Author Archives: uzyn

Web-based global live traffic visualization

By uzyn | Published: February 7, 2012

It has been awhile, but I have just noticed this video of a project I’ve done back in late 2008 for Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). The visualization shows live traffic[1] aggregated from various projects that are funded by MDA under their Interactive Digital Media funding program. The visualization is web-based. Its front-end is [...]

Posted in Showcase | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

My top albums of 2011

By uzyn | Published: January 6, 2012

My top albums (mainly progressive rock) of 2011: The Devin Townsend Project — Ghost Opeth — Heritage Anathema — Falling Deeper Björk — Biophilia Aaron Lewis — Town Line Steven Wilson — Grace For Drowning Blackfield — Welcome to My DNA Pain of Salvation — Road Salt Two Dream Theater — A Dramatic Turn of [...]

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Hash as filename

By uzyn | Published: September 13, 2011

md5, sha1, etc are very handy tools for programmers to generate hashed strings from random or fixed keys. A lot of the times, we simply store these hashes directly into databases, setting the field data type as string, or use the hashes as filenames (handy for creating cache files) or as part of URL. While [...]

Posted in Tips | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Connect to IBM DB2 on PHP via ODBC

By uzyn | Published: May 23, 2011

This was done and tested on a Linux (CentOS) system running PHP 4. Configure PHP with ODBC support. You should check that it is successfully installed by doing phpinfo(). Obtain the latest DB2 ODBC driver from IBM. You can download it from here. Lookout for Driver for ODBC and CLI. Untar it at a dir. [...]

Posted in Database, Tips | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lack of keyboard shortcuts in Apple applications

By uzyn | Published: March 11, 2011

One thing I’ve always really hate about Apple softwares are the lack of keyboard shortcuts on a lot of things. Today, I’m looking for a shortcut for editing of a cell in Numbers (a spreadsheet application in iWork suite) and this is what it says: “Edit content in cell: Select cell and click once, twice, [...]

Posted in UX | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How to convert a char column to numeric in PostgreSQL

By uzyn | Published: January 27, 2011

Attempting to ALTER a char column directly to numeric will result in the following error: ERROR: column “COL_NAME” cannot be cast to type numeric Here’s how to get around that: Verify data is ok & delete away the old column. I blog about PostgreSQL and other Linux sys admin stuffs on my Twitter (@uzyn) and [...]

Posted in Tips | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Running MySQL on EC2 ephemeral storage while maintaining consistency

By uzyn | Published: December 14, 2010

     Note: This article is written based on Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Server (Karmic Koala), having previously set up MySQL to run on EBS based on

Posted in Cloud computing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Accessibility fail

By uzyn | Published: November 11, 2010

From website of Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Posted in UI | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Email from myself — 5 years ago

By uzyn | Published: November 7, 2010

Received this surprise in the mail today: From: capsule@forbes.net To: chua@uzyn.com Date: Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 4:15 AM Subject: Hi from me 5 years back Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit [...]

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

First111!!!11!

By uzyn | Published: August 23, 2010

Alright, I’m not exactly new to blogging. Have been doing that since 2004. Stopped for 2 years from 2008. Now back again. Good to be back again. 140 chars are killing me.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , | 5 Comments