- @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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Category Archives: Life
Dents for 2011-08-05
- 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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Comments Off As Life Picks Up
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.
California Dreamin’ – Part 2
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.
California Dreaming
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.
Are We Running Out of Resources
I’m reposting this from LRC. It is an interesting note to bring up when discussions about resources running out, come up at a dinner party. While not perfect, conservation of resources comes built into the price-economic calculation.
Ash Wednesday
Today is Ash Wednesday. What a day it was. Started off with a dentist, ended up with me walking through slush in the driving wet snow. Not exactly the funnest of days. But I guess appropriate for the beginning of Lent.
I’ve decided that this Lent, I will work on resolving a nagging deep personal issue. I will not go into the details, but it is a serious issue that needs resolving. Along the way, I also want to dedicate more of my time and works to the Lord. After He gave me all my gifts, my life and everything. It is only fair I do something in return.
I plan on doing a lot of writing and editing of writing, inspired by Catholic faith. I think this will not only be a good direction for my spiritual development, but also my personal too. Considering that I am an editor of the Alexandrian and a writer it just makes sense. And also the amazing comments from my readers… I feel like I should do this:
So my plan is to spend my free time each day writing a part of my novel, or working on the next issue of the Alexandrian, or working on expanding the magazine. Hopefully by Easter, I will have a quite collection of work that I can offer up. And for the benefit of my readers and friends.
Innovation in Increments
I have the good fortune of working in a Research & Development group. That means I get to learn about new ideas, experiment with them and apply them appropriately. Unfortunately I can not discuss my current project, other than it involves automating the creation of mobile applications. While I can not say that I am building something that is so deeply innovative that it has no precedence. But then again what most people do not realize that innovation happens mostly in small increments. You take an interesting idea, see if it makes your life easier and better. If not you review your work and options, and you try again. If it works, you get innovation!
So while I can not comment on my own work… 🙁 I can point some interesting work happening in the libre software community.
Canonical’s New Take on Scrollbars
Many of today’s computing innovations like tablets deal not with radical new technologies. But rather making technology more usable for non-developers and non-engineers. It might not sound like much, but Canonical is working on improving the usability of scrollbars in their Gnome desktop: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/615
Take a look at the video in Mark Shuttleworth’s post. I definitely think that abstracting the line indicator and the actual control is a great idea. It also makes it more touch friendly and intuitive.
MeeGo and Qt Lives for KDE and the N900
While not so much an innovation per se, I am happy to hear that the development of Qt and MeeGo will continue. The KDE crew came out and pointed out that Qt back when KDE started was a great framework and is even better now. Back when I started using KDE, I was amazed at how well everything integrated together in look and feel terms. This was all possible with KDE settling on one good UI framework, Qt. Now that it is more cross-platform and rounded out, it still is a great compelling framework to learn and use. There are some governance issues that need to get worked out, but it is nothing that won’t be resolved nicely soon. I indeed intend on learning Qt, as soon as my own schedule clears up.
[Another analysis on the Nokia/Qt/MeeGo/KDE question. Man isn’t life in the libre software world messy at times.]
As for MeeGo, sounds like Nokia will be supporting the N900 as an official development device for MeeGo. So maybe Mr. Elop changed direction, but at least there is a way forward for MeeGo handset developers. Hopefully that’ll mean that we can get started hacking on MeeGo. And once more devices come out, all developer efforts can get carried over. Maybe, just maybe we’ll finally have a good libre software platform for new disruptive devices, that won’t be threatened by the domination of one massive vendor. I’m looking at you Google, Microsoft and Apple.
Negotiations – Rejected Sci-Fi Short Story
Author’s note: This short story was submitted to the 365 Tomorrows site. But was rejected due to the content not meeting the editor’s requirements. This was a particularly challenging piece, as I had a severe word limit on the submission. This is the final product of hours of painstaking editing. Enjoy.
Negotiations
A Science Fiction short for 365 Tomorrows by Dorian Pula
“You are no position to negotiate”. I speak into my headset’s microphone. I sit alone in the cockpit of my long-range starfighter, the Retribution. Outside the canopy, reflected sunlight from the cold red Martian desert below blots out the distant stars. My small fleet of the Retribution and a few Hunter drones drift in high orbit over the United Sons of Mars occupied colony of Mariner’s Retreat. The starfighter’s control console acts as an interactive map showing tactical data and sending commands to my assault force on the surface.
