SIMPLICTY@gombui.net

Fearsome Warriors

About a week ago while at the local Times Bookstore, I came across a book by Chris Bellamy titled – The Gurkhas Special Forces.  I’ve been fascinated by this group of fearsome warriors for quite sometime now.  The book begins with a historical background of how the Gorkhas came about.  The British learned how to harness the fearsome quality of these nimble mountain society.  I’ve read stories that enemies even surrendered upon hearing they were up against a Gurkha force.  They should be fearful for when the Gurkha unleashes his Kukri,  it must taste blood.  I’ve seen the crooked broad-blade weapon myself and it still make me shiver knowing that it’s a weapon for the kill.  It’s hard to imagine how these seemingly small-built man with their gurkha cigars would come to be one of the world most fearsome warriors.

Using my IPad for Presentation

I was scheduled to give a presentation last Thursday at one of the state ministries.  I did not want to bring my heavy laptop, so I brought my Ipad. Prior to that event, I was thinking, how do I project from my Ipad as there are no socket for a vga cable or rca video cables?  Fortunately there are accessories available, so I went to buy a VGA adapter for my Ipad  at the local Apple partner store.  Tested it on a projector and it worked fine.  The next thing was finding a suitable presentation application.  I thought of using native powerpoint file but soon find it to be quite cumbersome.  In the end I settled for a simple PDF format and presenting using the free IBook app.  One cool feature that I like was the ability to use finger gestures to control what you want to highlight on your slide.

Simple ideas for the workplace

No doubt the workplace is where we spend at least 7 – 8 hours of our daily (except weekends) activities. I believe in getting the best out of our working environment and while we are at it, why not have fun and relaxation at the same time. The few things that I find useful when making your work environment “work” for you are:

1. Attitude
This is by far the most important part. Treating the workplace as a playground and a place to relax (apart from doing real work…eventually you’ll need to do some work) works for me and keeps me going or helps me get the most out of my productive energy…whatever that is.

2. Tools and Resources
I usually make it a point that if the organizational unit I’m in lacks the proper tools, I’ll try my best to make it available even to my expense. At least it will get my staff motivated. We have also attempted to get some tools to work so that we are able to do conference calls.  There are many open source tools out there, recently we also tried Facetime and Skype.

3. Environment
Several things that I’ve always wanted to have in the office are an aquarium, equipped pantry, sofa set and media system.  Aren’t those the things you have in the house?  exactly…why not have your office look and feel like it’s home.

Doing some last minute social media page

Recently I was commissioned to create a fan page for an international event taking place here locally. With limited time and resource, I managed to pull it off.  Now almost a week later it’s still attracting “likes” and will continue to do so. It’s not something like you need to develop  a Web-est.com auto repair shop software. Fortunately I did not have to do any programming.

Watching Transformers III with my son

Last Monday, I went to watch Transformers:Dark of Moon with my son as he is a ardent fan of the Autobot Bumble Bee.  I hope after watching he would ask for a PSP. Then I will need to buy extra psp batteries. As expected the movie was full of CG effects.  My son was more interested in the action scenes.  He kept asking if that robot is the bad guy or the good guy.  The movie was about two and half hour so towards the end, I noticed my son was sleeping, leaving me to enjoy all the action and effects.  What I didn’t like about the movie were the dialogues….they sound to corny to me.