Self-improvement: Reinventing Yourself

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about re-inventing yourself. Then, today I randomly meet this 38-year-old martial artist/jewelry businessman/pre-med student/father who has been doing it all his life. Reinventing yourself is something that we can all learn to do. Let me give you a short synopsis of his.

Growing up in the states, he never went to high school or even middle school. Instead, he shuffled back and forth between Asia and the states learning martial arts from a Korean monk who was like a second father to him. Later, he joined the army. Then, he got involved in the diamonds business where dirty business is common. Eight times he was followed after leaving the bank with the diamonds. He always carried a gun with him to protect himself from the Korean underworld, Columbian mobsters, etc. that attempted to take the goods from him. Though it was dangerous, it was also lucrative. He managed to earn enough money to buy a nice house in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. That was great but his wife left him and departed with his daughter still in the womb. He followed her to Texas and somehow got custody of the child. Now, he has decided to be a good father and get a college education so he can become a doctor.

Clearly, this guy is very good at continually reinventing himself to have fun and to survive in this world. This is a key life skill which I think many of us never develop, especially for those of us who come from stable families. I can tell you that my personal story so far has been the singular linear path of school. My ignorance of this world is so profound that it's startling.

There's many people, perhaps including yourself, which has followed a similar linear path and have not yet seen how limited your view of the world truly is. You may very well continue the linear path of school to work with a few weeks of vacation every year to retirement without even thinking. Now, I'm not saying that you should go crazy and go rob a bank or overdose yourself with drugs, but I am saying that you should find a way to continually transform what you do since how else can you broaden your view of the world and truly say that you're living life?

To give you an idea, currently, I'm discarding my student entity and reinventing yourself as an entrepreneur but that is just one stage. What's next? I don't know when I'll do all this but I know it will happen in the next few years:

1. Reinvent myself as a world traveler and travel writer/photorapher. I will spend at least a year traveling the world keeping a journal of my days. At the end of my travels, I will hop around different cafes around Europe and compile the book to be published.

2. Reinvent myself as a film director. I really enjoy watching films and I have attempted to write a few screenplays. To film one myself will be awesome. I will spend a year or two interning to learn the basics of film production before going into directing one myself.

3. Reinvent myself as a psychologist or counselor. Many people have told me that I'm very good at helping them see what their issues are. I can go to school, get a degree, and then open my own practice. People can be fascinating and to understand different types of people is quite rewarding. I have decided that I'll do this when I'm old and (hopefully) well-respected.

So ask yourself this:

How will you reinvent yourself in your life?

Business: Generosity in Networking

A network functions because there's recognition of mutual need. The central idea that many people miss in the professional world is the concept of a finite mutual need. In other words, people tend to keep score since they believe the amount of social equity is limited. It's ideas like:

- I won't do something for you now since you can't do anything for me in the foreseeable future.

- I'll do this for you since you've helped me in the past.

- I'll do this for you now so that you can help me in the future when I need it.

What people are missing is the concept of infinite social capital. Instead of thinking like the above and how you can make someone owe you so you can ask them for favors later, you ought to consider your network of exchanges like the Internet, i.e. everyone benefits with more active connections regardless of which direction the flow is going at the moment.

This is similar to how friendships and relationships should work. You should not be thinking of what you can get from the other person but rather what you can give to the other person. Of course, for anything to last, the reciprocal should also be true. The other person will also give to you whether or not you expect a payback.

The ideal is to transform your professional network into a personal network so that the other person can operate on the same level of trust as you. Granted, this doesn't always work but why not try? A consistent lack of generosity is not a display of rugged individualism but rather a display of blatant selfishness. Individualism is merely maintaining your own identity regardless of outside circumstance. It has very little to do with giving or receiving.

Self-improvement: Switching Mental Eyes

Everyone sees the world in different ways. This statement appears very obvious. Let's be more specific. Artists see the world in one way. Engineers a different way. Writers still another way. Entrepreneurs yet another way. I consider myself an amalgmation of those different perspectives. When I observe a scene, I typically see from one of these perspectives. The artist and writer's perspectives come easiest to me but that's probably because I often carry a camera and notepad with me so I have trained myself to see the world like that by default.

Still, I find the world to be quite more of an exciting place when I will my mind to take on another perspective, or the coined phrase "mental eye". The scene is the same but what you see is often completely different. I believe that the ability to adopt different mental eyes may be directly related to creativity.

Though this requires some mental flexibility, if you can do this, you can get so much more from the world. A simple example is just by looking at an old fire hydrant. The photographer side of me sees the paint peeling off in a display of neglect and an odd patchwork of patterns due to it. There is some beauty to that.

I switch to the engineer eye. I see that there is an opening for a fireman to attach a hose to. Instantly, a number of questions assault me as I realize my own ignorance. The engineering mental eye for me is especially good at revealing my own ignorance in how the world works.

I start wondering what the water pressure for these things typically are. Does it vary with the location of the fire hydrant? Say the fire hydrant was 20 feet higher, will it be in a less effective spot due to possible lower water pressure? So is the placement usually in the highest possible spot and closest location to a building? What about the size of the hose? Was it designed just to fit a certain hose radius? It looks like it but of course the hose end can have an adapter that fits the fire hydrant so that probably resolves it. What about its interior? How many valves and pipes are in there and what's the design? When a fireman wants water, he just loosens the cap doesn't he? What's to stop from the water pressure suddenly gushing out and hitting him in the face? That seems a rather stupid design if true. No, there must be a valve that is turned on when the fireman presses a switch on the hose end that will be attached to the opening. I'm imagining something like a gas pump.

I switch to the entrepreneur eye. I see a disused neglected piece of equipment. I'm wondering why it's neglected to such a state. Fire hydrants I believe are maintained by the city government. This here means that the city is lacking some funds to maintain the city's equipment. Perhaps the reason is due to this one's remote location. Yet, the infrastructure supporting this fire hydrant still exists. Is it possible for a private company to renovate these fire hydrants? Of course that's possible but if the city had funds for that it would have done so. How about the reverse? Do they still work Need to investigate lifetime of fire hydrants under state of neglect. If it's over the expected lifetime, a company can remove these since they might pose a public health hazard. What possible health hazards? I'm not sure but it deserves investigation. That's just one business case. Maybe there's others. Considering the out-of-way location of this one and possibly others, they will not be missed here. Is there enough fire hydrants in neglect though to justify a venture here?

That's just one example of a rather mundane object. As you observe in life, there are millions of others. In other words, this world is really cool if you just pay attention and observe.

Self-improvement: Why Do People Seek Trouble and Drama?

Why do people seek drama? A good question and something that's related to the previous entry on Wang Xiaobo's "Extreme Experiences". Wang Xiaobo took his Chinese cultural revolution experience and ancient writings as his lens to see the issue. However, Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, takes another perspective on the individual's need for excitement.

This short book contains small prose passages with a lesson contained in each meant to inspire and guide the artist and writer. One of the central themes is the concept of Resistance and how that prevents us from attaining what we most desire. Steven writes this on the needless drama that some people pursue:

We get ourselves in trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It's easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman's wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.

...Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.

Cruelty to others is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others.

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.

Literature: Translations of Wang Xiaobo's Prose "Extreme Experiences"

Yes, here you go. If I do some more, I may go ahead and translate his entire book called the Joy of Living. It's actually never been translated from Chinese into English so it won't be reinventing the wheel. This prose is called "Extreme Experiences" and it's a satirical look at how some people tend to go for experiences that are extreme just to get a kick out of it though if you have any common sense, you realize it's stupid and foolish. The link to the pdf is as such:

http://www.mendedreality.com/docs/translations/wangxiaobo_extreme.pdf

Literature: Translations of Wang Xiaobo's Prose "An Unique Pig Who Goes His Own Way"

I really like Wang Xiaobo's prose. Unfortunately, some of his most insightful writings have not been translated into English. With my moderate literary skills I have decided to correct that injustice and allow more people to have access to this man who has the ability to express the profound in such simple terms. Personally, I find his writing style to be similar to that of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's or the prose of Tagore if the reader is familiar with these works, in other words, they are simple stories that express some truth which is most often ignored if someone just says it directly.

I have translated one of his prose since I know you can learn something from it. Like many of his writings, the story is simple but the meaning is far deeper:

When I went out to the countryside back in the day, I fed pigs and herded cattle. If there were no one around, these two kinds of animals would still know how to live. They would wander around idly, eating or drinking when needed. When spring comes, they'll make love. Just like that, their lifestyle is very simple, lacking anything to take advantage of. The arrival of man gave their lives certain arrangements: every cow and every pig now has a purpose. For most of them, this new lifestyle was quite sad with the former working in the fields while the latter growing meat for slaughter...

Read more: http://www.mendedreality.com/docs/translations/wangxiaobo_pig.pdf

Literature: Years of Tears

January's wind is your sigh to

Blow like a lost love while

February's creeping approach

Steps lightly to caress me

March's resplendent spring light

Gives me respite to forget with

April's blooming flowers to

Cast a field of fragrance but

May's rain is your tears to

Remind me of the past that was

June's verdant fields has me

Think of idyllic summer days but

July's sun is your glare to

Feel your flaming temper and

August's thunder only rumbles with

Memories echoing which never died

September's coolness is your resolve to

Drop the thought of I for me to wait as

October's falling leaves sheds memories of

Each thought dropped until gone to have

November's night blanketing my memories to

Leave me to reflect the serenity of

December's snow falling silently asleep but

Only to be ruffled again by January's wind

Business: Kickstarter to Fund Projects

Often, you have an idea you wish to pursue to fruition but you are blocked by the reality of insufficient funding. So what can you do? Run around asking for investors or borrowing money from the bank? That's the traditional way. Recently, I discovered this cool site, http://www.kickstarter.com/, which funds projects purely through individual donations. The catch though is that the donor doesn't donate right away. You, the project owner, must set a money goal that you're trying to reach within a time frame. If you don't get enough money by that point, there will be no donation. This is to ensure that all projects actually get sufficient money to be successfully completed.

Anyone can sign up for an account and submit a project allowing anyone to donate if they're interested. The only limitations are that the projects must

1. Have clearly defined goals and expectations.

2. Be creative. It must fit within the fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater.

3. Not be for charity or donation.

4. Offer rewards and not financial incentives. You cannot offer ownership, financial returns, repayment, etc. Instead, you must offer rewards like copies of the work, fun experiences, etc.

If your project fits these requirements, all you have to do is then fill out a short proposal form answering a few basic questions:

1. What is your project (750 characters max)

2. What rewards will you offer? (1000 characters)

3. Where can we find out more about you and your project?

4. Which category fits your project?

5. How much money would you like to raise?

6. How did you hear about us?

And if you're looking to fund some project, there's loads for your money to go into some worthy cause: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover

Some of the more interesting projects (in my view) that entrepreneurial-minded people have raised include. Check them out and/or post one of your own:

ISS-Notify

A LED light that shines whenever the ISS passes over your head.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/natronics/iss-notify?ref=live

http://mechanicalintegrator.com/2011/iss-notify/

And this was also interesting since originally he made one to detect near earth asteroids:

http://mechanicalintegrator.com/2010/near-earth-asteroid-lamp-at-science-hack-day-sf/

Paintings for Satellites

Rooftop paintings for the specific purpose of art observable from orbit.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1145342167/paintings-for-satellites

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollydilworth/

Team Prometheus N-Prize Mission

Launch a small satellite into LEO from a high-altitude balloon of 100000 feet. Note that this funding failed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1775006829/team-prometheus-n-prize-mission?ref=live

http://www.teamprometheus.org/

Lumi Co. Textile Products

A new textile technology that makes some products made of the material.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lumi/lumi-co-a-new-textile-printing-technology

Windfarms Project

Grassroots way of growing vegetables in the windows of homes in an aesthetically pleasing way.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/windowfarms/turn-our-cities-windows-into-vertical-veggie-farm

http://www.windowfarms.org/

Aperture Science Sentry Turret

Sentry gun based on the one from the amazing game Portal

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sirwolfgang/aperture-science-sentry-turret?ref=category

Mapping Gulf Oil Spill

Group of citizens got together to build balloons and kites attached with cameras to map out the Gulf oil spill.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jywarren/grassroots-mapping-the-gulf-oil-spill-with-balloon

Literature: Shadow

i wish you'll see it in my face
but my thoughts you don't see at all
i'm just taking my slow steps home
putting on a face of someone i don't know
but that's someone you think you see

i thought i could light up the room
but my candled flame burned out long ago
i'm just a shadow
walking behind who you think i am

if i can just dissolve my thoughts
i'll walk this path with steady steps
to have that flame making life what it is
and not to walk as this shadow
of a flame that had died long ago

i thought i could light up the room
but my candled flame burned out long ago
i'm just a shadow
walking behind who you think i am

so i'm just walking along thinking
will i just go away fading?
how will i relight this candle
so that i can be true to what you see?

Philosophy: Consumption, Destruction, and Creation

For every object in existence in this world, we can choose to act through one of three methods: consume, destroy, or create. Consumption is using the outputs of creation. Destruction is eliminating the creation itself. Creation is the act of creating something so that there can be consumption or destruction. An everyday example is TV. Consumption is watching TV programs. Destruction is physically destroying the TV or ensuring that no TV broadcasts are made. Creation is producing a new TV program or building a TV.

From a macroscopic perspective, the percentage of time allocated to each of these three actions in a society is a good indicator of the society's well-being. In the worst possible dictatorial society such as North Korea, the only acts permissible are consumption and destruction. Creation is carefully restricted to those in power and strongly discouraged by force otherwise. In such a society, progress will be slow if at all. Indeed, this can be extended to a generality: For any society, if creation is not greater than consumption or destruction, then the society cannot progress.

The macroscopic relevance of this rule is built on a fundamental level upon the microscopic acts of the individual. If an individual consumes or destroys more than he or she produces, this individual is creating a negative balance in society. For an individual to exist in this world, he or she is either selfish, misguided, or lazy to presume that the individual should feel entitled getting things by doing things of lesser value. A rich heir that squanders away his inherited wealth has demolished the culmination of the value of the creation of his forefathers. By logical extension of the counterpart, the most worthwhile individual will be one who strives to be at least one step above the ladder than his or her predecessors.

