ThinkingNectar

Met up with Sau Sheong over coffee during a weekday evening. I have been following him on his blog and twitter since meeting him last year at a Yahoo developers event. Much have changed since then.

Hardware Programming anyone?

It was interesting to know that Sau Sheong is into consulting startup, putting his knowledge and experience into good use.  Generally the chat was causal and revolve around programming.

Of Java, PHP and other programming languages, there is a observation which I made.  Java seems to be made for the mass. Anyone with sufficient programming training can use Java as soon as possible. It makes it accessible for the masses. Something that on its own a beautiful thing.

Yet I hold a personal baised that Java “takes the thinking away” from the developer. When a problem arise, Java coders will search for the library to do the job. It is good or bad? It depends. As a real life working tool, it is a good idea. As a medium of teaching in schools, it is not a good idea as a first language, but generally a better idea as a tool to teach OO.

Java should deserve more social merits than it have. It have been successful in making programming approachable. Many developers who moved from C to C++ to Java will find that Java is breeze to program in. I been to that stage, but started at Pascal prior to C.

But as the developer mature technically, they tend to challenge themselves and question their tools. That is when some purist will comment that Java is a “Lego-ish” language. Taking the thinking away from the developer. Likewise there are another school of thought that since Java is a first language for many, it means that it tend to produce “noob-ish” developers.  Same concept applies to see PHP developers as noobish as most web developers started off with PHP. I am guilty of such thoughts and did question myself after talking to Sau Sheong.

Hacking, in its core is a form of DIY. And in DIY, there is no right or wrong way. It is always my way or your way, but either way, it is the way of DIY. The spirit of DIY is something to be celebrated. The tool is not essential in DIY. It is the user of the tool that matters.

How to get from Zero to Hero?

Well according to gothere.sg, it will take only 1 minute and it is free. And it should take place somewhere in Loyang.

Check out the screen shot.

Zero to Hero at Gother.sg, Click to view

Jokes aside, the gothere.sg guys release new features that give more choices to the public. Great work. Hopefully they do not remove this Hero to Zero bug easter egg.

And at this point in time of posting, over at sgentrepreneurs.com was a post on a Hero to Zero Entrepreneurship Forum. What coincidence.

Was watching CNN live for Michael Jackson Memorial when this comment caught my attention.

Project Mayhem comment, click to view full image

Tasteless or not it is open for judgement but it is hilarious.

For those who do not get it, go watch one of the best movies ever. Fight Club.

Chris Anderson Free Book, free read.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Also, a full audio book download from Wired.com here. Nice.

For a quick article on the book, wired.com have a great article.

And the core of the article can be found at the last part of it:

Although consumers may prefer 100 percent free, a little artificial scarcity is the best way to make money.

Sound schizophrenic? That’s the nature of the hybrid world we’re entering, where scarcity and abundance exist side by side. We’re good at scarcity thinking — it’s the 20th-century organizational model. Now we have to get good at abundance thinking, too.

Bing is the latest (dated June 2009) search engine from Microsoft. Spotting a much lighter (loading) interface than the previous live.com. At the moment there is nothing much to say about it. For the time being, I will still stay with Google for search.

Bing.com Search

Saying so Bing have clocked some impressive growth according to Alexa and Compete.

Numbers aside, what I find interesting about bing.com is xRank. In short, it is like Google Trend, showing what are the popular search that was carried out. And the focus tend to be on personalities, namely Celebrities, Musicians, Politicians and bloggers. Surely there are more information beyong personalities? How about trends and news based xRank?

Strange that the moment that the FAQ on what is xRank is not pointing to anything meaningful.

The other search with Bing have is Image and News. Both of which serve to be rather decent alternative to Google Image and news search.

Some things are worth the effort to find out and here are the Mottos of some well known English Football Clubs and their Latin Mottos.

Arte et labore
By skill and hard graft
Blackburn Rovers

Pro rege et lege
For the king and the law
Leeds United

Supera moras
Overcome delays
Bolton Wanderers

Vincit omnia industria
Hard work conquers everything
Bury

Audere est facere
He who dares, wins
Tottenham Hotspur

Consilio et animis
By wisdom and courage
Sheffield Wednesday

Nil satis nisi optimum
Nothing but the best is good enough
Everton

Superbia in proelio
Pride in battle
Manchester City

Victoria concordia crescit
Victory grows from harmony
Arsenal

And for those who do not know, I do enjoy playing (futsal) and watching football. And I support Leeds United for the record.

