I stand now upon the crossroads between the paths of dreams and newly acquired ambition. It was a tough struggle, but I have made my choice and put it into words, a delivered letter and now into this poignant blog post.

I shall be leaving Azrul.com after today, bidding a fond farewell to the kind folks at AzrulStudio, leaving the "Talk To Us" and support tickets, the many interesting interludes and memorable moments. No more shall I be dotting "i's " and crossing "t's", at least not at AzrulStudio, as I moved onward and into my journalistic future.

 

But if nothing else I leave to all of you the MyBlog User Manual, my last and final contribution, excepting this blog post, to Azrul.com. I hope it shall serve to silent those calls and cries for answers of some of the more familiar questions. Without me being there to man the pre-sales inquiry trenches and sales & billlings battlements.

I am sure that Mark will do spectacularly, always and as before, while our new recruits Web Designer Guy Syahrul, Business Development Girl Rekha and Code Cruncher Iqbal shall more than make up for my departure. I wish my colleague sand soon to be former workmates a fine time and a grand adventure. I would like to thank you guys for a fine time and your gregarious friendliness. I shall miss you guys and our wild adventures.

To all our customers, affiliates and partners, I thank you for a memorable occasion at this end of the email, to have had the honour of getting to know and working with such wonderful people.

To Azrul and Meriza, I wish them all the best and present to them my deepest thanks, for giving me a memorable and life changing six months. I am proud to have worked for such a dynamic and loving couple whose deeds and their business success is perhaps echoed just as well in their beauty as human beings.

When I wrote the words " ...not just another programmers paradise..." in our web copy, business plans and recruitment ad, I was just being smart, witty and doing my job as resident copywriter. But now, looking back, I must say that AzrulStudio truly is something more than just a place to work. Okay... we did work... very hard and more so besides... but it was all worth it and what I personally reaped is more than just my paycheck. Instead of just giving you money and perks, at AzrulStudio you are allowed to explore and grow. I have learned to write in different ways and improve my command of writing styles, through books paid for by Azrul and time off from work to attend courses and workshops. In my case they did it too well perhaps that I am now sprouting wings and flying off. My gratitude all the same, and hopefully with their blessings.

But more so it is their inspiration that I am following. For with my dream of having my words gracing pages, both online and real, I have taken a page from their book. If the Malaysian codes from a Malaysian programmer like Azrul can roam the world in thousands of Joomla sites then maybe my Malaysian words, can one day sweep the world as well. Either the poetic, the literary or in news reporting.

By the 2nd of May 2008, I shall soon be the newly christened Junior Editor (English) and Field Correspondent for a soon to be launched Malaysian online news portal. Our aim to be the voice of reason amidst the storm. To bridge the middleground between reactionary alternative medias and the closed ranks of established press. Our goal to be the sounding board of intellectual discussions and the catalyst of informed decisions. It will probably be a Joomla site, so maybe I shall be around the block here still, once and in a while. I am now also part of "Poetry Underground" upon FaceBook's Malaysia Network, a local poetry collective, writing and performing poetry for the masses. You might catch me ,performing guerilla style, at a street corner sometime!

I leave you all with happy thoughts and a fond farewell. "The first star on the right and all the way till midnight... "

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While it has been a blast answering all the inquiries and issues from your support tickets.  I have decided to take some time off this week to pursue my hidden passion, performing my poetry to a public  audience! I have been writing poetry ever since I was in highschool, but mostly I am a closet poet-wannabee who hides his works in his back pocket, so to speak.

 I have fallen in with some rowdy poetic types of late, folks from the "Poetry Underground" From the Malaysia Network on Facebook, and have been inducted into the ancient art of  poetry performance. I have had my virgin entry into this art last Saturday at a "Readings @ Seksan" session with some local Malaysian authors and a visiting Kunal Basu of "The Minituarist" and "The Opium Clerk" fame at "Seksan's" a local art gallery. "Readings @ Seksan" is a monthly affair organized by local literary figure Sharon Bakar as a place for local and regional authors to gather, network and read from their literary masterpieces. I was nervous and only managed to put on a passable read of my "To Thee O! Sweet Angel", a poem about my first love. Though honestly, I and my poet friends were only called upon to perform to fill-in the time for some absent authors. But that is fine with me!

