James Zhuo 卓宇翔: Lists

Custom List: talk software

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:11:15 GMT

talk software

Introduction to Domain Specific Languages
Martin Fowler of ThoughtWorks giving 30min introduction on domain specific languages. A good take away is that you can't build an entire system using one DSL because writing DSL code are really just writing configurations that can be understood by the DSL.
The Architecture of Participation - Observing and Rethinking Web2.0
By Mingchi Kuo - (video in chinese) A good overview of where web 2.0 is now and some good points about the future, e.g. the future of internet media beyond youtube?
.NET Web Services Concepts
Code Project Article - good concise description of the basic concepts of web services, also a good overview of the historical development of computer languages.
David H. Hansson on the Future of Rails
David Heinemeier Hansson is the creator of Ruby on Rails, a powerful open-source framework for using the programming language Ruby.
The Big Picture
A review of Dreaming in Code by Joel Spolsky. I've put it here because I think it's a really good reminder of how our mind works - the fact that the human mind could really only concentrate on one thing at a time.
You Used Ruby to Write WHAT?!
Zed Shaw demystifying Ruby
Singularity - Radically Rethinking the OS
Singularity deprecated two priorities important to most successful OS: high performance and backward compatibility. The OS consists of three key architectural features: software-isolated processes, contract-based channels, manifest-based programs.
Ajax and Design Patterns (Javascript Demystified)
Dave Crane on why people struggles with JavaScript. The thing I took away from this is that people try to program JavaScript like how they've programmed Java or C# and JavaScript is not made for that. Dave went into details on JavaScript ..
REST Demystified
There's been a lot of hype about RESTful principles lately. This post goes into the history of SOAP, REST, HTTP and explains why REST is good. The problem being there's no incentives to implement RESTful principles.

Custom List: talk investments

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:19:46 GMT

talk investments

Escape the System - How to invest without being ripped off
By Alan Kohler, Eureka Report. Worth listening, might just saveyou one day.
What Buffett would be buying now ...
Roger Montgomery of Clime Capital Limited on fundamental investing, some very interesting and practical ideas. A must-listen
Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That thePoor and the Middle Class Do Not
By Robert Kiyosaki - on business and investment. Don't expect too much from it the first time around. Come back and read it a year later after you go and think about how you would start and run your own business, better still, start running your business.
ASIC's Money Radio Program
Things that everyone should know already about personal finance.It also serves as a good check list. I would call this a beginners' tutorial to personal finance.
Predictions for the reporting season (June 2006)
carl.daffy@wilsonhtm.com.au looking forward into 2006-2007 financial year.
Credit worthiness guidelines
Take care of your own money because no one else will. Equality as important, take care of your credit ratings because again no one else will.
CEO Interviews by Commsec
CEO Interview archive by Commsec
Don't sell without reading this
Some elements of truth in this.
Keeping your nerve in volatile times
The thrill of pocketing a profit forces many investors into selling shares that are performing well. On the other hand, the desire to avoid disappointment makes us stubbornly hold shares that perform poorly. The end result ...
Damodaran Online
Aswath Damodaran a professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU. I like to think the words of a university profession is more objective and thus more trusting than that of a Wall-Street Analyst. Read his books, available freely online, good stories.
An Introduction to Valuation by Aswath Damodaran
How's this for a wake up call?

Custom List: essential .net toolbox

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:37:50 GMT

essential .net toolbox

Enterprise Library for .NET
I haven't actually had time to investigate using these in commercial projects yet. But I've left it here as a reminder. It looks reasonably good but my gut feeling is that it's a bit bloated (.net purists would love it)
.Net Starter Kit
Good place to start if you have a pet project to work on, also a good way to learn about asp.net if you are a beginner
Lutz Roeder's .Net Reflector
NET. Reflector allows to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL. There's a sequence diagram plugin too, how cool is that!
TCPView
TCPView from the sysinternal guys. Fantastic tool when it comes to debugging TCP/IP connection problems in windows. See the list of other tools available as well, e.g. process explorer etc.
TimeZone Conversion
If you need to do arbitrary conversion from one TimeZone to another using .Net.
SubSonic
A instant data access layer that implements the ActiveRecord pattern. The code is very flexible and supports serialisation, transactions, stored proc, views and can be easily enhanced using partial classes. See the demo, you will be impressed.
TestDriven.Net
Visual studio plugin for running unit tests. Very easy to use, just right click and "Run Tests" on your test class or test project.
Class Diagrams in Visual Studio
Use it, it's very nice. I use it to create unimplemented methods when defining APIs or interfaces. It gives a much better overview of class methods defined for a given class.
Scott Gu on ASP.NET Url Rewriting
Concise tutorial on url-rewriting in asp.net.

