UltraCrepidate

I have several projects underway and would like to have a few of them come to fruition if possible. Most of them started in 2007 and were being polished on and off whenever I get a weekend free. Like always, I wanted too much and ended up spreading myself too thin. It doesn’t mean that I am going to change my approach though. Having multiple projects means that I can work on the project with the maximum efficiency based on the condition of the day that I chose to work on it, taking weather, money, alertness and the type of work into account. The effect of this arrangement means that it drags out longer, but overall, I complete tasks faster because I get to batch similar jobs together and plan accordingly. I will list old projects that are nearing completion first and discuss new ones that I have started later

Old projects

Repair of forever flashlight: This one started when my father broke the flashlight by dropping it on the ground while shaking it. Instead of throwing it in the garbage and getting a new one, I decided to take on the unknown challenge and attempt to repair this somewhat advanced flash light. The journey took me back down the memory lane to revisit some simple college analog circuitry as well as physics and magnetism. Later, I managed to acquire a copy of its PCB (Printed Circuit Board) schematics and whistled in awe as I flipped through pages of well designed simple concepts. Anyone who passed the 2nd year of engineering has the skill to put these together, but only these people actually went ahead and did it.

I had to devise plans to test each individual components on the circuit and find the right tools to perform the correct measurement. Once those are acquired (within budget), the testing itself took only 2 days. The best memory I have about this project is in a shouting match between me and the store clerk of Access Electronic about whether or not a 0.22F 5.5V capacitor exists. I backed down because I wasn’t confidence in my own belief against a store clerk who’s had 10 years of experience helping hobbyists choose capacitors. It turns out to be the right decision after all. I later found out that they actually don’t have the type of capacitors that I am trying to find. These are called supercapacitors.

Mobile personal server: I mentioned it once in passing as I was getting frustrated at bricking one of the major components of this setup. Things have since changed and I’ve got the server part established as a permanent presence. What I lack now is a mobile terminal that is both ultra portable and low cost. The announcement of eeePC couldn’t have come at a better time and it is being shipped to my address as I am writing this entry. I am down to two final steps before completing the whole setup. Tunneling through my work place’s proxy/firewall and buying a $100 HDD for backup purposes. Eventually, I’d like to add another layer of protection by using port knocking.

Digital filing: A requirement for this to work properly is in setting up the mobile personal server. However, I can still pre-sort my photo folder and music folder before establish a general structure for the grander scheme of things.

Backpacking through Africa: It’s been 1.5 years now since I’ve taken on any kind of vacation. These are mainly caused by me changing jobs and never having any vacation days because I’ve always been a temporary worker. Even when I did take a vacation 1.5 years ago, I didn’t use it on relaxing. I used that time to look for a new job. In May, I am going on my back packing trip to a few countries in Africa after accumulating two years of vacation time and using it together. It won’t let me cover all of them so I will have to return where I left off a few years later. The conclusion of this project can be found here.

Home improvement: There are several furniture in certain styles which I can’t find in the current offerings (Or will end up costing me an arm and a leg) so I decided to make my own furniture from raw supplies. The design phase took the longest and has been materializing in my mind more solidly as I absorb the nature of my condo.

Tax optimizer: As most of you are aware, I’ve been investing in the stock market and had a hell of a time figuring out how to declare it last year. As the list of maneuvers become available to me and their complexities increase, optimizing my portfolio will only get harder. So I need to devise an algorithm that does it for me. So far, I am still playing with excel spreadsheets to test out the viability of different strategies, but eventually, I will convert it to Ruby.

Making a game with Ruby language: I just started this. I am still at the initial stage of requirement gathering and training in Ruby. It is a bigger undertaking than I originally thought. Or rather, I am not used to the amount of single tasking and constant focusing needed to make this work.

“You have to be able to look at a stock and say I am going to buy it at this price and then execute when it reaches that price.” ~Warren Buffett (Or some variation in wording which I can’t recall in exact details)

I did that and now I am left dealing with the aftermath of what we call success. In a market where traditional bank runs are shown on TV, gas price is up the roof and people losing their houses everywhere. I prospered. In fact, more than prospered and I will simply leave it at that.

