UltraCrepidate

The sad morning

The dense fog hugged everything around me, dampening life as it blocked out my ability to sense the surrounding. Giving the day a hint of seriousness and sadness as if life itself was weeping. It’s strange that I am feeling at a loss. Especially so when it is for an object, but I can’t help it. When I thought about the fact that I will no longer see this car ever in my life again, I felt ashamed. I must be cruel for discarding it after it has rendered my family a decade and a half of service.

Its history

It’s had a good life though. Our family took care of it with all the money we can until I became the sole owner of it. Now that I think about it, I am the one who did the most damage to it in its life span. Having crashed it twice throughout its life time, damaging the tires and transmissios severely. It explains why I have so much problems in those areas near the end of its time.

Some statistics to remember it by: Toyota Camry V6 LE gray 1992

• Fuel economy: 17 mpg
• Automatic transmission
• Power window, power doors
• ABS
• Average cost of gas per month: $120
• Traveled 325,000 kilometers
• Onece side impact in Ottawa by a van
• Once rear ended in Ottawa by a van
• V6 engine (still in perfect condition)
• Fed it Premium gasoline all throughout its life except for the last 2 years when gas is above 1.00/liter
• Transmission completely changed when it’s 5 years old
• Air conditioner died from rust due to lack of use
• Tires replaced
• Rear caliper failed and replaced
• All the suspensions died
• Rear load balancer steel beam rusted completely
• Starter died (on the final day to be traded in)

It has been both a mentor and a great reliable ride for me… well as reliable as it liked. Now that I think about it, it has been reliable on occasions that were NOT critical. But I still have to admit that it was there with me on every steps of my life.

• When I was 16 and learning to drive
• The car that was used to transport me and my meager belongings to my dorm
• Drove my first date around in it
• Drove to my first dance competition in it.
• Had my first car accident in it

It did have a habit of failing at the most crucial moment too. A quirk in its personality that is part of its charm

• The hand break locked up on the day of my driver’s license test.
• The battery died when we were ready and packed to go to a competition
• The starter refused to do its job on the last day of its life when I was going to trade it in

Other than these worth mentioning events, it has provided me with reliable services especially during the harsh Canadian winter. Watching it slowly die in the past 2 years has been memorable. Now that it is gone these memories somehow provides me with warmth. I am glad that I get to drive it in its last two years of life. In dying slowly, it forced me to learn the principles of car maintenance and repair so that the next one won’t suffer as badly as it. The most important lesson that it taught me is the relationship between rust and its longevity. When I decided to junk it, its outward appearance is still pristine, however, the underside tells a different story.

The nail in the coffin is of course, the load balancer. Due to record snowfall for the past two years, it was constantly in touch with either snow or salty slush while parked. The compacted snow in the parking lot accelerated the process by grating off the layer of rust proofing material that’s supposed to protect all metals.

Thank you for the services you’ve rendered dear ol’ car. I will remember you.

November 06, 2008

Causalien out.

Today, I finally realized this fact. I do not love engineering. I mean, I am good at it, but I do not want to be in it.

The revelation came when I thought to myself while analyzing stocks: “Man I can do this all day, not get bored and feel like I have achieved something.”

This revelation is so big that these simple lines deserves a post by itself and is filed under Lifemark.

I am less and less of a believer of the long held belief that success is a matter of effort. We human, have a tendency to define things in black and white forgetting to include all the other conditions that goes into the biggest odd for a success. Yes, I am going to start calling that now: “Odds that might lead to success.”

We often fail to factor in, the opportunities, economic conditions as well as age into account. Also failing miserably, to account for the possibility that maybe, just maybe. Some had it easier than the other. Something I am still bitter about and finally recongnized as a fact so I can move on. The fact of the matter is, due to a difference of 4 years, my friend Frank had it waaay easier than I did.

Think 60% higher starting salary at no experience needed to be hired as a programmer vs my 2 years of perilous search for a tech job. The only difference being simply when he graduated.

I have to admit this fact and forget the bitterness. I have to admit to myself that I was foolish not to study the society as a whole and that I went into this domain whole heartedly without pondering the repercussion first. Just because it is the hardest program and the most looked up upon job, doesn’t mean it’s the greatest. I have to admit that I made a mistake. Yes I MADE IT, so that in the future, I WILL take it into account.

Moving on, the most sensible thing for me to do, is to look at the future. What will emerge out of this mess that we are in and what will I have to do to catch the wave.

Some update on just daily life since I haven’t written journal like entries for a while.

Since I used up all my vacation time for the trip, and my famillies will all be overseas, I will be working through most of the Christmas time except for the mandatory 2 days. At least, there ARE lots of things to ponder after an eventful year. Or I should take this time to complete one of my projects and successfully pick my first padlock like a good thief would do.

Sometimes I wish I can have a normal Christmas… If I am white. Truth is, I am not and I never understands Christmas. Nor do I feel the warmth of Christmas. How is the loneliest holiday in the world for most people a good thing? I’d rather have a good traditional Chinese New year. Now THAT is what I miss the most.

The economy is doing so bad that the odds of me actually getting laid off has surpassed 50%. I guess I should mentally and financially prepare for that eventuality. If that happens, all these optimization I’ve done would’ve been for nothing. Just when I finally figured out an email system that works for 20+ emails a day scenario and my inbox finally reached 0.

Projects are getting completed left and right now that I have adapted a new method. Rather, reverted back to the old method of SINGLE TASKING. It makes sense in two ways. One, you don’t have to task switch. Two, it makes others feel that you are dedicated. Which is true.Writing a project journal entry really helps too. It allow me to see the small progresses, while reminding me that I have to do something before writing any entry.

Causalien Out.

