New Year's Resolutions (2013-2014)

Ahh! It's that time of the year again - it's the End of 2013! Time for some New Year Resolutions and the same old talk about making SMART goals.

For your reference, here's some anti-SMART I found reading the all-time classic single-female-novel Bridget Jone's Diary.

I WILL NOT

   

Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

   

Smoke.

   

Waste money on: pasta-makers, ice-cream machines or other culinary devices which will never use; books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves; exotic underwear, since pointless as have no boyfriend.

...

I WILL

   

Stop smoking.

   

Drink no more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

   

Reduce circumference of thighs by 3 inches (i.e. 1½ inches each), using anti-cellulite diet.

   

Purge flat of all extraneous matter

   

...

Happy Year's End!

Bachelor Chow!!!

PROBLEM

I like to work late into the night at the office on weekdays. But... I have to eat good stuff to keep going.
In an effort to create an alternative to f***ing snacks, McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and expensive Cha Chan Ting dinners, I developed different versions of Bachelor Chow.

Recipe

Instant Bachelor Chow

Serving: 

1 Filling Dinner fit for a 2500 Calorie Diet

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup Grounded Instant Oatmeal (Your Fibre!)
2. 1 cup Milk Powder (Your Carbs & Minerals. I prefer Ensure by Abbott Nutrition.)
3. 1/2 cup Cocoa Powder (Flavor)
4. 1 cup Protein Powder (Your main Protein Source)
5. 2-3 cups water (Your Hydration)

Complementary Foods:

1. Oreos!
2. Crackers
3. Digestive Biscuits
4. Granola Bars
5. UNEXPIRED Leftover Mooncake from Office Party

Instructions:

1. Mix into a big bowl.
2. Add hot water until 2/3 full.
3. Mix with spoon.
4. Wait for it to settle.
5. Add cold water until reasonably full.
6. Serve with Complementary Foods.

Food And Emotions

We were having this table conversation the other day, and I realized how much I liked cooking and eating at home. I did some self-introspection and found that it boils down to trust and care.

At college and now work, I have been eating out a lot more than ever before. And every time I order, receive food and pay, my attention is always focused on the attitude, mood, tone of voice and movements of the staff. Often, they are helpful and considerate. But at the same time, others may sound bored and tired - a tone that betrays how my order is just one more out of many throughtout the day.

I believe that if the people making your food do not care about you or what you eat, there's probably something wrong with the food too. Nutritionally speaking, that is often true.

I like to feel more than the taste, smell and looks of the food when I eat. I like to be certain that food is done as well as it could be, with the correct intentions.

And the standard of trust is the family home/me.

Top 10 Ponderings This week

• How to organize my thoughts?

• File-naming Conventions?

• What are the hardest things a developer/programmer have to do?

• What are the most interesting things a programmer has to do?

• One of the most important things learnt at school is to keep things organized and complete things in an organized fashion. How can this be achieved for...

- software design
- basic life requirements
- time management
- thinking about thinking?

• Time is a feeling. Our sense of time is gauged relative to the change rate of certain factors. what are these factors and what do they feel like?

- Future
- Present
- Past

• Gravity. There are a few themes unexplored. 
• Murphy's Law & Technology. Prometheus & Icarus. "Tech could be playing with fire."
• Isolation. Nietzsche.
• Heroism. What is the definition of a hero? 

Why the concept of ghosts...spirits...zombies...halloween?

There are two schools of "thinking" here. Some people want to believe there is some kind of life after death. But anyone who has stared at a corpse (at funerals...mortuaries...accidents) long enough realizes how impossible the whole scenario is - life is no longer physically possible. It would be completely scary if it jumped back to life.

1. We like to believe in some sort of Life after Death, or Life without Death.
2. But...But...Life after Death is absolutely revolting and physically impossible.
3. Life without Death is also physically impossible. (Mortality)
4. Death cannot happen without Life first.

1 and 2,3,4 are contradictory. We must therefore pick our sides if we are to become stable, and the real side if we are to live as a happy integral whole in the present reality.

To resolve this cognitive dissonance, we create a new part, associated with the feeling of fun (or spookiness, who is more like fun and fright combined). In this way, subconscious desires have another place to manifest themselves, free from the "bounds" of reason and rationality. Here, the desires can roam free, like people in white sheet costumes...

What about ghosts and spirits? And why is fear the predominant emotion culturally associated with them?

Personally, I see this as a fear of the self by a fractured mind. Many movies have used "evil spirits", unseen forces to symbolize internal fears, conflicts.
On a deeper level of the "collective unconscious", It's a natural phenomenon that has existed for as long as the human race. Psychological trauma causes some people to hallucinate, replaying traumatic events of the past. In doing so, they repeat the emotions they actually need to replace in order to move on. This inability to live in the present is clearly related to most ghost stories which deal with the past.

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”

And it can only grow deeper.

So stop "celebrating" Halloween and go do something really fun and worth your time... because you only have less than 29,220 Days*, and counting...

"Happy Halloween(2013)!"

 *Assuming you are 20 now and have a life expectancy of 100 years old.

Re: Suggestion: Beds in the library

After 3 years at HKUST, I can conclude 3 things.

1. Universities are concerned with shameless people with too much freedom... and illicit activities.
How do I know? I've been trying to get them to put couch beds in the library and they (librarians and fellow students) shot it down. I thought the students could be much smarter.

2. The library is obsessed with OPENESS. It's also another word for MINIMAL PRIVACY. Everything has to be glass and/or transparent.

3. The library also hates a mess. The HKUST library still looks like a refugee camp everytime I go back. If you add beds, it would look too disgraceful for any self-respecting nerd.

Speaking of nerds and the like, even the new ones have found cleaner rocks to hide under.

But I do like the pillow one.

