Hypothesis

What would happen if hackers were subjected to fresh air? If they were taken out of their natural environment, and placed into the wild.

But being humane, we thought we let them keep the sanctity that they refer to as “the Internet”, to ensure their sanity.

Experiment

We decided to leave a few hours before working hour, to ensure that wet go to the Fathers Guest House at Cameron Highlands before their reception closes at 10.

Five surveyors began the journey.

• Arzumy
• Ditesh (read his version)
• Khailee
• Khalid
• Aizat

After reaching the toll booth to go up camerons, you can already smell the fresh air. We were in the wild.

Arriving at night around 9pm, we weren’t able to get a good view of the estate. If you had visited the website, you would have noticed that the rooms were actually old bunkers left behind by the british. Those are the cheapest rooms, but if you’d like to live in a bit more luxury, rooms in the house were also available.

After receiving our room keys, and placing our bags, it was time for our first fix. Laptops, whipped out. Packets, transferred. Facebook invites, ignored. It seemed the world was able to survive another few hours without us.

As it was already night time, we took a short ten minute stroll down to the town for some dinner. Stretched our legs, breathed in the fresh air, and start being climatized to the cool weather.

No coding was done on friday, though thanks to Khailee we were getting accustomed to playing jim rummy.

Come morning, and after executing the daily morning rituals. We set up base at the canteen and whipped out our laptops. The other travelers largely looked like backpackers, and must have found it very awkward for these geeks to siege the canteen with their technobabble.

Not to soon, we got word that Arzumy had to leave early.

Four surveyors remained.

The weather couldn’t decide whether to continue raining or to stop. So most of the day it was on and off. This contributed to the extremely cold night, and made it difficult to sleep.

By morning, Khalid had gone missing. He left early due to certain arrangements.

Three surveyors remained.

On the final day we finally decided to drive further down the road, passed a strawberry farm or two, and ended up at the market. Bought some strawberries, and flowers for the ladies waiting for us back home. Hence concluding our surveying, and headed back home.

Our long road to freedom was over.

Had a great time at Camerons with the gang, hopefully next time more people will join us.

A good friend of mine, Kamal Fariz is organizing BarCamp Malaysia 2008, aimed for 26th and 27th July. BarCamp is more of and adhoc conference, or as some would like to say “unconference”.

The Negated Conference

What would a negated conference be exactly? Regular conferences (at least the ones Malaysians are accustomed to) tend to be very one way.

• You plant your ass down.
• Presenter comes up on stage.
• You clap your hands in respect.
• Presenter delivers the information.
• You absorb information.

At no point in the conference, do the audience generally contribute back.

The goal of this (un/negated) conference is to facilitate that.

Discussions. Demos. Interaction.
Disclaimer: at least thats what it says on the wiki page

Information wants to be free.

Volunteering

Looking at their Facebook page, volunteer meetings are planned to be held every Thursday, and there was one just last night, which I happened to miss.

If you are interested, you can sign up as a Camper (Participant) at the BarCamp wiki page.

Resources

• BarCamp Malaysia
• Twitter
• Facebook Group
• BarCamp wiki page
• Google Group

Avid followers (if there really were any) of my blog will notice the sharp decline of the once prominent (or so I would like to believe) blog of mine, that has made waves (just gentle ripples really) in the Internet scene. As seen by my regular blog posts quickly diminishing into nothingness (echoed into silence).

I do not have to excuse myself for my absence.
I do not need to apologize to anyone.
I will say though, that this does not mark my return. Even I cannot guarantee that.

or at least the ones in the Kuala Lumpur, and Petaling Jaya area.

Come midnight 5th June 2008, Malaysians braced themselves for the worse. They prepared at least a bottle of water, perhaps even some snacks, and maybe brought a friend or family member along to keep them company. They were getting ready for the adventure of their lifetime. Their future uncertain, and we all know how much we fear uncertainty.

What was all this for? To line themselves up for perhaps an hour or more trying to save 20-50 MYR on gas.

Thus proving that they value their money more than their time.

Spammed on several places:

• Google Groups
• Facebook
• FOSS-SM

We have two presentations lined up for the night:

1. Gavin will provide a survey of different methods of handling missing references in various programming languages with emphasis on Scala. This stuff has been popping up a lot on Reddit. For a good backgrounder (in Ruby), see http://blog.thoughtfolder.com/2008-03-16-navigating-nil-method-chaining-in-ruby.html

2. Aizat will live build a Jabber bot that integrates with Twitter, provides system monitoring and makes coffee in the morning. Expect lots of BDD love with Autotest and RSpec.

Also, I have one last FREE PeepCode Episode Coupons to give away! 

