Miss, u have Banana?

Last Saturday, I went to MCA Speed dating program (forced by my mom,as I am 36, and I suppose to get marry next year), which they suppose to pair up 100 guys with another 100 girls, I know, crazy, right? Anyway, the first ice-breaking game at the event,s each of us needs to draw ourself a favorite fruit, and find another partner who draw the same fruit.

Guess what I draw?

A Banana, and this is question I keep on asking to 100 girls at that night, "Miss, u have Banana?"

None of girls draw banana? why...I thot Banana is such a healthy fruit, and make people happy and smile...

Banana, anyone?

Photo Sharing- Malacca day trip

Special thanks to a lovely Malacca Girl, Louise, who spend the whole afternoon to bring me around Malacca town, purchase ticket for me to the famous Malacca River cruise, and take me to sample Malacca food, Satay Celuk, and the famous "Steam Squid and Spanish with special source" . Thanks Louise..

Will update my journey in my next post

Beat me! Climing 10th floor of stairs in 1:48

Hi hi

This blog is special dedicated to Marcel (my close friend in USA), who claim he can climb 10th floor of stairs in 30 seconds, sure or not?

I could only do it at best in 1 minute and 47 seconds, while carrying my notebook, as shown in Video below:



So Marcel, please prove that u could do it better

In fact, Why don't we open up this challenges to all people around the world. Post a video of u climbing 10th floor of stairs, carrying a notebook bag (About 3kg) to youtube, tag it with "Climbing10FloorChallenge", and post ur Video URL in the comments. At the end of Jan 2009, the best record holder will have personal gift from me and Marcel..

Let's the game begin!

[Tips] tired of Windows Spam and Virus?

Then listen to me, please try "Ubuntu 8.10!, the right OS!"
Once u download, and install, follow this guide to make ur desktop sexy, here are some screen shots of my current desktop, very sexy and very productive..

Running on Awn launcher bar and Conky that display
weather, CPU stat, and my gmail status.

I have up to 4 virtual desktops to work with.

The sexy task switcher..

Rotate the desktop cube, just to impress Windows user.
btw, the background image is the pic I take from KL Lookout point.
if u interest, u can download the pic from http://flickr.com/photos/jameskhoo


and finally, because Ubuntu 8.10 comes with VirtualBox, u can install
Windows Vista, and surprising, it run very smooth on top of Ubuntu.

If u still not convince, do check out this Video

Haha, enjoy!

Moving on

I been through a very bad relationship recently, where I fall down and hurt myself badly.

I needs to move on from now..

KL Lookout points

Been living in KL for pass 10+ years, never know there is this place call "KL Lookout Points" for people to chit chat, "minum kopi", and enjoy the beauty of KL at night. Don't ask me how to go there, I depends my "Human GPS" (i.e my friend) to direct me there.

I think is some where in between Ampang and Cheras, over a small hills call "Hulut Langat". Warning : The place is "too romantic" for young children, have encounter at least three hot hot kiss action while walking toward the tower, obviously u don't wants ur Son ask u "Mom, why they putting tounge into each other mouth?" Haha...

Hope u like it.

My big big Secret..

My friends, I am going to reveal one of my big big secret, please promise me not to tell anyone, u swear? It happen two weeks ago, when I meet this lovely girl name Wendy…

Ha ha ha ha, obviously this is not a post about my love affairs (and btw I don’t have any love affairs) but this is more about my dreams. I am writing this post to tell the universal law of attraction and my readers what I want to achieve in my career in 3-5 years time. According to the book "The Secret", to make one's dream comes true, we just need to ask for it, visualize our needs, write it down in detail somewhere and feel it. One day, what you have request/dream will come true ……

So, here is my “Secret”.

Date: 2011/2012
Venue: KL Hilton Hotel, Lobby

Wendy, from The Edge Magazine : "Hi James, thanks for your valuable time to do this interview."

Me: "It’s my pleasure."

