The Dream and The Long Tail

I was taking a nap earlier. Then I realised that I was tossing and turning a little too much and woke up in a rather dreamy mood, and then I realised that college life is indeed a rather dreamy phase in one's life?

You might be wondering how so. Well, think about it this way. Assume that I'll be working till I'm about 70 years old (which, at the rate things are going, seems to be a rather good assessment), that means that I'll be having at least 40 years of working life, and college is just a small speck in the total time that I will be spent in the world of computer technology. Now, as I am thinking of it, it really does sound a little sad, to have to work for more than four decades of my life.

But well, I'm happy doing things related to computer technology, am I not?

So the realisation that college is like a dream hit me rather hard. This whole place seems to be like an illusion of sorts, where everything is like this really semi-perfect world where grades are all that matters, and where people coexist somewhat peacefully because there's really nothing to be complaining about that is not outside of the system. The people we meet, the things we do, the dreams we have, the times we shared will all fade into obscurity the moment we leave this place.

A quick glance at the school magazine seems to drive home that point. Perfect pictures of almost-perfect individuals who had a small epiphany making it big while being here, or wanting to make it big and thus be here. Yup, it is a dream alright, a dream where the top 1% of the folks here take up to 50% of the fame and stuff.

Ever heard of the Pareto Distribution? No? Or how about The Long Tail? Essentially, what the Pareto Distribution and The Long Tail means, is that a significantly small percentile of the populace tends to hold the majority of whatever resource we are looking at, be it wealth, health, technology, literacy, anything. It is akin to the theory behind the Central Limit Theorem, in the sense that it is an aggregate statistice of the population. The scary thing about the Pareto Distribution is that it is so prevalent, yet by its very nature, becomes much harder to comprehend to the idea behind the Central Limit Theorem. And I have this uncanny feeling that I know full well the effects of the Pareto Distribution—I'm like many of the folks who are in college, just on that boderline between poverty and riches, the middle class folk who are always sandwiched between the two extremities, the folks who collectively own the remaining 19% of the world's economic wealth, and yet we do not even number more than 25% of the world's population.

Scary thought huh?

So by now I would have been completely side-tracked and have no clue what was it I wanted to say in the first place, having been at this for about 30 minutes with research being done at the same time for what I am writing. I guess I'll just have to give it a rest then.

Media Switch

The time has come again to switch media, I guess. I'm starting to become rather nauseated from writing too much prose. So, there might be more updates via poetry instead.

Updates can be found here.

When it Ends... I'll be Left to Be Sad

All good things, as they say, must come to an end, eventually. And so concludes the wonderful story of Daria, one of the better cartoons that I've seen so far, where the storyline behind each episode actually made sense, and was not based on purely slapstick humour.

65 episodes and 2 made-for-tv movies later, the show has ended. I just feel so sad.

Beginnings always scare me; endings always depress me. This is the thing that I know for a sure fact. There's always this timeless feel when one's in the middle of things, that things somehow "worked out", and there was always something to look forward to. I guess this carries over a lot into real life, with so many things to prove it.

Which is why I'm afraid of starting new things. I know that when it ends, I'll become one of those nervous wrecks, and that thought horrifies me lots.

Alright, revealing too much about myself already. Maybe some other time.

Reaching Out from Within the Shell

Reaching out from within the shell, I guess that's something that I probably haven't been able to do well at all, considering all the crap that I have been though. It's a little strange what a little show and some isolation can do to clear up one's mind.

I don't really speak my mind, do I? Most of the time, no one talks to me in a way that reminds me that I'm a human, at least, till recently. A few nervous breakdowns later, I start to realise that perhaps I'm not walking as alone as I thought that I might be.

While many people do not try to reach out to me at all, there are those few who actually do. Maybe it is time to rethink about what I'm doing with myself, maybe it is time to relearn how to be more open and frank with myself all over again. Maybe, I should be more discerning to whom I should be trusting, and maybe, to those who trust, I should be more accepting of their concern.

Maybe I should start learning how to be a human once more, and shed that hardened shell of a persona that I have been using to protect myself.

