My little corner of the Web, to talk about things as and when they become available.
I have a lot of things I find interesting, and hopefully I will be able to write more about them here. This blog is an experiment, an exercise in creation, an outlet for getting things out of my head so they can live longer in a relatively nicer place.
It's a difficult concept. There's the defining of things that you absolutely will not tolerate: the lines you will not cross, the lines you will not let others cross. But there's also the active enforcement of these lines; the very instant (or somewhat close to it) that these lines are crossed you must act to uphold them. And then there's also how and when you uphold the line - how hard do you push back? How do you make the other person not want to push back again? How do you make it so you avoid others pushing? How do you even accurately determine that the line was crossed?
Right now you also have to worry about the digital boundaries. I honestly haven't been keeping up, which is why this article I found was a godsend. It details some good software to secure my browser; it also educates quite well on the nature of the problem plaguing online privacy. I suppose it's strange that a web developer isn't more up-to-date with these things - but since I have not had to work on the analytics side tracking user information isn't that a big thing in my mind. This is a bad headspace to be in, so I highly recommend the article as a way to get started for everyone.
Experts are especially prone to claiming they know more than they do. Because it benefits them more for others' perception of their expertise to continue. Because being ignorant is socially undesirable, and may lead to all sorts of bad consequences. Because for many things in modern life faking it is sufficient to get through.
Believing the lie, though, is something else entirely. Because it can lead you to not paying more attention to the stakes of what you're trying to bullshit. A professional does his assigned job, and asks for help when he needs it. The product is the point, and compromising it because your personal stuff got in the way is inexcusable.
This is something I try to keep in mind, because the self-delusion has been mine. Hindsight has been painful, and I have had made many mistakes. In the field that I work in now, I have to focus on making sure that I communicate correct information or the project can get derailed.
For examples, take every episode of Kitchen Nightmares. At my work there's the guy in a supervisory position who brags that his job is to "plan things," but who had to do nine hours of overtime for a presentation the next day. And there's the woman who keeps arguing over the usage of "If I were..." and "If I was..." She keeps talking about present progressive tense and whatnot - but the correct grammar has to do with past/present tense indicative versus subjunctive; the way she was BSing makes me think she didn't look it up, even though we're all in the age where looking up the correct answer only takes minutes.
In the midst of browsing the great funland that is the Internet I once again came across information regarding Japan's 1970's-era female gangs, called sukeban. They're precisely what one would think they are; but in this informative post it was explained why these delinquents weren't all just caged in some government-run institution: the police were of the opinion that the members of these gangs would just one day grow up and walk away from "the life."
That gave me pause. This attitude is probably from the same mindset that birthed the concept of chuunibyou. Japan isn't the only country with this concept, South Korea knows it too. My country though, doesn't have a term like this.
In the West, there's "It's just a phase." It's an acknowledgement that at some point early in our lives we will do sketchy shit - and as we grow older and more experienced in navigating the world, we choose more and more to forego the sketchiness and tread the straight, narrow and stony. It's an assurance that our past bad decisions won't be held against us, provided those bad decisions weren't egregiously bad.
I think part of what makes a great society is that it is forgiving to the people that make it up. Over here my countrymen always harp on about discipline and stricter punishments and shaming over the smallest infraction. In America things are even more draconian for those who have the misfortune of being caught.
I'm not trying to say that punishments are unwarranted, far from it. I guess what I'm trying to say is - I hope we all keep in mind what we have had the luxury to forget.
It's Dan Hibiki. I still have yet to play him mind you, but he's definitely caught my interest. I feel like if you win with him it's undoubtedly due to skill and not because of character choice. And he's fun:
I learned this recently. Price is a signal of how much one party values something. Spending money can be a signal of how committed someone is, a way of showing that he knows he'll make the money back. Or it could be that the cost he's paying right now is peanuts to him. A high cost doesn't automatically mean you're getting what you pay for.
Last Saturday I attended an event for Amazon Web Services. It was really informative and interesting, but the one that left a lasting impression was the DIY seismograph one of the presenters debuted. It was a dinky little thing, an accelerometer connected to a toothpick needle and handwritten dial. The whole thing relied on an Arduino to send data into AWS, and can send push notifications to a cellphone or turn on an alarm over the Internet.
The kit for portable seismographs will cost into the thousands of dollars. The DIY device showcased at that talk will cost much less, and can be tuned for different functions and greater/lesser sensitivity. It can be distributed to different areas, and AWS provides the analytics tools. The push notification capability alone exponentially increases the speed of info dissemination.
This device is revolutionary because it transfers potential into the hands of the regular people. It has the ability to outperform bloated institutions that are more concerned with perpetuating themselves than actually performing the purpose they were created for. Where I am for example the weather services are a joke. But what if instead of a motion sensor we attach to the Arduino thermometers and hygrometers and anemometers and rain gauges and tide gauges? What if we didn't have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to wait for advisories, and we could depend instead on a message on our phones?
Overheard how one bro lost respect for his brother because the latter pronounced sauce as sows (as in, He sows corn in his field everyday.). This same bro later characterizes someone as "matured," and another as a "dooshbug."
It's a pretty cut-and-dried story. Except it turns out the bigot detective was actually an informant for the FBI.
We all lose battles. It's fine if he loses this one - he's already done more than anyone in his lifetime. People are going to live more peaceful lives in Louisiana because of what he did.
This made me remember that for all the integrity media trumpets it has, the bottom line is they get paid to have people tune in. Their incentives are not my incentives.
