Should you spend 3 years and a ton of money to go to college, or do self-learning online for a fraction of the time and cost?

After all, it seems like more and more employers don’t even bother looking at the degree, and want experienced skilled people instead.

My answer is to do both. Get a degree if you can afford it, and don’t waste time playing games and other college-stereotype time wasters. However, build your social network, and make friends with high-performing students, especially outside your course. These relationships will grow to be very valuable in the long run.

During study, study properly – you don’t need an A+, but the point here is to train yourself in time management, and train your brain in being able to absorb new information. Most importantly, this teaches you about your own learning style, and you should use Youtube to learn how to learn more effectively. The activity of Learning is something that is most easily done, and trained, in your youth. “Earning” can be done at any stage in life, but Learning requires a young and healthy brain, which you will slowly lose as you age. Fact.

Outside of college, train other skills. Can be via online courses, Youtube, blogs, whatever. Get part-time jobs via Upwork, Fiverr, or direct connections, or even via FB/Linkedin groups, for the experience, not so much for the money. Learn coding or digital marketing or whatever you want, as long as you like it. Also take the time to explore new skills like design, music, sports, wall climbing, geography, geology, etc – both via computer and via physical activities. These things expand the mind and your perspective.

Now is not the time to focus on earning or working. Focus on Learning, Exploring, and Relationships (friends, network, and personal – explore them all). If you happen to be able to earn while learning, sure, no harm. But put your energies and focus in the right things.

As an ex-gamer who spent thousands of hours of gaming in my youth, I can tell you this for sure – mobile games and computer games are 70% a waste of time. It trains many things, yes, but lets not kid ourselves, it’s more for fun than anything else.

This is what I would tell myself if I could send a message 20 years into the past. What advice would you give to the kids of today?

My CARSOME experience has truly been AWESOME, not because I got a fantastic car, but because they fulfilled the CARSOME Promise to me. There’s two parts to this, but the summary is – CARSOME Kepong, specifically En. Hadi and team, is AWESOME and you absolutely should buy your car from them!

Firstly, the buying experience is very transparent – before you even walk into the store, you already can find out the car condition, see close-up photos, any flaws, and internal check-up results. And all their cars are updated – if it’s being booked by someone else, or if it has already been sold, it’s updated immediately. Compare this to other secondhand car dealers, they never update their listings on Carlist or other sites, because they want to get your phone number first. Don’t you hate this kinda behaviour? I do.

Carsome’s buying experience is smooth and transparent, and they really don’t have any hidden charges – what you see is what you pay, except insurance, obviously, cos that one depends on your own history. Compare this to other dealers – listed price is for the car only, then there’s a “processing fee” (usually a few thousand, I was quoted RM4-6k), runner fee, and other fees that suddenly come up here and there.

I can trust Carsome because everything is in black-and-white. Carsome even provides a 5-day Return Policy! No other dealer will give you that, because they just WANT YOUR SALE. Once sold, “bye, don’t know you anymore” (unless you want to give them more sales – but if any problems they won’t remember you).

This brings me to point #2 – the CARSOME Warranty. During my car testing, I didn’t realise anything wrong with the car. However, after I completed the purchase and got my car, during daily driving, I felt something was wrong with the car, it wasn’t super smooth and I got a headache. Shit, I thought, did I kena con… but nevermind, I brought to the workshop to do balancing and alignment, but didn’t improve. The foreman found out that one absorber was leaking.

So I called Hadi, my Carsome salesperson, and he helped me get this sorted out from start to end. Long story short, it required two returns to the Carsome Certified Lab (aka their service center), and they changed all 4 shock absorbers at no charge! This is easily worth RM2k if you do it yourself, and technically, they could have said this is normal wear and tear (my car was at 110,000km already – it’s recommended to change them at 80,000km), and could have declined to do it. But they did. And I am super, super impressed.

My 2016 Mazda 3 now rides super smooth. Quiet engine, smooth ride over bumpy roads and hard corners. Solid power on demand. Great brakes. Everything works. At half the price of a new car.

CARSOME really fulfilled their promise to sell good quality cars, and their sincerity at making sure that I am 100% satisfied really touches my heart. I highly recommend them without hesitation.

Thank you Hadi & team CARSOME Kepong – you rock!

The above pretty much says it all, but for the sake of completion, here are other points:

• Cleanliness is top notch everywhere – in rooms, toilets, restaurant, walkways, cafe, reception, even in the shared restrooms and the mainland office.
• Hot water shower with great pressure, cold aircon, cold fridge, powerful fan – yes it’s expected, but good to know they deliver.
• Very friendly English-speaking staff is obvious, but Alunan goes a step further by employing marine biologists to not only manage their coral growth and conservation efforts, but also to take you on your excursions (for me, at least – may or may not be all the time). Seriously, how often can you say you got a marine biologist to take you around Perhentian?
• The food is great, and I say this as a seasoned Malaysian foodie. I would go for Asian flavours more than the western fare though, it’s really top-notch that’s hard to match even in Kuala Lumpur.
• They expanded during the Covid downtime, so if you make your trip now you’d get to enjoy all the awesome new stuff eg the new cafe, new restaurant, new pontoon, new spa, etc
• Lastly, the corals there are simply awesome, and since it’s right in front of the resort, it’s literally free. Just jump in and swim for hours and hours on end. Needless to say, the water visibility is amazing from morning to night, and the biodiversity at the resort is to die for. If you’re a good swimmer, follow the left shoreline for ~1km (about 45 mins on a leisurely swim enjoying the corals along the way) to reach the “secret garden” filled with sea anemone and clownfish (Nemo). If you’re lucky, you might even catch black-tipped reef sharks, a wandering barracuda, even dolphins if you’re ultra lucky.

I would write more but you get the point. Alunan is awesome. This is not a place to save money at. Come with a budget of RM1,000 per person per day (inc hotel stay – about USD250), at least 4D3N (ideally a week), and you’ll go home with the best memories Perhentian has to offer.

And please, for the love of the sea, please buy a rash guard before coming, or buy from Alunan, to minimise the need for sunscreen. Sunscreen kills corals, even in super-low concentrations. Please don’t litter, please don’t damage the corals, swim responsibly, so this place stays beautiful for generations to come.

Thank you Team Alunan for making my trip so awesome. I look forward to returning soon!

Encounter

A jet-black craft with no markings screamed past Triton City. Close in pursuit were five mX-3 Triton Police Interceptors, each weaving past the skyscrapers of Triton.

“This is your last warning! Land NOW, or we will open fire!” the mX-3 Squadron Leader blared on the radio.

“Sorry buddy, my clients kind of really want this stuff, like, on time, dude”, came the cheeky reply in a young male voice.

With sharp precision, the five Interceptors spread out to an attack formation, four in front, equally spaced like a square, and the leader at the back, in the middle of the square. This was known as the Claw, and was usually the attack formation of choice due to its manoeuvrability and large attack area. The attack command came over the radio:

“Fire at will”

Immediately all five Interceptors started lashing out at the unidentified craft with unerring efficiency, lasers and cannons unleashed like there’s no tomorrow.

“IC-1, main lasers, firing on all turrets!”

“IC-4, main lasers, firing on all turrets!”

“IC-2, switching to Gauss Cannons, aiming… Fire! Damn, I missed. He’s good. Using secondary pulse lasers while reloading the Gauss”

“IC-5, pulse lasers overheating! Should I use the rockets?”

