youth in asia

2 more Weekdays

2012-02-02T21:07:00.000+08:00

Fun is the first reason to do anything. Usually I look for two or three.

Good stress level today. Recollecting my thoughts sufficiently, to begin thinking about recreation. Laundry, juice, sleep. More thinking.

Before bed. Taking a moment to clear my head, and see if I can... program myself into a tigher routine, just like that.

A Public Holiday

2012-02-01T15:26:00.000+08:00

On School

I WOULD like to force devs to compile HTML instead of write it. I'm in agreement with the general sentiment that it would piss off a lot of people. But that's not a good reason to avoid doing it. Wondering how to encapsulate entire websites (html/css/javascript) into a MECE lexicon of modular widgets. Need to read up more on OTP design principles and the gen_serve module. Settling gradually into the fact that learning OTP will be tough. Ish. Getting into OTP programming is interesting, you're poking at the limit of biology, for programs that can reproduce before they die. Yaws is looking really good right about now. (Don't ask, she works with Erlang.)

On Infrastructure

S&P is back! I can go apply for a loan now. Malaysia/KL: It's kinda a write-off country, but it's home. "... hah, you should know me well enough by now to know that I write things that are occasionally designed to piss off sensitive people ;)" Pep talk to self: go to sleep, do your job well, close all well defined deals, don't overextend yourself on undefined projects. Rest more.

On Society

Lunch with an interior design magazine editor. Vetting resumes for Malaysia's top performers... it's a privilege... you know who you are. Hitting the cinema to make myself feel more at home in the world. Whole day spent on small talk and message-passing between friends. Learnt a few things. Mostly trivia. Feeling very much behind on studies. Best relationships: those where I don't like "him/her/them" as much as I like "us". Liking and working w/ the same: too closed for comfort. She likes me more, I like us more. It's Rosmah's private business what she does with her money, god damnit, focus on demanding full financial disclosure from public officials!

On Jobs

40 months of running in low gear. I'm gonna be glad to take a break soon. Come on brain, heal faster!

2 Weekdays

2012-01-30T19:26:00.000+08:00

On Studies

Minimise language proliferation; stick to Erlang/OTP as closely as possible; build a web framework that's easy to deploy. Gottit. I just learnt how to do a HEAD request today. That just sounds so wrong. #http Stuck trying to get inets to serve static content. Going home to wash and try again. Laundry. Figured out static file service on OTP's inets. Yay. Hello. BN has allowed a FX derrivative trading for retailers in KL. Not something I can afford to do full time yet. Hehe. Commitments. Meanwhile, gotta make myself work a bit harder on equities research. Getting really torn between that and the Erlang web server project. Need to brush up bad, on international economics. Erlang, inets, httpd, ANTM, start, stop, wait... something doesn't fit here.

It's tutorial time! This is what I've learnt about building Erlang webservers, so far. This example uses Windows conventions for the server_root and document_root addresses.

% Erlang Minimal Webserver
%
% WHAT:
% - handles GET requests
% - serves static files, with directory listing and traversal
% - when possible, returns index.html instead of the directory listing 
%
% HOW:
% In any major OS, 
% 1. get Erlang OTP installed
% 2. run the Erlang shell
% 3. paste the function's body below (after the -> until and including the period .) into the shell
% 4. hit http://localhost in your browser (assuming that your OS paths are set right) 
% 5. try tweaking the code, then copy/paste again in the shell
%
% NOTES:
% I still don't understand why document_root is not treated as an accessible directory;
% I probably need to study the path variables more;
% e.g. you can access a child folder of document_root from its descendent grandchild,
% but you can't access document_root from the child of document_root;
% meanwhile, the directory_index can recognise and serve index.html from document root
%
% In any event, inets supports Apache-like htaccess files, which I haven't poked at yet

minimal() ->
  inets:stop(), 
  inets:start(),
  inets:start( 
    httpd, 
    [ 
      { port, 80 }, 
      { server_name, "localhost" }, 
      { server_root,"C:\\Users\\yourusername\\Desktop"},  
      { document_root,"C:\\Users\\yourusername\\Desktop"},  
      { modules, 
        [ mod_alias, 
          mod_dir, 
          mod_get 
        ]
      },  
      {directory_index, ["index.html"]}
    ]). 


% this is the function's head
% you don't input this in the Erlang shell if you just want to run the code in the function's body.
minimal_commented()->

  % the function's body starts here, after the arrow

  % does nothing if inets hasn't been started;
  % but if inets has been started, this stops inets and its services, e.g. httpd
  inets:stop(), % comma indicates end of expression
  
  % starts inets (the OTP library module which comes with a http server service)
  inets:start(), % comma indicates end of expression

  % starts inets' httpd service
  inets:start( 
    httpd, 
    [ 
      % MANDATORY properties
      { port, 80 }, 
      { server_name, "localhost" }, % server may treat this as a domain and try to redirect to it :( #wtf 
      { server_root,"C:\\Users\\yourusername\\Desktop"},  
      { document_root,"C:\\Users\\yourusername\\Desktop"},  
    
      % ERLANG WEB SERVER API modules
      { modules, 
        [ mod_alias, % required by mod_dir, mod_get
          mod_dir, % handles apache-style directory listings   
          mod_get % handles get-requests   
        ]
      },  
      {directory_index, ["index.html"]}
    ]). % period indicates end of expression, and end of the function's body

On Infrastructure

Salt in the morning, and sugar at night. My brain seems much happier that way. Every cloud has a silver lining. Every piece of silver tarnishes. Chellation and tardiness. It's been an ok year I guess.

On Job

Have been feeling kinda senile. But I suppose two almost solid years of being blockaded by d**** c*******ts will turn anyone insane. Reminiscing startup days talking to the Webcamp folks about CakePHP. Dear Kuala Lumpur. Happy FT Day. I think that integrated marketing communications (IMC) just became my favourite buzzword. But this is closer to the point: "strategic management, integrated marketing communications, human capital management, contract negotiation" #specialties IMC is the stick I shall wield to beat any marketing, PR, brand manegement, CSR, and investor relations people over the head... who tell me that their disciplines are atomic.

On Society

Studying Erlang and the KLSE in Telawi. Feel free to join. Oh shit, Greece... worse thing is, it's not even a real problem. It's just a few hundred bankers and officials playing poker at knifepoint. I'm just being poetic. It's a real problem as soon as the economy falls out and people start starving. But it's not a real problem, in the sense that... they should just boot them out of the EU and treat them like a third-world country, IMF, aid, whatnot. :P Ok, I'm still being ironic. Wish there was a dominant white-label supplier for such services in Malaysia. http://www.twilio.com/ #saas Quick tweetup at Sid's. Left early. Going home to make out with Erlang. ;) I'm an extrovert with introverted parents. I had to work to fit in. Extroverts RTFM yo ;) http://www.thedarktrumpet.com/2010/04/dealing-with-introverts-a-guide-for-extroverts/ http://www.lisapetrilli.com/2011/04/07/extraverts-guide-leading-introverts/ ISO 25,600 #wtf

7 days till the next 4 day weekend

2012-01-28T05:15:00.001+08:00

On Studies

Great time for an IPO - too much liquidity in the market this year. #facebook On going back to banking: well I miss lots of other things too. Documentation for the Chicago Boss installation on Windows is slightly incomplete, to say the least. I've offered to re-document the process in great detail, if someone would just show me how to do it once. Meanwhile, I'm sorely tempted to just get Nitrogen or write my own web framework in the meantime. Since I can't get the better Erlang web frameworks to work out of the box on Windows, I'm going to work on finance today, first. Disappointed with the Windows interoperability of the best existing Erlang web development frameworks. Going to perhaps start writing one after I study some finance. Need to learn more about the sovereign debt economy, and its decades-long lifecycles. Rested somewhat. Tea. Shower. Off to write some code for a stock screen, and maybe a web server too. Now I understand how a "long straddle" works well in markets like these - stocks like GOOG and AAPL react violently to earnings calls. Seems like I'm doing daily commitments to either computing or financial studies. Writing a web(server+dev.) framework in Erlang would teach me about 1) compilers and 2) networking. Do I want that now? Or focus on finance? Ok - so now that I see the Erlang "exp1, exp2, expN." syntax, I see how things can fail silently. :-S Just skimmed through all the ServiceConfig properties for Erlang/OTP's (inet's) httpd service. God, there's a lot of them. I guess it's not as bad as PHP.ini :


% MANDATORY properties
      { port, 8081 }, % http://localhost:8081
      { server_name, "hello_world" },  
      { server_root,"log"},  
      { document_root,"www"},  
      % FILE Properties
      % { proplist_file , RTFM },
      % { file, RTFM },
      % COMMUNICATIONS properties
      % { bind_address,RTFM },
      % { socket_type, RTFM },
      % { ifamily, RTFM },
      % ERLANG WEB SERVER API modules
      { modules, 
        [ %mod_alias,    
          %mod_auth,    
          mod_esi%,    
          %mod_actions,    
          %mod_cgi,    
          %mod_dir,    
          %mod_get,    
          %mod_head,    
          %mod_log,    
          %mod_disk_log  
        ]
      },  
      % LIMIT properties
      % { disable_chunked_transfer_encoding_send , RTFM },
      % { keep_alive , RTFM },
      % { keep_alive_timeout , RTFM },
      % { max_body_size , RTFM },
      % { max_clients , RTFM },
      % { max_header_size , RTFM },
      % { max_uri , RTFM },
      % { max_keep_alive_requests , RTFM },
      % ADMINISTRATIVE properties
      { mime_types,
        [ { "html", "text/html"},   
          {"css","text/css"},   
          {"js","application/x-javascript"}  
        ]
      }, 
      % { mime_type , RTFM },
      % { server_admin , RTFM },
      % { log_format , RTFM },
      % { error_log_format , RTFM },
      % SSL Properties
      % { ssl_ca_certificate_file , RTFM },
      % { ssl_certificate_file , RTFM },
      % { ssl_ciphers , RTFM },
      % { ssl_verify_client , RTFM },
      % { ssl_verify_depth , RTFM },
      % { ssl_password_callback_function , RTFM },
      % { ssl_password_callback_arguments , RTFM },
      % { ssl_password_callback_module , RTFM },
      % URL ALIASING Properties - requires mod_alias
      % { alias , RTFM },
      % { re_write , RTFM },
      % { directory_index , RTFM },
      % CGI Properties - requires mod_cgi
      % { script_alias , RTFM },
      % { script_re_write , RTFM },
      % { script_nocache , RTFM },
      % { script_timeout , RTFM },
      % { action , RTFM },
      % { script , RTFM },
      % ESI Properties
      { erl_script_alias, 
        {"/erl", [hello_world]}
          % /erl/hello_world
      },  
      % { erl_script_nocache , RTFM },
      % { erl_script_timeout , RTFM },
      % { eval_script_alias , RTFM },
      % LOG Properties
      { error_log, "error.log"},  
      { security_log, "security.log"},  
      { transfer_log, "transfer.log"}
      % DISK LOG Properties - required mod_disk_log
      % { disk_log_format , RTFM },
      % { error_disk_log , RTFM },
      % { error_disk_log_size , RTFM },
      % { security_disk_log , RTFM },
      % { security_disk_log_size , RTFM },
      % { transfer_disk_log , RTFM },
      % { transfer_disk_log_size , RTFM },
      % AUTHENTICATION Properties - requires mod_auth
      % { directory , RTFM },
      % { allow_from , RTFM },
      % { deny_from , RTFM },
      % { auth_type , RTFM },
      % { auth_user_file , RTFM },
      % { auth_group , RTFM },
      % { auth_name , RTFM },
      % { auth_access_password , RTFM },
      % { require_user , RTFM },
      % { require_group , RTFM },
      % HTACCESS authentication properties - requires mod_htaccess
      % { access_files , RTFM },
      % SECURITY Properties - requires mod_security
      % { security_directory , RTFM },
      % { data_file , RTFM },
      % { max_retries , RTFM },
      % { block_time , RTFM },
      % { fail_expire_time , RTFM },
      % { auth_timeout , RTFM },

On Jobs

Where I am right now, is a good balance I suppose - unless some hedge fund wants to hire me on a 9-5 schedule. Taking a break from messing with symbols. These days it seems I'm tossing out 1-year commitments left, right, and center. These days I seek a quieter life. (Checking my memory. I counted management fiascos at over a dozen operations in 5 years. Insane.) Ask some people for a brief with some numbers and they send you a slide deck. Surely business isn't that bad? Ran into the careers page of Jane Street, a firm I watched in a video back in 2007. Since I'm working on related stuff these days, I thought I'd drop them a cursory job application:

"Hi there.

I have a long-term interest in computational finance / financial engineering.

After college, I sought work as a quant at a Malaysian Bank (a rather superficial role involving Sharpe and Information Ratios, and fund accounting), but it wasn't technically challenging, so I left in 2007 to pursue further studies on my own. Since then I've paid the bills wherever I can, while learning about the local business environment.

Most recently in 2011, I've found time to practice stock and warrant trading on the KLSE. I've also begun studying Golang and Erlang, and am considering writing a web server and development framework from scratch in Erlang, in order to familiarise myself with networking, compilers, and functional programming.

Though I ticked "not currently a student,' I am pursuing independent study at home, though not attached to any accredited institution. I'm catching up on computing, mathematical, and statistical subjects that I postponed in college, while pursuing studies in quantifying human experience. I know very well how to quantify how humans think, and nowadays my studies are about learning how to explain it to machines."

Code editors and GL. (Picture) You can't really see it here, but syntax highlighting comes into its own when it glows like kryptonite.

On Society

The advantage of being a know-it-all, is that you probably have the privilege of being able to die happy, even if you have to die alone. No matter how complicated an idea is, I can find a way to explain it from zero. But I find that many people don't like doing that. Gotta figure out how to minimise gratuitious travelling costs, and the appearance of being antisocial. I figure I'm willing to spend about $500 disposal income on social tourism in 2012. Work ~2wks to earn it it! Some ppl make that in 2 days! Dexter, Sherlock, House... bah... caricatures. I guess the world enjoys its entertainment. :)

On Infrastructure

Further cost reductions. Walking out to look for dinner. Just like good old times, before work got busy. Chicken rice again. Booted up a housing journal. 2001-2011: I moved residences 21 times, for an average of one move every 5.71 months. #fark No wonder I'd rather buy at this point. Actually, it's iPhone and Windows for suit work; iPad for studies; and Ubuntu for freelance/personal. Macs are gay. In a good way. On some online course in AI: "Cool. But the same issue I had in college remains - I haven't reached the limit of what I can teach myself, so I find it troublesome to seek much help elsewhere. Very busy these days, hope to nail down more solid infrastructure soon. Then I can afford to engage in more improvisation again. Was just discussing this with a friend. Hehe."

3 Day Week

2012-01-25T14:44:00.001+08:00

On Infrastructure

Car lights fixed. Checked up on the check at the bank. Knuckling down. Portfolio up slightly. Sore throat vs. mouthwash and coffee. Drive less. Run more. Think harder, not farther. Nasi paprik sayur. A friend joked that it sounded like ad copy, so I snapped a pic to go with it. She said it could be promoted as poor man's food. "50% rice, and 50% sayur; 50% food, and 50% lore. Wicked." You can't get much lamer than that.

On Study

Need to make some tough decisions today. Focusing first on lunch! The present, the present, the present! Focusing on the present - off for a run. Today's studies include increasing haptic feedback to the nervous system, via creatine supplementation. Side effects anticipated. Some times I look at my work and think, I'm such a bad trader. But I've only been at it for 108 days part-time. Give up? Giving up for the night. At a friend's place. Quiet enough to think in, but not static enough for serious studies. Ho, hum. Attempting to set up Chicago Boss on Windows 7, I am descending into the world of Cygwin. If i end up bricking this win7 install, it's going to be hilarious. Greece is stuck; and I am finding a bit more comfort in a 70:30 stocks:warrants asset allocation. Installing my first Windows SDK and .Net infrastructure while I'm at it. Oh well, a good day. This is going to take a while. But it's good to be in a strange lands again. Windows SDK is required for Erlang on Cygwin. Giving up for now since I have dinner to attend to - will get back to this later. Oh. At the Cygwin prompt, I can run Windows programs, like erl.exe.

On Society

Nicholas Berggruen - now ain't that a poster child. Doing laundry. Catching some shut eye. Waiting for the rain to stop. Going to catch up with a coder friend whom I referred to an ad agency over dinner. Just did a massive amount of dishes. Feels like childhood again. Sheep always think that some other department's staff are disposable; wolves just ignore the sheep. #marketing #finance #technology #hr #wtf It's been a disconcerting 4 years, but perhaps my patience will persist. Don't say he's shallow. Say that he overeacts to superficial compliments. It's truth.

On Job

Most of the world thinks it's still CNY. I have given years of my life just to test people. I think it's worth it. The necessary self-doubt of choosing to specialise in non-specialisation, regards the possibility that one is insufficiently specialised. I hate getting yelled at for breaking the curve. -_- #neuroses That's what I get for focusing too much on the present I suppose. Next up: figuring out how to maintain SLAs, without being compared to folks who don't target the same. #tough Enjoyed a quick chat with one of my seniors from fixed income at the AMMB FMD - I miss banking - it's been a while since 2007!

4 Day Weekend

2012-01-21T11:26:00.001+08:00

Infrastructure

Saturday was really badly planned, and almost poorly executed. But a lot of errands got done in an ad hoc fashion. Perhaps because I've been low on sleep lately. Negligible housing developments. Shaved, laundered, sales deck, ate when necessary. "Sleep? study? sleep? sleep just won... for a bit..." "Just discovered the subtle difference in spelling complements and compliments. #fml"

Clearing my head. Reviewing the sights and sounds of the past week. Cultivated insensitivity to other senses, is definitely an IT decision. In coderspeak: I need to "defrag my sensory heap" more often. Need to remember to increase my haptics to optics ratio.

There are many types of idiocy in the world. Maybe I'm depressed because I don't have a place where I can avoid all of them at once. I've now had a degree and cell phone for 6.5 years. A laptop and smartphone for 4.5. A car for 10 months. #feelingAllGrownUP #cny Interesting how I don't even need these things... they're all for FUCKING WORK :)

School

Vim for iOS is horrible. iSSH to remote Vim is so much better for real work. Coffee and a quiet afternoon with the Edge. (newspaper not guitarist) Trying to learn how to think like a financier. Machine costs have dropped since the 1300s. Flesh is expensive - save it for when it matters. On why I don't maintain a mind palace.

Linked some spreadsheets so that my personal Ops Cash Flow for the month gets updated every 15 minutes, with my Trading Account Balance. Still studying Erlang datatype morphemes - I feel like the slowest learner in the world. Live Connect (dev.live.com) has a lot of good stuff; in the grand scheme of things, recently opened SkyDrive APIs are probably more important than Windows 8's GUI improvements. Here's a lot of good stuff on scopes & permissions that MSFT exposes to developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh243641.aspx The original notion of a thin-client is obsolete. Next, we're recognising that clients nodes will be specialised for heavy UI computation.

What superpowers? With the right training, anyone can be a Jedi. Praticed guitar. Have not in a long while. Strings so old, they're still in tune. Done with CNY gathering - fleeing the parents home, to the friend's home, where I hope to get more studying done. Need to rationalise: sleeping in the parents' home is a waste of time due to the social noise level, studying in the friend's home is a waste of time due to the lack of infrastructure and due to the high pop culture noise levels when the friend is around. So I must be careful to move to the right place for the right activities, at the right time. Study of new languages: (1) throw a bunch of morphemes into conscious memory (2) watch how the subconscious reacts (3) rinse and repeat.

Millisecond programming. It's a nice change from sketching out 12-month PR calendars. Sentiment analysis apparently bridges the connection between my job in public relations, and my studies of computational finance? Good talking point, but nothing new - they've been using NLP inputs for machine traders for a long time now. Facebook's probably going to have an insane post-IPO, given that they sell a product that a multitude of retail investors comprehend.

Fresh juice, siew yoke, Bloomberg, and Erlang. Reading up the library of Erlang OTP's BIFs. Erlang.org/course is probably the prettiest introduction I've seen so far. :( #slowpoke Study technique: make every attempt to store nothing in conscious memory. Flush eveything to subconscious memory & see what sticks. Anthony Bourdain documentary on Ferran Adria is pretty cool. It's encouraging to be able to name folks who work at this pace. The apartment in Sungai Long is meant to be my taller - I've been needing a place to accumulate hardware.

Jobs

Breaking out the PowerPoint... I saw some verbosity that needs reduction. "CSR" is a band-aid for problems arising from a shortage of citizenship (citizenlike behaviour by corporations). MSFT's Segoe UI Light and GOOG's Open Sans seem to be good complements. A good #mercenary works the way AAPL employees are said to work, regardless of her employer. (Final thought for the night. Good night.) In contemporary terms, Science is nothing more than a framework for knowledge management. Big data and other initiatives simply articulate how management is being forced to become more scientific. Cut through the faff. Sideline the talkers. Go straight for the capital. Trade concrete underliers. Stocks. Products. Services. #care One day, it will be nice to take a holiday from spending money on things I don't care about, like culture. Meanwhile, culture is a tool.

Society

Coffee with two random friends, dinner date, boss' birthday party, home again, home again. Really enjoying my study of five separate social media platforms. Every time I find a great link, I'm flipping browser windows and posting it all over. I think the Google+ splash page could be improved by improving emphasis on just one arrow (reduce the others). Must remember not to denigrate the religion of "taste" in first-order sensations.

"Apparently CNY dinner tonight will be @finnsirishpubs ! My fam is crazy, half explains where I come from. // Indeed, we are not the only Chinese family doing CNY dinner at @finnsirishpubs" Helping dad to find the cilantro while holding mum's hand in a mall. On folks at my end of the food chain not running revolutions: My minimum cash requirements have shrunk since I was 10. But those of us who get to choose our lives, already won the talent race. CNYd1: waiting at train station for cousins. Dump them home then figure out a nice place to study.

Following a short conversation involving me feeling that I wish I wasn't so busy, and had more time to explain myself to my date, I'm thinking that my hit rate's gradually improving... but I probably should aim to increase my demand for "workaholism" in the women that I date. Where I am over-performing is in managing to stay extremely productive, without most people realising the extent of my achievements - could be a successful PR strategy, or a delusion - and I do have to remind myself every now and then to stay the course, invite more feedback, but avoid being influenced overly by any that does come.

CNY 华lunch. One jack ass studying Erlang, a few more watching Big Bang Theory.

Garbage Collection

2012-01-16T18:38:00.001+08:00

Too much going on in my little world. Much room for optimisation. This is a Monday-Friday note.

On School

Focusing on time sensitivity. Making efforts to clear my mind fast, so that I can quickly shift to different parts of the day. The conscious mind can be understood as an information system with finite memory. The task we are discussing is the displacement of old memories with new ones (e.g. Zero-values) on a moment to moment basis. This is part of what it is to manage the said information system. Traditionally some call this meditation. Stephen Chow might call it kungfu. Betcha don't find many people who equate qi or consciousness with information. Bed time. Studying the SNR in my mind. Looking for a quiet place amidst subconsciously generated sensations in my imagination.

Good run. Did a hundred standing jumps as well. In a forum, discussions on the construction of guitar pedals remind me to focus on SNR as a metric of meditative success. Buzzing from dinner. I should probably eat more breakfast. Rare moment these days: teasing my understanding of sound, with music. I miss messing with synthesizers. Looks like Amazon's resurrection of A9's going head to head with Siri as well. Phew. Cloud intelligences, fight! I miss editing and shooting films too. "run time. braving the traffic before. standing by for armageddon." Getting juiced at Hartamas while the jam clears. #runFail

Resuming my studies, on the financial statements of a construction company. I think the Investopedia app is going to keep me busy for a while. COME ON FRANCE!!! (hooray for quantitative easing) #paybackLater Need my calculator to be more aggressive - going to factor in the online non-margin account incentive. Feeling like the financial noob that I am. Good goading to study harder. Tis the season. US auto factories doing 3 shifts; ECB printing E by the 100Bs; I wonder what's next. I must seek noise and purge it. I shall understand the structure of my mind. #lullaby Too much going on in my little world. Much room for optimisation.

On Roof

Early-week: Nada. I still don't know if the vendor has signed the S&P or not. Mid-week: Vendor has signed the apartment S&P!

On Job

Had dinner with the physicist/C-hacker I hired off a FB ad for an RA in 2009. Reminiscing startup life. "Tremendously worried that I am sending my friends more trouble than a job may merit. But on we go. #mercenary" "Survived six months in job; wondering if I can survive another six without morphing into a change manager. #autobots...t..." Marketing should inform Branding, should inform PR. But when the upstream terms aren't well defined, they are reinvented downstream. #hmm Off to PJ Old Town for bahkuteh dinner, then home to clean up some graphs. Tired. I must stay focused on school priorities, and ignore any vices that might distract me.

On Society

Geez and I thought I was weird - on Malaysians inventing LouSang, I never understood how sashimi was helped by mixing in a lot of coloured Twisties. 2 things to celebrate today. (1) An old acquaintance gave me some useful career advice. (2) Mom found some of my clothes that she'd stolen. Who knows what this means? "Wakkakudi... alakepadi!" I learnt it from the bar boys. They turned it into a song when I was working as a bartender. It's really deep stuff. "your sister's c''t... is ours to share."

In a world this complex, everyone is everyone's first something-or-the-other. On The Girlfriend Experience: not a bad movie for the surrealists... I mean, it's actually pretty romantic, and not as raw as life may be. I didn't know the lead was a pornstar. Learnt a lot about pornstars from chatting with people on Twitter tonight. I mean, where else can one learn about... oh... ok. On crowd-sourcing legal advice: Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook, are all valid places for this sort of thing. There are storytelling strategies that work better for each platform - for Twitter, people have to empathise with your content; on Facebook mere shock value is sufficient because you can chuck pictures in - there's higher bandwith for low-level content that hits below the belt of peoples' verbal processing facilities; LinkedIn is a place where people want to be seen as being professionally smart (so bait the show-offs); Quora is specifically targeted at the stuff you're trying to do, so it probably offers the most space to be cerebral about it with the least effort on empathy.

"#CNYpotluckEmails: ok, 3.2 is bringing duck, 4.1 is from outstation so getting snacks, 5.1 (me) can you order a chicken? #parentDotChild" "#CNYpotluckEmails: pizzapizzapizza! / vodkavodkavodka! / guys we get the point. / nymphosnymphosnymphos oh wait, am I off topic ?:-S" I become the people around me. Read all about it. It's just anthropology. Some art hints overwhelmingly at what cannot be shown, without showing what cannot be shown, at all. I just told my biggest middle school crush that I had a thing for her 14 years ago. When I was 14. Joked with my boss, also a female, that I might tell her the same thing one day. Whatever the truth of it, it makes for great conversation. It's a great "I waited half a life time" story. Haha.

On scapegoat duty. Because the dark knight can take it! Lulz

Weekend

2012-01-14T15:44:00.001+08:00

I feel better about life. I got enough sleep. I had icy cold lemonade. I had piping hot tea. I don't strain to read what's on the screen.

Research Division (Education portfolio)

Studying value investing, and doing a a stock screen for the KLSE. Studying some of my trading bets. Some very irrational moves, made without sufficient study. Time to stop loss. Reminding myself to conserve resources, and to avoid driving anywhere unnecessarily. On KLSE Saturday morning trades of large blocks, off the exchange, visible on the broker-provided tradestations - goddamn data doesn't turn up on Bloomberg. Wondering how it impacts retail trader psyches on Mondays. Reading up on Erlang expressions. Gotta drill these in. Turning up the brightness on my lappy's LCD is probably the best move I've made in a while. Individual pixels more visible, reading is indeed easier. I've been moving around too much, what with this lack of a HQ. Wondering about removing the backpanel from generic laptop or TV LCDs... and making a poor man's Samsung LCD Window (touch not included). Anybody wanna donate a tablet for a DIY smart window experiment? "I'maz thinkin I can survive on #ramenAndEggs, the traditional food of #studentsEverywhere"

Properties Division (Real estate portfolio)

No updates at this time. Headquarters still in limbo.

Marketing Division (Social portfolio)

Hacking out some study in Bukit Bintang, while waiting for a friend. Gamification is about games? Are you kidding me? LOL. Most people don't know what games they play. 12 Angry Men - great movie. Wish I had a stimulating environment like that every day. Met a cute girl today. Divas, boozers, and tourists. It's not that I don't like them - they just don't remind me of me. Or do they? The CNY Hamper mission: "Contact missed deadline and AWOL. Proceeded without. 4x cargo delivered. Back home to catch up on sleep and work. Local inhabitants behaving consistently with observed patterns. Status quo." The technology in Minority Report that bloggers probably turned into a go-to reference existed in lots of places before that movie came up - I remember the Matrix's Zion airport control system.

Finance Division (Commercial portfolio)

Why don't people understand... that ANY EMPLOYEE IS ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR SHAREHOLDER VALUE? *SIC* Employees answer to Management, Management answers to the Board. If none of these can explain to shareholders why stuff goes down, someone needs to be fired. Depressed. Have run into too many non-managers in my last 36 months. Then again, this is exactly why I chose this career in 2005. Anyone who doesn't like their work, appears to be allowing themself to stay alive for all the wrong reasons. Walking around Bangsar's Telawi - three years of work in this neighbourhood, and I'm wondering if it's been worthwhile. Took a nap. Felt more distanced from the day job - good, it'll help me pay more attention to it. Made lemonade and cleaned kitchen. Whenever I identify with my portfolio of strategies, and not the individual execution of each strategy, I know I just got enough sleep.

Generalist vs Generalissmo

2012-01-13T17:14:00.001+08:00

TW profile:

Job, Roof, School, Girl, that's my monosyllabic workload. Gradstudent working at a public relations agency by day, and poking at computational finance by night.

On Jobs

Friday. Tired of code-switching. Probably need to take a short break right about now. Hanging out at Bangsar Village with some coffee and some code; come July I think I'll need to find a more people-facing job. Specialists without a clue, Project managers who didn't manage, and Digital agencies without engineers. 2011: I saw it all. SEO is one of those strange rare cases where everyone in the INDUSTRY shares a single customer/client/audience - GOOG's ranking algo. Never noticed that before. Hmm.

On Roofing

No progress made today.

On Girls and other society

Dinner with little Ms. Electric. Turned down a request to interview a prospective candidate for my alma mater @batescollege. Feels bad, but my schedule is jammed right now. Checked out a Facebook contact that was potentially someone I actually know - no positive evidence yet, I had dinner alone and left the rendezvous. TV, Movies, and Social Media make me feel unproductive; but I should participate in all the above in order to stay in touch with society.

On School

Just saw Proof - was supposed to have watched it in 2002 (? failed memory: the film didn't come out till 2005) during Math Camp, but I skipped it because I was still postponing quantitative studies. Started postponing quant stuff in 2001... started catching up slowly in 2007. Meanwhile I'm still finding the stomach to implement my diversification strategies - nothing ever looks like it's ever going to move when you start really really broad. Contrarian, I suppose. Perhaps I overcompensate at work by never taking tasks that can't be analytically optimised.Reading up on Gastropods. And if you thought human sex was weird... who ever knew Cupid came from a fucking snail, quite literally. Erlang: module names must match module filenames. each module file can contain no more than 1 module. function arity must be explicit e.g. 0. S&P Downgrade? There's goes the alpha term.

Time for an Erlang Application

2012-01-12T18:43:00.000+08:00

Clearing my mind ahead of a decently challenging undertaking...

... clearing noise with stimulating exercises (kiara->NPE->Silk->SgLong is 8km further than kiara->Fed->E27->SgLong but potentially less jammed. Hmm.)

150km in 24 hours on a weekday. Do I wanna catch up on sleep right now? Yeah. Need to study Erlang. Still noisy in my head. Still doing the laundry. Trying to

(1) pass DA a pair of trousers for his CNY party,
(2) figure out the optimal route between Gateway Kiaramas and Bandar Sungai Long during rush hours,
(3) learn how to write a web application in Ericsson Erlang,
(4) keep an eye at my amateur KLSE portfolio,
(5) get enough food and sleep to function properly,
(6) do laundry and dress like I deserve to work in the professional services sector,
(7) maintain five social media properties because I'm kiasu about staying relevant to the pop-culture kids,
(8) localise a press release for a video game,
(9) buy a god damn apartment,
(10) do business with my mother,
(11) figure out if more ways to get more stuff done, in less time, with less clutter...

Hmm... haven't even gotten to "the other half." I conclude that I am a useless brat. Drinks at 11pm on a Thursday at 10 minutes notice? Impossible. :(

... crap... almost forgot (12) unanswered college admissions interview request in my mailbox... postponing that till the weekend.

Fire the S&P

2012-01-11T17:51:00.001+08:00

Deposit cheque submitted to lawyer. Waiting for apartment vendor to return the signed S&P. Then all systems go...

Evicted from office; mosquito foggers set off fire alarm. Girl, ok; Roof, ok; Job, ok; Study, ok. Portfolio ++rationalised. Run time.

Up next: Laundry, Haircut, Dinner, Shopping, School, then clean up and hit the sack before work on the morrow.

If I didn't enforce the image of propriety upon myself, they'd lock me up proper ;)

Three for Tuesday

2012-01-10T20:11:00.001+08:00

3 hours on the rainy highways of Kuala Lumpur. One step closer to securing a home. 3 increasingly difficult job years. No end in sight.

Signed S&P and sent to agent. Need to prep check for vendor tomorrow.

Stating the obvious: four concurrent non-integrated project tracks... dovetailing is bound to keep one very very busy #generalist #wtf

Updates?! Not much going on - i'm normally posting on my fb wall / twitter / blog / linkedin / and recently google+ ... keeping in touch with the masses ;P

Mad men flee the voices they cannot see. Young men flee the fakers.

Job. Roof. School. Girl. Ok, I've reduced my workload to monosyllabic form. It's a rare day - I actually managed to get a bit of each done.

BusinessWeek.com > Bloomberg.com : I gotta pay more attention to this

Tasty

2012-01-09T18:07:00.000+08:00

Bitter is a wake-up call. Hello black coffee.

Screw financial targets - I'm supposed to be worrying about my education.

Case closed! Managed to kill off a deal that'd been dangling since last year. Back to the study of income statements. I hope they find a good tech guy soon.

2011 had aggressive growth for a year that was supposed to be spent in R&D. Need to tone down for 2012. Bounce all jobs {ex-MY, <80/yr}, {MY,<55/yr} until I get a year of studying down. Dadumdadeedum...

Time for bed after catching up with a cookie accountant. How else can I start off the year? Stop worrying about money; make loss, not war.

I got a Twitter idea for you. Snippets like this one, to social-mediate your knowledge base :)

Today's HR Design Pattern (do not copy): Take a functional expert, put her in charge of her first P&L, and watch her agonise over it to the detriment of her creative faculties.

Are Four Jobs too Many?

2012-01-08T11:00:00.001+08:00

I've got some breathing space from all but one project this weekend, so it's a good time for relaxation. And reflection on group operations. In order of which came first (all are ongoing):

Job 1: gradschool. It's DIY, so I am teacher, student, administrator, and financier. That's what I've been doing from 2007, mixed up with relevant day jobs, and it looks like I have till 2013 to kick this along. The subject matter ia quantitative, from math, to programming, and finance.

Job 2: housing. I've shuffled residences as frequently as I've shuffled day jobs over the past 6.5 years - on average every 8 months or so. After getting a car to increase my day job opportunities, I started travelling far enough away from the city to hunt for housing which I could afford to buy, for less than what it costs to rent in the city. I found a place sometime in the middle of last year, and it looks like finally, the lawyers have gotten around to preparing the sales and purchase agreement. I'm expecting the whole transaction to drag on for up to another year at the rate they're going. I'm told transferral of titles from state offices to individuals, multiply, can take a while. So much for the leasehold discount. Meanwhile, I am putting up with some of the most annoying people in my universe, the parents, in exchange for tangible savings on rent and utilities.

Job 3: society. To keep things interesting, amidst the many-year morass above, I'm making sure to diversify my time, and hoping to build at least a few decent relationships along the way. This requires all manner of cultural contortion. But people are what they are, and the game is what it is.

Job 4: profession. It delivers predictable cash-flows, sets the stage for future projects through portfolio development, and overall provides broad infrastructural support to Jobs 1, 2, and 3. It changes most frequently, as the markets do, and one can never say much about ongoing projects in public. So that I suppose, is that.

All in all, that's left me "killer busy," and kinda-somewhat spaceless in my mind. So on certain days these years, I do allow myself to wonder, for risk management purposes, if the whole shebang is worth my while. Well so far, I guess, it is.

On Sundays

Sleepy walk around Telawi turned up a couple of surprises! Still sleepy. More walking required. One goes looking for inspiration on a Sunday afternoon, and finds it in a midair collision with an ex. Hunkering down in a quiet Subway to see if I can hack up something before dinner time. I compile my first Erlang file on Windows, and soon figure out how to use the module "inets" to crawl webpages, including Yahoo finance stock prices in CSV format. Goldman, I'm coming to get you now; it might take another decade or so to catch up though. Grazing on orgo to help clear my mind. It's just one of those subjects I haven't touched in a really long time. Full of gibberish syllables. I wish Twitter had a "hide all football Tweets" feature. Groan.

