2009...A Look Back on the Year

Prelude
YES! I made it! Post '20' just to round up the number for the 2009 archive. Probably the last post I'll make for this year as I'll be out to 'party party' for New Years Eve tmr night. : D Being able to write this MUST post to round up the year will definitely make my day! (ooh and finally writing a summary in the 'year' that I was meant to 'summarise' about! haha : P w00t!)

2009...What Should I Say?

Late this afternoon my mood has turned down into a somewhat serious mood. Not too sure why tho (I even had a coffee this afternoon too!), but I think this should let me be in the right mood to sit down properly and reflect on my year in 2009 (Perfect too! As I was determined to write this blog post before the year ends!)

I'm still a bit mystified as to what I'm going to say / feel about 2009. Currently watching the news, it is reflecting on the Top 10 moments in Sports in NZ (definitely got to say a YAY to the All Whites!). hmmm what should I say about my 2009 year? I breathe out deeply...still deep within thoughts. How should I start this? I wondered. I looked back at all my previous "summary of the year" posts....it seems I have build up a style of giving a one/few words summary to describe the year. I shall continue with my tradition and start with it by filling the gaps below:

2009 has been a static year but it's also one where I have "tried, learnt and accepted".

Try, Trying and still Trying

As the global economy went down at the end of 2008, so did my decision to do an OE in UK in 2008 (see last year summary post). Although I took a prudent approach I still didn't give up the dream. I continued to seek for opportunities when I have the time. I just continued seeking but in a more passive but wiser approach.

Persisting with the idea, especially during such 'down' times, was not easy. In between the period I had to go through a lot of thinking, reviewing and rethinking. But I'm glad I didn't give up. Even though at the end I'm still here at home in N.Z, however I believe the struggling I had to go through in my mind should make me a stronger and more patience person I hope.

Acceptance

I consider myself to be quite a stubborn person. One of advantage of this is it made me a determint person in nature, it's not easy for me to give up (i.e the point I made in above section). However thiis time round, it was also through these tough times that I not only learnt but actually took into action to become 'flexible' when necessary (which is a hard concept and action to take for a super stubborn person like me).

For example I would love to be able to achieve what I consider to be the 'perfect OE' in my mind. Although I've always known that 'you can't always get everything the way you want'. But to really take it in and 'accept' this thinking as part of a stubborn person's decision making was not easy. It was through these tough times that I have learnt to be less rigid and to open up my mind to 'accept' different alternatives and possibly different outcomes. It's definitely been a very valuable lesson to learn and accomplish (for myself)...I'm proud. : )

Learning

Apart from the two big lessons above, I have also or should I say glady like to annonce that I have actually done some other 'learning' too this year. Unlike last few years where I have actually completed some Java certifications or picking up a new skills e.g. guitar or Toasmaster...this year it's more at the EQ level.

As I wanted to open myself up to more opportunities in my OE options, I decided to change my career path a bit and got out of the Development department and entered the (Software) Integration team, which will allow me to take a closer look at what is like on site working with and in a customer environment...heading more towards the 'consultant' pathway.

Being out of the comfort zone in the development team, things definitely can get 'a bit hairy' out there. Not only that I had to 'learn and manage working' with new and different people with different ideas and perceptions; in a brand new team working with new ideas; and which is transitioning from the 'not really a team' stage to becoming a team with 'more responsibilities and expectations' with much more room to grow and mature and stablize. Now you might think all you are describing here is just 'new, new and more new' stuffs. But no no, it's much more than that. Learning to work in a new and different environment, with different expectation and way of doing things is just......'different'.

Originally I set myself a goal to stick with this for at least 6 months, no matter how it is going ot turn out. So that I can actually give myself a reasonable timeframe to try this new thing out, to learn from it and to learn to adapt to changes. Now I can gladly say, "I did it" and I did 'take and learn' somthing from it and even made some projects possible and possibly with improvements too! : )

In Summary

Although this might seem the MOST BORING piece of 'summary for the year' post to date so far. Didn't really achieve anything 'physically' or 'visibly' (hence I used the word 'stable' in my original few-words summary). However it has definitely been a year of 'roller-coaster' for both my 'heart and mind and soul'. More like a tough year for me mentally to get by. Lots of decision making, wondering if it was right, wondering what I should do next. But hey......"I did it". I survived it and hopefully become 'slightly stronger' person (mentally) now.