“Negative, IC-5. We don’t want more collateral damage around the city”

”Copy that, sir. Switching over to main lasers”

“IC-4, main lasers not appearing to have much effect. Switching over to rapidfire Small Turrets”

“He’s still avoiding all our shots, sir! Should we try Formation Spear?”

“Negative, we still need a lot of practice. One mistake and it’s kaboom for all of us”

”But sir, he’s just too fast for us!”

”Continue firing at will”

And so it lasted for ten whole minutes. The black craft skilfully evaded all their shots, diving in and out of the trees, between buildings, suddenly soaring high into the sky only to dive straight down by the time the cops caught up. Even some city folks were starting to cheer for the black craft, just so they could see more of his/her acrobatics.

The mX-3 Squadron Leader got a message on the radio:

“Hey buddy, aren’t you kinda tired of this? Come on, what say we put this all away, you let me deliver my cargo, and I’ll take you and your buddies out for a drink, eh? I know this great new stall which just opened up – “

“Men, execute Formation Spear. I’m tired of this shit”

“But sir, you just said – “

“I KNOW WHAT I SAID, DAMNIT! JUST EXECUTE THE DAMN FORMATION!”

“IC-2, copy that”

“IC-3, copy that”

”IC-4, affirmative”

”IC-5, roger”

With that, all five planes lined up in one smooth line, one behind another, with the leader at the back. The first four planes closed their wings inward so they only were half their original width – enabling them to fly much faster but disabling the use of their weapons. The leader remained with his wings outward, all weapons disabled except the Gauss Cannon, specially selected for this formation due to its special property of being able to fire a massive ten-inch projectile at near-light speed. A very damaging weapon – if it hits.

“On my mark – Three, two one, BLAST”

There was a sudden boom. Immediately all five planes went supersonic, catching up to the craft in 0.8 seconds. At the 0.81th second, the four planes in front suddenly swerved outwards: one upwards, one to the left, one to the right and one downwards. What remained was a semi-vacuum zone of air between the mX-3 Interceptor and the black unidentified craft.

At the 0.93rd second, before the surrounding atmospheric air could rush in to fill the semi-vacuum, the Squadron Leader fired the Gauss Cannon with amazing precision. From the belly of his plane, there was a mighty controlled explosion which started the movement of the ten-inch projectile. Accelerating to two thousand meters per second, it passed through the Gauss Rings, which further accelerated it forward to eighty thousand meters per second. By the time it left the plane, ten meters since it was fired, it was already travelling at close to the speed of sound, relative to the plane. Factoring in the speed of the plane at Mach 1.3, and the semi-vacuum left behind by the four planes, the Gauss Projectile travelling at would need only a little over one second to reach the black craft.

The black craft’s pilot was obviously very skilled with his craft, and very experienced with police tactics. The moment he saw the five planes line up together, he already devised a plan to escape the sure-death Gauss Cannon. From his rear view camera, the exact moment he saw the four planes evading, he shot straight up towards the sky. Such a manoeuvre was generally considered suicide because the human body was simply not suited to handle the 8-Gees of pressure it came with. But there was no other way to avoid the shot, so he tried his luck.

He didn’t even hear the cannon fire. In fact, he didn’t hear anything; it was as if the whole world blanked out on him. All that was, was him, and his craft.

Beep. 

Huh?

Beep. Beep.

Beep beep beep beep beepbeepbeepbeepbeep – his altimeter was warning him that he was about to leave the atmosphere and should change to Spacecraft mode. He opened his eyes. He made it. He was already too far away for the Triton police to regroup and launch another attack.

Exhilarated, he switched off his altitude warning, switched over to Spacecraft mode and set a cruise for the Centauri System Saddle Point. Hah! Beat you again, you slow suckers! Reid – 1, Police – 0! He opened up the radio to transmit a goodbye message.

“Hey losers! Next time try using Spear after I’ve celebrated my hundredth birthday! ‘Cause I’m just too fast for you! Hahahahaha!!”

“Reid Valko – We’ll get you next time. You can count on that!”

“Okay, one, two, three, four, five, – hey you forgot to tell me, count to what?”

No reply.

“Hello? Helooo….?”

Damn losers. Can’t take a joke.

Reid sped off with his black GX-3 Stealth Scout Ship towards the Saddle Point of the Centauri System, where the Centauri Carael Ring was located.

A star’s gravity is immense, powerful enough to hold multiple planets in orbit. This gravitational field around the sun can act as a spherical lens, which magnifies the intensity of the light of a distant star. At the point of focus of the lens, the gain can be hundreds of millions, thus making it possible to communicate between stars using equipment no more powerful than those needed to communicate between planets. This solar focus is called the Saddle Point, and this was precisely what enabled the Carael Ring teleportation.

The Carael Rings were developed by the Chinese in the year 4788. They could only exist in pairs, one to transmit and the other to receive. Basically what happens when matter passes through the ring is, the matter is split into its individual atoms, compressed using a thousand-page long algorithm to remove redundant data (similar to data-compression technology used in computers), and transmitted using a wormhole ten microns thick, to the receiver ring, which will uncompress it and ‘recreate’ the matter at the other end. Many had the misconception that wormholes work instantaneously – it doesn’t. It turns out that atoms transmitted over these man-made wormholes move at roughly thirty times the speed of light. Not exactly instantaneous, but good enough for inter-system travel – which it pioneered.

This technology was what started the Colonisation of the outer solar systems. The first of the gateway systems was between Sol (Earth’s solar system) and Alpha Centauri, four light-years away. That distance means that even if one were to travel at light speed, one would need to travel for four whole years to reach the destination.  Using the Micra engine, the fastest at that time, Earth’s first colonists placed a ring at the Centauri Saddle Point before colonising Rhean, the only habitable planet in Centauri. The journey took five and a half years, at an average of eighty percent the speed of light. There are now four such gateways to four solar systems colonised by humans – Sol, Centauri (four light years away from Sol), Cruix (six light years away) and Andromeda (nine light years away). And Reid Valko was about to use the rings to return to Sol.

The ship began its countdown to the rendezvous with the ring. Five minutes to Ring contact. Reid made all necessary preparations – all weapons were deactivated, everything stored in its compartments, all rubbish discarded to space – hmm did I forget anything? – took a piss and flushed it into space. Yep. All set.

Approaching Centauri Carean Ring. Entrance, in Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

A flash of blue light.

Forty eight Earth days later, Reid rematerialised at the Sol Saddle Point and promptly set a course for Earth, where his client awaited. He shivered a little and his spine tingled – a minor side effect of Ring Travel. He liked it, though.

“REIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!! WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO DAMN LONG???!!!” a deafening scream blasted into his ears.

“Ahem. Hello dear Sallyn, good morning to you. Or night, depending on which side of the planet you’re on. Where are you, anyway? Had breakfast yet? Or is it supper, hmm, I don’t know. Hey wanna grab a bite when I reach? I know this great stall which just opened up –  ”

“Don’t patronise me, Valko. You know I keep my whereabouts secret. Did you bring it?”

“Of course I did. Ran into a bit of trouble over at Triton, that’s all. What, you thought the cops were gonna let me off so easily? Hey I should be paid extra for this.”

“You’ll get what we agreed on. Deliver it to the coordinates I just sent over”

Reid checked his console and retrieved the destination address from his inbox, then inputted it into his flight computer.

“On my way, milady. Thank you for using Reid Express – The delivery service that’s faster than a police raid.”

“Just come, damnit. I don’t know why I even bother talking to you. You make me sick.”