"More than 90% of people in European cities breathe dangerous air"

If 90% of people in European cities breath dangerous air, where does that leave Chinese cities?

Hong Kong?

Gravity: A Space Odyssey?

While watching the movie, I became rather curious as to why there seemed to be no telling of Ryan's story. But then I realized it's all there.

The main character buries herself in her work (18 hour shifts), which puts them in greater immediate danger, but ultimately saves them from being shredded in the false safety of the space shuttle. I saw this to mean that while overwork is better than false comfort and can help someone move on in the short term, you can't do it forever because doing it any longer would kill not only you, but also everybody who cares about you.

Her fellow astronaut helps save her from the carnage, but is swept away. Even here, we see how she must save herself by unhooking from her work (symbolized by the satellite repairs).

Surviving the initial storm, she realizes it has taken a toll on her oxygen - the problem is killing her slowly. AND she's spinning. Which, (wait for it...) could be a metaphor for how people with psychological issues tumble in endless loops forever until they get help.

Thankfully, her man returns from the carnage. He has the stupidest idea of trying to retrieve the other dead astronaut (which definitely freaked out at least one of the audience, besides me) while she is running out of air. That looked like one unlucky headshot - "such a stupid way to die".

However, she is slowing them both down. The space tow scene could symbolize how her past baggage made it difficult for them both to move on.

Once outside the international space station, they must grab onto the station, because they used up all their fuel on the way there. Here, as they tumble out of control, she gets caught in the parachute cords. A possible symbolism here would be her joining the space program. It saves her from flying off into the emotional void, but it also looks like they broke up. Plus, he's out of gas.

We don't know explicitly what happens to her man. For all we know, he could have lived for a while and chose not to respond. What matters is he's gone now. The porthole shot reminds me of those old movies where a woman stares longingly into the distance.

In the space station, we see how she gets along. The fetal position shot signifies her psychological and technical development. She does some stupid things, like flying through the burning chamber into the wall with the fire extinguisher...and knocking herself out. (that was fun, we all LOLed. Also, the interior reminds me of Halo)

Wait, fire going out of control...sealing the bulkheads...knocking herself out trying to suppress the inferno? Could that be symbolic of her internal struggle? Or simultaneously, her burning desire to leave the training and actually go to space?

People have a tendency to compartmentalize the trauma they can't deal with. It's the natural way to move on and keep going.

So, she tries to escape on the soyuz pod. She gets it out, only to have it bungie right into the exploding space station. (sorry, woman driver jokes came to mind.) It is as if her lifeline is now preventing her from moving forwards.

Lucky for her, the debris field returns and she is now free, in space. The destruction of the ISS and the cutting of the lifeline could be symbolic of cutting the umbilical cord and literally blasting off.

It's exciting for a while, but now that she is freely floating in space, she must find the meaning of her existence. Find the reason to turn the air back on. Find the will to survive and get back to earth.

She attempts to contact others for help. But all she gets is trivia. Nobody understands. It's like something out of Lost in Translation, a kind of empty nihilism - and in space too.

And of course, there are her childhood problems associated with her dad expecting a son. Parental expectations can ruin childhoods. "There is no greater pain, than to remember happy times in misery." The inner child was left alone, wondering as she was forced to grow up. To me, the howling was the innocent child attempting to reconnect with the rest of her, just as dogs howl to signify their location.  

The howling scene probably ranks as one of the hardest scenes I've watched. At first, it was like - a grown woman pretending to be a dog! - how could that not be funny? But then, it started becoming sad. That was some brilliant emoting there.

But time is running out.

The answer comes in the form of a hypoxia-induced hallucination - "Landing is Lift-Off". In psychological terms, that means to resolve a past issue is to move forwards. And to resolve issues, one must first be grounded in reality and recognize its nature. Only then can one move on. (though I'm pretty sure for a second, we all wanted Clooney back! the audience almost get what they wanted.)

Cut to the capsule blasting itself free. That was really cool and realistic. She is now ready to face life and reality all over again. But to get to her new life, she must be prepared to enjoy the ride... in the burning TianJong space-station.

Back on Earth, she dumps the life-support, symbolized by the spacesuit, that allowed her to cope with the past. Then she breaks the surface into fresh air and swims out to shore and renewed life.

---

I walked out of the movie thinking it was actually slightly hostile towards space development. Now that I realize it could be a metaphor, I realize it is not space that is the problem, but escapism from one's past. 

A word about 2001: A Space Odyssey. What 2001 expresses philosophically for the history and future of mankind, Gravity does for the individual. The two films are complementary and though both are set in space, they are on different orbits. But they do intersect.

More on this later.

Writing this review has allowed me to see the movie through new eyes. I'm sure many more interpretations will surface as more people recall the movie.

I hope you have too.

Programming & MultiProgramming

Success in programming seems to depend on your ability to divide a task into many subtasks that can then be carried out consecutively.

Which makes it ironic that we now want multiprogramming - trying to squash consecutive tasks into being done together.

What if we could skip the task dividing, or do it some other way, so that multi-programming would naturally arise?

Just a thought.

The End of Privacy

Forenote:
The definition of private data here means non-confidential data while most people would still prefer no one snoop on, are generally available for those who actually look for them. Web history, customer sales records, IP Addresses, phone numbers. I wish to exclude passwords or encryption keys.
Privacy is "the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively".
The end of privacy means the reduced ability to keep things private.

Let's begin with a cliche.

The Chinese word for danger is 危机 (wei ji), literal meaning "danger and opportunity".

The end of privacy is exactly this. There is obviously the danger of all your information being collected stored by unscrupulous, creepy people with evil intentions. 

But there is also the explosion of opportunities. Since we now expect everything to be tagged and recorded anyway, why don't we instead open up and send out information that will influence others?

