Category: Experience Sharing

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Experience Sharing

Ripping DVD Tracks For Your iPod, MP3 Player, And Wireless Phone

Playing Ayumi Hamasaki’s video on my new N95 8GB

Am I the only one who is obsessed with importing my favorite music video clips into a portable device while keeping each track separate? I have been asking my circles of friends, from techno-geeks to don’t-ask-me-I-am-just-a-user, but no one can give me a satisfactory answer. So I have decided to try to find an answer myself, an answer that is safe and free-of-charge. Click here for a dedicated article on how I do it.

Now, with more and more portable devices that are capable to play video clips in an acceptable size and quality, watching your favorite video clips on the go is indeed a God sent reality. Imagine, you are squeezed into a train and your destination is just a few stops away. You don’t have your book or magazine with you and you are bored staring at a train full of bored people. Listening to music is just not good enough. What shall you do? Yes, take out your iPod, or MP3 Player, or wireless phone and watch your favorite video clips. Your boyfriend or girlfriend is late again and you have absolutely nothing better to do, what shall you do? That’s right, take out your portable device, watch a clip or two of your favorite homemade video, and be reminded why you still love that person despite the fact that he or she is yet again late. Or when you are stuck in a jam at CTE, cars are not moving and you car is on handbrake, what shall you do?

Okay, probably not for the last scenario but you get the drift.

I am surprised that none of the mainstream software application allows ripping of DVD tracks into a portable format with a click of a button. We can rip audio track into MP3 format. Why can’t we do the same for the DVD that comes with the CD that I own? There are software applications out there that may do the job with just a click. Most of them are on trial version and not free-of-charge. I also have had bad experience installing and un-installing these third party software (even for that famous video converter for iPod) ended up with system corruption here and there. Finally, not many out there have the feature of allowing you to rip your DVD track-by-track much like the audio CD. Usually the end result is one huge video file that takes up too much space in your precious portable device.

So, are you ready to read more?

Disclaimer: My criteria may be different from yours.  If you are happy with installing trial or full versions of third party software, please continue to do so. I also prefer the total flexibility of extracting any part of the video that I want.

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Experience Sharing Reflection

A New Theme For Year 2008

One mountain at Lantau Island, Hong Kong

I am still learning this process of self-reflecting of the past and goal setting for the new year. Here, I am going to share with you what seems to work over the years, what doesn’t, and what my plan for 2008 is going to be. Let me tell you upfront what does not work: not planning for the new year at all. To borrow a Chinese idiom “一年之計在於春，一日之計在於晨” (loosely translates to “a year’s plan lies in spring [i.e. the beginning of the year], a day’s plan lies in the morning”), now is a good time to plan ahead. For those years that I did not plan, I have no recollection of what I have achieved.

I remember when I was in my twenties, I used to have this one-worded theme for each year. Such a theme is easy to remember, relevant, and if chosen right, it seems to stick into my mind throughout the year, in everything I do. Let me give you an example. One year, I reflected upon my 16 to 20 working hours a day, 7 days a year and I said to myself: enough is enough. I could earn all those overtime paid and achieve all the career progression I wanted but I was missing all that life has to offer. So, I picked a theme “Balance”. Mind you, it was not easy to seek a work life balance back then. When I did come home while the sun was still up, I became uneasy not knowing what to do or where to do. I ended up having the feeling that I have wasted an evening not working. Miraculously, with that theme “Balance”, I seemed to have every single and small decision made based upon that word “Balance”. It worked way too well. I rejected overtime requests or did all that I could to prevent myself and my team going down that path of long hours and no life. It went so well that it me took a couple of years to find the balance. These days, I work and do my best to make sure that the people in my network work the most effective way during the office hours and in most cases, we all go home on time. Picking the right theme can be powerful. And this can work for you too!

Last year was interesting not just because I only worked for the later half of the year, I did my planning in a scorecard style. As you may notice, I stop posting the monthly result after the first three months. You may wish to know that I did track my progress till the middle of the year but I found it quite boring to publish the results in my site every beginning of the month. I thought I did pretty badly over the year on this rather ambitious scorecard but it is not quite the case. OK, I think I only achieve a 40% which to be fair, under my “wonderful” color coding system, it is a yellow that means “a mix of ups and downs”. And it is because of this scorecard, I did climb the Mount Kinabalu and started my oil painting hobby that count as two extraordinary projects. Also, I did take the initiative to plan the visit to Melbourne, my surprise visit to Jakarta, and my visit to Hong Kong/Macau. By now, I think I have hit the travel budget target over and above. I seriously have cut down my computer gaming hours a lot (my big, big problem in year 2005/6). The target set somehow worked as the “Balance” theme to me. I have this cautious warning in my head of not hitting the said target every time I played. Lastly, hitting the career fulfillment index is a bit of a luck factor. But then again, I did put effort in finding what I want.  Based on just these four tiny achievements, I can say 2007 has been fruitful to me.

