Monday 29 August 2011

A Tutorial to the manager


A Tutorial to mangers and management.

I always believe that, managers and management is a new job category from 90's. One of the major reasons is there are too many people in this world than ever. There are too many skilled workers and any one with a better communication skill would be excellent - too many options for them. 

A successful manager or successful management, one of the key successful factors, from my point of view, is the number of options. More options you have, better communication skill you have, you can always make a better decision. The manager can implement whatever campaign, policy, rules, COST SAVING or etc because the available options make sure he won't fail. 

But the key is - OPTION. 

Fundamentally, a good manager or management is just to make sure the individual or the team work better - They could do better than what they're supposed. They are supposed to be the worse, they could become worser with good management. They are supposed to be above average, they could be verity good worth good management. However, it is usually extremely difficult to change something from the worse to the best. You can't mind the gold from the trash. It is just impossible to create a miracle from nothing even with the best manager. 

3 games, GD is -3, 3 red cards in 3 games, ranked 17th. If the name of team is Blackpool, I could accept that. And probably the scroll would be 18-2 if we do not have the better keeper.

Wenger, the world has changed, the way in 90's does not work anymore, either you have to change or you have to go. You eliminate the options you have, take away the possible success factors, what will be your plan?

Monday 22 August 2011

From Windows 7 to Mac

After some works, I am above to transfer most of the data from PC to Mac. In the process, quite some challenges have been resolved, perhaps it is good to write down so that I could remember what I had done earlier...

  1. Word / Excel / Powerpoint
    The first major problem is to read the documents! Preview comes with Mac OS Lion is a read only program. Many options are available in Mac, such as iWork, NeoOffice or even Microsoft Office for Mac but all of them would still have certain compatibility issues.

    The conclusion is to use the native Windows Word, Excel and Powerpoint and it is the only solution can guarantee 100% compatable....

    So, the 2nd day I setup a VMWare Fusion with MS offices...
     
  2. Synchronization of Outlook / BlackBerry / HTC Flyer
    The 2nd major problem is the synchronization for the above. A very common answer from my friends is to go cloud (either Google or MobileMe). Personally, I don't like to much private information goes Cloud and I prefer to keep them locally...

    Then, the sync program from BlackBerry supports both Mac and PC. However, the sync program from HTC only supports PC (Outlook)! Luckily, because of the Office documents problem above, MS office is there and I just need to migrate the pst folders as what I did previously for my new PC.
  3. iTune
    iTune is a headache in the begining. I was trying to sync with the iTune in Windows because the HTC Sync only supports Windows. Lot of issues with library path which makes sharing iTune library between Mac and Windows impossible. Then the solution is to use free tool 'Easy Phone Tunes' from Market.
     
  4. iPhoto and Picasa
    I was suggested to iPhoto in Mac but it is not really a nice job to re-manage all the Photos again in a new photo manager. From the web, transferring from Picasa Win to Picasa Web may also cause problems. So I have used the Picasa in Windows (VMWare) as of now... Maybe when I have time, I will try to migrate to iPhoto or Picasa in MAc.

After all, I am still happy with the Mac experience till now. Some of the things come with Mac are really nice and I have been looking for these for a while.
  1. Native Unix Command
    This is really nice and i dont need to setup the cygwin anymore... SSH is also built-in...
  2. Virtual Desktop
    The Mission Control is the Virtual Desktop implementation in Mac. Currently, I have setup two desktops such that one for Mac and one for VM... I can also configurate the VM such that it will always start in the Desktop 2.
  3. Chinese input and Chinese Hand Writing
    Chinese Input (倉頡) is still not yet as good as my Palm CJKOS. However, it is still useable. It comes with a code lookup tool and I can always use the Hand-writing or paste a Chinese charater to look up the code. Not only it just looks up the code for 倉頡, but it also looks up the codes for the other in-use method...
  4. Time Machine
    Backup feature is something I need to spend time in my PC for long and I don't have a good solution yet. It is either too much of work for a backup or the solution does not backup / restore very well.
    Time Machine is great. It is just automatic and restore is not difficult at all.


  5. Dictionary
    Finally there is an OS comes with a nice dictionary ("New Oxford American English". and "New Oxford British English").

Of course, lot of other issues are still pending...
  1. Java / Eclipse / BlackBerry / Android SDK
    Apple is using it own development framework. Transferring the workplace from Eclipse BlackBerry SDK to Coca is not straight forward at all...
  2. Firefox Multitouch gesture
    Firefox, which is my favorite browser in Windows, does not support the Multitouch festure in Lion, waiting for the update.
  3. Native office application
    NeoOffice.... but also no time to try.
  4. Finder and Keyboard Shortcut
    I missed the 'Windows' + E to open the Windows Explorer. Mac does not provide the exact same short-cut to open Finder...