Loco

Sometimes I think I do things that the normal person would strike off as being insane.

So I started this company 4 months ago after failing at a shot at algorithmic trading (where I was drawing close to nothing each month). After an intensive period of learning an entirely new framework for web development in Python, I think I managed to gain some expertise in the area. The first project is currently standing at 75% completion and it seems like the goal post keeps shifting further at each iteration.

And then last week, after a bit of cajoling and careful consideration and prayer on my part, I joined a start up working on an area closest to my heart - photography. Shalt not release more information at this point in time but it sure beats working alone at home in my boxers. The team comprises on the founding member who doubles up as the UI designer and chief administrator, a very experienced French developer who is the chief technology officer and me. My role is unique as I straddle both sides of business and technology, with a focus on generating user growth. Lots of cool things planned and I must say, the team is amazing.

Based on my extensive study of the MBTI metrics, I concluded that the two other members were INTJ. Surprise! So I made them do the test and true enough, my suspicions were confirmed. The odds of working in such a team is so low that it becomes negligible.

However, I still my other client work to be done - web development, simple web-related stuff, photography etc. It's not a lot of money for a lot of my time. I'm sleeping less and less each day and I know that I have to focus more on one thing. For now, it's simply crazy but I'm loving it while it lasts. Thank God for all the opportunities and its really amazing how His grace pulled me through those difficult and lost periods.

P.S. I just purchased the latest MacBook Pro as the old MacBook was dying and it is a wonderful machine to work on. Dual booted into Linux - another sign of craziness, installing Linux on a brand new machine.

Learning Points

Had a good chat with J yesterday as we compared experiences from his project management role and my own. 

Conceptually, I have in place a good framework:

1. Agile process, hence modularity

2. No hard coding, everything is relative

3. Planning ahead for future extensions

4. Software versioning

5. Functional scope delivery

However, my experience in the current project has led me to think of several points that I require to improve on:

1. Communication, need to have greater collaboration with stakeholders

2. Contractual terms need to be clearly defined - that the clients know that we have to work in a very agile manner, which requires Point 1

3. A clearer process for collecting payments on work delivered

4. Incorporate more features of agile contracts, a shift away from more traditional waterfall methods where the entire project needs to be completed for delivery

    a. Clients need to be briefed early on how agile works as it's not clear to them

    b. Convince client that the processes will be iterative, cannot afford to wait

    c. Keep pestering clients to test as work is being pushed, feedback is important

5. Greater efforts to be focused on iterations - hence need for greater collaboration

6. Convince clients that it is a partnership not a top-down approach

7. Quotations must not be done in the old-school manner but still allow clients to plan for their own budget:

    a. Fixed-scope, fixed-timeline is a no-no, attempt to have time-based payments

    b. Attempt to quote from a functional point of view, time estimated to complete individual abstracted scopes instead of detailed functions

   c. Reduce paperwork involved, quotations to contain story points instead of clearly delineated processes

As this process itself is iterative in nature, I have to quickly gain validated learning from my experiences. Speed is imperative. Pivot and accept failure as part of the learning process.

Key is to convince people to shift away from deeply rooted experiences in working from fixed scopes. Plan for smoother cash flows from work delivered and expect delays.

It hasn't been easy at all. Yet, I know that this has helped me to become clearer in my approaches and I continue to pray for strength.

In my email to a church elder yesterday, I told him how I have not been lied to, misled, angered and disappointed as I have been in the past four months on this new path.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

17 Though the fig-tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

19 The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

On Staring

This post would be more about staring into the abyss. Recent events and stumbles have led me to dig deeper into the ground I stand. So many times, you hear the familiar rags-to-riches story and get so inspired, only to realise that somehow, the difficulties are abstracted away.

In reality, you wake up not knowing what will come along today. In reality, you go to bed fearing what will come along tomorrow. It's a yo-yo ride between euphoria and dismay. Yet, there are countless other things you could be thankful for - most of all people who still love you despite your circumstances.

