Colin Charles Agenda

I shared this from The Economist quite some time back: Counting raindrops. Here is an example of folk using mobile phone networks themselves for weather forecasting. 

Today I stumbled upon Cumulonimbus. They have an Android application called pressureNET, which makes use of the barometer in some Android phones. This is user-contributed atmospheric pressure readings, embedded on a Google map. It is available to view at http://pressurenet.cumulonimbus.ca/.

It seems many devices have a barometer as well. Samsung leads the pack with the Galaxy S3, S4, Note, Note II, Galaxy Nexus. It also comes with the Nexus 4 & Nexus 10.

This is just for testing purposes, but you might want to play around with MariaDB 5.5.29 coming via the CentOS 6 repositories as mentioned in this post. Please test it out and report bugs if required. The process was simple on a fresh install:

yum update
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/6/mariadb/mariadb.repo
yum list mariadb\*
yum install mariadb-server mariadb
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

That’s it, it just works. It comes with MEMORY, CSV, MRG_MYISAM, BLACKHOLE, MyISAM, PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA, ARCHIVE, FEDERATED, InnoDB (XtraDB) and Aria.

Remember this replaces mysql-libs, and is set to replace MySQL in your install. Here’s hoping it hits mainline CentOS soon.

Is the next wave restaurant booking applications for Malaysia? For that, the scene has to change much from restaurateurs.

In London, I had lunch at Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park. This restaurant has one Michelin star, and is generally booked out up to three months in advance. People clearly want to eat there.

But on the off chance something opens up, a service like OpenTable (not just for online restaurant reservations; is a restaurant management system too) can inform you that an opening exists and it could be great to visit. Foodies love this as there’s no wait, and restaurants love this as there’s revenue coming in.

From what I gather, when seasons are low at other OpenTable restaurants, you even snag discounts to eat there. No group buying involved, the restaurant genuinely wants to fill a seat, and everyone should leave the transaction happy.

Malaysia has no Michelin starred restaurants (Mandarin Oriental is the only user of OpenTable so far in Malaysia). That aside (who’s to say the ratings mean much), there isn’t a restaurant I know in Malaysia that has a need for a booking. I can almost always just walk in, leaving a reservation only for a special occasion if I wanted a preferential seat or something on the menu that requires pre-preparation (herbal chicken soup, beggar chicken, etc.).

There are restaurants that require you to queue though. Its culturally acceptable for us to queue and wait for something good (see Line Clear nasi kandar in Penang, the recent myBurgerLab frenzy in PJ, and probably Krispy Kreme doughnuts when it first came to our shores). I’m not saying its culturally unacceptable to queue in Europe (just look at the queues outside Laduree on Champs-Elysees in Paris). Everyone queues everywhere if something is good.

So it comes back to the type of dining. If its fine, you’re likely to take time to eat. Some 1.5-2 hours to get thru an appetizer, main course & desert. Its not fast food. You’re unlikely to queue for 1.5-2 hours under any circumstance just to get food, are you? So a reservation makes sense.

How many such restaurants are there in the Klang Valley, warranting a reservation?

There are times where reservations are invaluable. The whole month of puasa, where Muslims break fast in fancy locations, is probably a good time to make a reservation.

Overall I think the market isn’t ready for something that involves reservations. There just doesn’t seem to be a need for it. We have a foodie culture, but visiting many places almost never requires pre-planning.

I remember in Melbourne, a weekend dimsum (Hong Kong style at a place like Plume) works in 1.5h cycles. You got that much time to eat, and then head off. A reservation system there made sense. A multitude of restaurants could also be booked out for months, so again reservations made sense (try getting a booking at the then hot Fifteen restaurant by Jamie Oliver).

So, what do you make reservations for when casually dining in Malaysia?

1. Room Service which pioneered this in Malaysia (I think) wants RM20, with RM12-20 delivery fees (source)
2. foodpanda from Rocket Internet. 60 minutes delivery time, RM4-6 delivery fee, RM10-15 minimum order value

In the US, there seems to be GrubHub, Eat24, etc. In the UK, there’s Just Eat, niftynosh, etc.

What about payments? Room Service accepts visa/master/amex or cash.

The next time I have some time in Malaysia, I probably will give Room Service or foodpanda a try. Just to see how it works. I do see that their delivery areas are limited, which is naturally sad as it doesn’t cover the whole Klang Valley.

Can this work in Malaysia? Do people eat-in that often? How do you fix the location issue? When do we see more of the middlemen being cut out? Is it a good idea to go into business as a middleman like Room Service/foodpanda? How does this dynamic work when people don’t leave their homes, i.e. staying with their families even after marriage?

I don’t have the answers, and apparently this hasn’t been cracked since 2003 (when roomservice started).

I was in the library getting my usual feed of newspapers & magazines when I spotted a book that I totally wanted to read – Julian Assange the Unathorised Autobiography. I kind of forgot why I didn’t buy it upon release (read Julian Assange’s statement which tells why this is really an unauthorised autobiography).

It was a wholly interesting read that I can highly recommend. Some points that I would like to take note of:

• Reminding me of 1984 by George Orwell: “he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.”
• Theodore Roosevelt: “Behind the ostensible government sits an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.”
• “Authoritarian powers knows ow to strengthen itself through conspiracy.” – Julian Assange
• What were the unfakeable metrics in modern journalism? They were sales, hits, take-up and exclusivity. 
• I see that WikiLeaks published Michaela Wrong’s book about Kenya that was banned in the country as a PDF (It’s our turn to eat). Turns out that the author didn’t like this. This is something I myself have long thought about as the list of banned books in Malaysia is amazingly long.
• Its nice to see that he talks about the Malaysian Hack In The Box Conference (which he attended). It’s nice that he mentions he met Anwar Ibrahim too.
• Another George Orwell gem: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
• Disclosure is not merely an action; it is a way of life. To my mind it carries both sense and sensibility: you are what you know, and no state has the right to make you less than you are. Many modern states forget that they were founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, that knowledge is a guarantor of liberty, and that no state has the right to dispence justice as if it were merely a favour of power. Justice, in fact, rightly upheld, is a check on power, and we can only look after the people by making sure that politics never controls information absolutely.
• Information sets us free. And it does so by allowing us to question the actions of those who would sooner we had no means to question them, no right to reply.

“Those who study logic too long may lose sight of reason.” – Daniel Nichter (source)