Category Archives: Life

Reflections and glimpses into bits of my life.

Ghosts in the RSS Feed

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A few days back I noticed a new entry in my RSS for an old blog of mine: http://opensourcegamer.blogspot.ca/

I was really surprised, since I had left that blog and closed down account years ago.  I started that blog when still in university and before I could afford my own fancy WordPress installation.  Years later after moving my old content and closing down that site, I find a new post.  At first I wondered if someone had hacked into my account and started doing weird things.  However this would be not the case.

It seems that a certain gent (https://plus.google.com/106427604834859977346/posts) decided that they liked the name of my blog and run with it.  That I don’t mind.  In fact I wish him (or her) the best of luck!  However please note that I am not maintaining that blog, and all my focus on this site.  So don’t be surprised if you see said odd entry in your RSS.  Come to think of it, you want to hear more of me, you should subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

Added Contact Page

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Hey there!

It has been a while since I’ve blogged hasn’t it?  I have been terribly busy with getting life’s issues sorted out.  Plus I’ve been busy with a large scale project that might change everything for me.  But this post isn’t about that.  Rather it is about the brand new spanking Contact Me page!

 That is right!  I’ve included a way for people to contact me who aren’t part of my social networks.  (Those are a hassle for the most part anyways, and I’m thinking about how to get off those walled gardens while still being accessible.)  So feel free to contact me via my e-mail.  Please don’t abuse this form of communication though or it is coming down, alright?
Look forward to hearing from you!
— Dorian

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

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I’m on vacation at the moment.  But I want to wish everyone a Happy and Blessed Easter!  For those of the Christian faith, this weekend is an incredible and potent reminder of God’s sacrifice for our sins, and the Resurrection: the reason why we believe what we believe.  Alleluia!  He is risen!  And for those who aren’t of the Christian faith, I hope you have a relaxing weekend with your family and friends.

When Penguins Can Fly… (An Exercise in Portfolio Building)

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No, this is not an exercise in a delayed reaction for April Fool’s Day.  I am not that slow!  Rather I spent most of the weekend in a concerted effort to setup a portfolio and renewing my personal website.  I realize now the reason why I procrastinated to do so for years.  Setting everything up in a systematic manner is difficult and painful.  Digging through folders to find great examples of your work even more difficult.  However the effort was worth the pain.

The blog now has a unique title: “When Penguins Can Fly…”.  I think the title is appropriate considering how much of a Linux fan and of penguins I am.  At little bit of magic in Gimp and I replaced the background for the theme.  Anyone interested in using the theme for themselves, can find it here: Hacker Dreams WordPress theme version 0.1

After that and a bit of fun with the favicon, I started work on setting up the various pages and galleries in my portfolio.  It took a while to try out the various galleries, and I settled on the NEXGen Gallery plugin.  After some futzing around, I managed to setup quite a few nice galleries for the Draw section of my portfolio.  In the future I will need to either find even better art or create more artwork.  However this will have to do for now.  In addition I found an animation I did for a visual computing class that I uploaded to Youtube.

The most difficult aspect is the coding part of the portfolio.  I originally wanted to build a bunch of original apps with new source code.  Unfortunately that will take time that I do not have at the moment.  I will add those when I have a chance.  However for the moment downloads, brush ups of old work, screenshots and screencasts will have to do.

In a rare case, I am opening up the comments to take suggestions.  Please let me know what you think.

Time to Retire My Snowboard for the Season

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As part of a struggle to retrieve a lawn chair and folding table, to get some work done will enjoying the outdoors, I stumbled over my snowboard.  This winter–yes I know that officially spring begins in a few days–I managed to hit the slopes for two solid days of snowboarding.  Not enough to gain mastery over my mischievous, knee jarring board but enough to  enjoy a few thrilling rides down the slope.  Like all good things, there is a time to put away some things to start some new aspect of life.  So I put away the snowboard, and after some careful Tetris-work I managed to pull out the folding table.  Plus I found an old pair of sandals, which I am proudly wearing right now… in an attempt to declare this day as shorts and sandals weather.  In a way, I am glad that I can retire my snowboard for this season.

I am also happy that I can retire my resume for now.  Having found a nice new job, means I don’t have to deal with the joys of applying for new positions and dealing with interviews.  I can now concentrate on developing my skills again.  Possibly learning a new language or framework or two.  Most importantly, I can finally catch up on the huge mound of work and projects that I felt undone as I searched for a new job.  I am glad I can  concentrate on this, and not job hunting.  (Note for my friends: this catch-up effort is also the reason I’ve been rather silent recently.  Even by sleeping less, I still feel a tad overwhelmed by the work I have to do soon.)

Finally I am glad that I can retire some of my old bad habits.  This Lent I took the opportunity to retire my gaming habits and my will-do-later-cause-my-me-time-is-more-important.  Not all my bad habits and less than graceful behaviours have gone, however I am glad that this Lent gave me the opportunity to start a new chapter in my spiritual side.  I am glad that I feel closer to God, my Creator, and also my fellow humans.  I wish I could explain the joy I get when I truly try to be thankful for what I have.  And I wish I could explain how letting God into your life, will only increase the joy, wonderment and experiences in ones life.  It makes me sad that I’ve seen a few of my friends turn away from those graces, and I hope that we will return back in time.

Time for me to stop writing more on this post.  There is so much to do, that I feel guilty for not getting back to work.  I hope everyone enjoys a warm sun-filled spring, a productive start to the second quarter, and a blessed Lent!  See you all soon!

The Next Big Thing

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I am really excited that I am currently working on my next big project.  I won’t spill any details until everything is setup and ready.  This new project I hope not only will give me the opportunity to work on the technologies I love to work with.  But will also benefit the Linux and open source community as well.  More details will follow soon.

As part of this project, I will be doing some major changes to this site.  One of the major things will be the expansion of my portfolio.  It has been something I wanted to do for a long time.   Now I finally have the opportunity to do so. 🙂

From Inside a Particle Accelerator…

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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…

A Quiet Moment to Reflect, Regroup, and Rethink

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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!

 

Grey Morning in a New Reality

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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.