Category: Brunei

Brunei Petrol Station Map / Minyak Mana?

GDG held their DevFest Season 2016 and I was helping to facilitate the hackathon that they had. We tried to focus on some social good apps and the winner was one trying to map open burning areas with crowd soured reporting while the runner up had to do with image processing via a phone to recognise sign language gestures.

I also managed to squeak some time to pull off a hack of my own by mapping the Shell Petrol/Gas stations in Brunei

mana-minyak-petrol-gas-station-map-for-brunei

Steps detailed here

GDG DevFest Season 2016

Saturday, Nov 19, 2016, 8:30 AM

D & T Building
Spg 32-27, Kb Anggerek Desa Bandar Seri Begawan, BN

4 Geeks Went

This mont we’re partnering with GDG Brunei to help bring GDG DevFest Season 2016 for 2 days of talks, code labs/workshops and a hackathon.Hope to see you guys there!P.S. the main registration page is at bn-devfest2016.eventbrite.com and not on this Meetup page itselfSchedule is 8:30am – 5pm each for each day and we’ll update as soon as we can wi…

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Building Telegram bots

As part of the Brunei Geek Meet Hack Day on Sept 17th I built a Telegram bot that retrieves

  • PSI readings to indicate the haze levels
  • News (initially from Brunei Times but later moved to Borneo Bulletin due to Brunei Time’s closure)
  • Weather

Telegram bot: https://telegram.me/apibn_bot

telegram_bot_haze
telegram_bot_news

Updates post event:

telegram_bot_updated

 

Utilises

Hack Day / Get Together

Saturday, Sep 17, 2016, 1:00 PM

It’s A Grind Coffee House
G20, Citis Square Jalan Komersil Bandar Seri Begawan, BN

3 Geeks Went

Our next hack session returns! We’re open to suggestions as to the meeting location: ideally a place with power and Wi-Fi =) Thought it would be nice of it could get any suggestions from you guys.As always, feel free to come early/late/stay as long as you wish.These sessions serve as a place to:• Hack on a project• Learn something new• Ask us …

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Leaflet vs Openlayers

Presented at Brunei Geek Meet on 19th August

leaflet-vs-openlayers

 

Essentially trying to serve as a quick start guide to using

Mockups and more with Keynote + Mapping with Openlayers

Friday, Aug 19, 2016, 6:30 PM

Au Lait
Ground Floor Seri Q-Lap Mall, Kg Kiulap Bandar Seri Begawan, BN

3 Geeks Went

Hello everybody! Continuing from the previous BGM session of #DesignAndCupcakes (thanks for all the cupcakes Yasmin!) and our last hack session, we’ll be sharing some findings with all of you.Agenda• 6:30pm: Event Kick off• 6:35pm: Mockups and more with Keynote (and some Powerpoint) Firdaus will be covering how to use Keynote/Powerpoint to gener…

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Brunei Bus Map

As part of BruneiGeekMeet’s Hack Night on August 5, I managed to create a Brunei Bus Map for the the possible future bus route of Brunei as per their expression of interest. These are not currently running routes.

brunei-bus-map

Hack Night / Get Together

Friday, Aug 5, 2016, 7:00 PM

Starbucks, Mabohai Shopping Complex
Kebangsaan Road Bandar Seri Begawan, BN

4 Geeks Went

Our monthly hack session returns this Friday. These sessions serve as a place to:• Hack on a project• Learn something new• Ask us questions• Or just come to hangout! 😄But most importantly to have fun!It is open to everybody of all ages and all levels of knowledge. We are even welcome to those interested to learn more about technology or wanti…

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UBD/eG.InC Community Outreach Programme

COP Poster.jpg

I was lucky enough to be involved in the organisation of the community outreach programme held at UBD recently.  They had the idea of a challenge which is similar to a hackathon/hack day. I tried to keep things similar to how they do things at Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) and consolidated the problems faced by each of the organisations at communityoutreach.bruneigeekmeet.com

Some media coverage of the event and the last link about one of the organisations at the event itself

The day itself saw some teams being bestowed with prizes:

  • Micronet: worked on a database solution for Care and Action for Strays (CAS) (Website / Facebook)
    • managed to get a working prototype using Access
  • Laksamana College for Business: worked on a database solution for the Brunei Darussalam AIDS Council (Facebook / Twitter)
    • managed to implement an Android app prototype
  • Maktab Duli: working on solution for Orang Kurang Pendegaran (OKP)/Association for the Hearing Impaired as part of a skill / mentoring app (Facebook)
    • provided some good ideas and some interface designs for the app

Some notable mentions on my end where:

  • Projek k-3: with a great delivery of their presentation but also a great idea of upcycling existing clothes gathered and to use the youth to help out with the creation of upcycled products
  • The team that created a short video which felt like it was very on-point with regards to trying to raise awareness of volunteering

While each organisation hand some specific issues unique to there, there were a common issues faced by many of these organisations:

  • lack of a volunteer database / communication system so they can reach out to volunteers when running events
  • lack of a personal database to keep track of the things and to run reports
  • lack of public awareness of the organisation or events run by the organisation
  • the need for financial assistance

All in all, I feel that it was a good first step in there being more events such as this to work on actual real world problems rather than the typical business plan competitions that I usually see around. Brunei Geek Meet will try its best to help foster these kind of projects, especially after the event itself, as a part of giving back to the community but also as a way for the general public to get involved, to participate and learn.

