The Mac Keyboard

I was out window shopping with a girlfriend and being iPod owners, we decided to browse the Apple shop at Heeren before going for dinner. While we were there, We walked past two girls playing the song of a popular tv serial and saw that it was a piano keyboard hooked to a mac machine and two speakers.

Out of curiosity, I returned to the keyboard after browsing through the rest of the apple store. We tested the different sounds, beats and functions on the keyboard. It was almost as if we were holding our own mini concert. I was totally blown by the sound quality and the number of things I could do on that keyboard. To top it off, the price wasn't too bad. I'm definitely going back for a second look and won't be surprised if I decide to buy it once my new place is ready :)

Singapore Fireworks

As it would be some time before my colleague could send me fireworks in Hong Kong, he shared with me some of his photos taken of Singapore fireworks:

Project in Hong Kong

Just last week, a colleague of mine had been relocated to Hong Kong for 3 months to lead an eterprise IT project. If required, his stay might extend into a 2/3 year stint.

Without going into details, it is a challenging project, and 2 other project leads before him had failed to resolve the critical issues. He is the 3rd project lead to be assigned to this expensive initiative, and failure would result in a dive of his career prospects in the company.

On a personal level, he would be missing his family badly as he is very close to his wife and kids. The authority figure in the family, he took much pride in supervising his kids in day to day activities.

So he left Singapore with quite a bit of apprehension and sadness at leaving his family behind. I was happy to receive an IM from him that he was settling down well in Hong Kong. A first time visitor, he was awed by its beauty and told me of his discoveries in Mongkok, Ladies' street, etc. His hunt for an apartment was turning out to be a difficult task as the apartments were small, and it was difficult getting one away from a dodgy street as there were so many of them.

His first buy in the Pearl of the Orient was actually a camera (as opposed to buying presents for his wife and kids!) and I suggested he could use it to take pictures of HK and send it to the rest of us and he agreed to take one of the HK fireworks and send that over when it was done. Am sure looking forward to that.

This Is For The Big People

Too Busy to Care?

Our company is running a global Week of Caring for our business unit. Our regional office has been instructed to organise community programs for the week of 11th - 16th of September. As Communications/Web Manager, I have been given to role of organising it for the Singapore office as both my boss and her 2nd in command are both flying this month. I was none too happy at being awarded with another "day to day task" (there have been too many of those!) given the workload I already have. I'm too busy to be doing this just the President of our business unit is moving on to a new role and wants to create an impact before he goes, I thought. But, it had landed on my plate, and that was that.

As we already have been working with the Society for the Physically Disabled (SPD), it was an easy decision to continue what we have been doing all along. The only difference was that while we had previously organised charity grocery runs for the physically disabled, i.e. buying food and delivering them to the list of beneficiaries, we would be helping to clean, paint and organise the houses for them for the week of caring. That was the initial plan.

One of our team members followed the representative from SPD to visit our "clients" at their homes and do an "onsite survey". The photos he brought back with him were really sad, and we realised the work scope would go beyond the original plan.

I was given the task of attaining approval for project budget, which had more than doubled based on the condition of the homes. More than paint, soap and water were needed to make the homes we were going to clean livable.

One family had a son who was only 17 and still studying. His father, the sole breadwinner of the house suffered a severe stroke 20 years ago which had paralysed him and left him unable to work. His mother did odd jobs here and there to earn a meagre income, and they got by with food donated by charity or from community centres. The son was initially living with his grandmother in a 3 room flat and well cared for. However, as his mother required help looking after his father, he returned to stay with them in their one room flat composed of mattresses and electrical appliances picked out of the garbage.

They slept on mattresses infested with bed bugs and the boy was visibly covered with scars, according to my colleague. A pest extermination company would need to be called in before any work could be started in that home. A new bed, mattresses and bedsheets would also need to be purchased to replace their existing ones.

This is just one, and definitely not the worst of the condition of the homes. I can't even begin to describe the state of the other homes. Broken toilet cisterns had to be fixed and electrical wiring redone in one house. A handyman had to be engaged for another just to repair the existing condition of the furniture. It is emotionally disturbing. These people are not lazy people who do not care how they live - they just do what they can given their condition and limitations.