This was a cool trick I learned from a co-worker, which he in turn found from StackOverflow. I'm putting it here as a reference, because it's so simple and useful. So, let's say you want to have the browser download an Excel file instantly without using plugins or Interop. You put the following lines in your controller method:
Then you have the method return a PartialView. The PartialView will have an IEnumerable of your view model:
@model IEnumerable<[view_model_here]>
Then you can just add the markup and styling for the data. When you run the application and use the controller method, it will cause a download attachment to occur.
Remember The Pretender? I really loved that show. In hindsight I think it was the freedom Jarod had to be anything that caught my fascination. And now I've finally hit upon a procedure to learn quickly.
I found out about him since the channel I linked to in my previous post had another video about him. I found his blog in short order - color me impressed. I know what book and DVD I will be buying next...
The microbiome inside our bodies has never been properly understood; recent findings have clearly proven there are surprising connections between the state of your gut's microorganisms and brain development, gut health, anxiety, and even mental health.
The very activity of creating fermented foodstuffs actually has interesting economic consequences. I would recommend reading this blog post in the Wild Fermentation site to learn more.
I love the smell - it makes my mouth water. I love the deeply rich medley of flavors. It's good for you too.
Even if there were nothing else Korea achieved in its long history, I would still say God bless them for bringing kimchi into the world. It is a fond dream of mine to one day travel to the country and spend my time sampling authentic Korean cuisine - including their best kimchi.
Now, it seems like that dream is in danger. I understand the economics - the mere presence of a cheaper alternative in the market drives prices down, regardless of its quality. I get that China is more effective in terms of producing the stuff. There is, and let me emphasize this, nothing wrong or illegal at all about what's happening right now.
But while we're talking economics, let's talk about unintended consequences. The recipes for kimchi from Korea have a unique history. Some may have been passed from parent to child; others may have been refined over decades to appeal to the most people. Korea's population ate their mother's kimchi as the country went through both terrible and great upheavals. Kimchi is part of Korea's culture, but the Koreans grew into their culture because of such daily things like kimchi. To have this diversity and heritage just up and lost without much of a fight to generic product... sort of hits me hard.
It's a lot like how there was a wealth of gong fu in China before the Communists; if the latter had their way all these arts would have been replaced by wushu - which is really an amazing thing, let me tell you. But wushu is not gong fu.
The thing is, shaming is a mechanism to enforce societal rules. It serves to help solidify the lines between who is in the group and who is out, between who has a high social standing and who doesn't. Because if you weren't higher than the other person in status, you wouldn't be able to freely punish them, would you?
And so punishing someone for a transgression, even if it weren't strictly criminal, confers status on the one doing the punishing - they are gatekeepers of what is "right," they have a role in the group, and they are willing to enforce the duty that comes with their role. For the good of the group. Not the welfare of the members, just the good of some abstract concept of "the group."
Shaming shares similarities with physical assault - in both cases perpetrators target the victim who won't track them down and butcher their families in retaliation. Both are done for gain - whether it's to fit in more or gain status or, as in the case of companies who got involved in the circus that was described in the talk above, get money. But most importantly, shaming is done by people who can't do anything else - the elites don't bother to get into these petty squabbles. In fact, doing so is all downside for them. Criminals don't have any other avenue to get their fix or get to tomorrow; in this then we see that shaming is a tool of the mediocre.
Here's another article about online shaming. Sadly, all that vitriol won't bring Cecil back. Nor does it stop the continued poaching of these endangered animals.
I had the opportunity to hear Dr. John R. Williams give a talk titled, "Talking to Light Bulbs-- How the Internet of Things is transforming everything." This was a particular treat, listening to the man at the bleeding edge of innovation in my field give context and perspective to the IoT movement revolutionizing modern life. This is my attempt at setting down the points that resonated during that speech.
Right now, the best taxi service in the world doesn't own cars; the best retail service in the world doesn't have a physical location. And the best hotel service, doesn't own a single hotel. Data is being generated at an exponential pace, and analyzing this data is enabling the above to happen - it's even helping teach farmers how to be better at their job, beyond their own personal experience.
The beginnings for this were set up with the founding of the World Wide Web. Originally just to be used by the United States military to keep track of their stuff, the purpose soon expanded. Another milestone was in the development of HTTP - according to Dr. Williams at the time because HTTP was text-based it could get past firewalls since text was deemed safe; this made HTTP more useful than binary protocols.
The Internet was intended to support documents only. The coming about of Javascript birthed the creature known as a web application, which soon supplanted that original vision; it enabled developers to build programs on browser engines, which meant that these web applications can run on whatever device can run a browser. Now web applications are ubiquitous - practically all web pages aren't static documents, but rather are code that aggregate information from a multitude of sources. The code also has a second ability - it can track the user, and send out this information.
The revolution has only been helped by the open-source movement and the practice of releasing API's; developers can mash up different technologies and come up with novel applications. One example of this that Dr. Williams showcased was an app created by his students - the app leveraged the Meetup API to provide real-time information about meetings, filtered to those meetings comprising more than fifty people. The point of the app was to provide taxis with information on where to go for possible fares.
The coolest thing though that was demoed during the talk were the talking light bulbs. This was connected lighting - light bulbs able to change hue to create an atmosphere, able to turn itself on to wake you up, able to be toggled into security mode from your phone. Lights that can turn themselves off and on again to notify you of an emergency or a phone call. Light bulbs that turn on as you approach your house.
