Wednesday, December 28, 2016

This topic is always on my mind whenever I see a travelator in a crowded area. Finally decided to write about it probably because of the videos I've watched recently regarding traffic jams where they described something called the ripple effect.

This video does a good explanation of the problem with traffic and the idea is similar to what I'm going to talk about.


A little background information
I take the train to school everyday and there's a rather long travelator on the connector between the purple and yellow line (which I take). Whenever either train line arrives, a good portion of the commuters will alight and make a beeline for the connector. Unless I'm ahead of the pack, the travelator will always end up being jammed with humans and no one can walk freely on it.

The amount of people ain't the main reason for the jam, but the amount of people who don't know how traffic works causes it.

Here's an image I've drawn to illustrate the problem.

the moving speed is just an example

As you can see, the travelator is moving at 3 meters per second. Some people will to stand on the left hand side to facilitate people who want to move faster on the right hand side.

Person A and B is walking on the travelator at 4m/s, adding on to the 3m/s that the travelator is moving at, their net movement speed is 7m/s. When person B exits the travelator, he should walk at 7m/s so that person A would not bang into him. But since a typical person would not walk at nearly twice his speed, B continues walking at 4m/s.
Hence B exits the travelator at 4m/s.

Can you see the problem here?

Because B is only effectively +1m/s faster than the speed of the travelator, anybody who is walking more than 1m/s will eventually have to slow down, and by slowing down way too quickly, the people behind him have to slow down even faster and some even comes to a stop. The exact same ripple effect observed in vehicle traffic.

Even if B exits the travelator at 6m/s, it still means that the maximum available move speed of person A behind him is only 3m/s.

Of course this is only a problem when the amount of people on the travelator hits above a certain sweet spot; as long as the commuters are spread out it should not cause a jam. But during peak hours, do yourself and your friends a favour, follow these 3 simple tips to ease the jam on travelators!

1. Exit the travelator as fast as you can (faster than the net speed of your walking + travelator speed) or just clear out of the way.
2. If there's a jam infront, walk slowly. Don't walk fast and then get stuck and stand there, it makes the jam worse.
3. If you're a slow walker, just walk/stand on the left hand side it's not going to take that much longer.

Labels: featured, FFT, late night, thinking, traffic

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Friday, December 09, 2016

I've been inspired by real life and what I've been studying intensively for these couple of days. (mental vs. conceptual model)

Feelings are a terribly illogical thing.

We get frustrated at some thing, or someone even though it is not their fault. We just have the wrong idea (mental image) of how things are supposed to work. The larger the difference between our mental image and real life, the more frustrated we (or at least I) seem to get.

Let's take for example, I wanted to turn on a TV. Pressing the red button on the remote is what I think will turn it on, but for this weird-ass model, the steps for turning it on requires entering a pin, twisting the remote left twice and pressing a green button to turn it on. It's by no means the fault of the TV, but because it is so different from what I had in mind, it ended up causing some immense level of frustration.

Even though I seem to be aware of this phenomenon, I can't seem to control how I feel towards things; hence the "illogical-lity" of it.

My mental image of someone, does not shape who that person is. He/she is who he/she is and that's fine, but by projecting my ideas of how you are like and finding out that there is a difference in that; that kinda sucks. It is not the fault of that person nor the viewer (a.k.a me), sometimes our perspective on reality just don't line up perfectly.

p.s. If you're reading this, I'm sorry.

Labels: FFT, thinking

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Saturday, June 04, 2016

There are some people that I've come across the years that admit that they have a problem with some-thing. But they think that they can get away with it simply by admitting it, and that gets my nerves sometimes. Though I'll admit that I commit the same mistake from time to time. (which will sound very ironic when you're done reading this)

Let me draw an example from my not-so-short-anymore life experiences.

There's a guy A who would always be late to a meet up, and after numerous times he would say something like, "Aiya you know I got trouble coming on time one mah, you all just meet a bit later lor!" Preeeetty sure many people have came across someone like that, and it may sounds harmless at first.

BUT.

It's the same as saying, I am a late bitch, deal with it. He's not going to do anything about it even though he knows that it's an issue. (let us not dive into what's counted as an issue for this post)

Another example.
Let's say girl B likes to whine about anything and everything. (imagine she's pretty so she gets away with it) Over time people get annoyed and tell her not to whine so much. From my experience, people like her will come up with a response similar to,
"But you know I don't like all these things one mah, I'm liddat one."

I'm like that.

That is the tell-tale sign of someone who will very willingly admit that he/she has a problem but would not do anything about it.

