Sunday, February 28, 2010

Tcl Error Message in NS2

Tcl error messages in NS2 can be pretty scary. You can see an example at the end of the post. But it's not that hard to deal with it. Here is what you should do.

1. Relax.... Breath....
2. Go lines by lines following the error reporting structure:

invoked from within
"code"
(location)

From top to bottom, these three line blocks repeat themselves from the erroneous code to the file from which the error is initiated.

invoked from within

Error is usually caused by calling another procedure. NS2 provided a mechanism to drill down the error levels by levels until the real erroneous code is found. Each level is separated by the line with the phrase "invoked from within". This is to say that the upper line is "invoked from within" the lower line.

"code"

This is the quote on the exact NS2 codes, which cause the error. The location of this part is indicated in the next line.

(location)

Enclosed in (...) are the location where the error occurs. The format of location is

category [argument] line number

  • category is the location category. It can be file, procedure, classname (e.g., SplitObject), etc.
  • argument (optional) specifies the scope of the location category. Examples are filename (e.g., "smcc.tcl"), instproc name (e.g., unknown).
  • line number shows the exact location within the above scope.

---------- Example Code -------------------------
"_o3 cmd queue-parameter _o17 _o24 2 6"
invoked from within
"catch "$self cmd $args" ret"
invoked from within
"if [catch "$self cmd $args" ret] {
set cls [$self info class]
global errorInfo
set savedInfo $errorInfo
error "error when calling class $cls: $args" $..."
(procedure "_o3" line 2)
(SplitObject unknown line 2)
invoked from within
"$ns queue-parameter $n3 $n4 2 6"
(file "smcc.tcl" line 94)


For more information about Tcl, see Chapter 3 and Appendix A in the following book from Springer.

You may also find lecture notes and other resource at the following website: http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~teerawat/NS2.htm

Book Summary: Why Am I Doing This?

You guys might have seen plenty of websites for book reviews. But, book summary, there are not many of them. Why I am I doing this? It actually come out of my frustration. In fact, I want to do it for myself. So, I might as well share it with you guys. The followings are the reasons why I am doing book summary. BTW, my choice is audiobooks, not paper-based books.

What I Learn from Reading the Book

It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. One of the best way is to make note as we read (how many of us would do that?) After you reach the end of the book, you can review your note and recall what you've read earlier.

Looking for a Piece of Information

After some time, you may recall that you came across something. But you don't remember it very clearly. The summary of the book will help a lot.

More than Book Review

There are 3 pieces of information you may want to know before reading a book. The first one is book review, where reviewers share their opinion on books. I think the reviews is the best place to talk about the writing style of authors. The second one is the table of contents, which, I think, is very useful. Table of contents gives you the overall structure of the book. It shows you what to expect of the book. Finally, the last piece is the summary. This is the deepest level of information. It contains the insight drawn from the book.

What the summary does not give you is the details and entertainments. If you love reading, you would know what I mean. A good book keeps you engaged. You want to keep reading one page after another, and you cannot put it down. The summary does not give you that kind of sensation. No offense, but if you think reading the summary will save you time from having to read the book, you are obviously wrong.

Even Greater with Audiobooks

All of the above positive things get intensified, when you are dealing with audiobooks. Unlike paper-based books, audiobooks cannot flipped through page by page. The longest audiobook that I have listened lasts for more than 21 hours. If you don't know where, within the 12 hours, what you are looking for is located, you're going to end up listening for a very long time. Not pleasant, right?

Summary and Spoiler

The line is quite thin. Summary is something useful to know before and after the reading. However, spoiler destroys the moods and the funs of reading the book. To me, I think summaries of novels are spoiler. Therefore, the summary you will find in this blog are mostly of the non-fiction genre. Giving key insights and the organization of books, the summary makes it easier and more entertaining when reading the book. Summary or spoiler? I guess you guys would be the judge.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Entrepreneurial Principles: Loyalty and Passion Builders

Loyalty

Loyalty to an online recommender community is similar to the feeling of kids who incessantly want to go back to the same playground. Here are few items that you might consider:

Watch us grow page

Make a map. When a new member join, put a little pin on his/her location. Constantly update this page and you will see how much/how fast your community grows.