Beyond the fear and reality of being exploited, there is the desire to make a mark on the world. To have people know you exist; to understand you;. We are being connected at a faster pace than ever before in the history of human existence, and with it, the influence of the individual has also become greater than ever.

Not even the best privacy in the world is going to prevent immorality - they will merely find other ways to do so. Privacy is but one of many issues that naturally arise from immorality.

To fix the issue of immorality, one must find the truth through sound reasoning and solve the root of the problem.

But that's an essay for another day. Back to the End of Privacy.

Example 1. We know that sooner or later, we are going to have tags on almost everything electronic. It's just who does it, how, and when.

Why don't we open-source the applications and leverage the community to solve problems with it?

It could solve a lot of problems that have plagued all humans for all time...

End theft
If the tags are well-hidden, stealing would become increasingly difficult. Just like the lock has prevented many many robberies, identification can be a great thing to mark ownership. And while all security devices can be broken with tools like lockpicking, the point of security has always been to make theft harder than it would be to acquire the property honestly.

End forgetfulness
Relieving the cognitive load of having to remember lots of details. And actually, it would still be easier to remember where your keys were - it's just that you now have a choice.

Promote generosity and trust
Losing something and then having strangers return it to you usually increases community trust, at least temporarily. I know I certainly did when I lost my phone at a restaurant and it was brought to the counter for safekeeping. Now, I could have remotely wiped it, but I still wouldn't get my phone back. Knowing that "being a good citizen" now easier than ever to do increases cooperation, mutual respect and generosity greatly.

Example 2. Web tracking. This is a touchy one, because there are many rules (eg. AUPs), socialeconomic norms and political restrictions here.
Ideally, nobody knows who's been where or unless it is voluntarily disclosed. The reality is it's increasingly rare and tedious for people to hide all their web-traces.

Here, the opportunity is for greater openness, discussion and more sharing. Restrictions lead to people leading double lives (remember Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"?), which is really a shame, considering how it fosters dishonesty, miscommunication, COMEDY (don't forget comedy!), plus plenty of worry.

To conclude...

Where does Privacy really come from?

We all pick and choose our information. Even the most powerful computers in the world cannot process every single bit of data created at every single moment. It is from this that privacy naturally arises - because it is not economical, effective or useful to analyze or disclose each and all of it. Technological advancements allows more storage, analysis, disclosure, etc.

Violence

Question: How did Samuel come to like violent games??

or How Eugene learnt to worry and hate the Bomb?

It's kind of funny, because I've been running the other way recently. I never play shooters or any games anymore unless it's a good cause (eg. with friends/colleagues). For some reason, I'm come to abhor anything with any kind of violence in it, which includes wargames, news and TV. It's not hate, but rather a motivator towards the opposite direction.

And then, I realized it wasn't really violence I came to dislike, it was just its initiation without a reasonable cause or decisive victory. Or the scenarios where violence gets blown out of proportion, or when it would never work in reality.

I guess I would describe the feeling as equal to an enemy intending to win by wasting my time. It's like a kind of stalling. Or insulting my intelligence. Like when you know it's impossible in the near future and you probably don't ever want it to happen, even if it becomes possible.

Just a thought. Maybe it's a change of values and perspective of what I consider to be cool.

Yeah, it would be interesting to list what we consider cool now, and in what respect.

A post for Another Day...

Can AI be sentient without understanding the human first?

Why not?

What's stopping anyone from bumping into an accurate, implementable description of sentience? Who's to say it can't evolve out of what we have currently?

At the current rate of progress, it is truly a race between the sciences and computer science - the description and the implementation.

Month 2 Schedule

Many people track their money, few keep track of their time. But considering how my time is currently worth $50 an hour (and infinity to me).

8am Getup & hygiene time

8:10am
Eat.

8:20am
Run around the place to get the blood pumping.

9am
Shower
Eat some more.

9:30am
The great Office rush.
Watch sitcom Orange is the New Black, watch reactions from people around me.

10:30am
In the office, refreshed and ready to conquer.

10:45am
Boss comes in, asks how I'm doing.

*You know, it's amazing how where you work can make such a great difference on efficiency. I am far more efficient at the office than at home, so I try to do my blog-writing at the office, after office hours.

11:00am
Watering break.

11:30am
Managers comes in with their problems of the day.

12:30pm
I solve those problems and get back to what I'm supposed to do.

1:00pm
Oh, lunch in an hour! Let's rush this hard stuff so I can finish before lunch...

1:30pm
Tummy so hungry!
People start telling each other to drop what they're doing to go for lunch.

1:45pm
Almost finished with what I wanted to do. I plan for the afternoon.

2pm
LunchTime! We walk past each restaurant debating whether to go in. If more than 2 people agree, everyone else piles in and sits down.

2:30pm
Finished with lunch. We wait for the slow eater, discuss the latest app.

3:00pm
People start getting sleepy and slump on desks. I continue to code on.

4:00pm
Oh no! Day is dying away! Work harder work harder work harder!

6:00pm
Wrap it up....

6:30pm
WRAP IT UP!

7pm
Everybody starts thinking about going home.

7:30pm
People start going.

8pm
Everybody is gone, except for the workaholics.

9pm
Workaholics have gone home. I have gone home.

9:45pm
Late night supper.

10:30pm
Late night sports.

11pm
Feel like sleeping, feel like reading, feel like there's still so much to do...

11:30pm
Decided to blog.

12pm
Getting tired... why is there so little time...

12:30am
Book time!

01:00am
Start dreaming.

0700am
Dreams I can remember.



More on that later...

What I learnt in my First Month of Paid work

My first month here has been awesome. I wouldn't have said this back at HKUST, but I can say that I have learnt a lot more about software engineering here than I did in school.