The Internet of Things isn't all upside. It has proved to be a very disruptive force - many old businesses do not exist now because they have been made obsolete. Some companies have found success by embracing these changes and adapting to the changing times. The problem is that companies grow so successful they think they are too big to fail - it takes a special effort to always be on the lookout for the next sea change. Companies need to always be observing and orienting, and they need to decide and act quickly. In software development, this methodology is embodied in Agile programming - which in turn owes a lot to John Boyd and his OODA loop.
But IoT isn't just dangerous for companies that don't adapt; in many ways it's dangerous for its proponents as well. With increased connectivity and generated data and the current trend toward analytics, many people fall into the trap of thinking that the sky's the limit, that they can predict anything, and that the more information they put in the more in control they are.
This is understandable because for the longest time the prevailing mindset was that we can create mental models of phenomena to understand them. As more information comes up that shows minor problems with our mental models, we can make changes accordingly.
But what if a single infinitesimal change resulted in behavior completely different from that predicted by the model? The discovery of chaos and the butterfly effect mean that very small initial differences can result in huge perturbations. Dr. Williams illustrated this with the three-body problem - while it may be easy to predict the movement of a body hanging off another like a pendulum, adding a third body to the pendulum bob just makes predicting movement a hopeless endeavor.
Dr. Williams also related an anecdote about his colleague who was trying to predict the weather. During his calculations, the colleague made a mistake on the digit at the fifth decimal place; the result was that all his model's predictions were wrong. The colleague concluded it was impossible to predict the weather, because our measuring tools will never be accurate enough. And that's without taking into account the tools changing what they're observing as the measurements are being done.
Even in analyzing data one doesn't make use of all of the data; Dr. Williams mentioned that in order to make predictions often they just look at a fraction of the data - because data is almost always dirty, and making the algorithm fit the data too closely makes it too sensitive to these minute changes we've been discussing that result in wildly off predictions.
So there have to be boundaries. Within those boundaries, we have to allow for patterns to emerge on their own, perhaps introduce new strange attractors or dampen non-helpful ones. Of particular help would be the Cynefin framework developed by Dave Snowden.
Overall, it was a great talk. The above video was also used by Dr. Williams, but I couldn't find the other material I remember he used. I find some similarity with N. Taleb's ideas; lots of stuff to ponder.
I never used to pay attention to these things before, but as I grow older I realize these are moments that are precious because of their rarity - and as I appreciate more that there are other people out there who will die just minutes before these occurrences...
In my youth I focused on academics. The result was, I graduated - just like billions of others around the world, and the billions more who will come after me. I studied and did not see any value in arts or physical education. The consequence is I am lacking in ways that other people are not, them having had a more active childhood than I. The paper my parents spent so much for me to get - getting it resulted in me working a post that can be easily replaced should I ever decide to leave. I have to keep studying and finding training because my skills quickly become obsolete in my industry.
I know now that the brain's plasticity does not remain into adulthood; for anyone who disagrees, try learning a new language in your thirties and compare it to learning your mother tongue - or even a second language - growing up. I remember even reading that the brain cells are completely replaced every ten years. Whatever achievement you got growing up, it's not yours: it's someone else's merit, someone who is now quite dead.
Beauty, strength, speed, wit - all these fade with time. Things that were perky before sag as gravity lays a greater claim on it. People in relationships change, and the challenge is in finding something to love in this stranger who calls herself your spouse. The money you save depreciates in value every year - and the inflation rate is something entirely out of your control.
And then there's other people. Be it out of jealousy or pride or small-mindedness or whatever, there will be those who will see fault in how you work or live or do business. Who will run away with your reputation in a narrative not of your choosing. All to pull you down - perhaps to raise themselves up? Or just so there's more people at the bottom...
And then there's you. You, who is so afraid of things changing and becoming more uncertain that you would sabotage yourself just so you won't have to change.
The general trend is down. Everyone goes down; it takes a special amount of effort and will and luck and thinking to move UP. And whatever it was helped you raise yourself up, isn't guaranteed to raise you up again should you fall. If it is available the next time around, that is.
Whatever advantages you bring now get used up or are rendered irrelevant. So go make more.
Forging a path forward is messy - expect to be soiled. But this is the very nature of the universe - so go ahead, no matter how dirty or disgusted with yourself you get. The fight is yours alone. Keep moving.
We were made to strive in this environment. We need to remember that we have to work hard, and whatever respite we get is temporary. Let's painfully struggle, to our very last breath. >:D
The art is impressive, but not very special. And yet somehow a woman stands to rot in prison for twelve years because of it. This blog isn't much, but let me at least make sure in a way only I can do that the works of she who is being silenced will never be forgotten.
You can read why she drew this here. And let me just say, any country capable of this will never attain whatever it is their God promises them after death.
This article mentions another reason for why the original Thief series was so good. It's the fact that you can come up with these strategies and tactics. This is present in Trine, should be present in Team Fortress 2, and is present in every fighting game I love.
From the blog Rory Miller, whose writings have been teaching me a lot about how not to be a douche. The following is a nice twist on the doctrine about wolves and sheep, something I've also been brainwashed about for years.
First of all, two things: I did not play multiplayer games as a child, a teen, and a young adult. It's only in my thirties that I got into Team Fortress 2 and was exposed to the fun of multiplayer.
Second, I got Trine on a lark because it had good reviews and was on sale at the time. I played for under an hour and liked the graphics, but didn't really get hooked. Trine was soon going to be part of my Steam backlog.