New Years resolution.....haha it can go into another post....in 2010! : ) I shall end this year, as it is...just like this. Been there....learn it......now done!

Here's a "really really" good song to summarize the year for me..."路...一直都在" by Mr Eason Chan (陳奕迅)...here's part of the lyrics:

...

穿過一塊裡面一片黑暗　沒有想過回頭　
一段又一段走不完的旅程　甚麼時候能習慣
噢　我的　夢代表甚麼　又是甚麼讓我們期盼

That’s just life　尋找夢裡的未來
That’s just life　少點現實的無奈

不論風吹的時候　不在傍徨的時候
永遠向前　路一直都在

...

- For the full lyrics see here



p.s. - lol as usual i actually wasn't great and took a 'weeee while' to finsih this post. After taking a break in between writing this post....I couldn't continue writing it at night at all as I have lost my 'feel' for writing such reflective post! : \ But funny enough....no idea why...I woke up 'naturally' early the next day (i.e. 31st....lol may be too excited that it's the last day at work and a party to look forward to?). With a much more clear head, I was and have now been able to finish this post! YAY! Satisfaction feeling of being able to achieve target set! : D (I shall keep this feeling in mind!)

XML Encoding & Special Characters

Another day at work (right after holiday too) I encountered this problem with XML and encoding. As I have a lack of knowledge on this topic, it took me a while to figure this out (asking around for help) and it turned out to be a very valuable lesson for me.

You see the XML file that created the error contains some special XML characters. Now what I mean by 'special characters' are one of these (see link): Special Characters and Symbols, e.g. ™, • or √.

The 'actual' symbols you see are in UTF-8 format. However XML may be stored as Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoded. Now because Latin-1 is only 8-bit long so it can only represent characters that is not bigger than the 255 range. On the other hand, UTF-8 can represent up to 8 bytes of data. So it is obvious that some characters in UTF-8 will not be able to be directly converted into Latin-1. In these cases, the ampersand encoded version may be used instead to represent the same character in Latin-1, e.g. ™ •  &#8730. This is why it would be important to ensure the 'encoding' you listed in your XML file matches the same encoding the actual file is saved in.

Now the actual problem I was experiencing is I believe someting called HTML purifier. See this very very useful web page which tells you all about this (and gives a good explainations in XML encoding)! You see I was trying to write some Java classes to remove some unwanted node from an XML file's DOM tree. However everytime when I pass in an XML file with 'special characters', it always come back out with a question mark ('?'). The problem was because I got fooled by the encoding that was listed in the xml file and also with the unexpected kindness of Java to try to help me by purifying the XML file.

The problem was resolved by understanding how Java and XML works. Most importantly to understand that the encoding in an XML file is not just purefly for the sake of meta-data, but it is very important in determining which encoding / decoding to use when writing Java classes to process the XML file.

Additional ref: Processing XML with Java

Windows XP Folder Icons Gone BLACK!!!

Prologue: Yes! I was once again on my annual holiday, hence the whole Nov has a result of '0'! So here's me trying to to squeeze in a few more posts before the 2009 year ends! : O

So it was last day before I left work for holiday, not sure what I did that caused it (promised I didn't install any viruses and I never go on dodgy websites!!!). In fact I think it was after remote desktop-ing to my own computer from one of my work mate's computer. When I went back to my computer and logged in, suddenly all the 'folder' icons when I open up Windows Explorer has turned BLACK!!! Seriously!!! The folder icon went BLACK....no cream yellow coloured folder at all..just purely BLACK with the shape of a folder! @.@ I seriously thought I got a virus attack or something. Ran a virus scan nothing showed up and computer is running at the same speed as before and no creepy stuffs popping out!

So it was after I was back from holiday....I got too 'annoyed' by the black looking folders. Not only is it ugly but 'freaky' looking (imagining opening up your system root folder and all you see are a list of BLACK folders!!!)

I did a Google search and SUPER THANKS to this post I was able to fix the problem and all the normal 'creamy yellow' looking folder icons came back alive! : D What happened (I believe) was that Windows actually cache your Windows icons. So somehow after I log back into my machine the cache file must've gone corrupted / munted such that all my folder icons went 'burnt'! The resolution is just to delete the 'IconCache.db' from your "Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data" directory and your icons will be revived! : D