And you relentlessly plow ahead with you head bowed. Too many times I faced disappointing situations in the past few months, people who seem so promising end up being nothing but a distraction. Lessons to learn about trust and how to keep oneself from being needlessly angry. 

There is the Disappearing Clown who embellishes each word he says, promises you a return on your work, asks for a quotation and you never hear from them again. Period. Phone calls, messages and emails go unanswered. But they are last seen on WhatsApp 15 minutes ago. Thanks a lot for wasting my time.

The Time Waster is closely related to the Disappearing Clown except that the relationship does not progress beyond the initial meeting. You carved out some time from the busy schedule to meet this person, who promises a lot and talks about 'strategic future growth', only to balk at your rates and doesn't even bother politely declining your services. Thanks, a lot, you spineless prick. Some time later, you happen to chance upon the project that you were supposed to work on, albeit shoddily produced and you console yourself that peanuts can only pay for monkeys.

And then, there is the difficulty in chasing payments. Perhaps some communication broke down but the client is always too busy to pay. Yeah, busy updating your Facebook and Twitter. Why don't you spend the time reviewing the work that I slogged on for the past few months and actually pay me?

It is tough out there in the jungle. You just don't know who you will meet.

High Chance That You Will Fail

What if someone told you that before you even started on that new venture? What if you are just starting on your venture and you realise that the clients are seriously not coming in at all? What would you do? Would you buckle down and go in for the ride? Or will you just give up before you even began?

Remember the Chinese phrase that failure is the mother of all success? So many seemingly successful people out there have probably stared down the gaping black abyss of utter doom, only to pick themselves up and try again.

I was just reminiscing earlier that my life so far even though far from any outward success has been pretty interesting. How many people can claim to have led the life of a photographer, a swashbuckling quantitative trader and in my latest reiteration, a web developer all in less than 10 years?

Through all these experiences, I have changed from an extreme introvert to someone who is confident of speaking to strangers, a misanthrope who now sometimes actually care about complete strangers, from being unable to program properly to writing trading algorithms and now, (hopefully) world-changing code (across a stack of at least 4 languages). Most importantly, I know that I have supportive people around me who stand by my failures.

In a few months' time, I will cross that magic line in the sand - no longer able to say that I'm in my twenties anymore. While everything looks uncertain, I realised that nothing panned out in that 10-year plan of mine. Life sure gets interesting when you are not watching.

That is why they say to embrace your failures, learn from them and emerge stronger. I'm glad I'm learning all these lessons and experiencing things that would take a lifetime to go through.

Have you ever dreamt of doing something different lately? Do it.

The First 90 Days

It's been exactly 90 days since I was let out into the wild, pursuing something without a clear sight (for once), gnashing my teeth and forging ahead. Here, I will share my experience and perhaps be the start of a book I may eventually write (Jumping into the Deep End).

There has never been a greater sense of liberation than that experienced in the days since I left the corporate world. It's as if someone turned on a light in my head and showed me the archaic cob-webbed ideas of yesteryears - find a good hamster wheel, run as hard as you can, someone will feed you constantly but the wheel might break suddenly. 

No longer forced to work for someone else, I was able to delineate some form of plan for the new startup - from the general strategy down to the line-height of the invoice. Thank God it wasn't the first time I tried running a business on my own (plenty of old tricks learnt and reapplied).

So I set off into the unknown, with a borrowed MacBook that I installed Linux on.

The first project was deliberately charged at a low rate because I was not confident of my skills working in a new development environment (no more IDE, all open source). I also seriously underestimated the scope and overestimated my capabilities. Ever heard of the journey to South Beach? That straight path ended up more like a long route, with multiple cul-de-sacs (and a huge stranger standing behind you holding a knife), going around in circles, running up hills (it looked like an easy path!) and ending up nowhere near the target.

Beset by delays both on the client-side and my side, there were definitely times when I just felt like giving up. Yep. Every single time I open my eyes after a coding marathon till 5 in the morning.

Then the client refuses to first check on the work done so far - resulting in a delay in payment. Hey! I spent so much effort on this already. We were supposed to launch like 2 weeks ago. Argh. And then chasing for payment - almost as if I was begging (then again, I was literally begging).

