The FunkeeBlog

Mr. Wang, a fellow Singaporean has recently written a facinating blog post, challenging his readers to challenge themselves to achieve bigger things in life by attempting at and perhaps failing (hard) at those things.

So here are my five big goals (in order of importance).

1) Make FunkeeMonk Technology a financial success (instead of just being a good learning experience) by continuing to polish and improve FunkeeStory, and improving upon the ways I market it.

2) Learn Erlang for The Secret Next Big Project.

3) Improve my photography by taking more photographs and showcasing my work online, reflecting on my own work and the works of others. First step though is to process the immense backlog of over 4000 photos i’ve built up over the years using Lightroom.

4) Train up to be able to finish a marathon, hopefully by year’s end. I hope my existing ankle injury won’t prevent me from achieving this goal!

5) Learn to play a musical instrument (most probably a MIDI keyboard hooked up to Propellerhead Reason). Its been years since i’ve last played any instrument, and I dearly miss playing music.

I would love to hear about your goals too, so list them below by leaving a comment!

UPDATE: Posted a comment below recounting some of my past goals - both successes and failures.

A month ago, I chanced upon a story on TUAW on a Switcher’s Giveaway contest which was happening at MacApper.com. The prizes are amazing - 24 great Mac apps up for grabs, and a T-shirt from InsanelyGreatTees to boot, the first prize worth over $750. Although I did already have TextMate, SuperDuper! (both of which I use daily) and Disco, the rest of the prizes were still incredibly tempting, and I really wanted to enter the contest. All I needed to do was to create a contest entry on why I switched to the Mac. Piece-of-cake…

There is one problem.

My self-imposed deadline for releasing FunkeeStory 1.1 is loooooong overdue, and I really didn’t want to be distracted, spending half a day or more creating an entry to a contest when I really should be completing this new release instead. No new releases means less sales, and the longer I take between releases, the higher the chance of my business failing, with my dreams along with it.

So I continued coding away, trying to erase the memory of that contest from my mind.

But the thought just wouldn’t go away, nagging away at the back of my mind. I thought that I did have a pretty eventful story, since I essentially switched to the Mac so that I can write programs for it. But I continued battling away the thought of spending time on this when I should be coding instead.

Off I went to the public library (that’s where I usually work these days) in the morning about a week later, off to code away and bring FunkeeStory 1.1 closer to the light of day. “Hmm, what happened to the contest, I wonder if its over…”, I thought. The announcement came in - just 36 hours to go till the contest ends.

This time, the itch to write became too strong, too maddening to resist. I had to do something. I don’t even care about winning anymore, I just need to create this entry to ease this itch to write and create.

But, uh, what am I going to submit as an entry?

An essay? Nah, it’ll be too wordy (like this blog post), who’ll read it? ;-) Videos and podcasts are out - i’m in a public library! So I opened up the Applications folder, looking for nothing in particular when it struck me.

I’ll use Keynote to prepare a set of presentation slides!

But then I ran into another problem - i’ve never used Keynote before… But not knowing something never stopped me from trying things out before, so I just fired it up and clicked away.

3 revisions, and hours later, something ugly which resembled a presentation emerged. Now, how will I end this thing?

I thought - If I had just ONE CHANCE in this lifetime to say something to the entire Mac community, what would it be? And the last few slides just came out by itself.

A quick email submission to MacApper just hours before the deadline, and off I go again, back to work! There’s still lots of code to be written (and re-written…).

Fast forward a few weeks…

Last Thursday morning, I woke up, getting ready to get to set off to the library to work again, to find an email from Miles Evans, senior editor of MacApper.com, telling me that my entry for their Switcher’s Giveaway contest is being featured on their website. I didn’t win the first prize, nor the second, but as the entry got chosen as an honourable mention, I won myself a T-shirt, and a chance at $100 if my entry beats the other two entries in a voting contest.

WOOHOO! I checked my web stats, and page hits were coming in from all over the world. Unique visitors to the website and The FunkeeBlog went up to six times the usual amount of traffic received.

A link to my entry even managed to feature on the front page of programming.reddit.com, getting as high as #9 at one point. *faint* My story is getting out there! And I won myself a cool T-shirt! So I guess even if this whole startup fails, at least I can honestly repeat the cliche, that i’ve “been there, done that, and i’ve got the T-shirt”. :-)

More important than a dang-cool T-shirt though, i’m really happy that my story went out. I really hoped that this would expose to the Mac community what its like behind the scenes, being a struggling indie developer, and how every single sale can really go a long way in making sure an app grows and matures. Every sale means I get to feed myself for another day or two, improving the app, and not working for The Man instead, although it will pay a heck of a lot better at this point.

