2007 New Year Resolutions

Resolution means:
決心, 決定, "the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose" (from www.dictionary.com) .

And this shall be a new start for me...by first understanding what the word 'resolution' means! : O

"Firmness of purpose...決心達成目的"....indeed I got a few goals and hopes that I would like to achieve for the year 2007! Despite I'm only posting this post on the second-to-last day of January....I have actually thought about my resolutions for the year since the first day in 2007!!! (Once again I'm just making up for my delay in blogging!) And happily I have started on some of my goals already (despite it's a bit of a slowwww start)! : P

My main goals for the year 2007 are:

• To create a timetable; to organise my time much more efficiently.
  (I have actually consider myself to have had a rest for a full year in 2006 without thinking about goals, dreams and hopes....basically to settle myself in the life after-graduation and to enjoy the year with work and play! But after a year of the so-called 'rest', I think it's about time that I set some goals and aims for myself again. This is because I found that I'm the sort of person that need goals or aims to motivate me to continue moving in life. And in order to do this, I must organise my life with a bit of ordering and priorities again!!! : O
  
  
• To finish my unfinish businesses from 2006.
  There are a couple of unfinish businesses that I still haven't completed at the end of 2006, including building my RX-93V gundam (now completed! See RX-93V post) and complete the 'Communication and Leadership Program' in Toastmasters. I aim to get these completed within 2007.
  
  
• To realise my dreams/goals that sprung up during 2006.
  There were quite a few ideas that have popped into my mind during the year 2006 (but they never got implemented). I hope to be able to realise these by the end of the year! These include starting up a software project (as part of leisure and learning and for motivation purposes, which have already begun!!! YEAH!!! : P) and sitting the Java exam. (There ere are probably some other things...which I can't think of for now...hence the above are in my HIGHLY PRIORITIZED list)! : P

These should be my main goals for now, which I reckon should be just enough for me as I am a slow worker and the fact that I'm working now! : P

So I shall look forward to the end of 2007 with the hope that I'll get my goals achieved. : ) Go 2007!!!

Completion of My RX-93V Gundam Model (SD)

So finally numerous hours of work, I have finally completed my RX-93V Gundam SD model (last night)!!! : P


I bought this box just more than a year ago...and now finally after a year wait....my RX-93V is here! It took me approximately 5 days of work in total....(wow! I'm pretty amazed seeing this is my first gundam model and the first model that I built where I actually painted and drew on it)!
And of course just to clarify that I didn't work actually work on the model full on for 5 x 24 hours! I had some breaks in between the stages and just for the last 3 days have been working on it once I got back home from work! : P (hehe which was naughty of me!!!)

Completed Model:
To give a quick overview of my completed model, here a picture of the full model set:


From here on the rest of this blog is going to document the stages that I went through when building my RX-93V gundam. Through out the stages, I will comment on the my best and worst effort for each stage of my gundam making process!

So if you are still interested in reading about my progress...please go on! : ) Otherwise you are at most welcome to just look at the pictures of my 'stylish' RX-93V! : P

Stage 1 - Head:
Under the direction and of my experienced friends (Oh we actually had a gundam making day which was fun!), I was told to start off with the 'head'. I can't remember the reasons why ><" (I shall check with my friend again...) but I guess it is because the head is the easiest to handle as you don't have bits to attach or to 'fly off'. You only had to focus on drawing the lines on the head. But the bad thing (but also the best thing) about the RX-93V gundam is that it requires heaps of lines to be drawn on a gundam which uses the white colour as its base. However I think this is also the reason why I was attracted to this gundam! The details of RX-93V is what makes it look very '型仔' (stylish)! : P


Anyway, fortunately I was able to accomplish building the head very satisfactorily (despite this is the FIRST TIME I ever built a gundam and the head is the first part of a gundam I had to deal with!!!). The parts of the head that I'm most proud of is the thin and detailed black line drawn beneath its eyes. I was also very proud of the 'gills' (which are meant to be more gun holes!?) that I painted black on either side of its head! It took me a lot of concentration to draw these in!!! : O

Stage 2 - Feet
Under the direction of my 'teacher' (lol my experienced friend), I was told to move on to the feets! I agree that it is the 'next' easiest part to move to as it involves colourings using different colurs (to give you practise) and attachment of smaller parts together to form the feet.