Wendy: "First of all, could u share with our readers how u end up in ur current job, i.e Google Creative Director for Asian region."

Me: “I have always wanted to work with Google, so 4-5 years ago, I decided to apply for a technical job position at Google. However, given that I am already 35 years old that time, and working as a boring software development manager but not as talented (in terms of technical) as most of Google staff, and does not hold any working permit for US/India/China (where Google R&D centre is based), my chance of Google granting me an interview 4-5 years ago is very,very, very slim, :-(

So, instead of going via the normal route of applying a job at Google (i.e upload my resume to Google jobs portal and throwing my CV into giant black hole), I have to try another route.

I am very creative person, I also have ideas to make life easy, and some of my crazy ideas are very “Google” when I discuss some of my Google idea with my friends, and most of them agree that idea will work. So I decided to post my ideas to Google at my blog, and hope that Google HR will one day notice my creativity and call me for an interview. After posting about 10-15 ideas, I finally got call from Google HR for an interview, and after couple of more interviews and tests, I ended up with my current job position.”

Wendy: “Wow, that’s a unique way getting a company’s attention. So tell me, what is the job scope for Creative Director, i.e what do you need to do and deliver.”

Me: “Well, as Creative director for Google, I have to invent and deliver three-four ideas (i.e new Google services) to Google per year, The 2 -3 ideas must be profitable, and rest of ideas are platforms to improve community lifestyle, like free education for poor people, making our earth greener, reduce the gap of digital divine and etc.

My daily work involves discussing ideas to product and user groups, do a quick POC of my idea with my team, perform market survey about the idea, and finally work closely with product development group to implement the idea”

Wendy: “Oh, that’s a very fun and exciting job, so Khoo, tell me, where u get ur creative juice for all these great ideas.”

Me: “Hmmm, good question, and I don’t think I have answer for that, new idea will strike me out of no where, while driving, while watching movie, at the beach and even day dreaming. Hm..ok,, seriously, if I really have to put a answer on this question, I believed most of my creativities are from my observation. I like to do a lot of research, try out new things, observe people, and always aware of happenings around me.

Let me give u an example, the idea of “SMS Protect Me” came about after I read a news report that the rate of Malaysia women Malaysia being hit, raped, even murdered is increasing each year, and the sad part is most of victims are just doing day to day activities like taking a cab back home, jogging, shopping, waiting for someone to pick them up, and etc. So while driving to work, I am thinking is there any way to prevent this or reduce the crime rate, and out of sudden, my friend SMS me to go for breakfast. This is how the idea strike me.”

Wendy: “Cool, so James, or shall I address u as Mr Coolboy, out of so many ideas u invented, do u have one idea u very proud off?”

Me: “Hm, another good question. Well, if I have to pick one, I will pick "Google earth points", as I am very concern about our environment, and I wants our children have better place to live tomorrow. I am glad that the launch of Google earth points are very well receive by many parties, a recent study shows that, since launch of Google earth points, Google and other partners have help reduce global carbon emission by a total of 3-4%. Thanks to all the loving and caring Google users.

Oh, oh speaking of Google earth points, let’s me reveal this great marketing plan to u, thanks to Toyota. Starting next month, for anyone who purchase new Toyota 5 star green energy efficient car, Toyota will automatically granted purchaser for total 10 million Google earth points, 10 million Google earth points will entitled user to redeem latest Android Phone with 1 year unlimited voice, video calls, and unlimited usage of premium Google service for a year, Isn’t that exciting?”

Wendy: “This is a very good news, do tell us more”

Me: “Sure, wait till next month, at our press conference. Ha ha”

Wendy: “…

Stay tune for part two.

