UltraCrepidate

I stopped all promotional services this year to rely solely on word of mouth and keyword hits from search engines. It’s a part of my efforts to remain true as well as doing my part to reduce fluff on the net. It also made all the stats more believable. Unique visitors decreased as the year passes. I ended up with half the visitors I had in January, but pages per visit increased indicating that these are real humen lurking around my site.

The weirdest search is: what is the advantage of having muscles that run at different angels in the stomach

The second weirdest search is: massive punanis

The top content is: Triphasic Sleep

Most searched phrase is: triphasic sleep

Second most searched phrase: Ultracrepidate

Page Rank: 4

Alexa Traffic Rank: 9,698,8000

Technorati Rank: 676,883

Most emotional post: Emotions

Best contemplation: Jack of all trade vs specialization

Best financial post: Environment upgrade part 2: Canada Montreal housing market analysis

Event that triggered the most changes: Environment upgrade part 2: Settling down

The surprising part of these stats is the fact that my google page rank reached 4 while traffic remained the same. In my opinion, my page rank is only worthy of a 2. I am not complaining about the extra traffic though. It hasn’t saturated my bandwidth yet. It does however, make me spend more time on security+spam considerations as my site becomes more visible

The Triphasic Sleep experiment that I did out of a sense of adventure proved to be a surprisingly popular post. It certainly didn’t look that way when I was near day 28 of my wakeful dream. The page itself is given a page rank of 2 by google. Most of the visitors are either researchers or students from universities. I guess, because of how honestI was during the experiment, it provides them with the closest thing to a live controlled experiment. Visitors who visit my triphasic page usually leave the site right afterwards and despite the high amount of pages being viewed, none of them bothered leaving comments.

Either it’s because of the way I write my posts because the general goal of my site is different, there seem to be little or no comments going back and fourth between my readers. I believe that it is also a trend that I like. Unless something provides new insight or open myself to previously unexplored territory, I do not believe it needs to be mentioned.

The data from my site statistics are very inconsistent. I later discovered that my ISP forgot to turn on certain features in their tracker, making unique visitor count bloated. Hopefully after DNSLookup is restored, I can get a real idea of what’s going on. Good thing is, replacing picture files for layout with browser generated lines is paying off greatly as I reduced the bandwidth usage from 1 .87GB in June to 352MB near the end of December. I will improve on the current layout from now on since it’s the design that uses the smallest bandwidth.

Gaming was me. I am gaming.

I didn’t notice it till after the fact is set in stone. The spirit of change has recently adapted to the new strategy of steady corruption me instead of the the blatant assault. Doesn’t mean that I dislike the metamorphosis. I am just rather intrigued by memories of good old times. A time where gaming is the totality of my life.

I mean gaming as in playing video and computer games. With the kind of insights I have now, they are simply a sequence of button pressing required at certain critical time of a strategy. The refinement of the strategy is something that can be carried forward to other games and key areas of life, however, the expertise in the button sequence is lost when the smallest of the input method is changed.

The Alex One brought up a good point in one of our mutual deep probing of our own psyche. In which we discovered that I have not quit gaming all together, but simply decided to take on life as the greatest game of all time. I mean, think about it. Ultra realistic 3d view, 150~300 milliseconds total maximum lag, surround 3d sound, thousands of degree of freedoms in movements and a complex reward system which takes a lifetime to master. What else do you need?

Looking back, I can see a hint of the present from the games I’ve been playing. The fact that I choose games based on how close they come to real world is most likely caused by the subconscious needs to process more data. It was the constant desire for more challenges that pushed the limit from simple games to complex simulations and eventually end up where I started when I was born: the real world.

It doesn’t mean that I stopped the practice of playing a certain game for 2 days straight without rest or purges all the gaming devices from my life forever. I still have these insane all nighters (more for the practical reason of getting it over with in a short period of time vs dragging out the gaming over time) and I still purchase consoles as new ones get released. The difference is in the choice of games I play. The games are more integrated with other areas of my life and are only taken into consideration when I see some benefits to life. Which is why I bought a Wii instead of a PS3 and Mario Party 8 instead of Resident evil 4.

Gone are the need to get something as it comes out and the constant indulgence in the fantasies of RPG games. In its stead, there’s only me. More mature and devious as I plan to apply the knowledge to my own corrupted plan.