Distinguished Guests;
Graduands, Parents;
Ladies and Gentlemen,

A very good morning to you. I thank you for being part of this memorable occasion. It is an honour to address all of you on behalf of my fellow graduates. I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to the School for granting me this privilege.

As I stand here today, I can’t help but see a pretty picture of a group of artists waiting to exhibit their works of art to the world.  And how is that possible?  I must say that the School, our parents, lecturers, mentors, sponsors and friends have taught us all the right strokes for a career in healthcare.

And now with this diploma, I believe we stand proud with our paintbrushes and palettes (dramatic pause) ready to colour the lives of our patients and clients we meet each day.

Lecturers, tutors and clinical instructors, we have much to thank you for.  You have inspired us to create a unique and beautiful picture each day.  You have injected life and laughter into the lectures, tutorials and clinical placements, and have graciously welcomed every question we had.

You carefully catered the lessons to our needs, just like how a master painter would painstakingly blend the colours to suit the mood and tone of the subject he was painting. You told us to pay attention to the lighting, the shadows and the careful mixing of colours.

Our learning gradually took on shape and life of its own, a form that we could make sense of. Your patience and dedication as our “master painters” have spurred us to create our own masterpieces, and these we cannot wait to show to the world.  So long live the master painters!  May you continue to touch the lives of your future students.

Special mention goes to our families and loved ones. You have stood by us in our pursuit of a healthcare profession.  For your encouragement and support, we record our thanks.

Fellow graduates, let us now pick up the paintbrush and deliver quality healthcare in fine deft strokes like a much celebrated artist.  The colours we use may be bright eye-popping candy colours or warm muted shades.  But whatever colour you choose, may the picture exude nothing but warmth, care and excellence.  And no matter how bright your colours glow or how large your canvas of achievement is, always remember to paint a beautiful world.

Ask your patient or colleague this question:  “If I could have done one thing better in working with you, what would it have been?”  Find out and then deliver.  Ask:  How can I create a more meaningful experience for my clients?  How can I connect with them?    Find out what makes an ideal world and work towards it.

To quote the artist Pablo Picasso “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun”.   So be that painter Picasso spoke of, the one that can transform ordinary into extraordinary.

Class of 2009, it’s your show now.  The curtains have been drawn, and it’s time to put on stage your gorgeous works of art and dazzle the world.  I wish all of you great success in your future endeavours.  Congratulations once again to everyone.

Editor : Special thanks to Samantha for allowing permission to post this well written speech.

I cannot help but to overhear the deafening slience on this blog. Saying so, will and time does not allow for a indepth post on several topics that are brewing in my head. Hence a short and light hearted post to chase the virtual cobwebs away.

Uncovering a closet t-shirt designer:

Nice Red T-shirt

The design can be found over at RamboTan’s CafePress shop. And if Rambo Tan is kinda familiar, he blogs (very rarely now) over at Rambotan.com.

I enjoy meeting good developers. It is a bitter sweet experience most of the time. Firstly bitter simply because there are way too many good one out there and I am nowhere near their abilites. Sweet simply because a simple conversation with them allow myself to learn a bit more about how I can become a better developer.

Back to the topic, I had this view on good developers, and good developers who are out there doing startups.

The picture should be a better guide:

Developers into doing Startup

Of the pool of graduate yearly, a portion will be from the Engineering Faculty, or Maths. Of which another fraction will be doing computing or have experience in coding or software developement. And of this numbers, a group will be deemed good developers. And of these good developers, there is this crazy few who are willing to do a startup.

Of course, of the crazy few, not all can do a startup upon graduation. If the student graduate with a study loan debt, it is unlikely that he will be doing a startup which can hardly service the debt.

Likewise, many good developers are not attracted to doing startups simply because the banks and such pays better. Given the odds of finding a developer who is willing to do developement for a startup, it should be even harder to assemble a core team of such developers.

Good developers who are willing to run a startup are hard to come by. And for the few that I personally know and the others who are out there, I applaud  you all.

Decided to write links of interesta regular basis to share interesting links from around the web. Simply because my bookmarks list is getting really log with a backlog of things to read.  And the quick list of links here will get me to quickly scan and decide which have more useful content. A skill that is ever more important with the influx of information.

• Best Entrepreneur Stories, a selection of 10 podcasts
• Finding a Business plan for your startup
• YouNoodle: Startup intelligence and information
• Doostang: Anyone on this?
• Pycon 2009 Event Schedule
• 10 lesser-known HTML tags
• A writeup on pun at NYTimes