Reducing distractions and the 10,000 hour rule

I am in the middle of a transition period in life; I've got another 6 months till I turn 30 and the big question of "where do I go from here" that I need to figure out. One of my colleagues turned 40 a few months ago and the only thing he was muttering the whole time was "I just can't believe I'm an old man." The interesting thing about my life is that I get along well with people that are older than I am; it's always been that way when I was young and the best part of having friends that are older than you is that you get a glimpse of the future so I can prepare for it now.

As of recent, I've been thinking much about my future; or at least, a strategy for one. Getting prepared for the future isn't like getting prepared for a trip or a disaster, where you just spend a few days going out and buying what you need. Preparing with skills, knowledge and experience is a different game, where you pay for it in the currency of time.

The sub-prime crisis and the following recession/depression fiasco has wreaked indiscriminate financial catastrophe to all walks of life; the young, the middle aged and the old. What was interesting was how each group was affected by the economic downturn. For example, the young cannot find jobs, the middle aged are have debts to deal with, and the old had their savings hit. What this economic downturn has taught me is that you need to keep a good backup plan to protect yourself from being stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if you've become old (or transitioning to being old) and had your savings wiped out (naturally, you would have been investing in "secure" investments).

So where does this all fit in with me? At this point in life, I've come to realize that with growing age, the number of options I will have available will start to shrink in then next decade-- the number of new fields I will be able to jump into and get really good at will dramatically shrink. So it is now that I should start looking into explicit skills that I can enjoy and be really good at to make a good living. It has been oft quoted from by Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers," that the number of hours it takes for a person to become an expert at something is 10,000 hours.

Doing the math, to become a master it will take:

• 27.4 years at 1 hour/day of practice
• 13.7 years at 2 hours/day of practice
• or 6.8 years at 4 hours/day of practice

This calculation also puts a lower bound on how long it takes to be really good at something and also the number of skilled expertise that a person can have over the course of a life time. The other thing is the earlier you have more skills, the more they will pay off in the long run. Meaning, if you start training hard by the time you are 50 years old, you might finally become an expert by the time you are 60, however that doesn't leave a lot of time to put those skills to use.

The other interesting thing about skill sets is that they also come outdated as time goes on. Someone that might have been a really good switchboard operator/manager in the early 50's would find their skills useless in today's modern world. Or perhaps a little differently, some computer gamers might find their skills in Starcraft 1 be outdated by the release of Starcraft 2. You might have some transferable skills, but you won't be an expert off the bat. This brings up the interesting point that transferable skill erosion occurs with every new generation of technology, the further along we go in generation, the number of skills we can transfer will negatively compound. Though it might be a little early for me to start thinking about this, it is something that I should keep on mind.

So here is the thing, suppose that I do practice something at 4 hours/day, it will still probably take me 7 years to be really good at it. What it also means is that if you want to be good at something in a reasonably good time, you really don't have a lot of time to waste.

After coming to this realization. I have decided that I am going to institute a system to reduce the number of unproductive distractions so I can spend more time learning. Mainly less checking of news sites, less youtube, less computer games and etc. This doesn't mean that I will be aiming to live a boring life, far from it actually. What it means is that I should more effectively use my time by doing things that brings me memorable value; which could include picking up skills or spending time traveling to somewhere exotic, learning more about wine or whatnot.

I think there was an Indian saying that went like this:

When you are young, you make your habits.
When you are old, your habits make you.

Time to make some productive habits while I still can.

People still use C++!?

I find it amusing that people still use C++. I am a big python programmer, which was a transition for me from C++. The python programming language is just far more extensible, easy to program and dynamic variable typing is so easy to deal with that I just can't fathom that many people still program in C++. Many of the best startups on the internet don't touch C++ at all. Do I brush up on old skills or keep moving with the new stuff, a bit of a dilemma.

The problem with disclosing income

I've been doing some reading recently about the issue about disclosing one's income during an interview. The problem is that it give the employer an incentive to underpay you knowing your payment threshold. I've been on both sides of fence recently, knowing what pay looks like in the finance world thanks to a few contacts I was able to target for price at par with other people in the industry. Unfortunately things didn't work out as they had someone without a job that was willing to take the job, but that was OK. I would much rather not take a job if I knew I was going to be underpaid -- because one of the reasons for moving to a new position is to leverage your skills for a higher salary.

Since that deal had just recently fell through, I've just been introduced to some recruitment agencies and in the process of sending out applications for new jobs. I decided this time, that I would see what happens if I put something close to my real salary. I was soon contacted by a representative that would pass my resume to a few other positions. The guy quickly asked about my salary inspirations and I gave him my ball park number, he immediately balked at the idea of me looking for a 40%~50% salary increase, citing that I had a much lower salary listed. The moral of the story here is to not disclose your salary or put down a higher number.

I had qualms at first about inflating my salary before, but after seeing this reaction, it is an unfortunate necessity of the negotiation process.

Time to pick up some database skills

I've been dabbling on and off about some data mining work for sometime now. The one thing I am kind of surprised about myself is that I haven't picked up any decent database skills. Some IT related work came by my way, the guys are looking for someone with C++ skills and and database related stuff.

I haven't touched a low level language like that in ages, the last time I did something with C++ was try to write my own poker bot. I actually had a clever system setup as I made a hack into the RAM to find out where the card data was stored and figured how the card data was stored.

I haven't done any sort of enterprise kind of programming before; most of the work I do with programming is scripting and numerical analysis kind of work; I run pretty much everything through the command line to get at data. But IT work for banks and getting into analysis kind of work seems kind of interesting. The problem is that the firms are Japanese and I sort of have doubts on the amount of money they would be paying. I've worked in one Japanese corporation already and I believe that I should be fetching a higher salary, oddly not being paid enough seems to be strong negative incentive to me-- there were times I worked harder as a student than I work in the company.

There are a lot of skills I need/want to pick up right now. I just have to hunker down and pursue a few things with great intensity. I intend to make programming one of my fortes.

JLPT Level 1

The JLPT is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, basically a bench mark for the language ability of foreign people to comprehend the Japanese language. I don't have any qualifications as I have just picked up everything I needed along the way, but I have since come to the realization that it may come in handy for future employment opportunities. I am debating on picking up a few other qualifications on my own depending on the availability of my time.

I have decided to prepare myself for a move for a new career to better leverage my skills and improve income compared to the work I am doing now; even if it involves me picking up some new skills. The job market in Japan is interesting for people with international skills and I intend on breaking into that market career wise. There are probably other interesting opportunities in other Asian countries like Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong for international talent. One of those requirements to break into this field is a necessity for good multi-lingual skills in addition to either business or technical skills.

The need for international recognition as a baseline for certain skills may play an important role here. I will be looking into at least getting my JLPT level 1 certificate within the next year. I've lived here for 5 years now and I should at least get that certification.

Career planning is tricky

I am now in the process of looking for a new job. People might call me crazy to consider looking for new work with the economic down turn and all, but some how I am confident that I can find something better, that also pays more than what I am getting right now.

The job that I do isn't all that bad, and the working environment compared to other Japanese companies is pretty good, but I believe that I can do better and that I can pick up the skills needed to advance faster.

I finished reading a nook earlier this month called "kitchen confidential" written by Anthony Bourdain, a first hand biographical look into the nitty gritty of the culinary world. One interesting note that he made was that he could have been a better chef if he hadn't spent so much time chasing money, where as another talented chef went from Italian to pastries and through other fields of cooking, starting from close to nothing to learn everything he could. The fusion of knowledge would eventually make him a renowned cook.

Right know, I can admit that I am chasing the money, wanting to pick up the skills to advance into better paid positions. Raising one's income isn't a necessarily a bad thing, but what is it that one unwittingly gives up in this conquest?

Modeled numbers are easy to predict, this is the realm of accountants and mathematicians, but there is also a hidden lie beneath it all, we assume that the model doesn't change.

Accountants cannot account for the power of a technological or cultural vision becoming a reality. Like poker, predicting or creating the future isn't just about a numbers game, though knowing how to crunch the number does help. Are there intangible things that I am neglecting?