Being assigned as the Linux product specialist and wanting to permanently establish my mobile life is just the tipping factor required to jump start my inevitable work-life integration. The fact that they both evolves around Linux at the same instance in time blurred the gap to a point that escapes my notice. For years before this, there was always a factor that separated work and life. Either it was the high costs of engineering equipments or the difference of platforms the projects uses. Because of these, when I work on my website or program at home, I can alway make a distinction that this is not work.

So when I woke up in front of my monitor at 3AM in the morning looking at the Linux bash shell, I asked myself what I had been working on before I fell asleep.

Linux

But was it for work or myself? I couldn’t tell. Nor could I make a clear cut work efficiency decision like I did before, when I ignored everything else to chase after some strange error message I encountered at work. It didn’t take long from then till I eventually started doing work at home and testing server configurations for my home at work. The thirst for knowledge drives me on each day until I exhaust myself to a point where I can’t keep my eyes open.

Lethe sleeps on my lap in hopes that I’d pay her more attention.

People at work can’t believe I did it. What kind of a loser works till 2AM at home for work? I can see that question in the jaw dropping expression they gave me. I just can and I finally started enjoying it because I don’t want to separate life and work anymore. Once you crossed the line, there’s no more turning back to when it was just two separate events.

From an outsider’s observation, I am someone who shies away from Casinos for the fear of falling into the deep hole of gambling hell. In reality, my hesitancy is only enforced by the annoyance of having to drive a long way to the middle of nowhere to reach these places. Casinos for me, is simply a place that I am not able to afford in my current state of life.

I don’t look at gambling with the same deep rooted hatred that my parents and their generation have, but rather, as a game of analytical reasoning intermingled with strategies. A practice of chaos management that allows you to come out ahead by making the right decisions. At least, that’s what I thought before visiting the Casino of Montreal with a few colleagues.

It’s the first time that I’ve been in this setting after I took an effort to study finances. It shocks me how careful the Casinos have crafted the game and their processes so that the outcome of any bet is left purely to chances with the exception of craps and poker, which is a highly skilled game that requires professional dedication to excel in.

I was lucky to spot a group of pro craps player so I could observe to my heart’s contend. From the way they place and hold their dices to the subtle eye signals they pass to each other. It was a beautifully coordinated orchestra which left me speechless. It was subtle, but not subtle enough to escape the notice of trained eyes. Certainly not subtle enough to fool the cameras above. It is possibly so that they don’t draw a crowd and force the casino heads to act in order to disperse the commotion. They did everything within the rules. No noticeable communication between players, the dice thrower is not the one who wins money, randomly losing and randomly throw the dice without technique. I noted to myself that I will have to come back to this game once I get experienced enough.

The ones that seem to let players have some sort of control are black jack and sic bo. I am sure everyone knows Black Jack so I won’t go into details. Only to say that the house who plays the house cards are still human and can have an effect. Even though they follow a pre-established rule of whether or not to get another card.

Sic Bo, has Chinese origins and is the game that I focused on the most this time. The western casinos took away the human factors so that a good dicer roller will not be able to roll the number he wants all the time. So the dice is purely up to chances, but at least, you have the control of choosing your numbers. It is the closest thing to the stock market that you can get and the choices available means that you can apply some of the short covering strategies to it. Since we know from craps that the chances of a number appearing is not equal depending on which face is up we can apply this knowledge to the play of Sic Bo, giving us a greater predictability of the outcome. Still, the theory has to be tested, which brings me to the next part.

Sic Bo is pretty easy to simulate with code, knowing the probability distribution. This is to refine the strategy used on when to keep and hold money. Most often, a gambler loses sight to gamble their winnings and eventually their capitals away. The simulation is to get an idea of the chances that you have in winning a certain percentage of your capital in any one hour period. This way, I’ll have a logical decision mechanism not affected by my emotions to decide when to pick up and leave.

I am sorry friends and families. I am not giving out any presents this year. This year is all about building myself. I’ve never bought myself anything that isn’t necessary so I decided to spend my present budget on myself. In a sense, they are still necessary, because they are considered tools that will bring fun and challenge to me.

That and the stock market crash.

I needed to pamper myself, I needed to know what it feels like to pamper myself. To fully indulge in guilty pleasures without feeling guilty.

Frank Herbert’s books are mind opening. If your mind is prepared to be opened.