What? I left a world where pay checks would come in consistently at the end of each month for a future where I don't know if I will get paid even? Are you being insane?

Then I began negotiations with a potential client who could only meet on Saturday mornings. After going through several meetings, sending in a detailed proposal and quotation, the client seemed to decide that they didn't want to work on that project after all or maybe they do. I couldn't tell, they were being indecisive. Nevertheless, it was a good exercise in beefing up my contract, spoke to an intellectual property lawyer who graciously gave me some of his time to give some advice. Yea, thankful for those business law classes in school too.

While I definitely have felt more disappointments in the last 3 months, I learnt key lessons that would have been hard to replicate.

1. Do not bank on only one client - the one that promised to give you more business, introduce you to more leads; firstly, the client may not pay on time, the leads may not pan out and it makes more sense to have multiple sources of income.

2. Treat each project as a learning process - it removes money as the prime motivation. While I undercharged for the first job, I picked up a new framework, gained more skills in being a full stack developer and revised my rusty HTML/CSS skills.

3. Sales cannot be underestimated. I'm not a natural extrovert, I hate going out there to sell myself but if the company's survival relies on the sales I generate - hell, I better get out there! This was the part I neglected the most. I made a mistake of over trusting that client who promised to introduce people that were never introduced and jobs that did not materialise. I am pivoting this approach at the crucial 90-day mark: attended a networking session earlier in the week and heading out to attend a conference next week. I need to get out there.

4. It's easier if I already had an established network. And I don't. Mistake there. But I still have remnants of contacts from my photography business that I could potentially work on - if I could actually get myself to do it.

5. Lastly, working till 5am rushing for someone does not make sense at all. In the real world, no one cares about how much time you put in. If you wear that as a badge of honour, it would seem as if you were trying to gain sympathy points instead.

That said, when I speak to friends who have known me for longer than a decade, almost none of them expressed any surprise when I mentioned that I'm back doing this. It was something that I have been doing since Netscape was like the hottest software in the world and Geocities still had residents.

The greatest lesson I have learnt was that it is absolutely impossible to rely on my own efforts or willpower to make things work. The human brain is weak and I can only rely on God's strength to move forward. If I tried to understand why I had to "suffer" and start comparing and lamenting, it only creates a darkness within me; one that I recognised and knew its destructive powers - the darkness that absolutely consumed me fo a number of years.

Following His path does not dictate that it will be smooth - neither does it guarantee success on this earth nor riches. We cannot fathom His greatness and it takes a lot of faith to believe that the path He made you walk is the right one. I struggle with this everyday, especially when the bank account is flashing red again. I don't have an answer yet at this juncture but I try to remind myself of His goodness and love.

Entitlement

You are not entitled to anything in life.

You are not entitled to your job. You may lose it anytime.

You are not entitled to your parents. Respect them.

You are not entitled to your worldly belongings. Don't place so much emphasis on acquiring more.

You are not entitled to the relationships you have. Treasure the good ones. Get rid of toxic people.

Be appreciative. Seek peace in your heart.

Many times we feel like the world owes us. The people around us owe us for all the things we do for them. The boss owes us because we do a good job.

The truth is that you are not the centre of the universe. No matter how much you want to be. No one looks at you. No one cares about the new shoes you bought or that brand new car.

Embrace the pain that comes in living. It reminds you of a greater purpose.

Leaks

Interesting day where all my plans got thrown out of the window but I learnt so much more in return. It all started with a thought to change a leaky faucet. So together with my father, we managed to replace the old one but little did I know that everything would go so wrong after that.

After we replaced the old faucet, I went to turn on the mains. The valve was slightly tough to turn - my father twisted it really hard to turn it off initially, so I took the pliers, gave it a nudge and it came off, water burst out from the hole in the pipe.

Frustrated, we had to turn off all water supply to the house, accessed the situation and the older man said, "We gotta saw off the entire section and replace the old parts." Within 30 minutes, we purchased the materials, replaced the entire segment and waited for the glue to set. Then came the moment of truth.