[Google Idea] gLove.google.com

Wow, it's been a long time since I post "Google Please hire me" series, well, for fans that follow this series (ahem..as if I got many fans that read my blog, Haha), so sorry for the delay

Anyway, my 6th idea to Google is a Mobile match maker application for lonely hearts. The application utilizing Mobile Phone with 3G and GPS service, such as Google Android phone. Although there are many variance of mobile match making application out there, there are many cool features of my application. Here how the application should work:

• First of all, user needs to register themselves via Google love matching website (i.e glove.google.com), entering their personal's detail such as name, age, birthday, astrology sign, preferences, language, hobbies, and etc.


• User can also choose to upload their picture, and enter criteria of their preferred partner (race, age range, hobbies, and etc)


• Once register, user proceed to download the mobile match making application from the web site.


• Once the application is activated, and sign on, user is presented a real time love chart, shown below:
  

• Heart shapes represent love match found from user existing location. The three circles here help user to visualize on how far/near between each love match and the user. For example, inner circle means the love match is about 250 meter between user and potential love match, middle circle is about 500 meter and distance on outer circle is about 1 KM.

• Color of love shapes shows match compatibility, red color > 90%, green color > 80%, and yellow >70%
  

• User could click on any love shape to view more information about the love match, as shown in picture below.
  
  
• If user like the love match found, user could opted to:
  
• Get more info about the user.
• Send a short message to the user
• Invite user to play online love quiz, where system will ask both the user and the potential partner a series of love/compatibilities questions (like top ten prefer movies, top ten place to spend romantic holiday) and at the end, present both parties each other answer.
• Play "find me if u can", where system present both parties hints (about 30 steps NW from XYZ Shopping center) to find each other.

The application/portal will be designed as open platform which enable third party developer to develop interesting "plugins" (can be free of charge for user, or needs to purchase with credit) to enhance the mobile application.

To further increase the chance for each other to fall in love, following are some examples of such third party app.
- An app that study how compatible they are base on their birthday and astrology sign.
- A app that study user's circle of friend, and provide a social graph (with interesting graphic) how they are related to each other. For example, if Mr A match with Ms D, the app could show A knows B from Primary School, B is friend of C, and C working together with D at company XYZ.


Please note that, to find a closer match, user do needs to informs the server where is he/she, so that the server is able to find one's soul mate that is located near to his/her current location. If the application detected that there is no GPS Signal, it will use following channels to find user's location, example:

a) Mobile Cell tower - Use of mobile cell tower to find user's location.
b) Wifi access points.
c) Base on the trail of the movement (GPS) of the person until he goes indoor.
d) if all above fail, the app will ask user's to enter his/her location (e.g Sungai Wang, Mid Valley) and find closer match..

On top of that, We partner with other big shopping centers to further promote this mobile application, i.e special discount is given for "Love is in the air" user, each shopping mall could have a giant display on their info desk, or main entrance showing real time info how many "Love is in the air" user is in their shopping center, each with interesting statistics, for example-

- There are total of 10 5-stars most wanted bachelor in this building, and 15 5-stars single lady in the building.
- There are total 10 pair of people are 90% match with each other, are u one of them? quickly find your match now, and claim (together with your potential partner) your free movie tickets in next 30 minutes here..

I believe with the right marketing and development, this will be killer application.
So, that's it, what do u think? do share me your thoughts on the comments page, stay tune for my next idea.

PS: As always, if anyone find these ideas interesting and wants to further build up those ideas, do drop me an email.

Cheers

One World One Dream

Please edit email subject line before u send email

Please change your email subject before replying a email

I feel annoy when receiving a reply email, where the email content are not related with the email subject. People are just “lazy” to compose new email, and fill in address field with new email subject, they simply wanted hit reply button, where the address is pre-filled, even if the content is not related to the subject. Here's what happen to me today.

My recruitment agents call: "Hi, James, have u review the Java Developer CV I send to u yesterday?"

Me: "I didn't receive any email on regards Java Developer CV oh"

Agent: "Did lah, I send it yesterday about 3:30pm, could u check ur email again"

Me: "Hm, let me check, I did receive one email with the subject of 'Free for lunch?' from u.."