1. Failure is awesome.

I am glad to be in a team that does not worry about failure. We take project delays in stride, with a few laughs and chew it down with a meeting or two. We take things as they are - there's no shame in being inexperienced, or to make a mistake. The only sin here is dishonesty with a bad attitude.

2. OT is a good thing.

I don't know about other lines of work, but here, overtime is happy time.

People here don't OT alone. The grey images of workers in cubicles slaving away at spreadsheets and documents may be true in some IBM office next door, but when we OT, it's always the whole team. And that makes it a positive experience.

I OT-ed quite a lot during the first month here, but when you...

3. See the Big Picture

you start to realize you're not always going to OT like that. Someday in the distant future, I'll have other priorities and developing software might never be the same again. So I'm just going to do whatever I can here and then move on when it's time.

When the coding gets tough, I zoom out to get some perspective. I go off to the meetings. Help the project managers. Estimate development time for future projects...

4. Estimations are almost always wrong...

because we think it's hard and proceed to take the easy way out. We should really break down the tasks into familiar, hands-on steps, but instead most people like to say "a month" or "two months".

After a few of those answers, common sense took over for me and I decided to do the estimations for them... the effort which I too underestimated...

5. Nothing is ever easy.

If you want to make something awesome, it's always going to take more effort and ingenuity than expected.

The myth of easy success may exist in other areas, but software engineering is not one of them. One can make it a lot easier and smoother but hard focused work is always a requirement.

6. Effort is easy to forget

Something that took months to do can be forgotten within just a few years.

Take my FYP for example. I spent 8 months on it, particularly the last 4 months. I only just submitted it in May, but by now (August) the endless testing and re-evaluation now seems trivial in comparison to corporate projects.

7. Never underestimate your own influence.

In my experience, people behave differently when they are with different people. You may soften your voice and cheer up a little when talking to girls you find attractive. That's influence on not just the behavioral level but right down to biology.

 Based on past experience, recent observations and all those other states that persist in a mind, the tone of a conversation is often set before it even begins. I made a point of asking lots and lots of questions right at the start, and that seems to have put me in a kind of curious-fresh-graduate category. And that really gives you the opportunity to not only adapt to the environment, but through skillful questions, change the workplace culture. It's something the colleagues secretly desire.

Speaking of desire, everyone in the team will have hopes, wants and expectations. They might not even know it until you fulfill their unconscious dreams - Supply CAN create its own demand, which is all the better, since it costs you the least to be yourself.



Next week, I experience the office phenomenon known as The New Guy.

Past Statuses.

HKUST is going to have a Parents' Day?

Never try to get the UI perfect while the functionality is incomplete.

Just a Recap........

"I don't know what I want until I see it..."

Wow, so many PMs

My laptop fan is dead. Running very slowly!

First steps in programming Nao Robot.

Best Brainstormed Idea Ever!

Stressed? Bored? Tired? F***ed Up?

Then this is for you.

Kinect coloring game!

Inspired by Boredom.

Why I don't need a grad trip

1. Desire for long term entertainment and purpose

One trip is too short. I would just start thinking when it was going to end and then I would be back where I was.
This indicates underlying issue of not having found a goal in some field, particularly career. I want to figure that out first.

However, if I did find the prefect career match, I would not be procrastinating or resting. I would directly run at it until I got there and satisfied. It would be both work and play.

Personally, I can be a very in-the-moment person, but years of studying and working under deadlines has driven me towards being goal-oriented. I have realized that both being in the moment and on a schedule are really one and the same. That means I don't have to unwind as long as what I do is immensely engaging.

2. The Carrot & The Stick
The carrot and the stick limits people within a system, or culture. It's not good or bad, it just limits human potential. If the trip is deliberately a carrot, I don't want it.


3. Purpose
What is it about a graduation that makes it a purpose?

I usually like trips centered around a main objective. Like studying a course, or climbing a beautiful mountain, or seeing Alaska. But just going out and being a consumer isn't a valid reason to me. I could go to nearby Shenzhen for a day and that would fit the bill too.

Granted, we need to unwind sometimes. I like traveling. It opens me up to new perspectives, new people, new things and let's me experience just how great the world is. The "I know what's happening in Alaska at the moment feeling of connectedness.

4. Finance
And then there is money. To me, a graduation trip signifies that I have achieved a kind of independence.That I have not raised nor can spare the appropriate funds for the trip means that I am not  yet independent nor taking responsibility for the trip.

Having exhausted all arguments, I conclude that I simply don't feel like it.

So where do I want to go?

I'd like to go climb some mountains or explore some area. After mount kinabalu, I no longer felt satisfied with just sightseeing or the regular touristy stuff.Something taking tremendous effort was necessary to feel rewarding

Re: Diarrhea Diaries

I read this while reading. 

You're supposed to drink 2L everyday, diarrhea or not.

I've never had diarrhea last more than 4 days. The worst I had was in YangShuo. I had swallowed LiJiang water with all the garbage in it and then ate bad meat. At least for food was excellent the night before my diarrhea started.

My stomach started to cramp during a afternoon hike. By the time I was pound tent-pegs into the ground, my stomach was cramping every few minutes. No diarrhea.

When dinner was served, I had no appetite. Wearing shorts in the freezing cold, I went to bed early and cried to sleep. Still no diarrhea.

It wasn't long before I awoke. My guts felt normal and I wanted to eat. But dinner was done and even the marshmallows were gone, digesting in the stomachs of people sound asleep.

I sat up for a while, listening to the sound of cicadas and river flowing. Everyone was sound asleep and snoring. My guts started to twist again and despite the hunger, water gurgled inside me, followed by cramps.

I decided to go and try. The hole in the ground wasn't the best toilet, but it was good enough for now. The air being so cold, it didn't really stink at all. The latrine was dug pretty deep and actually already quite filled. I had to take care not to slip in getting up.

