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Is bigger pie better?

azrulrhm — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:03:47 +0000

VCs love to tell entrepreneurs, especially the young ones that owning a tiny percentage of a big pie is always better than owning 100% of a small pie. This is one of their standard sales pitch to the younger entrepreneurs. They often try to make you feel like a silly little kid if you want to keep a large percentage of your company instead. It kinda make sense at first right? Clearly 5% of a billion dollar is larger than 100% of 10 million dollar, right ?

You see, they won’t tell you is that

Improved riding position

azrulrhm — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 04:23:51 +0000

If you need to improve your riding position, having someone taking your picture/video riding is perhaps the best thing you could ever do. My “investment” in GoPro camera is totally worth it. I took it to the track once to record my body position and study them afterwards. The very next track day, I already see some improvement.

This is a screenshot taken at turn 14 at Sepang Circuit.

Posting from android

azrulrhm — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 02:11:33 +0000

Looks like I will be blogging from my android phone. Yes, I rid myself of iPhone and got myself a Samsung Galaxy Nexus instead.

The phone itself is pretty good, minus the camera. But the OS, other than the annoying consistencies, is actually rather liberating.

Since the keyboard is many times better, I will be doing some writing on the go with this phone.

My take on Samsung Galaxy Nexus

azrulrhm — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:42:51 +0000

I was hoping that android 4 somehow show a bit if maturity by now, which is why I ended up with Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

While the larger screen is indeed refreshing and does make typing a lot faster, Ice Cream Sandwich is still need a lot if work if it is to really threaten iOS dominance.

No doubt the os is powerful but there are just too many inconsistencies that affect usability. Hardcore android fan will pro ably never noticed it, but thing such as inconsistent search button, menu position and even simple things such as color scheme of the built-in application is seriously limiting android appeals beyond the geeky crowd.

Windows 8 disable Metro UI

azrulrhm — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:57:04 +0000

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

azrulrhm — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 05:42:27 +0000

I need to start writing again. I need to start writing again. I need to start writing again.

A workplace for self-actualization?

azrulrhm — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:37:16 +0000

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?

azrulrhm — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 07:38:11 +0000

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!

azrulrhm — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:44:06 +0000

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

azrulrhm — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:11:41 +0000

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.