Finally! I can BLOG! Updates on SgDotNet!

 Communities  No Responses »
Mar 312005
 

Hey guys and girls! It’s been so long since I blogged. Anyway I’ve been busy getting Community Server up and working for SgDotNet. The link for the new forums is http://community.sgdotnet.org/forums.

I’ll be switching my blog as soon as I can figure out how to migrate all my posts here to the Community Server Blogs @ SgDotNet.

Well, anyway, my new blog url is @ http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez. There’s nothing up yet until I write the code to migrate. A lot of people I know are waiting for this migration code. Well, I’ll try my best to write it this weekend.

I have to get the SgDotNet Website up ASAP, because we’re having a meeting next thursday. I achieved something today with the website, I’ve fixed the Single-Sign-On issue between cross-sites, the website and the community server. :) I rock. Yeah I do! :)

Till next time, hopefully you’ll see me in my new blog space. Cyaz!

Content Management System – Is creating one viable?

 Development  3 Responses »
Mar 282005
 

A friend of mine was telling about creating a commercial Content Management System is a good way to go. Then I was asking myself, why would I want to pay for a CMS which is so expensive, when I can get a CMS which costs $0, has online support, and many resources on how to set the system up.

One of them is the Mambo CMS created using PHP and MySQL which all runs on Apache. Here’s a recent review on it.

Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably

All these are free. Another one of them is the DotNetNuke created using Visual Basic.NET and runs on IIS which isn’t much of a CMS but there are modules to convert it into a CMS which can also interface with MySQL. The same goes with PHPNuke.

Just do a google search for “Content Management System Opensource” and you’ll get back so many results. So now I ask you, why should I spend time creating my own, and selling it? One way to make money from CMS would be to take one of these Opensource free CMS, and provide the service of customising it for the client. It’s much faster, reduces cost, and it’s already easy and ready to use.

Now I want your opinion on this.

What’s the rationale for creating your own CMS? Even if the rationale is that CMS is meant for big enterprise-level businesses, and most SME aren’t really taking for it, as previously mentioned, there is the niche market there to push into. But why would I want to spend time creating a CMS from scratch, then customising it, then selling it?

And why should I as a businessman want to buy the CMS from Microsoft when it’s so complicated, difficult to setup, and most of all, EXPENSIVE? Integration is one thing, but that’s all I can see as the advantage, which I don’t quite need really for CMS.

Comments please. :)

Discovered (??) CSS Hack – Loading Logos First

 Web Development  1 Response »
Mar 282005
 

I’ve always had problems putting links on css backgrounds. For example, a simple logo like this.

<div id=”logo”>
<a title=”SgDotNet For Cool Developers” href=”/”>
<span class=”alt”>SgDotNet For Cool Developers</span>
</a>
<div>

with the CSS…

#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

The logo will render the background image LAST! Now, as a main website logo, we don’t want that do we? We want it to be rendered first. So here’s what I changed.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

This will render the background image FIRST, but the anchor is gone. This isn’t what I need.

So this is what I did… I added both CSS in. And it renders FIRST, plus the anchor is still there.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }
#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

And this is all I did. It worked perfectly fine. If there’s such a hack already discovered out there, please forgive me for my ignorance.

Hee, feeling proud I discovered this myself.

Google OS?!? And advice for Imagine Cup teams

 Development  No Responses »
Mar 252005
 

For those participating in Imagine Cup 2005, I wished you would have given me something like this.

A Google OS by 2010?

I was just talking to another group of participants in IC2005 about an idea similar to that article up there, though it’s not coupled to a specific OS. Apparently this article came up soon after. LOL. Great minds think alike.

You guys want dissolving boundaries? That is your ultimate idea. Why didn’t anyone from Singapore think about that? Or something similar, or even something of the same granduer. Think grand scale, think innovation, think out of this world.

What was mentioned in the article is just waiting to be implemented, to be used, to be wide-spread. The idea has been going around since ages ago. We have webservices, we have SOA, we have the .NET Framework, we have Java, we have Linux. The technology is out there already. We’re waiting for it to happen.

Come on people, I was very disappointed with most of your proposals that I judged. Apparently Singaporeans have very little ambition, and are quite polluted by the fact of marketing and business. Think of out the box, please!! I had an agonizing time reading all the proposals I got.

Anyway, I wish all of the teams who got into the Semi-Finals of Imagine Cup 2005 in Singapore all the best, and please go all out to impress.

A good idea is only good when you yourself are excited over it.

Accepted into University!!

 Personal  1 Response »
Mar 242005
 

Yesterday I just got news that I’ve been accepted to University of Waterloo. I did it!!

1 hour later, I got news that I’ve been accepted to University of Toronto @ Scarborough (UTSC) too!! Stress! Now I’ve got to choose which one.

Anyone knows which I should go? Anyone knows which is better? Stress!

And furthermore, now that I got in, I’ve got to consider about paying for my education. I’m wondering if there’s any grants or scholarships around for my lowly results. Because all I see is scholarships asking for high A level results, with S-Papers and such. Oh well, I’ll do my best searching for some $$$. Each university also has scholarships and grants over there. So I might be applying for those too.

Well, congratulations to me! WOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Game Developer Conference 2005 Slides

 Development  No Responses »
Mar 232005
 

The Microsoft DirectX slides are available for download here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e9d5a43-a045-4ed8-99ae-09f3d69211ee&DisplayLang=en

This download includes presentations given by the Windows gaming and graphics team at the Game Developers Conference 2005. Included is the Microsoft DirectX Developer Day content and the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) Workshop content.

The nVidia slides are available for download here.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gdc_2005_presentations.html

The ATI slides are available for download here.

http://www.ati.com/developer/techpapers.html#gdc05

Enjoy.

lex / YACC on .NET?

 Languages  No Responses »
Mar 232005
 

I was trying to find a lex or YACC or bison equivalent on .NET, and lo ho and behold I finally found it, by accident.

It’s called The Compiler Generator Coco/R, or just Coco/R in short. Here’s the link to it.
http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Research/Projects/Coco/

It has ports to C#, Java, and others. It does things slightly different from lex or YACC or bison, but it still serves the same purpose. To parse text/code.

So that’s that. This is actually for a project that MIGHT be doing in future. Check out the thread here.
http://forums.sgdotnet.org/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=10570

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