Moving on from here, I’ll be consolidating the presentations/solutions provided by the teams and to liaise with the individual non-government organisations on how best they want to proceed with their projects. Once settled we’ll probably have more frequent Brunei Geek Meets with some days particularly catering for hack days or specific projects.

So if you’re interested in helping out, do get in touch by

  • leaving a comment
  • or emailing me at tim_AT_thewheatfield.org
  • or joining us at the next Brunei Geek Meet

Brunei Map – Mukims & Kampongs

As part of Brunei Geek Meet’s Data Hackathon

  • Managed to gather data from the Survey Department http://survey.gov.bn/web/survey_department/map
  • To map out kampongs and mukims in Brunei
  • Webapp allows you to search for kampongs / mukims and explore the neighbourhood around any selected area

brunei_map

Demo: http://thewheat.github.io/brunei_map/
Repo: https://github.com/thewheat/brunei_map

Is Brunei Mobile Data Really that Expensive?

I’ve heard complaints that DST, one of the Brunei mobile telcos, rip people off with regards to charging for data. Let’s see if that’s true.

So I compared Brunei’s cellular data from DST and Progresif Cellular to different telcos in 4 countries

And I’ve come up with this spreadsheet.

On a cursory glance, it seems that

  • UK has pretty good prices in all data tiers
  • we have one of the worst excess data charges
  • DST pricing isn’t that great when data usage is under 5GB
  • with plans using more than 5GB of data (and especially > 10GB data), DST is actually very good so long as you stay within the quota amount

Hope to do more in-depth look soon

New Telbru Internet Plans (eSpeed / High-Speed Broadband)

new telbru internet rates

new telbru internet ratesThe Telbru eSpeed/High-Speed Broadband (HSBB) Internet rates have arrived and price wise they are going in a good direction, quota wise not so much, but here are the facts that you need to know.

  • Base monthly rates have been reduced
  • Some plans have quotas
  • If you exceed the quota you will get throttled but you pay no extra (you will still have an Internet connection, just slower speeds)
  • Throttled speeds are “about 20% of the subscribed plan package”
    bandwidth throttling
  • Extra quota top-ups can be purchased if you exceed your quota which will restore your speed
    quota topup
  • Price caps are only for those who purchase multiple extra quota top-ups
    price cap
  • At the switch over, you will get the same speed but at the new reduced monthly price (and quota’s if applicable)

How to check your data usage

Notifications can be sent to you via your preferred communication channel (e-mail/text message) when you have used 50%, 80% and 100% of your quota volume

https://www.telbru.com.bn/page.php?c=193

Read more on Telbru’s site

Possible Issues

  • Is the data metering real time?
  • Are both uploads and downloads counted?
  • Best effort Internet: which sounds very similar to the eSpeed problems on yesteryear

My bandwidth at home cannot even reach 1Mbps, is there a rebate?

There will be no rebate given on your rental charge or quota. Our broadband service is best effort service. If your average broadband speed is low (approximately one megabit per second or less) we do not recommend you to purchase higher bandwidth or quota packages.

Brunei Geek Meet #4 (12th September 2014)

Thanks to Tru-Synergy for hosting Brunei Geek Meet #4 and thanks for all those who attended! It was a much better turn out than I expected and hope for more meetups to come!

Open Source Involvements: Experience in working on the OpenMRS CPM open source project

thewheat.github.io/presentation-open-source-involvements

  • People Management is essential
    • there is a need to manage expectations
  • High barriers of entry => great killer of enthusiasm
  • Reproducible developer environments
  • Documentation
  • Project Management: list of things to work on
  • Communicate
  • Code
  • It takes time
    • commit 4 – 8 meetups to see where you can contribute
    • nothing is too small
  • Places to contribute
    • OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education. openhatch.org
    • CodeTriage: receive a different open issue in your inbox every day. codetriage.com

Testing: TDD, BDD, WTH?

thewheat.github.io/presentation-testing-tdd-bdd-wth

  • TDD: Test Driven Development (Red, Green, Refactor)
    1. Write test (watch test fail in test suite: Red)
    2. Write code (to make test pass: Green
    3. Refactor
  • BDD: Behaviour Driven Development
    • Focuses on clear understanding of software behavior from stakeholders
    • Focuses on why code should be created: thinking “from the outside in”
      1. Given [initial context]
      2. when [event occurs]
      3. then [ensure some outcomes]
  • Unit Tests
    • Testing core unit of works
    • Isolated: no interaction with other systems (e.g. databases, web services)
  • Integration Tests
    • Test the integration between 2 different “units” / systems (e.g. your core system and the database / web service)
    • Database interaction: test database or in-memory databses (H2 / SQLite)
  • Functional Tests