Rebirth of T-rex

Leadership has always been an important element to achieve success and lately I have read a lot about it. Just to share some interesting points with you here.

John Maxwell has defined 21 laws of leadership, in which the following are the first 4 which I quoted from him:

1) Law of the Lid:
- The leadership ability determines the level of effectiveness.
- Personal success without leadership limits your effectiveness.
- The higher you climb, the more leadership you need.

2) Law of the Influence:
- The major difference of leaders is on the influence.
- Leadership is influence and influencer makes things happen.
- The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the people to participate.

3) Law of the Process:
- Leadership develop daily but not in a day.
- Everyone has the potential to be leaders.
- Leaders are born but successful leaders are learnt.
- It is the capability to develop and improves their skills to distinguish a leader from his followers.

4) Law of the Navigation:
- Everyone can steer a ship but leaders charge the course.
- Followers need leaders to be able to effectively navigate for them.
- A blueprint to navigate: PLAN AHEAD
- P: Pre-determine a course of action
- L: Lay out your goal
- A: Adjust your priorities
- N: Notify key personnel
- A: Allow time for acceptance
- H: Head off the essence
- E: Expect problems
- A: Always point to the sucesses
- D: Daily review your plan
- Preparations build confidence and trust in people

A saying from Anthony Robbin:
Success is to create pleasure on your life and making yourself to grow; Failure is able to find pain no matter how good it is!

While learning a lot from Anthony Robbins, I just read another great book by Chen An Zhi- "How to successfully be rich?" (translated). I won't drill down into the $$$ part as it's quite sensitive to some people, however, I would like to hightlight some important points about why people fail? Yes, it's true, we have been always searching, learning and practicing how to be successful, but we seldom look at the opposite, which is why we fail? Imagine if you are practicing the rules of success but at the same time committing to actions that lead you to failure, how well will you perform?

There are plenty of factors mentioned by the author, however, I will list down the three main ones, which are:
1) Lack of Goal (No Goal)
- Many people include me wants to be successful, but how? What do we want to achieve? How can we achieve the goal?
- Thus, defining your own goal is important. Try asking yourself, what do you plan to achieve today?

2) Goal is not recorded
- Oftenly, we have a goal but they are not recorded. When we are asked, "Do you have a goal? Where do you record them?"; most of us will just answer "Yes, I have many goals. I just remember them and keep them in my brain." That's in fact the exact answer I have given to my girl friend when she asked the same question. That's funny right? Yes, it's one of the root to our failure
- Besides, the goal should be specific and reasonable/achievable too! You can't say I want to earn more money. But how much is more? RM1 more than current is considered more too! Also, you can't expect to earn 100K in the next month while your current salary is only 3K. Though it might happen, but it's not reasonable.

3) Changing Goal
- Many of us keep on changing our goal after we have set one.
- We need to define short term, medium term and long term goal such that they are in sync and able to assist you to achieve what you have set.
- Set your dreams high, but set your goal reasonably.

I would love to share more in the future. Please feedback.

Today, I have a great time with my friend/leader who helped/trained me to see things differently. He shared with me many insights and we have gone through some motivation materials by Anthony Robbins. Thus, I would share with you some essence I managed to capture (quoted from Anthony Robbins):

1) "The past is not equivalent to the future".

2) In order to change our life, we need to know where we are heading (our goal), make a decision to achieve it (take action), evaluate the result and change our approach if it's not working.

3) Use role models or learn from people who have succeed to help us speed up our pace to achieve success.

4) "Failure and Fear can be your best friend".

5) "Everything we do is driven by need to avoid pain and desire to gain pleasure". Thus, when changing your behavior, focus on how not changing is more painful than changing and how changing brings more pleasure.

6) "Use pain and pleasure instead of pain and pleasure use you"

I am trying something new today- to do my work in Star Bucks, KL Sentral. It's the firs time I spend half the day in Star Bucks doing things I like in a very relaxing mode.

I came to KL Sentral in the morning with my friend. He met up someone for interview while I try to establish the wireless connection in Star Bucks. I was so stupid and didn't read the instruction correctly. I was connected via the WAN, however, didn't know that I just need to key in the given user id and password shown on the login page. I was doing other development work till my friend has finished his interview. We went for lunch and he headed down to Melaka while I stay back in Star Bucks. Too bad my gf wasn't online and can't chat with her.

I spent some time researching for solution while trying them. Besides, also chatting with my friend in Shanghai whom I just met. I like the environment here as it plays Jazz, which is very smoothing. I wish my gf is here with me. I also hope that my house can be designed to provide such environment in the future. After dinner, we can read books, chit chat, yoga, go online or even dance under such environment to relax ourselves, hindering from hypertension. :)

Since last weekend, I have been attached to a new project and will be in customer site for 3 months as Consultant. Time flies, however, the team members are very friendly. We have been able to work as a team very well though only being together for two weeks. We went for lunch together and since the team is quite huge, I take turns to join different gang. My colleagues even join them for lunch together.

Yesterday, I managed to meet up a few secondary school class mates (in particularly, Ing Huei, Kuan Yen and Pek Keen) for dinner. Too bad that a few other class mates couldn't make it. Though it was just a very short session, but we managed to get ourselves updated about each other. Hope to be able to meet them up again in near future.

Three hours more, I will be attending another reunion dinner, but this time is for primary school class mates. My ex-class monitor has arranged the session and managed to invite 3 of our teachers to join us. Hope that it will be an enjoying session.

Many things have kept me busy lately. The main focus was supporting a few prototypes
delivered to the potential customer and trying to improve the performance.

The one that really make our team and company proud is that we managed to convince the customer with a 188 vs 6 server hits figure during the testing. It may not make sense with that figure without understanding what it stands for. Basically, the figure shows the total number of server hits for a booking process in the existing system implemented using JSP/Javascript against the prototype we built. It clearly shows that with JSP/Javascript cause 188 server hits for the entire process, while our prototype only need 6. Therefore, the network traffic has been reduced tremendously (it's 31% of the original). It also means with the same infra-structure, it can supports more concurrent transactions. I can really see the sales and marketing personnel, especially my CEO, are really excited with this figure. They have been using this case studies every where when approaching prospects. I have heard it several times during the Novell Open Source Developers Conference at Sheraton Hotel, Subang Jaya.

I was also busy with the Novell Open Source Developers Conference. The event was held on Tuesday and Wednesday, in which Tuesday was the Conference at Sheraton Hotel, while Workshop was on Wednesday at KMDC, Plaza Sentral. I was sort of coordinating on the preparation for the workshop. I am really glad to have a great team members contributing a lot of effort to make the workshop successful. Though some struggles were met during the process as it is our first time, however, we managed to get through it. Really appreaciate their effort.

On Tuesday, my partner and I went to KMDC to set up the necessary software for the workshop. When we reached the venue, we were shocked with the training room as it's really very conducive and I haven't really seen one like this before. The room is sound proof, there is a special white board which you can't write with normal white board marker, instead, there is special electronic marker and duster. The most impressive part is the electronic marker can act as pointer to drag the mouse pointer on the projected screen, while it also reflects on the computer screen. Cool! Besides, the machines the vendor provided are really elegant!

