Sorry for the late post this week. No excuses, I’m just being lazy to post. Anyways, this week pick includes a lovely Tongan song and more of 7ven’s old songs. You can also check out previous posts here:
# 7ven Idols + Glass Alley
# 7ven Idols + NWP

Phwe – Icy7ven
This week I got two songs from Phwe’s old collections. “Ta Di Ya Nay Mhar Par” is about rememberence of the old university by Mie Mie Win Phay and Phwe sang it pretty well, though I think the song should be abit slower cos’ it’s suppose to be a sad song. “Pa Soe Nae Tite Pong” is Phwe’s favorite. The song is about wearing Burmese traditional dress – a gal is telling her bf to wear proper dress when he come see her parents. Her parents don’t like baggy cloths and next time if he doesn’t wear proper clothing, she will not accept him. It’s a good song though I find it kinda funny.

[ MP3 ] Phwe – Ta Di Ya Nay Mhar Par

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[ MP3 ] Phwe – Pa Soe Nae Tite Pong

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Tu’I kolongahau kaikoa
A friend from Tonga forwarded me this beautiful song. This is the first time for me to listen a Tongan song and I like it. Sometimes back, one of my friend sent me a PNG song which also has the similar name Maria or Mae in it. Unfortunately I misplaced the file and couldn’t find it back. But I think PNG and Tongan dialect are a bit similar…may be not. I also lost a CD with many good songs from South Pacific – Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and all those small island nations. I’ve been losing things lately, hmm so bad! Anyways, I requested the song details and here is what he sent me. Sweet isn’t it. I bet his gal must be really touched by it.

[ WMA ] Tu’I kolongahau kaikoa – Oh, my dear Maria

About the song:This song has been played throughout the three local and secular radio stations in Tonga: FM 88.6, FM 90 and AM 110.03

I wrote this in dedication to my current girlfriend. Her name is Demarise, who is currently studying in Africa. Due to the long distance relationship, and being, what we call it, ‘lovesick’ most of the time, I decided to put all my thoughts into a song, with my heart etched to it. The chorus of the song has her name in it.

I never thought this song would be recognized. I guess it’s just that I put my whole heart into it, where there are also others out there who can identify themselves with me. We all go through times when you think you will go crazy just missing somebody you love so much. I have translated the lyrics of the song in English, though I wish you knew Tongan because the heat of the matter is better explained in my mother tongue language, Tongan.

Read, listen and enjoy. And to all you lovebirds out there, just hang in there!

English Translation

Oh, my dear Maria

As the wind blows from the northern hemisphere
My thoughts are just filled with you
I don’t see anything else but your face in my dreams
It actually relieves me of the pain I feel (in heart and mind)

Chorus:
Oh, oh, oh, my Maria…

In the evening when the sun is about to set
It reminds me of your beautiful smile
I think of nothing and nobody else but you alone
Yes, the love of my heart (my lover)

Oh how I wish that I were near you
The thought of it just takes my breath away
Yes, I so cannot wait for that day
When I pledge you myself (body, heart, mind and soul)

# NB. The file is in .wma format and it got some keys in it. Just download it and you should be able to play as many times as you wish.
Thanks Hayden and Tu’i-K-K for the song.

May – G7ven
And finally this two is from me. “A Pyin Pyay Nya Nay” is about a girl day dreaming in a boring evening and sings about the thing she sees on the street. It’s L Sine Ze’s song and my recording is crap, overriding her vocal. “Nha Ko Tu Chit Ta Mhya” is very OLD song from a very OLD movie – “Thingyan Moe”, singing about two love birds. It’s a duet song but I sang for both. I can’t keep up the vocals … oh well…who cares!

[ MP3 ] May – A Pyin Pyay Nya Nay

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[ MP3 ] May – Nha Ko Tu Chit Ta Mhya

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That’s all folks! ta tar!

I’m wondering…

• I’m wondering, asp.net 2.0 website project does not create project file and .dll file and where all those code-behinds compiled into?
• I’m wondering, if we are to deploy it, do we only deploy .aspx and .ascx (front-end) files or have to include code-behind files as well?
• I’m wondering, why .pdb files are also included when you add project references to the website project.
• I’m wondering, why some referenced .dll creates .xml files as well.
• I’m wondering, do we need to add those .pdb and .xml along with referenced .dll in the deployment.
• I’m wondering, the main difference between asp.net 2.0 web application project and web site project.

And I’m still wondering…

Scenario: The gangs are talking about salaries at USP (University of South Pacific).

X: These gangs at USP, their base salary is 80K.
Z: They are ripping off students. Filthy rich.
X: What if all of us salary is 100K?
Y: Fiji is not that rich.
X: I’m just saying…what if our IT team salary is 100K? Everyday pizza…”Z” will be twice that size.
Z: How Rude!!
(* Chuckles *)
X: Haha I’m just joking.