Toning it down... that's what many people have been telling me. They have a point, I guess, about me being a little too over the top at times.

Self-doubt. Lots and lots of self-doubt. Sometimes I wonder why I even try so hard. Maybe I should loosen up a side of me, while not compromising what has made me successful thus far, I should be a little more relaxed in other parts of me.

*sigh*

I think I'm rambling on again... I shall stop here. It is late and I need to sleep anyway, so, until next time, I guess.

A Muse on the First Few Hours of Christmas

Ah, it is but another serene and cool night. Sometimes I wonder, if all these were but a dream, the whole idea of me being in another country studying, meeting new people, and not forgetting the old; could it be that all of these are but a very elaborate dream of some sort?

Well, the last I checked, I'm still in the same place. So if it were truly a dream, then it is indeed a rather coherent and persistent one then, which is fairly rare if one thinks about it carefully. How can a dream be consistent? The very notion of what constitutes a dream doesn't seem to permit it being wholly consistent; for isn't it in our dreams that we learn of our inner-most desires, our wants, our needs in a way that reality has no way of fulfilling us? Don't we have that dream ever so often, about the material gain that we dream of, or even about the intangible gains that we might have in mind, that is potentially unrealisable in reality?

Already I digress. But, allow me to ramble on, for within these rahter incoherent murmurings one can truly discover the deep-most essence of what makes me me. While writing has always been a form of venting for me, lately I feel that perhaps I might have written a tad too much about myself, to the point that I have become yet another open book with which people can learn more about me.

Oh how paradoxical! On the one hand, I am such a private person, hardly whispering about the goings-on in my life, yet on the other hand here I am, blabbering away about the very things that I would not talk about in real life. So, am I an attention whore then? Am I just another of those hypocritical self-centred persons who are emotionally sensitive, despite the fact that I don't really associate myself with them much?

Nah, I'm not quite an attention whore, I think. Attention whores draw attention to themselves due to their appearance, and they publicise it rather ostentatiously so as to be able to draw even more attention to themselves. I don't really publicise my blog(s) that much; I just put them in places where people might find information about me, and let them figure out if it is worth it to check out some of the writing that I do.

Creative expression. That's right, that's the thing that I don't seem to be able to work on well lately. Could it be because of the amount of work that I need to do in order to satisfy my academic requirements? Could it be that the time has come where my creativity has dried up and I am all but an empty shell devoted to the skullduggery of the largely captitalistic world? Nay I say, nay. I feel the old creative juices flowing once more, but this time, they are not the same as the youthful indifference I had, nor are they based on the string of rather uncomfortable experiences that I had in the not-too-far-away past.

It is a different sort of creativity, the kind that is fueled by a rather tacit understanding that the world is not as it seems, and that there must be some balance between what is essentially there and what isn't. It is the kind of silent creative power that has lain dormant in my very soul during the time with which I was forced to tuck it away in safety, for fear of the potential repercussions for not conforming.

While I still do not give a rosy endorsement towards blind conformance of the social norm, I have more or less acknowledged that there is no way to live in this society without realising that as a whole there is a need for us to be like sheep in order to keep some semblence of a large working commune of people. Imagine the type and extent of chaos, if all the people are non-conformists—where will all the industries based on trends go? Where will our consumerism-based economical systems go? Where will mass-productoin go? And more importantly, where will our sense of community identity go?

No, I'm not a naysayer. I didn't say that being non-conforming is bad—being completely non-conforming (or conforming for that matter) is not quite a good idea. We are all humans for a reason; the reason being that of the individual. Yet, as humans we are also social, and we are social because it gives us the environment necessary for us to express our individualism. Imagine if society as we knew it broke down to the point where people no longer conform to social norms and laws; the world will be a more dangerous place as people try ways and means to secure their own future with little regard of those who are around them. Where in this case does one exhibit one's individuality then?

As usual, I digress too far from where I started. So, yes, my creativity is back, albeit in a rather changed state. But I'm not complaining; I'm glad that she's back. Creativity is like a sultry mistress who seduces with her sensuality; have too much of her and you'll lead a rather decadent lifestyle, and if you have too little, you will leave feeling somewhat deprived of something which you can't quite seem to put a finger to. That's what creativity is, that's why some folks are willing to sacrifice almost everything to be able to appear to be more creative.