After the installation process has completed, my partner and I got a call from my VP who was at the conference in Sheraton Hotel. Then, we decided to go over to the conference to attend a session on UML. We took KTM train from KL Sentral then took a book from Subang Jaya KTM station to Subang Jaya Medical Center. It was great as I haven't been taking train for quite a while. The fare is pretty cheap and the journey is smooth. When we reached our company's booth in Sheraton Hotel, I can see that the crowd at our booth really attracted many participants of the conference. That's where and when I heard 188 vs 6 figures several times. :) Really proud of it!

Anyway. starting from Monday, I will be working on a new project, yes, this time is a real project! I was notified on Wednesday that the project might start on Monday and I will be involved. However, the confirmation only came in this evening. In fact, I am really excited and a bit of worry also. Hopefully, everything will go well. As I always have my lovely gf supporting me, I will never give up so easily :)

Welcome back to my blog, it could be a word to myself too since I haven't been updating the blog since my grandma's funeral. In fact, I have been really busy after returning back from Penang.

Concurrently handling multiple tasks of prospects from MNC was really challenging but interesting. Besides, balancing those tasks with the new task I was assigned, which is to take care of product development, increase the challenge level.

For the 1st prospect from Germany, engineer and account manager from partners, sales manager from Singapore, sales executive from Germany paid us a visit to view the demo I was working on and also business opportunity that could be crafted. I was excited over it though some issue arose the night before the demo but thank god everything went well and we got positive feedbacks from the attendees. Follow up activities continue, I just completed the installation cd and user guide for the prototype and they were sent to Germany to be shown to the CEO of the prospect. Later I will set up a server to host this prototype such that other partner or prospect in the world wide can access it. Besides, there is another prospect who is very interested and has asked us to provide the scoping to see whether the project can be started as soon as soon.

Quite a number of exciting news for other prospects of the tasks I was involved, however, they have been escalated to the higher management.

As mention, I am focusing more on the product developent. My senior architect will be going for long vacation in mid of August, so he is doing some handover to me and my colleague so that we are able to manage the product while he is not around. We went through existing training materials and source code to understand how to use the product and how the product works. Besides, I have mixed several bugs and enhance some features in the existing product. Yesterday was only discussing about the design for one important feature in the upcoming release of the product. Hope to be able to produce the deliverables soon.

Things are changing and I will be relocated to Cyberjaya branch as that's the R&D center. It's just opposite the MDC HQ. My colleagues and I who will be relocated to the branch went there for a visit on Thursday. Though the office space is not as big as the current one in KL, however, it's more conducive in terms of the partition/cubicle, so more privacy. I hope it will be a nice place to work.

I believe it has been really a long while that this blog has been very quiet. I was asked when will a new post be posted. You might have guessed it, I was pretty busy for the past few weeks, handling existing project, new project, new assignments, new roles & responsibilities and also personal issues.

With the rapid growth of the company, I am lucky to be assigned as one of the product owner, thus, in charge of over looking the growth of a particular company's product, threating it as my own 'baby'. As myself is really new to the product assigned, I was busy gathering information from the architect, including obtaining source code, demo, documentation, even meeting my CTO and the architect to discuss it in details. Then, I prepared a first draft of a write up for the product strategy. After the first review, I will pump in more detail on planning to the document.

At the same time, I was busy working on the existing task, building new components to simulate the existing functionalities. I have learnt a lot from there but a bit slow, hope to improve the efficiency in this area. New task also came in, thus getting myself to involve in requirements definition meeting.

Last weekend was great as my girl friend came up to KL, I wouldn't want to reveal the details herel, but it was a booster for me during the 'drowning' period.

Anyway, this week is really hard to go through when the sudden news of my grandma shocked me on Tuesday noon. My grandma has been suffering from critical illness for a few months and has been struggling through it. When she was hospitalized end of last week, I started to sort out some of the tasks, completed a few, planning to visit her on this coming Friday. However, after my lunch on Tuesday, I got a call from my mom, informing me the death of my grandma, I was really shocked because on Sunday morning, my relatives who visited her said that she seems like normal. But, it really caught us in surprise.

After the call, all kind of mixture of thoughts went through my mind. Then, I submitted an emergency leave application and discussed with my colleagues and did a handover so that they can help me to rush up 1 urgent task.

My family and I departed at 10pm on Tuesday night. Then I drove till Bukit Gantang with a pit stop at Tapah's R & R. Later, my younger brother took over and drove us till my 2nd auntie's house. We paid our respect to my grandma and have a glance of her sleeping peacefully in the coffin.

Every night we recides prayers for her, serving relatives who came over to pay their respects, guard the nights. My grandma told us not to cry for her leaving. Though it's hard to accept that she left us, because it just seemed that 'I just met her recently and now she is away!' However, fact is fact, I just got to accept it, with our greatest heart, hope she will be enjoying in Heaven.

Today I went to MPH and came across an interesting book written by Christopher Duncan, titled 'The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World'. I briefly read the introduction and found it covers a lot of real situation in the programmer's life, such as tight schedule, demanding customers, ever changing requirements and many others which I have went through before. Then, he suggests the approach we should take to handle them. I found the following useful and quoted here to share with you:

'As programmer, we're not just hired to code. We're hired to deliver great software'.

On Thursday, my colleagues (Azrin, PC and Juliana) and me attended Sun's Java Forum 2005 at Summit Hotel. As usual, I attended this forum to expose myself to more technical knowledge, especially I am a Java savvy, and also some business exposure. Early in the morning my sister dropped me at the Summit Hotel and my colleagues were all in there! Then I met Chee Woei, who is currently working in my company's partner, Niclas from eWarna and also Ser Yee, my junior in MMU during registration before the event starts. A door gift were given, including a magnet bookmark.

In this forum, it started with the introduction of new J2SE 5.0, code name Tiger after the welcome address by the Strategic Initiative Development Director of Sun Microsystems Malaysia. The speaker focused on the new language syntax along with some management tools introduced in the new version of J2SE.

Then, another speaker impressed the participants with the introduction of the Sun Java Studio Creator (covering Java Server Faces). She live demo to us how fast to get a typical web page that has criteria, result in tabular form, pagination and also consumption of web services within 30 min with that tool. It's merely drag and drop and selection in wizard most of the time. I am sure my ex colleague, Chee Tat would love this a lot if he has the tool.

We had a morning break before continue with another interesting live demo by the first speaker during the session on Advanced J2ME Development. He used Netbean 4.1 and Wireless Toolkit to create a simple appointment application for handphone. A lot of the process were drag and drop too! Impressive! I will sure introduce this to my girl friend for her final year project if it was so user friendly last time.

The Education Services Manager from Sun Microsystems Malaysia then brief us the value of Sun's certifications with statistics, including higher wages and demand. Besides, the certification coupon were 25% discounted on that day. I went to Sun's booth to claim a special token for audience who obtained their Sun's certification. Next, I headed for lunch. There were so much food that even I only took a mouthful of each, it made me felt so full till midnight without me taking dinner.

The afternoon session covered SAP Netweaver, a success story from StarSearch Technologies and J2EE (on EJB3) by Java Architect, JTrend. I was impressed with the EJB3 as the new specification ease a lot of job for EJB component developer with the usage of annotation introduced in Tiger. I got a T-shirt for asking a question during Q&A and later a key chain for submitting the evaluation form. So, it was really a day that full of 'input'.