Another example, fat people.
I'm not going to lie, I do not find fat people aesthetically pleasing, it's not like I hate them or anything, but unless it's some form of illness or hereditary disease, being really fat just shows how much fuck you give about your life/health. Okay where am I going with this again...

Right, superficial. There are many people who claims they're not superficial but dislike fat/ugly people on the deep down. (a smaaaall group of people who don't care about looks) Then, there is this other group of people who will very willingly proclaim,
"I hate ugly people, I'm superficial, whatever."

I'm not saying that being superficial is a damning value to have but jeez just because you proclaim that doesn't make it totally okay. Do you guys get where I'm coming from?

Shopaholics who go crazy over shoes be like, "I know I buy a lot of shoes, but I LOVE shoes!". I mean, yeah sure but that doesn't mean that it's alright to be blowing your entire salary on some summer collection!

The point I'm trying to bring across is simple, knowing you have an issue is a wonderful first step, but it's not the only step. Bloody fix it for goodness sake.

Labels: food for thought, thinking

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Friday, April 01, 2016

It has been so long since I blogged I don't even know where to begin, and oh I've been busy. The thing is... ever since I've found my lady it started making less and less sense to be typing away here, to myself. When I could easily just as well tell her all about my day and all of my nuanced feelings; while she pretends to listen.

School is hectic. Projects after tests after assignments after all the little shits that we have to do. In the blink of an eye, I'm at the 2nd last week of my trimester. The next time school reopens, I'll be a sophomore. (year 2)

Even though I've learnt a great deal, and my grades aren't half bad, I still feel like I'm not doing enough somehow; that I'm not making full use of my free time to do something cool, or earn some extra cash. With the long holidays coming up, I'd better get off my ass and start working.

I put off blogging for so long because I wanted to come back with a bang, with a really amazing post that'll blow the mind off any reader. As it turns out, writing really doesn't work that way. I probably have to slowly get used to writing again before my thoughts can flow to my fingers as smoothly as it used to before.

Let me try to tell you a story about something that happened recently (within the past month) that has been stuck in my head and I'm having trouble sleeping now because of it.

On this day, I went to the wet market with my mum, she needed to get some salt and other ingredients from this indian shop. After selecting her items, she proceeded to the counter to pay the guy. He's a rather big sized indian, albeit not very tall. Throughout the time he didn't speak a single word, instead he resorted to a calculator to show price, as well as pointing and gesturing. My mum seemed to be put off by that, so she discreetly told me in chinese, "Wah nowadays people run business don't even need to talk one ah. Like that anybody also can."

I gave her a slight frown and kept quiet, I didn't want to start any form of argument over something so pointless, but from my point of view, the guy clearly looked like he has some issues that prevent him from speaking. It could be that he has a sore throat, or some weird ass gay voice that he's embarassed about. Either way, it does not matter to me that he does his business without speaking.

Then came the next part that is etched into my memory.

When my mum tried to pay him with 2 5cent coins, he refused. Gesturing that she should use the 10cent coin that she has (because she was selecting from a pool of coins). My mum rebuked him, saying that 5cents is still money, why is he being a dick about it? (my words not hers)

Frustrated, he held up his hand, asking her to wait a moment. Reached down and brought up this huuuge plastic bag worth of 5cent coins. He gestured with both his palms out, what is he going to do with all these 5cent coins?!

Unconvinced, my mum continued to "argue" with a man that up till now has not spoken a single word.

At last, he brought his two fingers up (in slow motion from memory) to his throat. As he pressed upon it, out came a voice that was croaked, cracked and distorted. Turns out his vocal chords are damaged. He explained that all the aunties love to give him 5cent coins, but none of them is willing to take it as change, that the whole bag of coins is just junk as it isn't worth anything. I could tell that he was getting annoyed from his aggressive tone, and any normal person would've just left it at that and give him the 10cents.

But not my mum. 
She insisted on him taking the 2 5cent coins.

It was at this point that I walked out of the shop and left them to their own arguments. My mum eventually gave in, mumbling and grumbling under her breath as she left the shop.

I don't understand this.
It perturbes my mind.

Is it that hard for a party to give in and be nice? 

From my perspective, it is the same as two person walking towards each other on a pavement and both refusing to give way to the other. It only takes a small step to the left or right to avoid clashing, but instead both parties seem to question, "Why should I be the one to move?".

They would rather bang each other rather than just taking a side-step.
It's not that hard to give in, especially when it doesn't cost anything.

I'm not writing this to bash on my mum, or the indian guy. It's just a WTF situation that I can learn a lesson from. It is a lesson I try to apply to life everyday, especially when it comes to my lady.

A small side-step may be all it takes to make things better.

Labels: life, mum, thinking

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Sunday, November 03, 2013

The title is my conclusion, not my feelings towards them. 

