i.justrealized

It felt kinda funny so I just had to take a picture. I was at MobFest last week and Microsoft was the venue sponsor.

When Microsoft got their interns to talk about their projects, a few people stood up and leave. So basically they’re not there for Microsoft at all. It’s kinda sad and funny at the same time. I, too, wasn’t there for Microsoft products. I am working in the building next to them so we just walk over to check MobFest out. After MobFest, Arzhou, Raine and Uzyn had some supper (or dinner). And yesterday, I was at Microsoft Singapore again for RIAction and they had lots of Adobe stuff there. Google and Yahoo! was there too.

I think it is really generous for them to let competitor products step into the company. It requires a certain amount of openness and generosity to allow that to happen. I mean they could have rejected these things and no one would say that they are selfish. After all, it’s not in their commercial interest to host these sort of events. Sure they could sip in a bit of Microsoft talks here and there but they don’t really have to do that too. I don’t think the company deserved to be made a butt of jokes all the time.

Oh, you can’t sing a cover of “Winter Wonderland”. Apparently YouTube took down a video of teenagers singing “Winter Wonderland” due to copyright infringement. Warner probably owns the rights to the song.

Deleted Video?! Warner Music Group?! Copyright Infringement?! WINTER WONDERLAND?!

Well… I am just wondering why Youtube or whichever company did that. These Christmas jingles would sell better if more people spread it, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be in their commercial interest to not remove these videos? Unless of course the song would hurt the sales of the song, perhaps like a parody or change of lyrics or even a horribly-rendition.

YouTube’s January Fair Use Massacre

This is what it’s come to. Teenagers singing “Winter Wonderland” being censored off YouTube.

Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners (sometimes carelessly, sometimes not). But in the past several weeks, two things have made things much worse for those who want to sing a song, post an a capella tribute, or set machinima to music.

First, it appears that more and more copyright owners are using YouTube’s automated copyright filtering system (known as the Content ID system), which tests all videos looking for a “match” with “fingerprints” provided by copyright owners.

Second, thanks to a recent spat between YouTube and Warner Music Group, YouTube’s Content ID tool is now being used to censor lots and lots of videos (previously, Warner just silently shared in the advertising revenue for the videos that included a “match” to its music). (Source: EFF)

I’ll leave you to judge if this has gone too far.

The previous Monday was the last episode of The Little Nyonya (小娘惹). I was watching it with my mom. I watch about 30% of the whole series, I either overslept, too tired, too busy or too pek chek. (“Pek chek” is the feeling of frustration, typically arising from the fact that there isn’t much that can be done to alleviate a problem.)

(The Little Nyonya by Mediacorp.)

The Little Nyonya is the most pek chek series I ever watch. Right next to Lost which is really pek chek ’cause I have to wait months for the next season. I often bring my netbook and sit on the sofa to watch with her when I have the time. And when things get a little too pek chek, I enjoy some juice from my fridge while someone’s crying on television.

The series tells of Peranakan culture which is quite refreshing. A good detour from the typical Mediacorp Singapore dramas that involves a bunch of crazy folks and neighbors, a cute (in a smart-ass way) but helpless kid and some references to national education. What happen to the Mediacorp stock characters? Oh oh, I know the answer to this one – they’re all compacted in the next drama of Reunion Dinner (团圆饭). I yawned twice on the first day. The second day I yawned before the show starts and went to bed.

Just today my mom was saying the finale was terrible. “Thought you say nice?” Mom: “Bad ending.”

{[Yue Niang (Ou Xuan) and Chen Xi (Qi Yi Wu) together.] * 1}

Huh? I thought the ending was a good one? Well it wasn’t fantastically beautiful I guess but it was still a good ending, no? My mom wants to see Chen Xi (Qi Yi Wu) and Yue Niang (Ou Xuan) together and at the last few episodes she still wants to see them together. I keep telling her if they get together, I’d fire the scriptwriter.

If you ask me at the middle of the drama, I would say it would be great to see them together but as it reaches to the end and with all the plot unfolding, the chance of Yue Niang becoming the wife of Chen Xi is almost negligible. In fact, it would be rather uncharacteristic of Yue Niang to be with Chen Xi as it would be snatching her sister’s husband (even though they probably divorce or something). Yue Niang’s character has always been consistently self-sacrificial (which is why I say it’s really pek chek) and at the end of the series it would be likely that she would sacrifice again and again. I am so prepared for the additional sacrifice I stock up my fridge with apple juice. Furthermore, putting them together would be like watching a Disney-style ending, it’s like watching Cinderella with Peranakan seasoning.

(Disney Cinderella style ending for The Little Nyonya?)

I looked at the ending as a good one, probably because I did not view The Little Nyonya as a love story. I view it as a story of a person. After all, it’s The Little Nyonya and not The Adorable Nyonya Couple. May I also add that mid-series I actually thought The Pek Chek Show would’ve been a much apt title. I think ultimately, The Little Nyonya delivered. Whether it is the desired ending or not isn’t much of an issue. It’s the story of her, as the scriptwriter portrays. I think he or she did a good job.