On Operations

Feels like a wasted first 2% of the year. how to fix this? Tad too much uncertainty for gross rationalisation at this point. Waiting. There's only one thing to look forward to in 2012: I'm finally making it back to 1st world standards, in terms of either money or education. I'm such a worrywart today.

On Financial Markets

"Tis the season to be delisting."

On Personal Finances

Whoops. Spreadsheet was missing taxes. Financials for last year just scraped by. Need to be more conservative. Reading accounting before bed. This, I actually do have to remember. Also learnt about single-tier taxation of corporate profits from my regulator extraordinaire ex-flatmate.

Saturday Readings

2012-01-07T09:18:00.001+08:00

On Sociability

Going for a walk to find some noisier people than the ones I usually hang out with. I drive to a mall and walk around. Bored, I decide to head to some other iconic neighbourhoods. But I run into a traffic jam somewhere near KL city, and I decide to quit wasting petrol, so I head home instead. It is time for tea and sympathy. And perhaps some hacking. Making efforts to empty my mind of the people around me... couldn't really do without all this extra noise. I need to stop obsessing over how annoying the people around me are, and start ignoring them. Ebbs and flows - but I hope my life doesn't suffer if I start retracting this overcorrection. "you need to show some compassion" / "you can go **** yourself :P The case in point is to stop being as compassionate as I am, and to hone in for a while on my own interests."

On Physiological Maintenance

Caught up on sleep for the week. Afternoon run. I have only one question for myself at the moment. Bahkuteh? Later, I go for the second short run of the day. Orange juice and tea have kept things somewhat balanced. Perhaps a bit more fibre, however, is required.

On Organisational Structures

A modern company should have only a Strategy unit and a Risk Management unit. Outsourcing these functions however, is just balmy. #trite

On Readings

Orthogonality and sparse voxel octrees. Studying the Citric Acid Cycle. Finally... after skipping Form 6 biology and Organic Chemistry 202, and Biochemistry 301, 302 etc. in college.

On Investments

I invest in people. Most of the time however, I invest in my own person. Moving into the realm of material data analyses - perhaps its time to write a real time market screener, simply on an xAMP stack leeching data from Yahoo. Then, it may be time to dive into econometrics just for shits and giggles. Downloading the Erlang OTP for Windows. I tend to be too lazy to keep flipping OSes. Watching movie trailers and thinking of playing guitar - this feels like college. Once installed, it is 2am, and I can't find it in me to lurch into coding. Refer to section on clearing of thoughts. More clearing required.

On Social Media

It turns out that my favourite use of LinkedIn is for recommendations of readings. Trying out Google+ apps on the iPad. May have to write an app that pulls into APIs for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now this... grrrrr. I hate fragmentation. Everything should target browser platforms. We may however wish to study iOS and Android in order to hack those to target the Web GUIs.

On the Adprentice Copy

I concur, the advertising in dustry seems full of people seeking to be cool. I've known a few coolhunters, some well, some for a long time. They all seem to be looking for something, in the work. All I can say is myself, I am a bean counter. If it's not going to make money for the client, at some point you've got to lose it.

First Friday

2012-01-06T18:04:00.000+08:00

It seems that grazing has brought me to the subject of Common Law. Fixed car's air conditioning. Expecting to sign apartment S&P on Monday. Gradschool is waffling along besides day jobs of certain interest. She likes me less, she likes me more. It seems like I haven't done a thing since May!

On Automobile Maintenance

The compressor is replaced with another cheap part. But this time, I shall beware of servicing it more frequently, especially if it begins to show signs of overheating. The mechanic throws in a new fan, widens the air intake to the hood, and adds a relay between the battery and the fan. Car is noticibly quieter and gear changes are smoother - but might the latter just be because the engine's been running all day? Total cost of ownership to date is around MYR45/day.

On Housing

My temporary address is given to the lawyer, and I hope to receive and sign the sales and purchase agreement by Monday.

On Kinesthesia

Diet has been good for two days, but exercise is somewhat lacking, so I require a bit of a run and stretch today. Neck is very tight.

On Mental Agility

I need to improve my memory management, so that I can switch in and out of book-study mode whenever other tasks provide me with free time. Otherwise, it seems I waste much time. Dinner. Laundry. Nap.

On Speculation

Buffet's two laws are beginning to make a lot of heuristic sense - they are a good principal for guiding operations, though they are patently false (logically improbable). http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2011/12/05/the-rise-of-developeronomics/6/ My bets are going very well. I'm one who doesn't romanticise the meat market much.

On Corporate Ladders

I guess I am still young enough to enjoy games of the form "here is a ladder, see how high you can climb it." I enjoy all the aspects of organisational dynamics as a technical exercise, even the socialising and emotional plays. I might seem like a highly functional sociopath, however there's very little medical evidence to condemn me. It must be just philosophy.

On Moleskins "Functional Value"

They do special things to people's brains to give them this notion that their tastes are better than other people's.

On PHP Being a Modern Language

PHP is one of those languages that is constantly confused about what date it wants to be in.

On PHP Coders Being in Short Supply

There are plenty of PHP programmers out there, the problem is that many do not understand computers so good.

Compressor

2012-01-05T18:55:00.001+08:00

On Hating Automobile Maintenance

Firstly, I blame myself for buying a 15-year-old car, secondly, I blame myself for crashing it and breaking the air conditioning compressor that came with it. Anyway, the replacement compressor from May 2011 seems to have given up its ghost - it was a cheap solution anyway. Now I may have to spend up to 800 Ringgit on a quality part, and a bit more on labour. Fortunately, I still have slush funds lying around. Then again, let's see just how long I can survive without automotive air conditioning in this weather.

On Pro Bono Work

I am advising some acquaintances on technical issues this evening. I do not have space in my portfolio to take on the risk of another contract, so I will try to deliver the maximum amount of benefit that I can without making any legal commitments.

On Victuals

Feeding time. More bahkutteh? Dinner question marks. I like bahkutteh, it's like a quarter pounder, but better.

On Housing

My lawyers say that the sales & purchase agreement for the apartment that I would like to buy is ready... after 6 months! I hope that this proceeds with fewer kinks.

Not Day Trading

2012-01-04T17:58:00.000+08:00

On Emotion in Commerce

I have experienced a general feeling of uneasiness, whenever I am not actively at my tradestation, while the market is open. This was true before, and after, my two week daily trading stint at the end of December last year. There are two things that may be done. Option one, more physical discipline will be required to improve kinesthesia, in order to quieten these emotional noises, then to proceed with a study of longer-term views. Option two, will involve staying away from trading when I am not there to immediately observe market activities, wrapping up this portfolio, and ending the interesting time of learning. I need to go for a run, but I think I will end up in option one, unless I find a more competitive investment for my time and money. After a run, I am thinking that given the amount of research that went into picking the current portfolio, while it's down, I probably shouldn't touch it. It came to mind to make major adjustments to the porfolio around Chinese New Year, in a few weeks. Until then, I suppose, waiting and watching will have to do.

On R&R

Going to not-nap, and sleep instead at the proper time of night. Dinner time. What to eat? Seeking a variation from Bangsar, I am at PJ Old Town for bahkuteh. Afterwards, I think about what to do besides studying, since I am supposed to be taking a break from analytical strain. It occurs to me that in my tradition, the correct answer is more physical exercise. But since it is close to bedtime, and I am not particularly energetic, I will sit quietly and meditate on the sensation of my body. Bodies produce much noise in the haptic modality, but not everyone studies feelings as such. Later, we try out a Panasonic juicer. It reminds me of bartending.

Back to Planet PR

2012-01-03T17:21:00.001+08:00

On Government Payment Portals

Paid my first parking compound in the flesh - popular government payment-portal did not support KL City Hall parking compound payments. But I discovered that said service stores your password i.e. handles passwords insecurely, when I had my password read to me over the phone. Later, a customer service officer responds on social media that they only store a "temporary" password. But we still find this distasteful, and for security's sake, a bad practice.

On Wrangling this Gradschool Thing

Was discussing developmental biology with a colleague who has a kid. Later bumped into mum in the kitchen and she says I started walking at 7 months and 10 days - talking was a bit later. I've always been more of a mover than a talker I guess. Time for a run. Biochemistry is a bit wonky today. Later, I will analyse the portfolio, and try to learn to be a better inter-day trader. Getting a sense for why evaluations of short-tail stock markets like Malaysia need to be weighted away from their big-heads. Wondering if I should limit studies to 3 hour/weekday, given that I already have an 8 hour/weekday job. Must, find, balance. Ok. Enough god damn finance for today. Time to think about sensory things like food and sleep. Now that we've survived the busier months of the year, it's time to sketch out routines again. 8-9, 9-5, 5-8, 8-10?

On Readings

Post-nap readings are around Cory Doctorow's guestimate about the war on general purpose computing, and about zirconium knives and Moh's scale. Someone in Cory's video talks about the Law of the Sea - and Cory responds by saying that the Web is not like the Sea, and the same laws aren't applicable. My view on this is that the Web is like the Sea, and the the rules of the Web should be applied to the Sea in the first place - that's after all, what the Ecologists have been asking for. Stuff floats. Furthermore, we do have a vocabulary to discuss decentralised organisations, like the Taliban, and Occupy. There's a relatively ancient book called the The Starfish and the Spider which discusses this. Furtheron, I'm watching Bloomberg TV, and finding the view that the Euro-debt crisis neither imminent, nor binary, in agreement with my intuitions, and very superficial analysis of the situation. I am hungry for salt at 2am, and steal someone's ramen from the pantry. This really does feel like gradschool all of a sudden.

Public Holiday

2012-01-02T14:49:00.001+08:00

Lunch is a quick soup which I helped to make. I am spooning through the soup to cool it - thinking of fluid dynamics, gravity, and cooling systems.

I have an afternoon coffee meeting with a fund manager whom I don't see very often. Following that meeting, I return to my studies. Looks like there's a significant amount of doubt going on out there. That could mean that my portfolio's going to take a suckerpunch when the KLSE opens tomorrow morning. Aryan manufacturing is up, and Franco-Germanic debt is down, so let's see if this results in some short term gains tomorrow, or further losses.

Dinner involves some overpriced and not very fresh Japanese food at SS2 Mall. I have been presented with a juicer - a gift which was chosen because it is easy to share.

The day ends. It is the end of a fortnight of catching up on gradschool activities. I suppose it has been good for me, and I can only be thankful for the brief reprieve from work. Now to pay attention, and refocus on the job at hand. Back to Planet PR! ETA 8 hours...

New Year Again

2012-01-01T03:34:00.002+08:00

On Driving & Trading

Got a bit sleepy while waiting in a traffic jam at a roadblock at 2am. Subsequently made the mistake of driving on the wrong side of the road, for a short stretch. Got home, and now continuing to clean up the spreadsheet that is being prepared for the screening of call warrants on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, at a fifteen minute delay. I was working on this during the New Year's Eve party at the house of a friend. I finish a rough draft, identifying every call warrant on the KLSE with a negative time value. Then it is time for sleep. A brief chat online with an acquaintance about different amateur approaches to computerised trading models, rounds up my thoughts on this subject for the year. We all have a long way to go.

On Commercialisation

While buying a takeaway lunch later in the day, I think about my style of project management on operationally intensive product lines. I have a high-frequency high-fire approach to talent management - it definitely reflects my preference for turnkey operations as cash cows. An observation of my personal supply curve for labour shows that I require a 4-500% premium for the assumption of subject matter expert, or management, responsibilities, over what I would require for lesser responsibilities. This is probably a rational way to explain the prices I charge for my time, and their dependence on the sort of labour required. Perhaps one day I'll be able to form an economic treatise about this, in the form of a commerciable product.

On Relationships

My partner tells me I sound interested in myself, and pretentious, for talking about my understanding of things, instead of things in and of themselves. I say that I am indeed interested in myself. Specifically, I'm interested in brains, and mine is the only one that I have this (greater) level of access to. Most people, I gather, would not be interested in having a three hour (arbitrarily) long conversation with me about word choice and the syntax of their image-thought processes (semantics). So I do often talk to myself about these things in a great degree of detail. I suppose that if I am interested in this sort of analysis, and uninterested in non-self-aware statements, then my partner and I will continue, to disagree on what sorts of conversations are worth having. But that is a problem that I commonly face in human interactions, and one that I have come to accept as a necessary representation of who I am. A friend calls these, "planetary differences."

On the Year that's Past

Tea at 7pm is a McDonald's quarter-pounder. Now reading at Pelita, a mamak restaurant, where the coffee is more reasonably priced. I guess the year starts on an uncertain note. I send a text to my lawyer wishing him a happy new year, and asking for a working schedule for this year, reminding him that last year has been a mess. If certain deals go through, and if this sales & purchase agreement has not been inked, I may have to write it off for the second time. I have not had the peace of mind to cook much this year - having moved from noisy kitchen, to noisy kitchen. But at least, for now, I am saving on rent, though one can hope I suppose, that economies of scale do not make this possible in the near future.

On Gradschooling

I have been reading up on photons over the past few days, and I am encouraged to focus my study on the notation of tensors. Once I fully understand the language that is used, I am quite sure that my natural understanding will find ways to express itself to the broader mathematical community through that choice of linguistic medium. Much work has been done in a private language already, and gradschool being gradschool, it is time that I begin making preparations for my research to "come out". Meanwhile, as I read about the study of physics and mathematics in general I still wonder to myself, when will they properly teach everyone that Physics and Math should not be approached in a non-probabilistic manner? I think high-school mis-education ruins life for many people.

On Infrastructure

I have been considering getting more networking hardware, for the 4G network which I am subscribed to. But I figure that this will be unnecessary for the time being. I discover the ReadItLater FireFox add-on has a download queue-length indicator. I am happy to discover that I have been idiotic about missing that feature.

On Gratuitous Targets & Operating Strategies

She asked me what I wanted to do on the first day of 2014. Probably, that is because she knows I've roughly assigned my time till 2013 to the "gradschool" project. I say, "follow the money," and I am asked what I will do with the money, so I say "make more money," and then she asks what I will do with all that, so I say, "study brains." "You're going to need a lot of money, if you're going to study brains." I concur, but I also remind her that I can proceed happily with a low budget, even if I am to make a living as a bartender. This reminds me that one of the main things that bug me in life, is "universal stupidity" and so I am interested in reducing this through the study of information. While being interested in pedagogy, for extroverted/social purposes, and research, for introverted/personal purposes, I focus at this early stage of my life on the accumulation of intellectual/human capital, my own personal knowledge base. This is typically never compromised, while I use what's left of my energies to navigate commercial markets to make a living from the living.

Gradschool Year 4.3/6.3 Week 52/52 - still on vaca

2011-12-25T16:19:00.001+08:00

Sunday

Reflections on the year. The girl who was here in January is still here. And for that I am thankful. It's been good catching up on banking skills these past few days, and weeks. Personal branding has been pretty stable all year - seems like it's settling down. Lots of little projects, some better, some worse, throughout the year. Portfolio significantly diverse, though still highly concentrated. Cashflows are non-negative. Not bad, not bad. Platitudes. On we go.

FB

+ My tolerance for junk food has increased. My biochemistry must be crapping out..
++ Reading up the Greeks (risk), financial statements, etc. it's great to end the year on a high note. Four years - about time!
++ Tired. Going to walk home now. ETA 60 minutes if I don't get mugged. Expensive day. But living on the job pays for itself.
++ Back.
++ back at the bv1 library :)
++ Studying option pricing. Empirical data.
++ it's called starbucks - the closest thing i can get to the noise type and level of a properly populated library
++ not really. coffee here is quite mediocre. it's the noise quality that i'm paying for.
++ macaulay duration vs modified duration, volatility vs implied volatility, a half-dozen kinds of each kind of volatility... good. learning.
++ copulas and martingales? not quite there yet... but soon.
++ Kiddy mindfuck of the day: DIGI:MK call warrants have been trading at a discount to their strike value.

Monday

Fb
+ omg. doing a quick scan of the time value of call warrants on the KLSE is yielding some very interesting results.
++ Wrapping my head around the risk/reward ratios of options with negative time values.
++ Einstein does not believe that God plays dice, and informed investors do not believe that security prices move in a strictly Brownian fashion.
++ Supposedly, time value (TV) of an OTM option = underlier's price (P). But TV should be intrinsically less volatile than P. #wtf #noob?
++ Perhaps then we can look for mean reversion in OTM options prices... time for some backtesting!
++ An OTM call warrant, MAYBANK-CR, 86 data points, we observe 4-day-mean reversion within 4-days in TWO THIRDS of cases. Moving on...
++ This is meaningless.
++ Spreadsheet algorithm testing is getting a bit too complicated. Time to whip out the scripting approach.
++a #theWork: maintaining high growth * (being a chatterbox + doing serious quantitative stuff + empathising with all humanity) #getsHarder
++ Back to reading for a bit.
++ got woken up. went to get food. the waker is now asleep.
++ This is the perfect opportunity... to learn Ruby. On Windows. #numberCrunchingForEntertainment
++ Next meeting at 11am.
++ Making second attempt to get enough sleep before a morning meeting.
++ This vaca is turning out to be full of catching up on gradschool, limited rest, and too many nights up entertaining my favourite woman.
++ When you empathise with everyone, you empathise with no one, because everyone is despised by someone.
++ People who like alcohol tend to bore me, but they are generally fun to work with, and we are all human, and should get things done together.
++ Parties with booze bore me because everyone suddenly becomes dumber. Zzz.
++ Oh crap. It IS morning. Where did the night go? Zzz.
++ Some wonder what it's like to be permanently starved of good company. It is very easy to simulate -
just work harder, and let stragglers be.
++ I expected to be intellectually unproductive after the age of 30, so I scheduled my 20s for research, and expect life to begin at 40. #dork
++ I have three modes. 1. Audacious 2. Compliant 3. Not there. I'm highly influenced by "lead, follow, or @#$% out of of the way."
++ Morning jog. Gasing is swarming with humans. Laundry. Nap. Meeting.
about an hour ago · Like
++ Heading to bangsar for breakfast! Feel free to join!
++ Marmalade to meet a dude at 11am. Come one come all!
++ Mobile phone bill only rm80.xx this month, woohoo! Not including secondary data plan.

Wednesday

FB

+ Sometimes, I'm afraid that I talk too much. :-S
++ What will the new day bring? Uncontrollable market upswings?
++ Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology. So apparently, pride wastes the efforts of mathematicians too :p
++ Somewhat tired today. Perhaps it is a combination of inconsistent eating and sleeping over the past 48 hours.
++ KLSE trading experience fairly memorable. Wondering if I should roll up my positions and move on to subjects with a shorter horizon.
++ Just spent a week catching up no gradschool work. Wondering if I should spend the second half of vaca on actual R&R.
++ First solid food at 7PMish. Lounging with readings at a mall, Ruby, Perl, correlation coefficients, continuations, and options straddles.
++ Specifically now, in-the-money call warrants which have an irrationally negative time value. Looks very interesting.
++ Black Scholes is a useful starting point. But for real world use, one ought to swap out its naive assumptions about volatility. #hack
++ Six hours after first solid meal, brain begins to wake up. This is why I'm supposed to have breakfast at 7am not 7pm.
++ Not feeling the speed. Not at all. #istp :( #noobDayTrading
++ Right. Tomorrow we start scraping klse.com.my for daily data. Wonder if they allow this.
++ Haven't tried scraping data yet. But I am trying a day-trading MO today. Find the securities with highest volume, shoot, and pray. :P
++ Just scalped PROTON-CH for a hundred bucks. This really is an irrational, crazy, market, isn't it?
++ Should I have a significant amount of free time in the future, I will invest in a http://www.bursastation.com/
++ ... on the other hand, forget that, I just learnt how to leech free CSV data from Yahoo (without scraping!) directly into spreadsheets.
++ (on the free data being laggy by 15 minutes) with free data - I can run pattern matches on the WHOLE KLSE dataset... plenty of inefficiencies > 15 mins just there.
++ End of trading day. Taking a deep breath. Wary of potential losses on the morrow. This is good training for calmness.
++ at the bangsar library crunching some quant data... nice to get back to financial time series after four years away...
++ Downloaded a list of 300 call warrants from Bursa. Going to try and make a sheet that reports and reranks their Time Value every 15 minutes. 8-)
++ oh... shit... i need a lookup table for KLSE stock names=>numbers
++ It's amusing when folks say "kids are so annoying, I just want to slap them sometimes"; seriously, are adults any better?
++ Hmm. This means, either manual labour, or a bit of secondary research. First, a bio break.

Friday

FB

+ Syncing Readitlater to my lappy. Again. !@#$ Firefox...
++ Still don't have a place to go home to for studies etc. These days are spent between the folks, the girl, the office, and the malls.
++ Instapaper is comparable to Flipboard I think - not sure how either works, since I haven't tried them in detail. But Readitlater just stores links... and downloads the pages lock-stock-barrel, without trying to lay them out for prettiness. I have about 3000 Wikipedia etc. articles stored for technical grazings. The "digest/article/text-only" view chokes up on Mathworld.wolframalpha pages, because the symbols are rendered as images instead of in TeX, but otherwise... ok lah... can still read in "normal webpage" mode.
++ Market's closed. Last trading day of the year tomorrow. I made some major 1 sen boo-boos today. !@#$ stacking windows managers...
++ run. now to look for dinner. still now !@#$%^ permanent residence.
++ Broke mobile access to my spreadsheet again. Interoperability #fail
++ Four more days of school, then back to work! Is everyone else ready for the new year?
++ Income statements are the order of the day...
++ Operating income = recurring income = earnings before interest and tax (ebit); Gross sale > net sales > gross profit > EBITDAR > EBITDA > EBITA > net income
++ No, i quite definitely mean, school now... work next week!
++ (Net) profit b4 tax (PBT) = earnings b4 taxes (EBT) = pre-tax book income (PTBI) = net operating income b4 taxes = pre-tax Income #wtf
++ I always suspected, but have just confirmed, for my own information - that accountants are as fucked up as software engineers.
++ What if an OPEC member were to secede to the USA? #anotherZanyBookIdea
++ Awwright USA, market's UP! Now stay that way for 12 hours k?
++ Don't talk about rewriting physics, if you don't want to be branded insane. #stuffYouLearnAlongTheWay #goodnightWorld
++ Think i just covered my losses for the first three months of trading.
++ And all profits have been ploughed back into larger bets. Soon perhaps, it will be time for consolidation, and the cessation of trading activities.

+ Maxwell equations... Lorentz whatnots... it's going to be a while before I get to go back to physics :(
++ That's it for the trading year. Time to get some rest, then maybe squeeze in as much reading as I can before work begins on Tuesday.

Consolidating all web-writing/social media activity to jerng.blogger.com for the time being. Consolidation has been called for.

Back home, after a day out, having had the car tuned up, and drinking overpriced juice at a bistro, while trading. I need to be more careful where I sit my ass down. The parents are noisy at home, as usual. I hope that the lawyer hurries up with the sales and purchase agreement for the property I would like to buy. In any event, after I move the laundry which I forgot to move from the washer to the dryer yesterday, it is time for a brief run around the neighborhood.

I am trying yet again to download all my articles for reading on ReadItLater's FireFox client. However, the client does not show how many articles have been downloaded, and how many have not. This is very uninformative, as it is not possible for me to optimise my movements around the estimated time it would take to update my reading list. There do not appear to be other clients for Windows which work well. I have tried one, and it has crashed repeatedly.

Post-run. I check my discretionary cash balance, and it is roughly the same as what I had at the end of last year. I remember spending about half my discretionary cash, so that must mean that this year's "bonus" is an excess over targets, of about half last year's amount. Well targets got harder this year, operations got more complicated, and all in all, this means I'm doing pretty darn well. Cash cow skills like plain hard-nosed discipline kept things going; question mark skills like all the "graduate study" subjects have pretty much broken even on their costs; star skills involving the hacking of people have opened many opportunities. I am in the running for a steady job that pays about what my peers in college were paid when we graduated, six-and-a-half years ago. This would be my first dollar-denominated job, so it would be what I would consider a decent first-world start, after all the autodidactic adventures that I have made for myself in Malaysia, since graduation. It does look like the post-college pre-30s plan is coming together nicely, in implementation.

I got to witness some interesting KLSE dynamics today, watching Maybank prices jump 30 sen in the last ten minutes of trading, as x00,000 lot trades suddenly appear on both the buy and sell sides of the fence. I guess that other stocks moved similarly, based on what I can see in the charts. Also, an ex-classmate called looking for a Metatrader 4 scripter - but he wanted the scripter to be invested, by say USD 1k in the project - for the implementation of some ideas. I had to politely decline, citing my lack of experience in finance, and claiming an anticipated increase in my level of interest in the proposal a year from now. I need to study this more, first, on my own.

Saturday

I drove home a friend's car, and found mine compounded for overnight parking on a yellow line. I am expecting a lunch time meeting with a friend who is coming up from Singapore, and separately a New Year's Eve party this evening, where I may assist with the preparation of victuals. The afternoon is spent reading physics in Bangsar. Reading up briefly on quantum mechanics, I'm seeing how its core concepts can be mapped to the modelling of market prices.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 51/52 - vaca

2011-12-19T10:53:00.000+08:00

Monday

FB

+ Sometimes I find the finiteness of my time to be... overwhelming. Telling myself to shut up and learn faster.

+ Going through Google Trends looking for material insights for stock trading. Discovered PR insights by chance. Also discovered that Bing Trends is no longer available :( http://www.google.com/trends?q=Mango%2C+windows+8&ctab=0&geo=my&geor=all&date=all —

+ Brilliance is the price of sociability. Pick one, and lose the other. The masses of course, have their own bloody notions of "hot". #noob
++ Everytime i get off a project and back to gradschool, i feel like i'm trying to eat myway through a great wall of pasta dough. #fear
++ Reading Knuth. Omg. I can't believe I'd forgotten how much fun studying this stuff is - should not have stopped in november.
++ Cool. I still recognised Fermat's Last Theorem as a classical problem... though I didn't remember what it was called... #noob
++ Calling it a night. It's been a good night for returning to gradschool activities.
++ (on us175k startup ideas) Hack Chromium and stick node.js into Chrome. Sell as configurable "alt net" solution. Aim for buy out / IPO. steal this.
++ Awake early in the morning. Probably because my memory is clear, it must be vaca again.
++ All i gotta say, is yay Monti!
++ Juice time.
++ Laundry. Maybe guitar. Haven't had memory for that in a while. Maybe shopping. Shopping bad.
++ Reading up on matrices and eigenvectors again. Will I understand it fully, soon? Only other commitments limit me.Never understood why matrices are the way they are, as they were simply introduced in highschool. Now restarting with vectors and tensors.
++ i spent most of my childhood oppressed by "adults". Maybe I should start a child rights NGO! :p #ImNotKidding
++ So it turns out that what I call dimensions, mathematicians call indices. #moarStudy
++ I've always thought in terms of tensors since modelling cognition, in college. I just didn't know they were called tensors. :p #hermitsLoss
++ Mathworld.wolfram.com, wikipedia, and readitlater for references. Goodreader for highlighting and annotation. I'd love to run those companies, if merged to pwn global education.
++ Reading math in bangsar. Yawn.
++ It's kinda becoming my life's work, to help people communicate, and getting geeks to communicate math/tech to non-geeks would be a big deal.
++ That is after all, the business of pedagogy. Education is the writing of minds in a biological medium.
++ Einstein notation, multilinear maps, and algebraicq topology whatnot... soon I will decypher this mess in our education systems called math.
++ Rewriting physics, math, and the web aside, broadly we must rewrite human consciousness one conversation at a time. #comms
++ 3pm. Break time!
++ (on there being no such thing as brilliance) On that account, there're no such things as cats either. It's all just language :P
++ I'm sure you've seen Will Smith in iRobot.
++ (on gold on the ocean floor) And that, my friend, is why New Guinea is fucked... I mean its indigenous peoples.
++ Groups, sets, manifolds, definitionzzz. I is digging de hard core.... :p
++ Studying pure math has kinda been a pain since middle/highs school. I suspect I need to carefully unlearn various applied math messes first.
++ Omg, finally reading the definition of non-Euclidian geometry. If it's so simple why don't they @&$#%^ just teach it this way in school?
++ Tired. Fun day. Kinda.

+ What's up KL? Where do I go on a Friday night to talk about sex, tech, and mergers?
++ Boring little town isn't it? :p going for a drive in kl city... where the rain is hard, and the hos aah pwetty...
++ It's good to fo green after ending october in red alert, and staying in amber since then.
++ Wondering where my girl is, but it's clear she doesn't need me...
++ Glad to be finally getting around to the study of algorithms, now that i have an engineering context for most of the common ones.
++ I remember being 8 and wanting to study fractions for fun; being 14 and wanting to know what trigo was for - it was fun but had no purpose.
++ It's good to get back to logarithms. I hope that in 2012 I will finally have time to understand them completely.
++ (response to comment) What does a boob feel like? I though Will Smith settled that in Wild Wild West...
++ (on three way merges) Version control is just us humans engaging in the eugenics of the machines. Eventually the machines will do it well enough to reproduce with us having to jerk them off.

+ Eigenvalues... $&@#%

+ Xmas shopping for me came in under $30. Haven't figured out xmas shopping for the girl...

Tuesday

+ Non-standard theory. Models, models, models. Who doesn't love models?

+ Sometimes these Malaysia deal application forms make me crack up. Write something about myself? Here you go, have my Blogger profile.

FB

+ (forum) It would be an interesting exercise in economics to design an app that systematically helps people to coalesce their divided interests. :)

+ Going for another pitch tomorrow. Rudeness is a big part of the brand that's being sold. How shall we do it this time?
++ (on bilateral pitches, and making rudeness likable) I think that my online profile, pristinely managed as it has been for half a decade, clearly demonstrates my rudeness.
++ Perhaps however, my profiles with their various mesages and target audiences are scattered too thinly across the Web.
++ Someone said my (online profile) necktie is cute. Genius observation! I shall go in full uniform tomorrow. But i do need to represent the geeks somewhat, so i may go for a hoodie, open-front, over the monkey suit.
++ Q: what could be a detrimental factor to this partnership, given that it is a creative venture? A: I am a bean counter. #inAllHonesty
++ Yup. It's bilateral... I think 25% of the deals I go for fail because the counterparty is taken aback when I squeeze them hard for good reasons to continue. The worst pitches are the ones where people are needy.
++ Never shop when you are hungry.
++ there's always a way to incorporate more partners. I'll spot a 30% chance of closing this one.
++ Enough social stimuli for a bit. Back to tensors.
++ Real numbers, Hyperreal numbers, SUperreal numbers, SURREAL numbers... #wtf
++ (on why i want html to die) Inefficient, ineffective, managed by committee, piece of shit, non-standard, not-made-for-doing-things, imaginary language. Oh well, they have their used :p
++ Browsers don't kill languages. Committees kill languages.
++ Relative to Tolkien's Elvish... HTML really does have a place in the world. It really does. :)
++ I wouldn't mind spending a few years of my life (not more than 4) if someone wanted to fund gypsyos.blogspot.com with the aim of replacing HTML. (And piss off a lot of people in the process.)
++ Do I look too young on dates? That's ok - my product is targeted at the market which doesn't care.
++ Compiling the deck for the pitch.

//

Sell, sell, sell.

(forum)
Ciao!

Two things. First, any .NET + web GUI + FB app hackers who want to do quick bug fixes for RM1-200/hr? PM me, so that I have you on-call for a client (if they send the bugs, I'll send them to you, and they're all yours).

Second, I might have to hire a small team within the next three months. If you know me, you'll know that I prefer to work with generalists who can cover each other on multiple bases. What that means is you wouldn't mind doing sys-admin for a .NET system after breakfast, go for tea, optimise some GA scripts on a LAMP stack, haggle on spec with designers over lunch, wash your hands, shake off the raindrops and begin researching Android development for your first time ever, take a break, and finish up with GUI tweaks to an iOS app before dinner. If this sounds like you, please PM me. Also PM me if you don't know how to do any of these things yet, but you just like learning a lot of shit, really fast, and working really hard in order to learn it (that's me projecting right there).

Ciao!

ps. second point above is not for a startup - it's for a new department in an existing, profitable company. if you can stomach a three year horizon, and are excitable about building a solid engineering team, to do zany stuff (perhaps not immediately, we have to clean up first), then this is for you.

//

+ Gah... home networking...

+ As much as we want to help people in the present, no one should be encouraged to tolerate their own weaknesses.

Wednesday

Twitter

+ Ok. Enough #nyanduit nonsense, before I destroy myself.
+ Buangkan mata wang yang lain drpd lain. Pikirlah keutamaan... #nyanduit. (I love vacations)
+ Jangan terpesong dengan syling yang lama. Tukarlah kepade... #nyanduit
+ Bosan dengan wang tunai semasa? Takpe. Gunalah... #nyanduit
+ Ada masalah dengan pekerja? Chop. Pakaila... #nyanduit
+ @--- klau nak mencapai wawasan 2020, mestilah... pakai #nyanduit
+ “@tekong: Duit baru macam warna nyan cat je” nyan duit le tu...

+ I wait up at night, checking every passing car, searching the silence for sounds of the elevator... but she's nowhere, not outhere.

+ learning about warrants on the KLSE
++ palm oil futures.. hello, there are some derrivatives too of course..
++ call warrants, put warrants, and black scholl sandals...
++ Visiting the Bank Negara website for material education. First time! Glad I got around to it before the age of 30 :P
++ My 10-year goal answer for a business audience is "start a hedge fund"; for everyone else it's "build intelligent machines".
++ I hate it when investors hit the trite/test "where do you see yourself in x-years" questions :P
++ housekeeping!
++ Army of Me just made me a Bjork fan.
++ Actually I care deeply about neither hedge funds nor intelligent machines. Both would be fun, and the latter will take a long time anyway.
++ so with some luck, 2011 may also grant me the "options trader" badge :P
++ did laundry, changed sheets, washed and touched up car.
++ also painted my phone... so nope, I won't be picking it up for a while. :P (relatedly, i keep forgetting that creative people don't like to be associated with normalcy)
++ fuck this frequency trading shit... it's time for breakfast :P
++ Hate to break it t'yall kids, but uniqueness is not a moral value. It just happens to have survived.
++ Painting the iphone seems to have reduced its ability to radiate heat from its black casing. Whoops?
++ Creative success is secondary to campaign Effectiveness, unless you're merely an artist and not a hired agent of change.
++ Intel's finally catching up with ARM's GTM in the "system on a chip" market!
++ Vaca: time is passing very slowly today, that can only mean... that my brain is speeding up again! Yay!
++ Vaca: it's nice to just lounge by the window and stare outside, at night, without having to worry about being in call for crises.

+Late night. Time for a little math.

Finally reading up on modular forms after Peter Kozack talked to me about them around 2003.

Thursday

FB

+ There. It's done. I'm officially an options trader. :P #forBetterOrForWorse
++ Gradschool continues.
++ (on my risk appetite) At the end of the day, we are all dead. As long as I don't care if I do or do not wake up tomorrow, everyday is a good day.
++ Note to self. Sect 17 traffic lights are faster than the new ones at old Rothmans
++ Had a good time catching up, and yammering about options, elections, and startups
++ pulled some data from http://www.shareinvestor.com.my/ and proceeding with an analysis of DIGI vs DIGI-CF
++ I guess I am a sponge. Useful both for the quick absorption of messes, and the softer application of medication.

Friday

+ I've been thinking - I RT so many disparate topics, maybe I need a blogzine to group the related RTs together.
++ At some point I'll get this right. http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-have-an-understanding-of-very-advanced-mathematics#ans873950
++ Thing about my memory is that it's insensitive - I have to hit it hard to make it work.
++ Nothing beats the scientific method. Unfortunately - not many people know what that means.
++ time for breakfast, then readings
++ Brushing up on #zfc
++ I think this slate needs a $&@#%^ non- reflective screen cover
++ Recent coversations remind me, to remind others that there is no concrete definition of belief ;p
++ Gaya. Mutu. Ketunggalan. #falsafah
++ Going xmas shopping for a loved one. Then back home to close trades for the day.
++ Xmas shopping mostly failed. Will just bring the target along next time.
++ sweet. scalped enough profit to cover my losses on that one stock i had to sell at a loss.
++ first profit on a call warrant. about myr 60 profit on myr 3060 in one day ; that's before the broker rebates me the !@#$%^& 0.6% over-charged commission. I AM an options trader :D #notReally
++ oh shit... just discovered that my order sizes are not optimised to minimise brokerage fees -_-
++ klse's surging in the... last ten minutes before the weekend... again... #soWeird
++ Made another 60 bucks before the bell rang... sigh. Win some lose some.
++ ok - so now i've learnt that there are a lot of uncle-aunty traders like me (doing 1-99 lots per trade) who swarm in on irrational price movements in... certain stocks. very interesting. problem is, have to keep hand on pulse.

