My Attempt at Desktop Modding

Quite pleased with my latest attempt, i eradicated utterly all signs of Windows. heh heh heh..

Drugged and unconscious for 17 hours

Writing this after i lost almost a day of my life. Don;t be alarmed by my title, i was not on drugs, not the illegal kind. I have a bloody &^$@! cold, and some crap i bought from Safeway just conked me out since last night. Just for future reference, it is NyQuil from Vicks, makes you helluva drowsy. I took 6 pills over the past 18hours and hell, its really takes effect fast, within 15 minutes of taking, i was totally out! This must be the longest i have slept for years, 15 hours straight!

At least, people, you know what pills to buy next time you want a good nap.

Anyway, i did not go to work today, big deal you say, but that got me thinking on something i read the other day. Some guy actually stopped working and concentrated fulltime on blogging and depending on his content to generate readers that will fuel his financial freedom. Possible? I say, this is another manifestation of Web 2.0 IS it really possible to generate enough money to sustain yourself just by being yourself and propagating your thought to the WorldWideWeb?? Well, Google AdSense made that possible, a blogger just has to put up ads on his site, visitors to the site click on them and voila! multiply that thousands, millions of time and u have it --> your monthly allowance to pay for your broadband, meals, gas and more.

The question is, how does Google make this an honest business for their advertisers? WHere is the line drawn, in their Google search infrastructural farm, that determines honest visitors clicking on ads they really want, and malicious bloggers who are looking for social welfare handouts from the larget and currently most successful tech company in the world?

I do not know the answer, they (i mean all the major search engines) must be working on this problem. Click fraud is a menace to their bottomline, and the trick is to really distinguish between the commercial big-time frauders and those amateur, your-daily-Joe-or-Jane blogger who just doesn;t want to work.

Pretty interesting paragraph i typed there (despite being sick and drugged), i did not think of that beforehand, the thought just came as i was typing. Maybe typing is now beginning to stimulate my brainwaves, hahaha.. Or Vicks NyQuil actually boosts grey matter??

Here's the blog of the guy who does it for a living, there must be many more like him..

http://www.kottke.org/

Google and NASA Tie-Up??

Friends of mine have been remarking i am crazy about Google. Some others will also know i am crazy about space exploration since an even younger age. Well, this piece of news today seems to place the icing on the cake by combining my two crazes together. Read on by clicking the links. This could be related to Larry Page's fascination with space exploration too. By the way, another meaningless fact, Larry Page is also a fellow admirer of Nikola Tesla's genius, guess great minds think alike eh?? Hahaha... Read:

Googling for Space

Space: Google's Final Frontier

Google Intends to Build 1 million-sq-foot campus on NASA property

On a separate note, the following link talks about giant-killers of our generation -- Netflix, Google and Craigslist and their audacity in stealing market share from under the noses of once-dominant/ all-conquering market leaders.

3 Giant-Killers to Watch

Conflict in an Organization

Had a brainwave so i decided to just let it simmer out in a blog..

Gotta talk about this book i hv been trying to finish .. The Search by John Battelle. You can click on it on the right column.. His book is basically about the search industry and how Google and its rivals are leading the technology wave that is fast changing our social and cultural fabric. Just look at this, students these days rely on the internet for school work, be it research for projects, essays, ideas for presentations, images for your Powepoint slides. We interact alot on cyberspace too, we IM, (when not texting SMSes on our cellphones), we look at other pple's profiles on the social networks like Friendster (popular in Singapore), MySpace (popular mong the music lovers in US especially), Orkut (very popular in Brazil), TheFaceBook (a the No. 1 collegiate networking site for US) et al.. IF not, pple read blogs. This is the New World. I don;t know about the generations younger than me, but if they are born and raised in a world where they relay primarily on the Internet for people-to-people interaction, they r going to be even more plugged into the web. It reminds me of Science fiction i read when i was young, but i am digressing.