I approached Chapterhouse: Dune with dread. The kind which comes on the last day of your vacation as good times become a thing of the past and you have to harden yourself to get back into the turmoils of life. In the end, I am glad that I read the book at this particular point in my life. I connected with the author, Frank Herbert, in a way that transcended textual communication. Him, passing his own revelation through the thoughts of a Reverend Mother. Me, gobbling up the knowledge like a thirsty Gene Besserit acolyte. I am simply amazed by how my recent discoveries followed closely in line with his.

I rejoiced at the concept of naivete. The word punctured some of the still muddy ideas that were still brewing in my mind, giving clarity to my otherwise stunted mental maturity. To see clearly is to see with a child’s naivete and innocence (And this guy is no longer amongst the living).

At the moment, I am hesitant to finish the last two books of the series because they are written by his son using his notes. I’ve read some of Brian Herbert’s prequels of Dune and find it very different from Frank’s writing. Still exciting, but not as mind boggling.

I want to see what Frank sees, but that chance is forever lost. I can only pretend.

I never thought about it this way, but I believe that I have an expertise in driving on snow. Let me explain.

It is no secret that whenever I used to drive to competitions to dance, we’d always get hammered by some sort of snow storm in between cities. They used to be mentally taxing exercise that rendered me completely exhausted when I eventually get to where I wanted to go. Now, they relax me because I have more experience than the average drivers in these condition.

Pair that up with my numerous drift racing in GTA, which loosely models the behavior of cars when they skid in real world and you got me. Mental ward patient who enjoys drifting in a snowed in parking lot of some shopping mall. It is very enjoyable if you don’t mind wasting some gas.

Another benefit of drifting on snow is that you don’t have to suffer the usual wear and tear of tires on asphalt and it is way easier for the car to go out of control. I must enjoy this as much as I can while the snows are still there. Ciao.

Previously, I wrote about my new years resolution for year 2007. So did I achieve any of my goals? Or rather, are any of the goals still relevant?

Main list score: 1.75/5

#1: Separation of human improvement from main Journal

Not accomplished. Still stuck at finishing the layout

#2: Finish Level 2 German class

Half accomplished. Only managed to complete Level 1 German

#3: Finish building armor for SCA heavy combat

Not accomplished. It’s still sitting there.

#4: Finish rearranging digital data

1/4 accomplished. There’s just too much and a hardware failure doesn’t help

#5: Understand Linux enough so I can setup my own server

Fully accomplished.

Secondary list: 1.5/5

#1: Reaching 40k CDN in liquid asset

3/4 accomplished. US dollar depreciation and market crash in December prevented me from reaching my goal.

#2: Have a well defined 6 pack that doesn’t need a bright light to see

Not accomplished. I realized that I have to work out the chest too, otherwise, the stomach muscles will look weird.

#3: Complete secret objective

Not accomplished. Still a secret.

#4: Finish making curtain

Not accomplished. Dropped all together after buying a condo that came with one.

#5: Reach 95% accuracy on expert level of Trogdor in Guitar Hero 2

3/4 accomplished. Maximum I reached was 80% accuracy.

Total grade: 2.25

I failed my year

As you know, my mother visited me for a week. The outlook was grim and I was pushed onto the edge of implosion. In the end though, she left, a better person. Perhaps because I’ve gained a more authoritative presence or perhaps because she realized that I have life experiences that she doesn’t have thus making me worth listening to. Whatever the case, I am glad that she slowly started to see things from my point of view.

It was a rough week, as I was forced to interact with remnants of my past. It came at me through the expectations of mother, the tone she uses, the nagging and most importantly of all, a constant reminder that things should be done differently. Things were never up to par with her expectations, such is the way my childhood self interacts with her. It also brings a stark reality into view. That I am still conditioned to accept it. To submit means it’ll never end and to rebel only serves to strengthening its hold.

I was under her control again. I fell back to my old habit, fitting her image of me because her reality of that image is stronger than anything I’ve dealt with. I think that I am particularly vulnerable because I don’t have any deep rooted reality that holds me down to one pattern. My life has been in a constant flux up until now. Even after losing myself, I still managed to come out victorious (a way to put it if you want to deal with absolutes) because of a primary difference between our established reality. You see, I chose my reality while she settled into hers. My desire to change eventually found an exit strategy after examining the situation.