Before we departed home, my colleagues and I discussed on the task distribution for preparing a presentation to share what we have learnt from the forum and also some business value that we could bring to our company and products.

Today I have learnt a new business strategy which is called 'Prosumer', it should be the combination of 'Producer' and 'Consumer'. It is based on the concept of 'corporation' (Koperasi in Malay), in which the 'public wealth' is shared among the so called investor. It was introduced by the Europe economist back in the 19th century to break the monopoly of the rich or higher status community. During that time, the rich or higher status community will remain rich and having comfortable living, while the poor will always be poor. There is no chance for the predecessor to 'over turn' their 'fate', thus revolution or riot was raised to over turn the government, however when the new leader and the community took over, the same situation happened. Thus, the economist proposed 'corporation' to gather very small amount of money from the poor, then these money are used to purchase necessity directly from the provider or producer with lower price and the goods are sold to the contributers of the corporation and the corporation make some income from it, yet the price is much cheaper. At year end, when the profit are shared among the contributors. Thus, sharing the 'public wealth'. In this situation, the consumer 'spend and save' at the same time, thus the concept of 'Prosumer'. In today's world, when it is applied in some businesses, it will produce a great impact to the consumer, rather than selling, the consumer just need to consume the daily products, at the same time earning profit out of it.

Last weekend, I went down to Melaka to visit my lovely gf as usual. It's kind like a routine as if I am going to work everyday, I don't feel any burden or reluctant to do so, any how, because I am meeting my love one mah :P. We went to pray at the temple on Saturday morning (because the next day was Wesak Day) and planned to perform the ritual ceremony to 'bathe the god', but the temple didn't provide that. So, on Sunday afternoon, we went to another temple near my gf's house to perform the ritual ceremony. It was so nice that someone guided us the correct procedure to do so. In fact, as planned, I was supposed to meet up a good friend on Saturday, however, due to some emergency case, he couldn't make it. So, hope to be able to meet him on the coming holiday.

Yesterday, as schedule, one of our company's partner came over for a meeting to discuss about one of the prototype I am working on. When I was trying to show her and my CTO the prototype that I had secreted crafted without my CTO noticing it, both our partner and CTO were impressed. Later, the Vice President came over and took a look too! He advised me on some of the things to be improved and hint me to give another 'surprise'!

While continue to work on the prototype today, my CTO called up to ask me to visit one of our customer to provide some support and consultation on preparing them to perform a testing to compare an existing application with the one we have simulated using our company's product. I met quite a number of obstacle as this is the first time I am working on a real testing tool and scenario. I have consulted my colleagues and even my CTO, however, to no avail, I did't managed to convince them to the testing approach that was expected. Never the less, I managed to learn up a lot of things especially in terms of consultancy, problem solving and 'red alert' on my vision to be 'evengelist'.

Tomorrow I will be attending Java Forum at Subang Summit Hotel, in which we will be celebrating Java 10th anniversary. Hope it will be an interesting event.

Today morning, I was ready and almost going to meet up to discuss with my COO about tomorrow's demo, however, when I checked with my team lead, he informed me that our participation on the demo was called off as for tomorrow's meeting doesn't require technical support from us. So, I switched to help my trainer on the training material as we are supposed to present in the afternoon for review. I went through the slides and made necessary modifications, besides, also updated some sample code to fit the additional requirement.


Half way during the work, my CTO came over to checked with me on the code optimization for one of the prototype I have delivered to the partner. He then explained to me the approach to take to optimize the deployed prototype since the partner is doing a benchmarking. I managed to get that up with guidance from my colleague. During the process, we found out that Weblogic Application Server act differently compared to Tomcat Web Server for the code optimization process. However, it's good to learn another new thing today.


During the review session, it seemed that the flow of the enhanced training material is correct and just required some minor modification or addition. Then, we got two new colleagues who just joined to provide feedback on the previous training and gather suggestion for improvements.


Tomorrow I shall compile the list of feedback and discuss with my trainer on the necessary modifications. Besides, I may write a small test program to test whether the demo program for the germany project can be run on the backend. Then, will compile a list of items to be clarified on next Tuesday.


I will be meeting my lovely girl friend and ex-colleague this weekend. Hope to rest more as will try to start getting the business plan moving faster and gain more income from there.

I started preparing for the Germany project after my CTO sent me the available resources. I even used Google's translation tool to translate the German written in some document or source code to English. Now I'm able to know that 'Die' (German) stands for 'The' (English) and 'Anzahl' (German) is equivalent to 'Number' (English). Hope to learn up some other common terms. Then, later the partner came over to setup a trial version of the client and server of the existing system. She then run through the software to show me and CTO the basic functionalities.

After going through the resources, I tried to modify the demo program that they passed to us and was so happy to see the program runs. Currently, there are a few issues that hinder me from further progress. Awaiting for some assistance and consultancy from the expert. :)

Early this week, the Vice President and Team Lead had a performance review with me. Since it was the first time I am having the performance review, I wasn't sure how the process would be, so I prepared a simple form/ matrix on the technical skills and soft skills to be evaluated. When I had the section, the VP explained to be the difference of performance review and appraisal. Then, when I passed him the form I prepared, he explained to me that usually this form is used in more formal occasion, in particularly the performance appraisal and both parties will rate each items. We had a two-way discussion for about 1 hour plus as I would like to find out some of the area for improvements. At the end of the session, I was assigned a new tasks to assist my COO for this Friday's demo presentation.

My team lead guided me on some of the preparation for the demo and I am awaiting to coordinate with my COO tomorrow on how should we pursue on Friday.

It has been a long while for this blog to be quiet. In fact, I have been involved in a lot of learning since the past few weeks.

At work, as I was trying to port an existing prototype (that was running on Jakarta Tomcat) into IBM Webphere Portal, I bump into many obstacles as the architecture of Java Portlet is different from Java Servlets though Java Portlet is an extension to Java Servlets. After several attempts of trial and error in order to get the porting work, but to no avail, I decided to get back to the basic to start learning about Java Portlet API (JSR 168). I have found some good articles explaning about the specification, some with tutorial and so forth. From the new knowledge gained, I attempted to modify the prototype to try to reach my goal in porting it successfully in Webpshere Portal. Work continues...

Besides, CEO and the new Vice President, Engineer dropped and had a small discussion with all the senior (as in at least 1-2 years experience) employee they have just hired. We came to know about the new VP's background and introduce ourselves to him. CEO also notify us about the possiblities of changes that will happen in the company, in terms of our role and responsibilities. He also advised us not to be afraid of change, as this change will lead us to a better status.

After the session, I took the initiative to hold a informal online conference with a few of my colleagues to plan out some internal prototype to be done. The main objectives were to think of some new ideas, look and feels and new domain to be covered besides getting some of us start working on some application with our company's product. As I was gathering some opinion and feedbacks from some of my other colleagues, including my trainer and regional channel manager, the discussion became more formal. We decided to had a face to face discussion with our regional channel manager. She proposed us to attempt on either a prototype for domain that the company has not tried before or some internal applications that use our company product. She also agreed to gather feedbacks from Sales colleague on some commonly met issues, such a way we may craft something for them.