Following the instruction leaflet inside the pack, I coloured the feet as above. However, if you manage to look at the photo closely, you can see that my 'grey' wasn't coloured as smoothly as I hoped ><".But for the bottom of the feet, I used the special 'metallic black' colour to give the feet a 'bronze' looking colour which actually looked quite well. I also made a 'tiny' modification (but following how RX-93V looks on the box) by painting the 'the little dent on the back of the feet' yellow. Really proud of the little 'yellow' dot that I added on as it looks 'almost' the same as the 'yellow' sticker that was stuck at the front of the feet.

Stage 3 - Belt/Waist
This is probably the 'worst' part of my gundam! As colouring the 'red' over the white is already not easy...the red paint will "化出D黎" (dissolves over the white while it is drying)! Then giving it the 'black' border (while I didn't realise the red paint is still not totally dry) have made it even worst!!! As the 'black' colour will also "化出D黎" (dissolves over the edge) while it is drying.


But nonetheless I am happy with the tiny 'yellow logo' on the front of the waist. So if you look from far away...the waist doesn't look too bad! : P


And also the hardest part of painting this RX-93V gundam is drawing the lines on the yellow dent of the body (as you can see how the lines are badly drawn on the side of the waist) ><". There are quite a few of this all over its body. As you can see the yellow dent is make up by combining two parts (front and back waist) together. So if you draw the black line while they are still separated, you may have the risk of the line not align together when the parts are combined. However if you draw it while the parts are combined, it may be harder as you need to put the tip of your pen inside the dent in order to draw in the line!

Stage 4 - Chest:
I am pretty proud of the chest here! In particular, look at the black lines I was able to draw on the front yellow funnel!!! : )

The skill here is to just use the tip of your pen and touch on the edges inside the funnel lightly. Once you drawn the first line, you should be able to 'feel' your way through the other lines. Draw it line-by-line in order to get a smooth looking straight line!!! : O

Oh one modification I made to the chest is that I cut up an extremely tiny piece of the 'green' sticker that came with the gundam pack.....and stuck it inside the 'shoot hole' on the top right corner of the chest!!! The hole was actually really deep so it was hard to make the measureHope you are able to see it....I am pretty proud of this (once again trying to follow the drawing on the front of the pack)! I think I have done a great job for this!

Stage 5 - Shoulders and Arms:
Finally on to the shoulder and arms. By now I think I've gotten quite use to drawing lines that are 'straight'! eheh : P Enjoy! (I especially like the 'black' colour that I painted on towards the hand of the gundam. This time no 'spillage' out to the white area! : )


Stage 6 - Back pack and RX-93V Fin Funnels:
Finally the back pack and the Fin Funnels which are exclusive to RX-93V!!! I was extremely proud of the fin funnels....was able to draw in the lines pretty well! : ) However another thing I found really hard was drawing lines along a cylinder shaped plastic! See the pole that sticks out from the back pack!!! ><" But nonetheless....it doesn't look too bad in the photo right? eheh : P
Stage 7 - RX-93V Weapons and H.W.S. (Heavy Weapon System)
Finally the last stage of my gundam is its weapons and the H.W.S. (basically an extra suit for RX-93V to wear which change it into FA-93!!! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_Gundam or Chinese explanation in http://www.uwants.com/viewthread.php?tid=2347411&extra=page%3D1).


On the left of the photo is the HWS system and the right are its weapons! Quite proud of the shields and extremely proud of the 'big gun' I have painted and drew on (located on the top leftof the photo).

Conclusions:
All in all I had great fun building my gundam and is very proud of my FIRST EVER GUNDAM! hahaha but then I am not too sure if I will get another gundam to build...haha I proabably need some rest and soak in my RX-93V first! : )

Following is my resultant RX-93V (posting for its photos)! : )

Quote from Baci Chocolate (My 3rd Baci choc in 2007)

Love is a desire that wells up from the heart's excess of liking.
Jacopo da Lentini

n. 92

Quote from Baci Chocolate (My 2nd Baci choc in 2007)

A love which economizes is never true love.
H. de Balzac

n. 133

Quote from Baci Chocolate (My 1st Baci choc in 2007)

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!
C. Baudelaire

n. 87

What is joy in the workplace......

(Finally my first blog here on blogger on my personal life and thoughts...which has been long due!!! : P YEAH!!!)

Prelude:
Stressing that,myself, as a new grad. entering the workplace, I guess there's always things to learn and of course A LOT and A LOT of things which you are unsure about.

Amazingly I have survived the place for 'almost' a year now (which I realise now, time do go extra fast when you go to work 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day). However (or should I say LUCKILY), it was yesterday, Monday the 9th of Jan 2007.....that I finally experienced my FIRST REAL HAPPINESS at work.... : P!!!