Inspiration, the trigger to raw creativity. Oh, how often does one hear of the phrase uttered by many a student "I need more inspiration!". Where then does this whole inspiration thing come from? I'm not sure about other folks, but inspiration comes to me in the most strangest of times and places—I could be eating a meal when I have some idea on why certain biological constituents are the way they are, or I could be looking at the computer screen and think about some interesting riff that I can try to mimic on my musical instrument later. Different guises, different guises, but things are inspirations only if one knows that they are, or at least, acknowledge that there is the potential of a trigger there. More paradoxical statements? Perhaps, but honestly, I'm not uncomfortable with making statements like these.

Studying logic systems have formalised (and concretised) the concept that I have long suspected: there is a marked difference between the syntax and the semantics of any expressive language. At the abstract level, the syntax of an expressive langauge is just the typographical symbols that we manipulate around to form more strings of symbols; the semantics of the language is really an interpretation applied to the string of symbols that we are looking at.

Why bring up this whole hocus-pocus on expressive languages, one might ask? This relates to why I am not easily squeamish over some rather... graphic descriptions of things that most would find rather... disturbing.

You see, the problem is that I do not often interpret the words that are said directly. Think about it this way, if you see 1/0 as being "illegal" or "not allowed" or even "floating point error", then you have essentially interpreted what I just said directly. I don't do that, so I'm spared of all these potential bugaboos that might occur while manipulating the symbols. As such, overly graphic descriptions of really disturbing scenes do not affect me as much as other folks, simply because I do not immediately try to visualise the semantic meaning of the words that are just said, that does not mean that I do not understand what is being said.

Hmm... this seems to be rather hard to explain properly. I mean, I can hear/see the words being passed on to me, they register in my mind as words, yet I can understand what is being said without resorting to actually visualise what the words are describing. So put simply, the words themselves seem to have developed their own kind of semantic meaning. Notice that this is still consistent, since no one said that there can only be one interpretation of some string of symbols. Ever wondered where did puns/double entendres/innuendo come from?

And now, back to my original thread of thought. It is still a rather serene and cool night (well, it is December 25th now, except that it still isn't snowing...), and I'm sitting here wondering if this is all a dream. Or could it be a figment of my imagination wondering about me wondering if this were a dream.

Maybe I won't ever know if this is a dream or not. But one thing is for sure, I am still here, and not teleporting to somewhere else/getting everything that I want. So I guess I'll have to settle for this to be reality then.

And oh, have a merry Christmas.

Megatokyo Trailer?

This. Is. Hilarious:
If you've been following Megatokyo, you can clearly see all the interesting bits of that webcomic appearing in this trailer.

It's amazing!

Battle of the Beams

On a completely different note, read the article on the Battle of the Beams. It's one of the interesting skirmishes that occurred during World War II.

Very interesting episode in our world history...

Schizophrenic-weathered Pittsburgh

So today's Saturday over here in schizophrenic-weathered Pittsburgh (as opposed to what the blog date entry says, remember that the dates and times on this blog are still at SGT?). It has been 5 days since my last exam (and a long time since my last entry), and I am feeling a little more relaxed, now that the grades are out and I realise that I didn't do anything remarkably stupid this time around to shoot myself in the foot.

It's interesting when no one is around on campus. The whole campus is so quiet, and one can feel so much serenity in this place where pressure is the norm. The lullness is mildly invigorating, and I make it a point to try to get some sunlight each day by actually going out and walk around; this is to combat that strange affliction known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, aptlly acronymed as "SAD". Not that I would be afflicted by it, but hey, no sense not preventing what can be prevented, since I know what is going on anyways.

In my room, I've been playing my Quake II and Neverwinter Nights, and sometimes I'll just drop by the computer cluster to play a little of Unreal Tournament. Quake II is a fun game that requires a fair amount of vigilance (as is Unreal Tournament), but it helps deal with that rather random need for blood thirsty moments. Neverwinter Nights, however, is a much more refereshing experience. While there is a lot of killing involved too in Neverwinter Nights, there is still an overall storyline/story-arc to deal with, and by virtue of the fact that it is a role-playing game, it is of a different nature as compared to the first person shooters like Quake II and Unreal Tournament.

Speaking of which, lunch these days was interesting. I had lunch at Five guys, Orient Express, Quiznos and even Kiva Han. Lunch is usually a fairly important meal for me, since it is really a combination of both breakfast and lunch itself, aka "brunch". So, I like to eat something heavy for lunch, instead of the instant noodles that I keep cooking for "dinner" or the pepperoni-cheese sandwhich I have as a late night snack (thanks to Alfred for that one... he was leaving but had a suprlus of bread, pepperoni, cheese and mustard, and he kindly gave them to me to sustenance over winter break).

I've watched a couple of movies so far, Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End and Sin City, both of which are quite good. Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End finishes up the whole story of Jack Sparrow, and provides a rather twisted ending to the whole series. Sin City is a marvellous piece. Filmed in neo-noir style, it brings out a nostalgic feeling, bringing one back to the days when the mob ruled supreme and the city streets were unsafe for anyone after sunset. Sin City's use of neo-noir with specific highlights allows the ease of bringing out the violence of the atrocities that occurred in Basin city, without having the fear of making things appear too cheesy, compared to say Kill Bill. It must be noted too that Quentin Tarantino was a guest director for Sin City, so expect excessive violence without the cheesiness of having random red blood-like fluids splattering all over the screen. Sin City was indeed tastefully done.

Speaking of walking around, I spent a good two hours or so in Schenley Park. It's an amazing place, fairly huge, full of trees, and seemingly random paths criss-crossing its landscape. During the non-winter months, Schenley Park is quite spooky, since there is no artificial lighting whatsoever in it, and the trees are full of leaves which blot out the sunlight and other natural light sources; this is especially the case during the night. In the day, however, it is not as bad, but I don't usually have the time to actually visit the Park during the day for most of the academic calendar due to the academic commitments that I need to deal with. So it's been almost a year since I last stepped into Schenley Park, and the sheer rustic feel of it all returned to me in waves of what I can only describe as mild pleasure.

To be with nature once more... that's one thing that I enjoy a fair bit. And no, I'm not some maniacal anti-industrialisation zealot, but sometimes I do feel that there is a need to get back to nature, back to one's roots, in order to maintain a healthy balance of what is important an what is beneficial, something that we often miss as we run through the entire rat race throughout our lives.

I think that I should start pulling my camera out, there's so amny interesting sights and sounds to capture, and perhaps it'd be a good time to spruce this little blog up with some wintery pictures of Pittsburgh. Do note, however, that Pittsburgh is a "weather schizophrenic"—the weather cannot decide if it wants to snow/stay cold or not. Which explains why even in December, I'm still seeing green grass growing all around.

Ridiculous. Heh.

So, until next time...

No Funeral Wakes for Me Please

Hmm... In reference to this: this sounds morbid, but I figure that when I go, I don't want any fuss.

Just cremate me and scatter my ashes around the seven seas and let me wander about, learning more about the world even in my non-corporeal form.

I don't even want/need a wake. Folks who care don't need some public demonstration of their grief. Folks who don't care don't deserve a place where they turn up to wreak havoc and shed crocodile tears and antagonising those who are already grief-stricken.

I am but a mere speck of a human in the whole universe, so I don't think that there's a need to go through all that ridiculous expense just to "send me on my way". Death is just another phase of life, and since we don't do opulent things during our lives, I don't think it necessary to do opulent things when in death.

Alright, I'll stop here before it gets too morbid.

Hungry...

The time is now! The very first finals for the academic year. No pressure. No pressure.

Heh, who am I kidding? I'm scared as I can be.

Just need to breathe, and probably eat something before going for the exams. Hmm hmm...

