Bigger on the Inside

Interacting with new people do from time to time, make me somewhat anxious. Some questions in particular are especially anxiety inducing – A question like “what is your favourite X”.

The thing about favourites is that they imply a preference set in that one or more than one item in the set is more preferred than the others, usually in some kind of order. While it is true that for most categories of things I have a somewhat fixed preference set, problems arise from a few issues, which I will further elaborate below:

• The preference set is subject to extrinsic variables
• Too many tied orderings/too few tiebreakers
• The humblebrag

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I run in multiple circles of acquaintances. Amongst my circles of acquaintances, one is a heavily transhumanist/futurist/post-human circle. I would often engage in discussion – over drinks usually – about the Singularity and what’s to come, our minds would meander amongst the hopeful and not so hopeful futures. There were many ideas floated. Most were interesting, but few were realistic. Being around transhumanist acquaintances gives me a feeling of hanging out amongst science fiction authors of the 1950s. [Read More]

I saw Man of Steel last night. It was excellent. I might watch it again on the big screen – that was how much I enjoyed it: much much more than Star Trek or Iron Man 3 that both came out this year. I liked it a lot because I felt it was more than your average summer blockbuster * it’s definitely NOT summer in Australia – a very wet winter indeed . [Read More]

I love being productive. Being productive really feels good – it’s an ego boost almost. If the product of being productive is tangible immediately or almost immediately, there is a sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, being unproductive is the start of a spiral downwards. At least for me, being unproductive makes me fear being unproductive, which makes me even more unproductive. I really do not enjoy the feeling that comes with being unproductive. [Read More]

Today marks the 65th anniversary of Baby. Baby was the world’s first electronically stored memory. It heralded the age of software. Here is a video discussing Baby. I watched this video early this morning, and I wonder what it is like to be one of these people — pioneers of world changing technologies. I use the term technology in the way an economist uses the term – institutions, laws, tradition, etc are all considered “technology”. [Read More]

I don’t speak very clearly. If you have ever hear me speak, it’s as if the words could not get out of my mouth fast enough. Words slur into one another. I also have a bad habit of mixing my timing and rhythm when speaking, despite having English as my first language. This makes my usual rather flat accent into something that sounds very jumbled. While I would attribute the mixing of timing and rhythm to the rather odd rhythm my brain is used to, this is not very good for communicating, especially with people who are not used to my speech patterns. [Read More]

I like to think that I understand myself very well. But there are bits of me that even I don’t get. Over the past three weeks, the online advertising world had been rocked by massive incidences of fraud and malware. As part of my day job I have traced the sources of malware and fraud and we have ceased working with those companies behind them. At the same time I was also involved in a … let’s just call it consulting capacity to another potential fraud case (not within online advertising). I got into a frenzy working on both projects at the same time. Usually I would be happy that I’m highly productive, but this time round I felt rather miserable.

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A very simple way of looking at the world is to consider a binary option. One can put out statements like “there are only two kinds of people in the world…” and make a gross oversimplification of the nuances that is life. With that preface, I’m going to state that there are two kinds of people in the world: hackers and engineers.

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As part of the rethink of Pressyo, we’ve decided to adopt the agile methodology of running a business. I have my doubts about it (applying agile to running a business), but I was convinced by my cofounders that I actually went to read more about it. One of the people I’ve been following is Daniel B Markham. I’ve followed him since he was a prolific commenter on HN and does write interesting blog posts. [Read More]

Last week, in the Pressyo chatroom, we were discussing the idea of resonance. Resonance happens when a driving force is applied to a system with a frequency that is the same and in phase with the system’s natural frequency. The result is that the system oscillates at a much higher amplitude than normal. A typical example used in high school physics classes is that of a swing. Imagine a child on a swing and is being pushed by her parent. [Read More]