Suspended Time

- a fat toolbox -

2012-01-24T21:01:00.000-08:00

It's becoming a boxing day tradition to buy an external hard drive. This year I decided to splurge on a portable one - the type that can fit right into your pocket. So far it's been totally worth it:

- No longer feels like a brick
- Appears on My Computer in seconds
- No need to plug for power

I can't emphasize how much trouble that last point was in the past; I've been meaning to take regular backups but I didn't want to navigate through a maze of wires. Now that I no longer have to deal with wires, my new complaint is that copying over all my files takes A Really Long Time.

I *could* copy over just my new and changed files - if only there was something to do all that automagically for me. And then suddenly there is. I found SyncToy just today and the software's been insanely fast and intuitive to use. A++ Microsoft, never knew you'd come up with nice little gems like this.

Speaking of nice little gems, have you ever...

Needed to re-install a metric tonne of software on a new computer? Try Ninite. And then try everything listed on Ninite.

Hurt your eyes staring at the screen? f.lux matches the brightness to the hour

Wanted to search and load *anything* on your computer with a few keystrokes? Launchy. Ever since my friend installed this on my work computer, I can't stop alt-spacing to get to all my stuff.

Have you stumbled upon life-improving software lately?

- recipe for success -

2011-07-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Luck is the last ingredient, not the first.

Don't wait until you work isn't so busy to start a hobby your passionate about. Don't wait until you're perfectly energized to hammer out your project.

Barring life-threatening injury, if you want it badly enough, you can make the time and energy for it. If you're waiting for all the stars to align before setting off, you'll be stuck at the harbour.

What happens when you put in all the work and you do get a life-threatening injury?

That's what the last bit of luck is for.

- Of Air And Water -

2011-07-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

My affinity is air
Made of dreams and ideas
Open and intangible
Aimlessly drifting or
Following the winds

What I need to be
Is more like water
Flowing relentlessly
Shaping the earth
While still reflecting the infiniteness of the sky

2011-07-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Soaking in regrets is the surest way to grow more of them.

- reaching the finish line -

2010-11-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

I'm sure everyone has big goals they'd like to accomplish someday. Here's what I learnt from NaNoWriMo (and other delicious sources):

Visualize-able End Goal

You have to know what success looks like or you will never be able to know whether you've really hit your target. For NaNoWriMo, success was defined in an incredibly straight-forward way: write 50,000 words in November. Not everything will be that clearly scoped out for you - in most cases, you will have to define how success looks like yourself.

Action-able Steps

You have to know what is the immediate next step for your project. This may require brainstorming to figure out all the potential steps, and then analyzing which step is the best one to take. For NaNoWriMo, I had to figure out a general outline of the plot and sketch out my main characters. Then I simply wrote 1,667+ words a day.

Steps can be adjusted. When I could had nothing left to write about, "planning" replaced "writing" as my next step. When I lost ten days to non-stop overtime at work, I had to replace "1,667+" with "3,000".

Small Pieces Relate-able to Big Picture

Tying the two concepts above, you need to be able to keep in mind the overall goal when you work on your next action. Seeing a visual or numeric representation of your overall progress can be helpful here. This was easy for NaNoWriMo: I simply updated my word count every night and saw it slowly increasing to 50,000. A progress meter can be really motivating, which leads me to the last point...

You Have to Want it Badly Enough

If you want to complete something - as opposed to simply experimenting - you have to really want the end goal. Seeing your progress is worthless if you do not care about where that progress leads to. Novelty wears off quickly. Writers for NaNoWriMo are warned that the second week was the toughest and I can attest to that.

And that's it! Time for me to try this out on my next project.

- judging ourselves -

2010-10-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

We are our own biggest supporters.

We believe that our strengths are unique and that our failures are either 1) not our own fault or 2) extremely common. Your classmate's high grades aren't that impressive - you could easily match those if you wanted to. Who cares if you don't get much done at work? Not like anyone else is putting up extra effort - and even if they did, they probably don't have as much going on as you do.

We fall victim to self-serving bias all the time. An interesting experiment my psych prof once recommended: take out a notepad and jot down every time you make an excuse for a failure. You'll be amazed at how long the list will get.

And that's exactly why self-serving bias not a problem: our self-esteem would be battered without that spiffy little mechanism. High self-esteem makes us think we can be great things. High self-esteem makes us think we can achieve big things. And if we believe we can do it, our chances of succeeding actually increase.

The key to balancing is to be our own biggest critic.

After all, criticism is easier to swallow when it comes from yourself.

- willpower index -

2009-11-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

Numbers are a great invention - they can put real life events and ideas into a different context.

For instance, it's recommended that you write down your numbers when working out: how many push-ups or pull-ups you've done, what weights you used in various weighty activities, and so forth. The point of tracking is to know how far you can go (whether it be repetitions or the weight of your weights) for next time. After awhile, if you graph the data, it'll hopefully be a nice line going upwards and it'll be super motivating.

Similar to levelling up in a game (as xkcd already noted).

But what if we want to track mental rather than physical strength? It's just as - if not more - important, considering studies have shown that self-control is correlated to success and happiness.

Can it be measured? Call it self-control, self-discipline or willpower, that stuff seems to be abstract and untrackable. On the other hand, research has shown that willpower is like a muscle: it gets strengthened with exercise, and it gets depleted with over-usage.