And today, the MacApper Switcher’s Giveaway is now officially over with the conclusion of the Honourable Mentions contest.

The winning entry, by just 4 votes (talk about a close finish!!) is….

Switching to the Mac to be an Indie Mac Developer - A bittersweet true story in 15 slides, by Joe Goh.

Hope you enjoyed both stories.

The End.

Big Thanks

Thanks to the sponsors for providing the wonderful prizes for this contest. I’ll definitely be wearing that T-shirt from InsanelyGreatTees around alot. :-)

Big thanks to Miles Evans @ MacApper for organising this awesome contest, and providing an opportunity for me to bring my story to the world. Cheers mate!

A massive thank you goes out to all of you who has voted for me, and even helped spread the word to your friends about my entry and the contest. THANK YOU!

But the BIGGEST thanks have to be reserved to all the software users and gamers out there, who stood together with the devs and supported their work by paying for the software. Thanks - we won’t be here without you, and its your support that keeps our dreams alive everyday.

I love to write. I can form an opinion on almost any topic you present to me. I like writing about my opinions. And therefore, I enjoy writing on just about anything in this universe.

If not for the fact that I also love to hack on code, and I need to earn a living developing and selling FunkeeStory, I may just end up writing blog posts and reading other blogs all day.

Unfortunately, Law 1440 also restricts the number of things that I can do everyday. What’s Law 1440? Hint: There’s 1440 minutes in a day.

So what to do?

Over the past few weeks, i’ve tried to write about many different topics and monitoring the readership statistics. I hope to gather information about what you like to read the most, so I can spend those scarce amounts of time that I can spend writing blog posts on the things people actually want to read about. Since I enjoy writing about anything anyway, it means relatively little to me which topic I choose to write about. It does matter though to you, the reader though.

The results?

The most popular blog post is the one on Book writing and software product development by a HUGE margin. In just two days, it has gathered 204 hits, and 34 clicks in the RSS feed.

I know, I know, these aren’t really huge numbers, but if you compare it with the numbers of the other hits and click-rates that I have for the other posts, this one wins big. No other post even comes close.

The readers have spoken (or rather, clicked).

This blog will contain more posts by me on software development and updates on FunkeeStory. There may be the occasional unrelated post, but i’ll try to just keep it in my head from now on instead of spouting it to the rest of the world.

There’s a new video that’s making quite a stir at YouTube.

Click on the picture to get to the full-video on YouTube.

I have a theory on why the kid got kicked. But watch the video and make your own conclusions first.

Back?

If you look closely at the background of the video, there’s a guy with a white container collecting donations from the crowd walking towards the mother of the kid.

The mother may have asked the kid to donate some money to the guy collecting donations, but the kid misunderstood the request and walked towards the dancer instead.

This probably also explains why the kid looks back towards the mother with her left arm outstretched.

“Is this the man to give the money to mommy?”

What’s your theory?

There’s this great post written by Mike Johnston called Publisher As Casino on how hard it can be to get a book published.

But.

Just replace the word “book” with “software” (or even better, “computer game”) in the article, and also replace “publisher” with “venture capitalist”, and you can get a remarkably accurate story about software product developement and computer game development too.

Two articles for the price of one!

As Mike has said, it takes *alot* of “front-loaded effort” before you can turn a few scratches on a napkin or an idea in your head into a finished piece of software or a publishable book. Like Mike and his unpublished manuscripts, lots of developers have tens, if not hundreds of tiny little scripts, project ideas and other half-finished projects just lying around the hard drive. Many of those could be turned into a potential product - if enough effort is invested in it beforehand. Its even more true for computer game development.

And just like book publishing, there *could* be a payoff, but its a long long way ahead and its *very* uncertain whether there will be a payoff at all even after all the hard work put in. Its a brutal industry.

The answer to this problem that many (especially students) have put up is to shout “Open source it!” and like some magic dust, the software will somehow come into being. The reality however, is far from it.

Open source software really succeeds when there is a common itch that many developers want to scratch, and a single developer (or perhaps a small team) needs to first produce some prototype and code for others to hack with before the project can even gain traction. Without this, the project will stall with just lots of talk and high-level design discussions that goes on for a really long time. All talk, no walk.

And this up-front development before a project can gain traction? That takes time - and in this day of commuting for hours and longer and longer work hours, this time is getting harder and harder to come by for developers with a Real Job. Add a serious relationship, or a kid, and you’ll be wondering where all your time went.

Like I said in my Mac switcher and indie developer story, its really fortunate for me that I have no mouths other than mine that I have to feed, nor a house or car to pay off. For Mike, who has a kid to feed, his life situation just doesn’t make it possible for him to do what I did and just throw down everything and work 9 months without pay to get the book idea off the ground.

