TOGAF Foundation

A long awaited first architect level certification of mine, though foundational level, serves as a catalyst to boost value for my employer and clients. It is not a tough paper to pass, comparing to its Part 2 brother. I listed the materials that I used for examination preparation below:

• TOGAF Version 9.0 documentation (Optional but recommended, especially if you are like me going for Part 2 soon)


• TOGAF 9.0 Foundation Study Guide (Sufficient to pass part 1 but hardly flying color)


• Misc. TOGAF 9.0 Summary documents (For understanding only)


• Few years of architecting experiences (Optional but useful for really understand TOGAF values)

My score was 93% which is aligned with my usual passing standard. I think preparation works for Part 2 would be more interesting because it requires drilling deep into in-and-out of TOGAF 9 specification. Sounds fun!

Making sure XBRL kissing and not kicking you!

During the course of my professional career, may it be in business or information technology, I have seen and heard innumerable hypes and promises of disrupting standards, paradigms, solutions and technology advancements. Usually, mega-vendors with plentiful of marketing capital will succeed in planting seeds to gain buy-in and yet losing momentum when the trend reaching a critical mass of demystification and finally the bubble busted and they move on to another vicious cycle of hype-high-haunt. History is likely to repeat itself and what businesses can do to protect their valuable capitals is to put in the right perspective and context in understanding the impact and risk in adopting certain approach to meet competitive advantage demand, market pressures, regulatory (BNM NSRS ISS) requirements and et cetera.

Life’s tough but that’s life.

I would like to focus the spotlight in this post to be pertinent about Extensible Business Reporting Language, or commonly known as XBRL. I think I will most likely skip all the boilerplate explanation and description of what XBRL is and some common sense facts about it that you and I can reason without any significant efforts. I am more interested in shedding light about best practices, prevention measures, implementation management and techniques for making sure proper alignments between domains of business, data, application and technology.

To make this even more interesting, I am also doing some thoughts about topics such as BPO model to XBRL, the problem of agility mismatch and other matters.

Just close your eyes and imagine for a while the ideal state of anything that is perfectly blended into our life. How would we perceive them? The ideal case is that we don’t even need to know about their existence since they are so well blended into our daily routines or activities; we just take them for granted. For instance, we don’t need to know how an automobile’s engine works in order to drive a car. We can study about them if we have the luxury of time and resources, and at our will.

Same scenario is here for XBRL. The current proliferation of standalone XBRL conversion tool demands understanding of intricacies of XBRL to fully harness the real benefits of XBRL. The fact that these tools are standalone, single purpose built applications meant the chasms to enable seamless information flow is predicted to be more challenging than a proper solution with a long term interoperability vision. Information management in XBRL can be chaotic without built-in functionalities within the tools to perform auditing, archiving, versioning, automated and human workflow process for validation. The business might ends up with a mess of thousands of scattered XBRL taxonomies and instances with no tractable ways to consolidate them.

Have something better and let standalone XBRL conversion tool be the last resort.

My point is clear and obvious, a standalone tool could be suffice for relatively small company with human manageable size and complexity of XBRL artefacts, however it is not suitable for large corporations such as financial institutions, conglomerates and federal agencies. Operational expenditure of using standalone XBRL tool is forecasted to be exceedingly high compared to an enterprise grade XBRL solution. Next is the impact to the corporation’s evolve-ability and maturity level in enterprise data management, especially when XBRL artefacts are not meant to be the end, but only a means to the standardized information sharing platform. This is one critical area where technological advancement is needed to accelerate the adoption of XBRL because it is virtually hard to find commercial data integration tools that can natively process XBRL format. At the moment, these tools can only parse and understand XML format. XML and XBRL are not the same, we all should know by now right? One of the database vendors is coming up with a database vault that can process XBRL natively; however we are yet to see their releases and feature sets.

Aim for centralized management and governance model.

The sole action of buying a standalone XBRL conversion tool without a much higher level enterprise planning process is like buying and driving a car in a poor city planning area where you have no idea whether there is proper road in front of you. Still, the car will move and you might eventually reach your destination, well, predictably in a stochastic and risky way. The bottom line to use a standalone XBRL conversion toll is that even if you have decided to adopt the tool, please request your vendor or internal governance team to come up with a comprehensive strategy and future transitioning plan for it.

Prioritize and focus on the business values.