On the next day, my team (consulting team) lead called all team members for a discussion. My colleagues and I who were involved in the informal conference started to worry whether we have offended anyone. So we agreed to appologize on our mistake. When the team lead initiated the meeting, he started to brief us on the latest status about the team and some upcoming prototype and project to be worked on. As we are still waiting for the Sales team to get back to us, he told us to bear with him. Later, he praised us for initiating the internal prototype idea but advised us on some common requirements from customer, in which the customer usually wants us to develop a prototype that integrates with their backend, though we may have some domain specific prototype.

Towards the end of the week, I was called in to work with my trainer to improve the training material and process to 'enable' the developer, in such a way that upon the completion of the training, the participants are able to use our company's product to perform the development tasks. After some discussion with my trainer, he assigned me to prepare the sample code for the mini workshop, in which I have to improve the UI, adding more comments and also prepare another J2EE EJB component for data retrieval. I temporary halt my work on the Java Portlet API.

As this is the first time working on EJB and deploying the J2EE application in JBoss
application server, my progress didn't go well as planned as I was coding and deploying it manually. A lot of mistakes in the deployment descriptor consumes most of my time. I should have used tools like Lomboz or JBoss-IDE to assist me. Besides, I also stucked in one of the situation where the Container Managed Persistance (CMP) Entity Bean I developed refers to a table named 'user' in MySQL database always refers to a table named 'xuser' when I run the application. After quite a number of attempt, I only realized that I should not use the name 'user' as my database table name, since it may be referenced as the table that keeps the record of users for database authentication and 'xuser' is reference indeed. Thank god, I managed to task on EJB integration by afternoon today. Upon an informal review session, I
continue to work on the improvement of UI for the sample code.

During the weekend, I was chatting with my CTO over Yahoo Messenger and found that I need to learn up JNI for Java/COM communication. It's meant for one upcoming prototype that I will be working with my CTO for a company in Europe. I was so excited when I got to know the news. Because if things go well, I may stand a chance to go to Europe, but things are not confirmed. So, I will work hard enough to learn up the new technology and hope the company can close the deal.

Besides, I stayed back late yesterday trying to complete my task on the EJB integration for the training mini workshop. The new VP dropped in our office and we had a chat. He advised us some common practice on QA, debugging and testing skill. He also encouraged us to learn and make full us of Unified Modeling Language (UML), as it is not just a graphical 'tool' but it helps in project management too! I wasn't sure whether he mistaken me to someone, but he told me that I should learn this more and he is going to grow me in the new area. As we were walking towards his apartment (I went to my car), he advised me, don't 'over-manage', if there are 100 items in the project and only 10 which are critical or at higher risk, then just focus on that 10, otherwise you will ruin the project. He added, 'project management is like sales, speak the appropriate but not everything; we were consultant, that's why we tend to speak a lot in order to drive people to certain direction'. I agreed with what he said, but really wish to learn more from him.

I told myself, I really gained a lot of new insights in this new company and more to come. If I am growing as how I am growing within these two months, I am sure I will be able to be someone great in 3 years time!

I met up with a few secondary mates at Mid Valley Star Buck yesterday at 10am. Not many turned up. The following are some of the photo taken:

(From left: Me, Sin Boon, Kuan Yen and Chooi Chooi)


(From left: Sin Boon, Kuan Yen, Me, Chooi Chooi and Ing Huei)


(From left: Sin Boon, Kuan Yen, Me, Chooi Chooi and Ing Huei)

The following is a 'candid' version of Lord of The Ring (Gunung Irau Version)
The Fellowship of the Ring
(Before we started our journey, all of us are ready! From left: me, Kuan Yen, Zhen Tong and Pek Keen)


The Two Towers
(Communication tower, where we departed)


Return of the King
(Pek Keen- did you realize his sword?)



Some other photos on the Gunung Irau trip.
The Shine from God?
(Rays of sunlight taken when we were at the lower part of the slope)








Is this where the Elves stay?
(Moss garden- the moss grows on tree branches, not the roots)


Hanging swing
(Pek Keen sitting on a root that grow across on a higher ground with a hollow beneath)


Victory!
(The peak of Gunung Irau)


New friends at false peak
(From left: Holland guy, me, Zhen Tong, Jason (from England) and Kuan Yen)


Huge and tiny picture plant
(Can you imagine how big is the picture plant, try to use your body part to estimate)






Foggy-Creepy
(Covered by thick fog, seems creepy traveling across it)


Mountain View
(From peak of Gunung Irau)


Tea plantation


So, do I look funny in the photos? Hope you enjoy the photos.

It's a great experience for my trip to Gunung Irau yesterday. Anyway, I would like to start the story since Friday.

After work on Friday, my younger sister came to fetch me as we have agreed to celebrate my dad's birthday by having dinner together. I was surprised when I saw my mom also in the car. Then I tried to ask my younger sister about my elder sister and she told me that she went to fetch her boy friend and will meet me at the restaurant. When we reached the restaurant, I was really shocked because my younger sister's boy friend and my younger brother are there too! I was so pleased because we can hardly have chance to have dinner together like this, every family member attended.

After the dinner, I went to buy bread and 100 Plus for my Gunung Irau trip. I packed the necessary gears (but this time is really light, since no tent and extra water supply) and went for sleep early at 11pm. The next day I woke up at 3.30am. I took a bath and waited for my friends. Only 4 of us went for this trip, in which 2 of them (Pek Keen and Kuan Yen) are my best friends. We were called the 3 musketeers! Another member is a friend of Pek Keen- Zhen Tong. Zhen Tong drove us and I took a nap during the journey. We took our breakfast at one of the R&R in Plus highway.

We reached the peak of Cameron Highland at 9+, the weather was quite nice but pretty chilling. We started our journey. Passing through the forest, we found the track was slightly challenging as ground was quite soggy and tree roots criss cross over the track. It's slippery especially whe we steps on tree roots to avoid the soggy ground. We moved on the challenging track and Zhen Tong felt at two spots when we were slowly moving down steep slopes. I believed he hurt seriously (because later he showed the blue black on his tight), yet we proceed the journey.

Along the way, I realized that the one who lead the group must be very decisive in picking the right and best path when we reach a 'junction'. If the path chosen wasn't the better one, the group will be brought into some or could be serious 'problem'. While the people in between so act as a very excellent 'bridge' between the forth and back members to make everyone pace out in sync. While the last person also have to keep up with the pace in order not to 'drag' the group down. I believe this applies to the company organization. So far I found Pek Keen is a very good 'leader' during the journey to the top of the peak.

We stopped at some points to grabs some drink while giving our muscles to rest. We proceeded till we reach the foot of false peak. It situated between Cameroon Highland and Gunung Irau. Many people thought they have reached Gunung Irau when they reach the peak of this mountain, thus it's called false peak. The journey up to the false peak was really challenging as it's quite steep and long. Besides, we climb over big rocks and roots, it tested our physical to the extreme, yet I believe the mind power played greater role here. With our team work and high spirit, we reached false peak at 11+. We grabbed some food and drink and took a rest.

