The bigger issue is the news that another online "betting" site has discovered a shortfall in customer funds. The other one being FullTilt poker (although that site has since been acquired, and the new owners have reportedly paid back the money owed - abeit over a year later). Luckily I never had any money on either site, but it could have easily been the opposite - I strongly considered using both.

I can't imagine of any reason why a customer funds shortfall could occur - other than fraud. These sites should keep customer deposited funds completely separate and ringfenced from corporate funds. Only removing money at customer requests or for commission (where the site's make their money). Indeed, this is exactly the promise made by both these sites before it became clear they weren't doing what said they were doing. When two big and well-known names collapse under these circumstances, it really makes one wonder how many others are playing a little too fast and loose with their own rules. You could say that people should only use such sites located in juristrictions with tough regulators and laws. However, both these sites were headquarted in Ireland (although FullTilt was regulated in the channel islands). I thing the best bet is to never have more money on one site than you would be happy losing (not a bad idea considering the purpose of these sites).

The surgeon described my appendix as "mucky" and "within 24 hours of bursting". The histology report backed this up. A burst appendix is a serious condition, but removing it intact is just an "intermediate" operation. Luckily it was found before rupturing as I thought acute appendicitis caused severe pain and considered not bothering a GP. Apparently my appendix was in an unusual position high up the abdomen. This is why I felt no significant pain at any point - it was being shielded by the cecum. Get your long lasting abdominal pain checked out - especially if you still have an appendix!

I also felt no pain after the surgery. Partly this is because the procedure was laparoscopic. Only three small incisions a centimetre or two across were made. One for a camera to see what was happening. The others for instruments to move, cut and remove the appendix. Now they are barely visible. Very impressive. It all went smoothly according to the surgeon. He even provided a recording from the inserted camera. The procedure took exactly a few seconds over 30 minutes. The surgeon also offered a "medical certificate". Is this like a school participation certificate - well done for participating on an appendectomy! I didn't need it.

Some other notes:

• When describing possible procedures, the nurse said that the decision on whether to do a laparoscopy was based on whether the patient was "skinny" enough. I asked if I was skinny enough - the nurse hesitated, umm'ed and ahh'ed, then said it was up to the surgeon. Cue many "fat boy surgery" jokes.
• If I was borderline "skinny" before, now the decision would be a little easier. I have lost 4kg in 3 weeks - from not eating for 2 days and then being on a restricted diet for the following 2 weeks.
• I was in a private Malaysian hospital and the care was very good. Diplomats and partners get health insurance provided by the UK government up to the same standard as the NHS (so I had a shared room, etc). The total cost for 3 days in hospital plus emergency surgery was £2500. I believe this is comparable to internal NHS costs (as the patient pays nothing) and much cheaper than the US.
• The first question I was asked at the hospital was about how the bill would be paid. I regularly heard "do you have an insurance card?" It was all a bit surprising for someone who has only experienced healthcare in at least partially nationalised systems (UK and Australia). Right next the the Emergency triage nurse is a payment station (with credit card scanner). To leave the post-op ward I had to walk past a Payment Office (and agree to pay the bill if the insurance firm didn't). I can imagine it would be very intimidating for the uninsured.

Notably this course does not contain any written assignments - all assessment is multiple choice. It follows the (so far) standard Coursera structure. Seven weeks of online lectures (around 1.5 to 2 hours per week), with mid-lecture quizzes and a multiple choice assignment each week. There is an extensive reading list (all available free online), but only once can I remember details in the reading being required for a quiz question. The videos consist of a lecturer standing beside a large TV displaying relevant images. The lecturer appears a little uncomfortable in front of the camera, but otherwise production and content quality is high.

With around 10 hours of lectures to cover ancient Greece upto Socrates, the pace of history is quite fast. Thus this course is a little introductory. An impression confirmed by the very easy weekly tests. These multiple choice quizzes give you the answers at the end of each attempt and can be attempted three times without penalty. I can not see how anyone could get less than 100% with a very small amount of effort. After Homer, content is heavily focussed on the Persian Wars, Sparta, Athens and later the Peloponnesian War. Unsurprising as these are the main players and events in the classical period - and also the best documented.

