Aging

US alumni meetups.

2nd year consultants who likely make over RM15k/month chit chatting with friends about how long ago graduation was. Eventually someone asks me if I think age is just a number, and I'm like, "well, I graduated in 2005; this morning I had less than than $100 in my bank account, and no job security; I'm having a perfectly good time, just like I was in college..."

I still miss the eighth grade, actually. That was the last time I had a cohort.

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In response to a friend's comment:

I don't move when I get bored. That's negative stereotyping of millenials ;)

I only move when the (financial, informational, political) risk-return prospects are in my favour, and after I have fulfilled or exceeded contractual obligations.

I move faster than average because I have a higher tolerance than average for risk in starting work conditions. My high tolerance for unlikely success only works in favour of my employers. I take all the hits. :p I'm sure that is debateable, of course.

I think the main attribute that is true of millenial stereotyping comes closer to "I'm meritocratic, and feel no shame in exposing the inefficiencies of a system, no matter how bad it makes everyone else feel." Actually it's more an INTP/cynic thing, perhaps - makes good TV these days, from what I understand. Funny how people love fictionalising it.

What can I say - I'm just trying to make an honest living? If you can't find weapons of choice, become the weapon of choice.

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At least at this gig I can afford to outsource laundry and transportation (i.e. rent and launder), so it gives me about 12 extra hours per week for work (and physiological maintenance, which improves quality of work).

Beautiful Sheep

Two conversations came up today, on beauty and power. At the office, we discussed job applicants who put bits of their modelling portfolio on their CVs (i.e. any photo is unprofessional, on a corporate resume). On Facebook, a friend in the entertainment industry talked about a personal commitment to avoiding prejudice against beautiful people, based solely on the fact that they are beautiful.

I had a common response to both conversations. Beauty is a tool. Extended metaphysical discussion aside, is more than a tool, but it can be used as a tool in many situations. We don't want to judge people based on the tools they carry, but on what they choose to do with those tools. And then, there are the ones who carry tools without knowing what their tools do. This paragraph is really about tools in general.

A person who goes to meeting in presentable visual form is like someone who goes to a meeting with a sheathed but visible knife. They've done their homework, or they're just generally prepared. When someone turns up at a meeting with extraneous preparations, we do not want to judge their intentions, but from the point of view of operational security, we do note the preparations that they have made so far.

Neglecting to note the power of our tools, is neglecting the fact that our tools are tools at all. If you work in fields where beauty matters, you must pay more attention to politics, not less. Otherwise, you're running with the sheep.

Trite

A lot of people that I observe, like to talk about the things that they want, especially the things that they can't. Imma take a go at it... since I don't do that very often. (Because statistics advises that my expected return on any effort spent is far and deep into a profit regression.) Now, here we go, are you ready, in style with the folks that I listen to, yelling out into my earphones at work on a roll, to pay the bills, and avoid the chills of a skint tit with a skin tint. [All this is happening while I'm taking a break, from a casual inspection of a massively messy spaghetti type language of the PHP, Perl, and Python possession (it's Ruby, she's got her fans, but she reeks of bad crepes and motherfucking Javascript), Imma wring my hands.] I wish that more people would stare death in the eye, and talk shop with fools with a gleam in their eye, to be specific, as one terrific fellow quoted on TV, I wish more people would be like on the brink of abysses, chewing glass, spitting shards, and moulding flasks of disdain over tea and crackers. I wish more people would despise the flip side of doing what they enjoy, because it's a cop out for plebs of every meagre aspiring feel, and appearance, thoughtless, impassioned, clowns of the fecking flippin crowd of dispossession. But hey, if it makes people happy, it makes me happy, so generally I rest my case and let it be.

I think I've been listening to too much Eminem.

FPS? What about quality per frame? Or crap times frames?

I just wrote some code for a responsive drawer menu. I've heard a lot of people worry about performance crapping up the UI in apps, and I figure that my preferred solution is just to reduce the total time per animation. If you try to flip the whole screen over 1000ms, artifacts are clearly everywhere, because you're stressing out the video buffering mechanisms. But if you do the same in 100ms, it's a lot harder to notice them, even if the crap-per-ms is the same. The other thing I'm thinking about doing is actually forcing a low frame rate. Lots of hand-drawn animation came out of the eighties at no more than 6fps... the idea is to keep the user's thoughts elsewhere, if you can. heh