While I am aware that poverty exists in every country and Singapore is not spared, I have never realised it could be so bad. Or rather, I never realised the full implications of how poverty can incur such a heavy tax on the quality of lives.

While I do not identify with my colleague who commented that looking at those photos made her realise how lucky she was, it did cause me to start counting my blessings. While I have a problem with her reaction - the key point here should be the state of these people and how we can help rather than how lucky we are compared to them - I did realise that I have taken a lot of things in my life for granted.

The thing that DID impact me however, was the courage of these people to carry on with their lives. Some of them are actually intelligent, vibrant conversationalists with a keen mind, but crippled in their body. And they had many unfortunate events in life that have made their circumstances worse. Yet they were able to live out their lives a day at a time, under the most unbearable, meagre conditions. I have a lot to learn from them. A lot indeed.

Displaying Javascript Code on Your Blog

If you have pieces of code you would liketo share with everyone on Blogger's, it won't let you.

Any code with javascript or otherwise will be detected as code, and Blogger's will given you an angry red line when you try to publish your blog saying that that's not allowed.

So what do you do? No fear, you do not need to be a technical whizz to configure your code so that Blogger won't recognise it as code. Let this site do it for you:
http://www.simplebits.com/cgi-bin/simplecode.pl

It converts your actual code, processes it into another set of string that Blogger's won't recognise as code without affecting the actual display. Handy tool to have that can save you tons of time & frustration.

New Tools: Del.icio.us and Furl

As you can see, I've added some new tools to myFeather Starfish blog.

Just so your favourite entries on my blog will not become lost to you as my daily entries increase, I've added links to two web applications that will help you bookmark / save a specific post and share them with others.

Del.icio.us
This tool allows you to save a post in my blog (or other favourite blogs) to your account at del.icio.us.com. Why not use your "Favourites" button on IE? Because, del.icio.us allows you to add descriptions to your blog bookmark, as well as create appropriate tags for it.

What happens is that users search for entries saved by members in del.icio.us using specific tags. For example, you might want the latest gossip on Tom Cruise, and type that as a search tag. You also might decide that you will like to add the member who saved that entry to your network. This means that you have access to all the blog entries he saves on del.icio.us, his descriptions and tags.

Vice Versa, other users might find your entries based on tags you create with your descriptions. Don't sweat about privacy issues though, as you can choose which entries to want to keep private or open it to the Internet public.

Create an account at del.icio.us now.

Furl
This is a similar web tool to Del.icio.us except that it enables you to email the entire web page instead. It has much of the features as del.icio.us, and allows you to create keywords, descriptions for your entry as well as "subscribe" to saved entries by other members.

Additional features include the ability to rate the entries you save, and installation of the Furl toolbar which allows you to "furl" whatever web page you are on with a single click.

Sign up for a furl account now.

For Bloggers: To let your visitors add the posts they like from your site to either application, simply copy the code below and insert it into your blog template:

Code for Del.icio.us:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>">Post to Del.icio.us</a>


Code for Furl:

<a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<$BlogItemTitle$>&u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Furl It</a>


After you've done that, why not furl this entry just so you remember the steps you have to take, or add it to your new del.icio.us account?

Password Pain

If your computer has ever crashed on you and you have not written down all the security passwords for your programs somewhere, or you have unkowningly uninstalled a program requiring a security password, your woes may soon be over.

There's been a new USB key, called U3 USB key that can save passwords with programs with a few modifications, or "hacks". It exploits security loopholes in the Microsoft Windows program to grab passwords from your computer which is transferred to the USB key. Read all about it here.

Of course, what does it mean in reverse? never leave your laptop unattended with easy access for password stealers!

Thunderstorm

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was a strange experience. I had been dreaming that I was on an adult excursion to this really popular swimming pool that was much like a tourist attraction. A sort of theme park, if you will. In my dreams, I was shocked to realise that I had decided to swim in my pink underwear! But there I was, shy, but really wanting to enjoy the pool.

