3 Months Experience at Bangalore

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Friendly People

I personally feel that Indian people are very friendly. I can easily get help for direction every where as long as they know what I’m talking about and I know what they talking about. We meet some Indian friends at my training there as well. I can said all of them are very friendly and helpful, I really enjoy the time with them. India celebrate a festival call Holi where people throw colored powder or colored water on each others and have fun together without the barrier of different races among each others. This prove that India is a friendly place.

Veg Every Corner

Can you imagine KFC offer veg burger? Yes, this exist in India! Vegetarian food is everywhere. One of my friend who is vegetarian was so excited because vegetarian food is kind of rare at Malaysia. I become a 80% vegetarian at India because my company don’t always offer non-veg food and even they does on that day, it only have one single choice while all other are veg food. I think I eat very healthy at there.

Coffee Time

There are no StarBuck or Coffee Bean at India, but there have Coffee Day. The coffee at Coffee Day are consider good enough for me and it is cheap! One coffee at StarBuck in Malaysia, I can bought 2+ coffee at Coffee Day. A cold coffee at there is really a good fresh up after a hot day or stressful day. We do visit Barista coffee shop too, but that one is way too expansive for us (More expansive than StarBuck if you count the quantity). I don’t think I can visit coffee shop that often back into Malaysia any more.

Real Fast Food Drive Through

I guess most peoples have an experience of buying fast food through drive through like Mcd, but have you ever see a service that you order your food and they serve your meal all at your lovely car without need to move a step? I found this in Bangalore where they serve your food while you are still in your car. Not just food, they provide you the “table” as well, a long wooden wood that go through both side windows. Amazing huh? I don’t have a car there, so I can’t really experience that myself.

Traffic Universal Language – Honk

At Malaysia, honk is a way to scold others on the road. At India, honk is apply in every situations. Honk replace left right signal light. Driver honk whenever they reach a junction or they want to turn left or right, they are trying to remind other cars around to becareful. Even when I walk on the roadside, if I’m too near the road, the car will start reminding me not to cross the road with honk. No one will get boring on the road with all the honk. Surprisingly with all the crazy traffic and super driving technique of driver, I did not see accident there. Driver at India really train well.

Earth Hour Everyday

Blackout is something so common in my daily life at India. At least 2 times per day and it last for an hour. Lucky our guest house have a powerful power generator that can power up most of the electrical devices except those high power consumption devices, thus the one hour blackout is not much a problem for me. Handphone LED light always come into handy when blackout at night time while waiting for the power generator to boot up.

Foreigner Registration Office (FRO) Terrible Experience

Every foreigner who want to stay more than 14 days at India must register themselves at FRO, this go the same for me. Me and my friends went to FRO at afternoon for the first time, register ourselves at the security check point and found out the FRO only open at morning and close registration at afternoon. So, we went there for the second time the next day and queue up for more than 2 hours early in the morning. There are less than 50 peoples register there yet take so long time. When we almost reach the gate, one of the officer approach us and told us our form is outdated, please use the latest version. After we fill everything in the new form, the officer told us the registration is close, please come back next time. Great, what we can do except come back again next time?

We make full preparation and went to FRO for the third time. After queuing up for more than an hour, we successfully enter into the office for the first time (Yes, for the first two time, we are standing outside of the office only). When the officer at the counter half way go through all the documents we submitted, he voice out and ask us what is “IAMRL” written in our VISA. Well, they never told us what will written on our VISA when we apply right? So we have a guess and said it is Internship at Microsoft Research Lab. The officer don’t want to believe (maybe he choose not to listen) and call us came back with the letter that prove what is the 5 characters all about. That drive us crazy, after calling this and that, running here and that, queuing again and another 1 hour more, they finally believe it.

