Sleeper branding

Maybe Whatsapp isn't such a bad medium for discussions for what counts as an on-brand marketing tactics. As long as the marketing communications function is fulfilled, and the tactic is on-brand, I really don't care what we do. Having the number-one product does not fulfill the function of marketing communications. The end. Fix it, or deny yourself the opportunity to run a serious business. Move in parallel. Business functions aren't supposed to be fulfilled in sequence. That's why there are so many people in the room.

Oh, and #protip:

If you're a new partner in a venture, don't use Whatsapp to joke about being a double agent. No one can tell if you're kidding.

Studying MongoDB in TTDI... till closing, till closing, then home again, home again, jiggity jig...
Tired. Could be all the coffee. Napping at the keyboard.
Mentally preparing myself for a month of munging through the nuances of mongodb.
Having spent several years studying humans, and now spending several more studying machines... what if at the end, nothing?
Righto... MongoDB empty strings as keys: bad idea.
Dear god, I need to learn now to skip the pseudo-coding stage.
Home sweet home after a midnight run. Oranges. No violin, or I might wake the neighbours...
I use FB mostly for work, but I guess the recent Boston news got me on a college-mate adding spree. Also code takes forever to compile.
Groan. There are TWO ways that HTML form data can be encoded? Will have to parse the second tomorrow...

Work

Looked at cabalising Hell. Documentation too sparse, & Hell is probably not ready until it can programmatically initialise projects.

Meanwhile, let's try cabal-dev. Ah, I need to cabalise it first. Let's try cabalising again then.

ok.............. we're doing it... descent into #cabal-dev hell...

Some useful Cabal noob references:

• www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/How_to_write_a_Haskell_program
• http://www.haskell.org/cabal/users-guide/developing-packages.html
• http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/Cabal/Cabal.cabal
• http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2012/11/solving-cabal-hell

Cabalisation seems to work, as far as the cabal-dev sandbox for Hell is concerned. Now, to figure out how to runghc it.

Later, to figure out what cabal-src and cabal-meta do.

Blew up cabal. Reinstalling GHC and Haskell Platform not working. Trying again after supper.

While the only thing between myself and the women I love is cashflow, I guess I still prefer an interesting life over an easy one. :-s

Adding loads of acquaintances to my FB account for work... while waiting for code to compile at home...

Accidental deletion of $HOME, bad idea; deletion of UbuntuOne account after discovering that it is practically useless, good idea; blocking mother from Facebook account, very good idea.

superfuckingstressed #Hell-in-cabal-dev-hell

Periods of stress are good. Forces pruning of commitments. Those who don't prune, face emotional panic. One day I will grow old too.

Right. I think I've figured out how to cabalise both Hell and the app directories. It's an ugly build system that leaves files everywhere. One day, perhaps I'll get to write a prettier one.

I guess I have dismal tolerance for irrational complexity. The complex gets rationalised, the irrational gets simplified.

Friday.

For the sake of routine. Going to TTDI to drink more coffee. Bringing the code with me. But first. Breakfast.

On 900 voters name Fatimah Ismail. Since I'm registered, but not voting, and since my vote may be stolen, I guess: I, too, am Fatimah Ismail.

Design decision headache. Wrapping up at TTDI. Going home unless anything pops up in the next hour.

I'm trying to decide on how to integrate Hell and MongoDB. I already have formed the idea that while circle 1.0 is rather rigid, like CakePHP, circle 2.0 will be more a flexible collection of libraries. (Yeah, Hell will have circles, not versions...)

Off to bed. need to read more about (Read) ing from strings to other types in Haskell.

Managing software development

With software development - you want to make sure that you have reviewed the developer's portfolio, and gotten good working reviews from the clients. If you do your homework. Same as with hiring housing developers, and for the exact same reasons. Communication, transparency, timing, and cost factors.

Do NOT slack off on those metrics.