So, what’s my plan for year 2008? I want to go back to my theme driven way of life. After much consideration with candidates such as “Take Risk, Be Bold” or “Be Bold, Take Risk” (both are different by the way) or others, I have decided on …

“Do It”.

Yes, parking ideas of things that I want to do at the back my my head or at the bottom of my to-do list is not good. I need to … “do it”. If I need to be bold, so be it. If I need to take calculated risk, so be it too. The most important thing is, I have to action on what I have set to do, or rather what my heart has set to do. I shall count the number of achievements – however small or big – over the year as an indication of success. Hopefully, this theme will do wonders to me, the same way as “Balance” did to me years ago.

As for the personal scorecard way of life, I am not ready to ditch it completely as yet. Over this few days I am going to revisit the measurements and targets and to rethink how it can be aligned to my new theme. I have learned that this way of monitoring progress has two main challenges: the constant stress to meet target and the day-to-day chore of taking down the actual measurements. I have to find ways to make this monitoring progress a fun process (perhaps tie the increment progress to small rewards) and I have to find ways to record the measurements in the most convenient way (such as a calendar by the rice cooker to tick off days that I have home cooked meals). Scorecard way of life, I believe, is still a good way to discipline my rather undisciplined life. Stay tuned.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you think this is going to work for me? And what is your plan going ahead?

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Experience Sharing

Large Group Activity With Straws And Masking Tape … And A Twist

My friends from my last job, I am sure, can readily relate to what I am going to write here. Head to part 2 if you wish. For the benefit of the rest of the avid readers, let me elaborate just a little bit. In the past, some of our projects involved having a full day workshop with a large group of clients (anywhere from 20 to 80). You see, giving lecture on strategy can be boring to the participants, even if it is half an hour per topic. Having break-out sessions brainstorming on how to articulate and measure strategy can be both tiring and dry. So what we consultants did was to make their days fun and memorable. The intangible value as you may say. These are the people who have stepped out of their daily operation and have a chance to finally socialize. To us, we have a piece of deliverable to complete and we need to tap onto their brains. To them, they just want to have a good time and finally get to chat with the girl in the next cubicle near to them or near the other door far far away.

It is not until I have made a switch out of my last career do I realize what it is like viewing from the other side. Recently I have attended a team building event organized by an external party hosted at Sentosa. I must say, the event triggered a walk down the memory lane and some of the ideas that this organizer has is refreshing.

PART ONE – SELLING THE FUN FACTOR

There are many ways to get work done. Nothing beats the fun way. In the past, I was used to have a group of capable and creative consultants who took part in spicing up the events. If I am going to sell you a piece of work that involves X number of people Y number of hours in a duration of Z number of weeks and you will have this wonderful piece of deliverable that propels your organization to a higher level, you may bite onto it, you may not. If I am going to sell you a series of events and working sessions that not only will you have the same piece of deliverable, but also your team (apparently large) will have a chance to bond with one another, new ideas will be harvested from the ground (read: buy in … further read: change management) … and you can even throw in a BBQ session in the end of the day so as to boost morale. Now, that sales pitch flies, I am telling you.

To make the day fun, it is not that hard. First, split the boring stuffs (read: real work) into pieces. Make sure they are well spaced out with a 10.30am tea break (cannot be too close to breakfast nor lunch) and a 4pm tea break. If the group is new, throw in an “Icebreaker” activity. At appropriate timing, throw in an “Energizer” activity to break the monotonous of the facilitated session. Or just to re-focus the audience back onto the day’s activities. Did you know that when you gather a group of people after the lunch hours, their minds are still somewhere out there? An “Energizer” activity helps them to forget what occupies their minds and to bring them back to Planet Earth.

My team has lots of creative ideas. We seldom recycled the same activity too many times. And we always found ways to add a twist to the old games. There are many ways to carry out “Icebreaker” activity. The key is to let people get to know one another better. One of my favorites is to ask each person to draw a symbol that represent themselves on a piece of paper and within each group, go round the circle and present what this symbol means to them. In turn, we consultants got to pick people in random to present their pictures on stage. It is really not that tough to find some funny ones. Usually you can judge the reaction from the audience to see which one to pick. And don’t forget to pick up the ones from the bosses. People usually have a good laugh out of it. Of course, you can ask everyone to stick their pictures onto the walls so that people get to see what others are like during breaks.

