Finally, on Webfaction

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Slowly migrating all my sites onto webfaction, done 2 already, including this, 6 more to go.

So, why webfaction?

To put it in perspective, I had 6 sites operating off my AWS micro-instance. 3 wordpress blogs, Instasyncer , a couple of other projects that I am working on. This meant that I had to consume decent amounts of RAM, or at least more than the RAM allocated to a micro-instance. CPU was alright though. It was more than enough.

Now with the RAM as the bottleneck (no, I’m not kidding, I had times when malloc failed, and it failed really noisily), I had 3 options. Move off AWS, add a swap partition, or upgrade to a larger instance.

  • Move off AWS

    Now this would be a pain in the ass. You have to first find another service provider, and then move all your sites. Didn’t want to do that much work, so nope, didn’t migrate.

  • Add a swap partition

    It shouldn’t be that bad right? I mean how much can it cost? (At least that’s what I was thinking earlier)

  • Upgrade to a larger instance

    No way. Micro to Small is a BIG difference. No way I’ll be willing to part with so much money just to host a few personal projects.

So I added the swap partition. (Note: I did play around with the httpd.conf file. There was one point where I tried having only 2 httpd processes but it didn’t work out. It was overloaded.) And I changed the swappiness to 0(minimum swapping, to reduce ebs IO costs. I checked the bill 6 days later. I had racked up 9 million EBS I/O operations. 90 cents over 6 days. Extrapolate it to 1 month, and it would cost $4.50. Little, you may say, but not to a uni kid. Not only that, the only reason why I had to pay of IO was because they refuse to let S3 work on micro-instances. If S3 worked on micro-instances, i think I would still be using AWS.

So yea, switched over to Webfaction, and I have to say, I am very happy with it. At least so far. I can run my mongo stuff on it, I have shell access and can compile crap on it, and I don’t really have to worry much the next time I post something up on HackerNews. Downside is I don’t get to play with the sysadmin stuff anymore =( RTT is still pretty decent. So yup, happy with it :) Haha.

Clarification on ‘On “What Does A University Optimize For?”’

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A couple of people pinged me and ask me why I am defending NUS in this case, wasn’t I against NUS in the first place?

Let me make this clear, I am not against anyone (Oh wait, I’m against people with PhD’s in entrepreneurship despite not having started companies before. Yup, mainly them.). I am against dumb policies. I am against the dumb things that NUS sometimes does, which is why I regularly blog about stuff against them, such as my education simply being one of regurgitation. But they did no wrong this time. Entrepreneurship is NOT their core business. Their core business is pushing the limits of what mankind knows, and passing that knowledge on (whether they are doing a good job at it is questionable though).

So yea, just to make things clear, I am not against NUS, or SoC.

On “What Does A University Optimize For?”

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So recently Derrick Ko (let me make this clear first, he is a good friend of mine. It’s just that I disagree with some of his arguments on this.) wrote this blog post on this guy on NOC who was offered to stay on another year at the company he is currently working at and how NUS was being a/an …(fill in your own word here) for denying the guy such an awesome opportunity.

Now, before I start saying why I disagree with what he expects NUS to do, I want to make this clear as well. In no way am I endorsing/supporting NOC/NEC in this post, as long as they have people with PhD’s in entrepreneurship running that place and act like they know everything, and people with no startup experience teaching people how to startup.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, here’s why I disagree. NUS is a university. Much as the industry want the university to be a place where they create production ready employees, that is not what a university is about. It is not a vocational institution. And its core business is definitely not to encourage entrepreneurship. Its core business is to expand the knowledge of mankind (which I personally don’t see alot of in NUS but that’s another rant for another day).

Not only that, entrepreneurship in Singapore is starting to get really easy. People stretch their hands out for long enough and chances are they will be able to get some sort of grant/funding from the govt. We see people writing tons of business plans first, and then getting funding, then finally looking for the guy to implement the idea, and finally complaining that the govt did not give them enough support for their idea to succeed. You don’t see stuff like this happening in a really vibrant and successful startup ecosystem. Imagine, getting funding for just a business plan. That actually happens in Singapore. And as a result, there are many substandard entrepreneurs out there who see entrepreneurship as a quick way to get rich without much work.

How does this fit into my argument?