So anyway, i was talking about John Battelle's book. There was this segment on how Larry Page and Sergey Brin met for the first time. They are smart-asses and they verbally challenged each other's brains like hell (helps too since they didn;t like each other very much at first sight, though the other guy was too pompous) Well, you know the story later on how they worked together and founded the most successful search company ever since. But they retained that seemingly constructively confrontational style of intellectual discourse throughout their process of building Google. Now, how many of us are comfortable with such a confrontational style at work or study? Can you handle constructive criticism well or even see where the line is drawn between being a team player or being constructively critical? I will be honest by saying that I am still trying to learn where that line is. Truth is, I think an oranization that fosters and is able to manage constructive and intellectual conflict is one that would succeed. You don;t want to work with too many yes-men or hire too many of them. They breed familiarity and familiarity breeds complacence and ultimately incompetence over a long period of time. You want people who think different, people who are able to complement your weaknesses but still have strengths that are able to be useful in a team environment. I think watching sports helps people to identify how to build teams. You can't have a team of offensive-minded people who dun watch their defense, yes defense is boring but somebody needs to do that in order for offense to work and create a victory. The defense and offense components won;t always see eye to eye, and conflict results, but thats not their job, thats the job of a the manager. Somebody needs to watch the bottomline.

I must qualify my statement by saying that you want pple who understand the process of intellectual discourse in the right context as well. That is, after arguing, a deciison has to be made to move forward, and then the team has to act as a team, i.e rally behind the decision made by the team and be supportive of the decision after the open criticism and intellectual exploration stage is completed. Otherwise, nothing will ever get done and the organization might as well enrol itself in debate competitions where they stand a much better chance of commercially exploiting their strengths.

Didn't think i was arguing to point, i will think abt it and maybe make some changes later, if you have your own views, do share them.. Lets embrace conflict.

Microsoft -- Limping and hobbling

This is not new news, but it seems Google's really pissing off someone by being a good search engine and serving the world's information needs exceedingly well. Check out the guy's face above. Mind you,thats not a happy one if you know whose face that is.



Here's another pic in case you have seen too many people recently and can;t read faces well. Click on the image if you still do not know who this dude is. I wouldn;t want to cross his path if I were CEO Google. There'a reason Microsoft's stock has not climbed above $30 for more than a couple of years and it has something to do with corporate stagnation, not being clairvoyant enough about the trend on the web and computer users' wants, needs and desires.

The "Search Engine Wars" have returned. Does anyone still remember the days when YAhoo, Altavista, Lycos ruled the internet bandwidths anymore? Those days were gone, pretenders crumbled, some of these sites exist as phantoms now, just another line of words being googled by the usurper to the throne of Search. Its not only about search anymore but everything from blogs, instant messaging (IM), email, photo-sharing, music, video, anything people could possibly do on the internet or their desktop/ laptop/ TREO/ iPaQ/ BlackBerry/ RaspBerry/ BlueBerry... IF you are able to make enough people come to your blog, you make big bucks, simple as that.. You can quit your job and essentially earn money off Google's advertising programs that pays sites that host their ads and have enough pple (or bots for that matter but click fraud is another issue altogether) clicking on them.

I am a MSN user, despite my rather ironic post, i still prefer that svc above others, well i have no choice, all my friends use that svc and it is pretty darn good, but check out the pic below. Some new feature (near the bottom of the pic) those guys in Redmond, WA added on the IM client really began to grate on my nerves.




P.S. its the search button next to the "send" button. Seems like an act of desperation, are they working on including a "Search" button on our keyboards too?

Fast Times at Hero High

There was a time when our superheroes were losers too... in high school at Hero High

http://www.ifilm.com/top100/shorts/comedy

My Green Day Wkend

yes, losing momentum here on my blogging habits.. was intending to do some awesome blogging on my weekend but dilly-dallied for quite a while as i contemplated the best way to pen down my thoughts. Darn! its tough to blog well as well, i wonder how others manage to keep up such detailed blogs..

Just wasted 30 minutes writing a comprehensive blog entry and lost it all due to some "log-in failure". ^%#*&!@!

Its Love Parade in SF this weekend. Love PArade is basically a celebration of love, freedom and techno/ trance. It had its roote from the Berlin Love Parade. Held in Civiv Centre of SF, i got there late at 6pm. Here's some pics.



And here's the Spundae float.. Tis is the same Spundae for which I attended the Love Parade after-party later in the night.



And here's the Pink Mammoth float.


Talking about coincidences, i met up with my ex-colleagues from Bitmicro at the Love Parade too -- Martin, Aileen, Alex. I thought these coincidences only happen in tiny countries in Sigapore but it goes to show the popularity of Love Parade. Yes, the organizers predicted abt 30,000 people showed up for this event. It is (if ou believe the parade's marketers) one of the world's biggest parties, and no American party is complete without lots of booze, music, dance, girls flashing and in SF (gays flouting their freedom).