“Aww come on. Deep down you really feel that warm fuzzy feeling whenever you hear me talk, right? Come on, just admit it – you love me and you’d love nothing more than to be held in my embrace, in the penthouse of – “

–Bleep– The connection was terminated.

Aww she’s shy… hahaha. Reid grinned all the way to the spaceport.

 The landing procedures were executed flawlessly. Reid parked his ship in an open spot at the site, and proceeded to unload. He opened his cargo hatch and went to take his package – a large flat box about the size of an ordinary adult human. He then loaded it onto a hovercar and pushed it to the customs counter for declaration.

Processing his entry took a whole hour, throughout which Reid was having difficulty sitting still. A look of total relief came over his face when he was finally given the green light to leave the spaceport with his cargo.

Grinning with delight while imagining how he was going to spend his pay, Reid sped off on his hovercar towards the direction of his employer. However, barely twenty kilometres from the spaceport, a shadow loomed over him from behind. He turned – and met with a knee in his face. CRASH! He lost control over the hovercar, and it crashed – rather smoothly, due to its build-in stabilisation routines – into a nearby motel.

What the hell…?

His assailant was sprawled beside him, dazed, but regaining consciousness. Reid crawled closer to try to see who attacked him, and perhaps get an answer to why he was attacked in the first place. But he was suffering from heavy blood loss, and his consiousness was fading. In the few seconds that he managed to look at the person’s face, he saw that there was hair, lots of it, draped down to the person’s midsection. And there was a bulge at the front…

Female…?

Author’s Notes

Character Sheet

Main character: Reid Valko

Supporting character: Alexa Hawke

Reid Valko

Main character of the story, 23 year old (22 years old in 4999) unlicenced space pilot, self trained in self defence, gunslinging and piloting since young by his father who went missing when he was 16 years old. Has accepted the loss of his father and feels no detachment or sadness for him. Has honed his skills to perfection during his 7 years of self-sustinence. Currently travelling alone from place to place as a transporter using his modified GX-3 Stealth Scout Ship originally scavenged from the Panon Planet rebellion war in the year 4980.

5000 – Reid age 23

4981 – Reid’s mother ‘died’ at 33 years old (Father was 36 years old)

4977 – Reid was born (Father was 32 years old)

4972 – GX-3 obtained (father was 27 years old)

Alexa Hawke

For the girl with mesmerising eyes to fill up 🙂

Story outline:

It is the end of the year 4999 and people everywhere are gearing up to celebrate the 5^th millennium of the modern age. The human race has extended far beyond Earth, and currently inhabit 5 planets spread out over 4 solar systems – Earth (Sol), Rhean (Centauri), Crytea (Cruix), Panon and Erpen (Andromeda). Space travel is now possible after the invention of the Micra Engine (developed by the Americans in 3371) which enables travel at 80% the speed of light, and the Chunsee Teleport Ring (developed by the Chinese in 4788) which enables teleportation at 10x the speed of light (requires a transmitter-receiver pair of rings).

Reid sees the Quilennium (fancy name people call the 5^th millennium) as a chance to earn some extra cash when he overhears some people talking about sending ‘sensitive cargo’ to a ‘secluded area’ but not being able to find the right candidate for it. Obviously, he strikes a deal with the person and heads off with a huge wad of cash waiting for him in the ISBS – InterSystem Bank of Sol.

En route, he gets curious and opens the cargo, finding only a mirror. In all appearances the mirror looks perfectly normal – ordinary, even. One major difference though – it did not reflect him. However no matter what he does, nothing seems to happen so he puts it aside and continues his journey.

Upon landing in Crytea, he rises to put the mirror back into the cargo box, only to meet with a fist in his face. A fight ensues, and he manages to subdue his masked opponent – barely. Upon removing the mask, he is shocked to discover that the assailant is female.

End of chapter 1 🙂

Future twists:

Naturally, Reid and Alexa fall in love somewhere down the story – although it seems unlikely to happen as they are portrayed in the early chapters.

Reid finds his father in a very totally unbelievable situation – and discovers that his mother is still alive.

The mirrors are actually gateways, to where, not decided yet. However the person must ‘navigate’ his way through a subconscious awareness while inside the gateway (hence the name Dream Mirrors), it is very dangerous as you can get lost in the ‘dream’ and never find your way out.At first Reid thinks it is a one-entrance/one-exit gateway, but later in the story he finds out that there are more than 2 mirrors and there is actually a network of gateways.

Alexa has an interesting past – up to you to decide. Heck you can insert vampiric blood/relations here if you want 😛

Big dark scheme behind everything, someone is up to very bad intentions. Who? Why? Later decide.

Alien contact – yes or no?

Perhaps in the end, they discover a fresh new world devoid of humans and aliens and technology and stuff, and choose to live there together. They still keep the ship tho 😛

PS:

<?php
function BonusLevel($rashdansara) {

	$never = str_replace(['!', '+', '-', '#', '>', '%'], ' ', $rashdansara);
	$gonna = str_replace(['z', 'j', 'm', 'p'], 's', $never);
	$give = str_replace(['q', '6', '9', '~'], 'e', $gonna);
	$you = str_replace(['t', '*'], 'u', $give);
	$up = str_replace(['x'], 'vin', $you);
    
    return substr($up,15,33);
}

$rashdansara = "zandyb6ach9j23@mo#wh6n>ar~%yo*+gtym-haxg!kidp?qjz:\?kee93zp";
	
$nevergonnaletyoudown = BonusLevel($rashdansara);

echo ucfirst($nevergonnaletyoudown);
?>

(Non-programmers: Load this code in https://www.w3schools.com/php/phptryit.asp?filename=tryphp_echo1)

What can you do to prevent this from happening to your own website?

1. Split your web components

Typically, website ownership involves 3 components – the domain, the DNS server, and the hosting server. The giant internet services companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, Exabytes, etc all want you to host everything with them for “convenience”, with all services under one roof. However, this actually raises your risk – never put your eggs in one basket.

Talk to your web service professional to split these components into 3 separate providers. This way, if one fails, you can always switch to a failover.

a. For domains, I recommend registering them with a reputable large company, as this is the cardinal component of your web presence. GoDaddy, Namecheap, Domain.com, etc are all good candidates.

b. For DNS servers, I use Cloudflare, as they have loads of other beneficial web services as well, and has a great Free tier. There are other DNS servers out there too, such as DNSME, Amazone Route53, Sectigo, etc.

c. For hosting servers, there are a billion options out there, with a long list of variables for different use cases, so if you need actual suggestions, please comment below and I’ll try to provide advice. Generally I stay away from shared hosting and use VPS servers like Vultr or Upcloud.

*You may be wondering, why didn’t Facebook just do this? Well, they’re too big to use 3rd-party tools so they had to build their own. This gives them more freedom, flexibility, and performance – but as Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility. Misconfigurations happen all the time in tech, and some are worse than others – as we saw happen yesterday.

2. Host your backups offsite, and make backups of your backups

The Facebook incident didn’t affect the data, but you can bet your ass that they have multiple redundancies and backups of their data. Question is, do you?

A common mistake in many website owners is an assumption that “the server guys should have a backup”. Never make this assumption. Also, even if they did, chances are, they will charge you for restoring the data, or it may take a few days for them to do it, or the backup version is too outdated for you to restore critical data. Plus, if something were to happen to them, you’re dead in the water.

For example, on 10 March 2021, OVH, a major server provider had a fire in one of their datacenters, and some customers lost all data permanently. They couldn’t restore the backup, because the backups were stored in the same place, and everything burned to the ground (together with some website owners’s hopes and dreams, I’m sure).

