My neighbour asked me to help install a copy of The Sims Deluxe Edition, Hot Dates Expansion Pack and Vacations Expansion Pack. Spent about two and half hours in front of the Windows 98 computer, I managed to install all three successfully. Too bad the documentation did not mention the correct order to install the various version. There is a list of recommended order of installation for someone with ALL the various expansion packs, but there wasn't a list of recommended order of installation for the 3 editions specifically, although the 3 editions were packages into a same retail box.

Anyway, since I spent my time on this, I think it should do some good to get this documented.

• First install the The Sims Deluxe Edition - this involves 2 disks
  
• After that, install the Vacations Expansion Pack.
  
• After successfully installing the Vacations EP, start the start.exe in your CD. It will ask you to insert the Disk 1 for The Sims Deluxe Edition. Change the CD and launch the program again.
  
• You can choose to launch either the 800x600 version or the 1024x768 version. The Sims Deluxe Edition will detect that you have installed a new expansion pack. This message appeared in a dialog box that was launched behind active windows in my case.
  
• Choose the option to insert the Sims Deluxe Edition disk for updating the files. This option will re-copy files from both the Disk 1 and Disk 2 of the Sims Deluxe Edition. After the installation is completed, you can launch the Deluxe Edition again and you can find that in the main screen (Neighbourhood view) there is another icon to bring you to the Vacation Island view.
  
• Installation of Hot Dates Expansion Pack is similar to that of the Vacations Expansion Pack. The only difference is that one of the steps require you to insert a Livin' At Large Expansion Pack CD to continue installation. If you do not have that CD, you can try either inserting Disk 1 of the Sims Delux Edition, or click "Next" a few times at the dialog box that asks you to insert the Livin' At Large EP. (I don't know which works, because I did both at the same time. Let me know if you tried one of these)
  
• After Hot Dates EP is installed, you can launch the Sims Deluxe Edition and find that there is another icon "Downtown view", which will bring you to the Hot Dates EP
  

MayDay's Singapore concert is tonight! If you don't know what/who MayDay is, go to www.gogorock.com to find out!

Ever wonder what is that program that is running in your windows task list? I was looking for carpserv.exe in google, and came across this site which explains the common executables found in the windows task list. Helps if you want to optimise your windows system.
Task List Programs

Most of the time spent in a development project is not in the actual coding, but in the time to communicate and make clients understand what you are trying to do. Sometimes the clients are really so clueless that educationing them is a full time job!

Someone wrote a lucene search implement for BroadVision, and also took the time to do up this image.

Using RSS in JSP pages describes the usage of Informa, a new open-source Java API for parsing RSS files.

I am terribly excited at the rate of development of the RSS/weblog related technologies out there in the web. However, one of the things that I had problem with is how to categorise and collectively call this set of technologies. (To call it 'RSS/weblog related set of technologies' is a mouth full and does not give the technology justice.

Through some readings, I came across the term Semantic Web, and it does seem to shed some light on the path that RSS/weblog related techonlogies are all to solve the problem of make information machine-understandable.

Hey, wait a minutes, doesn't machine-understandble information sound suspiciously like Web Services, the buzz word of the last few years? Yes it does. In fact, my view is that Semantic Web technologies (now I can call them 'Semantic Web Technologies' instead of 'RSS/weblog related technologies') will lead the adoption of web services with its ability to ease and assist in Content Consumption.

Just like the HTML-brochureware-to-transaction-heavy-sites kind of evolution, I believe that web services evloution will follow the same path, gaining popularity and wide usage first based on content, then follow suite with transaction capabilities.

John Robb's Weblog
Aggregators are going to be the next killer-app!

JESS is a derivative of CLIPS, an Expert System Engine. Seems like it has gotten more acceptance recently.

TheServerSide.com J2EE Community - Jess and the javax.rules API

Live statistics of the California vote. Arnie the next governor of CA? Looks likely when I last checked.

Vote2003

Found another open sourced Java application server.
JOnAS - Home Page

Blogging is fun. It satisfy my need to share with everyone in the world what goes on in my mind. However, I think it really is a big drain on engery, when everything that could be said, now needs to be written. Audioblogs will not solve this problem, since they cannot be easily "glanced-over" like a text blogging site can.