There were other interesing details that stood out in my mind, but I will reserve them for now. It was while I was on the edge of the pool wanting to dive in that I realise something was wrong. My conscious mind was invading my subconscious and telling me the aircon was off.

"wha'?" I slowly came out of my sleep to realize that it WAS hot. And that the aircon WAS off. At that moment I could hear the rain falling down in sheets and thunder that accompanied it. For a while I just lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds. Strangely, they were very comforting.

For so many months now, I had been living in a world trying to wrestle for control over my tasks, situations and projects, to stay on top of them. I was wrestling with people, wrestling with time, wrestling with my skill sets, and wrestling with myself. I had no time to "smell the roses" if you will. My meals were taken in front of my computer and I would be eating while working or during a meeting. I have learned how to eat in 30 minutes flat - and this includes taking the lift down to the food court downstairs, standing in line, waiting for my food, polishing it off, and then going back to the office again.

It was also a time when global was starting to pay attention to the projects AP was carrying out as our Marketing VP had approved a lot of our programs over those proposed by North America. The limelight had incited ambition and we could see colleagues suddenly engaging in power struggles over each other, trying to "recruit" followers, taking on more leadership in various projects than they should, leaving the rest of us nervous at how badly managed their projects then became, etc. The rest of us just try to do our jobs and stay out of the way. It has not been easy.

After months of watching and trying to stay out of these intense human strife for power and control, suddenly I found myself in a state where I was completely powerless. As I heard the sound of the thunder and the furious crash of the rain on th cement ground, I felt extremely consoled and reassured that while we may struggle on earth and sweat over the "small stuff", there is a higher power that is in control and running planet earth, keeping all things in order. After months of strife and fighting deadlines and power struggles, I was finally able to find rest and peace for my soul.

Suddenly, the lights came on again (I sleep with the lights on) as did the aircon. The storm must have triggered our safety rod that shut down our electricity and my dad had got it up again. I got up and switched off the light, enjoying the sounds of the thunderstorm until I fell asleep again.

Hidden Games in Mac Terminal

If you are an apple computer owner, you might be interested to learn that there are hidden games in your computer terminal. While they are not very glamorous and you may not play beyond one game, it's still cool to know that you have embedded games somewhere inside the convoluted brain of an Apple engine.

Why is it such a thrill to me? Because it feels like I've stumbled on an inhouse Apple secret!

Follow the steps below to find where your games are:

1. Open the finder
2. Open Applications
3. Open Utilities
4. Open Terminal
5. type "emacs"; click enter
6. Press ESC + X at the same time
7. Type "tetris"
8. Play Tetris! Use the arrow keys to move and rotate the blocks, and press the space to make the blocks fall.
This isn't really a part of the Mac OS, it's a part of emacs which is part of the UNIX system. Most Mac users don't know this is included with their computer. There are many more games included as well. To know what other games are included, do the following:
Open the terminal again, at the prompt type:
"ls /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/play"
Don't forget the space!
You'll get a directory of the games included with emacs,
to play these games do the same thing as with tetris,
except type your chosen game's name in place of tetris.

Readers Attacked by Sock Puppets

So what exactly are sock puppets? They are Internet aliases. Why are they attacking readers? Because they criticised writings of an editor and reporters.

Apparently, the said editor was so angry by the criticisms of a reader on his blog that he attacked him verbally using an internet alias. When found out, he has been suspended from his job indefinitely, and his blog closed down. Another incident of a reporter who committed the same crime is also reported here.

While I understand how closely connected you can be to your writing (having worked as an editor and writer a number of years back), the true mark of a professional in the publishing industry is - objectivism. Once you lose that, and your cool, its hard to be respected as a true journalist.

A Case for House

The Home pages of The Straits Times, Singapore's main daily, reports of a 10 year old twin girl dying from a flesh eating disease. Apparently, she grew a lump on her arm and was brought to the hospital. She was given medicine for the lump which did not subside.

