If you haven’t seen it already, there’s also a new video demo of Phone Journal at the website. Check it out!

If you’re upgrading from FunkeeStory, please remember to disable the FunkeeStory conduit first before syncing with the new Phone Journal conduit. Phone Journal will automatically migrate your preferences and SMS data files from FunkeeStory.

Here’s a brief summary of changes between FunkeeStory 1.0.9 and Phone Journal 1.1.0.

- Renamed from FunkeeStory to Phone Journal, with a new icon.
- Leopard compatibility fixes.
- New Look - Revamped user interface to be more Leopard-like, even on Tiger.
- New - View statistics on messages used each month with customisable billing day.
- New - Automatic software version checking and installation (optional).
- New - Undo available when decoding and deleting messages.
- New - Added advanced option to delete duplicate messages.
- New - Delete messages.
- Message text searching revamped.
- Lots of bug fixes.

As always, Phone Journal development continues immediately after this release. Treo 600 and Verizon Treo 650 support is being developed right now, and iPhone development will immediately follow.

I know, I know, WWDC concluded last week, and in Internet time, last week is like, oh… 10 years ago in Snail-World Time. But you are all nice people, and i’m sure you’ll forgive me for not posting last week.

Anyhoo.

Here’s my list of tips for future WWDC attendees - won from experience after attending WWDC 2007 - which was the first ever multiday conference i’ve ever attended.

1. Be prepared.

Bring a water bottle. The Odwalla juices on offer are *really* sweet and run out quickly, and there’s no way you are going to stay hydrated from drinking that and coffee/tea all day. There are plenty of water refill stations all over the Moscone.

Bring a jacket/jumper. Unless you come from Norway or Siberia, you’ll probably find the weather in San Francisco really chilly when the wind gets going. Dress in layers. Even if you don’t plan on getting out much, the labs and lunch areas are *really* cold at times too.

Bring extra cash for food. You would think that a conference that costs US$1,500 just for the ticket would serve better food. Unless you’re on a tight budget like me, bring extra cash for getting food outside of the Moscone if you want to keep your spirits up throughout the week. All food at the Moscone is cold, including breakfast. Lunch is served in plastic boxes.

Honestly, I had better food when I served in the Army. Although the Moscone Center food isn’t as bad as unheated combat field rations, it comes really close. Heated combat rations would beat the food at the Moscone hands down. Its scary to think that when it comes to serving hot food to lots of people, the catering people at the Moscone would actually *learn something* from the Army.

2. Get to San Francisco early.

You may have read about my jet lag. Even if you’re on a tight budget, make sure you get to San Francisco at least 3 - 4 days in advance. If you’re flying from halfway across the world, this rings especially true. Jet (or drive) lag will take out a lot of your energy.

If you plan on sightseeing around San Francisco, do it before WWDC instead of after. If you’re a developer, WWDC will give you a huge buzz and you won’t be able to resist quickly flying home after the conference is over to start working on the new stuff you’ve learned.

3. Have a blog or website? Put a picture of yourself or your team online.

There are loads of people who would love to talk to you about your product, your blog or your site during WWDC. The first step in making sure that people can even find you during the conference is to make sure they know what you look like in the first place. Should be pretty common sense eh? But even I neglected to do that (i’ll be fixing that soon).

If anyone at Apple Public Relations is reading this - you may even want to consider placing pictures of Apple engineers somewhere so WWDC attendees can easily track them down for questions. :-)

4. Don’t waste time planning your schedule far in advance.

The session and lab time-schedules change during the conference. You may also change your mind about attending certain sessions during the week itself, so don’t waste too much time planning your schedule too far in advance. Just plan a rough guide during the plane and you should be set.

5. Partition your laptop hard drive before you leave.

If Apple is going to give out a new developer seed during the conference, you won’t be able to resist installing it on your laptop. I’ve personally heard of two fellow attendees who, in the excitement of it all, installed the developer seed onto their existing Mac OS X installation without first backing up. Ouch.

Here’s the better way to do it (Disclaimer: if you lose your data following these steps, its not my fault).

1. Get Super Duper! or the backup utility of your choice and completely back up all the partitions on your laptop.

2. Repartition your laptop to include another empty partition (at least 14GB) for the developer seed installation.

3. Put Mac OS X and your data back onto your laptop again using the backup you created in step 1. If you don’t have sufficient space, try to exclude things that are not needed during the week of WWDC. You can always put all the pr0n back onto your laptop after you return from WWDC.

6. Live close to the Moscone.

Attending technical sessions and labs all day is tiring work. Commuting for a long time after each day at WWDC will quickly sap your energy. Do yourself a favour, and don’t bum off your friend’s apartment on the other side of the city to save a few bucks. Get yourself a room somewhere close to the Moscone and get a lot more energy throughout the conference.