Avoid been inundated with XBRL related jargons and terminology because a well-planned business application using XBRL shall abstract most of these technicalities from business users, even power users. I know the in-and-out of XBRL because I spent quite a fair amount of time in understanding their specifications and business orientation. At the basic, XBRL got at least 3 specifications to be understood plus all the related XML related specifications; I bet my clients won’t have the luxury of resources to skimp them thoroughly. On top of everything, there are global standards such as IFRS, US-GAAP, GRI and many more to be adhered to govern a business. So, when possible, procure a complete business solution that designed at the proper level of technical abstractions.

Know your opponent’s agility.

In a regulatory landscape where regulator (e.g. BNM NSRS ISS) requires monitoring and compliance submission information from regulated entities, these entities should know the capability and agility of their regulator to pick the right XBRL solution. Let me explain the idea in more details. You see, regulator is implementing XBRL solution for say regular financial statement submissions from regulated entities. There are valid rationales and implications of why they do so. One of them is to progressively increase their capability of requesting and consuming more detailed, more frequent and more accurate information and catch up with regional and global peer pressures in adopting evolving industry standards.

Once the regulator possesses this agility, regulated entities will face what I coined the problem of agility mismatch, if they didn’t level up in this playing field. To meet the initial regulatory and compliance requirements mandated by regulator using the new XBRL platform is relatively simple for basically whichever approach that regulated entities adopted, may it be standalone XBRL tool, and enterprise integrated solution or even pure human solution. The real issue is the size, complexity and interval of future changes that regulated entities faced. Regulated entities most likely will caught in a downward spiral of catching up with the reporting changes. Money can be spent better elsewhere don’t you think so?

XBRL is at the centre of information nexus.

It is very ideal indeed to position XBRL like this and I think is risky because supporting tools, standards and technologies are not there yet to reinforce the implementation. Nonetheless, XBRL can really be used to supplement the organization’s effort in consolidating master data, reference data, metadata and their governance initiatives. Don’t lock the value of XBRL in a silo. XBRL is significantly much better than any ad-hoc and in-house standardization efforts such as creating a XML based data sharing format, standardized document structures and tons of other such things you and I have seen. XBRL is developed to solve many of these repeating and known problems. Why not leverages XBRL but reinvents this ugly wheel?

Lastly of this post, I don’t favour the idea of engaging a BPO vendor to take care of the organization needs to be transited to the paradigm where XBRL is used for regulatory and compliance requirements. I think XBRL is here to stay and getting more ubiquitous, pervasive and critical for businesses to stay relevant, competitive and agile. XBRL can be a socio-technical object transforming the way we handle business information.

I will write more of my thoughts out in the future about this topic. Pen down.

Wireless Mini Dehumidifier

I bought this gadget from Ace Hardware shop at One Utama, costing me few ten bucks. Usually, I bought disposable Thirsty Hippo-something for absorbing excessive moistures at home, but it seems like going to incur relatively pricey ongoing $$.

Here is how it looks like.



In front, an indicator is available to show you the amount of moistures absorbed, relatively by different colours.






Back there, you get a socket to connect to power outlet to heat up the device to enable something called water crystal regeneration thingy



For first trial, I placed this in my very humid store room and one day after, the colour indicator turned to pink, phew! Then I went and recharged it for 7 hours and now back to purple colour and my store room got less moistures. Cheaper indeed.

More information here

http://www.olee.com.sg/prod_dehumid_reusablemini.html

Little Nerd(s)..... Soon?

Wow, Mrs. Nerdy brought back with her a box of DVD titled "Pregnancy for Dummies" that she borrowed from her colleague for "contents evaluation". Suspicious huh?








Anyway, she should get instead "Pregnancy for Nerds", LOL

Little nerd(s) running around Mr. and Mrs. Nerdy Eddy... What a View! I like it.

梅兰竹菊 - 四君子

傲梅：山骨苍寒石径斜，舒装淡腊待时开
幽兰：素手拈寒香自远，玉床拥翠梦犹初
淡菊：抱香枯隐朱松外，瘦马秋风自奋蹄
坚竹：无言独抱凌云志，有节空怀抱国心


I like these 4 knitted decorative paints. Bought them @RM150. They currently occupied my TV cabinet acting as static visuals which are kinda cost effective compared to subscribing to the pricey Astro pay tv.

Author of 100 Things To Do Before You Die has died

Eddy said: So Ironic!