What is Joy?
You see what happened was that I was assigned to work on an issue, which is to re-skin the interface of the web application my team is responsible for. I have been working on it for a few good days now....and it's ALMOST ALMOST there. Accidentally, I had to check with my project leader about the interface, which lead to the invitation of our Team Leader Leader to come to my computer to check our the partly done work.

hahaah and when my project leader arrived he was like "Wow....look at it (my screen showing the re-skinned interface)...finally I get to see some happy news today"!!! Looking at his face and hearing closely to his tone, you can feel a genuine happiness flowing from his face. And after he was done poking around on the interface....he simply said to me "Well done.....good job!" (and I could also tell it was a genuine appreciation too)!

And THIS is what I call "what is joy in the workplace"! : ) A genuine appreciation and a genuine admiration of one's work! And what makes it even more joyful was that I myself, did not think it deserves such appreciation, seriously it doesn't look THAT nice at all!!! So to see the joy on his face was a total shocker for me!!!

Conclusion:
And hence after this I thought to myself, if ONE DAY I am lucky enough to become a management person. I will definitely remember to give credits to my team when its worth it and show my appreciation and admiration to their work frequently!!! Because this is what makes a team work and one happy employee that will continue to work hard on their job!

Opening the Tomcat SSL Connection

Introduction:
While I was trying to set up a webapp that my friend and I have left behind for 2 years : P..... I remembered that I had to configure the good old Tomcat to accept SSL connection (which I also remembered I went through a bit of agony when I did it the first time 2 years ago)!

Well, luckily (and amazingly) I was able to get this done pretty quickly!!! : )
(I guess all I have to say either I am now 'older' and 'wiser'....or I was just too in-experience back then....hahaha let me pick the 2nd as the reason!!! Which is true...as I was still a eager-to-learn student back then!!!).

(FYI: A quick note here! I saw that in the Tomcat documentation (see reference link below), if your webapp uses an application server as well as a web server. Then the SSL connection should be configured on the web server instead of the application server. In other words, you would only want to use Tomcat as a stand-alone web server).

Creating a SSL Certificate and Configuring Tomcat with SSL Connection (for Tomcat 5.5, Java 1.5 and Win XP SP2):

1. In command prompt, go to your Java home directory and go into the bin folder.
2. Type in the following:

   keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA

   This will open up the keytool from the JDK. It will create a SSL
   certificate for you. For tomcat, the default password is 'changeit' (case
   sensitive).
   
3. Once the certificate has been created successfully, a file called .keystore should have been created in your user home directory i.e. something similar to this on Win XP:

   C:\Documents and Settings\LemonTz

   Cut/Copy this file into your top most root directory of your tomcat installation directory i.e. on Win XP:

   C:\

4. Now go into the Tomcat installation directory and go into the folder conf and open you the file server.xml with an editor.
5. Uncomment the block that represents the connector element for the SSL connection i.e. the block begins with the title:
   

   Define a SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443

   
   
6. Restart Tomcat and you should be able to see the Tomcat splash page when you access https://localhost:8443.

Troubleshoot:
The best place to troubleshoot is always in the Tomcat log (yes! log is a wonderful thing which I have discovered since I entered the workfoce!!!).

If the following line is found in the log:
java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\.keystore (The system cannot find the file specified)
This means it can't find the .keystore file. Make sure the file is in the correct location (see above in the log that it expects the file to be found in the top most directory of your Tomcat installation folder).

If the following line is found in the log:
java.io.IOException: Keystore was tampered with, or password was incorrect
This means that the password you have entered is incorrect. The default password for Tomcat is 'changeit'. A custom password can be used by setting the correct attribute for the connector element in server.xml. A new certificate must be created in order to fix this.

For more information:
This is only a summary of the steps I did in order to set up SSL connection for my Tomcat. I followed the following to help me to set up my SSL connection (which is where I got my information from):

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/ssl-howto.html

Which has much more detailed information in there.

Happy New 2007 Year (Preface)

I must add something here before the first day passess!!! ><"

OH WELL...HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY 2007 YEAR!!! : )
BEST WISHES! WORLD PEACE AND GOOD HEALTH!!!!!!

I suppose my first goal must be to do things ON TIME!!!!!!!!

Oh well....more about my goals & plans for 2007 later....
I shall quickly post this up so that I can go to the main reason that motivated me to 'blog' at this hour of the night (more correctly DAY)! : P