RooJSolutions

Roo J Solutions Limited is recruiting

2012-01-31 00:00:00

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog
Since we have been very busy already this year, I have now almost completed the process of migrating from a Sole Proprietor into a Limited Company. Roo J Solutions Limited is now a registered Hong Kong Company. We are now looking for full or part-time staff (based in Hong Kong).

Please read the full post for details.

Barcamp Hong Kong 2009

2009-09-14 06:39:12

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog
Went along to Barcamp in Hong Kong this weekend, Have to thank all the guys & girls involved in organizing it. As it was a chance to meet some interesting people, who I did not realize where even in Hong Kong.

Barcamp Hong Kong, is perhaps a little different from what you might get elsewhere. First off it's not so much a techy thing. (Evidenced by the sight of 1 Linux desktop = mine...) I gave one talk on 'D', and went to a couple of others with lesser technical emphasis - drupal / OO JS etc. but the majority of talks where either business development style (raising funds, startups). or iPhone related (with out the coding stuff).

I guess this comes from the general attitude here that most programmers tend to regard it as a stepping stone to management or something, and have very little passion about the whole industry.. (as someone described it to me).

The technical talks gathered at most 20 people (out of I guess 200-300 people at the camp). And unfortunately, my talk/chat/discussion got rather hijacked by someone who wandered in, was completely non-technical, and started asking irrelivant questions. (self reminder, politely say, this is for programmers only next time)

Overall it was not much of a learning experience, rather the chance to actually meet developers with similar interests, (and see that they actually exist) - Shame I had to leave early for family stuff, as the drinks would have been good...

HK Government Incompetence or just plain stupidity

2008-06-18 18:15:00

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog

A friend of mine received a letter the other day from the Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department (IRD), It was addressed to her company, and cc'ed to Her (at the bottom of the letter). The letter was titled "Notice For Recovery of Tax Under Section 76(1) of the Inland Revenue Ordinance."

Her first reaction was "This must be some kind of mistake", I'm not a boss/owner of this company, I guess they must be sending it out to all the employees.

Anyway, to help her out, I thought I'd phone up the IRD to find out why this letter arrived. It did not take long on the phone to realized that this letter was actually meant for her. So we did a little more reading of the letter. It turns out that it was a demand notice for.... wait for it....

"Notice 1" for Final Assessment for the year 1993-1994 in the sum of HK$309 (that's about US$40 or 20GBP)

To be honest I thought this was hilarious.. they had waited nearly 15 years to send out a first reminder to pay the amazing sum of HK$309.. Got to be one of the best examples of real government incompetence I've seen in a long while..

While it's not a huge issue in terms of finding the money (raid the piggy bank), I though it raised quite a few questions, some rather serious.

1) Why address demand letters to employers rather than employees?

2) Is this not over 6 years (the standard for Statue of limitations - or Hong Kong's equivalent legislation)

3) How are you supposed to challenge this? - I sent a cheque in 1993, it was cashed, you should have the payment? - nope, no human (except the IRD it seems) keeps records that long.

4) What if it had been a larger amount? one day you where happy with nice savings, looking to buy a house. Next you are wacked from nowhere and close to bankrupt with a huge bill from IRD, that you never knew about?

5) How many of these bills are there? - are all Hong Kongers going to be paying back-taxes for issues over 10 years ago? Will you get one every year?

6) Is this some kind of computer glitch?

7) Was someone pocketing the cash that long ago? and the system has only just been picking it up? Is there some kind of Superman fraud going on here....?

8) How on earth could they justify this? My friend has been paying tax every year for the last 15 years, so it's not like they did not have her address..

Oh well back to trusting our intelligent overlords..

PHP developer Job in Hong Kong

2007-09-18 14:20:00

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog
If you know anyone in Hong Kong (or who wants to move here and can get a visa) with PHP experience, and some linux experience (although not essential) , who is looking for full time job, feel free to contact me alan at qsolutions dot hk dot com.

This is a permanent job, working with me in a small company based in Central. The projects are varied and if you can program in D, C or any other language there are even more opportunities.

Shame on them - bad corportate sites..

2007-05-06 10:25:00

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog
When you spend a large proportion of your day working on internet applications, and a considerable amount of that time working around annoying browser bugs (IE and Safari win here). You do it out a sense of pride, that you are delivering the best possible product. Solving these problems is a mater of personal pride that I produced the best possible end user experience.

So when I see site that is not only mindbogglingly broken, but has been developed by large corporations with relatively unlimited budgets (well compared to most of mine anyway). It just really makes me wonder how such under qualified moron's managed to get such high paying jobs......