When: Thursday, March 27th 2008,  7:30PM 

Agenda:
7:30 - 8:00pm Socializing
8:00 - 8:15pm Opening by the Organizer
8:15 - 8:45pm “Survey of different methods of handling missing Preferences” by Gavin Bong
8:45 - 9:15pm “Developing a Jabber bot … LIVE!” by Aizat Faiz
9:15 - 9:30pm PeepCode Episode Coupon Lucky Draw and Close 

Cost: 
Free. No registration required, just come right in, have a seat, and join the crowd. Invite your friends. 

Contact:
kamal.fariz@gmail.com
+60123099143 
aizat.faiz@gmail.com
+60176908783

Where:
Open University Malaysia Angkasa Raya
Floor Tingkat 3, Bangunan Angkasa Raya, 
Jalan Ampang
Kuala Lumpur

Located near Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)
15 minute walk from the KLCC LRT station.
Praying facilities are available on the campus.

From the FOSS-SM site.

Special guest speaker Kenneth Wong will talk about the challenges of running a FOSS company in China while juggling mission critical systems with over 1 million EUR daily transactions, 30+GB pgsql databases and 20+ debian servers. Second part of the meetup will be quick meeting to formalize registration of FOSS-SM with Registrar of Societies, Malaysia.

—
Topic: Running a FOSS SME in China
Kenneth Wong
Director of Software Development
Exoweb

Kenneth Wong is the Director of Software Development at Exoweb. Exoweb is a software development company focusing on agile development and open source in China.

He will talk about the challenges of running a FOSS company in China while juggling mission critical systems with over 1 million EUR daily transactions, 30+GB pgsql databases and 20+ debian servers.

—
Topic: FOSS-SM Registration
This meeting is to formalise the registration of FOSS-SM by electing interim committee members and for the community to provide live feedback on issues such as the constitution and direction of FOSS-SM to support our local FOSS community.

Can’t code or not a technical person? Would like to contribute in some way to FOSS?

Then we NEED YOU!
Yes you, no, don’t look away, I know you’re closing the browser, but stop right there and read on!

We need a secretary to help deal with the paper work to get us registered, as well as be the official voice for many of our aims and activities. We are also looking for somebody to be the treasurer to help handle increasing amounts of funds that this society will be receiving in the near future to better run our various activities.

No experience needed, what we need are people enthusiastic about FOSS and have some time each week to help run FOSS-SM.

If you’re interested please contact committee@foss.org.my

—-

When
====
Wednesday, January 13th 7:30 PM

What - Meetup Agenda
=====================

7:30pm - 7:45pm Opening by the Organizer
7:45pm - 8:30pm Running a FOSS SME in China - Kenneth Wong, Exoweb
8:30pm - 8:45pm Q&A
8:45pm - 9:30pm FOSS-SM Registration Process - Khairil

Cost:
Free. No registration required, just come right in, have a seat, and
join the crowd.

Contact
kaeru@inigo-tech.com
+60-16-3111330

Where:
OUM Angkasa Raya
Open University Malaysia
Floor\Tingkat 3, Bangunan Angkasa Raya,
Jalan Ampang,
50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
TEL: 60-3-2148 8400

Located near Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)
15 minute walk from the KLCC LRT station.
Praying facilities are available on the campus.

About MyOSS Meetups
====================

Interested in helping out the Free and Open Source Community in Malaysia?
Check out http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/howto

If you would like to do a presentation, please contact me at the above email address.

Learn more about the MyOSS Meetups at
http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/about .

This meetup is possible due to the support and facilities provided by Open University Malaysia.

From the FOSS-SM site.

Mysql Topic: “Mysql performance tuning and benchmarking”

Colin Charles
Community Relations Manager
MySQL AB

Colin Charles is the Community Relations Manager at MySQL AB. He lives in Melbourne, Australia and has been with MySQL since 2005. Before joining MySQL, he worked actively on the Fedora and OpenOffice.org projects. He currently spends a lot of his time making community-based projects happy using the MySQL database.

—-

CouchDB Topic: “Introduction to CouchDB”

Ditesh Kumar

Ditesh is a free software developer and has been officially blessed by St. Ignucious. He has sworn to the oath of writing free software for the goodness of all mankind, and is known to be mostly holy (though not celibate). He can be found at free software events in Malaysia.

—-

When
====
Thursday, January 10th 7:30 PM

What - Meetup Agenda
=====================

7:30pm - 7:45pm Opening by the Organizer
7:45pm - 8:30pm MySQL Performance Tuning and Benchmarking - Colin Charles, MySQLAB
8:30pm - 8:45pm MySQL Q&A
8:45pm - 9:30pm Couch DB - Ditesh Kumar

Cost:
Free. No registration required, just come right in, have a seat, and
join the crowd.

Contact
kaeru@inigo-tech.com
+60-16-3111330

Where:
OUM Angkasa Raya
Open University Malaysia
Floor\Tingkat 3, Bangunan Angkasa Raya,
Jalan Ampang,
50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
TEL: 60-3-2148 8400

Located near Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)
15 minute walk from the KLCC LRT station.
Praying facilities are available on the campus.