And so, I will probably come to a crossroad, there will be jobs that I can pick up skills for that may take me away from my world of research and development that I believe that I want to remain in or do I go into the world of finance or other uncharted territory that may pay better.

There will be more job offers coming my way in the coming months and more skills I will need to pick up to position my self for better opportunities. The question is, to which direction do I walk and why? Assuming that this is the right question to ask in the right place, sometimes it is just nice to just walk in the first place.

If there is a time to do it, it is now; I hear from other people it does get a little harder to find new work the older you get.

The Search for a New Apartment Begins

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been living in the company
dorm for the past 3 years and it's time for me to go. In Japan the
moving season is in March-April because the university year starts and
new hires start work at this period of time.

I've been looking on and off for places to for the past month through
the internet and after living in the dorms for a while, I am ready for
a nicer place to live. Somewhere with at least 2 rooms and a kitchen,
and relatively closer to the city in a nice building. It is going to
be much more expensive to the dorms that I've been living in, but I
will be able to invite friends over and host events, which should cut
down on my entertainment costs significantly.

The added benefit is that I'll be able to dedicate a room to a
study/work out area, meaning that I'll be able to do more activities
at home. I would like to see if the partition between having a study
versus having a bedroom + study will have an impact on my working
habits. Either way, having a new environment will be mentally
stimulating and I am quite certain that the change in environment will
have a positive impact.

At the same time, having increased associated living costs will force
me to keep myself to sharpen my skills, advance and look for new
opportunities. I believe that it's easy to stagnate if one gets too
comfortable-- because if things are pretty secure already, why try
harder? This is a habit that I am going to work on breaking, but I
believe that it requires some external "stress" to be applied to
myself.

Fortunately, I've still been tracking my personal expenses so I have a
general idea of what I can afford. In Japan, compared to North
America, there is a wider selection of places and prices of places to
live in. Where as in Vancouver, the cheapest place that you will be
lucky to find will be in the $800 range, going upwards. Living about 1
hour out of the city by train, you can probably get away with
something in the $500-$600 range if you wanted to save money. I'll be
aiming for something nicer and closer to the city. It'll be more
expensive, but I will be aiming to shoot for a career upgrade within
1.5 years for a respectable increase in salary. I have a general idea
of what other companies might be looking for in an international
candidate now so I will be pushing to get certified in the level 1
Japanese Language Proficiency Test and one other certification.

To accomplish these goals, I will be looking to reduce the number of
hours to focus on personal development. The idea is to invest in
myself and reap compounding rewards the more skilled I get. I think
this is a far better solution compared to working longer hours-- as I
loathe to think of myself as a monkey. Other commitments I'll need to
make is to cut down on the number of hours that I spend unproductively
and I am in the process of setting up a timer system where I focus on
a task for a specific amount of time before giving myself a break to
do whatever. I'll also be looking to find a way to tabulate what I
learned or accomplished during these times to determine if I was
working effectively.

Time to move out of the company dorm

Living in a dorm of international students was great, living in a dorm with co-workers is pretty damn boring. I exist in a different world, even when in Japan with international expats, Japanese people that have lived abroad and came back, I even really like the country folk here as well. The thing is that I just can't connect with the ordinary traditional salary-people here. The just don't jive with me, not that I don't like them; I am just bored around them. I generally do my best to fit in and I am usually pretty good at fitting in, but there are times when you simply just need to put your foot down and get out.

Yeah the rent for the company dorm is really cheap, they charge about $250/month in fees with utilities included. Dirt cheap and thanks to that price, I've saved up a good chunk of money that would have otherwise gone to the landlord. But at the same time, you also pay a price, that you can't invite outside friends and the other thing is that I live away from Tokyo, from where all the cool stuff is happening. I've just started to meet many interesting people and decided that I need to get closer to Tokyo and make more free time to do interesting work and meet interesting people-- the surrounding environment plays a very important influencing factor. You can tell that things are different when you listen to people with interesting ideas and trying to startup a new business, whether it is in silicon valley or in Singapore; you think depending on your environment.

So I've decided that I need to get out and get myself into a more happening place. I'll probably have to deal with a commute to get to work, but it is one of those things I'll probably have to live with. In ideal circumstances, I'll find a new venue of work where it is close to where I live, somewhere happening. I've been living too "defensively" for the last few years by making decisions based on how much it I can "financially save." I want to from "saving" to "making".

A weekend of relaxation

After a wild Halloween and more weekend events (one of which included me dancing in a museum and the curators getting mad at me), I've decided to spend this weekend at home for a change. Most of my friends would have a hard time imagining me spending time at home instead of going out, but yes there are times when it is really nice to just not go out; in this case I had a lot of errands that needed catching up on and I figured that it would be now or never to get them done.

Stuff like cleaning the room a little, changing the battery on my scooter, hitting the hardware store to look for a can of rust remover and finding spray can of grease (interestingly) for my bicycle and such, I remind my self that there are probably a lot of small little maintenance things that I ought to be doing but just haven't really been finding the time to do recently. So sometimes, it is necessary to put time aside to get things done and time to just chill out as well too.

The last week has been marked by a string of food indulgence, as not many people might know, I live without a kitchen so I've created my own little kitchen with a table and a hot plate that lets me fry meats and make all sorts of other dishes. Having good food waiting for me at home is a great incentive to come home early; I often have a hard time staying late at work when given the choice of eating at the company cafeteria (which isn't bad, by the way) versus something home cooked.

It's been a while since I've done any real picture posting-- I still remember that I have more photos of Hakodate that I should have posted and other things that I should have done but haven't gotten around to doing yet. Slacking isn't a really good habit, but there are only so many productive hours in a day that a person has (or so I believe).

So first off, since February of this year, I bought a new cross bike and have been riding it from time to time to the beach on the weekends. Round trip of 30 km makes for great riding. The entire distance can be covered in about 1.5 hours but I like to take a breather at the beach, where I like to buy a can of orange juice and watch the beach goers play volleyball and surf over there. With autumn dawning upon us, the sun sets much earlier and the sky much clearer compared to the hazy humid sky that one would typically see.

The setting sun

The beach center

The other nice thing about autumn in Japan is that it is still relatively warm-- I can still venture out in a t-shirt on a sunny day, which makes doing exercising in warm but cool weather perfect.

I've also been doing a lot of youtube watching recently. My favorite videos to watch on youtube are of the cooking variety. I've already posted recently about one of my favorite youtube chef at foodwishes but in addition I also really enjoy watching Anthony Bourdain's series called No Reservations; a show that I highly recommend for anyone that enjoys both travel and good food. One of his shows aired way back was a "Techniques Special" from which I used as a base to replicate a beef stew.

The recipe is rather simple:

Take a hunk of shoulder cut beef, chop it up, season with salt and pepper.

Fry until brown

Add onions and cook until semi-translucent

Add some red wine.

Simmer for about 1.5 hours

Add carrots and cook until tender

Serve with a side of rice, bread or whatever you have lying around.

I did all this while cleaning the room and gave up on cleaning after the stew was ready. An incredibly easy but tasty dish. Would probably be nice to add some potatoes as well. I've got enough food in the fridge to last several days. Eating leftovers for 1 might get a little repetitious sometimes, but with enough variety it beats eating expensive take out any day.

Stay on your toes

I'll be writing some more later on but for now, there will be a short lull in writing. Work is busy at the moment and a lot of things are going on. Will be back later!

forget the limiting, focus on the enabling

I've posted plenty about my gripes on working in a corporation and doing research in an institution. I've decided that it's time to stop worrying about all the annoying things that bug me about these establishments and free myself of the "me versus them mindset" and become more fluid in dealing with roadblocks.

Perhaps I was naive when I was younger, when I saw a system or an organization that I thought was ineffective, that it would be easy to encourage change. After trying with little real results, I have come to the realization that change is hard and not worth the time. It's more effective to create a pocket in an organization where you can work effectively and if things are not optimal, then it's time to go. When finally getting into the real world, the scale that you deal with things changes, dramatically.