I read about the Dead MP Games Resurrection Group and joined. They had a scheduled Trine multiplayer game for today, so I thought why not? I played Trine for about an hour just to familiarize myself before the session.
My goodness, this game. I suppose it's a distant ancestor of Dark Souls? Because I died a lot - and I was not prepared.
I played with two members of the Steam group - they were in a party, one of two that were active at the time of the session. We were bad and awkward - but it was fun. There's a rush when you know the other character on your screen has a flesh-and-blood brain.
After the session, I played Trine again. On my own this time, I noticed that a lot of the puzzles in the game could be solved not just by timing and reflex, but also by the unique capabilities of each of my people. I found myself turning toward the Wizard a lot for solutions.
You have no idea how fulfilling getting this to happen was...
smokers congregate where the purpose is an afterthought generating excreta - sticking it in deeper than any penis or finger or tongue an orgy wrapped in foul vapours, raping all who come across it not sparing even the children
doing it standing, sometimes perched precariously all for that little tingle that's gone so soon braving the heat and the dust when it's done everyone's the same, only more putrid not meeting anyone's eyes.
because: the most important thing you will do in your life is this you will pass the days dead-eyed until you are lit up again.
When you think about it, solitary confinement is an improvement in terms of cruelty dealt to the victim; where older societies would exile a transgressor, they never barred them from making a new life for themselves elsewhere. The point was that the transgressor was no longer present, and he no longer had access to his friends and family and other resources too big to carry.
My country had a similar punishment along these lines.
Here's the first thing I did after reading about all that has happened to Sir Tim Hunt: I tried to find a video of the speech. Context is everything, right?
I couldn't find a video of the relevant portion that has everyone so upset. I did find this:
All of this hate, and we can't even find one incriminating clip?
Here's how the man himself explained it, courtesy of Wikipedia (original source of snippet can be found here):
Crucially, Hunt said, he then added the words, “now seriously” before going on to praise the role of women in science and in Korean society. “The words ‘now seriously’ make it very clear that I was making a joke, albeit a very bad one, but they were not mentioned in the first reports and I was deluged with hate mail,”...
Ok. So we have no context. This could have been everything people are saying it was; or this could instead be a British person making a dry remark that's meant to not be taken seriously but does hint at some personal misadventures that are better left unsaid.
We ran with this, didn't we? And we're such good people. And the world is better for what we did.
I've written before about my love for the Hitman franchise before. The only games I haven't played yet are the Sniper Challenge and Hitman GO. The latter because I don't have an iOS device, and the former for reasons I'll be talking more about below.
I was glad that they were rethinking their approach to the game so that there would be more similarity with Hitman: Blood Money. Bigger levels and more stuff happening in the levels are a great thing. The switch to a more episodic digital release was also intriguing, doubtless this was influenced by the success of Hitman GO's own model. There will also be improvements to the Instinct mechanic, which is welcome; the Hitman games have always suffered from the randomness caused by Agent 47 not having good enough feedback from the world he's interacting with.
Where the old Thief games had shadows and great sound rendering and the light gem and highlighted interactive objects:
Gameplay by Lytha, of "Lytha Way" fame
And Mark of the Ninja had vision cones and shadows and "sound bubbles":
The Hitman games never had a similar mechanism warning you if there's someone about to enter the room. The Suspicion meter was there mostly for disguises, so exploring without a disguise - i.e., using actual stealth - was always a fraught affair. Things were less about using cunning and more about tensely being on point with timing.
The thing that turns me off about all this is that by being in a spaced digital release model you have to churn out regular, quality content to keep people engaged with the game. Absolution's Contracts mode was fun but these days no one plays it - the problem is the same, you have to do something new to keep people from getting bored.
And there are elements to the Hitman games that will bore; remember that the NPC's in any Hitman game are scripted to do the same kinds of things. Miss the timing? Just wait and the characters will do it again - doesn't matter if you get discovered, let the heat die down and things will eventually go back to normal. Blood Money addressed this with the Notoriety mechanic, but the effects weren't within a mission - it was more the next mission became harder because you were sloppy. Which means you are more likely to continue being sloppy, while careful players aren't affected.
I think what Hitman has been missing is the improvisation aspect. Sure, they say there will be many ways to take someone out, but all these ways have been pre-programmed. Just be at this place at this time with this item then click the mouse. That's basically what the Sniper Challenge is - shoot here now while the target is there and something happens.
Let's check out fighting games for a second. In a fighting game there are characters who have special moves they can do by the player pressing a button or a combination of buttons. The moves have certain properties like recovery speed or set-up time or invulnerability or unblockability that affect how they are to be used/defended against. But most crucially, the moves can also be chained together. You could argue that it's also a timing game - a very strict one at that - but the prospect of dealing huge damage with the other player not being able to do a thing makes the grind worth it. Also, a lot of these combos don't just get told to us - they have to be discovered. Often it's the players themselves who come up with them, then they share the combos online.
In this way, players make their characters truly theirs. There's nothing equivalent to that in Hitman, before or now. If I were the lead designer, at the very least I'd make the game into a huge PvP fest - players are freelance clones of 47 who compete for contracts against NPC's and each other. Maybe each player gets to develop a main specialty, like infiltration or bomb-making or sniping. Or John Woo-style parkour and double-wielding. The best-performing player could get to actually use 47 as their avatar.
In conclusion, I think to take the franchise to the next level a world of assassination isn't needed - rather, a world of assassins should have been the hook for this reboot.