A video feed from a Griffin heavy assault walker drone on the surface floats on the HUD, hiding the view outside. The delegation of USM minister-experts and Black Guardsmen soldiers on-screen stare at the imposing four meter tall six-legged Griffin. My voice thunders from the drone, rings through the ruined USM bunker, and echoes off the twisted steel, broken concrete and shattered glass. The soldiers form a circle around the Griffin, pointing plasma rifles and rocket launchers at the drone. I smirk at their vain efforts.
Their efforts could not stop a few drones breaking through their defenses. Nor could they stop their subverted factories from manufacturing ever larger swarms of drones. Now their fortified positions fall as endless waves of drones crawl over the burnt shells of their predecessors and overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers.
In the background a series of screams signal the silencing of yet another bunker. Unseen drones pull overwhelmed soldiers out of their entrenched positions and subdue them. I capture the conscripted soldiers rather than kill them. And my drones ignore the panicked civilians. My quarrel is with the USM experts and their Black Guardsmen.
Three years ago the USM invaded Mariner’s Retreat promising a scientific utopia based on equality and fairness. I tried to leave Mariner’s Retreat with my fiancee Anna and her parents but the invasion cut us off from the starport. We watched as the last transport full of refugees lifted off under heavy fire. Upon capturing the city the USM experts imposed their “utopia” on us. Black Guardsmen hunted down the resistance, murdered them and dumped their bodies in some remote Martian canyon. Everyone else got conscripted into the army or slave labour in the mines. I slipped out one night with an ancient plasma rifle, spacesuit and a small bar of platinum. Anna stayed behind to care for her aging parents, waiting until I returned with rescue. She later died in the mines, broken by the endless labour before I could save her.
I slide three fingers across the console. Three green glowing triangles follow my fingers and stop as I lift my hand before a cluster of red blinking dots. Three Hunters coast over the ruins and stop over the bunker. Their presence cloaked by active camouflage and masked by the chaos of battle.
“I will ask again. Do you unconditionally surrender?”, I ask firmly.
One of the experts pushes forward, his bearded face red in anger and his body shaking in rage. I recognize him as the Minister of Labour who sentenced hundreds to death in the mines. The expert roars, “The United Sons of Mars will never surrender to a mercenary scumbag!”
“This is your last chance. Do you surrender?”
“NEVER!”
A single tap commands the Hunter drones to launch their missiles at the target. The screen turns to static as the explosion rips apart the bunker and everything inside. The sporadic pop of rifle fire becomes less and less frequent. A few moments later a dead silence falls over Mariner’s Retreat.
No Need to Complain
This post is dedicated to my good friend Rudy.
As I drove back from work on Monday with Rudy, I drove poor Rudy crazy with my complaints about work. Sure there are less than ideal situations that I have to deal with everyday. But I’m sure that everyone else who works, also comes up against the same. True, I was and still am recovering from a nasty cold. And I tend to be crankier in such situations. Still there really was no need to complain. And Rudy sensing a good opportunity to jump, cut me short in his trademark style.
Dorian, remember how we talked about you complaining too much?
Yes?
You’re complaining too much.
And he was right. I do complain too much. Yes, I do have tight deadlines at work. Yes, Life hasn’t exactly played out according to my plans. Yes, everyday seems to pile on more workand things to do, on top of the existing staggering pile. Yes, I sometimes wonder if I’m not behind my peers on the important things in life. Still I complain too much. And I’m good at it too. But I shouldn’t…
When I look at the things I am complain about, they really are good things in my life too. All that work at work, means that I am needed to build these apps and solutions for both my firm and our clients. At home, all my tasks and projects mean that I have a full, abundant, un-boring life. Could life be a bit more relaxed? Of course it could! But it is nothing to complain about. It could be worse.
I could be living without all my comforts. I could be without the work and getting paid regularly. I could be without some many things, like so many other people in the world are without. And yet I am fortunate to have all that. Even if it brings the occasional headache.
And I’m fortunate to have friends like Rudy, who remind me to be thankful with what I have. Thanks!