Custom List: talk economics and sustainability

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:45:53 GMT

talk economics and sustainability

Race to algae-based biodiesel heats up
I think algae is ultimately a much more feasible fuel source than corn and soy. If i have a chance i would invest $5000 in each of the algae based startup company and hope that one or two of them succeeds in scaling the technology for mass production.
Algae Hydrogen
Now, this is truly exciting, more so than algae-based biodiesel in my view.
An Interest Perspective on China's Economy
(text in Chinese, use a translator)

Custom List: I like these

Tue, 27 May 2008 14:01:31 GMT

I like these

reactable
How cool is this new musical instrument? Amazing stuff
michael jordan (god, he's amazing)
The best of Michael Jordan - he's my hero not only because he'sthe best basketball player ever in history but that his achievements transcends racial barriers.
sketch furniture? (wow)
Combining rapid prototyping system with 3D motion detection, andthe result is amazing, I want to play with this! Man, this must be costing someone a fortune. The next step for this i guess is to combine 3D realtime holographic visualisation.
YU XIANG, you are MIGHTY!!! (soul food)
I really like this, motivates me like nothing else.
coke fountains (wow)
What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane.
multi-touch interaction research (god, it's amazing)
While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact,multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations.
lawrence lessig on creativity
wise-words from george w. bush (hahaha)
This is just so funny, you've got to see it.
a week's worth of art work (nice)
Amazing stuff, similar to the stop motion animation by Gregg Conde, but using arts
wu shu (amazing)
Some spectacular display of 武术 (Wu Shu)
Rhythm of Lines
You will wonder how they've done it in flash. Pretty cool stuff.
Bill Stone: Journey to the center of the Earth ... and beyond! (inspiring)
Bill Stone, the maverick cave explorer who invented robots and dive equipment that have allowed him to plumb Earth's deepest abysses, explains his efforts to build a robot to explore Jupiter's moon Europa ...
The Fantasy Worlds of Jacek Yerka
Jacek Yerka is a Polish surrealist artist, who uses his paintings and pastel drawings to create fantastic imaginary landscapes.
Yao Ming (inspiring)
For reason unknown, Asian youth has always been major basketball fans, Yao Ming alone has inspired a new generation of Asian basketballers.
Origami Boulder (ROFL)
Very witty. a real artist in my opinion, perhaps not so much in his origami boulder, but the site as a whole is a real piece of art. Read at least half of it and I am sure you will agree with me.
History of Apple Products
A pictorial history of apple products
Virtual Barber Shop
This is a really cool demo of 3D audio. Put your earphones on otherwise you won't get it.
Spencer Tunick

Custom List: design inspirations

Wed, 21 May 2008 11:58:00 GMT

design inspirations

Custom List: talk infrastructure/scalability

Mon, 12 May 2008 05:13:29 GMT

talk infrastructure/scalability

FastCGI: A High-Performance Web Server Interface
There's a section in there that explains the subtle distinct between FastCGI and CGI, interesting.
Facebook App: Friends for sale Architecture
This is a really interesting facebook phenomenon
Zed on Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, and More
Zed is the creator of Mongrel. Mongrel is what allows websites built using Ruby on Rails to scale.
Reverse Proxy/Load Balancing
I was researching on the difference between reverse proxies and load balancers. A reverse proxy is commonly used for load balancing but it's more than just that.
High Scalability Site
Great articles on how people like Youtube, Google, Amazon, Flickr scales.
Google MapReduce
MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets.
Scaling MySQL
Some interesting stats on scaling MySQL at various highly trafficked internet sites. E.g. Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia etc.

