The Art of Being Dorian

While I was working last month (and last year), I had the need and opportunity to setup Linux properly on my laptop.  Windows simply did not cut it for remote development.  After a bit of fighting with some graphics issues (yes, I got bitten by the switching between the Intel and Nvidia GPUs) I managed to setup my Linux system fairly well.  Yes, I am missing out on some of the nice, new hardware features on my laptop like the fingerprint reader.  Nor can I get a nice boot experience due to the combination of a strange widescreen resolution, using the proprietary Nvidia drivers and the plymouth splash screen.  Running full-blast with the Nvidia graphics card does not help my battery much.  But I can live with that.

The experience with using modern Linux and KDE can not be understated.  Not having to fight with your system when setting up development environments helps too.  The icing on the cake, was my most recent experimentation with Wine.  Back in the day when I started using Linux, getting any Windows program running nicely under Wine was a minor miracle.  An update could change that in a hurry.  Getting a 3D game running smoothly under Wine… just did not happen.

Now imagine my surprise when I tried to use Wine on my most current install.  After using winetricks a few times, and a tiny bit of experimenting I managed to run nearly all my Windows games under Linux without too much difficulty.  Nearly all my Steam powered games worked, including Deus Ex, Half Life, and Myst.  Even Microsoft games like Freelancer and Halo ran with very little work.  So did Risk and the original Homeworld with very little effort.  And yes Uru Online which is my favourite of the Myst series runs really well as well.  What makes this great–beside not having to reboot to play a game–is that old games will run with little extra effort without keeping some ancient version of Windows lying around.  Also important to note is that none of the games lagged under Wine, just some minor sound stuttering and weird cursor grabbing.  So one can enjoy most of one’s Windows games under Linux without needed to reboot necessarily.

Sometime last year, it feels like the pace of my life accelerated to a phenomenal rate.  I would venture that just before I started working in California was when it happened.  Since then much like a particle accelerated in a linear accelerator, it feels like I am moving forward at a frantic pace.  Maybe it is just me, but it feels like that.  The start of this year does not seem to slow down much either.

Not that I am not thankful for everything that has happened.  Living in the SF Bay area.  Experiencing San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Working on some pretty nifty Android technology, all the while learning more and more.  Seeing one of my best friends get married to the love of his life.  Visiting Poland, Germany, Italy and Austria.  Learning how to windsail.  Getting more involved in writing and editing.  Becoming a lot more self-reliant and independent.  Becoming closer to the people I care about.  These and so much more I am truly grateful for.

There have been painful times and experience along the way as well.  The loneliness of not knowing anyone close in California.  Having to change jobs three times in a single year.  The stress and anxiety that came with those and so many other moments.  But that is all just part of the growing process I guess.  Still the whole life hurtling forward of its own accord, feels unsettling.  Maybe I am just getting old.  Maybe all the bad decisions of procrastinating have come back to bite me.  But it would be nice for life to slow down.

So what is next for me?

Well I am looking for my next gig.  I’d like to get further along on my writing and coding projects.  Hopefully catch up on everything and get some of that “slow down” and “stabilize” going on…

The madness of the past few weeks, has taught me the importance of quiet time.  Time that I can truly reflect quietly and calmly work on the next steps I need to take.  Most of the week I have rushed, ran and tired to compact as much I could into a single day.  But you can only do this for so long before you have to slow down.  While life fills up with small, urgent tasks, those tasks are rarely that important.  Not to say I can forget about the small tasks and go on living comfortably.  Those small tasks after all act as the components of the large important projects in life.  Yet three ideas that have helped me recently are: 1) to keep the important projects in the front of my mind; 2) remember the scale of importance between the day-to-day tasks and the goals in life; 3) maintain balance in one’s life.

