Monthly Archives: January 2014

Persistence towards the Future!

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I already begin to feel the lack of new ideas and inspiration from just two days of significantly decreased reading. Sure I read textbooks, but it’s really the rich variety of books on every subject that gives you that fresh perspective daily. And that’s all I’m going to write today because I want to sleep and get ready for tomorrow! I was planning to stay in a living room this school quarter purely because of the price but I’ve since decided that sleep and quiet times are essential for any type of self development. So, I’ve been busy moving into my new apartment room which I’m double-paying for along with the living room… rather unfortunate turn of events so I’ll definitely be trying to make the most out of my decision! Goodnight all!

Living in the Present and School Starting…. Travel Experiences!

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

I’m starting to love blogging in the morning. While everyone’s asleep, I get a bit of time to organize my thoughts going into the new school quarter. Usually I’m reading at this time [currently starting out Jim Cramers “How to get Rich Carefully” this time around] but my brain just isn’t feeling it. And though I’ve always embraced the concept of doing my agenda list in the order that I “feel”…this new year I’ve decided to just go with the flow – even if it wasn’t on the to-do list. So with school starting in a few hours [winter break just ended!], I want to just write down some honest thoughts and be able to look back at it as the school year progresses!

And the flow has brought me to talk about a little hobby of mine…… travelling! I want to talk about Thailand and my experience there. Maybe venture a bit into the other countries depending how I feel. So, I’ve always thought of it like this. Imagine one day you wake up in a new world: in this world your bank account is multiplied 30 times over[if you dont have enough in the bank for this to be good news…. you better think about that one!!!] – but there’s a catch. Everyone is a lot nicer and as a result everything costs about 5 times more. I mean that’s Thailand. It’s developed from the ground-up as a tourist country so they are extremely receptive to English [much moreso than China/Taiwan/etc]. And so I dwelled a while in Bangkok, really just love taking it slow and reading until noon in the hotel -> walk outside -> meet some locals  + find food -> sightsee one place -> dinner -> massage -> sleep. Repeat, one week. Leave. Also dropped by Pattaya for a nice beach experience, it’s rather undeveloped and gives off an extremely natural vibe. I liked Bangkok a lot more though and probably will return to see the sightseeing parts [Chiang Mai / Phuket]! I’m really a big-city liver though and if you’re into $7 massages, $0.65 coffee [way better than Starbucks], and $3 Pad Thai. Well. Yep. Oh and also $5 Taxis. Yep.

But now that I’m back, I want to re-visit the topic of what university should be like. And that’s getting everything through an easy-mode version of life along with chances to actively mold your untapped potential before picking up extra “cargo” throughout life/career. There’s a relatively simplistic business model with your “connections”, “politics”, and “too invested” concepts but it’s in a world trying to help you out. Well that’s a lie, but chances are your teachers care a lot more for you or at least are much more willing to mentor you over your future boss. The easiest example: when’s the last time you grabbed some coffee with your boss to talk about your future/ask for some advice [not talking about raises/promotions here!]. Yet, that willingness to help somehow seems to push students away. Classes of 300 at my university have maybe 1-2 if at all any students showing up to office hours. And that’s yet another lesson learned. Free just isn’t appreciated. And geez, life is really complex. But hopefully, I’ll map it out and organize my thoughts on this as the quarter goes on. I really want to think about some active steps a student could take to really utilize their status in order to develop a more established presence in “reality”. The first would be to attend conferences that offer student pricing. It’s so hard to explain the tangible effects of the intangible to my a lot of my classmates though. Well, I’ll revisit this topic again.

Last topic. Living in the present. All that matters is now. All these recurring concepts, it’s starting to finally hit home. The fact that I’m too stubborn to listen to my parents, lost so many friends throughout my mood swings, and all my worries about the future. Altucher talks about how each of these occupy a portion of your brain and really take away from your active intelligence. Yep. That’s exactly it. For me, those 3 items listed above. I can’t work and create something genuine with those thoughts. In fact, I can’t even write a blog with those thoughts. But now I found freedom. With this comes acceptance. There’s no going back to the past, how things were, and the “good ole days”. In fact, it doesn’t even matter to the current you. Except that memories are unforgettable and invaluable etc. But it isn’t your LIFE. Life is the current, the happening, there is no bad life[as long as basic human rights aren’t being violated – that’s different], there is no not enough time, and there is no miracle happening. Everyone is different. Everyone is individualistic. And life itself must be re-defined by everyone as they live it. And I wish people [me included] can just start to realize there’s no “correct way” to live, no “destination”, and no “shortcuts”. You learn there’s no looking back. There’s only the you that’s alive and the you that is grateful for everything that you’ve since amassed since you were born. Well, and if there’s nothing – then that’s fine too [it’s never too late to start!]. And that’s that! Now I’m motivated for school! 5 days of 2014 over. Day 6 Beginning. Let’s keep going!

