Recently many big and small YouTubers are defaulting to using generated thumbnails. These are the ones with a huge mugshot of the person with a fake smile acting in amazement of some colourful object. YouTubers like Mr Beast, Joshua Weissman all use it and if the Big YouTubers are doing it, there is a solid reason. This could be another game in the algorithm where if you use it you get suggested…
This Christmas I attempted to draw and write once a day on the build up to Christmas. I wasn’t the most religious on keeping it exact daily and I definitely skipped quite a few when I had to attend Christmas parties. Overall I wrote 13 pieces, and more drawings than I could count. I found drawing much easier to get started. It was quite soothing to pick a reference and just draw. I was just…
What to write about should be a simple topic. It boils down to who you want to write for. Am I writing for an audience or am I writing for my own sake. So far, I’ve been writing whatever that comes to mind. Including this piece, as sort of a diary or note taking. Is there a grander sense of purpose of this blog? Not really. This Advent of Writing especially has been positioned as an easy way for…
Getting food with your colleagues is important. I believe a core part of work is knowing the people you work with. Not in a casual, friendly sense but to understand this person’s style, structured and way of thinking. The road to the restaurant or the local supermarket for a meal deal is perfect for this. In this small slit of time, you’re at work but not fully at work. This I find is the best…
On interesting people who have written. Paul Graham I first engaged in his writing in 2022. On a trip to Gran Canaria, I downloaded everyone of his essays and binged read all of it. I’ve heard of YCombinator before this and loved the basis of a merit based startup fund. His writings are fairly widespread but generally centred around, startups, writing, and making things. Possibly my favourite…
What is risk taking In this day and age, taking risks is what all the cool kids do. Everyone wants to be a founder or be part of a start up or run a crypto exchange. Even going for big tech earning 6 figures is considered a safe choice . Why has this point of view become the norm? I think that just having general wealth being a lot higher has helped. Being born in a first world country nowadays is…
I have been hooked on Expedition 33 for the last few days. I learnt about this game from the Brandon Sanderson podcast on ‘Video games’. In the comments, many have suggested him to play this as the lead writer of the game is a fan. Many of the world-building came from both the wheel of time as well. Things I disliked Let’s start off with things I dislike. The camera movement can be super…
I have yet to give up on my startup dreams. Here’s a list of potential business ideas for this season. Tried Meeting optimiser AI based Smart homes AI Font generation Potential Booking platform for Dentist Vivino for coffee snobs SOPs management system TBC
As you can tell, my portraiture is not very good. In this Advent of Art, I want to change that. My understanding of the facial distances seems to always be a bit off, leading to an uncanny face. Working on something you aren’t good at is something you do when you’re young. Can an old dog still learn new tricks? Can passion and work triumph over a lack a talent? Adult classes for learning Aside…
Angelo is swimming in a lido. Teleportation device Discombopulation and reconstruction. Daily usage and is common. What happens to the organic matter left behind? Travelling the universe Human backups how are memories stored in our brains Actual cloning is prohibited. Due to the widespread abuse of labour and slavery. Teleporter is a 3d biochemical printer Reporter scandal on constructed memorys…
As a young boy, I was told I had an entrepreneurial spirit and I like to make money. A funny and repeatable story that my mom constantly repeats is how I manage to sell an empty water bottle to a fellow student in my secondary school for $10, more than when it was full. She needed it for a craft project and as I was the only empty bottle owner, I could charge monopoly prices. I think my connection…
Why do I enjoy sharpening knives? Knife sharpening on a whetstone is one of those tasks that I’ve started to enjoy after joining the career ladder. Simply put the blade onto stone and feel the crevices become nil whilst enjoying the smooth grinding sound. The mechanics of sharpening is not hard. It is only moving the blade up and down on a whetstone with moderate pressure. But, there is a lot of…
Joseph Mallord William Turner is my favourite artist. His capturing of light is explosive with both soft and heavy brush strokes. No doubt his most famous painting is “The Fighting Temeraire” in the National Gallery depicting a steam powered ship salvaging the late great wooden warship. However, my favourite is the pair of paintings with octagonal frames “Peace” and “War” both at the Tate Britain.…
Chester grew up on a bustling street in North point. He was never talkative in his formative years and had few friends. Through grit and determination and his innate talent in Linguistics, he managed to snag a spot at St Paul Boys, a highly regarded secondary school on a Scholarship basis. Natalie was the direct opposite. Born rich, she lived high up in the mid-levels. She was never prideful and…
Advent of Code is a popular coding challenge that occurs yearly based on the Advent calendar. As with the name, it’s a question a day up till Christmas eve (although this year it is reduced to only 12 days). For this year I want to embark on a little art and writing journey. I pronounce the start of the #AdventOfArt and #AdventOfWriting. Each day I intend to create one piece of art and complete…
The virtual cell challenge is a brand new challenge released by the Arc Institute to help progress single cell predictions against perturbations. This research is crucial into our understanding of how cells behave under perturbations and allows us to create novel cells. It comes alongside their own release of State , a model to do just this. Understanding, predicting, and ultimately programming…
Stories and Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang is a collection of science fiction / fantasy short stories. In total there are 7 stories. Each of them are disconnected and has its own unique world building. This was a great collection and each one was as thought-provoking as the last. In this review I’ll quickly cover 3 of my favourites. My first selection is coincidentally the first story of the…