About MyOSS Meetups
====================

Interested in helping out the Free and Open Source Community in Malaysia?
Check out http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/howto

If you would like to do a presentation, please contact me at the above email address.

Learn more about the MyOSS Meetups at
http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/about .

This meetup is possible due to the support and facilities provided by Open University Malaysia.

I came about the The Malaysian Dotcom Youth Search through one of my emails. Here are some slogans from their site.

• The Hunt For Innovative, Commercially Viable Website.
• Web Awards recognizing the very best in Malaysian Youths.

If you go through the list of over 100 websites, you’ll notice that a large number of them are blogs. Does that make them commercially viable? No not really. But when you opt to join their ranks, they ask you “How is your site considered INNOVATIVE?” (with capitalization preserved). Is there any innovation in these bloggers? Personally, I think not.

Where is the innovation?

As an experiment, I submitted my Malaysia Air Pollution Index, and see how it fares amongst them.

Disadvantages: haze.net.my gets booted from the list.
Advantages: More visibility for the site.

Interestingly enough they also ask “How does your site bring INCOME?” (again with capitalization preserved). To which I honestly responded “It doesn’t”.

A few months ago, the International Open Source Network held an Exchange Grant for people in developing countries to visit a FOSS related event before the end of the year.

Having never gone for an overseas FOSS conference, I took the opportunity and submitted an application form.

A few weeks passed by with no reply, until I was informed that along with Ditesh I was one of the lucky candidates to go to FOSS.IN in Bangalore, India.

Not only would this be my first visit to a FOSS conference, but also to Bangalore, India. Many firsts.

Sadly the flight to Bangalore required a short transit in Chennai. The departure time for Chennai was at 8:20am, so I had to be in the airport earlier than usual to catch the flight. Both flights were okay, but they were packed to the brim.

I’ve always held this image that Bangalore was a modern city, complete with a fully automated public transport system, large streets, what ever the definition of a modern city is. But at least on par with Kuala Lumpur. Immediately after touch down, reality hit, and I was slightly shocked. This image is probably built because of continually hearing Bangalore referred to as the “Silicon Valley of India”.

Perhaps I should have read Wikipedia it before arriving.

After arriving to our service apartments, The Orchard Suite, Ditesh and myself preceded to the FOSS.IN location at JN Tata Auditorium, National Science Symposium Centre, Indian Institute of Science by the infamous mode of transportation, the rickshaw.

The rickshaw rides are bearable, with the only exception being that due to its open nature, I found my hair flying all over the place.

Nonetheless we arrived safely. While waiting fro the registration booth to open, we hung around outside, pulled out our laptops, and leeched off the Internet.

After a long hiccup, registration opened much much later after we arrived. Once we registered, we finally got to meetup with Colin. As it was already night time we preceded to MG Road for dinner.

Note: Blog posts are highly dependent on wifi availability.

You can follow my flickr feed while I attempt to take more photos with my Nokia e61i. Or follow the public flickr feed!

View the Official Announcement.

Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems will talk about Sun’s FOSS Philosophy and Strategy

When
Wednesday, December 5th 7:30 PM

What - Meetup Agenda
7:30pm - 7:45pm Meet each other

7:45pm - 7:50pm Opening by the Organizer

8:00pm - 8:45pm - Mr. Simon Phipps - Sun’s FOSS Philosophy and Strategy

Will be presenting a talk on Sun’s FOSS initiatives touching on topics such as strategy and direction as well as projects such as OpenJDK and OpenSolaris. He will also has a surprise announcement in store for attendees.

8:45pm - 9:30pm Open Discussion

Cost:
Free. No registration required, just come right in, have a seat, and join the crowd.

Contact
kaeru@inigo-tech.com
+60163111330

Where:
OUM Angkasa Raya
Open University Malaysia
Floor\Tingkat 3, Bangunan Angkasa Raya,
Jalan Ampang,
50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
TEL: 60-3-2148 8400

Located near Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)
15 minute walk from the KLCC LRT station.
Praying facilities are available on the campus.

About the Speaker

Simon Phipps is the Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, co-ordinating Sun’s extensive participation in free and open source software communities and actively participating in the global conversation they express. Prior to this appointment he co-founded Sun’s pioneering staff weblog facility at blogs.sun.com.

He takes an active interest in several free/open source software organisations, including serving on the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation. He holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Chartered Engineer and Member of the British Computer Society where he is on the committee of his local branch.

About MyOSS Meetups
Interested in helping out the Free and Open Source Community in Malaysia? Check out http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/howto

If you would like to do a presentation, please contact us at the above email address.

Learn more about the MyOSS Meetups at http://foss.org.my/projects/meetups/about .

This meetup is possible due to the support and facilities provided by Open University Malaysia.