When we were about to depart for our destination, Pek Keen proposed such that we only carry one bag with the necessary drinks, while the leaving the ramaining bags back, so that it will reduce our burdern and increase our speed to reach the peak of Gunung Irau. Then, Zhen Tong proposed not to proceed with the journey as I believe he was pretty exhausted and also affected by the hurt from the falls. Thus, we reorganized the baggage and I volunteered to carry it since I am the 'biggest' among all. We continued our journey down the false peak and we were impressed with the creation of the God when we reach the mossy jungle. I was told by Pek Keen that it looks like where the Elves stay in Lord of The Ring. I can't believe it till I really see it with my own eyes. It was so beautiful. Every 15m we stepped on, it was another 'scenary'. We took many pictures and I wish to share it very soon. At last, we reached the peak of Gunung Irau at 1pm. Yes, we made it! We conquered Gunung Irau! This add to my list of hills/mountains that I have conquered!

So far, I have managed to reach the peak of the following:
Bukit Gasing- Petaling Jaya, during Form 3 for project
Bukit Teresek- Pahang, during my trip with club to Taman Negara
Gunung Bunga Buah- opposite Genting Highland, I went with Pek Keen and another two secondary class mates
Pine Tree Hill- next to Fraser's Hill, I went there twice with Pek Keen and a few other friends
Bukit Beruang- Melaka, during my studies in MMU Melaka
Gunung Irau- next to Camerron Highland- new entry!

We headed back to false peak after taking a lot of pictures at Gunung Irau as record of achievement! I am surprised to meet two foreign hikers when we reached false peak. One of them from England- Jason, while another from Holand, can't really remember his name, sorry buddy. We had some chat while taking some food to regain our energy. I over heard their discussion on whether to proceed to Gunung Irau, as they seemed to have run into shortage of water. So, I proposed to Pek Keen to offer them a bottle of mineral water. They were happy and asked for some information on the duration to reach Gunung Irau. We managed to take a photo with them and before they left, they asked us for the contact number of Taxi service. We promised them to pass them the number once we reach the Cameron Highland town. Thus, we have Jason's contact number with us. So happy to meet two new friends at false peak! Seems to have meeting a lot of strangers this week :)

Something special event happened today, in which I didn't expect it to be so, probably it's fate or destiny. It all began about 2 months ago. One morning when I was stepping into the main door of the building, heading towards the lift which will bring me up to 6th floor, where my office is, one guy sitting at Star Bucks approached me, passing me a small photo size pamplet having very nice colored front design and having the following stated at the back:

Statistics Show,
Most People...

• Are UNHAPPY with their Job.
• Are OVERWORKED and UNDERPAID.
• RUN OUT of Money before the month ends.
• Have TOO MANY BILLS to pay.
• You CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE
  

Today, I realized that an approach that has been applied by my friend to develop his business is very efficient and effective- he uses the power of human network. I won't reveal much here since it could be his top secret recipe and I haven't confirm with him about my observation. Mei Mei, take note on this, I will discuss with you on how to make full use of this approach to expand our business.

Besides, I have some quotes that I would like to share, they are translated from Chinese:
1) Set a goal and plan an action plan
- if you don't set a goal, then you will be like a ship in the sea, lost of direction. Upon setting a goal, you need to plan and carry out the action plan, in order to make your dream comes through.

2) Make things happen, never wait things happen
- you must be proactive to expand your business, knowledge...etc. Must always aware and sensitive about the surrounding.

3) Discipline, always go beyond and never have excuse
- You must have self-displine to keep yourself on the track to reach the goal. Never give up easily whenever you meet obstacles.

4) To succeed, you must have a right attitude and believe, believe in yourself
- Many people likes to 'wait' for the right timing, but 'now' is the best timing .

5) Never give out
- It has been proven that if you never give up, those who doesn't believe or commented you will be convinced.

6) Enjoy the process
- Enjoy in what you pursue.

7) Listen more, talk less and do/act more
- God has given us 1 mouth, a pair of ears and hands to make us a good listener. Thus, you can learn more, rather wasting time to talk nonsense or irrelevant things but convery your message precisely and concisely. No need to be in doubt, be brave to move on. Action is the best start to reach your goal! In other words, action speaks louder than words.

8) Never say "I can't" but "How can I make it happen?"
- We should learn how to use our brain to create miracles. Whether bad or good things happen, it doesn't matter. The main thing is how we perceive it. A right and positive attitude is like a compass, thus never say "I can't" but "How I can make it happen?"

Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines,
but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.

-The Buddha

I have been searching and gathering some informations for my Master Degree preparation. However, since early of this week, I started to seriously study for some of the introductory knowledge that will be required for me to kick start my Master Degree research on Computer Imaging/Pattern Recognition. I shared some of them here.

Definitions (brief and verbal basis):
i) Moment- Image intensity projected on monomial/polynomial
ii) Feature- Characteristics
iii) Descriptor- Way to describe features, eg. wavelet
iv) Domain- Range
v) Normalized- Convert to 'standard'
vi) Moment Invariance- Under certain condition, things doesn't change, eg. centroid (center of gravity)
vii) Lagendre Moment, Zernike Moment, Pseudo-Zernike Moment- based on Lagendre Polynomial, Zernike Polynomial and Pseudo-Zernike Polynomial respectively.
viii) Elementary Area- The ratio of area between original and domain

Since I am looking into Zernike Moment for research, I wish to share some of the important mathematical background here:

The radial moment of order p with repetition q are defined as


The 2D Zernike moments of order p with repetition q of image intensity function f(r, theta) are defined as


where Zernike polynomials of order p with repetition q, Vpq(r, theta), are defined as


and the real-valued radial polynomial, Rpq(r), is given as


where 0 <= q <= p and p - q is even

As my hair is kind of messy and long, I went for a hair cut. I was surprised that the barber still consider me as MMU student. So happy because I still looks young :P

During the hair cut, we have a great chat as he told me many 'unknown' news. The one that shocked me most is that back in China, someone who would want to apply for a job needs to pay up to a few thousand dollar before he could join the company. If you don't want to pay there, then others who are willing to pay up will get the job. Really a big contrast to what happens here, in which graduates demand for certain amount of salary before they are willing to join the company.

When I mentioned that many fresh graduates still jobless, he commented that many will straight go for KL because more opportunities. He added that we need to 'ride on a cow to look for a horse', can't just always aim for big companies and high salaries. The longer you wait, the tougher you will get because the next cycle of fresh graduate will be released to compete with you.

Besides, he also told me that he has a friend whose cousin just launch a new shopping mall in Acheh during Tsunami attack. The Tsunami attacked on the fifth day after the grand opening, though the mall was not 'swept' by Tsunami, but things in there were gone! (stolen by the victims) And he lost RM 5M. More surpisingly is that he just said that it can be earn with little effort. Thinking back in Malaysia, just wonder how long it will take for us to earn that much, it may not even happen in a life time.

Lastly, the told me that there are some Chinese students here felt a bit reluctant to go back to China because they can no longer able to surf English web sites- they are filtered. Besides, I also read an article recently that says the government closed down a lot of cyber cafes. Personally I felt that this may reduce the 'eyes of scope' to learn more and produce international-standard products, especially in IT.

