Server-less office

Over the last month or so, I've been spending some time searching for a new office. Our current office is almost full, flaky internet connection has been driving us all mad and the selection of lunch-time food is... well, there isn't any selection really. There is only one mamak stall with questionable hygienic  standard downstairs.

While looking around, one thing I notice is that, the moment I mention that it will be a software house, everyone seems to think that we need a server room. At our current office, we have a small dell server that runs our bug tracking and subversion system but I always feel that it is unnecessary. All these application can really be hosted somewhere else. So, I have decided that our office shall run completely server-less!

Seriously, there is no need for us to have a server at all!. Almost everything that we need can actually be hosted somewhere else, on a remote server. There are several advantages of running all these application on a remote location. First and foremost, continuity. Most competent hosting environment should have a good continuity and backup strategy. Other than full raid setup, regular image backup normally comes standard. You will also never need to worry about hardware failure. They should also have reliable network which makes access from any location a snap. Again, any competent hosting company should have a technician on stanby 24/7 . Trying to replicate all this in-house takes a lot of time away from your real work. Having our data off-site also means that we don't have to worry so much about theft or fire, or flood destroying our work. The office runs quieter, cooler, cheaper.

Amazingly, going server-less is easy. I grab a cheap Windows VPS package (hosted in Malaysia), with just 380Mb. I successfully moved all svn data to the new server. Next, I'll be moving our fogbugz on the new server and perhaps relocate our build script on this server too. I can then shutdown our dell server forever or donate them to charity. Anyone wants one ?

Its all in the cloud...

How to nail an interview

In my work, I have to go through tons of resume to find great people to work join our team. It isn't as easy as you might think. Some people might actually do have what it takes, and can actually do the job well, but the way they present themselves, their resume, they way the talk and dress might not do them justice.

As an employer, I am always on the side of cautious. Do understand that as employer, we are actually scared to get that offer letter out. Just work a little harder and you will be fine.

I could not have summarize it better than this. http://www.howtonailaninterview.com/

P1 Broadband Review

I am curretly using P1 as my primary broadband provider at home. This isn't a review, but rather a rant on one particular issue with P1 broadband.

For the most part, P1 is OK. During the first week of using their service, it wickedly fast. For 1.2 Mbps package, I can consistantly hit 900 kbps. On international sites, speed of 500-700 kbps is not uncommon. But obviously as more as more people are signing up, I rarely see the 900 kbps nowadays, with 600-ish being a norm. These figure, isn't bad at all, ad is comparable to StreamyX on a good day. All and all, it does edge StreamyX slightly.

Now, the bad news. For some reason, P1 seems to enjoy a late night detour. Almost every night, the service will go down at some wee hours in the morning, typically 15 to 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour and even a few times a day. The excuse given is 'maintenence mode', which is acceptable if it was done on a monthly, or even a weekly basis, but come on, this is becoming a daily occurace. P1 might think that no one uses the internet at night and it is ok to disrupt the service, but imagine is TNB uses the same logic. Hey, at 3 am, most people are asleep right ?, lets cut off the electricity for a while, no one will notice.

My worry is that, there is no sign of this getting any better and P1 seems to take it for granted that no one complaint. So, here I am now. For those thinking of signing up with P1 and work late at night, be prepare to have your chat with your business partner across the globe to be cut short.

Web 2.0 Expo reflection. Airport Edition

Here I am at LAX, bored out of my mind, waiting for my flight home. So I figure I could write a few words, reflecting my recent experience in Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

1. My first session, which is also one of the most useful one was about Economic 2.0 . Oh man, we are so far away. The world are moving at such a rapid pace, I don't think most of us realize what's coming. I thought I knew what Enterprise 2.0 is before, but to the extends it is being pursued is mind-boggling. It is a challenging environment we live in and the pursuit of business efficiency has never been this ruthless.

2. I feel that, we have an unhealthy culture of celebrating those who talk about entrepreneurship rather than those who actually do it. It is liberating to hear stories and experiences, direct from the actual entrepreneur themselves. They (most, but not all) talk with such passion, clarity and honesty, which are rare, locally.

