If you are like me that check his/her credit card statement every month to see how much interest been charged by the credit card issuer then let me share with you my little experience.
I have been using my credit card for the past 3 years or more, but recently I noticed that the interest been charged by one of of my card issuer shot up from an interest rate of 15% to 19.20% APR, at first I thought maybe its the credit crunch stuff, as I am not an account nor finance guy, I thought I give my bank a call and get an explanation as to why my credit card interest rate has shot up my savings account rate remain stagnant.
Well, spoke to this lovely guy probably based in India, wasn't much of any help has he could not explain to me why the rate had gone up from 15 to almost 20%, but he was kind enough to inform me that the rate goes up based on the calculation done by one of their computer system.
That was not good I rant on the phone, after 15 minutes of heated debate (poor bloke), he decided to take the interest rate back to 15.9%.
As a selfish guy, I thought I try my luck, and ask for a refund based on the high interest I have been charged in the past couple of months, I would love to say I won, but he wasn't willing to give me a refund, but I am happy with the final outcome.
Lesson learnt, don't let your bank or any financial institution rip you off. A call for an explanation and clarity is what it takes
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Monday 26 November 2007
Flex Chart Creation
Being a person that loves technology and challenges, I decided to implement a flex chart capability into the software that we are currently working on. I installed Adobe Flex builder 2, got myself the professional Flex 2 book(Tretola, et al) and set myself a deadline of 5 hours to come up with the needed chart.
What started as a little challenge, turned out to be tedious, stressful and at some point I almost gave up, but my job and integrity was on the line.
Before venturing into Flex development, I had the impression that I could connect directly to the application underlying database, but men was I 100% wrong. Reading the book and the manual, I came to realise that I would have to make calls to the database to fetch the needed data, using HTTPService, webservice, etc. Flex mostly use XML as a data format.
Ok, I recovered from the dilema of connecting to the database and learnt how to use the HTTPService to get the needed data for the chart. The data was then used to plot the chart after defining the datasource within the column chart tag.
I went on to learn how to make the data value appear on the column using the showDataTips function, I also se the column maximum column width(maxColumnWidth), for accessibility I used the toolTip to provide additional information to the user.
By default the axis label are not included, digging into the help file, I soon came to realsise that I can set the X axis label using the category Axis tag of the horizonatalAxis and vice versa.
The chart to be produced in question was suppose to give the user the ability to see yearly incident, when a year is clicked the chart drills down to show the month incident.
Surely this should be easy, at first it was not, but now it is. I started my search on Google with 'drill down chart', some of the result where helpful, but soon realised that my XML format was different from that being used to explain the drill down data.
Well, after additional break, party, sleeping, easting, etc I found a solution to help me. The key to my problem of not been able to come back up after drilling down was because I can access the needed data.
To resolve this, I brought in the XML data as an Array collection(by using result part of the HTTPService) and then made the array collection to be 'public'
What more can I say, I am happy that I cracked it, I can still my job and my integrity is as clean as clean.
Can I point out that I have never made the effort to read flex prior to creating the chart application, but I realise that one can bring skills learnt from other systems and apply it on current application development/implementation.
What started as a little challenge, turned out to be tedious, stressful and at some point I almost gave up, but my job and integrity was on the line.
Before venturing into Flex development, I had the impression that I could connect directly to the application underlying database, but men was I 100% wrong. Reading the book and the manual, I came to realise that I would have to make calls to the database to fetch the needed data, using HTTPService, webservice, etc. Flex mostly use XML as a data format.
Ok, I recovered from the dilema of connecting to the database and learnt how to use the HTTPService to get the needed data for the chart. The data was then used to plot the chart after defining the datasource within the column chart tag.
I went on to learn how to make the data value appear on the column using the showDataTips function, I also se the column maximum column width(maxColumnWidth), for accessibility I used the toolTip to provide additional information to the user.
By default the axis label are not included, digging into the help file, I soon came to realsise that I can set the X axis label using the category Axis tag of the horizonatalAxis and vice versa.
The chart to be produced in question was suppose to give the user the ability to see yearly incident, when a year is clicked the chart drills down to show the month incident.
Surely this should be easy, at first it was not, but now it is. I started my search on Google with 'drill down chart', some of the result where helpful, but soon realised that my XML format was different from that being used to explain the drill down data.
Well, after additional break, party, sleeping, easting, etc I found a solution to help me. The key to my problem of not been able to come back up after drilling down was because I can access the needed data.
To resolve this, I brought in the XML data as an Array collection(by using result part of the HTTPService) and then made the array collection to be 'public'
What more can I say, I am happy that I cracked it, I can still my job and my integrity is as clean as clean.
Can I point out that I have never made the effort to read flex prior to creating the chart application, but I realise that one can bring skills learnt from other systems and apply it on current application development/implementation.
Thursday 11 October 2007
Free Flex Training at Total Training
Flex, according to Adobe.com (2007), enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems.
At first glance to me it looks like Flash, but after some reading I was made to belief that though they are similar( as they both use Actionscript) but at the same time they are different but not that different.
One of the great feature I like about it is the ability to represent data in a grahpical format through the chart capability add on.
At $499 for the standard version and $749 for the Flex with chart, you would agree it does not come cheap. But the ability to easily create rich application for clients and personal use is marvellous.
As a novice that likes to learn about new and emerging technology, I was looking for online sources to learn how to use the technology, luckily I found a free 30 days training from total training courtesy of Adobe.
Link to download a trial version of flex
Link to get free 30 days flex training
At first glance to me it looks like Flash, but after some reading I was made to belief that though they are similar( as they both use Actionscript) but at the same time they are different but not that different.
One of the great feature I like about it is the ability to represent data in a grahpical format through the chart capability add on.
At $499 for the standard version and $749 for the Flex with chart, you would agree it does not come cheap. But the ability to easily create rich application for clients and personal use is marvellous.
As a novice that likes to learn about new and emerging technology, I was looking for online sources to learn how to use the technology, luckily I found a free 30 days training from total training courtesy of Adobe.
Well I am off to start learning how to use the application!
Link to download a trial version of flex
Link to get free 30 days flex training
Tuesday 2 October 2007
Google Analytics
Just yesterday I happen to be looking for a website monitor/analysis tool. Luckily the engineers at Google(don't you just love them) had already created a sophisticated tool coined 'Google Analytics'.
Most of Google products are free and this is no exception, though due to the great sophistication and functionality and capability embedded within this application I am still wondering why it is free. Point to note, you have unlimited page use if you are a member of the Google adsense.
The ability to detect the type of browsers, operating system, exact location, amount of visitors to your site, are just some of the features that could be achieved when using this little beauty.
All you need to sign up is a google account(which is free) and have administration right to the website you want to monitor.
I suggest you try it out.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Most of Google products are free and this is no exception, though due to the great sophistication and functionality and capability embedded within this application I am still wondering why it is free. Point to note, you have unlimited page use if you are a member of the Google adsense.
The ability to detect the type of browsers, operating system, exact location, amount of visitors to your site, are just some of the features that could be achieved when using this little beauty.
All you need to sign up is a google account(which is free) and have administration right to the website you want to monitor.
I suggest you try it out.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
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