+ My first study of warrants. Empirical data. Just looking at the charts, there's quite a few stories to be told here. (I'm making this up on the spot - these are naive observations which may have little truth value.) FIRST of all, the whole point of warrants/options - you trade on the difference, so the warrant exhibits much greater volatility than the stock. SECOND, there seems to be a linear correlation between the price of the stock, and the price of the warrant (just multiple the $-change of the stock price, by some constant, and you approximate the $-change in the warrant price... sans volatility if there is such as thing). THIRD, it appears that most of the time, the current/original price of the warrant is discounted against the current/original price of the stock - could this be the profit margin collected by the issuer of the warrant? FOURTH, it appears that while the warrant's price follows the stock's price, the warrant's price has "slippery tires" and tends to overreact, then correct itself shortly afterwards. So where's the profit in all this? :) Bedtime.
++ I'll tell you what I did - I bought (among other trades) digi-cf today, it's obviously in-the-money, and I am fairly bullish about its stock price (look at the 3-year trend, plus they have great ads :P and the EUR crisis seems to have fixed itself mostly in the last month, barring the collapse of some other institution). I figure I'll scalp at least a few % off the price of the warrant, which has about six months to go. Can't remember offhand, but if I hold the warrants to expiry, there's a small profit to be made if the underlying stock's price has broken MYR4.16 or thereabouts (I'm still not absolutely sure that I understand the conversion ratios metric, but I think I do). Anyway. I like learning things the full-data touchy feely way, as it helps me remember what I'm studying.
++ Got a few months left, I think. Won't hold it till expiry :P
++ Also I've generally been of the opinion for over a month, that the Eurozone will be too chicken to let stuff go down. Fear and trembling in the boondocks, I say. But then again, the only reason I say that's cause I'm an ignorant punter.
++ are you referring to the ECB, the warrant, or the state of the world? anyway... good luck to europeans. if anything does go down, they're the ones who'll take the worst hit... horses get hurt. punters take losses and go home for dinner. :(
++ whoops... sold it and made 60 bucks in 24 hours #scalpers
++ (on black scholes) ah, i see! well, i also noticed that a lot of warrants on the KLSE trade at a premium to the BS valuation, but i'm using the risk-free rate of KLIBOR 3%, not the ECB 1% number... hmmm... will check it out.
++ Looks like most of the locally issued warrants are call warrants. Mostly issued on big-cap stocks. Issuer's premium is said to be quite high, and priced into warrants for a couple of months after issuance, at least. Trading volume is indeed low. Treading carefully and learning everyday (while I'm on holiday, hehe) back to work in Jan. Need to improve my math also.
++ I guess it's relative... small fish like me doesn't go in for much more than usdx000 per trade. Definitely have not had time to do a systematic trawl through the market's data. Miss my old Bloomberg Pro terminal at the bank :) but that was 4 years ago, and I've been to busy to get into finance until now.

Saturday

+ Throwing my preferred Xmas eve party - a cuppa joe and gradschool readings at a mall in Bangsar. Feel free to drop by!
++ Just the usual nonsense of 2007-2013... math, economics, software engineering...
++ I plan my life in chunks :p it's normal for this period, the same way history of ideas, MECE education syllabi, and analytical phenomenology was the usual nonsense for 2001-2005 :p
++ Nah, 2013 I'm thirty, and I hit the gas on making money for a decade. If it works out. Education then rides shotgun. Under these first three chunks of time, it's the other way around.
++ (someone said montessori) Just decided what you want to invest in, allocate the time, set stop loss limits, and do it. No need for fancy name-calling ;)
++ (someone asked me to pass a message to dad) Go ask him yourself you fucker, and besides, if it really is important, I'm sure our heavenly father'd be glad to be the telepath operator.
++ Www.pos.com.my is an alternative. You can find his office address on the relevant website. How is it arrogant of me to propose that you do the right thing? :p I don't even know what you look like.
++This is a very interesting whitepaper on implementing a high-level language for embedded systems. (via @ReadItLater) http://t.co/gd3FKCSX
++ I know what xyz of MCKL looked like in 1998. But we don't know that he and your Facebook account are related. Lay yourself bare, masked man :p
++This is an article on building a "Lisp CPU" for an FPGA. Again, very cool shit. http://t.co/zIdSy9Uh
++A classic article on why you should consider using the Lisp programming language. #timelessQualities http://t.co/bbHvJP4y
++Important for those still using SQL. Graphs (data that can be visualised as a network) and SQL. http://t.co/nH8gSK3s
++ After reading much prose, I feel like doing some numerical analysis on warrant prices for a pair trading strategy. But laptop is at home. :(
++ I switch from engineeri readings to Bloomberg readings.
++ These years, I spend about half my time stuffing my head with information, and the other half getting sorted before it goes missing.
++ Time to learn about credit markets (been putting this off since 2007).
++ frankly, math and physics for SPM was a shitty experience... huge turnoff... i had to postpone my interests till nowlike
++ Bloomberg on iPad has succint research summaries for day-trading. Adding that to Yahoo's portfolio manager, and Maybank's tradestation.

+http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ - recommended by a friend
++Tired. But happy to be learning something.
++ It's good to be on holiday. I miss that time when I took a four year holiday called college.
++ Checking my numbers. Even my profitable trades are bad deals. Making 2% on a security that moved 9% within the same period. Boo.
++ I'm at bangsar village trying to stomach #zfc ; animated blokes at next table slapping each other and ogling bitches on social media
++ I generally have severe disagreements with anyone who expresses a non-physicalist theory of mind. Pisses off my girlfriend, that's for sure.
++ Totally explains why I diagree with mathematicians who espouse a superphysical ontology. #fuckYouGodDamnInformalists
++ #fuckAllYou dualists, and anyone who thinks emotions are incommensurable with reason; #fuckAllYou spiritualists and empiricalist wankers ;)
++Omg. I don't get how after all these centuries, people don't get that "abstract" thought is IMPLEMENTED in physical hardware... Grr.
++ I must be sensitive to sensations for commercial reasons, while ignoring sensations in order to work faster. #generalistBlues
++ Given the small size of my fund, limited time for research, and my high risk tolerence, next thing to do is to undiversify.
++ Finally, a theorem, instead of random examples: "any root of any natural number which is not the square of a natural number is irrational". Seems superficially tautologous though.
++ I hate telling teachers that they don't make sense. It defeats the reason for bothering to do so. #tookAFewYears
++ While Kant seems to understand the world, he wasn't very good at talking about it. Studying his writings too closely makes one confused. :p
++ too busy to care about happiness... but admittedly it's happiness that drives being busy

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 50/52 - dum dee dum

2011-12-11T00:34:00.001+08:00

Sunday

Morning meeting with a VC at one of the hack.weekend.my events. Then lunch with a former client who wants to bounce some ideas. I dropped off a bunch of a fruits and some juice at the event earlier today, requesting that hackers eat real food. Otherwise, I attended on request of an acquaintance, did not do much coding at all, and mostly read up on KLSE tickers.

Wednesday

FB

+ Fuck. I am reading Friday morning financial papers on Saturday night. I have only myself to blame.
++ Bull warrants, bear warrants, goddamn motherfucking i don't know a thing about these damn warrants :p
++ Gradschool+unrelated work is beginning to border on insanity. Sigh. Nearly the end of the year!
++ Fulamak... logistics and BI again... this really is startup weekend :) yay furthermore for their sorting out the EUR mess...
++ Kuchai lama is pretty cool
++ awake again. i need to buy me some data.
++ Statmetrics and Piggy Market Squeak to the rescue, thanks to Wilson Wong. Now if only I had time to use this. I'll probably find time.
++ Cleaning up financial tracking a bit.
++ fund status: 61 days; 73% exposed; at -0.09 to -0.59% nominal value, depending on how you estimate due brokerage fee rebates.
++ Finally read the manual for this trade station. It's not too bad. Just ugly.
++ Capitalism: decentralise monarchy, thereby making protests ineffective. Communism: make political targetting even less effective. #ploys
++ Still getting used to the notion that most of my savings are bouncing around on the whim of capital markets. On the other hand, owning a piece of all these buildings around me does have certain (trivial) appeal. This is good exercise, even if it may be costly - I need to get used to taking reasonably higher risks with my time.
++ Soon we will return to Black-Scholes.
++ 90% exposure; zero leverage; net losses at 0.64-1.20%; I meant it when I said I was going for broke.
++ I think my fund is over-diversified.
++ ... and underperforming the KLCI by some 5%... #noob
++ People are the most interesting things on Earth, yet even they are so boring.
++ Maybe that is why I have a machinist hobbies - it's a humanistic jab, a reminder that no one is irreplacable.
++ thank god new twitter is so much lighter
++ Financial services jobs are lower than they've been in a decade; great time to join the industry. If you can.
++ Nap time.
++ Bear migrates from cave one to cave two. Incentive: another bear.
++ Morning coffee at a meeting. I question my economic contribution. The conclusion is it does not matter.

+ Startup networking. I figure I'll do this for fun, until they tell me that they can't afford to not pay me. :p
++ networking is my favourite job :P aside, I'm about done haggling over the hourly value of code. I'll just take equity now thanks.

Friday

FB

+ Huge? http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/12/15/about-damn-time-microsoft-will-silently-upgrade-everyone-to-latest-version-of-ie/

+ OMG this is better than that #$%^& Saladdin... don't ye rest on your laurels, little Malaysia...
(transformers clone - indonesia)

+Romney's back!
Mitt Romney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org
2012 Presidential campaign2008 Presidential campaignGovernor of Massachusetts, 2003–2007Political positions · Electoral historyPublic image

+ Grey day. It's nicer outside. Time to bail out. Where'd chutes?
++ Wondering how to amuse myself today. Maybe I'll catch up on sleep first.
++ commodities are down. i'm looking at massive losses on latex and cpo stocks tomorrow :P
++ Having a limited appreciation for people who will fly 400 miles to run 25 kilometres. It's still the same bloody boring planet... geez.
++ I find that I have a strong tendency to trade weirdness for mediocrity.
++ And i really need to deprioritise hanging out with people who work out to look good. I work out because i enjoy the performance boost,
++ Gratuitious travel and body building just make me feel like a dumb shit.
++ EOY ops rationalisation; cutting hang time with boozers, divas, and tourists; in all likelihood, the girlfriend is going to dump me. :P
++ Looking forward to a holiday so that I can get back to quadrupling my return on invested time. Hope the sky doesn't fall next week.
++ Tired of bumping into middleaged men who don't have the patience for longstudy. Investors? More like writeoffs.
++ http://hotmail.com/m is sooo much faster than http://hotmail.com/... !!!
++ KLCC LRT station seems to be using mosquitos. Ouch, my ears :(
++ Gonna try to swing a deal, between the agency, and the hackers!
++ All would be management consultants should be required to take the Hippocratic Oath.
++ stuck at 5 portfolios with the free bloomberg service; going to try the yahoo one; the google one doesn't seem to grab klse data very well
++ cleaned up a spreadsheet somewhat to make it compatible with simpler software on the ipad
++ head still not quite wrapped around the scope of available trading strategies for equities. need more quant analysis. no energy to do it while i'm reserving loads of memory for stuff that could possibly fall over at the day job. looking forward to next week's holiday so that I can use my memory more productively. yawn.
++ new yahoo finance portfolios are easier to use than bloomberg free portfolios - but perhaps not as clean
++ Ah, holidays. Unloaded PR job from memory, and went for a run. Will clear email later this evening, and read up on economics and math. #yay
++ Dinner, shave, reading, perhaps.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 49/52 - ho hum

2011-12-04T10:32:00.001+08:00

Sunday

When unsure of what to do, I try to make myself aware of it. When I am successful, I try to hold back my hand a little longer.

FB

+ Let's try that again... anyone going clubbing tonight?
++ [name] as long as you're getting all the data you need... I might crash after I poke at this Canvas stuff some more, or I might nap and then head out. Should we head out, your mission is to select the venue.
++ (on other interested parties) WYSIWYG
++ gimme a call if you rustle up any others... I think I am going to sleep. Not personally interested in the drinking, so would join for the party talk.
++ [name2] looks interested. Build a list...
++ Maybe after I nail a place to live, I should attempt the path of the publican. Proghouse and bigbeat whatnot. :)
++ Sorry, I collected sleep instead.

+ Anyone working on some code tonight?
++ Beginning the study of Canvas for GypsyOS
++ refreshing my browser JavaScript scoping. it all begins with a window...
++ revising the nutcase variable assignment syntax in JavaScript, where objects are passed by reference, whereas anything else is cloned
++ Ok - I'm getting the hang of rudimentary Canvas calls.
++ Nap time.

+ The artist believes in creation; the physicist believes merely in emergence.
++ Ruminating on the start of a weekend.
++ Rebranded "Gypsy Cross-browser Application Development Framework" to GypsyOS "for HTML5 Canvas"; set up Facebook pages for both GypsyOS and GoodRobot Abstraction, so that my profile links to those.
++ I've become bored of rounded rectangles since 2010, and now I know who's reponsible for them... partly, STEVE JOBS AGAIN.
++ Off to explore Subang Bestari!
++ Was explaining to boss that "computer languages" are just the user interface for low-level "computer platforms".
++ Learnt that iphone does not charge when hot. Also, ss2 mall toilet sinks have taps aimed at crotch level.
++ (on malls in random places) They dropped it in recently. I hear they're all pre-fab these days.
++ Surveillance systems? Really? Good grief, it's 2011... I'd already assumed that everything I did was remotely observable since 2001.
++ Cooking up a frugal pasta. The greatest hindrance to efficient eating, is the presence of unappetising company.
++ Time for some research, or reading. Financial housekeeping before that.
++ I feel like... more frugal pasta. Fund exposure now at 51%, CAGR at 0.87%.
++ Feeling a bit like a scatterbrained looser this past month, but so far, it's still within reasonable risk limits. Now where's the reward that's supposed to go with that...
++ it's about time we put the rounded rectangle to death... so to speak
++ ‎(on MNCs being as screwed up as GLCs) At the end of the day, people do whatever they need to survive another day. Having been there or not, the macroscopic evidence is that the microspheres are wonky.
++ Sunday follies.
++ It's a bit too bright to go for a run right now. Haircut and breakfast instead. Then reflections to clear the head before work begins again, around midnight.
++ I figure, weekends are supposed to help you hold out until vacations, and vacations are supposed to help you hold out until a project ends.

Monday

FB

+ Conversations with a microprocessor designer: "There are quite a number of rudimentary processes that I would probably take a while to ingest. I'm actually diddling in this because I am more interested in distributed computing architectures - particularly the development of OSes/VMs that will allow the same apps to be run on hair dryers and notebook computers.
++ Basically, I'm interested in the software/networking abstraction layer that would enable all devices in the room to co-compute their jobs. However, to properly do that, I am guessing that (at very least) a bit of exposure to VHDL and the like should help me understand stuff down to the nuts and bolts of custom processor design (as and when that becomes necessary).
++ Just musings."
++ At the end of the day, all we do is trade time. Having a higher rate of charge for a fiscal semantic simply increases the exchange rate of your time, and therefore your ability to get most other transactions cleared for a smaller amount of time.
++ By plans set earlier this decade, I still have a couple of years to play with, before I start barking about the value of my time. Throttle down. Test the waters.
++ Going for a walk. It's unusually cold in here.
++ Off to explore the little village of Kuala Lumpur. I kid you not.
++ I miss the busy streets of this tiny little city.
++ In Bonospeak... nearly everything I've done this year is naff...
++ Crap. Just realised that i have half-done the laundry at home.
++ After a brief run-around - back in Bangsar.
++ Wind is quite crazy. Rain must be near.
++ studying Porter-Duff operators while doing R&D for @GypsyOS ; also figured out that my ideal keyboard angle is having the keyboard inclined down and away from me
++ Taking a break from Canvas to study ETFs on the KLSE. I guess I might read up a bit on other products too.
++ Sponge mode on; stay focused ;)
++ ‎... and as it turns out, apparently you can take short positions on stocks in the KLSE, just not naked short positions; but I'm still not sure how to do this as a retail investor.
++ I feel like a college freshman. So many things to learn, so little learning.
++ OK - at least I think I'm done with Canvas. Next to figure out a simple scene graph API.

Tuesday

FB
+ Set myself up for reading, then all I felt like doing was sleep. Then partner tweets me to say, he's temporarily lost his phone, car, and house keys, so I'm going to pick up the silly boy. (or girl, what does it matter to you?)
++ I guess I'm going to up be up studying the markets after all >_<
++ comes with the territory... hoi *bucks
++ Losing money on a stock I bought in a traffic jam. Good practice. Like fencing with a dummy. Ouch!
++ Home again, home again, jigitty jig...
++ ‎... surrounded by past and future follies.
++ Not quite enough time to do fun stuff... between equity research, math research, and software research... and a day job in PR. Anyway, it's past midnight, so back to the day job! #gradschool
++ need a run, perhaps - might try gasing to klcc
++ PR, equities, laundry, settled. Nutrition, exercise, and computation, not yet settled... on with the day... it's 6:18pm.
++ Basel iii is such a clusterfuck. But there may be such a thing as a good orgy.
++ Living with the same whiny people for 18 years is just bad for health. Ouch. Can't wait to drop them forever.

Saturday

FB
+ Calibrating seasonal prices. 15/month for technical, 18/month for non-technical. Go. Off to the market!
++ ‎@^&* market spiked in the last 10 minutes of trading :)
++ Networking for the day - done. Contingency planning for the year, done. Bets placed. Rock'n'roll.
++ More bird shit. Sprayed the little car down. Time to catch up on sleep.
++ iCloud won't dominate unless Siri becomes the majordomo. Ok - that makes more sense.
++ Word of the day - potlatch.
++ going for broke...
++ Did a few too many copy-paste operations for my sanity. Bailed out from work a tad early. Need to start looking for July's cashflow.
++ Dinner. Dinner. Brief set of lifts. Back to catch up on sleep.
++ I don't care if I don't change the world. But attempting to change the world remains a useful strategic element for the accumulation of finance. Think of ten things that would be nice to have, which the world currently don't consider to be affordable... yet.
++ Fastest way to becoming a community pariah today : support the Computing Professionals Bill of Malaysia
++ About to deflate my value by several % just for the learning experience. Here goes nothing, KLSE...
++ Mentally preparing myself for a working weekend. It's all part of the year. Gotta maintain a long-term perspective, on short-term controls...
++ Many noises surround me. I must overcome. There's the klaxon at 8:20am. Roll out.
++ Making a point not to worry about market movements while the market is open, and to focus on thinking about this sort of thing after the market has closed.
++ Oof... market's down. But it's a long slow year anyway. Maybe I'll wait it out. No, definitely.
++ Need to make habit of clearing my research on equities at least once a week.
++ coffee and a bit of amusement with coding... not yet time for dinner.
++ Dinnertime!
++ Installed an app for tracking mobile data plan usage. Downloaded user manuals for the dinky consumer tradestation provided by my broker. Preparing for a relaxing weekend... one can only hope.
++ ‎(forum on computing professionals bill) There should be a Standards Certification Body for enterprise computing workers. Just like CFA and ICAEW for finance and accounting, for example. Beneficial but not necessary. Ideally, go the way of the Actuaries - it's a pyramid of exams. Except that in software, things change too fast for easy standards certification. In which case, it may make more sense to have trade organisations, like leagues/clubs of programmers, which are self-governing. That helps build credibility too. Wankers who talk and can't do work have bas references etc. but new business flers have a place to start digging for info.
++ ‎4Q2012. I'm finally FINALLY getting a good practical reason to read more economics, since I started day trading equities.
++ Hanging out at some sort of hackweekend event. So far it's kinda cute!
++ Not coding. Sitting outside where there's more oxygen - catching up on the equity research reports.
++ stock trading... I haven't had this much fun since doing shopping for the ideal little DIY PC when I was in high school.
++ Data overwhelming... taking a break from stocks.
++ Penat. Time to log off for a bit.
++ Food. Kandarrr.
++ Just hooked up another entrepreneur with some a VC. One of these days, I either gotta start charging for this, or hope that there's such a thing as good karma :P
++ Refllection: my main motivation for getting good at doing things, is so that if I ever had to tell someone else to do them, I would know how.
++ Shower time! Scruba dub dub.
++ At the barbers. Then maybe back to the hackweekend.
++ With some laundry getting done in between.
++ Finally, after putting it off for about 13 years... i have a practical reason to read the business pages, very, very carefully. #arc
++ Grr... I want a data service... where do I get a reliable, affordable, data service for research. Scrape it? Klsetracker?

The Computing World, is not Yet Flat

2011-12-03T01:51:00.001+08:00

Allow me briefly, with my limited knowledge of history, to comment on where we stand as a species in terms of computing.

The history of European culture progressed roughly, by some accounts, through periods known as the Dark Ages, the Classical, the Baroque, and the Romantic. The view that is called Modernism paints these as a gradual progression of society's knowledge along a path of increasing analyticity. The Dark Ages are roughly where we purport to find the seeds of a new Rationalism, struggling to distinguish itself from the masses around it. The Classical period is one which is marked by a great equilibrium, a fundamental acceptance of certain schema by society in general, and the derivation of the logical conclusions of those schema. The Baroque period roughly (sic) marks the point at which the standardisation of forms has sown new seeds of boredom, and we find that the increasing scarcity of uniqueness has driven human passions to fancy high contrasts, and grand collisions of taste. The Romantic period marks then a progression beyond such rational struggles for identity, into exhaustion, and a craving for simpler, sweeter forms.

The mechanisation of the world's economy as we know it today, may be construed to have parallel periods. Where in art there was an emergence of Classical forms, during the industrial revolution, a series of patterns known as Newtonian physics would come to dominate the designs of things. The Baroque period of mechanisation is possibly the period of history marked by the World Wars, and the Romantic period of mechanisation is possibly the effuse proliferation (is that a redundant phrase?) of a global consumer culture, which to-date continues to gradually bring us a greater influx of technology into the creation of consumer art (right now, a good example of this is 3D broadcast television).

But what of computing? It seems to me that we have parallels there as well.

The end of the Classical period of computing could have been the age of the mainframe. The Baroque period might have been the gush towards mobility (from the user's point of view, or hacking from the technician's point of view), with all of us sitting squarely in 2011 about the rise of a Romanticism preached by Apple. At this point in history, the Classical forms of computing are sufficiently commoditised that the conflict - that arose after we became bored of running in a straight line with the Classical forms - that very conflict itself, has made us weary.

But in computing, we are nowhere near the post-Romantic period where culture becomes so easily malleable that it is accessible to all. At this point in history, computing is most certainly not equally accessible to all. Governments around the world have made it possible for a vast majority of our global population to access the commercial ecosystem, through incorporation or other legal terms for representation in the market. This accessibility, or commercial & legal infrastructure, in turn makes the knowledge and mechanical goods of the world available to all on a gradient of skill, which is fairly transparent to the studious child - from the simplest act of a transaction, to the grand securitisation of contracts. The infrastructure for these aspects of the world is in place, such that there are many adult individuals whom properly taught, could learn them in a week, and master their introduction in a year. This however, is not yet the case with computing.

Computing still lies somewhere between its Middle Ages and its Renaissance. A vast horde of illiterates are only now beginning to be plied by a rising merchant / artisan class, that is able to pursue a low-art (platform developers). Above all these waft the few who are schooled to a classical degree (anyone who understands compilers probably is just about getting there). And at this point of course, the boundary between these is blur. But certainly, the Classical forms, the high-arts, have not yet been made accessible to the masses.

So how do we take the lowest-level of programming to the masses? What pedagogical tools will we discover? What transformations to our current knowledge are required, before all these dark-arts and high-arts will cease to be unapproachable to the casual observer?

That's what I think, is an interesting point form which to begin any research into the future of computing.

This short tirade is a reflection, which I had towards the end of reading Steve Job's biography.

It still troubles me that it is so easy to tell the difference between a human and an electronic mind. I hope to help fix that before I die.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 48/52 - canvassing

2011-11-27T04:51:00.001+08:00

Sunday

FB

+ I'd like to find/write a JavaScript framework for application development specifically for the HTML5 Canvas tag. The end-goal is to find/create an app platform that requires nothing more than a modern browser (as we know it). Apps should then be write-once, run anywhere, but as sophisticated as current desktop apps.
++ Not sure if this is the right analogy, but think of what Windows 8 development looks like, except that instead of sitting on a C# backend, this is going to sit on a JavaScript backend. And the frontend has to be cross-browser compatible. May take a while for the hardware to catch up, but this should be worthwhile in the long-term. We already have WebGL, which is a huge plus.
++ 1. What frameworks do you recommend for writing desktop-quality apps on Canvas?
++ 2. What's the "industry leader" for this kinda thing at the moment?
++ (Did a search in this group and could not find a direct hit, so forgive me if I'm posting redundantly.)
++ (on a silverlight suggestion) Silverlight is prop. I don't deal in prop stuff. The point is to have something that's open for public hacking. Think of it as Linux for the web.
++ Sliverlight is much more like Flash, than just plain ol' JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas. Windows 8 is very similar to the latter, but it sits on a C#/whatever-else backend for speed. I want to swap out the speed, for lower security, and a higher rate of platform adoption. What d'you got for me?
++ I'm now looking at Real Studio Web Edition as an exemplary target to parallel in open source. Talk to me.
++ "canvas windows manager" turns up bad results.
++ seems like "html5" is the operative word and "canvas" usually is useless; moving on to looking at JavaScript scene graphs - CAKE looks cool http://glimr.rubyforge.org/cake/canvas.html and so does Amino http://goamino.org/ ; I want to avoid anything that depends on WebGL like scenejs.org, because Microsoft hasn't confirmed any support for WebGL; fonts - will it be easier to implement fonts IN the scenegraph, or to fake it with a hybrid, and render fonts in overlaid DOM elements? ; do we need a windows manager? if so, should it behave like an x-server? I have nearly no current knowledge of windows manager architecture, so this is going to be a shot in the dark..
CAKE - Canvas Animation Kit Experiment
glimr.rubyforge.org
++ Maybe this means a new blog starts tomorrow...
++ we need a scene graph in JavaScript. now is that very different from a compositing windows manager?
++ learning about subpixel rendering - ah, this is new! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
++ (holy crap - we don't want to go there)

+I'm going for a walk in Kuala Lumpur. Feel free to join me.
++ And the plan is no more.

+ Eurogeddon #wordOfTheDay

+ humbling. WebCamp KL
++ TechCrunch | Startups: Silicon Valley Vs. The Emerging World

+ Closing the gap
++ www.economist.com

+"... the robots are not Terminators," yeah, that's what she said...
++ Robot Prison Guards Roll Out

+ Trying to bridge some old and new business networks. This is a long shot, but if it works, there's some great synergy to be had. Tried tagging people, but one of them seems to have exploded their friend-limit and opened a new FB account WTF. :)
++ ironically I'm doing laundry at the same time, and... wth... am I the only one who gets excited when i find a pair of socks that match?!

+ This is the part of the hectic week where I ask myself, "Hmm, I have a couple of hours to myself. Do I study international economics, Erlang, or the human appearances around me?"
++ going to read up on HTML5 application platforms - there ought to be a few out there already, otherwise I'm going to write one.
++ (need a more visible project for relaxation)

+ Wah, financial freedom sales-aunty at the adjacent table in Starbucks is really rockin it :) some things never change.
++ mat-ca lah - "meh dou yao, childlen's educashun, ahahaha, lei dei bei zhou, yah ding yau liew... ahahaha... unit trus..."
++ "got three ways... baselain hai kam yeh... haus ah, okhui dow dei... lifestyle inflation rate... in acchual fec, garmen inflation... ngor mun hei lah..."
++ "... transpohtashun, petrol, on avereg lah, our inflation is 7-10%... your 3% vs 7% can cover meh? is negatif... epf trekrecod past few years lah... fd is like this, lei tai lah..."
++ "... so wat about the balens ten yers? how ah you go-ing to survaiv?"
++ ffaaaaaaarkkk.... this is scary shit. #anthropology
++ Myself, I just wish M&S would hurry up and decide if they'd like to just kill off the Euro instead of making us wait.
++ After having my work interrupted by this aunty for an hour, I am severely disdainful of creatures that cannot escape their material desires.
++ ... severely disdainful of those who have not thought out their emotions on life, of those who could not, even on good reason, pull out that iron and pull the trigger...

+ I find that compared to some other people, I have a much higher tolerance for ignorant people, and I am more willing to engage ignorant people in the incremental reduction of their ignorance. Perhaps this is because I regard myself as a mostly ignorant person, and I engage myself constantly on the marginal reduction of my ignorance. Bootstrapping myself gives me good practice at bootstrapping others. However, this overall outlook does not seem to go well with people who do not appreciate the highly inefficient process of development through bootstrapping methods. People who believe that they are more than ignorant on even the smallest subject area, tend to be annoyed when ignoramuses in that subject area present themselves as such. I welcome ignoramuses everywhere, everyday, in almost everyway. Which is probably why I am incredibly annoying to many "professionals".
++ And therein, I think we're agreed on why this relationship often isn't working.

+ Sometimes I wonder - why I entertain all the kiasu notions of the people around me. Coexistence seems futile.
++ Speaks softly and take a lot of noise. I guess it's a work ethic.
++ Reminding myself that when there are sevem or eight things going on at the same time, the first thing to sacrifice is socialising. No friend's gonna do my work for me. :)
++ Note to self, try not to mix crazy life and not-so-crazy girlfriends.
++ When budgeting for a single property, it must be livable now, livable forever, affordable now, and of moderate long-term risk/return.
++ Probably should focus on one property at a time and shut out all the dingbat loudmouths who worry about ROI. Secure target. Retarget only when target is lost. Move.
++ Going to mallrat for inspiration.
++ I bought a USB cable that would save me time. It satiated my need to purchase an LCD TV which had no immediate purpose in my life.
++ ♥ rain. nap, then maybe recreational coding.
++ Song 2.

Monday

FB

+ There are things in the world that words refer to, and then there are just words. Some people can't differentiate between these. I get into trouble a lot because of these people. -_-
++ More accurately, it's the people who can't differentiate betweens propositions that refer to models of the world as models, and propositions that refer to models of the world as the world. The whole point of building models, is to be consci...See more
++ Time for me to pre-fix all my nouns with "my model of", so that I'm minimally misunderstood. It's a good reminder anyhow.

+ Can't believe I just updated my LinkedIn profile Summary to basically say, "I have a high tolerance for idiots; that's what makes me good at what I do; which is everything." Nobody, I swear, is going to buy that.
++ Goddamn Sunday reflections...
++ (on companies valuing that in employees) My point is that the people I want to work for would value that in the CEO. :P
++ everybody wants to go fast... nobody wanna slow down... do the wooooosahhhh #badboys

+ Illustration of how Gypsy application development stacks may compare to typical existing application development stacks.
++ omg, i have a feeling that this is about to take over my life... http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html#primary-context
++ in 2009 when I thought it'd be nice to have a live-shared-document IDE so that we could all code on the same doc at the same time, I didn't realise they were actually working on one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Bespin
++ Lo an behold, there's a host of them... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript-based_source_code_editors

But I knew Google Docs had reimplemented text-editing, and was not reliant on HTML's raw functionality. And I was happy for them. Hopefully one day soon I will have reason to be happy for the rest of us too.

+ Hmm. Plans are changing again. Where does that leave me? Let me go take a nap.
++ Nap aborted - I'm still reading the Jobs biography. It's cute. I guess when compared to guys like these, my idiosyncracy is that I find it challenging to demonstrate excellence in tasks which I do not believe to be of objective value. I'm a gamer that way.
++ I miss the years of non-liability. I worked very hard at the age of 14 to party.
++ Upon reflection, I have close friends who could never play the game for long, of learning to derrive value from something which they initially believe to be of little value. I think this has been the cause of most severe disagreements that I've had with close friends this year. Not that any of my close friends are supremely close to me in the traditional sense of close friendship...
++ I don't think that my proclivity for ignorance would go well at any job interview conducted by Jobs. Jobs is the sort of person who likes to announce that he is better than others when he feels that is the case, and he hires similar people. I am the sort of person who likes to work with people regardless of my feelings about them. I guess I tend to hire people who are like me too.
++ I find that a sensitivity that I have, is upon discovering any jackasses in operations, I start doing their work by myself.
++ if it doesn't meet a certain level of predictability, it's not a worthwhile enterprise; it might make a good pet though.
++ i have more pets than friends, it could be said

+ Saturday: spent on copywriting and laundry ops
Sunday: spent on software research and cooking ops
Monday: wha... it's still the weekend?! time to catch up on Bloomberg News, and Arts & Letters Daily !!! a rare opportunity these two months...
++ Oh cool - Steve Jobs got to skip two grades too. :)
++ I guess Steve Jobs would have been fun to know in school.

+You don't say...
Groupon shares sink below IPO price
www.msnbc.msn.com

+ In plain English for laypeople who don't understand what models are, I must prefix my nouns with "my highly uninformed and fundamentally inaccurate idea about X" whenever I hope to not piss them off in discussion. Saying "my model of X" garners the response "you don't have a model. What they don't realise is, all they have are models too. They're models of their pet subject matter are just better than my models.
++ Dumbed down my LinkedIn profile summary "Generalist: Specialists take pride in their knowledge. I take pride in my ignorance. Because of this, I am able to work well with all manner of ignorance in other people, and get jobs done through broad-based bootstrapping methods. I suppose that this is just the fundamental difference between sophists and philosophers. "

Wednesday

FB
+ Omg. Lawyer called and Sg Long is making a comeback...

+ Money is just a word, as of the last century. Anything that's just a word is an information technology.
++ Compressor's not working :(
++ Market's up big time. Too bad I'm in no mental shape to trade actively for a few weeks. Nearly full focus on the busy period at the PR firm.
++ (on stages of corporate development that i'm interested in) Stages of development that I'm interested in are just about all of them - I think it's very deal-specific, since I'd bank on under-valued deals based on my own appreciation of how to improve their value. Doesn't everyone? :P

+(on the NYT article, Maybe It's Time for Plan C ) Had A B and C lined up, I'm still stuck on plan Z from the last cycle. Lol

+ 3am. Awaiting meteor storm on schedule in 6 hours. Tighten the boots, oil the barrels, latch the safeties, empty the mind, get ready for anything or nothing at all. Sleep soldier sleep. At least 7 more months of this war.

Thursday

FB

+ Churning in my mind. Rest required.
++ Finally got around to proofreading a draft that'd been sitting around for a week. Turned out to be such a minor set of edits that it would have amounted to recreational work, if I had done it earlier. I'm reminded to read as much as possible, as soon as possible, without expending energy on judgment.
++ Managed to get a little bit of research done, given the time bought with this serendipity. Bets placed. Tradestation closed. Back to other realities.
++ Trying out http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/08/salesforce-com-debuts-do-com-its-take-on-the-social-productivity-app/
Salesforce debuts Do.com, a smart social productivity app for small teams
++ I've examined this product and concluded that this looks like trouble for certain friends of mine.
++ Portfolio's up to 1%-per-annum.
++ only 20% of orders cleared. maybe I should normalise the sizes a bit; places positions from a !@#$% traffic jam
++ execution not great these days; stepping on the rationalisation nox
++ Good grief what a day. Dinner time.

+ Calvin and Susie are playing stupid girls vs asshole boys again. Oh bother. It's an icon of gender relations, probably derived from out special (as in species) DNA. There isn't much one can do to save relationships when one party insists that the other is a liar - and that's often enough for me, a stoploss limit. But why do many people call me a liar? I think it is because they can't accomodate my breadth of conversational folly. I pick random topics, like "chocolate is good" or "marketing is for morons" on a whim, and discuss them to myself, playing the role of devil, advocate, champion, or whatever strikes my fancy, sometimes for years. People then believe that I believe what I am saying. And they can't shake that belief. So I am a liar - but Oscar Wilde and others are allowed to be lyrical. No one is properly appreciated while alive, some say. In any event, this has shaped my social API: few take contract language more seriously than I; few take other language less seriously.
++ (on my being an asshole on twitter - here's new profile text) Few take contract language more seriously than I; few take other language less seriously. Be warned, I tell jokes that are many years long.
++ (forum - on a related note) After a couple of decades in different sorts of operations... I find that it becomes me not to work where "passion" is the lowest resolution of analyticity. If you can't break things down below the structure of a feeling, it becomes very difficult to have rationale discussions about feelings, and with such counterparts - I am quick to rescind interest. ;)

Friday

FB
+ Bored by endless faffing. :) On with life.
++ Goddamn philosophers :P
++ I need to go for a long run. If I start telling myself that now, it'll happen soon enough.
++ Traffic ridiculous. I have fled to my favourite Lucky Garden coffeeshop in the interim.
++ Oh NOW I get it... Oracle's happy to sue for Android because Ellison's Job's old buddy... makes total sense.
++ If I have kids, they will be taught to appreciate porn. I don't even like porn, but I make a point to study it. In principle, no one should fear their interaction with porn, no one should dislike themselves less, or enjoy themselves less, under any circumstances whatsoever. That's the sort of freedom that attached artists like Jobs may never understand.
++ One who is truly free, loses appreciation for so-called moral highlands.
++ All these pitiful artists... they think they have discovered truth. Unfortunately it is the same tautology that masturbation is good.
++ Hmm. I'm not sure that Apple can master the cloud form factor. iCloud's web GUI was visibly tacky (too heavy for browsers) when it launched iOS 5. oh no apple... well, let's see what they make of it. The cloud is much more open than hardware - competition abounds. Apple should probably stick to making great hardware. Not a fan of their GUIs myself.
++ Apple and software: I'd be impressed if they'd got guys like Lattner working on a distributed operating system using glue like 9P. That'd be the basis for a believable future in "cloud".

