That’s a lot of hours spent to create the worlds of Studio Ghibli with Minecraft!

Some time ago, I rooted and upgraded my old Motorola Milestone to CyanogenMod 7 (Gingerbread). The process was so tedious I almost cried after hours spent on finding a possible/plausible method to work. One evening on a dinner table, my mate told me about upgrading the Samsung Galaxy S (not mine, my girlfriend’s) and how it can be done with the leaked ROM. I thought I was going to wait for an official ROM from Samsung but since this  copy is out, I might as well give it a go on a weekend.

Samsung Galaxy S so far was the quickest and easiest to upgrade. Less than 5 minutes and poof, it was ported Android 2.1 to 2.3! Also, rooting was easy too! Hurrah!

[Upgrade with Odin]
[Upgrade with Clockworkmod recovery]
[Root Samsung Galaxy S]

As I’m being employed to an organisation for a long period of time, there is always room for personal/work development. Over time, new things appear and you’ll start in pursuit for such new technology and skills. Something to improve one’s skillset or work knowledge so that oneself can improve one’s contributions to an organisation. Having said that, such scenario usually happens in a very optimistic world or an organisation that loves to spend mindlessly. In truth, it’s hard work and a lot of convincing and coercing to do. Well, unless you are a seasoned ‘shoe polisher’, you have to wait. A very long wait. Acquiring resources (regardless it’s training or equipment) to commit my work more efficiently is a taxing effort. Asking approvals from a procrastinating management is like squeezing water out of a rock. A fruitful outcome usually took me more than a year to realise.

Learning from those bitter experiences, I’ve grown up. I’ve learned to uphold the good old saying, “If you want to do it, do it yourself” and have decided to invest my time, my finance and my own effort to get things done (of course I have to watch out my budget and monetary constraints unless trading dirt and old clothes are expensive commodity out there now). I’ll pay and I’ve paid my own training and equipment. That’s that!

So how does it feel? Satisfied, yes. A dent in my pocket, definitely a yes but it was worth it. Knowledge is priceless and they can’t take it away from you, unlike a company mobile phone; it’s not like I’m entitled to one anyways. ; )

It has been a while since I upgraded my Motorola Milestone from its stock Android to a community mod Cyanogen. I must admit rooting it and run Gingerbread (ver 2.3) does open up my mobile performance and range of apps to play with.

Alas, not everything is perfect. The mod OS drains my battery faster than the stock. It even drains faster when my 3G radio is on. I’ve tried ways to knock down the power consumption but so far no success. The stock camera is acting up too. It froze after taking a shot. For now I’m relying on a third party app.

Ok, aside from those  gloomy whinges, there are brighter sides as well. It’s faster, less rebooting to flush over-gorging of memory and better apps memory handling. And yes, I can install apps to the SD card (Motorola stinged on Milestone internal memory, bah).

I’m still waiting for a newer release that will follow up the issues and hopefully addresses them.

But at the end of the day, it’s frustrating but it is still worth it. I happy with it….for now : )

WordPress is updating its release faster than I can update! As of now, the lastest is version 3.1.2.

It’s a good thing the recent WordPress provides an automated upgrade of a defunct version to a new one. I remember those days I had to turn off each plugin one by one before I FTP’d the latest files to my blog. Oh, I must not forget to backup the database too!

Also, the theme I’m using is not as versatile with the new 3.xx. It was mean for the earlier versions. Sigh, more work.

I’m starting to dislike long distant commuting to work by car these days. It is not the horrible traffic nor the rude drivers nor the blasted passing trains/trams that hogged the streets. It’s just that I can’t do anything else but looking straight, drive diligently and avoid uncouth road bullies cutting in suddenly. The longer it takes me to get to work, more time is “invested” into thoughts (daydreaming sometimes). I tend to start to think about a lot of unnecessary things. Things needed to fix. Procrastinated tasks. Miserable stuff. Dumb office peeps. Worrisome thoughts. Murderous intents. Things that triggers my anger (not a good thing to happen early in the morning). Most of the time, it just spoils my day and I become unproductive.

I really missed commuting to work via public transportations. At least I can fiddle with my mp3 players or my mobile phone or my portable console; in other words, total distraction. No worries all the way to work.

