n305er Industries

Man I’m bored blogging all by myself without any active blogging friends to link to and to comment to. Everyone is into Facebook only…

Just a few weeks ago, I attended a Buka Puasa Event organized by National Instruments. It was an annual event where they will host a product and innovation sharing session and then Buka Puasa when it’s time to Break Fast.

The problem is not the event. Although the agenda (Green Engineering) is boring, there is the most obvious bad attitude that Malaysians show during that day. The event was supposed to start Sharp at 3pm with some welcome and introduction speech followed by breaks and demo sessions until 7pm. At 3.30pm, the amount of people who showed up could be counted using our 10 fingers. A pathetic amount given that NI is a major Engineering support company and this event should attract and generate lots of ideas, questions and discussions among potential education organizations, potential business partners and engineers.

However, the event just went on without the full audience anyway and around 6.30pm, when it’s about time for the free buffet, the Hall suddenly become 90% full.

Shame on the Malaysian Culture!

Would you like a toilet that tells you if you’re healthy or not every time you take a dump? Japan’s leading toilet maker, Toto did just that. The “intelligent toilet” has a built in scale on the floor, and armband to check your blood pressure and a receptacle to collect and analyze your urine sample.

The information will be sent to your computer, which you can then email the data to your doctor.

Japan is already a country with the most advanced toilet technology ranging from sound and smell management and automatic cleaning systems. This toilet will sure add to their profile. I wonder if they might create a toilet with a built in fridge so we can eat some ice-cream while doing our “business”.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iiFjXssh46TJTgbIidhTOoq8TFoQ

Right now, It doesn’t matter if you talk about the opposition coalition party or the ruling coalition party in Malaysia. Both these groups have something in common which I really think it’s a waste and I really think both parties are not really suited to govern Malaysia long term.

The issue is their arguments. Have you ever read the newspapers for the past 5 years? Anything related to politics will always have some statement either directly or indirectly insulting the opposite party. Everything they try to do in order to gain popularity, fame and trust is to make the citizen distrust the opposite party.

While in other countries, political arguments are not about blaming each other parties and finding their faults. Instead, they challenge each other party’s ideas and policies to see which is more efficient and practical. Then voters get to choose how they want the country they live in to move ahead. They don’t need to vote because the other party is a snake or traitor or just racists, they just vote because the other have better ideas.

When will we have such a good democratic practice in Malaysia?

So in the programming world, sometimes a project might be too big or too long term to work or support the system alone. Therefore, we need to work with several people who “knows” programming as well.

There’s where problems arise. A lot of them thinks their system is way superior then others and their skills are really good enough to brag about. Sure, if you can understand a messy coding in the first place and make it more messy and still make it work correctly, then you might think the same. Any suggestion that me and my friend to rebuild the system in order to standardize it into a systematic, modular and easy to understand program was all laughed at with the excuse that it’s actually making it more complicated and not piratical at all.

Now that they have actually seen a real systematic program and are forced to work on it (The system was programmed by someone else), they praised it so much that they have forgotten all their laughters at our suggestions before…

Even now, any other further suggestions by us were met with the same ignorance and laughters.

There’s a few things I want to note about my current working environment. Some you may find funny.

1. Water leaks through the ceiling.

2. Flooded puddles at the car park

3. Pictures of products we don’t sell or support anymore everywhere!

4. Cables everywhere. Very messy, very dangerous, and they call themselves 5s complient.

5. There were some rats running around and died in one of the ceiling panels. It stinks.

6. They rather rent and maintain other people’s building then to develop the empty plot of land they have.

7. I have 2 access badges. Everyone else has only 1. Because they have 2 different types of door scanners and don’t have money to replace all the old ones to the new badge system.

8. 2GB of RAM and Windows XP still considered engineering spec laptop.

9. My cubicle is smaller then others. If that’s not bad enough, the cubicle only have half the surface area for me to put things on it.

10. Can’t find a proper toilet to shit. All toilet seats here bites!

I’m not sure if it’s the connection here or my web host. But the pages seems to be loading really slow for the past few months already.

Is the server getting overcrowded or the service getting worse?