Writing that book or software part-time after hours and on weekends? Sure. And you might just end up with a book or piece of software - 3 years later - if the book or software is still even relevant after all that time.

The answer for both authors and software developers for their ideas to become reality instead of being stuck as a simulation in The Matrix can be summed up in one word: funding.

For my case, I funded myself, by quitting my job, living cheap on my savings for 9 - 10 months before my idea became product. This route is probably off-limits for Mike.

Mike has this idea for his book:
“Game Theory for Photographers. A book exclusively devoted to how average-to-good photographers can get better and “improve their game.” A how-to book with nothing technical in it, but lots of commonsense discussions and many exercises that are concrete and practical rather than theoretical.”

Wow.

As an amateur photographer myself, I would love to see this book come to fruitation. So if you know of any book publishers that are willing to finance Mike for his book, point them to his blog at The Online Photographer and leave a comment with the words in the post “not for posting”, with an email address for him to reply to.

A few weeks ago, I submitted my story on why I switched to the Mac for entry to a contest. Though I didn’t win first prize, my entry did however get selected as an honourable mention. You can now read my story entitled - Switching to the Mac to be an indie Mac developer - A bittersweet true story in 15 slides.

Its actually part of a contest which is still happening right now, so if you think that my story deserves to be a winner, vote for me here.

UPDATE: The contest has concluded, and you can read about the contest results and how this story came to be, at my other blog post - A Story About my Switcher Story.

Enjoy reading the story!

Like all other Singaporean male citizens, Lawrence Leow left home to serve National Service for his country for 2.5 years. Due to his outstanding performance during basic training (called BMT - Basic Military Training in Singapore), he was chosen to attend OCS (Officer Cadet School) in preparation for his future role as an officer in the Singapore Armed Forces. Bright future ahead for this young man, destined to be a leader.

While training in the jungles of Brunei during an OCS course in 1987, Lawrence suffered a heatstroke. The doctor that tried to resuscitate him caused further injury in his windpipe, resulting in a scar.

In addition to being left paralysed by that accident, the further injury in his windpipe means he had to undergo a tracheotomy. Today, he breathes through his throat - using a hole at his neck. And he is unable to speak.

Lawrence Leow (photo taken from http://edmund-ng.blogspot.com/2007/05/untold-truths-of-national-service.html)

His bright future ruined while being forced to serve his country’s military service - he receives S$500 (US$330) a month as compensation. A US citizen in Kansas collecting unemployment benefits would receive more than him for his sacrifice for his country as a soldier.

Singapore isn’t a poor country, and due to its high GDP, it has the highest military expenditure in the region, with more than S$10 *billion* spent in one year alone.

I’ll leave you to decide whether a S$500/month compensation for this soldier is adequate or justified.

P.S. If you wish to help Lawrence in anyway, please contact Edmund Ng at +65 9782-2682.

UPDATE: Lawrence Leow’s own homepage seems to have almost disappeared from Google over the past few days. You can find his homepage at http://wpfj.org/weekang/ and email him at weekang at pacific.net.sg

FunkeeStory 1.0.8 has been released and is available at http://www.funkeemonk.com/FunkeeStory.dmg

This is a stability improvement release, and thus, I highly recommend it to everyone to download and upgrade. This is a free update for all users.

Changed in this release:
- Conduit stability improvements.
- Properly handles email addresses used as phone numbers for contacts.
- Further improved handling of phone numbers with formatting characters.

And the sprint to complete FunkeeStory 1.1 continues! This is a good time to thank the team behind Subversion. Without Subversion, I wouldn’t have been able to so easily switch between developing and releasing FunkeeStory 1.0.x and the new 1.1.x release. Thank you, all the wonderful people behind Subversion.

Its been more than a year now since my girlfriend and I decided to become flexitarians. That means for us, we’re vegetarians 99% of the time. During those few times that we’re eating with our parents, or at any other social situation where there would be no vegetarian fare served, and its a choice between eating that food or going hungry, we would choose to not go hungry.

Vegetarian Cheesesteak that I made for breakfast - Yummy!

Like most Singaporeans, the #1 “social activity” for my girlfriend and I is to dine out, and we had no intentions to stop that when we made the switch.

When I first made the switch, I always wondered how long I can keep this up - will I give up because of my craving for good food? Surprisingly, i’ve not given up my love for good food one bit, and i’ve even discovered a few more delightful places to eat in Singapore that I might not have found otherwise. There seems to be a lot more vegetarian dining outlets springing up all over the island over the past few years, so I guess i’m part of a growing trend to switch to some form of vegetarianism.