I bought this game about three months ago. It joins Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, Kings of Kung Fu, and Skullgirls on my Steam library.
I have a thing for fighting games. But what started it all was King of Fighters. Everybody else was on to Street Fighter, but I stayed true to Chin Gentsai and Mai Shiranui. Then, after a few years it was K9999 and Ryuji Yamazaki; I had a brief flirtation with Oswald but by and large I've been a Chin man. Now though I find myself gravitating to Ryuji and Vanessa. Oh, and Kim Kaphwan's moves are pretty cool too...
I gave Street Fighter IV a try when it was free to play on Steam one weekend. I thought I might enjoy Hakan and Rufus - boy was I disappointed. I do believe the game is well-designed, it's just that I couldn't bring myself to care for these characters on the same level as I do DOA's Eliot and Gen Fu, or Skullgirls' Parasoul, or KOF's Chin. And when I can't care about a character, I don't bother playing since it isn't worth it to learn playing anybody in the roster well.
See? I really wanted to love Rufus.
In general, I start liking the quirky, side characters first in a fighting game. I got into Guilty Gear XX #Reload at my local arcade because of Zappa. Chin was among my first in KOF, and the only reason I got into Eliot was because he was the only fun unlocked one in the Xbox 360 version of DOA 4 that I played. I've never gotten into the main protagonists like Ryu or Kyo Kusanagi or Sol Badguy.
After establishing my quirky main, I start looking for the tactical characters. Venom had so much versatility, I never mastered him at all; darn False Roman Cancel timing always eluded me. Yamazaki is fun too, and even up to now I'm learning all sorts of things. His Nejikomi move, for example, is nice to use while backing up or blocking. Since the keys you need to press for Nejikomi start with a Block movement, it can be buffered from a block. It's a pity I can't test it out on anyone online, everybody's into KOF XIII. Which doesn't have Ryuji or Vanessa.
I like Dead Or Alive because a lot of the characters use Chinese martial arts - not just in name, there are actually identifiable moves from the style that appear in the game. It speaks to my other hobby.
I wish AOA Black would come out again. They were on to something quite unique in the world of Kpop, now that the dance subgroup is doing well maybe FNC can experiment more, have more band-centered releases.
I get a lot of inspiration from seeing these videos - they really showcase the depth and rich history of boxing.
This breakdown is of particular interest to me because of how the style I've been taught likes to be close, at infighting range. I would also add that by leaning the left shoulder into the body Mr. Henry Armstrong ensured his opponent never got to target his centerline while his left arm was in prime position to go full-power with the uppercuts.
Really starting to get into Chinese dramas... which is a problem as we don't get Chinese programming where I am. I really wouldn't mind if a DVD collection came out, but right now I'm trying to find it online where I can.
The series that I want to talk about is "Painted Skin." It was an offshoot of a very successful 2008 movie; the series was released in 2011. The series follows roughly the same events as the movie, but more emphasis is given to the characters' relationships and development.
The series also has some beautiful, quiet moments - although, full disclosure, I found myself skipping a lot because I was more interested in the villain Xiaowei (played hauntingly by Fiona Sit). I ended up rooting for her to get a happy ending.
I've already watched the end, and right now am in a thoughtful mood. If only there were a sequel...
Koding is an interesting project. I've been getting into Python and Data Science the past few months , and I've been looking for a good enough IDE. I'll be looking into this moreover the next couple weeks.
Interesting article over at Cracked about how we have difficulty seeing people as people when they are out of our ingroup. It's a possible explanation for stereotyping, and has made me more reflective of my own biases.
This is genius. Take away the make-up, take away the clothes, take away the socially-acceptable mannerisms, and the same person is someone completely different.
Think about that. People surround themselves with stuff and smells and sights and sounds and other people to insulate themselves and protect themselves and make themselves look attractive. Do they even know what they are anymore under all those layers?
I've come to think of the sense of attractiveness as passing all of the criteria we have in our heads for what an attractive thing is. Nice clothes? Check. Confident demeanor? Check.
Did you answer 0.10? It's instinctive for many people to answer that way - but that would mean the more expensive object is 1.10, and that means we've gone over the stated total cost. Simple algebra would tell us the correct answer is 0.05.
It's an easy question, but it's hard in the sense that we don't stop to think about it more. We're trapped in the mode of thinking where we favor knee-jerk reactions. It would be fine if our instincts were something like what Aristotle wrote about as correct beliefs - we don't know why it's correct, we just gravitate to the answer. But in real life those correct beliefs have to be tempered with experience; experience is what gives you fingertip feel - fingerspitzengefühl - or the correct beliefs in the first place. Experience also tells you when to stop rushing into something and take your time to suss the answer out.
This is by far not an easy thing; too often we find that these two systems of the brain are at cross-purposes in certain situations. On the one hand, punching him in the face would feel so good; on the other, I'd be sacrificing my livelihood. Decisions, decisions...
I've played it for some time now, so perusing Magic: the Gathering articles occasionally is something I tend to do even if at this point I no longer have anyone to play with. Right now I'm enjoying these three articles - on sideboards, mana curves, and optimal aggro decks.
I'm also recently getting into Team Fortress 2. I'm looking to Zeigon and MrPaladin's YouTube channels for guidance. I'm gravitating toward the Spy class for some reason; I think it has a very exciting playstyle.
