Quickie: I’m Joining Kone for 3 Months
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
I’ll be working at Kone Elevators for 3 months, beginning Feb 11, assisting in some data migration project. Yeah, at first I thought it would be some data entry kinda thing. But my boss did point out that even the recruitment company thougth they wanted data entry clerks. It’s data migration, not entry :p
The morning of my interview, I knew I needed to print a copy of my resume. I kept procrastinating, pushing something trivial like that off. Damn, an hour before I need to leave for the interview, power failure. How the hell am I gonna print my resume?! Thankfully, I’m using a laptop and I have a UPS. At that very moment, the RM 210 I paid for the UPS was worth every penny.
Anyway, am gonna have my last paper at TARC on Thursday - friggin’ Drama. After that, it’ll be pretty hectic: finishing up my documentation and packing as much stuff as possible before heading home. Only a 1 week break for me :( But on the bright side, I’ll be an official dSLR owner by March!!
Tags: life
Overrated
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Beware: This is another rant post.
I get kinda pissed sometimes when people overrate themselves. Take for example, a fresh grad’s resume. This smart guy boldly claimed his knowledge of Adobe Flash as “Advanced”, Adobe Photoshop as “Advanced”, Visual Basic .NET and C# as “Advanced”, SQL Server and Oracle as “Advanced” too. Excuse me, but was there a change in the definition of “advanced” that I wasn’t aware of? C’mon.. I can’t imagine anyone who can be “Advanced” in so many fields?
The most I would rate myself on one of these fields is “Intermediate”. That’s the most. I mean, you putting “Advanced” when you’re actually not, shows how shallow your understanding of that field is. Advanced SQL Server or Oracle? How many records were in your test database? Do you know how they both index their tables? Can you optimize your table structures so that the indexes built will suit your queries? Have you tried replicating your database onto several physical machines? Ever dabbled with SQL Server’s reporting services? I would consider someone who have basic knowledge of the above as “Advanced” and someone who has few years actual experience of the above as “Expert”.
Please.. “Advanced”..
I also wanna warn people to be cautious of final-year-projects that seem way too cool to be believable. Take for example: a program that can read car registration plates off a picture. I bet that it’s done with a 3rd party component. I mean, how many IT students can actually write a OCR tool from scratch? These skills are no longer in the IT realm. It’s got more to do with maths/engineering.
Please do enlighten me if you have manually coded an OCR tool from scratch in a few months time. For a TARCian, the challenge is monumental with the only major topics covered in our “Data Structures and Algorithms” being stacks and linked lists.
So the next time you see a “car registration plate reader”, check what kinda tool he/she used to develop it. Don’t be surprised if the component had a method called getCharacters().
Lousy HR
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
This afternoon, a rep from Motorola gave me a call. Just said a few words to me and said “we have a interview session at Mandarin Oriental Hotel on 2 Feb, can you come?”. Nothing really occurred to me at that moment (yet), so I just requested the lady to send me some details via email.
So I got home, and this is the mail I got: Read the rest of this entry »
Why No Water Drink?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
That’s the damn question one of my juniors (no, luckily I don’t know him) asked when he went to HSBC for industrial training interview. I was like, “What the fuck?!” when my ex-colleague told me this. Jeez, who do you think you are? It’s a really, really stupid question to ask..
Oh, the stupidity doesn’t end there. There was another foold who asked how many will get to work at HSBC, as he/she was wondering if she/he will be working there or not. He/she was worried he no friend at HSBC, since the department “all old old staff”. And to quote my ex-colleauge: “one fellow, berlagak like oad really really want tarcian ..”
Those bummers are a real disgrace to TARC. Well, it just goes to show how useful our liberal arts units are. Heck, maybe TARC should introduce modules like “Common Sense 101″ and “Professional Courtesy/Etiquette”.
Sony A200
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Sony unveiled the A100 dSLR replacement model at CES a few days back, boasting ISO sensitivities of up to 3200 and an optional battery grip. Specs (and a bunch of pictures) can be found here at dpreview.
The good news was, no need to all the way to Las Vegas to check out the new A200 - it’s right here in Malaysia! Yes, there’s an ongoing roadshow by Sony at Mid Valley.
I took a several shots with my own CF card using the Sony A200. The crop below is taken at ISO 1600, down-sized by 50%. Noise control is pretty impressive I’d say, compared to my current DSC-V3. Hah!!
The A200 has a comfortable grip. There are dedicated buttons for ISO and drive mode on top, AEL and exposure compensation button on the rear. However, I find the drive button a bit hard to reach with the thumb. At RM 1,999, it’s a bargain! Heck, it’s newer and cheaper than the Canon EOS 400D. There’s a big BUT though - Sony lenses. They’re friggin expensive! The best example is the 70-200mm lens. Sony’s cost about RM 1-2k more than the Canon’s. Whatever happened to the economical reasons for built in image stabalizers.
If I were to get the A200, I’d get the single kit (18-70mm lens) and get myself a Sony 50mm f1.4 lens. It’s about RM 1200, roughly the same as Canon’s 50mm f1.4, though Canon’s has USM. I can try to get a used Minolta 50mm f1.7 at around RM 300.
Well, I’ll be waiting to see what Canon has to offer come PMA at the end of the month - more importantly perhaps, is how much the 400D’s price will drop to.