I was spending the most parts of this rainy morning try to write a post in my company wiki/blog, to communicate details of an upcoming project. I know the benefits of having it all written down, instead of just holding a meeting where half the information will be forgotten once the attendees stream out of the room to lunch, but it is still a pain to write all these down properly.

Just wondering, is blogging going to help all this? Maybe if I started blogging about the engagement from the start, it would help.

Just learnt that now both IE6.0 and Mozilla can render XML files using XSL files with directives like the following:
<?xml-stylesheet href="/parts/rss.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?>
This is interesting, as it takes away the need to perform the rendering of the HTML at the server side. However, I wonder what is the percentage of browsers out there that can support this feature.

This is pretty cool. A Japanese guy who is dedicated to making RSS-related technology work. (Anyway, are these technology collectively known as Semantic Web? Got to find out more) He has done quite some work translating FOAF to Japanese. I cannot read Japanese, but I guess I can use this site to learn...:P

RSS Feed Reader @ Web KANZAKI

Stumbled upon this site that focuses on license that is suitable for bloggers. Creative Commons. Will check it out further later.

Try this chinese posting....in UTF 8
吕贝克是德国的世界遗产之一

Perseus - The Blogging Iceberg

This is one of the first few articles that said something negative about blogging. Apparently I fall into the category that has the smallest population - the 13,600 blogs that were resumed after being abandoned. :)

source: BlogDex - top on the list when I checked.

Will this appear properly as Chinese Text on my blog? Does Blogger.com support chinese?
?��V?�10��4?�?C2003�N?B
Apparently it does not.

hehehe... I finally found out that the above code is GB....no wonder it did not work....

Chinese blogging is getting really big too. CNBlog:Blog On Blog

Ok, the verdict is out. It works. :) Basically the logic in the action controller decides which action to forward to depending on the user-agent value. After that, it all depends on the action forwarded to to render the correct version of the site. Code snippet:

String UserAgent = "";

java.util.Enumeration e = req.getHeaderNames();
while(e.hasMoreElements()) {
String name = (String) e.nextElement();
String value = req.getHeader(name);
if (name.equals("user-agent")) {
UserAgent = value;
}
}

if (UserAgent.equals("Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320)"))
{
// if user agent is for Pocket PC, forward to success_pda
return mapping.findForward("success_pda");
}

// by default forward to success
return mapping.findForward("success");

I am trying to modify one of the applications written by one of my colleagues so that it will properly direct the browser to the correct jsp page (either for HTML browsers or WAP browser) based on the User-Agent HTTP variable. Struts is making it quite easy to do this. Someone has a proposed way of doing it in this post. I will try it out and see if it really works.

I have always been wondering about copyright laws and how it applies to the Singapore context. Someone (a lecturer at NTU, I think) has put together a good site with resources that answer such questions. http://www.medialaw.com.sg/

By the way, I think I will still keep Vista, but instead use it to post to my blog here at TotallyConfused. :)

In true tradition of being TotallyConfused. Was trying out some RSS Clients and found FeedDemon that is written by someone who is also the author of HomeSite. Cool interface, but again it is information overload that makes me quite confused about how I can best use this tool. Too bad it is going to be just a beta that will expire on Sep 15.

Ok, after testing out Gaim, Vista, Rhymbox, Trillian and a handful of many other IM clients, I think I will settle with ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. The attempt to aggregate the various IM providers is just simply too complex to make an engaging enough product that works well

It just takes a few bored IT professional to come up with conversation like this......

"There should be a water-cooled system for underwear"!

My colleague just said this "We should all not wear underwear"!

Will this get on my TotallyConfused Blog? Blogging from Vista

Now, you see, I was blogging on Radio some time ago. I did not have too much time to play around with it, but I bought a one year subscription anyway to see if I could get the hang of it within a year. Now that my one-year subscription is up, I am still pretty confused about how to go about blogging effectively.
Switching to Blogger gives me a chance to try out another blogging tool, to see if I am really up for blogging.

Anyway, welcome to TotallyConfused. I hope you leave my site less confused then I am. :)