Some may object to this simple analysis by stating that not everything which is created has value. Aren't some creations dangerous and harmful? Is it not better to create nothing than something if more harm will arise due to its creation? Unfortunately, creation for the most part seems to be a double-edged sword. With few exceptions (such as gas chambers), any product or service created can both be served for good or bad. For instance, just consider

- Nuclear bomb versus nuclear energy

- GPS satellites for military surveillance and missile targeting versus ensuring that you do not get lost

- Rockets for military use versus rockets to travel to space

- Viruses concoted to kill people versus medicine developed to cure diseases

Since the good or bad usage of technology is impossible for us to predict, we cannot stop all progress just because of the possibility of something being used in the wrong way. This is not to say that we shouldn't be careful. To be noted is that in general for a technology, the greater the potential for good, also the greater the potential for bad.

Another valid counterargument is that not all individuals can create more than they consume. Consider a long-term hospital patient who is suffering from a debilitating illness. Is that person not entitled to be supported, i.e. consume more than create? The answer here seems to cross from the mechanistic into the moralistic. Actually, there is no such distinction. One merely has to observe the past history of the individual and his or her present state of action assuming that the individual still has faculty of mind and body. If even at this stage, the individual has the brimming energy to go do something or if the individual has demonstrated such tendency in the past, then the current state is but a temporary one.

More counterarguments can certainly be brought up and I'll be happy to address them.

Self-improvement: Communication Between Levels

Take a look at the following drawing depicting people walk around on different platforms of various heights. If you understand this diagram, you understand what I'm referring to here by people are on different levels of understanding of this world. A person on a certain level can always engage with those on his or her equal or lower level. For a person on a lower level to engage someone on a higher level, either someone on the higher level must jump down to the lower level or the person on the lower level must wisen up enough to permanently upgrade him or herself to the higher level.

Several examples may suffice to illustrate my point. Consider why a child is bored by "adult talk". Oftentimes, it's not that the child doesn't understand what the adults are talking about but rather that the child doesn't see its importance. I remember that when I was a kid I quickly zoned out whenever a grown-up conversation started between my parents on things such as buying school supplies, cleaning up the home, what clothes I need, etc. I mostly care about when I get to visit a good friend of mine, what books and games I can buy next, and if there's anything interesting to watch on TV. You can see how narrow and limited a typical child's perspective is.

Another example is when wise men of the world had to explain "how to live life" concepts to the average man. They almost never say whatever concept directly; instead, they depend on allegorical stories and parables to reach out to a wider audience. Clearly, most people aren't capable of understanding profound truths unless it's dumbed down to practicalities that they can understand.

The lesson here is that whenever you're communicating with someone, make sure that you can be on the same level as him or her. Note that it's much easier to go down than up, e.g. it's much easier for an adult to understand child talk than a child to understand what adults are talking about. So what does this mean? Three things:

1. Surround yourself with people that's on the same level as you if you wish to communicate easily.

2. Study and interact with those on higher levels than you to learn and "level up" eventually.

3. Interact with those on lower levels than you to bring their awareness to what's missing. This may not always work but at least it's worth some of your time. An enlightened individual should not hesitate to give understanding to the ignorant. The question is only how much time you have for such an unequivalent exchange.

Literature: Retribution of Tears

Her violet eyes streamed with tears as she stood on the edge of a seawall holding the broken shards of a crystal ball. In the next second, everything will change. She imagined herself plunging into the dark turquoise waves below her, forever erasing all traces of the broken shards of her and her memories. Yet, even in this last moments of her life she couldn't help but cry out for someone to save her.

A memory flashed by of her unforgivable action a minute ago. The shards held in her hands piercing into her flesh were literally the remnants of her former lover. At this very spot a moment ago, she had accused him of betraying their trust. He had given her a look of derision tinged with fear and laughed and said that she deserved it for first betraying him. He went on, heedless of the pain which his words like tiny barbs dug into her heart. He had thought she was the type of girl that he liked, one who will relish having a man around to protect her from this dreadful world where cute girls often fall into the laps of perverted devious men.

Instead, after she revealed herself to him, he had found himself to be utterly redundant. She was more capable of taking care of herself than he was. He had slowly started to draw away. But that wasn't the last straw. That was a week ago when he saw that she had the power to transform people into perfect replicas of glass when people saw her cry. That was when he knew that he had to get away to wake himself up from this unexplainable insanity. So it was just good fortune that he met someone that day who happened to be someone actually normal and wasn't able to take care of herself, so of course what happened just happened.

She had tried to hold it in then but couldn't. She had cried with open eyes and watched helplessly as her retribution of tears twisted his body into glass. The wind blew then and this form had toppled over shattering against the wall below. The only remnants were his eyes that flew like tiny pearls from his head to land miraculously in her open hands at that very moment.

A proper end for her has always been on her mind and she was always ready to execute her demise. She took out a mirror and gazed at her reflection held within, the last visages in her vision herself at her worst. There was barely a moment of regret before she toppled over, the second glass statue to fall into the waves that day.

Literature: Flight of the Dandelion

 
This is an allegory of the battle between the immortal dream and the temporal world. Every dream has an associated cost. Saints hardly ever marry; to reach aspirations, they have to sacrifice worldly concerns like individual love for a greater love. For better or worse, I'm no saint but being an idealistic dreamer at times, I'm hoping to capture some of their spirit in this simple story:

My scholar's robes swished back and forth across the stone floor giving off a silent display of impatience mirroring my mood. The pendulum chime at the corner of the workshop showed that there's still ten minutes to the hour but that seemed like an eternity to me.

Today was to be the start of a glorious period of my life; it is also the end of a long painstaking period of my life. In the season of life, I will have passed into the glorious state of summer where the blue sky and white clouds will give me boundless freedom. This is not allegorical for today I will have finished the Dandelion.

Five years of ingenuity and hard work and we have finally done it. Our shared dream of flight will finally take flight, if you'll excuse the pun, once the last component arrives and the ornithopter completed.

DONG! DONG! The ding-dong of the pendulum was punctuated by the opening of the door. In came the most intelligent if not also most beautiful lady in the known world. Her blue and purple robes gave an air of impatience as she approached.

Ciela reached into her robe and held out a sparkling gem. It shone with an unnatural brilliance that even the glass mirror in the sunlit room failed to match. I realized that I knew what it was and exclaimed, "A soul catcher!"

"Indeed," Ciela corrected. "With a worthy soul soon-to-be in place I can finally fly."

"Don't you mean we?" I laughed and said. "No need to be egoistical at this stage."

"There was no mistake," Ciela said with eerie calm as she slowly approached me.

When I saw the knife it was already too late. There was a silent slash and then I saw my reflection in the mirror falling. That was me with my throat cut, my mind thought with alarming disbelief. I struggled to ask why but what actually came out was a bubble of blood and spit.

