Curious Cat

Miti Stole My Chair

Miti has her own "sleeping chair", but for some reason she likes to "steal" mine. Whenever I am away from my desk for a while, soon I will find her sleeping on it. Her look tells me not to mess with her.

Active-Passiveness

"In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action, and embracing this paradox can save your life."*

Recently I had lunches with a few friends. Though they all survived the recent round of layoffs in their companies, they were not very happy. They felt unsure about the future, tired from the now heavier workload, and helpless to do anything to change their current condition. I tried to think of something to say to encourage them, but couldn't find anything that was not a cliche.

Then I spotted the term "active-passiveness" from the book "The Survivors Club". It's a term used in psychology; scientists found survivors of crises were usually people who waited for the worst to pass (instead of getting panic or fighting it directly). The preserved energy was then used when the situation was not so dire and eventually saved their lives.

Since we are "officially" in crisis now, applying some "survival" psychology may help. In the mean time, spending some time reading "Lao-Tse" or "Chuang-Tse" while biding your time may not be a bad idea. :-)

*This sounds like Lao-Tse, but is actually from the book "The Survivors Club". It contains a chapter which is a good digest of the "luck factor" book (even better than the original).

The Tao of Software Development

In the pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added,
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.

-- Lao-tse*

I know my college Chinese professor will be laughing her head off if she knows I am reading Lao-Tse (and her beloved Chuang-Tse) through the English tranlation of someone who doesn't even know Chinese. Well, since Tao is "unnamable", "undescrible", who knows the English translation is not truer to the Tao? (Also, if my college professor can be a huge Dostoyevsky fan without knowing any Russian, why can't I read Lao-tse in English? After all, I can always go back to the original.)

Back to the topic. When I read the chapter 48 of TTC, I suddenly realized, Lao-tse was actually talking about software development! Think about it. When we start learning software engineering, we start by learning basic data structures and algorithms. As we become more knowledgable, we add more and more complex tools (data structures, algorithms, languages, design patterns, etc) into our tool box. However, when you are doing software development, if you just keep adding complexity, pretty soon you will have a chuck of unmaintainable code or a very tangled architecture that is out of your control.

So what do you do? Well, you simplify it, you take away things. That's the essence of refactoring. That's why we have design patterns (and why you need to know how to use them wisely). After you have cleaned up you code, used an easier to understand yet more efficient data structure or algorithm, seen the patterns in your code and made them flexible, after you have done them again and again and finally nothing can be done, you know it's the time you put it down. It is time to move on. You may have to revisit it someday, but there's nothing you can see or do now. Some day, you may have a new metaphor, a paradigm shift, which allows you to see the problem in a different light, to find a solution even simpler, but until then, you are done with the work, nothing is left undone.

Such, is the Tao of software development.

*This is from Stephen Mitchell's translation of "Tao Te Ching", the most readable and enjoyable English translation so far. Mitchell had some Zen training, so his "unfaithful" translation is actually a mix of Zen Buddhism and Taoism. However, whatever his translation loses in authenticity, it gains from his poetic use of the English language.

Feeling Lucky?

Ever think how to improve you luck? If Feng-Shui doesn't work, maybe you can try the principles suggested in this book. Based on the author's "scientific research"*, they are:

1. "Lucky people create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives."

So don't shy away from your chance encounters. Don't get tunnel visioned by anxiety and fail to see new solutions.

2. "Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings."

If you have read the book "How We Decide"(another interesting read), you know gut feelings are actually our subconscious mind working. They can recognize patterns much faster than our "logical" mind, so listen to them, but double check your facts.

3. "Lucky people's expectations about future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions."
If you think you are lucky and destined to something, setbacks won't stop you. On the other hand, if you think you are always unlucky, you won't even try. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

4. "Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune."
In short, they fail smart. Instead of blaming on their luck, they learn from their mistakes.

Do they work for me? I don't think I have more good fortunes when I adopt some of these principles, but I do learn to cope with setbacks better. Who knows, maybe that's enough to be called lucky.

* Like most of the psychology experiments, I found these experiments too primitive to be called "scientific". Most of the time they measure correlation , but cannot prove any cause and effect, so don't take the "science" part too seriously but treat it like a different perspective.

Once

This morning I woke up with a song playing in my head. I must have a dream, but by then the dream was lost. Like entering a movie theater where the movie had end but the sound track kept playing, I tried to put back the story by the song I heard. It evoked a sense of yearning, the smell of the sea, the feel of rain dropped on your face, taste slight salted. (How wonderful the human brain works.) The dream was hopelessly gone, but I realized where I had heard the song. It was at the end of the movie "Once".