After passing out from that dreaded place, I have been posted to Kranji Camp as a mechanic. Shall write more about the place in another post. The thing that I want to bring up is that there is an abundance of overweight people in that camp, people who have been marked as unfit for combat.


How overweight you ask?

If F=MA is legit, then he would only need to punch 1/3 as fast as me to deliver the same amount of force. If I am a zip file, then he would be what raw uncompressed data looked like. I'm avoiding literal descriptions because I don't want to paint something your mind canvas can't fit. But just imagine that if you punched him, his bodily armor would absorb your punch and dissipate the energy in the form of ripples.


Now that we have the setting established, let me talk about the point of this post.

There are obese females, and males I observed, who have the potential to become models. But instead they hide their beauty behind a vault of carbohydrates. I don't have anything against people who literally bite more than what they could swallow, but I am superficial enough to say that their body outlines isn't what I deem as ideal.

They can look better, and some of them do have the intention of cutting down the chomp. Some of them succeed, some of them don't, some couldn't follow through.

Why?

From what I have seen from the people who have succeeded, you just need strong motivation, and a crap load of will power. I'm hypothesizing that the people who failed lacked either or both. I'm thinking that if life is going on well and there's nothing to change the flow, there would be little motivating factor to change anything at all. Will power can be found when you really want something, or if you got fucked over so badly that you gain the mental strength to make things happen.

This is why we shouldn't be nice to fatties. Laugh at them, insult them to your heart's content. Indeed, they will hate you to the core with their clogged hearts. But it is a very strong motivator. Not wanting to lose is a really strong feeling, and a common motivator for sports people alike. I'm not saying that pissing off people will make them want to change, but you know, it is a good enough reason when the whole world point their fingers at you. This may seem evil, and it is. But it's just a more direct version of how some people got their motivation.

For example, getting rejected because of your looks will motivate to improve on your looks through either cosmetics, clothes or whatever. There will most probably be resentment towards the person who rejected you. My point is just a distilled version of this example.

Side tracking a bit, there has been a thing that has been bugging me. Let's say that there is a female that likes me, but I am a superficial bitch and basically don't like her face, or whatever. Let's say that she went for some amazing make over and became an eye-turner. If I went for her, the relationship is fucked because it's obvious what it is based on. If she rejects me because I'm a bitch and she has her pride, the relationship is fucked. If I had accepted her in the first place, there will be little reason for her to become prettier. So fuck, looks must become a second factor to personality; this is somewhat of a downer.

But anyway, back to the topic, for the sake of humanity and raising the bar for looks;
Give them a reason to look better. Give them the motivation to change.


Well... I'm not saying all fat people must slim down. But it isn't that bad of an idea, is it?

Okay before you run out and start dissing all citizens of the obese, calm your tits. This utilitarian method is clearly too cruel to work in real life. It's just a thought I had from all the hours of sitting around. Obviously there are kinder ways of motivating people, but those take too long and it's a pain in the ass. So well, if you don't mind being a target for rocks, go ahead and fuck the fatties.

Labels: fat, featured, FFT, food for thought, random, thinking

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Tuesday, June 04, 2013

I mentioned that I was entering prison of some sort in the previous post, I was referring to entering the army. Because it'll be a pain in the ass to explain "why?" to international readers, Wikipedia does a good job of explaining it for me.

Thankfully, the "sentence" has shortened from 2.5 years to 2 for the past couple of generations, and if you passed your IPPT with a silver or gold, you will only need to serve for 22 months instead of 24. This is where my post comes in, I am doing 24 months.

First of all, I can't do pull ups or run long distance for nuts. I could, in the past, when my school has PE every week. But in SP (which I just graduated from), 3 years of non-regular exercise, coupled with fast food restaurants all around the school has put me out of shape.

As I've finished schooling early this year, why didn't I bother training up for IPPT and save myself 2 months of NS? Here's my logic.

The date we enlist is somewhat linked to our month of birth. Since mine is January, I have a very high chance of entering the first batch, August. I was hoping to find a temporary Computing job but all required at least 6 months of commitment. Which by the time I got around to finding a job, I was only left with 4 or 5. Since I have already failed my IPPT once, I knew that I will be enlisted in early June. Which gave me only 3 months to find a job, if I wanted to.

The thing is that I hate doing sales and stupid jobs, I wanted something that could give me experience for what I was going to do in the future. So I gave up on finding a job.

Hence, going in 2 months early is somewhat like a job to me. Even with the meager pay of $480, it's like I am being paid to exercise, train and pass my IPPT. Compared to training in my own free time right now, where the reward is the extra 2 months of not doing anything, I just don't see going in early as a bad idea.

