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A Father’s Letter to His Son
Beautifully written article. For the visitors of my website who has been hurt countless times, take note of what was written here:
You might get teased and bullied and hurt by people you meet … and then
after meeting dozens of jerks, find a true friend. If you close
yourself off to new people, and don’t open your heart to them, you’ll
avoid pain … but also lose out on meeting some incredible people, who
will be there during the toughest times of your life and create some of
the best times of your life.
A Letter to My Son, on Starting Out In Life | Zen Habits
There will be times when you are met with disappointment instead of success. Life won’t always turn out the way you want. This is just another thing you’ll have to learn to deal with. But instead of letting these things get you down, push on. Accept disappointment and learn to persevere, to pursue your dreams despite pitfalls. Learn to turn negatives into positives, and you’ll do much better in life.You will also face heartbreak and abandonment by those you love. I hope you don’t have to face this too much, but it happens. Again, not much you can do but to heal, and to move on with your life. Let these pains become stepping stones to better things in life, and learn to use them to make you stronger.
But Be Open to Life Anyway
Yes, you’ll find cruelty and suffering in your journey through life … but don’t let that close you to new things. Don’t retreat from life, don’t hide or wall yourself off. Be open to new things, new experiences, new people.
Posted in Lifestyle.
– May 17, 2008
Virtual Reality Views using the WiiRemote
Awesome innovation by Johnny Lee – Virtual Reality using the WiiRemote!! This will change the future of 3D gaming more. Super exciting!
Other than gaming, what other uses can this technology be used for? Virtual conference? Can’t imagine having virtual conferences with this technology. Hmm..
YouTube – Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
Posted in Technology.
– May 15, 2008
Career Advice 2.0
An interesting slideshow for career advice. It’s one of the marketing channels for a book on career advice. In general there are 6 lessons:
- There is no plan – You can only connect the dots looking backwards.
- Think about strengths, not weaknesses – Do what you are good at.
- It’s not about you. - It’s about giving back to society
- Persistence trumps talent. – I have a problem with this. +_+
- Make excellent mistakes. - Risk management
- Leave an imprint. – What do you want to be remembered for when you die?
Enjoy!
Post inspired from- QuBitBucket: Chopsticks vs. Parachute – Career Advice 2.0
Posted in Updates.
– May 5, 2008
Google allows advertisers to bid for keywords that are trademarked
It will be interesting to know the impact that this will have on Google. They seem to be eroding their stand of “not being evil”. Increasingly, I see the detrimental effects that being public listed can have on a company’s stand and directions. I don’t think the founders would have anticipated this pressure to maintain profit growth every year when they list the company out.
If I ever have the chance to start a company, I will find all ways and means to keep it from being listed on the stock exchange. I have lost faith in the world’s financial and capital markets. Fundamentally, the reason that drives performing companies to expand their operations from external funds is greed.
FT.com – Anger at Google’s keyword shift
A sudden change in Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) ‘s policy on brand-name advertising in its search results has angered British advertisers, even as it opens up competitive opportunities in search marketing.From May, Google will allow anybody to buy trademarks as “keywords”, allowing rivals’ sites to appear in sponsored search results when users query a specific brand or company name.
Posted in Updates.
– April 19, 2008
Singaporeans are complacent and greedy?
Somehow, I believe we have this problem too. High pay, low working hours etc. Resonates very well with what I sense around me.
mollymeek: Send this to the ST Forum 5: S’poreans Complacent and Greedy
Singaporeans are becoming more and more complacent. They think that the government will take care of them. They are unable to go through hardship and are unwilling to work 18 hours a day. They are so greedy that they think they are entitled to overtime pay when workers are supposed to do work and not suck money from employers who are kind enough to give them work to do.
– April 17, 2008
Further advancements in RFID software technology
It appeared that previously, RFID tags can only identify groups of objects. Any attempt to track objects individually (for example a specific bottle of shampoo as opposed to the entire brand of shampoos on sale) was costly and ineffective. The advancement in RFID technology now solves this problem.