"I have always loved flight more than I loved you," Ciela replied guessing my inquiry. "And you are a worthy soul for this dream to bear fruit for out of all in the kingdom, I have seen that only the soul of you or I are fit to power this flight."

I tried to say that I would never do the same to her but once again nothing came out. She guessed my thoughts and continued, "If you say you'll never do the same to me, that's only because you're foolish enough to willingly throw away an immortal dream for temporal love. Know that whatever love I felt for you never for a fraction of a second could compare with the love I felt for what's up there."

My life was slipping away and there was nothing I could do. My last thought which never found voice was "I love you and always will". She must have sensed that for when she turned away there was a hint of sadness and the trace of a tear.

Self-improvement: Combine Scattered Thoughts (结合分散的思维)

对我来说，写作就象某些酒鬼的喝酒的滋味。他们不喝酒会感到好压抑，类似如我不写我会感到很不妥。只有把我的心思写出去才可以心里放松些，知道虽然大部分可能不是聪慧过人的思想，可最起码这道思维不会因为没写下来传达给别人而睡了一觉就永远消失了。我平时写的是用英语不过我发现写中文是更有挑战性，并且我也不知不觉地克服了我之前的障碍，那就是担心人家看不起我。就用中文语言的列子吧，我之前老是觉得我就是因为说的不行，至少得写出些像样的著作来弥补，可以翻词典什么的来拉近这个距离。其实我发觉这么做使我十分讨厌用中文来表达自己，你想想每隔几句我得翻一下词典（或Google）确认一下那一段是不是都正确是十分劳累并且不最有效的方法。

我想到这次去罗马尼亚的经验，虽然在那边只待了一周多，我却学到了些不少单词跟当地历史和文化。这就是因为我没不敢问人家怎么讲这个那个，就是因为公开自己的无知才会有所长进。通过这次旅行我深刻地意识到能互相吸收人生经验和知识是十分有意义的，也许就是因为我跟对方有大量区别才会有大量收获。我这个人的习惯就是随时带着笔跟个本子，这样随时从周围观察或跟人家交流学到的都可以保证不会忘掉，唯一的不好就是当我同时也戴着单反相机时有几次有人会以为我是记者。可我现在想也未必是件坏事，下次要是这样的我可以假扮为记者的位置。其实记者是挺有自由的，像这次旅行待在我旅馆楼下的就是德国的一个记者，他是很有理由跟开会场合的科技人物提问（不过可惜的就是他并没这么做，恐怕他还不敢显示自己的无知）。

跟他聊了之后，我发现自己很想追要他的生活方式，去世界各个地方采取信息写文章。其实我是经常睡眠醒后就会有个想脱离一切的愿望，把一切扔下拿起旅行包就走。究竟去哪我也不是百分之百清楚，不过不用说肯定比留在此地的感觉好！可惜那只是一瞬间，白日梦做完了就得想到今天的某某任务。我从罗马尼亚回来的那一天就做了几个旅行的白日梦，是想脱离当场的责任。这就是我个人所常见的矛盾，一个人要是完全自由那同时很可能一事无成，可要是完全专注责任那同时就对这世界的好奇跟灵感（这可是比生命有价值的东西……）。我想做的给我目前非得做的有时一致可也经常分裂。

想结合这些是需要三项策划。首先对我必须做的但没什么兴趣的行动我得尽量在新环境完成，记得有几次开车去陌生德州小镇的咖啡店或公园做事使我的心情很快地好转。第二就是每周我得有个小项目能完成，即使是大项目不过能把它切成小项目来完能给我动力。第三就是跟人家分享我的想法，我几年前才体会到我其实是外向的，外向的人精力一般来自跟人家的社交。

我想这几项策划不仅对我一个人有帮助，因为我发现像所有的人，我周围熟悉的人一般跟我的世界观点有些类似，也许这也可以用在你的生活上。不妨你试试看一看有什么收获？

Self-improvement: Justifications on Mental State

They say people are good at justifying their actions, whether good or bad. I suppose that's true since I'm doing that now for why I slept 12 hours earlier without eating anything. No, it's not jet lag since I could have woken up 6 hours ago.

Brief disclaimer: To be noted is that justifying actions often makes more sense to the justifier than other people. For me, it was apparent enough that to give in to temporary madness is to have greater focus later.

I have noticed my hunger for creating knowledge and doing projects is directly linked with my physical hunger for food. However, just physical deprivation isn't enough. There is also often the important condition of no outside distractions. This is especially true for activities that I deem boring but necessary to do.

This other condition is universally applicable but hard to apply during daytime since inevitably I do not want to be cooped up inside when the sun's still shining. If I look at today, my thoughts earlier were as such: If I wake up now, I will most likely go to a coffee shop where I'll proceed to work and eat some food. Then a few hours later, I'll socialize, come home, and sleep.

This doesn't sound like a bad arrangement but I knew that I needed more time than a few hours. When I get home I indubiably will not do more work since I'll already be satiated for the day.

This can be resolved by preparing a mental state where I can do more work. This is analogous to the phenomenon of supersaturation where under certain circumstances a solution can contain more dissolved material than under normal circumstances.

Here, analogously I can do more work if I put myself in a state of greater pressure by depriving myself of food and outside distractions which is much more likely at night when everyone else is sleeping.

What I've been wondering for some time now is whether there's some healthier alternatives to reaching this supersaturated state. Self-deprivation of food is not a sustainable process in the long run and not interacting with others at certain times may not only be considered selfish and unreliable but also miss important opportunities.

Literature: Red Light

Don't ever let people decide how you should travel in this road of life. Wrote this poem as a simple message of that:

Red light of the sun

Fading into the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

I breathe in sorrow

The slave of your world

Every little action

Only falls onto me

To follow your words

Is to just wait there

At the crossroads of life

Stopping at your red light

But do you know?

On this journey

Only change can happen

When I change myself

Red light of the sun

Giving away to the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

Breathe of peace

The ruler of my world

Courage of conviction

In everything I do

So I say I believe in you

Do you believe in me?

[IT] Advantages of Hexadecimal

If you work with computers on some level beyond Microsoft Office or browsing the net, at some point, you will run across hexadecimals. What are they and why do people bother using them when they seem something better left for assembly programmers?

Hexadecimal is just a base-16 number system. We humans because we grew up in a society where most of us has 10 fingers, use the decimal system for the most part. In hex, in addition to the numerals 0-9 to represent values zero through nine, we also have letters A-F to represent values ten through fifteen.

Consider the number 10995. In decimal system, we have
(1 x 10^4) + (0 x 10^3) + (9 x 10^2) + (9 x 10^1) + (5 x 10^0) = 10995

In hexadecimal system, we have 2AF3:
(2 × 16^3) + (10 × 16^2) + (15 × 16^1) + (3 × 16^0) = 2AF3

What's important is to realize that numbers are abstract counting notions which can have infinite ways of displaying in reality. Actually, base 10 really offers no advantage to us except that we humans are born with 10 fingers and toes which make it easier for us to count. We could use base-23 or base-159 for no good reason.