The artist believes in creation; the physicist belives merely in emergence.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 47/52 - onus

2011-11-19T19:07:00.001+08:00

Sunday

FB

+ (on Android on a stick project, Cotton Candy) I'd like to see MSFT come up with a Windows Phone/8 device like this one.

+ Shakin off that under-utilised, under-capitalised, under-leveraged feelin... groping around for dinners in hell.
++ impending rate cuts, another slow down in housing, and indexes tipping over everywhere... kinda feels like i'm shooting myself in the foot. let's see how this goes.
++ Frugal pasta. Accidentally 'al dente'. Sipping oily instant coffee. Enjoying the rain. Watching the talking heads on Bloomberg TV, especially the pretty one from MacroMavens.

+ Sunday recreation in between bits of work.
++ GoodRobot Abstraction: Erlang and Flynn's Taxonomy

+Some of these random people on Facebook who add me are either bots or intelligence agents -_- or just normal people.

+Parked at Bangsar Village II Starbucks pursuing my gnomish PR duties... drop by for a chat if you're near!
++ Parsed some email. Updated some documents. Updated some filing structures. Prepared two case-studies for hacking. Going for a walk. Nice weather, this. Back to work later.

+ Radar indicates 2 bogeys on Monday, 1 on Tuesday, 1 on Wed, 3 on Thu, 1 more by Thu, 1 on Fri. I need to rustle up financing for gradschool at the same time - an opportunity has presented itself. Research currently deprioritised. Time to start sniping targets. Battlestations!
++ Thoughts at the barber's: I still think that the most mature growth strategy that one can play as a young person, is to minimise risk and to build a diverse portfolio of value buys. A balance of stars, cows, and question marks properly distributed across many stages of a single supply chain, retains system availability, while creating opportunities for performance optimisation through vertical integration in the future. Wing it.
++ For me, I summarise this as avoiding professional skill specialisations, and focusing on transferable skill development across the entire gamut of "commercial activity" - and that includes resume development.
++ (on needing to build something besides a resume) No I don't - I've got plenty of ongoing projects already. Just because I don't sell things, doesn't mean I don't have something I'm building :p Besides, building a trading balance counts as building too.
++ Example : today's build list - case studies for clients, miscellaneous tasks for bosses, proof of credit-worthiness for bankers... won't even have time to work on GoodRobot.blogspot.com ... sigh... busy busy.
++ Not much if mental events are concrete - to me they are. Everything is building. I just built a sentence right there.
++ Semantics. :P
++ If you're really curious about how I run my long-term strategies, you can look here - hehe - http://goodrobot.blogspot.com/2011/11/founder.html
++ Nap time. Stockpiling for a busy week.
++ When in doubt, document everything. Sceptics have long journals.
++ Edge's tablet app is cool. More financial news!
++ Need more quality food. Been eating too much overpriced crap of late. Studying kinesthesia. Again.
++ Run before dinner. Lethargic and out of shape.

+ Everywhere I go, they tell me I'm abnormal. But I look myself in the mirror daily (well, metaphorically) and tell myself, it doesn't matter if I look stupid to them. They look pretty damn stupid to me.
++ Time to take a swig of warm water.
++ What does it matter? :P The really stupid thing is... why do some people care that others are not like them? :) But such are the people of the earth.
++ I think it's a cyclical thing. Every few years, I forget the degree of variance in human emotion, and so I let my guard down, piss off a few people, and then remind myself to be a quieter person.
++ I think my highest degree of friction also comes from being close to people who don't like working seven days a week. They're impossible to get a hold of on week days, and on weekends they won't get anything else done.
++ That was just a jibe. But it is interesting to consider.

LI

+ ( Personal summary) I still think that the most mature growth strategy that one can play as a young person, is to minimise risk and to build a diverse portfolio of value buys. This means a balance of stars, cows, and question marks properly distributed across many stages of a single supply chain. This can retain system availability, while creating opportunities for performance optimisation through vertical integration in the future.
++ I implement this strategy by avoiding professional skill specialisations, and focusing on transferable skill development across the entire gamut of "commercial activity".

Monday

FB

+ Lunch! No, bankers! I like doing deals.
++ Missed the Digi stock split and 8% in a coupla hours! But ooooh... it's a massacre. I think my portfolio's in the red now. Maxis holding up nicely though.
++ Geez, I'm still in the black by 0.15% !!!

+ Force feeding. Taking a biologically conservative approach.
++ It still feels like loser week.
++ Time to get aggro -_^ push back. Yang variables up.
++ Fully jittery today. Need to go work out all that anxiety. Ruuuuunnnnn.....!

+ standing by for more wtf-curry. even work gets in the way of work some times. i guess as usual, i'll just securitise it as anthropology. i suppose playing the role of a humanist means seeking to constantly understand the deeper rationale, beneath the apparent chaos of ordinary opinion. commerce is often like that. people will be people.
++ not feeling very satisfied with myself this evening. a lot of entertaining. not much work done. tried reading up on Lisp dialects, and Ada (which has a language specification, like ANSI Common Lisp). inconclusive. am i deluded, or is Erlang...
++ at the risk of sounding like a prick: note to self, stop complaining about people with narrow world views for the next two hours. i think that will make me a happier person and ready me for sleep.

Tuesday

FB

+ Storytelling 301: the product is an emotion, the pitch hinges on the debilitation of rational faculties, and when you explain how a magic trick works, there is no magic left to sell... now if only all salespeople understood what they were selling. If your business is stupidity, and you try to sell your smarts, you are doomed.

+ Just made my girl watch Watchmen. I figure I'm still a fair split between Manhattan, Rorschach, and Ozy. Pop.
++ Not a bad rendition of the movie. Does more showing than telling. Unlike some headlines I had to read today.
++ I take that back. No one is like Manhattan. Fair split between Rorschach and Ozy maybe.

+ Tomorrow morning's going to be blood on the market. Come on ECB -_- fat hopes right there.
++ Tomorrow's strategy looks like this. And it's gotta be that way for a few days. If they don't fix stuff, we just sulk and write more code while waiting for a long-term solution. If they fix stuff, we go in with another 30% total fund exposure, parking it in challenger brands, consumer goods, and mid-caps with strong fundamentals. Grr. Wait for it. It's gonna be a rough one.
++ Noob watchlist: {GRPB, YTLP, DIGI, MAXIS}, {GUIN, NESZ, STAR, MPR, PLUS}, {SIME, IJM, IOI, IGB, KLK}, {MAY, CIMB, PBK}

Wednesday

FB

+ It's force feeding time. Brrrrrreak fast!
+ This is BIG.
++ xkcd: Money Chart

+ Hello slings and arrows. Where is my outrageous fortune?
++ Exposed to volatile equity and realestate markets, useless friends that want me to be more socially relevant, bored lovers that want me to eat more, and well... there's always the details of life in the service sector. It must be a growth opportunity. So I tell myself to grow faster damnit. I'm not dealing well with life as it is. :p
++ (lyrical retort to comment on burgers) And the french fries, they are merry...

+ I don't want to run. I want to sleep. Much mess surrounds me. I hope for a clearer head to work with after sleep.
++ Post nap order of the evening: item 1 - realestate.
++ hit a wall. government offices open at 81:5am. that means up at 7:45am.
++ Reading before bed. Termite & Scheme.
++ Told my day boss that I'd put studies on hold - but apparently I'm more mentally alert if I keep studying. So on it goes. Hopefully everyone wins.
++ ♥ rain at night while reading

Thursday

+ I find it hard enough to find talented people, let alone demand that they occur within some particular industry. (On the alledged shortage of "talented advertising people".)
++ Upon reflection, one of the reasons I'm not ideally suited for the headhunting profession is... that I'm genuinely unimpressed by most people, regardless of "seniority".

+ Today, my mum offered me a two hundred thousand Ringgit interest-free loan. I told her it would be too complicated. She said I was strange. Today, my girlfriend tried to tell me about how to get a better mortgage. I told her I didn't care what mortgage package I got, because my mortgage was for a tiny amount. She said I was strange. And that's just the part of my life I can talk about :P oh "happy" days. Anyway, 0155 hours and I've got to be up in 3 hours for work. So I thought, to help me sleep better, I'd update my social media properties, catch up on macroeconomics, and then see if any other nutters are doing the same. Nope. No such luck.
++ ok. ready for bed. yawn.
++ Nap. Coffee. That, well timed, does wonders. Dinner. Rest. Maybe some exercise.

All in all, it ended up being not a bad day at work - I managed to spend minimal time on my bum, an what time was spent that way, was relatively productive.

Saturday

FB

+ How to react to random recommendation requests on LinkedIn: "I have never worked with K**y** Y*d**, nor do I know him personally. But in the interest of creating network equity, I have chosen to write this brief endorsement for his profile. Whatever you do or do not take away from this note, Remember K**y** Y*d**."
++ Somehow found it entertaining to continue writing recommendations with a number of people I remember working with in the past.
++ A dedicated vegetarian. Pursuant to the installation of our in-office salad bar, no cucumbers were safe from his discovery.
++ Yes, I was going for prose that could actually pass as serious to a small % of LinkedIn readership. Tak sedap lah lu...
++ ‎... come, walk the middle path with me.
++ Time for laundry and housekeeping. Or realestate touring. Fgmhmmm
++ first weekend back in a coupla weeks

+ If you are a server or application hosting provider, have you considered the benefits of the Microsoft SPLA?

+ Sexing up some pre-sales prose. Talking dirty, is talking dirty, whether it's a potential partnership in business or in pleasure.

+ My mind is slowed by repetitive activities engaged in for money. No worries. I have years of this down, and room for a few years more.
++ ‎"bloody young people" she said // "we guard you while you sleep" i said - #fightclub

+ Whenever I have a heart-to-heart with someone, the counterpart probably has to use their head a lot. So I have heart-to-heads? Geez.
++ http://www.opendataday.org/
International Open Data Hackathon

+ The market's smeared with blood today! December nears. I figure my time allocation this year looks something like: 50% information technology, 30% asset management, 20% communications...
++ On the way to a meeting. Revising that estimate to 30% ops & client management, 25% IT R&D, 15% financial management, 10% comms management, and 10% talent management, and 10% business development.
++ Four commercial contracts. Three new asset classes. A handful of new programming languages and dialects. And a challenging personal relationship. Ok, when I put it that way... it's been a fruitful year.
++ Checking my pace. It shouldn't take me 37 minutes in between an email from my office desk and an email on a train. Hmm. Shortcuts required.
++ Oh hell what a week. And it ain't even over.
++ listening to music, to help clear my short term memory.
++ Second day of catch up on sleep. A couple more days required before I start bouncing again. But first, as the sun is up, I shall catch up on work.
++ On the year... gotta note down: "and one new industry" though it's four new industries if you count asset classes as industries.
++ Stuck at the barbers. Oh, these maintenance rituals for business life!
++ ‎(on Gen Y being smarter with contracts) People who aren't smart with contracts, ought to get out of business.
++ If you don't understand the promises that you make, how do you deliver on the promises that you make? Fools...
++ rain, motherfucking rain in bangsar !!
++ ‎(on needing coffee) just hold out a cup with grounds - the rain will do the rest

+ ‎(on grudges being a waste of time) Sometimes if you feel really bad about your relationship with someone, then you really ought to have a "are you trying to screw me over?" conversation with them. :)
++ Talking to a friend about people, I'm reminiscing a lot of relationships I terminated over the past four years because I thought they weren't fair / didn't make sense / weren't worth my time / whatever. But first I always asked the difficult questions. Just my taste (or lack thereof) I guess! In the startup industry, they do often say "fail fast / fail early".

+ via osnews.com http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/21/nokia_hildon_the_great_lost_platform/
Nokia's Great Lost Platform • The Register

+ (dating strategies for companies) So you see... I exhibit a rather superficial notion of "love".

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 46/52 - code

2011-11-12T20:16:00.001+08:00

Sunday

FB

+ Still looking for a problem. Troubletakers don't go without finding something to do.
++ Everything I can think of is rather hardware specific. Maybe it's time to hack hardware.
++ Ok, between posting this and 1pm, I've noticed that "automatic abstractive text summaries" is interesting enough a subject. It's also related to a lot my past and present resume - so I have some insight here. :)

+ In university, I felt that people who attended university to improve their job prospects were in university for the wrong reasons. After university, i was happy to give such people more love, as i did not have to share their thinking spaces.

+ Housing project haz headshot. Time to refocus on programming and finance.
++ farming (forum) Anyone looking for a startup CTO? I'm ready to get into that around July next year - so we've got that much time to figure out plans before kickoff. PS - no offense, but if your idea can be prototyped in 2-3 weekends, I'm not interested in your idea. ;P Looking for a longer haul gig, so hit me with something you'd like to do, where your bottleneck is tech (hardware is fine, as long as you've also rustled up the respective financing requirements). Also, I'm not interested if you plan to use MY government grant money to fund technical development - anything else is ok.
++ ‎... see, if I had more front-office stuff on my resume, I'd be posting the above for CMO/CEO roles as well; bait and switch, at least this should get some conversation going.
++ Looking for a fairly significant problem.
++ More sleep required.
++ Too many noisy voices in my head. Why do i keep friends like this? Oh, anthropology.
++ If ii like being productive, then i never have to worry about liking what i do, as i always will like what i do, so long as i am productive. That seems to summarise the past. #sundayAndLaundry
++ Maybe time to fire a few more projects. Where's my todo list...
++ Parked everything except Lisp Flavoured Erlang. This means active investment is being deprioritised also. Sigh.
++ It's always good to refactor. I like cleanup days. Time to move some laundry.
++ Demoting the primary non-job priority on my list for a bit. LFE is down. What's up? Need to figure out something less quantitative. Gradschool is fail.
++ The reason being that LFE will be a relatively verbally intense undertaking - and I do need to step away from verbal work somewhat to protect my on-job resources till EOY. Hmm. What to do...
++ Maybe it's time to work on my musculoskeletal hardware. Traditionally, that's the default answer for questions like these. Maybe I've been overcomplicating things, thanks to the financially elegant and structurally naive advice, which I have overprioritised from acquaintances, of late. Sigh. Soloing has its risks, I guess.

Monday

FB

+ There are "class clowns," and then there are... "best in class clowns" -_- just reviewing some past projects. What were they thinking?

+ (forum) Deleted the noisy post. But I figured out a way to package some interests in a way that is easy to understand, an so I have booted up what I call the GoodRobot Abstraction project, and have written about it here. http://goodrobot.blogspot.com/2011/11/about-us.html
++ I want a robot that's good at summaries. This project is to develop and popularise software that reads and summarises texts - technically, "automatic abstractive text summaries". 13-Nov 2011.
++ One new blog, eight new posts (albeit short ones), and a massive consolidation of my interests over the past decade, into a vessel that may last for the next decade. That's an afternoon's good work, I think. Need food!
++ One more post and a lot of edits. Hyperlinkage is shaping up.

+ Hilarious sequel http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii-posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/
The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk
++ Here's one of those thing about being a loner; you have to be a generalist, in order to supplement your environment with all the factors that more sociable people might obtain from their peers, co-workers, friends, and family - since you generally don't have those relationships with other people except at a superficial level.
++ (on someone's having better problem definition than solution) Fire away. Boot up a doc and share it with me - we can drill down / filter from your bucket list.

Tuesday

FB

+ EOD. Time to cook up some prioritisation, and retire junior investments. LFE? KLSE? NLP? wtf...
+ Lunch time.
++ Bankers are so sllooooow today :(
++ ‎@&$@)&$ blackout!!!!
++ FTS

Wednesday

FB

+ Market's going down tomorrow morning. Hola KLSE...
++ Watching Inside Job. I'm glad I learnt about toxic debt in 2007, and decided to leave banking to learn programming. That's probably a couple of years well spent. The hurricane is not over.
++ Money is easy - you just have to con people. I have a harder time conning machines. That's still more challenging for a while.
++ Resting in a comfy place. I feel blessed.
++ Lunch time. Looks like DIGI is behaving like a safe haven. Probably gonna split anytime. Missed THAT party.
++ Rain = pricey lunch
++ Waiting for my pasta. Studying CDSs.
++ come on... drop some more damnit...
++ Caught up on sleep. Brain is superfast for a bit. (forum) Read up on zmq. I'm too noob to have touched raw sockets before, but i broadly see where it's going...
++ Safe haven or not, Digi has a few fans with deep pockets. But the market doesn't seem to be sustaining it... eh... noob
++ Reading up on the European sovereign debt crisis. US numbers are strong, but that could be a peak - or is this a comeback from 2003? lol

Friday

FB

+ I think I get it now. Italy's is a false crisis. It's fear and trembling in the boondocks. If there's a real problem, we're going to find it elsewhere. And I'm not thinking about Greece - that's news from yesteryear.
++ Hmm. No time now to worry about that. Bed time and then reporting in the morning.
++ Battlestations!
++ On the way to meeting. WHAT the hell, CIMB is almost a straight line down for a week. :-?
++ I like that bezos also targets 5-7 year horizons.
++ Market is sinking! Awhsum...
++ Waiting for the giant to break its back. Slow. Stay busy. Move readily.
++ Just discovered the Windows+x key combination by accidentl/
++ drafting a case study
++ Doesn't make much sense to get into the market without reading reports, and I don't have time to read reports for a while. Might as well go study Erlang meanwhile.
++ Giving up. Languishing in the priorities of the present.

Saturday

FB

+ RM55,000 for Nottingham University Executive MBA program. Anyone got any better ideas? I don't think it's great, but the paper will come in useful for job hunts. LOL
++ Better use for education loan monies: rent somewhere conducive for research. And I may just be about to put down my second bet on realestate, including learnings from the first lost venture
++ Is it just me, or is it really tough to find things worth doing in this town?

+ Feeling somewhat bored by the mediocrity of clowns who'll settle for $80,000/year and jack shit daily schmoozing. Off to explore Malaysia.

+ Production: I don't mind being the gaffer... but please just tell me who the one, and only one, director is.
++ TGIF - back to school until the nutty emails arrive.
++ Looks like short-term consumer loans become a lot more attractive in July 2012.
++ Quintupled fund paid up capital. Internal rate of return at 0.34% even after accounting for friction on the sale of equities. Cool. Am I noob or what...
++ Reading up on Erlang's stdlib. Going home to do laundry for a bit.
++ I need to make breakfast a more important routine.
++ Checking out executive MBA programs.
++ Laundry -> Dryer, then heading out to explorer the highlands with a realtor. Ironically, the prettier stuff is cheaper than the city living.
++ OKU realtor drives with one hand and without a seatbelt. This'll be the death of me...
++ Holy shit. This place is fantastic.
++ Realtor had a stroke. Forgot how to speak his first language, Cantonese. We speak English.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 45/52 - island

2011-11-06T15:15:00.000+08:00

Sunday

FB
+ I hate birthdays, and I hate vacations. If you like them, please don't tell me about it. It'll just make me hate you. Love. ;)
++ Cleaned up my fund accounting spreadsheet. RM60.33 on RM1067.32 in 6 days... that's a CAGR of 2735% WUT?!?! small monies, but I'm beginning to like the icing on this day trader thing. Pity it's not all icing. Haha.
++ Between a lawyer that couldn't get anything done in 2-3 months and a complicated seller, I've decided to write off $533 in deposits on a property I would have liked to buy, had my counterparties behaved in a more timely manner.
++ Make that 4-5 months. 7-June deposit placed; 4-Nov I tell the lawyer, since we haven't started, let's not bother. And they won't take fees. I guess I stink.
++ What a year.
++ Time to start house hunting again! :D
++ and like a bat out of hell, my mind picks up - i have no reason to be in KL again. but contracts have been placed, and there is much work to be done still. perhaps time for iproperty.com
++ Seriously considering Lily & Rose as a quick solution. But I think those are leasehold also. Slow.
++ Super volatile year. At least I've dumped most of the toxic stuff. A few laggards remain, but well, what's diversification for anyway? :P
++ Erlang's probably top on my list for a middleware platform. Frontend: Haskell or Lisp?
++ I miss chicklet keyboards. I think I haven't been treating my keyboard right... it's actually quite soft to the touch, but i've been hammering it because of the shape of the keys
++ ‎(comment on the MY scene these days) the problem is that the language is the medium of instruction... and since the media was broken and to-date unfixable, they had to rollback... the problem hence, is that they still haven't figured out how to teach english. not that they don't know how to teach math and science. that's a separate problem all by itself.
++ I haven't used wap apps in a long time!
++ Arrived. WiFi Internet only at lounge. No worries, I think I can get most of my work done somehow. Also, there's always Monday evening back "home". Post coffee break, shower, then maybe dinner and work.
++ ‎"Brand" is a fancy term for "name". What's in a brand? What's in a name? Semantically, each of those is just an image, a graphic or sound. A morpheme. The brand or name, means, every other image that is within one degree of separation from it, in the minds of its discussants. So to speak. Coggy techspeakish.
++ Looks like the price of pasta is going down? Wheat stockpiles are up!
++ The rain is slowing. I'm still unsettled. It may mean a sleepless Monday night. Probably not, fortunately.

+ Every business is a wager. The CEO runs the bets, the COO runs what's being bet on, the CS/MO times the bets, and the CRO picks up the slack. Different names for the same thing. Best my breakfast deprived brain could come up with while walking to the store.

+ At the moment, for nutty startups I'm probably only considering CMO/CEO roles, as those are the ones I value, which I haven't already done. Been thinking about it since the end of the long gig last December. Hmm. #ruminations.
++ Maybe if I haven't found anything super interesting to do by next July, I'll just spam Kickstarter/Ulule type websites, and run local community programs.
++ ‎!@#$%^&*( mosquitos
++ either no-wifi, or lotsa-mosquitoes - i am losing hope here... maybe I will just procrastinate till Monday night back in KL. meanwhile, I can house hunt online... while slapping mosquitoes

Monday

FB
+ I guess professional brand managers don't often encounter "allow the public to think you're worth less than what you are," as a component of branding strategy.
++ The rationale is simple - the customer who can recognise your true value, and is able to rationalise your price, is self-selecting.
++ Of course, you can easily apply this kind of strategy only in retirement, or if a brand is supposed to get you through gradschool, and not much else ;) then again, things don't always turn out as intended. They may exceed humble expectations. But expectations remain, nonetheless.

+ A rough delineation of the equity classes in the security that is my life from 2001-2011, would look something like this: (a) education/information, (b) health/physique, (c) resume/trophies, (d) reputation/mindshare, (e) money and things you can easily buy with it, (f) relationships with other people
#financeGeekery So you can see why my time gets spent the way it does.

+ Working on tech PR reports on GPRS in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the sea, in the middle of South-east Asia, at the head end of the 21st century. Sigh.
++ at least the constant rain is calming
++ focus fool, focus...
++ ‎0035 hours - about time to give up, given the less than ideal working conditions, and the anticipated 5-hour drive tomorrow, mostly on two lane "suicide" trunk roads.
++ Not the busiest week of the last decade. But this is the busiest week, in the busiest year of the last decade. Unit returned to noisy base. Need to clean up and do laundry. Feed. Get some shut eye, then return to operations levels befitting full logistical support. It was a fun birthday present, pity I didn't have the presence of mind to fully dig in. Priorities: work, friends, family, unfortunately for the family of two.
++ Interrupted my nap to get more laundry done, and can't fall back asleep again. Fml. I hate working on too little sleep. Time to get up for work soon.
++ Time to roll out. Suit up. Finalise laundry. Feed. Find a noisy location that stimulates the concentration. Work!
++ On the other hand, a lack of exercise and budgetary concerns, plus the lack of sleep on my part... suggests that a more domestic approach may be optimal for this evening.
++ Walking out for a quick dinner, home for fruit, then work.

+ Delineating peoples' relationship goals is interesting. Some are looking for someone to feed them; others are looking for someone who lets them feel less alone in the world; others still are looking for someone to make fun of the rest of the world with. In the absence of other people, some people wouldn't know what to do with themselves. I do know what I'd be doing - and I am doing it anyway, with or without the rest of you. #work #life #reflections
++ ‎"don't you want to belong?" // "not really. not to this. it's all too human. yawn." LOL
++ ‎(on Apple's supply-chain excellence) Just read up on your critical chain management. (Or what philosophers call modal logic.) Businesses are most easily run by checklisting (in this order): how easily you can get your hands on stuff, how consumable you can make that stuff, and then only how saleable you can make that stuff.

+ Registering for every sub-$100,000 residential development I can find near Kuala Lumpur... comfort is not a priority, I need a fuss-free roof. it's a busy decade. I've already lost 5 months on this project, thanks to weak counterparties and a lost deal.
++ I'm looking for deals. Quick deals. Prioritise freehold secondary market items, ready-to-move-in new developments, distressed properties. I need a deal that closes quickly. There's much work to be done, and this can't hardly wait. -_-
++ Staying in Malaysia? (comment) Who said I was staying? In the last six years no one's required me to sign a contract for more than 12 months, so I've never had to decide. It's all touch'n'go, tactical moves for now.
++ When you work on my timeline, and you miss deadlines by months, I don't have many options but to move on. :(
++ I think you missed the point. I'm looking for fast not good.
++ Looking at the smallest, shittiest, freehold deals, because those transact faster. Or, any places that developer is willing to let move in/reno immediately without extra cost to me.

Tuesday

FB
+ Still underslept.
++ A whole lotta dead gonna happen if i don't make up for a whole week and weekend of early mornings.
++ Not successful at falling asleep. This is bad. I need to sleep before getting some work done before 9am. What does come to mind are a lot of designs regarding organizational structure - like baking cell groups into HR policies from inception.
++ Come to think of it, the last catch-up sleep session I had was 12 days ago. Hm.
++ The housemates take showers, ring the doorbell, go about their familial routines. I treat my biological family as little more than acquaintances with whom I exchange favours.
++ Done with laundry.
++ moved operations from noisy base to magical creatures; proceeding in silence...
++ Done with urgent work. Procrastinating less urgent work till the morrow. Updating calendars with reminders, then off to bed.
++ Knackered. But glad to have deposited minimal efforts in locking down a residence. For the day. Back to work now.

+ I love you to bits. But love is a satellite to my world of work. Love is not fundamental to my being.
++ Shush and board the train Ramachandra -_-

Thursday

FB

+ Sitting for the last hour in car beside rumah pam air kepong estate looking for deals on my phone. Yay apple.
++ (on whether I was stealing wifi) Nope. Just good ol digi 3G
++ I owe a lot to Digi :P
++ Crashed. Addressed critical chain factor that is sleep. More needed in next six weeks. Need to triple that insurance. Back to ops.
++ ‎(forum: on the social graphe being neither) First of all, math is a model. It's the study of how our brains prefer to carve up the world (trying to understand that literally is like literal bootstrapping, which physically doesn't work), the best way to appreciate math is as a metaphor. So OF COURSE life isn't as simple as nodes and edges. However, once you get that bit of conversation on the table, the distinction between a node and an edge is trivial. It's like the distinction between an object and a property. At the end of the day, each is purely theoretical. Whether boys have hair, or hair has boys is a purely linguistic construct. At the end of the day, there's "really" only the stuff that the words refer to.
++ Nap. Then back to operations.
++ Pre-nap note: avoid placing orders under rm2858 in value.
++ best way to use sleep so far: let fear takeover the conscious imagination, while detaching the conscious imaggination from the motor nervous system - everyone wins
++ Trying to fall asleep. Repeatedly frustrated with the overcomplexity that many AI researchers ascribe to the human mind (ultimately i blame the naive humanists for defending that position). The human mind is a very simple thing. The smallest possible model of it should also be very simple. Memory is an edgestore, language is a string parser, knowledge is the subset of memory which is maintained through unit tests whose generative algorithm we call the Scientific Method (popper is simple enough, yet powerful enough). Jesus, why don't you all get this?? ;p Back to rest, then back to ops. Worry about civilisational issues after we worry about the quarterly reporting. :) Can't wait for school to begin again in December.
++ Other bugbears come to mind. If we build the rise of the machines, then we are building the deflation of human capital. If we achieve the total and complete deflation of human capital, how do we humanistically transfer power in advance, to every human being, so that the currency of their flesh is protected? The next thing that comes to mind is something like communism, but i'm sure we can come up with a more elegant solution than that. ;)
++ Meanwhile the only futureproof industries are energy, mining, manufacturing and logistics. If you lose the genome, you lose the need for agriculture. But if we presume the persistence of the genome, we could prop up shares in agriculture for a while, and if we ever settle this civilly, we might even be able to prop up shares in culture and the arts perpetually. Ho hum.
++ So much for 60 minutes of attempted napping. But it was R&R well spent all the same. Back to operations.
++ Sugar. Parsed emails. Nap again. It's going to be a long night. Lotsa sugar.
++ Email hell is not having 300 emails/day. Email hell, is having 30 emails/day that you can't do anything about, but whose content you have to gratuitiously bear in mind anyway...
++ my partner thinks i'm an asshole on twitter. why the qualifier? i thought i was just a vanilla asshole. :(
++ life is such a stage.
++ (on technocratic anarchism and the computational invalidity of the supernatural) that's a geek dream. if the machines are smart enough, the machines will eat you too. :P and supernaturalism is a hypothesis, quite valid, as many other imaginary things are... though not scientific by the criteria of "falsifiable"
++ ‎33% done for the evening... sigh
++ This has been an interesting year. Consultations that are not consultations. Specs that are not specifications. Developers that are not developers. Plans that are not plans. Case studies that have no cases. Business anthropology FTW...
++ ‎(I forgot... minutes that are not minutes...)
++ Excel crash. Lost some data. Deeefinitely nap time. Forgetting to Ctrl+S on every other action is a sin.
++ graph database development just rose to the top of my reading list
++ back at ops centre 2
++ ‎66%
++ ‎100% !!! yay. now for the fun part - laying out the rationale for all this. then breakfast.
++ When did JayaOne fall smack on the locus of section13/jalan u clusterfucks?! I guess i don't know this hood.
++ Apple for breakfast. Vietnamese tuyet lan for tea. Looking forward to mcCrap for lunch. We'll see... #stormWarningTillChristmas
++ Chala Spice set six, doubled. Now i'm reaadyyy fer werk...

Friday

FB
+ I'd willingly donate rm10,000 to any organisation that can guarantee training, jobs, and acceptance by all beggars in bangsar. Get'em off the streets!
++ Napkin calc: if there are 5 beggars in Bangsar, and each of them collects RM10/day, then this is an RM18k industry. Paying RM10k to destroy an RM18k industry would be a work of art. However, to get all the beggars off the street (including the bloody charity gnomes) for a minimum of fifty years, including the outlawing of begging in this area, would maybe require a foundation to be set up with a startup capital of RM500,000. For that, I'd need 49 other people who'd always be willing to cough up RM10,000 to keep Bangsar beggar-free for 50 years. Very doable. Maybe it's time to hit up Kickstarter... hahaha. (Any takers?) Back to work meanwhile.
++ it's an empty promise: guaranteeing "acceptance" by the beggars is almost unfeasible - you'd have to set up a concentration camp, and even then some would rather be shot than do real work.
++ now now, napkin calculations... there's also probably an average of 15 beggars per day, not 5

+ Daily outlook: zero throttle on studies till EOY, barring further developments, full throttle in 3Q11 with a move to the country...
++ Digital housekeeping, then sleep. Then work.
++ My first portfolio is sitting at +2.92% after 30 days. Better some than none. At least, that's a few drinks right there!
++ So the number is usd30m eh? Duely noted.
++ Yay. Done with most of urgent work for a bit.
++ Catching a breather. Reading about hypergraphs. Bit at a time. Sleep time.
++ Following a late night conversation on why Brandtology's research methodology is useless for long-tail insight, I'm sniffing around for quantitative inspiration online. This isn't a formal study project, as I've parked those... eh... till the holidays.
++ Trying to figure out for fun, the difference between how you write a table-oriented database and a general graph database. DirectedEdge's classic article comes to screen again, but I do not find it immediately useful. It's very problem-specific, and I don't have a clear problem yet.
++ Hacking the world, and maximising capital, are two goals I'd like to delineate. Pick one and run with it. Either can lead, the other can follow.
++ Getting a lot of small fry is better than a bit of nothing. Busy year.

Saturday

+ Fuckit. It's only economical to buy a property because I let myself pay way too much for rent in 2009-11. Gonna reconsider this whole purchasing thing. But if I buy, I need to keep form, and move fast, instead of listening to all these worryworts around me.
++ (about using savings for reits instead of properties) Always the plan. But I only started doing active investment last month. Also, returning to the rural preference - I don't need the city. If the city needs me, it can bloody well pay me better. :p
++ Hitting the road for Seremban, and other stuff along the way.
++ Don't get me wrong, i've always liked cities a lot more than towns. But i don't need the city. i've got work to do.
++ (on rent being cheaper than mortgages) That's OZ where BLR is super high right? :p anyway, scoped out a few nice places, but decided to camp out at the parents place till end of current job contract, then decide what to do next. Probably can find an even smaller town with fibre Internet by then. Hehe.
++ Checking out another new highway that doesn't exist on Google maps. Yay.
++ Realising that with this car i run out of gears before i run out of horses -_-
++ Good to catch up on personal projects after two absentee weekends. Housing project has failed this time around - cost has been about a 150 hours and RM4,000, during Mar-Nov 2011. Pretty costly. Among the costliest projects I've failed at ever. Right up there with a hardly utilised 3-year gym membership, that was strategically positioned to align my interests with work at a start-up, which to-date hasn't been able to align itself with either customers, employees, or investors.

+ Centrepoint batu caves, freehold, myr110k upwards, shop apartments. Shopping!!!
++ Hangin out on streets I walked 24 years ago. Limestone cliffs, virgin forest, machine shops, this is my kinda town. #pandorawtf
++ Jammed on duta. I'm beginning to see the value of the DUKE.
++ finally got a good excuse to ride up the ramps to the new palace - major shortcut
++ Got signals at work that I appear to be making too much of an effort. Time to kick back... and unpark gradschool. With some luck, I'll find a place to live soon. Broker meetings start at 9am tomorrow, with a meeting every hour after that until... the calls stop coming. Hell yeah.
++ Off to find a shell.
++ Surrounded by doubtful voices. Grr. Let me fiddle with the options a bit.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 44/52 - more wage, less work, unfortunately

2011-10-30T02:32:00.000+08:00

Sunday

FB
+ Taking a break for dinner. This is the first month in a long time, which probably contains enough failures and noise to count as a "no lifer". Hehe.
++ Hwa Paprik and Sorority Row at a diner in Kerinchi.
++ Enjoying a brief reprieve in a stairwell somewhere. Physiological rest, acoustic calm, and a bit of historical reflection, and strategising for the near future. Ah, it must be ++ (forum) on avoiding distractions when at work: The point is to minimise noise surrounding any particular task, whether it's a fuck or a script. If there are likeminded people nearby, then a high SNR can be preserved even with collaboration. If there are noisy i.e. people irrelevent to the task at hand, then off.. someone must go.
++ [xx] I can't even remember what that was! I was just thinking about how I like to not-plan my vacations, whereas my partner likes to plan vacations. I got booked for next weekend, but I'm definitely not going to enjoy planning around it for the rest of the week. sigh. :) #superP
++ I was supposed to be more sociable this weekend, but timing has been shit. Couldn't wait up past 1:38am for counterparties, and decided to go home to crash. Much work before Monday. Whee.
++ This not having a home thing is not boding well for my time-efficiency. Not at all. Sigh.
++ Ten years ago I was 18, and too busy having fun to go to parties and bump flesh with the crew. Eight years ago I was 20 and too busy studying the information architecture of university syllabi to go to random parties. This week I'm 28, and avoiding random parties as I'm too busy clearing stuff out of my way so that I can study machine cognition. Not much changes. I wonder if I can keep this up for another ten years. I expect life to begin at forty, if I ever get there. Or maybe I'll just fold and party. :)
++ Refactored an accounting spreadsheet. Backdated savings targets, as if since completion of the undergraduate project, then grandfathered them into my current accounting period. I've actually OVERSAVED a bit, it seems. Good. Then this year's risks are insured, a bit more than I had hoped.
++ Actually no, forgot to add interest :D ok bed time. Much work to do on the morrow.
++ Efforts in the present can amplify efforts in the past.
++ Exhausted. But there's much work to be done! Shooting vitamins upon waking, lunch, a shower, then moving from the office to the client's office for the rest of the day, possibly!!!!
++ Initial status report fired. Spreadsheet templates prepared. Now for the manual labour... time it!
++ 25% done - subjective analysis of quantitative data, batch one.
++ (musing on the notion that I'm the only person in the vicinity who thinks of this data as a hypercube - I mean, everyone does, just not rigourously or consciously - but that means, of course that I can't act on small concrete insights without graphs or lengthy explainations)
++ 32% down. time for a swig of water. this is not manual labour - manual labour is often not cognitively intensive. this is micro-management :)
++ thanks [yy]! I have no recollection of my birthday two years ago - as you can tell, I really don't give a damn about birthday. death days are much more interesting. :) people don't come into the world having done stuff, so I don't see what the big deal is.
++ 43% - planning to break for lunch when I hit 50%. I was thinking about something, but I can't remember what it was - damn, that's why I write things down. #stoopid
++ my birthday is the only day I get to tell people that birthdays don't matter and shouldn't be celebrated... haha
++ Note to self: at some point we need to distinguish between the vector of a clip's amplitude-in-general, and a clip's amplitude-per-subject.
++ i hate birthdays. #garfieldMoments
++ 50.246%! Rest glazy eyes, and grab lunch.
++ 67.98%. Gah :) Vacuum cleaners all around me...
++ 75 percento... finally we're getting somewhere.
++ Why do I have songs by the Offspring playing in my head?
++ 100%
++ Dinner at Dutamas. Back to graphs.

