Should you say “few” or “a few”?

Well, it depends on what you mean.

If you say that there are "a few" cats, it means that there are some cats.
If you say that there are "few" cats, it means that there are not many cats.

Another example:
"Please ensure you have few defects in your product." --> The person who says this wants your product to be successful.
"Please ensure you have a few defects in your product." --> The person who says this wants your product to fail!

Note: Also drafted for the Tetra newsletter. Since it was already cleanly drafted, I decided to post it here too. The Tetra newsletter should be out by the time this is posted!

Visiting a baba nyonya family

The next room in TeddyVille was a baba nyonya house! Complete with a folding screen...

This is their family.

With food on the table (the kuih looks good, but the nasi lemak looks awfully unappetizing :P )

I took a photo with them too!

In the glass case (that you see in the first photo) is a scene of Weld Quay.

Here's the full scene, followed by shots of their "daily life" from other angles.

The following room was a very small one, with just these bears:

It’s about Jimmy Choo!

Taking night shots

This week's photo theme was night. I guess it was a good opportunity to try out the night function of my phone camera!

The photos didn't come out so well though, probably because of the streetlamp which became too glaring with the night function.

In the end, I used the "pro" function instead and tried a few shutter speeds to find the best one for my photo.

Teddies in the 1700s

Step in through the curtain at the end of the previous TeddyVille post, and we find ourselves in historical Penang.

Except that the Penangites are bears! :O

It is actually a miniature scene in a glass case.

Overlooking it is Captain Francis Light...a teddy bear version, of course.

That arm is just begging to be held...so I obliged.

Meet my escort, Captain Light.

Viewing the miniature scene from a different angle - just look at all the details!

Each room also had an explanation of the scene that is being presented. Perfectly crafted for foreigners! (and also contains extra information that even locals don’t know :P )

A heritage fire station

There is a quite famous fire station in Penang. I knew it was there, but that was about it.

But on my way to the bank yesterday, I passed this area in a seldom-used direction. Usually I would pass beside the fire station, but yesterday I passed in front of it. What's more, I stopped at the traffic light, so I noticed the sign (or is it a fence?) that says "world heritage site". 

I believe that the heritage site refers to Georgetown and not just the fire station...but the thing is, I have never seen that sign before! I'm not sure how new it is...

Spring is over

This week's theme was spring. It came right after all the tecoma (aka Malaysian sakura) blooms fell...

So I settled for this shot of not-enough flowers instead.

I did snap a photo of tecoma, but the flowers are not even noticeable if I don't tell you they're there!

A teddy bear history

Upon entering the TeddyVille Museum, we were greeted with a teddy-bear timeline on the wall. (Behind the curtain is the ticket counter at the entrance)

Then there was a long glass case with teddies of yesteryear.

this photo was taken using the panoramic function...I saw my friend doing it and decided to follow suit :P

Then there were other teddies in their own glass cases...some prettier than others. (Some were downright ugly, so I didn’t take photos of them)

Part of the reason I took this photo was because of the words!

There was also a poster on how Steiff teddies are made.

And after this “actual” teddy bear museum, a bear welcomes you to Penang…

Then it is no longer a museum about teddy bears, but about Penang! You’ll find out more in the next posts. ;)

When less is more

There is a story that I remember reading during my childhood. It was about a boy who had a cat. The cat would meow at the door when it wanted someone to open the door for it. The boy had an idea and cut a hole (a semi-circular one, shaped like a doorway) at the bottom of the door, so that the cat could go in and out as it pleased. His mother praised him for his brilliant thinking.

Then the cat had kittens, and the boy cut four small holes in the door beside the big one, so that each kitten would have its own doorway. This resulted in him getting told off by his mother, because “The kittens could just use the same hole as their mother!”

Now let me ask you, what if instead of getting four kittens, the boy got a new cat, bigger than the first one? Should he cut a new bigger hole for the new cat, or should he just make the existing hole bigger?

I can hear you saying, “Make the existing hole bigger, of course!” Yes, of course… but in our code we often see developers duplicating an existing piece of code just for their “new cat”.

Now that I am losing your attention, here are some extracts from online articles, together with their sources so that you can go and find out more. (I’m not gonna duplicate the existing articles and modify them to cater for your needs!)

“Writing lots of code does not mean that you’ve written lots of software. Indeed, some code can actually negatively affect the amount of software you have—it gets in the way, causes faults, and reduces the quality …”

- from Write Less Code!

“You can improve a system by adding new code. You can also improve a system by removing code.”

Dead code won’t kill you, but it will make your life harder than it needs to be.
- Unnecessary code [...] requires maintenance over time. It costs time and money.
- Extra code [...] makes it harder to learn the project, and requires extra understanding and navigating.

- from Improve Code by Removing It

Note: This article is drafted for our Tetra newsletter. I actually recalled this article about developers who delete code, which I had read before. While searching for the article (using keywords that I roughly recalled), I stumbled across the other two gems, that are more concise, and with more powerful words.

Rare number spotted!

After starting to play again the other day, I set myself a goal to finish at least one beginner, one intermediate, and one expert every month. Since it's April already, I set out to achieve that goal... and of course I played on. Found an 8 in intermediate and a 7 in expert. 

I was glad to get another 20 on intermediate, and several sub-100s on expert. On beginner, I got a 3, which was pretty good too. Now bad for a day's work!

Introducing Penang's TeddyVille Museum

On Monday I visited TeddyVille Museum with a friend. It is located in DoubleTree Resort by Hilton, at Batu Ferringhi.

The entrance fee was RM27, and I think we made it worth it by taking a whole lot of photos! The people at the museum said that we would need 45 minutes to an hour to go through the whole museum, but we took 2 hours and 15 minutes in total (according to the timestamp on my photos). I took around 230 photos, which makes almost 2 photos a minute! :P 

We may have been the first ones there that day. At around P. Ramlee (you will see what I mean later) there was a Malay family that caught up with us, with children who were excited and running quickly to the next section, calling out to their parents to come and see. So we dawdled a bit and let them go past, then we could continue leisurely taking our photos.

After that, at Penang Bridge, we heard another group coming up behind us, but they didn’t catch up with us till we were at the gift shop.

The entrance to the museum is inside the hotel itself. (and we paid a per-entry fee of RM5 for parking)

bears showing us the way to the museum

you can see the entrance to the museum at the end of the corridor

there seems to be another attraction advertised here, which is for children to drive the mini-cars

Barney was at the counter of the driving area, beside the entrance to the TeddyVille Museum

There was a tourist guide waiting for us!

However it seems that he was not working that day...he did not take us through the museum. :P 

At the ticket counter, there was a map of the museum. But this shot that I took halfway through the museum is clearer. Now you can see what I mean by P. Ramlee and the Penang Bridge!

This is the area that we will go through when we exit the museum. See Barney behind the bear in the red dress?

By the way, while typing this article, I discovered that “bear” and “brat” are typed in very similar ways on the keyboard! Hahaha...

Since I have so many photos, I think I will post a few at a time. I already have Photo Friday, so I shall make this Teddy Tuesday instead… and publish once a week! (the posts will definitely be scheduled…so I shall skip the “postdated’ label on them)