2009 November » JustinLee.sg

HackerspaceSG: Events of Week 49 (Nov 30 – Dec 6)

Nov 302009

I thought I’ll try this out for size and see how people responds.

So upcoming for week 49 (yes, it is week 49 of year 2009), we have…

Hackerspace Hack Time
Mon, Nov 30 6:00 pm Tue, Dec 1 12:00 am

This is our every monday regular scheduled reserved time for our members to get anything done. So come join in and hack on any of your projects and prepare for the next day’s Show and Tell!

SHOW AND TELL with Carl Coryell-Martin and Vikram Rangnekar
Tue, Dec 1 8:00 pm 11:00 pm

Our very first “SHOW AND TELL” event by Hackerspace.SG. Carl has created a very interesting iPhone application. I’m not too sure what Vikram is doing. Joash Chee will probably be showing his Chordica Touch. We will have some British entrepreneurs in the house on Tuesday who might join us too. And a guest, Brad Greenspan (Founder of MySpace), might just drop by to say hi. This event is open to anyone who wants to show off what they have created! Come join us!

Singapore Ruby Brigade Meetup
Wed, Dec 2 7:00 pm 10:00 pm

The usual Singapore Ruby Brigade meeting, but with a different twist. This time round it is going to be a free form discussion and impromptu presentation. If you love really great geek discussions, join us for this meeting!

Singapore Perl Mongers Meetup
Sat, Dec 5 3:00 pm 7:00 pm

Singapore Perl Mongers is back for their 3rd meetup! For those Perl language enthusiasts, this is the chance for you to discuss with your peers on all things Perl. Geek out at the geekiest Perl meetup yet. RSVP on Facebook or their mailing list.

Nokia E72 Social Messaging Workshop

Technology 1 Response »

Nov 272009

I was invited to the Nokia E72 Social Messaging Workshop on Wednesday, 26th November at Espressoul to play with Nokia’s newly launched E72 cell phone and their new Social Messaging technology, which comes free with the E72.

The previous Nokia E71′s offering for “Social Messaging” allows you to connect to your Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Exchange, Google Talk, Yahoo Messaging and Facebook. This time with the Nokia E72, it adds Microsoft Live Messenger, Twitter, and MySpace too. Right now, it covers 90% of all messaging networks out there because of their recent partnership with Microsoft. Furthermore, you are able to connect to all these social networks all at the same time.

Here are some things I found out about the Nokia E72 cell phone in that short 1 hour I had to play with the phone. There will be a more comprehensive review when I get to play with the phone for a longer period of time.

You can only have up to 10 email accounts and 1 Microsoft Exchange connection.
You can only log in to 1 account per social network at any one time. i.e. it will not allow you to log in to 2 different Live Messenger accounts at the same time. Only one. However, you can log in and be connected to 1 Live Messenger, 1 Google Talk, 1 Yahoo Messenger, 1 Nokia Messenger all at the same time.
Every social network and email account is separate to itself, and is not combined or shared between each other.
There is no contact sharing between the different social and messaging networks. i.e. you don’t have 1 contact that shows all of that person’s social and messaging networks.
The keypad has a pretty shallow “pillow” bump which makes typing slightly difficult for the uninitiated. I would prefer a more obtuse bump per key.
The new optical navigation key makes it really pleasant to navigate. This is possibly my most favourite feature of the entire phone. However, the ridges surrounding the optical navigation key does cause a bit of friction which might be uncomfortable after constant use.
If you do a master reset, you do not get all the shortcuts and messaging applications that comes with the phone when you first turn it on. You’ll have to download the applications again and set it up manually.

I really like Nokia E72 and I think it’s a fantastic upgrade from the E71. For those who want a Blackberry but like Nokia, this is the phone you should get. For those who are really into the messaging and social networks, this *might* be suited for you. With Nokia’s age-old Symbian OS which has been around for decades, it is a pretty solid phone that integrates both the matured cell phone platform that you can trust together with the new social messaging.

[Pictures courtesy of mhisham with permission]

Hackerspace.SG Housewarming on November 21, 2009

HackerspaceSG No Responses »

Nov 182009

Hi everyone,

Hackerspace.SG has recently set up at 70A Bussorah Street! We were also featured in Straits Times.

We’re a little community for creative thinkers. Artists. Engineers. Designers. Musicians. Techies. Photographers. Writers.

Hackers.

We’re having our really awesome housewarming party at 70A Bussorah Street and we’d like to invite you, and your bunch of geek-loving friends down for a little party!

The event’s taking place on the 21st November at 6pm, held in conjunction with the BarCamp Singapore 4, 2009 Afterparty and we want you to come!

Hope to see you there!
Your friendly neighbourhood hackers

Assassin’s Creed Lineage

Lifestyle No Responses »

Nov 172009

This is an awesome mini movie from Ubisoft. I can’t wait for the game to be out. Soon, very soon.