+ (work on sunday: picture of the cafe under our office)
++ now that I've become familiar with the amount of non-digitised effort in the PR industry, i'm seriously considering writing a bitch in Lisp and founding a startup to mechanicaly parse news [] - that sound interesting to anyone?
++ well obviously, the jokers out there have been babbling about Semantic Web for forever and a day. wolfram alpha / siri is not a bad start. but in this case, i'm considering a business intelligence / market intelligence / media intelligence service... that's a decent balance of client servicing (because much translation is needed at the HCI junction) and hard core algorithmics on the backend. so yes, like a search engine, but we write custom code for it on demand, and stick a consulting firm on the front end of the product :P
++ ooooo.... the maids just came in... btw, if anyone every goes to that cafe, the spag vogole comes in very small portions, but it's ok. next time if i'm hungry, i'm sticking with the cream sauce for fillers...

Tuesday

FB

+ I'm trying to find out if erlang is an acceptible lisp. http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an-acceptable-lisp
++ http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/02/why-ruby-is-not-acceptable.html

+Job done. Fanciest rushed deck I've done in a long time. :)
++ Ah, awesome timing. 28 YEARS LATER !! Where my zombies at?
++ Housekeeping at 3am. As the house is quiet.
++ Looks like I'm booked solid next weekend. That means, I can't afford much of a break this week. it's gonna be work work work, day and night baby...
++ I fucking hate planned vacations.
++ Got early warning for an anticipated 6-hour write-off for roadtripping next weekend plus possible further write-off for gratuitiously intentional entertainment activities. Fuckall. Good grief. This is going to get me worried about catching up with studies all week. Gotta roll with it. 4:14am now. Ideally I'm up at 6:30am and back to lab for a bit before hitting the office at 9am. Likelihood is I'll sleep through both alarms. Sigh. Gotta roll with it. Breath slower, and move faster. Comeon brain, behave....
++ Just saw Margin Call. Miss finance. All the kids whose company I enjoyed most ended up in financial services. I guess there are 90-hour/week bankers, and 90-hour/week startup guys, and 90-hour/week hermits... and ditto the generalists.
++ Home. Fixing up my one of my metal babies...
++ snoozing off a caffeine burn
++ once again I have escaped from bootloader hell... mwuahahah.... #boreng
++ diggin deep; lookin for options; (forum): we process most information from our sensory nervous system subconsciously. meditation is just the moving of data between conscious memory and subconscious memory. couldn't be simpler.
++ Hangin with a ginger ale. (forum) don't be asking for programming logic. This is your problem rephrased: "hotel booking website" is not a spec. You need a spec. That's spe-ci-fi-ca-tion. Programming is easy, but many programmers work downstream from shitty product managers. Product managers who don't get analytical are not managers. Product managers should be in charge of defining quality. That means writing tests, not test code, but test logic - ifs, thens, or-else-whats. Product managers don't have the privilege of ideation (even if you're on Steve Job's budget, he got good at what he did after he figured out supply-chain ma-nage-ment). I think software developers should watch Project Runway. You want rapid development? You want snazzy UI? You want guys who do full-stack prototyping? Watch Project Runway. Buggy developers don't make it past those judges. No way. Every one who wants to be called a fashion designer needs to know how to make clothes. Software product managers who haven't written code? Useless in two-man startups. No one needs a diva until they've gotten past b-stage funding. Tongue in cheek ;)
++ Jaya one is a good place to hang. Just down the road.
++ Goin home fo some serious readin. Dis why i dun do de booz.
++ Laundry. More reflective work.
++ Market did some interesting moves today. Good learnings.
++ So i am wondering... if erlang's hot-loadable code feature is a gateway for meta-programming. Or if i should learn lisp. Prolly both.
++ Starting a dive into lisp and erlang. Bed time.
++ Today's entertainment: gratuitious participation in traffic jams. Love this rainy thing.
++ Lisp weaknesses: platform divergence. Metacircular programming: Lisp can suck it's own cock, but Erlang can have mutant children by virgin birth. May not be accurate analogy. Still reading.
++ Irony of ironies, i first pro coded in the cells of Excel. Now i'm studying Lisp and quite comfy with its syntax. Excel's not bad after all.
++ Anyone who thinks that the ios animations are fast, just is too slow to see the individual frames. Who needs fifty odd clunky transitions per second?! Get me to the last frame immediately!!!
++ Nothing wrong with robots as long as they're smart and sensitive robots.
++ I think someone just dropped a fucking bottle of perfume in starbucks bangsar village one. Groan.
++ After reading a long foodfight on concurrent processing of log files, it was refreshing to read "the log file is a legacy datastructure."
++ I need a better understanding of hash tables. But first i think i need a hamburger.
++ Lisp is a mathematical syntax that someone figured out how to translate into machine language. Erlang is a war machine. Where do they meet?
++ I guess the stackmeld should be: Erlang OTP backend for infrastructural rigour. Lisp interpreter for developer HCI. Sugared dialect to hook Excelers, graphical drag and drop frontend to hook kids. Now we're getting to hard drug design. Scary.
++ Lisp Flavoured Erlang: a proper Lisp. Hmm. http://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/325/EFLA10-LispFlavouredErlang.pdf
++ If i wanted to pull a Jobs, I'd be trying to unify computing for everyone, not just consumers. I'd be inclined to begin with the atoms..Sic
++ Lisp fpgas, lisp OSes, lisp windows managers. How low do you wanna go?

Wednesday

FB

+ (on a messy schedule from 2-Nov to 10-Nov) Thinking about it makes my head hurt. Writing it down in 2D gives me something that I can point to to hate.

+ Between my current girlfriend and day job, the coming weekend is being obliterated. So much for gradschool. Goes off to rest head.
++ Life's going to suck until 10-Nov. given the number of commitments lined up. Oh well. Steel up and growl. Grrr.
++ All transactions are consensual in nature. :p
++ Then again after a few more unanswered messages and another .7 hours in the waiting room, I'm beginning to think it's time to let this one go. I'm in a firing mood, and I definitely don't have spare minutes for incommunicados.
++ 11:11pm. Now to salvage what's left of the evening. I think there is time for housekeeping, and not much more. I spend a lot of time on housekeeping. It becomes a vast house, that which is my mind.
++ I guess I will have to get groceries tomorrow, instead.

+ Ongoing environment: ecommerce deployment; Function: Project Management; Rank: Sr. Executive; What you can do: bicker with bankers, talk tech to tech boys, shoot shit with marketeers; What you do best: pick up shit, integrate loose ends, deliver on schedule; Company: listed on bursa, but majority owned by a gweilo company, global holding co. announced good earnings; Working hours: prolly 9-5; Job market value: RM5-6k/month; Type of employment: permanent with EPF an' all that; posting for a friend - if interested, PM me your cv (apparently you can attach files these days).
++ Q: can you bicker with bankers? A: bring me a banker. Let's find out.
++ Housekeeping at 2:22am
++ Took a long position on Yes4G's data inventory. Makes no sense - price of data can only go down. But having data on hand is a must for work.
++ Laundry or not laundry? Shutdown.
++ Not catching up. Just futilely pursuing Bloomberg before a nap.
++ Big beat. Awoken quite refreshed. Food.
++ Goodreader for one-click downloads of many PDFs broker reports straight to the best tablet reader ever. Mmhmm.
++ While reading about stocks is quite educational, I'm shutting down my brain again in preparation for another monster job this weekend. Time for a drink.
++ Fucking noise levels just went up. Time to leave the building.
++ Seems like all of PJ got scared by yesterday's jam and stayed in tonight. Hohoho.
++ Some people lack pleasure and they are driven by a pursuit of more. Others lack pain and are driven by the escape from it.
++ Laundry. And much noise in this house. And no other houses to go to. I need to find a home.

Thursday

FB

+ I'm definitely a 16. 22. 26. anyone who's dated me want to comment? Please do. (29 Reasons You Shouldn’t Date a Tech Entrepreneur)

+ OMFG. This is exactly what the Philosophy major is supposed to train you for... analytical KPI submission of content.

+ Those of you who go through life without ceasing to dote on relationships with friends and family... may never understand how the rest of us willingly do without.
++ Unfortunately, one can't tell one's parents to shut up... all the time. It's not nice.
++ I guess there'll be time for groceries tomorrow.
++ I have been trained to believe that it is possible to absorb any amount of disharmony in one's environment, and to sort it out passively, or actively. That is what it is to be humanly 1337.
++ Maybe it's time to start house hunting again. But on point of discipline, I'm not going to bother until the lawyer has clarified the that other bid is a write off.
++ Breaking out the laptop to fix a spreadsheet that's gone wonky on the tablet interface. Sigh. Tool chain.
++ Termite Scheme, Gambit C...
++ Seems that Gambit C is a relatively immature platform.
++ I'm looking for weapons, and Lisp while sharp, is not standardised. Still looking at Erlang, and at most Lisp-flavoured Erlang.
++ Picobit - embeddable stripped-down Scheme with a 7kb runtime
++ Surrounded all decade by fuckers who get excited by food, fashion, and tourism. OMG. Having a brief crisis moment, but that's ok. I'm at home in bed. Oh well. On with life.
++ Need to focus on getting more sleep between now and 10-Nov. Hell on schedule... rip it.
++ There's a subtle difference between a hippie and a mercenary. One is a ruthless capitalist.
++ If things are still on with this woman: "I've figured out how we should plan vacations in future. You buy you ticket in advance as usual, and closer to the event if I am able to commit, I will pay the premium to tag along. Preserves flexibility for my schedule! :)"
++ Obliteration. That's the only word that comes to mind for this week.
++ ‎8:30. Suit up kids, and roll out. We're already late.
++ Breakfast! Back to work! More ccooooooofffeeeee.....
++ Some people live for the feelings that others give them. Others don't.
++ Recuperating in chatty environs.
++ Bought some $6 pants. I mean trousers.
++ Market's up!!

Friday

FB

+ It's always cute to hear people who think that misanthropy is an age thing. They need to watch Dexter. It's just a no-feeling thing.
++ I think it has to be explained "this is more like a religious difference," to people who have no idea about putting themselves in the shoes of non-emotion. Dumb it down. :)

What's after the Web?

2011-10-27T22:18:00.001+08:00

(Thoughts on the Economy.)

The web-application industry currently contributes negative impulse towards the growth of jobs. More work yes, but self-employees rarely turn up on the national number sheets till much later. Pre-internet industries particularly media, retail, services, and logistics lose marketshare whenever the Internet is utilised to disrupt traditional flows of value (read:supply chains) - to say nothing of advertising and telecoms.

This arbitrage by web-preneurs (and their ensuing corporations) can only continue for a limited period of time - at some point, traditional supply chains will have been displaced to a point of saturation. An equilibrium will be reached when the world's Internet application infrastructure (of which adoption of technologies is a crucial factor) reaches maximum efficiency given the limits of the commercial environment as we know it. At that point, web-application companies will cease to grow their margins as aggressively as they now do, and growth projections will be slashed, perhaps resulting in a slight depression over a decade or so. All this may happen within as soon as 10 to 20 years from now.

But what happens next? What's after the Web?

What makes machines worth studying?

2011-10-26T17:26:00.002+08:00

‎(Quick reflections on gradschool while in the shower.)

Some people say that they will never understand machines. Now that's bollocks for dummies.

There are many sorts of information systems, some are made of flesh, like you and me, and some are made of semiconductors, and metals, and plastic. Anyone who's ever known deep inside, what it FEELS like to be understood, has already obtained a fundamental grasp of what it is to BE an information system, of a fairly robust kind.

All we do in software development is nothing more, than to multiply that feeling by ten thousand operations, to stack and fuse the consequences of every step, thereby turning many trivial feelings into an organised whole.

I read people like books. People are easy to learn, and easy to deal with. But I don't understand machines, and they are excruciatingly tedious to learn. But that is precisely why machinery is an interesting object of study.

Tell me how this strikes you - though probably, it doesn't.

Burn Your Funding: Technopreneur 104

2011-10-25T20:40:00.000+08:00

(A quick rant on Facebook.)

Hey, you, yes you there. Are you a doctor? No? Ok!

Now assume that one day your neighbour died and bequeathed to you ten million dollars, on condition that you use that money to set up a hospital. What would you do next? Do you put out a job advertisement, pull in some CVs, and then ask your best doctor friend from college, "hey doc, how do I tell a good doctor from a bad doctor?" Probably not the best approach right?

Maybe then instead, you'd hire a chief doctor, and have him hire all the other doctors, with the simple mandate: don't hire guys'n'gals who'd do a bad job. "Yes sir, says your chief doctor," and off he goes. But how would you hire your first, chief, doctor?

You'd probably find someone with a flawless reputation, who was making quite a sum of money already, but who you'd be wiling to invest in, because you wouldn't want to fuck up this stage of corporate development. Right?

Maybe. Maybe wrong. Maybe right. Maaaybe right. Well if that's right... then WHY THE HELL DO I GET EVERY WANNABE TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS OWNER WHO DOESN'T WANT TO READ CODE, ASKING ME HOW TO HIRE ENTRY LEVEL PROGRAMMERS??????

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 43/52 - boiling down

2011-10-23T01:35:00.000+08:00

Sunday

FB
+ Fed keeps rates low. Financial sector gets better margins. Enterprises increase investment. Everyone else waits for economic multipliers to arrive. Go long on financial services, short on consumer goods? #noob
++ (on investment-consumption cybernetics) noted. this is probably where I want to go read up about inverted yield curves...
++ (on chicken and egg problems) Chuck norris goes first...
++ (on chinese bailouts) Does that mean Chuck Norris is like... a communist??!
++ Did some quick calculations - on my first day of stock trading, I have already lost $19.26. Must ask broker why frictional charges range from 0.7% to 1.3% (maybe there's a minimum). Oh well. Here goes nothing.
++ Sorting a decade of files continues. Maybe time for a drink. At least the weekend started roughly on time this week.
++ Tidied up my Windows 7 installation. Getting ready to use it as a host for a VM running Linux.
++ Note to self: don't add water to the lemonade. Mmm. Lemonade.

+ Omg, it's party day in Brickfields! I could care more for the storefronts, but I really like the restoration efforts on the townhouses away from the main streets.
++ epiphany: if i had a startup, all the servers would be named after porn stars.
++ doing my weekly call on the lawyer. 3+ months and still no S&P.
++ not getting very far with "rename", "find", and "move"; I think it's time to learn "stat" and "awk"
++ listening to a business owner explain to his friend about trouble with an employee; at the next table at starbucks; this is clearly above the mean voice volume level in this cafe.
++ next chance i get to say something intelligent, i'll give this guy a tip about how to run his company; feels like a good'ol'speakeasy in here.
++ back to bash scripting basics.
++ business owner has left the cafe. however, now that his conspicuously volumed voice is missing, i can hear the content of most conversations in the table behind me. giving up on housekeeping for a bit. will start by reading the BASH manual later.
++ going for a walk in bangsar. not the most productive day. but catching up on socialising.
++ Maybe i just need more sleep. Or more food. Or both.
++ Doing some brainless financial housekeeping. Checking daily burn rate, nsportation cost per km, grocery list, etc. Wondering if I should invest in YTL Comms inventory.
++ I guess the rich dad answer, post napkin math, is #yes.
++ Bloom to the berg, for a bit of light reading on the markets. Between PR and programming, I've been doing too much linear stuff of late.
++ Dow was up 2.3% on Friday, and I obtained my first portfolio before the US market opened, so, by noon on Monday, I should be seeing some good news. Pity I won't be free to do that. Haha. Worky work. But now it's still Sunday, so play on, play on.
++ Need to find a current hobby that doesn't involve a computer. Maybe I just need to get back to basics like exercise and 'culination'. (don't misread that...)

+ comment (on the interminable boredom of life): You need a more interesting job. But for that, you'd need a higher tolerance for bullshit. By interesting, I mean disconcerting.

Monday

FB
+After nearly ten-months of being back on this gradschool thing, I think I've finally done a bit too much computing to just keep kicking it. (Probably recently saturated by computing of the mundane kind.) Anyhow. Good. Now I can take a break, and reflect on progress so far. http://jerng.blogspot.com/
++ Things I've learnt (or new ways to say old hat): some people need to make fuck-you-money - others just say fuck you.
++ Someone just put on Fight Club. Some night cap. Marla Simpson - I guess I have the same philosophy of life (broadly speaking). I guess my therapy schedule's on LinkedIn!
++ Singer, not Simpson! Lol
++ Weekend mop ups complete.
++ This yang needs to yin-out. Slower and steadier plz.
++ Things I learnt in PR: letterboxing is like refrigerator repair. You charge 10c for tightening the nuts, and $100 for knowing which nuts can be tightened.
++ Cat napping in a coffeeshop, during another attempt to bridge a VM's WIMAX connection to my metal.
++ Godamn windows 8 vm keeps crashing. Iphone 3gs+fb keeps hanging. None of my gear likes me :(
++ This evening's anthropological excursion is slightly extravagent - we dine at Burp in BSC. Meanwhile, figured out that 3D acceleration doesn't play nice with Win8 on VirtualBox.

Tuesday

FB
+ (refer to soliloquy) everytime some ding-dong does that, they reinvent the tech bubble in a fully personal way.
++ Giving up on Windows 8 VMs on my 10W machine for the time being. Sigh. Nap time./
++ Power napped. Drink of water. Let's try a stabler VM.
++ Laundry. Now where did I put my licensed software disks? #notlinux
++ Once, life was simpler.
++ Back at work. Waste not want not. Time is short.
++ Eh, I didn't know Rajat Gupta got in trouble. As of a few years ago, I guess his reputation was solid.
++ Windows XP was lean.
++ Lunch. Firefighting.
++ Discovering quirks in the search function vs folder names in Hotmail.
++ Haven't been able to get 4 different VMs to bridge a Yes4G Buzz's internet connection, through VirtualBox, to Ubuntu 11.04. Yes4G Go doesn't run on 11.04, though i hear that it runs on 11.10 out of the box. Concluded for the time being that I really suck at this, and need to take a nap before deciding if going a couple of levels lower and learning sockets is really an efficient use of my time at this stage. Sigh.
++ On the brightside, I've almost broken even on the stock portfolio.

Wednesday

FB
+ Crashed after dinner. 13 hour catch up sleep. Wonder how much work I'll get done today.
++ Sounds like Oakland just made OccupyX a bigger deal than the hippies. The riots 30 years from now will demand the limiting of machine rights. #enterTheMatrix lol
++ Preparing for my portfolio to get massacred tomorrow.
++ So much shit to deal with, and so little time. Steel up, and move faster. Remembering to periodically refactor.
++ Laundry. And an attempt to get that WiMAX dongle running on 11.10. Ah, noobish life
++ ‎(forum): http://play.typeracer.com/ 69wpm just woken up on my lumpy keyboard. Good, a place to practice! I need to get back into the 100+s. Working in Malaysia for the past 6 years has killed my prioritisation of proper English.
++ Trying another angle on this installation thing. At least i got some structures cleaned up at the other office yesterday.
++ Next team I run is going to sit under one of those posters that say: Lead, Follow, or Get Out Of The Way.
++ Wow. 11.10 did not upgrade properly but is crashing all over.
++ GUI fuckup means this is a writeoff. Time for a fresh install. Finally.
++ Conclusion: ubuntu predictability still sucks. There are no worthy power user OSes on the planet.
++ Lesson of the month. Hot upgrades to Ubuntu STILL cannot be relied on. It is better to maintain a manifest list of packages, and to do a fresh reinstallation each time.
++ Wouldn't be bothering with all this if I hadn't got a client whose office is out of reach of all data networks but that one WIMAX provider.
++ Even the fresh installation is buggy. Web updating...
++ Parental units are bickering in close proximity. This is not a good day.
++ Bad month for tech research. Really bad month.
++ Fresh installation also buggy. Hmm. I guess I'm stuck with 11.04 without wimax for now. Motherfucking mess.
++ Random meeting with a friendly VC. Then more sysadminfu.
++ VC has IT team, has $, but no CTO, and no business model. This is new.
++ Starbucks has officially dropped off my list of viable places to get decent wifi in Malaysia. This moving to the cloud thing is tough :-/
++ So has Digi's 3G service. Sigh. Back to Unifi.
++ Made another mistake that will take me another day to fix. Need less coffee and more food. Serious rebalancing required. :(
++ The cost of solo projects is high, and now I realise the volatility. But all is expected. Nothing particularly tragic has happened, yet. Maybe I will die tomorrow.
++ Lock down for a few hours. Stay home. Don't get distracted. Clean up shit.
++ Figured out a workflow - Boot in Windows. Sync to cloud. Boot in Linux. Do stuff in Linux. Rinse and repeat.
++ Hmm. Might have managed to minimise damage. Backups seem to be working along the path of least resistance. Going to grab dinner then check.
++ Dinner at ye'olde chicken rice shop

Thursday

FB
+ 5/8 jobs gone sour since 2007. No permanent residence because lawyer has gone AWOL. Best friend of the moment does not relate to most of my work. Family - well, who cares about family. Almost deleted 10 years of my memory this afternoon. Lists of stuff I know, to stuff I don't know, has a ratio of about 1:8. Living on less than US minimum wage for the most part for six years. At least I'm still alive and kickin ;) on with it!
++ Taking this opportunity to rebuild my 10 year database, as a flat list. That is going ot make sorting a bit easier. kill them directories
++ well, you know what they say about whatever doesn't klll you...
++ while waiting for hard disk drives to do work... i meditate, though technically, that's just the active identification of odd harmonics in the nervous system, and the normalisation of those signals. #tech
++ i guess if i had to come up with some trivial reason to have all this data lying around - it'd make a decent start to challenging the Immortaility Test #beyondTheTuringTest LOL
++ ‎24 thousand files and then some. this is one bizarre backup operation.
++ Folding laundry. For real - this isn't a metaphor.
++ Sipping hot water while making a squashfs... one of these days I gotta learn how to do this manually.
++ Sleep appears to be nothing more than a passive defragmentation of the entire human memory hierarchy. #conjecture #phenomenology
++ While cat napping in between sysadmin work, I got this brilliant idea for replacing "hire/purchase" contracts with "temporary shareholder" contracts. Steal this idea. If not, I might actually do something with it some day. It would do away with company vs. customer conflicts (e.g. when app stores decide to retire apps), and it would make employees directly subservient to shareholders, rather than as they currently are, stuck in the middle between shareholders and customers.
++ Has it been done before?
++ Cheese for supper. I'm tempted to go grab ramen. Damn. Ran out of pasta. Didn't go shopping this week :(
++ Sounds like a good time to join KKR. Heh.
++ Soup. Stolen from the pantry.
++ Ah crap... looks like GAE or Twitter changed something. My Killtweets tool is broken.
++ Simplest fix - I think I'll add a pretty GUI which calls the Action URL by AJAX. Hmm.

+ (This is an interesting way to use Facebook - as a place to draft thoughts, prior to publication on a blog.)
++ No, we need to learn how to do other things as well :P diversity is king.
++ Final re-backups to Dropbox. Nearing the end of a 24-hour ordeal. Sigh. noobism
++ At least one more thing to read up on before bed... inodes, filesystems, and the difference from databases.
++ Right now I'm just super fearful of diving into Linux hacking. Seems like a bottomless pit. Then again, so was that project to completely delineate the structure of human consciousness... which ended within 2-4 years of inception.
++ I think the appropriate thing is to attack the languages of C and Erlang concurrently. #badpun
++ Turn on a little industrial radio... then head to pillow.
++ Locked and loaded. Unit rolling out.
++ Lunch. IJM is up!!
++ Sold. First profit. Expecting a loss anytime soon. I don't evem understand most of the widgets on this ugly Maybank trading terminal.
++ Back home doing backups. Again.
++ media reports. testing my excel's filtration against the clipping agency's web GUI
++ just made a histogram in excel... a few dozen keywords amidst 7400 articles... feeling semi-leet. yes, i can still do 10th grade stats. -_-

Saturday

FB
+ Anyone hitting Bangsar later tonight?

+ One more gratuitious transit. Is my life really too complicated for my own good? Anyhow, the last thing I can afford is to get mad at other people, so I'll care less whenever I can. Back to the coffeeshop to catch up on wage after dinner.
++ At the end of the day, an employee's role is fundamentally to create shareholder value. Everything else is flaff and "management". :)
++ Semantics have it of course, that managers create shareholder value, and that employees exceute management directives without discretely optimising for shareholder value. But zoom out a sec, and consider the manager and director as employee, and every employee as a micro-manager. As I said. Semantics.
++ Waiting for my turn at the barber's.
++ Falling asleep before my turn. Again. Yawnees.
++ Shaven. I think I'll skip the extra leg and just work here. I fuckin hate driving. It's such a computationally/cognitively intensive task, which is too easily outsourced.
++ Four virtual cores, and a coupla thousand news articles to vet. No sweat. Just more coffee. Better not crash on the way home :)
++ Cooking algorithms for news. I always thought that would be fun - but I always thought I'd cook algorithms for finance first.
++ I need some hard rock. First a speed test to see if the connection will hold up...
++ Maybe I'll be getting into Lisp sooner than expected. Haha.
++ Starbucks wifi #fail. Out comes the Yes 4G wimax... i knew this would come in handy... hard rock is on.

+ If you live in Malaysia and forget that English is a foreign language... you may actually not live in Malaysia... :-/
++ (on bubbles of our own concoction) actually a lot of people live in one of someone else's concoction

+ Another wasted evening. If i wasn't worried about waking up in the morning, i'd be on the road back to my home office right now. Oh well, shitty month, but everything's supposed to get better on Fridays. Hello Friday.
++ Need to drop my risk aversion, and increase agility back to base levels. Fear is no excuse for operational rigidity. #sleepHelps
++ Too many exams my friend. CFA can wait till i'm blocked from a CFO role :p
++ Friday night!! Dinner out, then put the baby to sleep, now back to the office to try and get some work done. Then sleep.
++ It's true about sleep deprivation - based on objective evidence, the best I can do is become completely unaware that I am functioning on lower cognitive level.
++ Hearkening back to the various points of competitive advantage that I have studied over the past ten years. Things to do, in very separate portfolios/ companies/ divisions: 1) match existing services to business requirements 2) deliver the equivalent of existing services at lower cost per unit of service 3) develop services that do not yet exist. Hmm. Diversification along the innovation life cycle.
++ Done setting up my Windows redundancy. All geared up for life among the livin' - now to sleep, and to perhaps do more reading this weekend. Finance, and perhaps programming are nearer than mathematics and statistics at the moment. All in all, a good spot in life for revision. Just did a financial tally and I'm finally, safely in the black.
++ Up early clearing email. Fun fun.
++ I'm so dumb this week, I didn't realise that LAN sync with a cloud checksum is still 15-25 times slower than USB2.0.
++ Only the meek take acid. The world as it is, is quite crazy. Most people just don't care to take a good hard look at its offerings.
++ ‎6pm. Client. Soho. Dinner. Partner. Soho. Partner. Soho. Partner. Soho. 1pm. I'm beginning to observe two gravitational centres of my work in the present. On the last drive home, was thinking about high-availability x86 emulation on Erlang (high performance can wait). Should I be looking into this? Always only willing to be a fool.
++ Whoops. Back to jobbing after the break. So much for getting any work done this weekend. We'll see how it goes.
++ Gearing up for work. Nap time!
++ ‎#sysadmin #fail #nobandwidth #nobrainer
++ Car tales: i need to improve throttle control to smoothen the auto shifting.
++ Dinner. Shave. And then I'll probably head back to the soho again, and spend 20sen on coffee and some peace and quiet, instead of 7ringgit on a noisy place and slow wifi. Not a good month at all. Off we go!

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 42/52 - steeling up

2011-10-16T11:11:00.001+08:00

Sunday

FB
+ Where's the party at? i'm gonna need food in 1-2 hours. Ocelot upgrade on an 11.04 loopback device was a major #fail #rollback
++ Supper near Taman Bahagia anyone?

+ No big shakes for regular users - but if you haven't tried Linux recently, you might find that they've got a decently modern user interface. http://memeburn.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-the-linux-youve-been-waiting-for/
++ Tire rebalancing and alignment. Tiny Core Linux Plus has Wi-Fi support. I'm impressed. May try it further later.
++ Top up the tank!
++ Nap time. Need to carefully plan the rest of my weekend.
++ It's been a helluva fortnight. Now I'm thinking about thinking. Some people like to "chill out" - others like to actively reorganise their memories.
++ I live in a noisy house. Why do I always pick noisy houses to live in?probably because they're cheap.
++ Time for some reading.
++ Oh shit, everytime ssomeone said GAAP I've heard GARP, for years. That's what I get for dropping out of banking too early.
++ Just batted off another looming distraction... almost had to leave the country for my birthday. Already, very little work is getting done this month.
++ I hate celebrating stupid shit... like birthdays, farewells, welcomes, successes... but that's probably because I'm already slow at work.
++ The only people who have the privilege of valuing sentimentality, are those who can flick it on and off like a switch. Those who can't get it on, or off, at will... are pretty much handicapped from the former point of view.
++ Ten years behind Internet marketing, and five years behind mobile apps, I wonder what comes in time for me to start it. Lol
++ I'm lovin Blogger's new dynamic views. Definitely pro-choice, this UI. http://jerng.blogspot.com/
++ In ext4 hell. Can't extract a loopback device to a physical partition with ease.
++ Extremely tired and unproductive, but enjoying the lack of interruptions. Sower and apples whole the next operation completes.
++ lesson of the day: ext4 may be an improvedment for physical storage management, but it's a shit stick for virtual partitions and loopback devices. ext2/3 for the latter plz.
++ of course, that might not even be correct, but lessons are iterative i suppose
++ however bad life seems - it could always be worse
++ remastering a loopback device, to get it out... grr... if I wasn't so stupid, life wouldn't be so complicated
++ reading on PVM and distributed computing. given the stability of the Linux kernal and its associated middleware... perhaps we should be targeting to create a beowulf VM framework that functions as a backend to Linux. essentially, a cloud-form microprocessor emulator, or something like that. probably already exists in many forms for all i know.
++ Plan 9 and MPI tsk tsk
++ definitely, time for more emphasis on grid computing, but only because of the surge in mobile computing.
++ Given the extensive porting of Inferno, compared to Plan 9, maybe we should be porting Inferno to JavaScript...
++ learning about the original Berkeley sockets, microkernels, etc. hmm. more fat stacks to be squashed...
++ nap time. up soon to continue the gardening of this @#$%^&* system

+ yummmmmm
++ (that was a wall jacking). Aside, when I first saw "enhance" being used, it looked like the "equalise" function in Photoshop and GIMP.

+ High heels: graphically evocative, but a terribly lazy way for people to look fitter than they actually are. Athletically not dysfunctional - they impose proper posture - if you buy the right models. Otherwise, good for nothing.
++ Yes, and more often than not, sex gets in the way of other work :P
++ comment on running: i'm surprised. i just run till i can't think straight, then i go to sleep. it's like drinking too much.
++ Tablets today aren't as modular as PCs were in the late 90s. If they were, we'd be passing around SD cards with custom OSes like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps a commerciable opportunity. Observation complete.
++ Trying out an Ubuntu installation with a separate partition mounted as the /home directory. Also creating the swap partition at exactly 4096MB to see if it limits hibernation on a 4GB RAM system.
++ freespace counts are all messed up; hibernation does not resume. let's try again
++ pasta for a lazy lunch
++ Laundry. Fusilli. Thinking that Blogger's finally gotten it's UI to a point where I'd consider using it as my journal dump for the past decade. Pondering Inferno hacking.
++ a frugal pasta never reaches al dante. get on with it!
++ third attempt to early-adopter-upgrade - some OS this weekend - talk about nonchalance to high-risk activities. 9p2000 is interesting. but what happened to vita nuova's website? still interested in learning how erlang implements green processes.
++ review of the computing landscape:
- number of nodes is increasing (mobile devices are due, in part)
- quality of nodes is not increasing (Hz ceiling)
- parallelisation has followed naturally as a result
- parallelisation remains hindered by heterogeneity of protocols (Cambrian mess)
- abstraction of heterogeneity is hindered by architectural decisions that limit the minimum size of a portable unit of work (i.e. computation)
- ho, humm. Sunday reflections on the obvious.
++ because having no heels is better than having bad heels :P
++ Whoops. So that's two failures in a row this weekend, Natty->Oneiric, once on a loopback device, once on a physical partition. Both ext4. Sigh. Unpacking the backup copy again...
++ forgetting not the presence of mortar - I'm thinking about local web television stations - but a service for easily generating those. i've always had a soft spot for mall revenues.
++ Chauffering the whiny matriarch. Haircut. Lunch at 5:45pm. Then probably home, to check on the data backups.
++ Syed has some good satay. But it's RM1.30 a stick. Woo hoo! Backups complete.
++ the hackerspace kl group is a pretty decent source of information!
++ Recreational walk. Brickfields constipated. Fled to MidValley.
++ Has Spade gotten more boring or what?
++ Catching up on the notebook market. Thin is in. Going home to read up on it. Form is fun. For a few hours per fortnight.
++ back home to finish up that bag of pasta and jar of sauce. one a day each - that seems to work. plus some meat, vegetables, and fruit. code for work, and marketing for recreation. time to read up on those product brochures.
++ Market research: majority of laptops sold here come pre-loaded with a closed-source operating system. Manufacturer discount without?
++ research reminds me that my hardware is crappy. sigh. budgets.
++ wow. computation/(watt*$) has really exploded over the past 9 months. pity i'm two generations behind!
++ end of CPU research. wow. i'm really impressed by how far things have come. :) aside, have been thinking of marking off the next 15 years for an OS hobby project, in Erlang, 9P2000/Styx, and... oh well, maybe in 5 years we'll have a usable prototype.
++ what on earth has happened to Vita Nuova Holdings? they're website doesn't seem functional anymore.

Wednesday

FB
+ Hi! For laptop shopping... I just had a look at MidValley (but Digital Mall should have these too). Lenovo e220s is very thin, using an internal battery like the Macs. Asus' U-series is pretty decent in terms of thinness also. Either Asus or Acer had one more shaped like a MacBook Air but with a plastic body. Check it out. Hope that helps! Remember to get 17watt not 35watt CPUs for longer battery life if you need that!

+ Now let the weekend begin! Oh wtf.
++ Haven't prioritised enjoying life much since 2005. Next major break from this trajectory is 2013/14. Let's see what happens next. #careering
++ forum, on tamil vs malay: Learn Sanskit. It's much more rewarding. You get to see how it descends into Greek->Latin->all the romantic languages, Indian Subcontinental languages->Malay/Tagalog/Myanmar etc. 3000 years of history, no less. It's like learning C and then seeing the 30 years of programming languages that came after :P well not really, but you know...
++ Sleepy time. Gotta set pace for six hours of reporting tomorrow. At least, I got a little reading done this weekend. Much to think about.
++ Breakfast after the first leg of work. Market is up. Super boring in a country which bars short selling. Maybe I will just work on journal housekeeping today.
++ Dinner. Today I expressed fear of working on an account in the startup industry, as I was afraid that I might be too distracted by opportunities to criticise operations, instead of focusing on PR.
++ I'm doing PR. Word.
++ Beginning the laborious task of porting 10 years of journals to the Google cloud. And into the public. I'm giving myself till the end of the year to do this properly, goddamit. I got started writing a CMS in January, but was more interested in data structure research than in locking down a data structure. For simple content like my journals, I will just use Google's, as it's as close a commodified structure as one can get. At least the next port after that, will be API enabled. #normalisation
++ We begin with a mess of photos.
++ Learning how to use Picasa.
++ Dinner time. Oranges, I think.
++ Whoops. Just became a paying Google storage customer.
++ I think Dropbox just became my lab gear, while Google became my closet.
++ Eyeballing 10 years of visual history - journals, notes, papers, photographs, artwork, holy shit that's a lot of water under the bridge. I didn't think of myself as much of an artist back then, but hell I was rather prolific with the dirt...
++ Thought of booting up a 'generalist' branded web-zine/blog today. Apparently that moniker already belongs to some architectural mag. Maybe I'll warp it...
++ Here's the angle - it's gotta be like the New Yorker was, but fast-forwarded by a century. It's gotta be Arts & Letters Daily meets OS News, meets Maxim, meets the Harvard Business Review, meets Top Gear. Can it be done? I'm not quite sure.