Yesterday, when I was heading home from a long day. In the corner crossing of Camden road, I saw someone whip out a phone and snapped a picture of their friend across the street. This got me thinking about the possibility of an augmented reality tag game. IDEA: AR Tag People running around a fixed area with a target and a tagger. Tagging is snapping a clear picture of your target. Tagging out…
Health is an important aspect of life. More and more people are becoming conscious about health and their diets. Of course there are health fads coming in and out like intermittent fasting or the carnivore diet. I think however there is a consensus that what you consume in terms of nutrition values (not when, or what exactly) is the most important bit. This leads me on to my latest obsession.…
This post is NSFW. Recently I’ve been noticing that there is more and more and more bots in the YouTube comment section. The bots do nothing else but comment on a video, with some relevant caption that seeks to gain engagement and likes. They read normal, just like any other post. The only reason I can easily point them out is because of their icons. It’s additionally suspicious because these…
As a kid, we are told to dream. Believe in yourself and you can do whatever you want. In Hong Kong, there is a famous movie quote “if you don’t have a dream, you are no different to salted fish”. Salted fish is a delicacy where all the moisture of the fish gets dried out by the salt and air. This emphasises the importance of dreams rooted in our culture. Dreams are what we strive for, an…
Dummy
This is an account of the show Stage Fright, made by the legendary pair Reece Shearsmith (R) and Steve Pemberton (S). The following contains LOADS of spoilers. Plot summary Part 1 - Who’s the Audience? Show opens with an instant jump scare (instant black + bang). Scene then shows a bunch of theatre seats facing the audience. As the audience filters in, there is a busy man (S) on his phone and…
Inspiration 8 Language 9 Pleasure 8 3 characters, 3 point of view and one intermingling story and theme. My thoughts A town called solace was a different read for me. The language was slow from the get go and I had bad assumptions that it will be a lot of literary devices with not much plot, which I care mostly about. At the end I found I really enjoyed the book mainly due to its structure. The…
Inspiration 2 Language 2 Pleasure 2 This book is about a dragon living in modern times whom encounters a young boy and learns about friendship. My thoughts I use to read so much of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series and it seems either my tastes has changed or this is not a very good book. The plot itself is possibly interesting, but the language and things that happen is very distracting.The gore…
Inspiration 8 Language 8 Pleasure 10 Murder in Harrogate is a collection of short murder mystery stories centered around Harrogate. It’s a book to celebrate the Crime Writing Festival. The location is famous for being the place where Agatha Christie disapeared to during the height of her fame. My thoughts The book was a quick pleasurable read, perfect to finish each story during the morning…
Reading up on how frontend really works There’s so many frameworks, paradigms these days that keeping track of how frontend works is quite tricky. It’s very easy to get started on this frameworks. Boilerplates makes this especially easy. Running: npm create vite@latest my-vue-app -- --template react creates an application in a flash! This makes getting started on a website or web application…
Sleeping is a large part of our lives. It accounts for a third of our time on earth (albeit being unconscious). Sleep enables us to rest our muscles, removes toxins from our brain and retains memories. It’s essential to intelligent life and almost all animals sleep. This technique of recovery requires no training and is essential to our young. Although the origins of sleep and dreams are still a…
Building an AI For the better part of the last year, I’ve been working on a little project I called alpha-catan . I wanted to work on something just fun and interesting. Nothing related to business or anything that is even (remotely) useful. Just pure unadulterated fun. The project I ended up working on is trying to build and AI that plays Catan. Now, Settlers of Catan is a pretty famous board…
Waxy breakdown of garlic is a phenomenon where garlic can go translucent and yellow. The pyruvic acid levels of the garlic also reduces, lowering its pugency and has a softer texture. It’s considered a disease? but It’s different to black garlic which is fermented. I’ve had it happen a few times to my stash of garlic. I was initially weary about using it as it look’s off, but once I did, I really…
To put things into context, my primary purposes for a computer is to program, watch videos and play video games. That’s pretty much it and accounts for all I need a computer from. I prefer a setup with minimal fuss and can be flexible enough to adapt to either new technologies and games. In this post I aim to cover a few of the choices I’ve made and why I’ve made them. My hardware Currently in my…
Context I was born and raised in Hong Kong for over 15 years, and would consider myself a native Cantonese speaker. However, if you asked me to physically write Chinese characters in order to save a cute little puppy🐶… it would unfortunately not make it. Why is that? Why can read, speak and listen to Chinese perfectly fine but have such a low grasp on writing. I’ve read the Remembrance of Earth’s…
Random thoughts Is writing any language important in our generation?✅ Fluency of language Reading vs writing vs listening vs speaking Writing versus typing Can there be a universal language? ~~ How good is Feng shui 風水?~~ Is Feng shui based on good UX? Who still uses feng shui? When did people start sleeping on their backs?✅ Invention of the pillow? Why is most programming languages english?…
This phrase is played across London tube stations. The nonchalant and robotic tone of the broadcast sounds as though the pickpocketers simply work at the station. In line with the “See it, say it and sort it” and “No Staring” posters, it brings a looming inevitability that hooliganism is always by our side. How do these safety reminders give Londoners and visitors a sense of security? If nothing…
Ride to somewhere I open my eyes. I’m on a bus. It’s packed and stuffy. The people around me speak a language I do not understand. The window on my left shows a scenery of shrubs and more shrubs. My right shows a barren rocky landscape. A gentleman is sitting next to me. His cane is lodged between his legs, and he wears a mismatched tweed suit and beige chino pants. I asked him where we were and…