Overall synopsis:

When the Duke of Milan is brutally murdered, Giovanni Auditore an Assassin – is dispatched to investigate the crime. His mission: determine who is responsible and why. The answers he uncovers implicate Italys most powerful families reaching all the way back to the Vatican itself. As Giovanni draws closer to the truth, he becomes hunted himself. He must expose the conspirators before he joins their ever growing list of victims This is the Prequel to the Assassins Creed 2 Story.

Episode # 1:

1476, Florence. Giovanni Auditore, an assassin, attempts to thwart a conspiracy against one of Lorenzo de Medicis allies, whom he works for. The ensuing inquiry will take him to Milan where he tries to prevent the worst from happening.

Episode # 2 :

Pursuing Sforzas assassins, Giovanni arrives in Venice where he intercepts a coded letter from the members of the conspiracy. Decoding this document in order to get to the top of the conspiracy becomes of imperial importance.

Episode # 3 :

Unable to decode the letter, Giovanni decides to deliver it to Rome in order to unmask the ringleaders. But there he discovers that the conspiracy is much more widespread and dangerous than he thought.

Hackerspace in the News

Articles, HackerspaceSG 1 Response »

Nov 162009

It’s been a roller coaster ride these last few weeks, trying to get Hackerspace.SG up and running. We are officially launched and featured on Saturday’s Straits Times news in the Home section. Even my Singapore MVP lead caught wind of it and wrote a blog post on it. I’m very happy that everything is slowly beginning to shape up. There were many concerns regarding the logistics, accounting, security, and other problems especially being “ostracized” by various groups. This is the first step of a very long journey towards reviving the Renaissance era within Singapore. Be it good or bad, we have yet to see how everything might turn out.

We’re having an Open House viewing on 21st November at 6pm onwards together with the BarCamp After Party. I hope everyone can come and take a look at what we have achieved as a community.

Here are some photos of the raw-ness of Hackerspace.SG right now.

Virtual Router – WiFi Hotspot for Windows 7

Lifestyle 2 Responses »

Nov 112009

I just mentioned about Connectify a few posts ago. Here’s a free application, Virtual Router, that makes use of the same Virtual WiFi technology on Windows 7 to create a Virtual Router out of your laptop or PC. As pointed out by various people, it only supports WPA2 which it seems to be a limitation (or feature if you wish) of the Wireless Hosted Network API’s provided by Microsoft to ensure the best security possible. It worth a try out.

Link: Virtual Router

Closure Tools for Javascripters

Web Development No Responses »

Nov 102009

Google’s Closure Tools contains 3 set of tools for web developers:

Closure Compiler – A Javascript Optimizer

One of the benefits of not working on the web is you actually have a compiler to pre-check your errors, optimize your code, and warns you about common problems with your code. Javascript is a runtime dynamic language which gets interpreted on the fly, and having a compiler was redundant. The Closure Compiler allows you to have all the benefits of a compiler, optimizing and compacting your code while checking for errors. Do note that it does not actually “compile” your code into some bytecode, it just compacts, optimizes and checks for errors. There are 3 parts to the Closure Compiler:

Closure Compiler Service API
This is a REST service online that you can call to compile your code.
Closure Compiler Service UI
This is a HTML UI version of the service.
Closure Compiler Application
This is a Java Application that you can use to “compile” your Javascript.
Closure Inspector for FireBug
The Closure Inspector XPI Allows you to read the compressed, obfuscated Javascript withinFirebug, giving you the capabilities of source mapping, improved stack trace display, and unit test integration.

Closure Library – A Comprehensive Javascript Library

Another benefit of working outside the web is we have comprehensive libraries like the Standard Template Library (STL) for C++, Java’s Standard API Platform, C#’s .NET Framework, etc. These libraries are well-tested, robust and modular. Closure Library is a cross-browser Javascript library very much like JQuery. It has everything from a large set of reusable UI widgets and controls, to lower-level utilities for DOM manipulation, server communication, animation, data structures, unit testing, rich-text editing, and more.

Closure Templates – An easy templating system for both Java & JavaScript

This, I don’t get. Closure Templates are very much like JSP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, etc. It sounds pretty much like what you do with ASP.NET’s Custom User Controls, or JSP’s Tag Libraries. Here’s what it’s on their website: “In contrast to traditional templating systems, in which you use one big template per page, you can think of Closure Templates as small components that you compose to form your user interface.” Go figure.

So, ultimately what do I think of Closure Tools? I really like Closure Compiler and this is something that I’ll definitely use. I don’t see the need for Closure Library and Closure Templates when we already have JQuery and server-side templating systems. I don’t know of any client-side templating systems, but I would figure that there’ll already be some out there.

Evangelion 2.0: Coming to “The Cathay” theatre

Personal No Responses »

Nov 062009

YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT!

Calling all Evangelion fans. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破 Evangerion Shin Gekijōban: Ha, lit. “Evangelion New Theatrical Version: Breaking”), the 2nd part of a 4 part movie series, is coming to Singapore on 12 November 2009 at The Cathay / The Picturehouse.