Friday

FB
+ Tgif. Heavy rain. On kerinchi link. Slow but steady. Playing traxx fm. Loud like the feng tau i am.

+ GoodReader for iPad is probably the best PDF notation stack around. It's the reason I bought an iPad. Personally, I also use ReadItLater and DocumentsToGo Premium. The latter can easily sync to Google Docs or some other service - good for unified note-taking. I'm an office-head - I find Evernote clunky, and prefer spreadsheets for many applications.

+ Cheap tea at 3am. It's been a year full of infighting in my mind. The sum is quite positive, but portfolio churn and volatility have been immense. Head to rest. Farming in the morning... with new protocols, and tighter deadlines. Whee...
++ Rise and shine motherfuckers...
++ Forum: Have been thinking about this for a while. Recently remember some SG guys trying to implement similar functionality on GOOG docs because its storage layer is $cheaper. Dropbox's competitive advantage is all the middleware it's built. Just for fun, if I had time I'd like to try bridging thr APIs for Dropbox and Google Docs, and implement a filesystem layer on top of the latter, using the latter as block storage, and bsdiff/rsync or something like that. Oh well. I had the time. :)Steal this idea... may not be worth stealing. L. I recently became a paying customer of both thise services, so curiosity wise I'm getting hungrier. L.
++ rrrrrrrrollout. image libraries almost migrated. carry on, carry on.
++ Breakfast of milk. Lunch. More reporting.
++ Shutdown to cool off. Reboot. Unit reporting.
++ Packet one delivered. Cool down. Preparing packet two...
++ Done with wage for the day! On to other work...
++ Snack and bedtime I guess. Only a few more GB to go. Then on to textual media.
++ Roll.
++ ‎500 MYR is trivia, but it's bad manners for it to go missing. i guess i'll send another invoice eventually.
++ forum: saying that SQL is not suitable for a commodities brokerage engine is like saying that land rovers are not suitable for city driving... seriously... find a better argument.
++ If I wake up bored tomorrow morning, I know what stocks I'd like to buy. But if I don't wake up early or bored enough, I am going to hold my breath and bide my time. No rush in getting rich.
++ ohhhh.... a SAN provides block-layer abstraction under the file-system... ok.
++ Google Docs as a SAN. It would be a cheap, slow SAN, but it could be a SAN.
++ friend: "its eaten my life but ah well, been a useful experience
me: "good. that's what work's for."
++ i couldn't really afford to do it part-time, without a schedule. they couldn't really afford to get me full-time, or get a schedule. i think we tried, and it didn't work out. all routes exhausted. can't spend life perpetually helping folks who over-invest in implementation, and under-invest in technical plans.
++ did a random calculation when discussing labour economics with a colleague... 100 gratuitous salarymen in a bank here doing paper accounting... comes to some MYR3-500k PER MONTH... OF COURSE you'd invest in an MYR 2m/year system to replace them.
++ but you can't fire people in malaysia, not easily anyway, so the point is to get off on the right foot. ergo cloud computing. haha.
++ Dinner time. Warm up the sauce. Cook the pasta. Easy does it - don't got money to burn.
++ Done with dinner. Back to work. What is my data minus the graphics?
++ studying linux's "find"
++ Wahbngiao. Both the iPad and mobile web fb apps are giving me upload grief today.
++ Aichallenge.com is bucketlisted. Ender's game anyone?
++ I miss my girl. And i wish i had more hours in a day. :)
++ Get up fool. It's friday night. Move that ass. Dinner time.

+ cleaning up a decade of files. i'm glad i learnt how to use linux.
++ ‎"find -printf" really helps one to start exploring all the metadata that's wrapped up in those 'lil things they call files...
++ finally getting back to regex. [programming guru] will be proud of me... haha

Saturday

FB
+ goes to show that Jobs was a narrow-minded ponce #shrug
Steve Jobs vowed to "destroy" Android
gigaom.com
++ you can sell a product by creating a cult - but to drink the kool-aid and actually believe that human creativity extends beyond some fairly straightforward limits set forth by laws mathematicians have observed for centuries, is just kinda daft. sorry. dead or alive, i'd have told you anyway. meanwhile, RIP. "originality" in graphic design... in 2011? what a myth.
++ oh, i forgot, he was an artist... they think they are special. lol.
++ enough disparaging the touchy-feely people of this earth; 1am in Bangsar and i'm running out of coffee...
++ going for a walk. then probably home.
++ based on what little i read, he was an amateur buddhist in the hippie kinda way. preferred "natural cures" over "modern science". then goes and devotes himself to an ideal. shakes head.
++ An INFJ feels that the world could be better, sees it faintly, and gets excited when they finally hold that betterness in their hands. An ISTP knows that the world could be better, sees it clearly, and gets excited as they put trivial things in place that are required to make it happen.
++ as i was saying, Consciousness is an inescapable boss to all
++ An INTP is familiar with the structure of possibility, and is unamused when it is actualised. An ISFJ is familiar with the structure of actuality, and is unamused until it changes. #wtf
++ comment: tranching makes anything independent; one atom is irrevocably screwed, and the other atom is independently profitable (until the policymakers get a hold of it...)
++ it depends on what you want out of a computer. Apple fans are less interested in quantitative performance, than in emotional masturbation. it takes all kinds - they do help the economy :)
++ I've never used Time Machine, and I'm sure it's great. But so far, Dropbox is awesome for delicate restorations of command-line screwups.
++ going to check out the MPPJ public library... maybe grab breakfast along the way
++ RM31 for first year, RM15 for subsequent years, or RM300 lifetime membership. LOTS of kids. Very much a community library. Unfortunately, a bit too must for me to make an investment right now. Hmm.
++ note to self: NEVER use linux "cp" and "mv" without the "-b" parameter, unless overwriting is desired. why couldn't they have put the safe option as the default? sigh.
++ learning perl expressions ... also, finally.
++ slow pipes at the coffee. thinking of grabbing lunch and heading home.
++ I gotta do a minimum of 30 minutes per day of sorting, otherwise this 10 year mess ain't never gonna clear. Ssiigghh
++ Nap time.
++ up time. now we unpack all the !@#$%^&* zip files first...

Kicking this "web" thing along

2011-10-11T02:55:00.000+08:00

On a Ycombinator comment about Dart (a new web programming language by Google) someone wrote "I'm really hoping that we're coming to the end of the era where we use server-side languages to generate static HTML, and I hope we're closer to the end of the creation of new languages to do that."

I totally agree. I've spent the last year musing about how we'll be mailing entire VM states to each other in the future, the same way that people mail saved-games and Word documents today.

Since I started web programming in 2009, I've found the whole client-server architecture to be bunk (made worse by cumbersomely evolved W3 "standards" like HTML and CSS). Perhaps in the future, web servers and clients won't be written on different stacks that talk to each other like a wet market - perhaps they'll just share a common "virtual application" model, with a share "virtual addressing space" and pass messages back and forth about the state of the app in real time.

I guess node.js enthusiasts see something like this coming up, and contemporary implementations are simply the server-client-integrated frameworks like Google Web Toolkit.

Oh well. Anyone else sick of the web, and think it needs reinventing?

(First post on news.ycombinator, and I'm not sure I did it properly, since I pasted a link to the original Facebook note :P)

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 41/52 - drivers

2011-10-09T13:29:00.000+08:00

Sunday

So apparently this week, the king is dead. You know what that means for all little fiefdoms.

FB
+ Last two years: code and fight fire, day and night. This year: code by night, and fight fire by day. Work life balance is protected. Snicker.
++ Friday. Hope to get some studying done over the next 60 hours.
++ Share trading account is active! Now if only I can find time during a weekday to use it.
++ Brekkie, and studies. Malaysian equities and perhaps, some virtualisation.
++ Getting cosy with Bloomberg's free services.
++ Xen competes with Hyper-V, and AWS competes with Azure. ok - check.
++ forum post on ideal mobile device form-factors: "heh... since before the iPhone came out... in 2007 when I got my first laptop and two years after i got my first cell phone, I've been wanting just a bloody laptop with built-in GSM functionality. I don't mind using a headset for phone calls and leaving my laptop on all day. I just don't like lugging different devices around. shit lah. i swear this is what's kept me curious about hardware hacking for the past coupla years."
++ Time to see if I can find a Huawei E173 just for shits. Break time. Need to figure out the best way to spend the next couple of hours. Optimising for maximal rate of learning over the next 1.5 days.
++ Need to murder some darlings, and deemphasise short-term financial gain over long-term engineering skill.
++ ‎... or should I seek an asset allocation that is slightly more biased towards trading skills? Decisions, decisions, motherfucking decisions.
++ Listening to Steve Job's Stanford speech. The problem with me is that I know how to turn anything I look at into great work. :P That means having a rather limited degree of passion about going anywhere else.
++ ‎#lowbrow
++ Data backups.
++ Pipes are bloody slow today, but I'm not going to say whose pipes.
++ Dinner break. Walked out to chicken rice. Need to free up schedule for cooking. Grr.
++ Laundry and Xen.
++ Now here's an old company I didn't know much about before today - Citrix is doing some very interesting stuff.
++ Shit. I think I had the wrong version of VirtualBox installed. Grrr... Canonical...
++ This goddamn year is killin me... but it's probably been the best year for research since 2003/4!!
++ Moving two dozen Linux ISOs from January onto my ULV workstation... slower, but comfier... now we're cooking with ciggy lighters.
++ We have to move beyond the Xerox Alto... -_-
++ If UEFI becomes highly adopted by mega-corporations - it's really going to spur an open-sourced hardware movement in the computing industry. Sigh.
++ forum: "nononono... the point now is that if all the OS sellers adopt UEFI... you're going to have to jailbreak your laptop's hardware (i.e. buy new ROM chip) just to install linux on it. :P"
++ osnews.com is my new favourite tech site.
++ wow. http://www.razerzone.com/blade gaming laptop, has multi-touch LCD panel on keyboard.I wonder how much it costs. $2800 apparently.
++ Charitable organisation developing a $25 ARM 700Mhz computer that can run Quake III. This is definitely something I'd like to get into for work. :) http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=106
++ Apparently some Windows Server 2008 R2 licenses allow you to install ONCE on metal, and to then have INFINITE virtual instances of the OS.
++ Razer has some really cool dirt. http://www.razerzone.com/switchblade
++ ‎"Gaming" laptops are awfully good for virtual-machine and terminal spawning in development environments. Who actually uses them for games?
++ one more try to get the goddamn buzz working on linux... the heavy but reliable way...
++ can't remember how to push packets from the VM to the host. hmm. avocado at 3:30am. green. two weeks in a very cold fridge didn't do much, I guess. good $1 snack. tea.
++ Exercise in futility. But it's good to be reminded of how little I know about how the TCP/IP stack works. More to come. First, some sleep.
++ i've heard that Razer could use a little polish on usability - concepts usually good, but technical flaws, like mice lifting off happen.
++ It's a good day to start learning how to write logical device drivers. Have exhausted my patience with forums and dumb-admin configurations.

FB
+ So apparently this week, the king is dead. You know what that means for all little fiefdoms.
++ Catching up on news while getting a shave. On affogato: "Nescafe will be too sour and not bitter enough. Try Indocafe. That's an oiiiily substance..."
++ ‎"Awesome" remains such a diluted phrase in the American vernacular.
++ I guess the value of having PR companies run events, is just to provide direction.
++ what's up bangsar... do you have wimax drivers for sale here, or do I have to learn to write one?
++ over my head in rather fragmented USB debug documentation for the linux kernel
++ learnt about the existence of "debugfs" and "modprobe usb" today. Going to journal it and try it out another day.
++ reading up on last week's stocks - kind dated, I am.
++ Really unproductive week for technical studies. A very generalised week.
++ I thunk it's time for some lighthearted mathematics. HTML5 touch interfaces, anyone?
++ Mentally prepping myself to get into business a couple of years earlier than preferred.
++ crossroads :(
++ farting around with HTML5 demos. I haven't done audio synthesis since college and highschool. stuff i put aside till later in life - well now's later in life - should i get back into it? studying the limitations of the medium.
++ Here's the dilemma this weekend. I don't feel that I have enough time to properly get to the next level in understanding a) equity markets and b) computer engineering, while doing my current day job, so I'm just - pensive and remorseful.
++ Need to take stock of study progress over the past quarter. I think I've neglected commercial subjects over the past three years sufficiently for me to justify doing some specialisation in that right now. After all, it's still within the five-year syllabus...

Tuesday

FB
+ It's October. I've spent most of the year studying computing subjects. I've barely touched commercial subjects for the past three years. Upon reflection, it seems quite reasonable to spend the rest of the year studying stocks. Am I easy to con or what? #gradschool
++ Current OS footprint reduced to 6.1GB. I'm amused. It's good to end the weekend with some focus. I guess that's what Sunday reflections are for.
++ ‎:) and :)
++ Let's hope I actually how not to lose money first.
++ Monday morning. #attackTheStack.
++ I took econ 103 intro to macro in college... could barely contain my laughter, and pretty much stayed because the professor was enough of an absurdist to wear flaming bow ties, while getting us to cough up the grades. :)
++ supposed to be studying finance, but i'm still farting around in web developer forums. lol. says a lot about my pace of life these days. ok.

clothing: check
crowd: check
food and beverage: check
sleep: enough
gun to the head w/o side effects test: pass
clearing conscious imaginations...
... flushed
... refilled
... flushed

ok, let's get on with this.
++ phpreboot is cool. oh, sorry. back to finance, for real now.
++ fundamentals: there's no safety in oils and metals, unless the current threat is a long-term one. if you don't think a real depression's going to happen, any enthusiasm in commodities should be interpreted as effervescent. short the peaks.
++ a good monk needs only to know how to generate dopamine, just by thinking about it. the memory of a touch is indifferent from a touch, as both are mediated by consciousness. the medium is hackable. study the medium. - thoughts while reading b-grade reports on global trade
++ yay. it's finance tonight.
++ ‎"{tablet, car, fridge, washer, smartphone } c {capital}" => capital deepening lol
++ The trick to analysing time series data, is to be able to think in meta-time. Two dimensions of time. Maybe, that actually makes sense. #hypercubes
++ DuPont analysis. Interesting.
++ basic accounting equation: accounting would be so much more an interesting subject for neurotypicals, if it was linked consistently with sensual objects. just like math.
++ comment: taking the road less traveled guarantees a lot of peace and quiet - and sometimes that's all a bloke wants ;P
++ I'm remembering an investment banking interview I went for where "no accounting background," was required, whereupon they presented me with a spreadsheet, and told me to balance an accounting statement. I asked what the point was - and they didn't seem to have a ready answer. Oh well, I thought - then I had to ask them how to use the spreadsheet software, since I was aware that cells were linkable and referable objects, though I had barely used such features of the software before. They did not seem impressed. But the thing is, the physics of finance is so simple - they should really not test people based on their knowledge of the names for things in its universe. Names, are trivia.
++ More coffee.
++ Glad to be finally getting around to studying accounting and finance in a detailed manner. Have been putting it off for a long time, particularly due to my perception of its difficulty. One should always do the hard stuff first, before one grows old and lazy.
++ Enough coffeeshopping for the evening. Need to sleep, to pay for wage, which pays for studies.
++ home. sort the laundry. take a shower. back up the office computer. check personal finances. target to keep cashflow minimally negative, now that a trajectory has been set for the next sprint. staying at home to learn accounting terminology is on this week... if possible. have decided to for-go season parking at the office, due ot the complexities of the process. we'll see how that goes. hoping to recoup some costs incurred for a hobby project at the beginning of the year.

Thursday

FB
+ She picks me up online
+Consciousness appears to be nothing more than a program that runs on matter. Appearances can never be trusted.
++ bedtime fo real.
++ Updated my resume and lobbed it at some webpage. Pitching exercises.
++ Getting caught by surprise is very bad for the pocket book.
++ Going for a walk in a mall near Tesco.
++ Groceries. Alt rock. Probably need more sleep. I hate thinking about what I do, but doing what I do is what I do best. :)
++ Just this week, and for the first time in years, I am truly depressed as a result of being surrounded day and night by people who have nothing better to do than to celebrate things that they can taste and see. Oh well, it is good anthropology! Onward with the gauntlet.
++ Should look a bit closer at Tiny Core Linux
++ I wish there were more job ads out there for overachievers sans passion.
++ need more sleep. very grouchy.
++ found a way to rearrange an excel table into a particular arrangement of text using a formula. it took only a few minutes. FML - have decided that writing a web application for this shop is overkill, as no one but me will be able to maintain it. moving forward, i will be attempting to create processes for heavy string parsing using the exisiting functionality that's employed when content is pasted between MS Office applications. easier than explaining \n\l\wtf to non-programmers. bah, unicode. hurry up and grow, Siri...
++ Busted out of wage. Got some stuff done today. Clears up tomorrow for retrieving and refielding review units. Wonder which mainstream media's gonna get a [___]

Saturday

FB
+ Gov.my: making us an innovation leader in Islamic Finance; OWC: making us an innovation leader in Islamic Sex. #beyondNikahAlMutah
++ Looking at a mountain of documentation. It's cleaning time.
++ Merging two branches of office doc folders... go easy now, thousands of files and overlength file names.
++ Omg. Best thing Hewlett Packard's done in the last quarter... @REALSTEELMOVIE !!!
++ This is moronic analysis... as Google Data probably provides the broadest, stablest set of APIs and infrastructure, with plenty of consumer action going on... outside of social networking apps per se. Just an offhand thought. Shrug. http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/10/96016/#axzz1aIL2u8x9
++ US markets seem to be down; I'm expecting KL stocks to follow suit tomorrow. It's quite clear that the thought of its selling its PC unit is a major cause of HP's investor negativity; they have to keep it, and the stock will go up. Apple's stock price will probably decay slowly towards December, unless they decide to pull another trick out of schedule. It's a pity that I only have a few minutes per day to study these things, but these are precious minutes. :)
++ Steve Jobs gets credit for being a leader, a feeler, not a thinker. Someone please kick that intellectual adoration, and save it for Wall Street. LOL.
++ Peace and quiet. Wondering if I should do wage work this weekend. Tempting as that might sound, I'm going to have to force myself to diversify. Seriously, I specialise too easily if I don't aim for generalism.
++ Thinking of starting the weekend by running from Gasing to KLCC. Fresh air.
++ Loser's fartlek : sfx, um in, um out, abdullah hukum, maarof junction, bv1 => 43 minutes. Long time no run. Now, to backtrack...
++ ‎1:58++ door to door with breaks
++ How did I end up in Bangsar for dinner again? I'm gonna go broke...

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 40/52 - wage

2011-10-02T20:50:00.002+08:00

Sunday

Wage is very distracting this week. Nevertheless, on we must go.

FB
+ forum post: #web_os update. (Note: this is not #webOS)
++ I've decided to forego Golang, and look more closely at Erlang, because the former is relatively unadopted and untested, despite being perhaps more visionary and much faster - same reason I avoid node.js. Turns out that People have deployed supercomputing systems largely utilising Erlang (@clustrx), but it appears to be closed-source - I've Tweeted to ask. To cover another base, Microsoft appears to have this shady related project called Midori, which you might find interesting.
++ My current strategy is to set up a [embedded linux -> Erlang VM -> web_os API layer] stack. Clearly just a first stab at it. For starters most of the hacking will happen the highest layer. Maybe in the future, we can throw away the lowest layer and and implement Erlang in x86 assembler. (Maybe that's been done before, I don't know.)
++Also, I'm thinking of booting up a blog to consolidate all stuff related to this hobby. If you're interested in full-stack development (and I mean FULL stacks...) hit me up, and let's do coffee.
++ Fixed income portfolio is looking up, after suffering numerous divestments over the psst six years. Other asset classes are doing pretty well - and software development among these is doing extraordinarily well, I suppose. Spread it thinner!
++ Had to explain "walking > driving > just sitting in a car," and "I stopped going to TrueFitness most recently because they won't let me work out in denim longs."
++ At home on a Saturday night, catching up on reading. Not so inclined to toss money at the night life just yet. Some balancing required. Let's catch up on work now...wage has been extremely distracting of late.
++ Spent much of the day helping the folks with tech, but not helping. Did the math, and am about to switch from @digi_telco's SmartPlan to @yes4g valuepack #heck
++ Nap time. Yes4G's quantitative value proposition could be more clearly presented. I might have switched earlier.
++ Comment elsewhere: It really does depend on what the masses have been groomed to consider as gross. I mean, I find most commercial activity to be gross... but many people find it delicious. I do enjoy studying what I find to be gross and learning what's tasty about it... but that's certainly not for everyone.
++ Rain in bangsar
++ Recently realised that I miss my pinky joint when groping around in dark bags for small objects. Where's that pen damnit?
++ I'm thinking of applying for product strategy jobs with consumer hardware manufacturers. #2012AndBeyond
++ Financial review: still behind targets after tax. Need to gradually migrate into tax-free endeavours, like trading stock and realestate.
++ Only fools shop when they're hungry.
++ ‎90 minutes of reading on microprocessor product features and doing financial projections, and I'm ready to go for a walk.
++ more correctly: fools ONLY SHOP when they're hungry
++ Fuck working in product strategy somewhere else. Might as well just run my own team. #BizOClock
++ I guess the next question is, what's after the design bubble?
++ Land rover defender 110 2.4l locally assembled. Myr106k on the road. Hmmmmm.

Tuesday

FB
+ Stopping work on technical stuff. Back to wage: risk management for a mad week. Shore up, shore up... go go gadget newsreaders...
++ Got some done. Now a bit of work before bed... time to think about the state of the tech industry.
++ Killed readitlater from my phone. Too much redundancy. Pipes are slow in this town.
++ Today I am minding a registration desk!
++ And I've got to mind one tomorrow - I wonder how much reading I can get done before 6am.
++ Clustrx says it's GPL. Where's the source? I'm thinking embedded cloud nodes just because.
++ To get going before midnight: laundry, new telco piping, claims, and ...
++ Thought about embedded network OSes, and figured they'd be no fun to build without a strawman problem. So, I guess it's time for graphic hacking. Nyeheheh. Time to pursue research into vector video, I suppose. Then once it's working in straight C, we attempt to scale it up via an Erlang-based web_os... or something like that.
++ Pleasant surprise - my equity trading account has come online! However, I probably won't be in much mental shape to take advantage of it soon. Puer and charts for a bit.

FB
+ Trying out a yes 4g wimax phone by samsung. I can use this if i can figure out how it talks to ubuntu.
+ Omg i can't believe the pumpkins happened 20 years ago. Omg where has my youth gone... #cherub
+ Reminiscing the kids I hung out with in college. http://www.frequency.com/video/smashing-pumpkins-today/2059522
+ what field of quant should I dive into next? why?
++ fundamental-driven equity market analysis
++ harmonic synthesis of emotion (make a machine that squeals like a mammal)
++ peer-to-peer web content management (servers in browsers)
++ distributed-computing with embedded Erlang
++ vector-graphics for video compression
+ Anyone know how to tether a Yes 4G Buzz to an Ubuntu computer?
++ forum posts (on how to comment on one's own pull-request; or rudimentary scientific writing for software developers):
++ mention the following (for this post, previousstate == previouscommit):
- what the previous state was
- your motivation for forking/hacking the previous state
- what you changed; why?
- what you didn't change; why?
- what you hope has now happened
- what you hope will not happen
- summary green flag: why is your hack valuable?
- summary red flags: some things that people should look out for, related to this issue, whether you or someone else coded it
++ (just a formalised innovation process - the same thing you'd use in product development, corporate strategy, drug research, etc. except that GitHub locks it down to the semicolon... which is what makes programming an interesting area to be innovating in!)
++ from github to jstor eh?
++ elsewhere, conversation with a friend: "mining news articles in a domain-specific (i.e. financially valuable) fashion has contingencies that go beyond finance... the model depends heavily on nat.lang.proc. <- and we don't have reliable models there yet (or do we? see watson)"
‎... (contd.) "then again, anything worth more than a net return above the BLR is worth considering :P"
‎... (contd.) "I'm reluctant to get into nat.lang.proc. without actually modelling human cognition in at least the visual modality. just my bent, I suppose."
‎... (contd.) on everything being about graphs "i'd agree with that with the qualifier that... all cognition can be modeled with graphs (network modeling) of primary sensations - however, words are secondary, they are often semantic, and the morphemes have no inherent value"
‎... (contd.) "I'm just saying that the networks of primary sensation (lower-level) have a far more predictable structure than the networks of words in what we call languages (higher-level)"
++ One more pull, then time for bed. #puer
++ ‎:D I'm more into phenomenology than I am into programming - you can see where this comes from.
++ ‎"predictable" above should translate to what a mathematician might call "regular"
++ on information theory 101: good place to begin linking common notions of "logic" to how words are references to functions, which identify sets. the meaning of a word is simply the fuzzy set of imagery (multi-modal) it points to in the mind (i.e. memory) of the perceiver (i.e. cognitive system)
++ ‎"information theory" - get a formal introduction. you won't regret it. if you're in a developed country, the local academic library's stack should suffice to produce at least something interesting. you know - always a hundred textbooks on the shelf, and it's often easy to find the 2-5 readable ones...
++ The secret to fast reading, is to only read texts that are fast-readable.

Wednesday

FB
+ Taking a half-day off to make up for a half-weekend. This begins with laundry at 2224hrs. An attempt to streamline telco costs. A shortage of company for banter on technology. And dinner catch-up with an astrophysicist.
++ Life sucks when people are whiny. There's only one thing to do when life sucks. Emotionally divest, and get on with it. For Sparta!!! :P
++ probably the only guy excited about downloading (another) version of Windows 8 while the world watches Apple
++ performance first - screw the fads and divass
++ ‎15 minute nap - slug should have fully downloaded by then #cheapHeavyHack
++ the literati are guardians of abstraction - the nature of words
++ current versions of VirtualBox do not enable USB bridging for the freeware versions. bugger. off to bed. think about this after catching up on a little sleep.
++ economic variables abounding.
++ Slow fucking year. Could be worse. Off to bed. Busy, busy, busy.
++ Can't hardly wait to get back into an environment where 100% of the population cares more about getting things done than about caring for things. Even if it's a population of one. Good evening crickets. The time is 3am.
++ Confirmed. Giving up. They're now my secondary data connection.
++ Lunch with a management consultant. This one doesn't seem sure if he will really like what management "consultants" do in the long haul.
++ Half a day of work, need to mop up telco optimisation, need to catch up on sleep, need to fix computer (again). So much for weekends. :)
++ Comment: "Social contracts are great if you can a) get everyone to sign one b) get everyone to sign the same one c) get everyone to have the same understanding of what they signed, and d) figure out what comes after the signage... #brattyPhilosopher"
++ ‎" Oh god- i might as well just get a huddle. Path of least middleware resistance. :)"
++ Finally caught up on sleep!
++ Now to try and remember what I do for a fun... wait for hard drive partitions to be resized, apparently.
++ September costs sans major capex came in at $19. Car getting 25mpg in this city, at about $0.44/km. Suck it in and drop it lower...!
++ That's $19/day. So low, but so high.
++ Life was simpler when I was just a kid with a geetar...

Friday
+ Tea.
++ Time for a two hour nap while waiting for the next operation on that partition to complete.
++ Reading up on embedded Erlang. Hands kinda tied - this basic version of Ubuntu has an out of date Flash player, so I can't study the stocks. #noob
++ Most online conversations on compiling JavaScript to Erlang seem to have died out around 2007.
++ forum: "I think Siri's usability is debatable. If you could get Siri to respond fast, and with a low rate of error to very simple questions, then you could have it sit around as a goto resource for that sort of question. It's all about figuring out if it'll be a good worker node, and if yes, the for what sort of task."
++ Lousy not-boyfriend excuses: "I started fixing my computer and kinda can't go out now."
++ Doing a product / marketing / comms / delivery teardown of YTL's 4G services with a friend, over Whatsapp... #geekery
++ Interesting that the Uppsala team is working on a LLVM backend for HiPE.
++ Yes 4G: if they throw away everything except Yes ID Starter Pack and Valuepacks, and if they restructure Valuepacks to allow any arbitrary purchase (min RM30) it'd be a much sharper product. Currently their product is too exotic - effective but uncommunicable - in its fragmentation.
++ Wondering about JavaScript to LLVM implementations.
++ Emscripten (compiles LLVM bytecode to JavaScript) reminds me of the Chinese millionaires who turn their vintages into a common punchbowl. Marcel Leng Khee-Gan Lee
++ Then again, as long as the target platforms are good, who cares if they target each other?
++ Clang just became my favourite Apple "product".
++ ‎"tablet/phone + keyboard dock" is becoming my preferred laptop computer, since its heat generation is very low.
++ bloomberg is my new favourite iOS app
++ Phew. Hard drive cleanup successful. Resurrected bootloader entries and my customised operating system.
++ omg. what an ordeal. -_- but it's good practice. ordeals always are.
++ And we're back. Reading up on Tizen. In parallel, thus begins my foray into tech/telco stock analysis.
++ Day one of studying stocks. Looked into Bollinger Bands and discovered that digi:mk trades very nicely within them, and so does maxis:mk - right this minute, maxis seems like the better buy. Will keep watching.
++ I think I've just found the manual for the creation of loopback devices (files that behave like physical disk partitions). Prap thus begins a foray into filesystem architecture. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount
++ Rock'n'roll... make food come to table...
++ Learning how to model Islamic marriage and divorce laws #callbacks

#web_os

2011-10-01T23:56:00.001+08:00

@jerng
Yang Jerng Hwa
No one using this tag? This is my first tweet on a new strategic direction, for a hobby stack: [embedded Linux -> Erlang VM -> #web_os API]
13 seconds ago via web Favorite Reply Delete

FB:

forum post: #web_os update. (Note: this is not #webOS)

I've decided to forego Golang, and look more closely at Erlang, because the former is relatively unadopted and untested, despite being perhaps more visionary and much faster - same reason I avoid node.js. Turns out that People have deployed supercomputing systems largely utilising Erlang (@clustrx), but it appears to be closed-source - I've Tweeted to ask. To cover another base, Microsoft appears to have this shady related project called Midori, which you might find interesting.

My current strategy is to set up a [embedded linux -> Erlang VM -> web_os API layer] stack. Clearly just a first stab at it. For starters most of the hacking will happen the highest layer. Maybe in the future, we can throw away the lowest layer and and implement Erlang in x86 assembler. (Maybe that's been done before, I don't know.)

Also, I'm thinking of booting up a blog to consolidate all stuff related to this hobby. If you're interested in full-stack development (and I mean FULL stacks...) hit me up, and let's do coffee.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 39/52 - grub

2011-09-25T21:38:00.001+08:00

Sunday

FB
+ Ubuntu 11.04 auto-detects the TP Link USB Wi-Fi dongle that I got for MYR18-25 or thereabouts. Atom desktop from January is now effortlessly wireless. Time to virtualise some of my workstations.
++ Trying to see if I can figure out a GRUB2 menuentry for a Wubi (loopback device) boot.
++ I think I will avoid recommending Wubi to anyone who has to maintain it. Installing on physical partitions is easier to maintain.
++ Then again, loopbacks are fun for encapsulation :)
++ It's good to catch up on studies. Wage work has been busy of late.
++ as of today... I KNOW GRUB FU!!!!
# boots wubi, where hd0 is the physical device, and where windows is on hd0,2 the second partition
grub>loopback loop0 (hd0,2)/ubuntu/disks/root.disk
grub>set root=(loop0)
grub>linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 loop=/ubuntu/disks/root.disk ro
grub>initrd /initrd.img
grub>boot
++ New Acer Aspire Timeline keyboards aren't the nail-catchy type! Cool.
++ Oof. Dinner. Back to studying the code.
++ Wondering if I should risk bricking my lappy, and try installing the Burg bootloader.
++ It's only 9pm. Too risky. Will wait till I'm back home to try Burg. What shall I read instead...

Monday

FB
+ Anyone out there fancy messing with bootloaders? I think I'm getting closer to learning how to write operatings systems.
++ Just learnt how Ctrl+/ in Google Docs works the same way that ? does in Gmail.
++ tidied up my computing LAMP study materials: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_GB&key=0AnIy2Y0kIMxldEdJMFd2RmhPcHAwM2E2N0dqQXlWbHc&output=html
LAMP journal
docs.google.com
++ Wish we could get BlueMotion cars in Malaysia... haha... I think I've been overdosing on car shows.
++ Just realised that I'd forgotten what a fuel cell does.
++ Enter Monday. Time to take a 10 hour break from work, to pay for all this education.
++ logged an 8-7 day with a brief break in between. that's ok - rock and roll. what's next... take apart a brower, or an operating system? i think the browser provides the easier option for now. baby steps. come one, come all.
++ laundry. boiled pea sprouts and a long dash of soy. mmhmm, now that's a classic taste. fresh. two glasses of milk. maybe chicken rice later.
++ thinking about specialising in middleware. i already specialise in human middleware, maybe i should specialise in machine middleware too. then one day i'll actually get around to the human-machine middleware. lol
++ sometimes you warn people and they don't listen. then you gotta help them out after they start fucking themselves over. :-/ such is man.
++ d'oh. fixed another bug. killtweets was wiping sessions during authentication failures, but not savings the changes. -_-
++ so funny today: "@gnovark says: Programming is an art. The problem is that too many programmers are of the Jackson Pollock school."
++ not so funny, the poor suckers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576593122004251398.html?mod=rss_Heard_on_the_Street
Greece Offers No Clean Break for Euro
online.wsj.com
The promise to keep Greece in the euro is one the euro zone will fight to keep.
++ ruminating on contemporary consumer economics. reading up on the chromium projects developer documents. websockets seem to address the lower-levels of some of the problems that concern me. reading up on the architecture of p2p networks. ruminating.
++ This is new learning, is it a Bill Gates design? "In dos, the boot sector loads IO.sys and Msdos.sys, which loads config.sys to configure the computer, then loads command.com, and runs Autoexec.bat on it."
++ Now tracking the world of Chris Lattner and the LLVM.
++ Apple's low-level hacking is quite impressive. I still don't like their UIs, for the most part. Win some, lose some I guess.
++ My recent overdose of Jeremy Clarkson is making me say "cock," all the time... -_-
++ too late for chicken rice - anyone want to hit up MingTian in SS24 for pig porridge? (many parts of pig are involved)

Tuesday

FB
+ Soliloquy is a lost art. It was lost for good reason, and I bring it back for none.
++ Aphorism is nevertheless a better babble.
++ Rain and nap time. Skipping further dinner. Might get some cheese though.
++ Fried two eggs. Cuppa joe. at 23:00+08, I hope it's not too late. I've spent the last three months working on form in this routine, now I am tightening the corners and working on speed.
++ Depressing: documentation that emphasises how difficult it is to write a machine operating system. I thought it was obvious already.
++ Heart lightening: anyone says pure math is difficult, and they can go fuck themselves. At least I have options.
++ Getting Readitlater to download my reading for the laptop.
++ Digging up the calculus and linear algebra. Still haven't gotten much further than highschool. It's a nicely pristine set of studies. Raw weapons - no need to worry about engineering drivel for a bit.
++ Know your limits! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_limits
++ Bedtime. High risk day tomorrow. Morning ops routines, client meetings, unrelated meeting with a VC (for strange reasons), and then some media advisories to write. Let me see if I can get out of office by 5pm. Yeah, right...
++ No time for brekkie, had reduced meetings, but insufficient time. Job done. Back to work for the evening (like real work, of no short-term financial value). :)
++ ‎7pm. Need to sort out my next 14 hours so that i can actually get stuff done. Already missed financial targets for September. More costs, more time!!
++ A miser is one who decides that his community's standards of efficiency are...merely unacceptable.

FB
+ got my chicken rice. hanging out in bangsar, starting to write an operating system. i've officially braved the thought of insanity.
++ it's not that complicated _NAME_, just very very tedioius http://wiki.osdev.org/Beginner_Mistakes like most significant problems in life...
Beginner Mistakes - OSDev Wiki
wiki.osdev.org
++ Interesting resource http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html
++ Interesting interview http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/315421/we_talk_developers_behind_menuetos_an_operating_system_written_entirely_assembly_language?pp=1
++ Midori: sounds like the MSFT answer to GOOG's Golang initiatives http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-midori-operating-system-is-still-alive-and-seemingly-well/7439
++ Seeing as how it's crazy OS day on my wall - an OS written in Erlang (for non-programmers, that's like a cake made of icing -some may dispute that) http://massivesolutions.co.uk/clustrx.html
++ forum post on nested VMs (we'd agreed that it's only economical if there's a limit on the number of VMs at the parent layer):

Correct me if I'm wrong, but typically if a technician could easily do something with additional metal, but the metal is not available due to procurement limitations, then some financial controller somewhere needs to grow a brain... given that the price of metal is infinitesimal these days...

