Duality

Eddie.

Duality is done. It was good while it lasted.

I wonder if I locked the door when I left. I know I did and I know I always do, but I still wonder. Maybe a mysterious mechanical defect caused it to unlatch as I stepped away. Maybe I hallucinated the whole locking-the-door action. Maybe the Underpants Gnomes infiltrated the lock (1. Unlock door; 2. …; 3. Profit!).

I always wonder if I lock things. Even though I know I did; even though I should know that I did; even though I spend an incredibly amount of time convincing myself that it is locked before walking away.

The uncertainty of such certain events wracks my brain. And this at a time when I’ve been reducing everything that happens around me to logical explanations—turning seemingly random occurrences into certainties. It makes no sense for me to wonder; it makes no sense for me to waste CPU cycles wondering. Yet, I do and I do.

Someone remind me to make copies of my Brood War CD for Monday.

Usually I don’t watch the World Cup. Usually is somewhat of a misnomer in this case since I’ve only had four other chances to watch it, but I digress. I wasn’t interested at all in soccer until (I think) summer of 2003, when Cole pushed us to play soccer during every break of AIC. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated the game more and more. I now fully indulge in the quick passes and brilliant teamwork that don’t get shown in the highlight reels.

I really like Italy’s swarming style of play. I just wish they didn’t tire out so fast today in the final game against France. Italy’s offense sucked in the second half and their defense consisted of just throwing enough bodies at French strikers to knock them down. It was like Zerg vs. Protoss.

And I could do without all the flopping that’s been going on. Every time a player flops, an angel loses its wings. Really. Portugal really takes the cake in that regard. Their players go down grabbing the wrong leg! Can I nominate the Portugal soccer team for the 2006 Razzies? Especially this guy. What a waste.

Nice, I get the day off but government institutions don’t! I took advantage of this rare opportunity by bumming at TIC all day. For the uninitiated, the TIC/AIC/TVA-line of classes at ATDP are the brainchild of Lloyd. I was involved with AIC from 1999 until its last year in 2003. Been dropping by every so often since.

I got to see Lloyd’s black MacBook in person—a smudgy, black MacBook. Everyone who thinks black matte plastic is better than aluminum is crazy. The black MacBook is a total oil magnet. Ugh, I find oil smudges unpleasant to think about.

And of course, I got to see everyone at TIC and then some. Lloyd, Kass, Trev, Abraham (Aaron’s brother; he’s teaching the robotics course), and all the TAs of TIC (6 out of 9 are my former students; yes, I’m old). You know, I do miss being involved, but it’s not something you can do forever.

I’ll be back again some time before ATDP ends. We should do something special, like soccer instead of ultimate frisbee. =)

I went out to dinner with friends twice this past week. After hearing how many of them don’t like their jobs or don’t find their jobs interesting, I feel lucky to have the job that I have. My job is challenging and offers plenty of opportunities to learn new things. There is a clear path for me. As I get better, I will get to tackle more on my own.

I can see where my parents are coming from when they encourage me to go back for grad school. If my job were one which required me to do the same boring things day-in, day-out, of course I’d go back to school. But that’s not the case—at least, for now.

Congratulations to the newly-minted Davis alumni Xero and his roommate, Porf!

I had the honor of being at that ceremony Saturday morning. Some of the highlights: one student hugged and picked up every faculty member on stage (instead of the usual handshake); another student’s name was so difficult to pronounce that the faculty member saying the names into the microphone let the student say it himself.

What challenges will Xero tackle as a new graduate? If his Saturday afternoon nap was any indication, he’ll bravely tackle the advanced field of getting enough sleep. It’s been one year after my own graduation and I haven’t made any progress in that regard. Good luck and again congratulations, my friend!

… for the third time.

This redesign has taken so long because it is hard to make progress when my free time is chopped up into tiny pieces. Every time I sit down to design, there’s a bit of start-up time when I’m getting into the flow of designing but not making progress. If my particular chunk of free time is small—and more often than not, it is—all I end up doing is exercising Command-O, Command-Q. It’s like effin’ brokerage commissions. I might have sold at $0.10 per share higher than I bought, but if I only traded 100 shares and my broker’s commission is $10, I didn’t actually make any money.

The other two times this design left the Photoshop mock-up phase, I forced it out. Both times, I wasn’t entirely happy with the design. The first time, I got all the way to the templating phase (for reference: mock-up ~> test page ~> templating) before realizing there was no way I could make it work. I scrapped it at the end of July / beginning of August and started over. I worked on its replacement into the test page phase, where I got fed up with how certain parts of it looked.

That was a few weeks ago. Since then, I overhauled the page’s layout and shifted the color scheme to the point where I’m eager to show it off. Sadly, no sneak peeks until I’m done though. =)

If this design had a mantra, it would be “Nothing is sacred.” Over the past year+, I’ve revisited parts of the design several times and scrapped the whole design once in search of a look and feel that I would be happy with. That’s not something I would’ve done in the past. Before, once I finished part of the design, I wouldn’t touch it again. I’ve been regularly taking screenshots, so you’ll all get to see my wanderings. It would make an interesting slideshow, actually.

No sneak peeks today, but here’s what I reveal about the new design:

1. It’s blue. (Sorry to all the fans of pink)
2. It’s 1024×768-optimized.
3. It sports a shiny new logo. New = I designed it in August, but none of you (save Xero) have seen it yet.
4. It has a listing of recent comments (all weblogs which have comments enabled should have it), recent reviews, and links to interesting stuff (like The Diamond Invention).
5. It has curves.
6. It doesn’t use JavaScript.
7. It won’t use cookies if everyone’s cool with 2.0 gamma (between Mac-standard and Windows-standard).
8. It’s another space theme.
9. There might be an iPod drawing.

Their customer service responds very fast—at least in response to what I’ve asked them for so far. I asked for SSH access on a Saturday and they replied back in half an hour. I asked for rsync on a Sunday and they replied back in 12 minutes. I think that’s pretty good. Their responses seem to be all canned though, so I guess that’s how they respond so quickly?

Very little is set up for you by default on their servers. If I remember correctly, there’s pico, vi, de/compression tools, and a few others. No emacs, no rsync, no development tools (gcc/make/etc.). They will grant access to development tools if you ask them. For anything else, you’ll have to compile it from source yourself.

Media Temple’s server performance is very good. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns, unlike at Mesopia/Netbunch where the servers got bogged down every so often. That’s not a completely fair comparison since Media Temple charges more than everyone else for the same space/bandwidth, but you are getting something for the extra cost.

I’m sick again. Fever and indigestion again—this time both at once. Something about being an adult…

It’s like Guilty Gear… for the DS… with online play (via WFC)! I’ll write more about it later.

Note: Guilty Gear Dust Strikers seems to really suck. Let’s not acknowledge its existence ever again.

Looks like New Super Mario Bros. will be out before I finish the next design. To be fair, I had a lot less time than I thought I’d have because there was that one week when I was incredibly sick and then the following week I was still sick and then the last week was dominated by apartment hunting and then my free time this past weekend was taken up by reformatting my PB (dual-boot Jaguar/Tiger now)… and some Jump experimentation (new deck: Ichigo/Yoh tag-attack =)).

Well anyway, it’s late already. Better sleep.

Let me start this by saying that I think the PS1 controller is the worst controller ever made for a mainstream console (”mainstream” meaning the Jaguar doesn’t count). The handles are at awkward angles. The analog sticks are in bad positions. I’ve never liked dual shoulder triggers on each side. And of course, there’s the disconnected D-pad, which I consider to be cruel and unusual punishment.

Sony, being the smart company that it is, chose to retain the same controller form factor when it transitioned from PS1 to PS2. And today, Sony, being the smart company that it is, announced that the PS3 controller will have built-in Bluetooth, wireless tech, and motion/rotation sensors—all in the same form factor as the PS1/PS2 controller. Sometimes I wonder if Sony execs just laugh at us behind closed doors.

Other news: the PS3 will be available in the U.S. on November 17 for $500 (20 GB HD) or $600 (60 GB HD). Yawn. Wake me up when it’s affordable.

Update: the cheaper PS3 model will be missing a boatload of features (HDMI output, Memory Stick / SD / CompactFlash slots, and 802.11b/g).

Last weekend, I played Jump Superstars with another human being for the first time and I must say I’m impressed by the game’s variety and strategic depth. How much of the screen you can see + the range of your opponent’s attacks is much more of a factor than I thought. More than a few times, I caught my friend from offscreen with Jotaro’s crazy range. I’ve been considering building a deck based on reducing your opponent’s view area with the (admittedly flaky) Dio grab -> Neji 64-strikes combo.

err… I’m talking gibberish, huh? Come on, no one else has the game? =( It really is the #1 must-have game—on any console—for anime fans.

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What is Jump Superstars? Jump is a Japanese DS game that takes characters from the weekly manga compilation Shonen Jump and places them in a party-style, 4-player brawler (ala Smash Bros.).

If you see this, I either gave you the address directly or the DNS updated. I finally dumped WebHostPlus (formerly known as NetBunch (formerly known as Mesopia (formerly known as Dr2.net))) for Media Temple. Dr2.net was a good host, but with its multiple mergers/ownership changes, the service went downhill. And I’m running out of space anyway (185/200 MB used), so I figured now was the time to change.

I chose Media Temple because it’s a well-known webhost in the web design community and the only bad thing people say about it is that it’s more expensive than other places. But that’s not much of an issue for me, seeing as how their lowest plan is still cheap compared to other things—cable internet + cell phone bills =(.

Anyway, it’s good to be with a decent webhost again. Having 2 GB disk space this time around is nice too!

I drank the kool-aid. Now let me tell you why you should all stop hating Wii.

The beauty of Wii lies in its logo and its connection to Nintendo’s current strategy. Looking at the logo, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to see dotted i’s as people and the use of “ii” to mean inclusion. That’s where Nintendo’s use of ii differs from other companies’ use (such as Intel’s Viiv, where ii clearly doesn’t mean anything). In fact, I like to think that Nintendo started with the ii logo first and then slapped on the W later to reinforce the idea of inclusion.

While Wii certainly doesn’t sound as cool as Revolution, Wii fits Nintendo’s current strategy much better. Wii—and the ii that it contains—is inclusive. Revolution is exclusive: you are either with us or against us. That’s not the attitude that the Nintendo of today wants to put forth. After all, Nintendo is no longer led by the iron-fisted Hiroshi Yamauchi (a man who told Bill Gates to suck it), but by the kinder, gentler Satoru Iwata. Nintendo doesn’t care if you own a PS2, XBOX, and/or XBOX360. Nintendo doesn’t care if the PS3 is at the top of your wish list. Nintendo just wants you to have fun. And that’s what Wii is all about.

Indigestion unexpectedly dropping by on Sunday. Insomnia joining the party that night. Crazy thoughts racing through my head. When I finally kicked them out today, fever hits me at work.

Man, if only I were still in school… take the whole week off without a second thought.

… and this time I’m having trouble sleeping as well.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept waking up. At 6:30 AM, I just forced myself to stay up. I got to see the stock market open—Yahoo! Finance’s quotes going from yesterday’s closing price to the first prices of the day. And I watched from the sidelines as the market jumped because of the Fed’s report (we’ll talk about why I didn’t get in yesterday another time). I watched some anime eps off YouTube (seriously, how long before lawsuits shut that place down?) while forcing down breakfast (stomach not feeling too well).

All in all, not the best way to start the day, but I manage. Work time rolls around and it looks like I’ll be getting to work earlier than usual. Slip on my jacket, don my cap, get my bag, put on my shoes, grab the door knob, twist, pull, and…

*snap!* The door knob breaks off! I stare at it in disbelief; the door knob in my hand and the door still closed. My thoughts turn to dread: what if I’m locked in? “Sorry boss, I can’t come to work today. I can’t even get out of my apartment.” Slowly, I regain my composure. Using a pair of pliers, I’m able to open the door and finally get to work.

You know what worries me though? What if the door knob on the outside breaks off too? Shit, knock on wood.

(btw, anyone have the Ichigo 100% OP single? =))

Let me know if anything doesn’t work.

Btw, Xero, spell checker plug-in is disabled right now. Don’t have time to test it out. (Safari 1.0.3 doesn’t support whatever tech the plug-in uses. It’s already late, so I don’t want to launch Firefox; it’s such a dog anyway)

… I really need to tweak the WP UI. Or replace it with the Tiger one (supposed to be really good?).

—aka What I’ve Learned From Trading Stocks for Two Months.

(Note: what I am about to say applies to trading stocks only. That’s all I’ve been doing and all I can do until E*Trade gets off its lazy ass and processes my account upgrade. With the ability to trade options, I’m sure some of this will change.)

Buy & hold is NOT a safe strategy in today’s market. Holding stocks for long periods of time is incredibly risky because it’s impossible to predict how the market will move—especially in these post-boom years. One bad quarterly report is all it takes to piss away months of gain, e.g. Intel’s fall from $26 to $21 in a couple days in January. I have no idea how such a flawed strategy as “buy & hold” became the mantra for middle-class, wannabe investors.

A much safer strategy is to buy with the intention of selling within a short period of time. The goal of these quick, surgical strikes is to make money off the market’s natural, short-term volatility. Take Novellus (NVLS), for example. Over the past 2 years, it has had its ups and downs, but the overall trend is flat. If you bought and held it, you wouldn’t have made any money. On the other hand, if you repeatedly bought and sold it, you would’ve been able to make a decent sum. Of course, there were some companies whose stock consistently went up over the past couple years, but the beauty of this strategy is that you don’t have to find companies like that. Just pick a mid-sized company (very large companies tend to have stock prices which don’t vary much, e.g. Intel) that isn’t in danger of going under and go at it.

The big caveat here is that this strategy requires you to check the stock market at least once a day. It’s easy to miss good buy/sell opportunities if you check less than that.