Due to some issues faced the day before, my colleague has proposed that we work in our office to get some of the UI improvement done and to find out some solution to the issues. I drove to office since my younger sister didn't use it. After getting ourselves ready, we have a small chat with our CTO regarding the progress and some suggestion on solution that we may proposed to our customer to improve some of the operation processes. We pack and left the office. However, since both of us were driving, so we decided to let him pass his car to his brother in Kepong, then I drove him to Cyberjaya.

When we reached partner site, everyone has gone out for lunch, thus we also head for food. At the canteen, I met my uncle there. So happy. We continued with our work after lunch and faced some obstacles as we don't seem to get the integration work properly. Later we found out it's due to information provided by the other party are either incorrect or insufficient. I hope this part can be improved as I believe quite some amount of time has been wasted on this. At the end of the day, we managed to complete 2 out of the 3 remaining tasks. The only remaining one is because the other party not yet ready for us to integrate. So my colleague will continue to pursue that task on Friday since I will be on leave.

When I drove my colleague home to Kepong, we were surprised that the traffic seemed quite congested, starting from Sunway all the way up to IKEA. After I have dropped my colleague, I drove home to have my dinner, then I went to visit my grandma who is currently critically sick of lung cancer. My 3rd auntie was there too! My younger sister and her boy friend cum my best friend were already there. We spent sometime with our grandma and relatives.

As scheduled, today I went to customer site in Cyberjaya to integrate the prototype my colleague and I have done with the existing backend EJB. My colleague picked me up at SS2 and I was shocked when he told me that he was stucked in the jam from Kepong to SS2 for an hour. However, the journey to Cyberjaya was smooth and we reached around 9.15AM. While waiting for the pre-sales colleague to arrive, we went to a food court near the customer site. I realized that the our company's new branch will be located in the next block.

When my pre-sales colleague reached, we went to the customer site together. We meet up with our partner colleague and one of them was my ex-colleague. He was in the previous company when I was undergoing my industrial training there. So lucky to meet him here. But that's now all, I met another MMU junior who just join our partner. Since I have a MMU junior already working in the company (our customer), we have a small gathering during lunch time. Everyone seems to be doing fine. However, the most interesting part is after the lunch, my junior brought me to the sports room to have a few rounds of pool. There are 3 pool tables, 2 table tennis tables and a table for carom.

After that my colleague and I continued to perform the integration process. We successfully integrated two out of five modules that are specified in the scope of work. Among the three that meet a failure, one of them was due to the backend server is down, another was due to the backend is not ready for integration since it needs JMS, while the last one was a bit tricky, we suspect it's due to the version or service pack difference between the servers.

We left early and will continue our integration process tomorrow.

The whole week, my colleague and I have been busy developing the prototype. In fact, some minor problems are still unavoidable during the development, however, we our positive attitudes and we played as a very match team mates, things were resolved and almost come to an end. Starting from tomorrow, we will refine the prototype and prepare ourselves for integration on Tuesday. Hopefully everything will go well and smoothly, and of course main thing is meet the requirement and expectation. Prepare for deployment.

Back to things happening in my family, I sent my younger sister for a small surgery to extract a lump in her body yesterday. In the beginning of the week, I wasn't really worry about the surgery since it didn't seem so serious to me and I was just too busy with my work. On Saturday morning when I sent her there, the nurse ask me to stay back till her surgery is over. So, without realizing it, my heart was pumping slightly faster than usual and I was a bit worry. I told myself that my sister is nervous too! She is trying to tell me through 'this'. Thus, I pray for her, pray so that she is calm and the surgery goes well and she is safe. Thank god that the surgery was a short and succesful one.

Since the doctor still need to observe her condition, she needs to stay back and we continue to wait. Then, she awoke, the nurse allowed my mom and me to go in to take a look at her. She was a bit weak and felt cold. She told us she felt like vomitting. So, we requested from the nurse a container for her to vomit in case. After that, I sent my mom back home and to work, then return back to the medical center to visit my sister again. The doctor came after half an hour later, did some check up and released my sister after she found everything is ok. I went down to pay the bill and collected the medicine for my sister and drove her back. So far, she is alright and perform normal task. Thank god.

My Kai Mui recommended a site which provides a test to identify a person's travel profile. I went through the test which the questions seems a bit wierd. However, the following is what I got.

	Your travel type: Rough guy When the going gets tough, the rough guy gets going! Sleep outside, hike up mountains, eat raw lizards for breakfast, that's his perfect holiday. Ten days of hiking through unspoilt jungle between Colombia and Panama, that kind of thing.
	top destinations: Ngorongoro Kashmir Ciudad Perdida	stay away from: Paris Venice Tokyo

get your own travel profile

What do you think? Does the test correctly reflects my travel profile? You can try it out too!

As I mentioned in the previous blog, I was working at partner site on Monday. Early that morning, the Pre-Sales colleague dropped in and notified us about the changes on the prototype we were working on. In fact, based on the plan, we would sum up the prototype and pack to go back to office. So, after final touched up and testing, we departed home.

On the next day, we were back in office. First thing I did was set up my desktop as we just brought back our CPU from partner site. Then I contacted the Channel Manager to find out more about the preparation for the IBM Symposium. After the briefing, I started to work out the things. However, one of the notebook that would be used for demo went down and supposed to be sent for repairs, so we took alternative to set up another notebook. Since IBM Websphere Portal need to be installed and set up for us to deploy some of our application, a lot of hard disk space was required, which brought us to another issue- insufficient space. After much discussion, we decided to use another IBM notebook that requires reformating. I am grateful that another Pre-Sales colleague who are familiar with all these technical stuffs helped me. In fact, he stayed up whole night before the event trying to deploy one of the application, but to no avail. I felt owing him.

I reached Sunway Convention Center at 6.45am and waited for the other colleague from Marketing and Pre-Sales to arrive before setting up the booth. After some effort, with coorperation from all parties involved, the booth is ready. I was busy explaining and promoting the comapny's product to some prospects and participants of the Symposium. Besides, also having FOC nice hotel food. I was very pleased with the day. During the break, the Marketing Executive told me that 'You have gained another profile today.' I was shocked with what she told me and asked her to explained, then she smile and told me 'Dang- Ju/ Zhe^ Mi/'. She continued to asked me, 'So, do you prefer Pre-Sales or Technical?', then my COO came by and added 'Don't force yourself to do things that you don't like. You have the capability, so make your choice'. Later, my CEO asked me whether I know Mandarin, when I told him that I was from Chinese primary school, he told that I will be another candidate to go China. I was shocked. After the event, I headed to bus station to get the bus ticket for Friday night to go down to Melaka.

On Friday, I was sent to represent the company to attend Novell's Open Enterprise Server launching. It was not a big event as the Symposium but merely a small promotion talk at Novell's training room. I was impressed with the work they have done, especially trying to promote SuSE Linux which is now bundled with their product. However, I was in doubt when they try to compare SuSE Linux with Red Hat Linux as I was expecting them to be 'partner' rather than rival. Anyway, it's still pleased to see how much the open source has gained the niche in the market.

After the event, I went back to office and received an email about another new prototype for a big corporation. After some discussion with my team mate, we started to prepare some of the required tools and source structure. CTO came over and emphasized on the seriousness and importance of the prototype as it's for the big corporation and we don't hope to lose this opportunity. So, it will be a challenging task this time and I really hope to produce something that will impress the customer, partner and the management. Pray Hard!