... or is the ACTUAL SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE of the system preventing the addition of VMs?? LOL
++ forum post on how to hire content people (someone said, try English majors):

a who the fuck runs companies that hire based on degrees? lol. misleading the noobs...

++ I guess I gotta add this to 'mah Flipboard...
++ Wondering if using readitlater as a todo list will work
++ https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD now this is interesting. All I need is a NAS cache to set up a fleet of desktops. Next thing to learn - netboot. We'll get back to Beowulfs eventually.
++ Setting up an Ubuntu repository mirror seems fairly straightforward at 30GB or so. OS X Server is also interesting because I don't hear folks around here using it much.
++ OS X Lion Server stack is MYR360. Not bad. I wonder how flexible the hardware requirements are. And I would have liked to know the price for WIndows Server, but this page wouldn't work for me on Firefox or Chrome on Ubuntu. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/mla/default.aspx

Thursday

FB
+ Mingtian foodcourt. I hve crowd addiction, which gets particular painful when I have to shut myself up for hacking. Got a spot by the DJ
++ today I was just poking around at various packages for speeding up boot times. Major $-work day tomorrow, so don't want to tire myself out doing other-work right now.

FB
+ Hard challenge this week: learning x86 assembler.
++ Easy challenge this week: setting up a Linux usability consultancy in Kuala Lumpur.
++ I haven't done much more than basic groundwork for either.
++ yummy. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/owc-3g-budget-ssd-ssd-storage-solid-state-drive-ssd,13536.html
OWC Introduces Fast, Cheap 275MB/s SSD for $68
++ Need to slow down and get ready for bed. Massive todo list from 9am-6pm tomorrow. 01:00+08 now :( take a deep breath.
++ Something to tapau on the next trip to the mainland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
Loongson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
++ Study progress has been decent this past fortnight. Need to circle back and do backups tomorrow. Housekeeping!
++ Planning my work for tomorrow.
++ ‎19:31+08 time to get back to life in the fast lane. Chill.
++ Salary deposited. Petrol filled. Time to fuel my brain. More chicken. Backups, and then perhaps assembly.
++ Removing distractions. Backed up the loop0. Uninstalled apache, php, mysql, and postgres, There we go. Less children in the room. Hush and see what comes up next. Still waiting.
++ It's starting to become a dexter mode on, dexter mode off kinda thing. Strange.
++ knackered. need to heal.
++ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Assembly looks very interesting - but how does it differ from C?
High Level Assembly - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
++ Wondering about possible interactions between LLVM, HLA, and Lisp.
++ Tired and lonely. Gearing up mentally for another day of non-quantitative wage working. Ganbate what not :)
++ Getting bootchart again, just for shits.
++ Remember to breathe. Studying the respiratory system's PNS haptic streams as I tune down CNS optic and acoustic streams. Synchronising signal phases, increasing SNR, and easing the storage and recollection of memories. Seriously, fun stuff if you ever sit down long enough to figure out how to quantify the mind's model of the world including itself.
++ Oh jolly good - a flurry of email just came in. Thought that I'd been confronted by someone selling boobjobs. Clarification pending. Now back to thinking about assemblers before bed.
++ Recently it's been hammered into me that inexperienced ISFJs need good goalsetters, otherwise they wander like lost moles. #tunneling #teams
++ I just ate a tomato. Hmm. I think i'll eat two more.
++ Cruising the old streets of PJ looking for a bite. Now that just sounds wrong.

FB
+ I feel like a Smith. It's a good day to bemoan the well-heeled, hard-boned worms of our earth.
++ That's the Smith I meant. Anyway. Dociler work day. Now back to Bangsar for work... probably related to assembly languages.
++ Fuck work. Nap time. Major wage day tomorrow. Work may have to wait till the weekend.
++ I hereby declare "dociler," a valid neologism. Perverse. tsk tsk
++ Pure64 is interesting. I am contemplating a networked OS architecture, which has a fat/generalist stack node for usability, and lean/baremetal nodes for specialisation. I FEEL THAT THERE IS SO MUCH WASTED COMPUTATIONAL HARDWARE ON EARTH GODDAMNIT. Apparently coders have feelings too. ;)

Saturday

FB
+ Many people I meet, are not able to recognise their meat, for what happens to be their meat.
++ Post-dinner, I am refreshed, and thinking of flooring it. Haven't done an all-nighter in a while. Nights are such a waste of concentration.
++ It's kinda sad when people know how to appreciate stories, but not the structures from which consciousness is apparently derived. I say apparently because of course, there isn't much of a way to actually know it. ;)
++ Never underestimate the quantity of value that a good management consultant can add, by exposing an organised folly. To commercialise the business of smart-aleckry is well and good until the masses of moronia decide to revel in local equilibria. Reap it.
++ I'm quite disappointed that despite several experiments, civilisation seems to have stagnated in the paradigm of the two-dimensional graphical user interface for computers. And yet 3D gaming is a massive industry.
++ A spot of coffee - instant 3-in-1 stuff - keeps me going through the subject of how routers work. Networking, finally.
++ Soon I'll get to understanding filesystems.
++ Just relearnt how to go incognito with Firefox.
++ Decided that I need to read K&R.
++ Learnt about car tires from a tech blogger.
++ IT pros afraid of cloud computing? Our kids will find coding to be baroque. What computer doesn't understand humans?
++ I think I'll take Friday night off from both work and wage.
++ After two tomatoes, I've decided to take a shower then catch up on random work (reading). Structured work (reading manuals) will be put off to another time.
++ Postponing laundry till tomorrow, while I catch up on e-paperwork for the wages.
++ Wage!
++ Latest edition of Fast Company reminds me that after this quantitative gauntlet, it'll be time to hit up commerciable deisgn.

KillTweets - Alpha release announcement

2011-09-24T06:12:00.001+08:00

I'd like to share this with you, but please DO NOT PLAY with it until you have logged out of your main Twitter account (unless you want to see all your Tweets disappear).

http://killtweets.appspot.com
(Alpha release 2011-09-23T05:53+08)

Expect this user flow

This should ask you to identify yourself via a Google account. Then, it will send you to Twitter to authorize the app. IF YOU AUTHORISE the Twitter app, it will start deleting your Tweets as quickly as it can, WITHOUT further warnings. Each request to the server fetches the most recent 50 tweets and starts deleting them in reverse chronological order of publication. After the request completes, it will redirect your browser back to the same page, and continue deleting Tweets until it runs out of (a) your Tweets or (b) API calls - you currently get about 150 calls per hour, meaning that you can delete just over 140 Tweets per hour.

Development

I'd implemented OAuth 2.0 clients before, but this was my first attempt to implement/learn:

i) an OAuth 1.0 client (RFC 5849, to be specific)
ii) written in Python 2.5.x
iii) hosted on Google App Engine

The learnings were timely, as I'm currently pursuing independent studies in all of the above, among other quantitative subjects. I'd previously familiarised myself with PHP and JavaScript (which seem to have become very similar of late). I've been trying to pick up lower-level stuff like C, Go, and Erlang, but their number and design of data-structures has been challenging. Python has proved to be a rather good language to bridge that learning curve, since it utilises various types of tuple-style data structures, besides being stronger typed than PHP or JS. App Engine provides a tier of free-of-charge service that befits a poor self-funded graduate student such as myself, so learning that has been another win.

Origins

The choice of business logic was due to a recent spring cleaning effort - no one else out there seems to have a working Twitter app to erase all your Tweets, so I decided to hack one up myself. (For Facebook, there is the excellent http://www.cleanmywall.net bookmarklet.)

Next steps

Maybe I'll spend more time polishing it up, slapping on some ads and a GUI, and release a beta. Maybe I'll just use it as it is, since it's doing what I need it to do already.

I hope it helps you too.

This is hereby the official feedback page for this application.

Gradschool Year 3/5 Week 38/52 - python

2011-09-18T02:41:00.000+08:00

Sunday

FB
+I conclude: there are two types of people - those who are driven by what they want to have, and those who are driven by what they already have. By and large, those who want cannot imagine what it is to have, and those who have cannot imagine what it is to want. Which are you, a wanter or a haver?
++ Of course it's a false dichotomy designed to fuck you in the head. All speech is a false dichotomy - but you don't have a choice unless you wish to stay silent, do you? Silent, or deluded. Hahaha. Silly rabbits.
++ sleep for what? don't tell me we have new work tomorrow... oh noo....
++I can't remember the last time I did what my parents wanted. You can ask my mum __NAME__ :)
++ Job done - proof of concept Google App Engine->Python->RFC5849->Twitter integration http://killtweets.appspot.com/). Omfg what a headache. It's dawn on the second day of a long weekend. Time to get some sleep, and grab lunch with the delightful __NAME__ at some convenient time. Zzz. Then to actually build some functionality into that app.
++ Ooh... just confirmed that both OSes on my dualboot notebook can sync all the same folders to Dropbox. Nice. Good job with the indexing system, they did.
++ Whoa, what was that... that just walked by? If it looks like a ditz, and talks like a ditz, and walks like a hooker... I've probably been awake too long without sleep. :) Off to brekkie, then lunch.
++ Waiting for brekkie. Time to review my study list for the rest of the weekend.
++ Readitlater is currently the perfect mnemonic tool for managing what I know about what I don't know.
++ But __NAME__, the trick to being a haver is simply to know what you have and to appreciate the extent of its opportunities. Wanting what one can't have is patently... dumb. ;) That's why you hate us arrogant bastards. Don't be hatin' we haven't even met yet :P
++ A few caffeinated drinks later, and after food... I'm back home in a cold room coding. Almost. As soon as I update the majority of my social investment, which is Facebook. Yes, you scoff.
++ __NAME__ no one gets points for being a baby. That being said, I've heard that they give extra credit to babysitters :P
++ Reading the "screen" manual. Never got it memorised properly. Nap time. Kungfu, the pagent is temporarily discontinued. Zzz...
++ Awake. Going to look for food in obvious places.
++ Reflections on personal economy - my businessy friends always make fun of me - drinking, fucking, car and house ownership, commercial endeavours, and other "normal" activities... all stuff I postpone to late age in order to avoid operational complexity. There always is, and still is, so much to learn beyond those trivial affairs. Busy, busy, busy. I'm glad to have had better things to do...

FB
+ String manipulation in programming reminds me mostly of knife work.
++ It rains, and the view is lovely from the KL City Library
++ Still frustrated with the million imbeciles who have no notion of long-term career planning, and enjoy discussing careers in terms of what they currently feel like doing.
++Probably however, more frustrated with the ones who come up to me and emote about my (not their) lack of apparent planning... when their proposed alternatives are non-probabilistic heuristics that any child who reads the newspapers could have obtained.
++ It's a good Adrian Mole day :)
++ Maybe I shouldn't confuse "any child who reads the newspapers," with my newspaper reading self as a child.
++ 3pm - that's 5 hours of librarying today. Learnt a bit more about Twitter, Google App Engine's WebOb-style framework, Python (e.g. os.environ, class definition syntax, iterable types), and got a refresher on Twitter's API authentication system. Wondering if I should break for solid breakfast, or keep studying until the library closes at 5pm.
++ I have Twitter's oauth_verifier via Python on Google Apps! Time for breakfast. Bye by KL City Library. http://killtweets.appspot.com/

FB
++ PhDs are an asset class that I cheer for, but which make no sense whatsoever in my personal portfolio :( vicariously through you, my loves. ;)

FB
+ Nap time. Busy day tomorrow. Wonder if I'll wake up before wages begin at office hours.

Tuesday

FB
+ Dinner was a wok fried cabbage with garlic. Found my parents eating brownies and ice cream. I'm glad that grants them the appearance of having nothing to do with my habits.
++ ‎21:25+08 - done with dinner fuel, and almost done with laundry ops. Need to quit kaypohing on the business of silly people, and just get on with studies. I still think finance is presents quantitatively literate generalists with the greater space to encash their resources, but I'm not yet sure. Back to Python.
++ Time to practice session implementation in Python - probably about to create a ton of security flaws. Onward!
++ Studying Google App Engine's Python Datastore API
++ Digging into Python class and subclass definition in an attempt to properly understand the "db.Model"'s properties. Black magic, they say...
++ ‎(cheh... the black magic is in the language implementation... the GAE API semantics are actually quite transparent...)
++ Currently on the way to implementing basic sessions in GAE Python as (comments welcome):

# 'db' is the GAE API datastore class
# 'users' is the GAE API authentication class
# sessions
class Session(db.Expando):
expiry = db.DateTimeProperty(required=true)
session = Session(key_name=str(users.get_current_user()))
session.some_dynamic_property = 'yomama'

++Ok, bedtime. Need to maintain work-life balance in favour of work now. Mega-busy wage week.
++ Technically though work=life, so it's actually a wage/non-wage balance that needs to be maintained. Anyway, with that... nacht.
++ Food ops. note: cabbage for myr4.28/head is so not-worth-it. Ban the cabbage. Everything from tomatoes to leafy greens offer better value - even sprouts. Gonna be refilling gas soon, afterwhich i'll update transportation costs/km and expenditure/day for the rest of the month. Mind the disciplines. Nyehehe.
++ ‎01:xx+08 down, 07:30+08 up. Year 3, Week 38 is pushing on.
++ Morning routines done. Need to get out of home office. Move!
++ Creative writing: I was trained to do it in emergencies, and I still do it decently. But it's kinda mundane. Fully loaded, and ready to fire!

Thursday

FB
+19:15+08
++Waged work hours are off. It is now time to get on with unwaged work. We left off yesterday at using GAE's datastore and Users service to build something that behaves like a session. But first, fold the laundry, and make some dinner.
++ Kitchen full of parents. Went for a run in the rainy dark streets of Gasing instead. Washed. Offered to cook pea sprouts for a girl, and was told to buy chicken. "Sigh. My diet is pipelined a week in advance."
++ Gotta get up for waged work in five hours, but so little other work done. Sigh.
++ Too sleepy. Giving up for the day. I think I haven't written my if(a or b): properly.
++ Gogogo. Thought while running yesterday, a sociopath is little more than an extroverted misanthrope. Reminded myself today, jobs are like fashion, and fashion is mere morality, for the current MO.
++ Waiting in the space between meetings. Tried the Windows Phone 7 UI for the first time and prefer it to iOS. Unfortunately, the absence of Marketplace means that SSH is probably not available on WP7. is it?
++Wage hours off again.
++ Lemonade and Python.
++ Who would have thought that lemons are $%^& oily :P
++ Python - you know it's going to get goofy once you read the manual under Class Definitions and see "(Lacking universally accepted terminology to talk about classes, I will make occasional use of Smalltalk and C++ terms. I would use Modula-3 terms, since its object-oriented semantics are closer to those of Python than C++, but I expect that few readers have heard of it.)"
++ ‎"In fact, nothing in Python makes it possible to enforce data hiding — it is all based upon convention." Craphat -then again, maybe not.
++ Digging into GAE's datastore, and wondering about the theoretical speed-limit for an edge-store built on rudimentary GAE methods.
++ This is good, but I wish I could write a prettier class (sigh):

class Session(db.Expando):
created = db.DateTimeProperty()

# if no session is found, create one; if an expired one is found, reset it to zero
session = Session.get_by_key_name(current_user)
if session is None \
or session.created + datetime.timedelta(seconds = session_lifespan_years) < utcnow: session = Session(key_name = current_user, created = utcnow) # fugly: how do I rewrite the class so that I just have to write here `session = Session()?
++ Facebook new UI is data-intense, which I like, but only in that teeny corner, which I don't like.
++ ‎(Forum post: web application architecture for dummies.)

My preferred model (business analysis of a web application) has been more like:

APPLICATION layer (CLIENT-side):
JavaScript is for Temporal definitions
^
CSS is for Spatial (and derivative, like colour) definitions
^
HTML is for Content/Conceptual definitions (abstract of space & time ;) )
]
NOTE: there is a VERTICAL hierarchy here - you don't need the higher layers to use the lower layers. This is output from...

^

APPLICATION layer (SERVER-side):
[whatever language you like]

^

PLATFORM layer:
[Web Server + Database Server + Language Intepreter/Compiler] which are more or less horizontally interconnected, having similar requirements (the OS below) and providing different specialisations/ functions/ roles.

^

Operating System

^

Metal (or virtual machine)
++ Tired. Slow in the head. Wishing studies would go faster, but that probably means I'm learning a lot subconsciously. #foolishConjecture
++ Finally found the space of mind to read up on WSGI. Ok, it's interesting.
++ Epic rush-hour trawl... 40 minutes from Hartamas to Brickfields, 10 minutes from Brickfields to Bukit Bintang. Thought about how my professional skill set is primarily specialised in getting things done, regardless of what I feel about it - so much so that as soon as I start to enjoy any work, I tend to avoid treating it as a profession. So if I keep a job, it probably means it's an ideal secondary activity to complement my primary activities. Old hat.
++ Bedtime attempt #1.
++ Considered switching telcos due to bad 3G reception at a major client's office. Will delay reconfigurations for the time being. Transportation costs have dropped to MYR1.43/km. Dinner was cheaper than expected - good value. Daily discretionary budget for the rest of the month, about MYR12-16. Doopdeedoo. Lawyer says apartment paperwork is nearly ready. Fingers crossed, I can take all of 2013 off for studies :P
++ Break. Errands. Now back to wage for a bit.
++ You call it high fashion, we call it kitsch.
++ Got jumped for supper. Pity I'd had chicken intestines for dinner already. Writing a speech at Plan B. Given the target audience, this one is actually quite fun. Separated by an inch of glass from a woman reading guide book to... Oregon. Strange.
++ Spent supper pontificating over quantitative literacy, scientific literacy, and professional life in KL. Back now to speech writing... sigh.
about an hour ago · Like
++ Haven't listened to the radio much in ten years - until I got my car speakers working this month. Apparently I like California Gurls and Beautiful Monster.

Saturday

FB
+Peace and quite at 02:38+08
++ I'm reading up more GAE documentation. I don't think I understand its environment well enough yet.
++ Plenty more reading to go. Wondering if I am oveinvesting in learning this domain-specific information. Bed time.
++ Earlier today, registered for my first stock trading account. Hope this doesn't mean I'll be stuck in gradschool forever :P
++ Friday jams. Hartamas->D'sara Heights->Ara->Pantai->gasing
++ Daily budget seems to have dropped to MYR4.69 - I guess I've been fucking around too madly with the cash.
++ Ah, if I add back my expected cash flow from parking and gas claims, we're back up in the RM20s, which is a "phew," but that was a bit too close for comfort.
++ Laundry, some milk, and a shower. Nap time. TGIF
++ Ipad battery discharged after two weeks. Is that normal?
++ Here's the plan. Get out of bed at 22:00+08 and get back to work!
++ More tomatoes. Clothes now to hit the dryer. Thinking of a good place to go read GAE docs.
++ Baby gherkin snack.
++ Any idea which of these cases is faster? In case 2, would Python cache the result of the first x.find('=') and reuse it for the second function call?

response = 'a=1&b=2&c=3'
response_list = response.split('&')

# case 1
response_d = {}
for x in response_list:
xp = x.partition('=')
response_d[xp[0]] = xp[2]

# case 2
response_d = dict([ ( x[:x.find('=')], x[1+x.find('='):] ) for x in response_list])

++ Fried eggs snack. Not sure if that's the best way to satisfy a junk food craving, following some cheese.
++ On faster than light neutrinos: the only scientists who can be shocked by this sort of news, are the kind that think too abstractly of science to begin with.
++ got that @#$%^&* OAuth1.0 access token... yay for Friday night study catch-up.
++ Wahliao... Twitter's server is talking to me in BM.
++ learning XML parsing in GAE: I still don't really get import-syntax.
++ Wow, that was a lot of debugging - messed up the alphabetical order of some protocol parameters :(
++ Yay, finally got it working. It's deleting Tweets. Running it off my lappy for now - will do more thorough debugs before releasing the beta.

FB
+ Pan mee breakfast, Python meetup, poetry slam, indie concert, and reading up on Windows Azure.
++ Need to figure out how to position Azure's comparative advantages. Based on what I can see, AWS provides a low-level IAAS but no managed robust PAAS, whereas GAE is the opposite.
++ Azure apparently offers both, having web/worker-role servers that are oriented for web development, with FastCGI support. And then there are fullblown VM-roles if you want to bypass IIS by writing your own web server, or use OTP and Erlang. (Azure's apparently in talks with Joyent to further implement node.js on Azure, though it's not clear to what degree.)
++ Ok, I think I now know how to sell this @&"%#*!
++ At NSTP: whatever this is, it sure as hell ain't slam poetry.
++ Just realised that my id's hardcoded in, so you can only delete MY tweets. Haha. Whoops. Got to fix that later. Will post update whenever I get to it.
++ NSTP: finally, someone brought the slam
++ Fixed the bug. Tomatoes and cheese. Mmm. Time to check the groceries spreadsheet.
++ "why do you have a groceries spreadsheet?!"
"they say, the unexamined life is not worth living"
"oh geez, socrates..."
++ Reflection. Hydration. Recollection...
++ Time to go a bit lower. Was thinking about bootloaders again today. Let's try to run a copy of Chromium. It's something to think about amidst all this Windows 8 buzz. I haven't had much time to mess around with OS installations since December or February!
++ Broad strokes are a source of inspiration.
++ The thing about being a person with very few "wants," is that you tend to rely on other peoples' "wants," as a basis for improvisation.
++ So what do people want? That's a good place to start, when designing business architecture.
++ Posting from the Chromium operation system (vanilla, by Hexxah). Cute.
++ Whoops. I think that running Chromium on a USB didn't stop it from wiping the boot manager on my internal hard drive.
++ My knack for generalism is still indicating that in commerce, I should be working in finance.
++ learning about loop devices and a bit of grub semantics
++ Very interesting. I actually managed to learn more about bootloaders today. Going to hack fix my lappy, then migrate all hardcore studies in this to a VM.

Week #37 - irregularity

2011-09-11T12:26:00.012+08:00

Sunday

This has not been the most productive weekend for work. The week has been mostly spent jobbing from home, and so I have been quite deprived of social interaction. I have been spending the weekend catching up on that. Aside, I have this week repositioned my working strategy, and am now approaching the general subject of understanding how mchines think, beginning with the transistors. There is nothing else too new... to report.

I have been broadly aware of the electrical engineering of computers, but not overly familiar with it. At this point in studies of the universe in general, I have proceeded through the stack from high-level scripting languages, towards C and Go - but find that to understand how the compilers work beneath them, I really do need to get down to the architectural study of microprocessors. This was going to happen at some point in my education, but I suppose that now is as good a time as any.

I have a feeling that for a while, I'll be running back home "to my pipe," until mobile Internet in KL gets a whole lot more reliable.

Wondering how hard it is to set up a library in Malaysia, like officially. Food and beverage, co-working spaces, and other business models are certainly complimentary, but the library service is a point of definition.

FB:
Sunday afternoon - I think I'll look into spring cleaning all my Tweets.
+ 6 hours ago via Mobile Might be a good day to learn Python.
+ 6 hours ago via Mobile We have hello-world.
+ 4 hours ago Decided not to use the python-twitter project library - as that would mean learning less about raw Python on App Engine. Yup - I picked Python this week because I'm hoping to use App Engine for this and learn that platform too.
+ 4 hours ago Can't upload app using appcfg.py - seems to be a proxy issue, but right now I'm not sure which layer of the stack the problem's really at.
+ 3 hours ago Asked for help on local developed FB groups. Going to take a nap now. Zzz.
+ 3 hours ago Things I learnt while napping: making the conscious mind daydream is an excellent way to allow the subconscious mind to decouple the conscious mind from the sensory nervous data stream.
+ 2 hours ago Post-nap: no feedback from groups, so did a bit more reading with refreshed mind. Found several vague pointers, including this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1665835
++ Learnt about "operating system environmental variables." Learnt how to EVs on/off in Ubuntu, and found that a network proxy configuration I'd set up at UCSI during NMF2011 was stuck in my /etc/environment. 妈屄!
++ Fixed it. Uploaded my first Python hello-world to http://killtweets.appspot.com/
++ Moving on with life.
+ 2 hours ago PS. I am not sure that I am using the colloquially correct character for swearing. Need to check with my Chinese SME _NAME_ 2 hours ago Taking a break to do laundry and groceries for the rest of the week. Maybe a haircut too. Gotta let the knowledge rest.
+ 2 hours ago Waiting for a shirt to bleach. OMG. I can update Ubuntu again after months... #stoopid

FB:
[photo of rough cut tomatoes] ‎
+ (I actually eat like this because I looooooove knives...)
+ maneuverering in kitchen with mom and dad - everyone's working on separate stuff because we cannot agree

FB (later in the evening):
OK - finished up the carrots and tomatoes. Unsuccessful at shopping for a curl bar. Dad is still hammering away at his goulash... I'm going to try Python -> Twitter on App Engine again.
+ 2 hours ago via Mobile Python: learnt comments, strings, and so now we have HTML. Up next... OAuth and Twitter.
+ about an hour ago Chipping away at manual OAuth 1.0 token requests. Signature generation is a bitch, but oh well... lay them bricks in by design.
++Time for dinner - meat, and sleep.

Tuesday

FB wall cleaning:
+ honey pepper pork chops at 1am. i'm quite happy to have a functional kitchen again.
++ ‎... served hot, with ripe mango slabs served cold; to be cut and eaten in alternative mouthfuls, in the jus from the pan; washed down with a brisk pu-er. Ok, I have to write this one down. Pulverised garlic + oil -> pan fry some lean pork marinated in salt, pepper, and honey. #roughCut
++ Thoughts on human cognition, between frying pan and shower: emotional folks just require a little training, to shift the main focus of their spatial analyses away from the flesh than encases their bodies. Vice versa, for less emo folks.
++ Wait - did i just miss the tenth anniversary of the day i bought my first, a cherry red washburn made in indonesia? Sparta! #911
++ A bit of electronics reading before bed. Much to do on the morrow. Time to hit Jalan Pasar, soon, perhaps.
++ Financial review: transportation costs have dropped to MYR1.53/km, daily spend targets at MYR16.85, insourced a curl bar, rationalising groceries... Highest MYR/kg items: Replace with:
Cheddar Cheese 51.96 ?
Pork 20.18 ?
Pea Sprouts 14.95 ?
KimChi 27.25 ?
Yoghurt 9.26 ?
++ AM coffee: All the above got to go. But maybe a more utilitarian protein mass/myr analysis.
++ Interestingly enough, a superficial protein g/myr analysis shows the following relationship: milk > cheese > yoghurt; it's a bit hard to measure eggs and meat accurately of course, but those are definitely > milk. Of course we neglecting the value of fruits and vegetable micro/mystery-nutrients here, but oh heck. it's a facebook wall...
++ Did you know that stuff was designed to be a more nutritional substitute for gin?
++ No kidding. Speaking of meals - I need to be more picky about the frozen chicken that I buy. tsk tsk.

FB
+ Das Kleinan Auto: Kancil und Vierte Reich
++ it's a joke, it's a joke... VW's been pumping ad dollars into the Das Auto campaign, and all I can think of is where it began.
++ And just which teutonic genius decided that the global branding should utilise German copy? OMG. No one understands that "Das Auto" and "The Car" are the same thing here...
++ Alternatively - assuming the Das Auto global strategy - let's nitpick on the artwork. They put Das Auto and The Car in the same sound bite / graphical font - failing to separate the brand morphemes (das auto) and the brand semantics (the car). So bad.

FB
+ Lunch break. Of late have been noticing miscoordination in hand speed and eye speed. Need to pay more attention, especially on the street.
++ I never took DoTA seriously - made a point to learn just enough to survive ;P
++ ‎:) After I solve a major engineering problem for the world, I'll make a point of playing global league for at least one game ok? Meanwhile my game is careering. Haha
++ We'll see about that. It's all just one big game anyway.
++ AM coffee: eye speed to exceed hand speed. Quick note to self.

FB
+ More coffee! #20senOnly
++ Done with wage for the day. Need to R&R and get back to quantitative work. Where's the cabbage?
++ Note the eternal jest. Feelings are more like words, and words are more like numbers, than most... amateur humans dare imagine.

Wednesday

FB
+ Beautiful rain. Nothing like a hot wok and a fist full of garlic. Time for a shower, and studies. But first... some wall cleaning...
++ Learning about 1950s programming legacies: printf for string formatting.
++ 0025h Shut down the Python lab. Pick up at: reading the python-twitter library and copying its example of OAuth1.0 token requests, to speed up learning both this and Python at the same time. Engineering, out.
++ Python is after all, an interesting family of languages.
++ Reading up on coroutines, subroutines, generators, pipelines. Yay. 0300h approaches, and I think the second wind of study needs a break.
++ Nice to be actually getting my hands dirty with the precursors to the particular challenge: of optimising microprocessor design for Target Languages. Minimise that mess, then let's compile existing software from other languages to that Target Language. Python on a chip is therefore interesting.
++ Sometimes the breadth of this stuff weighs heavily on me, but I guess my problems are relatively trivial in their own way. #firstWorldPains
++ Oh god... chasing milk with yoghurt was an interesting mistake.

+ learnt how to Ctrl+L to get to the address bar in a browser some time in the past week.

fb
+ Found an an old prezzi that I did a few years ago for a Ruby enthusiast group - the prezzi has nothing to do with Ruby :P Anyway, in case there are any machine intelligence / meditation nuts out there. LOL.
Quantitative Phenomenology
www.slideshare.net
‎2008
++ bucket list - low priority #coffeeBreakingButStillAtWork - I write for money, haha.
++ Anyway, no one needs another buddha. It's a very lead-by-example tradition - be happy and anyone who prefers otherwise can fuckall. :) Sigh. Been doing rushed jobs all day - so gonna take a deep breath, and aim to finish the next thing in 120 minutes instead of 30. Then dinner, and quantitative studies.

Friday

Everyone's out celebrating Malaysia day, and asking, whether it should be 31-Aug, 16-Sep, 8-Jul, or 1-Apr. People often forget April Fool's day.

FB
+ Anybody implemented OAuth 1.0 on Google App Engine, in Python, before? Need help. (Specifically, Twitter app auth without using a client library. ) I probably should not be trying to learn two new interdependent systems at once.
++ Exhausted my tolerance for stupidity for the day. Done with quant stuff. Will try raw Python without Google's App Engine SDK next. Reminded by __NAME__'s panic-cramming... that there's no better way to study. Shove it. Today's bonus: downloading Windows 8 with Developer Tools - maybe I can take it to my day job and try it out tomorrow.
++ Goulash!!!!!!
++ On second thought i shan't mess with dad's pasteurisation at 1am... i mean his food's, not his. Garlic pea sprouts instead! Good value for money, $1 only. Mmhmm. Wok it.
++ Decided to try and get Python2.5 running on my Apache2. Libapache2-mod-python doesn't seem to want to point to the right place. Don't tell me I need to build from source. Groan. #noob #noEnoughHoursInTheDay4am #bedtime #moreworktomorrow
++ ‎80 minutes on the road and 7 bucks of gas. Should have taken the tollroad anyway. Done with wage for a bit. Food. Sleep. Studies!
++ Manual rollback to 2.7. Hmm. Nap time.
++ ‎15 hour sleep catch up. Yay. Back to wages and other work.
++ Breaking out the PowerPoint-fu smmmarrrrtttart.!

Saturday

FB
+Milk, eggss, and oranges. Cheaper than nasi lemak x.0 and arguably more nutritious.
++ A life of controversy is probably less deadly than the alternatives. happy Malaysia Day, and don't forget the Malayan Union. :)
++And apparently - my Facebook wall is finally clean again.
++ Pick your battles :D
++ Coffee with a friend. Chauffeuring the matriarch. Back home to try and fix my Python version again.
++ forum: "Thanks for the tip. (wsgi vs mod_python)
++ Meanwhile, I've decided to just forget apache, and use the dev_appserver.py that they bundle with the SDK. However, I can't regress my Python 2.5.6 to 2.5.2 and have decided to use 2.5.6 "on faith," i.e. warts and all, assuming that it is compatible with App Engine. Now I want to get back to app-layer development.
++ Anyway, the main reason I started messing around with the server-layer, was because dev_appserver.py (running on localhost:8080) is inconsistent... some requests, to the same file, are very slow while others are very fast. This does not seem to be tied to whether the script .py files have been updated or not."
++ Sigh. I hate mucking around with other peoples' high-level code.
++ It's a good day for hating fools - no one else is in my office (read:bedroom).
++ Ok. I was fumbling around for a solution to read the response headers from my OAuth token request, but Python kept dying before I could debug the headers. Resulting from this, I have since learnt that one with urllib.openurl() has to use exception handling in order to obtain headers from a response with a HTTP status code other than blatant success. OMG. (yeah, I'm noob.) this works, for example:
++>>> try:
>>> response = urllib2.urlopen(urlString)
>>> except IOError, e:
>>> print e.code
>>> print e.info()
>>> print e.read()
++ Forum : "I'm an academician - we survive on getting things right - high-level without low-level is the devil... that sort of thing is for people who want to get things done without understanding how they work. Seriously, would I be coding OAuth ONE-POINT-ZERO by hand if I wanted to get things done fast? LOL"
++ OAuth 1.0 is kicking my ass. I am currently trying to get a PHP example working (since I am more familiar with PHP) to avoid the Python variable entirely, for starters. #backtracking
++ Azan! 05xx hours.

FB
+ Don't vote because your friends told you to do so. Vote if you know the difference it makes, and most importantly, know why you are not-not-voting.
++ I still don't vote because I can't find a good enough reason to do so. Free-rider mentality.
++ sorry dude, things like that are rarely accidental. i am a trained populist. my dad is a church leader.
++ I found group leadership too easy after doing it for three years in middle-school, so figured I would spend my time on more challenging activities... like technical skills, music, theatre, art, cybernetics, programming, math, stats. When I am thirty I will focus on business and making money. It is very simple. There is no space for guesswork around here. When I am bored of all those things, maybe I will be more social again, and allow myself to lead a society... but that's kinda what I mean by "at fifteen, I decided to take a long-term view on politics in this country." Nowadays, I find that the best person to quote on this is Magneto's, "in chess the pawns go first." Was just having a convo with a marketing girl and a PR girl.
++Marketing makes fun of PR for being trivial.
PR makes fun of marketing for being superficial.
Marketing makes fun of religion for being clerical.
Religion makes fun of PR for being superficial.
Academicians think commercial people are all superficial.
Commercial people think that academicians and activists are confused.
Activists think that academicians are too confused, and that commercial people are too trivial.
++ I just like being an anthropologist and making fun of everybody doing what humans do. ;P
++ Friend's wall: all in all I must say, you people who are driven by dreams are fun to watch.

FB

Forum: (2011-09-17T06:40+08)

Got the damn thing to work - after a lot of fuzting. PHP was no help - trying to copy any other client library was no help as they'd encapsulated the examples in OO and I couldn't be arsed to figure it out because it shouldn't be that complicated. Major WTFs were:

(1) discovering also that this is the finalized protocol (yeah, I failed to RTFM properly) http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5849 and that OAuth Core 1.0 and OAuth Core 1.0 Revision A are obsoleted, but will turn up in Google searches, and ARE STILL BEING LINKED BY TWITTER DOCS. #$%^&*()...

(2) discovering that urllib2.Request(urlString,'"",headersDictionary) gets sent as a POST whereasurllib2,Request(urlString,None,headersDictionary) gets sent as a GET - and there is NO OTHER WAY (as far as this noob could find) TO VIEW THE STATE OF THE REQUEST and/or its headers.

Anyhow, proof of concept RFC5849 request token is displayed here http://killtweets.appspot.com

Code block is (yes, it's just one block!!):

# Authorize URL https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize

# Access token URL https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token

import base64

import hashlib

import hmac

import sys

import time

import urllib

import urllib2

import uuid

twitterAppConsumerKey = 'yourkey'

twitterAppConsumerSecret ='yoursecret'

tokenSecret = ''

tokenRequestCallbackUrl = urllib.quote('trivial','')

tokenRequestUrl = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token'

tokenRequestNonce = uuid.uuid4()

tokenRequestTimestamp = int(time.time())

tokenRequestNormalisedRequestParameters = urllib.quote(\

'oauth_callback=%s&'\

'oauth_consumer_key=%s&'\

'oauth_nonce=%s&'\

'oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1&'\

'oauth_timestamp=%s&'\

'oauth_version=1.0'\

% ( tokenRequestCallbackUrl,\

twitterAppConsumerKey,\

tokenRequestNonce,\

tokenRequestTimestamp\

),'')

tokenRequestSignatureBaseString = '%s&%s&%s' % ( \

'POST', \

urllib.quote(tokenRequestUrl,''), \

tokenRequestNormalisedRequestParameters\

)

tokenRequestSignatureHmacKey = urllib.quote(twitterAppConsumerSecret,'') + '&' + tokenSecret

tokenRequestSignature = urllib.quote(base64.encodestring(hmac.new(\

tokenRequestSignatureHmacKey,\

tokenRequestSignatureBaseString,\

hashlib.sha1

).digest()),'')

tokenRequestHeaders = {'Authorization':'OAuth '\

'oauth_callback="%s",'\

'oauth_consumer_key="%s",'\

'oauth_nonce="%s",'\

'oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",'\

'oauth_timestamp="%s",'\

'oauth_signature="%s",'\

'oauth_version="1.0"'\

% ( tokenRequestCallbackUrl,\

twitterAppConsumerKey,\

tokenRequestNonce,\

tokenRequestTimestamp,\

tokenRequestSignature

}

print '''Content-Type: text/html

<html>

<head>

<title>KillTweets!</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>KillTweets: now in HTML</h1>

'''

try:

response = urllib2.urlopen(urllib2.Request(tokenRequestUrl,'',tokenRequestHeaders))

#print response.info()

print 'request token obtained! - (untested proof-of-concept only)' + response.read()

except IOError, e:

print 'request token detained! - <pre>' + str(e.info()) + e.read() + '</pre>'

print '''

</body>

</html>

'''

Week #36 - longform

2011-09-04T14:48:00.002+08:00

Sunday

Sometimes I expand Twitter posts on Facebook. I may then copy them here.