*stomach growls*

Internet Radio + What I Want For Christmas

Internet radio is interesting. I used to want to try this out, but the bandwidth was always something that I was worried about. But considering the fact that these days I'm not really using much of my bandwidth anyways, I decided to relook into this other media form. So, I managed to find some cool classical stations on SHOUTcast, and since I'm using the venerable foobar2000, that meant that it was ridiculously easy for me to actually make use of the SHOUTcast.

Here's a simple computation on the amount of bandwidth required. Suppose we are using 96 kbps quality. This gives us 96000 bits per second, or roughly 12,000 bytes per second. Suppose that we let the player run for about 24 hours, that's roughly 86,400 seconds, which gives us a total yield of 1,036,800,000 bytes or about 989 MiB. So, if the Internet radio is on for 24 hours, then the expected bandwidth consumption is around 1 GiB, which is roughly half of the daily bandwidth that we are limited to. Not too bad, but considering the fact that a more realistic number of hours of play time is roughly 9 hours, the actual number is really around 370 MiB, which I think is completely reasonable.

Besides, I don't really want to buy/leech so many CDs of classical music; only a connoisseur (or scholar or some other classical music buff) will know the difference between one piece and another. To me, the music seems kind of generic in nature, and serves as a useful background music to stimulate pseudo-intellectual thought during the process of revising for my finals.

That all aside, the preparations for finals are really causing a strain in me. I'm feeling so lackadaisical and am actually slowing down in terms of getting the revision underway—could it be that I don't have enough caffeine in my blood to keep myself awake? Or could it be that the adrenaline hasn't quite kicked in yet?

On another note, I have successfully written a working proxy for my lab, which is interesting in its own right, I think. There were several weird bugs with regards to race conditions on the concurrency of read/write locks, but after utilising a semi-novel debugging technique, I was able to quash that bug once and for all, and a live test of flooding it with about 400+ HTTP requests didn't kill my proxy off with weird segfaults or infinite loops. I love concurrency programming—I discovered that I have this weird insight to how and why concurrency works/fails for the code that I'm writing. It's an amazing feeling, I think, to be able to look at concurrent code and to reason about its correctness and think about ways on how to defeat the carefully constructed locking mechanisms to test the robustness of the code.

On yet another note, I think I know what I want for Christmas. A nice girl to hang out with and chit-chat, and maybe to cuddle with and share warmth as the snow drifts all over the place. But of course, we all know that this is only another of those phantasies of mine, which has an extremely low chance of coming true. I'll probably end up wandering about the city of Pittsburgh during that time. Maybe then there will be more interesting updates about the sights (and possibly) the sounds of the city that I've been spending my last year-and-a-half in. Pittsburgh is a really pretty place, and it's quite a pity that I don't really have the chance to explore it well enough, because of all the insane amounts of work that I need to do each day just to keep my neck above the waterline. A period of peace and solitude; it might turn me into a complete nervous wreck, or it could help me really think about things through, and to determine for myself what is it that I want exactly. I guess that it is probably the best time to start getting reaquainted with the side of me that I've been neglecting all these years.

Alright, as usual, I end up with a rather long-ish post/rant here. It is late, and I'd want to catch up on sleep, and so I think that i'll stop here for now. More updates should be coming soon, I think, as and when I find something interesting to talk about and when I'm sufficiently tired from all the studying and need some manner of a distraction.

Hang-man Stick Figure (No More)

[Ed: There used to be a picture here, but the random visits regarding it was starting to annoy me and so that picture is now gone.]

At times, this is how I feel, like a dead person trying to make some sense of a pretty complicated life. It's hard to comprehend why so, really, but then again, I try little to comprehend things, considering the fact that at this time, all I'm interested in is to not accidentally shoot myself in the foot.

I'm fearful of the future. I feel that I no longer have any control over the future, and that everything is going to be under the nebulous control of some higher being/corporation/society. I fear for the loss of my individuality—it has already begun. There are so many things that I fear about, and one of the things that most probably affects me the most at this point in time will be the finals itself. Naturally, I need to be sufficiently well-prepared for this final phase of the semester; I just can't help but feel dread as the days pass by and my own finals start to come ever so closer. The mounting pressure is tremendous, and sometimes I wonder with incredulity how I managed to survive trauma after trauma with a strange form of tenacity.