Author of 100 Things To Do Before You Die has died before completing his list
Dave Freeman, the co-author of best-selling travel guide "100 Things to Do Before You Die" has died aged 47, before completing his irreverent list.

By Lucy Cockcroft

Dave Freeman tried out every task he wrote about had managed to tick off around 50 of the adventures recommended by his book, including land-diving on the Pacific island of Vanuatu and running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

His father, Roy Freeman, said he died on August 17 after falling and hitting his head at home in Venice, California.

An advertising agency executive, Mr Freeman co-wrote the 1999 guide - subtitled "Travel Events You Just Can't Miss" - with friend Neil Teplica.

The book poignantly starts by saying: "This life is a short journey. How can you make sure you fill it with the most fun and that you visit all the coolest places on earth before you pack those bags for the very last time?"

Relatives said Mr Freeman visited about half the destinations on his list before he died, and together he and Mr Teplica had been to nearly all of them.

"He didn't have enough days, but he lived them like he should have," Mr Teplica said.

The book's recommendations ranged from well-known pursuits and events, such as attending the Academy Awards or Royal Ascot, to the extremely obscure.

The more bizarre suggestions include taking a voodoo pilgrimage in Haiti, nude night surfing in Australia and competing in a yelling competition in North Carolina.

Each of the 100 entries were accompanied by a rating which indicated where they were on the scale between "grandma friendly" and "down and dirty".

One of Mr Freeman's favourite events was the Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain, where firework-filled papier-mache effigies of politicians and celebrities explode at midnight.

He tried out every task he wrote about and listed land-diving in the South Pacific as the most exhilarating adventure.

The centuries-old tradition, which he called the "original bungee jump", involves leaping off tall towers with just a vine attached to the leg. One Vanuatu islander fell to his death during a 1974 ceremony witnessed by The Queen.

The guide was born out of a regular website feature called "The Coolest Place on Earth".

As readers sent in accounts of their experiences at wacky festivals around the world Mr Freeman and Mr Teplica decided to dedicate themselves to trying them all out.

The success of "100 Things" went on to inspire dozens of spoof imitations, with titles such as "100 Things Project Managers Should Do Before They Die" and "100 Things Cowboys Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die."

I Can Feel The Heats

The RPM Team is currently spending most of our time at customer site, specifically staying in one suffocating room that was due to faulty air ventilation.

Saw one guy at the back from another vendor showing off his USB powered desktop fan, we can't hold our temptation and got our own fans less than 2 hours later, :), efficient right?



My mini fan - RM17



Phupang's super fan (10 times more powerful than mine) - RM18

Hypo Hygienic Nerd

Thanks Chrysalis for letting me know the existence of this marvellous product.

I'm a Virgo and a typical Virgo should be very hygienic person, and yes I am a hygienic person in certain aspects.

I don't like the idea of walking to washroom and clean up my hand everytime I shaked a fellow hand or touched some "suspicious" surfaces. Too troublesome and not productive! The ideal will be having some sort of microwave driven or ultraviolet technology cleaning ray rotating in the office environment, sterilizing employees while they are working. No displacement of asses from their chairs.

One day, I saw a little magical bottle at my colleague workplace, to be precise Chrysalis' territory. Stole some elixir from the bottle, it is so easy and nice to use, I like it alot.

I passed by Guardian today and conveniently bought a 200ml and a 50ml Dettol Hand Sanitizer, one for outdoor usage, one for in house consumption, :)



And the best is 30% price discount from Guardian when you donated RM10 to Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign in the shop.

Radius Pharmacy
Instant hand sanitizer kills 99.99% of germs. Leaves hands feeling refreshed Rinse free & non sticky.
Classification: General Sale
Dosage: Squeeze a thumbnail sixe amount in your palm then briskly rub hands together until dry.
Ingredients: Alcohol Denat, Aqua, PEG/PPC-16/6 Copolymer, Propylene Glycol, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Tetrahydroxypropyl Ethylenediamine, Parfum, Limonene.
Warnings: Highly flammable. Keep away from fire or flame. For external use only. Avoid eyes, in case of contact with eyes flush with water. Discontinue use if skin irritation occurs. If condition persists consult a doctor. Keep out of reach of children. Medicines have benefits and some have risks. Always read the label and use strictly as directed. If symptoms persist or you experience side effects talk to your pharmacist, doctor or health professional. Vitamins are supplementary to and not a replacement for a balanced diet.