most interesting thing by far was the interview in the early evening with webcontrol and gateinfo, 2 thai e-business companies.
both of them have a range of very interesting projects coming up, and so i am left with the difficult task of deciding whom to give the go ahead. i opted to go with them instead of siemens because they are more entrepreneurial in style and have their technological act much more together.
i hope to hold a series of brown paper bag speeches / seminars about the implications of web services to the employees of these 2 companies. doing so will allow me to contribute my interest in the field towards a better technological vision for these enterprises. i hope to spark their interest, and therefore
work with these technologies during my stay.
on a different subject, thailand is really going down the toilet. lulled by a comparatively healthy economy, the thai leadership is asleep at the wheel,
and rotten to the core with corruption. they fail to implement crucial reforms, such as a cleanup of the bureaucracy or more stringent rules for bookkeeping. instead, they propose (this i no joke! i did not make this up) to align their time zone with singapore because singapore has been economically successful. do they really believe that they will achieve anything other than a good laugh with fumbled strategies like these?
Month: July 2001
Shamiro
my brother in geekhood, ben, is experimenting with a weblog of his own. his intentions go as far as uniting all his personal data & apps in 1 portal, like email, personal files, photo gallery, thoughts etc.
i wish him luck with this endeavor, but frankly i think it a) makes no sense because a portal is not a better interface for all these (separate) requirements, b) is a waste of time given that having separate modules works out of the box, and c) is a lot of work if you plan to build what would basically be a PIM-cum-Workspace on the shaky architectural foundations of a weblog that was not designed for any serious user management issues..
Bangkok Day 5
being sunday, i overslept my appointment until oliver showed up at the hotel at 12.30. we then went to bayoke, arguably the tallest hotel in the world at 308 meters, and had lunch at the top. it was 310 baht fare & all you can eat. incredible, especially the vietnamese cuisine. go for it. the view was also great however we will probably do some shots at night when there are some taillights from the traffic.
on we went to do some clothes shopping, with many stores to choose from. it was more an exercise to avoid all the obvious, been there done that diesel fakes and go for the meatier stuff than anything else. freshly dressed we entered pantip plaza to check out new software releases. sure enough they already had final fantasy on dvd. (it will show here in 1 week.. ha) i opted for some baldur’s gate expansion instead (hello guido do you copy?)
oliver had to be back early, so i charged back to the hotel and went to the swimming pool and read on in cryptonomicon. you cannot complain if you get a swimming pool for 10 swiss francs a day accommodation. i then decided to check out the hotel restaurant for dinner. it was great. rumor has it that their menu has repeatedly been stolen by thai restaurants from around the world, and dinner was like 4 swiss francs.
Bangkok Day 4
after sleeping until noon, i start a new book: cryptonomicon by neal stephenson. it’s about the code breaker effort during ww2 and about crypto in general. later that day, i meet oliver and we watch a pulp fiction parody, plump fiction. it’s so bad it must be an art form. then it’s time for shopping! i buy a book with the famous caltech physics lectures by richard feynman. with topics like warp space i wonder whether i will be able to understand the book.; if i do, it will be a great intellectual achievement.. less of an intellectual challenge was planet of apes, while i thought it rather funny, oliver walked out after 30 minutes. hey, you cannot complain for 4 swiss francs admission.
we then head for the swimming pool, have dinner and chill out.
Bangkok Day 3
After a nice breakfast at the incredible Atlanta, I head to town to work on my emails. At 14.00, I decide to go to a spa to make use of the 555 baht special deal where you can have massage, sauna, body scrub, manicure, haircut, for 20 bucks.
At 14.10, I call Siemens Thailand. They invite me over for an interview (so no spa today). I have a nice chat with them, resulting in a job offer around 16.00. Afterwards, I finish Bill Gates “Business @ the speed of thought:”. I then head back to the Atlanta, chill out until 20.00. On the street, I then get bitten by a stray dog. 22.00: Sun arrives at Oliver’s apartment. 24.00:Ii am in the hospital to get vaccination against rabies (which that stupid dog surely had) 1.00: I eat noodles with chicken on the street. 1.30: We are shaking it at Bangkok bar.
2022-07-27: I may have dodged a huge bullet on that day. Rabies is scary.