This is a good short introductory course on (mainly classical) Greek history with an especially good set of suggested readings. For a more detailed history of ancient Greece pehaps consider Yale's CLCV 205: Introduction to Ancient Greek History.

So, drum roll, the year's results are:

Gross: 8.7%
After Fees: 7.6%
After Bad Debt & Recoveries: 2.3%

Ugh, 2.3% is not a very good before tax return. However, still better than any UK bank account. Those rates are calculated with the actual cashflow entering my account. It is interesting to note that the Funding Circle website says my gross rate is 9.2%, but I can't see how it calculates that over a single year (unless it is including compounding rates). Anyway, it is clear that the poor performance is due to bad debt - the recovery figure over the year is immaterial (0.04%). None of my loans are larger than 1.2% of total capital, and most are around 0.7%. The bad debt is made up of multiple defaults. Using the suggested bad debt rates by loan rating on Funding Circle's website, I calculated my expected default rate at around 2% per year by volume (my portfolio skews riskier than average). Over the year I saw double that and thus earnt a rate far less than suggested. In Funding Circle's defence the difference in suggested and observed default rates translates into only a few loans, so it is not statistically significant (yet). Interestingly the bad debt seems to arrive in two waves roughly 6 months apart - one at the end of summer, and another at the end of the tax year.

After these results I won't be putting any more money into Funding Circle over the coming year, but neither will I be taking any out - I'll give the system another year.

Postscript: In the last few days and after the above calculations were made, one of the defaulted loans was "recovered". This resulted in a 61% loss on the original loan amount becoming a 39% loss, with no chance of further recoveries. Better than a poke in the eye I suppose. Had it occurred a week earlier, this event would have made the final return 2.5%. Instead it will provide a boost to this year's return - see the next update in 12 months time!

Melaka is known historically as the capital of a powerful Sultanate and then later a Portuguese, Dutch and lastly British colony before independence. Now it is known for a sizeable Chinese population and delicious Chinese-Malaysian food (Nonya cusine). We also discovered that there are two types of the very tasty Laksa (soup with noodles) and we prefer different types. While away we ate four meals a day - apparently not uncommon. All the food was excellent, including the street food from the main market (which despite notices stating otherwise, was open on Sunday night).

Time spent eating in Melaka is time well spent. There are also some colonial ruins (the British destroyed most of the older buildings during the Napoleonic Wars), a recreation of the Sultan's Palace, and a few other tourist attractions. We walked around these sites, but didn't enter any. The town is a very pleasant place, makes good use of its central river and is easier to walk around than KL. Getting there on the bus from KL is cheap and easy (13RM for a 2 hour trip leaving every 30 minutes). I can definitely see us popping down for another weekend.

I have paid GoDaddy hundreds of dollars. No more. All my domains have been moved to another registrar. The reason? They decided to stop accepting my money. When trying to renew a soon to expire domain, the result was always the same useless error message "Unable to process". I tried different cards (both of which I had previously used successfully on their site), paypal, restarting the browser, restarting the PC and trying again another day. Always the same error with no indication of how to fix it. I looked to support - nothing in their online guide and with phone support shut, I sent them an email. Over 24 hours later the response was "we don't know send us more details". However, during the wait I had checked Google. I was immediately reminded of all the bad things about GoDaddy, plus a few things I hadn't heard before. I also discovered that their competitors had a better reputation AND were cheaper!

So the solution was simple, take the hour required to transfer all my domains and pay less! I think there is a business lesson here.

Now it is closing. Why, why Google, why?

Hitler, I feel you. I don't want my news retweeted by Stalin either.

It is heartening to see that so many other people online feel the same way. I understand it was a free service and that Google has every right to do what they want with it. Although I never had the chance to not be a free user. Still, the shutdown is incredibly disruptive. Now I am far more wary of Google's products. As are other people, suggesting this is a bad business move for Google by decreasing public trust in their products. See articles here, here and here. Of course, I found all of those through Reader!