It all started on Sunday when I joined the parade for 'Kuan Yin' Birthday celebration, in which all of us started at one of the temple in Tengkera (Melaka) and 'march' to 'Qing- Yun/ Ting/' (Kuan Yin Temple) by walk 3 steps and pray (kneel down) (san- bu\ yi/ gui\) all the way. This was my third year attending this ceremony. We started around 5.30am and it ended around 7.30am when everyone reached the Kuan Yin Temple. It's for world peace!

When I came back to PJ for the week, I was relocated to partner's site to perform some UI enhancement on the prototype that we managed to completed and presented last week. It was great as it's only my 5th week with the company. The system looks great with the new 'look and feel'.

Besides, I received a notification that I was selected to involve in company's marketing activity next Thursday at Sunway Hotel during IBM Symposium. I was excited as it's pretty early for me to get involve in marketing activities since I just join the company no long ago. Really appreciate the opportunity given by the company. :)

The following is quoted from Michael Volker.
"The thrill of transforming a new idea into a successful commercial venture is hard to match. We love to talk about the success stories – those that make heroes of their founders and millionaires of their backers.
We don't like to talk about our failures. Yet, we can learn a great deal from these euphemistically called learning experiences. Why do some companies fail when others succeed in the same environment?
Venture capitalists on the speaking circuit love to explain that there are three essential criteria for success: management, management and management. But when we do hear about a company that didn’t make it, the reasons given by management are usually along the lines of inadequate funding, market conditions, competition, or some governmental woe.
My business is starting-up businesses. As such, I see a great number of failures – companies that just couldn’t cut it. However, there are many more which don’t exactly fail, but aren’t smashing successes, either. These are the ones that the VC’s refer to as their living dead. I think of them as patients in a coma. They’re still alive, but they’re not performing.
I was recently speaking to a class of university engineering students on how to measure corporate performance using the P&L, i.e. Profit and Loss, statement. Indeed, it is the job of management to produce P&L results. For startups though, a P&L is merely a projection of what might happen.
In these cases, it isn’t this P&L at all that’s really important. It’s one that’s a lot more difficult to measure, although not at all difficult – yet frequently overlooked – to observe. And that is true P&L – Passion and Leadership.
One overwhelming conclusion which I’ve come to is that it isn’t just management that will make a business hum. What do we really mean when we talk about management? Is it the MBA school skills or business experience that will make a difference? While these are necessary, what are the essential success factors?
An entrepreneur who is passionate about her business and who can lead a management team, i.e. the operators who can execute a business plan, is the one who is going to hit a home run.
When looking at the usual P&L numbers, the exhaustive spreadsheets and backup material projecting future revenues and profits, it may be easy to conclude that a good management team is in place – but without passion and leadership it’s pretty useless. I’ve seen countless detailed plans and projections which are impressive to say the least – worthy of high grades and accolades – but which have not taken off.
VCs and other investors need the business plan in the course of doing their due diligence to provide the justification for risking other peoples’ money. They are obligated to look at, and validate, the P&L numbers. Angel investors who, by definition, invest their own capital don’t need these numbers. They look at the other P&L paradigm. Maybe that’s why VCs like to back angel deals – both types of P&L may be present.
Monday morning quarterbacking will inevitably point to the lack of passion and leadership. We know that because all other obstacles can be overcome if these attributes are present.
Budding entrepreneurs or those wishing to back them, must understand this. A critical self-assessment will keep the entrepreneur from deluding himself. Anyone who tends to blame others or circumstances or has trouble trusting others to carry out tasks will have difficulty.
I like what Michael Gerber, small business consultant, refers to as the E-Myth which simply states that many people who think they are entrepreneurs are merely technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. His thesis is that just because someone is good at performing a technical skill (engineering, programming, or design) doesn’t mean that they will be good at building a business that does those things. But simply hiring people with the requisite management talent isn’t enough.
The way I see it, management may well be the most important factor in building a successful company, but it’s passion and leadership that differentiates the winners."

I came across this in one of the Business Opportunity Symposium, which says that Success will brings you a lot of Dollar and Cents (C in the title should be sign of Cents, but since I can't represent it, I have to use back C).

However, referring back to the previous posting, this could also means that in order to succeed, you need to invest quite a large number of Dollar and Cents.

What do you think?

I came across this statement in newspaper, quoted from Sauber, which make me ponder whether there is anything that doesn't require money to make it success.

I have a 'step sister' who don't see $$$$$ as everything and willing to sacrifice herself to achieve what she always wanted to do- charity! I am really impressed with her philosophy. Keep it up! I will fully support you.

I started the week by continuing my assignment given by my trainer, which is to prepare a search screen which allow user to enter search criteria and shows the result in a tabular format. Besides, the result should support pagination, in which the challenge is user will be brought to the next page automatically when he/she scrolls to the last record of the page. I managed to complete the task with some clue and guidance from my trainer. Besides, I tried to improve the design by generating a new utility class that is targeted to be generic enough to support future usage.

Then, things move faster when I was called in for a briefing to start working on a POC, which stands for Proof-Of-Concept, similar to a working prototype that is to be delivered on next Thursday. I was excited as this is only my third week with the company and I am already given a chance to get involved in 'real work'. My spirit is high!

Besides, I have been spending quite some time to help up at home to ease my parents' and siblings burden. I carry the practice promoted in my company, which is 'discipline flexibility' and I know my responsibility well and I get them fulfilled.

I also started to discuss meet up friends whom I haven't been meeting for quite a while, discussing about their current situation and future plans, trying to provide some opinions or point of views... I can see the difference.

Most importantly, I started to miss my girl friend, who is in China for family trip. She will be coming back tomorrow but I can only meet her on the coming weekend. Hope she is enjoying her trip there in China.

I am growing, even more this time. Just like a rocket propelling to the space!

I came across the following Programming Precepts when I was tidying up cupboard. Quoted the following to be shared:

1. Keep your algorithm as simple as you can.When in doubt, choose the simple way.
2. Consider time and space trade-offs in deciding on your algorithm.
3. Never afraid to start over. Next time it may be shorter and easier.
4. Be sure you understand your problem completely. If you must change its terms, explain exactly what you have done.
5. Act in haste and repent at leisure. Program in hast and debug forever.
6. Start afresh is usually easier than patching an old program.
7. Always plan to build a prototype and throw it away. You'll do so whether you plan to or not.
8. When the user of global a prototype and side effects is unavoidable, be sure of the subprogram.
9. Keep your documentation concise but descriptive.
10. The reading time for programs is much more than the writing time. Make reading easy to do.
11. Don't lose sight of the forest for its trees.
12. Each subprogram should do only one task. But, do it well.
13. Keep your connections simple. Avoid global variables whenever possible.
14. Never cause side effects if you can avoid it. If you must use global variables as input, document them thoroughly.
15. Keep your input and output as seperate procedures, so they can be changed easily and can be custom-tailored to your computing system.
16. The quality of test data is more important than its quantity.
17. Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never their absence.
18. Most programs spend 90% of their time doing 10% of their instructions. Find this 10%, and concentrate our efforts for efficiency there.
19. Practice information hiding. Seperate the application of data structures from their implementation.