Bangkok Day 2
today its job seeker day. dressing nicely with suit and tie, i seem to have quite the attention at the hotel.. as they say, appearance really matters. i head to the colenco office to print out my cv. apparently, colenco could use some help in the security, networking and backup areas. i will work something out.
in the afternoon, i plan to go to the pwc office and call up some swiss guy who has a company here. we’ll see what happens..
Bangkok Day 1
i arrive in bangkok after a rather tiresome flight, no driver in sight, so i catch a taxi and drive to the hotel atlanta which i have in fond memory from my previous trip to bangkok. once in my room, jet lag takes over, and i sleep for the next 5 hours.
in the evening, i join oliver in his apartment and i am immediately subjected to his rant about thailand. its his 18th trip to thailand, and unfortunately for me, he hates it this time..
apparently his job at webcontrol is rather stressy, with no one talking to him during the workday, 20 minute lunch breaks and so on. so he might change jobs by the end of the week..
after dinner we go out to play billiard. the place is new to me, and its quite decent even though its in the center of the red light district. decent in this context means we are not approached by any bar girls, which is nice.
after making the acquaintance of a swedish formula one journalist (oliver seems to be into formula one. i have no idea what they are talking about..) i hit the sack.
Pathetic mysql
I spent a day with mysql, and i did not like it. Mysql is missing so many essential features its not even funny. I wonder whether all the hype is about doing recipe databases with no real requirements? A better alternative seems to be postgresql.. I hope php integration is as smooth as with mysql.
compare xns to everything else
XNS is a combination of 5 major components—a naming and addressing service, an XML vocabulary and metavocabulary, an XML protocol and metaprotocol, a legal and operational infrastructure, and a development platform—that together provide a foundation set of services for the next layer of Internet infrastructure. This white paper has compared the key features of XNS with 92 products, services, and standards in 7 general categories and 30 subcategories.
Weblogs social implications
the playing around with jabber gets its first fruits in this transcript from a chat i had. it seems tools like weblogs and instant messaging really make a difference.
excerpts from a chat i had on jabber with ben today.
gregor i wonder whether the topic is above the heads of 95% of our members?
ben well, is always the same story, people fear to get involved 😦
ben it certainly is… no question I would rate it as far as 98%
gregor hmm. so basically we are doing something that is only of interest for ourselves?
ben but the real bad thing is, people don’t want to learn anymore … they are knowledge-aversive.
ben I hope not so much, people might get curios if the show is just big enough.
gregor i wonder what these guys do all day? website design with dreamweaver?
ben I’m talking about product demos, free cd’s hands-on workshops, some high-tech playground air.
gregor what is their idea of computer science? proficiency in ms office?
ben worse, number punching with AS400 @ CS.
gregor i don’t know, but i would certainly not employ one of them.
ben Well, some do know something, like christian or thomas (not the VS guy, the staff one), but they don’t care …
ben most of them are living a lonely life, girlfriend, mom, dad and one or tow guys from high-school… probably still living with their parents.
gregor ben the sociologist 🙂
ben I’m urged to be… it’s quite difficult to come to a new country, especially if the last one was .mx …
gregor actually i will have a discussion about basically these topics (interest in new tech etc) with my kpmg team on monday
ben ppl have different moral values, most are thinking in their own world, and in their heart they may even don’t like IT, but computers.
gregor its the same situation there.
ben oh, thing this is even very much worse:-)
ben I think their motivation is money, since thats what have been in plenty supply the last few years. the good ones are either those who don’t care about $, or who have it anyway.
ben /start spelling
gregor well, for my team the issue is to either: a) innovate & take great risks b) continue with building asp web applications as before.
ben 🙂
gregor i think you have a good point there.
ben we’ll see it in 2 years
ben I’d say don’t let them decide over that topic, plant a migration path to risk…
gregor you think the downturn will last 2 years?
gregor problem is, i made most of the decisions for them the last 1.5 years.
ben I mean, provide them with a framework for the next 6 month, and ask them whether they like that, or trying to find new asp client do the specs etc.
gregor they have to be committed to what we do, or else it won’t work out.
ben true
gregor we might take a bold step and go with .net.
ben how do you generate commitment and motivation?