Thought: The higher the salary, the better/more food in take, the bigger your size will be.

The core mission of a version control system is to enable collaborative editing and sharing of data. Different systems use different strategies to achieve this. There are two main versioning models namely “Lock-Modify-Unlock” and “Copy-Modify-Merge“.

Lock-modify-unlock

In this model, the repository allows only one person to change a file at a time. This exclusively policy is managed using locks. VSS and old style source controls use this approach where only one person at a time can modify a file. Lock the file, edit, then check in and release the lock. This model is only suitable for a small teams. For a bigger team with many developers, it would be inefficient to use this model as locking isolates a file to only one developer which delays the work among other team members who want to work on the file.

The lock-modify-unlock model (Ref #)

The problem with the lock-modify-unlock model is that it’s a bit restrictive, and often becomes a roadblock for users:

• Locking may cause administrative problems.
  if one developer forgot to unlock a file before he take a leave would cause others to delay working on the file unless an administrator to release the lock.
• Locking may cause unnecessary serialization
  if developers are to edit different part of the file, it’s is unnecessary to unlock and edit. It should be edited together then merge the file.
• Locking may create a false sense of security

(Ref: pp. 4)

Copy-modify-merge

In this model, each user’s client contacts the project repository and creates a personal working copy – a local reflection of the repository’s files and directories. Users then work simultaneously and independently, modifying their private copies. Subversion, CVS and a number of other version control systems uses this model as an alternative to locking. Early version of Subversion did not support locking at all, but this is no longer the case. You can now lock files, query files to see who has locked then, and even mark files as requiring locks before edits. This make sense for binary files where merging is impossible. (Ref: pp 5)

Copy-Modify-Merge model (Ref #)

NB: TortoiseSVN provides a good built-in diff tool; you can also install WinMerge (http://winmerge.org), which integrate itself into TortoiseSVN.

When Locking is Necessary

While the lock-modify-unlock model is considered generally harmful to collaboration, there are still times when locking is appropriate.

The copy-modify-merge model is based on assumption that files are contextually mergeable: ie. that the majority of the files in the repository are line-based text files(such as program source code). But for files with bonary formats, such as artwork or sound, it’s ofter impossible to merge conflicting changes. In these situations, it really is necessary to users to take strict turns when changing the file. Without serialized access, somebody ends up wasting time on changes that are ultimately discarded.

While Subversion is still primarily a copy-modify-merge system, it still recognizes the need to lock an occasional file and provide mechanisms for this. (Ref: pp 7)

Ref:
#Don’t Use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe!,
# subversion documentation | Online version

This one is the winning caption from last week Caption Contest at Read/Write Web.
Short, sweet and sharp, I like it!

Winning Caption: “Google Human Indexing – We start early.”

Check out other captions too at Read/Write Web.

Crazy Egg is yet another web statistic tracking service. It displays in 3 formats:

• Overlay – % clicks, referal links
• List – view a full summary of raw clicks
• Heat Map – shows the most click areas on the page.

There are 3 paid plans and a free plan. A free account is ideal for a small personal site such as blog to track the visitor stats. Ofcos, there is a limit of 5,000 visit/month, 4 pages and 4 screenshots archive for the free plan. Very neat interfaces so you can consider using it for your blog stats tracking.

Here are some of the readings on Subversion and VSS that I came across. Whoever interested in Source Control and its available tools should go through these links first to get to know the technologies out there. I’m just concentrating on SVN and VSS, but there are a lot more to look at. Depending on your choice of technology, google would be your best reference.

Documentations:

• Subversion Software (Wiki): Subversion features and support wiki
• SVN Documentation: documentation on latest svn, available in pdf and html downloads
• TortoiseSVN Tutorials: step by step tutorial on using TortoiseSVN
• AnkhSVN Wiki Home: svn Visual Studio plugin – AnkhSVN support wiki.

Good Reference Articles

• Branching & Merging Primer: very good explanations on various form of branching and merging.
• Source Control HOWTO: Series of articles explaining how to do source control and the best practices.
• Subversion Resources at Open Directory: various resources and plugins for svn on multiple platforms.
• Subversion versus Perforce: Popular source code management tools go head to head: good comparison on svn vs perforce by the register
• My Experiences With Subversion: good article on personal experience with svn.
• Steps in starting up with Subversion – moving away from Sourcesafe

No to Visual SourceSafe? Bad Toad! Bad Toad!

• Don’t Use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe!
• Source Control: Anything But SourceSafe: strong emphasis on not to use VSS.
• Visual SourceSafe: Microsoft’s Source Destruction System: points out the disadvantages of VSS in terms of features as well as code safety.
• Visual SourceSafe Version Control: Unsafe at any Speed?

I’ll be adding more later and if you find some good readings/articles, do let me know too.