However, there are distinct advantages to using hexadecimal in computer science:

1. You can store more information in the same space. In a hex code with two digits you can express the numbers 0 through 255. In a decimal code with two digits you can count from 0 to 99.

2. Hexadecimal (base 16) converts easily to binary (base 2), which is used by computers at the fundamental level. A two digit hexadecimal number can range from 0 to 255, which can be expressed in eight digits of binary code.

Programmers sometimes like to throw around dorky jokes that ordinary people won't get. The following is a good test to see how dorky you are:

3x12=36
2x12=24
1x12=12
0x12=18

Programmers typically put 0x in front of a number that's in hex base. This way, people don't get confused. So here, the first three lines are interpreted as multiplication while the last is considered the hex interpretation of 12, which is (1 x 16^1) + (2 x 16^0) or 18.

Here's a better one:

Q: Let’s say only you and dead people can read hex. If you teach your buddy how to read hex also, what do you all have in common?
A: You are all deaf.

If you need an explanation, you're still not quite a dork. Work on it though! Still, for completeness, explanation: "dead" refers to a hexadecimal number DEAD (57005 base 10), as opposed to the state of not being alive. With you and your friend, that's two more to the group, so add 2 to D to get F. Hence, DEAD + 2 = DEAF.

[IT] Short Discourse on Encoding (ASCII, UTF-8, etc.)

As Joel Spolsky, the co-founder of Frog Creek Software and the very popular blog/company Stack Overflow, says, every programmer ought to know about the basics of encoding considering how many of us don't. It's really quite sad. So this will be a brief gist of what I gleaned from reading his article.

In the old days when English still dominated the computer world, a code called ASCII was able to represent every character using a number between 32 and 127. Space was 32, the letter "A" was 65, etc. This could conveniently be stored in 7 bits. Most computers in those days were using 8-bit bytes, so not only could you store every possible ASCII character, but you had a whole bit to spare. Code below 32 were unprintable and were used for control purposes like 7 which made the computer beep.

But the codes from 128-255 were left entirely open to the geographic region's inclination. For example on some PCs the character code 130 would display as é, but on computers sold in Israel it was the Hebrew letter Gimel (), so when Americans would send their résumés to Israel they would arrive asrsums.

The eventual adopted ANSI standard secured all agreements below 128 but left what's above 128

to your regional taste. Before the Internet this whole patch of mess worked to a degree but as soon

as the Internet came in, something had to change. Enter Unicode.

Unicode

Some people are under the misconception that Unicode is simply a 16-bit code where each character takes 16 bits and therefore there are 65,536 possible characters. This is not, actually, correct. It is the single most common myth about Unicode, so if you thought that, don't feel bad.

In fact, Unicode makes you think a different way about encoding characters. Until now, we've assumed that a letter maps to some bits which you can store on disk or in memory:

A -> 0100 0001

In Unicode, a letter maps to something called a code point which is still just a theoretical concept. How that code point is represented in memory or on disk is another story.

Every platonic letter in every alphabet is assigned a magic number by the Unicode consortium which is written like this: U+0639. This magic number is called a code point. The U+ means "Unicode" and the numbers are hexadecimal. U+0639 is the Arabic letter Ain. The English letter A would be U+0041.

Encodings

The earliest idea for Unicode encoding, which led to the myth about the two bytes, was, hey, let's just store those numbers in two bytes each. So Hello becomes

00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F

Couldn't it also be:

48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 ?

the people were forced to come up with the bizarre convention of storing a FE FF at the beginning of every Unicode string; this is called a Unicode Byte Order Mark and if you are swapping your high and low bytes it will look like a FF FE.

For a while it seemed like that might be good enough, but American programmers were complaining. English rarely used code points above U+00FF and the thought of wasted bytes shocked them. Besides, who's going to convert the ASCII character sets over?

Thus was invented UTF-8. UTF-8 was another system for storing your string of Unicode code points, those magic U+ numbers, in memory using 8 bit bytes. In UTF-8, every code point from 0-127 is stored in a single byte. Only code points 128 and above are stored using 2, 3, in fact, up to 6 bytes.

This has the neat side effect that English text looks exactly the same in UTF-8 as it did in ASCII, so Americans don't even notice anything wrong. Only the rest of the world has to jump through hoops. Specifically, Hello, which was U+0048 U+0065 U+006C U+006C U+006F, will be stored as 48 65 6C 6C 6F.

There are actually loads of other encoding out there but since December 2007, the most popular encoding on the web has been UTF-8 so it'll be good to know more about it. It's important to know the encoding for messages over the web. No such thing as plain text anymore!

For an email message, you are expected to have a string in the header of the form

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

For a web page, the original idea was that the web server would return a similar Content-Type http header along with the web page itself -- not in the HTML itself, but as one of the response headers that are sent before the HTML page.

It would be convenient if you could put the Content-Type of the HTML file right in the HTML file itself, using some kind of special tag. Of course this seems to be a Catch-22: "how can you read the HTML file until you know what encoding it's in?!" Luckily, almost every encoding in common use does the same thing with characters between 32 and 127, so you can always get this far on the HTML page without starting to use funny letters:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

But that meta tag really has to be the very first thing in the section because as soon as the web browser sees this tag it's going to stop parsing the page and start over after reinterpreting the whole page using the encoding you specified.

What if a poorly informed web designer doesn't put this tag though? Apparently, every browser does something different to try to guess the character set. Sometimes, they get it right. Sometimes wrong which you the web browser will have to try to figure out what encoding the web designer actually meant for you to use. Is it Chinese? Hindi? Arabic? Good luck!

Thus comes the central point that for every web document you code up, be sure to include the encoding type!

For his whole article, I heartily recommend reading it here:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Self-improvement: Efficient Management of Time

There is a difference between someone being effective and someone being efficient. The former is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. The latter is doing things regardless of their importance in the most economical manner.

For instance, a door-to-door salesperson is very efficient at selling door-to-door but he is utterly ineffective. He could just use email or direct mail.

Two things to keep in mind that might be fairly obvious but often overlooked are:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.

2. Requiring much time does not make a task important.

The key is realizing that WHAT you do is far more important than HOW you do it. Efficiency is only secondary to effectiveness.

How do you become more effective? The key is having more time by doing less. OK. what does that mean? Many people define a to-do list. But how many people also define a not-to-do list? Probably not many do.

A daily to-do list should only have one or two items. Just ask yourself this simple question: "If I can only do one (or two) thing(s) today, what will it be?" How you identify these crucial items is as simple as asking yourself "If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?" Make sure that you accomplish the task listed in your to-do list no matter what by the end of the day. Be realistic with your daily milestones but don't make them too easy to achieve! If you have to sacrifice a social life or a late charge on loans for it so be it.

Just setting one or two tasks a day is already cutting your workload dramatically. But you have to do some them efficiently. This can be forced through using a timer on a stopwatch or this website:

http://e.ggtimer.com/5minutes

(or 1hour or whatever after the second slash)

This is a set limit on the amount of time you have in accomplishing the task. Remember that you're still expected to finish the task by the end of the day so be generous with yourself.