Diarrhea was actually enjoyable after the cramping. I had to go to toilets everywhere - from hole-in-the-grounds to your standard Mainland Chinese dirty squat-toilet. It was tough squatting properly with cramps - I found it easiest to pad the sides of the squat-toilet with toilet paper and sit down on it. 

Later, I found out that the others got antibiotics. As I realized, antibiotics are simply unnecessary and sometimes ineffective. All you need is lots of water and a good appetite, and then the body will eject what it does not need.

After 3 days, my appetite returned and all problems had ceased. The experience injected me with greater respect for my body and made me indifferent to bodily malfunctions - if anything, I have come to enjoy illnesses. The twisting of the guts, the gurgling of digestive matter, the satisfaction of offloading waste and the thump of shit freefalling into the water below. The feeling was all strangely healing and exquisite, part of the human experience in the infinitesimally short moments we are alive. 

Looking back, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

My Graduate Survey Answers

Please state the reasons for your answer above (i.e. recommending or NOT recommending the UG program you have completed to other students.)

I would recommend the UG program, but also let them know what it's really like so they have no delusions about life at HKUST.
Pressure can occasionally feel overwhelming. While I enjoyed my time here, I am not sure this is an experience I would like to repeat. To be flatly honest, given another choice, I would have chosen the other universities that accepted me. True, most universities are like this, yet at the same time, I think the cultures of other universities may be more positive.

However, I am proud of what I am achieved, accomplished, the skills I have acquired, the attitude I have developed and the ideas I have contacted.

What is good about this university?
 
You will find people you like to work with/have fun with, people you don't like but have to work with.
You will learn to cope with pressure. You may find yourself without guidance, but that develops your character.
You will find yourself doing things you thought you'd like but then didn't. This will make you find the things you really love and hence your direction.

What needs to be improved in this university?


Make it bigger. At least twice as large. Set less exams and more projects. Actually teach people how to manage their time and life well.
Everyone should have to take mental health first aid or psychology. It would have saved a lot of grief when things don't work out we want and have to handle failure.
Help your students succeed. Why should half the class be below average when everyone could be 90% or above? Why are people happy with being "above average"? "Above average" isn't excellent. That means people DON'T even UNDERSTAND all the material.
It's not an issue of pulling grading curves or students being lazy. The issue is why are people not aiming higher or achieving excellence? Where is the culture for excellence? Right now, we have a culture of "above average".
This is probably a major issue for many universities. Not only is it holding potential back, it is this very belief that makes people average. People who wish to live meaningful lives won't get it by setting the goal of beating others, but by feeding their desires to achieve.

Other general comments:

Encourage entrepreneurship. After taking entrepreneurship courses, I think every student should be an entrepreneur. True, few will actually succeed commercially, but so-called failures are infinitely better than no result at creating future success.

The market is too volatile today. Bad economies make being an employee a real pain, besides being fired first. It is however awesome for entrepreneurship, for taking risks, because many experienced/skilled people will be looking for work and willing to work for less. Job training is no longer the main goal of education.

Everyone should go on exchange somewhere sometime. It teaches adaptability and makes one confident that one can thrive anywhere. People are only going to get more mobile in this century. And I knew students who have rather narrow outlooks which were completely broadened after just a month of exchange.

20 Years of Experience in Water Drinking

Q- Why drink water?

Water. 

The enabler of life. Humans can take a liter an hour in the hottest places, or die.
To get minerals. In nature, pure water doesn't exist. There's almost always something in it.

Q- What water to drink?

Electrolytes!
When we say water, we aren't talking pure H2O. While we can drink pure water, we need salt and minerals. Without them, we may eventually get water poisoning - the normal electrolytic balance is disrupted and the brain is most sensitive to it.

I found during the half-marathon just how much electrolytes are necessary before, during and after the race. I started off drinking 3 or 4 cups of water with 1 sports drink to go. At the turn-around point, I found that my vision became brighter and glare-y. Switching completely to sports drink helped things back to normal, except the sugar was causing small sugar crashes soon after. There wasn't a work-around to this issue. The sports drink also felt rather diluted. Perhaps I should bring my own rehydration salts and next time.

Coconut water is great stuff, with similar composition to blood plasma. I could drink nothing except coconuts in Vietnam and Malaysia. I didn't feel any different after drinking and sweating.

Fluoride
I did a 6 month long experiment soon due to end. I drank only distilled or non-fluoridated water, and no drinks. From the start of 2013, I hauled bottled water back home and to dormitory ever few days. I alternated between mineral water and distilled water, depending on which was on sale. I made drinks whenever possible.

The result?
My mind became clearer. I felt smarter. Reading novels, I could see clearly everything so exquisitely described by the finely chosen words.

Reduced sleep requirement. I woke up from clearly defined dreams every morning. The details could so good that for a short moment, I forgot it was a dream and reacted like the waking me.

I could very easily pull all-nighters. If I was fully engaged, it didn't feel any different whatever the time was. I could work fully until 4am and still wake before 9am the next day. Of course, I only did that twice, knowing the long-term consequences.

While logical reasoning did not become clearer, I found my visualizations form clearer images. This is very interesting and under-researched, because this means there are actual high-level effects, with effects over entire populations.

However, I could work longer without fatigue. It was as if my mind felt lighter and more agile. I was able to focus greater effort at my interests, and less able to force myself to do anything. It wasn't that I was more willing, just that it was easier.

I also found a difference between remineralized and distilled water. Distilled water did not feel as hydrating as mineralized water - my mouth would still feel dry and furry after distilled water.

Mineral water comes in many different forms. Some charge a big premium over where they are from, branding, texture and taste. Watson's (the mineral type with blue-caps) are good enough for hydration purposes, though to my tastes, even Chinese purified water tasted better. The greater cost is not worth it - it's cheaper to add a powdered drink of your choice.