The intensity of the success within such a short amount of time meant that I am constantly filled with adrenaline and I’ve been like this for a week now. Every time I wake up I feel tired from an over active dream. My mind is on hyper drive constantly and I wondered about just how good I am.

At the same time, I am constantly going through reality checks to keep myself grounded. The need to cry out my success to others is unbearable yet I know to be inappropriate in the current economic condition. I’ve only giddly let it slip during in a discussion with Mark and already, it irked the hell out of my humble self. I am also doing constant checks against my decision now that the feeling of success and superiority is coursing through every pores in my body. For I know that cockiness is the first step towards failure.

Yet little signs here and there still showed through interactions in my daily life. Mostly because I am really close to not being able to justify working at a job anymore from a return per effort perspective. Self sustainability is not that far away. The lack of sleep, high level of adrenaline, the constant reality checks/self analysis and my internal return per effort algorithm which is constantly on. They all contributed to this moment right now. I don’t know how to properly put it in words.

It’s not a feeling, but rather a state of overexcitement. Kind of like the day after we took the gold medal in a big dance competition against 30 other couples. Tired and rough from the physical and emotional drain, yet the adrenaline is still propping us up while life all around has returned to its slow pace. We had to restrain ourselves so we don’t jump up in joy while walking across a depressing rainy street towards a breadshop for breakfast. Yeah. Kinda like that.

Disclosure

I own stocks in Activision Blizzard(ATVI) at the time of this writing.

Background

Since I reap quite a bit of revenue from the gaming industry this year and project that I will continue to do so in the coming 5 years, I decided that it is time for me to take it as seriously as a job. After all, the 23 years of gaming in my life must account for something right? It is not time wasted like my parents have been trying to make me admit. When I started playing games, we were the minority, the “losers” and “nerds” that are socially inept. The outcasts of society.

Which is why it is very heart warming to be on the sideline cheering on the recent developments in my beloved gaming industry. It has grown and matured into this multi-billion dollar economy that people can no longer ignore and possibly become the salvation that the battered music industry is looking for. It will, one day, surpass even the movie industry due to its ease of access and interactivity.

In any case, I’ve since rescinded my place in life as a hard core gamer and plays game only for novelty and the stories of a few franchises that I’ve been following since I was young. It’s still a nice and relaxing hobby, but a few events gave me insight on how I can put those experiences to use. I started investing in the gaming industry. To say I was dead on with my choices would not be an overstatement right now. The financial levelheadedness seem to be a good balance against my obsession with games I like. I am able to look at games objectively and properly analyze its impacts on different demographics of people. Being a person of mixed cultural background who’ve lived in different countries also helps in the understanding of people. In fact, it’s all about the understanding of people.

Enough of the background information, let’s get on with what I found out after watching game play footage for 6 hours.

Analysis

Ubisoft

The French company Ubisoft is really good at making games with an artistic flare. Although their game engine and style hasn’t had any ground breaking face lift, they seem to have incorporated the Japanese’s flashy RPG fighting moves into their recent and future releases. I might just buy a few of their games when I eventually assemble a good enough entertainment system. I can only associate the result of their works to the fact that they are French.

Activision Blizzard

The news in this year is the merger of these two great company. There’s enough media coverage on the web that you don’t need to hear the details from me. What I can provide you is how well their upcoming games will be received. It will be very well received and Guitar Hero: World Tour will beat Rock Band 2. I was worried about the dilution of this brand because they came out with so many different titles for different platforms in such a short amount of time. I believe that “World Tour” platform will allow them to keep the software/hardware mix the same while amassing longevity. Starcraft 2 will be bought by 1 out of 2 Koreans so we can expect at least 20 million copies sold. WOW is business as usual since there isn’t any stunning MMORPG that is revolutionary enough to dethrone it yet. Diablo 3 is disappointing.

There is nothing new and innovative in the Activision Blizzard pipeline, which is going to be a worrying trend in say, 5 years. However, the near term profitability of this firm remains very high as they pimp out the current collection of franchises.

Electronic Arts

Surprisingly, most of the innovations are coming out from this publisher that I really don’t like. Spore will be a cash cow, but I am not sure if the money generated will be enough to cover the R&D expenses put into the game. I also don’t see any longevity, re playability or social connectivity in this game. It’s a one shot game that will be put on the shelf after “GAME OVER”. The hype is great, but it took too long and too many man hours. Expect a few of these new innovative titles to stick and gain a following to eventually mature into a franchise with many sequels. Short term profitability is in doubt, but they can still whore out their sports titles for a while.

Take Two Interactive

GTA4, enough said. After that, it’s a matter of whether or not they can stay afloat until GTA5.

THQ

Nothing surprising. They are just repackaging games that’s been done to death with upgraded graphics.

Sony

Everything they do takes too long. I mean, it’s good looking and flashy and all, but at what cost? Looking at the recent games that already came out, most of them can go toe to toe with the graphics of the Final Fantasy series. The only thing that’s left is their great storyline. It appeals less and less to me. Their @Home is a great innovation though. Seems like a persistent world that they can improve on and eventually port over to PS4. It also looks like a lot of the thing that Sony is doing with the PS3 is an experiment at something more persistent so they can eventually use it in PS4.

Sega

Die already.

Part 1 of the Morocco backpacking series: Backpacking through Morocco

May 4, 2008: Flying into Casablanca

Google map position

On the plane to Casablanca (Dar-el-Beida), after a year of planning. I am having trouble sleeping because babies are crying in a orchestrated symphony. Their screams pierce through my earplug induced isolation. Nope, sleep is out of question. Why oh why did you bring your babies? Standing around in the hallway chatting in Arabic, oblivious of other people’s discomfort?

In six more hours I will be smack in the middle of a strange place. Still hasn’t hit me how fucked up that will be. I am just enjoying a momentary serenity in transit.

Costs:
Taxi split: 25 Dihram
Train ticket Mark: 35 Dihram
Train ticket Peter: 35 Dihram
Room split: 220 Dihram
Phone card Peter: 20 Dihram
Phone card Mark: 20 Dihram
Tea split: 30 Dihram
Bread Peter: 1 Dihram
Mars bar Mark: 1 Dihram
Water split: 10 Dihram
Dinner split: 365 Dihram
Tea split: 14 Dihram
Spicey desert Peter: 3 Dihram
Mark exchanged for 1100 Dihram
Peter exchanged for 700 Dihram

Our first dose of the local flavor started with buying train tickets to where we want to go. Not knowing how the local transport works and how they charge, we went ahead and bought train tickets to our destination. I felt like an idiot repeating the name Casablanca and pointing around until the cashier understood what I meant. Maybe they drew amusement out of our confusion, I am glad that I at least served as entertainment of the day.

Can’t help but feeling ripped off like I’d feel in any foreign country after landing. From the desperate taxi driver who did everything for us for 25 DH to the bread shop owner who sold us a few pastries for 0.38 Dihram. I am constantly asking myself: “What is the right price? Am I paying double?”

There are a lot of Quebecois and French people, tourists that are white as ghosts and invades the streets with their towering castle of a bus. Oops my mistake, these are British and Americans. The French are more willing to go local, since most Moroccan speak French here.

We are spending our first day in Casablanca. It is pretty much a disappointment so far. One out of six encounters with the locals are nice, the rest turned out to be people selling secret “good” stuff, people who gouge you by doubling the price and people begging for money. I don’t think we’ve seen all the cities yet, but so far the impression I get isn’t very pleasant. We walked around trying to blend in as much as a white ghost and the only Chinese guy can in order to observe the population. Our guide, lonely planet said that Casablanca is a city which you won’t appreciate until you’ve toured the rest of Morocco. We’ll see about that.

On our first day in this strange country, we discovered that:

• They love soccer
• There’s no woman in scantly clad cloth
• Men love wearing suits, even in the heat
• Casablanca’s prices are all jacked up by tourism
• Everything is closed on Sundays
• The priest who scream for prayers have great lung capability

Back to series index

The first bank-like (In this case, thrift institution that deals with deposits and mortgages instead of pure deposits) institution has failed and I get to see the first physical bank run in my life where people line up to withdraw their money. IndyMac paves the way for images of what’s to come… other bank failures. I still can’t believe that my semi joking advice to my colleague of having $2000 in cash might actually be the best advice I’ve given in my life. I, on the other hand, am not following my own advice.