It is important to create a sense of ownership for the members. When making a map, consider the types of members. For a general public, a map might be divided into provinces. But if the members are mostly from universities, each location might represent a university.

Every member gets his/her own websites


Give every member his/her own customizable web page. Upon logging in, bring the member to his/her page.

Every member gets his/her own identifiers

Identifiers are things with community's logo on it. Examples are hats, wristbands,  mousepads, notepads, prepaid credit cards. Again, engraving the member's name on identifier will help increase the member's sense of ownership. These identifies could be given when the person signs up for a membership.

Members are searchable by victory

Points and/or achievements should be given to members who do good deeds, and they can be used to earn an elite status in the website. Good deeds are, for example, writing a report rated great by other members, catching another member doing a bad thing (e.g., speaking untruthfully on behalf of product vendors), recruiting a famous person to represent the comunity.

Lockers and Closets

A locker is a private storage that no one else can enter. Members can use it to keep secret stuff such as story, password, kudos, newsletter, special email, avatar outfit, etc.

A closet is a public storage for a member. It is the place to store things that members are willing to share with other members. These things are, for example, points, tip jars, etc.

Award status

Make a hierarchy ranking. Award can help elevate the members' status. Member can earn awards by 1) bring in new members, 2) participating in product testing requested by the community, 3) , 4) Story-telling contest, 5) Introducing strategic partners to the community, 6) getting a publicity for the community (e.g., getting a place for a community in the TV).

The unexpected reward

Give out rewards (4-5 times a year) to members without telling them in advance. Announce the award in the newsletter. This can be real money.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.


 Source: Social Network Business Plan by David Silver, Chapter 5

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Entrepreneurial Principles: Your Community As Theater

The Age of Experience

Let's move back in time to when assembly lines were introduced to the market. This monumental event marks the beginning of the age of quality, where people focused on building products with standardized quality.

When the market is saturated with quality goods, we need services. We need part distributors, retailers, telephone, cable TV, and so on. The age of quality shifted to the age of services.

And now, with the Internet, we are shifting again from the age of service to the age of experience. For a long time, people experience things, good or bad, and they want to share their experience with others. It wasn't easy to do so in the old days.

The internet makes it easier, much easier, to share experience. People email, chat, and blog about their experience. Online recommenders will rate, review, and recommend products and services that they like and dislike based on their experience. In the age of experience, advertisement will no longer be convincing (as it was). The wisdom of crowd will.

Theater

Theater is a place, where directors, actors, actresses present their goods (e.g., their talent). If you think of your online community as a theater, you will be the director and your member will be the actors and actresses. Your job is to prepare a theater for the audience which will come and share experiences with your members.

Name

In the age of experience, names should reflect what experience the audience expect when entering the theater. Well, if you have a lot of money to advertise, you can choose a non-descriptive name such as LUX for soap. A non-descriptive name will catch people's attention. And, you can use advertisement to help explain what the name is, and people will always remember the non-descriptive name. But if you don't wanna do advertisement, pick a name that will inspires the audience to think what you want them to think.

Be Creative, When Designing Your Community

Artists and entrepreneurs are similar. They are creative, and they solve problems. Successful artists and entrepreneurs are those who are able to adapt quickly. The reason is simply because "Perfection is too costly". So start as soon as you can, and then adapt as you move. Try but do not expect to get it right at the first time. When stuck, reformulate the problem. Any problem can be solved if we change the problem into a related one to solve the real issue.

7 Rules for Entrepreneurial Success
  1. Рау attention to detail
  2. Get thongs done on time
  3. Delegate to others all that they can handle as well or better
  4. Use showmanship, imagination, dramatize what you are doing
  5. Take action. If you have the facts and a little common sense, and you move, you've got a better than 50 percent chance of being right
  6. Do your business homework
  7. Reinvest your profits - but always keep a liquid position


Source: Social Network Business Model by David Silver, Chapter 2.
For more details, get this book online @ books.google.com [Link]

Monday, February 15, 2010

About Me

Welcome everybody!!

