Sheffield vs Manchester vs Leeds

(Picture from BBC)
Apparently Sheffield has been chosed to represent the UK at Venice Biennale of Architecture (although I can’t really find it mentioned in its website).

I’ve lived in Sheffield for about 6 years now, plus a year back in 1996. I’ve always wondered why Leeds which is supposedly much smaller seemed more vibrant. The sidebar in the BBC article says it all: Sheffield is poorer, less educated, and shrinking working age population.

Personally, I love Sheffield, although it would be nice to have a Manchester-class airport with (almost) direct flights to Indonesia! Maybe some airline will start flying from Robin Hood.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil 1

Partial classes in C# 2.0: No Chocolate Needed

While trying to explain #region in C# to a new programmer, I came across this Architectonic post. I wonder what he thinks of partial classes in C# 2.0. It removes the turd entirely to a different place. In fact, as in #region, I feel that partial classes was designed to do exactly this: handle and hide generated code.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Is Malaysia better than Indonesia?

Probably, but not by much according to Unspun. I have friend (Indonesian) who is absolutely nuts about Malaysia. But Indonesia’s actually been there first, during the Soeharto era, particularly 80s and 90s. We were stable, growing, hailed as an economic success. The price? 1998. So is Malaysia heading for a crash? Maybe, maybe not. But if you are an Indonesian that longs for the stability and certainty of the 80s, then you should go live in Malaysia.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil 1

THIS is a flower!


THIS is a flower!

Originally uploaded by wpsardjono.
Recently we went on a walk. Not just any walk, a looong walk. About 7 km in 2.5 hours. Amazingly Abyan did it in his stride. He even become an inspiration for the adults: “If he can do it, so can I”.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil 1

Windows Live Writer blog client

So it seems there is a new client on the block… from Microsoft. It recognizes WordPress.com just fine. When it said WYSIWYG, it weren’t kidding. It actually downloads the CSS etc for this blog, so you are using the exact same font, width of screen, the lot. Clean interface, although by doing that it looks different to other Windows XP apps. Or is this new Vista Ui thingy?

So, for in browser blogging just use Performancing for Firefox, for desktop blogging use Windows Live Writer. Easy.

(Just about to post, found that I couldn’t easily add categories on the fly. Bummer.)

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Why Employees Make Great Entrepreneurs

I agree with Dharmesh on why students make great entrepreneurs. Together with Paul Graham’s reasoning, it is enough for me to let go of my need as a parent for total safety for my kids. I will certainly encourage them to consider “riskier” paths as well as “safer” paths.

However, for myself, this is a bit too late since I am already one of those employees, with a family, mortgage, loans and what have you. So I will now list the reasons why I would make great entrepreneurs, partly to see whether something can be salvaged for us salaried employees in a corporate environment.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

  1. Realistic Optimism The optimism that we do have are realistic rather than starry eyed. We’ve seen mini-startups (internal projects) succeed or fail enough times to know what works and what doesn’t.
  2. Great Customer Contacts We already met the all important customers, or at least we know exactly where to find them. They’re the ones that our current company does not want to engage, or maybe they want to but cannot.
  3. Good Networking Because we go to board meetings and trade shows and conferences and user groups, we know many people who can help in our startup, either as an investor, partner, a consultant, beta tester, or whatever.
  4. Financially Aware Hey, we survived long enough to read Dharmesh’s blog, didn’t we? Yes, we have bills to pay, but we managed somehow to find enough cash to pay them (well maybe not ALL of them). So we already know the importance of hard cash rather than eyeballs or strategic partners stuff. We know being profitable is not enough, you need excellent cashflow as well.
  5. Excellent People Skills We know that great products come from great companies because they have great people. We already have the skills to weed out deadbeats from our projects. To give our star programmers freedom to innovate. To impress our boss enough to be given the resources. To impress customers enough to always buy and upgrade to new technologies from us.
  6. Kids If all else fails, we have kids in school. We can tell them to start a business, taking the role of a business angel instead. How cool is that?

There you are, for all employees, rejoice. We can be great entrepreneurs as well.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil