Tuesday, October 6, 2015

My first Hackathon experience



It was my first experience joining a Hackathon Competition. Thanks to my ex-colleague from IBM, I managed to find something I want to accomplish long time ago. To join a geek kinda competition. :)
This Changi Airport Hackathon was organized by UP Singapore and the competition lasted around 24 hours excluding the pre-workshop.

Before the event started, there was a pre-hackathon workshop where the organizer will introduce the background challenges to tell us about the key challenges which Changi Airport encountered. From there you get to know the key problems and opportunities which you might be able to collaborate with Changi Airport in future if your project seems to be feasible for them. It is also the time to find the suitable members to join as a team for the hackathon.

Following that after a few days, there is Ideation Workshop where the exercises will help you to share observation participate in the discussion and your ideas to share with them. This will be the final opportunity to form / join a team for the hackathon.

On Day 1 of the hackathon, this is where your solution started and start coding. There is also consultants around to advise you if your idea/prototype. For my team, we were thinking about experiencing and enhancing the capabilities of engaging the customer better by introducing an interactive concierge using IBM Watson Dialog. Something like Cortana built into i-Changi App helping to answer any queries and suggesting ways to spend their time at the airport.



On Day 2 is where you do your final touchup and ready for your final presentation. There will be presentation clinics which will help to refine your presentation. It will be judged by the top level management from Changi Airport Group and the result will be disclosed on that day. I am glad that team won the 3rd prize despite we were really rushing to get the app running up and meet the minimum baseline objective.



This is what I learned from my first hackathon.
  • Preparation - This one I guess everyone should know. Things what to bring for that day. Don't forget your jacket! You will be staying the whole day in a room and it might be freezing for you.
  • Decided for an idea - The time you step into the place on day 1, you should have a glimpse of an idea how your final idea and end product should look like.
  • Communication - Your team should have agree on what to work and how should it be done.
  • Keep the scope small - We know that every ideas are great to have but the most important thing is that can it be delivered within timeframe? Are the deliverables to big to cover? Especially for events like hackathon, your team cannot afford to make any mistake in the later part and discovered it is impossible to finish. there is no such thing as plan B here.
  • Know what to use for your tools - I admit I wasn't prepare for this event as my software was not ready when the day starts. I loss some of the hours to get everything done and get started.
  • Bring your tumbler or water bottle - as most hackathons was held indoor, they usually host in very cold places. You need to remember to bring your jacket and your bottle just in case u need to warm yourself up.
  • Dual monitor - I find out myself by working with 1 monitor really lowered my productivity. If possible invest a portable usb-powered monitor if you can, it helps alot.
Would I join another competition again? Yes I would! Though its pretty intense but its also quite challenging and satisfying!

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Tweets on Singapore General Election 2015

GE2015 dashboard tweets is created by me. It is based on my free time and interest to know the insights about what people are talking about during the election days. It is not supported, funded or aligned with any political party. Pls reminded that these information does not ask you who to vote for. It is just information extracted from tweets from one main source, twitter.

Compare to my previous project, I have added sentiment scores to show if the tweets is geared towards negative or positive tweets.

You can check out the interactive dashboard here.


Sentiment words based from : http://www.cs.uic.edu/~liub/FBS/sentiment-analysis.html

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

A 'Relevant' Resume.

In the world of job market opportunity, every resume just look the same. Mentioning about your success, promoting your skillsets, bragging out your achievements...

Ever wonder of doing a different resume?

http://designtaxi.com/news/377846/Man-Fills-R-sum-With-Failures-Non-Skills-Gets-Eight-Responses-In-A-Month/

This may actually work? I may try out next time to see hows the response. :)

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Heart of a Gamer

One of the person whom I respected most and brought me fun during my childhood times.

I can still remember his speech from GDC. I remembered that I literally listened the whole speech. Especially when he first introduced himself on the stage.

On my business card, I am a corporate president.
In my mind, I am a game developer.
But in my heart, I am a gamer.

http://gdcvault.com/play/1014847/

RIP Mr Iwata.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

My first Raspberry Pi project


I won a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B during the Singapore Microsoft Build 2015 at Sentosa Resort World.

Rather I was quite surprised by it because it was the last prize that was won by me. (How I wish I have won the Microsoft Band too so I can work on something!) I have actually planning to get either one soon maybe end of this year or next as I am thinking to work on some IoT project on home automation.

Anyway here's how it look like after unboxing it.
The size is about a little bigger than a credit card size

My initial project is to make a casing for it

Well it didn't quite make it because

  • It was left in open air and there is no way for me to cover it up.
  • The plugs didn't fit quite well as it was obstructed with the lego pieces from Mindstorm.
  • It was quite flimsy and not easy to remove the pi.
I decided to scrap it and worked on using lego bricks instead and here is my result.



Start from the left : Usb cable as powered adapter, HDMI cable. RJ-45 cable and Bluetooth dongle to control my keyboard and mouse.

The interior how it looks like.

Installed Kodi aka xbmc for media box home entertainment. Able to stream internet TV without any lag in performance. Very satisfied how small this Raspberry Pi 2 can do with just a small piece of device that cost 49 SGD. You can get it from here to start your own project too!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Tweets on Mr Lee Kuan Yew before and after his passing.

I have created a project collecting information on social media about Founding Father of Singapore Mr Lee Kuan Yew to find out what are the people tweeting and also who are the people tweeting about it most.

You can use visualization here.

Unfortunately one of the Tableau component is not showing up and leaving a blank space on the right. I will update it when they get back to me. That space was for the information who is the person tweeting it and what he is currently tweeting. Scary huh?

Out of Memory Exception running Java in R


I encounter this problem when I tried to run a function that execute Java to export a dataset from R to xlsx. It seems like its not a good way to export large dataset using the library(xlsx) as it may eat up the java memory. So I do I resolve this?

I have tried running the following command to expand the heap size but it does not work. options(java.parameters = "-Xmx1000m")

The way I found is to use XLConnect library.

Instead of using write.xlsx(myDataset, file = "myfile.xlsx") from the xlsx library, I used library(XLConnect).

writeWorksheetToFile(myFile, data=mydataset, sheet="mySheet")

It has a function to clear the memory, xlcFreeMemory().

If all else fails, try writing to CSV format then convert into xlsx from Excel.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

V Day... Vader Day

V Day... Vader Day.
Vader promise not to use the force on Valentines Day. Instead, he chose another "force".

Friday, January 30, 2015

Java plugins not able to run on Chrome problem.

Recently Java has new update for their application and may need you to replace your old version of your Java. There are quite a number of users encountering an issue about chrome not able to run the plugins.

They tried various way from uninstall and install Java completely. The reason it does not work is not due to anything bug errors. It depends on your main system. If you have follow some of the tech news recently, chrome has updated their application to 64bit. Main reason why it is unable to install is simply the link java website provided by default only direct you to 32bit updates.

To ensure that you have the similar issue, check if you are running 64 bit chrome by following these steps.

1. Go to About page from the hamburger icon.

2. Check if you are running 64bit to resolve this problem.


3. Go to this http://java.com/en/download. Click download and you will have options to go for other downloads.

4. Download the 64bit, close the broswer and install it.

Voila! You can now run java plugins on chrome! Hope it helps you!

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Galactic Empire Got Talent!

Galactic Empire Got Talent

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away... Darth Vader do spends alot of time holding concerts around the universe before attacking Corellian corvette Tantive IV...

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Lego 300

Lego 300

THIS IS SPARTAaaaaaaaaa~~~~~~~~!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Coming Soon...

Wink

After being absent in lego photography for 3 years, I think its time I should revisit this hobby. :)