7. Business cards.

Whenever you receive a business card, write a description about the person on the back of the card as soon as possible.

You’ll thank me later when you’re on the plane, sorting through the huge stack of business cards you’ve received, and you’re trying to recall whether “Johnny Foobar” was the guy you met during lunch with an awesome new idea for your app, or the guy that you’re supposed to send a review license to.

If you can control the formatting of your own namecard, you may even want to try placing a picture of your face on your namecard. I don’t know about all you other cats, but I remember faces a lot better than I remember names. Put a picture of yourself online somewhere if you can’t control the design of your own card.

8. Make use of the labs.

Your mileage may vary with the labs, but personally, i’ve got a huge amount of value out of the labs. Broken code got fixed, new features got implemented *on the spot* and magic developer dust was given out. Its been awesome.

If you’re going to the ever-popular UI design consulting lab, arm yourself with the following,

- Prepare a list of questions beforehand. Don’t try to “wing it” at session, you’re just going to waste your time.
- You are only going to be given half an hour with the Apple engineer. Keep questions short and specific.
- Bring a notepad and keep it ready to jot down ideas.

9. Talk to everyone around you.

The food at the Moscone may be tragic, but the lunchtime conversations are awesome when you manage to find the right group. If you’re an indie, you know how hard it can be to get a good technical discussion with anyone in real life, so you really owe it to yourself to find a good lunch group. The amount of energy and buzz you get out of it can carry you for a long way throughout the week.

Don’t limit yourself to lunch either. There’s great conversation to be found just standing in line. Just try not to do that at the long queues for the male restroom.

If you have more tips to share, feel free to leave them in the comments!

The number of hours of sleep i’ve had everyday since i’ve landed in San Francisco:

Saturday: 3 hours
Sunday: 2.5 hours
Monday: 3 hours
Tuesday: 4 hours
Wednesday: 4.5 hours
Thursday (tonight): ???

What happens is that i’ll sleep at perhaps 11pm or so, then for some mysterious reason, i’ll just suddenly wake up in the early morning and i’ll be unable to get back to sleep again.

I can manage to stay awake enough during the sessions and labs in the morning, but it gets *really* difficult during the afternoon sessions, especially those between 3 - 5pm. Worst of all, those sessions in the afternoon are frequently the most interesting ones. :-( I try sooo hard to stay awake during those sessions, but its just impossible sometimes.

I’m really afraid to drink coffee too as i’m extremely sensitive to it - i’m known to drink *one* cup at 7 - 8am and then be super hyperactive and awake till around 2am. Its that bad.

This week has been absolutely *amazing* though and I have so much to write and share, but I guess that will have to wait when I return to Singapore and decompress (and hopefully get some good sleep).

Off to bed now! Hopefully, I won’t wake up again at 3am and wonder what the heck is going on anymore.

Good night!

I left early for the Moscone Center this morning to be amongst the first to register for WWDC 2007. Not by choice - i’m having a jet lag, and I can’t sleep (i’ve been awake since 3am). :-(

Without further ado, presenting - the official T-shirt for WWDC 2007.

Power to the programmers

And this is the complete collection of swag that you’ll get if you register at WWDC today.

WWDC 2007 Registration Goodie Bag

From the top,
- WWDC 2007 Laptop Bag - seems like a pretty good bag with a thick, comfy handle.
- Attendee badge.
- WWDC 2007 T-shirt.
- Conference map and schedule cards.

No tumbler, Apple branded stationary or anything else this year it seems. :-( Hopefully, there’ll be more swag given out tomorrow!

First time flying on an airline after I switched to a vegetarian diet - I wonder how vegetarian airline meals are going to be like?
First time attending WWDC - I can’t wait to learn all these awesome new things that are coming on Mac OS X Leopard so I can bring FunkeeStory to the next level. :-)
First time visiting the United States - and its San Francisco! This is going to be huge fun!

I’ll be writing new blog posts regularly this week, so please stay tuned!

This year though is totally different.

As I continued working on FunkeeStory and getting it to release, I very quickly realised that there are literally hundreds of different ways that I can improve the app, and there’s also a list of things that came up over the past year that I would love to have Apple engineers help me out with in the labs.

I was a Select member last year, and as part of being a member, it came with two DTS technical support incidents. Those two DTS incidents were worth every cent, and without the help and advice that those DTS engineers gave me, FunkeeStory may have been released 2 months later than it did. That’s right, each DTS incident probably saved me a month of my time each.