But thank god it’s Friday today. At least I can leave my mind to rest on the weekend but the following Monday is another story.

(Source)

One of many frustrations we IT professionals have to face is miscommunication or misinformation. The outcome has a ripple effect; small insignificant misiplaced information will tend to produce a big crack in the project. It gets worse if the crack starts from the begining of the project life cycle. And yours truly have the honour to experience such eventful moments once too often. There’s this scenario with a recent project I was dealing with may not sound like a huge project that cost a lot of money but nevertheless, time was wasted.

It goes like this. According to the manager after a meeting with the sales team, they wanted a button (manager’s favourite term for anything that is clickable which sends you off to somewhere) that is attached to marketing emails which allow potential clients to download it onto the desktop like an application icon. Double clicking it will then trigger a web browser and navigate itself to a specific CMS website. The manager stated specifically, the button must have the company’s logo in it. In an IT nutshell, it’s a URL shortcut with a customised icon.

Sounds pretty simple enough huh, except a few critical areas he’s not aware of. As email technology advances, a lot of unfavourable things catch up as well. Virus, trojans, spam, you name it are used to attack users via emails. Attaching a URL shortcut is one of them. Antivirus/Spyware/Malware/Spam filters are very edgy and alert on these attachments and very likely they will be filtered as spam or blocked. Next bright idea (and also unfavourable) is attaching an executable file. That will definitely sound the alarm louder. Another problem is different OSes the clients are using. In the manager’s ideal world, M$ Windows is assumed the OS clients engaged with (loved it when a debate ensures with a ‘What’s the percentage of insert-operating-system-here that our clients are using?). Okay, let’s ‘assume’ every client is a Windows freak, what’s a quick workaround solution? Zipped it up, he said and pray the anti-virus will not find it.

Personally, I do not agree to such attachments (regardless a zipped or non-zipped executables/URL shortcut) but then again, I’m just a small voice in the organisation that only listens to themselves. A better solution was suggested: Tell the clients to bookmark the URL site, for goodness sake. It’s not rocket science to teach but it’s possible. It’s better than opening an email, download the attachment, unzip the executable file/URL shortcut onto the desktop and doubleclick the file. Simple keyboard shortcuts vs dozen steps instructions. Geez.

Having discover that I was totally against the idea of such attachments, the idea was apparently put off and quietly delegated to another person without my knowledge. Note: This incident happened within the period of two weeks. The graphic designer was assigned to this (I don’t know why) and the bitter cycle of trying out customised icons with an executable file via emails happens again. I caught the wind of it when the dude was trying to test it out by sending the attachment to my email via a zipped file!

During one lunch hour, a sales team personnel joined us and from the casual chitchat, we popped the question of the little project the manager brought up. That 2 minutes conversation cleared up a lot of things and it was a totally ‘OMFGWTF’ moment. What the sales team wanted is not an application/URL shortcut/executable file with a customised icon to be downloaded from emails onto the desktop. What the sales team really wanted is a GIF or JPEG of a web banner with a company logo in it so they can send these images to partner clients to use, say embedding the banner as a weblink in their website.

I’m not pinning blame to anyone (though subtlely I do lean against the management), but the point of this scenario is we could have save the time and effort if the needs of the person who requested it, is properly verified and confirmed. Man, epic fail.

Update (4th April 2011): Found out that the mod is draining my battery as fast as within a day! There’s a fix on this and I’m going to try it out.

Installing a custom rom for an android mobile phone is quite a challenging move for me. It took a while for yours truly to take a big step forward and whack the Android mod rom into the mobile phone. I have a Motorola Milestone, running on a Motorola branded Android 2.1. All is fine and dandy until the lacking of disk space for my apps irritated me.

It took me two days to read in various forums/websites and figured out what to be done. I rooted my mobile sometime ago with SuperOneClick prior upgrading the Android OS. I don’t think I need to repeat what the instructions these seasoned dudes (here and here) have provided.

Note: Before you ever start rooting or installing a custom rom, please research properly and know what you are doing or else you might brick/mess up your mobile phone. I’m only passing my own personal experience of installing one and will not take responsibility of your actions.

