The sad state of Malaysian web hosting industry

May 28, 2010

Anyone involved in web development would know that whatever website you develop would be useless without publishing it online on the web. That’s the heart of the web hosting industry’s business – hosting websites on servers so that people around the world can access the websites through internet. It is therefore a crucial part of any web development business, be it huge companies or individual freelancers.

Because setting up own servers is expensive and is simply not financially viable for almost all web development studios (and freelancers), the most cost-effective and simplest way is to just subscribe an account with a web hosting company – companies whose business is simply to set up servers and host websites. This, of course, comes at a fee.

Web Hosting Dissected

There’s typically three types of web hosting package: dedicated server, virtual private server (VPS), and shared hosting. Dedicated server is often the most expensive, as the web hosting company dedicate one whole server to just one particular hosting account. It’s like renting a computer with blazing fast internet connection to host large number of websites or websites with huge disk space and bandwidth requirements. VPS comes second in terms of price, offering much of the features of a dedicated server, but instead of dedicating one whole server to just one account, several accounts are allocated to one server with restricted server resources for each account – less disk space, less bandwidth, less memory. However, you would typically still have the administrative features of a dedicated server with a VPS, like shell access (executing commands on the server through command line interface) and determining most, if not all, server settings. Then comes shared web hosting, which is the cheapest of all. This is because there’s even less disk space and bandwidth allocated, less memory, and a host of other restrictions apply, so that the web hosting company can allocate one server to as many shared hosting accounts as possible. With shared hosting, you will be so lucky to be able to find one that allows you to even play with the server’s settings. Continue Reading

 

Easter Trip 2010 – Retouched

April 24, 2010

These are select few photos from the trip, retouched using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

If you want the full-sized version of these photos, ask!

 

I will derive!

April 19, 2010

A classic parody of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”

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And this is a live performance record by Gloria Gaynor, singing I Will Survive. Absolutely beautiful performance. The tune’s so catchy you won’t realise your body’s rocking!

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Falling down from 15,000 ft at 200km/h

April 15, 2010

I can summarise my just-concluded holiday trip as this: falling down from 15,000ft up at 200km/h, and climbing back up again to 2000m. And that was simply, simply awesome.

Taupo Tandem Skydiving

The skydiving experience was just unforgettable. Steadily climbing up from the ground to 15,000 ft (about 4.6km) in the small skydiving plane from Taupo airport, I didn’t think about what I was about to do. The view was nice to take in, and at that high an altitude I can see the whole of Lake Taupo, a lake with a size bigger than Singapore, and more. The tandem master tightens the harness that attaches me to him, while cracking some jokes along the way. It was not until the first person went out of the plane that the realisation of what I was about to do suddenly hit me, and it crunches me to the gut. It was the “oh my God, oh my God, oh my God” kind of gut crunching, as I watched one by one of my friends went out of the plane’s door. When all my three friends have already jumped out, the tandem master pushes me to the edge of the plane’s door, and I can see now the landscape below, the water and land, 15000ft below my feet, with literally nothing in between.

The very first moment my body fell out of the plane and into the air, I felt like my heart dropped, and everything else that happens afterwards is better told by videos and pictures rather than words. Continue Reading

 

An appeal to end Internet Explorer 6′s life

March 10, 2010

I never thought I would actually write this post. This is truly an act of frustration.

I humbly request each and every one of you internet users out there that are still using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to do any of these actions:

  1. Switch to other internet browsers, like Mozilla Firefox
  2. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8

Both the above softwares can be legally downloaded for free.

Why, you might ask, the need to change? “IE6 has been working fine for me since time immemorial. Why should I bother to change?” Well my friend, let me explain.

IE6 is an old technology. It was first released 9 years ago. Since then, a lot of newer and more modern browsers have come out, like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, even Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. These newer, modern browsers support newer technologies that allow for more engaging and interactive web experience, which many of them are not supported by IE6. We web developers are very, very keen to integrate these new technologies into the websites that we build so that you, the end user, may experience a more engaging and interactive web experience. Continue Reading