So after that fantastic experience with DTS engineers at Apple, I knew that attending WWDC would provide a huge development boost for FunkeeStory. Spending a week at WWDC getting my problems solved right there with Apple engineers, might be equivalent to, oh I don’t know, perhaps saving 3 months of trial-and-error, doc reading, and who knows what else on my own. I can’t wait - this is going to be awesome!

But attending WWDC from Singapore isn’t cheap.

WWDC early-registration ticket - S$2,000
Air ticket to San Francisco - S$1,600
Living in a dorm during the week - S$300
Other expenses - S$300 (estimated - i’m going to try to reduce this amount as much as possible by trying to eat as many meals as I can at WWDC itself :-))

Total estimated cost: S$4,200 (around US$2,800)

Ouch. There’s no way I can afford to go just off my own efforts, time to look for some help!

I first approached MDA for funding under their Capability Development Scheme. I explained to them that my current work (and my future work for the Secret Next Big Project) falls under the definition of “new media” (which they’re trying to bolster development efforts for in Singapore), and WWDC is *the* event for people working on “new media” products on the Mac and the upcoming iPhone. Unfortunately, somehow the MDA doesn’t consider WWDC as an event that they’re willing to sponsor. Hmph, I wonder what kind of events the MDA are sponsoring instead of WWDC.

Thankfully, Apple was a lot more forthcoming with support for indie developers trying hard to make a difference, and I managed to get some assistance from them for attending WWDC. Together with ERS funds (that the Singapore government gave out a few years ago that i’ve got squirrelled away) and some money i’ve got saved up from sales of FunkeeStory, I have *just* about enough to attend without having to live on bread and water when I return.

So a big thanks goes out to Apple, and all the wonderful people who bought FunkeeStory for making this trip to WWDC possible. I won’t let your investment in me go to waste!

New and improved in FunkeeStory 1.0.9:

• Vastly improved handling of US mobile phone numbers.
• Redundant messages will no longer show up for received MMS from friends who also sent it to other recipients.
• Syncing multiple Treo’s to the same Mac improved - you no longer have to remember to set the handset profile first.
• Improved general handling of phone numbers.
• Contact name list is now sorted case-insensitively.
• Fixed bug with handling of contact names with less than 5 letters.

FunkeeStory - The BEST SMS/MMS backup/viewer for your Treo.

*ZAP*

You find yourself transported back to year 2000 in front of your Pentium 3 (or G3 Mac?) again, with no memory of the future where you came from.

“Oh oh!”

You see a new ICQ message on your monitor. Its from a mysterious person telling you that in the year 2007,

1. The Mac is going to steal developer mind-share from Windows, and you’ll also see a lot of “I deploy on Linux, but develop on a Mac” people.
2. Ruby is going to be one of the top 10 programming languages.
3. JavaScript is going to be one of the most important programming languages.
(3 statements above from Global Nerdy)
4. Flash is going to win the video streaming war and it’ll be the core technology used by a company that gets acquired by Google for US$1.65 billion. RealPlayer and all the others? Sunk into relative obscurity.
5. Java will be languishing as a language for desktop application AND client-side web development.
6. Perl isn’t cool anymore. None of the Cool Kids seem to learn or use it.

Would you have believed it? Or maybe even call it stupid? Those 6 points above really illustrate how unpredictable the software world can be.

I believe that in the next few years, the number of web sites devoting to the tastes of Alpha Geeks will increase considerably. In the past, we had sites like Slashdot. Now, we have sites like Reddit and Digg, which allows interesting new ideas, programming languages and paradigms to propogate through the entire community a lot faster than ever before.

As a result, the growth in mindshare for fringe technologies that are actually good, will increase dramatically.

So that everyone can laugh at me when I get it wrong in 2014, here are my bets for the changes that will be coming up for the next 7 years.

1. The Mac will get 20% marketshare of the global personal computer/laptop market. This segment of the market will also be the part that really matters to developers - the type that will actually upgrade their computers and buy after-market software. This will have a huge impact on the consumer software developers worldwide as cross-platform functionality can no longer be ignored.

2. Java will no longer dominate as the de-facto server-side programming language in enterprise projects and its importance in academia will be significantly reduced. Erlang, Python and Ruby (for web shops) will hit the mainstream consciousness and replace Java for server-side programming tasks. Python will get introduced in the curriculum of universities to replace Java as the main instructional language.

3. Client-side programming will be dominated by hybrid-apps. Many more apps will use Javascript/HTML/CSS/etc for front-end work and adopt a hybrid approach of using Python (or maybe even Lua) for the bulk of the code, and only leaving some portions in C/Objective-C/C++.

