Avatar: 2009’s best movie

The film begins in 2148 and focuses on an epic conflict on Pandora, an inhabited Earth-sized moon of Polyphemus, one of three fictional gas giants orbiting Alpha Centauri A. On Pandora, human colonists and the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of Pandora, the Na’vi, engage in a war over the planet’s resources and the latter’s continued existence. The film’s title refers to the remotely controlled, genetically engineered human-Na’vi bodies used by the film’s human characters to interact with the natives. -Wikipedia.org

My rating: 11/10 (explanation below)

IT LITERALLY BLEW MY MIND AWAY. Pure genius. The movie alone scored 10/10 in my book but then again me and France watched it on IMAX hence 11/10 stars!

If you are a fantasy fan you are going to love this. It’s like War Hammer/Mech Warrior meets Dungeons and Dragons from another planet: How cool is seeing a human wearing exoskeleton battling against a giant elf like creature with arrows dipped in neuro-toxins.Personally I see a lot of similarities between the Elves and the Na’vi, mainly both of them being tree huggers, the way they call their race The People and them being one with nature. Also, I think the Na’vi are in a way the exact opposite of how we are living today. Their planet behaves more like a greener version our hi-tech world here on earth: no they don’t have Starbucks but they have these cool organic USB like receptacles they can plug-in to whatever living thing on their planet and connect to them. The planet is connected with some sort of organic WAN with Eywha in its cener (their Deity, scientifically explained as the collection of energies of the planet collected in a big tree), from plants to trees to wyverns to the Na’vi, all is one with nature.

Great story telling, great cinematography and the ultimate 3D experience (I’ve had so far, it liretally had me on the edge of my seat wishing I was riding my very own Toruk), this movie is a must see and in an IMAX threater near you no less.

Good day and God bless!

BAI Culture 101: How to use gym balls

So your office has one or two gym balls? Do you know how to use them properly? Here in BlastAsia we thought about how to use these wonderful devices and extend their functionality beyond the original design; here in our company we greatly value extensibility. Lol.

So here are some our resident software engineers’ suggestions:

Seats - In the picure below you can see Bot sitting on his ball while developing. Not only do you excercise your abs while coding but you also feel like a 10 year old kid: 10 year old dev + gym ball = quality code. Note: Do not bounce when there are bosses around, they might get dizzy just by looking at you which can result to you losing your job.

Barricade – Does your office face the imminent threat of Alien invation or attacking hordes of imaginary friends? If that is the case, gymballs are the perfect tools for barricading your office. Just stack them tightly (as illustrated by Bot) at the corridor you want to make your final stand and viola: instant wall. Note: Just make sure no boss in on his way to the comfort room or you may also lose your job.

Toys – As you can see, Keith is enjoying balancing while brainstorming with Bot. Sometimes we kick them around, use them as huge marbles or billiard balls, play passing games with them or hit friends (in a friendly way ofcourse). Here’s a video of eli using the gymballs to the max: Eli Video (I’m trying to find Engr. Gilbert’s video but no luck). Note: Throwing balls to people are ok but throwing people may not be a good idea, because, well, you can lose you job.

Dream Catcher – As you can see below, no amount of bad dreams can ever penetrate this wall of gymballs stacked with love by your friends/co-workers. Note: Be sure to place the balls gently so that the subject will not be disturbed. Also, do not do this with bosses. Again, you may lose your job.

Hope you guys had fun reading as we had fun playing around.

Good morning and God bless!

BlastAsia POC Library and a surprise

The BlastAsia POC Library is now online. Yessterday, I deployed an instance of Wikimedia (the wiki application Wikipedia.org is using) using a local XAMP installtion. I conspired wtih a few devs from BlastSuites and infa to try out composing articles on the Wiki.

When I got to the office I noticed that my old CRT monitor was swapped with a new LCD monitor (thanks sir Arup); coding will be lot more comfotable since LCDs are easier on the eyes. There was a problem with the display though, the colors looked washed up and I couldn’t tell the difference between lightly colored gradients and plain white so I asked Mark (NFD team) to calibrate it for me; So now my work pc has 2gb mem, GeForce 8500gt and a Samsung LCD. So in the desktop goes the code and documents to the laptop. Very nice.

Good night everyone and God bless!

WCF Services Training

I’m late again. When I came to the office I wondered why almost all of the seats in the BlastSuites area were empty; I asked my Scrum Master and she reminded me that there was a WCF Standards training today so I quickly rushed to the conference room and joined the training.

Sir Roy Saberon (Technology Management Group) trained us in the proper implementation of WCF for the use in SL/WPF applications in the BlastSuites. The training deals with using the TelerikORM within a layered n-tiered model then using WCF services to expose the data to the client. I like the way it’s designed: giving us more control of the services and is a welcome trade off with the over-head work. Haven’t studied it much since its Marco that maintains that part of the Application but will do so later.

SixDayOldString Pedals

Friend and bandmate Neil has been developing his own line (SixDayOldString) of guitar effects. I can’t really say if I’m biased or not but everything he’s created sound real good. And the names and designs are really cool too.