Don’t let this happen to you.

The solution is simple – talk to your web professional to make OFFSITE BACKUPS, i.e. backups that are stored separately from the hosting server. For instance, Google Drive, Dropbox, or your hard drive at home. I would go one step further and make a secondary backup, stored elsewhere, just in case. As the saying goes, prepare the umbrella(s) before it rains.

3. Take ownership of your website

If you outsource your website to a freelance web professional, never fully rely on them to take care of everything for you. Always know where your systems are (point #1 above), where your backups are (point #2 above), and learn the basics of how they work. At the end of the day, your website is your responsibility – learn how they work, so that if shit hits the fan, you’re able to do something about it instead of letting the fan keep spinning for days and weeks.

Good luck!

Key people you should talk to are:

1. Project/Account manager – You will be working with them the most, and if they’re the “single point of contact” then they are also the single point of failure. Imagine an hourglass with a broken/obstructed neck – you can imagine how smooth the sand will flow with that. Hint: Not Smooth.

2. UX team – “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”. Too often I see people spend 20% of their time/effort in designing/planning, and 80% in development. You have an idea in your head, but you lack the technical skills to translate that into an app, so you rely on the agency to understand your idea, put it to paper, translate it into a design, and build it. More importantly, you rely on them to think of the things you don’t know about, such as “what if the user wants to delete their own account?”, or “at what stage of the checkout process do we force the user to create an account?”. That’s why the UX team is critical, because they (amongst other things) create the final prototype of your app before sending it to developers to build. The prototype helps you clarify your idea, and helps you spot holes in the design that you can address before development. The absolute last thing you want to hear from your agency, midway during development, is “oh, you wanted to be able to export customer data? You didn’t tell us, that’s why we didn’t build it”.

Never judge an agency based on their past clients or screenshots of the final product, and certainly not based on the depth of your friendship with them. Instead, go DEEP; ask for a case study on how they interviewed the client, user interviews, validations, assumptions, see samples of the User Journey, and the final prototype that’s made before development.

The future of your business is literally in the hands of the agency – make sure these hands are strong.

04:30 – Speaker background

1. Been in the CTO position throughout his professional career
2. Started without any experience in CTO only technical background
3. Failed at first with all the different culture. After the team scaled down and restructured, able to restart the leadership journey
4. Experienced working with Youthsays (now Says), worked with MOL, and then moving on to Fave

06:50 – What are the expectations of a CTO especially for a startup?

• Expectations are different based on team size and business expectations
• Most of the time, founder of companies who tries to look for CTO are probably thinking of wanting a good engineer.
• Thus, you should be very clear what you want and what do you really need?
• The title at this point doesn’t matter. When you’re a team of two, you can name the position anything but most importantly, you know what you want in the hire.

• Need to understand that to be a good leader, you need to be a good follower. Only then, you know how to empathize and lead properly

• To be a CTO, it’s not going to be easy. Technical is not only the thing to think about. Understanding the business is crucial to have a grasp of the business and also leading people. Whatever decision you made will impact someone else’s life.

13:15 – CTO doesn’t mean you need to be a strong programmer.

• Becoming a good programmer is not the key skill set to become a good CTO. What’s important is understanding technology as a whole especially in the context of your startup and holistically understand how things work (people, product, business). As much as the technology is important, the operation is important as well.

• When you first started (team of 5), even though your role is a CTO, you are a team lead. You’re leading a team to focus on right technical directions and the processes around it and making sure people follows it. As you scale up (team of 50), the role of CTO starts to evolve.

17:50 – It is important to understand expectations of CTO and align them with CEO/founder

1. Understand your role
   1. You may not have practiced your technical skills for a while and you might need to start hiring. Understand where you’re at, the stage of startup, what sort of things you need to deliver and where you should be within the company.
   1. Understanding the expectations of the business
      1. The initial goal during a startup is to figure steps to survive the business i.e. raise fund/seed fund, extend business run rate, make profit etc
      1. It’s not just about writing codes

• Once you understand the goal, then you realized you cannot do it alone and need to hire people. Hiring is always tricky. Whenever you hire, it may never be enough.

• The product that you plan to build will never have enough resource for you to build it. As your team expands, the expansion of your product is also expanding.

23:30 – Rules in hiring

1. Don’t care about qualifications. Hire good engineers, less about their background
   1. They are those who really care about programming and care about creating good stuff. They don’t do it because of what they have been taught.
   1. So far, these people who’re hired based on my experience, tend to do more during their delivery and learn faster.

25:50 – Interview process

1. Hiring the right people at the right time is very important
   1. What type of engineer you want right now?

Example when we first startup, we want someone who is jack of all trades. Even if they are not there yet, but there is someone to pick up all these things.

1. As you grow, then you would want someone that is specialize in the role e.g financial tech
   1. You might want to hire someone who can grow and learn with you rather than someone who will tell you what to do.
   1. Know your business limitations. I would optimize to hire someone who has potential to grow rather than optimize for someone who’s been there done that and knows everything whom you can hire much later when you have better financial backing.
   1. Hiring someone with limited experience, it’s much easier to shape the culture. Compared to someone who has 10 years of experience, probably have different ways of doing things and probably will have a conflict.
   1. But if it’s someone who is like a mentor/coach whom you learn from them, then it’s fine.

30:00 – Management

1. Engineering level – just to define what level you are as an engineer and a salary band ties to it i.e. E1,E2,E3,E4,E5…
   1. It’s hard to tell when you just startup but as you grow the definition of each engineering level will change.
   1. Once you grow, you need to pay people fairly, then having engineering level and salary band helps.
   1. As your team grows in terms of skills and experience, at this rate, probably your engineering level is too easy in terms of expectations. Then you start to expand the expectations for each level (increasing baseline)
   1. So, during hiring at least the lowest level, they are also at the higher level than last year. Of course, the minimum level shouldn’t move too big because you still want to groom people and hire the right potential. So, the middle level will expand more.

34:30 – Productivity 

1. How to measure engineer’s productivity? It’s tricky and hard because engineering is a creative process i.e. cannot measure how many lines of codes committed by engineer.
   1. Normally, measure the output of the outcome i.e. delivery, how good are you at estimation etc
   1. It’s fine to be slow as long they’re consistent in estimating. If they’re inconsistent especially in estimation, it’s hard to predict how fast you can launch something or when certain things can be delivered
   1. At early stage may be hard as the project just starting and are new, but as the team get used to it and a lot of familiarity, then you should expect more on their estimation i.e. 80% hit rate.
   1. Don’t make them do things that are less productive e.g. too many meetings. Be more objective and very clear during meetings. Be methodical on how to solve it like how you choose the technology to solve it, make sure there’s a framework around it. So that it becomes like more consistent and more productive.

38:00 – Managing remote team

1. We try to introduce more asynchronous communication where we don’t expect immediate reply from anyone. We do more like constructive questions i.e. everything is detailed out.
   1. This can also be used as a documentation later on where if someone joins the company, they can almost feel all the knowledge of the engineers in one place i.e Wiki, Forum etc. More things written down rather than having calls where things are not recorded.
   1. Trust your team. Whenever hire someone, we start with 100% trust until proven otherwise. Believe in the people we hire. Believe everyone is doing things in their best intention.
   1. Rule is you can do whatever you want within this constraint, as long you are not a blocker to anyone.