So am I going back? Not a chance. I attempted a withdrawal, which resulted in a significant loss of productivity and mental clarity (mental fog) I'd rather not experience again.

Temperature
Based simply on feeling, this should be obvious. Since we are warm bodies, warm water is the natural choice. Warm drinks give a relaxing, cozy experience. I can also drink more warm water than cold water, with the warm water being absorbed faster than the cold water.
There is also evidence that warm drinks help digestion, and that seems to make scientific sense too. Enzymes work optimally at specific temperatures. Fats are more fluid in warmer liquids.


Q- When to drink?

The best time to hydrate is immediately after getting up. If you're like me and weened off air-conditioning for sleeping at night, eight hours of sleep is also eight hours of drying up and using up energy. The body is in great demand for water and food.

The second best time to hydrate is steadily throughout the day. Water is consistently gained and lost through all sorts of processes. To stay balanced, replenish as soon as it is lost.

If having a water source near you all day isn't possible or not your style, the best time to drink is an hour before meals. That's when you'll be feeling hungry and sometimes, that feeling doesn't mean you need food. Water can delay the response until you can get a meal. It will helps digestion too.


Q- How much?

It is entirely true that one can go with not drinking water at all. We get water from food and other drinks all the time.

I'm not concerned with minimums. I consider "getting enough water" to mean that urine is always clear and the mind/body are feeling great.

Based on my water bottle estimates, I was drinking 1.5L average for winter days and 2L as summer heat sets in. And this is just for mineralized water/mixed drinks.  There is no way my urine could be entirely clear with just a liter of water a day.

For a half-day (~5-6 hour) summer hike, I need about 2L to feel as if I was sitting in an air-conditioned room. I just used up 1L playing 3 hours of tennis outdoors in the hot afternoon. That's not including pre- and post- hydration, which are just as important.

Conclusion

• Drink water with electrolytes, excluding fluoride & other pollutants.

• Good water is a nutrient - it makes you feel better.

• You need more than a liter of clean water a day. 2 Liters is very reasonable if you're not big on drinks.

• Replenish fluids as/before you lose it - not afterwards.

Almost Graduated. (An Ongoing Post Tracking Changes until Graduation)

Cooking: The Spanish omlette looks like a pie of sorts. I can fry a decent omlette myself.
Cleaning: I have done zero cleaning in my dorm except for washing out the covers. Don't intend to.
Programming: Projects mostly. Looking for open source project to actually write code or documentation for.
Reading: Still on Sword of Truth. The author hasn't ceased to amaze me. Also reading the Bible and Ayn Rand a page at a time. Together they give a unique perspective on life and philosophy.
Sports: Trying to keep up the running, so that I may be ready for marathon next year. May be unlikely given my career, but I'm training while I can.

What I meant about trade from SOSC1000A (Game Theory)

Trade makes everyone better off, some better off than others. The trick is to maximize your gains and then not caring what the other people gain.

Night @ HKUST

Little dashes of light gleamed white brightly on the calm wavy ocean.

As 9pm came, the lights went off, yielding to the darkness, and the occasional cool night wind. Restaurants closing, staff waving each other off, students going home.

As I look to the staff quarters, I see the calm night life of families, of professors watching after dinner TV, and I start wondering what it's like back home (or what Mom and Dad are doing).

I guess as busy people, we don't often get the night to ourselves, to admire the serenity and everything in slow motion. This has to be one of the things I love most in HKUST. Whether I'm around people, or alone, I get this feeling that my time is mine to enjoy, whatever way I please. Maybe that's just me.

The weather is just right today - temperature's just right about air-conditioning.. I feel like I should to spend the night outside, sleeping by the sea, breathing fresh air. Sometimes, I just don't get why the buildings are designed like air-conditioned boxes, when everyone could be outside enjoying the air.

Simplicity. Why was Angry Birds so popular?

The brain likes to simplify things as much as possible. A wall doesn't have to be exactly white for us to see it/call it a white wall. Angry birds feels nice because it is extremely simple for the kind of things that it wanted to represent. There was just enough detail on that bird to quickly form a well-defined, clear mental image. In fact, it is so clear we have no desire of adding anything to it. This makes us comfortable and puts our mind at ease.

Just like the no-smoking sign.

Wizard's First Rule reads nicely and comfortably because the descriptions are to-the-point and fed just at the right time - just when the reader is anticipating it. Fitting the expectations means no revision/recoding is necessary or done. The author, Terry Goodkind, is careful to present details exactly when most people will start wondering about it.

These expectations are cognitive habits hidden in plain sight. We keep using them, yet they are harder to discover because of other cognitive tendencies, like not wanting to think more than you have to, aka getting used to something.   

One such tendency is for direct descriptions in simple wording. This is simply parallel with the Angry Birds form distinct impressions in minds. We want representations as clear as possible, not fuzzy, untouchable shapes.

A sense of mystery also helps engage/hypnotize the user. "Why did you do this?" The discontinuity makes one waste CPU cycles and relax, at least until the person actually thinks about it. Very common examples of this include IPad interface. It is very distinct, and one has to wonder why there are so many gaps between icons, how the icons can follow my fingers on the screen, why things expand at the rate they do. All this is far from arbitrary, yet just thinking about it is enough to make the mind try to chase its own tail - the dog never gets it.

Simplicity repeated leads to more simplicity, not less. The mind becomes more and more efficient at processing the same thing - more of it becomes unconscious. It is the progression from unconscious unknowing - not having any mental model at all, to unconscious knowing. Any discontinuity has been related to other discontinuities to form continuities. When all discontinuities have been found and connected, there are no more distinctions to snag onto consciously.