“Energizer” usually ties back to the theme of the topic the consultants want to talk about next. Some can be as simple as a quiz with simple scoring system. Some can be as straightforward as a puzzle solving competition amongst teams. Perhaps I am an engineer in training, I love the ones that involve people building things.

Straws and masking tape are wonderful materials when it comes to building activities. Off the head, we used to have “build a bridge” or “build a tower”. The specifications are flashed out via the projectors and each team is given 20 mins or half an hour to complete the task.

PART TWO – MORE STRAWS AND MASKING TAPE

What a role reversal. Now I get to play the games that the external organizers put together! Hooray! I was excited because for the past two years or so, I only got to see people play the “Energizer” games, scratching my head and the heads of my team to think of the next better and more fulfilling game.

For one of the indoor games that we played in Sentosa, the objective was simple: build a track to keep a ping pong ball in motion. Whichever team that clocks in the longest time wins. Each team was given 1 hour to complete the task.

1 hour?! Isn’t it a bit … too long.

I was amazed at how time flew.

The twist I was talking about is not keeping a ping pong ball in motion for the longest time (though I must say it is refreshing on its own). 15 minutes into the activity, we were instructed to send 2 of our members into another team for 5 minutes and in return, we received 2 new members from a different team (hence, not a swap of team members between two teams but rather a rotation of team members). It was interesting because suddenly there was new idea injecting into the our team and those who got send away would bring back new idea from a totally different team.

30 minutes into the activity, we were asked to abandon our own track and to take over our next team’s work. That was actually quite interesting. Some of our initial reaction was … to sabotage another team’s work. But that quickly dissolved I am sure. Others worked on the half baked track in fear that we have to take over the work from then on. Of course, some of us genuinely wanted to help.

I still remember how much shock we had when we looked at the track that hardly worked. One side of the support was collapsing and we were at lost as in what to do next. I started working on the support and some others started working on the track. And within 10 minutes, we actually got a working prototype! We loved it so much that we did not want to move back to our old track – but we did have to, as announced by the organizer.

You would have thought that we all more or less built the same thing right? Well, while we all have the concept of oscillation in order to keep the ball in motion for as long as possible (according to the organizer, not many actually thought of that) and we all finished on time (our department is responsible in delivering projects … duh … job hazard), our designs varied. My team has come up with a very neat and simple design rested on table with moderate height. One team has the height of twice of ours rested on the floor. Another team went for the length. One created a very long track (about 4 meters) with a few humps. Another one made a small circular track that spiralled towards the center. I noticed that those teams that built the structure on the floor, the structure itself tended to be a lot bigger.

Another interesting piece of fact is that the result did not vary much despite such a variation in design. The timing was in the region of 40 seconds for all of us. I wonder if I can create a mathematical model based on that one day. It is a pretty fun game. Give it a try when you have a large group next time.

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Experience Sharing My Hobbies Oil Painting

First Experience With Oil Painting

Consultants are as such: we try to learn something fast, repackage the information, and sound as though we know the topic in depth. As you can see, my first oil painting is still amateurish and this article is definitely not about how-to-paint-oils. But rather a sharing of the fun experience I have when I temporary converted the common bedroom into a humble painting studio.

As shown in the picture above, I have a humble setup painting from “life”. To give you a better appreciation of what are the items for, I have created two larger images with some labels on them.

An easel is a stand that holds a canvas or a board. Traditionally, easels are made of wood. I chose a modern folding one. If you pay attention, easels are commonly used in the shopping malls for advertisement.

Since I am not going to spend an insane amount of cash to paint on canvas, I use oil painting tablet and have it stuck onto a board with double-sided tape. A good light source is important because light brings out the colours of the subject. I made a simple view-finder (aspect ratio must be maintained) to help me in sketching.

I have oiled my palette with linseed oil before first use and guess what? I oiled the wrong side. Moving on, we have the paints and lots of brushes. Dippers are the small tiny containers to hold the turpentine (to make the paint thinner) and linseed oil (to thicken the paint). Paper towels are useful in cleaning the brushes between colour switching. Some paint with a palette knife while for me, as of now, I use it to scrap the paint off the palette at the end of the painting session.