On her third admission to the hospital, the fingers on her right hand had turned black. Doctors ran an xray and suspected there was pus on her arm. Upon surgery, it was discovered the lump was caused by a blood clot. However, Noni was already too weak and had irregular heartbeat. She was suffering from blood poisoning. She passed away on Thursday. Her twin sister Nona is now left to play alone by herself, and misses her sister badly.

Reading this article in the news reminds me of the popular cable television series, House. It was ironic that last week's episode was about a man who was dying from a flesh eating disease and had his right arm amputated to prevent the bacteria from infecting the rest of his body. It seems so surreal to read about the same flesh eating disease claiming the life of a 10 year old girl. After all, its a television program is just a program, is it not?

All In A Day's Blog

It’s been a long and tiring, thankless day and all I wanted to do was go home. After 5 meetings in a row with my boss in a bad mood I’ve never seen her in, it certainly didn’t start off well. The meetings today caused further concern as a number of country timelines were slipping a little, and no one seemed to want to adhere to regional directives or brand guidelines.

So I decided to call it a day and take an easy ride home on a privately owned chartered bus that fetched me directly from home (almost from my doorstep!) to work and vice versa.

I was hit with another obstacle – a nasty accident on the expressway that covered two lanes. This caused a major jam and our vehicle ended up crawling inches on the highway and it seemed that we would spend the night in that bus!

Finally when the bus broke free of the jam and started speeding to make up for lost time, it started to rain. It seemed as if not just planet earth was unhappy, but that the gods were in a foul mood as well.

The one good thing that came out of the jam though, was that I finally had time to write for my blog. While I have happily watched my site stats jump from 54 to 207 over the weekend, today it stands at zero as I did not put in an entry for Sunday.

So a lesson learned – blog everyday even if it’s a couple of paragraphs. Even if you have nothing to say, there is always news out there that you can comment on.

Web Hosting Account Deleted By Vendor Without Prior Notification

Recently, due to my "busy-ness", I have neglected my mail, and as a result got into a couple of account suspensions. Yesterday, I attempted to reconnect my web hosting provider in the States, and was quite shocked to be told that they cancelled my account.

So what does cancelled mean? I asked with dread.

Does that mean that my files have been deleted?? Yes, he says.

I'm stunned. I probably have lapsed payments for 1 month, max 2 months only.

So what's your company's policy of how long they will let payment lapse before canceling an account?

Two months, he says. The billing & accounts department would have sent you reminders before they did anything.

But no, I did not receive any such notifications! In fact I even checked my mail again while waiting for his reply on livechat, but - NOTHING. By now, you can tell that I was starting to get upset.

Can I speak to the person in charge of this account? I ask.

No I can't, I'm sorry, he says. There's no one in the office but me. You will need to call billing first thing Monday morning.

I was flabbergasted. All the work I did in not just setting up my site, but also the extras I paid to redirect 2 of my other sites to the same account under different domain names. I have also installed various php programs for an ecommerce site with images I have personally designed, and made code changes to the program. In addition, there were weekends spent designing the directory structure and installation of other internet programs like a forum board, shopping cart, site meter, etc...

While I have 80% of my site backed up, the other 20% being easily updatable, the code changes to my php program were lost, as were some manuals and audio files I have invested quite a bit of work in on my ftp site.

Am I going to call them? I don't know. Seems hardly any point now that they've deleted my account. And there's no way I'm going to host with them again. Should I sue? It's going to cost me too much in term of time, cash and PEACE OF MIND.

Well, I'm just going to look at this as an opportunity to start on a fresh slate. Then I remember that my original blog that had my blog when my grandmother passed away on it. It was deployed from blogger to my site. Anybody have any idea if blogger would be able to help me recover that?

Sigining off,
Frustrated Webbie

Liquid Armor Protects Against Speeding Bullets

It seems like the brits have invented a "liquid armor" that is now undergoing testing. This armor is light and flexible, and apparently only hardens into an impregnable armor upon impact. It also hardens for the same duration as the impact. Sounds like something out of sci-fi movie, doesn't it?

However, tests have proven that it can protect against knife stabs, low impact guns, and hypodermic needles. They have yet to test it with high speed bullets. Anybody game to volunteer for the test?