Certification update

Had a job interview last month and I was posed a difficult requirement which I want but have no confidence to fulfil. The interviewer has asked me to upgrade my Java certification with a score of 90% within two months and the job is mine.

Age has been catching up and my brain no longer functions as efficient as ten years ago. Memory leaks and only "open-book" tests can save me from failing. Passing will already be a huge task, let alone scoring such a high mark.

Oh well, I should do it as soon as I am prepared and get it over with before I am too old for all these certifications. Please do feel free to give me any advice on how to prepare for it. Reading resources and brain tonics are equally welcomed.

Anyway, I managed to get two other certifications recently to give my résumé a little boost:

• Certified Security Analyst v4
• Titanium Certified Developer

Mavericks killed my Wi-Fi?

Cross posted from the Projapps Propaganda

It has been more than two weeks since I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks on my old MacBook Pro. It is also more than two weeks since the upgrade broke my Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi actually worked for a while before it went dead. A subsequent reboot resulted in the indicator showing "Wi-Fi: No hardware installed".

I have tried all the advices and solutions I could google. I tried anything from resetting the SMC/NVRAM/PRAM to doing a clean reinstall of the operating systems. Downgrading to Mountain Lion or using a USB network adapter did not help too. These had me thinking whether Mavericks had killed my Wi-Fi or my Wi-Fi is no longer supported with any device driver. Maybe it's the VirtualBox update I did but highly unlikely since I reinstalled...

Hence in comes the TL-WR702N by TP-LINK, a 150Mbps wireless N portable router. My friend happened to have one on hand so we gave its client mode a try. The client mode allows the router to be connected to another device via Ethernet core and acts as an adapter to send/receive the wireless signal from a wireless network.

It worked! Therefore I went out to get myself one for S$34. It is supposed to be a stopgap fix but with no solution in sight, apart from buying a new MacBook, I think I may have to carry the router around with me for good.

Long overdue update

Wow, it has been so...... long since I last updated this blog. My last post is in 9th February! Anyway, there isn't much to write about between then and now, with most of what had happened to me or what I had done recorded in other websites and social networks. So here is a summary of my 20130209 - 20131113 life.

Firstly, I took a trip to Hong Kong for the BlackBerry Jam Asia, courtesy of Research In Motion Limited, the company that gives us the new BlackBerry OS 10 platform to develop on. My friend and I were there as developers hoping to learn more as well as being representatives to an application we were to showcase. So how was the trip? You can read about it here.

Secondly, just for the fun of it, I have also gotten two certifications along the way of self-improvement:

1. YouTube Digital Citizenship
2. Certified Ethical Hacker v8

The plan now is to continue on to getting the ECSA...

How far can these wheels go?

Yes, I have finally completed my website "How far can these wheels go?" that records my journeys to different places, both locally and abroad. It's my little contribution to introduce travel locations that someone on a wheelchair may visit. Hopefully this may help handicapped travellers or tourists choose their next destination and understand what to look out for.

Currently I have places of Singapore, cities of Switzerland, and locations of Australia, Taiwan and Malaysia in the website. I will update it once I get an opportunity to travel again.

Finally finished migrating my blog...

Since receiving an email from Friendster on the 15 April informing me that they will remove my blog after 31 May, I have started copying my blog posts to Blogger. Although Friendster has provided an application to download my blog in its entirety, the application failed to export it in Blogger's import format. Instead of waiting for Friendster to resolve this issue, I decided to move one post at a time, taking the opportunity to replace missing images and update old links. After almost three weeks of command-c and command-v, I have done it!

Hmm... missing pics on old blog posts

I was looking through my old blog posts on Friendster and I noticed that some of the images are not being displayed. Some images can still be found in the media library and I think it is just a matter of links gone wrong but there may be a few missing altogether. So can I still locate them and fix the problem? Hmm...

Blogger doesn't allow editing of comments!

Alamak! My original blog hosted on Friendster is running out of storage space and I thought Blogger will be a good place to migrate my blog to. But it was only when I am a quarter way through with the moving of individual posts that I found out about this big blogger limitation: No editing of comments copied over!

So now I am pretty much stuck with the migration and I see no alternatives but to retain my old blog and use this new one for archiving whatever I have shifted over. Let this be a lesson for me to remember to do more research next time before committing to any new application. Try it out first, duh!

My Old Blog

I have finally managed to transfer all the entries in my old blog, which was a series of web pages I created. I didn't use a blogging site as I wasn't sure I will keep up the writing. In the end, I lasted a year, fulfilling one of my resolutions for that year. Seeing that I have rediscovered my interest in writing down my thoughts and was not afraid of sharing them online anymore, I switched to this site.

The links to the start and end of my old blog are given here :)

Vain me...

I have changed the name of this blog again. Always thinking up stuff to do for no apparent reason...

I went, I read, but I don't understand...

Argh!!! I was reading a friend's blog which is in Japanese and I can't understand even the simplest of her posts. And I have been taking lessons for quite a while liao. I guess I have lousy memory for the things I learn and absolutely no talent in picking up another language. Why can't my brain work the same way as in learning English when I was young?

Speaking of brains, have anyone tried the game Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for Nintendo DS? Can those who have played comment on it, introduce what the tests are like? For those who wanna exercise their minds a bit more, there is a website containing various games like the mind-boggling Point-and-Click/Escape-From-Room/Solve-A-Mystery ones. Enjoy;

[Advertisement] My Best Friend's Blog

Dearest <hidden name>,

Finally you have got your blog up. Congratz. I have to say that the content you have there is amazing. Very thought provoking and I can get to learn more of you as well as questioning myself on the same issues.

Luv,
James

My old blog...

Only now do I notice that my old blog which I have discontinued is still online, though I have only an inconspicuous link pointing to it;

New Blog Name

I have made my decision..."Semicolon;" is the new blog name; though I still love the old name "Words Extracted From A Tired Mind", it is just a bit too long; however, it will make a good title for a future post; sounds like a title for a poem too...

As for "The AntGoddess Worshipper"...it belongs more to a shrine than a blog; I have no intention of turning this into a shrine...maybe creating a new webpage with the title;

Too Long A Title...

It has only been two days since I have put up this blog and I have already felt that the title of this blog is a tad too long...so I intend to change it to a shorter one; I currently have two candidates for the new blog title..."Semicolon;" and "The AntGoddess Worshipper";

Why "Semicolon;"...a semicolon partition a sentence having two ideas...it stops a sentence after explaining an idea, indicating the start of another; Use here as a title, it symbolizes that this blog will keep having new posts...representing a lively blog; Besides, the semicolon is also used in computer programming languages like C and Java to end a line of code...so I type it quite a lot;

Why "The AntGoddess Worshipper"...AntGoddess is one of my friends' nick...she exudes elegance, intelligence, and confidence...that is my impression of her anyway; and I like such traits in a person...hence my Y!M status line "I am a little Ant worshipping my Goddess..." - Wind Fox; too bad I already have a nick known to my friends, or I may change my nick to "The AntGoddess Worshipper";

Hmm...1st Post...

Wow, even friendster provides blog service too... ...oh well, never good at coming up with nice web pages so this may be a good place for me to just throw my tired mind without having to worry about how it is going to be organized... ...that is if you can organize a dysfunctional mind as well... ...blue color, suits my pic;

Yesterday was April Fool's Day... ...no pranks, that's good... ...new work environment so better not play a fool; that's all for my 1st post...;