Here's to the main event of my night -- the Green DAyyy concert.




I had to go on a mad rush from SF to SBC Park where the concert was held, battling the chronic lack of cabs in SF during the peak hour time of 7pm. By the time i got to SBC park at 745, i was already 45 minutes late but thankfully, Jimmy Eat world 9the opening act) was still crooning away so i didn't miss anything at all and coudl still hv time to grab my compulsory doses of beer.

I had bought a ticket for staning space in the field. I was in the second layer of space, about 20 feet from the stage, if i fought my way to the front of the barricades, and that was what i did, charging my way with streams of other pple trying to get the best space in the house. Green Day had a large fanbase out here and it seems the Californians had turned out in full force to celebrate the return of their native sons (Green Day was from the Easy Bay).

Like a band befitting their repuatation and status in the music world right now, Green Day only started their gig at 830pm, and fuck, they absoutely rocked the house. The music was good, Billie Joe had a generous amount of showmanship as he worked the crowd into a frenzy. At one time, he even hand-picked certain audience members from the crowd to come on stage and take over each member of the band as he sought to create a historical first by creating a band during his concert. Compared to my previous concert i attended (which was the Dave MAtthews Band), this one was worth every cent of my 57 bucks in terms of entertainment and atmosphere. Alcohol and drugs always co-operated well to create enough crazy pple, free without inhibitions, and there was a whole lot of screaming, hollering, and rabid dancing during the many climaxes of the concert. It was truly helluva experience to see the bodysurfing that goes on at these concerts and i am abolutely a convert now to the punk rock genre.


The third leg of my seemingly never-ending night was to go to the Spundae Love Parade after-party. Thanks to Justin;s friend, May who worked as a promoter for Spundae, he had a guest list pass which used to my advantage to get in free to the party by confusing this easy-going, but blur, lady wo manned the guest list entries. It pays to be a Chinese sometimes, since Americans have no idea how your names are constucted and why Lee can be Li and Justin can be my name too although none of it appears on my California driving license. Haha, i saved myself 50 bucks there by not paying for the normal ticket.

THe after-party was held in 3 cavernous halls in the concert theater. Markus Schulz and God of Trance Himself _ Ferry Corsten was there to preside over the event. You won;lt be able to belive the amount, or lack thereof of policing at this event as it resembled more of a junkie;s paradise at time with the multitudes of stoned people. These, i say ARE THE REAL PARTIES! HAHHA...

I HAVE TO GO TO PRAGUE!

Saw this castle a few years back in pictures and god, is it fucking amazing or wat?!

Thought i had to mention this after i read their blog, it seems this couple really saw some amazing places during their time straddling around Planet Earth, I feel obliged to advertise their blog now, so click on the image above if you haven't.

Sex is a Big Deal .. in the workplace!

How interesting could it be to learn about sex @ work?

Well, its not really sex, but sexual harassment, so all you perverts there could click on "next blog" upstairs if this is getting boring. My company had a sexual harassment training course today. It was meant to educate us on the new rules governing this law in US. Frankly, it was a bore. I can;t believe someone doing this in SIngapore but apparently, it really is a big deal in US.

Some lessons i learnt from the Big Bore-Fest:

- the laws are really a bunch of common-sense. You don;t cross the line between humor and bad taste/ off-color comments.
- Oh, something as trivial as commenting on someone's new dress or shirt could get you in trouble. This is, if such comments are suggestive or the pther person is a prude.
- Be safe when commenting, treat ALL your colleagues, (this sounds ridiculous) as genderless creatures.
- Californian laws are very friendly to cross-dressers, homosexuals and those with dubious or confused sexual orientation, explaining the point above.
- there are 2 categories - sexual harassment and sexual discrimination
- apparently, excessive abuse, even if not of a sexual nature can amount to some form of sexual harassment due to the fact that it contributes to a hostile work environment.
- there are alot of gray areas. sexual harassment laws are apparently the field of dreams for budding lawyer-bloodsuckers out to make fast and big bucks.
- AND CHECK this out. There's this true factual tale about a new MALE hire in a company that showed up on his first day at work in full female-attire regalia. Heels, dress and the works... Obviously, this sounded like harassment to me, of the visual kind. Who wants someone dressed that wrongly strutting around the office? And you haven;t heard the best part, this new guy was employed as a ... LAWYER.