With work I have been recently introduced to the idea of Flat UI design. I'm playing with it on my current project, and I am looking to designmodo this time. What's interesting is that web designers use a lot of image editing. I'm thinking I need to start learning GIMP and Inkscape. This might be related somehow, I don't know; but it seems like it will lead to something promising.
As a fellow who loves spicy food, I wholeheartedly love the fact that my addiction has healthy side-effects. This is an interesting finding (article here).
I'm obsessed with the comic series Global Frequency. I remember a character mentioning about being blocked by government institutions acting like gatekeepers to where they wanted to go. He said that they'll grow their own wings, as in they'll take care of themselves instead of being enslaved by others and suffering the externalities caused by the latter's callous decisions.
In light of what's happening with the FBI and the CDC right now, with the global repercussions of this I think people need to seriously start considering to grow a pair of their own. So long as the members do not become circlejerkers I'm sure they can accomplish a lot more than the politicos would give them credit. Remember that it's in the authority figure's best interest to keep you dependent because that's his livelihood we're talking about here. A lot of them don't have skin in the game, which is why they don't even bother sometimes.
There's a lot of good in the world being done by ordinary people with skin in the game - here's one more in a line of other's I'll be talking about in future: the Delancey Street Foundation.
The tricky thing about calendar form inputs is that browsers render them in different ways. Safari on Windows for instance, I recently found out it does not render calendars as a calendar; rather it shows two buttons on the extreme right side of the textbox that when either is clicked increments or decrements the date being displayed. What's more, it displays in YYYY-MM-DD format, which is a bit difficult if your client wants you to have MM-DD-YYYY format instead.
jQuery to the rescue, I guess. I got the widget to work well, it even displays a default date thanks to help from this blog post, but I wanted to make sure the theme did not conflict with any other styles I might need to put into the site I'm working on; the jQuery UI theme should only affect select elements in my form. This should be a piece of cake since a Download Builder page is available that allows one to specify CSS scope. Except datepickers in jQuery have a quirk when used with the CSS scope; that cost me two and a half hours of trying to get it to work.
If I may digress, what the h#ll. I mean, you create such powerful code and you can't be bothered to elaborate what's happening more clearly on your documentation? It's these kinds of bottlenecks that ruin the development experience for me. Luckily, I found this entry on stackoverflow that was a light at the end of the tunnel. It clearly stated the reason for the theme not showing up when using CSS scope, and gave a workaround.
Here it is, for future reference:
Note: Another gotcha was how to embed JSFiddle code on blogger. Got the skinny here and here. If it weren't for these resources I would have been out of a job already...
I'm trying to create a system I can rely on so that I can create website UI's much quicker. I've written about this before here, and this time around I'll be writing about what I found with regard to menu bars and modal popups.
Everyone's familiar with menu bars, but to illustrate modal popups we have a handy demo here. My issue has always been browser compatibility; I can come up with good code on my own, but it fails when taking into account Internet Explorer, Safari on Windows, Opera, and so on.
The Gibson Research Corporation's Script-Free Pure-CSS Menuing System was a godsend to me in this regard. I experimented with it on IE's Emulator tool; while it's true it looks ok on the emulated IE 5, the hover over submenus didn't work. Also, when I replaced the images being used for the first-order menu elements with text and styling, in IE 5 the menu reordered itself vertically. I'm therefore more comfortable with saying my alters result in code that's IE 7-applicable.
The site that I got the demo from became the basis for the modal system. It was very simple code, except that it used a lot of features older versions of IE do not support. So the gradients, border-radius, rgba opacity, and box-shadows had to go. One could presumably use hacks to get the same effects on IE, but I've tried all of them and have never gotten them to work. Besides, we need to have a handle on how fast the page runs - adding too many files would be awful on the load time.
For radial gradient effects or large linear gradients, I usually take a screenshot of the gradient on a browser that supports it. I then crop everything out, leaving only a thin sliver of the gradient. For small gradients, I use online gradient image creation tools; then we just specify on the CSS to repeat the image as a background image and we're done. That method is also how I got around the rgba opacity not being supported in old IE; in this case I use a PNG file at a certain percentage transparency (usually plain black) for the background.
Another thing I noticed is that Safari on Windows does not give a nice calendar when using Formalize CSS; I would recommend instead using jQuery's Datepicker.
The game is called Floating Point, and it's free on Steam. I like that it has simple mechanics that are hard to master; the levels are randomly generated and there's really no other goal aside from learning to move elegantly and gracefully throughout each level. It's the kind of game that's a step away from the usual run-and-gun.
I'm sharing this, but I haven't watched it yet. I've lived to the point where I think it's fine if I refrain from watching some things. I'm never watching one scene in Malena again, and neither will I ever watch this.
I've been lurking in YouTube since before it got acquired by Google. In all that time it's grown to be something quite amazing, I think. It's changed how people see the world. It's a source of income for a lot of folks, and a vehicle for free information.
I've grown older too, and the longer I've been in the world the more I see what selfish cruel sh*ts some people are. I've seen shallowness and people letting themselves down. Heck, I've let myself down a lot too. But I think letting down the girl above, we all who've been in YouTube are a little culpable.
Why didn't someone reach out?
Yesterday, sick of the crap I had to wade through at work and looking for some distraction, I found videos of people taken on the sly. They weren't really doing anything wrong, just going about their day. But the one who uploaded the drivel was trying to frame the situation in such a way that the person being recorded was doing something wrong. As if the uploader had the right, training, or authorization for that. Taking someone minding their own business, taking the situation out of context, exploiting the hive mind-cum-rage machine that is us.
