Another Day in the Antz Farm

Scientists in China say they have developed a new way of predicting earthquakes – by observing erratic behaviour in snakes.

 More on BBC News

This arvo, I joined Stanley Tan (MS Singapore ADE) to interview prospective Microsoft Student Partners (MSP) candidates from my Singapore alma mater – Temasek Polytechnic (TP). The interview panel was made up out 2 out-going TP MSPs, their MSP Lead – Wilson (from National University of Singapore – School of Computing), Stanley and myself.

It was an interesting experience to have an opportunity to compare my MSP interview process compared to SG. The SG interview process was done in person and consists of four phases: introduction, technology interests and knowledge assessment, a simple programming scenario and public speaking ability.

This experience gave me new insight on body language and interview engagement process. It also gave me a chance to witness and appreciate cultural differences between SG and AU students. I felt very privileged to be in a position to pick up on this knowledge as a Singaporean working in the Australian sub for a global company based in the USA.

We are now living in the Age of Globalisation 3.0

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Related link:

A summary of the 10 Flatteners and the book “The World is Flat” (wiki)

Today was a Black Wednesday for Asia’s telecommunication were severely disrupted after two powerful earthquakes the off the coast of Taiwan. The earthquakes damaged crucial undersea cables which formed as the backbone of much voice and data traffic.
This afternoon, I was in OMB to gain access to Microsoft Corp network, access were severely hampered and our email delivery was slow. It made me realised how dependent we are to the Internet, the world is so integrated.
Related Links
Internet access in Singapore severely affected by Taiwan quake (Channel NewsAsia)
Asia quakes damage cables; Internet, banks affected (Reuters)
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Singapore is such a small place, just within a span of two days I met two DPE Microsofties by chance. Wed, I met Kurt (the APAC EE Lead) and Fai (Malaysia ISV Evangelist) outside the context of work. Both of them were very kind and asked me about how I was coping in my role in AU despite my lack of direct work interaction in their areas.
This trip home felt different from my earlier trips back in SG. Somehow, there were part of it that felt like returning to a full circle. Maybe it is an intuition that I will be coming back to SG to start looking for a new job.

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Do you have a passion for globalisation, Web 2.0 and changing business practices? If so, Thomas Friedman’s latest book – The World is Flat is the book for you. Never have I read a printed book that is so up to date and balance and accurate in his analysis of today’s flatten global economy. If you want to really want to understand Web 2.0 (substitute the term Globalisation 3.0 with Web 2.0) from a business and technology perspectives, its promises and challenges, read this book.

Picked up on this link while I go thru my backlog of blog enties, thought it would be an interesting approach. I am not too sure how well it can be applied to other languages but it’s worth a read.

Lazy programming is a general concept of delaying the processing of a function or request until the results are needed. This concept has numerous applications, from the obvious to the obscure. Thinking in terms of lazy programming can help you rid your code of unneeded computation and restructure programs to be more problem-oriented.

–Lazy Programming by Jonathan Bartlett (IBM – developerWorks)

You can take a Singaporean out of Singapore but you can never taken out the Singaporean traits from a Singaporean.

And the top traits is our passion for good food and for the best food guide in Singapore and Australia – Beverly ’s blog (an ex-Microsoft intern too) is my number 1 pick.

Each entry comes with the makan (Singlish/ Bahasa Melayu: food) spot location pictures, complete address, contact numbers and even URL. Not to mention price guide and peer food quality reviews with comparable restaurants.

Beverly’s Blog -the essential online AU-SG Makan Sutra.

The Lobby from SPG is a “member services”blog from the Starwood Preferred Guests which features useful travel tips, useful reviews and gadgets information.

This is a well executed marketing blog which adds information value to it’s audience as well as highlighting the different interesting locations around the world. It usually ends of with a subtle recommendation of hotels from it’s group which I regard as an excellent way to promote their hotel and well as increase brand loyalty.

Check out their recent “New Year in New York” entry where they included a link to New York magazines (bringing an inference from a respected 3rd party) comprehensive guide to celebrating the New Year and left a mention of the W and Westin New York. Smart.