After that, the next counter question why we went there with VISA type X. Man, High Commission of India at Malaysia give us this, how I suppose to know then! After some great long explanation and confirmation, that counter only approve our application and went for process. While waiting for the validation process, I saw others whom went there with an agent and with the outdated form application process without any problems at all. I guess something going under table huh? After all those trouble, I really don’t wish to visit FRO any more…

There are just too many stories I want to share but this are the one I can think of now. I enjoy the weather, the people and the food (some time) but not really for the government service.

by Ooi Keng Siang

Vote Us in PolyU GSC 2010 Best Commercial Award

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Team Cosmic is back in action with Virtual Paper (VP)! We are selected to compete in the finals of PolyU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Global Student Challenge (GSC), a business plan competition with the focus on sustainability to be held in Hong Kong in June. The voting is now open for the best trailer. The winning trailer will be awarded with a bonus cash prize while voters will get a chance of winning USD 100.

Please vote for Team Cosmic’s trailer here.

Voting will go on until April 30,2010. Do help us spread the word around so we can get as much support as possible. Thank you for your support. Wish us luck!

by Ooi Keng Siang

Internship Experience at Microsoft Research Lab India

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

3 months past quickly and yesterday was my last day internship at Microsoft Research Lab India (MSRI). I wound said I gain a lot of experience at here from other researchers and having a lot of fun with people at MSRI.

Everything begin at Imagine Cup 2009, where my team and I won the ticket in Design for Development Award and have the chances go to MSRI at Bangalore for internship. Aren’t it sound so cool to have the chances to intern at other country? I still remember the first day at MSRI where everyone whom visit the MSRI for the first week need to answer a question. The question is “If you have an hour or two to spend with someone, no matter living or dead. Who will be the one.” This is really something I never think of before. Well, I answered “I guess that will be my lover because I think no other people can listen to me boring talk for an hour or two.” and it work, some one came and told me that he like my answer. Shocking huh!

While working at MSRI, I always start my day with some toasted bread with nutella  and a cup of milk. Having my breakfast on top of the roof with a nice view of the sky really is a great kick start of my day. I can’t believe that I have been using a machine with 2.0 GHz single core with 2GB RAM running Windows 7, Outlook 2010, Visual Studio Team Suit 2008, 2 Messengers, 3 Web Browsers, etc for the past 3 months. I sure give the machine a hard time, but I kind of get used to the speed later on. Well, it also give me a great reason to Facebook-ing when I compiling my code. The unlimited sugar and caffeine at pantry really keep me awake while working. I try to control myself for not taking it too much, else my weight sure will increase a lot.

I really enjoy my internship at MSRI. The working environment are so nice, and the people there are friendly too. My happy boss Ed, who always has his happy smiling face. It seen like even the sky fall down, he can still smiling and get the problem solve. Saurabh, who is very friendly and always give us a lot of direction when to visit at Bangalore. Some how he is keep on promoting IIT on us during our farewell dinner. Aishwarya, the researcher I’m working with. She surprise me as a non-IT background researcher yet know how to appreciate the work from programmer. I’m so glad to do the project with her. “How are you doing?”, this is always the question ask by David when he bump into me. He like to joke and make us laugh non-stop. He told me that study Phd is like eating a cake, full of fat in the end. I guess I will only understand it when I study Phd. My first impression on Bill, a very serious guy who don’t talk a lot. But in the end, I found out that he like to joke and tell some funny thing too. I think I know him a bit too late. I also learn some serious programming practice and .NET CE programming from Pushkar. Glad to working together with him too. Too bad that I doesn’t have much chances to know more about Indrani and Mimmi as they are too busy traveling around for their work.

I also have a lot of fun with other intern there too. Aakar, Anand, Anuj, Diwakar, Gaurav, Kanika, Navkar, Olga, Praveen, Rebecca, Shashank, Vaishnavi, Varun, and Vishal. I guess I didn’t left anyone behind. The lab is so much fun with you guys and girls. We work hard and play hard there. I still remember the first time we play Frisbee together, where I hit my head on the tree truck when chasing the Frisbee. Ouch! Exploring Microsoft Surface together. Having lunch together and sharing our own story, about research, about future, about food, about place, about dog and etc. Lunch with Shaishav and Chinmay never get bored, because both of them sure make me laugh non-stop. Man, I going to miss you all.

What I really learn in this internship? Good C# programming practice, Windows CE programming, .NET CE programming, using Visual Studio Team Suit, learned basic UI design for rural people, micro-finance, mobile banking and etc. In this internship, I also found that I’m still really weak in communicating, English speaking, reading research paper. I should really polish up my communication skill with others rather than just with computer only.