I turned on the main downstairs.

My father said there was a leak somewhere, we examined our handy work and were disappointed that we did not tighten the connecting pipes and that the previous owner of the flat had did a shoddy repair job and we broke something during our repair.

So I spent quite a fair amount of time trying to fix that. It struck me that we encounter leaks in many aspects of our lives. At first we ignore the problem, letting it drip till we decide one day to fix the problem. What happens usually is that the original problem gets compounded and leaks start appearing in other aspects in our lives. It could be money, relationships or workplace issues. Repairing the leaks as they begin causing problems may not exactly be the most optimal solution, very soon you will probably find other leakages due to unequal pressure.

I arranged for a plumber to come in the morning. If we had arranged for one to come today, I would have not gone through the entire wild goose chase. Fixing pipes is definitely not what the old man and I are good at (despite him having sold pipes to oil refineries for twenty odd years; selling is different from repairing obviously). I guess in life, we got to focus on what we are good at, outsource (not blindly but smartly) whatever we may need help in.

Paper Bag

Two years ago, I embarked on a journey to try my hand at a job that I would now term a processor of random events, or a professional coin flipper. Somehow it always came out tail when I bet on head and vice versa. I thought naively that creating programs to weed out the randomness would put me far ahead but the firm had other ideas. I was left to navigate on my own in the realm of PhD mathematics.

I discovered an entire life's worth of lessons in 24 months. It's a journey that I do not wish upon people - the anguish, pain and confusion.

Today, I packed all my books and some notes into two big bags: the sum of my culminated knowledge (of which I did not absorb enough).

What's next you ask me?

I'm not exactly sure but I have just enough to last me for a short while. Sent out quite a few resumes in the past month, most (if not all) I will never hear back from.

I have a small (paid) project to work on now, so it ain't that bad. Nevertheless, I'm tired of all the unprofessionalism I have seen here and adios!

Note: I might resurface sometime within the next few weeks.

Hiding

Usual hideout in plain sight, waiting for the hours to pass. Soon, soon, I remind myself. Nothing new on the horizon, yet it is with faith that I keep on praying.

Recently started on the new project. Pretending to work up to 9 hours when the sun is shining, returning home for a quick meal, crack my fingers and begin work for another 6 hours or so. I sleep 5, maybe 6 hours, if I'm lucky. Back to the doldrums where I pretend to crack complicated mathematical formulae but really, I have no idea what I am doing.

Further Out

Alive. Still alive. Started on a new project outside of work, which equates to more thinking and tinkering, less time for anything else. All for fun and to learn something new. More next time.

Also, happy for those around me who are/have gotten married recently (mostly outside of Singapore hence no wedding dinner, phew). Although I think most people vaguely know that I am alive but out of reach at the moment. I don't know, people drift apart after some time. A topic for another day maybe. Even at the office these days, I'm there but not really there. I come and go like the wind, someone was shocked I stayed till late, exclaiming, "Wow, you 24/7 ah?" But of course, he didn't realize that I only came in like 3 hours late.

Recently discovered how I managed to gain wisdom and grace, going through each day which a short while ago seemed excruciating, to a state of inner peace knowing that what will come to pass will come to pass.

An epiphany this morning that I need to record down. I realized that I have recently been gifted with the ability to realize the folly of my youth. Two, three years ago, I looked at things pretty much from a very short-term perspective. I wanted this quick; I needed that success immediately. What I finally came to know after this period of struggle is that it really is about the long-run.

What's good if you came in a blitz, rose to the top, only to crash and burn at the end? I always prided on my ability to think strategically and longer term back then, but boy, was I over reaching my own capabilities. Who is to know what tomorrow brings? Yes, many peers wanted to reach a pinnacle of career/material success before 30 but what's all the rush for? I had my own 5-year plan and frankly, I totally failed on that. Does that make me a failure?

No, it doesn't.

