Life @ NCP

Growing up in Singapore with typical asian parents meant that my sister and I were forced coerced encouraged to learn how to play the piano. We had a piano teacher who would come over every week, giving us pieces to practice. I remember this one time where she gave us some bars and told us to compose melodies. Ten minutes before she arrived, I was hastily stringing random notes together on the sheets she gave us. Worst part of it was I had to sit through her trying to play each bar of music, wishing the ground would open and swallow me up there and then.

As much as I hated playing the piano, it’s probably the only reason I can read musical notes or string a melody together. It’s not the most useful skill as a developer, but something I am thankful that I have the opportunity to know. I don’t think I could have ever picked that up if I was handed a piano and told go learn this yourself. I had to be forced to.

Years later, I think the tyranny of choice is still just as relevant. My most productive days are the ones where I have to work through so much stuff that I don’t have time to think about what task to pick next. If it’s not ordered in a nice neat stack and I’m instead given the option to choose which task to do next, half the battle is lost for me.

So I want to be a dictator of my time once more. Not an absolute, iron-fisted maniac yet, but certainly with grand aspirations. I can only decree that these are the things I will do this week for now, but soon, these are the only things I will do today.

It’s not to say I want to cut out spontaneity in my life. There’s always time for spontaneous things I want to do. It’s the things that aren’t spontaneous that need to be forced into submission.

And I know some days I know I am going to wake up, smell the coffee and wonder wtf. Maybe I should go out and meet some friends instead, rather than sticking to this. But it’s precisely those days I need to come down hard on choice. There should be no other option available to pick from, just one.

Which is why the post made it out at all this week 🙂

So Martha did a humorous speech yesterday based off one of Michael McIntyre’s gigs. It was about how convoluted the process of buying tickets online had become, involving indecipherable captchas, countless fields to fill in and confirmations and legalese to read through if you really wanted to make sure your ass is covered and you haven’t actually signed / checkbox-ed away your firstborn child.

As she was talking about how strange it was that you have to confirm your email (they just want to make sure you really know your email!), all I could think of was the technical reasons behind it. It sucks when your system captures the wrong email address and keeps sending to a dead lead. Which then got me thinking. Why aren’t there any stand up comedians that work solely in professions. I’d think a stand-up comedian in IT would make a crazy killing in say San Fran, kind of like Dilbert but hardcore tech. Heck, even the word stand up means something different in IT than in comedy ~ta-dunk~.

So obviously the first thing you do when you have an idea like that is Google. And there really arent’t that many hits. For one there’s http://geekcomedytour.com/, which doesn’t seem like it’s been updated for about a decade. A whole tour of geeks doing comedy, who would have thought? It turn out that there’s quite some geek specific comedy like nerdist and even something like http://www.wcgeeksversusnerds.com/, where debates about the obscurest of topics in pop culture happen, like DOROTHY vs ALICE – “who is the best at navigating bizarre new lands?”. Random collection at http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/nerdy-comedians-477293/ too which I have to go through at some point to figure out if they’re actually worth my while 🙂

But the bottom line is, I can’t seem to find any comedy specific to the IT industry. Something that will touch the soul of a tech person like http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/ does. Anybody who codes or has to maintain systems can identify with that. But why not bring that to life? Why not make it living and breathing?

Apart from the lack of mass appeal, I think a big question is time. More than any other industry, the face of the landscape changes in the blink of an eye. And you can show your age and affect your appeal based solely on the choice of tech stack you choose to make fun of. And desensitisation. I’ve only started working at the new place for 3 months now and I can already tell some people have well and truly drank the koolaid. And when you drink the koolaid and something just ridiculously crazy to an outsider or someone coming in for the first time happens, you just go – yeah, that’s normal, nothing to see here, just move on, even when your hair is on fire, the sprinklers are on and people are running around screaming.

So let’s try and make it happen. I’ll give my next speech from the humorous manual, and make it something about IT. Let’s see how that works out.

To put thoughts into words, and to share those words with you, the reader. Such is writing. Some people have no problem talking about ideas, but hand them a paper and pen and they are lost. There is something about writing that forces you to structure your thoughts, to make up for the lack of context provided by a conversation in person.

I want to become a better writer. To better share what I know, and better understand what I do not. So here I am, practising. Practice makes perfect, so they say, but there is a reason why I’ve been playing badminton off and on for a number of years now but still get my ass handed to me every time. I like playing badminton, but I certainly can’t say I’ve been practising.

I want to become a better writer. To think better. There is a reason why people pay for time to practice. Exchanging cash for focus sounds like a quick fix, a shortcut to mastery. I think there is something to it, but only if you are thinking about what you are doing and constantly reevaluating. Only if you are thinking about what you are writing.

Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby and all round amazing guy has advice for TED speakers. Speak only about insightful things. Only talk about what brings value for the audience, because it’s not about you. On one hand, once you know something, it is hard to imagine how “not knowing” feels like, so what is valuable to your audience does not seem as valuable to you. The other side of the coin is when I’m the only person on the planet who might find how a specific configuration of parts on software causes a bug interesting.

And there is always the fear. The fear that stops me dead in my tracks. The fear that stops me from pushing the publish button. The fear that makes me pause, look at what I’ve written and say I can’t believe I wrote that and toss it in the graveyard of forgotten dreams.

I will write, and I will think about what I write. I will write regularly, and I will write for you, whoever you may be, whereever you are. There will be no room for fear, no time for hesitation. The audience await, the readers clamour for the souls of manuscripts pushing against the door of existence.

All that is left is to turn the page, to put pen to paper and make them real.

I picked up a book called the 4-hour workweek when I was in the university, and although at the time I didn’t completely buy it, the book introduced me to Tim Ferriss, the author of the book and a fast-learner extraordinaire.

Every two years since then, I checked out where Tim is at. Just like a startup releasing better version of its app, Tim released more books, learned more languages (up to seven now), and best of all, started a podcast channel. His channel is called “The Tim Ferriss Podcast“, and I have been listening to it on a daily basis for a while.

Yesterday I found one wonderful episode in the podcast between Tim and Derek Sivers, a musician turned programmer, and a really nice wise guy (I meant that really in the nicest way possible!).

The episode is two hours long. Yes, it is long, I know. But if you are even remotely interested in some of the topics listed on the title of this podcast: “Developing Confidence, Finding Happiness, and Saying ‘No’ to Millions”, then you should find the time to listen to it.

The link to the podcast: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/12/14/derek-sivers-on-developing-confidence-finding-happiness-and-saying-no-to-millions/

She owned a mixing bowl designed to please a cook with a round bottom.

Read the above sentence one more time, and try to make sense of its meaning. How can a cook has a round bottom, does it mean big bottom? Aha, it is the round bottom of a mixing bowl, not a cook’s. That is unclear. The phrases are ordered incorrectly, mixed up in its meaning and context, but it can easily be fixed by re-ordering and adding a comma: She owned a mixing bowl with a round bottom, designed to please a cook. There you go. For many, writing is already difficult, but editing is even harder. Fortunately with this book, Bruce Kaplan provides an easy-to-understand rules in common situations to edit and to improve your writing.

The table of content is below for you to peruse:

Why learn editing? the benefits for you
Lean and clean: what editors do
The golden rules: for professional writing and editing
Ruthless people: what makes a good editor?
Be active: avoiding the passive voice
Split personalities: beware the split infinitive
Time for action: turning nouns into verbs
Small and pesky: two words that slow the pace
Nuisance value: more overused words
Is that so? how to avoid that
Every which way: the difference between which and that
Short is beautiful: avoid long sentences
Briefly speaking: a guide to shorter, simpler words
Pronouns: how to avoid confusion
Feeling single, seeing plural: more tricky pronouns
Collective nouns: which verb form do I use?
Clichés: avoid them like the plague
The future that is to come: the tautology trap
Stating the obvious: first cousin to the tautology
There, there: a few little words we can do without
Putting on the style: be consistent
Punctuation: basic rules
Contractions: when, and when not, to use them
To quote or not to quote: direct and indirect speech
Tricky, tricky: serial or cereal?
The plurals trap: don't get caught
Under a spell: a handy guide to difficult words
Oops: the misplaced phrase
If only: be careful to say what you mean
Now, see here: look out for this common error
Kid stuff: avoid slang
Former, latter, last: how to keep order
Get to the point: how to write a news story
Heads, you win: how to write a headline
Editing checklist: a last round-up
Hot tips: things to remember
And finally: set your standards high
Resources: things to keep handy

My favourite section is ‘every which way’. It is a section that explains the difference between which and that. Which introduces a non-defining clause, where the information within it can be completely omitted from the sentence. For example: The car, which a teenager was driving, crashed into a post. In this sentence, the main information is that the car crashed, and the driver, incidentally happened to be a teenager.

On the other hand, that introduces a defining clause, where the information within the clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence. For example: The car that the teenager was driving crashed into a post. In this case, the main information includes the fact that a teenager drove the car. If you are not sure whether to use which or that, Kaplan advises to always use that.

Another favourite section of mine is the ‘two words that slow the pace’. According to Kaplan, the words of the are not needed. Rather than writing the manager of the bank, I should write the bank manager. Another example, rather than the owner of the horse, I should write the horse’s owner. Brilliant! It is more succinct, easier to read and more pleasing to the eye.

I finished reading the book within an hour, it is a short book, and it can easily be skimmed, and you will find loads of hidden treasure as you do. Later, I plan to at least gloss over this book every time I need to edit my own writing, it makes it so much easier to do, almost like priming my brain to by having a checklist for editing. Editing made easy, indeed.

Thank you Bruce Kaplan.