I love MSRI!!!

by Ooi Keng Siang

MouseHunt Travel Advisory Script Hit 100 Download

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Yeah, Mousehunt Travel Advisory script hit 100 downloads today on userscript.org. This number is just merely from userscript.org and did not include download from my homepage. Although 100 hits is just small amount for others, but this is a great milestone for me to continue move forward.

It has been almost a month since I write this script from group up. From zero knowledge about user script and very little theoretical knowledge about javascript until the script complete. A way to polish my javascript skill huh? From installing different browsers to test the script for portability, until today I used all 3 browsers for my daily life. Sound a bit crazy huh? Thanks to my friend’s help in finding bug in the script so that I can fix all the bugs in the script. Testing is very important ya! Well, I can said by writing this script, I have learned a lot of thing where I can’t found in class room.

Well, let’s stop talking about my long winded story, I guess no one is interested. Let’s get something to work. Shall I add auto travel function in the script? One click button and the script will help you travel using the cheapest path to destination. I wonder this is violating the term & condition of MouseHunt or not. Another idea is maybe I should just add (not replace!) the feature like travel planner where user can select the departure location and destination they want, because some of the users are actually planing future traveling before they reach that location. So what do you think? Come tell me in the comment!

MouseHunt longtail (version 3.0) is releasing soon, I hope it won’t completely screw up the script. Even it did screw up the script, I’m ready to fix it as soon as possible.

Don’t know about MouseHunt Travel Advisory script? Check it out at userscript.org website or my homepage.

by Ooi Keng Siang

PolyU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Global Student Challenge (GSC) 2011

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

If  you are a high school student or undergraduates and have a great business plan or a great product, don’t miss once-in-a-life-time opportunity to enter the PolyU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Global Student Challenge (GSC) 2011 and win your team a free trip to Hong Kong, the Asian’s World City.

GSC is an international business plan competition for high school students and full time undergraduates worldwide. Shortlisted teams will be sponsored for their flights to Hong Kong with accommodation provided on PolyU campus in June 2011 to present their business proposals in front of renowned business executives and venture capitalists and compete for the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Commendation Award and win the cash prizes up to USD5,000!

Requirement:

  • Have a brilliant business idea about a product or service, which may include but not limited to one of the sub-themes: Health & Wellness, Lifestyle, Environment & Sustainability.
  • Form your team – Each team should consist of three students in the Secondary School Division and three to four students in the University Division. A mentor* is compulsory for the Secondary School Division and optional for the University Division. You are welcome to form a ‘joint team’ with members from another secondary school or university.
  • All team members must be upper form secondary school students or undergraduates for their respective division at the time of the Semi-Final and Final rounds of the Challenge to be held between 11 and 17 June for 2011 Challenge.

For more information, visit the link below:

Registration close 31th May 2010, better hurry up.

by Ooi Keng Siang

MouseHunt Travel Advisory 1.1 Release

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Mousehunt Travel Advisory 1.1 release will fix the bug that cause Firefox browser keep on reload travel page whenever user click on a new location.

MouseHunt Travel Advisory is a user script that build specially for MouseHunt application in Facebook. It is able to calculate the cheapest route from player’s current location to location the player wish to travel to. It work similar to Pooflinger’s Travel Planner, but this script read player location directly from the application and embed the result directly into application instead of opening another tab for travel planner.

Travel advisory script load is whenever player open the travel page in MouseHunt after they installed the script. It will search and get all locations that is accessible by the player. It will then calculate the cheapest route to player’s selected destination base on locations that are accessible by the player. This allow the script to automatic route through Forbidden Grove when it is open (if necessary) and avoid Forbidden Grove when it is close. It will also avoid location that unable travel by the player currently (such as missing map piece). All travel cost are base on MouseHunt Wiki.

Currently the script support Mozilla Firefox with Greasemonkey add-on (Tested with Mozilla Firefox 3.6 with Greasemonkey 0.8 add-on), Opera (Tested with Opera 10.50) and Google Chrome (Tested with Google Chrome 4.1).

For more information and download, visit MouseHunt Travel Advisory website or visit userscripts.org website.