41:58 – Silo

1. Silo will happen regardless. We don’t expect everyone to know everything but we do expect everyone to know at least high level of how everything else works.
   1. Do sharing session e.g. every 2 weeks. Have everyone to present something or projects they are working on. Try to involve other teams in certain technical decision to get fresh eyes and knowledge transfer across different teams.
   1. Again, documentations have to be available throughout entire team. If things are written down even though not complete, at least there are certain knowledge that people can learn.
   1. We don’t try to fight silo, we try to work within it. Try to distribute knowledge as much possible

44:00 – Quality

1. Quality is quite subjective. I would not try to assign a value to a quality, rather focus on the characteristic of the engineers that we hired to ensure that they always strive for better quality.
   1. Characteristics of people we hired:
      1. One who really care about the codes and take pride when they solved problems
      1. One who is really curious and really wants to understand how certain things work. That’s how you get things to be better.
      1. One who is more adaptable. Sometimes we question should we cut some slack where we do something that is not optimal in order to achieve the business goal. There are times the answer is no if the impact is throughout, sometimes it’s minimum impact then it’s fine. This person should be able to accept that, someone who is more realistic.
      1. One who codes for the future. When they code, they are think about the readability of codes 6 months down the road and maintainability. One who writes code for their team members.

48:00 – Getting the team to focus/prioritize

1. Prioritize as if you have a single engineer. If there’s only one person to run things, how do you prioritize it. You can’t run things in parallel, you need to choose from top to bottom, doesn’t matter if you have 3 or 5 teams.
   1. If you’re thinking of splitting things into each team, that’s not prioritizing, that’s just slotting it into teams where you see fit.

49:20 – Expectations of business board meeting

1. What’s important to the investors/VC perspective are not so much about the technicality of things, they care more on high level things like:
   1. 1. are we choosing the right technology?
      1. have we hired the right people?
      1. are we delivering things at the right time?
   1. You could also highlight certain incidents or amazing things you’ve done

50:50 – Working with others

1. Allow engineers to join all meetings even without any invites
   1. Reason being, sometimes unless we’ve worked with engineers for a while, we probably don’t know what to ask. You probably know you have a problem but you don’t know how to solve it. And even if you know how to solve it, you may know how to solve it within your domain and not using the right technology or right tools
   1. So, you want engineers to always go out there and try to give values and help others to solve problems

52:00 – Keeping the engineers

• As a leader:
  • • You need to understand the aspirations of your team members i.e what they want to be, what are their goals etc
    • What are you doing to help them get that? As much as possible you want to align your goals towards the business goals so then you are growing. When you are growing, the business is growing.

54:08 – Q&A

• 54:49 – What is your biggest mistake in your career and how did you overcome that?

My early mistake was not being honest with the team members. Honest in the sense if someone not doing well, they don’t know about it and eventually have to let them go. During the startup, most of the people I hired were my friends. When they make mistakes, I just casually talk about it, rather than explicitly mentioned these are the things to improve. This mistake leads to more toxic behavior within the team.

• 55:44 – What is your biggest achievement? How did you move about to achieve that?

People that I led, seeing how they grow from intern to team lead or someone who join bigger companies. Especially someone who worked with me before, left and then now we can talk at the same level as CTO rather than talking like a coach/mentor position.

• 56:40 – How do you rate Malaysian IT grads vs Foreign grads like Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, or Eastern Europe? In terms of price, experience, productivity.

We worked with people from all over the place. I wouldn’t say there are groups that are better than others. But there is some certain biasness to certain groups. E.g. engineers from Vietnam, they are really technical. From Indonesia, they are more towards products-minded engineers. From India, they are hardworking engineers.

This is really contextual, different economic situations in different countries, ended up sway the salary cost. Wouldn’t say someone really good from India will get lower pay in Malaysia. Generally, IT grads we hire from Malaysia and for other countries, we hire someone with experience.  

• 1:00:20 – Why do you think most of our engineer talent lack the entrepreneurial mindset/skills? What are your tips to change that?

I would disagree with that. Generally, it depends on your lens and focus. Most of the interviewees that I got have the strong entrepreneur mindship. Entrepreneur here doesn’t mean just in terms of business, in terms of like getting things done with their entrepreneur quality and not necessarily starting a new business.

• 1:02:00 – Top 3 metrics that you for to the individuals you hire
  • Someone who can learn something fast
  • Someone who can articulate things well
  • Someone who is curious

• 1:03:15 – How to make the new hires understand their role and allow them to operate and think by themselves?
  • Know how the team operates? Maybe they are not given enough autonomy to do things, hence they are waiting for things to be done. Maybe it is not communicated clearly to them or maybe they are not allowed to do all this thing.
  • Have a chat with this person. Your level is not defined by your experience. Reflect back what problems you’re solving to show me what level you are
  • Example, if you’re solving a specific problem e.g. build a login page.
  • Higher level, how do I get people to login. There’s no right way of doing it. If you’re solving it you probably will be a bit senior or team lead level.
  • One level higher than that, problem that is unknown. You look at the business, we don’t know what’s the problem, maybe this is one area that we need to solve. That’s operating more like leadership role.
  • We need to start to have the conversation and see what’s going on and figure out why they have to behave that way i.e. is it the processes or they just couldn’t believe they could operate at that level, or maybe they are just incompetent etc

• 1:06:19 – Do you sacrifice security requirements for faster delivery? What are the things that are generally acceptable to take a blind eye to at the beginning and address it a bit later?
  • Up to the company decisions to apply the risk they are willing to take
  • Build a risk level i.e. what you’re willing to accept and what you’re not willing to accept
  • Determine what are the criteria that the company care about and assign value to it. i.e. direct losses, reputations, lawsuits, mission/vision etc

• 1:09:40 – How would you handle a vaccine registration website?
  • If the website can handle 1 million registration in one hour, it’s doing a good job there.
  • What’s not fine is probably the user experience. We know limited about the backend of it, but we know about the user experience when using the website.
  • Manage expectations well e.g. Mcdonald put them in waiting room, show numbers in queue etc give users a choice whether to wait or not.
  • In terms of speed, you can manage better with better user experience. Not much technical can be done.

1. 1:12:20 – Would you mind expressing your experience working with Joel?
   1. One good thing about him is lack of ego even though with all the success that we’ve done.
   1. He won’t be someone that will stick around just because he is the CEO and say you should do this. Even when he wants to do it his ways, he would convince each person and get their buy ins.
   1. He’s subtler in how he operates. He’s less about dictatorship.

• 1:14:00 – What kind of relationship you have as a CTO with the CEO in Fave?
  • We are friends and I’m reporting to him. Almost the same questions how do you work with a friend. Knowing that line we shouldn’t cross between friendship and business.
  • Communication is key. Things are always back and forth. We love to brainstorm stuff just to keep the spirit going, whether to build it or not.
  • Challenging each other over time. You don’t want to assume he is right. He can be wrong multiple times too.

Last advice

As a leader, you are not a single track anymore. Technical is not the only track you should be concern about, understanding business, people, products, strategies, these are the tools and skill sets in order for you to become a good leader.

Last piece, it’s always about the people not just about you. Respect them, understand them. Treat them like human and that’s how you can go far as a leader.

The Good

As with all soup noodles, the soup is most important. No point giving _banyak lauk_ if the soup is tasteless. Thankfully, Sarawak D’lights did not disappoint. The laksa soup is thick and flavourful, so much so that I finished both bowls of soup.

The sambal is also delicious, and adds a little more spice to the not-that-pedas laksa soup. Combined, these two components make up 90% of the flavour of the entire dish.