To many film critics, "Once" is on their top 10 best movie list of 2007 (and Bob Dylan is a huge fan). It's not hard to see why. Like "Before Sunrise", it is a love story where the boy and the girl met for a short time then each headed life their own way. (You probably have seen these stories so many times in real life and have one of your own.) It is plain, yet it has a kind of truthfulness and authenticity a Hollywood love story never able to create. But that's not enough. A plain movie can be boring. What save the story (and distinguish it from the others) are the songs composed by the actors themselves. (It won the 2008 Oscar for best original film music.)

But don't rush to download the soundtrack yet. For what is a song without the story? Watch it. It will be the 85 minutes you remember forever, even in your subconscious.

Blog Separation Plan Abandoned

I was thinking of separating this blog into 3 (book, movie, and home) and creating a navigation menu to easily link them. (OK, I was reading too much CSS lately so my hands got itchy.) After a few tries, I decided against it. Two reasons:

1. The navigation to another blog is just too slow. I was hoping it would be fast and smooth so I could "fake" that they were the same blog. I was wrong. The transition was too obvious.
   
2. I don't update my blog often enough (I know, my bad). If I separate them, readers will have to click each one to find out if there's any update. Most of the time, they will be disappointed. It's a waste of their time.

That said, I was having fun enhancing the blog template. Here is the "prototype" blog I created. Can you tell what I was trying to do? Tell me what you think.

P.S. on further investigation, it seems if I use wordpress (a free online publishing software) I can achieve the effect I want after some customization. However, it means I have to host my own website. Though it's fun to learn wordpress and php (on my to-learn list for a long time), I once again decided against it due to the cost.

A Cat Gives You A Good Reason To Wake Up Every Morning

Miti's incredibly cute expression can hardly be caught by the camera (she hates it). Fortunately she's not too against me drawing her. This is what Miti looks like when she wants her morning massage.

Watchmen

If you think superheroes are a bunch of costumed weirdos, welcome to the world of "Watchmen". Here you will find quite a few (warning, spoiler alert): someone who can see the future and move in space by will but is an emotional zombie, someone who won't hesitate to kill a pregnant woman, someone who makes money by selling super hero models based on himself, oh, and some sort of wonder woman who's only purpose seems to be sleeping with the other superheros (I have actually spared you a few characters, I am sure the movie will cut out some of the politically incorrect scenes).

Still think it is interesting? Then 03/06/09 is your day to watch it on big screen. Yes, it's visually stunning (I had seen the trailer on big screen, very impressive), but just don't ask me why this is the "most celebrated graphical novel of all time". After reading the original, it sounds more like an advice to avoid them all.

Battlestar Galactica

I thoroughly enjoyed the old Battlestar Galactica when I was a kid (more than StarTrek). Lately I discovered there was a recent remake. I am glad to see the remake is also quite enjoyable too (and with Mary McDonald as the president, really loved her performance in John Sayles's "Passion Fish"). For the "fifth grade" sci-fi fans (you know whom I am talking about), check it out.

P.S. after watching a few more episodes, I am afraid I have to say the pilot was in fact the best one. How disappointing! such a promising beginning.

Endurance

In August 1918, Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 embarked on an expedition of Antarctic. Their goal was to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent. Before they even reached the continent, their ship, Endurance, was trapped in the Weddell Sea. The ship eventually crushed under the ice. The crew had to make two near-fatal attempts, rowing their small boats across 800 miles of chopping water, before they could get rescued. Their twenty-two month ordeal became one of the greatest survival stories of 20th century.

Thanks to their on-ship photographer Frank Hurley, the Endurance story was vividly captured through Hurley's Kodak camera. (In Hurley's time, photos were captured on glass plates so they survived the harsh weather pretty well. You can see more about the story here.) We can now witness their amazing survival story first hand. (Hurley, like Dorothea Lange, is one of my photography heroes.)

Looking at those photos, I can't but think about the similarity between now and then. (Not so long ago in the dot-com bust, the Endurance story was "rediscovered" by the media, but it was narrowly focused on the leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton.) Maybe it's time to read the story and get inspired by it again. After all, the lesson may come in handy this time.

P.S. if you are interested in the Endurance story, I highly recommend Caroline Alexander's book and the HBO mini-series "Shackleton" (played by Kenneth Branagh).