Disclaimer: This post is about my terrible experience with the iTunes software and the synch process.

I am a regular buyer of original CDs and I survived on digital copies for my music fix. My Windows routine was as simple as 1-2-3.

1. Put in a CD into my PC and run Windows Media Player
2. The CD details was provided, I confirmed the correct information was displayed and proceed to rip the CD into my external hard disk.
3. Play my ripped WMA files from start to finish.

It was a good routine. End of the day, I get my new CD ripped in a digital format I can take everywhere with me. Nice and flexible.

My iTunes routine

1. Put in a CD into my PC and run iTunes.
2. After verifying the right CD title was displayed, I agreed to rip the CD into the iTunes Music Library.

Issue 1: iTunes Music Library by itself does not allow me to move the ripped files around easily. I don’t even have the flexibility to determine the location of my destination folder.

3.   The source CD rip sequences was correct but the end results looks disastrous.

Issue 2: Tracks from the same album are scattered everywhere within the iTunes Library. What’s worst, iTunes Library don’t allow me to reorganised the scattered files.

I need my music collection organised. I cannot tolerated have orphan files scattered throughout my library. I’m not going to re-create a playlist for an album which I ripped from start till end.

The conversion speed from CD Audio to ACC (the only format supported by iTunes) is much slower compared to WMA conversion.

Please click on thumbnails for enlarge version.

4. Insert my external hard disk to convert more WMA files into iTunes Music Library. Duh! The USB external hard disk cannot be detected or seen in Windows Explorer. Need to use regedit hack from Microsoft KB to “recover” my USB hard disk.

Issue 4: I have to hack my registry each time to “recover” hard disk detection upon insert. I can’t do it everytime I use iTunes!

End of the story, I really like listening to music with my iPod Shuffle (Gen 2). It’s a beautiful device, the Al (wiki) casing feel so cool and sexy to hold.

However iTunes v7.0.2.16 is like the fat, ugly, slow step-sister (like in Cinderalla) and inflexible piece of software crap. It limits my flexibility and makes it hard and longer for me to get my music in digital format and limits them to 1 location.

Any iTunes regular users have any insight to share with me on how to solve the scattered files problem?

Everyone has a tech buddy, so do I. My online tech buddy is the Microsoft Support Knowledge Base (KB).

 I received a iPod Shuffle for Christmas this year and so I had to install iTunes. I was a bit weary of installing another media player, like I want to deal with another media standard too. Oh well

I installed iTunes, charged up my Shuffle (nicknamed “i-Berno”) and began to move my WMA from my external USB hard disk to the iTunes Music library. After a reboot, Windows Explorer doesn’t seem to detect my trusty external hard disk anymore. I suspect iTunes messed up my machine registry.

Crack up the trusty Microsoft Support Knowledge Base and found a simple registry hack from this KB article “A computer that is running Windows XP cannot detect a USB thumb drive, an Apple iPod, or an external hard disk drive“. Problem solved.

I’m going to spend the rest of this wash out day reading my new book and listening onto my shuffle.

– James Boddington

 Have you even seen this year’s summer (in the south hemisphere) snow report? Thought you read it wrong, nope! It’s snowing in Thredbo, right in the heart of summer “Summer: let it snow, let it blow, let it glow” (SMH)!  Still on the weather theme, Australia is currently experiencing one of the worst droughts ever. This drought is sending many farmers to brink of winding up their farms while consumers are at paying record prices for fresh produce.

Singapore on the other hand is quite the opposite tale. This year’s monsoon season has been very rough and we experienced record rainfalls which result unseen flood levels in certain parts of Singapore. Rain has been long and heavy for many parts during the day. From the picture below, you can observed that the downpour is so heavy till I can’t even see the Singapore National Stadium or city skyline from my room.

Last evening, I attended midnight Christmas mass in Novena Church (wiki) with my god-sister. This Church was always been my principal Church in Singapore but I didn’t have much pictures of it till last evening. There was the usual bumper turn out and the external cark park was converted into temporary “pews”.

Here are some pictures I took during mass: