Slice of life

Monday, June 20, 2011 by simpleblob

When you see someone being happy, sad, or angry, it is only the snapshot of their life. Reacting to those (negative) emotions are like reviewing the movie by looking at a single frame.

But for yourself, remind yourself that most people only remember that first frame you've shown them, whether it was you being happy or sad.

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Another Life Quote

Thursday, March 17, 2011 by simpleblob

It took me too long to understand that lots of people show you how they're feeling right now, and not how you deserve to see them. Now when someone's pissed off and won't talk to me, I think "I bet it isn't me. I'll wait a day or three and see how they are then."

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Financial crisis is a decrease in trust

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 by simpleblob

Braindump:

Bank is an entity that makes profits on the mismatch of Lenders (deposits) and Borrowers (loans). A bank will match the cash in-flow to the cash-outflow and take the haircut as profits. If the borrowers are trustworthy then the collateral will be low (or zero) and so that amount of money can be used the get more resource (the for borrowers).

The event of mass defaults shook the banks and the lending system at the core, now each entity will demand more collateral and return, hence make the system much less efficient, which then results in decrease ability to produce goods and services.

In summary: Someone very rich misplaced the bet and went bankrupt, everybody is linked to that person, nobody wants to lend money (fear), economy grinds to a halt.

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Rainbows End - 2010 Vision

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by simpleblob

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Long Term thinking - decisions

Saturday, July 24, 2010 by simpleblob

When we decide something, should we choose base on our current values, or should we ask ourselves:

Will I regret doing/not doing this in my deathbed?

Given that no choices are going to kill or cripple us, I think we should ask this question as often as possible.

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Shortest Sentences

Sunday, July 18, 2010 by simpleblob

For me, there is a poetry in succinct writings. It expresses the meaning perfectly with the smallest amount of information possible. Something about its efficiency and simplicity amazes me. Recent authors with this style includes Paul Graham and Ernest Hemingway.

And these kind of words don't come freely, you have to really work at it. And the results showed. When I come across these kind of texts, I savor it. I reread it several times and always find something new. They has a quality of "Zenness" that needs reflection.

As an example, take the world's shortest novel by Hemingway.

For sale: One pair of baby shoes. Never worn.

Isn't that beautiful?

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Human communication bandwidth is dismal

Friday, July 16, 2010 by simpleblob

I have one personal problem that has been nagging me for all my life. I can't seem to explain complex thoughts to anyone. Almost every time I tried, people will have confused look on their face and after several attempts, they gave up. I also don't know how to tell a story very well.

Now, I could be too hard on myself. (see: Dunning–Kruger effect) But at any rate, any improvement at all would make me a very happy person.

I always like to talk to myself in my head a lot. I argue and agree with myself all the time. I just notice that when I am very excited about something, I want to share it with another person as soon as possible. Then I begin describing it exactly by what is going through in my head, in other words, a "brain dump" or "info dump."


As I have to need to explain to myself all the words and concepts that I already know, the thing that came out of my mouth must have been.... a little bit hard to understand. I view this as a channel problem. I thought I was communicating brain-to-brain. (with also have shared prerequisite knowledge). But the reality is much worse: my brain --> voice --> ear --> another person's brain.



I also notice that when I think or have a talk with myself, I tend to do it very fast -- impossible to physically vocalize, in fact. This is one of the point I should remember. When talking to someone, slow down drastically.

If we think about this in term of communication channel optimization, then there are simple steps that needs to follow. I don't know if I can make this work right away, but I believe it can be trained into a habit.

1. Slow down (until the listeners are comfortable)
2. Speak clearly
3. Plan roughly what to say first, do not think around.
4. Speak in term of things that the listeners understand
5. Relay messages in chronological order
6. "Listen" for feedback

People usually can only remember 4-7 maximum item simultaneously. I already forgot half the list. This needs to be second-nature, automatic. I think starting with 1. and 5. is my best bet.

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Unnatural readings

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 by simpleblob


I've burned through a lot of blog posts nowadays. Everyday I read/skimmed about 20-30 through Google rss reader, and another 5-10 through social news sites like reddit. I found that often the most thought-provoking and informative posts has no comment at all, and the opinionated, controversial posts with less substance generate an order magnitude more response.

I think this is due to the reading habit of people on the internet (myself included.)  We prefer sound-bites and clear-cut stories more than logical and fact-based ones with nuanced positions. Our brains digest them easily and yearn for more. That got me to another question: Is this the natural preference of the brain, and can we "train" the brain to like reading denser stuff?'

Recently I began reading scientific/technical papers. They are packed with concepts and information, which makes them very hard to read at the beginning. Later on, I found that the biggest reason is I don't understand a lot of words/jargons that the author used. Words are like compressed ideas. In this case, really compressed clever ideas. These papers are quite efficient at delivering information, given that you know how to decode them (knowing what all the compressed words mean.)

So I began jotting down all the terms I don't know, and google+wiki them. After that, most of the papers read like a complicated short story, though completely understandable. The funny thing is, I relax between reading sessions by browsing those blog posts.

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My Sleep Schedule

Friday, April 16, 2010 by simpleblob

Relevant.

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We thought it was so easy

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by simpleblob

But it actually takes 10,000 hour to master something. That's 2 hours everyday for 14 years. A Freaking long time.

Logically you gotta choose carefully if you wanna invest 10,000 in mastering something. But you can't. 'Cause you won't know what you want.

If you're passed 20 you should know what you sucks at though, so don't invest in those. Invest in your core competencies -- to paraphrase Peter Drucker.

Dilbert author has an interesting advice -- Be very good at two or more things. It takes so much effort to be the top 5% at something, but not so much for top 25% at two things. And you'll also be in a unique position, it's rare to have a combination of skills. "Queen of two trades"

So Invest about 7,000 hours into two or more things, and you'd do great!... in 20 years. :)

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Thursday, January 07, 2010 by simpleblob

There's a pervasive belief in this society that perfection is possible. So if something bad occurs, it can never be because we just got unlucky. It must be because something went wrong and someone is at fault, and then things must be fixed. Sometimes, though, this simply isn't true. Sometimes it's better not to fix things: either there is no fix, or the fix is more expensive than living with the problem, or the side effects of the fix are worse than the problem. And sometimes you can do everything right and have it still turn out wrong. Welcome to the real world.

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The Network Revolution

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 by simpleblob

Yet another revolution, from industrial revolution, to computer revolution.

And yet..... this is real.

Even though the internet has completely transform our life up till now, we still haven't seen "the real McCoy" yet.

We still have a somewhat half-ass attempt at connecting everything together - be it servers, mobile phones, cars and other gadgets. We still haven't found/implement a good network model.

But things are a-changing.

First, we're transitioning from voice atm network to VOIP packet network, which make every transaction data now. What that means is we can use an economy of scale to serve every one very cheap connection. Almost, free. Imagine unlimited call for $1 a month.

Second, We'll tag every device with an IP address. Right now, we only use this for computer client/server. We will fill every slot in IPv4 (256*4bit address), so we're moving on to IPv6. (enough to label every human on earth millions of time over)
Each device now has a "name" of its own, and it can start chatting. your bed can tell your light bulb to turn on because you just wake up, for example. Huge, huge amount of possibility here.

Third, social change. Imagine that being "connected" to the internet is your birthright. You don't need a fast connection, just a basic 3Mb/s is enough. Government can set up a nationwide network, just like roads and streetlights, to enable you to connect all the time, 24 hours. And you carry with you a supersmartphone, which is actually a minicomputer by then. Imagine what it can do for you and what you can do with it.
In fact, Finland has done just that. I expect other countries to follow suit in the next 10 years.

