wejustblog

I frequent a few online forums and one of them is a private community known as Lobby45. One of the admins Keith posted something about the 90’s that really made my day. If you are in your 20 somethings this year some of these things will be familiar and you will probably feel the kind of nostalgia I did. It goes something like this.

You remember watching

• Doug
• Ren & Stimpy
• Pinky and the Brain
• AAAAAAAH Real Monsters!
• Rockos modern Life.
• Animaniacs
• Gargoyles
• KablAAAMMM!!
• TRANSFORMERS

You’ve ever ended a sentence with the word “PSYCHE!”
You just cant resist finishing this… “I in west Philadelphia born and raised…”

You remember

• Step by Step
• Family Matters!!!
• Dinosaurs
• Boy Meets World!!!!

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
You remember reading “Goosebumps”.
You still get the urge to say “NOT” after (almost) every sentence… not

When everything was settled by

• Rock paper scissors
• Bubble gum bubble gum in a dish or
• Ms. Mary Mack

When kick ball was a daily activity.
When we used to obey our parents.
You used to listen to the radio all day long just to record your FAVORITE song of ALL time on a tape.
You remember when Super Nintendos and Sega Genesis became popular.
You remember The Original Game Boy.
You always wanted to send in a tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos… but never taped anything funny.

You remember watching

• The Magic School Bus
• Wishbone
• Reading Rainbow
• and Ghostwriter on PBS

You remember when Yo-Yos were cool.
You remember those Where’s Waldo books.
You remember eating Warheads and Splashers Gum.

You remember watching

• The 1st Batman
• Aladdin
• Ninja Turtles

You remember Ring Pops.
If you remember when every thing was “da BOMB!”
You remember boom boxes .vs. cd players.
Making those little paper fortune cookie things, and then predicting your life with them.
You played and/or collected “Pogs”.
You had at least one Tamagotchi, GigaPet, or Nano and brought it everywhere.

one word… trolls.

Windows 95 was the best.

You watched the original cartoons of

• Rugrats
• Wild Thornberry’s
• Power Rangers
• Rocket Power

All your school supplies were “Lisa Frank” brand.
You collected those Beanie Babies.

Carebears

Lambchop’s song never ended.
Silver dollars, which were cool to have.
Everyone watched the WB.
If you even know what an original Walkman is.
You know the Macarena by heart.
“Talk to the hand”… enough said.

You went to McDonald’s to play in the playplace.
You remember playing on merry go rounds at the playground.

Before the MySpace frenzy.
Before the Internet & text messaging.
Before Sidekicks & iPods.
Before PlayStation3 or X-BOX 360.
Before Spongebob.
Before Tupac was shot.

When light up sneakers were cool.
When you rented VHS tapes, not DVDs.

When gas was $0.95 a gallon.
When we recorded stuff on VCRs.
You had slap bracelets!
You actually played outside until it was dark!

Way back.

Before PLAYSTATION!
The Dreamcast being the first online system…

There you have it. My post on the 90’s for the weekend.

Sure we set up a blog, nice theme and all, had some visitors coming by. Things are all good but we want it better. We didn’t really know what to blog and Ridzuan has writer’s block each time he settles himself on an office chair. We have a lot of discussion: what can we blog about; how frequent should we be blogging; and how to blog about communications without sounding like an excerpt from a third-year engineering textbook.

Someone - I honestly can’t recall who - brilliantly suggest that we should have some sort of a blogging roster where everyone sort of have to blog once per week. And yeah, my turn’s on Friday and this is my first time blogging in Widgeo.us Blog.

Also, we’re aware that the name Widgeo.us Blog simply didn’t sound just catchy enough. During our board meeting (our board has 4 people, coincidentally the size of our company), we started suggesting new blog names.

And then I suggested “we just blog” after hearing John Legend’s We Just Don’t Care on radio.

John Legend - P.D.A. (We Just Don’t Care)

So… yeah, we adopted the name. It’s short, sounds fun and is (probably) most descriptive of the purpose of this blog - after all right here, we just blog.

[On a side note: My proposal to make the song our official anthem has been rejected.]

You know sometimes when you dream and then you wake up feeling totally inspired? I had that magical feeling 3 days ago. I was cycling in my dream and cycling was something I have not been doing for 5 years, ever since my beloved BMX bicycle was stolen. It was an aluminium Haro tricked out with an array of high-end components like “Shimano XT” V-Brakes and my favorite French “Mavic” Rims. I locked it outside my flat with a thick chain and apparently it was cut in the middle of the night while I was asleep. The dream was almost lucid and the first thing on my mind when I opened my eyes was that I have to get a new ride.

A trip to my local bike shop and I have my new ride. It was a hasty decision but a good one nonetheless. Cycling was one of my major hobbies and living without a bike for the past 5 years somehow made me incomplete. The bike I bought is a 2008 Avalanche 2.0 Disc from GT Bicycles. As the name implies, it comes with Tektro Auriga Comp disc brakes stock for great and responsive stopping power, especially useful for a heavy person like me.

Pardon me for the messy background of my art materials.

Aside from the quality brakes, it also has a good frame with the proven GT Triple Triangle design 6061 butted aluminum with hydroformed downtube and zero stack headtube. Basically it means the frame is strengthened at the parts where it matters and lightened where it does not, for strength and lightness. The stock drivetrain components are pretty crap and I’m definitely swapping them for a more decent system.

Unhappy with the stock components, I upgraded some of them to lighter, prettier ones. I replace the longish GT stem with an AtomLab Aircorp short stem. The wheels are replaced with a pair of disc-specific Mavic Crossrides. I’m a big fan of Mavic! The current gear shifting feels sluggish and soft so I’m changing that as well. I have the 2008 Shimano Deore-XT group in mind. I like swift and light shifting so the aluminium triggers do me a big favor.

Do you have a ride too? Show me show me!

At approximately 11.30am today, we presented our alpha version of the Widgeo.us platform marking the successful completion of this phase. Kudos to Aen, Kah Wee and Uzyn for working round the clock in the run up to today.

It also marks the entry into the next phase of the startup which will involve the development of the platform into a fully functional system…something that we’re requiring before we release this for public use. This is also where we’ll begin to introduce you to what the Widgeo.us platform is about and how it can be relevant to you.

I know that a lot of people have questions as to what we’re trying to do but we’ve been operating in stealth mode to avoid unnecesary attention. Why talk so much if there’s nothing to show right? So now that we do have some skeletal platform out, i’ll start talking about our platform and what problem it’s solving. Screenshots will follow soon.

Unfortunately, we’re keeping the platform closed until we hit our private beta milestone….or maybe we might just send out some invites to random people… haha

Expect me to post up another entry with more meat next week! =)

It’s 5am on my notebook computer and the entire team is still up doing last minute tweaks and integration work before we head on for a presentation to our investors.

It’s an awesome feeling that’s mixed with a tinge of anxiety that after about 4 months of development work, we’re actually going to see something materialise.

I won’t want to celebrate before we officially hit this milestone but here’s to the team and to everyone who’s been so supportive thus far!

Keep on Chugging guys!