I had a huge fear inside me recently. I came into the IT world solely on a whim; I'm not originally from any institution remotely connected to computers. I am woefully behind on skills and experience with the technologies assigned to me; and prior to getting this job I had to send my resume out hundreds of times. I went to interviews almost everyday for three months before miraculously getting a choice between two jobs - one for a C++ gig, the other making mobile games. 

I screwed up the choice, and had to resign after two months due to burnout. I then had to do three more months of job searching before I got to my current position. 

I didn't go into this with a naive mindset; I took time off to study computer science concepts, several languages, and web development. I really wanted to thrive and make a good accounting of myself. It galls me that all my effort could come to naught arbitrarily. 

As of now I get assigned to projects only occasionally; to pass the time I try to practice coding or do training sessions. I volunteer for whatever and don't complain about what task is given to me, even if said task isn't really about web development. I want to do more exciting stuff, but I'm not getting assigned to the right projects for that; and my fear is that if this continues I won't be able to advance my expertise far enough to get into a better company, let alone become a key part of my current one. 

There's also the fear that the path I am on might not pay off; even though I am trying my hardest it's like I'm still getting left behind. I've been in a funk about it for the past two weeks. What finally snapped me out of it was realizing something about the martial arts I practice. I remembered that my school's grandmaster was very powerful - I've seen videos of him in action. My current teacher may not have been on the same level, but he's still very good. And I may never get to be the same level as them, but I'll still gain something from practicing. The fact that the teaching works is proven by the grandmaster and master's prowess. And my practice for the past two years has not only made me stronger, it's cured some recurring maladies that I've had since I was ten. 

I may not know if the path I am on will lead to success and contentment, but I know the path of martial arts I am on right now is real, and it has given back to me more than I expected. And so even if I look like an idiot practicing the drills in public, even if it comes to pass that I won't be able to pass on what was taught to me, I will still continue to practice. Even if I have to keep doing standing stake in a smelly restroom cubicle, I'll do it; my life belongs to the martial arts. It will help me survive even when everything else turns to shit.

My New Idol

The show above focused on Mr. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of India's third-largest IT services company. I came across him because of an assignment I needed to do for a Coursera course I am currently taking. The course is about utilizing emotional and social competencies in order to become a more effective leader; the assignment was for us to determine which competencies Mr. Murthy displays on the life experiences he recounts during this interview. 

I've never really bothered myself with the Indian scene before; I am really impressed at the kind of leadership Mr. Murthy shows during their talk. Being in the IT services field myself, I can appreciate the hardship he must have endured to get his venture off the ground. His example makes me agree that the technical skills only matter inasmuch as getting one's foot through the door is concerned; these emotional and social skills make the difference.

However, I can't quite shake the idea that this thesis mostly works for people in management positions, and probably in fields that require collaboration. For knowledge workers or people concerned with individual output the technical skill might matter more; in which case it is mastery of the field which is the decider.

Ultimately, in my opinion you need the "soft skills" to rise up and secure a good future for yourself; it is unfortunate but programming can be a dead end for generalists and specialists whose technology the world has passed by. But the kind of work you get into is still going to be determined by your skill; the better you are, the more opportunities are open to you. You have more options, and this means you are more robust - i.e., better able to thrive under less-than-ideal conditions.

Learning the Eternal Spring

A fellow student learned Weng Chun years ago. My teacher was impressed with the art's handwork and wanted to incorporate the sensitivity drills from Weng Chun into our art. But I decided to get deeper into it to improve my technique; happily, my kungfu brother agreed to make me his junior in this art. I've learned the Seven Stars of Weng Chun and the first two parts of the Siu Nim Tao form. 

It's important to state here that Wing Chun and Weng Chun are completely different - the latter is a soft martial art. It's less about aggressively intercepting and more about receiving the force in order to deflect it. I've found the art likes to have one hand do everything. Remember that there will be times where you might not be able to use both hands, and Weng Chun's ability to find the holes in another's defense is top-notch.

Below are some videos my kungfu brother-turned-senior have shown me. They're very cool stuff.

This.

The React videos by the Fine brothers is one of my new addictions. They have a pool of elders, youth, and YouTube celebrities react to all sorts of trends in pop culture. I in particular like this video about a first-time YouTube uploader; I think deep down everybody who runs a blog, vlog, channel, page, what have you started like this kid. When I started out on this blog I in particular was excited for the statistics, how many people viewed my post or where they came from. I was particularly elated when I got my first comment - which most likely a bot :'(.

Another interesting thing was how the whole discussion went on a tangent about the history of YouTube. I actually had an account back when it was starting out; I still have it, and I've steadfastly refused to let Google change the username for it. It's a nostalgia thing - however I can definitely say that YouTube right now is so much more diverse. Back then the videos were super-short, but once the clip was loaded you could rerun it however long you wished. And the videos didn't have the production values we have today.

Just... yes

HAL, definitely.

Night

I finished reading Eli Wesel's first book, "Night." I am thankful I don't have anything in my life that could help me understand even a tiny bit of what he went through. I hope no one ever does - though there are people out there right now who can probably relate (Malala Yousafzai, for example).

If I could take a turn of phrase from Sir Terry Pratchett, the book is horrible. It inspires horror.

It's not the jump-scare type of horror, nor is it the gory or spooky stuff you see in the movies. It's real-life horror. It's when people start out with good intentions but it gets twisted. It's when the victims become participants in the torment. It's the horror of making numerous life-and-death decisions and missing out on the correct choice; and then living on solely by dint of luck, forever kept up at night by the regret. The horror of people giving up whatever they are because of hunger and pain.

