Author Archives: michaelon9
Google Voice… Invited but not available!
Just got a alert in Gmail “You’ve been invited to Google Voice” and I thought the policy had changed to allow registrations outside of US. Unfortunately scrolling down further stating its only available for sign up in the US.
If you haven’t already heard about it, Google Voice is a service that makes using your current phones much better!
Here’s what it offers:
- A personal phone number that rings all of your existing phones when people call
- All of your voicemail in one inbox with unlimited online storage and free voicemail transcripts sent to your phone and email
- Low-priced international calling to over 200 countries and free SMS
- Other powerful features like the first phone spam filter to protect you from unwanted callers, the ability to ListenInTM on your voicemail messages while they are being left, conference calling and more
Tried my luck anyway and got this :
Google Voice is not available in your country.
Thanks for visiting Google Voice. We’re not yet open for users outside the US, but are planning to expand our service to additional countries in the future.
I do wonder with e-mail, browsing habits and now voice (leading to Android platform), will Google hold too much information on a person’s habits?
Pre-ordered iPhone 3GS.. first Apple I’m going to own!
I remember seeing my first Apple Macintosh at cousins house at a very young age and being amazed about the green glowing text on the screen. That sparked me off on the journey that has me fascinated with technology. For some reason, I’ve yet to own a Apple product in my life! So its rather prescient when a Facebook quiz which asked “Are you a Mac or are you a PC” results in a Mac! When Singtel sent the invite to pre-register I didn’t give it much hesitation since it looks to be a great platform for development and a capable smart phone (At last).
Counting down to welcoming Apple to the bunch of Windows machines in the home. 2 days to go!
Will also be saying good-bye to M1 on Friday. Have been with them since my first Nokia phone in 1998.
How many languages do you know?
Sudden thought occurred to me that I’ve been learning programming since 1989 and how quickly its now 20 years.
Here’s a chronological order of the languages picked up so far.
- 1988-1989 : Logo Programming
- 1992-1994 : C Programming , some dBase
- 1995-1996 : C, Pascal, Dabbled in Assembly (demos in the day impressed me a LOT!)
- 1997-1999 : C++ (self taught during National Service to ensure brain didn’t rot)
- 1999-2003 : ASP, Visual Basic, PHP, Java, LISP, Perl, OpenGL, MPI, HTML, Javascript, SQL, Prolog
- 2004-Present : C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net and more PHP
I’m looking forward to doing more of PHP, Objective-C, Ruby and HTML 5! and who knows what else in the coming years. Might even re-visit Java since Android needs it.
For code editing, after a few years of using Visual Studio, I find myself using Dreamweaver and Eclipse more. Apatana and Netbeans have also taken residence so shall see which IDE takes over. Otherwise there’s always Notepad++.
Updated for 2010/2011:
- Comfortable with: jQuery
- Still Learning: Ruby (+Rails), Objective-C, jQuery Mobile, HTML5/CSS3
- Trying best not to take up Java (with Android)
- Development on new Macbook Air, getting to love console again 🙂
- More Git, Less SVN. Loving Heroku
Technorati Tags: programming, languages, chronology
Rebooting
It‘s been 9 days since I got back to the corporate life. Why after so many years of avoiding it? Hard reality was that running the business while enjoyable for its freedom meant a rather tiring schedule. Keeping everything juggling in the air without good support meant that inevitably things came crashing down when I faltered.
So after taking a good LONG break from work and taking stock of what I could achieve, I interviewed for a job at ST701 doing something I love (actual development versus lots of sales calls/meetings). Most folks probably do it differently, joining a large corporation when they start their first jobs and some might leave to realise their dreams.
I started by freelancing, joining a small firm and eventually learning about management, interacting with large firms and developing solutions along the way. The opportunity throughout the years to gain experience in design patterns, architecture, infrastructure, communicating with customers and solutions has been invaluable. While I won’t get to apply this experience within the current job scope, I’m sure it’ll come in useful down the road. It’ll take some time to get used to life in a large corporate entity but at least it’ll be a fresh journey to learn from.
Plesk Domain Removal Bug and incompatibility with Symantec Antivirus (Resolved!)
Had been having a rather irritating issue with Plesk for Windows that prevented domains from being deleted. Before wiping the system clean after fruitless attempts at searching out a solution on the Plesk support forums, I finally found the answer (thank you Google).
If you are using Plesk for Windows and getting this message :
Error: Unable to remove domains: Problems occured while removing domains: Unable to remove hosting: Unable to delete system user: SysUser->systemRemove() failed: usermng failed: Unable to open process token: (5) Access is denied.
The solution is to disable process-level tamper protection in SAV by: Start > All Programs > Symantec Client Security > Symantec Antivirus > expand Configure > Tamper Protection > Uncheck Protection: Processes.
Reference :
Plesk 8.3 incompatibility with Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 (and a rant about Parallels!)
A year into the future
Had a pretty interesting casual meetup with a fellow business owner doing pretty much what I’ve been doing for the past few years. T is a year older than me and has been running his own firm with a small staff allowing him to do what he likes (programming and more programming!).
Interestingly, T observed during our meeting that programmer’s think alike and even dress alike! We had a good laugh and came to agreement that programmers (those who freelance only) these days are a rare breed.
- Biege shirts – tucked out
- Khaki Pants
- Loafers w/o socks
Having a team really helps one focus on what needs to be done. For the past year, I’ve had trouble with that as being essentially a small outfit for so long meant juggling a lot on the plate while trying to achieve goals. I felt burnt-out and tired having to manage sales, development and maintenance. Moving forward, this partnership should free up more time to do what I love, essentially to program and reduce the day-to-day overhead of sales process.
Site upgrade completed
It’s been some time since updates were posted on the site. A new theme has been installed with a cleaner look and with it, WordPress has been upgraded to 2.5.1 to take advantage of a new dashboard and security.
I’m also taking the opportunity to write up more on our products that have been under development for the past year, O9BMS (Building Management Systems) for Enterprise Mobile Inspections and Broad-Cast.net, an EDM and Corporate E-Card Portal since these products will be primary focus of the company this year.
Michael Ong 