The reasoning is simple. I am relying on the government backed insurance that ensures $100,000 of my deposits will be guaranteed. Since I have not reached that limit, I know that all my money is safe… or is it? A simple question requires a simple answer. I need to know what will cause the worst case scenario where all of them are wiped out? The conclusion is this. It will take the bankruptcy of my banking institution as well as the dry out of the insurance fund to wipe everything to zero. Since we are in Canada and trails the US by 6 months, I decided to take a look at the entities in US to get an idea of what’s to come.

For those of you unaware. FDIC is the entity. Currently they have $53 billion in the insurance fund which goes into taking over the failed banks. For IndyMac, it wiped out $8 billion of the fund. Which makes you ask this question. How many more bank failures can the FDIC take and what happens when the fund runs out? For a rough estimation, assuming each bank failure wipes out the same amount (which is an exagerration since IndyMac is really big and the most extreme, subsequent banks that fails might be smaller), it will take 6 more bank runs to wipe out FDIC funds.

So the next question is. What happens then? Research shows that the FDIC is then not obligated to pay your deposit if it doesn’t have anything in its fund. Even though the entity is created by the congress, it is however created as an independent agency. Meaning that the government has no obligation to back it up. It is up to the whim of those politicians you are paying to decide to rescue it, just like Bear Sterns. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (minus the countless others that they allowed to fail).

The moment the 6th bank fail. Social unrest will happen as the rest of the population will start seeing their whole life savings wiped out. Government intervention will come too late as the avalanche effect will see to it that it happens too fast for any entity to react. Or if it is even possible to react, too big for anything to affect the momentum that’s already in place.

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a while knows that I’ve been avidly investing in the stock market for the past two years. It helped me gain the perspective of the big picture as well as providing emotional stability by honing my heart in the constant onslaught of an emotional whirlpool. They say that money loss is second only to love loss and in some Asian countries, it might even trump love. I agree with that to certain extend. After all, I did survive losing $10,000 on book only to gain it back the next month. The ordeal left me feeling numb or not at all. Suffice to say that dips and rises in the market no longer affects my normal life anymore. I am beginning to be more and more like commander Data from StarTrek.

Not that I am happy about the downfall of Bear Sterns, IndyMac, CountryWide Financial and numerous others to come (Lehman brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae), but the fact that companies valued at above 30 billion could disappear within a month amazes me. With a market in turmoil, you can no longer trust the public statements of any company. It seems to be a trend that the more that they are under water, the more they make the effort to announce that everything is fine. It isn’t rare to see a company announcing one thing and does exactly the opposite the next day (with the CEO promptly fired the following day of course).

I knew of these of course. The reaction has always been part of the possibilities. I just never had enough experience to know the percentage of such possibilities because I am still learning as I go along. It took guts and decisive action to cut losses against my emotions. It is also a great exercise in trusting myself, my decisions and my ability to read people. Throughout all this bullshit, I know I will come out stronger. I already am a little bit and I can feel just how much more I will be when all the strategic planning (That I’ve taken the pain to make) comes to fruition in 4 years.

I am like a kid, going up to the recently widowed, asking to perform an autopsy on her deceased husband.

I have been chasing the idea of simplicity so intensely that I overlooked some of its fundamentals. For example, does the new change require extensive research and work? Is letting things as is a problem with the normal functioning of daily life? Can I pay someone to do it faster? Most importantly of all, does simplicity actually convey the right message?

I have been brainwashed by the knowledge of “less is more” ever since I started dancing. For certain things, it is justified, but at the same time, how many instances of “More is MORE” am I leaving out and ignoring? The easiest example, is practices of any skill. I would never say to myself that 1 minute of complete submersion in the art is enough from “less is more” and “keep it simple stupid”.

More importantly than taking the saying at face value, we should instead look at why people sometimes need to say this. Imagine a situation where you feel you need to say this to somebody else, go through the scenario once and reflect at the end of it, why you feel you need to say it?

