Self-folding Origami

Kinda cool and creepy at the same time...

Updates

Well, I've spent most of the last 30 days working on a job site about 600 miles from home. Travel with this frequency is tough. The hotel staff already know me by face and there isn't much to do in small-town America. At least the weather is getting nicer and night shift doesn't really involve bundling up like a yeti anymore.

Trying to control my diet here is tough. Portion control is really really really hard. I'm not looking forward to weighing-in when I get back home. At least I have maintained the exercise regime. I find it getting easier now that there's some kind of consistency and motivation to not break the trend.

But in any case, I'm glad I'm going on vacation this week. Even though that brings the total 'time not spent at home' time to about 30 days in the last month and a half, I think this break will be very much welcomed indeed.

In other stuff, here's an interesting use of light textures on 3D surfaces. I think it's cool that they can simulate depth by running lights in different thicknesses along a surface.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

Yami to Hikari

Well, after that previous post, I decided to be a little more upbeat. I haven't had the chance to re-weight myself since the last weigh-in as I was traveling and the place I went to didn't have a commercial scale. The ones that they did have would probably treat my body weight as a rounding error.

Anyways, so there's good news and bad news this time round. The bad news is that I have succumbed back to Team Fortress 2, much to my eternal shame. However, this is day 2 and I have only played 45 mins since I reinstalled. That's a promising start.

The Good News is that I'm now 211. 3lbs in 2 weeks isn't much I guess, but it's better than nothing. Finally being able to have some consistent form of exercising seems to be paying off. I have roughly 15 more weeks till show time. Let's see how far I can do this shit.

Musings

The weather up here can be beautiful at times. I like the vast expanse of sky, sun and clouds. It's one of the nice things to see whenever I travel to the less populated areas out here.

It's easy to see why people have the urge to eat ice cream in weather like this.

Another interesting thing to see when I travel is the 'exotic' names that some of these small towns have. I think this is the 'best' name I've yet to see in the 3 years of travel I've had.

I pity any child that has/had to grow up in this town.

Lastly, the weather here is ridiculously windy. Apparently, it gets up to 40 mph in the winter. I can't imagine trying to work in the open fields with that kind of elemental force battering you all the time. I'm glad that I'm here in late spring and not winter.

For metric users, that's about 40 to 50 km/h...

So Round 2?

I finally bought a scale. It's one of those electronic scales that can measure to 0.2 pounds. It's also made from tempered glass and can track the weight of 2 users. There was another higher tech version that could measure body fat as well but it wasn't as nice looking, almost 50% more expensive and frankly, I think my body fat measurement will be depressing. The weight is depressing enough as it is.
So anyways, for the record it's 214 pounds. Which means that I am sub-100kg! That's a great first step. Haha. Now my target is 10 pounds from now till mid-May. The plan is to:

1. Reduce rice intake to 1/4 cup per meal
2. Only finish 1/4 of the potatoes in an outside meal
3. Eat more seafood
4. Oranges and Apples and Pears baby!
5. Wake up early to exercise. I've been trying but I have to wake up at around 6 to make this work. Means that I have to sleep by 11pm.

Incidentally, I have also suspended my TF2 for now. I need more time to organise my stuff and I want to learn VBA for realz now. Also, I will probably need time to prep for any advanced tests I want to take, be it the Pro. Eng. exam or something else.

Wish me luck. Round 2 int he quest to get fitter and better in life.

Brazil Trip - Part 1

So some of you might know that I recently went to Brazil for some work. So here's the pictures and stories I have from that trip.

I took the late flight from Chicago to São Paulo and arrived at 10am on a Saturday morning. My first task was to go from the international airport (São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport) to the domestic airport (Congonhas Airport). To do that, I could either take a cab or take the 'Airport Bus Service'. I went with the bus service as it was more economical (31 reais vs ~100 reais) and I had time to kill on the first day anyways as my flight inland was on Sunday morning.
It's a trip from the east of São Paulo to the west and took me about 50 minutes. The bus basically takes you through some parts of the city and then on the outskirts for others.

It's a big city. Lots of sprawl and many tall building as well. Oh and the weather was great too. Blue skies, white clouds, 28 degrees C...
Either the Mystery Machine has gone into catering or this is a blatant copyright rip-off. But I guess everyone wants Scooby-branded baked goods and snacks.