Before, life would revolve around the academic environment, going to elementary school or high school with 1,200 students and only interacting with mostly people in the same grade (say several hundred people) means that you have a really small point of reference. Going to a university of 40,000 people is a little different. When you finally get out of university and into the real world of millions of people the scale of what you deal with changes. When you're dealing with just a few hundred people and you're stuck with them for many years, that was the environment that you're stuck in and it's rather hard to change. You had to live with the things that you liked and didn't like. After getting out of school, the world is a big place and you don't have to put the effort into changing an environment to make it more palatable. If it's something that you don't like then you can easily move on.

And that's the thing when it comes to attracting smart people, keeping them and creating the right environment to getting good work done. I don't have time to fight the system, to convince people that doing things a different way is better and then doing it. Life is too short for that and I just want to find the right people and environment to be successful, because at the end of it, it takes way less effort to fight within a system and do something than to disengage and do it yourself. The strategy is to find the right way to be successful on your own. If the only taught that at school...

Performance review

I just had my performance review yesterday. In 6 months, I did a decent amount of work and at the same time, I also reduced the number of over time hours I've been putting in at work. I was pulling about 55 hours of overtime/month last year and this year, I've brought it down to about 30 hours/month. Having an extra 24 hours/month to yourself does make a difference in quality of life. Don't underestimate the value of time. I'm going off on a tangent however...

After my performance review, I asked my boss what does it take to get a promotion. How things work in a corporation is that you get raises based on the number of years you've been around, on top of that, after a certain number of years you can be recommended for a grade promotion. His response was that I need to take more of a leadership role and that I could be considered to get a promotion after my 4th year. Hearing something like that was shocking and disappointing. Why does it have to take at least 4 years to get considered for a promotion? I believe that promotions should be performance based, depending on the capacity of the person to handle responsibility and their ability to do good work. To be stuck in a position for 4 years and then take say another 5~6 years for another promotion is pretty much career advancement at a snail's pace.

I don't want to be half-way dead by the time I get into middle-upper management.

There has to be a better way at being successful instead of lining up in the seniority queue for a promotion. That way of thinking has to die and if you want to have a successful company, "promotions" shouldn't be limited to the number of upper level vacancies that need to be filled with someone. Instead, I argue that everyone should have a salary that scales with the level of their performance. I would rather have an environment where everyone can be rewarded for excellent performance instead of people waiting for someone to leave to get upgraded.

Real talent can't be kept waiting, because they will find other places to move upwards into and the company will be at a net loss in talent.

When it comes to making a successful company, having the right people is everything. More important than the amount of money that's bankrolled into the company. Smart, resourceful people will usually find a way to succeed. When your most talented members are gone, companies that were once great will be doomed.

Having a backup computer is important

I've had previous experiences with computer hardware failure, namely having a laptop computer dying on me, leaving me without a PC to do any sort work or connection to the internet. Having a single point of failure for tools or equipment I use on a very regular basis can be a severe vulnerability and it is necessary to have a backup.

I learned this lesson through experience, after my first jaunt where my primary computing device was a laptop. It was great for about the first 1.5 years, then it died on me after expiry of my warranty, the extended care package also did not cover additional repairs at 100% and every time that something would fail, it would always be diagnosed as a motherboard "failure" which would cost just enough so I would seriously consider getting a new laptop instead.

After having enough of that experience, I decided that laptops had a too high cost of failure in terms of time (as repairs had a 1 month turn around time) and financial cost (ie. $700~$1000 for a motherboard replacement) to repair. Being experienced with the assembly of desktop computers, I know that I can generally replace damaged computer parts for far, far cheaper. I decided to switch back to having a desktop as my primary working system 3 years ago and put together my own system. The machine was working great until today when the computer started acting up when the power started cutting itself out during use. I am highly suspicious that the power supply needs to be replaced and I just put an order for a new part online for about $40 for a new unit.

The difference between $40 and $700~$1000 is staggering, and in addition, instead of having to wait 3~4 weeks for the repair, I'll have the parts arriving in the next few days to make the replacement.

When it comes to mobile computing, I have opted to have a cheap $400 netbook for use when I am on the road. Equipped with 160 GB in hard drive space and an atom processor with 7~8 hours of battery life, the machine has sufficient enough kick for me to watch movies on the go, digitally enhance and store travel photos, and the usual net browsing and e-mail applications. Should anything should happen to my little netbook, I would be far more comfortable with discarding it and getting a new once for about the same price. I am very happy with the decision to change my computing setup years ago, because it is finally paying off.

The beginnings of a bookmark list

I incredibly happy about the news aggregator sites like slashdot, reddit and now hacker news. With so many articles being posted everyday, and sometimes, degradation of communities with growing number of people, I have decided that I would like to create a bookmark list of good articles that I have read to share with other people. It may simply be a page on this site for now, but I would like to more functionality to create feeds with other peoples bookmark lists to enrich breadth of reading topics and material.

Being with the right peoole is rejuvinating

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of going to a small gathering of Tokyo based programmers working or interested in start ups. Though interaction with everyone wasn't technical in nature, it was great to meet people working to starting their own businesses.

The great part of everyone was how supportive to each other they were. I would have thought that the world of startups be all about competition but it isn't, it is also about people helping each other out. I sense of altruism and community resonates well with me and I want to work in an environment like that.

I talked about being in a place with the right kind of culture in an earlier post, that community is the kind of place where I want to be.

Know your tier 1 friends

Life is short and the things is that you should you know in life is know who you can depend on. When push cones to shove, there aren't a whole lot of people in life that you can depend on in life.

There are people in life that will call upon in you when they need you, and there are people that won't come to help you when it comes time when you need help. Maybe when a person grows up is becomes necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is necessary to know who you can depend on. Those that you can depend on, treasure them. The rest, is a decision call. But if you can't depend on them then there isn't a point to being friends with them, but that us the cold truth. You might as well know who you can depend on now then waste your time on useless people later.

If this sounds cold, then realize that the truth is equally cold, because this is what you must answer to everyday. If you want to have real friends then find real people that you can depend on.

Company culture is important

I went to a company seminar for junior employees of the company I work for today. I was throttled with disappointment and have reservations about the future direction of the corporation that I work at. The environment and the kind of people you hire are essential to create the right kind of culture/atmosphere that makes a successful company. We face a creativity and innovation crisis and I am starting to see that part of the problem is a result of the culture of the company -- there aren't a lot of people with the right kind of creative flare, follow through and leadership to pull off innovative and visionary projects. Hell, I don't even think that there is a real vision at work.

You know when you are in trouble when the executives are telling employees that "we have to be more creative," thinking that just telling people to be a certain way will enact change. When you have executives that can't lead, set good examples or communicate inspirationally throughout the company then there are very fundamental problems. The problem is even worse when there are superiors that don't listen or are stubborn and you have weak subordinates that know when it's time to push against the grain to get things done. We lost 6 months on one project because people weren't able to speak up. But back to the seminar I went to today.

The seminar I attended is a career planning seminar for junior employees (though I would not like to consider myself one). The idea that over the next few years, we are supposed to be preparing a general vision of ourselves, the kind of person that we are to evolve to be and present that vision to our project managers and eventually to the division executives when we get to our 4th year at the company. Feels like being back in high school by the sound of it.

I feel that many managers are in search of an answer for the next big thing. What many of them can do to a certain degree is identify them when they squeeze ideas out of their employees. I also find that so few of them have true visionary ideas of their own. The only difference between them and their employees is that they're subjected to more ideas and can pretend that they know more-- there is know easier way to stick out your chest and look like you are an "alpha" by appearing to know more than your colleagues. It is by nature of their profession that managers act this way. Dilbert comics make a good point about this with the pointy haired boss, know much about buzz words but little behind their meanings. To be a good manager, I believe that there is more to just knowing, but the ability to get things done on your own. If you want to inspire and attract the right kind of people, you have to start off as being the right kind of person.

Changing corporate culture, or culture in general is a tough process. I've tried it to little avail once before when I was a student at a Japanese lab while doing my masters. I've seen and experienced different things as a westerner and people are afraid of trying new things as old habits are hard to break. I talked about how we how it would be a good idea to start having better ways of exchanging ideas between members of the lab, (the lab I was a part of was really big, with 50 researchers) and better initial training to bring new members up to speed instead of fending for themselves. I eventually ran into a brick wall, with insufficient support and with looming deadlines coming up, I gritted my teeth and decided that I wanted to be the best possible person that I could be instead of changing my environment and did my own things.

Sometimes there isn't time to fight the fight and other times, it just isn't worth it. One of the things I learned over the years is to not waste time fighting over small things. If the effort it too much for some small return, then it isn't worth it to waste time over it-- simply moving on and finding better people to deal with is far more rewarding. I think that a lot of smart people are aware of this and when it become too much of a pain to do interesting work, you will start to lose your smartest people. Google, Microsoft and other technology companies know how valuable smart people are that they even had an agreement to not poach each other's company. If you want to be successful, part of it is knowing how to attract and keep the right kind of people to work with. When it comes to success, people and culture is crucial.

Financial Report Aggregation

Started reading some financial reports from Amazon and Apple today. What was interesting about the both of these companies is how they've deployed their capital in international markets to hedge against the declining USD. Amazon, in their 2010 Annual report would stand to lose money if the USD appreciated. Apple seems to be hedging against the declining USD as noted in their July annual report.

It would be interesting to see what kind of economic sentiment one can pickup from aggregating information by reading financial reports to figure out how businesses are positioning themselves for the future. So a question I've started mulling is how does one aggregate financial information from many sources well? The amount of information that I can process is limited, is there a collaborative strategy or a digital processing techniques?

Will need to do more reading to figure out a strategy.

The "Life goes on" Stance

Maybe it's because I think too much, but I am the kind of person that likes making optimal decisions. I wonder if I am using the most optical technique for math problems, I wonder if the data structures and the functional relations are setup to write clean code, and I wonder if moving out to a more lively place, while costing more is better than living cheaper further way from the city.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. The problem is that one doesn't really know the end effects of a decision until having made them. For whatever known or unknown circumstances things may or may not go as according as planned. The question, is it really worth it worrying about all that stuff?

It's been ages since I played any Texas Hold'em poker, but I took away some very important lessons in life from this game. Texas hold'em poker is an incomplete information game, that is the beauty of this game-- the idea that you have to make decisions without knowing every piece of information available. You could still make the "best" decision given the information available and still lose and that is where the "risk management" aspects of the game kicks in. Sure you can have a 90% to win probability, but if you're playing all-in all the time then you are going to have your ass handed to you eventually. The moral of the story is that for whatever decision you make, even if it goes terribly wrong, you ought to be able to take the hits and keep on going (Rocky 6 reference).

An that's sort of the thing with life-- you do things, somethings fail some of them work out. Unforeseen circumstances kick you in the rear and sometimes pleasant unexpected surprises fall from the sky. But that's really all there is to it, no matter what happens, for better or worse, life simply goes on and there isn't much that you worrying can solve.

Being robust is more important than being optimal

There are too many things in life to worry about and worrying takes up precious time. It would be nice to reduce the amount of time worrying and increase productive time and state of mind. The simple solution is to make robust decisions, where the expected value if positive and failure is not catastrophic. That is not to say that one shouldn't make bold decisions; but for the bold decisions that you do make, you ought to be able to take the hit and still be able to stand if things don't work out. The interesting thing though about a lot of optimization mechanics is that risk/robustness analysis is often forgotten and left as a hidden variable-- things work out nicely unless something fails.

Being robust also means that you can set yourself up for some high yield/high risk (relative) situations since you could have a fall back setup should things don't work out. I'll say it here, but knowing how to be robust and knowing how to take chances and succeeding at them is a key ingredient when it comes to being successful (and even sexy).

The point is to not let failures be hangups or crippling and keep moving on. Oddly enough, this almost sounds like an investment strategy.

Goofing off pays off

Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, had mentioned that he had lost the inspiration to find new and useful ideas in physics. He also apparently was in a rut for it, where upon he just gave up on thinking hard about it and decided to let his mind meander to do whatever it felt like. The ends result was that he ended up winning a Nobel prize for his mind meandering when he came across a student in the Cornell cafeteria spinning plates and noticed that the plate had a 2:1 wobble to spin ratio. After performing the physical calculations and being chided by one of his colleagues that the analysis he was doing was "useless," Feynman would go on to win a Nobel Prize for a derivative work from the calculations he did from the wobbling place as it was related to electron spins in quantum electro-dynamics. For those that are interested, a small part of the story can be found here, and if you do have a chance, I highly recommend Feynman's book, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" as a great read.

I too would run into a similar problem these last few weeks after being thrown into the flame of writing simulation scripts using a terrible scripting language. The syntax is strict, variable names are strange and the compiler doesn't accept lowercase letters in the code. The code looks like Perl on bad crack and it's surprising how people can get work done in this language.

I have a colleague working on the simulation project and he's build up a code base over the last 2 years, he's resigned to bashing through this programming language to run simulations. I've tried to read the code and fell asleep multiple times and got several headaches as a result of trying to follow a convoluted path of variables. split across several files to figure out what it going on.

Traumatized, I gave up trying to write code in this language. After 2 days of trying to understand the code, I was pretty much in a rut with this terrible code and resigned myself to clearing my head by working on other projects and taking really long breaks. Nearly a week later, after getting a handle on the fundamentals, I was struck with an idea-- basically, I would write a program to writes the simulation script and I would by pass all the terrible variable handling by natively managing variables in a different language. I managed to clean up the interface considerably, write a main processing loop where I just throw cleanly designed data sets to generate complicated physical structures with simple commands.

What my colleague would need nearly a week to testing and debugging, I could do the same thing in an afternoon. After joining my colleague in the simulation team, we're going to throw out all the old code and redesign everything using my framework.

Perhaps it is an inherent trait in me, that I hate using an inelegant system to do something and my natural instinct is to run away from the problem until I find an elegant way of dealing with the problem. Sure, I may have been goofing off for the past week, but I've figured out to nearly multiply my productivity by a factor of 4~5 over my colleague and will be bringing him up to my speed after I teach him how to my code. Increasing the productivity of 2 people by a factor of 4~5 is huge when it comes to the amount of cost savings the company yields. I will be writing about this in my winter evaluation report no doubt.

Though this story may sound like that it serves a didactic anecdote, that running away from hard problems is a good idea, I assure you that it doesn't and there are times when it is necessary to roll up the sleeves and to the heavy duty grunt work. The question is knowing when to run and look for better solutions vs getting on with it is key. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I generally like attacking problems when I have an idea to make it easy to solve, otherwise, I'll be doing other things.

You can't Schedule Productivity

I tested, debugged and coded for most of the the day, by the afternoon, I was just too mentally tired to do anything else-- the afternoon was somewhat of a write off as I could not bring myself to learn a language for a light simulation program that I need to learn. I am coming to the conclusion that I have a limited attention span for certain activities, so why push it when you aren't going to be able to get any productive work done?

With that idea in mind, I have second thoughts about the 9-5 pm work day. Thing is that we aren't necessarily at our mental peak during this time period and hammering at a problem when not mentally prepared could be a waste of time. Just because a set time is designated to do something does not necessarily mean that it is the best time to do it. The human mind and emotions can be so fickle, unfortunately that it is just beyond the comprehension of logic-- it would be nice to be able to do something exactly when one decides to, but it doesn't work that way.

So I am here, stuck at the office, tired after programming and not in the mood to more work. It's 5 pm right now and it's just a matter of time before I can pack up shop and head home. The question I repeatedly ask myself, is time spent really the right metric to measure how much a company should pay a person?
Many of the brightest people I know do not follow the 9-5 syndrome. These people are writers, artists, engineers and hackers. Ideas come to them where ever they are and they work as long as they have to do whatever they have in mind. I've worked on projects well into the night because I thought it was something interesting to so, I've done the same for writing when an interesting idea hits. One of the things that I enjoy is having my iPhone where I am able to write immediately when a thought is fresh in my head instead of it becoming dulled after getting home.

Though it is important to have a form of daily rhythm/schedule, there are somethings that can't be scheduled for; and one of those things is setting a time when you are going to be mentally productive. Perhaps there are mental exercises to improve one's concentration and memory, but I have yet to find something that helps one to get into that "productivity zone." Some reading into human psychology might be something interesting to look into, but for now, I am going to give up on the notion that I am going to get a lot of productive coding work done and focus on other things instead.

Charging for what would usually be free software

I've started getting to simulation for a project that I am doing at work. Long story short is that the language for the simulation program is pretty bad and I have decided to use python in between to use the simulator to work with. The problem is that the $30,000 simulator (which is only 104 MB large) is rather buggy and requires me to use a specific version of python. They recommended that I use a prepackaged version of python that comes from a company called active state.

The thing about python is that there are many optional free libraries that can be used together. In general you should have no problem using the libraries as they have installers to get the thing working. The product/service that active-state provides is sort of a automatic version management system to keep track of the different libraries installed and automates the update process and provides a repository that you can download modules for different programming languages. Their module tracking software for python is called pypm (or Python Manager).

Community Edition vs Business Edition

The distinction between the two version is sketchy at best. On their website they trumpet the use of Financial Modules, Database modules and more. I downloaded the community version since I was recommended by the developer of the simulation software to use it. I then tried to install the usual free numerical calculation modules (numpy, scipy, and matplotlib) for python from their repository and was prompted that I needed a business license to get it; the price for that license is $999, to get access to that package and other packages that required a business license to use. I can't tell if this is a great business idea or a total scam.

I instead went online to download the numerical calculation packages and install them. For the version of python I had before, it worked perfectly. After installing the Active state version of python and installing the packages I regularly use, the plotting package I usually use can't be imported because of a missing library. This doesn't instill a lot of confidence in their software: suppose that I download the libraries from them and it didn't work, I'd be short $999 and very unhappy. The difference between the community edition vs the business edition is "whatever software package they have available, except for some well used ones that we want you to pay for."

On the Linux front, software package management is all done via the freely available repositories available on the internet. I am generally informed automatically of the updates and updating is done automatically. Management of the python libraries is also done automatically and for free. Though I am quite certain that adoption of Linux based systems is still fairly low, should adoption of software repositories and management of installed software be done through these packages be done on Windows, a business like the one ActiveState runs would be killed off fairly quickly.

Maintaining code for other people sucks

Perhaps I might not be the best programmer in the world, but I can do enough to get things done. Last month, I managed to write a macro that does fitting for measurement curves to extract system parameters for some devices we are making.

We've got a production line going making devices that needed some assistance for device characterization, so I decided to pitch in and write a program that does the fitting for them. It took about a week to write, test, debug and install into the factory line and things were going great until I got an e-mail this week saying that the program wasn't working well. It turns out that the new batch of devices that are being fabricated have characteristics that make it hard to fit nicely and the mathematical functions that is used to fit the data against is somewhat unstable under certain conditions that causes it to blow up, meaning that the solver that comes pre-equipped in Microsoft Excel runs into a brick wall when the function blows up on it.

I've decided to write a new solver to deal with the problem and I need to go through the entire writing, testing and debugging phase again to add in this new module. As a result, I am not particularly happy with this predicament as it sucks up time from me doing anything else.

So I'll say that I've learned a valuable lesson here: I've written useful code for someone else that doesn't know how to maintain it, resulting in me having to keep track of things when conditions change or when things go wrong. The code doesn't benefit me and it costs me time in after care. Perhaps learning about code after care is important as well, but I would much rather maintain code that is a direct benefit to me; like dealing with 2 birds with one stone. In this case, it's my stone being used to hunt for someone else's bird.

The blurring line between amateurs and professionals

Back from Nikko, will have photos up later on. It's a Monday and I've also took the liberty of having the day off, it's great to be away from work. Anyways...

I am amazed at how many "ordinary" people that are capable of putting out great works on the Internet. It wasn't long ago when the most polished media always came from TV or the radio. What was once expensive to film, compose and broadcast has become much more accessible to the ordinary person, that we are starting to see a wealth of impressively polished and professional productions being uploaded to youtube (note, if you do have the bandwidth to spare, up the resolution on the videos).


Aimbot from reddiew's channel

I still remember a while back that the media heads (unfortunately I can't find the source) were arguing that youtube would only be a source of videos that nobody would want to see and that its primary popularity was from uploaded copyrighted material. Perhaps that was the case, 2~3 years ago, but now with readily available HD cameras and video editing software, times are changing.

It isn't the necessary case with entertaining videos, but also for music as well. I find that youtube is also a great source for budding musicians with a flare for video.


Pomplamoose - Another Day from PomplamooseMusic

This is the kind of high quality material user submitted material that we are stating to find on the net. I expect to find more of them as users become more educated and talented as time progresses. As an anecdotal note, even I've had the chance to make a video for a friend's wedding using Apple's iMovie which turned out significantly better that what you might have gotten from just using a powerpoint slide show and music slapped on.

Though I don't think that we will see user submitted material displacing TV shows just yet, we are starting to see the nascent seeds being sewn. A while back kevJumba on youtube produced a miniseries with a friend from wongfu productions called funEmployed on the net:


FunEmployed Ep1 by JumbaFund (or kevJumba) and WongFuProductions

I would argue that making full out 20~30 min episodes on the net probably beyond the time and resource constraints of an youtube "amateur," perhaps we may start to see some experimentation into this medium in the future. Though we are not seeing direct competition against mainstream media just yet, the line between the quality of work between professionals and amateur video productions is most definitely becoming blurred. This is a classic case of a new disruptive technology going for the low end of an incumbent market. If you do have a chance, the book The Innovator's Dilemma is a great read.

As a bonus I'll post my favorite cooking channel, which is the foodwishes cooking channel with great video recipes. The recipes are great and short. Chef John that runs the channel, also won a youtube video competition and will be also hosting a cooking show on the food network. The lines have been blurred indeed.


Super Bowl Chicken Wings by Foodwishes

Off to Nikko

Today is a Thursday and a national holiday in Japan. I have decided to head off into the countryside to get away from the city and home- a change if scenery and getting away from the computer is something that I've been looking forward to; no more computer games and time wasters for me. In terms computing devices, I've only got this iPhone and a netbook to keep me company for this trip. I'll be gone for 3 nights and 4 days.

As usual, I've booked myself into some hostels while traveling. The hostels in japan are comparatively cheap, usually have interesting guests and the people that run them are very knowledgable of the area. Once you get used to staying in these establishments, it gets hard to go back to staying at ordinary hotels-- hotels are so socially sterile and expensive. I would only stay at one when I'm feeling that I need some time alone.

The region Of Nikko is located north of Tokyo, about an hour and a half by train. The region is well known for its hot springs, national parks and nature. There are also a variety of historical sites in the area worth checking out. I've only taken a cursory look at the information available online and expect to get more details after arriving in the area.

I've also broken-down and bought some new software for the iPhone that will allow me to post while on the go. I probably will have the netbook to post from as well but posting directly from the iPhone with pictures is now an option. The G3 network might not be able to handle large numbers of high resolution photos bit I'll see how this turns out.

Dealing with the paper filing problem

It's odd to think that there is still so much paper work is still flying around. Manuals, contracts, proofs of purchase, bank account statements, bill and what not. I just spent the afternoon cleaning the room to come to the realization that I have a lot of documents filed away that are just taking sitting around and taking up space. I've been slowly trying to de-clutter the room and I've decided that excess paper documents are the next on the chopping block to go.

I've installed Google desktop onto my computer recently and have found that searching for things within the computer has gotten a little easier as all I would need to enter are a few key works and the document I am looking for comes up. Apparently, there it a "keyword" field for most files that you can put metadata into a file for tracking. So what I've decided to do is buy a scanner and scan as many paper documents as possible and keep them in the computer instead. Meaning I have less things to worry about keeping track of.

Setting daily objectives, keeping the environment fresh

Saturday; for all intensive purposes I've survived until for the weekend. Assuming that I have nothing planned for the day, the day is basically equated to a day of goofing off. I nearly spent the entire day simulating new Starcraft 2 battle strategies and have really thrown off some players today. I did end up losing a bunch if games, meaning that the strategy needs some fine tuning. By the time I've realized this it is nearly evening and i have an evening dinner appointment with a friend. The question is, should I have spent this time doing something more productive? The answer is most likely a resounding "yes".

So I need to cut down on the amount of time gone to non productive actives, actually, I mean time that I don't regret wasting.

There have been times where I have been exceptionally productive working on a variety of projects. I really don't know why, but it generally was me wanting to do something. Motivation is a strange that way, sometimes it is there and others it just isn't. What are the origins of motivation, really? I've probably mused about this before but it one of those things that I "get", when I get it.

In order to reduce the number of motivational dry spells, I am going to instigate a system to keep a small lots of tasks that must be completed each day, barring extraordinary circumstances. The tasks don't necessarily have to be big, just a series of small things to do as I have a terrible memory for keeping track of things I "want" to do in addition to the things that I "need" to do, because things that "need" to be done usually have some kind of pressing deadline which makes scheduling easier.

Actually thinking about it, I need to find a way to make it a habit to hold myself accountable to getting something done, which makes it a little too easy for me to let things slide. I think I need some friendly competition to do things. Or even some friends to bet against, like say 'html'>Saturday; for all intensive purposes I've survived until for the weekend. Assuming that I have nothing planned for the day, the day is basically equated to a day of goofing off. I nearly spent the entire day simulating new Starcraft 2 battle strategies and have really thrown off some players today. I did end up losing a bunch if games, meaning that the strategy needs some fine tuning. By the time I've realized this it is nearly evening and i have an evening dinner appointment with a friend. The question is, should I have spent this time doing something more productive? The answer is most likely a resounding "yes".<br /><br />So I need to cut down on the amount of time gone to non productive actives, actually, I mean time that I don't regret wasting. <br /><br />There have been times where I have been exceptionally productive working on a variety of projects. I really don't know why, but it generally was me wanting to do something. Motivation is a strange that way, sometimes it is there and others it just isn't. What are the origins of motivation, really? I've probably mused about this before but it one of those things that I "get", when I get it. <br /><br />In order to reduce the number of motivational dry spells, I am going to instigate a system to keep a small lost of tasks that must be completed each day, barring extraordinary circumstances. The tasks don't necessarily have to be big, just a series of small things to do as I have a terrible memory for keeping track of things I "want" to do in addition to the things that I "need" to do, because things that "need" to be done usually have some kind of pressing deadline which makes scheduling easier. <br /><br />Actually thinking about it, I need to fond a way to make it a habit to hold myself accountable to getting something done, which makes it a little too easy for me to let things slide. I think I need some friendly competition to do things. Or even some friends to bet against, like say $100 to whoever gets the best score on something or other. Just need to find the right people to do this with. <br />00 to whoever gets the best score on something or other. Just need to find the right people to do this with.

Finding customers

I think that the hardest part or business is getting getting paying customers. You could make or do anything that you wanted, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then you are going to end up as a non profit organization.

Coming up with solution to problems is easy, the real trick is finding problems that people are wiling to pay to have solved for them. I was fortunate to have that opportunity once as a tutor. Teaching was a trivial problem, I was just simply good at it. People caught on and starting thawing wads of cash at me for that service. I mainly taught math and physics but demand grew into other demands and I even ended up teaching easy writing and programming. Filling a demand is the easy part, so long thar you have the background to solve it. Everyone has skills to do something, the challenge is to find a demand ghat is easy for you to fill. Get that equation down and you'll be on the way to being rich.

3G: an expensive poor man's Internet

Friday night and on the way out to Tokyo to meet up with some friends that I haven't seen in a while. To the left of me, there are two guys talking about stuff that I couldn't possibly care about to be honest, I wish they'd shut up. But alas what am I to do, I'll have to turn up the music I am listening to instead.

So what was I going to talk about? Oh yeah, 3G internet is pretty damn slow. I have taken to reading on the train to pass time and maybe it's just today, but the Internet is really damn slow. If I were to compare it to something, imagine a 28.8k baud modem connected to your phone downloading content heavy webpages.

Going to content light webpages is real blessing because the wait can get rather long. Doing specialized searches like for train timetables seems to take longer than expected. Maybe because it's a friday but I don't have enough experience to make that judgment yet.

Wireless communication with decent bandwidth is still a limiting factor when it comes to the utility of the a smart phone. The interesting thing is that I am paying nearly just as much for this wireless connection compared to my broadband connection at home.

If I had 1/100 th of the speed I have at home (assuming a 2 MB/sec) broadband connection I'd be really happy right now. There has to be a way of making a highspeed wireless cellular network. There has been attempts using meshed wifi routers but I remember that idea getting sued out of existence by an internet carrier once, but if I were to do it then that would be the route that I would go.

What the hell would you want to do with the internet while on the go? Location based search is probably the biggest thing. I can bet you that Apple is working on that. There has been several ventures out there that are doing location based applications. I believe that the field is still immature because the technology still wireless data communication speeds still need improvement. When that happens, expect to see some killer applications to come out-- we are still in the mid early adopter phase.

I've written this much and the guys beside me still won't shut up.

Setting time to do things

I've been finding it hard to do things that "I know I should, but never get around to," its like eating vegetables that you don't like, you know that you should but don't want to (though I never really had that kind of problem as a kid). Though I have been finding that there are many things that I should be doing periodically that I don't. Some of them include, studying Japanese, working out, cleaning the room (more frequently), throwing out things that I don't need and working on small projects. The biggest culprit when it comes to not getting around to what I should is distractions: mainly keeping up on news, games and watching online videos to name a few.

One thing I started doing is putting myself on a timer and setting a block of time to do something productive. The productive activity of today was working out, as I set up a timer to work out for 45 minutes before doing anything else. Attending to any distraction during this period of time was strictly forbidden.

The interesting result was that the usual upper body exercise that would take 1 hour to complete, was done in under 45 minutes, a 25% savings in time. I do believe that there are many places over the course of the day where distractions kick in and whittle away precious productive time where I should be getting things done. As an added bonus, I also managed to get the laundry done, ordered some music to send to Canada for a friend and made time to catch up with 2~3 people that contacted me that I didn't get back to this evening. Forcing myself to be productive during a specific period of time has been quite fruitful this time.

I think this effect is the result of committing to being productive during a period of time or outlining what exactly what you want to do during a specific period of time that improves productivity. There have been times back in high school where I've been really productive when classes were based around the period system-- I used to strive to get as much work done at school so I'd have less homework when the day was over. Perhaps I am seeing a similar effect here.

On the train on the way home

So this is the first weekend that I had with the opportunity to go traveling with the iPhone. Long story short, it makes a great traveling companion. I generally carry a DSLR camera to take nice photos of events and currently lack the gear to take videos. The iPhone equipped with a very nice camera and decent microphone is well equipped to take great videos. I'll post a few later on after getting home. The one other great thing is that the phone makes for a great tool for taking quick photos what I wouldn't be able to do with a big camera without looking uncivilized. I just was able to whip out the phone and took a few pictures at a nice French restaurant during dinner with a friend.

The other great thing that I am developing a liking for is access to the internet and good reading material that I wouldn't usually be able to look at while on the go. I have so far read several good articles from the comfort of my seat while on a 1 hour train ride back home from Tokyo. Actually I was out much further but I spent most of my time sleeping on the bullet train on the way back from a business trip.

I do wish the screen was a little larger for reading, but with a device that fits in my pocket and has a very, high resolution screen, I'll make do. But I can understand why the iPad might be a popular device.

The other great thing about having the iPhone is rhat I am able to write and post when an idea is fresh in the mind instead of having to wait utility I get home to type things out, by then sometimes the thought degenerates to the point that I can't write about it anymore. Something attributable to my inherent bad memory.

Oh and the one other thing that I really like is that I can were out complete sentences as opposed to the butchered version of English that comes out of most texting on cell phones. It called being civilized, bitches :). And that is how I roll.

