Daily news reading is a habit I inherited from my father, who tends to read the morning newspaper at the dining table during breakfast every morning and most other meals as well, even to this day. Some would say a bad habit, especially when among company. These days my morning newspaper consists mostly of Flipboard articles, then the local newspaper during lunch and dinner if I am at home. Aside from mealtime readings, I also regularly take breaks to check what is going on in social media and my RSS reader. I am, to invent a word, hyperinformed. As soon
2019 March
- The big one this month was Captain Marvel. I posted the usual spoiler-free review over on Tumblr, but I have some more spoiler-y thoughts over here: (Spoilers) While I thought the movie was ok, I was underwhelmed by the third act and specifically the lack of any serious threat for Carol to defeat towards the end of the movie. As this tumblr post explains more clearly than I ever could, perhaps the issue is that the narrative is not something targetted towards me as a man, who has not experienced the emotional gaslighting IRL that many women are exposed to.
- I posted a quote yesterday about how if you're feeling like an outsider or you don't belong, you should take the take to try and "find the others" who are more similar to yourself. For every person, there likely exists a "tribe", not necessarily all in one place, a community where that person would fit in. And in the modern age, the internet and social media make it all the more easier for such "outsiders" to connect with each other. There is a power to this connection, to finding your tribe. It gives you strength and reinforces your beliefs and
- âAdmit it. You arenât like them. Youâre not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the ânormal people" as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like âHave a nice day" and âWeatherâs awful today, eh?", you yearn inside to say forbidden things like âTell me something that makes you cry" or âWhat
- As a follow-up to yesterday's post about Google Plus being discontinued, I should note that you should be regularly doing backups of all your social media content anyway. Most of them will provide easily accessible backup tools, but probably they have to be accessed via a web browser. Here are the relevant pages for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. (And be wary of sites like Quora that don't have a direct backup option.) I'm not saying these services are going to fail and shut down mind you (though that's a disinct possibility with all the controversy these days). But there's a
- They're pulling the plug on it by end of this month. I got an email telling me to backup my content from there so I did, not that I had much. I don't think I wrote any original posts there, the export was mostly +1s and shares and such. Maybe I'll dig through it in detail in the future. I wish I could say they tried their best with Google+, but they really didn't. It could have gotten a lot more support, but it felt like their heart wasn't really in it. Maybe the world could have been a better
- I wish I had a more concise way to describe it, but I really don't. Some time ago this guy I follow on Twitter, visakanv wanted to know how to do a certain search: he wanted to know who a given famous person follows on Twitter, and among those, finds the one who follow him (visakanv), so he could network through them. I might not be explaining the concept too well, here's the thread. Anyway, in a fit of "I'm a bit bored, anything interesting I could do?" I figured I could set up a quick webapp to do that.
- The concept of a "meritocracy" has come to the fore again with the recent college admissions scandal in the US, where wealthy parents bribed coaches and other professionals to get their kids into high-end universities with supposedly high standards. It's put a lie to the idea that the students of these universities represent the "cream of the crop" or "the best of the best", showing that kids can get in not only due to their own talent, but also due to money. Of course, it was always open knowledge before that one could get their kid admitted to such universities
- Earlier this week, Google officially announced their much-rumored streaming game platform, Google Stadia. Initial thoughts: If this works out, it will greatly lower the barrier for access to AAA games, since people won't have to buy desktops or consoles anymore, and you would be able to game on laptops without worrying about overheating. Sadly like many online services, it will probably be a while before it even becomes available over here in the PH (I believe even Sony's Playstation Now is not yet accessible here) One would presumably worry about how well it would work with the limited bandwidth available
- "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." -- Ernest Hemingway
- Scenario: Someone I know, let's call him/her Person A, appears to be supporting Party B, who in my opinion represents some of the worsts traits of Philippine politics (including but not limited to corruption, patronage, personality politics, etc). Now, I like to be optimistic about people and give them the benefit of the doubt, so in a bid to understand I tried to list down some possible motivations for Person A to do so. There are I believe two axes to consider: - whether Person A believes Party B is good/bad for the country - whether Person A personally has
With the PS Vita recently being discontinued by Sony, I decided to work on reducing my Vita backlog a bit. One of the games I'd been meaning to play for a while now was Zero Time Dilemma, the third game in the Nonary Games trilogy. I've only previously played the 2nd game in the series, Virtue's Last Reward, which is a bit appropriate given how the events in these games often unfold nonlinearly. ZTD is pretty good, but the story is understandably complex, given how it builds off a series of games that already involved espers and time travel and- Another repost from my Quora answers, this time some info for anyone looking to move into programming. How much of what we learn in school helps us in real life? The stuff school teaches you - literature, mathematics, art, history, science, and so on - are intended to give you a broad enough base from which you can freely choose the direction you want to go in life. This means that as you specialize, many of these subjects may become âirrelevant" to you, but having this broad base of knowledge gives you a better foundation in life. Knowledge from unrelated
- "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E.B. White I am fortunate that with my flexible working schedule I get to choose whether to derp around or to be productive every day. Though I must confess, derping around wins more often, maybe.
I mentioned before that as an engineer, I'm not fond of marketing. Image credit: Dilbert.com (Disclaimer: Liking the Dilbert comics is not an endorsement of Scott Adams' politics) It's not that I can't be good at salesmanship either. I have a good grasp of communication skills and think I have a decent chance of writing good copy. My main issue is that I've been exposed many times to sales/marketing practices that just seem dishonest downright or scummy. This happens both with me as a customer and with me on the side of the company trying to do the sales/marketing. An- If I could give some advice to someone starting out in their software development career, it would be this: Don't stay in the same place too long. The first company I worked at, I stayed with them for thirteen years, which I now feel was way too long. I have to admit, the work was hard and challenging, but I was young and had a lot of energy and was willing to work the long hours. I was good at the work and the enjoyed the company of the people I worked with so in a certain sense I got
- A few months back, my current web host WebFaction announced they had been purchased by GoDaddy, which was worrying. Back then they hadn't announced any details other than there would be some account migrations and single sign on, so it wasn't a big deal yet. I initially joined WebFaction back in 2008 because they were a Python-friendly and developer-friendly host that had some reasonable budget options, allowing me some space to host this blog and any side projects I wanted to deploy. At that time I was learning Django, so I needed the Python support that normal hosts don't provide.
I read this tweet from @GaryGulman, a standup comic who gives out tips for comedy writers: Today, put together a list of the most embarrassing moments in your life. Take one or two and write them out in detail. Next time youâre in front of a warm crowd, work on telling the story. The idea being of course, that such an exercise trains you to be more vulnerable in front on an audience. I thought about this advice for a bit and found it difficult to remember any particular moments in my life that I feel particularly embarassed or ashamed
I posted the other day about trying to get back into the habit of early morning walks. Unfortunately, I failed to continue that habit the very next day (hopefully I'm able to succeed on upcoming days). The main reason I failed is that I was unable to sleep early on the preceeding night. My sleep cycle is horribly irregular, given my flexible working hours. I tend to be easily tempted to take naps at odd hours. Not that there's anything wrong with naps mind you. But it's probably better if my naps were predictable, like say, a quick nap after- Another repost from my Quora answers, this time some info for anyone looking to move into programming. What are the pros and cons of making your career in programming? Pros: It is a very rewarding career financially. Software development often ranks in the top 10 highest-earning careers in most countries There is a lot of scope - you could be developing web applications, mobile applications, embedded applications, client-side, server-side, data analysis, artificial intelligence, games, etc It is very difficult to be bored. You can always automate away the boring stuff. Different projects always present different challenges. The field is evolving