Physical Goals + Growth Hacker Marketing!

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Okay, I’ve decided for this blog – I’m going to try to post frequently to keep up the traction! Some of the posts will be just me talking about my life [like this one :>] and others will be about my thoughts on certain topics[a little bit of that here today too]! To all the haters [that don’t exist yet probably], go away!!! So it’s 4:53 AM. Didn’t blog yesterday because I fell asleep at 6:30pm…. not that it’s mandatory to blog everyday but I just like bringing new content to this site! Decided to get out of the house since I thought Starbucks opens but it opens 1 hr later on weekends. Which seems to work out, I’m having the time of my life at Carls Jr right now for the first time in years! Yesterday, I read Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday[so short so good] and I want to get to that later as well but first back to the daily practice!

Today I want to gloss over my physical goals. As of now, I’m more focused towards staying active and energized over the goal of achieving certain results and want to keep this segment of my life just fun. My current approach to this is to continuously mix up the physical activities and keep it spontaneous. And soon, I’ll just list the activities that I do later – I have a different goal in mind today.

What I want to introduce to you guys is the concept of Hot Yoga [especially to the guys!]. Honestly, I don’t want to sound too over-the-top here but being loaded with a relatively fulfilling schedule(trying to stay positive here) – it’s hard to pull yourself to exert an explosive amount of energy when the evening hits. i.e.: treadmill/gym/sports w/ friends/etc.  Hot Yoga brings me two purposes every session: mental relaxation/clarity and physical satisfaction. No matter the practice, I guarantee you will be drenched in sweat and purified of a significant amount of toxins throughout your body when you spend an hour in that blazing hot room![exaggerating a little…] I started off a complete beginner [and still am] but the concept of a personal group instructor is very motivating in comparison to me personally.  Also, the amount of acceptance and gratefulness at the core of yoga really encourages you throughout the session! Okay, well anyways if you want to know more about this topic than just google around to see if there’s a facility near you! This really helped my work-life balance as I used to always feel really stiff in the neck/shoulders and now my blood circulation has really improved as a result! Oh, one con is that it’s slightly expensive[at least for me]: it’s ~$10/session or about $180/month at my location. YMYV though!

++Shallow Corner (GUYS!) – added bonus! if you want to see skimpy-clothed females…. that are actually in shape [flexible, nimble, toned]. It’s here, not the beach :). Maybe 8:2 ratio or so at my location[F->M]~

So just to wrap this section up, the rest of the activities I like to participate in are Ping Pong[loveeeee this sport]. It’s actually pretty hard, check out [ihttp://bit.ly/1csvuVh] if you don’t believe me! Also the treadmill + gym is good, considering running outside [goal is maybe ~2miles right now, barely making it to 1mi right now]. That’s about it! Despite all the hype I gave Hot Yoga, I’m only planning to do it 2-3 times a week. I find myself a bit unable to be too repetitive and there’s no reason to force myself to be!

Ok so, Growth Hacker Marketing. The biggest point I learned in this book is that transparency is everything. It’s so easy and intuitive to live in honesty and accept “constructive criticism” in the modern era. This book is only ~50 pages? I read on the kindle so I’m not sure but it’s almost mind-blowing how you can wake up early, finish reading this extremely motivational book and finish exercising/showering before most of your peers even wake up! The transparency i described earlier is to find the PMF[Product Market Fit] for your product through the continuous exposure towards social media, [perhaps your blog or friends] to receive feedback! It’s such a simple step but so often do people go into their own little hole and expect their completed work to be a hit! Holiday talks about this from books to launched products, but even I can think of basic examples such as studying. Often kids study by themselves and wonder why they perform subpar on the tests. It’s good to study yourself [up to a certain degree -> almost like how it’s important to have a THOUGHTFUL product before asking for criticism] and then you can work with others or even the professor if you really find all your peers inferior! Another key concept is it’s all about customer retention more-so than publicity. The latter is also important, but caring about those key people that are already your customers and delivering will build a solid foundation to get your product exponentially multiplying in the future! [paraphrasing Altucher: your current customer is your best/future customer!] This is getting a bit windy, so check out the book if you’re interested – it’s $2.99 on kindle! [http://amzn.to/Ko3Pva]

Mapping it Out……… Day 2 + Programming Website/Book reviews

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

So today is January 2nd. Finished reading Altucher’s Choose Yourself at about 3 am and then took a nap until 7. Woke up with the “daily practice” stuck in my head [http://bit.ly/1asE4Aa if you don’t know what I’m talking about]. Anyways, this post will probably be my last profiling of Altucher because he ignored my question on the live AMA today… so I’m bitter!!!(half kidding!)… :p. But regardless, it’s more or less one of my preferred re-packagings on one of the most fundamental concepts of self development: balance and equilibrium. For those of you too lazy to click the link: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual [essentially the pillars of success – I honestly forget which book I read this from originally]. Alright enough about that, I’m sure a lot of you probably already know about it + it’s common sense so…. onto how I incorporated these concepts into my life!