There is some weird architecture here as well.

When I first saw the row of stuffed toys on the road divider, I was wondering what was going on, until I saw the lady hawking the stuff. Just like here, there are people who try to make a living from the road divider and at traffic junctions.

For a city of ~18 million people, Congonhas Airport doesn't look all that big or modern...

This is the hotel I stayed at the first night. It's like the Holiday Inn of Brazil. Unfortunately, their website isn't too informative in English.

Well, that's it for this first post. I'll continue later. I'm tired and it's bed time now.

So it's been awhile

It's been 2 months since my last post and I think it's time I restarted this thing again. I had a rather busy Dec/Jan with work and vacation. So I think I'll just write about a couple of things on my mind this 2010.

First of, Happy New Years to everyone out there. Yes, I know it's really belated but better late than never eh?

Anyways, the other day, some idiot in my complex damaged the apartment garage door and it could not close properly. Management had someone stand guard outside and cross reference everyone who entered with a residents list. How the guard checked my identity was quite interesting to me - He asked me to confirm my unit, which I did, and then he said "Thanks so much Mr Lee". I totally did not get that it was a test and was kinda irritated at him when I responded " No. Tan". Only when he said "Thanks again sir" did I realize I just got juked by the guard. Now I'll look out for instances where people try to trip me up and perhaps I'll use this method to check for consistency from other people in the future as well.

I've been trying to wake up early to exercise so as to try to adhere to previous resolutions but it's proving to be really tough. If I wake up at 6am to workout, I'm a dead man walking by 2pm. I have to adjust my sleeping pattern to accommodate this new plan... But with a new year, there is a new hope. So I'll just keep plugging along.

Well that's enough ramblings from me for now. I have to get ready to sleep to try to follow my workout plan. Wish me luck.

The Best Laid Plans

I just realized that my last post was my 500th. 500 posts covering about 6 years. Wow, I've been doing this thing for quite awhiles already. I feel like patting myself on the back.

Anyways, to the post proper. It seems like a great number of buttons have been pressed and a significant number of phone calls were made to ensure that all the vendors for this particular job that I'm working on will go down onsite tomorrow to troubleshoot the equipment. Apparently the jobsite still has intermittent issues with the equipment which I feel is not really related to things under our control. Admittedly we can fine tune it some more and we need to fix some bad parts, but most of the problems seem to be issues that involve the electronics and communications of the equipment. Which is not my company's area of expertise nor scope of supply. But when your stuff doesn't work, regardless of reasons, you have to fight for your own reputation and have to show you are willing to go the extra mile for the client.

But it's also something akin to extortion I guess, since we are working WAY beyond our contracted hours for this job. And we will not get compensated for it. We might be able to offset it with the backcharges for changes to our equipment done onsite but who knows. All I know is the global headquarters called our company to say 'Git 'er Done'. Perhaps it's pandering to power but when the bigshots call, you listen. I find it a bit distasteful, but we are a small business so we need to make them happy. I want to explore this idea in a future blog. But I'll leave it like this for now.

It's just that it seems that the next couple of months will be a busy busy period for us. There are an estimated 5 startups from now till next Mar/Apr. Which makes me really really glad that I'm going on a long vacation this X'mas. Cos I don't know when I will get a chance next year. Feast or famine I guess, that's the rhythm of the business. 就是因为这一点我想尽快拿到绿卡，过后箬想走就能走。

Also, just so I can boost my ego, I'm posting here for posterity some of the comments people have made about my guitar playing. I did a collaboration with my friend for Extreme's More Than Words, with her singing and me playing the guitar. For the record, I don't think the praise is warranted, but I'll accept it anyways. Haha.

(10:20:09 PM) J: my sister thought i'm using a background song because the guitar was so good
(10:20:11 PM) J: OMG......

Observations from a Job Site

So I'm currently in the Mid-west doing a start-up. I have spent 30 of the last 36 days here onsite at the Holiday Inn Express. And these are just a couple of things I have observed in that time.

1. When you spend 30 days in the same hotel, the staff knows your name. I asked to extend my stay twice this week and both times, the staff just set things up in the computer without asking for my name or room #. I guess they know my name and face very well now.