My failing lies fundamentally with not understanding the nature of opposites. Ying and Yang serves to strengthen each other, forming a whole circle by interlocking their connections. What is often forgotten during frenzied efforts to wipe out the ying is that a bit of ying is inherent inside your yang. When one dies, the lack of its opposite can only serve as its eventual rebirth.

To struggle against it is to ensure its eventual revival

With that realization, I completely changed my attitude. Opting instead to lead our interaction to places where I wish to go rather than letting idle chatter fall into old habits. The result, well, it’s work in progress, but at least, we were able to focus on the positive side of life.

“Too much fluff in articles. Questions self about my own perception due to this belief. Will experiment and contemplate its application from now on. Cut the crap.”

Back to basics.

I have been greedily acquiring information at an explosive rate ever since I stopped living a dancer’s lifestyle. The result of which gave me more free time than I thought. It’s safe to say that I am fed up with this much freedom to read. Now that ads are everywhere in the world, there’s an even greater need to control the information I come in contact with.

Realizing that most articles are padded full of fluff, I begin to realize the same happening to my own blog post. I mean, why do you, the readers, need to know this journey that I have to take and the reasoning behind my choices? Is it because I feel that it is important? Or is it actually helpful for people to read. Am I seeing all these fluff because that’s what my mind made me believe? I’ve already tried cutting down on most of the crap in my recent posts, but still, there always seem to be an even shorter and to the point version possible. Should I commit to this? We’ll see as I test it out in the future. Rest assured that I will be applying my minimalist ways to my writing as well.

On the flip side, an extreme version of this post can be summed up by the lines at the beginning of this post.

Finally, I see my flaw. It started as a fleeting sensation during one of my morning meditations: a glimpse of a feeling similar to a random heart murmur. When it came to me, I wondered briefly if having only 3 hours of sleep caused this before disregarding the possibility. I have become too good at controlling my alertness after my previous experiments. This feeling, of self induced censure along with the total lack of words to describe, made me realize that I am looking at one of my demons. Back track a bit through the trails of thought and the show got is suddenly interesting. The discovery is a result of my awareness of my weaknesses and my lifestyle of truth saying.

Understanding the intermingling of opposites is critical to arrive at this juncture. In these meditation sessions, I explore my strengths in order to see my weaknesses. It just happens that today, I looked at my skill of observing the minutiae of human body which I’ve prided myself on ever since I started dancing.

I thought that with this skill, I can understand people.

The problem is, this reliance prevented me from exploring other skills critical to understanding people. Looking back, there are numerous times when I managed to observe the body language, but didn’t know how to react. What I failed to understand is that even though I can see the present, I cannot predict their future thoughts.

I lack the ability to follow other people’s state of mind, to see what they will be thinking and this prevented me from being able to bring people from one state of mind to another and lead a satisfying interaction. It also prevented me from understanding why people get offended by things that are so insignificant in my life. I can’t feel their state of mind, or rather:

I REFUSE TO BECAUSE I THINK IT’S WORTHLESS

Following my vent of the company system I reflected on several future adjustments that I will be making in my life which will align the environment I live in to my core beliefs: Constant improvement, never ending curiosity and the elevation of human race as a whole.

One of the insight that came to existence in a brief moment of clarity while I was digging my car out of the 20cm of snow is the fact that this country really doesn’t suit me and the benefit of living in Montreal is slowly but surely disappearing. Montreal Canada is a great place, however it’s not a great place for my current situation. Here are some of the points that got thrown around:

Benefits:

1. The country takes care of you
2. There’s no requirement to split the capitals for common-law arrangements i.e. you can live with any girl you want without getting half of your fortune taken away when you split. Not that people here care anyway. see point 1.
3. Very diverse culture due to McGill’s international status
4. No need to look around for fun since everything is at one place: downtown
5. Cheap education
6. Beautiful girls due to #3
7. Low crime rate
8. Lots of space
9. Low housing cost

Inconveniences:

1. Winter wastes a lot of your time
2. Immigration system easily gamed
3. High tax rate meaning you are supporting everyone else. See point #2
4. Low average salary
5. The French language glass ceiling

The points that really stood out are Benefits #1 and Inconveniences #1, #3. I estimate that about half of my productive time are being used on. The reality of which, is further amplified when I spend time with people I know who live off of the government. What irritates me the most is how this system breeds complacency and mutes innovation. It is slowly eating away at me, making me feel comfortable and secure.