All this fit together to form user-friendly, engaging software.

War and peace

I find it really strange when people would read the most depressing paper in a nice peaceful park.

I dont get it.

Solids and Shadows

Watching the show first has the uncanny effect of getting the character portrayals into my head.

I wish Christians could be more like Muslims, who ban all portrayals of their prophet Muhammad. I keep getting the popular image of Jesus as a tall man with long hair wearing sheets and sandals. I mean, it's quite instinctual, but I wish I saw what my instinct would have me see first.

If the story's good though, these impressions start to fall away and looks matter less.

For example, Wizard's First Rule. They started off as shadowy medieval archetypes - a shadowy cross between Robin Hood portrayals and Lord of the Rings characters holding swords and bows, but then I started to watch the show. Nearly all the mental fog was gone - characters were no longer spirit-like. They now had real faces!

Pretty exciting.

But now, as I move on in the series, they became more gossamer-like among the mental mist. I think the portrayals usually fell apart at facial expressions - the novel characters and actor's portrayal are ultimately different. Some expressions just don't occur in the show, probably because some scenes can't fit in the adapted story-line. And people probably find it hard to scowl nearly as many times as novel characters can!

Ultimately, I guess it is the character's spirit that lives in the reader, whatever they may look like.

The ghost in the body is perhaps what matters in the end. If there was an important lesson I learnt from reading, it is about looking past the costumes, masks and bodies of people and seeing the spirit living in the body.

Total Reading

1. Find a setting similar to the one in the novel. (Which is safe and may not be comfortable.)

The Sword of Truth novel series is set a lot in the woods. I went running around to remote parts of HK just to find quiet away from people to read it. Read it, Live it.


"...Sounds of birds, breezes, and bugs hurt her ears. Trees draped with
streamers of moss, rocks incrusted with lichen and snarled in roots and vines, and patches of damp, dark mist crowded in all around. The overpowering presence of it all terrified her. Breathe...." Extracted from a Sword of Truth novel.

2. Go out there and do the stuff in the novel.

OK, I didn't go all the way.

But getting chased down by a Quad (mounted assassins) at breakneck speed? I can get close to that. Getting on a horse and charging around a tough course of jumps as fast as I could in the best posture I could muster gets pretty close. Riding without a saddle also gives that awesome raw feel.

How about shooting arrows at nasty D'Harans? HKUST's archery ranges lets you do almost the same.

And what about torture by Mord Sith? OK, I can't match that. But spending a day and night programming some tedious assignment and I did rather want the torturous death by Agiel at the hands of a madwoman. Close enough.

3. Eat the food of the novel.

Soup and bread?

Richard came awake with a start. Warm midday light filled the room, and the wonderful, tangy aroma of spice soup filled his lungs.

Unlike the movie theater, popcorn and other junk food simply do not belong in the worlds of fantasy. And you know what? Fictional food often come from awesome recipes. Spice soup is awesome. Ideally, I'd love to try it camping somewhere and cooking it over a campfire, but a modern kitchen does just as well.

4. Play the music of the novel.

What music I'm listening to has a huge impact on what the setting and characters look like in my mind. It's hard to write about music, so you have creative license on this one. Generally though, if the novel you're reading has been made into a movie, then the soundtrack will usually do fine.

One way you know you got a great piece is when you find yourself humming it and then all of a sudden, the novel imagery begins to float in.

5. Read short, savor long.

I read 30 minutes daily, but I do it at my natural pace - as fast as my eyes devour the words, like a computer parsing SVG code.
After reading, I savor the passage for the rest of the day before reading another passage at bedtime. Bedtime reading is awesome, just don't overdo it.

6. Get the sleep you need to immerse.

The image of a teenager propped up against a pillow sneakily reading a Harry Potter book in dim light is a fantasy that people want to believe as true (Wizard's First Rule). A sleepy brain simply does not render the vivid imagery as well, nor does the imagery invoke as much emotion as it should have.

7. Get away from unnatural distractions.

These bring you out of the world of magic and back to reality. Instead, I encourage all to get into the Wardrobe - the portal of your fantasy world. Dive right in, stay in there for a while and go where it takes you.

8. Find yourself in all the characters.

We all have some part common with everyone, even fictional characters.

9. If there's a TV show of it, watch it before the book. 

Why? Because movies/shows of the books look stupid after you read the book.

Seriously. Why do you find people on the internet complaining about movie adaptations of books? Expectations are created from long exposure to the book's characters, story, settings that movies often don't match (can't blame them - everyone imagines them differently).
On the other hand, watching the show first adds vivid imagery to the reading mind, while delivering minor spoilers.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/board/post3117547.html

It wasn't until recently that I actually remembered that the first fantasy novel I actually read in primary school was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. That's almost 10 years ago, but I still remembered it. I don't even remember the exact story anymore - it was kind of a reading assignment back then. We had to hand in book reports every few weeks and I actually enjoyed most of it, though it was always quite a difficult rush to do - My English was not too bad, but also less than my peers, who did reading comprehension exercises religiously. I had trouble remember what I read and I had a small vocabulary - both of which were greatly boosted when I started to do some passionate reading.

Looking back, I'm thankful for the religious reading regimen. It pushed me up to the level where I could actually enjoy novels instead of seeing it as a chore. While I could have done it eventually, the support was invaluable, laying the groundwork for the reading I now look forward to.

FYP lookup

I experienced and learnt many things from the FYP. HOWEVER, I can only see so much for now, so this is what I saw.

- Selection beats training and changes of all kinds, EVERY SINGLE TIME. I accepted a rather unpassionate "salaryman"-like character and we all had to live with it for the rest of the project. Advisors do not have an direct control, there is no peer evaluation, only social solutions are available.

- Indifference today will translate into laziness tomorrow.