All of this will take about 20 years at most, so a majority of us will be able to benefit from it.

The future is going to be a hella exciting.


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The Grand Theory of Human Mind

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by simpleblob

Or, my little model of human mind I just thought up myself during my train ride home -- without any evidence to support the model. (well, I haven't looked it up yet)

OK, my belief is that our mind has 2 parts: the conscious-logical mind, and the jungle-like pattern matching unconscious mind. These two are separated physically, but not in a clear cut way like left & right brain.

1st part is responsible for aceing the IQ test, doing math, and critical thinking. Anything that is reasoning and "careful" logical thinking. I stressed careful because that implies you have to be fully conscious when you are using this part of the brain. Most scientist-types are proficient in using it. As you can tell, it is most suitable for analyzing information and making "perfect" decision. The downside is time. You need to consider everything, slowly.
[Programmer talk: This is like a deterministic algorithm. Can find optimal conclusion, but computationally expensive]

2nd part, this one is interesting. It does pattern-matching for you without you knowing what's going on, hence operating (mostly) unconsciously. What you usually get is a "hunch". Ex: Something is off about this guy. I don't like him. This place is somehow odd, I'm not sure I wanna rent it. And many more example. The people who has the most advanced form of this part are the intuitive type -- usually women. They are great at guessing things, but they can't tell you why they "think" that way.

Most people downplay the importance of this 2nd part. It actually is another form of intelligence. Very useful for quite a few things -- Like interpersonal skills. Most salesperson use it to read the customer and react accordingly -- without knowing it themselves. It's fast, almost instant. The decision is good, but not the best. Mostly "good enough"
[Programmer talk: This is a heuristics part. Plenty fast and cheap. but might stuck in local maxima]


This is why scientists can't sell and salesmen can't do science! Their brains are completely different! (Well, to be more accurate, they only like to use one part of their brain and try to use it to solve every type of problems. When you're a hammer, everything you see is a nail.)

I'm a scientist type. Everyday, I try to approach the people-problem using the analytical part of my mind. I think I gain some insights, but it's usually too slow, and so DAMN tiring. With people, it's like solving 3 differential equations at the same time without knowing the variables. I can see the benefit of the "ituitive" brain, but I don't know how to use (or activate) it. I'll be researching more of this.

Hoo boy, I'm taking a brain dump here. It's hard to write something coherent when you're tired, and this is especially a hard concept to explain. Hope I can read it later and still gets it.

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My iPod gone

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by simpleblob

My iPod got stolen today, during my evening walk back home. Damn the Bangkok thieves! I had my hands full today and left my iPod in my messenger bag. He probably saw my white headphone line disappeared into my bag -- pinpointing the device location.

I was a bit upset at my bad luck, but now I revel at how the thief's luck is equally bad. You see, my Ipod is an obsoleted 5-years ago model. He probably couldn't sell it through a 2nd hand market, or if he could the price would've been dismal. Plus, my songs are mainly in English and Japanese, which I presume is not his kind of music anyway.

So what he essentially stolen is a 5 years old hard drive. And what I got is --- an opportunity to buy a new iPod! (gotta pay for it though, hmm or is stealing a choice?)

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Money vs Time (vs Quality of life)

Saturday, August 29, 2009 by simpleblob

Reddit, Being Frugal.

I've said it before on /r/Frugal and I'll say it again.

Being frugal is not about saving money. Not one bit. Being frugal is about saving TIME.

HOWEVER... when you think on the relation of time vs. money... you need to factor in something that many people leave out... how much TIME did it take you to EARN the money? You need to convert costs to time, not dollars. The oil change may cost you 35 dollars... but if it takes two hours to earn that money back then you may be losing in the long run.

We are frugal not because we want to save money. Money is essentially an infinite resource. If we spend what we have we can always make more. The catch is that we have to spend time to make money. Time is a very, very finite resource. Most of us will only get about 70 years worth, and if you're old enough to be living the frugal life you've probably already spent 20 or 30 years of it.

