Home Of Tong

I hate it, Gmail seems to be going down ever so often nowadays. Almost every few days in fact. This is definitely unacceptable for such a large organization as Google, especially so when email has become such a critical part of everyone’s life now. Yes, in fact, too much into everyone’s life.

I know of someone who email to another colleague to ask simple questions where all he could have done is turn his head back and talk face to face. Yes, it is sad sometimes. Everyone prefers email than to talk face to face, or even to calling, as it is always easier to write than to talk. The same reason why SMS has become so much part of almost everyone’s life too.

Wait, some of you might be wondering why am I so upset about gmail going down, as most who know me knows that I use my own domain name for my email address. Reason is I have migrated my mail services to gmail and still using my own domain name. So the email interface I use is exactly the same as gmail except that I am riding on my own domain. Confused? Find out more at Google Apps.

When I finish writing this, gmail is still down, and I am still upset. I think they need some serious investment to ensure their mail services do not go down again.

My new place have a nice little balcony (the first time I actually stayed in one that has) and I took a series of 3 shots and stitch them up using the ArcSoft Panorama Maker 3 software that comes with my Panasonic Lumix TZ3 camera. The result is pretty good considering that when I first took the shots, I did not meant to stitch them together. But when I was reviewing the photos, I notice that the 3 photos have some overlap, so I just ‘throw’ them into the software and the result pretty impressive.

Here are the raw shot (in fact I took the middle photo first before I decide to take the left and right photos):

Using the software, here is the result (click on the photo for a larger view):

There you have it. The colors of the sky could be better, but hey, for a no brainer, I thought it is pretty good. And the software is free too (comes with my camera).

There is another very good free product too. It’s done by a university and the product is call AutoStitch. It’s a free demo that works and is pretty impressive, such that you can take a few layers of photos and the program will be able to stitch them up. Check their website for details. My previous download expired but when I go to their website and download again, I can use it again. The product has been licensed in some commercial products (probably with more functions, I have not check those out) but this demo does the job quite well too. Happy stitching!

It is finally ready. This has got to be the biggest project that I have undertake so far, and the longest. After months of preparation and weeks of testing, the website is finally ready for official launch.

SweetLoveStory.com is a website for you to share your love and relationship related articles, quotes, photos and more!

SweetLoveStory.com is the place for everyone in a relationship (and who isn’t? It’s more than just boy-girl relationship). Learn tips from others, read true story of how people deal with their own relationship success/failures, share happy moments. All this and more on SweetLoveStory.com. Best of all, it is FREE!

Pen down your thoughts, share your moments, write down your experiences that others may learn from. At SweetLoveStory.com, we make your memories last forever!

Take a tour while you are there, and find out more about us. We also appreciate if you can link to us on your website/blog to help us spread the word of love.

Better still, email to all your contacts and ask them to visit SweetLoveStory.com today!

Cheers!

I was on reservist during the past week and should have a lot of time on my hand to update this blog, but I find myself more busy than even. You see, I am preparing for the launch of my new website that is one of my biggest work so far, so every available time I find myself working on it.

As this project is quite different from all my previous project, I wanted to get some professional help. So I actually hired a programmer to do up the website for me. The project start last June (2007) so you must have guess that it didn’t went on that well. The programmer (or coder as I like to call them) hard code the entire site from scratch so there was a limit that I can do to improve it. When the website is about 95% done, the coder stopped all communications with me. How is that possible?

Well, I actually didn’t hire a local programmer. There are now many websites that act as middleman for service buyer and server provider to meet. What I do is post a project requirements, the service provider will bid for the project. Communications/clarifications are done on the website before the bid is awarded, and continue after the bid is awarded. Money is escrow to this ‘middleman’ so that the service provider knows that if the job is completed, they will get paid. Once the job is complete, the service buyer will release the funds. So everything seems to be in order, except that I paid up when the job is 95% done, and the service provider obviously went on to other jobs. Lesson learned.

Well, when I say 95% done, it was because I know the coder can’t do much improvement. The forms are so badly done I could have done a better job, and the admin interface is non-existence. So due to lack of funds, I decided to shelve the project for the time being. BTW, while there are many “3rd World” coders, I decided to award the project to an Australian, thinking they will be more responsible, they usually are, and I guess I was really out of luck this time round.

