Welcome to my new blog. After fighting it out with Drupal, I decided to go with WordPress instead. I’m quite impressed the ease of install, permalinks work and everything. I can’t say the same about Drupal. But then again, these are two different tools for different purposes.
Enjoy the new blog.
Please excuse the past few days of silence. But I’ll moving this blog/journal/collection of incohesive rants yet again.
The new home will be at my new brand new domain: https://dorianpula.ca/
Now at the moment of posting this message, the domain is not up. CIRA, you fail again. So for the next few days I’ll be working on putting up a new blog on that site, and copying over my content. I’ll keep this blog up for posterity though. However I will post new entries on the new site. Also I might be silent for a few days while I transition over.
Yesterday I realized I need more sleep. Basically living the life of a rockstar: 5 hours sleep and then 1.5-2 hours of a catnaps just doesn’t work for me. Initially I became more productive with more time in my day. But it seems that illness and tiredness caught up with me. And I get irritated, nervous and slothful when I don’t get enough sleep. So I slept A LOT yesterday.
Today I am back to my cheerful, energetic and productive self again. And for the most I caught up with most of the tasks and projects that carried over from last year. There is still work to be done. But nothing worthy to loss sleep over. So a new, New Years resolution: sleep my 7.5 hours a day.
We take a break from our regularly scheduled program on technology, gaming, freedom, life management and progress updates; for a totally pointless post.
Up in the frigid northern regions called Canada, there lives a nation of people who well… basically live there. The very thought that someone would want to north of the 49th parallel, is downright shocking to Canadian’s southerly neighbours. More shocking is the revelation that said Canadians in fact do not normally consider dog sleds a mode of transportation. Nor do they consider igloos as mortgageable housing. Something that is not shocking is the presence of a substance known as snow.
Snow, or the collective name of crystalized water droplets in flake form, is a common occurence in Canada. In fact snow is the second prefered form of precipitation in the wet winter season. Rain is naturally prefered but not when combined with freezing temperatures. Oddly regardless of the number of times a Canadian has experienced snowfall, they react as someone who has seen the phenomena for the first time.
A Canadian will at first mention of a coming snowfall, will deny the existence of snow or its falling. Once the first snowflakes appear near the ground, a Canadian will appear shocked. Then dismay will follow. This dismay may lead to a near complete loss of driving abilities. Additionally, a significant amount of flakes accumulate on the ground, can profoundly affect the mood of a Canadian. A normally cheery and sensitive Canadian can be an unhappy, grumbling, insensitive individual. While other events can affect Canadians such as: election day, a referendum on Quebec separation or the unlikeliness of a Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup; these events happen with significantly less frequency. Such behaviour in a northerly people is confusing, given the frequent nature of snowfall.
There are a select few who worship the coming of snow. But even these rare individuals admit it, they prefer if the snow remained solely on top of hills and mountains rather than on roads. Also children seem to appreciate snowfall more than adults. However this appreciation is shortlived if the quantity of snow is less than required to close local schools.
The benefits of snowfall in Canada are multitude. Snowfall for one gives Canadians free exercise. It also cultivates the skill of shovelling. While a more profitable skill in the 19th century thanks to the use of coal and steam engines, shovelling can provide meaningful employment in construction, irrigation maintainence and ditch digging. Paradoxically, snowfall also provides a form of national unity.
The researchers of this paper recommend that a more thorough study on the contradictory nature of snowfall and Canadian attitudes is in order. The researchers are currently applying for a grant from the Metrological division of the National Research Council to cover costs of supply, equipment and travel to conventions held in more southerly countries.
This message was sponsored by local snowplow drivers and disgrunteled snowshovel wielding Canadians. And is dedicated to a certain ice princess.
First of all: Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Christmas and ringing in the new year.
So it looks like the second day of the new year is slowly coming to a close. This year promises to be as exciting and interesting as last year. Maybe even more so.
This year I plan on finally achieving the goals I sat out last year. I have a lot of writing and coding ahead of me. Hopefully I will get involved with the KDE and Maemo projects early this year. Also the transition from student life to corporate IT worker should sink in soon. I am optimistic I will grow drastically in all aspects of my life this year: academic, professional, artistic and personal.
However some doubt, and grey clouds lie on the horizon this year. The situation on the economic front looks dire. I worry since the parallels of the great depression and hell that followed afterwards are there. Except that this time around ideals seem more distant, nations seem more violent and the machines of war are far more lethal and potent. And I don’t think literature or computing will cut it to get us out of the mess, we set upon ourselves so long ago.