Now I am going through all the free online products I use and imagining their disappearance. Most are unimportant - I wouldn't care if they were shutdown. However, there are a few that would cause me concern. A couple of these are free Google services. I will have to research alternatives - just in case. I'll certainly think twice about replacing existing offline services with online ones.

In the meantime, I've switched to The Old Reader for RSS feeds. Just trying it out at the moment. It is nothing fancy, a bit slow, but does everything I need. So I will probably stay.

Determined to get out and about more, we booked ourselves on the MM adventure Firefly tour. We were picked up from outside a local hotel mid-afternoon (with two other tourists) and driven through the palm plantations around Kuala Selangor to Bukit Melawati, followed by dinner, and finishing with the fireflies. If the traffic is good there are other stops, but unfortunately for us the traffic was bad.

Bukit Melawati is the suprise highlight of the day, with a train trip to the top to feed the local Silver Leaf Monkeys. The photogenic monkeys are surprisingly well-behaved - happily leaving people alone if there is no food visible. Although they quickly move to grab any food on offer (sweet potato is definitely a crowd pleaser). If the food is out of easy reach, you will soon find a mohawked monkey perched on your shoulder or head, perhaps with an unsteady baby monkey in tow.

Dinner is a set seafood meal at a local Chinese resturant on the Selangor river as the sun sets. Then it is on to the fireflies at an eco tourist center (restoring palm plantations to firefly habitat). Rowing down the river the fireflies flash in overhanging trees like a cheap christmas light show. The boat often getting so close passengers are brushed by the strobing branches. Then it is back home by around 9.30pm after a very enjoyable day - recommended.

Our hotel, LaLanta Hideaway, is the most southerly on the island and backs onto a national park. Thus it is quiet and remote from the tourist strip - which is exactly what we wanted. The weekend was spent lazing around the hotel and the beach it backed onto. We walked, swam, kayaked, had a massage, and ate. A very relaxing trip.

The only downside is the transfer from Krabi airport to the hotel. It took 2 hours 20 minutes on the way out and 3 and a half hours on the way back (when we got caught in traffic). Compare this to the flight time of 1 hour 30 minutes.

When I wanted to write a computer game, three months worth of ideas and notes went into a document. By the end of that time there were 9 different ideas in there. The best (and most importantly, simplest) idea became Concealed Intent. The other 8 are not practical or not interesting enough to see to completion. Although all are still sitting in that archived document - a couple are games I would play, but they are just too ambitious for a small team. Concealed Intent was the best idea by a good distance.

A couple of other idea have come along during development. After a few days thought, they went into the archive with the others. Now I have had another idea. A great idea. A better idea than Concealed Intent. It requires simpler coding (no 3D). It is easier to play and more accessible. The story is emergent based on play. It could even be a casual free-to-play web game for maximum reach. I have several hours developing the day. Time that would otherwise be spent on Concealed Intent and thus development on the latter has slowed.

What to do? I think I need to finish what I started. Many ideas will come along, but the main focus has to be completing Concealed Intent. Otherwise I will be forever starting something and then dropping it for the latest great idea. Still, a few hours now and then on the new idea can't hurt too much, right?

The party consisted of 5 characters:

• Greymarel - an alcoholic wizard
• Bandance - a pyromaniac evil wizard, often getting in arguments with the rest of the party
• Kur-Tas Kai - a war priest of Kiri-Jolith, and the organiser of the party (if not de facto leader)
• Talin - a brave, but occasionally foolhardy, ranger
• Ugarit - a fighter

The party sailed into Karameikos on their return leg from the primitive southern isles they recently explored (Isle Of Dread). Before heading back to their home in the northern borderlands a week's march to the north, they planned to spend a few days in the large civilised city - enjoying its delights and spending their recently acquired gold. They quickly found themselves surrounded by the city guardsmen and required to present themselves to the local Duke (technically their liege, as their hometown was just inside his territory). He had a proposition. A distant ally of the Duke required some irregular soldiers to deal with a number of hostile nomads raiding his lands. If the party agreed to help the ally he would pardon a number of treasonous offences they committed in the course of their earlier adventures (aiding certain hostile northern Elvish tribes). The party agreed and went to join the foreign army as it assembled. Thus started Master of the Desert Nomads.