3. Get real. We need to be honest to ourselves and start asking some real, hard questions. Will our business survive the global competition. Do we really have any competitive edge, or are we just syok sendiri ? Is our revenue model sustainable ? 5 years from now, how will people remember us? a loser who talk to much? Have we been resourceful ? or have we been complaining about lack of resource ?

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The Star on Malaysian Broadband

Th Star on Saturday carry a feature on broadband penetration in Malaysia. I feel bad for the reporter, because, really what is there to write about ? So, they throw in a couple of articles on what you can do with high speed internet, (sigh!).

While everyone blame each other and making promises, I flip to the next section knowing that, I better not hold my breath, waiting for any improvement, anytime soon.

Chedet.com (or whatever their domain is now) is run by amateur

Yes, you heard me. I tried to be patient, but I am just too damn annoyed by now. Chedet.com is run by a bunch or amateurs!. First of all, why the heck did you guys moved from .com to .cc . Do you guys even have a clue what a .cc is ? Here, let me help, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cc

.cc is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory.

Why would a Malaysian politician use a .cc ? A .com is good enough. I remember, when they change it, I lose all my rss feed and have to configure everything all over again. As I type this, they just changed it to .co.cc which is a bloody redirection service, typical amateur.

Oh yes, this bunch of amateur also at one point uses http://test.chedet.com as a live production url. Shocking.. now, they happily apply redirection whenever they feel like it, with zero consideration for SEO. As I type this, the url is http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/ . Hello! we all know it is a blog, why change it to /chedetblog/ ? .

Why not use this url instead ?. http://test.chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/

Another thing that annoys me is me, such a high traffic site can easily make a lot of money. Instead, this clueless amateur quote a ridiculous amount of advertising rate. Last time I check, it was RM 300 per day.

Enough rant. Some advice.

1. Let someone else run the site.
2. Just keep the damn site at http://chedet.com . DONE!
3. To make money, deploy Google AdSense. Charge a more reasonable rate. A full traffic stats need to be disclosed.

Digi Broadband

I have been staying with Digi and their slow (but reliable) Edge network all this while, hoping that, when they finally get their 3G act in order all this waiting would be worth it. So, I was a little excited when they finally account their broadband packages at http://www.digi.com.my/broadband/index.html .

Sadly, the excitement only last a couple of seconds. The 3G-based broadband is NOT accessible within my existing voice account. You will be given separate sim card purely for the broadband access which cannot be use with any voice services.

I don't understand why DiGi would want to chase the most crowded space, land-based broadband when there are simply tons of other providers. I am sure there are thousands of Edge user who would readily upgrade their account to 3G-based network in an instance. Instead, they roll out yet another wireless internet services that require expensive modems. Opening this service to their existing customer, who already own 3G phones would greatly speed up their adoption. It will also reverse the voice user migration from their service to other 3G enabled provider.

I am so disappointed with DiGi..

Seth 3000′th blog post

Today, Seth Goden celebrate his 3,000th blog entry. I can only admire him. I started with the same ambition, a post a day, but not too long after that, I slack off, giving myself too many excuses and simply stop writing.

Momentum is a great thing and I need to get back at it.

Appearance, UiTM

I am going to make a short appearance at UiTm later tonight, at Kompleks Sains & Teknologi, 9.00pm. I will be talking a little bit about entrepreneurship and innovation. The organizer does send me some guidelines of what to talk about, but I'll try to inspire rather than educate.

Introducing, one of my fav song

This guy inject such a powerful emotion into his every show. I wish I could put that much energy into every single line of code that I ever wrote. Unfortunately, in many cases, programming is a marathon, instead of a sprint. I am not sure you can sustain that much energy and emotion for a long period of time.

Spend your day, doing nothing

Every now and then, I manage to fill up my Saturday, doing almost absolutely nothing at all. And today was one of that day. I did try to get some code review done, reviewing our AdWords result, but it is close to midnight and I still feel the day is wasted.

A couple of major issues here.

1.  That idiot box! the junkfood for the mind! aka TV.
2. You have no plan for the day, at all. Even when you actually do something, you can't quite pinpoint what it was.
3. At the beginning of the day, it seems like you have plenty of time for everything, but, by the time you realize that you actually has as much time as anyone else on any other day, it is already too late.