From the iPhone on the train

It is a Saturday and as luck would have it, I was able to line up a business trip to Sendai while there is a jazz festival happening this weekend.

Given that I had some time to play around with the phone on the train I decided to see what would it be like to majestic a blog post from the phone. Accessing blogger from the phone turned out to be too slow so I opted to install an application that would let me post offline. Though I won't have much of the nicer text editing features like the bulleted list and font control, just posting text only seems sufficient to me.

Another potential feature that may end up shelling out done cash for is to add functionality to post pictures. The iPhone has a pretty nice camera and it might be fun to post pictures while on the go. Say like pictures of food.

The one thing about these smart phones and ultra portable devices is that you really don't know their real capabilities until you try them. So far I am pretty happy with the device though I have yet to find the killer application for me. I do feel that there is plenty of potential.

iPhone 4

Going to be a quick update, hard to find time to write at the moment. Got the new iPhone last weekend, finally starting to get used to it.

• Touch QWERTY keyboard is really nice-- I find my self typing much faster compared to the normal keypad.
• Tried to use Skype on the 3G wireless network, had lag and poor quality -> you really need WiFi
• Caller ID for Skype in Japan does not work, even with a number through a provider in Japan
• No contact groups in standard iPhone contact book, bought a $5 contact manager
• Business model for softbank, (provider) is to provide data, charge on voice, limited discount for the first 2 years. Charge is currently $40/month, up to about $60 in 2 years (not counting voice)
  
• Being able to send international text and e-mail from phone is nice
• Having google maps on the go is good
• Battery life, kind of short. 3 days with no usage, down to about 1.5~2 with medium usage
• Browsing the internet is decent
• Having a camera, video recorder, internet device, music player and cell phone in one is nice. Reduces the number of things in my pocket
• Would be nice to have direct access to the device to edit contact in formation. I can't seem to figure out how to do a custom import into the device
  

That's it for now. Still week one with the thing.

The scrapbook

There are many things I think about during the day and I haven't the time to do in depth writing about them. The other thing is that many ideas of recent, have been self explanatory and don't usually warrant me writing about them, but they are good food for thought (for me at least).

For those that might be interested, I've started a scrapbook. Feel free to check it out, it'll not be organized and full of what ever I am thinking. Consider it like a thoughtful twitter on crack.

Attended a software design lecture

Three are the hackers and there are the regular guys. Unfortunately for me, I am not much of a hacker, I don't write incredibly beautiful code, but I like what I do. I ended up attending a talk on software design a few days ago hosted by an Ivar Jacobson. Whom seems to be working on a software design frame work called Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT). Unfortunately, the talk was light on the details, but the claims are grandiose -- the next swiss army knife for all programming architecture, whose goal is to help people/organization write code that is useful, extensible and reliable.

The lecture was carried out in English, and I've forgotten how fast my brain works at absorbing information and coming up with interesting questions/problems to ask on the fly. It's something that I've missed for a while now. I just haven't had a high level of discourse in a while, meaning that I think I am just itching to find some really smart people to work with... but I digress...

I will admit that writing software can be an incredibly complicated process, especially when the requirements) or even the challenges) are not well understood. I would argue that "you don't understand the true nature of the problem until you try to solve it," and after a few (or many) false starts, does the gravity of the problem starts to sink in.

The unfortunate (or fortunate) thing for me about programming is that I am self taught. I don't have a whole lot of exposure to code written by other people, so I have very little of a reference point of comparison when it comes to comparing the work I've done to other people. I generally start getting a bit of a headache when the project I work on starts to get pretty large there is a big code base to keep track of and keeping it organized is rather tricky.

The interesting thing about the talk, however is the state of software design in large software firms, and it appears that the state of programming is somewhat abysmal. From what I've heard, Microsoft spends about 75% of its development costs testing code and it can still be really buggy at times.

Interestingly, we are starting to see the tide turning against large software corporations when it comes to startups. Teams of approximately 5~10 people have been able to develop quite popular internet sites and bringing in significant revenue when they were able to develop their software on a shoe string budget. For the project that I am working on right now, we have a budget of many tens of millions of dollars and we still haven't seen any big returns on that investment yet.

I believe in being small and effective with money and it seems like big corporations are really crappy at doing that.

I hate long winded writing

There is a large plethora of blog posts and articles on the internet. The more text I need to go through to figure out what is going on the more of my time that is wasted. The most unfortunate thing about certain websites is that they are starting to read more like magazines instead of good essays. Basically the more text they have, spanned across more pages means more page views and a bigger chance of generating ad revenue.

In short, there is too much long winded crap that gets posted out there and I hate it when my time is wasted by websites with too much filler material. I like succinct and to the point writing. My writing isn't like that and it shows and I think it's pretty bad. I am going to kick this dry spell of writing and poor writing eventually so bear with me.

I need to be more demanding of myself

To succeed, you need to be demanding-- there is no doubt of that in my mind. A few days ago I was watching some old reruns of Steve Jobs presenting at the Mac World 1998. This was when he made his return to Apple, lopped out useless products and decided to focus on 4 produced and decided to make them the best in their class. The result of his efforts and vision resulted in the birth of the iMac, the G3 Mac and the powerbook after killing the other branded lines of Apple computers.

It was fascinating to see Jobs in his presentation outlining how his products were the best in their class and how they would not settle for any second best position-- to come this far in the product development cycle to make such compelling products it was obvious at they had a demanding goals and pushed to have them accomplished. After that, they just kept on going, leading to some of the best designed computers and portable electronics devices today, leading to windfalls in profits. They were well respected in their early years because they were humble and demanding... times may have chanced since their climb to the top, however I'll leave that as a different issue to tackle at a later date, because you need to get there first in order to have those kinds of problems.

The first thing about becoming more demanding is to not get too used to anything, because when you get used to something things start to get easy and as a result you get lazy. When that happens, game over. I've found that the most productive times in my life was when I've been out of my natural element, while dealing with interesting and new challenges and I was picking up the skills and knowledge I needed to succeed. There was an element of excitement of doing something new that brought the enthusiasm and the need to push myself to succeed. In order to have the desire to be demanding, I believe that it is necessary to have an element of risk in one's life, where things can either succeed or fail, but the strong desire to succeed is what puts the demands on the person to do what it takes to succeed.

On an interesting aside, I believe that men, in particular, that can succeed in risky situations are considered sexy from the perspective of a female. Sure you could say that "success is sexy," but I would add "consistently succeeding through risky situations is even sexier." And me, being a guy, would have to say that that is plenty enough motivation for me. Now that I've survived my financial fiasco of last year, it's time to start taking some calculated risks and winning at them.

Considering an upgrade to the iPhone

Over the last few months, my cell phone bill has skyrocketed, nearly doubled because friends have started sending me photos from their cell phones and I don't have a data plan. What would have been a 4,200 yen monthly bill has jumped to close to 9,000 yen (over $100!). This is clearly unacceptable and I have started looking into getting a data plan for my cell phone.

On an interesting note, data packets for cell phones are a major ripoff. My carrier, charges 0.2 yen / 128 bytes (1 packet), this pretty much equates to 1638.4 yen for 1 MB (1024^2 for 1 MB), or about $20 for 1 MB on the go. This is astronomically expensive!

Considering that a 400x320 jpeg is about 100 kb, I am paying about $2 for an image being sent to me. Compare that to a $1 song on iTunes. Wireless carriers are making pretty big margins on their data rates. I do have to wonder how much regulation is keeping new people with fresh ideas out from bringing these costs down.

I have considered adding an unlimited data plan to my cell phone, though it would be a nice feature, I would be missing out on the full richness of having the internet available to me on my mobile device because of its limited user interface. While being back home, I had the opportunity to use the iPhone for an entire week, just using the instant messaging and accessing e-mail here and there has me very enthusiastic about the device and I am seriously considering making the switch.

The new 32 GB iPhone 4 would cost me about $700 and a 16 GB version would run me about $600, I've been looking at the one Japanese iPhone carrier softbank and noted that with a data plan alone, I would be spending about 3785 yen/month for an unlimited data plan and I would be billed per 30 sec for phone calls unless I added a voice plan to make calling "cheaper" --> obviously, the name of the game for softbank is to push the iPhone and it's internet abilities and then quietly sneak in a voice plan.