Custom List: life

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:04:10 GMT

life

Sleep Deprivation is not a badge of Honour

Custom List: talk start-ups/entrepreneurship

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:53:25 GMT

talk start-ups/entrepreneurship

Startup.com - the sequel
remember govWorks? what about startup.com? here's what happened after all that stressful stuff.
IP protection (article)
How do I protect my software? ...
Finding great developers (article)
Where are all those great developers? ...
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups (article)
Paul Graham on The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
Mobiles hope to be 'smart wallet' (reminder)
The mobile phone have many untapped potentials, I've left this here to remind myself to think of mobile applications for the future. This is definitely not a space to miss.
TechCrunch (info)
Can't really go pass this without a look if you are really interested in what other people are doing with their startups.
Carson workshops (info)
the future of web apps
RockStartup
People video documenting their startup (I've never actually ended up following them)
Mercenaries and Missionaries
John Doerr views entrepreneurs as missionaries rather than mercenaries; drive and paranoia (mercenary); passion (missionary). Essentially saying that making meaning is more important than pursuing money when it comes to creating a successful company.
Making meaning in your company
Guy Kawasaki on making meaning in your company, this is one of the fundamental things that I believe in when it comes to creating a company.
The idea does not count only execution matters
A serial french entrepreneur, currently the founder of seesmic (seesmic is a video blogging platform inspired by twitter)
Richard Brandson in Meet the CEO series by UNSW
Very useful for all entrepreneur i think.
Ken Wilcox on Corporate Culture and Strategy
An insight into how a bank focusing on helping entrepreneur works. Its lessons in the journey to success.
Paul Graham at Startup School 2008
Paul Graham on Benevolence
Paul Graham's Essays
Paul Graham on startups.

Book List: to read

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:08:39 GMT

to read

Forbes Magazine: Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (Forbes)
Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends & Influence People (read)
Fantastic book, also just found out it's on the top 10 most under rated business book.
Alan Greenspan: The Age of Turbulence (read)
Greenspan's Auto-Biography, a fantastic insight into Greenspan's life and thoughts. And as expected I've learnt a lot about economics.

Custom List: talk software patterns/standards

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:35:17 GMT

talk software patterns/standards

Visitor (Behavioral Pattern)
Visitor lets you define a new operation without changing the classes of the elements on which it operates.
Facade (Structural Pattern)
Provide a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. Façade defines a higher-level interface that makes the subsystem easier to use. (basically presents a simpler interface to the outside world)
Factory Method (Creational Pattern)
Factory Method lets a class defer instantiation to subclasses at run time. This might be used to swap in and out components used by a system. E.g. you might want change the logging component used in a system by simply changing the configuration file.
Singleton (Creational Pattern)
Ensure a class has only one instance and provide a global point of access to it. (E.g. when you want to instantiate one and only one thread for a particular background service)
Observer (Behavioral Pattern)
Define a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its dependents are notified and updated automatically.
KISS principle
Albert Einstein - "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
C# Coding Standard/Naming Conventions
Two C# coding standards I've compiled giving a bit of explanation which to use. Both are almost identical, I'll recommend using the Microsoft one, it's more concise and quicker to skim through
Data Access Patterns for .Net Applications
"This tutorial explains the three architectural patterns you should consider when designing your next application." - Personally I prefer object relational mapping, e.g. the ActiveRecord pattern, but definitely a good read.
Strategy Pattern
This is a very interesting one, a new one for me. I have seen it in a presentation on how it can be used but haven't really look into details yet.
Ajax and Design Patterns
Dave Crane on Ajax and how Design Patterns might be used when implementing JavaScript based browser-based rich client application.
Command Pattern
This is a very nice one, the basic crux is to use it one class to represent a single action. This is particularly useful for implementing Business Processes where all the business logic for a given action are encapsulated within one class.

Custom List: talk business

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:40:34 GMT

talk business

Writing a business plan with PlanHQ
PlanHQ works much better than a business plan template. It provides a skeleton business plan to help keep your business on track as it grows. However, I don't necessarily think a business is essential for every business, especially for startups.
Meet The CEO
The meet the ceo series is one of a number of programs initiated by the Australian School of Business Advisory Council.
Fire & Motion - or listen to your customers
Joel Spolsky on what he thinks is the best strategy for any business.
Glastonbury 2007 'generated £73m'
I thought this was very interesting, an example of how events affects local economies, and really I just want to keep it here for myself for future reference.