Whenever there is an astronomy documentary on TV, I usually tune in for at least the first few minutes. Normally I turn them off fairly quickly as most are aimed too low or just go too slow. The last one I watched contained about 15 minutes worth of information in it's 60 minutes run time. There was no similar problem with this course. While it started gently with positional astronomy and Newtonian physics, it quickly moved on with a week each on planets, stars, stellar evolution, relativity, galaxies and cosmology.

While many of the facts in the roughly 3-4 hours of lectures per week were not new to me, the course also covered how those facts are mathematically determined. Thus while a documentary my say something like "after 10 billion years the Sun will start to expand", this course goes further. It presents the maths to calculate the amount of energy released by nuclear reactions in a star's core; how quickly the fuel for these reactions is exhausted and how the pressure inside the star changes at this point (including quantum effects like electron degeneracy pressure). The maths stops just short of calculus (thus many formulas are presented without derivation), so high school level is adequate to understand everything presented.

There was an assignment every week requiring usage of the maths presented to solve various problems. This is where the course let itself down. The first assignment was hard, had a one week deadline and did not inform the student where they were going wrong. After close to 16 hours of effort I submitted on time and as the deadline passed received my grade of 95%. Although I was quite proud, I did not have the time to continue with the course if the future assignments continued in the same fashion. The hours were not reasonable, especially for a course that advised spending 6-8 total hours/week. However, it seemed that many other people complained, so all further assignments had a 3 week deadline, allowed multiple submissions and gave instant feedback. Still assignments normally took me around 6 hours - so the course was an unexpected time sink. Furthermore, the lectures and marking scheme often contained mistakes that impacted assignment questions. It is extremely frustrating to try solving a problem, getting feedback that it is wrong and spending time trying to work out the error when it is in fact a mistake caused by the lecturer! I soon learned to wait and only start assignments after they had been available a week (by which time the errors had been spotted and fixed).

A very interesting and informative class - unfortunately marred by assignment errors and required more time than expected.

Australia Day appears to be the premier event in the local diplomatic community. The Australian diplomatic mission is one of the largest in town and they aim to impress with their national day celebrations. However, it wasn't like any Australia Day event I've been to before. For a start the invite said lounge suit. My memories of Australia Day are t-shirt optional (because there is a pool) with a BBQ followed by fireworks and the Hottest #100. The event here is far swishier. It was held in a large exhibition hall, with projection screens and unobjectionable Australian music playing.

My first impression was of a school ball. Not helped by the first food station encountered being a chocolate fountain. Although after that the comparison fails, with a large array of excellent food options available, including Waygu beef, lamingtons and a whole fresh tuna flown in specially that day (morning in Australia, evening in KL). All presented on little bite-sized dishes so it was easy to try a wide range of dishes. The audience appeared to be largely the KL diplomatic community with some local VIPs. Speaking to many of them, they were deeply impressed with the event and the cost implied. It seems the Australians set the bar high and dare other diplomatic mission to try topping it. With austerity all the rage in the rest of world, I don't think anyone else makes the attempt.

Thaipusan is a Hindu festival from southern India, where followers make offerings to Murugan. This may be in the form of a pot of milk or the hair from a freshly shaved head or even piercing the body with needles and hooks. In Malaysia, the holiday is held at Batu Caves with over a million visitors during the 3 day event.

We visited on the first night and rarely have I seen so many people. The caves were packed shoulder to shoulder, as were the stairs upto the caves and the assembly area. Around that was a large expanse of food stalls, trinket shops, shrines, head shaving areas and more. All rammed with more people. Gratifyingly, the large red crescent blood donation area was also completely full. It was a bit overwhelming. There was loud drumming, people hooked (literally) into decorated canopies, and colour everywhere (mainly yellow). It was all quite good natured.

I only heard about this event a few hours before it began, so didn't participate. However, the location was open to the public at the end of the 48 hours, when the finished games would be presented. At KL there were 5 teams creating games around with the theme being the sound of a heartbeat. Here are pictures of the teams presenting their games (click on the image to go to their game page on the GGJ website).