One nice side effect of making this switch is the interaction with the staff of the places I frequent. In the places that I frequent, I am almost always greeted with a *BIG* smile and sometimes even some small talk when they aren’t busy. This is almost unheard of in busy-busy Singapore, where most customers aren’t even recognised.

In the year since i’ve switched, i’ve gone from having zero stall owners or waitresses knowing me in my whole life, to five - who know me and my girlfriend, and sometimes even know in advance what we’re ordering. Its an awesome feeling. It wasn’t all sunshine-and-flowers though, it took quite awhile to get to that level of understanding.

Ordering vegetarian Chinese food in Singapore is an adventure.

During the first week, I was jittery and unsure of how to order. Will they even sell me food? I’d better proceed with caution and try to hide my vegetarianism, and pose as a super-finicky eater instead. Here’s what I went through at a Chinese restuarant 5 mins away from where I live.

“Hello, one plate of hor fun please, but can you take out the meat?”, I say, trying to mask my nervousness. (Hor Fun is a dish made with flat noodles)

“Okay.”, the waitress says.

“Hey, that was easy.”, I think to myself, relieved. That wasn’t that bad!

What happens then is that instead of having pork in the dish, they’ll put in some extra chicken instead. Apparently, the word “meat”, especially when spoken in Chinese, means only red meat for many in the food business here. Let’s try this again…

“Hello, one plate of fried noodles, no meat, no chicken.”, I say, more confident this time.

“Uh…. okay.”, the waitress replies, giving me funny look.

And then I get presented with fried noodles - with lots of seafood like shrimp and squid instead. Okay okay, more detail when ordering!

In rapid fire Mandarin Chinese, “One plate fried noodles, no meat, no chicken, no shrimp, no squid!”

“HUH?! Then what do you want in those noodles?”

“Uh… can you put in some extra vegetables instead?”

“Okaaaay…”, the waitress replies, trying to not sound annoyed.

This is clearly not working. Not only does it take too long to order, in some places we get presented with a plate of food that is basically either rice or noodles, with some soy sauce and garnishing. Its also really annoying for the staff to deal with so many things in the head. Maybe I should just ‘fess up?

“Can I have fried noodles please? I’m vegetarian…”. I’m trying to not look like a nervous schoolboy caught by the discipline master.

“We don’t sell vegetarian fried noodles.”, she replies.

“Oh, actually, just take out the pork and the shrimp and it’ll be fine.”

“Hmmm. Is garlic and spring onion okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine…?”, I say, confused.

“Aiya, you should just have told me that you’re vegetarian long ago! Where are you sitting?”

Apparently, for many food businesses in Singapore, being vegetarian means being a “Chinese Buddhist Vegetarian”, which means (as far as I can tell) being vegan (no eggs or diary products), with the additional restriction of having no garlic, ginger or spring onion in your food. No wonder being vegetarian has such a bad rep here! I’m a *huge* fan of garlic, and I find Chinese cooking without garlic tasteless, and I think i’m not alone thinking like that.

After weeks of trial and error, i’ve now got my routine down pat. Minimal grief, painless and efficient.

Presenting - Version 1.0 of the FunkeeMonk Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Ordering Vegetarian Chinese Food in Singapore.

1. Smile.
2. Say, “Hello! (food item) please. I’m vegetarian, but eggs, garlic and spring onions are okay.”
3. Listen for any clarifications from staff, answer appropriately.
4. Thank the person taking the order.
5. Maintain sunny disposition and when in doubt - smile.

What really surprised me is how friendly everyone has been to my girlfriend and I when we’re dining out. When I visit my regular places alone, i’ll sometimes get asked, “Hey, you’re here again, is your girlfriend busy today?” or other pieces of smalltalk. Before we made the switch, these same places never recognised me or my girlfriend, and now we’re treated like good friends coming over for a meal.

I believe that this is happening partly because our dining habits make us easier to remember, but I think its mainly because we interacted with the wonderful people selling me food beyond what their other customers usually do.

Everyone wants a little bit of good social interaction and appreciation for their work, and by smiling, and showing that you’re enjoying your food, and just plain not being nasty, the people that are selling or serving you food would appreciate it, and their day may be brighter just because of that.

Its easy to think of the people selling us food as like a voice-operated vending machiine, just quickly say what you want, give them the money, and try not to scowl too hard at them for taking so long to hand over the food to you. I see this around me everyday and I must have done this plenty of times in the past too. Is it any wonder that we end up being treated like another cog in the machine and treated impersonally by the people serving us food?

Take a little bit of time today to talk to the person serving you food, and smile! Everyone’s day will be brighter for it and it won’t even cost you a cent. Give it a try, and share your dining experiences too!