Not when I know that it was not meant to be; this short-term get-rich-quick scheme I plotted in my head many months ago. I never really looked beyond the month, much less the quarter. That was my mistake. But not one that He could not correct. Now, I see how one needs to think even longer range, five, ten, twenty, thirty decades down the road. That's right, decades. What do you leave behind for the later generations? A crusty HDB flat that has a ninety-nine year lease only? Digital images of you cruising it up at a beach resort that probably will disappear in the future version of the Internet?

Do not take it the wrong way, I'm not saying that these pursuits or activities are bad. I'm just saying that I gained some perspective along the way. Perhaps I need to work on something in the future that will last for a few lifetimes, all in His plan.

I think this is one of the final lessons for me in this period. So much growing up, so much errors but thankfully, the pain was only temporary.

A new beginning bodes for me. I can feel it.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Ever had a co-worker or school mate who seemed so lost in his incompetence that said person actually thought he was good at what he did?

Quoting Bertrand Russell, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed in 1999 to recognise this phenomenon. The incompetent falsely inflate their perceived capabilities, not knowing what they don't know, often believing in their own incompetence as competence. Actual capability actually reduces self-confidence.

In their hypothesis, Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.

Studies were carried out on Cornell students and the effect was clearly observed. Given science has proven that the stupid will continue being stupid; thinking that they are smarter than they actually are, it creates pain for those with true ability, who tend to underestimate their own capabilities.

The next time you meet an annoying person who belongs to this category, take heart that science has proven that they are purely idiotic.

Personality Tests

Was introduced to the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument yesterday. I read through their materials but of corse did not take the test. I consider myself a proponent of using the Meyer-Briggs as a gauge to determine optimal relationships in the workplace and personal life, so inevitably a comparison was done for both methods.

What I liked about the HBDI was that it provided a visual representation of one's dominance in the four different quadrants. It also provided or with recommendations for type o jobs one should be in that best emphasises one's dominant traits. However the hefty price for an assessment really put me off.

There is a competitive space in the market for services that assess individuals and propose methods to improve existing relationships, especially in the workplace. I wonder how one could provide a similar service for individuals at lower price points without looking like those free personality tests websites, while providing consultations to

improve users. I have heard of people paying 4-figure sums to obtain their profile and attend workshops to achieve whatever that workshop is intended for, e.g. Increased sales etc. Would an online version help? How about interpersonal relationships?

But I guess before I formulate a solution any further perhaps I should also think how to become a practitioner for one of these tests and then work towards helping those around me first.

Random thought of the day and that's because I'm probably a high D quadrant (creativity) on the HBDI scale. Frankly I dislike the naming convention those, ABCD quadrants.. That's not very descriptive!

Dichotomous Beliefs

We usually fall into a trap of having dichotomous beliefs when in actual fact, the absence of something does not really mean the non-existence of another.

When most view worldly measures of success, there's always an inherent comparison of quantity. "He's earning more than me and just not as capable," someone might grouse. When faced with a temporary setback in life they fret and end up worrying about this and that.

What I have learned through my recent failures are lessons that are essential for life. I know that I'm neither stupid or lazy but things just didn't work out as great as I had envisioned. That was because my initial reasons for pursuing the path were wrong. Along the way, I picked up humility, faith and trust in something greater than humans. I know that this chapter is ending soon and I will move on to my true path, whatever that may be.

Also I learned about management or rather the detriments of having a bad management. Longer hours does not predicate success, neither does a stick. Improper motivation will lead to more unhappiness. Productivity is not a measure of work done but quality of output. Awards for 'best' is usually taken as putting on a show. Random events build teams without proper scientific backing usually leads to nothing.

What is required is an environment where people are driven by an innate desire to pursue the best interests of organisation before self. Everyone works in a congenial environment, willing to help each other out and be creative in their tasks. How does one then build a team like that? How does one encourage team members? Questions that management got to constantly think about and not occupy themselves with fighting fires.

Recently my entrepreneurial spirit has been stoked, plenty of ideas popping in my head but I know most are just distractions that are not well thought out. Also, I recognise the need for proper frameworks, ones that are not overtly inflexible yet encourage productivity. You don't want to waste time reinventing the wheel for each project but work off a goo framework.