I was quite impressed by the games considering how long they had to develop them. Getting anything going in that timeframe is an achievement. They put my productivity to shame. Although I suspect looking around the room a few people were only awake due to caffeine and sugar. Bath and bed were probably in the near future for most of them. A couple of the games looked particularly good. I could see them going on an app store as simple games with a little more polish.

Most of the participants were students of Game Design & Development at KDU (only 2 women though, so the stand male-female ratio in computing continues here). Furthermore, there appears to be an active game development community in KL. I had feared that most game development would be sucked south to Singapore (where I know there are a couple of studios). However, this seems to not be entirely the case. With a university course, an active IGDA chapter and at least one studio which turned up to see the games too, I hopefully won't feel isolated.

It was also interesting to note that all the games were developed using Unity3D. I think the free Unity tool really helps overcome many of the barriers in writing modern games. I started writing simple text and sprite games as soon as I learnt to program as a teenager in the mid-80's. Most of the motivation for wanting to code came initially from wanting to make games. These primitive attempts were not too far removed from the commercial games of the time in look and feel. It was clear how one could write a Zork, Galaga or Chuckie Egg given the time and motivation. However, after Doom and Quake I think the perceived difficulty in creating a decent game greatly increased. It would be nice to think that tools like Unity and events like the Game Jam, help encourage people to program by making it seem again possible to create decent games.

• Blog at an average rate of at least 3 times a month. Result: achieved. 43 blog posts in 12 months.
• Complete the game demo and send it out for comments. Result: achieved. I completed a prototype of Concealed Intent around mid-year and had some positive feedback. I then started on the proper game and sent out an early build to a friend - more positive feedback with some constructive criticism. I'm confident enough in the idea that I will continue.
• Be able to run. Result: achieved. I can run for about 10 minutes (at a slow speed) with no complaint by my feet or ankles the next day. It's not much, but it's a definite improvement. My feet are not 100%, they sometimes feel a bit tight, but I haven't had any pain for months.
• Decrease net ownership of physical goods. Result: achieved (just). I got rid of all my DVDs, some books, old clothes and many unnecessary papers (e.g. 9 year old bank statements). On the other side of the ledger I acquired a laptop. I know that everything I own now fits in around 11 packing boxes and two suitcases. It will be hard to make further decreases without getting rid of my books, CDs or desktop PC.
• Leave the UK. Result: achieved. I now live in Kuala Lumpur and plan to be here for the next 4 years. After 6 weeks, I like it here. I don't think enjoyment of life will be a problem, but I just need to be mindful of my career for when it comes time to leave.
• Maintain general Blender, Ruby and Scala skills. Result: partial. I have barely touched Blender and haven't used Ruby at all. However, my Scala skills were improved by the Functional Programming course from Coursera. There is talk of a follow-on course teaching more advanced concepts in Scala - I look forward to it.

Not a bad track record. I think it helps to just focus on a few things rather than trying to achieve too much. For the coming year, I will:

• Finish or nearly finish Concealed Intent to a saleable level. I want to complete the game to at least public beta where it just requires some fine-tuning and bug-fixing. The aim is to sell the finished game and at least break even. Thus I will continuously promote the game through the year, to build awareness. I will aim to build a community as early as possible. Especially for the purposes of gaining feedback (to this end I hope to soon'ish produce an alpha build with a wider testing audience). Starting soon, I hope to produce nearly weekly updates on progress at Jarrah Technology.

And that is it! Well no, there are a couple more, but Concealed Intent is going to be such a focus over the coming year, it deserves a list to itself.

• Blog at an average rate of at least 3 times a month. Never more than 4 a month. The level of effort required to maintain this blog over the last year seems about right to me. Many of the technical posts will probably migrate to the Jarrah Technology blog, so this will become largely memories, travels and general thoughts.
• Exercise 3 times a week. For the first time in 6 years, I have both the time to exercise and I'm injury-free. While my first priority is to stay injury-free, I also want to become fit again, rather than being puffed after just a slow 10min run.