Pusat Sains Negara Visit

Pusat Sains Negara Visit, originally uploaded by zeeman01.

I visited two weekends ago the Pusat Sains Negara - after not coming over for about 2 years or so.

What can I say? Just coming in, I was able to impress the kids of what cool and great things they could see and learn. It was a promising start with the fish, aquarium, the animatronic animals (the sea turtles were a favourite).

There was one exhibit which was a hit with my son- the one which demonstrated centripetal force via a perpetual motion-like machine. It involved cranking up balls up the different segments of the exhibit, which then fall into rails to demonstrate what perpetual motion can do...Some segments required another ball to be cranked up to set in motion stuff like King Kong climbing up a skyscraper and to trigger a boot to kick the other ball. When we got the third part of it, the ball skipped the rain and fell into the centre of the display with a thud! That's off bounds so we couldn't do anything about it. Seems like the machine hasn't been fine tuned for awhile...

In the end however, I couldn't help feeling a bit peeved and cheated since a lot of the exhibits were not working well and some were even broken...It was a weekend and I guess some of the science shows were not on.

Felt a bit hungry and peckish and the only place to eat was the souvenir shop which had a makeshift kind of eatery with toasted bread, instant noodles and sandwiches. Wished there was more so I can encourage the family to come more often though...

How are we supposed to cultivate science in the young then? We sent a man to space but we can't even maintain some permanent science exhibits, even when people pay to get in...*sigh*

Words of wisdom to adhere to...

I've got some words of wisdom that got me as far as winning that job interview that I was aiming for. Some of these, can be used and when applied with skill, will be impressive I tell you!

1. That Starbuck's guy was right when he said "You got to challenge yourself every few years even when you're hitting home runs."

2. He also said "Don't be afraid to learn from people smarter than you."

3. He also said "Compromise on everything except you core values and everything matter (in terms of the little things that customers appreciate)"

4. "Live by the Golden Rule," - this is to be applied not said. Treat them as they you would like them to treat you.

5. My favourite, after it's all over and if the occasion arises and if they seem friendly enough: "I think it was the former CEO of AMD, Hector Ruiz who summed it up best when he said: You can get far in life, without being an asshole!" - mind you, I only use this to give a nice warm fuzzy feeling lasting impression when it seems that all seems well and friendly like. You don't want to seem cocky - friendly and sincere is what you're aiming for...

It's been awhile...

Hello folks.

Yep. It's been awhile and after leaving the fraternity of IT journalists for awhile, it gives you some perspective how life is on the other side: corporate communications take note, is somewhat not for the faint of heart.

You see, although I'm still writing to some degree about IT and technology - and a lot more scientific related stuff- I've actually jumped from the purely IT journalism bandwagon since mid-June 2008.

I've got stuff to share if there are people around thinking of making that big shift from journalism to corporate communications. Right now, I'm doing this magazine which I'm beginning to feel is a farce of sorts- with no inkling about how a publication should be run. Too many cooks after all, spoil the broth- and I'm already sick of how my broth is being spoilt.

The Bray of the Malevolent Office dONKEY

ONE with ethics and personal passion to succeed in what one does, in most cases will resolve to do the job as well as the situation demands it and to their limit of his or her abilities (of course everyone's entitled to have a full bull-crap day once in a while, to be down on the boondocks). So it comes as a surprise and the wild amazement of people, who continuously think about their future when they come into a new place of work and discover a species of work people (if you could call them that, they're more like fixtures or furniture or non-action hero figures) that are the anti-thesis of the work-people at large.

Work-people generally work to make a living and want to make a living because they have a future to think about and they don't want to put unnecessary burden on fellow workers. Enter the enigmatic species called 'The Donkey."

Donkeys or asses (scientific name Equus asinus) are actually, members of the Equidae or horse family...But at least these gentle creatures are useful beasts of burden, even if they do bray a lot. Donkeys, in the workplace context can be technically competent people and might in fact seem impressive in terms of the wealth of knowledge they seem to possess. Of course at the rate of the hot air and technical specs that they blow out, they can get very annoying in the first 5 minutes of the initial meeting.

Workplace donkeys can spew out a lot during those brainstorming meetings when discussing on projects. In one scenario at a technology-centric institution, assignment or project ideas are pitched by a head-honcho, with no one taking up the offer to take on the assignment. The lurking, silent Donkey then pounces into action! Lying innate at first, it then spews out an unstoppable flow of technical jargon, terminologies and a 20 minute pre-amble in the technologies involved. Hence, the terrible bray of the Donkey!

He or she then gloats proudly and rejoices how he has impressed everyone. Upon which the head-honcho will appoint the proud Donkey to take on the project (which actually wasn't Donkey's intention, he just wanted to prove how smart he is - and everyone hates a show-off Smart Ass). With no real sincere inclination whatsoever to actually do any work, this important assignment will just drift away into oblivion. The Donkey will get Scott Free on all charges.

Why is that? Well, the Donkey is notorious for having a supposed short-term memory capacity. He or she will conveniently 'forget' what the assignment was at the eleventh hour when the work is to be due. This puts the head-honcho under undue stress. So what does he do? He passes the burden and stress to an unsuspecting co-worker! The co-worker has not much choice. He or she hates the extra workload but thinking of the entire team and company reputation, he or she will slog through and scrape up something usable for the assignment's purposes. A backup if you please- of course this will lead to a downward spiral which will affect work quality since it is not done with proper resources and within a very limited amount of time. Eventually, if nothing is done the team will shrink, since co-workers will be disappointed and will think that they are not being appreciated for all their good efforts so far- given the sort of punishment they have to take.