4. Functional programming languages will (finally) hit the consciousness of the mainstream developer. Functional programming will be taught to first-year computer science students.

It’ll sure be interesting to see which of these things I get right or hopelessly wrong in 2014! Here’s hoping this site even exists at that time. :-)

Being an independent developer, my resources (especially financial ones) are scarce so I can’t afford to buy every single Treo model in existence for testing. Although i’m quite sure FunkeeStory should continue to work with this latest Treo since I didn’t see Palm reporting any changes in its Messaging application, its much better to be sure!

So if you have a Treo 755p, please download FunkeeStory and give it a try on your Mac, and let me know the results by leaving a comment in this post, or sending me an email through the contact form.

Thanks!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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

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.

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!

That aside, FunkeeStory 1.0.7a has a number of changes from 1.0.6
- Much improved Address Book contact photo matching.
- Stability improvements in the conduit.
- Better handling of phone numbers with formatting characters like “-”.
- Redundant phone numbers in contact details are now merged.

I highly recommend upgrading to this release if you’re on an earlier version. As always, this update is free for all users.

With this release out, I will be continuing work on FunkeeStory 1.1 - which would be sold at its original price of $24.95. If you’ve always been interested in FunkeeStory, this is your last chance to buy FunkeeStory at its promotional price, so hurry!

I’d also like to thank all those that have supported the development of FunkeeStory by purchasing a license. Thank you. Without your support, I would not have managed to even survive these past 4 months, developing these new releases. Its with your support that I do not need to go out and look for a job somewhere writing code for The Man, instead, I work for you - my faithful users.

After the mouse i’ve been using broke down yesterday, i’ve decided to give up my mousing ways once and for all in a bid to save my wrists (and my livelihood). 16 years of using a mouse, what could ever replace it?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - The Red-Eye Monster. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.

The Red-Eye Monster

It is otherwise known as the Logitech Trackman Wheel. Its a trackball, and is available in both corded and cordless versions.

After 16 years of using a mouse, like anyone who’s ever used a mouse, i’ve had doubts about switching to a trackball. Will I even be able to get used to it? Will it even improve the situation with my wrist? There’s only one way to find out for sure, so I plunked down some dollars for a shiny new one.

The Red-Eyed One A.K.A. Logitech Trackman Wheel works out of the box with Mac OS X 10.4, no driver installation required, just plug and play. I expected to take at least a month before I got used to twiddling a ball under my thumb, but its been amazing how quickly the adaption to using a trackball has been.

Just after using it for two days, drag and drops, mutliple selections, even cropping pictures in Lightroom and Photoshop are all really easy now with no significant loss in pointing accuracy. I did notice a big loss in speed (even with the tracking speed turned on full) and a slight loss in precision though, and this is probably due to The Monster With The Red Eye tracking at a lower DPI compared to my Razer Viper. Logitech - please come up with a “high-DPI” trackball for us switching from high-end gaming mice.

But the most important question is: Did using a trackball instead of a mouse actually help with alleviating the symptoms of RSI?

Me, fondling the monster.

Today, i’ve been using the trackball for 9 hours so far with a wrist support (to keep my wrists straight), and i’ve not had any pain at all. Previously, if I used my mouse for more than 4 hours, I am guaranteed some pain in the wrist to keep me awake. The rolling action was quite rough the first day I got it too, but it got alot smoother today - maybe due to lubrication from finger grease?

When I first made the switch yesterday, using the trackball for 7 hours *without* the wrist support, my wrist hurt just like before. So if you notice that your wrist is bent upwards when using a mouse or trackball, I highly recommend getting a wrist support. The one i’m using is made by a company called Fellowes, and it has a really nice squishy feel, so you can even squish it with your thumbs for stress relief. Good squishy fun.

It took me 15 years of using a computer mouse before I experienced any symptoms from RSI, but you don’t have to wait for that to happen. Or perhaps you want to be like me - enjoying the wonderful sensation of fondling a smooth red ball under your thumb? Act now and switch to a trackball today!

This blog is crafted by me, Joe Goh. I’m the sole developer behind FunkeeMonk Technology, and its first product FunkeeStory.

This blog will have my views on technology, computer programming, food, business, news about FunkeeStory development and a whole load of other things. So stay tuned folks, things are going to get interesting…

I’m going to follow Bob Johansen’s advice and have Strong Opinions, Weakly Held when writing posts for this blog.

I will be discussing some pretty controversial topics in the near future, and my stated opinion about those topics are going to be strong. However, i’ll be trying hard to not be too attached to my beliefs. It is my goal to be able to learn something new everytime I write a new post - and its your comments that will make this possible.

Enjoy reading The FunkeeBlog!