Technology Blog

The World Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:35:00 +0000

I was watching the late show with David Letterman the other day, and Bill Clinton was on it. They talked about the economy and the problems. Clinton said the problem is that over the last 8 years or so, people have been investing, but only in property, and having a high leverage. The rich people have been getting richer through property, instead of investing in something that creates jobs. It would have been better if it was invested in something like solar energy, and the investors would have made the money back through technology advancements and also creating jobs, and improving the economy.

I think Clinton is quite a good speaker, and he is one of the great leaders, and I believe in this instance he is probably right. I too am trying to make money from money, even though I havn't got a lot of it. Over the last few years, I've been trading on the internet, and trading currencies. It does look like it's again a good time for making money with currencies, and I have made some investments just recently, but now I'm thinking it's time I invest in something that benefits us all, and it may even have better returns.

I would like to invest in something like energy, but I know nothing about it. I'm keen on investing in companies making hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles. I would love to be driving in something that uses 1 litre per 100km of petrol, and not having a high price premium in buying those vehicles. Rumour is, the new Toyota Prius hybrid, due to be launched at the Detroit Auto Show next year, will be better than the current one, using 4 litres per 100km instead of 4.4l/100km. That is an improvement, but I don't think it's attractive enough for most buyers to be willing to pay the price premium. A hybrid car in NZ cost over $10,000 more than an average car. If you compare a Toyota Corolla and Toyota Prius, one uses 7.7l/100km, the other uses 4.4l/100km. The difference is 3.3l/100km. If petrol is $2 per litre, you save $6.6 for every 100km you travel. So if you do 30,000km a year, that's a difference of $1980, and it takes 5 years to make your money back. That doesn't seem too bad.

But consider this. If you buy a Daihatsu Sirion at $15,999, the difference in price is $25,000, and it uses 6.5l/100km. the difference is now 2.1l/100km, or $4.2/100km, and you save $1260 per year, and takes 20 years to make the money back, wow 20 years. You may think you can't really compare the two cars, but for me, I only use my car around town, and most of the time i'm the only person or there's one passenger, and I can take 5 in the Sirion if I want. The choice for me is obvious. Buy the Sirion, invest the extra cash somewhere, and pay a little more for petrol.

Say if I invest $25,000 in hybrid vehicles, and there's a technology breakthrough in 10 years, making the cars do 1l/100km, that would be money well spent, and I'll happily drive a brand new super fuel efficient car at that time.

Another thing I can invest in, is telecommunications. Being an IT person, it makes sense to invest in my own field. Plus, I'm going to be working for Telecom for the next two years, it makes even more sense. I would be keen to see prices drop on mobile charges and broadband, and the only way that's going to happen, is through investment in new technology.

I believe investing in these two areas would be a sound investment, and one that I will see a good return on investment, and in savings in the future.

Someone asked me how do you get out of the recession, I said, make people spend money. We need to pump money in the economy, but not just for personal benefits, but with investments that will benefit everybody.

Capitalism Revisited - Forbes.com

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:35:00 +0000

How entrepreneurship can save the economy.

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TWUL day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:25:00 +0000

Did you know that Samsung makes Tanks, and Toshiba makes Missiles? There's a group of students from St Hilda's college protesting them making weapons, and raise awareness so that people think twice before buying their products. I wonder if they are the only ones. Does nokia make military cellphones? Intel makes chips for missiles or nuclear weapons? To me, I don't see the problem with them making weapons, just an interesting fact i saw today

Teach What You Learned (TWUL)

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:59:00 +0000

"Cisco Systems' astute CEO John Chambers sums it up in two sentences: "The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email usage look like a rounding error in terms of the Internet capacity it is going to consume."

I have a dream, a dream to teach kids programming. I learned "basic" programming when I was not even 10, and I loved it, and I could write some basic programs, but I never had a chance to learn more after that. Until about 5 years ago. Now I'm a few weeks away from finishing my degree in Information Science. For the last few years, I kept thinking I wish I had started learning programming earlier than uni.

