this object, you will need to close and reopen this object's properties before you can view or change permissions.". Click on the "OK" button.

Click on the "OK" button.

Click on the "OK" button.

When you are back in the "Security" tab, select the "CREATOR OWNER" option from the "Group or user names" combo box.

Click on the "Edit" button.

If the box for "Full control", "Allow" is not checked, check it. Click on the "Apply" button.

Click on the "OK" button.

Click on the "Ok" button.

Now you should be able to delete the folder.

Replica Island project setup

2010-10-31T22:14:00.000+08:00

I was trying to run the Replica Island in the Android emulator, but I needed to setup the project correctly before I could proceed. Well, here's what I did.

Before everything else, make sure you've installed the Android SDK, Eclipse ADT, installed the relevant Android packages (install all if you're unsure), created the AVD and installed a subversion client (I'm using Subclipse).

Check out code
From trunk from http://replicaisland.googlecode.com/svn
Minimally, you will need to check out the "res" and "src" folders seperately.

Fix the xml in the "res" project.
Turns out there's some problem with apostrophes here.
This may be fixed in the future versions of the code, if so, just skip this step.
First, find "mustn't" in strings.xml in the values folder. Replace with "mustn\'t".
Second, find "I'll" in wanda.xml. Replace with "I\'ll".

Create a new Android project.
For project name, you can put anything. (I used "ReplicaIsland")
Check the "Create new project in workspace" radio button.
Check the "Use default location" checkbox. Else, specify your project location.
Select the Build Target. I checked Android 1.6.
Specify the application name as "Replica Island".
Specify the package name as "com.replica.replicaisland".
Click the "Finish" button.

Move the files to correct folders
Delete folders in the "res" in the "ReplicaIsland" project.
Copy all the folders inthe "res" folder checked out from SVN into the "res" folder in the "ReplicaIsland" project.
Copy all the Java files in the "src" folder checked out from SVN into the "com.replica.replicaisland" package in the "ReplicaIsland" project.

Replace the contents of AndroidManifest.xml
From http://replicaisland.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/AndroidManifest.xml

Finally run the project as an Android application.

And there you have it! The emulator should start up and Replica Island will start to run.

Links dump 11-Oct-2010 to 17-Oct-2010

2010-10-17T08:09:00.000+08:00

The Seven Wastes of Software Development

This talks about reducing the costs of developing software from a process-driven perspective. The seven wastes highlighted are:

Partially Done Work

Extra Features

Relearning

Handoffs

Delays

Task Switching

Defects

As a programming grunt, I can readily identify with the problems highlighted. Basically the series talks about delivering value to customers and eliminating overheads while delivering software to the customer. These overheads are what constantly pisses off programmers. Unchecked-in, untested codes. Lost of domain knowledge. Unexplainable design decisions. Customer requests not correctly captured. Multi-tasking. Long-standing bugs that are just uncovered. The list goes on.

This is a must read for all involved in the business of building software.

Replica Island

Replica Island is a free, open-source game for Android. I'm interested in designing some simple games but I've no experience doing such things. This website is great as source codes are provided for people to use some reference. The developer notes are also enlightening, tracing the design decisions and problems faced by Google developer, Chris Pruett. One of the most important sources of knowledge on Android game development.

chmod -x chmod

A puzzler for system administrators, what can you do if you remove the execute permission for the program that changes file permissions, aka chmod? Assume a data center environment and no Internet connection. Very interesting solutions provided.

Partially Done Work

Extra Features

Relearning

Handoffs

Delays

Task Switching

DefectsPartially Done Work

Extra Features

Relearning

Handoffs

Delays

Task Switching

Defec

Important task completed – lessons learnt II

2010-08-28T22:39:00.000+08:00

Recently I've been involved in a change request that modified some data that is returned to a web service client.

There was a bug that occurred whenever the stub made a remote service call, there was a conflict in the security algorithms being used. Even after googling, I still couldn't figure out what the problem was.

After some futile investigation, my colleague advised me to print out the security providers as additional providers may have been loaded during the remote service call.

So I did something like

		Provider[] providers = Security.getProviders();
		for (Provider p: providers)
		{
			System.out.println(p);
		}

before and after the call, and true enough, there are security providers being dynamically added! So I called Security.remove(providerName) for those additional ones and lo and behold, it works! This is something totally new to me as I've not done much work on this aspect of Java programming before.

While debugging the problem, I realized it's sometimes more convenient to check the existence of environment variables rather than playing around with the program arguments.


#To get the environment variable in Unix
echo $PATH

#To get the environment variable in DOS/Windows
echo $PATH

#To set the environment variable in Unix
export VARIABLE=value  # for Bourne, bash, and related shells
setenv VARIABLE value  # for csh and related shells

#To set the environment variable in DOS/Windows
set VARIABLE=value

More info can be found at this Wiki.