Special thanks to Yew Liang that discover the bug in this script.

By Ooi Keng Siang

MouseHunt Travel Advisory 1.0 Release

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

After more than 2 weeks of learning user script from ground up and testing the user script, I’m proud to announce the release of MouseHunt Travel Advisory script created by me.

MouseHunt Travel Advisory is a user script that build specially for MouseHunt application in Facebook. It is able to calculate the cheapest route from player’s current location to location the player wish to travel to. It work similar to Pooflinger’s Travel Planner, but this script read player location directly from the application and embed the result directly into application instead of opening another tab for travel planner.

Travel advisory script load is whenever player open the travel page in MouseHunt after they installed the script. It will search and get all locations that is accessible by the player. It will then calculate the cheapest route to player’s selected destination base on locations that are accessible by the player. This allow the script to automatic route through Forbidden Grove when it is open (if necessary) and avoid Forbidden Grove when it is close. It will also avoid location that unable travel by the player currently (such as missing map piece). All travel cost are base on MouseHunt Wiki.

Currently the script support Mozilla Firefox with Greasemonkey add-on (Tested with Mozilla Firefox 3.6 with Greasemonkey 0.8 add-on), Opera (Tested with Opera 10.50) and Google Chrome (Tested with Google Chrome 4.1).

For more information and download, visit MouseHunt Travel Advisory website.

Special thanks to Yew Liang, Matthew Phiong and Koekoe for helping me beta test the script.

By Ooi Keng Siang

Easy Way To Add User Script in Firefox

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Ever downloaded a user script from website other than userscript.org and figuring how to install it into Firefox? Ever write your own user script and have problem install it into Firefox?

I do have those problem when I first installed Greasemonkey and download some user script to try. The Greasemoneky Installation dialog usually won’t pop up if I download any user script from website other than userscript.org. Every time I drag and drop a user script file into Firefox, the Greasemonkey will definably pop up a install button on top of the page, but the button never work out for me.

After spending some time playing with user script, I finally discover a better way of install a user script into Firefox instead of click on the New User Script menu button and paste all code into the new created script. It is nothing new or special, but the menu button is hidden instead of disable when no user script is open in Firefox. This cause many users include me did not realize the existent of the button at all.

To install a user script after download and save at local disk, just drag and drop the file into Firefox, then go to Tools > Greasemoneky > Install User Script. If you did not found the Install User Script button, this is because you are currently not viewing the tab that contain the user script file open in Firefox.

After click on the Install User Script button, the Greasemonkey Installation dialog will pop up. Click on Install button after the countdown end and the user script will be installed into Firefox.

I’m very curious why the button is hidden instead of disable. It just doesn’t make sense to me. The install button pop up on top of the page every time user drop a user script into Firefox never work, a bug? Anyway, I never know the answer unless I go and ask the developer, which I’m not going to do.

by Ooi Keng Siang

My First User Script – MouseHunt Travel Advisory

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

The script is already ready, you can found it at MouseHunt Travel Advisory website or visit userscripts.org website.

After more than a week of spending my free time learning and working on user script (also call Greasemoneky script), I finally come out a prototype of MouseHunt Travel Advisory (a temporary name given to my created script). This script build specially for MouseHunt application in Facebook. It is able to calculate the cheapest route from player’s current location to location the player wish to travel to. It work similar to Pooflinger’s Travel Planner, but this script read player location directly from the application and embed the result directly into application instead of opening another tab for travel planner.

Well, this script may not sound so good for hunter who own a lot of gold, but this script should be good enough for hunter who want to save as much as gold yet lazy to open another tab to look for alternative route when travel.

Currently, I was only able to complete the AJAX part (require the whole web page is fully loaded before player click on any location) and yet to complete the HTML part (doesn’t not require the whole web page loaded before player click on any location). The script also face some performance issue where travel to location required a lot of gold such S. S. Huntington II or Dracano (the script need to loop through a lot of route), but I had found a solution for this. The script should be able to complete in this few days (if I’m hardworking enough).

Now, who said play game is bad for learning. Javascript, routing algorithm, performance measurement and… there are many else we can learn from a game!

by Ooi Keng Siang