RFID reader can now identify velocity, position of tags
The new software will be able to discriminate between different bags, and provide such information as where the bag is going and whether a certain piece of luggage is supposed to be searched by Customs.Alien’s new software, a free update available for the models ALR-9900, ALR-9800, and ALR-8800, also has a flexible reader distance, ranging from just millimeters to 100 feet.
“You can also use it in the military,” Stelter said. Helicopters picking up cargo can use a reader to locate the load, an often arduous task when visibility is poor. The reader distances have increased fivefold during the last five years, according to the company.
Posted in Technology.
– April 13, 2008
Comparing Google’s App Engine with Amazon EC2
An excellent graphical comparison between Google’s App Engine and Amazon EC2. Google seems to offer a better whole product solution that Amazon EC2 because of their ability to leverage on web frameworks, toolkits and their social graphs.
Amazon seems to be stronger on the infrastructure side – The flexibility to integrate with most client-side codes (as opposed to Google’s sole support for Python) and their S3 + SimpleDB database.
How Google App Engine Stacks up to Amazon EC2
With the platform-as-a-service revolution getting into full swing, developers (especially in start-ups) have more options for creating and deploying applications without the hassle and more extreme cost of setting up and maintaining infrastructure.Dion Hinchcliffe at ZDNet compares Amazon’s approach to providing infrastructure services to Google’s. He found that Amazon’s set of services is more flexible but not as integrated as Google’s App Engine.
Posted in Technology.
– April 13, 2008
Does a Business Guy have a place in Software Startups?
Valid points made. But it does not address one key issue – how difficult it is for business guys to convince smart hackers to work together.
Does a Business Guy have a Place in Software Startups? – Tony Wright dot com
It turns out that it’s not so simple as that. Startups are diverse– each startup has different needs. How do you think SalesForce.com would’ve done if it’d been started by a bunch of hackers? How do you think Zappos.com would have fared if it wasn’t started by a zealot for customer service and support? There are plenty of examples of great software startups with a critical founder who wasn’t really a technologist (arguably, Apple is a great example of this).
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Technology.
– April 11, 2008
YC Clone in Singapore?
Y Combinator is a venture firm based in the States which provides funding, networks and mentorship for early stage web technology startups. The underlying philosophy of the founders are that young hackers are smart, and should start their own company than to be miserably stuck working in cubicles.
Peter Christensen toyed around with a few concepts to expand the YC philosophy to other niches. What struck me was how Singapore was one of the countries off the top of his head for a YC clone to be set up. And Singapore is the only Asian country that he mentioned in the list. Not China. Not Hong Kong. Not Taiwan.
I know I might sound childish here. I should be asking him the questions directly as opposed to blogging it but I’m lazy to do so. Wow – Has Singapore made a name for herself in the web technology space? Has he met any Singaporeans? Does he know anyone from NUSEA, ruby-sg, Singapore PHP, garag3? What have he heard about Singapore so far? Or was it just a coincidental random call? 
Can YCombinator Be Beaten At Its Own Game? » What’s In Peter’s Head
The other discussion was about selecting founders to fund. I summarize YCombinator’s selection criteria as: “Young, Smart, Cheap, Determined, Acquirable”. This fits in with Paul Graham’s philosophy and worldview, and by focusing on these kind of founders, they deliberately pass on many other ideas and founders. Are there any other investment niches in the space ignored by YCombinator? Of course, but it will take another creative individual to come up with that business model. Here are some ideas:* A YC clone in (Toronto, Sydney, Singapore, Helsinki, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, etc) for founders that can’t get US visas. US immigration policy keeps lots of smart people out of the US, so that’s an unexploited opportunity
* A hardware-centric fund that funds quick, small solutions based on FPGAs instead of burned-in hardware
* Focus on revenue generating startups as opposed to acquirable startups and collect dividends instead of exit payouts. This would create completely different companies than the ones YC has funded
* Encourage teams mixed with technical and business/marketing people to promote faster adoption people. Test the hypothesis that business adds value to early-stage startups
* Target more experienced professionals that are farther along in life and wouldn’t live on such a small amount.
Posted in Singapore, Technology.
– April 10, 2008
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