To generate a not-to-do list is almost as easy as generating a to-do list and there will actually be more items. Ah, don't you feel good being lazy? Haha. Simply ask yourself what are the top three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I've been doing something important. These are aka crutch activities, things that you do to avoid having to do things you really have to do but still have a little value so you don't feel completely bad. You might put things like watching the Discovery channel on TV, reading online news or blogs, and reading random books at a bookstore.

Another thing to note is managing interruptions. You might have the best plan in the world to execute your well-defined goal of the day but then you get that phone call from someone and you end up talking for over close to 2 hours. Then an urgent meeting that you just have to attend. Then some emails to send off. By the time you have lunch and get back, the day is about half over and you haven't even started on your daily goal.

What to do? Actually, it's tips that should go into a general not-to-list:

1. No phone calls while you're working unless it's urgent. Let people know this beforehand by setting a voicemail which tells people when not to bother you. Eventually people will get it.

2. Make business phone calls exactly that. Business phone calls. Do not go off on tangents or letting other people go on tangents by talking about the weather and such. Know beforehand what you're going to talk about.

3. No emails except 2-3 times daily at set times that you check. Recommended is 12PM, 4PM, or 8PM. Do not wake up and check your email immediately. If you do it in the morning, you can get trapped in this email hole which'll take up a good portion of your morning. Also do not check it at night. That will just give you insomnia.

4. No social networking sites, online chatting, watching TV, or any other time wasters except after you've finished your task for the day.

5. No meetings unless absolutely necessary. Meetings for the most part wastes a lot of time. Agree to no meeting where there's no clear agenda and end time. Otherwise, make excuses if you have to for why you bailed a meeting early or why you couldn't make it at all. Of course, always ask someone to email what was talked about at the meeting. Reading the email will take up a fraction of the time of going to the actual meeting. Repeat this enough times and people will get used to your permanent absence. Of course, you have to do actual work. Just make sure you do more work outside of meetings than in them. Let people know what you've done through more efficient means of communications--like talking to them when you actually have a problem or emailing status updates.

There you go. Just follow your to-do-list and not-to-do list (including the general ones listed above) and you should be on your way of using your time much more effectively. With these tips, you'll find that you have more time to do things that are not work. Remember that being overwhelmed is as bad as doing nothing. Having these lists daily will help make sure you fall into neither category.

[Sociology] Dating Social Progression?

Probably at a used book store somewhere sometime, I picked up a 1950s guide on dating called Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers by Evelyn Millis Duvall. I really like reading retro books and its subject matter was too curious for me to avoid. Since then, it has comfortably reclined on my book shelf gathering dust until now....

As I'm reading this, I'm wondering just how many of the things Dr. Duvall discussed still applies today. I'll list out five that I think no longer holds true in modern American society. Quoted verbatim from the book:

1. In a poll of high-school boys, more than two-thirds said that they do not like to have girls call them on the telephone. They feel that this is a boy's privilege, and that a girl seems forward when she phones a boy.

2. When in doubt about what to give a girl, flowers are usually safe.

3. Boys find that girls do not like the indirect approach that starts, "What are you doing next Friday night?" That puts the girl "in a spot." Boys should not act as though they expect to be refused, as Amos does when he says, "I don't suppose you'd like to go on a date with me, would you?" This backhanded kind of invitation is apt to make the girl feel uncomfortable and is a mark of the boy's feeling of insecurity, too.

4. A girl must be extremely tactful; boldly buying her own ticket or handing him the cash in public may be embarrassing for him.

And this line is quite hilarious. Ah, if only teenagers followed her advice then but too late for America now:

5. ... They are usually the more immature, impulsive boys and girls who have not yet learned that there is a place for everything in life, and that even a kiss is better when it is reserved for the times, the places, and the persons that give it most meaning. With experience a man is able to tell a woman he loves her with his eyes; a woman can express her adoration in a hundred little gestures that only he can understand. It is only during the calf-love stage that love-making is open to the herd.

There are some advance that very well still holds water though:

1. A good conversationalist is not necessarily the one who talks all the time. More often he or she is the sensitive person who listens well and is not afraid of the silences that come along from time to time.

2. You overcome a bad reputation by gaining a good one...This times time and perseverance, but it is the only sure way.

3. Your hospitality is one of the nicest things that you can offer to those you like.

4. You are fortunate if you and your parents have worked out your dating questions by now, for dating is much more satisfactory when it has their approval.

5. The first person you loved was yourself. Little babies are capable of loving no one else at first. They have not had enough experience even to be aware that there are other persons to love.

I'll probably pick up this book again and give my thoughts on it in greater detail but I leave you these few points to ponder upon.

Philosophy: Religion and Spirituality

Many people don't realize there is a difference between religion and spirituality. Religion often boils down to following a set of prescribed rules of dos and do nots despite what else it may say. One should not murder. One should not steal. Ask a religious person why she doesn't steal something from the store when there's no one around and she'll tell you that it's against some religious figure, divine being, or holy book's teachings. Maybe it's even all three. Whoo hoo.

That is not the case with spirituality. You don't steal when you can because you feel it within you that it's against the way of nature. Your reason is not based on prescribed formulas of right or wrong regardless of whose authority it originates from. There is no divine law you just broke. You don't commit such an action because you feel at peace within yourself when you don't do such a thing.

With every rule there is an exception and that's the problem with blindly following some religion. Holding religious tenets can make you quite a fool though you may fool yourself into thinking you're actually wise.

Case in point, a natural disaster just struck and half the town is deserted. There are looters everywhere ransacking shops and such. You go in a jewelry store and sees that there's a few diamonds and pearls in a dimly lit corner that people have missed. But you realize that as the night goes on and before help arrives, there's no way every looter will overlook it. What do you do?

If you say "God says I should not steal and other people will certainly obey this too and if not let God punish them", you just leave it where it is and go on your merry way out of the city. Shortly afterwards, some gang leader sees them and buys some more weapons and drugs with the money from selling them when things return to normal. God somehow doesn't punish him and he turns a few more kids into crackheads or gang members.

On the other hand, if you say "I'll borrow it for the time being so that other less decent people wouldn't just steal it and never give it back. I'll track down who the owner was when things return back to normal and give him or her back what's rightfully his or hers.", you'll gladly take them.

Let's just say you never manage to track down who the owner was. Was it wrong for you to steal the jewels? In that case, it depends on what you do with them. If you sell the jewels to have money for a vacation I believe so. But if you sell them to donate to a charity I believe stealing them was still good.

There are no rules that's not meant to be broken given the right circumstances. Following rules from a holy book without constant reflection on when to apply them actually makes you more foolish though you might be less selfish. Good job. You're no longer quite a selfish person seeking material gratification; instead you're now more of an idealistic fool who thinks you're actually wise. I'm sure being a fool is better than a hedonist but I'm not sure it's much of an improvement.

As another example, let me talk about Christianity in this country. I have met many Christians who are nice (though I have met a few that's not so nice but that's another topic). But there's two kinds of nice. Some of them are genuinely nice while others are religious nice. By the latter, I mean that you can tell they're only nice to you because some book they follow says so. You can sense their nice is somehow forced. If they didn't follow the book's teachings you can be sure that they wouldn't be this nice to you.