2. I have finished 2 tubes of travel sized toothpaste. So 1 travel sized toothpaste will last on average 2 weeks.

3. When things go bad, they might go bad in a hilariously tragic way. My equipment was running the last couple of days without incident but yesterday was a looong day. First of all, there are 2 sets of equipment here on-site. We had to shut one (called set 2) down due to a lack of feed yesterday morning. In the process of shutting set 2 down, there was a crash due to a mis-timing of the sequence. This inadvertently caused set 1 to crash as there was a programming error that caused set 1 to monitor the status of set 2. Since we only needed 1 set of equipment, we restarted set 1. We were trying to clean up the mess that crashing set 2 caused and so we went to lock out the equipment to be safe. The operator who was helping me then turned off the wrong set of equipment. So set 1 went down again. We then restarted set 1 and resumed cleaning up set 2's mess after we locked out the correct set. Then when we wanted to restart set 2 to check if we had cleaned everything up, we discovered the cross-referenced programming as set 2's equipment crashed again and led to another crash on set 1. Again, we restarted set 1 and then it was running fine for another hour when the discharge equipment that collects product from my equipment crashed. This led to yet another crash on set 1. All these crashes occured in a 6 hour period. I was sooo ready for a beer by the end of the day.

4. The Colts rock.

5. There are really some unpleasant people in the world who think that they can bully everyone else who is more 'junior' than them. I am not looking forward to working with that person again. 真是个自以为是的王八.

6. Bringing a guitar on-site was a good idea. At least I get to practice a couple of songs on the good days.

7. I cannot wait for vacation next month! Looking forward to happy times and Success!

当你的公司要被卖的时候应该怎么做？

今天我的上司确定了公司要被卖的谣言。最近几个月我们总公司决定要卖我们北美部门。

听说我们的竞争者想买我们的公司。如果真的被他们买了的话，我觉得公司会有超大的改变。我们公司文化，风俗一定会换。我对这个件事有点不安。不知道我绿卡的申请程序会不会受影响。加上会不会被逼搬到新的城市。Sianz.

Oh well, only time will tell how it goes. I should just aim to get out of this start-up as soon as possible. It's already been 4+ weeks and counting. Ugh. Hopefully I will get out soon.

The Winds of Change

So it's been a really cool year. Summer was more like a warm Spring, with the number of >30°C dagys countable on both hands. It was kinda nice to be able to escape the heat and humidity. But now, it's Fall and I think the weather has no intention of ever becoming warmer than normal this year. It's early Oct and it's already 10°C... Ugh.

It's my 6th year in the Midwest and ever winter never gets easy to handle. But I guess that makes the nice, sunny days all that more precious. Perhaps the changing of the seasons is also analogous to my changing life. I just did my first solo project, which means I have an increasing responsibility. I like that. It keeps the mind engaged and busy. Idle minds just turn to things that I cannot write on this (relatively) SFW blog.

Also, I like to think that I have started a new chapter in my social life. Moving up the real estate ladder and trying to meet more people (or at least, meet people more). This can only bode well for me. So let's see how it goes.

Finally Resurfacing

So September has been a hectic month for me so far. I was moving into my new place for the first week of the month then I had to hit the road for a job in South Carolina. In fact, I'm typing this at the airport in SC (free wireless at the GSP airport, very nice).

When I get back, I'll assemble the pics of me furnishing the new place but for now, I'll leave you guys with a pic of Jennifer Love Hewitt. She's so hot!!

Disappointing Returns...

So it's my birthday today. I'm busy with moving and stuff so there wasn't really any celebrations. Just ate some black forest cake my mum bought.

But I did decide to try my luck at the Mega Millions since it was a $252 million dollar jackpot. And the draw was gonna be on my birthday as well.

I got $27 worth of tickets, but as you can see, only 1 ticket actually won anything. And it was a measly $3 as well... I had thought to bank on birthday luck, but it wasn't forthcoming I guess. Oh well, I hope the office pool did better.

Joys of Business Class Travel

So on my recent trip back home, I was bumped up to business class. There's a huge jump in service and food between business class and economy. It's no wonder that there is a 2:1 price premium on business class, but after getting the kind of service I did, I'm definitely gonna try to upgrade myself every time I get enough points.

It's nice!

