Windows 8 disable Metro UI
I bet I am not the only one looking for ways to disable Metro UI on Windows 8. I was playing around with it and I was so annoyed with metro UI popping up once a while just to annoy me.
I still haven’t figure out how to disable the metro UI actually. The moment I found out how, I will let you guys know. If you guys to have more info, please share it here!
update: 1 hour later.. still can’t figure out how to disable the damn thing, if it is possible at all.
update: Thanks mandel129 . Here’s how you can disable metro UI
Rename c:\Windows\System32\shsxs.dll to something else =)
Preferred way, by editing the registry
- Open regedit by typing regedit at the Start screen.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
- Modify the RPEnabled key to a “0” instead of the default “1”.
- To return to the Metro UI, just change the value back to a “1”.
I need to start writing again
I need to start writing again. I need to start writing again. I need to start writing again.
A workplace for self-actualization?
We might not want to admit it, but a huge chunk of our happiness are actually derived from work. Hence, I think it is important to have work and a workplace that actually geared towards maximum happiness.
For slashes & dots, from the beginning, my goal has always been to create an environment for developers. I wasn’t very specific about it at first. Just a cool place where developers can work and learn. Over time, I realized that more specifically, I want a place where developers and creative people can be their “actual self”.
What is this “actual self” ? To put it simply, it is the person that we feel happy to be. For example, a software developer could potentially take up accounting and be an accountant and make more money. But deep inside, they won’t be happy. Their actual self will forever wanting to be that coder, tinkering with codes and building something cool and get into the flow for hours!
I realized that I am not 100% successful in this area yet, but I am 100% conscious about it and will always support any improvements and initiatives towards helping the rest of the team realize their full potential.
What’s not obvious however, is that developer themselves cannot just sit back and wait to be “groomed”. While I am extremely supportive, I hate to change people. If people internally lack the desire to grow, I have no time to baby-sit them. Having said that, I know that this is one of my biggest area of weakness, something I am hoping to slowly fix.
Office in a bus?
I suddenly have this crazy idea that our next office be inside a bus! Every day, we can practically work at all sorts of different places. The office can pick you up for work. We can have lunch in different places every day. We can probably head down the beach and come back by prevening (refer to big bang theory!)
The downside however is plenty. Motion fatigue from moving around all day. Lack of physical address. Unreliable Internet. Toilet ?
Maybe not a good idea..
Seagate Momentus XT review. You don’t need SSD!
Having tested MacBook Air at my local Apple reseller, my interest in this little baby is rekindled. I know hard disk is the slowest part of any computer, but I can’t bring myself to spend that much money on a SSD. To my surprise, this hard disk isn’t that easy to source offline. After looking around, I managed to get my hand on a 500G version, which is the exact same size as my current hard disk on my MacBook Pro, which is the slower 5400 version.
Installation was relatively easy. I wasn’t looking forward to reinstalling OS X and then Windows and all other crapware all over again. Since the hard disk is of the same size, I simply make an exact, 100% sector-by-sector copy of the hard disk using EASEUS Disk Copy. You will need a portable hard disk enclosure to perform this copy. Create the boot image on a cd, reboot while holding ‘c’ and follow the on-screen instruction. For 500G, it took about 6 hours to complete the copy process. It was 10 pm, and I hit the bed.
4.00 am. Perhaps out of excitement, I jump out of the bed and ah, the copy process was just about to finish in 12 minutes. 12 minutes pass by easily by just staring at the progress bar. Reboot.
First boot was uneventful. Launch NetBean IDE. Ok, that wasn’t any faster. I close it, reopen it and close it again. The 3rd time I open NetBeans, I was sold!. Loading time improved from about 15 seconds to just 5 seconds. I did the same with MS Word. By the 3rd launch, Word loads almost instantaneously. I repeat the same process, training the hard disk to recognize my frequently used applications and all of them start so bloody fast now. 4Gb flash might not be a lot, but the improvement is noticeable. Everything just feel so much snappier.
Noise and vibration. Now, if you Google this product enough, you might have come across vibration and noise issues. Here is my take. Yes, it does make more noise than the one that comes with MacBook Pro, which is absolutely silent. But, other than occasional clicking sounds when there is too many IO activities, it really isn’t noticeable. After a couple of days, I no longer noticed it at all.