It has been quite a while that things have not been changing or things are changing, more of rotating around the same axis. However, I have taken a paradigm shift to enter a new environment, new challenges, which enable me to handle several concerns together while fulfilling my responsibilities to meet different parties' expectations.

I love the new environment a lot. People around are very nice and pleasant. I undergo a new environment on how a normal working life is. There are many plans after work which I can never have a chance to carry out last time. It's just seems that everyone is welcoming me back, especially my family and friends.

I was asked to give guideline and opinion on how to study IT.

Firstly, I would like to make myself clear that I am not an expert, just an amateur who are learning, just like you. :) I wouldn't say giving you guideline or advise, but sharing some of my experiences.

I found that the main thing is you have to be clear of why you are in this field and what do you want to achieve at the end of the journey. I have many juniors who get into IT because IT is cool; IT is so popular; their parents want them to take IT... etc. At the end of their day, they join sales and marketing field. So, what's your goal?

In IT world, you have to get yourself as exposed as possible, in terms of knowing what's happening around. You need to be resourceful in terms of when you need information, where will you head for the reference, eg. Internet, eBooks... etc.

Master the concepts. In programming, there are many basic concepts which we learn in college or university level. We tend to ignore it after the exam. Many of these are very important and useful concepts that you need them when you apply it in your job. If you have better grasp of these concepts, it helps you a lot in designing and writting better system. I experienced this when I was preparing for my Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam.

Get your hands dirty by practically apply things that you learn. There are many tutorials or articles that explain certain technology, many of these provide sample code, which you can try them out to understand it more.

Just my two cents.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Chai! How's your CNY? Received a lot of Ang Pao?

As for me, it's a very different Chinese New Year- one that is full of feeling! My family and me celebrate it in Penang (both my parents's hometown) this time. We departed on Tuesday morning, around 4am, drove two cars up the highway. As I always sleep during a journey, so I started driving while my younger sister take her nap; in the other hand, my elder sister drive another car while my younger brother slept first. The journey was smooth and we reached Penang Island around 10am as we rested a while at Sungai Perak R&R.

We went straight to 1st aunt's house, then we went for breakfast with grandma, auntie and cousins. The subsequent days continued with food as grandma and aunties prepared a lot of great food for each meal. I became 'Satay Man' for one of the dinner. :) I met up all my relatives, whom I have not been meeting them for quite some time. Having great chat and sharing with them. Full of cherish!

Hope that you also having great times like me for your CNY.

I just sat for Sun Certified Java Programmer exam yesterday and it was an interesting experience. Yeah! I passed! It was not only the exam session that I sat for, but also the whole preparation process that gave me a new insights. Thus, I would like share some of them with you here.

Firstly, I would encourage any Java programmer/developer who hasn't sit for this exam to start looking into it and register for it. It's not the cert (the paper you get upon passing the exam) that gives you the most value, but the knowledge that you acquired when preparing for the exam that bring you to another level. I have always asking myself how I can write a robust code- I can say that this certification is the first step.

The following are some of the references that I would like to share for you to understand what SCJP is, how to kick-start your preparation for the exam and how to enhance and testify your knowledge with the mock exams. Please take note that the following are some of my recommendations (just my 2 cents) and it does not guarantee as the best.

General:
http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/index.html
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-scjp/

Book:
Exam Cram 2- Java 2 Programmer by Bill Brogden and Marcus Green

Mock Exams/ Tests (Please ignore questions on AWT and IO since it's not covered in SCJP 1.4):
JWhiz1.4
PrepLogic Preview Edition for Exam 310-035 (in the CD of the Exam Cram 2- Java 2 Programmer book)
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/test.html
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/test2.html
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/question.html
http://www.jchq.net/mockexams/exam2.htm
http://www.jchq.net/phezam/login.php

Notes/Tutorials:
www.whizlabs.com/tutorial/scjp/j-scjp-a4.pdf
http://www.jchq.net/certkey/index.htm
http://www.javaprepare.com/notes/intro.html

All the best!

Happy New Year to everyone! New resolutions for a new year. As I was still pin down by sickness, coughing seriously, no special celebration was undergone for this new year. I felt pretty sorry for not able to join my sister and friends back in PJ on the new year eve.

Anyway, I ended the day with a simple Java program, in fact, the first Java program with the new features introduced in J2SE5.0 (Tiger), in particularly enhanced for loop.

I wrote the program using JCreator, a light weight Java IDE. You can obtain a free JCreator LE (Build 3.50.009) at http://www.jcreator.com/download.htm.

Besides, you must have JDK 5.0 in place; I would recommend you download and install JDK 5.0 Update 1 (from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp) as that's the latest release. Ensure the JAVA_HOME is added in the environment variable, please refer to my previous posting- Hypersonic SQL (http://trexlim.blogspot.com/2004/12/hypersonic-sql.html) for reference.

You are required to set the compiler to the used in JCreator. Launch JCreator and select Configure > Options from the menu. Click on JDK Profiles and click on New button, then browse to JAVA_HOME. Click OK button and then Apply button.

The following is the source code I have written:
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class Test {
   public static void main(String[] args) {

      // Create a new list and add some strings to it
      ArrayList mylist = new ArrayList();
      mylist.add("a");
      mylist.add("b");
      mylist.add("c");

      // Use enhanced for loop to show the element added into the list
      for(String str : mylist) {
         System.out.println(str);
      }
   }
}

After you compile (using menu Build > Compile in JCreator) the above (provided no compilation error) and run the program (via menu Build > Execute File in JCreator), the following should be the expected output printed on the console:
a
b
c

I was working on a project last week in which the application was initially deployed in Tomcat 5.0.28 in my local PC. As I would like to evaluate how JDK 5.0 perform in my local PC, I tried my luck in migrating the application to Tomcat 5.5.4, which is intended for supporting JDK 5.0.

The migration was quite a straight forward process as I just need to change the path for JAVA_HOME (pointing to where JDK 5.0 is installed, eg. c:\j2sdk1.5.0_01) and CATALINA_HOME (where the Tomcat 5.5.4 is installed, eg. c:\jakarta-tomcat-5.5.4) in my system's environment variables; then add the context configuration file in CATALINA_HOME\conf\Catalina\localhost folder, in particularly myapp.xml.

The issue that I faced when the migration was performed was on the content of myapp.xml. I had the following the old myapp.xml:

<Context privileged="true" debug="0" path="/myapp" docBase="c:\software\IDE\eclipse-3.0.1\workspace\myapp">

<Resource name="jdbc/myappdb" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container">
<ResourceParams name="jdbc/myappdb">
<parameter>
<name>factory</name>
<value>org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>driverClassName</name>
<value>oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>url</name>
<value>jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:dev</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>username</name>
<value>myappusrid</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>password</name>
<value>myapppwd</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxActive</name>
<value>20</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxIdle</name>
<value>10</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxWait</name>
<value>-1</value>
</parameter>
</ResourceParams>
</Context>

However, after simplifying the above to the following, it was running well!
<Context privileged="true" debug="0" path="/myapp" docBase="c:\software\IDE\eclipse-3.0.1\workspace\myapp">

<Resource name="jdbc/myappdb" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:dev" username="myappusrid" password="myapppwd" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container" driverclassname="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" maxactive="20" maxidle="10" maxwait="-1">
</Context>

Enjoy and good luck!