And people fall for it too. Or they willingly go with it. For the power trip it brings.
I'm sick of this crap out in the world. I know it's not my job to swat at these flies, but I can at least do a little bit to clean up. To show the sh*ts of the world that there are consequences to their manipulations, that there is at least one person out there who won't buy into their propaganda. I reported the video; today I saw that it had been taken down.
The feeling is cathartic. Right now I found a user uploading voyeur shots of women. There's a lot of videos on the channel and YouTube's reporting tools are cumbersome. Hunkering down...
It's a brave new world we're in. Google's now being proactive about fixing problems with the Internet. There's some hope here; that in my lifetime I'll see the day when people will stop relying on governments and politicians to keep them safe, that we'll be able to grow our own wings. The dream of a Global Frequency is alive, sniff...
It's a fond dream of mine to have something like the Global Frequency exist in the world. This is why I am so impressed with this article about Brazil solving its problems by actually leveraging the power of the Internet. I mean, we have Tor, we have passionate activists who have genius technical abilities, and an open-source culture in full bloom. When are we going to see Miranda Zero on the news?
This was an experiment from about a year ago using Metro UI CSS and jQuery. I remember this was a b*tch to write; there were so many things to take into account. I started with a test page where you could drag an element (a name) between two areas of the page. I finished up with the second test that converted the appearance of the element to a colored box with a small image of the person (that's the black area) as well as a checkbox.
Unfortunately the project that I was doing the test pages for got temporarily shelved. Part of me still feels that I did all that research and proof-of-concept design for nothing; a bigger part feels proud I got the whole thing wired up and running perfectly. So, here's the sample code - unlike the previous one this doesn't need Visual Studio; just run it on your browser, really.
One of the things I enjoy about web development is making the user interface. It's fun for me to make elements appear on the browser and move it around. But the thing the I really hate the most about web development is also connected to the interface - I'm talking about making the markup behave consistently across different monitor resolutions, different browsers, different devices, and different content lengths.
This has been the bane of my work life; thankfully I've gained knowledge over the two and a half years I've been in my company. The very first thing I learned was how to keep the content centered with even margins on both sides; that's just setting margin-left and margin-right to auto, natch. The second thing I learned was to use grid systems. It's very much like the old days when people used columns to arrange the layout of their newspapers; the bonus is that a layout made with a grid system will be perfect regardless of the browser or screen resolution. I started out with the 960 Grid then Bootstrap; right now I'm leaning toward Blueprint.
For some time I came to accept that form elements have varying renders depending on the browser; and then I heard about the Formalize CSS; cue mind being blown. I checked this beast from IE 5 to 9, Chrome, Firefox, Safari - it was all the same. Uniform and consistent. Until you've tried designing across browsers, this thing might seem trivial - but I assure you it is not. With the grid system and the form normalizer in place, one can for the same amount of work make a UI that doesn't break over a ton of situations. It's amazing for productivity.
The last thing to complete this was guidance from cssstickyfooter.com. This brilliant web page provided insight into solving the thing which has plagued me ever since I was a beginner developer - how to set up a footer that expanded with the content and was always at the bottom of the viewport. I've found that different CSS systems can interfere with this fix - for example, Bootstrap needs a completely different markup. That's why my preferred styles now are Formalize and Blueprint. It's so much simpler and unobtrusive.
I've been experimenting with this setup and I'm really satisfied with how easy it is to create my own custom styles. The styles for the labels and textboxes are an example, I just lengthened the boxes' width and added the colors for the labels.
Fixing the buttons meanwhile was quite fun. Turns out the Formalize style took precedence and even if I added a class of my own my changes would be canceled out. It would work with an inline style, but that would make the markup clunky. What I did was dive in the Formalize code, find the part concerned with the link button, and copy the style. I then used this for my own class, minus the attributes I needed changed of course.
You can see that I used the :not selector starting from line 68, this was to exclude those elements with my class. Unfortunately, this caused the Blueprint link hover style to display. It was no problem though, just had to do the same thing to line 43 of the Blueprint style:
I got the tip from Mr. Dudley Storey's site. I recommend you all visit, very cool website it is. I used this for the Submit button, and I left a Cancel button with the inline style for comparison. Anyway, here's a download link to the code I was playing around with (needs 7Zip to unpack, and Visual Studio 2013 to run). The markup I got from the Formalize demo, they used tables to layout the elements and it was a bit annoying to have to translate everything to Blueprint grid. It was good practice though, so all's good.
It's a concept I've been grappling with. In lay terms power is the ability to influence the world; for example, you bump into me and I mess up your day. Or there's some law being put to vote I don't like so I make a call and poof! Several months' work and taxpayer money wasted.
In the martial arts, power is all about doing more work for less effort. So, either I kill you without breaking a sweat or I kill more people before I get winded.
Having power over your environment is a good thing, something to aspire to. It's kind of humanity's schtick, mastering our circumstances. But I can't help but think that the lay definition and the martial arts version are incompatible. See, in the first definition of power the focus is on the effect whereas in the latter the focus is on the process.
An office worker with his crew spreads a rumor about a colleague who is in an outgroup - not part of their clique. The rumor spreads, gains momentum and causes the colleague years of emotional turmoil. The guy that started it must be so powerful, huh? But for things to have turned out the way they did so many other factors had to fall in line. Just to talk about one factor,you're telling me he had a hand in the opinions of the people he was spreading the rumor to?