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Google AdWord tips, conversion closing rap

I started running a Google AdWord campaign yesterday. I haven't been doing this for a while. So after a little bit of reading (which everyone should do a lot more!), I manage to get the ad up and running. The initial CTR was embarrasingly low, although from our tracking, we manage to actual make a posititve ROI.

Searching for some guide online, I found this video. It is amazing how much info you can get into a 2 and a half minute video. 

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Daily blogging

Ok, I've decided that I will blog every single day from now onwards. I don't care if no one read it, or if it is filled with spelling and grammatical error, I just need to get started.

Oh, by the way, this is today's entry.

Resume tips 1

1. Please DO NOT put "typing" as a skill. You might as well put "walking" or "eating" or "annoy potential boss" as you skill.
2. I don't give a rat what you get for your UPSR or which kindergarten you went to.
3. neither do I care what you get for PMR either,
4. If you are applying for software engineer position, your flipping burger skill you learn when you serve your time at the local burger join doesn't interest me one bit.
5. Don't bloody list every single subject you took in college
6. Personality: hardworking, independent, motivated, willing to learn, team player.. bla bla bla. WHATEVER. I don't want to hear it.

Just some recent photos

Add auto increment primary key in mysql

If you tried to add an auto_increment'ed primary key to existing table using phpMyAdmin, it won't let you since it form a messed up syntax. Just use the query below:

ALTER TABLE `table_name` ADD `field_name` int(11) PRIMARY KEY auto_increment NOT NULL FIRST ;

That should do it.

Time to face business reality?

I recently read an interesting short writeup on bnet on how Twitter and the other revenue-less Web 2.0 company, now more than ever needed to get down to business. In case you missed it, we are actually in the middle of another tech bubble about to go bust. How can you tell ? easy. When a business is focusing on anything other than revenue and profitability, sooner or later its going to bite you.

The current economic turmoil doesn't do anyone any good. Too much has been said about the Great Greed of Wall Street and I am not going to add anything new there. The interesting point is, while wall street become obsessed with generating more and more money, many Web 2.0 company manage to somehow turn the idea of generating real revenue into yesterday's fad. Shocking! Generating revenue is NOT cool!.

Personally, I have no doubt that this crisis will affect us. Yes, I could be all optimistic and say, "oh, more now people will want to buy our stuff because it saves them money" all day. Not surprisingly,  almost all the entrepreneur that I knew say almost exactly that. We fail to see that entrepreneur are risk taker of disproportionate proportion. With 90% failure rate, optimism isn't worth much.

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Meet me at 2008 Winter CMS Expo in Denver

Just a short note. I will be giving a talk at CMS Expo in Denver, Colorado this 4th December 2008. CMS Expo is a very business-friendly event where the focus will be on education, business and networking. Despite the name, Joomla will still take a centre stage in this expo.

If you are a big fan of Joomla or wondering if Joomla will fit your needs, this would be a perfect event to attend. In no other event that so many Joomla expert will gather in one place, both commercial developer and developr within the core team. Personally, I am excited to meet up with everyone!

I will giving 2 talks, on component development and using Joomla! as your blogging platform. I will also be giving short presentation on JomSocial, our new Joomla! powered social networking platform.

You can register your seat here . I'll see you there.

LHC is super COOL

As a proud, self-confessed geek, I am terribly excited to hear that LHC is up and operational. Yes, it is super expensive and the money could definitely be used to reduce global poverty and world hunger, but how could you put a price on single most important step in humanity quest for knowledge ?. 

The field of quantum physic always amazes me. I remember reading about relativity, and some brain-cracking physics when I was in college. For a short while (very short I must add!) I wanted to be a scientist. I thought it was super cool to grow and carry around some extra neuron compared to the rest of you. But that was a long time ago and I much prefer what I do now.

Productive software developer

A productive developer and programmer is someone who understand the economic driver of his/her company. He understands that it is his sworn duty to develop a software that offer some values to the user. A developer must continuously ask himself:

Is my code offers any value to the user?. Did my commit at the end of each day really make a different in customer's life ?

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