However I am disappointed that The Little Nyonya felt a little rush with several unaddressed plot developments such as:

• What happen during the fire? How did Yue Niang escape?
• What happen to Liu Yi Dao? (By the way, that’s one of my favorite characters, hahaa…)
• What happen to Yue Niang’s husband? I know he wasn’t shown because they couldn’t find an old caucasian dude who resembles the younger actor but still…
• What happen to Yue Niang’s family? I know they moved into the house and then? (Oh by the way, seeing a bunch of old folks looking at the house like it’s heaven is really funny. I laughed, sorry.)
• What happen to Chen Xi and Libby? Perhaps more coverage would be good after all much of the series focuses on developing Chen Xi’s character.

I don’t think there would be a next season, they practically killed of all characters to begin a new season. A parallel plot is possible but it’s untested in Singapore dramas (correct me if I’m wrong). Perhaps a single hour sub plot would be good to revisit the familiar characters and address some of the questions above. A spring festival special perhaps?

I see windows services that does absolutely nothing but just check for regular updates. It is just sitting there through your entire session waiting for the time to ripe for checking of update. Don’t do that kind of lame stuff.

A common requirement in business application is a scheduled process – call a webservice, process the data, and FTP the results to a business partner, for instance. Developers kick around possible solutions – BizTalk’s overkill, DTS won’t handle it well, what to do?

Invariably, someone suggests a Windows Service with a timer. Just as invariably, when you try to talk them out of it, they’ll condescendingly tell you that Windows Services are easy to write in .NET. “Trust me, it’s not hard – we’ll write a simple service with a timer which will do a simple time check…”

A Windows Service is the wrong solution to scheduling one-off custom processes. The right solution for scheduling simple processes is the Windows Task Scheduler. (Source: Jon Galloway)

I mean it’s just an update check. It’s not that a big deal to use a service for that.

I’ll try to explain based on my experience explaining Java to some friends. I never been through formal programming training which probably hence made me a poor teacher.

To me, it is because they cannot accept the language as it is. They question why are things done this way? Why not another way? The modern programming language is so abstract. It’s hard to see how the lower level components interact.

Some learners need to fiddle with the lower layers to accept and understand the higher level components. We just build tools on top of the lowest layer and then establish more and more layers thinking it is making life simple.

I lost my patience before and said to a friend, “Why can’t you just memorize it? It’s by design, if you don’t like then design your own language.” Actually it’s just an excuse because the real reason is too long to explain. It’s like telling a primary school kid that light travels in a straight line even though you well know it doesn’t and thank god it doesn’t.

Perhaps it does make life simple for the already programmers, but it makes learning a lot harder.

I love Borders. Love to be able to walk in and browse through. I have to admit that 90% of the time I come out empty handed or perhaps just with the Borders card member brochure.

I’m sorry that you aren’t doing well Borders. It’s all my fault.

Borders Inc ‘no longer for sale’

It posted a net quarterly loss of $175.4m (£113m), or $2.90 per share, as against $161.1m, or $2.74 per share, in the third quarter of last year.

But it said applying a range of restructuring measures in the past year will allow the company to stand on its own despite the downturn.

“We have smiles on our faces”, Borders chief executive George Jones said.

Like-for-like sales dropped 12.8% in Borders superstores, with revenue falling to $693m from $765m during the same quarter last year.

The news sent Borders share down 52% in after-hours trading.

In March, Borders said it had been evaluating a sale of its core business after facing increasing difficulties in accessing funds. (Source: BBC)

Books aren’t doing well these days probably because lesser people are reading these days. I used to see more people reading in trains. Singaporeans are rather busy people, few have the chance to read at home for leisure. Most read during commute time. It’s not easy to read while standing. Those sitting on chairs either have their ears plugged with earphones (blissfully unaware that they suppose to alight the previous stop sometimes) or sleeping (or perhaps pretending to sleep when there’re older folks in front of them).

Anyway, it’s just not good news for book lovers. Are physical stores impractical these days? Is the future going to be electronic books? I still much prefer touching paper. I’ll hate to see physical bookstores become a luxury of yesterday.

One of the worst programming languages I ever wrote in is Fortran. It’s got a rather limited set of features. I dreaded to go work every day staring at the lines of codes that basically represent a cholesterol research paper’s equations.

I was using the g77 compiler. The only thing that I can remember is all the nonsensical representation of while loops. It has got the most basic support for structural programming. I had the impression that programmers in the 1970s are like artists, they paint a first layer and paint a second then the third and if there’s a mistake they cover it up with a thick coat of paint. The whole software is like a gibberish piece of code and no amount of comment ever made my life easier the next day.

However it is through Fortran that I start appreciating the more modern programming languages. I look at for each loops imagining how confusing would it be to represent the same code in Fortran.

Every time I hear people whine about how many lines of codes and how confusing a code chunk looked, I wish those people could see things from my point of view. Imagine the number of mistakes made and later corrected for the supposed better.