‎9-day weekend review: monthly cash +$250; purchased and installed grub and garb infrastructure for additional cash flow; killed an unused creditcard; cleaned up a few of my #work tracking spreadsheets; added some 700 items to my #work readlist; had car tuned up; sent a pair of jeans for alteration; helped to fix up friend's apartment; executed necessary #wage routines; spent sometime with nuclear and extended family - okay, I don't feel so bad now about making zero progresss on non-essential #wage projects.

Monday

Don't mind me for saying this, but web development, like all other occupations, is defined by a concrete deliverable. Your get good at this one by delivering more working web pages. If you wanted to be a faster reader or more creative theoretical physicist, the pedagogical strategy would of course be different - but not by much, in that you would simply need to read more or do more theoretical physics, respectively. There's no easy way out, and I got this beat this into me in 小学 - whatever you want to get good at, just do more of it. Took me a year of repetition just to shoot consistent baskets, and play guitar. Took a bit longer to figure out how to quantify human experience. Lol.

--

Alliseell. Alliswell. Gradschool ex officio is still a bitch, but that was bound to happen. Onward! Catch up with you businessfolk in a coupla years when I start deprioritising studies.

Tuesday

Just thought of a (n arbitrary) definition of the "generalist," role: one who specialises in the vertical integration of business functions.

I mean vertical - as in programming, a full-stack developer is a generalist. In consulting, a kid that can do interviews, analyse data, compile a slideshow, and close a sale is a generalist. End-to-end capability, defines generalists in my mind.

Well, the definition i proposed actually describes an agent that has the capability to airdrop into any horizontal/vertical coordinate... and start vertical integration along the vertical axis... so i guess that counts as a sort of integration. Horizontal integration always implies cross-domain integration, but if you're the sort that can integrate ANY vertical, it usually (in my little world) suggests that you can integrate ACROSS verticals as well.

Week #32 - wow

2011-08-10T21:42:00.002+08:00

Wednesday

I'm really not keeping up with this, am I? Well, I've been trying to consolidate everything to Twitter. Admittedly.

Week #30

2011-07-27T18:38:00.002+08:00

Wednesday

Supposed to turn up at WebCamp KL for pecha kucha at 7pm, but I have no idea what I am going to make my presentation about. Yet.

Week #29 - getting back into reading after six years

2011-07-20T23:05:00.003+08:00

Wednesday

Comment on the comments in my "work auction," hack in the Management Exchange competition:

"Well gentlemen, I find that the hack works intuitively if you are the sort of person with a general understanding that all work "can," be clearly defined, and managed from a centalised location. The ability to obtain such a general understanding is dependent on each individual's aptitude and personal tendency towards analyticity.

For those without such analytical tendencies, the system still can work for them, if they interact with it as "players," in the game of work. Researchers elsewhere are currently looking into the addictive qualities of video games (most recently, such as Angry Birds and Farmville) to understand why people enjoy these games so much. One perception is that tasks, goals, and rewards are more clearly defined in the game, and as such, the player's risk/work/reward neurology interacts easily with these gamey systems.

The world might get there one day, or it might not. However, one day I'd like to see 80% of the labour market become as clearly commodified as the stock market is these days."

Week #28 - PR

2011-07-10T20:17:00.004+08:00

Sunday

Tomorrow I'm supposed to turn up for work, to start work with a PR agency. I've given the founder a soft commitment for a minimum of one year. Meanwhile this weekend, I have been thinking about how to reallocated my resources around this strategic movement. I have been thinking that studies will have to be denigrated to a "hobby," status - however, this might be feasible in the long-run given that finally, since having hypothesised that something like this might work in 2007, I am taking a stable job in a less-quantitative function. I hope this complements my general scope of study.

Wednesday

End of business on day #3 in PR. I have a number of things to read. But I also really need to get my ass into gear on readings outside of work. I have postponed the purchase of any further electronic devices / aids / tools for the time being, though I have considered both a tablet and a 42" TV.

Week #27 - Project Aman, month #11, week #1

2011-07-04T20:44:00.003+08:00

‎"X said after about 10 minutes that there was no fit. In order to come for today's interview, I turned down a job offer, took leave from work, dressed up, and drove through 40km of traffic, besides filling in and printing the forms that you requested. Next time could you please have the hiring manager call me for preliminary questions before making me come for an interview?" - I usually expect interviewers to be unprepared. But a friend suggested that indignation would be appropriate, so: - thxverymuchyoursincerely (FB)

Week #26 - KL Architecture Festival

2011-06-27T10:39:00.002+08:00

Monday

Work.

Tuesday

Catching up with the astrophysicist.

"Been stuck in KL from Jan-Aug on a community project - renting an apartment with some blokes. During this time, I've been busy with contracts for IT consulting, and I'm also interning at http://datumkl.my to help the curator. That should end this week.

By next week, I may be joining a PR agency for a year. I'm in the process of buying an RM80k shop apartment in Bandar Sungai Long - it's cheaper than renting in KL.

Studywise, Erlang, Golang, vector graphics, Linux kernal, web servers, distributed databases... gradschool is slow when you ad-lib it without external funding :)"

Hooray for til-70-years-of-age financing.

"I've been avoiding canvas tags until recently, because of lack of support. Well IE9 finally got MSFT up to speed. So given evidence such as the above (which has been expected) I guess it's time for me to switch over to "just canvas" for all practical purposes. Still slower than Flash, but more cross-platform compatibility. Can't wait for more "native client" experiments to hopefully just kill Flash once and for all - if ever." -wckl

Friday

Slight rapporteuring at Datum:KL 2011's NOW conference got cut short - too many posts, they say?

"[caveat: this is in troll mode - consume with NaCl]

@non-technical business managers, also do yourself a favour, and throw out any notion that your technical manager wants to hear your opinion on technical issues, including the distribution of technical work across human nodes.

Even if your technical managers do want to hear it, all you're doing is degrading their thought process by bringing your lack of expertise into conversation - and that just completely pollutes the project's investment in their time, i.e. their thought process. If you want to engage your technical manager in a technical conversation, go hire an expert technical consultant to do it with you.

E.g.

"why don't we do xyz?" if not explicitly phrased as a question issued out of pure curiosity, will be interpreted as "we should do xyz," and I assure you, as a technical person, I do not have time to argue, and will let you do as you wish.

:)

Pick your battles.

//

just gotta be fair to the non-techy webbies here. Of ten they don't know how to go about this. They've got to figure out where/when/how to talk to tech. I think that's a key competency of being a non-technical manager with technical direct reports.

Any non-techies who have techy direct-reports... wanna hold a class on how to talk to techies? :)"

Week #25 - reading, again, finally

2011-06-19T04:58:00.002+08:00

Sunday

Family trees from unknown (presumed to be unreliable) sources:
Computer languages: http://www.aisee.com/graph_of_the_month/lang.gif
Human languages: http://www.our-english-class.com/BritLitFiles/LanguageTree.JPG

Some books on vectors and tensors to download later:
http://www1.mengr.tamu.edu/rbowen/

Study notes:

"revisited Fabrice Bellard's JavaScript implementation of Linux; read about his work on QEMU; skimmed over binary translation... and more or less was satisfied with this nightcap; good evening - more reading tomorrow - yay for weekends

back to reading on Smalltalk

I understand humans very well. I barely understand computers. That is why I study computers. Smalltalk as an interpretation of Simula, ALGOL as a reaction to FORTRAN, JIT-compilation, PASCAL as a descendent of ALGOL... where is that computer languages graph?!

superoptimiser peephold wtf (back at BV1 again)

need to go deeper and understand the architecture of stacks and registers

It just occurred to me to articulate: a machine's operating system should not hide its underlying architecture from naive users; abstraction should be non-obfuscating; GUIs should be representative of machine reasoning, and not merely some daft designer fantasy about what stimulates serotonin in users. Crap. Just found a good reason to get myself into writing operating systems. This is not going to be good for my social life. :(

reading on abstract data types. getting a better grasp of "declarative programming" as a superset of "logic programming," "functional programming," and "regular expressions". it occurs to me that declarative programming is CLOSER TO NATURAL LANGUAGE than imperative programming. wtf. why are most programmers imperative programmers?!

The problem with computer science, is that it's not science. It's engineering. Wtf.

Not really getting the difference between a vector and tensor yet - help anyone? I'll bet no one is reading this -_- no worries. Solitary studies just make one work harder.

I wish that growing up, I had better maths education boo hoo hoo. Oh well, about time I made up for it... at least in terms of effort.

pointer arithmetic is a really simple concept - it's a pity Wikipedia lacks an explicit definition of it #talkingTooMuchAndNotHelping

reading up on inverters and batteries for storing power in my new apartment"

"to do: get a piece of plasticine and experiment with sphere cutting problems. thanks to Sulin Lau ; 2D: I can get 11 fragments on the surface of a circle, from 4 cuts, but I'm not sure if in 3D: how many more can we get by replacing the circle with a sphere? This is partially insightful, but I'm not that good at pure math yet, so I like to experiment.
http://www.ifor.math.ethz.ch/teaching/lectures/poly_comp_ss11/lecture10"

Monday

"time to get started on readings in operating system design #cs

watching a lot of Youtube videos on programing languages from contemporary times

Google's Go language has 'number' as a single datatype - thank Google... Marcel Leng Colin Charles

revising objects, classes, and interfaces (and the meaning of "implementation") stuff I learnt from a C++ tutorial not more than a few months ago

And apparently this whole Google Go / Golang thing is related to Erlang (they kinda took Erlang concepts, mashed them into C++/Java style OOP and imperative syntax, and implemented the whole thing pretty close to the metal, as a general language platform, rather than an application platform which is what Erlang is meant to be):
http://erlanginside.com/go-borrows-from-erlang-123

Now I'm wondering how one would mash up Go with Lisp.

And making a note to figure out how LLVM, GCC, and GHC should be understood in relation to each other.

Enough stimulation, not enough sleep. Defrag that."

Tuesday

Hung out with the ex, on holiday from gradschool.

fb: "you know what makes me good at what I do? I don't care if I die tomorrow. and I'm not that far from broke ($-wise). never called myself an entrepreneur, but life is good ;P"

Wednesday

"wonder how long it would take to build a program with sufficient neuroses to be considered human

computationally, bigger things have been done, e.g. Watson. but, architecturally, Watson has no first-order opinions, only an echo chamber

I suppose then the task at hand, is to develop a program which has first-order (first-person) experience, reflects upon it, and semanticises (verbalises) it.

essentially we need a primitive physics engine for the virtual body, and an edge-store for the virtual first-order memory ("experience"); then a compiler from the first-order memory ("understanding") to natural language ("speech"); or something like that ;)

in summary, the android must have a physical aspect (public interface), a psychical aspect (private interface), and an ability to move data between them (experience<->expression)

the crux of my undergraduate research was this: the variety of psychical entities in any human's totality of experience can be systematically abstracted, to a degree which is beyond the analysis of the human itself at any particular point (i.e. moment) in time

"our consciousness is limited by our understanding," therefore to create an android consciousness, we simply model beyond its self-awareness

self-awareness is trivial, but most people aren't able to fully verbalise what they are aware of - those that celebrate this are artists

on second thought, that just cheapens the notion of art :P

can't toss around the moniker "artist" as above - it would include every drunk sorority boy-toy who couldn't explain the minute, concrete details of his ecstacy... and was just a mad-good fucker :)

but most people are like the drunk sorority boy-toy described above; and in their arrogance, they poo-poo the notion that there are quantifiable limits to human experience. oh well.

Back to the original post - I think a proof-of-concept would take a week, but no one would be able to tell that it was any different from other bots. It would think like an infant.

Anyway - I guess the core program I should be working on is my android consciousness project. Everything else should revolve around it. Ok - done, that's what's I'm doing for gradschool. Maybe I'll get to write an OS or two along the way, and some web-app-fucknot frameworks while I'm studying the state of contemporary computing in general. Time for bed.

When I was 18, I thought it might take me beyond the age of 40 to model human consciousness to my satisfaction - I go there by the time I was 20. When I was 21, I thought it might take me beyond the age of 40 to implement a prototype to my satisfaction - maybe I can get it down before I'm 28. :P four months to go... probably not.
"

Week #24 - kickin

2011-06-14T23:46:00.000+08:00

Monday

Excursion to Singapore.

Tuesday

On the "RM1.8mil ... for a Facebook page" debacle at the Ministry of Tourism:

"the title is misleading - the article clearly contradicts the title, as "pages" and "apps" are different on facebook; the figure can be justified if they are calculating ROI; we wish. :P"

"P&L; data. data. data... the ways to do it exist; the travel websites already cooperate when necessary - but I'll bet the ministry is not collecting good data, unless they got say, a strat team at NagaDDB to coordinate the 6-18 month rollout and assessment of value."

"ask their strat planners (if any) for the justification lah... but they won't be able to talk unless you know them personally and they trust you :P"

On job descriptions that look like "PHP, jQuery, MySQL fresh graduate RM1.6-2.5k/month please":

"a safely competent "full stack" developer as GD described above would charge more than most Malaysian companies would find efficient to have for a full-time staff; it's clearly cheaper to hire specialists :P #2sen #genearlistForHire

" ‎... plus no matter how good the "fully competent full stack" guy is, you still have #busFactor : so even when I prototype stuff for clients, I demand they mitigate their risk and get their long-term teams in ASAP, I warn, then if they stonewall, I walk (as long as contract allows it). The bigger code grows, the less any solo-ist is going to want to have anything to do with it."

"It's also very vague. jQuery: .show().hide() is trivial; doing drag-and-drop, image-cropper type stuff from scratch is not; PHP: writing parseable code is trivial; writing readable/commented libraries is not. etc.... PHP being what it is, even configuring it is a pain in the @$$; and with jQuery, complicated JavaScript cross-browser compliance is also."

"On hiring: for general abstract thinking aptitude, I test for demonstrable competence in SQL JOIN-syntax for backend guys; failing that, I test for CSS selector competence; failing that, I don't hire. Folks who don't already know the above, I can teach on the spot - and if they get it, their aptitude is ok. IMHO - backend is more abstract than frontend (where you can see more of what you do)... so in terms of pure coding (not graphic design), this strategy for testing is minimalistically useful!"

Thursday

note-to-self: avoiding tweeting when conversing with poets.

In WebCamp KL on FB, on a post about hacking PHP:

"This just came to mind.

0. I'm generally a big fan of reducing redundancy - so with regards to web development, I've been very interested in the differences between languages, their pros and cons, and the thought of hacking problems at the language layer.

1. PHP's pros are its wide acceptance, slight learning curve, etc. PHP's cons are its 50,000 ways to do the same thing/the way someone else does it, and perhaps the way the system can be/is configured, etc.

2. I recently started digging into the syntax of functional languages, starting with Erlang (see group docs for that story), and immediately thought that referential transparency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referential_transparency_(computer_science)) solves one of the key issues I have with PHP code - that it gets too messy, because it's too flexible.

3. Then I figured that it should be a relatively simple fix to hack PHP and implement referential transparency at the compiler stage (i.e. if someone codes x=4; x=5; the code will not compile). Anyway, so now this is added to my grand-to-do list.

4. Maybe after 3. is attempted, it would be fun to try and implement into PHP/Zend Engine the stricter "pattern-matching" style of defining functions, e.g. used in Erlang. This is making me very, very curious at this point.

5. That's it - I just thought I'd speak my mind. Ping me if you find this interesting too. Otherwise I'll just let it float down the wall again.

(BTW isn't there a way to "search Group" so that I don't have to manually click through all old posts to find the one I want?)"

Reading up on comparisons between C and FORTRAN; learning about Lisp and its descendants; reviewing the idiosyncrasies of Erlang, Lua, etc.

I guess to more quickly understand the Wikipedia articles on various programming languages, I should first load this library... cram time! "Template:Programming paradigms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"

Interesting note on Lisp: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyLisp
More on Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html

Learnt about the Thiel Fellowship. Aww, that's so cute. :)

Friday

Talked to a friend about Fortran - so it shouldn't be hard, it seems, to write PHP code that does exec(some Fortran program);.

Scanned jobs in PHP - plenty of them about, with decent >RM7k/month salaries. I can afford to lay low for a while - the market's not drying up.

Nice article on strings parsing speeds using different programming languages: http://onlyjob.blogspot.com/2011/03/perl5-python-ruby-php-c-c-lua-tcl.html

"Study session at Starbucks bv1 yo

trying to figure out where Smalltalk fits into the history of Lisp

Trying to figure out how Prolog and other "logic programming" languages fit in with all the above.

Taking a peek at session handling in Erlang.

Reading on Prolog - the name 'functor' pops up - which reminds me, there was a time when I carried around the Wikipedia article on functors in mathematics, in the pocket of my jeans. SNS startup year 1.

Just applied for a junior position to learnt iOS/Objective-C and Android/Java development.

Learning/relearning the definition of the Cartesian product; elsewhere, learning the difference between a compliment and a complement. Feelings very uneducated today.

arity, parity, and cyclic redundancy checks (which use check-values)... it's been a while since I crammed tech terminology... my mind goes back to 1998, some social engineering maneuvers and a national title.

JM: Shame we're not on the same continent.
me: what you wanna do, hold hands and read code? geez
JM: Wow, that's the last time I ever say anything like that.
me: lol.
JM: Giggle.
JM: I'd love to compile your code.
JM: Catch your exceptions.
JM: uh
JM: Sort your lists
me: Parity inversion in your pants. (Sorry, I'm still actually paying attention to my reading of Wikipedia...)
JM: ad infinitum
JM: Go ahead, I'm about to get smashed and play my erhu. Toodles!
JM: ‎....and I'm not speaking metaphorically.
JM: ‎*glare*
me: ciao now.

Cram school. Chinese school and Malaysian school. There I learnt that the mastery of great bodies of vocabulary is hardly different from the assembly of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Nothing makes sense, and you don't do anything particularly intelligent - but patience and a lot of sorting gets you through to knowledge. I am S not N that way.

Wavefunctions and the letter Psi. Neptune holds a key to the delineation of the universe. <- now if I was Dan Brown I'd write a book about that; maybe someone has already.

Pin joints and trusses. Devilish -_-

Reciprocal Fibonacci Constant... ratio tests.. aha, we're back in the realm of math - right where I want to be. Slow down and study.

tension vs compression - back to physics - get that terminology straight...

struts and ties, bees and hives, hurt my eyes

sets, classes, ZF and NBG... right where I want to be... wondering how long I can stay here before I have to get back to... driving -_- what an utter waste of computation that is.

Running out of coffee... another hour before the bird alights. Barista, hit me...

I seriously need to brush up on my set notation. I can read predicate calculus, but not set notation. Gimme a coupla days full-time on this... grr.

A lover is a brace in needless tension: {}

Reading up on the work of the Knuth. Also checking out the fastest way to process lots of strings - C, ASM, Perl, etc. Lots of commentary. Lexical parsers, LR(1) filters whatnot.

Learnt a new trick. Inflate the font size and lean back in the armchair to read - screen on the table far away.

At some point, it became commonplace to spend Friday night reading logic in Bangsar, surrounded by chattering British schoolgirls.

Reading up on Perl's string handling. Big-O notation. Overview of the analysis of algorithms. That's it for now. Jacked. Second short Americano down - I'm going home for a shower." - now that, is a long string of comments

Saturday

FB Note "ENTP Brand Management?"

"Someone asked about my brand management, so I thought about it and said...

"(Well, I hate to be explicit about it... because I'm generally way too proud of myself without talking about it in public... but) for the last four years I've been the guy who people call when no one else wants the job (or they just don't know who to ask) for the given price (sometimes it's high, often it's low!).

That's my comparative advantage - there ain't much comparison in terms of the services I'm willing to supply; so I get to do what I want, because I have a monopoly - of course it's inefficient for the buyer, but it appears that they buy my time because they don't have other options.

As stated [previously], this appears to be a boutique strategy, from a branding point of view. Most people don't buy LV because they make superior bags - most people buy LV because it's Louis Vuitton.

Hope that clarifies my brand strategy, since you asked... linkedin.com/in/generalistforhire :)"

Yeah, I know no one gets it, but it's a sole proprietorship, and I am the product. I can't think of anything else that I do well, except learn fast - so you could put me in as a "ENTP for hire" but that would just be opaque. "Generalist for hire" is way more specific for the audiences that know what generalists do. Everyone else is a lower-priority target audience.

I guess it's equally opaque though. Ps always guess.

Here's another way to look at it: the goal of my brand managemnent is not to be appreciated - it is far more important to appreciate. It is essential to my intention, that my audience does not perceive that I am perceivable. The observer who does not find this amusing, is not my target audience."

revisited Fabrice Bellard's JavaScript implementation of Linux; read about his work on QEMU; skimmed over binary translation... and more or less was satisfied with this nightcap; good evening - more reading tomorrow - yay for weekends

Week #23 - home execution, go go go

2011-06-07T11:02:00.001+08:00

Tuesday

"That's not yet my problem. I try to stay out of the way of management - sometimes, one can't tell WHY they want what they want :p If I'm billing for time, it behooves me to care less." - on ROI analysis

Home loan research and legal engagement today.

Thursday

More of the above. With some distractions.

Chatting up a VP of Marketing:

"Oh no, I thought for a moment that you were a headhunter! Then I reread your profile.

I'm interested in investment banking, in general - but the Malaysia market is a bit thin to hold my interest in banking operations. Therefore within Malaysian banking, I would indeed be interested in the marketing function, as that's where sophistication is less limited by regulators. I also don't have "marketing" in my portfolio yet, and would be interested to get it in. My specific interest would be marketing analytics - specifically because I am numerically and graphically literate.

Here are some samples of my communication abilities, using PowerPoint, Excel, and vector graphics tools (similar to Illustrator):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.543202630557.2056813.14600284&l=ca84270eec

Furthermore I am a competent web developer, and might be able to help your department to further its understanding of the technological details of digital marketing - towards new possibilities, upcoming trends, and vendor negotiations.

I can personally build and administer database-driven server-client systems, with cross-browser compatible graphical user interfaces. However, in cross-over with the communications portfolio linked above, I'd like to show you a graphical resume that I recently built for a friend. (The graphical design is copied from someone else, but I have written the code that generates a customised graph for each person, based on the activities in their resume.)

http://mylifeis.info/dev/cv_demo.html

Let me know if you'd like someone like me on your team.

Again, it's nice to meet you!

Best wishes,"

Saturday

Chatting up an AVP of BI.

"I can send you a copy of my CV - looks like a neater version of my linkedin profile. I can do most generalist stuff like interview folks, navigate bureaucracies, chat folks up at functions, identify points of view, summarise stakeholder interests, propose courses of action, do quick analyses in Excel, handle larger datasets with hand-written code, draw pretty graphs/slides/vectors/bitmaps, present in person, handle questions, moderate discussions... general management stuff, I guess. And I'm quite Internet literate i think. I'm interested in getting more sales/marketing/corporate strategy stuff into my CV at this point, so I'm probably more avoidant of HR, IT, content, and some other areas where i've already collected some work history. I can commit interest for any number of years, from the get go, if the overall package is right. Let me know what you think. Which email address do I send my CV to?"

in WebCamp KL on FB:

"trying to install my first LYME stack on an Ubuntu 10.04 VM: will post updates randomly
2 hours ago � Like � � Unsubscribe
Yang Jerng Hwa ‎1. happened to have a TKL-LAMP machine lying around;
2. uninstalled all the TKL-LAMP packages I could find;
3. installed package "yaws";
4. had to manually remove the sub-config files (might have been a hangover from the TKL-LAMP stack) because they contained instructions to load additional servers that could not be loaded (SSL etc.)
5. accidentally deleted my entire /etc/yaws/yaws.conf file
6. rewrite is in progress... fml
54 minutes ago � Like
Yang Jerng Hwa Static and dynamic content examples from http://yaws.hyber.org/simple.yaws both working. Now I actually have to go learn Erlang. Sigh.
43 minutes ago � Like
Yang Jerng Hwa Zooming out a bit, I'm now rereading a bunch of stuff on Erlang (i) web servers (ii) frameworks+databases.

I'm still somewhat miffed by the whole disparity of platforms... I'm referring here to the "pick the best way to do each thing" approach. Naturally that results in "everyone picks what they deem best and do it separately except when they happen to agree." The Cambrian explosion comes to mind - this is the sort of stage in history that web development is in right now.

Anyway - I'm just curious about the evolution of different computer languages and their corresponding web platforms in the next 10 years or so - will people start integrating stacks (OS+server+language+framework(server&client sides)) and shipping them together? That's the sort of development that I'd be interested in - it's more parsimonious.

Anyone else into that sort of thing - let's discuss the possibility of full platform development as a service. I'd put time into that. Definitely some money too - except that I'm not expecting to have a lot over the next coupla years, gradschool whatnot ;)"

Week #22 - home shopping

2011-06-01T00:26:00.002+08:00

Wednesday

Breather.

"(cc: my friend R who lives in Sungai Long, just to keep him updated
on what I've been thinking about; R, meet my current flatmates)

Bandar Sungai Long stuff looks ok on the inside; outsides of units are
VERY clean - inside I would still take down all the plaster and expose
the brick walls for aesthetic reasons.

However, Cheras highways appear to have 1-2km jams from 6-10pm. Sounds
like trouble. If I had an extra RM100k savings, I'd go for Sungai Long
because I probably wouldn't have to work for a couple of years (hence
no need to leave town). There's an RM80k third-floor shop apartment
which just might turn out to be worthwhile - I'll find out on
Saturday.

If that fails, I'm leaning towards working part time after August, and
getting a Flora Damansara place in the RM110-120 range. Probably will
put a deposit in by Friday next week.

A,

Can you introduce me to your lawyer who does the S&Ps? Any other
recommended advice regarding loan application, or other necessary
processes? I'll probably go for a max (35-year) loan, while trying to
keep down the penalty for early repayment.
"

Saturday

Plenty of shopping done today. Scanned the spectrum from RM38k (~RM150 monthly payments) to the RM80k option in Bandar Sungai Long. Very tired. Also washed and touched up the paint on the car. That's one more errand out of the way. I hope to get some infrastructure laid down soon - so in order for this 8-month gamble to be not-so-much-of-a-waste, I'm looking to kick this acquisition along. Swell. Back to dealing with work: various cat herds that need a catherd for just a while longer.

It's now month-10 of the stay at Limau Purut.

Week #21 - small fixes here and there

2011-05-23T11:10:00.003+08:00

Monday

Wednesday

"Today I think my overall personality is more ESTP than ENTP.

then again, the whole hermit thing just makes me an ISTP doesn't it? so far, two ex-s think so.

Pursues intellectual interests like an INTP, daily life like an ISTP, works like an ESTJ, and plays like an ESTP... must be ENTP? so confused. More evidence

actually, the confusion in and of itself supports an INTP hypothesis - well that's what I thought I was when I read the book a decade and a half ago.

Doing data-entry. Need wakeup. Yawn. Daydreamed.

I suddenly remember doing a lot of this hole-punching and filing of hard copies thing... prior to 2005.

Lunch break!" - fb

"after some research, I think I can describe my experience as a front-wheel drive car, accelerating into a right-curve to avoid an obstacle (car braking in front of me), with a rear-wheel skid (due to braking as the obstacle moved to the right, back in front of my car - which moved the weight off the back wheels) - then overcorrection on my part, sending the car to the left violently, then overcorrection again sending the car back to the right, (at which point I had already released both the acceleration and brake pedals, but not moved the transmission into neutral), resulting in the car impacting the right-side barrier of the road at a roughly 100-110 degree angle clockwise from the tangent of the curve (you can see from the picture, that the impact occurred on the front-left-side of the car). Bummer." - fb

Friday

Offered to write off a month's work for a confused client. No shame in that. We'll see what they say.

Week #20 - chugging along

2011-05-16T11:19:00.001+08:00

Monday

Keeping office hours at the internship.

Tuesday

Meeting developers and contractors for the web.

"Children are a universal condition - not specific to Singapore - though Singaporeans in all likelihood will experiment with artificial wombs and in vitro accelerated development before the rest of the world. #avatar :P" - fb comment

"Around 8:30pm on 16 May 2011, on the Sprint Highway going to Mt. Kiara, between the Science Centre and Desa Sri Hartamas. Going at about 80kph in fast (right) lane. Dude in blackish Savvy tailgates me. I can't move left until I pass car beside me - I flash brake lights to signal tailgater. I pass car on left, then switch into mid-lane. Savvy swerves in front of me and slows down, I slow down and attempt to reenter fast (right) lane, but Savvy seems to attempt to cut me off. Within fractions of a second, I am skidding from rapid steering changes, after car swings left/right a couple of times, front hits mid-road divider, bumper gone - lights still working. Car rear hits mid-road divider. Engine finally stalls. Reboot. Drive to business meeting in Kiara. Need to make police report and worry about insurance later.

Sigh. I blame my lack of defensive driving, generally incompetent driving, after-rain road, and road bullies. :-S I generally don't like driving when I am also thinking about work - one needs a break from sorting out other people, you know. // I actually drove from Sprint to Mt Kiara, parked, drove to Bangsar police station, parked, then drove home. Heats up fast, but not instantly. Calling tow truck tomorrow." - fb

" yup. you know the drill - get in trouble, check that everything is still working, snap photos, and share on social media. ;)" -fb

Week #19 - rest

2011-05-08T01:34:00.000+08:00

Sunday

Monday

Eased off on negotiating, and focused on mediating a client's vendor requisition to conclusion, to the end of mitigating risks for the client.

Ran with a new friend, and learnt a bit about how public relations companies work in Malaysia.

Tuesday

Still waiting for risk mitigation. Might do some training meanwhile.

Friday

I often worry that this will happen to me. No one would ever discover me. :) Article:"The man who keeps falling in love with his wife"

Week #18 - sell, sell, sell

2011-05-01T11:27:00.000+08:00

Sunday

"Hmm. Idle again. I think if I can't get this girl to pick between watching TV and hanging out with me, I'm going to be wasting a lot of time. Stay tuned for negotiations."

"I've been doing jobs that I don't like since I was six-years-old. People who can't do those, are unamused by me."

"Going for a drive around Sri Gombak where I grew up - just to round off the Sabbath. // I'm in Kampung Laksamana. Never got this far before."

"I am triple-hatting as a PA, a sales guy, and a solo rapid application developer this month - and somehow, the PA role is most discombobulating. //Maybe forcing myself to watch TV for social reasons is further stressing me out."

"Gave the condo sweeper Bangla a ride home. He's usually a kitchen helper at La Bodega. #bangsar // What the hell are cars for eh? Polluting the environment. hehe"

"Sell or hold? -_- // ‎"money or romance?" ; "matdouhaicha - all also stuff" // It's not either or - it's both that are $%&-ed."

"Stuck on another lack-of-spec problem. Back to the GUI team... good god... I should start a consulting practice simply on the creation of product specifications for IT solutions. // Making no money while waiting. Off to the pub. (or non-alcoholic equivalent) // Product team came back. I can go back to work now. Good thing I have no social life otherwise I would be smashed already. //0028 hours. Minimum expectations for May established - now to attempt 3-400% delivery on minimum expectations. Hmm. Resources providing."

" went from being "in an open relationship" to "single"."

"Back to work. // First order of work, inform the prospective hire about the technical nature of the project. Second order of work, get ten hours of sleep."

Monday

"3:08 AM
me: i haz rejoined the club
me: yup - as anticipated
she went over the top - took a few weeks
but it was getting well nigh near climax
3:21 AM
me: in this particular relationship - I just waited for her to hit the realisation.
it's a difference of interests - to a degree that matters to her, but not to me.
3:22 AM
so I'd be fine continuing - but she wouldn't - so I'm happy to save her the suffering :)
me: it's rather painful watching someone who's not sure that they like you - try to stay in a relationship with you eh?
how's about your story? :)
me: er...
me: i'm not sure if you get it - but i just told you mine. haha
me: well, a lot of details about what she likes/doesn't like - but that would be complicated
about 5 months - 4 of which were moderately agonising.
me: hehe no problem.
you may go ahead too if you wish.
me: well i like being with her - but she's not sure - so just in that sense.
all i can do is shrug and get on with life.
3:27 AM
ain't about to make someone else's burden a big part of my portfolio.
3:28 AM
me: for better or for worse, I've figured out how to fix that problem in most situations - once I know it's there
i agree with you.
me: yeah, I cut things off pretty fast
3:30 AM
me: takes some discipline
not everyone will like you for it
me: and you will develop a brand if you are consistent about it :P
me: well, language makes the world go round
me: ok
let me see what details i missed from mine..
3:41 AM
me: an accurate summary would be to say, relative to me, she's a bit of a diva -
me: and it's taken her a while to figure out that the diva bit doesn't get along with the mechanic bit of me :)
cares / doesn't care
has tastes / mocks tastes
that sort of thing.
3:43 AM
has opinions / shreds every opinion to find out how it works
are you seeing a pattern yet?:)
me: those were the points of friction that mattered to her
i don't think that's what made me attractive :)
3:44 AM
me: yup
no prizes for guess which side I'm on
me: well - that's basically it - i wait around for her moods to go up and down, and now she's decided.
so we have to move on.
3:46 AM
unfortunately, I am guessing that in the process she has allowed herself to get hurt by the various expectations she might have inadvertently placed around me.
me: well i think she's a sweet person and I have spent a lot of time digging around peoples' subconsciousness (my parents are career counsellors of sorts)
3:48 AM
so perhaps i'm a bit over-trained to explain things in that way
shrug. oh well.
3:49 AM
3:50 AM
me: my folks are pastors - my dad's a bishop and my mum's a doctor haha
me: ahah ok
makes sense
me: then staying here for how long?
me: sure thing.
3:51 AM
me: i'll introduce you to xxx the www for yyy
me: they are a ssss mmm company
me: about 25 employees, 9M in revenues
me: offshoring to KL
3:52 AM
I had to turn down an offer to work for them in May because of you guys :P
no worries
also - ggg is hiring in KL
big time - so if you wanted to do that for fun... you should try!
3:53 AM
me: yes and no
3:56 AM
I've also nailed my ass down till Augustish at the internship which is roughly 3 business days a week
so that's buying me time to help avoid a hasty decision
3:57 AM
me: the yyy job was technical - so too much conflict with your gig - if ggg wants me for sales management, I'll be on it 40hrs/wk right away if they let me do weird hours
then your project will slow down a bit
but not below 2hrs/day
4:00 AM
me: whatever works.
4:02 AM
me: moderately relieved that it's concluded (for now), a bit sad that the girl is the way she is, and generally happy to have more time for work :P"

"Wondering if I should pull all my job applications and get back to studying, since the motivating relationship for them has been divested. Probably will follow-up till conclusions, then decide."

Getting knee-deep in project management on a project where I'm supposed to be a developer. Need to fix some HR issues. Bed.

Learnt about maqetta.org from the possible solution team. http://www.weebly.com/ also

"One (1) solo dev. project where I have to worry about "truck risk", now in its third month of ops. One (1) privately-funded machine intel. project, which seems perpetually on the backburner. Multiple (N) job applications in limbo. Multiple (N) business proposals in limbo. One (1) burned out relationship, which has amidst the smoke above run the course of its possibilities. I'm happy that at least it's raining. Whee."

Tuesday

Glad to hear that Singapore is giving course credit for Wikipedia participation.

"you can't overthrow a corrupt system by being smart; you can by being powerful, but that's a slightly different story ;P" - fb

Wednesday

"Bimonthly meeting with client-lead at 5pm, proposed risk mgmt strategy at 5:30pm, got vendor proposal at 2am, counter-proposal out at 4am. Yeah."

Schleep.

Thursday

More mucking around in other peoples' business. That's the life I suppose.

Friday

Catching up on paperwork. Cats to herd: event management, software development, technology outsourcing incorporation, rock band members.

PhoneGap fills a long-awaited (and predicted) platform space. Kudos to someone for getting it done.

Saturday