We are frugal because we want to avoid spending money and essentially eliminate the need to make more of it.

If you're frugal because you want to spend all of your time saving money so you can stockpile it then I think you have the wrong idea. I also think you have the wrong idea if you're being frugal so that you can build up enough money to buy "things". Or, maybe you want to retire young but you don't wanna look back and think that you wasted the best years of your life earning money so you can spend the most increasingly difficult years of your life saving money to leave behind. I certainly hope you aren't visiting /r/Frugal on a regular basis because you want to save up enough money to buy a great big house so you can spend time making money to fill it with more "things".

You can get money back. You can't get time back. But being frugal is about not being wasteful with money so that you don't have to spend time.

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Another Sowell gem

Saturday, August 08, 2009 by simpleblob

If you could knock a little something into the heads of young liberals, what would it be?

I'd like to get them to think in terms of incentives and empirical evidence, and not in terms of goals and hopes. Over the years, I've reached the point where I can hardly bear to read the preamble of proposed legislation. I don't care what you think this thing is going to do. What I care about is: What are you rewarding, and what are you punishing? Because you're going to get more of what you're rewarding and less of what you're punishing. -- Thomas Sowell

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Google wave developer = Viking Legend

Sunday, May 31, 2009 by simpleblob


I was just watching Google Wave keynote, and noticed that Lars Rasmussen, the creator, looks so much like Askeladd, the character from Vinland Saga manga.

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Singapore all-age employment

Monday, April 27, 2009 by simpleblob

I've intended to write this post a few weeks ago but completely forgotten about it.

I have visited Singapore a while back and had an interesting observation. It's about old people in Singapore. They're still working -- in their 80's and beyond. On menial job, which I think government reserved for old people.

I've specially experienced a strange but warming scene when I went in a local fastfood (near hotel) for a quick meal. I ordered a bowl of niku-don from a very young cashier. (probably 12-14 years old)
Then got served by a 25-something waiter. Then after a while, very old grandma came out from the back and went to stand at the front handling out discount flyers to teenagers. She is about 85 and has her back bent like a question mark.

First impression -- this is like a family business!

Second impression -- why doesn't grandma's son/daughter take care of her? Chinese has a culture of taking care of their parents.

From trying (and failing) to communicate with this grandma, I still found out that she likes this job. I still remembered her smile.

I tried to get every employees (12,25,85) to take a photo with me but they are too shy. Oh well.

That's it I think. No conclusion, no nothing. I just think it's a weird and want to share it.



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Linux & Windows, general user statements

Friday, March 13, 2009 by simpleblob

I spent 4 hours trying to get my broadcom wi-fi adapter working in ubuntu. When i finally got it installed, i could ping, but i could not browse. I gave up and re-installed vista and everything worked right off the bat. I dont even know why i am posting this. I guess i just want somebody to feel my pain.

Dugged.

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The day when the banks die..

Saturday, February 21, 2009 by simpleblob

Closing levels of S&P 500 Index :
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bottom of Dotcom bubble burst
October 9, 2002 ===========> 777

CNBC's Jim Cramer's "This is Armageddon!" call
August 6, 2007 ============> 1468

All-Time closing high
October 9, 2007 ===========> 1565

Close of Beijing Games
August 25, 2008 ========> 1266

Lehman Bros. collapses
September 16, 2008 =========> 1214

CNBC's Jim Cramer appears on "Today Show"
October 6, 2008 ==========> 1057

U.S. Federal elections
November 4, 2008 =========> 1005

New Year's Day
January 1, 2009 =========> 903

Chinese (Lunar) New Year's
January 26, 2009 =========> 836

Feb '09 options expiration
February 20, 2009 ===========> 770

U.S. banking nationalization?
February 23, 2009 =========> ???

Oh, and also -- BAC is toast.

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