In a new department now, but things weren’t as good as expected. I got ill for 1 week on the second week on my new job and had been popping Clarinase and Paracetamol like candies (Within dosage limit) for the past week on top of vitamin C, Garlic oil and Fish Oil supplements. The only thing which helped me feel better was sleep and sleep is a luxury for me since most employers here just still want us to come to work even when we’re sick.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of ideas going through my head lately and also some of the plans were discussed before with some of my friends. Among them, starting an online business, and getting side income via working freelance as a web developer and designer. But there are a lot of things that I needed to learn first and most of them probably involves improving my coding skills and gaining some knowledge about starting our own business.

There’s also plans about travel some time to play. (Yes yes! FINALLY!) Well, going to Genting Highlands will be good to release some stress and some vacation plans on January… Something different from routine lifestyle.

But besides play and work, probably the thing worrying me most will be studies. I’ve gone ahead and registered for tutorial classes for Engineering Council part 2. Part 2 is equivalent to an engineering degree but does not have the luxury of a normal part assignment part exam total score. All pass and fails are based on the exam and it fully tests our knowledge and maths skills without the chance of gaining points with research through assignments.

The worrying part isn’t if I can make it or not on any particular paper, but there’s a total of 5 papers and 1 report to complete part 2. Usually, most people will do it within 2 or 3 years but I’ve registered for all 5 papers to go within 1 year. I’m worried if I can keep up with the lessons and able to pass the exam or not. I’m really keeping my fingers crossed on this one and this time, I’d probably won’t be aiming high for distinction or merit like I used to in Diploma level.

So plans plans plans…

1. Work smart and hard
2. Plan carefully and initiate them for side income
3. Play hard and stay healthy during vacation time
4. Study hard and pass my exams!

Sounds like a short list? But there’s a lot of effort required. Not forgetting that I also want a new phone and my own laptop if possible.. HAHAHA…

On a side note: Why does so many people keeps asking me about MacBook anyway? It’s good but it’s not worth it in my opinion. And in fact, if you ask me, I’ll just tell you it sucks because it’s Apple and Apple stores and apple services sucks in Malaysia. And because you didn’t do enough research on more affordable alternatives, you suck too.

If you’re really going to use the software, then it’s another story. But if you get a Mac and still expect it to run like windows, then I’ll take your RM6k and sell you a cheap 15″ laptop with Ubuntu. That’s 3k for the laptop, and 3k for my services and charges for your stupidity.

And yes, I’m actually cursing on my blog because Apple fan boys are the most idiotic bunch I’ve ever seen. Ever read any of Cnet, ZDnet’s, Gizmodo or engadget’s comments on any apple related posts?

Over the pass few months, I’ve been reading many good reviews on the Samsung Galaxy S’ screen quality. How clear and vibrant the colours of the phone is always being complimented even compared to existing AMOLED screens from HTC and Motorola. Now, this Super AMOLED screen boosts 20% brighter screen, 80% less reflective under sunlight and 20% reduced power consumption is some really big numbers in some really important points of a smartphone screen.

Being a smartphone user for over a year now, I’ve always struggle to work my phone under the sun. It’s either I’ll have to rush to a shaded area or just guess what’s on the screen based on the faint shadowy images I can see.

Today, I got the chance to actually see what an AMOLED screen looks like and I was quite impressed with the clarity and the colour vibrant. Although I must admit I can still see some pixels but it is not really something to complain about since it’s actually already much better then many existing phones. The only phone with better pixel density is the iPhone4 which I don’t fancy at all.

I went to the Maxis centre where they have the Samsung Galaxy S and played around with it a little. Although I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures, I believe that most people will already be familiar with the phone’s design. Most smartphone looks almost the same anyway.

The interface was quite fast and zippy except for some occasional loading of bigger apps such as Layar. There are many screens available to fill up with applications but with no search features. Scrolling though the apps was slow but Google’s Android OS 2.2 (Froyo) will fix that by adding a search feature.

It was my first time seeing the SWYPE feature in action and my friend gave it a shot. Not bad. Really fast typing for a first timer.

That’s all I can say now for the few minutes of exploration.

The phone is available though Maxis at a price of RM1699 with a 1 year Data contract. Which means they don’t care which call plan you’re on as long as you sign up for the data package for 1 year. It also comes with an extended 6 months warranty and RM10 rebate for data plan when you get the Samsung Galaxy S.

iPhone 4 is coming to town!

Although I do not recommend this phone, but it’s still good news isn’t it?

Also, Maxis users, it’s also coming soon to you. Not just Digi. I just didn’t post any screen shot because Maxis’ banner doesn’t even show their own logo.

As for Celcom users… Uh… Continue to enjoy your blue teddy bear.