Dressmaking with Blender

Begin:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Cloth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zd1AI198I8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_bC0gjoM0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySyQsLD_7GM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8cOjU2Lehs

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34216

Objective Romance

The strange thing about objectivity is that you can know if you're giving people more respect than they deserve, or less. Scientifically, it provides us with a way to judge people. Sometimes the scientific method yields that someone isn't reliable. But we're nice to them anyway. I suppose that's what love is, whether we scope it as charity, piety, friendship, or romance.

Less respect, less respect. Must constantly remind myself to treat others with less respect...

//
The point of mental conditioning is to maximise economic leverage, via an option to include or exclude sentiments in any action.

Career Counselling

Quack yogi story of the day.

I tend to shoot my mouth off at recent graduates from the US who are in my network, when they ask for advice on building a professional career in Malaysia. I often feel inadequate. What have I ever done, to deserve a view?

- I have a hardly relevant resume.
- My knowledge of the operations of global brands in management consulting and investment banking is completely theoretical.
- My views on Malaysian society are fairly cynical - far drier than those of the common pundit.
- I plan my cost structure around the minimum wage of RM900/month, with all excess consumption, savings, and investment subject to my current occupation.
- I am happy with little more.

I just hope that while listing out my opinions on local culture, and how to strategise about a global career from here, there is some semblance of a transferable algorithmic skill. I hope that at least, from talking with me, today's young lady finds it easier to implement a means-ends approach to discovering a viable critical chain, to pursue.

Ah, talk.

Mandates and Leaders

The only things worse than feeble leaders, are weak mandates. What's the point, oi? If you have clear mandates, and a weak leader, you can always replace the leader. If you have weak mandates, even if your boss is the nicest most enjoyable person to work with, if he's off mandate, you don't know until judgment day when your boss is judged by his boss.

To cap it off, here and there you find people saying that their goal is "to have fun," and then I really have a problem. I'm having fun without moving a muscle. Fun is not a reason to go to work. I suppose some people find it hard to enjoy doing what they do for money - well don't we all, sometimes - the point of professionalism is to pursue commercial fulfilment, even if you have to change yourself into the sort of person who likes your end of the deal, you do it so that you get to close the deal. That's enjoying your job.

Dreams?

(From a chat about Docker - a tool for encapsulating complexity in software application deployment.)

--

Today I'm ruminating on my dream for a unified source-code package management DSL that's language agnostic. Package management: "there's one DSL for rbenv, one more for python's virtualenv, composer et al for php, cabal freeze for haskell, etc.etc. How about just one DSL? It can be done."

"This flies in the face of why we use containers in the first place."

Really? Well call me 'greedy,' then. Docker fixes a problem in deployment; I want something that fixes a problem in computing. Using containers to encapsulate complexity in language stacks (source code, to runtime, and whatever lies between) is like using a bazooka on a mosquito; the foreseeable future will be more like the laser mosquito zapper - however far off that is (the mosquito laser already exists, IIRC). Bazookas are not the best analogy - containers are probably more like "avoiding mosquitos by hiding  under a net".

--

And after that, I'd like a unified FFI that's language agnostic (I know, it's called the OS, sockets etc. -_-, but no), so that building, and deploying multilingual applications becomes trivial in complexity. Much work to be done.

On one hand, shared-kernel containerisation was invented to solve problems in software configuration management (I don't mean source code management). On the other hand, I think the problem I'm concerned with is where we are in history, in terms of how operating systems, and machine nodes, and binaries, and source code are related to each other. The current situation is too complicated. It will get more complicated. But it will one day be much cleaner.

--

So if I let myself get distracted by all this, I'll never get back to that interest in improving the "standard mathematical notation," "permanently breaking the turing test," and that other one of "a MECE education syllabi."

What Docker does for devops, I've always wanted to see more of in the broader universe of human knowledge management - whether it's framed as information studies, or civilisation, or education, or math & scientific notation, I don't really care. It's all the same fundamental units of computation after all.

--

Ah, a good day for listing dreams!

#vacationTime

Data Procurement Officer

Compared to five years ago, I'd say there's now enough complexity in the Internet (consumer) ecosystem... to justify the need for a data procurement SME in any consultancy that makes recommendations on Internet (consumer) marketing strategy.

Marketing as Logistics

Direct marketing problems are logistics problems. If your supply of the necessarily information for closure of a sale is faster, you win. And that's how you figure out what the critical chain is....

100% Organic Labour

A quick thought in response to this. On the topic of robots vs human labour: I think within 30-70 years we'll see B-grade hotels advertising themselves as "we only use organic labour," and being sued for trying to slip in robots in their place - most customers wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

The Objectification of Public Discourse

Public discourse is not about having our voices heard. The voices discoursing in public should be manipulated by each of us, as we prefer the public discourse to be. The fact that our voices belong to us is irrelevant to the public discourse of voices.

We are the changes that we want to see in the world.

If we want to feel appreciated for our opinion, we find someone to love us. That is personal. If no one does, well so be it, the world is unforgiving. We are born, we are maimed, we die. Voila.

Celeb Crushes

"I've got a celeb crush..."

"I think she's married..."

"Aren't they all? That the damned definition, isn't it? They're  untouchable."