Category Archives: Poetic Code

South East Asia OpenSocial contest

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Here are the winners. And I’ve received 2nd place! That’s super awesome. I didn’t expect to win anything, but I won’t deny I kept my fingers crossed when I submitted my application just to add some luck. It’s an awesome feeling being able to win something cool. At times, I wish I can celebrate this.

Congratulations to Marvin Lee, which I think has made a cool application for the opinionated. Dude, I’d like to meet up with you someday.

Thanks Google & the S.E.A crew. You guys are super duper cool.

5 things I learned from OpenSocial hackathon

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Aside from learning about OpenSocial, I observed a few good real life examples that can be taken as an example for Malaysia’s corporate/creative workplace.

Junk food is important. It’s fuel for the brains. – The pantry at Google.sg office is stocked up just like a tiny sundry shop where I lived. Having a pantry with a high complex mix and balance of (brain) power food & junk food will keep any developer happy! It’s a happy pantry!

Never be afraid of your idea, no matter how silly you think it may be. – Ideas make the world go around. Ideas hatched every second, everywhere around the world. The best way to find out if your idea makes the cut is to share it with like minded individuals or just throw it out to the wild general public & react to their responses. People say to think outside the box. I believe there is no such thing as a box.

Never to be afraid to share. – People might steal your ideas, copy your thoughts, but hey, doesn’t that what makes the world a little bit interesting? Most would think “my idea is original. no one must know about it.” That’s the way of the old school. We are the new school.

Hire developers/staff who are naughty. If they are pranksters, they have a better chance to get things done. – Humor, laughter. The best medicine. This is a requirement in any organisation. You need at least one prankster that can come out with the silliest (funniest) prank or activity in your office. It keeps your environment fee alive.

Always surround yourself with great, good, fun people. – Anti social is good, to a certain extend. Being around like minded individuals stimulates you in ways you couldn’t even imagine.

And it’s done. For now. OpenSocial stuff-a-thon.

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Google Singapore OpenSocial hackathon has come to an end. But fear not, the next hackathon is coming soon, closer than you think!

To Vinoaj, Andrew, Duong (I hope I spelled your name right) & Chandra, you guys are awesome. There’s nothing better than having a good time with you guys, hacking & stuffing stuff, and also thank you for having me & the rest of the attendees over to your humble abode and thank you to Google for supporting us developers at this side of the world.

Just don’t stop doing this. It’s important. It’s fun!

I had a pinch of Google

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Now, I’m writing & sitting on a red (my favourite color) relax couch with matching footstool in Google’s Singapore office. I have to say, the first thing I fell in love when I set my foot in the office, it’s their marvelous work spaces and environment. I can imagine myself running around the office screaming “Hellalujah!”, praying for some kindness (and improvements) for my current workspace.

I’ll be blogging (semi) live from The Goog. The Goog. Sounds like a really good title for a cult movie about The Goog(le). Watch this page for (lazy) updates.

1:30PM

Still waiting for the show to start. There’s roughly about 12 10 developers that has arrived. And it seems that I’m the only developer from KL. Met Justin Lee from e27, Budy from Indonesia. etc.

2:00PM

Vinoaj kicks off the hackathon with a kickstart session. He briefly (re)introduces the crowd to OpenSocial & its usage. In a note, 51.com contributes the largest amount of OpenSocial users from Asia, but they recently boycotting OpenSocial with several other socnets from China.

2:30PM

Vinoaj jumps around to give a glimpse of what we will be building (hacking) here today using the iGoogle sandbox.

2:50PM

Bjorn Lee (e27) arrives.

3:00PM

Vinoaj speaks about Shindig. Props to @ropu for his DevFest presentation on Shindig.

3:15pM

I’m getting sleeeeepy. Hardly slept last night. A good adventure this morning searching (and walking) for a hotel/motel.

3.20PM

Vinoaj wrapping first presentation. Now he is talking about “Socializing Apps”.