I find that very disturbing for the main reason that if so much of their actions and attitudes are determined by following those teachings, do they ever think for themselves? Or do they just reference the book or their pastor's teachings on what to do just about everytime something comes up? I really wonder how much of their actions are up to themselves to decide and how much they relegate to some book or person's teachings. Maybe this is why I find many of these religiously nice people to be a terrible bore if not merely annoying. Given any hypothetical situation, it's very predictable how they'll react. *Yawn*

There's countless other examples of how following a religion actually makes you more foolish than wise. I'll just list out a few I thought of here that's especially applicable in the states:

- Condemning the theory of evolution without understanding how scientific theories work

- Claiming abortion to be wrong regardless of the mother's circumstances

- Condeming gay people as sinners who should miraculously turn straight even though the tendency is often inherently biological

- Talking to people of other beliefs and telling them that they're definitely going to be severely punished by God if they don't convert

- Evangelizing to people who don't really need evangelizing and who's actually more spiritual than you though they don't agree with you on certain "fundamental" principles

- Believing people who can dreamwalk, dream of the future, tell the future of people, spiritually sense their surroundings, etc. to be charlatans or even worse practitioners of evil sorcery

The way to do this is not to think about by what rules or holy words should you do or not do. Instead just reflect on the consequences of an important decision on the world. By world I'm referring to the general sense of anyone or anything including yourself. If the way you take causes greater disharmony in the world in the end, don't do it. On the other hand, if it causes greater harmony or has no effect on the world, why not do it? It's always possible to follow a religion and be spiritual instead of "religious".

There is a caveat here though. I do believe that some people do need religion. Not everyone is sensitive enough to the needs of themselves, other people, or the planet's well-being. Some people are not born that way. They cannot or have a hard time feeling the pain of others. Maybe they somehow are born or have grown long accustomed to even attaining pleasure from hurting others. In these cases, I believe strictly following a religion to be a powerful means of control. The alternative can be much worse.

Literature: Smoking in Solitude

I gave my following thoughts some embellishment; in other words, I lied about certain parts to make it more interesting from a writer's perspective. Still, it is true that I often find music to be directly linked to my train of thought. I wonder if most people find that to be true as well?

Solitude is nice. I was smoking a cigarette on my front porch while waiting for the water in my pot to boil. My headphones resonated with Trinah's "Every Day" while I exhald puffs of smoke. I really don't like smoking. That's why I had to drive home first and drink some caffeine first. I didn't have coffee at home so I had to do with tea. It's close enough to the lyrics and feel of the song.

At the moment, as I'm standing there quietly with the ember of the end lighting up in front of me, there's just the feeling of this moment as part of a larger picture. I'm part of a scene frozen in time. I thought of the scene in Waking Life where Caveh Zahedi and David Jewell were talking about the holy moment. Since I used to watch the movie about every other day I guess relating life to Waking Life still comes up pretty often in my mind.

David Jewell is definitely not the greatest poet alive, I couldn't help but think. Too much pretentious repetition, I thought pretentiously. Still, some of it can be oddly catchy which is why I glance over his stuff sometimes. Like "which way. this way. that way. left way. no right way. find a bright way. and then a night way". I have no idea what it means but maybe someone can rap it.

I tried it and decided that I sounded very lame. This is better left to bling bling professionals with too much money and time on their hands.

The ends of the stick were curling up like a wounded caterpillar. I mildly flicked it and watched absent-mindedly as the ashes fell down the railway onto the first floor. There was no one there so nobody yelled at me. The primary advantage of living upstairs is that gravity is typically on your side.

Half-way there and some ways more to go before all that's left would be smoke and ashes. Once this burns up, these thoughts would be burnt up with it. This moment is not eternal which is why my life is far from being a Haruki Murakami novel. I also don't interact with cats if I can help it and there's no weird metaphysics. His novels are ridiculously annoying in its melancholy but still oddly delicious in how it twists your mind. I'll have to switch to a different song like Space Cowboy's Falling Down with the Paradiso Girls to get my mind off of cats and metaphysics. Electropop has the consistent tendency to dropkick me in the head and knock me out into the real world. Wham!

Self-improvement: Balance of Thoughts on Time

I'm listening to some R&B while sipping on some green tea. My bedroom is tranquil and despite the time of the day has a feeling of permanent lethargy. It is an amazing ambience for reflection or slacking off but a terrible ambience for doing any real work. I use this thought to comfort myself on why I'm writing this instead of doing real work.

When I drive my mind naturally wanders, like yesterday when I daydreamed an epic story in my head for a good hour or so where a god had to do evil to ultimately achieve good but the heroes stayed ignorant of that until the end. There were some amazing graphic scenes and plenty of betrayals and unnecessary deaths. Let me digress no further. Before I jumped into this golden pit of illusions, I thought of an interesting psychological theory:

"Without a balance between thoughts on the past, present, and future, one can never be happy."

The amount of time one's mind dedicates to reflecting on the past, doing the present, and dreaming for the future should be in balance. For instance, if one excessively reflects on the past, one will be stuck in the mentality of past failures or past glories. This will likely cause the person to not like the present either due to regret of events that could not be changed or the seeming reality that the past is much better than the present. They may both be true but dwelling on it too much is harmful to one's mental stability.

Similarly, if one focuses on the present which is the "just do it" mentality, one can lose oneself in the daily reality of life. Where one came from and where one's going should not be ignored since otherwise one can wake up one morning and feel lost in the world. One has lost the meaning of one's life. Lastly, if one dreams too much on the future, one ends up doing nothing useful since the mind consistently dwells on fanciful daydreams.

So how do we find this balance between these thoughts? That depends on the individual since everyone is different. A systematic approach that may work is what I've been doing lately. Simply carry a notebook around with you and carry around a phone with an alarm. Set alarms for random times during the day. When the alarm sounds, write down three things: the time, what you're thinking, and how happy you are. At end of each day, you can take a look at your notebook and see a collage of snapshots of your thoughts during the day. You can repeat this for a week and observe the consistency of your thought inclinations.

Literature: On a Blue Day

Note: Just another exercise in dramatic writing. Just to let you know that I'm honest and will never go anywhere I shouldn't be, I never did any of this. All imagined in my mind and expelled henceforth from it!

I'm not in the library for its books or its "esteemed" educational value. I'm here for it offers me an expansive solitude that I can find little of elsewhere. This was the feeling I had even before I found a key to the roof top. I was in the elevator going up.

Second floor. The only person beside me in the elevator was a short girl with a large backpack. We were in a pseudo-comfortable silence. The backpack was pink. I glanced at her shoes. They were also pink. I turned away and silently counted in my head waiting for this pink monstrosity to leave.

Fourth floor. The door opened and the eyesore thankfully departed. I quickly punched the button to close the door before anyone could get in. Not that I could see anyone waiting in front of the elevator but you could never be too careful ensuring zero disturbance.