Enough thoughts for a rainy morning. Time to move on to a temporary drudgery. Very soon I will be delivered and be excited over new developments all over again!

How Not To Give A Pep Talk

So in the span of two weeks, another 2 guys left. They worked the morning shift with me and it was actually long-coming that they moved out. Although I had an inkling change would come soon, I did not expect it to be this fast. A reduced head count and management keeping mum seems to indicate more contentious times ahead.

The trainer approached me yesterday and asked me how I felt with the current exodus. I looked at him and said, it's inevitable I felt crappy about it, even more so when the guys who left were the ones I talked to the most. He said he noticed my current demotivated spirit and tried to give me a pep talk. He began with how despite all his twenty-odd years of experience, he has seen many of his peers who started on the floor with him succeed on this path. When he first started, he too was raking in quite a fair bit until he hit a funk and proceeded to lose his entire stake plus his wife's savings. Then he shared about how his school friends looked up to him in his younger days. Now at this age, he has been reduced to nothing; taking a miserable pay and no qualifications while his peers are planning for retirement and his friends had steadily climbed up to higher management roles in their respective fields.

It seemed more like a cautionary tale. Obviously I thought about these things before and truly, I don't want to end up in a situation like this. While I first embarked on this expedition, I thought I was motivated by my passion for the intricacies of the market but the actual underlying force was one of greed and vanity. That was my biggest mistake but a lesson that I have learnt in a relatively short span of time.

As always, it's time to abandon a flawed policy and make adjustments to my own expectations about what living is all about. I have an answer for that, drop me a message and I will let you know.

Management (And Motivation)

Got a rude shock today when I heard that a senior got suspended (euphemism for receiving the boot) after he told the management that he received an opportunity to work at a competitor. While poaching is not new in this industry, the process that followed was unprofessional and simply driven with emotions more than reason. A clear sign that things are exactly well-lubricated on this boat.

So I was called into an unplanned meeting when we discussed some important aspects of developing the business further. I have been working on some parts of this on my for the past two months but there has not been exactly a clear direction from the management. Or in other words, they think they are managing but in actual fact, it is more on par with Pointy Head's style in Dilbert.

The point of this is not so much a complaint but more of a warning indicator. For months I could feel, breathe and see the contentious air in the office daily. Not one month passes without someone leaving. Even with the new hires last quarter, the exodus is obvious. Some are searching for new pastures, others fearful but feel stuck (non-transferable skills).

When I asked the senior, why did you leave? He replied after much hesitation because he thinks he can learn more at the other place.

A laissez faire management style can only work if the workers are all motivated by a singular goal and see us before self. Whereas the entire structure was built upon a franchise-model, it is nearly impossible to overhaul the system without injuring some egos and creating discordance. From my point of view, I think deep-seeded issues will worsen, morale will decrease further and the company will limp forward without any development.

I tried to give advice, I did my dutiful part as an employee, I contributed beyond the requirements but ultimately, a great sense of dissatisfaction has dawned upon me, especially in the last two-three months. Good bye and good riddance.

May my new door open soon.

Rejuvenation

As Easter came and went in a blur this weekend, we are reminded of the day two millennia ago when He sacrificed for us. Our lives are constantly filled with noise, external stimuli and worldly desires..it's hard to focus on what truly is important in our lives.

Forget not.

Fret not.

Living to the Fullest

When I first heard the news of the professor from school who passed away on a diving trip, I was filled with shock, then anguish and sadness for his family. He was a man who fully utilized his time; training for marathons, picking up several new hobbies while juggling his academic and administrative duties. It is often a tragedy that a person who inspired many is taken away from us too quickly.

What does it mean to live fully, since our lives are oft too short?

Do you spend too much time watching TV shows, playing mindless mobile games or clicking away on social network sites?

What was the last thing you learnt outside of your common knowledge? What was the last nice thing you said to someone?