Battery life. No different as far as I can tell. I was at a conference and manage to get 4 hours of usage, mostly emails, Skype and browsing. I suppose if you’re running a hard-disk intensive apps, you probably going to get much shorter battery life, but for most user, there is nothing to worry about.
Conclusion. If you can afford it, order it now!. I have tested blood and will never buy a normal hard disk ever again!
A lawyer’s office – a matter of appearances
I had to visit a lawyer to get some paperwork done today. I have never heard of them before and was recommended by others. What I remember vividly about the trip is how much appearances matter. You see, I don’t know much about what they do. I can’t tell if they will do my papers correctly, or if they just going to pass it over to some cheap intern.
It might be extremely superficial, but the moment I step into their shiny, marble-floored office, I kinda assured that it will be fine. For all I know, they might just put up the whole office yesterday, or that they might have botched so many cases, or sent someone to life-imprisonment with hard-labor with guaranteed solitary confinement, 6 days in a week.
Anyway, the point here is, presentation matters.
Conference etiquette
I am a rather introvert person, as many geeks are. This characteristics is particularly problematic in a technical conference. Geeks tends to just hang out with their gadgets, quietly at a corner. But the thing is, geeks as normal human being do want to talk and interact with others, they just don’t know how to start the conversation.
I would propose the following etiquette in all geeky (or otherwise) conferences.
- When choosing a seat, always pick a seat that has people next to it. Try not to pick a seat that is empty on both sides. I know it sometimes feels awkward, but it is even more uncomfortable for other geek to choose a seat that has people seating on both (gasp..) sides.
- If you somehow manage to be talking to someone, do watch out around you. There might be some other people trying to be friendly, but might not have the skill to intercept your conversation. Always welcome someone who seems to try to join the chat. What I saw in most cases is that, once this geek get into a nice conversation, they tends to “protect” and close it against outsider.
- Ask questions about them, don’t just talk about yourself.
- Include everyone in the conversation. You need to realize that there are more value in triad, or multi-way discussion instead of just talking between two people. You’re attending a conference, not a date.
- If you happen to be in an unfortunate situation where someone just wouldn’t stop talking and you need to get out of there, just quickly excuse yourself and leave. Don’t pull a silly stunt like taking a fake phone call.
There you have it. Not too hard right?
Office wall
I have this blank wall at my office entrance and I have been thinking what to put there. I’ve decided to wrap it up with 2 things I value most in the office, which is learning and people. Next time you visit the office, the first 2 things you’ll see will be a set of questions that will challenge our team daily and collections of team photos!we have lots of them 
HD DVD vs. Blue Ray, it doesn’t matter at the end. The content has won!
Not too long ago, when high definition video format come about, (naturally starting with Shawshank Redemption, no less!) a new kind of war format broke. The battle was for the complete domination of optical disk format, with the main contenders being HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. You may google it up for more info.
What I want to highlight is that both supporter of those format work so hard to be the dominant format that they lose sight of what is important, the video content itself! Many years later, nobody care about these optical disks. High definition video won, and the internet, mobile phones and satellite broadcasting become the preferred delivery of these high def content.
Well, this is just a reminder to myself to look beyond the delivery method of the value and focus on the value that it delivers. Delivery methods changes frequently, but the core value that it deliver, really doesn’t change that much. Take our need to know what happen around us. It was once smoke signal, followed much later by newspaper and now twitter, but what we get from it is still the same, news.
Perhaps, despite all the technology, human has largely remains the same. We’re just too lazy to change.
Unlimited book budget, why our company can afford it.
At my company, we have unlimited budget for books or any other (educational) reading materials. I am actually proud of this policy and tell practically everyone that comes to our office for interview. I keep saying this to my team repeatedly, but most of them don’t take advantage of this. Perhaps mostly they just google up things and maybe they don’t quite see how books book can be useful.
Let me explain how unlimited book budget is feasible. It is really simple. You see, for what we pay our developers, a typical book cost roughly an hour or two of their working time. If, by reading this book, they manage to save an or two of their time, the book already paid for itself. Now, if the book is shared by a few developers, the book basically paid itself many times over. What if this time saving is continuous, 1 hour of saving per month, the ROI of a single book is now a few hundred percent!
There is nothing magical about this. It is simple mathematics, simple economic. And me, I always believe in simple economics!