Canada’s system carefully wraps you in a comfortable cocoon and slowly siphons your time away from yourself. It is great for growing up and retiring, but to succeed, you’ll need greater efforts than anywhere else in the world.

There are a few trends forming in our lives which might be coming true within the next 10 years. As a believer of my own judgments about the future of our world, I decided to adjust my life accordingly. I’ll start with the least crazy of all these predictions. Based on statistics of my predicting ability in the stock market, please take into account the fact that my predictions usually takes about 6 months longer to realize than what I originally thought.

Groceries:

Walmart groceries. I did a quick check of staple grocery items between Loblaws and Walmart and found that Walmart’s offers are generally cheaper than the giant grocery store except for fresh produces which Walmart doesn’t offer. Loblaw’s stock has been declining and I doubt their distribution network can be as cheap as Walmart’s. Walmart is also showing a lot of intelligence in selecting the produces that they wish to compete with.

Connected life:

With Google’s online storage option only few months from release and the current trend of extremely cheap and basic laptops for $200 (eee PC for example). My dream of a mobile and connected life from a small and portable terminal laptop can soon come true. I’ve also started using Google Notebook for most of my online needs, replacing word, bookmarks, small personal diary, reminders and to do list. Once I get my hands on an eee PC and hook up my skype, account, I will be selling my cell phone and switching my calendar to google. I do suggest holding off on uploading any copyrighted material on google for now. Wait a bit and see who’s suing who. Google will be the Microsoft of tomorrow, but with a better conscious. They haven’t pissed me off in anyway so far. I am also freezing my project of turning MyBookWorld into a small server for now since reviving the hardware will take a significant amount of time (usually involves spending a whole weekend by myself, which I am really not looking forward to).

Switch to 3d movies:

The future lies in downloadable movies as home theaters become mainstream and equipment costs decrease. I recently browsed online for equipments and realized that it will only take about $1000 to setup a home theater. But going out to movies as a social activity will never die. It will simply be replaced with something that we can’t have at home: IMAX. If you haven’t seen the recent Beowulf movie, I suggest you do that now. The bottleneck of 3d movies used to the equipments needed to film them. Now that we’ve proven close to real life films are possible to create digitally and make profit, that bottleneck has lifted. This is a game changer.

Design focus:

Unless the 3d initiative kicks in, the computing power will be able to generate contents closer and closer to real world. The industry is less about new features that was previously impossible due to computer limitations and moving towards the territory of whether or not the consumers will pick it up after a short demo. This is where design and user friendliness reign as the major factor of a purchase.

Blog Libel in full effect:

Enough people will sue for defamation that we’ll all start watching what we say or taking the blog private. Enough with the junk already.

Chinese as the official language:

I still have the dream of “teach chinese overseas” as a job to get paid and explore the world at the same time.

I can’t believe that I am still standing in line waiting for my turn since I last mentioned Nintendo’s Wii. This is the first time in my memory where a console remained sold out a year after its release. Where 200 people still lined up outside of the store under the duress of sub zero Canadian winter to cheer like wartime buddies when receiving their coupon to one Wii console.

The demographic of people has changed. The line no longer consists of hardcore enthusiastic gamers, but instead is populated by your average mom and pop types. It’s harder to relate to one another because we are from different age groups, but the stories of each person’s desperate search brings a little warmth to our heart. Especially when we know that the fight is finally over. At least for those of us who managed to get one.

One dad has been everywhere on the island of Montreal, another has traveled to the states. While a whole family was coordinating each other between 4 different stores to enhance their chance of success. That is how I know that several others stores received their stock at the same time and already have a lineup of 200 by 6AM. I have to thank the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere and that the majority of people here aren’t your typical hardcore gamers.

“It will only get worse as the holiday approaches”

At 7:30AM I arrived and placed myself 17th in line when only 20 units was advertised to be in store. I got really lucky at my estimation of time this time, but the same cannot be said if I were to line up outside another store at another part of the city. The accurate analysis boosted my confidence in myself and I am beginning to wonder if my estimation of Ebay Wii price tag of $500 right before Christmas will come true as well and if I will my console when that price is reached.

When will this madness end? How many people bought it for the hype? Will gamers be competing against grandmas from now on to get their hands on one? On one side, I am glad that the general population is getting into gaming, on the other, I am looking at them with disdain thinking “What do they know about gaming?”.

“What do I know about gaming?”