tzlee.com/blog

Month: March 2011

  • Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers

    Good read: http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2007/11/11/ten-habits-of-incompetent-managers/

  • Money in the bank

    I’m sure many of you have heard of (or a variant of) the following question:

    If I gave you a million dollars, what would you do with it?

    My usual answer is “I don’t know, give it to me first.” Hehe.

    Anyway, just for fun leave a comment and tell me what you would do, then answer the next question:

    If you saved the next 20 years for a million dollars instead, what would you do with it?

    And on a related topic, see https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/yes-rich-kids-already-won-the-career-game-heres-why/

  • Blogging helps language

    Trying to restart blogging is like trying to get off cough syrup addiction. I’m having withdrawal symptoms – looking at the WordPress interface makes me nauseous. I actually need to force myself to write.

    My English is going down a death spiral with my daily dosage of Singaporean “business communication”, or whatever they call it.

    “Dear Justin, Noted with thanks. We will revert to you as soon as possible. Regards, HotChix”

    Noted with thanks? Revert to you?

    Oh my brain cells. Please stop writing like that people. It’s totally wrong.

    I hope blogging fixes my English. If it doesn’t then I’m in big trouble.

  • Welcome back

    As promised, I will attempt to revive my blogging.

    As I type, I’m actually watching “The Social Network”. Damn geeky, I know. Not the best movie of all time for a Saturday night.

    Anyway just to start off the new year – lots of shit happened in Q1 2011. My “Ultimate” Driving Machine™ had a cracked radiator which meant it needs to be replaced. Not too expensive but still ouch.

    A friend got into an accident with a bus that tried to flee the accident scene. Thank god he’s not injured at all – the bus hit the passenger side and he was alone in the vehicle. He was lucky he had a witness.

    My high BMI neighbours upstairs are still as annoying as ever, even right now at 1.25AM and I have another 3.5 years to put up with them and you bet I will.

    By the way, if you’re wondering – Singapore has no decent law against domestic noise. There’s nothing the government can really do if you have an imbecile neighbour like mine. All you can hope is to curse them to rot in their filthy home and get eaten by fleas so they’ll mixmash well with the herbs and spices they pound daily in their bedroom. I’m not sure if even an impending election would change anything since Bukit Panjang is still split into two.

    Just six hours ago I heard I got voted to be in the EXCO of KH. I’m puzzled how I got voted even when it was a no-show; I was at CGH and it wasn’t a lie. I don’t think I can commit and I will not bullshit my way into a role I cannot put quality effort into. This is precisely what I am going to tell them during the next meeting: Career, Family, Hobby. Choose two. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to answer that.

    I’m also trying to adopt a minimalistic approach to life. I’m trying to get rid of shit I don’t need and just keep the necessary stuff at home. I’ve always believed in buying things of quality versus price since high quality stuffs tend to last longer. Also you’re likely to only need ONE good, say, shoe than ten cheap shoes.

    That’s it for today. I need to watch my movie. Stay tuned for more updates.

  • Offline HTML Mobile Apps

    Picking up iOS is quite a bit of work plus you need to buy a Mac to get Xcode running.

    Yes I know you Hackintosh folks are going to start making some noise but let’s keep this legal.

    So I’ve decided to build quick apps using jQTouch.

    To get an App icon on your home screen, simply… add the page to your home screen! Duh. It’s like adding a bookmark. Try it – it works!

    But here’s the next problem – how do we get the apps to work without network connectivity?

    HTML5 introduced something called the offline cache manifest. Here’s how to use it…

    Step 1 – Create a file called yourfilename.manifest with the following content

    CACHE MAINFEST
    demos/main/ajax.html
    demos/main/ajax_post.php
    demos/main/index.html
    demos/main/jqt_startup.png
    demos/main/jqtouch.png
    jqtouch/jqtouch.min.css
    jqtouch/jqtouch.min.js
    jqtouch/jquery.1.3.2.min.js
    themes/jqt/img/back_button.png
    themes/jqt/img/back_button_clicked.png
    themes/jqt/img/button.png
    themes/jqt/img/button_clicked.png
    themes/jqt/img/chevron.png
    themes/jqt/img/chevron_circle.png
    themes/jqt/img/grayButton.png
    themes/jqt/img/loading.gif
    themes/jqt/img/on_off.png
    themes/jqt/img/rowhead.png
    themes/jqt/img/toggle.png
    themes/jqt/img/toggleOn.png
    themes/jqt/img/toolbar.png
    themes/jqt/img/whiteButton.png
    themes/jqt/theme.min.css
    some/other/file.name

    Step 2 – Make sure your web server reports the MIME type correctly by adding the following config to Apache. You might need to contact your hosting provider to get this done.

    AddType text/cache-manifest .manifest

    Step 3 – Add the following tag to your HTML page so the browser knows where to find the manifest.

    <html manifest="yourfilename.manifest">

    That’s it!

    Original reference material here.