One more gadget-want in the bag

Posted on May 14th, 2012 by Erin

Testing the MHL adapter that Nanang Lucille sent over.

When upright, the display only uses the center with large black spaces on both sides.

Rotate it sideways and the magic happens…

Unfortunately the device will only be detected if power is supplied via the micro-usb input port. Not bad for a $10 MHL device. The device works beautifully for the purpose why I wanted it in the first place: to watch video clips that I have already cached in my phone memory if the TV is available. :)

Thanks Nanang. :)

Clarification: the unit is the only one bundled for that price. The HDMI switch and cables are from CDRKing. The power adapter is the one that came with the SGS2 unit.

Tags: Top of my head // Add Comment »

Welcome to reality! A parody.

Posted on May 8th, 2012 by Erin

The image below was posted in a yammer group and I felt inspired to write a parody. All resemblance to real life are imaginary. It is not meant to reflect my place of work. Now with the legalese out of the way…

welcome-to-apple

There is work and there is your life-at-work.

The kind of work that has your and your team's fingerprints all over it as documented in the metrics you worked all night and submitted 1 day late.
The kind of work that you'd never compromise on, except with that tiny incident one that we don't really like to talk about as the metrics doesn't agree with it.
That we don't expect you to sacrifice your weekend but expect you to do it anyway because we over committed and under-estimated.
You can do that kind of work here. People here think safety first, where CYA is the norm and security, as we defined it, is the top most priority.
People come here to swim in the deep end but you need a swimmer and diving certification before you can do that. And you need to sign a waiver. Afterwards we still don't let you do it because it is risky and it wasn't an activity approved by HR.

They want their work to add up to something. We don't know yet but the laws of physics say that energy is not lost so it must go somewhere. I think it becomes a paycheck or something.

Something big, at least as was stated in the executive memos. Something that couldn't happen anywhere else except for Dilbert cartoons.

Welcome to the place where dreams meet the pavement of reality. In the wipe out kind of way.

Tags: Humor // Add Comment »

Bashwk to basics

Posted on May 7th, 2012 by Erin

It was the first time to generate and send the report. It deals with downloading a lot of access logs, combining them based on certain scenarios, filtering out the cruft, slicing and dicing per service accessed and then tallying the responses to see if they meet the SLA.

The first manual extraction took around 4 hours to create the report for the most critical service. After that, I sat down and created the bash+awk script to do the slicing, dicing and tallying part. It took me 3 hours to create and test the script but after that I can generate the reports for 6 services in 30 minutes, where the bulk of the time was spent in downloading the latest logs (~10minutes) and pasting the data in Excel to create the “bayoootiful” graphs.

I figured if I can automate the rest then the reports can be generated under 15minutes, and I can hook it up on a continuous service so it will send it automatically every night. After that I can work on getting rid of the need to go through Excel if I can find some API to generate it and publish them as PDFs. JFree perhaps but my Java skills are already rusty. I also need something native if possible as I cannot install stuff on the office machines. The zLinux servers are pretty much off limits though I think there is a python interpreter installed.

One thing I can say is that automation and f/loss rocks. The script is too specific and covered by IPR so I cannot post it here but it is something that most scripters should be able to do.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS, Work // Add Comment »

Down boy, down

Posted on April 21st, 2012 by Erin

Let me get the caveat out of the way: I was raised as a Roman Catholic by my pious paternal grandmother. I spent 13 years in Catholic schools and university. I progressed from being a Roman Catholic to non-practising, and now agnostic. It is possible that you visited my ranting space through a link I may have inadmittedly provided. You may not like what you read below so better close your browser tab now.

I love Godwin’s Law which, even though it is named that way, does not have any connection to religion. It is a de facto law invoked in cyber discussions wherein the first person who uses a Nazi comparison or reference loses the discussion immediately regardless of how brilliant their points are.

I wish there would be something similar for people who just love to bring their religion into the middle of everything. Especially those who think that referencing their omnipotent lord through all capitalized letters is a testament of their faith. I would, in my own twisted and probably ill-thought way, disagree for the following reasons:

  • Capitalization as instructed by my grammar teachers should only be used on the first letter if you want to use that word as a proper noun.
  • All-caps in textual communication denotes shouting.
  • Or, putting everything in caps can denote an initialism or acronym. An example can be Goods of Desire, or Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks

Some might argue that they see nothing wrong if they are proud to shout and profess their faith in regular discussions. I would like to challenge you to think it over again. Do you shout that same word every time during real-life discussions? If you do, then I hope we don’t have any opportunities to communicate. Ever.

Rabid

Everybody is to free and have the right to believe in what they believe in. My point was not to be lazy and try to work out that everything is about religion or can be explained automatically by using a religious reference. Not everybody have the same belief, and cramming that at our throats every discussion doesn’t help your cause. Whenever I see that during discussions I actually feel less inclined to participate further. It feels to me that I am conversing with a Dothraki native who thinks spouting “It is Known” while nodding their heads actually gives credibility to what they said.

Tags: Rubbish // Add Comment »

14 years

Posted on March 13th, 2012 by Erin

A few more minutes and the day that marks the 14th year of being with my wife is about to pass.

A steak dinner in Bistecca (courtesy of a gift certificate), dessert of swapped Magnum ice cream sticks being eaten while the car is parked in an underground mall parking, and a lot of “I can’t remember now” conversations to while the drive home. That is how we chose to celebrate it this year.

For my wife, who is lucky to have me and I to have her, I dedicate the chorus of this Guns ‘n Roses classic:

14 years of silence
It’s been
14 years of pain
It’s been
14 years that are gone forever
And I’ll never have again

*ba-dum-ching*

[NOTE: Yes my wife already heard me quote that chorus to her a few weeks back. :) ]

ciao!

Tags: Top of my head // Add Comment »

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