Programming and a lot of things are things you can self taught. Or can be taught outside of school or uni. I'm sure there's a lot of self taught developers that have more experience and are better than me. Take for example the Facebook guy, the guys that created wretch.cc, the guy that cracked iphone (i'm not good with names).

So what's it got to do with Teach What You Learned. TWUL is an idea i thought of today, maybe someone is already doing the same thing, if there is, let me know in the comments, i'd like to have a look at the website. What it is is just you blog about what you learned today. You can blog about what you learned before, last year, ten years ago etc, but recent events make it easier, as there may be too much if you think back, and eventually you just get sick of blogging it.

So here's an example. Yesterday, I was at a restaurant, and someone said you have an exam on Thursday, and you seem quite relaxed. And I replied whether or not I'm relaxed, the result will not change, so why not be relaxed. This year, I have reports after reports, presentations after presentations. I used to get stressed about each report and presentation, but after a while, it became natural. When you have to do it, do it the best you can within the time you have, then when its done, it's no big deal, no stress before it's handed in, no relief when it's done, it's simply just another day.

Interviews are the same, and exams, I had a mid-semester exam about a month ago, I studied, I went in the exam room, did the exam, then went on with the rest of my day as if it was nothing special.

You see, life is like this, there's going to be deadlines after deadlines, reports after reports, presentations after presentations, it's ok for a student, a lot of people stress about tests and exams, then when one year is done, they have a holiday and come back and do the same thing again. But in the workforce, it's different, there is no holiday, you just deal with things over and over again until you retire. You might learn not to stress over things over time, but the sooner you do, the easier things are going to be for you.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean it's ok to slack around, you should still do your best, but change your attitude. Allocate time for the task, do the best you can, when it's done, move on as if was no big deal. At times you can't help being stressed, but just know that stressing doesn't do any good. If you feel stressed, take time out, and exercise is always good to relief stress. I've seen people stress over an exam 2 weeks away, and try and sleep minimal amounts and do nothing but study, but if it was me, i'll live normally, and maybe take more time to exercise and relax, because I know that's the time when I would be stressed, and i want to be in the best, non-stressed state if I want to do something well.

That's what i've learned over this year, and there's lots more. When you TWUL, it doesn't have to be long, it can be something like "shake hands firmly, it makes you seem more confident", or "do similar tasks together, it saves time" or "check email twice a day only" or some technical knowledge. It can be big things, or it can be small things.

A lot of people know a lot about a lot of things, and we all learn a lot each day. Life is an adventure, and the most satisfying thing is to learn from something new. So here's what I want to do. Blog about things I learned, and hope someone reads it, and perhaps benefit from it. You can do the same too. You can have your own blog, or simply write comments to this blog or some of my subsequent blog entries. You can agree or disagree with me, correct me if you want. In fact, it would be good to hear from anyone, I can know different views, and get sometimes get my facts straight.

As to the teaching kids programming thing. I've got a few friends that have kids under 5, I'm not going to teach them now, but maybe one day, I can teach them, maybe even some time soon. Kids have a lot of potential, and we might see a rising star somewhere, and one of them may be the next Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or make the next YouTube, at the age of 12 or something. I think I've read somewhere the guy that made firefox also started really early, and went to silicon valley at 17 or something.

Finding and teaching a star is a dream, but TWUL is not, you can do it any time, and about anything. It doesn't even have to be right, but probably best if it's something at least you believe in, so you don't steer someone on the wrong path that even you wouldn't head down.

So lets get active and Teach What You Learned.

Note: It's good to share things you learned, but you also need to be careful. If you learned something at work, you have to see if it's appropriate for the world to know. After all, if you leaked some secrets, you may make headline, but it will probably also cost you your job. To be safe, don't blog about work at all, unless pre-approved. Also if it's something you learned from someone, try to change their names or not mention names, and change the setting so they can't be easily identified, or ask them if it's ok before you post the blog.

The next big thing on the net - 20 Oct 2008 - NZ Herald: Int

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:28:00 +0000

Education... read on...