Spotlight: Deutschland

Shooting from the hip here again, thought i might blog some more to keep up my new-found momentum and since i had just slept 4 hours and disrupted my sleep routine for the night. Germany has successfully demonstrated the failings of democracy for the world in their recent elections, much to the ire and anguish of many Germans, I believe, if anyone still hold belief that their politicians possess enough competency to rescue the country.

Is democracy still relevant in today's world? That is a multi-layered question that depends on national contexts. A simplistic conclusion is that democracy has increasingly created politically polarized nations, see the Red-Blue divide in America, the "blame-game" played out in the halls and corridors of power in Congress and Senate in the wake of Katrina. In the case of Germany, we have Angela Merkel winnin mathmatically but failing to muster any form of ruling mandate over her opponent Gerhard Schroeder. She is most likely to end up joining arms in a "strange bedfellows" relationship with Schroeder and form an impotent government that will spend more of taxpayers' money in a very public verbal debate on words with little or no action being done to improve the welfare of the nation. If developed, First World and relatively industrialized and well-educated nations like US and Germany have succumbed to the democracy malaise, what chance does democracy hold for less developed and less-educated nations where the social facilities for democracy are more lacking and people lack the judgmental abilities to make the right decisions for their countries' futures? Read Iraq and Afghanistan, you do not hand power to the people, although it might seem better than handing them to dictatorial despots or terrorist-friendly regimes. However, as we can see, the situation in both countries are really a result of errant US foreign policy makers who seem to prefer internal chaos contained within the countries, rendering them harmless to US national interests, than an agenda-driven country that poses a national threat to US.

Bjorn's Pensieve (Alpha)

Finally got to my first post, my first blog. I like to think of it as my own Pensieve (one there for all you closet Harry Potter fans out there) This is not gonna be one of those &^%$* blogs where you expect outpourings of angst-filled emotions, fluffy musings of romance, cute pictures posted by adults refusing to snap out of their adolescence. It will be my personal opinion on all things relevant in this world fit for my comments. Well, at least those fit for my comments considering my academic and experiential knowledge. I shall not seek to impose my opinions on people as you should be intelligent enough to discern right from wrong, black from white and learn to navigate the grey world we live in. Yes, I am anti-Bushism as well. And may i let it be known that anyone who appoints their cosy, familair acquaintances/ friends/ fat-cat donor friends to positions of power and influence over common folk, be no better than the scum that besieges my bathroom floor.

I should get a lawyer friend one day to write a legal disclaimer some day and post it on this site, so no agenda-driven fool try to sue me for my comments. I refer to the War on Blogging recently waged by my home country, borne out of the government's concern on racial sensitivities rupturing the social fabric of Singapore.

The intention is good, no doubt, but in view of the fact that Singapore's culture has been -- that of a general public been mollycoddled by a patriarchical, top-down ruling class whose word has historically been interpreted as law, the recent clampdown on online race-sensitive blogs does not bode well for Singaporean bloggers. One perspective is that civil liberties and free speech have taken a direct hit after the public put-down by the Prime Minister, that the government desires to exert influence over the New Media on the blogosphere as well. I agree to a certain extent with that. It is culturally difficult for Singaporeans to defy the word of their patriarchical government, there is a mental block that limits the distance Singaporeans will go in criticizing the policies of their government.

The Singapore government may have recognized the importance in liberalizing the views of the public and incorporating their opinions into policy-making in recent years, especially through their main vehicle -- the "Remaking Singapore" initiative. This initiative was hailed, by many quarters, as the end of "Nuclear Winter" of free speech in Singapore, as a new government sought to co-operate together with their people to draft a national blueprint for the small nation in the new era of globalization and technology. Sadly, globalized Singapore may be, technology-friendly we are not if the "Race-Blog" issue becomes a festering thorn in the government's policy towards free speech on the Internet. I am not against the decision to condemn racially-insensitive elements of hatred, but the draconian laws and punishment meted out to the culprits reek of unfairness and extremism considering the young ages of the offenders (one was 17 years). If we censure politically incorrectness on the Internet so flagrantly and harshly, we send a very negative message out to the outside world - one of intolerance.



On a separate note, its amazing how my boss, Sia, dishes out gems of wisdom even when he is down with flu.

The role of management is to manage people.

The role of employees is to manage the business.

Do not micro-manage. Give people the infrastructure and let them loose with the resources to manage within their personal scope of abilities.