As we begin our lives each day, we have to remind ourselves that what we have does not belong to us. We are not entitled to our blessings each day. Be thankful that you are still alive now. Be grateful for the kind people around you.

Job 1:21 (NIV)

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.

Bleary, Mind Over Flown

So the Digital Signal Processing course's pace and rigor is making my head spin. Firstly, I did not have any formal education on linear algebra past JC stuff. Secondly, the pace at which the course goes on makes a lot of assumptions that someone without an engineering background (aka me) gets totally lost. While I slowly decipher what each Greek letter means, the lecturer has already moved on to the next topic. I have not felt stupider in a long time (okay just last week when I had to plow through a few other academic papers). Thirdly, I think I am only able to gain an appreciation of the underlying computations when the lecturer shows the formulas in a graphical format (sinusoidal waves, transformed and scaled etc) and I go, oooh.

Free quality education. How can one not make use of this? I've signed up for a few more classes and I think I may need to go through MIT's open course thing on linear algebra to brush up my skills. Learning is such an important part of my life that I just cannot imagine my brain rotting away.

At least I learnt the mathematical properties of tuning a guitar today. Never dared to approach the topic of how a sound wave can be mathematically expressed and manipulated. The wonders of things we take for granted.

Bleary eyed, it's way past bed time. I have got an interesting thought looking at how fast Fourier transformations are done that I will eventually tackle a problem that eluded me for the past few months. It's awesome to learn new things.

Challenges

Past few weeks / months saw an exponential increase in my capabilities to craft lines of codes into more efficient algorithms based on common patterns. As I struggle with interesting issues that crop up, I am reminded that there is so much overlap in this subspace that sometimes it really boggles my mind.

Take a finite state machine (FSM) that can only exist in one state at a time. Due to the design of the algorithm, there may be multiple excitations of the same FSM that leads to different states based on the input at any one time, usually in the microsecond resolutions. However, due to limitations found in our physical universe (even if represented in a series of 0s and 1s), the said FSM can only exist in the last known state, barring changes as it transits from state n to n+1. Obviously, techniques must be employed to ensure a fluidity of this and error-less results (which is often sacrificed by latency).

And then I chanced upon a completely new set of literature on point processes that I have not read before last Friday that totally piqued my interest. However, the math involved is beyond my capabilities and I have to start brushing up the elementary portions of it before even attempting to understand the papers.

Also, courses have begun on Coursera and I am taking Digital Signal Processing and Pattern-Oriented Software Architectures for Concurrent and Networked Software. Both courses are obviously beneficial to my work and are not the basic courses one would take in one's spare time. I just finished 3/4 of the 1st week of lecture notes for DSP and my head is already reeling. Seems like I have forgotten a huge chunk of trigonometry and integration from junior college, which was 10 years ago. Whoa. I am excited to see what the software architecture class will touch on next week as I believe many of the bug-creeps I face is due to an insufficient understanding of parallel/concurrent/asynchronous programming.

Ah. New knowledge is always so enticing.

Black Water

Happy lunar new year, dear friends. While it poured buckets over the holiday weekend I slept in trying to recuperate from 12-16h days since the 2013 descended. Then I went back to the office to clear up some stuff that enabled me to avoid visiting relatives.

Not such a bad thing since I managed to achieve a huge performance gain today in my code. Reduced 600 lines of complex if-then statements into 150 lines. The processor was able to achieve the same results 40-200x faster. How's that for a performance gain?

Trajectories

Massive trajectories of purpose and non-purpose.

We bounce, we flee, we rush towards space and time; bounded by the physical and governed by natural laws.

You stop. Breathe. And realize you are heading no where.

He stops. Breathes. And finds no purpose in his pursuits.

She stops. Breathes. And is contented with her path.

Where are you now, friend?

A blanket of darkness or a wave of lightness?

Blue

The young man with a Mohawk dyed a shocking electric blue. He had piercings through his earlobe that one could see to the other side. Arms and legs covered with tattoos. He walked with a sway, daring anyone to look at him. Instead, it was more like a pitiful cry for attention. I could see beyond this facade, always a lonely soul devoid of love and care at home. Seeking this in the outside world, he tries so hard to shout out, to overcome the background noise.