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Stanford Engineering Launches Free Computer Science Classes

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:21:00 +0000

This fall, SEE launches its programming by offering one of Stanford’s most popular sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford’s undergraduates and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering.

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10 Essential Principles of the PHP Masters

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:46:00 +0000

We need PHP masters to show us the best principles to follow for high-grade PHP programming.

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Hug A Developer Today!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:45:00 +0000

Nice video :D

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How HTML 5 Is Already Changing the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:42:00 +0000

HTML 5 represents the biggest leap forward in web standards in almost a decade. And it may be a long way off still, but elements of HTML 5 are already reshaping the way we use the web

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10 Smart Javascript Techniques to Improve Your UI

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:42:00 +0000

here are many clever and useful ways to improve a site from the user interface perspective. A developer can find nearly any snippet of Javascript to achieve what he or she wants to accomplish.

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Wireless Security In-Depth

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:41:00 +0000

If we had told you eight years ago, when 802.11b was really taking off, that one day in the future you would be able to pick up at least ten different wireless networks on any given block of a major metropolitan city, you might have believed us.

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13 Amazing Firefox Add-Ons To Make Designers Lives Easier

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:36:00 +0000

In this post, I am listing down 13 Amazing Firefox Add-Ons To Make Designers Lives Easier.You are welcome to share if you know more amazing firefox add-ons that will save time which our readers/viewers may like.

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Wireless Security Research Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:33:00 +0000

Wireless Security Research Summary

10 Promising JavaScript Frameworks

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:12:00 +0000

It’s always good to consider all of your options before settling on a JavaScript framework that’s right for you and/or your team. This article showcases 10 alternative and capable JavaScript frameworks/libraries to explore. Links to some of their demos (when available) are included in the entry so that you can see the framework in action.

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20 Websites To Help You Learn and Master CSS

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:10:00 +0000

This article features 20 excellent websites to help you "grok" CSS. There’s a wide range of websites included – from blogs to directory-style lists and websites that focus on one particular topic related to CSS.

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Google Launches Internet Browser to Compete With FireFox/IE!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:10:00 +0000

Google is launching an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

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EASEUS Disk Copy Makes a Fast Clone of Your Hard Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Free boot CD EASEUS Disk Copy copies any disk or partition sector-by-sector for an exact copy of the original.

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19 Most Essential Open Source Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:51:00 +0000

19 Most Essential and useful open source applications that you probably want to know to use in your daily life. Most of them are top of the list projects that have an open source industry leading popularity and many of them are not listed here but over all the list has variety of projects for every one of you.

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Business network management woes with open source GroundWork

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:10:00 +0000

When Sam Lamonica stepped into the CIO role at Rudolph and Sletten five years ago, he set out to tame an ungainly network by using an orderly open source network monitoring solution.

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Nine Enlightening Business-Performance Metrics - Forbes.com

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:41:00 +0000

Track these numbers and you'll have a better handle on what's really happening at your company.

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Google's 'Agility' - Forbes.com

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:07:00 +0000

Agile development is used in creating software as well as the Internet giant's corporate culture.

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Balancing Act - Forbes.com

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:37:00 +0000

With work taking up so much of our time, where do the rest of our lives come in? Our new weekly video segment catches up with some people who are managing to make a dual-life work out.

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How to: Save Time While Building a Website [10 Tips]

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:24:00 +0000

As a freelance web developer, time is money.

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The 10 Fastest Cars on the Planet

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:16:00 +0000

Feel the need for speed? These cars are sure to satisfy, but they'll cost you--a lot. And that's just the speeding tickets. All of these cars are street legal and currently in production. There's typically a two-year wait, but if you're willing to spend even more than the sticker price, your car could live up to its reputation and arrive a bit fast

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10 Things That Will Change The Way We Live

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Wu) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:11:00 +0000

This Forbes story looks at 10 major changes that will probably occur within our lifetimes. The list includes VoIP, WiMax, and $200-per-barrel oil.

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