Tag Archives: update

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.

Out with the Old

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I’m preparing for what I hope will be a new phase in my life.  And one of the things I need for this change is a revised online presence.  I’ve experimented with various ideas and concepts.  And I want to try and implement them in my life.

One of the first to feel the changes, will be my blogging.  I deleted my old Blogspot blog.  All the content exists on this website anyways.   Also I’m planning to make this blog more into a portfolio, than just a blog straight up.  The blog obviously will be accessible, just not on the front page.  Also I’m thinking of doing some ExtJS magic and build a new AJAXy theme.  So if the site breaks, you know what I’ve been up to.

On another note, I’m getting back to developing justCheckers into reality.  And on the side playing around with the newly revived Pyzzle game engine.

Update – A Week in Review

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This has been quite a busy week in hindsight.  I managed to build up my portfolio and work on my professional image.  I managed to restart my coding and writing projects.  And I’ve finished up on my correspondences.  I look back and I’m quite proud of my achievements.  I just wish I could move such mountains on a regular basis.

Upgraded to Yellow Stripe

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A quick little update, cause I want to concentrate on my personal work today before the workday begins.  Finally caught up on my immediate projects, and I can concentrate a bit more on my personal and professional development.  Also I’ll crank out a good deal of writing and code in the next few days hopefully.  Hence the brievity of my upcoming blogs.  I need to reserve more time toward things other than blogging.

Speaking of personal development, yesterday I traded in my white belt for a yellow stripe in taekwondo.  Keep in mind though, that in the past I’ve trained up to yellow belt.  And I’m still some way before I can don on a black belt.  But I’ll keep at as long as I don’t seriously injure myself.

Parting with the Somber

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I changed the theme for the blog again.  Back to the nice calm, natural feel that I so very much enjoy.  Also I am parting from the somber mood.  Maybe this is a bit premature.  Maybe not.  But I can’t help it… I want to bounce back to my cheery, crazy self again.  Maybe I should be less moody.  Or maybe I should just accept my nature for what it is.

Anyways, just a few more days before I go back to my normal routines.  Back to my life in Toronto, my friends there, and the monotony.  Boring can be fun too… so long as it is not overdone.  I’ll miss my friends and family here too.  But I’ll be back sometime in the future.  For some reason I always gravitate back here again.  This trip taught me a lot about myself, my place and everything in general.  As with any search for knowledge, it creates more questions and concerns than before.  But knowledge gives serenity, as it explains the uncertain and pushes back the unknowable a bit more.

I’ve done some writing.  I hope to have more to share in the future.  But if I want to keep this post short and not rambling.  Then I really, really should, just stop right here.

Forced March

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Another quick update on the writing.  I managed to write up the second thread/part of chapter one.  I am not in the mood for writing today actually.  But I’m going to force myself to keep writing.  Once I have the entire book on paper I can agonize over it later.  Content first, editing later.  Anyways I must continue.

In other news, I’m a bit tired, worn down and honestly don’t give a damn about many things.  Too much crap happening in my life.  Eveything feels like I am in a vicious cycle.  And all my “solutions” aren’t helping more than just coping.  Life goes on, progress does happen but I’m bitter.  Please excuse the fatalistic drama.  Life is becoming a bit of a forced march.

Update on Writing

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Yesterday I wrote the first section of chapter 1 of my novel.  I’m not sure about all the elements of the novel, especially the names and characters.  I might not want to base my characters completely on real life friends.  But I will work with what I have as a rough, rough first draft.  I plan on hashing out the novel first, and then start editing once I am further into the writing.  I might even forego editing until I finish the entire novel in the rough.

At the moment, the first part of the chapter now lives.  I plan on writing two more parts, since the story will consist of two or three interwoven threads or storylines.  And for consistency, I will keep that style throughout the book.  I might merge the storylines together at the end.  That seems like a popular solution to wrapping up a novel, or maybe not.  I plan on crossing that bridge when I get there.

Sleepless Night

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I really ought to go to sleep now.  My bosses will hate me for dragging myself into work zombie style.  But I can’t help it.  I plan on getting a few things done before I get up… or rather before I go to sleep.  Or even more accurate before the time I want to get up to make it to the bus to start my morning commute.