Agent: "That's the email..that's a CV attached".

Me: "Then why don't u change the email subject to 'new Java Developer CV to review' to me before u sending email back to me?"

Agent: "Err......"

A quick update on JPA Boolean Magic Converter

Some update on changes:

• Fixed the bug of Null pointer exception, when JPA return null on the annotated field.
• Introduce a new properties call ifNull, which allows user to configure what to return if JPA returns null, it expect enum of org.jbpcc.util.jpa.ReturnType, which have values of ReturnType.True, ReturnType.FALSE, and ReturnType.Null,. The default value of ifNull is ReturnType.Null

Thus as an example, assuming we have model class define as below:

package org.jbpcc.domain.model;

import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import org.jbpcc.util.jpa.BooleanMagic;
import org.jbpcc.util.jpa.BooleanMagic.ReturnType;

@Entity
public class SomeVO {
   @Id
   private Integer id;
   @BooleanMagic(trueValue = "Yes", falseValue = "No",
                 columnName = "OVERDUED", ifNull = ReturnType.FALSE)
   private transient Boolean overdued;

   public Boolean isOverdued() {
       return overdued;
   }

   public void setOverdued(Boolean overdued) {
       this.overdued = overdued;
   }
}

Java APT with JPABooleanMagicConverter factory, code above will be converted to:

@Entity
public class SomeVO {  
   @Id
   private Integer id;
   private transient Boolean overdued;
   //--- Lines below are generated by JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR
   //--- START :

   @Column(name="OVERDUED")
   private String magicBooleanOverdued;


   public Boolean isOverdued() {
       if (this.magicBooleanOverdued == null)
           return false;
       return this.magicBooleanOverdued.equals("Yes") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
   }

   public Boolean getOverdued() {
       if (this.magicBooleanOverdued == null)
           return false;
       return this.magicBooleanOverdued.equals("Yes") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
   }

   public void setOverdued(Boolean trueFlag) {
        this.magicBooleanOverdued = trueFlag ? "Yes" : "No";
   }
   //--- END
   //--- GENERATED BY JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR

}

That's all, as usual, you could find the JPABooleanMagicConverter binary at http://code.google.com/p/jbpcc/downloads/list.

Do share me your thoughts and comments, happy coding

A portable JPA Boolean Magic Converter

While doing some small POC with JPA, I am surprise to find out that the current Java Persistence API (JPA) standard does not mandate JPA provider to support data type conversion via annotation, not even a with simple boolean field. For reader who unfamiliar with JPa, what I means is, to persist and "JPA" manage a boolean field, JPA expect the database data type to be integer, where value of "1" means true, and value of "0" means false.

You got to be joking, right? Every "real life" programmer knows that, there are many existing database use different combination of char or string on a table boolean field, such as "True/False", "T/F", "Yes/No", "Y/N", "-1/0", and etc. Thus, as a "real life" programmer, I kind expect the JPA should allows me specific a boolean field via Annotation, such as example below:

@booleanField(trueValue="Yes", falseValue="No")
private Boolean enabled;

And to my surprise, the answer is nope!!!..So far only Hibernate JPA provider provide data type conversation. Daniel Pfeifer, have explain the problem in details, he also discuss some solutions to work around this stupid limitation at his blog, title "Type Conversation with JPA", do check it out.

Daniel's "manual mapping" idea, do solve the limitation. However, maybe it's just me, I just don't like the idea to temporary change a Boolean field to map with database data type (either char, string) in order to resolve the limitation, even we make the field private, this is just me. And I am stubborn, and old . :-)

Anywhere, after some research (Also, a good excuse to my manager to research how difficult to come out our own custom Java 5 annotation with custom Java APT process factory), I come out our own compile time annotation, called @BooleanMagic with our own BooleanMagicProcessorFactory, which I hope, shall temporary resolve the problem.