Hopefully, my darkest nightmares will not realize themselves. They did not solidify last year. Instead many a happy accident happened. And this year looks like many more happy accidents will occur. But this I wouldn’t put up a todo list. It doesn’t seem practical, and doesn’t account for the unexpected.
I’ll be the first to admit it. I am a perfectionist.
At first glance, this is a very positive trait. I pay attention to detail. I can “hyper-focus” on a task, and flesh out all the issues with it. I want to bring into existence the best solutions, the most efficient code and most beautiful art. It helps avoiding mistakes. It helps with paying attention to details, others skim over. It helps bring masterpieces into existence.
But there are downsides to perfectionism as well. Time does not always allow for the perfect technical solution. Historical reasons-I shiver at those words as a excuse for past sins-and other things outside of your control don’t always allow for a solution to getting even close to perfection. You need to maintain a healthy level of pragmatism and be realistic, or you will go crazy.
More importantly, perfectionism can lead to a pessimistic perspective of life. You may bring the bar up so high, that no human can achieve to your perfect ideal. The worst, you can’t either. If I tried to write the perfect piece or code the perfect application, I would never get anything out the door. So remember to give yourself a break occasionally. No one is perfect.
Yes, it is true. Even math can be fun and enjoyable. Especially when presented in an interesting manner.
Check out the Dimensions series. This series goes into visualizing multidimensional objects, using projections, fiberations and complex numbers. Very interesting and informative. The first three and last films are good introductions to 4D geometry. The other films may feel a bit heavy for mathematically uninclined though. Still great films. I wish these films were around when I studied dimensions, basises n-space matrices and vectors in linear algebra. I might of gotten better marks in that course. 🙂
I finally managed to steal some time to blog again. It is the morning too, so not everything might sound coherent.
So the past few weeks have been exacting on me. My life has become a bit of a gaming sprint. Not that I game as much as I used to. No. Rather each day feels like a gaming sprint with a schedule as follows: I wake up at 5 AM each morning, arrive at work at 6, do some personal stuff from 6 to 8, work like a dog for my client from 8 to 4 PM, travel home and work like a dog at home until near midnight-ish. Then rinse and repeat every workday for the past 2 maybe 3 weeks. It is getting tiring. Productive. But tiring.
I am still trying to organize a LUG in Brampton. But the guys on Facebook claiming to already operate one in the region, don’t look like they are doing much in that regard. So if you are in Brampton and like/love/hate Linux then come out December 16 at 8 PM to the Coffee Culture. I plan on putting up some flyers too.
Also writing and coding are off to the side right now. I still need to catch on important life/reality based stuff first. However I think my original TODO list is nearing completion for this year. I might need to revise the dates when I plan on actually finishing stuff. I reckon everything will be done before Q2 of 2009. Look at me talk like some corporate drone. 🙂
Anyways, I will try to update this blog more often. I think life should quiet down after Christmas.
This has to be a first. I saw one of my coworkers who works on a handheld-related project, dual-wield barcode handheld scanners. Quite an amusing sight to see, and yes he can read the barcodes too while doing so.
UPDATE: Ok, so I lied. Getting off Facebook is much harder when you do have people you want to stay in touch with. I’m just going to make sure that all the info on Facebook relate only to the friendship side of things, and not to business or other parts of my life. Hence the blog feed no longer autoupdates on Facebook. But the same applies to LinkedIn.
Today I finally caught me myself off from Facebook. Not because I am anti-social. No, not at all. It is just that Facebook doesn’t work for me. Yes, it notified me of a few events. And I could follow what my friends do. But honestly… I’m not exactly interested in every pokey little detail about my friends either. I prefer to catch up on e-mail. Or read people’s blogs. And hence RSS and e-mail clients prove to work better for me.
Anyways, I’m too busy for Facebook. I stored too much information on it. Mea culpa. And I linked it to a blog. Mea culpa again. And Facebook won’t help getting you a date. I know, I tried.
Facebook is only part of the picture here. I am trying to exorcise the nitty-gritty, time wasting aspects of my life. I have far too much going on. And I’d prefer to spending 30 minutes on writing my novel or my games then on Facebook… …wondering why I’m bombarded by ads supposedly helping me out of my single life. Gimme a break. The social networking I need is on LinkedIn anyways.