Pure social apps. Socialized apps.

3:30PM

Vinoaj wraps. Now it’s time for Widgeo.us. Whoops. e27 briefs everyone what they do. My comment: they actually bring students out from their “coconut shell”.

4:30PM

Brainstorming session. Good ideas surfaced.

5:00PM

Hacking starts. Now, who wants to team up with me? Isk isk…

6:30PM

Vinoaj orders dinner. PIZZA!

6:50PM

I’m pretty worked up on my OpenSocial idea. Will continue posting updates when dinner arrives! Hehehe.

9:00PM

All good things must come to an end. Thank you guys. Thank you Google. I’m tired and sleepy after a sleepless night & an early morning search for cheap hotels (I refused to stay at Hotel 81). I’ll write more about this, after I sleep.

OpenSocial Singapore hackathon

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Thank god for pills! I will be heading to Singapore again this Friday for Google’s OpenSocial hackathon. The venue will be at Google Singapore office starting from 1pm on Saturday till late. I’ll be staying again at Uncle Nava’s place (i promise that I will write something about this awesome bed & breakfast motel) and hit me up if you want to hangout afterhours for a drink or something.

Revision 100

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I’m about to reach another milestone in my current work. A beta release will be out in a not so far future, after months & months of iteration. It won’t be a big deal for most people, but for me, it has been a journey & experience to whip out something from scratch. Well, almost… Hehe.

I’ve always been a Drupal developer since Drupal 4, but having been working on so many different PHP development frameworks over the years, I’ve learned that Drupal has always been the most suitable partner for me in web development. WordPress is cool, but not for many things. CakePHP is delicious, but it’s going to take awhile for me to properly digest the M-V-C. And Textpattern is simply beautiful.

I’ve always been the procedural type of developer (think C++), but hey, learning ain’t easy but it’s always fun!

As a self taught web artist & developer, I’ve (maybe, maybe not) mastered the true arts of CSS ever since the first time I’ve glished (is there such a word?) my eyes on the meyerweb in 2001 & succumbed into the power of Zeld. One thing weird though, lately I’ve been guiding my coworkers on the force and I never thought that what I’ve learned while skipping classes & hanging out at the computer lab in college would be useful & actually teaching it to other people.

In fact, the job I have right now was totally based on skill, because if I compare myself with my colleagues, I’m a lot less academically than they are. And honestly, they are great & good people and has been & will always be a pleasure working with them, although I’m the oldest (in age) in the development team. Plus, I’ve been having working on weird & unbelieveable jobs after I graduated high school, and this has been the best for me, so far.

Right now, I’m on my way to (hopefully) absorb & understand the awesomeness of Drupal, telling myself to make the best out of what I have & hoping to share with the world with what I’ve learned.

I’m also about to tread on another path: agriculture. Going to grow me some vegetables & fruits!

Aizat & the FOSS.my dudes has infected me with the “awesomeness” bug. Spray spray! New buzzword please! Haha!

Lady luck, don’t leave me yet :)

Google App Engine SDK repackaged.

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I think I need to “go live” my other website, which mainly deals & talks about web solutions, open source & stuff like that. But since this is my personal site, oh what the hell.

Google App Engine is cool. Having your application live in the house of Google is way cooler. Should be a -5 degrees weather. Having downloaded the SDK & use it to build some “maybe interesting” apps, I decided to repackage it to a all-in-one ZIP file.

What’s in it? The application server, latest documentation, latest application samples & a script that I created to have a quick & dirty way to start the application server. It’s not perfect, but if you have any idea to make it better, feel free to check-it-out from the repository. If you don’t want to, you can submit a patch. I shall thank you with an ice cream treat. And the script only works for *nix systems. I hardly use windoze anymore, but maybe one day a VBScript version will surface, someday.

I’m still having some trouble to package it for Ubuntu, still learning the hard way. Never mind, I think I should be able to release a .deb package anytime soon.