Seletar Reservoir Phototaking

One of the earliest memories I have is of my parents bringing me and my sister down to Seletar Reservoir for a photo-taking session. I can actually recall running around the place although nothing special at all happened that day. It was just a normal family outing.

It’s amazing how seemingly insignificant events like this — in the adult’s perspective — can actually somehow leave an impact on a child’s memory. I hope I can keep this in mind as I bring up my baby daughter. Something that is i think is seemingly insignificant may leave a deep imprint on her life somehow…

Freemind: The Mind Mapping Tool

One of the tools that I absolutely cannot live without at work is Freemind, the open source mind mapping tool.

In my previous workplace, I was only assigned a desktop, so I was unable to utilise Freemind fully. Now when I have my own notebook, I have unleashed the full usefulness of the tool: organising my thoughts, note-taking during meetings, etc.

Why don’t you try it out for yourself? It’s really easy to use and before long you’ll also find it indisposable. Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/ to download a copy and try it out yourself!

Food Terrorists in China

Food terrorism has got to stop. Fake food is a terrible thing to do, and unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous individuals and businesses who take advantage of this basic human need. Capitalism has seriously reared its ugly head when people’s lives are risked for the sake of earning a buck. I do not wish ill upon those who have profited from their sick and twisted dealings, but I hope that their conscience will strike them. Hard.

Note that I did not specifically mention that Chinese were the culprits. Without having any first hand information myself, it might even be the case that the Chinese are the victims of some inept or unethical overseas management! Who is to say that some big-shot manager from outside of China did not force the Chinese factory into adding melamine to their food products? Until investigations are complete, 三鹿 should be assumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

Being a parent myself, I can understand the anguish and turmoil that the Chinese parents are facing. Regardless of whose fault it is, the Chinese government should tighten up food safety laws and prevent people — their own citizens especially — from suffering due to the selfish motives of others. One death due to food poisoning is one unnecessary death to many.

Friendly-HTTP is unfriendly when testing

If you’re involved in the testing process for a web application and you use Internet Explorer for testing, one of the first things that you will need to do is to turn off “friendly HTTP error messages”. This option is turned on by default and I can understand why Microsoft did it because most people are ordinary consumers who won’t be bothered with deciphering the error messages that the server throws back.

Turning this option off will display the error message returned from the server in all its techno-geek glory that only IT people can decipher. Incidentally, these error messages are also often useful when testing. For instance, Weblogic Server Developer License only allows 5 unique IP addresses and it will inform you via the error message if you should exceed that. However, if friendly HTTP is on, you will only know that access has been denied without knowing the reason.

If you have trouble finding this option in your IE options, I’ve reproduced a screenshot below.

 

Friendly HTTP Error Message option
Friendly HTTP Error Message option

Passing the Hot Potato

During the course of your daily work routine, you will probably come across certain tasks that I would term as a “hot potato”. These “hot potatoes” are tasks that do not require much of your time to handle, but you risk being the bottleneck if you do not respond promptly.

Literally, no one wants to hold a hot potato for too long (unless you’re masochistic). If all it requires is just a small diversion from whatever you’re doing, then just handle it quickly and pass the hot potato on. Of course, it will require some skill and experience to determine whether a task is a hot potato.

A “hot potato” is a task where:

 

  • You hold up progress if you do not act on it
  • It does not take much of your time to do your part and pass it on
  • Once you pass it on, you can forget about it and continue with whatever you were doing in the first place