I find myself rooting for them, these Jews trapped in concentration camps. I find myself chiding them when they save their rations instead of eating immediately - not eating when given the opportunity only starves them and causes their bodies to weaken. Once they are weak they won't be able to perform hard activities or make lucid decisions, and when that happens eating whatever they saved would not cure them.

The first few chapters have parallels with Mr. Taleb's own childhood, it's the Black Swan in action. They thought everything was going to be the same as always, ignoring the danger nearing their doorstep. I couldn't blame them for this; I think I myself might have been even more in denial. 

It's heartbreaking though, when instead of seeking a place in Palestine the father chooses to keep his family where it is because he feels he is too old to be starting over in a new land. They didn't know, and couldn't have known. And yet by one such decision the family is doomed.

But what truly haunts me was when they were being required to wear the Star of David, there were those who said that doing so wouldn't kill them. That's right, but it was a start; it makes me wonder for the world we live in. The discrimination we endure in this world - it might not kill us outright, but it may lead to it.; how can we know? Indifference is an atrocity that paves the way for other atrocities.

Seeing things from another point of view.

I've been a Reddit lurker for a long time now. It's an amazing forum where you can get opinions and viewpoints on anything, posted by people from every conceivable background all over the world. It functions like a hive mind at times and it can get things catastrophically wrong. But I think it's worth it when you have the opportunity to get gems like this thread.

The site makes me feel more connected to the human race. I learn that there are almost a thousand others at least who have experienced Insta-Shits, countless others who have had it worse than me and yet are still keeping at it, and the same number have horrible secrets that would bring mine to shame. It's like this big bar where everybody has some weird, stupid, horrible, funny story to tell.

I love the r/AskReddit page. It gets me out of my headspace, from thinking that I'm the only one experiencing this or no one else knows what I'm going through. Yes, other people are going through the exact same things, sometimes even worse, and they also don't know what to do. 

We don't win a lot. But we're also not alone in the world. 

The Reykjavik Confessions

Everyone knows I am fascinated by stuff like this - the page from Mind Hacks has other links to its articles that explore how we can be so wrong about stuff we need to be getting right, i.e. the criminal justice system.

How the F*ck...

That's what goes through my head when I come across algorithmic gems like these:

Movement Mechanics in Legend of Zelda

Realistic Terrain in 130 Lines of Javascript

Spelunky Level Generator


I mean, how do people even come up with this? It's the ultimate transformation of programming into an art form.

Your Body Language [UPDATED]

UPDATE: It seems like current attempts to reproduce the results of the initial experiments aren't being successful.

Making Failing at Stealth Fun

I think this has been a long time coming, but the games industry still has a long way to go. The current crop still err toward making things too easy; I would like the opportunity to salvage a bad situation, but I don't want it handed to me.

Xingyiquan

The first internal martial art I really got down to studying was Xingyiquan. I got up to my teacher's lineage's linking form for the Twelve Animals, but unfortunately after six months I had to stop. I was in the wind and needed to find a job; when I did find a job I had to undergo training, and eventually months turned to years. 

I still like the art though, even that I am training in something else. I was told later that my current teacher's teacher once said that it's really just the Five Fists that you need - the Twelve Animals just being to bilk more money out of students. I haven't verified whether he did really say this or whether the Five Fists is all you need, but what I can say for sure is that in the art I am currently learning they teach us to make just the one move work for you in all manner of situations. So perhaps taken in that context, just a couple fist forms is all you need. After all, Wing Chun has the Seven Stars and boxing has (I'm sorry if I don't remember correctly) ten punches. Yiquan meanwhile has no form at all; so perhaps we shouldn't obsess too much over the things we can do.

The following are some video clips I found on Youtube that made me think about the principles that we try to implement through the form. I hope you find them interesting too.

Fun with Javascript

I was doing a programming assignment for Coursera and this entailed reading large amounts of information from a text file to be downloaded from the site. One could have used any other language to read the file and convert the data into an array. Since I've been doing web development for quite a while I used HTML and Javascript.

The logic was easy enough to encode but the hard part was converting the data. I settled for pasting the data into a div with an id so that I could reference the element using the DOM. I got the text using textContent, and then split the text - since the file had an item of data per row in the file, I used the newline as a separator parameter in the function invocation.

The first item of the data had to be inline with the opening div tag, and the last item of the data with the closing div tag. This resulted in an array of strings, which caused problems for me during debugging until I realized that the values needed to be parsed into the appropriate data type.

I checked out my implementation against the code that others have made online, and it's interesting how mine differed; some were shorter or made use of language-specific conventions. Others were more elegant. But all worked, just not equally in efficiency. 

It made me think of the martial arts I practice, and how the same moves can be found in other arts. Each variation hopefully having a purpose.

RIP, Gentleman Peeler

Courtesy of BoingBoing.

My company just finished a training on English communication; most of the participants held too much of a high opinion of themselves to learn anything. As for myself, having gone three years calming down irate customers sort of gives you a man-from-the-trenches sort of perspective. I think we'd have all benefited if we'd instead taken pointers from this man.

I find him interesting for another reason. Let's admit it, selling potato peelers isn't much of anything. It's not like curing cancer or figuring out the theory of relativity or the Google algorithm. No lives were saved, no lives were improved on the scale beyond that of the kitchen. Yet this man has mastered his craft; martial arts were like that before, the more indigent masters travelling around and performing exhibitions of skill. They sold something, but they also sold themselves. Notice how it's really his crafty usage of the peeler that makes us see it as something indispensable to our lives.

It's actually him, with his experience and lightness and humanity, that we can't live without.