My current mood was an unstable system and the slightest perturbation may cause it to fall into the more stable mood best described as handling reality. Rare moods have to be preserved in a state of unstable equilibrium for as long as possible. It's like taking psychedelics once in a while to connect with the universe but doing that too much will seriously impair with handling reality. But regardless these rare moods must be preserved for how else could you experience the spectrum of your mind?

Sixth floor. Philosophical musings shoved aside, my mind returned to the practicality at hand. Leaving the elevator, I surveyed the area next to the stairs. No one in sight. Climb? Yes! My internal voice had to shout.

I went up and saw a door with a keyhole. Glanced back again and saw no one. I turned the key and walked out into the sun. The roof top was empty as expected.

I chose a boring day to be up here. No clouds. Just an aimless infinite blue. No wind. Just flocks of crows or ravens flying aimlessly. A slight breeze? Probably the downwash from their wings or more likely my imagination.

I sighed and walked towards the edge. Funny how there's no guard rails. If someone falls off though, they'll be all over it with regulations and whatnot. That's the funny thing about this country. One person's carelessness instantly means everyone else has suddenly irrevocably turned stupid.

I walked along the edge. If I fall off, there may be some interesting consequences. Quick images flashed through my mind like a film fast forwarded X16. I lose my footing on my next step and I topple over the side with a yelp. Good that I already have numbers prepared in my head in case something like this happens. Every floor is ~3 meters tall. There's approximately 7 floors making it 21 meters tall. Terminal velocity for a skydiver of around my weight is about 50 m/s. Obviously, I won't reach terminal velocity but how many seconds will I have? Every second my body is gaining velocity of ~10 m/s. This means I have about two seconds to think of anything in my last moments. This approximation isn't good enough, some part of me wanted to say.

I told it to shut up. Am I really going to squander my last moments trying to resolve the time of flight before I can no longer model myself as a rigid body or point mass? That's somehow comically absurd.

Third floor. Time does slow down in your last moments. Somehow I was able to think all that and I'm still just half-way there. The windows are rushing by at an accelerated pace. No one has noticed me yet. I hear the wind howling by. Maybe I'll suddenly sprout wings and fly. Will they be a mechanical contraption or magical? I spared a moment to ponder on which one I preferred. I decided that I'll go with both for redundancy. Saving myself should be a system with no single point of failure.

First floor. Sadly, daydreaming really doesn't help with developing powers in reality. The grey ground flew towards me mercilessly. I saw two people glowing white standing close to where I was soon to land with a crunching splat. They were smiling. Are they angels?

Odd, I almost did think I saw two glowing entities down there. I blinked. There were just two students there talking. I stopped my daydreaming on the edge of the roof. I stepped back and turned around. Either I have briefly entered the twilight zone or I really needed some sleep. Either way my mood was gone and this short venture was done. I went back inside and closed the door quietly behind me.

Literature: Sky (天空)

觉得从未用中文写过诗就试了一下自己的文学：

千里旅途，停留湖静，

低头饮水，水清如镜。

云朵如羽，层层漂浮，

微风拂过，水乱云散，

一片水光，五色灿烂。

举头一望，碧空万里，

光线刺空，刻上天衢。

Self-improvement: Not What You Do But Why You Do

It's very important to realize before you do anything, the reason you're doing it. If it's not for a meaningful purpose, you probably should not be doing it. And you should always be truthful to yourself on the real reason why you're doing it.

It's often easy to trick your mind into thinking on one reason you're doing something when that really is not the real reason. Do not just stop at your mind; look at your heart and ask how you feel. Most of us are gifted with conscience within our hearts and more often than not that'll be the gate which can see our true reason rather than the reasons given by our complicated mind.

For instance, today, I was thinking that I should isolate myself again to try to get a lot of work done to make up for slacking off recently. This is what my mind was saying. But then I asked my heart and it said only one word "guilt". If my heart had said something like "triumph" or "expectation", that'll be different. But I cannot base this action on this feeling since I understand enough about myself that I can be easily distracted when I'm completely isolated. And I know that more "guilt" will be tacked on the present "guilt" because I'll be ignoring other obligations I need to do today if I just completely isolate myself. I'm just digging a larger hole for myself.

The heart is simple like that--emotions that can be expressed in one word can say more than any fancy reasoning needing a paragraph. And it typically is more honest than your mind but do both to confirm.

So to sum it up, two things to keep in mind as going through life:

1. Before doing any activity, ask yourself why you're doing it.

2. Know the real reason on why you're doing it by looking at both your mind and your heart. In other words, your reasoning and your emotion.

[IT] Effective Keywords for SEO

It seems these days that just about every business who has kept up with the technology of the days, i.e. Internet, has decided that a business website will be a good idea. But how do you ensure that people can find your website? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) is very important: how do you maximize the chance that your site will be listed near the top of the search list when someone searches for a product or service that your company offers?

Too often, people go with the obvious. Say, you sell jewelry online. The keywords "jewelry" or "bracelet" will make very poor choices for keywords precisely because they're so common. Unless you're a huge multinational corporation or just happen to own jewelry.com, you're unlikely to have anyone find you from a search on "jewelry".

To actually benefit, focus on more specific keywords that has less competition AND more relevance to your site. For instance, words like "Rolex watch" or "Tanzanian bracelets" will much more likely generate a better search result with your site listed.

If you want to come up with other good ideas for keywords or maybe even business expansion, the Google Wonder Wheel may be able to help. The Wonder Wheel can be accessed by doing a search and then clicking "Wonder Wheel" under the filter options on the lefthand side. A visual representation of the way that Google groups together keywords is presented to you. This gives you an idea of what else potential customers are searching for that's related to your chosen keywords.

Self-improvement: Cycle of Thoughts and Moods

While wondering why I was feeling mildly depressed earlier, I had a mild epiphany. Negative moods like depression is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, I realize now that sometimes I like to be unhappy. Without these negative moods, how can I come to revelations like this one?

Moods are not meant to be controlled but they should be influenced to form right proportions.

One should not expect to be happy all the time but neither should one expect to be depressed all of the time. An excess of negative or positive moods surely limits one's experience and perspective. The trick is to attain the right proportion of all these feelings so that life can be experienced in its entirety without being blinded by overwhelming joy or overwhelmed by hopeless despair.

Moods cannot be controlled directly but thoughts can. And a consistent string of thoughts form the mood. So if one can direct the thoughts into a coherent picture, the mood naturally forms. The idea is to control one's thoughts.

How do one control one's thoughts? Besides just forcefully controlling one's thoughts (which may be very hard), there are multiple options to indirectly affect it as well. For me, these two work well:

1. Do things that are conducive to certain thoughts.

2. Go into environments that influence thoughts in a certain way.

For instance, if I want to feel depressed and alone, I'd like to find myself in an abandoned construction site on a wet cold day doing absolutely nothing but thinking. If I want to feel happy and sociable, I'll hold a party or talk to random people. If I want to feel imaginative and creative, I'll write my novel. If I want to feel focused and alert, I'll write some code or work on building something.

Many people have the notion that they have to feel a certain way to do something. But it's really a cyclic approach. One can do something because one feels a certain way. On the other hand though, if one does not like how one feels at the moment, why not do something or go somewhere to change one's thoughts so as to change one's mood?