We save money and seek out high-paying jobs so we gain purchasing power. But if we die before we ever spend a cent, there's no difference between us and a pauper. We may be objectively rich, but effectively we're poor. It's the same with the kind of "power" a lot in our society desire in my opinion.
For another metaphor, and this I learned from an online crisis management course I took, imagine being ruined by some catastrophic, overwhelming occurrence. Say this event destroyed everything in your immediate vicinity, you don't have food or water or shelter. You're taxed physically, emotionally, spiritually even.
You find a big chocolate bar - it's still good. You're better than you were before, right? So, what do you do - do you save the chocolate, prolong your state of relative prosperity for a few more days; or do you eat it? After all, you might not find food anytime soon. It would make sense to keep what luxury you were "blessed" with as long as possible.
Except this would be wrong. Eating the chocolate would remind you of better times, and it would be to you a pleasurable treat - a high point in a situation that doesn't have much of those. It'll help get you in a calmer mindset. Eating it would also give you fuel for whatever you would need to do. Not eating now will make you hungrier and less in a rational mood; if deprivation doesn't kill you it will put you in a state where you'll make a blunder that can't be fixed by the chocolate you put off eating.
Eating now and going hungry tomorrow is infinitely better than growing more malnourished today because eating won't fix all the conditions your body might get as a result of worsening health.
I kind of like the martial artist's definition. If I get more of the same kind of work done in the same amount of time or if I do the same work with less strain then I know I've grown. It's something that's part of me, like my arms or legs.
This is one of those half-baked ideas I'm so fond of. It just means to dedicate ourselves to those things which pay off for us. Life is short and we can't afford to waste time and resources on anything that won't benefit us at all.
I speak of this from experience. I've aligned myself with lots of things, invested in all sorts of schools of thought and ways of living; I dedicated my time to so-called friends. All for them to betray me or not be there for me when I needed them most. I paid for that foolishness.
Magic the Gathering has been an obsession of mine. The deck for me is Red-Green Madness; however it's a sub-par deck, and I have a disappointing losing streak whenever I played - less than chance, really. I've only lost more money the longer I've dedicated to it.
Which isn't to say I haven't found gems. There have been things that have rewarded me for their dedication. The martial arts, for instance, have given me power and knowledge I did not have before. And it has also afforded me friends who are true inspirations; I feel privileged for being welcomed into their homes.
In work, I made the choice to study IT. The sense of accomplishment I gain whenever I fix a bug or make a program work are concrete. I am able to write code that is utilized within organizations, code that is depended upon by untold number of people. The skills I struggled to learn initially are now my ticket to earning money and perhaps getting better things in life.
Making this blog had a benefit: it made me more practiced in writing essays and has come in handy when I need to turn in an essay during the training sessions I subject myself to.
So, pay attention to those things that have a return for your money, while dropping everything else. Don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. But my key insight regards making the distinction; after all, the hardest part is in knowing when to put more effort in and when to fold.
For me, it seems like the cut-off is seven months. If after seven months there's no benefit, drop that crap. I am basing this off my experience in the martial arts I am practicing; it was about seven months before I gained anything. Now, the time-frame may be even less depending on the intensity of the activity; for instance, I learned jQuery and MVC in less than the five months I was assigned to a project that required them.
Now that I've realized it, I'll be applying this criterion to other things in my life. One can always benefit from periodic weeding.
But what about optionality? Ever since I read about it I've been a fan of the concept. This extends from stock options trading, where you are able to buy or sell the right without the obligation of buying or selling something before a specific date. The key is that you can choose to exercise your right only in situations where it will profit you to do so; you don't have to buy or sell in bad conditions. You practice optionality when you think something might happen and so plan for the "just-in-case" scenario. Except this only works when you have a real, practical mastery over the odds and consequences. You also need a big enough buffer to weather any unforeseen complications or mistakes. People in general don't have the first condition, and we don't have as much of the second condition as we would like to believe.
My point is, people tend to think they're practicing optionality when they're really not. I think it's because we're not so good with long-term forecasting/thinking. I must say though I am still working on applying optionality, so until I am able to say I am comfortable with applying the concept I would tend toward the rubric I outlined here.
I've got the seed of an idea. It's not fully hashed out yet, but it has the feel of something that would quickly slip away from my mind if I don't record it. It's interesting, so here we go:
In one of the many Coursera courses I was taking, one key thing you are supposed to do in order to gain resilience and improve your career is to define your values. Before they explained what that was they image that came to my mind was of some trait or attribute, like being a hard worker. Turns out values are the things that are important to you, stuff you prioritize that make you feel good about the world when they are attended to.
This week we had a product development training session at work. The presenter started out by asking what a service is. Those who were asked to relay their idea of what a service is stated some variation of "It's something where someone serves you." The actual definition of a service that was used for the presentation was that service is a material/non-material good or invention that people can feel compelled to pay for. So, people are not really being paid to serve you at a restaurant; they are providing you with the opportunity to sample amazing dishes in a great ambiance, to make your meal an experience, and also without you toiling in the kitchen or investing to gain the skills required to make these dishes.
Values aren't stuff in your personality that can make you successful; they're stuff that inform what goals you will set for yourself, which are in turn signposts to the path of success you need to be taking. While service isn't something people do for you or to you in exchange for pay, it's about something existing in the world that you have to get in on so badly you're willing to pay for it.
It would be interesting to ask people from around the world about this, about what they think values and service mean. My idea is that people in less advantaged countries have a more entitled view about these concepts.