Custom List: my favourite entrepreneurs

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:18:04 GMT

my favourite entrepreneurs

Richard Branson
He has such humility, perhaps so unexpected of him. At least that's how i first reacted after seeing a few video interviews with Branson. He's very softly spoken but with great charisma, a skill that probably can't be learnt.

Custom List: talk software development

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:32:48 GMT

talk software development

Optimization: Your Worst Enemy - Joseph M. Newcomer
Optimization matters only when it matters. When it matters, it matters a lot, but until you know that it matters, don't waste a lot of time doing it. Even if you know it matters, you need to know where it matters.
Venkat Subramaniam on Pragmatic Agile Adoption
This is a must watch for all software developers. Wise-man withsome very wise words.
Scrum Boosts Effectiveness at the BBC
Andrew Scotland talks about introducing scrum to BBC. Andy echosthe same incremental approach that Venkat talked about in his video. Their experience is that scrum should be a flexible approach that modes itself to a particular team.
Password Security Explained
A very concise presentation of password security issues.

Custom List: inspirational movies

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:10:48 GMT

inspirational movies

Remember the Titans
An inspirational movie on how sport brought people together, how football transcended race (I think this is a true story)

Custom List: handy webbies

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:41:20 GMT

handy webbies

Nifty rounded corners
Pretty nifty rounded corners without any images

Custom List: friends

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:13:38 GMT

friends

Spring
you'll be shocked, this is my aunty ..
Emong
my kid friend (family friend) ...
Jordan
used to be my cs buddy ..
Ehremin
uni friend
Charlotte
typically nice & quiet ..
Alex
mmm...
Tinh Trieu
uni friend
Loz
used to work with me
Fielding
childhood friend (china)
Hu Huynh
industrial designer
Ting
my girl friend
Jackie
the drum machine
Sheva
volunteer .net evangelist
Rob Barac
black humorist
Zheng Zhou
my other cousin
Anna
boring
Yi Zhang
my cousin
Leakkhena Ung
shares guru
John K
The short film producer, the future medical doctor ....
Michelle W
cat woman
Michelle Z
ting's friend from newcastle, same surname as mine (rare)

Custom List: tea house

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:53:23 GMT

tea house

Patterns & Practices - Enterprise Library Home
The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges.
SSW Rules to Better ....
development guidelines and standards
Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
Joel on Software
a software developer in new york
Channel 9 (MSDN)
.net community
Bill Gates Webcasts
one of the few, who inspires me
Choice
NGO dedicated to helping consumers get the best deals. This saves me a lot of time shopping around for credit cards etc, for a small fee of $16.95 per quarter you get reports for all sorts of things so you don't have to do much research yourself.
Info Queue
online community focused on change and innovation in enterprisesoftware development
ASP.NET Videos
Ajax made simple, allowing you to concentrate on business needsrather than technical know-how.
SQL Server - Best Practices
Drawing on the extensive experience and expertise from respecteddevelopers and engineers at Microsoft as they walk you through the specifics on solving particularly difficult issues.
Educators Corner - Entrepreneurship Education Resources
The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) Educators Corneris a free online archive of entrepreneurship resources for teaching and learning. The mission of the project is to support and encourage faculty around the world who teach entrepreneurship to
DeviantART
really cool visual arts

Custom List: talk trading

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:21:02 GMT

talk trading

T3 instalment: receipt or warrant? What's the difference?
Receipt or warrant? What's the difference?
Obey the stop signs
Louise Bedford explains why following a sound stop loss strategyis an essential skill for share trading.Trading without a stop loss is like rock climbing without a safety harness.

Custom List: wok de theoretics

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:00:48 GMT

wok de theoretics

Topic Maps
An abstract concept which could be exploited to implement betterIS navigations
Game Theory
wide range of practical application from business to economics to politics an perhaps even computer science
The Laws of Identity
your choice between one identity or multi-indentity for different context