In a company, freeriders can be fired. In a group, peer pressure will have to do. If members start to accept freeriding, the team is lost, divided into subteams.

In another context, people must decide what their role in the group is. If you tell indifferent people to do something, there is a big possibility they will not do it well.

Indifferent people are easy to spot. They are opportunists looking for only the reward, without passion for the work they do(or indifferent to it). When you see they don't like to work but love the celebration, you're looking at the definition of a freerider.

- Leading without social leverage is not easy. Leading without similar values nor the above is even harder.

Have both before you decide to go in the lead.

First post from the IPad

Dream(...){
...
Waking Reality(...);
...
}

What a good Friday this is.

Today, I woke up at 6am, 2.5 hours earlier than usual, because a dream told me to. Maybe it was the combination of reading GEB and The Sword of Truth (quite a Randian fantasy novel series) that rendered this wonderful dream.
I was awoken not by any nightmare of sorts, but felt a greater sense of peace. The room was dead quiet. No morning rush to classes, no roommate, no birdsongs.
I woke up in the middle of a dream and came to life, and has been enjoying great productivity ever since - shooting down homework tasks, debugging, self-introspection... Did it all before noon.

Perhaps I have found a reason to read novels - to have beautiful dreams.

Sometimes, I wonder if it is more appropriate to think of life as waking up in dreams and returning to them at night, or coming out from our own theatre of dreams to reality. Both ways work - its recursive anyway. And so many things seem to affect what one's view is. Introvert/extrovert, culture, lifestyle, work, imagination... Personally, I like the first view. I think It is what people with high life satisfaction call "living your dreams". The latter feels like slavery.

What do you think? How does this view affect you?

Group conflict

People in teams dont always cooperate with each other. When they dont, its called a disagreement. What makes some disagreements disagreemnts and others?

I believe that conflicts are necessary in any team. It may not be nice, yet the outcomes usually improve if/when the team comes to a new agreement. I believe people always have a valid reason behind their disagreements - even when they're joking around.

Most of the time, others don't know exactly where you are coming from. Let them know.

I generally find the most difficult thing in teamwork is getting people to listen. Actually listen attentively. I used to force my way in because I got so frustrated. Nowadays, I find acknowledging my understanding before shooting away a more pleasant experience.

Developers getting lots of doc from stack-overflow

So very true. How did people write code before stack overflow???

Perhaps this is an example of just how badly documented most things really are. Or if the library is well documented, it's too dry with no examples.

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/05/1755216/developers-may-be-getting-50-of-their-documentation-from-stack-overflow

What I feel about the News

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

-- Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.




It is the best of all times, it is the worst of all times.
It is the time of technological advances, it is the time of artificial disasters.
It is the age of intelligent people doing dumb things, It is the age of ordinary people doing great things.
It is the days of great openness, it is the days of forbidden secrets.
It is the time of convenience, It is the time of information overload.
It is the time of freedom, it is the time of bondage and control.
It is a time of prosperous peace, it is a time of chronic violence.
It is a time of astonishing beauty, it is a time of revolting ugliness.


It is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity.
There are many in high happiness, there are plenty in secluded depression.
It is the season of awesome light, It is the season of terrible darkness.
It is the Spring of Hope, It is the Winter of Dispair.

We have everything before us, We have nothing before us.
We are in Heaven, We are in Hell.

-- Modern Times, by Me.


Feel free to add to it!

It's over, and we all know it.

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/s7pyxwkvskssjtqfjk4kxw.gif

Talk about low approval ratings!

Programming with LOVE

I guess I've been programming for about 5 years now (seriously for 3), and this is something I just realized, writing code for the NAO robot. The fact that it's cute as hell probably helped here.

Programming is a form of communication with a life-form that doesn't know what you know (yet). And just like humans, animals and plants, it's easier to get what you want if you are sincere and love that life-form. Now, one may be a great programmer but sucks at the process of programming itself, or vice versa. If one sucks at the programming process, then that's just like a lover who sucks at kissing or flirting (aka HOW to love). On the other hand, the one who is great at all the tools and processes of programming may feel lost at writing complex code despite all the knowledge. This one is the lover who is a great kisser and seducer, yet can never maintain a relationship for long.

The same goes for code. Some people are great at coding, but can never maintain it - for them, it remains as just a tool. Others are always learning, but it's the love of the whole program that drives them.

Programming can teach you to love without expectations. Expectations cloud one's thinking and judgement, preventing you from seeing what the code really does. If you can love your code, it's more likely to work well.

--to be continued--

Question

Today, a friend of mine posed a very interesting question - what do I know that you didn't? 

Answer:
The answer told me a lot about this guy that I/he probably didn't realize.

 First of all, his tone told me he was being haughty and dismissive. We went through a whole bunch of things and always preferred to say "I've heard of it, but I don't believe it/like it." instead of honestly listening and moving the conversation forward.

He showed a remarkable disdain for "people who only knew how to study." And you know what? I used to too! Today's culture perpetuates the mass belief/filter that there are winners and losers, and so people compare themselves to each other. This means that the underpinnings of the rebellious is still love of the system, except by hating that which they do not have. An example of this is the thief who steals money who is expressing their love of the monetary system, just as the hardworking worker who earns it. The only difference is that one is lead to believe he is a victim and the other is a victor. This sort of thing ruins people for life, societies for ages and stays there until it is changed, manifesting itself as both positive and negative human emotions as "jealousy", "feeling inadequate"(especially in males), "useless", "pleasure" and "fear".

I guess I prefer people who are secure and don't try to threaten others with insecurities, but I understand a bit about how people can turn out like that.

On the good side, I found that verbalizing what my knowledge bases made myself clearer to me and I'm sure this guy thought so too. In a way, we all mirror each other and so we can see ourselves in others.