Anyways, enough philosophizing for one post…

While I was riding on the train back today, I tried to catch up on some e-mails.  And I found out about the new version of WordPress was available for my sites.  Thanks GoDaddy for being an awesome web host and sending out e-mails notifications of those kind.  Anyways after some twiddling with the new WordPress update, I decided to do some house-cleaning of my website.  One of the slight modifications I made is the new title of the blog.  Yes, I am back to using “The Art of Being Dorian”.  This has been the best title so far, and while thought about using the geeky “Transmissions from High-Earth Orbit” or obscure “Mlaren Racer” or the nice but misleading “The Zen of Dorian”.  (Misleading because even though I like Zen as a design methodology or as a general idea of simplicity, I am not a Buddhist nor do I follow Buddhist philosophy, culture, etc.)  Plus, I good friend of mine in Ireland loved this name back in the day.  And so it is back.

Also note that I dropped the “Hacker, Gamer, Writer” moniker.  Hacker, yes if it means coder and not cracker as it means in conventional terms.  And while I still enjoy playing the occasional game, I rarely do so.  So by definition I fall out of the “gamer” crowd. Just like I’m not much of a boarder since I rarely have the chance to go snowboard, surfing or windsurfing.

So this blog I will dedicate to writing articles about coding, writing and living well.  I think it will be most benefit for everyone.  And I will enjoy sharing my knowledge in these fields, more so than the random ranting that I’ve done in the past.  I hope you enjoy the new blog!

Outside the window, grey clouds fill the sky and raindrops stream through the air.  A warm morning for an early December day, the weather being more likely for mid-November.  The rain does not bother me as I am sitting in a GO train headed to downtown Toronto, and getting ready for the start of a new day.

Since I started working at Indusblue as an Android developer, my mornings involve a morning train commute to Toronto.  While taking the train and streetcar to work extends my commuting time, I can not complain.  I get about two hours each day of time for myself, to get work done.  Amongst other things, I use this time to write or catch up on past work.  Today I decided that instead of sleeping on may to work, I would update this blog.

After a summer of travelling to and from San Francisco and spending a good portion of my Fall travelling in central Europe: Poland, Germany, Austria and Italy; I finally am settling down at the end of the year.  While I love travelling and visiting new places, I am glad that I have returned to Toronto.  I am glad to be close to most of my friends, family and familiar settings.

Since my return, I have concentrated on catching up on overdue work.  So many tasks and delayed projects have piled up, that I feel the need to make progress on them or even finish them before the end of the year.  Amongst other things I started writing two pieces: a science fiction novel and an auto-biography of sorts.  Also I started working on justcheckers again, which I plan to complete as part of my portfolio work.  And I am working on a few other missing or lacking parts of life, that I can not comment on right now.  However I am overjoyed with the progress I have made, and the opportunities that linger on the horizon.

So while the mornings are grey and rainy and sometimes quite cold, I am grateful for the new reality of life I am in now.  It might rain outside, but I feel as if it were sunny.

• You win some. You lose some. At the end of the day all that matter, is did you make a difference for the better? #JustAThought #

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• @balleyne Yeah those are not the greatest. I recommend the new #Samsung and #HTC #Android phones. Easy enough to root and good device specs. #

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• 42 more e-mails to figure out. Then on to trip planning and playing catch-up. Life does not slow down, does it? #
• Inbox zero achieved. The grand unified GTD to-do list is in place. I wish I had done this months ago. Now about that trip to Poland… #

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Life, nature or  the universe has a perverse sense of humour.  The next day after I posted my last blog post, optimistic of the future and looking forward to approaching life in a slower pace… well everything happens at once.  And it seems like someone decided to fall asleep on the ‘drama’ button in my life.  So now things are exciting, moving quickly and require immediate and decisive action.  I am not amused, by this turn of events.

Since this seems like a prevailing theme and trend recently, I’ve had to make decisions to simplify my life.  I have to minimize the distractions and maximize the impact my action have on my surroundings.  If that does not happen, I will simply get swept away and get carried off by the next big wave.

Today I realized I need to take my tasks and projects head on.  That means do the most relevant, NOW.  It also means putting up a single list of to-dos and sticking to them.  And I have to simplify life and remove distractions.  One such distraction is maintaining my blog.  I love blog, I love writing and publish my thoughts.  But I do not like having to administer it.  Hence I migrated to WordPress a long time ago.