Having experiences investing in the market have made me a skeptical person when judging the success rate of a project. Especially so when it comes to empty promises. Don’t get me wrong, I was once the enthusiastic techie who’d jump at a chance to participate in some grandiose research project. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I put in 120% of my efforts, the spill over will be enough to make it successful.

I’ve since learned that the success of the project is a correlation between its complexity and the health of its parent company. Take the first major project I participated in for example. It was an exotic product that will probably be a game changer in terms of how things are done in the medical field.

However, the price of the company’s stock had been falling for 2 years straight. Back then, I didn’t see that as having any correlation with the project that they are working on. I was wrong. That can only be true in companies with solid foundations.

As the number of quaterly and annual financial report I read increases. I can extract more and more from the numbers in the maze that they provide. With each pitfall around the corner that I stumble upon, I gain the ability to see one more secret hidden in these numbers. My dad always tells me to leave that to the analysts who are better at it and I was content at doing that for a while.  Until the recent market crash taught me one important thing. Most of these big shots in the financial world got through their studies because their parents paid good money to the universities which they attend. They got there through inheritance.

Take an acquaintance of mine in Ottawa for example.  Who’s now working in the treasury for example. His math skill is questionable and he had no experiences in a similar position. I have to say that his family’s influence was the major reason he got the job. Now think about his credentials and think about the fact that he is now responsible for your tax dollars in the government you will understand why I don’t trust the big financial heads.

Done

1. Find and install OpenGL IDE

I think I am all set for learning OpenGL. Found a very useful website that should help me in the future. I don’t think I need to learn all the lessons. As long as I understand how to model a cube and texture onto one of the face then I should be fine. Question is, will the card be able to handle both GPGPU instructions and OpenGL display commands?

To do

1. Find out how to draw a 3d object
2. Setup development environment in Linux
3. GPGPU and GT
4. Sigma Delta

Discussed the drawing of 3d objects with several others who’ve done it before. Processes seems straight forward enough, but the fact that the display update is done in a while loop is worrying me. Either way, I have enough information to start with a first run now.

I thought about how to proceed with the Linux development environment. Now that I have successfully RAIDed my two HDDs in RAID 1 config, storage capacity went down significantly. Plus I am really not in the mood to further fuck around with the disks, linux’s ability to see the two disk as separate entities (even though it’s hardware RAID) and the potential for a journalling system’s failure wrecking havoc on a mirrored set. I opt to see if I can boot my PC through a USB external HDD.

GPGPU and GT. Even though they are the core of this project. I seem to be spending most of my time getting all the surrounding technologies to work. Hoping for the day when I can just sit down and write algorithms.

I have started converting Verilog code of the sigma-delta decimation filter into circuit diagrams. Drawing it by hand is slow, but should be sufficient since I don’t have a million bucks to spend on buying a license for the tools I used while working. Researching freewares will probably take too much time. So brute force low tech should be the most efficient way. On a funny side note, somebody wants me to go in for an interview. They are looking for a Sigma-Delta decimation filter designer. He’s from one of those head hunter agency so he’s probably just coaxing me to respond. Will make a note to reply with a sublime “FUCK OFF” message for fun.

What I am seeing

HD is in and NTSC + PAL is on its way out. This is the impression I am getting as I stand at the front line between manufacturer pitches and customer demands.  The real shift is going to take some time and will start with video broadcasting (currently happening) and end with security camera’s transition (due to facial recognition software requirement).

So far, I have been involved in a few systems where the HD input is 1920×1080 @ 30 fps. Most of the teams started out for the first time and thought that it will only be a matter of simple code change, they are in for a big surprise.

A snapshot of the industry

As things stand right now (November 2008), the broadcasting sector is already fully transitioned into HD format while the rest of the technology sector involved with images are still in the research phase. This is due to the relatively simple use of technology from the video broadcasting industry. Basically, there is no need to process data and real time performance is not necessary. Therefore, up until now, the only bottleneck they have ever encountered, is figuring out where to get a CMOS sensor to take 1920×1080 and how to store the high definition data.

The topics discussed

Because storage of the medium is the first and foremost problem everyone who dabblesin HD will encounter, I will go through a scenario in the first part of this serie where I defined the requirements for Hard Disk Drives that will be used to handle HD storage needs.

I will follow up this article by doing a step by step decision process of the rest of the system specs based on image processing needs. Finally, I will complete this serie with an indepth look into some of the techniques we can use to speed up the display and defining the display hardware requirements that factors into your project decision.

Crossed path with a woman who looked like Lauren but, upon interrogation, turned out to be somebody else. Still, it didn’t stop my heart from jumping all over the place in joy during that brief moment of confusion. It gave me a lot of questions to ponder.

I’ve passed by other people from my past before, but none of them felt as potent as a simple possibility that it might be her. None of them felt as comfortable either. How do I convey this difference. With others, there’s always some type of anxiety lurking around somewhere. Either making me self conscious or showy.

It’s probably because of the fact that I just flat asked her out on Valentine’s day and got rejected. Well, rejected in my mind back then because I was a 1 and 0 guy. Everything was black and white. Well, I didn’t want to have any regret and I didn’t know any other way. So it was the best I could’ve done I guess. It is kind of stupid because I am now regretting the fact that I gained my current knowledge too late. I shouldn’t have given up, but I did. Because that’s the type of guy I was, that’s how I did things. Take a big breath, have ample time to prepare and perform a do or die maneuver.

The comfortable feeling must’ve been a result of that. Nothing bad happened. She didn’t make fun of me or tell anyone else about it. She just accept that fact and continued on with life. No judgment no nothing. I was the one who acted weird. Then, with the stress that is to come with engineering. It got brushed to the back of my mind till today.

So I started wondering. What ended up happening to that girl with a beautiful mind?