Here's my list of shame.

1. HSBC a) for taking years to realize that intra bank transfers where a phisher's dream, b) waiting until the government mandated two tier authentication and finally when they deploy it. Being so broken that it takes over 5 minutes to get through the authentication system. What is even worse, is the lack of acknowledgment that they have a problem.

2. EsdLife, our governments outsourced 'e' website. Run by a company owned by the largest tycoon in Hong Kong. Which initially only supported IE on Windows, (allegedly), and for what must be now, 5 years, Has never worked once for me. not even for simple things like setting up a e-password to file tax returns or booking tickets for tennis courts.

3. Verified by Visa, or better know as unverified by JavaScript errors. This site not only has numerous JavaScript bugs, but does not correctly identify mozilla compatible browsers. No you should not use the browser name for compatibility testing.

All of these have one thing in common. Huge amounts of money spend on a web site, by a large organization. Which needs only to do a relatively simple task (read "It's just HTML stupid"). Yet manages to complicate it to the point that it makes the sites almost completely useless...

Know of any other great examples. It's just a shame we cant name the project manager's names and shame them into fixing these problems.

Wing Lung Bank (Hong Kong) not exactly trustable.

2007-01-24 14:16:48

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog

Banks, while never perfect corporate citizens usually at least try to behave in a reasonable maner. That is probably why I was fuming with anger at Wing Lung Bank in Hong Kong.

I have a credit card from this bank, that was given out as HKIA uses them for their membership cards, and my spouse being a member, just signed me up for it. I normally use American Express for most payments, but some shops don't accept it so having a Visa card is quite handy.

We always pay off the balance every month, I normally sit down around the 1st or 2nd of each month and clear the bills. I must have been doing this for at least 6 years, and I've had the Wing Lung card for I guess more than 3 years.

So yesterday when I got a letter from them indicateing we had not paid the bill, I was a little supprised. That turned out to be me forgetting to pay my wife's bill last month, as she doesn't use the card normally, so the is normally nothing to pay. However while checking the other bills, I noticed a finance charge, and a late payments charge. I was pretty certain that I had paid last month on time, so I checked closer, I had paid the bill on the second of the month, which was the usual date. Then I spotted the problem..

WING LUNG, THE BUNCH OF CROOKS HAD CHANGED THE PAYMENT DUE DATE!!!!

They had moved it back about 10 days, resulting in the card running up late charges.

Not only that, I started checking the older statements,and realized the had pulled this slight of hand 5 months ago, raking in a tidy sum for their criminal coffers.

By this time I was fuming, and called their hotline, my temper not subdued by their annoying 'press 2 for..' and playing adverts for their services while waiting.

After practicalling screaming at two idiots who refused to refund the money and change the payment date, and listening to them try and justify this crazy action 'your agreement states we can change the terms at any time' They promised that a manager would call back.

Of- course, this call never arrived, so today I cancelled the card, filed a complaint with our consumer council. (Hopefully at least they will issue a warning about them Changing the due dates, so other customers don't get caught out.)

From what I've been hearing, this is not the first bank to pull this scam.. Well, Wing Lung will not be one of the place's I'm going to get a mortgage from...

Hong Kong consultation on copyright changes.

2007-01-06 15:52:00

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog

Response to Copyright Changes consultation document:

Please Have a look through my response, (I'm not an qualified activist, or an English major - so you probably want to improve it) but please do respond if you live in Hong Kong. It's already a bad enough police state, without these idiots letting this kind of legislation loose.

To co_review@citb.gov.hk

Introduction:

The whole premise of this document is outrageous, it reads like a music industry wish-list, and follows on from a previous consultancy document that was rejected before. Basically trying to force a similar attitude without care or compassion for citizens of Hong Kong.

It Completely ignores fair use and consumer rights issues, which have already been seriously damaged by the current legislation, and are railroaded in favor of helping the antiquated business models of copyright monopolies. A particularly bad example of collusion between government and business over consumer rights.

crap job offers.....

2005-09-09 19:28:24

Article originally from rooJSolutions blog

As an aside to that one, a good friend of mine (not in the IT field), just had the funniest offer of a job. They turned up to sign the contract because the owner had refused to fax it over to review. After reading through it, they saw the last page... that went something like this

I agree to leave my mobile phone on after work and during weekends, and to answer it immediatly if called. I also agree to check my phone messages every two hours when not at work.

This was for a professional job (nothing to do with critical systems or life support). In the end my friend left saying he would sign the contract, if they aggreed to remove that and a few other weird clauses.. The owner never called back. Well sometimes you are not dissapointed to not hear from morons like that..