And also why I am turning off comments on my articles.  I am sorry to my readers, but the majority of you don’t comment on my blogs.  I don’t mind that.  Most of my articles and journals are not something one can or need to comment on.  And the majority of comments that get queued up are spam.  Even with Akismet running in the background, I get too much crap.  These days I have precious little time to blog or do anything outside of the urgent.  And I definitely do not have time to read 200+ comments all trying to commit various forms of link spam.  I want to use my precious time for blogging and updating my sites.  So no more open comments on my blog.  Some articles I will open for comments, but most will not.  Sorry but it is just something I need to do.

So I am back in California again at the request of my client.  Fortunately for not as long as last time.  While Northern California is a great place to live in, it is not quite the palm lined, sunny, warm dream that Hollywood and LA make it out to be.  Summer in the San Francisco Bay Area is much like Toronto’s late spring.  But not comes close to the humid summers of the East Coast.  Plus living in a hotel in a suburb away from everything including friends and family is not fun.

The one good thing is that I have time to reflect, and to catch up.  One such thing being blogging and writing for me.  I do miss writing and hopefully once I clear off my immediate urgent work, I can do more writing.  With any luck there will be more updates to this blog.  And even better… more chances of writing long-form prose.  However I have to first write back to all those e-mails sitting in my inbox, screaming for attention.

Work occupies most of my waking hours.  I wish I could talk about my work in greater detail, however my client wishes to keep a lid on the project I am involved in.  I do not blame them, as the final product will be a great surprise to their customers.  And a wake-up call to their competitors.  I can not say more than this: working on an embedded Linux tablet project is fun.  As a developer I love a good challenge and this project presents many such challenges.  And I am inspired to continue down this career path.

Life continues to swirl randomly and unpredictably around me.  Lots of good signs keep me motivated to try harder.  Still the challenges continue on mounting and sometimes the sheer volume is overwhelming.  However I am still hopeful that this is the mere “storming and forming” before life takes on a certain elegant pattern and routine.  I wish I could say more, but I fear that I might jinx things I reveal too much, too soon…

Wow.  I hoped for a less ambiguous post.  Still it can not be helped, given all the circumstances.

Good morning all!

Maybe there are better things to do than to update your blog, right before you start work.  And looking at my e-mails and my to-do lists make me feel like this will be a long day.  But considering my recent silence I thought an update on me is in order.  Plus if blogging doesn’t get my creative energies flowing… I’m not sure what will.

As I sit at the table of my hotel room, I can not but be amazed.  For a little over a month, I started a new job and showed up at my client’s office.  My client being located in the south San Francisco Bay area.  The first week I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of travelling, working on a serious project for a serious client and living on my own.  While the initial shock wore off, I am still overwhelmed both in the good and bad sense.

A month later I still love the travelling aspect.  Visiting San Francisco and Los Angeles all were worthwhile.  Flying never gets old, but I could do without the insane travel “security” at the airports.  Everyday I still can not believe that I am in California, right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley.  The fact that my client wanted to fly me in from Toronto to Silicon Valley is amazing.  A huge ego boost.  This is me making it in my career.  Sort of like an actor ending up in Hollywood or performer on Broadway.  Plus I get to work on Android development and build a tablet system from the ground up.  All of this overwhelms me in a good way.

Living on my own in a new city, without a car overwhelms me in a bad way.  Living out here, away from the inner-city makes everything so far and inconvenient.  Groceries, getting places, and all that jazz is tricky and time-consuming.  Taxies take too long, and the only real viable option is biking.  Unfortunately I bought a bike that just broke down on me the same day.  Plus since I will not be living here for longer, it doesn’t make sense to plan too long term.  Being away from friends and family also takes its toll.  Originally I assumed I would at least be able to catch up on my long overdue work.  That is partially true, but I still struggle with that.

Still as with anything in life, there are pros and cons.  Overall I’ve learned a lot, and have a greater appreciation of life’s small things.  I do miss Toronto, but I love also living here.  Flying solo does have its advantages.  And I’ve never been able to take the initiative and be more spontaneous like I can now.  I have learned to be truly independent in work and in life.  And I have started to make friends here too.  Now if only the weather here started being more like stereotypical Californian, as in warm and sunny.  Even the Sun has been shy recently.  But other than that–and if the overwhelming amount of catch-up work would just go away–I am happily dreaming big dreams and living it up down here in California.