Read more Uncategorized articles

On sale now at Lelong.com.my.

Read more Uncategorized articles

Saving a 54K python file took a very long time (sometimes close to a minute). I thought this was due to Vim and tried to save the same file to a .sql file.

It saves in a zip.

So, the problem was with .py alone.

I checked vim's au commands, and found nothing suspicious there too.

Next, I checked the plugins and narrowed down to the plugins I added.

Turned out that the python_fold.vim plugin was the culprit.

It was recomputing the folds in the whole file everytime I  saved.

I abandoned the plugin. There's another similar plugin python_ifold.vim out there but I don't need an auto-fold plugin for python at the moment.

For the moment, I am happy that .py files save zippily.

Read more Uncategorized articles

Sharing from my past experience, I have had many blogs which I started with great enthusiasm, post for a few days and then lose steam because I either lose my enthusiasm or run out of ideas to write on.

Looking back at those blogs, I can broadly list the following reasons why they failed:

1. cheap

I started many blogs on Google's Blogger. It was fast, easy and free.

I have a great idea and then went to get my blog on Blogger.

Since it cost me nothing to start and it cost nothing to give up. I  gave up easier.

2. bad idea

The great idea was actually a bad idea. It was easy to start a free blog and therefore I did not really think over the idea and do careful evaluation of the worthiness of the idea.

I am really embarassed about some of the blog topics I thought were good ideas.

3. lazy

I was plain lazy most of the time. I just waited for my muse to inspire my next post. I was too lazy to think hard for posting material.

4. indiscipline

I did not discipline myself to actively look for material to post. I did not keep to a strict discipline to post regularly. When there is little effort, there is little to show.

5. lack of persistence

I gave up too easily.

When I hit writer's block, I gave up.

When I was lazy, I gave up.

When it was difficult to think of the next post, I gave up.

This blog will be different, if not on all of the above, at least it is not cheap.

Read more Uncategorized articles

I read somewhere once how not to write a blog.

One of the don'ts I remember very vividly is do not navel-gaze.

I don't know what that means and the online thesaurus  suggest that I look up nerve gas instead.

When I gaze at my navel, I am not doing something useful.

When I gaze at somebody else's, it usually means somebody's shirt is too short.

Or maybe it's me checking on my blog every few minutes, admiring the new look ?

Read more Uncategorized articles

This is very very interesting. In normal competition, competitors bad-mouth each other (Oracle says SAP is losing market share....), competitors buy out competition (Oracle bought Siebel, Peoplesoft, Berkeley DB which is one of the MySql storage engine options) but here IBM says to MySql, "We'll help sell MySql databases".

What do I think of IBM ?

I think they demonstrate wisdom in competition - they recognise MySql's strength (and thus threat) and instead of channelling resource to try to snuff them out, IBM sees an opportunity and partners them to help them sell.

Does it threaten IBM's DB2 (IBM's database)? I don't think so. Big budget customers tend to go for costlier databases like DB2, Oracle, Microsoft Sql Server. Tech savvy or budget constrained customers go for open-source databases like MySql.

The partnership also gives IBM immense credibility.

Despite all the flak that SAP levels at Oracle, most people do not believe the stuff that SAP says about Oracle and vice versa. In the same manner, most people will also take SAP's and Oracle's claims with a pinch of salt. If you churn out marketing talk all the time, you can also be just 'marketing' your products.

When a big company like IBM acknowledges that a competiting product is good and announces a partnership, I tend to think that the guys have more integrity.

Innovative competition.

Read more Uncategorized articles