Background

I have known of QR Code for a few years now but has never dabbled at it. Recently, I was asked to look into it.

Findings

Hi-Res cameras on today’s smartphone coupled with high resolution QR codes (e.g. version 40 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Data_capacity) can allow for 4296 ascii characters! We could fit quite a long URL into that!

Tools

• qrencode
• libqrcode-ruby
• http://www.qrstuff.com/

Thoughts

Singapore cinemas, some of them, are already using QR codes as a proof of purchase (ie. ticket). I am guessing the customer is given a QR code that translates into a key that was randomly (secure randomly) generated. It is a key to a table that holds the ticket detail including a expiration date?

Conclusion

Ideas are flowing… let’s see if I could find some innovative use of it as well.

It has been 2-3 months since I been to BKK. Quite excited to be heading there for a week. Maybe some new events or learnings to report after this.

Background

patriach = sheet.getDrawingPatriarch();
patriach.createPicture(anchor, pictureIndex);

Needed to extract images from an Excel file and then place it into another.
Wow! It was a lot tougher than I thought.

Problem

POI, JExcelAPI, etc. Most of them can’t seem to get the job done.

Lament

This file format must really be a POI for so many to fail at something as simple as extracting an embedded image.

One would have assumed that if we can insert, we ought to be able to extract? Sigh.

At Work

DatabaseMetaData md = connection.getMetaData();
ResultSet colRS = md.getColumns(null, null, "Portfolio", null);

Boon has been benefiting a lot from the database metadata on the Java space at work recently. During one of the discussions, we (Boon and co-workers) were pondering why is the rich database metadata on the DB API mainly available only in Java/C# space? Why does the scripting languages mostly lack a rich DB metadata API?

At Home

Boon still pondering…

Background

Boon uses a media player at home. The media player has 2 USB ports.

Boon plugs a ext3 formatted USB drive into the player.

Recently

Boon finds that the drive keeps dropping off and comes back.

It begins to happen more and more often.

Hunch

Maybe file system is corrupt or damaged.

Action

Boon unplugs it from media player and plugs into Ubuntu PC and e2fsck it.

e2fsck to the rescue!

Result

Boon can watch movie on media player without problematic drive anymore.

Lesson

If you frequently power on and power off your media player (the hard way, by switching power on and off), even ext3 can deteriorate to the point of failure.

Before You Say…

The media player doesn’t deal with anything other than NTFS and ext2/ext3, so don’t ask me why I didn’t try like XFS.