As you can see, they provide you with a power connection. I think mine was busted or couldn't provide the 230VAC required to power local electronics as I couldn't get it to charge my DS... The 2nd pin hole for the headphones is because it is noise canceling.

The array of seat arrangement options was numerous. I could make the seat slouch or fully recline. And they have a lumbar massage option which I found quite amusing if un-effective. The leg extension was also far too short but I guess they would have ran out of leg room.

They also gave me slippers and a fancy place to put my evian mineral water.

Spacious.

There was also a counter where you could place your drinks or other stuff. Even though I don't normally drink champagne, it was being offered for free, so why the hell not eh.

And now on to another important aspect of the business class experience: the food."

A classy menu.

The snacks given are "higher class" than economy but I think in the end, I prefer the cheaper Japanese snacks compared to the more esoteric things they provided. The free sake is a HUGE plus though...

The main course consists of an appetizer, a main meal and then desert. This was one of the most exotic airline meals I've ever eaten. Considering that I've always traveled economy, it's not a very surprising statement. But it was good. They gave me scallop, abalone, beef tongue, shrimp and a whole bunch of other stuff. And in case anyone was wondering, the blue ribbon is your chopstick holder.

The main meal had fish. But not some lousy fish from a microwave dinner box, this one had a ginger sauce. And they served it with miso soup and rice. They also give you a blue table cloth. Like woah.

Finally, desert. Melon sherbet and ice cream. This is wayy to awesome to describe. My favourite part of the whole course.

In conclusion, life in business class is good. One should try to always upgrade their seats to business class. I know I will keep trying!

An insight to how the big boys play

Interesting read about how the world of High Frequency Trades operate. It sounds like it there's a lot of megabucks and serious computing power involved in major transactions around the world.

No wonder the small fries don't really stand a chance. We get overpowered, overclocked and even played by the big fishes. Sometimes in ways we don't even know. Caveat Emptor I guess.

But that might be changing with the recent introduction to stop "flash trading" or the esp-ish read supercomputers get on the markets due to them piggy backing on the stock exchange servers. We'll see how it goes but it feels good to even the playing field a little.

In a separate note, you always hear stories of how companies do not put enough thought in the naming of their products when selling them in foriegn markets. I recently had to deal with a company called Process Combustion Controls. A pretty innocous name by most standards but the moment I read their name I started snickering. It's pretty unprofessional but funny. Guys and masturbatory references always seem to get along well.

The funniest thing was, after I mentioned this to my colleague, he said that the name was appropos, since they were "a bunch of jerk-offs."

It's been a while

So I have some catching up to do.

1. Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there. You guys probably deserve the attention more than one day a year for all the good jobs you do.

2. It's the official start of Summer! Hopefully, this will mean that there will be more "summer-like" weather than weird, crazy April weather. Although considering that this is one of the coolest summers in memory in the Midwest, the chances of something weird happening is pretty high.

3. Congrats to the newly graduated! You guys might not have chosen the best timing for that act, but at least it's better than graduating 6 months ago.

4. Proof that TF2 sound effects + bloopers = funny.

Sick

So no updates for now. It was a beautiful wedding, Congrats to the bride and groom. I'm confident that they will have a fantastic future. In the meantime, please enjoy this video.

10 more days

I'm starting to think of local food everytime I go for a meal now. The loh mee, the vegetarian bee hoon... I can almost taste them. It's been more almost 15 months since I've been home and I'm totally looking forward to my first major vacation this year.

I think I could use the break. Although things are starting to get busy here, a break will do me good. 最近自分の生活はあまりよくいかなかった。どんの理由があっても、自分が直したい。。。 Perhaps a change will do me good.

A true Hand of God

Taken from NASA's X-ray Observatory, this is actually the death of a star. The blue rays are X-rays emitted as a star loses energy and collapses onto itself. It takes 150 years to traverse from the base of the palm to the tip of the longest finger. And it happened 17,000 years ago. That's the awesome thing about astronomy, it's a study of stars and our past. Due to the limit of the speed of light, it's the one form time travel that is possible - we see what happened hundreds and thousands of years ago as it reaches us from light years away. Amazing.

Here's to hoping that in the next decade, we see a "finger of God".

Show me the Money...

Yeah! The 400 dollar tax rebates should be kicking in this month. Which means I get another $40 bucks take home pay per month. Woo!! That should be enough for a stag party back home.