I would have challenged him to a staring match, but instead I ask myself, how can I help him? Perhaps I am being presumptuous and a busy-body. So I walked away pondering.

The Thrill

So, before 2012 ended, I spent the last weekend of the year photographing a wedding and attending a wedding lunch the day after. Let's just say it wasn't pretty the following Monday. The commission was from an old client/friend of mine who provided me with an ample supply of jobs back when I was actively shooting. It wasn't until the day before that I realized that I was to shoot his own wedding (he would later tell me that he tried to get my on his ROM but I rejected him due to work).

Pleasant surprise but an added element of stress...the last "assignment" I had was my cousin's short ROM in September. The last wedding I took was my buddy's earlier in the year where I worked from 3pm to 2am, went over to his place and lasted till the dinner at night. So naturally I panicked a little, my equipment was wonky, I had to borrow a decent camera and lens from someone and I needed an assistant (just in case I screwed up, managed to find myself an awesome assistant).

When we arrived at the venue, I quickly realized that several pieces of my equipment were failing to work. Panic. Flash was not firing, lenses not focusing, batteries dying. Thankfully, everything was resolved after a quick prayer.

It has been awhile but my instincts remained sharp, my lighting under control (most of the time) but I really did struggle trying to get the consistency right. The lighting condition for the first part was horrendous, natural light mixed with 2 different tungstens and no walls to bounce off to kill the ambience. I made do with whatever I could. The pre-dinner reception had a low ceiling at parts, while the table was situated at a place with high-ceilings and awful amount of tungsen. Then the ballroom had a terrible yellowish-reddish tungsten that I could not balance at all, opted for a deep yellow gel on my flash and tried to achieve off-white balance.

Worst of all, when the couple was to walk in, I did not expect bright (daylight) white lights leading them in; totally screwing up my manual settings and white balance. Whoa. Had to make so many rapid decisions and trust the equipment, rapidly capturing moments that were otherwise lost.

But the thrill was there. Trying to overcome these difficulties, getting the exposure right, the focus tight, white balance near to perfect (while maintaining the ambience, the main guy at my buddy's wedding totally made the whole dinner look like a corporate event). I had fun. I enjoyed myself and think I did a decent job at covering the wedding. Could have been better but I am prone to perfectionism. Anyway, it wasn't a high budget job and I was actually honored when the client/friend introduced me to his friends and said I was his ever reliable friend. I was touched at how happy he and his wife looked (they enjoyed their wedding night tremendously, lots of smiles and laughs and hugs in the pictures).

And I am glad I got to share this special night with them. I hope they like the images (still think I could have done a better job if I didn't have to struggle with the lighting at times).

Wedding photography is a special branch within commercial photography, competition is higher, stakes are high, chance of failure equally high. One bad day (faulty CF card, wonky flash, broken lenses without backups) and you could possibly kiss your business goodbye. I have been watching with interest (as an outsider) over the past few years - the proliferation of many young aspiring wedding photographers. Some are good, some not so good. I wish them luck, clients can be so nasty to deal with and I'm glad I don't do this full time.

Although, this assignment did rekindle the familiar taste of blood and I want to go hunting again (preferably where I get to dictate the rates I want and interesting couples only). We will see. Rental is dirt cheap ($350++ for 2 cameras + 2 lenses + 1 flash).

I wonder where my style fits in: I definitely cannot do those lovey-dovey bokeh-maximus shots, I don't do nice abstract shots of objects (my definition of abstract = new series that I will be showing somewhere soon), I hate having to say 1-2-smile, I detest table shots, I suck at close-ups preferring wide-angles (photojournalism-style) but I can capture the life of the place, the happiness (occasionally sadness) as the groom walks the bride down the aisle, the friends' joy (and desire to get married too). Action-packed. Yep, that's it. But who wants an action-packed wedding photo album? I wonder.

(Oh yes, good friends, I may shoot your wedding FOC. Be nice and ask early but you need to get your own main guy.)