Spurred on by this, I have signed up for a poetry performance workshop to be conducted by Britain's Jacob Sam la Rose courtesy of British Council, Kuala Lumpur. I shall be attending the workshop on the 24th and the 26th. I have also registered  to enter the KL"Go Green" Poetry SLAM, so named in honour of Earth Day. I shall be competing with other performance poets in a SLAM style poetry recital. It shall also be on the 26th, after my workshop. I would like to beg your forgiveness if I may be a bit late in replying to your tickets from during that time (24th - 26th April. Though as always, Mark and Azrul himself will be online and on duty. 

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While we wind our way through the hustle and bustle of coding our components and the all important business of answering your support tickets, here at Azrul.com, we also aware of the bigger picture. The greater issues that engulfs us all, as one big family of humanity and our shared home, planet earth.

In order to observe and honour Earth Day, which is tomorrow, the 22 April of this year, Azrul.com will run its operations without lights and as paperless operation for the entire day. The lights at our office shall be turned off at the close of operations today and shall not be turned on again until the morning of 23 April. We shall also turn off our printers and put down our pens and pencils tomorrow and run without our usual scribblings and writings and printings.

A drop in the bucket I suppose and symbolic gestures at best. Though we do hope to slowly work towards helping to reduce the burdens upon mother earth and run our operations in a sustainable manner. Till then we solemnly observe Earth Day and pledge our support for our Earth, our future and our childrens's future.

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With the tick tock of clocks and the setting of suns, it is now near the end of 2008's first quarter. Wow! How time does seem to fly, does it not? It is almost just like yesterday that we were releasing our components for 1.5 and it seemed like just but a few moments ago that I was welcoming this year of the rat. Now here we are, fully 1.5 compatible and in the midst of new tales, fresh adventures and latest tidings.

 

First off, Azrul Studio bids a fond farewell to Eddie Yanto a while back, our bona fide hard core code- cruncher . While his time here has been a blast, he has set his sights on other things and we bid him good luck in his new journey. Needless to say we will on the lookout for talented programmers to flesh out our dev team. Anyone interested can email me at hazlan@azrul.com. We also offer a sizeable bounty (RM2000) to anyone who can refer to us suitable candidates. We are looking for keyboard cowboys and code jockeys. With intimate knowledge of PHP, MySQL and Javascript. As always AJAX, JSON and PHP framework knowledge will be an advantage.

We also had our company breakfast at Bangsar Shopping Centre's La Bodega this week to welcome the lovely Rekha, our new Business Development Gal. Well it seems that I will no longer be the odd business development duck in this software developer's paradise. Finally someone who I can speak the business lingo to. Anyway, she will be spearheading our new aggressive expansion strategy. As I said earlier, Azrul Studio is looking to go far this auspicious year! As always, there was a misunderstanding about the order whenever our crowd goes out to our company breakfast. I guess, we may have been cooped up way too long in the office and need to rediscover the pleasures of good food and communicating with helpless waiters. But it was sorted out in the end and we had a wonderful time exchanging tales and trading jibes, ideas and generally havign fun welcoming the new addition to our team.

As for our components, the buzz around the developer's lounge is that the final touches is currently being done on MyBlog's modules and content mambot integration for Joomla 1.5, by none other then Azrul himself. Though that is all I was able to get out of Mark after bribing him with some Mars bars the other day. When is it going to be released? I don't know, but it will be soon. Stay tuned ladies and gentlemen for further news adn developments!

Speaking of developments, Azrul's experiments with XEN and VPS has been quite successful and we have our very first server up and running. In fact our support and main sites are now hosted on our hosting service. Dubbed 3GoHost, this will soon be another branch of our service. Plans are being made to expand our server count soon and we will begin our entry into the still untapped territory of VPS hosting service in Malaysia. Meriza, Rekha and Myself will be busy soon, overseeing the business side of things while Mark and Azrul is hard at work between support tickets and improving our code, building and testing our servers.

In conjunction with Joomla-my.org Azrul Studio will be working hard to organize and energize Joomla! Day Malaysia 2008. We are in the planning stage right now. I have been in touch with Alex Kempkens of the Joomla Core team in their forums and Azrul will liaise with the committee from Joomla-my.org. We are looking forward to a grand and glorious Joomla! Day Malaysia 2008. We shall increase the number of participants this year and will reduce the required fee by a bit. Our aim to make Joomla! 2008 accesible to more people and reach out to more users.