No matter how many time I go through the same scenario, the one conclusion I can draw from it is that the person has gone overboard into an obsessive compulsive behavior. “Less is more” should only be repeated when you’ve lost your way and couldn’t see the sweet spot of price vs performance anymore. At least, that’s the conclusion I’ve finally arrived at in life.

Had my first condo meeting since I moved in. We were all surprised at my age. For them, I am very young, to me, they are very much older. Other than that, things progressed in an orderly manner conducted by a person from the management team. After raising my issue at heart, snow removal during the winter, I remained silent throughout the meeting, seeing no need for anything else and relying on the 500+ years of experiences from the combined age of the group. Who’s going to give me slack anyway and I really am not that comfortable discussing finances in French. In fact, this is the first time I tried to discuss finances in French. So many unfamiliar legal terms.

What did surprise me though, is the unwillingness of the people to take up leadership position. Most of it fell to the young and capable (and away from me due to my sucky French and my noobness). I’ve always thought that older people tend to lead more, but what I saw was fraility, the fear of making mistakes and general dislike of responsibilities. Yes they’ve been there and done that… for sure.

In any case, the president position is in good hands and I can continue on to a trouble free life, provided that I pay my condo fees on time of course.

Sometimes, I really don’t understand why I push myself like this. Putting my ego on the line so others can trample it over and over again. Am I losing my dignity? Wouldn’t life be simpler if I just do what I always did? No stress,  no excitement and my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. I’d feel good about myself.

It’s a sign that I still don’t deal well with rejection. Whenever I tell myself that it is ok we are just not a good fit, in the subconscious level, there’s always an equal resistance that wanted to push it forward even more.

I think what hurts me the most is that I did not expect the process to feel the same as in year 2003 when I first graduated. There’s no excuse this time, 5 years of hard work experience later, it is still the same.

Everyone has a tail. Signs that shows irritation or discomfort when you are not perfectly aligned with the world. I am no exception despite great efforts to eliminate these tics. When I get irritated or annoyed, I tend to sigh alot (recently replace with exhalation) or shake my legs like crazy. On different occasions, I’ve been observed to use the table as tam tam. When I lie, I always have problem looking people straight in the eyes.

They are all perfectly logical reactions, at least to me, they can be easily explained. Sighing is an attempt to get rid of that heaviness I feel in my chest so that fresh air can get into my lungs and chill the boiling inferno that is inside. Shaking my leg represent my desire to do something, however, the situation does not allow me to exhaust my physical energy so I shake, in an effort to get rid of the excessive build up. Not able to look at someone in the eyes is pretty self explanatory. The day that I am able to do that is a day of reckoning. You can be sure that I’ve completely gone over to the dark side then.

In the past few days, I’ve observed myself exhibiting all the bad tics. Which is usually a sign that things have turned to the worst, but in reality, not much has changed. I have simply built up too much hype in what’s to come and in turn, had fallen hard when none of the efforts turned into fruition… yet.

When things gets complicated, they tend to fail. It is especially true in my self motivated attempt at pushing myself to my limits. My well thought out reward/punishment scheme finally fell apart in April when things got too busy and I don’t have time each day to update the numerous details of all the activities I have to do. I’ve bumped into a plateau that every other self improvement specialists must have encountered. Too much planning.

So, to keep it simple, I decided to use Twitter for that. It’s very easy and simple to understand. Simply put, there will be 3 items that I have to achieve by a certain date. One long term goal, one medium and one short. Out of the 3, one will be related to my profession while the other 2 are general life improvement items. If I achieve something by a certain date, I get a reward, if not I get a punishment.

Rewards needs to be small and to the point. I failed at my previous attempt because I have a tendency to build up lots of points so I can go for the big items. This way, I force myself to reward right away. So far I have these as rewards:

Short: Starbucks Coffee

Medium: Movie

Long: $50 spending money on presents

Punishment is hard to think up. It has to be something I hate doing and will be too lazy to improve on while at the same time, not required for the normal functioning of life (else they’d just be one of the items on the twitter list). Being motivated to improve, it is actually hard to find fitting punishments. These are my punishments:

Short: Practice typing for 1 hour

Medium: Play tam tam for 2 hours

Long: Put $50 into RRSP