My layman's perspective on Malaysian debt

In the run up to the election, people these days keep posting articles about the Malaysian government's borrowings from the EPF, the state pension fund. Some say, the EPF is the largest buyer of Malaysian government debt. Ponzi, ponzi, ponzi?

I've posted a similar comment before on a similar post:

1) There's nothing wrong with the EPF (read: a state pension fund) buying any government debt (read: giving loans to any government with interest), so long as the risk profile of the governments who are taking the loans is evaluated (by the EPF), and each specific investment (by the EPF) is hedged against other investments with different risk profiles, in order to diversify systematic risks. [THE THEORY]

2) Whether the EPF is properly diversifying its risks is an open question, which the article alludes to, but does not directly address. It shouldn't be too hard to figure that out if you really wanted to know, however. Just spend a few weeks talking to the right people and/or digging around the paper trails. [HOMEWORK REQUIRED]

All that being said...

3) The bigger concern for me is that the government of Malaysia is taking too many loans, and using that money to implement socialist/loose monetary policies like BR1M. What this is doing is selling the future cashflow of the government, (not the Government), in order to buy present-day cashflow.

3a) Betting your future earnings on current expenditure is generally never a great idea. This is what the BR1M achieves for the country as a whole (unless you're willing to assume that the majority of BR1M funds ended back in investment, rather than in consumption). This is a bad policy at best, and at worst it is the Government robbing the government, in an attempt to preserve the Government's control over the government.

3b) Realpolitik/cynicism/sports commentary: this is appreciable as a poison-pill strategy by the current Government, because what happens IF the Opposition wins, is that the future government run by the current Opposition bears a huge burden of debt which it has to bring back under control through stricter policies (something similar happened to the Obama administration in its first term).

4) In the worst case scenario I can think off on my current coffee break... 2) above is a real problem, and 3a) above is also a real problem. It's basically running the risk of the government's running out of cash to pay debts in the future. If this happens and (a) you print more money, then you devalue the MYR, and we're all in soup, so go buy some bitcoins, USD, or something right now, or (b) the government goes bankrupt the way of Greece, Cyprus, etc, and required foreign bailouts... oh yes, you still get (a), just with more headline news.

All THAT being said... it still just sounds like business as usual in good'ol m'larky Malaysia... :)

This sort of discussion is really cute, particularly when it lands next to articles on universities spending money to build giant logos out of doughnuts... granted, that may not be a public university.

Interdisciplinarian

If you're honest, they'll say you're mean, foolish, a show-off, overreaching, condescending, despicable, scary, etc. Honesty's a bitch.

Super stressful coding day - HTTP sessions - so noob. I can feel myself getting short sighted. Need to switch up the font/screen size a little. Awakened by coffee talkers. Must feed.

Electronics think in one way; mathematicians think in another; laypeople in yet another. I'm interested in the language to bridge these.

Here's the plan. Code for a bit. Eat breakfast. Drive to the city and park my ass in some coffee shop. And code some more.

I find that I like work to the extent that I rub people, who don't like work, the wrong way.

Designing web development frameworks... trying not to break HTTP semantics, in the process of reducing complexity.

Just under 4 years between picking up CakePHP and trying to clone it in Haskell. I feel like an idiot, but I guess it's not too shabby.

This is probably the dumbest thing to do, but I'm writing a JSON parser in Haskell for Data.Bson.Document. #languageDesignStudies

If you can't rely on other people to bring you happiness, then DIY, and let them be...

Hump day.

Awake. Must feed. Then off to a coffee shop in KL to munge through the legalese. Ah, the things I do to stimulate myself..

Doing one's best work within lowly limitations, requires... some discipline, to deliver the best work, capped by the provided ceilings.

"emergerd. these contracts need revision control." Dafuq... Chinese whispers...

Done with paperwork until counterparties turn it around. Back to coding.

Temporarily escaping the mundanities of commerce.

Sometimes, it feels like life's only tough because I try so hard to keep in touch with the rest of society. :)

"going bust reduces my chance of encountering busts, that's for sure"