Now that I understand the name of the game here, if I were to use an iPhone, my goal would be simple-- find a way around using the ordinary voice plan for making calls, because it is really expensive. Without a plan, they charge 41 yen/minute and if you pay an additional 980 yen/month the voice charge is 21 yen/min (using something called a "white plan"). The question is, "can I do better?" and the answer is, (unsurprisingly) yes.

Enter Skype

The ironic thing is that I was looking to get an iPhone to lower my data transfer costs but in actuality I can reduce my voice calling costs significantly by purchasing a skype number for Japan. Buying a skype number with a monthly subscription is 200 yen/month and I am looking at a 400 min subscription for about 500 yen/month. The savings are very significant after the number crunching as shown in the table below.

What it means is that for the price of a new iPhone I can reduce my monthly calling costs (and have 2x more minutes) and have an unlimited data plan for the same price as my old plan on my old provider.

I don't know about you, but barring quality of service problems, this looks like a winning plan to me.

I was there before cloud storage

It's been around for a while, but I've started using cloud storage to get access and sync data between several computers: my desktop and my netbook. The service I use is called dropbox and I use it's free 2 GB account to share files between work, home and on the go.

It should be obvious, like having a web based e-mail account that it is nice to have access to your data where ever you are. I used to do this a long time ago while I was a university student, I ran an FTP server so I could upload/download my assignments from home or store work I did at school instead of having to carry a USB memory stick around all the time. I was doing this nearly 7 years ago... and now, having software that lets people store and share data online seems to be fairly decent business.

Being ahead of the curve is one thing, realizing that you're ahead of it and everyone else might have a use for what you do is another. I would never have thought, 7 years ago that people would be interested in having their data accessible from anywhere, because at the time, laptops weren't so hot.

Operation Jailbreak

I've worked in the company for long enough and the project I am working on has gotten delayed for some technical difficulties. Some management level people are giving it about 6 months for a redesign and testing. From my perspective it will take 9 months if we are lucky, easily 1 year if we don't have any problems and possibly longer if something bad happens. After that the technology needs to be commercialized, brought to mass production and etc, which will probably take another year or 2. Meaning that it is going to be at least 3 years until a product gets out the door.

It would be nice to have a notch on the belt if this project succeeds, but I don't have forever to wait for things to work. Given market timing sensitivities, other project challenges and even the risk of the project failing, I don't have time to waste for something like that. I want success and I want it now.

There are something that are worth waiting for, but when it comes to putting your life on hold for something that may or may not materialize, what's the point, seriously? You only live once and I'd rather put my time into something more worth while and thus I have decided to start "operation jailbreak."

I think I am done with the 9-5 work life (which actually is more towards the 9-7 pm) , I can do the job and I am properly equipped for the job but the job isn't inspiring or rewarding enough and I don't think that I am producing something that is tangible to me. It's a nice to have but I really don't care about the thing that we are developing, putting in 3 more years of my life into this project isn't worth it, it means that I need an out.

Moving on, new plans:

A job is like being in a relationship, a friend of mine once mentioned to me that when you start to think that it's over, it probably was... 2 months ago. The job makes me money, but it doesn't bring me a sense of accomplishment, pride or joy. It doesn't add additional tangible value to my life other than money, I want a to be free and happy. If being rich ends up being a side of affect of attaining these goals, so be it... but I am not going to sacrifice being "free and happy" for a secondary objective.

Fortunately for me I've been keeping good track of my finances and I know what I need to be making to survive and generally how much I need to make to meet long term goals. What I have not added to the my life plans is an image of what exactly the kind of life that I want to live. The most important thing to me is to reduce the number of hours and be able to take time off whenever I want instead of being at the whim of some company.

There are other lifestyles out there that are more free and open allowing me to spend time more thinking and studying instead of working at an office all day. To be honest, I don't want to think of "work" as "work" anymore, but rather as "something worth doing, well." For me, (and I do not know for others) when I do something worth doing, I will spend the long hours laboring to do something well. I used to do this when I taught classes while at university, I did find some of the practical applications of what I was learning to be genuinely fascinating and I wanted to bring the same level of interest to inspire my peers. I was usually quite well known for my seminars when I was a graduate student. I miss those, as I haven't had the right kind of environment or people to do these kinds of things to do with anyone anymore, hence forth I've gotten a little rusty with my presentation skills. I've also been slacking with writing on the blog, which has been impacting my writing skills. But I digress...

The new long term goals:

The new goals are to work less and remain financially stable. The idea of working in a company is incongruent with my first goal and thus I will be looking to quit and go my own way in the future. Instead of an abrupt change out from my current working situation, I will be looking to pull a fade out by looking to generate "passive income". The goal will be to start by generating $50/weekday, then move up to $100/day and then to $200/day. I think these are realistic goals. Passive income at about $200/day over a year should equate to about $48k/year. If I can pull something like this off, then I am going to be pretty damn happy.

There are several avenues that I want to explore for this so I'll be dedicating my off hours to cultivating skills to make this a reality.

The Entrepreneur

I don't know if it is a good thing, but it seems like that I've been tagged as the entrepreneur at work due to skills in programming and data mining stuff I've been able to do. Basically I am stuck in a group of experimental researchers and I've got the power to write my own programs to analyze vast amounts of data and run simulations that can help predict the outcomes of their experiments.

It took me 2 days to write a simple program to analyze how light would interact with interfaces using snell's law to predict that they'd have problems as a result of their design-- it took them 2 months to build the device to realize that it has problems and are trying like hell to fix it. They've probably used more than $100k in capital in R&D costs to get these results too. I've been doing a lot of these things on the side so the co-workers to get kind of surprised when I throw out these programs from out of nowhere at them. The result of this has given me a bit of an entrepreneurial reputation-- as in if I see something interesting, I'll go off and make something happen. I've started talking business from time to time, by adding new features to equipment that we already have and compared it to other systems that we would have paid a fair bunch of cash if we were to buy equipment that had the stuff loaded in already. People are starting to catch on about me writing valuable software and are kind of poking at me in the sense that I'd probably be able to pull off a software venture.

In a sense, that is a part of the game plan that I want to be positioning myself in the future as I want to leverage my skills to create a money making machine. I just need some spare time to continue building and completing some side projects, then move them online and make them semi-public. If something catches on, commercialize it by selling a subscription or a license or something.

There are a few ideas bouncing around in my head at the moment and not a whole lot of people over that I've found with the same kind of spirit here. Actually, I should start looking into entrepreneurial gatherings in Japan to see what kind of people in that world exists. The project that I am working on just got delayed for about a year and I don't want to be waiting forever until when this thing ships.

I want results, now!

An experiment with dictation software

Today I am using dictation software to write this next blog post. As of recently, I've been trying to improve my typing skills but so far have not come out with any major gains in typing speed and or accuracy. While reading on the Internet if have come across information about people whom write books using dictation software. I decide to give a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking a shot to see what it would be like to dictate a blog post instead of typing one. To be honest it feels very natural to speak and have a blog post written, however it does take some getting used to when it comes to dictating punctuation.

Another thing that would be useful is to have a good microphone with very little noise as it seems that I have some noise issues when it comes to having my speech converted into text, but I don't think this is a very significant problem as these mistakes can be very easily corrected through the keyboard. All in all I do believe that dictating these blog posts over microphone seem to be significantly faster than my typing speed as paragraphs can easily appear in large blocks as the computer processes through the speech and generates text.

So for the time being I went to give speech to text dictation a shot for my blog posts for now and see how that goes. It would also be an interesting experiment to try is to have a wireless microphone and be able to dictate while lying down in bed which it seems like something fun to do.

I live in a dorm room with one of the walls made of wood which unfortunately limits the volume of my voice at which I can speak, so I will be probably limiting so my blog posting to the early evenings until I move out somewhere where I can speak whenever I feel like; it is one of the unfortunate things about living in Japan but I have come to live with it.

So until next time.