Missed 4 trains last Friday during morning rush hour

2010-08-01T21:31:00.000+08:00

SMRT CEO Saw Phai Hwa says that even though trains are crowded during peak hours, people can still board the trains if they choose to. Well, there was certainly not much choice last Friday. I had to stand by the side and watch 4 trains whizz past me. All of them pulled into Bedok MRT station nearly filled to the brim. And the platform was nearly half-full with passengers going toward the city. Only some of them manged to squeeze in. Considering that there only a handful of stations east of Bedok, you can guess how bad it is for the rest of the passengers further down the eastern part of the East-West line.

Random checks with my friends seems to suggest that the congestion already started before 8.30am.

Challenger setting up shop at Bedok Point

2010-07-16T09:25:00.000+08:00

Taken from their company announcement on SGX. A piece of good news to me, I'm usually too lazy to go down to Sim Lim

So around my area, there's quite a few branches. Excluding the upcoming one, there's one in Tampines 1, one in Eastpoint Mall, one in Parkway Parade

http://info.sgx.com/webcorannc.nsf/AnnouncementLast3Months/92D6AC4B193A94274825774400246E2A?opendocument#

World Cup 2010 on free-to-air channels

2010-06-11T07:59:00.000+08:00

With the World Cup around the corner, I dug out my trusty A-B converter again to tune in to the Indonesian channels. The reception is a bit grainy but still acceptable. And it's way cheaper than the $94.16 you have to shell out for Starhub and Singtel's World Cup package.

The good news is that I'm getting pretty good quality on Malaysia's TV1 and TV2, so I can watch that as well. As I said before, if our neighbours can provide us with free World Cup coverage, why can’t the local channels do the same?

Spamming the word "professional" makes you look quite the opposite

2010-05-01T09:22:00.000+08:00

Just spotted this comment, which I will mark as spam.

Couple of days back I have started my local recruiting agency and now i am looking for some good highly professional place that is dedicated in placement of professionals, that can help me to expand my business of recruiting. I am also having many professional candidates looking for professional jobs and I also look for professional companies that require professional candidates from different areas right from restaurant jobs to highly trained engineers job and also management jobs. Does anyone know about anything nice place?

That's 6 "professional"s in 2 sentences. Wow. Besides showing a lack of vocabulary, the author also trips up on his/her grammar.

Edsger W. Dijkstra's manuscripts

2010-04-24T20:48:00.000+08:00

Edsger W. Dijkstra should be a familiar name to any computer science student, since one of the most important algorithms, Dijkstra's algorithm, is taught in graph theory.

Besides being a brilliant computer scientist, he's also written some articles regarding the computer science discipline and the computer industry. Click here for the link.

As such, most of what he covers are quite esoteric to those without any programming experience. Case in point, when I first started programming, I had to get used to the fact that in many languages, numbering starts at zero. Ie, the the first item in a list is indexed as 0, the second item is indexed as 1, and so on. An interesting view I discovered is that according to him, many mathematicians view computer science in poor light, and these are usually the poorer mathematicians.

My favourite piece is The Humble Programmer.

Some quotes:

On poor mathematicians:

I gave the puzzle as a sobering exercise to one of the staff members of the Department of Mathematics at my University, because he expressed the opinion that programming was easy. He violated the above rule and, being, apart from a pure, perhaps also a poor mathematician, he started to look for interesting, non-obvious properties

On poor mathematicians again:

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

On learning:

We are all shaped by the tools we use, in particular: the formalisms we use shape our thinking habits, for better or for worse, and that means that we have to be very careful in the choice of what we learn and teach, for unlearning is not really possible.

On the Internet's impact on computer science:

No, I'm afraid that computer science has suffered from the popularity of the Internet. It has attracted an increasing —not to say: overwhelming!— number of students with very little scientific inclination and in research it has only strengthened the prevailing (and somewhat vulgar) obsession with speed and capacity.

On the power of machines:

Machine capacities now give us room galore for making a mess of it. Opportunities unlimited for fouling things up! Developing the austere intellectual discipline of keeping things sufficiently simple is in this environment a formidable challenge, both technically and educationally.

On society's expectations:

.....machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming had become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products. To put it in another way: as the power of available machines grew by a factor of more than a thousand, society's ambition to apply these machines grew in proportion, and it was the poor programmer who found his job in this exploded field of tension between ends and means. The increased power of the hardware, together with the perhaps even more dramatic increase in its reliability, made solutions feasible that the programmer had not dared to dream about a few years before. And now, a few years later, he had to dream about them and, even worse, he had to transform such dreams into reality!