It’s also a pretty nice place to sit in. Clean tables, comfy aircon, good ventilation, no pressure to leave. There’s tealive here too so you could chill pretty comfortably here.

The Meh

Everything else about today’s meal is… meh. Shredded chicken, shredded egg, add-on balls, red bean soup – all decent, but nothing to shout about.

The Bad

Taste-wise, there’s surprisingly nothing to complain about – though to be fair, I don’t know what an “authentic” bowl of Sarawak Laksa is supposed to taste like. If I were to nitpick, it’d be the lack of vegetables, and food price is a tad on the high side – but the clean environment and pleasant ambience makes up for it.

Will I return?

All things considered, this was a surprisingly decent lunch. Worth returning to, if I’m itching for some laksa.

Sarawak D’light
1. The Sphere Bangsar South(LG Floor)
2. 163 Retail Park Mont Kiara(LG Floor)
3. Mytown(B1 Floor)
4. Rasa Food Arena KLCC(4th Floor)
www.facebook.com/sarawakdlight

You can watch the video to see how it’s done, or scroll down if you prefer to read:

Step 1 – Download Macro Recorder

Head over to macrorecorder.com/download/ (non-sponsored link) and download the macro recorder. The free version should be enough for you to use.

Step 2 – Create a new macro

Click on the icons on the top row to add a new action. Add the below:

1. Left Click > Relative to mouse position > X: 0, Y: 0
2. Wait 200ms
3. Left Click > Relative to mouse position > X: 0, Y: 40
4. Wait 200ms
5. Left Click > NOT relative to mouse position > X: 1167, Y: 322

Note: You may need to adjust the coordinates for step 5. Watch the video for clarification if this macro doesn’t work for you.

Step 3: Set a hotkey

Go to Settings > Hotkeys and select a hotkey to auto-Playback your macro. I prefer the Insert key.

Step 4: Run the macro

That’s it! Open your LinkedIn Connections page, hover your mouse over the “…” icon, and press your hotkey in Step 3 to launch the macro.

Watch the video if you’re not sure or if this doesn’t work the first time.

Good luck!

I bought the “67 Layers Raindrops Pattern Damascus Gyuto Kitchen Chef Knife Vegetables Knives” from Lazada by Sandy.my, seeing how it’s supposedly “real 67 layers” and reinforced many times by the seller. On receipt and close inspection, this is clearly NOT a Damascus knife.

Seller claims this is a real 67 Layer Damascus

It’s not like I didn’t read the fine print. The seller outright claims that this is REAL 67 LAYER DAMASCUS STEEL many many times, in its product descriptions, in answers to customers, in their website, etc.

I initially thought that maybe this seller was bullshitting me. But I checked further and found out this “67 layer Damascus steel” is widespread online through various brands like Zelite, Zhen, Zulay, Sunlong, Grandsharp etc. And they all share a similar description:

“This knife is made from VG10 steel which is the center core of the blade, protected by 33-layers per side of SUS410 High Carbon Stainless Steel making a total of 67 layers.”

They can’t ALL be fake… right? Well… it depends on what you define as “fake”.

This “33+1+33” layered metal is absolutely NOT “Damascus steel”, for the simple reason it is not folded into patterns (see below) but just sandwiched with many layers (supposedly). Just because it has many layers does not make it a Damascus steel knife.

This is similar to using minced beef shaped as a ribeye and calling it a “beef steak”. NOT THE SAME.

So what is Damascus steel really?

“Damascus Steel” refers to a lost technique of folding different layers of steel to make high quality steel weapons. Modern-day techniques are similar, where they take many layers of steel, compress it, and fold it a few times. Kind of like puff pastry, come to think of it. This will always result in this kind of layered pattern:

Watch this for an example of how Damascus steel (or more accurately, “pattern-folded steel”) is made:

Now that we know how the forging method creates the “Damascus steel” pattern that we are so familiar with, you can know see that all these “67 layer Damascus steel” knives are all… well… NOT Damascus steel. It may have the Damascus pattern PRINTED/ETCHED onto it, but it’s most certainly not the real thing.

Neither side can prove it’s authentic

Pissed as I am, I can’t actually prove whether the knife I got truly has 67 layers or not, unless I sand off the pattern and/or dip the knife in acid. I’m unwilling to burn my money to damage the knife to prove my point; at this point I want to just refund the product and get my money back.

To readers of the original article: This is why I’m editing this article and my review on Lazada. I personally BELIEVE that this cannot possibly be called Damascus steel, but I simply cannot claim this knife is fake without actual proof, despite obvious appearances of this knife.

Where to get REAL Damascus steel knives

Since posting the first version of this article, I’ve found a Facebook Group for Malaysian Damascus Steel knives – PISAU DAMASCUS MAMPU MILIK. I wish I had found this group before buying the knife from Lazada. Super legit Malaysian blacksmiths selling REAL handmade Damascus steel knives for under RM500. Sample below, posted 19 Dec 2020, going for only RM280:

This experience has taught me many things, but at least I’m getting my money back and I found a legitimate source of true Damascus knives at very reasonable prices.

I hope this article has helped you too. Good day.

Here’s a simple flowchart to follow to reset your Keychron keyboard and fix other Bluetooth troubleshooting issues. Thanks to Tim Wolters in the Keychron Facebook Group for creating this.

IMPORTANT: A factory reset does NOT automatically trigger Bluetooth Discovery Mode; you need to do that manually. Therefore the full reset sequence is [FN+Z+J+4sec > FN+1+4sec].

The Saotome Gambit was the first fanfiction I ever read and till today remains the only fanfiction I’ve finished. An unrelated conversation with someone today reminded me of this amazing story I read 15 years ago, and I Googled it to read it again. Unfortunately it seems that the original website Fission Park Press has been taken down, and the author has disappeared altogether from the internet.

If you’ve never heard about The Saotome Gambit, it’s a crossover fanfiction between Ranma 1/2, a manga in the early 1990’s about a teenage boy named Ranma Saotome who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and back with hot water (very funny manga, seriously!), and Mechwarrior, a series of video games set in the fictional universe of BattleTech that was very popular, also in the 1990’s. Although they’re both from the 1990’s, The Saotome Gambit is set far into the future and should be well readable even now in 2020 and beyond. I highly recommend a read even if you have not heard of the original stories.

Someone by the name of Shinji Ikari was gracious enough to upload the full version (yes, all 576,479 words, or 1600+ pages!) on to fanfiction.net, and thanks to that I am able to read this again. However it is 2020, and it’s just so much more convenient to read a book in an actual ebook format – which is what I’ve done, as a contribution back to the community for providing me with such an amazing read.

Please download The Saotome Gambit from the GDrive link below, and upload it to your favourite ebook reader to read ( I recommend Google Play Books). No ads, no links, no upsells – it’s a clean upload, promise.

I hope this book gives you as much enjoyment as it gave me.

Download

Download the EPUB ebook here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SeFabAsZTKJ3_5gAoqBGVNGCAqauX8n2/view?usp=sharing

Preview

For centuries the Inner Sphere has been aflame with war.

Struggling from the ashes of the Star League are five Great Houses: House Kuno of the Furinkan Combine, House Gosunkugi of the League of Five Nails, House Joketsuzoku of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, House Shiratori of the Federated Shiratori, and House Tendo of the Nerima Confederation. Each House has a claim to the Star League throne, and each has an army of mighty Battlemechs with which to conquer – but only one House can rule the Inner Sphere, and none will allow that rule to come without price.