By the way, we have updated our website with a new template and the latest versions of our components. Hope you guys like our new look. What do you think? Do tell us and leave your comments. There is a also a new FAQ section and a User manual out for MyBlog

Well, that's all for today, I am off to other more demanding work. Will share more tales with you guys later. Have a great week!

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For the development team, the priority task at hand is probably getting our components fully Joomla 1.5 compatible. We have got Jom Comment to run on Joomla 1.5 RC4 but there are still some wrinkles to iron out. My Blog and Nice Talk is next on the list. Though this process will take time as we think it best to wait until Joomla 1.5 itself is stable.

As usual Mark is standing by to squash all bugs and soothe the savage Joomla beast with the clickity-clack of his keyboard and the melodic lines of his codes, coaxing our components ever closer to 1.5 compatibility.

We will also be looking at rolling out several new products to the Joomla community this new year. While actual details of the new component roll outs are still hush hush and confidential, I am allowed to say that we may be seeing a better way to put up forms and job listings on Joomla soon. Building a better mouse trap so to speak.

Newcomer Eddy Yanto is currently in the thick of the action, as the newest developer at Azrul.com. The first one of many more that we will be recruiting all through the year. Part and parcel of our planned expansion. As Wil Schroter is fond of saying ,"Go Big or Go Home". We have big plans for 2008! Though we do plan to still keep things cozy. Where are we heading? Well let's just say into another blue ocean.

This is what I will be spending most of my time on this first quarter, weeding out the wheat from the chaffs, screening applicants and looking for those few, those happy few, those band of developers that eat, sleep, drink and excrete verified codes. If you have what it takes to be the best or ARE the best do drop me your resume and a note on why we should hire you at hazlan@azrul.com.

Azrul has got himself a new toy this year. After the iphone from last year, Azrul is now all crazy about VPS and virtualization. He has cobbled together a web server and is experimenting with XEN VPS like some Dr. Frankenstein and his stitched up corpse. When he is not spearheading the development team's coding forays he can be found by the side of his newest toy.{mospagebreak}

Much to the chagrin of Meriza, who nevertheless is keeping busy with our many planned community and public relations activities. We are also looking at expanding our market outreach this year. So if there are any interested potential affiliates and partners, do give us a buzz. We would love to hear from you. We are looking for affiliates to market our products as well as partnerships with template producers, 3rd party components developers as well as hosting providers. Interested parties can contact me.

Speaking of community activities, we will be supporting the upcoming Joomla Day Melbourne 2008 where limited FREE COPIES of our standard edition components will be up for grabs. If you are organizing a Joomla Day do let me know and we will see what we can do to support and celebrate your Joomla day with you.

Well that is all thats up with 2008 for now. I hope this will be a good year for us here at Azrul.com as well as for all our friends, affiliates, partners and customers out there. Till later, I bid all a good day and a spectacular year ahead!

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1.5 compatibility! The king of kings for the day was the jubilant Mr. Azrul himself whose last minute spurt of creativity managed to secure the breakthrough that the whole team has been working towards for the last few days. Coding team newcomer Edwin who was plunged headlong into the compatibility project on his first day, had to be rushed to the pantry for an emergency coffee infusion as he nearly collapsed from the strenous nature of the ordeal. According to coding team veteran Mark, the Edwin debacle is a common sight amongst newer members of the team before they got used to the whirlwind pace and turbulent episodes at Azrul Studio. Meriza, the solitary rose amongst the thorns at the office was just glad this whole thing is over so that the coding team can finally go home to rest, shower and shave. Finally, she can call in housekeeping to take care of the mess that the office has become after days of office-camping by the coding team. While the compatibility issue has been handled, it will still take some time for the kinks to be worked out of the code and for it to be integrated into Azrul Studio's component products. As such, we will only be seeing the compatibility updates out latest by December of this year. For those interested in the development of the 1.5 compatibility project, please tune your browser to our website and watch out for it on our news page, forum or developer blogs. You can also catch the news on the Azrul Studio newsletter. A temporary hotfix will be available soon for testing by our beta testers, those interested can sign up now.

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