Sometime in Dec 2007, I begin to look at it again, and decided to post a “upgrade/improvement” project and see how much will it cost. Bids came flying in and I have bids of a wide varied range. After reviewing all the bids, and with the experience I’ve gotten previously, I communicated with a few short listed bidders and than deliberated for a long time before selecting one who suggest to re-create the entire site and not try to improve. Reason? He is using a well know CMS (aka Content Management System) and so I can be assured that the admin interface is an established one, and I can get support easily through the forum and also do some simple improvement myself. The damage, more than the previous project.

I really want to ensure this project take off, which is the reason I decided to pay again (and more) to get it re-do all over again. While the previous coder took about 2 months to not even complete, this coder from USA finished in about 2 weeks. (3 weeks if you consider all the holidays during this period). And the result was much better than expected. And even during the project phase, I am able to already do some changes myself, and add modules I want but did not state in the project descriptions. After the project is completed (satisfactorily I must say), I decided to venture into making some changes and testing out some modules to see how I can improve it further, and it has been rewarding.

But the most difficult part is all the writings I need to put in. Like the About Us, Terms, FAQ, Tour, etc…something than is not really my strength (considering that I am writing a blog, this might seems strange). I do enjoy writing articles, or blogs, but to write stuff like FAQ and the T&Cs are very dry, perhaps I can find a creative way to do it and make it more interesting. Anyhow, most of it has been done now, and I am very close to launching this site full blown. With a little bit more writing, and some tweaking of the site, I should be really in about a week (hopefully less).

So check back and I will sure let you know the name of the site. Till then, take care and wish me all the best to bring it to completion. Cheers!

It has been quite a challenging week for me in terms of my personal and family life. We are deciding whether to change our car that has recently become an ‘petroholic’. As much as I try to bring him in for ‘counseling’, it does not seems to change his habit. So I have to make a decision, to put him to sleep and get a new car, or to persist on with him. With the rising petrol price, and the recent drop in COE, it has make the matter even more urgent. I have to give an answer to the dealer by latest tomorrow morning, and right now, I am still undecided.

My wife and I has been praying about it, but have yet to hear a clear answer. Pray about it? Some might ask. Yes, we believe in asking God for every major and minor decision so that we can be certain that our decision is the right one. Too many times we went ahead to decide things on our own and things turn out bad, or at best, pathetic. So in this major decision, we want to ensure we’ve made the right one, so we need our God to ‘prompt’ us.

What will be our final decision, will we change? Will we not change? Watch this blog to find out.

Any crazy thing I did was today. I actually decided to go down to Comex after church, venturing with my 2 sons as my wife has something important to attend to. So I manage to make arrangement with my mother-in-law to meet us at Suntec so that she can help take care of my younger one which I bring my elder son Denver to queue up with me. While I know it will be crowded, I did not expect that today, there is actually a cycling event going on and they close almost all the entrance to Suntec area. So this caused a major traffic jam and after about 1.5 hrs been stuck in the traffic jam, I decided to detour and park at Raffles City and than walk to Suntec (with the 2 boys). Thank God that when I make it to Raffles City carpark, there is a lot waiting for me. So about 2 hrs after I set out for Suntec, I finally reached my destination.

I aim today is simple, to sign up for the MaxMobile Unlimited plan from Starhub and in irresistible 2 years contract with 50% of subscription for the 1st year and 100% (yes, totally FREE) of subscription for the 2nd year. And it comes with a free 3.5G modem which can give me a good download speed of 7.2mbps, much faster than my office broadband (oops, did I said that out loud?). The first 50 MaxOnline customer can also get a free 30GB Creative Zen, and I heard people started to queue up as early as 6am. 6AM!!! Anyway, the offer is so good that everyone seems to be signing up. In the end I have to queue up outside of the starhub area just to be able to get into it and queue again for registration, and than wait for my numbers and queue again to pay up. All in all, I queued for more than 2hrs. Small price to pay for a wonderful package but I feel so bad than my son have to queue with him, without lunch! By the time everything is over, it’s already 3+ pm.

But it is well worth the wait as not only is the price very very attractive, the speed is also very impressive. Installation was a breeze and using it is just as simple. At 7.2mbps, it sometimes feel faster than my high speed shared broadband at home (also by Starhub). It is definitely faster than my office Internet and been an unlimited package, I might just use it in office! Will put it to further test tomorrow and see just how good and reliable it is. Wait for my report!