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System.

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

12 January 3025

“Step on it, Pop!” Ranma Saotome screamed to her father as crackling balls of charged particles blazed around them with violent thunderclaps. The communications antenna on their stolen Swiftwind scout ATV wouldn’t retract, which left a big hole in the top of the ATV’s armor, and Ranma was trying without success to fix it.

The giant panda, growling in abject terror the entire time, already had his furry foot on the floor.

The six-wheeled ATV swerved past a pile of boulders as another volley of lightning death lashed into the muddy ground. Clods of dirt and geysers of steam erupted at the impact point, bathing the open top hatch of the vehicle’s antenna mount in scalding water droplets.

Ranma, suddenly male, turned back to face their pursuer as the now human Genma Saotome fumbled with the map function display. A Panther battlemech lumbered behind them, slowly dropping back as the ATV outran it. The particle projection cannon on its arm smoldered at its glowing hot muzzle tip from constant use.

“Doesn’t she ever give up?” Ranma groaned. The Panther’s PPC shivered with another thunderbolt, and a blindingly bright blue ball of lightning screamed overhead to explode a dozen meters in front of the ATV.

Genma swerved again to avoid the sudden five meter wide crater in front of him, nearly rolling over as the ATV tipped up on three wheels. Ranma was pitched out of the vehicle to land hard in a muddy puddle of water. She bounced out of the puddle with the force of the impact and crumpled into a dazed ball. The ATV continued on, with Genma either ignorant of his son’s fate or unwilling to turn around and face the Panther to retrieve him.

Ranma, covered in mud and dripping wet, tried to pull herself upright as the Panther’s footfalls shook the ground. Doing her best to ignore the pain and the pounding in her head, she managed to crawl out of the way of the battlemech as it continued on in pursuit of the ATV.

Shampoo grit her teeth as her ‘mech’s computer informed her in a saccharine voice that her PPC was overheating. Whichever of the two interlopers was driving that infernal ATV was either a panicked fool or else the galaxy’s greatest stunt driver. She had never had such trouble eliminating a wheeled vehicle before. She was so intent on keeping her particle cannon online that she did not notice Ranma’s accidental ejection from the ATV.

As the overheat warning became more urgent, she bit down on her lip and thumbed her weapon selector over to her missile launcher. One good volley would do the job, even if it wasn’t as satisfying as frying them with a lightning bolt from her particle cannon. The gratifying tone of target acquisition sounded in her ears, and she sent her missiles flying with a curse for the damned girl who had destroyed her life.

Ranma watched as four Short Range Missiles streaked from the Panther’s launch tubes and corkscrewed into the air. The stubby ballistically-guided weapons arced over the fleeing ATV, then dropped suddenly to the ground. Tremendous explosions threw clods of mud and bits of shrapnel high into the air. From the midst of the fireballs flew the ragged and burning hulk of the ATV.

“Pop!” she screamed in horror.

The ATV rolled end over end a dozen times before coming to a stop upside down a good forty meters from the blast zone. The Panther turned its sensor head to survey the destruction for a few moments, judged it good, then turned for home as if nothing had happened.

“Pop!” Ranma cried again hoarsely.

Dragging herself to her feet, she staggered across the muddy plain to the smoldering ruin of the ATV. Ragged bits of armor plate continued to rain down from the still air. Sharp pieces of scorched metal lay scattered about the wreck. Deep within the hulk came the tell-tale hiss of emergency venting from the scout’s fusion reactor.

A tear spilled down her mud streaked face.

“Pop…”

A sob wracked her body as she sunk to her knees and wept.

“That’s very touching, boy,” a weak voice grunted from within the wreck.

Ranma’s head bobbed up in disbelief.

“Pop?”

Genma Saotome’s head appeared from the smoking ruin of the wreck. His face was smeared with mud, blood, and charcoal. The pungent tang of cyclo-trimethilene trinitramine, better known as the military high explosive RDX, filled Ranma’s nostrils.

“Pop, how are you even alive?” Ranma asked, tears still in her eyes. “I saw what happened.”

Genma gave him a grave look.

“Thank the gods for seatbelts, airbags, and armor plating,” he replied slowly, and released his straps to fall in the mud at her feet.

Ranma helped her father up. “That Shampoo’s gonna pay for this,” she growled.

“We can still make the spaceport,” Genma declared wearily. He had no intention of going back to face any Joketsuzoku. “If they think we’re dead, they won’t be watching for us.”

“We might as well be dead,” Ranma grunted, her elation at finding her father alive fading fast before the reality of their situation. “Look at what’s happened to us! We’ve gotta go back and get a cure!”

Genma waved a hand in dismissal. “Are you out of your mind, boy?! We don’t even know exactly how this happened to us! You think we can just sneak back in there and find a cure? That’s assuming there even is one!

Ranma’s face fell. She knew the reality of their situation as well as her father, but to just run away without a fight…! “Well I’m fresh outta ideas, Pop.”

Genma lowered his bloodied head in thought.

“I have a plan,” he said at length.

Ranma gave him a dubious look.

“Where have I heard THAT before?” she groused. Genma offered her a weak smile, which made her cringe with dread. Finally she could bear the suspense no longer. “So what is it, Old Man?”

“We’re going to the Nerima Confederation,” he announced.

“What?” Ranma cried. “You gotta be kidding me. The Confederation is about to get crushed by both the League and the Combine. They’re broke, their ‘mech forces are holding on by their fingernails, and they’re halfway across the Inner Sphere from here. What could possibly be there that could help us?”

Genma eyed his son, now a buxom scarlet haired girl. “I have an old friend there. If anyone could help, it’s him.”

“Whatever,” Ranma replied, nonplussed. She gathered up what little they had that was salvageable from the wreck of their Swiftwind and started walking. “It’s a long march back to the starport, Pop. We better get going and hope you’re right about them not looking for us.”

Download EPUB ebook here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SeFabAsZTKJ3_5gAoqBGVNGCAqauX8n2/view?usp=sharing

Disclaimer: The Saotome Gambit is written by Jamie Austin Wilde; I own nothing. Ranma 1/2 and Mechwarrior are copyrights of their respective companies. If anyone knows of a way to reach the original author, please let me know.

Image credit: https://jusenkyo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Saotome_Gambit

Article source: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3209934/1/The-Saotome-Gambit

The short version is this:

1. Find out what you actually want for yourself.
2. Write it down on paper. Physical paper.
3. Make a plan for it WITH DATES ATTACHED. A goal without a date is a dream.
4. Work.
5. Evaluate > tweak > progress. Don’t do things that do not follow the plan.

The problem comes when you do step 4 without doing the rest. Swimming hard without a compass results in going very far to nowhere. Result? Drown.

Do steps 1-5.

The longer version:

Watch these, in sequence. This is a masterclass in setting goals, creating an action plan, giving you the needed motivation and vision to get your foot out the door, and the tools you need to create your own masterplan.

I won’t wish you good luck. I’ll send you off with a reminder:

1. Find out what you actually want for yourself.
2. Write it down on paper. Physical paper.
3. Make a plan for it WITH DATES ATTACHED. A goal without a date is a dream.
4. Work.
5. Evaluate > tweak > progress. Don’t do things that do not follow the plan.

The problem comes when you do step 4 without doing the rest. Swimming hard without a compass results in going very far to nowhere. Result? Drown.

Do steps 1-5.

