July 2007 - Posts
After work today, a couple of DPE folks went to Settlers Cafe @ Katong. Among them, we have Stanley, Jocelyn and Cheryl from MIC. Chewy had a dinner date so he couldn't join us but I bet we'll have more crazy fun when he joins us next session.
We played a mostly Taboo!, some weird games asking us to find objects in a 9x9 map, UNO and eventually back to Taboo again since it's so addictive.
Had a great session with lots of fun. Another session will be scheduled next week when more people will be invited.
As Imagine Cup 2007 comes to a close, preperation in Singapore for Imagine Cup 2008 is going to start soon. Keep a look out in this blog for more information as more pre-competition events are set to be launched in Singapore at the later part of this year.
Today, Stanley (Academic PM in Singapore) did a briefing on what other countries are putting forward in the Imagine Cup finals and I'm WOW-ed by the wide variety of innovations that are taking place around the world.
Check out this link from CyberNet News
Watch the minesweeper the movie, it's hilarious!
Don't get a real job until you're 30. This is Technical Fellow Peter Spiro's advice, and something he fell just short of doing. Discover how this forestry student got a job at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and then came to Microsoft to help build the team that drove SQL Server to the huge success it is today. How do you learn the necessary skills for leading huge projects? Try restaurant work or being in the Peace Corps. Also, never undere...
Download this video at Channel9 site: Download Directly
Student have stepped up their effort to make their voice heard in the OpenXML ISO process. My friend mentioned to me that he is created a online petition for it:
http://www.petitiononline.com/yopenxml/petition.html
Vote YES to OpenXML!
I'm surprised that even iPhone by Apple supports the OpenXML standard and I can't really find the reason why people are resisting the notion of having multiple document standards when one hand they are fighting for freedom of choice yet on the other hand trying to resist the adopting of alternative standards?
USD$1,025!!!
You got to be kidding me right? Apparently the homer xbox is given out during one of the talk show hosted in US and the winner put it up on sale in Ebay: Homer Auction
Thailand has just been announced as the worldwide winner for the Imagine Cup 2007 competition. Great work by the Thailand Team!
Just as IC2007 comes to a close, preparations for the Imagine Cup 2008 has started! More exciting online campaigns (like those you find in Imagine Cup 2007) and road shows are expected to happen in the later part of this year!
The theme for next year’s Imagine Cup is Imagine a World where Technology Enables a Sustainable Environment and the finals will be held in Paris, France.
http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDGigapixel.htm
Check this out! We are going to create our own HDView Landscape at Esplanade area. Watch out for more details soon!
One of my favorite game (Forza 2) has skyrocketed in sales on Amazon! Great racing game built exclusively for xbox360!
Contacts and presence control released by Windows Live team is pretty awesome. Check it out here:
http://dev.live.com/mashups/trycontactscontrol
How many games in this world actually sells a million copies worldwide? Halo 3 exceed that number in it's pre-order session in north america alone!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20196977/
The current version of XBOX360 is selling at US$ 329.99 and it comes with free shipping.
It is actually pretty insane to hit such a high number even before the title is released. While we are on this topic, there's picures of Halo 3 themed XBOX360 floating around on the web.
Received a package from Chewy (http://www.verychewy.com) which contains a whole bunch of gadgets from Phidgets (http://www.phidgets.com). In short, there's a circuit board inside that have a usb interface and 8 input/output ports where we can connect either custom made sensors or phidgets sensors.
Phidgets is also kind enough to throw in a couple of sensors for us to test:
Along with a LED display which is useful if we want to output the readings from those sensors:
After getting this kit, we decide it's time for us to kick-start our long-awaited power tracker project (and of course to prove/disprove all the power consumption facts/myths out there).
We made our way to Sim Lim Square and got ourself the following hardware:
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KEWTECH KT200 Digital Clamp Tester (To get the actual AMP reading as bench mark)
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KEWTECH HOT Wire Tester (To ensure that this is not our last community labs)
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1 Mini Power Box with 2 sockets (To house our sensor and also provide sockets that electrical appliances can plug into)
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A couple of wires and 2 x 100Watt Bulb + 1 x 60 Watt Bulb for testing purpose
After getting our toys, we made our way back to office to start building the gadget, all thanks to Phidgets, they have a great deal of resource on writing apps on C#/VB.net. Anyone who wants to start can easily download the following software package:
(if possible, please download them in the same order so your codes in example can compile successfully; you will need phidgets library package installed to successfully compile your examples)
So, now's the hooking up part. We simply have to route the active wire through the phidget sensor; afterwhich, connect the output port to the Interface Kit.
Ensure that all wires are well shielded and you are not touching any parts of the circuit when it's hot.
That's it ! You now have a gadget that tracks power consumption!
Important fomulars to remember:
P (Watt) = I (Amp) * V (voltage)
In Singapore, we are running 240V and the Phidget Sensor will return the Amp reading (there's some conversation needed from the raw input). To ensure that everything is working, simply connect the usb port of the Interface Card to your development machine. Run the Interface Full example that can be downloaded from: http://www.phidgets.com/downloads.php?example_id=10
In my system, the path is C:\Users\yizhe\Desktop\CSharp_2.1.2.004\CSharp\InterfaceKitExamples\InterfaceKit-full if you install the Examples Package on your desktop.
Observe the readings in the Anelog In section and you will get the output value (OV) of the sensors. To get the actual AMP reading, you will need to:
OV * 0.025 * 1.4142 = Actual Amp Reading
An example (output is 18), the actual reading will be 12 * 0.025 * 1.4142 = 0.42Amp
With 0.42Amp, we can derive the Power by
0.42 * 240 = 101 WATT
The current price for Power (rough value captured from Singapore Power site) is $0.2052/kWh. Thus with this fomular, we are able to calculate the actual consumption in terms of Amps,Watt and Cost !
Some pictures of our creation in action:
For the past week, I am working with chewy to come out with a Home Server plug-in for a demo tomorrow. While working collaboratively for the past couple of days, we are frustrated at the complexity of maintaining two code base (sending each other updates through email attachments).
2 days ago, we got ourself a Codeplex account and WOW!. I'm impressed! Coming from a background where I use to work with SourceSafe, I must safe Codeplex brings it to a new level. Check-in/out, Versioning, Issue Tracking, Team Foundation Server, etc... Now we created a project and will release a community project in a few weeks time after we finish packaging up the codes we built for the past few days. One great thing is that Codeplex runs on Team Foundation Server and it's fully integrated into Visual Studio 2005.
And best of all, Codeplex is totally free! Visit www.codeplex.com and start taking advantage of it now.
More information about our 1st release of community labs will be released soon!
I have:
I need to:
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Process them into my desired format (throw some fields away and then transform the remaining fields)
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Pass them through a logic to sniff out entries that matches my requirement
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Feed them into the database
In the end, I used Excel 2007 to collate those data and then use resources here (OPENXML!): http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332058.aspx to manipulate the information stored within my xlsx.
Finally, my "Importer Tool" is completed and is running a batch job now. It's pretty amazing how simple OpenXML is and how .NET library supported it (.NET simply need to support XML manipulation and it can access any files created by the Office 2007 family (e.g. docx, pptx, xlsx, etc). I still remember we used to do lots of coding just to access a single field in Excel