Needless to say, it is really in the depths of the night when I am writing all these. I cannot help but write about what first comes to mind under such a silent and foreboding environment. I still maintain that writing here is akin to shouting down a really deep and dark hole, where sounds are made but no one is certain if anyone has heard any of what was said.

I feel grossly inadequate to be in this society, and to look for the mystical one. I'm more or less resigned to my fate of work, pain, loneliness, and sadness. Is there anything that I can do about it? Maybe, but now's not the time, perhaps. I think I have gotten into more quarrels and arguments over this with Xiaolu than anything else that I ever had.

I'm tired. Tired me is tired. So many things to worry about, so many things to be confused about. Perhaps the concept of living and dying is no longer as well-defined as before. Perhaps my sense of reality has been so badly warped that I am no longer thinking straight. Perhaps, I'm just too weary from the finals beatdown. Perhaps... there are too many perhaps which are occurring in my life, which is something that I am not used to, for I used to be able to plan out my life ahead by at least a few years.

Now, I just live by the minute, always wondering if the minute that just passed was the last that i'd ever have.

Ouran High School Host Club

I'm still a sucker for romantic comedies, I guess. This time, it is the Ouran High School Host Club. It's a most interesting anime that I've seen so far, as compared to the rather dismal feel of Xenosaga: The Animation. I'll skip the whole summary bit and just talk about my feelings about the anime.

In a way, the Ouran High School Host Club is much like the fun club that I'd dream of joining but would never have the guts to do so. I mean, I'm just not that confident with myself in terms of doing things that "please" people. I'm usually fairly stiff, I guess, and am often "awkward" with people. It is such a contradictory oxymoron; I keep saying that I'm bad socially, yet at the same time, most of how I got to be who I am, is based somewhat on socialising. It is a really weird thing to wonder about, but seriously, I don't know why I'm even having problems like that in the first place—it makes no sense whatsoever.

This. Is. Frustrating. Somewhat.

So, at this point in time, it is a Friday, and also the last day of classes. Which means that most folks are out there partying like there's no tomorrow. Which means that there's a really weird acute discomfort. Irritating somewhat... maybe I'll write more later. I think I'm getting a little too distracted by some JS Bach concertos on the harpsichord now.

Snow?

And finally, a shot of the Morewood Courtyard as seen through my dorm room window.And yes, it is snowing. Not as pretty as this, but still pretty enough for now. If this holds up, I think that I might be able to get a really pretty night shot of it, and maybe even the wonderful night shots of the snow/ice at night when the lights just twinkle on the frozen snow.

Amazingly beautiful stuff. I could live like this forever.

Finals Crunchdown

Ah... the finals crunchdown, the start of the [temporary] end. Where all the projects are due on the last day of class, where all the papers need to be completed by then, where all the stresses over the whole semester come crashing down once more, where one's nightmares of material from the earlier part of the class come back to haunt one.

Throw in a completely messy weather pattern and you'd get the set-up for a great [and complete] stress-rush crash.

It is strange, that even in the start of this chaotic times, I am still sitting here [somewhat] calmly, and still typing out this entry. Could it be that I'm resigned to my fate? Or could it be that I suddenly have some hidden resource within me that I am drawing upon to cope with the stresses?

Or could it just be that I am currently suffering from a cold and recovery is of the utmost importance as opposed to anything else? Gee I have no clue whatsoever.

So anyway, the finals crunch down have started, and honestly, I am getting a little worried for my logic class. I should be able to do fine on probability and the two other programming-related classes, but I'm really terrified for my logic finals. I seem to be losing that ability to do abstract theoretical mathematics, which is quite worrying, considering the fact that I dabbled in math way before I did anything in computer science. And this is worrying because I have at least another class (Real Analysis) which involves theoretical math, as opposed to the "concrete" math of combinatorics and graph theory as applied in programming.

Maybe I'm so screwed... I don't know. Just need to put in the effort and make sure that I don't kill myself unnecessarily, like last semester... Having almost no buffer is probably the worst thing that I can ever imagine, and the pressure associated with this is ridiculously high.

Alright, back to work for now.