(now read from the bottom up)

– MK, June 2019 –
– Inspired by “I’m very ugly” by Abdullah Shoaib –

I don’t know if the below steps are applicable for ALL Huawei devices, or if other phone manufacturers have the same or similar menu items, but try to poke around your phone settings, maybe it’s there. I can tell you that it’s most likely NOT in the standard Android menu, since apparently you need to do a kernel modification to fix this (you probably read about this too, if you Googled for the problem like me).

Anyway – here’s how to disable this magnetic screen lock thingy:

1. Go to Settings -> Smart Assistance -> Smart cover -> Disable
2. That’s it!

As for other phones, I just checked my Samsung Duos and there’s no such function.

Apparently some LG phones have a “Quick Case” menu item that disables this:

Activity Launcher -> All Activities -> Settings -> Quick Case

That’s about all I know. I don’t know which other phones have this feature or how to disable it. Try to poke around, I hope you’ll find it.

If you use a different phone and found your settings, comment here to help others too!

Thanks to the folks at Stack Overflow, I found a way to redirect all the URLs using a wildcard method so everything from www.olddomain.com/abcd redirected accordingly to it’s www.newdomain.com/abcd counterparts. I personally tested this with the Windows code for the web.config file for WordPress, but I’ve included the Linux .htaccess version as well for easy reference.

ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP FILE BEFORE YOU START

Linux .htaccess version

Step 1: Access your file manager on cPanel, Plesk, or whatever control panel you’re using, and edit the .htaccess file (if you don’t know how to do this then you should contact your web developer instead)

Step 2: Add the below 301 redirect code and edit accordingly:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?old-domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://new-domain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L,NE]

Step 3: Save and test.

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28894627/301-redirect-to-new-domain-with-same-url-structure

Windows web.config version

Step 1: Access your file manager on cPanel, Plesk, or whatever control panel you’re using, and edit the web.config file (if you don’t know how to do this then you should contact your web developer instead)

Step 2: Add the below 301 redirect code and edit accordingly:

<rule name="Redirect to new domain" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^(.*)$" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" matchType="Pattern" pattern="^olddomain(:\d+)?$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://my.newdomain.io/{R:1}" redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>

Note that your web.config may already have a rewrite rule in it. Simply replace the old <rule name=”WordPress Rule” stopProcessing=”true”>Old code</rule> with the new one above.

Step 3: Save and test.

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31348272/redirect-old-domain-to-new-domain-keeping-url

Remember to notify Google via Google Search Console or Google Webmaster Tools so you do not lose SEO ranking due to this redirect! Here’s a quick tutorial if you don’t know how (jump to step 4): https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-properly-move-wordpress-to-a-new-domain-without-losing-seo/

Hope this helps! I’m not an expert programmer but post here if you encounter any problems and I’ll try my best to help. Or if anyone else can jump in, it would be very much appreciated 🙂

If you’ve ever tried using anchor links, you’ve likely run into this problem before: Of the target links showing too high up, behind the main menu or something. Here’s a simple way to add some “padding” (technically margins) to the top of the anchor, to push the link and contents down below the menu.

If you’re using inline CSS:

================

Demo with standard anchor links (inspect element to view code):

<a href=”#headingone”>This is heading one</a>

<a href=”#headingtwo”>This is heading two</a>
<h3 id=”headingone”>Heading one</h3>
blah blah blah blah blah blah
<h3 id=”headingtwo”>Heading two</h3>
blah blah blah blah blah blah

This is heading one

This is heading two

Heading one

blah blah blah blah blah blah

Heading two

blah blah blah blah blah blah

===============

Adding a top space (margin) of 160px:

<a href=”#headingone”>This is heading one</a>

<a href=”#headingtwo”>This is heading two</a>
<div id=”headingone” style=”margin-top: -200px; margin-bottom: 200px;”></div>
<h3>Heading one</h3>
blah blah blah blah blah blah
<div id=”headingtwo” style=”margin-top: -200px; margin-bottom: 200px;”></div>
<h3>Heading two</h3>
blah blah blah blah blah blah

This is heading one

This is heading two

Heading one

blah blah blah blah blah blah

Heading two

blah blah blah blah blah blah

Results in:

This is heading three

This is heading four

Heading three

blah blah blah blah blah blah

Heading four

blah blah blah blah blah blah

===========================================================

If you’re using WPBakery Visual Composer or other page builders, and have IDs assigned to rows, and want to use custom CSS for this, simply use:

#headingone {margin-top: -160px; margin-bottom: 160px;}

So on and so forth. Good luck!

The point of this blogpost stands: Neither Milo nor Vishen are evil nor selflessly good. It’s marketing vs marketing. Feel free to disagree.

Original post:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past month, you’d have heard of Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley’s video that’s causing this major uproar saying Milo has been lying to you and it’s full of sugar and you should stop drinking it and blah blah blah. I’m not going to link his video to give him more views, because here’s the bottomline of that video:

He is just trying to sell you his WildFit diet course. This video is an advertisement for a diet programme.

Below: Progression of sales funnel (I’m just guessing on the last one, I didn’t attend the masterclass). 

A bit of a disclaimer here before you go kneejerk back at me:

1. I don’t work for Nestle nor anyone in the health industry
2. I don’t hate Vishen nor Mindvalley nor his health course. He’s probably got some good nutrition advice in there, but just remember this video is an advertisement for a diet program
3. I don’t hate the government nor do I believe everything they say
4. I don’t hate “big pharma” nor do I believe everything they say
5. I drink Milo, Coke, teh tarik, ice lemon tea, etc
6. I exercise and live relatively healthily, weighing around 70+kg. Far from perfect, but eh, good enough
7. Everything I say is my own personal opinion

I’m not going to respond to everything Vishen’s video is claiming about, only that supposedly Milo is a terrible drink. Well, I agree that it’s not a superdrink, it’s definitely not going to “minum Milo anda jadi sihat dan kuat”. But compared to many other commercial drinks out there, come on, it’s bloody good bang for buck. Here are the facts:

1. In every cup of Milo there’s protein, fibre, Calcium, vitamins B2, B6, B12, C, D, Niasin, and iron (source). That’s a lot more than a cup of teh tarik, teh o ais limau, sirap ais, bandung ais, and a fkload of other drinks out there.
2. In every cup of Milo there’s 12g of sugar – that’s about 2.5 teaspoons (5g = 1 tsp). Yes, sugar is evil. But Milo doesn’t have much of it.
3. You wanna lose weight? I’d start with cutting down on Coke (39g/8 tsp), Ribena (21g/4 tsp), Starbucks (35-69g/7-14 tsp, see here), and definitely our favourite Malaysian foods like roti canai (esp roti tisu, boom, pisang, susu, kaya), nasi kandar, nasi lemak, ayam goreng, french fries, roti bakar telur cheese, satay, curry mee, char koay teow, maggi mee, cake, buffets, the list is endless.

I’m not passionate enough about the subject to give you healthy alternatives – but there’s Google for that. All I’m saying is:

Milo may not be super healthy, but it’s far from evil. 

Vishen/Mindvalley may be healthy, but he’s far from “being the good guy”. He’s trying to sell you his course, guys.

You wanna boycott Milo? I can’t stop you. Pointless, but hey it’s a free world. You wanna continue drinking Milo? Welcome to the club – I’m still enjoying my 3-tbsp Milo-O every couple days. Better than starting the day with a Frap, of this I assure you.

(Again – I’m not super healthy so take my opinion with a pinch of salt. It’s just an opinion)

My general philosophy: Eat a varied and nutritious diet, exercise enough, and sleep well. Good enough for me.

Peace out.