From Leisure Suit Larry to software development

I suddenly remember an old game call Leisure Suit Larry (in the Land of the Lounge Lizards). This is an adventure game released by Sierra Online during the 80s on PC (XT), the game feature with some adult content, but is a funny game. The game is about Larry looking for (real) love in the city of Lost Wages (the name is a humor by itself, isn’t it?) .

The game has a series of 7 (or 8? I am not sure), I play the part 1 and part 2, can’t even finish the game without the clues.

The game was written by Al Lowe. Al Lowe is a musician... and a game designer, I am not sure he does programming as well. The theme song of Leisure Suit Larry is composed by Al Lowe, you can download from here.

Many of the developers of the original Apple Macintosh 128k operating system like art and music. Jef Raskin who started the Apple Macintosh project like music and composing. Bill Atkinson, one of the key developers for the Macintosh operating system, is a photographer, he is on full time photographing now.

In later development of Macintosh OS, Apple always choose a musical term as the code name for the operating system, eg. Harmony (Mac OS 7.6), Tempo (Mac OS 8), Allegro (Mac OS 8.5). Rhapsody and Copland, the two projects before OS X are music related as well. Copland named after a composer, Aaron Copland. May be these two later project is just a naming convention after the early development of Mac OS, but those developers in early days of Apple, like music.

To become a software developer, other than programming skill, you must be creative and artistic, because programming is an art itself. In the 80s, musician and game designer learn about programming, so they can create, design and develop the software. These days software developer just coding, that will be sad.

In 80s, scientist, physician, musician learn programming because they think software development is interesting. In 90s, most people learn programming to secure a good job and good salary. In 2000s, I know some software development friends leaving the industry and work as art designer, film director and play in a band, that is real sad (for software development industry).

unplug for firefox browser

There are many ways to download an embedded streaming video, in youtube and apple movie trailer.

Using unplug plugins for firefox browser is just one of those, is easy to use. If you are not using firefox browser, may be you can consider install one in your system.

After installed unplug, you should see a fish icon with green color at the right side of url input box of the browser. You access to youtube website, click on the fish icon, it will extract out the video link.

unplug, download embedded video

Just click on the link should download the streaming video. You can use VLC player to view you video on desktop.

Oracle at Sun Tech Days Malaysia 2007

I didn't attend any of the Oracle presentations because I seldom use their products.

Everyone should remember the "Wheel of Oracle".

Spin the wheel and see what type of free gift you get

You submit your feed back form, you get a free gift from Oracle. You spin the wheel and try your luck, see what type of gift you get. Most people get a red color plastic cup. May be they have do some tricks to the "Wheel of Oracle".

Is a free gift, so no complains.

speakers at Sun Tech Days Malaysia 2007

I like to evaluate speakers, because speakers are key to the success of the event.

James Gosling speak in Sun Tech Days

These are the list of speakers who speak in Sun Tech Days.

I can't remember all the speakers on stage. These speakers came from all over the world, like Malaysia, China, India, Australia, South America and North America. I just list a few of them.

Angela M. Caicedo. Most impressive with her j2me presentation and "Minority Report" demo. She don't speak fast during her presentation, so audience can digest what she says. She choose the demo to show the audience, simple and clear.

Lee Chuk Munn. I have seen Chuk Munn a few times in other Sun events, I think he is experience on stage. He choose the right content, not boring even though sometimes his presentation is quite technical. He is a Malaysian.

Peter Karlsson. He speak quite fast but still easy to understand, and he says he work with Microsoft before.

Chris Armes. Chris is big size, so you will not miss out him. He is the host on OpenSolaris day.

Matt Thompson. He speak in an open source session, I think he is a marketing guys.

Joey Shen. A lot of people don't like his speech, but I think he do a good presentation for the open source license.

All speaker do their homework, it need a lot of preparation before on stage. I think every speakers do a good job.

Friends at Sun Tech Days Malaysia 2007

I meet a few friends that I have not seen for quite some time during Sun Tech Days 2007 at KLCC, like Aizatt, Tiang Hin, Lee Wee Jon, Ai Lin, Ethan Soo. I almost can't recognize some of the faces, and some of them can't recognize me too. IT world is a small world.

Sun Tech Days is great event, I am lazy to blog. I do a search in Google, Aizatt blog it. Aizatt blog quite frequent. I only blog when I have the mood to blog.

Open speech by Managing Director of Sun Microsystems, Mr. Gan Boon San, invited guest Deputy Minister of Science Technology and Innovation Malaysia, YB Dato’ Kong Cho Ha. Follow by James Gosling's keynote. Yes, James Gosling did came, but he just give talks on the first day (7 Mar 2007) opening, and not other session.

An air ticket was give out during the opening, winner can fly to USA to attend the JavaOne conference in May, I am not the winner. Early bird stand a chance to win an iPod, it was given out in the morning as well.

The following events as presentation split into three tracks, web, java and solaris, just choose what you like to attend.

They said about 1500 attendees, but don't worried, there is sufficient of food supply. Enough food for lunch and tea break, good review of technology during the presentation, a lot of freebies. If you pay one hundred and twenties for the event, it worth more than that.

Demos at SUN Tech Days Malaysia 2007

I think most people who attended the SUN Tech Days Malaysia was impressed by the few demos shown at the opening of events.

There a six demos:-

1. Java is fast. They compare the performance of a fibonacci program, written with Java and C/C++. The Java performance is as good as those C/C++ program (if is not faster).

2. Petstore 2.0 example. SUN has a popular J2EE petstore example, the SUN people make it more interesting with web 2.0. If you are developing web application and you don't know what is web 2.0, this will wake you up.

3. The remote tanker. Demo shown how to control the tanker movement and action using a mobile phones, definitely is a java enable phones. I heard there will be more java toys will be shown during the JavaOne in America, on this coming May.

4. Netbean IDE. A lot of users already know Netbean, now it came with java mobile edition, for java mobile application development.

5. Java mail client. Java can write application with rich GUI interface.

6. New search technology for multimedia. SUN develop a search technology, which search mp3 with tunes (not text), you can search mp3 with similar tunes, style or genes. I feel like I am in Apple conference, because iTunes and iPod are related to this type of technology.

7. "Minority Report" demo. SUN has a new desktop call Looking Glass, they write an interface to capture the hand movement (with the glove). Use the hand movement to move the cursor, and grab object on the desktop, just like the system use in the "Minority Report" movie. The system is not stable, but good enough to impress everyone.

Each demo was give about 5 minutes time. The demo is short, but very impressive.

iPhone Hello commercial

You know Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) is good at advertising, most remarkable is their Macintosh 1984 superbowl commercials. It only shown once during the superbowl game, but it repeated uncounted times on News and TV. That’s Apple.

iPhone Hello, Apple commercial

In sync with the OSCAR Academic Awards, Apple shown the first iPhone commercial, intercut movies/TV scenes of famous actors and actress say ‘Hello’ through phone. The commercial was shown during 79th Academy Awards.

Some people comment the iPhone Hello commercial is not as good as the other Apple commercial, but I think is nice.

There is 31 movie scenes, how many actors/actress can you recognized, and what is the movies name?

Refer here and here.