I wanted to post this a while back. Here is a thought experiement: Should anyone be forced to help someone else? Or do the right thing? Watch and discuss below!
Messy
I missed an update yesterday, but I won’t fudge it today and backdate this post. Things are a bit messy at the moment and behind schedule unfortunately. I’m trying to fix this, but I’m not sure when everything will get back on-track.
So until that time, I’m going to keep the posts shorts and not necessarily daily.
Daily Writing
I’ve done a lot of thinking today. About what to do next in life, and what will be the next big thing. I feel that I should seriously back into writing in a big way. Managing all the projects that I’d like to do will be challenging. But I think I should try and dedicate one day of my week for a particular project.
But one thing I will do, is do some daily writing. I should be able to manage, cause after all I am posting this even though it has been an off day.
Getting Back into the Swing
This post is actually a few minutes into the next day. But I’m still trying to get into the swing of things. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to put parts of my life that aren’t on track, back on track. Of course this is easier said than done. But like Matthew Kelly–an amazing Catholic inspirational speaker and evangelist–says: “Our life changes when our habits change.” Changing habits is a long and difficult process, and honestly I’ll be happy if I can get everything in place by the end of THIS year.
In totally unrelated things, I found out that the original Starcraft runs beautifully under Wine. I’m going to try some of my other Windows games in the future, and see if I can realistic ignore using my Windows partition.
On the First Day of 2011…
…I’m recuperating from the awesome party that the Huddarts (and Sharon) threw. Lots of fun, met new folks and partied well into the morning with everyone especially the Nasons and the Nolans. 🙂 Thanks guys. And the weather cooperated as well.
Anyways, I’m still pretty tired out. And tomorrow will really feel like the first day of the new year.
Happy New Years! Goodbye 2010.
I’m on my way to the New Year’s party that my friends the Huddarts are throwing. So I’ll keep this blog entry short.
I meant to blog about a few things. But these last two weeks, have left me with a lot of work and not much time. As part of my resolution for next year, I’ll try to blog on a daily basis. And so I’ll get to all the content I meant to blog about soon.
I want to wish everyone a happy, prosperous, blessed and cheerful New Year! I hope that 2011 will be a year just as great or even better than 2010. For myself, it has been a year of ups and downs, blessings, challenges, and opportunities. New experiences many of which I ever imagined all happened in 2010. Many questions answered themselves and many things make more sense now. I also saw many promising developments for the future. I hope 2011 will be a continuation of this.
So Happy New Year to all of you! Don’t party too hard tonight and see you in the new year.
Published in the Alexandrian!
I found out on Friday that my friend and founder of the Alexandrian, just released the Fall issue. I haven’t read the entire issue yet, but it looks like a great issue.
I’m particularly excited about this issue because it contains my first ever non-self-published short story: Learning to Love God
http://thealexandrian.org/journal/learning-to-love-god
Do Android Devs Dream of Electric Sheep?
I can’t speak for all the other Android developers in the world, but I know that I don’t. But I can’t pass up a good opportunity for a terrible pun at the late Phillip Dick’s expense.
However I am enjoying living in the Android ecosystem both as a developer and as a user. Just right now I am trying out a blogging application for Android. And even without the slide-out keyboard, using the Swype input app and using an unfamiliar app, I feel more at home on the Samsung Galaxy S than on my Nokia N900…
As a developer I really enjoy working with the APIs. And I appreciate using a widely used platform. No it is not a perfect platform. But it is a joy to work with compared to some mobile platforms and much better than plain old Java development. I guess the saying that the Android development is where old Java developers feel young again is true.
Now if only Google keeps on doing and good job, the manufacturers keep on churning out good handsets, and the fine legal team at Oracle lays off then we’ll all be well off.
Totally Unknown Writers Festival 2010
On Wednesday evening, I went to the 17th Annual Totally Unknown Writers Festival. As always organized by the great folks from Life Rattle Radio and originally founded by two of my professional writing professors, Guy Allen and Arnie Achtman. As with every year, great stories written and read by talented authors from around Toronto.
I hoped to read this year, but I’ll get ready for next year’s festival. I did meet up with some of my old classmates from university. And I was able to catch up with them and Guy. If you want to hear great stories of life experiences from the GTA, I highly recommend coming out to the festival.
Remembrance Day
Update: My sincere apologies for blogging for not fact checking before posting. Apparently Poland’s occupation by her neighbors officially only lasted 123 years rather than 200. However the partitioning of Poland’s borders started before that time, so my initial past may not far off. Still I apologize about that error.
Today is Rememberance Day. Originally commerating the end to the senseless slaughter of World War I with the signing of the Armstice. Today we commerate the sacrifices of men and women in the armed forces and resistance forces. But we should also remember all those died because of that most hideous of human acts, war. Since the French Revolution, the total war doctrine expanded the scope of war to include civilians and many innocents have been massacred in front of altars of War. We too need to remember them.
Rememberance should not end at wearing a poppy and a gloomy look. It should not be done for a few minutes of silence once a year. (But please the least you can do is offer those few minutes.) No we should try to learn about these sacrifices and why they happened. Knowledge for its own sake is of little value. Knowledge must be acted upon for it have value. We must act upon the knowledge of these wars, their victims and their consequences. For the consequences of even wars that happened hundreds of years ago, live with us today.
I’ll make the bold claim that it is our duty to help eliminate or minimize these horrors from touching future generations. Unfortunately, our current actions don’t speak well to a better future.
For Poles today is also our Independence Day from the combined empires of Russia, Austro-Hungarian & Prussia. The end of World War I ended 123 years of foreign occupation and resistance. Today as a Pole I remember about the many sacrifices done for our national identity and voice. And I pray that Poland does not lightly dismiss these gifts, for profit and conformity to the European Union.