So why not have a go at it?

[Has gained 1 experience point from writing this entry]

- the spider's toolbox -

2009-07-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been digging up and trying out online networking and sharing tools. All of the following already have a sizable chunk of users - some have been around for ages - so it's not like I'm trying to be cutting edge. The list is sorted by how much experience I've had with it and each item links to my page. Maybe you might find some of these to be useful or fun to use!

# Livejournal

An online diary that's good for writing down day-to-day events, and keeping in touch with friends. LJ makes filtering posts simple, so it's easy to write whatever you want and share it with people you have an acceptable comfort level with. Very spiffy for letting off steam and putting it in a box. The community feature is a nice touch. I use the uwaterloo one and people there are helpful and responsive. Seriously, if I ask about - say - a professor, I'd get replies within the hour.

Recommended Use: Journaling - especially for drama and angst. Keeping in touch with faraway friends or family (hi sis!)

# Blogger

At first, I tried using this like LJ to keep in touch with friends. But honestly, it's a major pain: you'd need to bookmark or link to your friends' blogs, whereas other places (see Livejournal, Facebook, Twitter) keeps all friends update on one page. What most or all blogging tools *will* do for you is give you freedom to customize your page. It's good for publishing your own content - writings, thoughts or news.

Recommended Use: Decently long thought-provoking and-or humorous entries. Or pseudo-intellectual, pretentious writing. The latter sums up my blog perfectly!

# Facebook

Facebook needs no introduction and everyone knows its many tricks. However, there are ways in which people are doing it wrong. In addition to what that dude said, I personally find LJ better for keeping track of friends: less cluttered and easier to read. Other than that, Facebook does many things well - which is why it's the market leader in social networking and killed off crappier attempts like Friendster.

Recommended Use: finding old friends, contacting people, organizing group events, sharing photos, ~~stalking~~

# Twitter

Same as LJ except for people with ADD. Or likes constantly receiving updates on mobiles. Useful for tracking/talking to celebs. 140 char lim

# StumbleUpon [echoblaze]

As mentioned earlier in the facebook entry, StumbleUpon is good for discovery cool things on the web. If you have time to burn, you can continuously click that "Stumble!" button and be forever amused by the vast expanse that is the intertubez. Or if you have a lot of interesting content to share (i.e. whoring your own stuff), then you could attempt to push it here.

Recommended Use: killing time

# del.icio.us

Social bookmarking. You upload your bookmarks and share it with friends or others; you could check out cool stuff by looking at the most bookmark-ed items ever. To be honest, I didn't use StumbleUpon or this much because I don't have too much time to burn. Also, if you start having tons of bookmarks - it's honestly easier to search for what you want in Google.

Recommended Use: killing time

# LinkedIn [Emerson Cho]

I'd call this "professional networking" as opposed to social networking. On the recommendation of my coop advisor, I went and played around with this toy today. Functionality is similar to Friendster - the coworker recommendation system is similar to ye olde testimonials, but there's a lot of extra structure in place: job searches, sorting by companies or fields of work, finding coworkers. Not sure whether this will pay off - I find it more likely that people will add to their professional networks IRL. But if nothing else, it'll be good for keeping track of ex-employers and ex-coworkers.

Recommended Use: too early to tell. I suspect it will become an e-rolodex.

2009-06-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

Not only do we want choice, we want the choice of when we want to choose.

The corollary to this is that sometimes not having a choice is preferable.

- The Burning Tower -

2009-02-01T00:26:00.000-08:00

Because
I could not
bare to watch
the candle slowly
burning down,
I
gave
its
crimson
crown
a
puff;
the
smoul-
d'ring
wick
returned
my
frown.
And in the ensuing darkness I realized:
I am now truly alone.

- Prioritize This -

2008-11-16T12:08:00.001-08:00

Procrastination is simply setting a task to the lowest priority - lower than checking Facebook and surfing the 'net. Addiction is simply setting a task to the highest priority - just below eating and sleeping, or possibly even above it. Once we realize this, we don't have to take a passive stance on procrastination and addiction:

- procrastination and addiction are simply setting priorities
- ultimately, we control our priorities
- if we want, we can defeat addiction by setting other things as "higher priority"
- ditto with procrastination

Incidentally, when a productive task becomes an addiction, great things can be achieved.

2008-06-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Whoever controls the greatest mindshare controls the world.

- Tabula Rasa -

2008-04-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

People want a blank slate. A chance for everyone to forget your previous errors and detours. Blow away all the ugly false starts and build on solid foundation because you know better now.

A mistake. And there are two big reasons why this is a mistake.

1) Everyone messes up. There's no way you can build a tower of perfection right up until you die. By obsessing about a fresh start, the chances of getting anywhere past the foundation is slim. Painters don't toss away the canvass in the middle of the painting - they paint over it. Similarly, a fresh start in software can be suicidal. Netscape decided to redo their code from scratch, lost precious years in effort, and guess where they are now?

2) The Internet has a really long memory. Remember that site you made in Grade 5? Even if it's deleted Google probably has a cached version of it. For an offline analogy: your extremely awkward or negative situations are still remembered by people. In short, your history is less like an Etch A Sketch and more like that fully cached website.

Instead of trying to erase the doodle, it would be more productive to understand why it's there and work with it.

How many times have you tried to clean the slate?