Hello everybody. If you are visiting this blog, you may already know me. My name is Teerawat Issariyakul. I am Thai graduated from Canada and now living in Thailand. Starting this year (2010), I decided to blog regularly. You can expect my blog post on Sunday night or Monday morning, every week on the following topics that I am interested in:

- Audiobook review or summary
- Network simulation tool, NS2
- Interesting technology
- Howto for Computer and Programming
- Management and Economics

Thank you for visiting and I hope those of you who are interested in what I am interested in will enjoy my blog.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Entrepreneurial Principles: Why not start 5 simultaneously

The Ease of Launching Community website
An online community website has extremely low cost to launch. One requires only to identify an area where people suffer who are willing to collaborate and pay small amount of money to get information. You may lunch one by yourself, and launch another by acquiring the existing another website.

Acquiring Strategies

There are a lot of mediocre community website on the Internet. Some of these are funded by venture capital who granted the money for the startup. The venture capital does not want to sale the average website for lower price. If you own a great community website, you might offer a stock trade. Give them a small portion of stock, and ask for a large share on their website. They will be delighted to do so, as they can get rid of the poor website, even if gaining only a little bit of your website. Then, you can restructure and transform the poor website into a great one.

Source: Social Network Business Model by David Silver, Chapter 4.
For more details, get this book online @ books.google.com [Link]

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Entrepreneurial Principles: Mimic the baker and copy Starbuck

Scarce v.s. Non-Scarce Resource

Doing business on non-scarce resource is hard, because consumers holds the power. So, how should one proceed? Keep cutting the margin against competitors? Does it sound like all entrepreneurs will spiral down to the extinction.

The Bakers

Bread is ubiquitous. If bread is the only thing sold in a bakery, all bakeries would keep lowing the price to attract more customers. But the bakers can make a non-scarce resource scarce by turning bread into pastry and cake. Think about how the wedding cake become the center of the wedding ceremony. If the Internet is bread, we, the bakers, are the entrepreneurs. And, our product such as community websites are pastry and cake.

Personality

Personality differentiates one person from another. It can be look, sound, smell, or tastes. The personality for a pastry would be its look, smell, and taste. It differentiates one pastry from another. Equip your community website with a warm and welcoming personality to attract more members.

Starbuck Business Model

Coffee is ubiquitous. But why Starbuck thrives so successfully. Get into Starbuck and look into its menu. You will see that most of the drink cost Starbuck about the same to make. But Starbuck charged them so differently. The price is not based on cost, but on the willingness to pay. The price tells how special the buyer is.

So if you are launching a community website, and you are providing a tip jar, here is the guideline you might want to adopt. Some people may not know how much they should tips the others. Why don't you put a tipping guideline. Follow Starbuck! Then, the tips should be based on how serious the problem is. For example, running nose $5, headache and congestion vanish $10.

Source: Social Network Business Model by David Silver, Chapter 3
Find the book online @ books.google.com [Link]

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

[BookReview] Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Rating: 5/5

This book talks about the importance of building a "personal brand", which becomes increasingly easier during this internet era. If you have decided to leave a mark in this world or if you want to be known in public, you might want to read this book. The author, Gary Vaynerchuk, is a successful business developer. He believes that effort will bring you success, even if you don't have a lot of money (like big companies have). This is inline with another book "Outlier by Malcolm Galdwell", where the author believes that a great one (e.g.,Bill Gates) practices what (s)he is good at for at least 10,000 hours (I will blog about it later). Vaynerchuk acknowledges that continuously investing effort in a certain thing is hard. But, if you passionate about it, you can push it through. If you love what you do, you will be happy when putting in effort.

I just finish up an audiobook "Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion" by Gary Vaynerchuk, and will blog about it pretty soon.

Sunday, February 7, 2010