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Experience Sharing Reflection

My Personal Scorecard for 2007

I have been toying with the idea of publishing a book on Personal Scorecard with my ex-colleagues when I was providing professional service to the military units and formations in crafting out the Balanced Scorecards. Personal Scorecard is not easy as we may or may not know our purpose in life. Without knowing our purpose in life, whatever we do today may or may not take us to where we want to be – that is if we want to be somewhere in first place. Personal aspiration is subjective and each of us have different character trails so much so that to standardise on an approach to develop a Personal Scorecard is indeed challenging. Besides, who do we, for lack of a better word, be accountable in life to besides ourselves? Of course, some may bring in religion, social constructs, and traditions as our “higher orders” whereby some may found it less acceptable to live their lives by others’ standards.

While I am still in search with the existence of such a Personal Scorecard, I think basing on New Year resolution is a good start. A New Year’s resolution is a commitment that one makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. Though we may not know our purpose in life, I trust that we should be able to see what is good from bad and to recognise things that we can do to make our lives better. In a way, the concept of Balanced Scorecard still hold, the approach is entirely different.

First thing on my mind was my lack of enthusiasm to Cynthia’s desire to see the world. To me, a trip down to Botanical Garden or Sentosa or even a road trip to Malaysia is good enough. But Cynthia wants to see places that she has not seen before. There are many measurements that can address this as long as they satisfy the S.M.A.R.T. (simple, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely) rule. I can go with number of days overseas but then I will have to separate the long haul and short haul trips for the difference in impact. How about the places that we have not seen and the place that we have? In the end, I have chosen Traveling Budget Utilised as my measurement. It is a good proxy while giving us the flexibility to mix the different types of trips.

Shall I measure everything that I do? Of course not. So measurements like number of songs written, amount of content posted in my website, number of times I meet up with my friends per month, and etc. are important but are not things that I wish to track constantly. I know I will do reasonably well regardlessly. So I limit the number of measurements to what I most want to track. The magic number is ten.

I am not doing well in leading a healthy lifestyle so I think setting a target of 8 hours of exercise per month should be doable. That works out to be 2 hours a week. Half of the time having home cooked dinner should be achievable too. At present, Exercise Hours is zero and Percentage of Home Cooked Dinner is close to zero. So, any improvement is going to be good.

I have been lazing in managing my own money. I have seen how even with such a little effort Cynthia has put in, she has made some good return. So this New Year, I am going to start investing my money to beat the low interest rate.

On the other end of the money spectrum – a money making career – I need some sense of measurement as well. I have no idea what Career Fulfillment Survey is going to be. But the sooner I have this worked out, the clearer I know what I expect from my career.

After putting off the idea of turning my hobbies into something more serious for such a long time, I guess I should take this opportunity to see how far I can go with them. To the least, in the year 2007, I would have put in my best. So I am going to see how many live performance I can make and if I can publish a book or two on any topic.

I guess drinking in moderation at times is not that bad so long as I don’t have a hangover that affect my next day. I thought of having other measurements such as the unit of alcohol consumed but it is hard to quantify with the different type of alcohol.

My another habit to moderate is my time spent on gaming. My current benchmark is about 130 hours per month so having it down to 40 hours I think is a determined effort to make a change.

As I looked at these nine measurements, I pondered upon things that I should do to make my life more memorable. Things that I have no idea yet and hence, I classified them under Extraordinary Projects that have significant impact.

I don’t know how long I can sustain this process. Judging at this merely ten items, I think I have lots to do tomorrow. Wish me luck!

A recap of my measurements for Year 2007 by clicking here.

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Experience Sharing Songwriting

What I Found Most Difficult As A Songwriter

When friends of mine learned that I write songs as a hobby since 1994 having close to 150 songs written as of today, they frequently asked me questions such as do you write lyrics first or melody first, where do you get your inspiration from, do you have a band, do you perform, to whom you play your songs to, and etc. Seldom do people ask me what is the most difficult part of songwriting.

PS. The picture was taken when I was dining in this high class Japanese restaurant at Jakarta.  The lyrics of “Eternally Thankful” was born on that dinner table.

Writing a song is easy. Transforming a song from its draft state that is written at the spur of a moment into a song that is pleasant enough to last the years is tough. Recently I am reading a book written by a plastic surgeon and to me, songwriting can be as natural as the process of life creation but to enhance an existing song requires one to wear the hat of a plastic surgeon. What does this mean? Let me share my recent experience with you.

Last week I have written two songs “Diamond” (lyrics) and “Swallow” (lyrics) in two different nights. I managed to complete each song in one night, which is important because rarely the mood stays the same for more than a night. New songs take time to sink in and I practiced them for a couple of days. To my disappointment, I was not happy with the results. Something was missing. Something was not right. I felt as though I have missed the mark by a far margin.