@BooleanMagic comprise of three attributes:

• trueValue, specified the table boolean field true value here, such as "True", "T", "Yes"
  
• falseValue, specified the table boolean field false value here, such as "False", "F","N"
• columnName, tableColumn name;

Also please note that BooleanMagicProcessorFactory mandate any field annotated with @BooleanMagic annotation, must either annotated with @Transient annotation or with modifier transient.

Thus, as an example, assuming we have a boolean field called "enabled", which map to table "ENABLED" field, with boolean value of "True"/"false", we will specified our VO as below:

@Entity
public class SomeVO {
@Id
Integer id;
   @BooleanMagic(trueValue="True", falseValue="false", columnName="ENABLED")
private transient Boolean enabled;

public Boolean isEnabled() {
 return enabled;
}

public void setEnabled(Boolean enabled) {
 this.enabled = enabled;
}
}

Using Java "APT" tool with JPABooleanMagicConverter factory, code above will be converted to:

@Entity
public class SomeVO {
@Id
Integer id;

private transient Boolean enabled;
//---
//--- Lines below are generated by JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR
//--- START :

@Column(name="ENABLED")
private String magicBooleanEnabled;

public Boolean isEnabled() {
return this.magicBooleanEnabled.equals("True") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
}

public Boolean getEnabled() {
return this.magicBooleanEnabled.equals("True") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
}

public void setEnabled(Boolean trueFlag) {
 this.magicBooleanEnabled = trueFlag ? "True" : "false";
}

//--- END
//--- GENERATED BY JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR
}

Now, isn't that cool (haha, sorry, I am bit biased here). Btw, BooleanMagicConvertor is portable across JPA protable, and IMHO, this is a better interim solution till JPA make data conversation standard.

I decided to contribute my BooleanMagicConverter back to open source community, it's currently park under my open source project Java Batch Process Control Center, at http://code.google.com/p/jbpcc, you could either build from the source, or get the "BooleanMagicProcessorFactory.jar" from here.

Here an example of how to use the BooleanMagicConvertor using Ant 1.7 apt tasks, assuming all your entity class is declare at ${src.dir}/org/abc/domain/model directory, and you wants to output all generated call to ${basedir}/target directory

 <target name="preProcessJPABoolean" depends="buildJPABoolenProcessorFactory">
   <apt srcdir="${src.dir}/org/abc/domain/model"
      destdir="${build.classes.dir}"
      classpath="./dist/BooleanMagicProcessorFactory.jar:./lib/Model_Dependent_thirdparty.jar"
      debug="on"
      compile="false"
      factory="org.jbpcc.util.jpa.BooleanMagicProcessorFactory"
      preprocessdir="${basedir}/target">
  </apt>
</target>

That's all, do share me your thoughts and comments, cheers!

I started yet another open source project

I decided to start another open source project name Java Batch Process Control Center (JBPCC). "What, another open source project again!, what happen to your suduko project?", some of u may ask. Well, the project still hosted at sourceforge, we just not going to maintain the project any more. Reason being, I am tired of suduko already, and there are far too many variance of suduko open source project exists. Sorry!

Anywhere, the idea of Java Batch Process Control Center is somehow continue from my original idea on "Automatic Remote Logging Management via JMX". by using Java 5 instrument API, developer able to "wrap" any Java base process, and automatically offer JMX monitoring and remote logging management functionalities, and the idea of JBPCC, is to deliver end user an AJAX web application to manage, monitor and schedule any those "wrap" processes.

Proposed Features:

• An in-memory module for remote servers to register, execute, and manage batch processes.
• Time-based and duration-based scheduling of any configured or registered batch process for execution.
• Monitoring currently running processes, including resources used and logs.
• Server management for configuration of servers that hold remote batch processes.
• A simple rights-based user management module.

Our project is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/jbpcc , Please note that, as this is still a fairly new project, there isn't much user could download from our project repository. But, rest assure that, we will post project news, progress report, tutorial, even web cast here. So, stay tune..

Wish me luck!