In harsher environments, the Donkey will face very unforgiving farmers that will probably make donkey-sausages at the third time of being annoyed. Team members would have given the Donkey a good flogging. Too bad in some situations, people are just too nice and Donkeys tend to not have a belief system like Karma- what comes around goes around. They oddly enough, sort off believe that they're privileged.

While this is happening, the braying Donkey continues to bray a lot (impressing further other people not in his group of how cool and knowledgeable he or she is) and grazes around to find greener pastures and females but never succeeding to make marked improvement towards those objectives. Perhaps it is confidence. Perhaps he knows that he is merely a Donkey, not capable of doing real work or sustaining a long-term relationship. Or maybe he was just simply deprived as a child. Or he or she is just someone who is evil enough to think that people will tolerate his or her shortcomings because he or she is Top Donkey.

Everyone will probably notice that every place of work has a Donkey out grazing in the fields- or some subspecies of. The Donkey would do well to change himself, to become someone useful to society at large instead of being a pompous burden to others who are carrying him every time- not because they want to, but because they have no choice: slavery by proxy by Donkeys is a fate worse then death. Luck will run out and Donkeys will find that they'll be put to pasture soon enough if they don't make amends (probably turned into glue). Take note: people are people, they will not put up with Donkey crap for a very long time- it's just too stinking bad.

Some earlier CES 2008 & Yahoo! Photos

Here's some pictures taken on the old Epson 3.2 MP camera I took along for CES 2008 in Las Vegas and the visit to Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale, CA. I've added some captions...If you'd like to see more just click on the link. Take it as a sort of vistual tour, I guess:

http://picasaweb.google.com/zeeman01/YahooCES2008/photo?authkey=s6-AlTAEfnk#5227321210498852930

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Widget vs. Android story...

Some buddies emailed me saying that they liked this piece. Original story at:
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/techNu/Monday/Notebook/20080218152854/Article/index_html

Really can't wait till Android comes to town...

Widget versus Android
by: Hazimin Sulaiman

IT might sound like a cult sci-fi movie title from the 50s, but it’s not. It does, however, concern two superpowers in the Internet realm – Yahoo and Google. The year 2008 certainly has proven to be a fast-moving one. It was just earlier in the year when Yahoo unveiled its plans at CES 2008, Nevada, and gave us glimpses into what the company’s future looks like.

A few weeks later, it was reported that Yahoo was suddenly laying off 14,000 staff. And just two weeks ago, the news came that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo yet again after similar attempts in the past.

Last week came the news that the main Internet search engine, Google, has just released its much-awaited Android operating system at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.

Well, it seems that the battle has just escalated to mobile devices. This is of course, not surprising, given that Yahoo’s projection said that the mobile market segment will reach four billion phones by 2010.

From the likes of it, Yahoo will have to be on its toes in order to survive all these external pressures. It is doing so with the power of widgets/widgetry if you please.

Ironically, the way that both Yahoo and Google are going about laying their stake on this new territory are one and the same. This involves making it easy for a lot of people such as developers, advertisers and publishers to get on board and be profitable.

In Yahoo’s case, the company wants to make it extremely easy for mini-applications called widgets to be made by anyone who is familiar with .XML coding. Yahoo has been widget crazy and driven for some time.

This is proven by its purchase of Pixoria, the company behind Konfabulator years ago. Pixoria used to make widgets for the Mac OS.

Similarly, in Android’s case, Google wants to make it easy for developers to quickly and cheaply write applications for mobile phones, minus the licensing fees.

Both ideas are the same as they are different: one wants you to invade your mobile/smartphone via a client called Yahoo Go (which is needed to run the widgets), and another wants to have its operating system on your phone.

The Yahoo Go 2.0 is supposed to be already available for over 300 devices. Such a “soft-invasion” might have better acceptance by various manufacturers, and it also means that widgets can be written once and used in many devices, regardless of manufacturers or platforms. Hence, the beauty of widgets.

In the case of Andriod, Google intends to provide what seems to be another platform altogether. However, just like open source OS such as Linux, this might pose some problems. Granted this can only be qualified in due time when we actually get to see, use and feel Android.

OSes also tend to require more time to mature into a stable platform. Take Windows Mobile, for example, it only started to reach a degree of reliability and stability after Windows CE 3.0 (Microsoft Windows Pocket PC).

Needless to say, the lesser Windows CE (or WinCE for short) 1.0 to 2.0 made a lot of people WinCE. In those days, Palm OS reigned supreme. But it serves to show that diligence and financial stability does make the OS better.

It all boils down to how long can an OS developer sustain itself to get better. Is Google game enough to do this? Only time will tell.

Teething problems and a rocky road will definitely be abound for Android. Google will have to toughen its resolve, especially since the company is not just aiming for the mobile phones market.

Google’s chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt believes that Android would start an entire new wave of innovation unseen before in the industry. He is confident that this platform will amaze users by the amazing things it will be able to do on their mobile devices.

What does Yahoo think about the invasion of the Android? Will it disrupt the Yahoo widget invasion plan for the mobile phone space in 2010?

Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo Connected Life, cited at the recent CES that “Android is just another operating system. We’ll support it by giving its users a great user experience with Yahoo Go.”

Well, Yahoo Go on the Android? Now who’s invading who? Let’s see how it goes.