So I called in Cynthia to help as a critic and lend me some fresh perspectives. Let’s deal with the second song first. “Swallow” was upbeat and the only discomfort I have with the song was that it sounded pretty much like my previous set of songs. It turned out that I may be over-worried as Cynthia did enjoy it. At times I wonder how far I can go without someone saying that my songs are lack of originality. There are artists who continue to churn our hits albums one after another sounding pretty much the same (Aerosmiths, Bon Jovi, Rolling Stones just to name a few).

That was “Swallow”. As for “Diamond”, Cynthia did shed a tear after the first listen to the song and it was the lyrics that drew her emotions. However, her first impression was that “Diamond” lacked some kind of oomph. In fact that was how I felt as well but I have no clue on how to improve upon it.

Cynthia asked me to play again and recommended a shift in key towards the end of the song. My only reservation was that “Diamond” was not written that way. I kept an open mind because she did help to transform one of my songs with the same technique. To shift the key, I first need to find the right key for my vocal range. I have lowered the entire song by a key and kept the ending as what it was originally written. It did enhance the song slightly but still, it lacked the oomph we wanted. We tried increasing the tempo but that took the emotion away from the song.

“Diamond” was basically divided into three parts without any chorus. The problem was a lack of memorable melody that could not be fixed by key shift nor a change of tempo. Now, that was the most painful part of songwriting – to throw away the parts that are not working well – because there is a certain sentiment towards each part of the song and today’s mood is definitely different from the mood when the song was crafted. We reevaluated the entire song and have decided that one-third of the song has to be rewritten.

Cynthia pointed out to me that there was a mismatch in part three of the song. All the chords were in major while the song started with minor. To those who are not familiar with major and minor chords, in short, minor chords create a darker mood while major chords tend to convey a happier message.

I picked up my guitar and started to experiment with some new chords. I was open to even changing the lyrics because it was this “hopefulness” in the lyrics that prompted me to stay major. New chords started to fall in place with the existing lyrics. Instead of the standard monotonous chord progression that I employed, I let the last part of the song to go free form creating a melody that follows the lyrics. The result was stunning even as we progress through the verse. Out of nowhere, an inspiration hit me with a surprise twist of chords that added colour to the song, creating a dramatic holding space before taking the song to the final lines of intense conclusion.

Having gotten a satisfying ending verse, that was not the end. It is because this new verse has to gel with the initial parts of the song. Like I mentioned, if parts of the song are created in two different mood settings, I need to find ways to put them together. That translated in me playing “Diamond” from beginning to the end again and again experimenting different chord transition to make it worked. Instead of the more mellow guitar solo chords transiting from part two to three, I have changed the chords to insert more emotion in preparation of the climatic last verse. This in turn drove me into having a completely different strumming pattern for the last verse to further bring out the building up of emotion to the climatic end.

With all these hard works, “Diamond” was transformed from a song that each time I played I felt something was missing into a song that each time I played my soul soared to the sky. That, is what songwriters put their blood and sweat for.

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Experience Sharing

DIY – Silicon Gel

The contractors who reattached my cabinet that covers the rubbish outlet have done a lousy job. Crawling insects kept visiting my home. So I have decided to take matter into my own hands. My task was simply to remove the (transparent) silicon gel and reapply the more tasteful white silicon gel sealing up every possible gaps.

I have seen my dad done it zillion times back in Hong Kong (but never have done it myself). Knowing exactly what I needed, I visited a hardware store and bought the right tools (see below).

Just looking at those things, how much do you think it costs? Cynthia thought the “gun” was sold at S$20 and the gel itself is S$10. I thought likewise to be honest. When the boss told me that the “gun” cost S$3 (and the gel for S$3.80), my initial reaction was, “Huh? 30 dollars?”, and was about to pull out the ten dollar bills. He repeated, “3 dollars, 3 dollars!”.

After I got home, I gave my dad a call. Anyway, to share the experience with you, step one is of course to attach the gel into the “gun”.

Step 2 is to attach the nozzle and cut it diagonally.

Step 3 is to slow depress the trigger and you can see silicon gel starting to ooze out of the noozle. Steadily apply the gel to the gap.

Step 5 is to cover your nose … kidding … alright, the acidic smell could be overwhelming but the last step is important. I suggest you wrap your finger with a small piece of cling wrap and trace the gap steadily. Rub the excess gel off a paper kitchen towel.

Allow a full day for the silicon gel to harden and there you are! You can be the next DIY Expert!