So what exactly do I have in mind?  Well maybe a few odd tasks, preparing for work tomorrow, even maybe some writing.  The tiredness is not really helping me to think straight.  But it does let me focus on a single task at a time.

Funny, now that one of my friends reminded me… I’ve worked in my current position at VisionMAX for a year now.  I’m still sane.  I still hold my job.  I get to work on a real project with a serious client.  People appreciate my input and my work.  Professionally I have grown.  Now if only I could smile everytime I want to complain about work.  It really is not that bad.

In general life continues in its plodding, ordinary way.  Two steps forward, one step back.  But still it is progress…

Anyways I really should get on with my other stuff.  I just wanted to update this blog for the upcoming day.

An Encore

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I didn’t update my blog yesterday.  Life turned out busier than I could imagine.  I am still catching up on things.  I took on so many tasks.  I have a trip to plan.  Writing and reading just piles up around me.  I’m not sure in which direction I should concentrate my efforts.  My efforts to catch up look comical at times.  And my only wish is that I too like those Hindu gods, could possess extra sets of arms and infinitely divideable attention, so I could actually finish everything.  Yet, with all the additional emotional chaos in my life, I still manage to move forward.  In the past, I would of just curled up and moaned myself to sleep.  Today I no longer have that luxury, I need to execute my plans and execute them well.

So a quick update is in order.

Writing

I’m still maintaining my daily blog entries.  Not a simple task at times, I keep on scrunging around for topics to write about.  I’m not sure how my PWC friend, Marika manages to update her blog twice a day and still find time to write books.  I’m marking her as yet another example of the craziness, creativity and sheer amazing output that Finns are capable of.  My own novel writing ground to a halt.  Too many distractions and too many random tasks are to blame here.  However, the novel is moving towards an iteration of an earlier novel idea and elements from other ideas.  I plan on dredging up those previous stories, modifying them to fit the theme and context of this novel.  It’ll probably end up looking like a post-apoc scifi “Jungle Book” of sorts.  If you can get that around your head, great, now help me understand it! 😀

Coding

I’m changing gears at work, so hobby programming is not on my list of high priorities at the moment.  I plan on getting back to Qt as soon as the rest of my life falls into place.  Also I’m holding back from contributing to the KDE and maemo projects for a bit.  I do need a bit more motivation to get involved.  Many using the platforms more often will make that happen.  But still need a working IT before I can even think about developing for maemo.

Life

Learning to feel at home driving.  Cellphone enroute.  Things starting to fall into place.  I just need more time, to get everything done.  Working on bring some sanity and regularity into my life.  This should help on the health side, cut down on giddiness, increase productivity and increase self-satisifaction.  With the warmer weather coming, I plan on getting out there more often.  So projects might need tabling until I have more time.  And a big thing is a planned trip, which will resolve certain important and nagging questions in my mind.

A Weekend of Inaction

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This weekend turned out not as productive as I planned it to be.  Instead of working on any writing or replying to any e-mails or doing any real computer-related work.  I did enjoy the guilty pleasure of semi-disconnecting from the Web.  This disconnect actually helped with the dose of soul-searching and self-pity that comes with the hyper-worldly message of Valentines being spouted at you.  I also took it easy since I needed unwind from my recently hectic schedule.  I did some work done around the house.  So I apologize to everyone who expected a response from me earlier.  I’ll respond to your e-mails today.

However one thing I managed to work was the conceptual ideas behind my novel.  I want to achieve a high-level of realism in this book.  After some thought, I decided to try and go the “strange reality” route that Strugatsky’s The Roadside Picnic espouses.  So while some of the technology will be futuristic, it will mostly consist of “upgrading” today’s technology.  No flying between planets, and I took the hazardous route of making the entire story on the Earth.  I’ll have to tread lightly to avoid making any direct statements about current politics and the such.  But other than that, the book will feel more realistic and better researched.  My imagination only goes so far, before things start sounding fake.  Not having to imagine things, and places will help speed writing the book I think.  Now lets see if the theory matches practice though.