gregor however we would have to find clients willing to pay for that.
gregor it cannot be generated, only encouraged. it has to come from themselves
gregor if i knew a recipe for that, i would have applied it countless times at icu & other places..
ben It can be generated, let the remember the words.
ben motivation by identification on mental, physical and social levels.
ben here you go
ben deep integration of the people in the community culture etc. why do you think people are visiting university?
gregor to meet their friends at the cafeteria
ben It fits into their social concept
ben right
ben why do coderz code?
gregor i have done some research on rewards in communities.
ben what the outcome?
gregor if you can get others to acknowledge you in some meaningful way, it helps a lot for motivation
gregor its like andy warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.
gregor for instance i think the tight feedback loop that is emerging with tools like jabber, personal weblogs
ben i thought about that for the ms thing
ben if their projects get out to the world they feel rewarded
gregor will really forge people together. it does for me.
ben if i.e. other colleagues use their say webservice, they’ll think is cool, we are back at social integration
gregor in fact i have already received a lot of good feedback because i share my thoughts with anyone who
gregor cares to listen.
ben yeah the feedback is important, good point.
gregor i thought for years that it’s just so much work until you have eliminated enough communication barriers to let interesting (and rewarding) discussions flourish.
ben that’s why i’m so keen about php-nuke, it helps to express people’s thoughts and it gets organized as well.
gregor same for me.
gregor and on a much higher semantical level than /.
ben yeah!
gregor basically, sites like /. are only input and gain value through digesting and thinking about them
ben well, that is a good conversation i have lacked since the departure of my dad.. thanks!
gregor in fact i have seldom come across more interesting links and ideas since i started to collect them on purpose.
ben true, and the /. community has no means of focusing on topics…
gregor you are very welcome 🙂
ben 🙂
gregor my submission queue has currently 17 items that i might write some thoughts about.
ben urg
gregor since i am in no obligation to deliver anything, this is not actually a problem..
ben I haven’t come that far, i’m currently more interested in bring the right infrastructure into place. am thinking about how to get webservices organized on php nuke
gregor its more like there are far more interesting things than time to check them out.
ben same problem over here
gregor i wanted to do the same thing. my first web service would have been a web service to full text search phpnuke
gregor however the mess that is apache soap turned me off 🙂
ben I actually envy your job, you can explore interesting topics and even get paid for it 🙂
gregor i don’t do this as part of my job.
ben is no mess, its smooth running
gregor actually at my job i am currently doing very boring things like setting up nt 4 servers because the it department cannot do it themselves.
ben my first one is running… no big deal, but my second one will be a “Sprueche” DB from ancient asian war-philosopher
ben oh, well, nt 4 ?!?
ben forget it 🙂
gregor it’s not even an operating system in my eyes, its so crappy it’s hard to believe
ben You know “Sun Tzu” ?
gregor the art of war or something?
ben war yes …
ben I’m impressed!
gregor i think this guy is standard reading in certain managerial circles 😉
ben oh it is? So that’s where you are heading 🙂
gregor no, but you have to watch out. many predatory business practices actually have their roots in some manager donkey reading up on stuff like that..
ben btw. did you read “B@ speed of thought”?
gregor no, is it any good?
ben try it, I’ve just finished it.
gregor can i lend if from you?
gregor i have some interesting books in return like goedel escher bach
ben sure i’ll cp it to you post box together with Cryptonomicon
gregor hmm. i will be gone on 24th evening..
ben so I better do i fast 🙂
ben when do you plan to breakfast tomorrow?
gregor around 9 i hope.
gregor i have to do a major part of the coding for that site tomorrow
gregor why do you ask?
ben we could meet for B and exchange books, I’ll have to visit the Kanzelei anyway
gregor ah ok, and i have to get that stupid practica sheet from ifi
ben any place ?
gregor ah i know.. there is actually a tea room very near to my place (have never been in there though)
gregor its at haldenbach station, and subtly named tea room 😉
ben so, i’ll try to be there at, say 0915?
gregor ok, i better be going to bed then..
ben uah, yea.
ben so cu tomorrow.. bonitos suenos 🙂
gregor was nice. we’ll keep it up.
ben sure
gregor gracias
Gregor J. Rothfuss 