You can find out more about his creations by goign to his blog: http://sixdayoldstring.blogspot.com/

Also you can view his YouTube channel for demos: http://www.youtube.com/user/sixdayoldstring

Good day, God bless!

My Current Desktop

My Current Desktop

Originally uploaded by Basti Basurero

Just finished up installing and trying out stuff. For now the tools I use are:

Music – Songbird (iTunes for people without iWhatevers)
RSS Reader – FeedDemon
Email – Postbox (replaced Outlook, awfully slow. Thunderbird with gmail-like features)
IM – Digsby (Trillian features without the price)
BLogging – Zoundry Raven

Very very nice apps.

Proof of Concept Library / Repository

At the previous ThinkTank meetings, I proposed (verbally) the establishing of a Proof of Concept Library / Repository. It would be a sort of Knowledgebase for reasearches done by Blasters. What I envisioned would be a sort of atleast a blog that would allow people to post articles about their POCs or even stuff that they already implement in their applications.

This would be very useful to developers who transition from one technology to another. Like most devs currently in BlastSuites are new to either Silverlight/WPF/WCF while a team exists in BlastAsia that started using Silverlight/WCF from SL version 1 up to now: a lot of code and experiences undocumented and are limited to the members within that small team.

Today I mentioned this to Noel and said he would forward it to Sir Roy. I also told this to TJ who in turn suggested that we use a Wiki: which is very applicable to our situation. I am a noob on setting up a wiki though, so I wouldn’t be of much help until post deployment. Lol.

I’m very exciteed about this initiative because this can be a lot of help to devs who want to learn and ofcourse lessen the burden on the devs who will share code.

Goodnight and God bless!

Leadership Exam & Source Code Standards Training

Just finished the leadership exam a few minutes ago. We were given 2 situational questions and were required to answer in an essay type format. The questions were the same for everyone else but the personality type of the subject was random as opposed to the examinees. After taking the exam we had to present our answers to the panel as well as our fellow examinees. Based on a personality test, I am an Originator (ENTP); and for question 1 the subject is a Chief and Originator for question 2. I think I did well enough job in that test. Well, atleast for item 1 since question 2 will be checked next week. I had fun introspecting and seeing how much I’ve improved in such a short time. Many thanks to the people who helped me get me on my way.

Recently we shifted from TFS (Microsoft’s Team Foundation System) to SVN as the system for our code repository management. In the final installment (or so I think) of the series of trainings from TMG we were taught the new standards for arranging our source code in SVN; this is in part of the preparation for the upcoming implementation of the Continuous Integration Server. So from what I’ve heard FitNesse, SVN, Nunit and so may others will be connected to the Continuous Integration Server: everytime we update (i think, and it can also be scheduled) our source codes the CIS will take all the steps to produce up to the dlls used in the FitNesse Acceptance Test. Coolness.

Anyway, good night everyone! God bless!

Devigner

A web devigner is basically the combination of developer and designer (Devigner = Developer + Designer) -thewebdevigner.com

I have been encountering this industry term a lot in the net lately. Mainly because of all the Silverlight stuff I’ve been researching on. Basically this term means someone who can do a layout from Photoshop and slice it down and directly convert it into a page: A designer who also knows how to code.

Now a lot of BlastSuites team members may not know it but they are headed towards this direction. WPF/Silverlight uses a combination of XAML and C# code and some are unaware that Expression Blend + Visual Studio  can attributed as the Microsoft equivalent of the devigner tools:  We layout, design and style pages/views using Blend then work on the backend code.

We still have our Creative Team here that handles major designing (look and feel, theming, etc.) since that is still the weak point (everyone except JP is guilty of that =))) of devingers here BUT backend coding here is definitely a strength: we use the MVVM design pattern + layered architecture for backend code.

Maybe someday we can up the level by studying more on what the Creative guys can do, or just focus on whatever we have now and improve on it.

Good day, God bless!

Empty pockets and ATDD/FitNesse Training

I am happy because I did not come in late for the first time this week (no deductions) but a little down because i forgot my wallet at home. Good thing Bot lent me money so that I wouldn’t starve today. After filing my leaves/offsets for the cutoff and buying food, we went straight to the conference room for the ATDD/FitNesse training.

ATDD means Acceptance Testing Driven Development; it’s basically Test Driven Development geared towards fulfilling the product requirements or so called Acceptance. The training included the basic structure of the ATDD process: mainly discussing the Discuss-Distill-Develop-Demo stages in the process, Acceptance Test Criterias, Acceptance Test Fixtures and how to create them and using FitNesse.

FitNesse is a tool that allows us to integrate and test our code using a Wiki type web application that can be publicly accessed (public meaning publicly available within BlastAsia) to be viewed and tested.

This training is a part of a series of initiatives by the TMG (Technology Management Group) to standardize the way software is made; primarily in BlastSuites since the Products department have a lot of new Applications.

A lot of new things are being implemented and most of us feel that there are a lot of over-head work that will be produced by these new processes but I think that in the long run, these investments will pay off to better applications.

Good day and God bless!