Well, NUS is making is hard for the guy to achieve what he wants. Well, guess what? When you run a startup, it’s hard to get what you want too. Nothing is smooth sailing in the real world. People have been complaining that NUS is not real world enough. Well guess what? NUS is giving him as real world an experience as it can. I don’t see anything wrong with that. You want something you fight for it, knowing that you might not get it. I’m quite sure that that was not NUS’s intention, so don’t give them credit for it, but face it, it’s the right move. It’s teaching the guy a lesson, that you don’t get everything you want in life. And this could be a very useful lesson in future.

There are many reasons to slam NUS, but this is clearly not one of them.

On talknopreneurs, and please stop bugging me

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P.S. This post is targeted towards the Talknopreneurs, people who apparently know the ins and outs of running a business despite not having done anything related to starting anything before.

P.P.S. To my friends who are business owners, and REAL entrepreneurs, and have given me advice, thank you :)

I released Instasyncer on the 1st of May, 12pm.

Ever since then, I’ve had a whole bunch of people telling me how I can monetize it, and how I can make this into a business. So this post is to end it once and for all.

Until I reach a stage when I’m losing money by running this service, I am not charging for it.

There, I said it.

I did this because I needed it, and I put a UI over it because I thought other people might benefit from this service, no matter how few people use it. End of story. There was never an intention to monetize, so please keep your brilliant plans to make money to yourself, and stop talking to me like you know everything there is to business when you yourself haven’t even started one. The next person who has not started a business telling me how to make this into a business will automagically not be able to contact me anymore, just like how Instasyncer automagically syncs your Instagram photos to Dropbox. I’m serious. I have better stuff to do than listen to your plans on how I can make money, for example, coding more cool features for Instasyncer. If you really have an awesome way to make money, please go and make it. I’ll be very happy for you. Really :)

Instasyncer is out!

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Haven’t been updating my blog recently, cos of exams, and even more recently been working on a side project called Instasyncer. Ever since Instagram came out for Android, I’ve been using it, and damnit, it’s a real pain to sync your photos over to the computer everytime you take a photo on Instagram.

So now, what I have done is that every time you take a photo using the Instagram app, no matter which phone you are on, just as long as that account is verified with Instasyncer, your photos will be synced to your Dropbox account within minutes.

If this sounds like something you will use, drop by the Instasyncer website here.

KRMF 2012 – DPM Tharman

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KRMF 2012 was earlier tonite, and while not as grand as the previous 2(MM Lee, and PM Lee), it was nevertheless an insightful experience.

1 and a half months ago, a Singaporean released the Android 4.0 operating system, for the Samsung Galaxy S. To put what he has done in perspective, he was featured on major tech blogs all over the world, and forums were talking about him.

On the contrary, almost no one in Singapore knew who had done what. Danial Makuthum, also known as Max was the boy behind this. He is a 14 year old, Normal Technical Secondary 2 student at Swiss Cottage Seconday School. He has surpassed the level of many of our computing undergraduates. But yet, he is in the Normal Technical stream.

So my question is this, what is Singapore doing for the hidden talent like him, who is simply not interested in studying the maths and science, and hence relegated to the lowest streams in education? Wouldn’t taking some time and money off procuring foreign scholars in order to seek out these hidden local talent be worthwhile?

He gave a very good reply, on how the government at the highest level is starting to realise that academia is not the only way to be good at what you do. Some people learn better by doing. And he mentioned that they are now working on starting to let the students do what they are really interested in not only at the secondary school level, but primary school level too. Not only that, he mentioned that in the best schools overseas, they get their students to create and build things, and not only mug textbooks, and that the government is working on that too. And I feel the most important point(at least imo) that he said was that technical and applied are for the bright students, not the students who cannot do academics. He did mention how they wanted to get kids to start building stuff too, and how not everyone needs to be a banker.

Now, the reply is all good. Problem is, are the teachers on the ground ready to do this? How many of the teachers we see are there simply because they cannot find better jobs outside? There is a reason why the saying

If you can’t do, teach.

is around. And recent MOE initiatives to pay for good behavior is just ridiculous. Are you going to pay for people to not commit crimes soon? There needs to be a mindset shift, and a cultural shift in the people actually executing it. The visionaries are good. That I do not deny. Tharman sounds like a very sincere and capable leader. Problem is, the people executing it are not.

Had an interesting chat with a professor of mine and his guest afterwards. Might blog about that too.

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