What I did to mine was basically :

1. Copied the custom rom and Google apps into the SD card
2. Boot to OpenRecovery 3.3
3. Backup the current rom (in case anything happens)
4. Wipe  (davlik cache, cache, data)
5. Install the CM7
6. Install Google apps

I ran into a hiccup somewhere in step 5 when I came across with an error “E:EOCD marker occurs after start of EOCD E:signature verification failed”. Apparently, I have to fix the vulnerable recovery issue before I can proceed with the installation. That was where I almost pulled my hair out.

Anyways, I did manage to install everything  and it was worth the effort. Did I tell you it’s faster now? Hurrah…

Oh, to boot into system recovery mode, I read there’s various ways. Some said holding down Power Button and Camera Button and some said holding down Power Button and the ‘X’ key on the keypad. For me it’s the latter . It all depends the version of the bootloader your mobile phone has.

A quick shorthand/ single line IF statement

Say if I want to code an IF ELSE statement like this:


if (x>1){
var str = 'x is more than 1';
}else{
var str = 'x is less than 1';
}


Alternatively, I can go as a single line like this:


var str = (x>1) ? 'x is more than 1' : 'x is less than 1';


It has been more than a decade since the world is introduced to Neon Genesis Evangelion and its franchise is still going strong.

And now you can actually have a taste of being in the entry plug of an Evangelion unit…with a bed in it.

(Source)

Here’s the link to the preview video of the hotel

Update: When I got back home, I found out my kitchen  and living room were fully condensed. Wet floors and dampy atmosphere. All thanks the humidity and wet weather. Let’s hope the mould won’t enter into the picture soon.

(Source: News.com.au)

It has been pretty warm, humid and wet for the past few days in Melbourne. Rain has been threatening Melbourne for days and I feel it’s more and more tropical here. Blame the global warming, they say. 

On the other hand, Queensland was hit pretty badly and the flood had swallowed a number of suburbs. [News.com.au] [Brisbane Times]

Happy New Year! It’s a brand new 2011 and this same problem is happening to me just like last year and the year before and before before then. The problem is, I mistype the year wrongly.

For example, today is 11th January 2011 and I’ll accidentally type in 11th January 2010. Imagine I’m entering the wrong date for my SQL lines. Bet it’ll misquery and produce the odd results. I say it’s a habit thingy. I’m so used to the previous year that I will, without a blink of an eye, type out 2010 instantaneously. I suppose that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to think about entering wrong dates especially the year at critical moments like during a financial transaction.

It’ll take a while for me to familiarise with this young 2011, say within a month I reckon. But by early next year, I’ll be facing the same thing again. Sigh.

Update: Now, most of them have ported from the iPhone 3Gs to the brand new  spanking iPhone 4, it is time to show off to those who are underprivileged.

I am ”pleased” that iPhone4 has arrived for the “devoted” and “deserving” staff members in the office. With it, we shall have plenty of business/sales coming in and make tons of money. Behold, the powerful aura of Apple products!

Sigh…

Every Christmas week, I’ve never bothered to celebrate nor going out for a shopping spree on Boxing day. Heck, all my years in Melbourne I never thought of going out and fighting for my life to grab a parking space or pushing through the rowdy crowd in a tiny space retail shop. But here I am, in Chadstone Shopping Centre.

For the first time I can see throngs of people walking or running in and out of each retail shop, hoping to find a bargain. Good thing I’m not a fancy shopper.

My stomach is growling now. I didn’t have a single meal since this morning and my girlfriend (she’s the opposite of me, a bargain shopper) is still enjoying herself in her few favourite shops.

I should have brought along a book to read. Actually I’m kind of regretting for not buying a Nintendo DS to kill time especially during these periods.

As the official photographer for the company, I am obliged tol answer any requests from the higher ups, should it be inhouse or offsite jobs. Today marks the last offsite video and photoshoot for this year and today it is my third visit at Holmesglen TAFE. Our subject is the process of making pastries. What sort of pastry, I do not know; me ain’t privy to such information. All I need to do is to show up and shoot on the fly.

Now I’m waiting for the rest of the crew and the chef himself to arrive. Guess I’m a little too early.