Well as a student, I’ll start off with the mental subsection first… after all school school school is priority (so they say). But what I’ll be talking about is a bit of self-learning in terms of getting started with coding (especially for the web if you read my last post) and what I think about these websites. Note: I’ve started all of these for about a month, I’ll give an estimate of how many hours below during my separate reviews – of course, the amount of time I spend on it also correlates to how attractive and easy to digest the offered content is the and overall satisfaction with the experience too!

So in List format (favorites on top):

HackerRank (5 hours) – Okay, so if you want to pass the software development interview. You know you need to master your data structures + algorithms. This site, essentially an easy mode version of TopCoder (you guys can look into that if you’re a bit more hardcore but the UI is not for me), is basically the smoothest it gets in terms of forcing you to struggle (which many of the following websites don’t imo)  yet also holding your hand a bit in the beginning. Essentially, you learn the material. There’s very little room for error as coding syntax is not very forgiving and if you can wing your way through all the exercises – I’m sure you could hand-wave your way through the initial stages of any interview (Google, FB, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc) as well. Anyways, this isn’t really beginner beginner friendly but honestly this is a stage anyone has to pass if they want to become even slightly competent -> if not, there’s outsourcing at elance.com and you should find your true motivation in life and start focusing on that instead. BUT, for recreational learning I highly recommend the next website…..

Team TreeHouse (30 hours+) – This website is fun. The UI is clean. The teachers are great. I love watching and learning fundamental concepts and I usually watch the easier intro vids at 1.5x – 2x speed once I get used to the teacher’s voice. I personally have the gold suscription (no I’m not under any sponsorship and the cost is hella expensive for a student) and really like tuning into their project development (coderacer) and Treehouse w/ Friends(where they interview rather successful freelance developers + maybe more – only watched a few). Overall, it’s relaxing and it’s easy to absorb. When you’re done w/ work + school – often, you’re too tired to be tackling that next brain-wrecking algorithm in C. Yet, this is still infinitely more productive than watching tv or spamming refresh on facebook/reddit/twitter. The progress really adds up. One hour a day and you’ll be surprised when you end up at the end of the month knowing your Javascript from scratch etc etc. Oh, one more thing is I like the lectures -> quiz ratio. They aren’t meant to be hard questions and you’ll almost definitely know the answers if you just half tune in to the video lessons!

Okay, these are the mediocre ones. I don’t hate them but I primarily use the first two (or at least plan to).

Codecademy (10 hours+) – This was the website I started with since there was so much publicity around it. I’ll spell out my favorite part of this website right here: it gets you coding immediately. And that is really important. Talk is useless without getting your hands dirty and that’s what Codecademy does. And to be honest, I was rather satisfied for maybe 1-2 hrs – and then I wasn’t really learning enough because there was no progression in difficulty. My opinion is that it’s too easy and even in later difficulties they basically spell out the answers for you. These are all my opinions, and I honestly prefer the above two (one for easy mode one for hard). But, I feel that for some people who like just learning to learn moreso than for practical application, perhaps you would be able to understand some of your coworkers code after completing all the exercises. I finished the Javascript section and dabbled in all the others before I moved on.

CodeSchool (2-3 hrs) – This website is really good for the right audience. It has more of a messy and adventure look geared towards kids/explorers. I prefer TreeHouse for learning the basic concepts but I REALLY like codeSchool’s introduction to ruby and deep dive into NodeJS. I’d continue the subscription if I had unlimited amounts of money, but I’m probably going to focus on the first two and stop it after this month! If you’re curious though, I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. I really dislike how they don’t have a trial period but I guess they have introductory classes for free so you could get a feel for it.

I also read a plethora of Algorithm books: and to be honest, it really drills it in you. Doing an exercise gets you able to nail the problem but reading the theory and concept behind basic and fundamental computer science will get you learning the subject on a more intuitive and personal level. Though, I rarely get past the second or third chapter though since I find these books really dry. I’m just going to list the one I own but I’m not going to recommend any in particular since I can’t seem to finish any of them.

Algorithms Unlocked – Cormen, Thomas: theoretical and tries to make it readable for the non-programmer. You basically still need a developers mindset to read this. I like it, it’s short but I haven’t gotten through Chapter 2 yet.

Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java – Shaffer, Clifford: I really like how this book started out. It’s probably the easiest to understand out of all the books so far. But it’s a bit thick – so I tend to pick up my other ones more.

Algorithms (4th edition) – Sedgewick and Wayne: This is basically the textbook reference I have. And it goes into all the detail you need, I go back to this and re-read after I read a similar chapter in another book to solidify my understanding.

Algorithms – Dasgupta: This is the required textbook for our school. The professor himself wrote it, a very very very good professor by the way. Too bad I dropped out of school that quarter so I didn’t finish the course. I like how this book is short and to the point and I’ll probably actually finish reading this book when I take the course.

Oh, one book (or I guess publisher) I WILL recommend though. Is The Big Nerd Ranch: Guide to Android / Guide to iOS (two separate books) – they are really good. Taught me everything I needed for my internship @ an iOS consulting job in China this previous summer which paid very nicely (prorate to about 100k USD/yr).

I’m not really sure why I wrote all that but I’m tired now so I’ll write about the rest of it next time. Hopefully this is useful to somebody, if not it helped me organize my thoughts on how I want to tackle information in the software development area for the rest of the year. Anyways, see you guys soon!

Oh right, while I was tagging – I tagged Starbucks. Started off the morning coding there – love coding there, meet interesting people (a surprising amount of CEOs @ 6-7 AM in the morning just sitting across the table from you) and finally bought a starbucks rewards card. I only put $5 in though, being an investor at heart I hate locking my money even if it’s small amount). Let’s see if I can get that gold unlocked by the end of this month :).

Welcome to the Blog of Peace….. for now

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Well, apparently I published what I was typing earlier on older blog and would hate to just copy and paste it over…. that’s just too unoriginal! So welcome, I started this blog after reading James Altucher’s Choose Yourself [http://amzn.to/1eUU5q5 if you’re interested] and realized that it’s time to come out of a coma. I like having financial freedom, I like having happy friends, and I like moving forward in life. Even if I got my dream job of working at Google…. maybe I would be pretty happy, but there’s no harm in being a bit entrepreneurial about it so that I could make some more on the side! Throughout this blog, I’m just going to write about my updates and my mindsets.. feel free to leave a comment!

Well I should introduce myself. Right now, I’m 22 and I’ve been in and out of university for six years. I’ve dropped out to dabble in the stockmarket – making and losing hundreds of thousands then millions of my parents money, played and competed in a popular online game known as League of Legends competitively, and taken quite a bit a time off to just travel the world – staying in major cities/countries such as Paris, England(London), Belgium, China [Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Changsha] and Taiwan for relatively long periods of time. I’ve also visited Thailand, Canada, Mexico, and planning to go to Korea/Japan after I graduate.

Alright cool, so the point of this blog is just personal discovery. I crave my own success, I realize that making big money at a big job may not give me the complete freedom that I desire, and I want to make money even while I’m asleep. But I’m just a student, I’m penniless if my parents cut me off [which they did], and I have no idea how I’m going to find passion while creating value for myself. So that’s what this blog is for – hopefully if I succeed, you can learn from what I did when I had nothing [now]. My first step is going to be a quick venture into the web industry: it’s all about visibility and I just happen to be a Computer Science major – why not? I was thinking on my plane back from Taipei, what could I really do with no experience in the industry? And I decided that I’m going to ask local restaurants that I enjoy if I could make a website for them.. free of charge – maybe some free food? I’ll definitely be curious to see how that happens. By the way, I have very little web experience – I even had to drop a web development class I took because I just wasn’t working on a subject I was enthusiastic about and didn’t bother to learn.

Another part of the journey is realizing that everything I learn is for myself. I won’t be cryptic to the point where I start hating on the university system but I just see no point unless you’re learning for fun – which is much better than cramming to graduate by the way- or actively learning to find that puzzle piece of your plan. I appreciate that the school I go to, UC San Diego, allows me to take whatever classes I want. I love jumping around taking math, physics, biology, engineering [mostly bio/electrical], philosophy, and psychology classes. Some I take for fun, others I take because I feel it creates personal value and as I said above: I’m a CS major because it’s practical, worth my time, and keeps me updated with the latest and greatest. Most of the classes I took were useless to graduating yet I feel they define who I am and how I think. While I didn’t always have this mindset, I wish the rigidity in the education system would bend to allowing students to create a more personalized graduation plan.

So I’ll cut this first blog post at this point, and read a little bit more of other people’s blogs (you guys should check out IEatFancy @ blogspot if you havent before…. the food looks so good)! Happy holidays and let’s all work on creating a new 2014! ^^