Yes, I know that freedom is valuable. But when I spend my freedom doing nothing important, it really doesn't matter that much to me.

So the end result is that I have more reasons for going in early than not to. Even though the reason (not to) is a strong one, I probably wouldn't appreciate it until I'm in, but then again, maybe I'm spot on with this train of thoughts.

Pros:
Less boredom
Some sort of income
Get fit for BMT
Enjoy life now

Cons:
2 months less of freedom.

Like many people have told me, it's all about your mindset, it's up to you whether you want to enjoy your mandatory NS or not. I am not looking forward to it, but I do hope that it would be fun.

Work hard, play hard.
Let's see how I'll feel when I book out on the 29th.


p.s. I am enlisting on the June 11th. So... from then on I would be gone for 3 weeks. That's just life.

Labels: army, featured, life, ns, thinking

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

A random thought spurs from the many cliche lines about how you are special/unique/different from everyone else. I have also always heard about how "no one understands me".

In fact, I seem to see "no one understands me" written all over the internet, on many blogs/tweets/posts that I see.

I think that both of them are true. Because no matter how similar two people are, they are still different, even if they're twins, the atoms making them up is different. No matter how similar the experiences are, it is still different for everyone.

Even though I don't expect anyone to truly understand my feelings or thoughts, it doesn't mean that it cannot be done. You see, the thing is: humans are rather fucked up.

There may come a time when someone is able to truly understand me for who I am. However, will I be able to accept "myself" that is projected by another? Questions like, "is this really who I am?", "who am I really actually?" are bound to surface, either you refuse to accept that your friend is correct about who you are, or you simply aren't sure about yourself in the first place.

Thing is, I find the concept of "self" rather confusing. Conscience and freedom of thought is a really confusing thing for me. Because it just seems to go no where when I think about it. (it's like the brain trying to define itself simply by thinking about it)

So here's my thought.

Our feelings are essentially our motivation to do things. Sometimes that feeling doesn't have a name for it, that's why we sometimes do things with the reason of "Because I felt like it." And from time to time, another person would be able to understand that feeling of why you wanted to do something.

The whole point of this post is to say that everyone is different, and it doesn't make them all the same. Just because everyone is a different fruit, doesn't make all them into an apple. Therefore, don't worry about not having someone to understand you inside out. We change all the time, just having someone who is able to tolerate you is good enough.


Additional note: Have you ever been at a really high building, and felt like jumping off?
Some people understand that feeling, some don't. There'll always be a unique situation/feeling that only you will understand.

Labels: FFT, food for thought, random, thinking

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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Some people know that I like to learn about the most random things possible. Not that I have a passion for torturing my brain, but some stuffs are just really interesting.

Recently however, I have been encountering topics that I have studied back in my schooling days. Topics that I really hated, not because that it's not interesting; but because it was dry and I see no use for it, nor the reason for it's existence.

Firstly, Chemistry; mainly, Stoichiometry.
I am annoyed why my school didn't teach us like this video did.


I love Crash Course, you have to subscribe to them if you haven't yet. These weekly lessons just makes me feel a hell lot smarter. They have also covered Biology and Ecology in the past.

Here's the thing, when I learned about moles(unit of measurement) in the past, we learned about the equations pretty much immediately. Which obviously doesn't make any sense to me at all. Here's a brief overview: The amount of moles shows how much "stuff" is in a substance. So for example, a 5mol/cm³ Hydrochloric Acid is more concentrated than a 3mol/cm³ HCL.

What I was taught is simply how many moles of Hydrogen, mixed with that amount of Chlorine will yield how many moles of Hydrochloric Acid.

Honestly, that didn't make any sense to me at all. Why wasn't I taught that the whole point of the mole system was so that I could measure the Chemicals in grams?! Why?! Sure, I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in some point in time but it wasn't drilled into our heads. Like it was just a "oh btw you could do this too" kind of thing.

It would make our lab practicals so much more meaningful if we have to calculate the weight of the chemicals we are mixing in, in order to achieve the amount of product we want.

All we did was mix chemicals until it changes color, or some smell; or measure the amount of chemicals we have to mix in a beaker until some observable reaction occurs. The problem with that was, I didn't know why the fuck we were doing those things. It didn't promote learning at all, I didn't want to learn anything more about it, all I was doing was just studying my ass off on it.*
(well... I'm not that much of a model student)

Secondly, Mathematics. Mainly, the Infinite Series.
I came across something called the Zeno's paradox.

The "simpler" (shorter) version of it is this.



You may alternatively check out the geekier version of this. (which explains it better mathematically)

I learnt about the infinite series while I took engineering maths. But I could never really found a reason to apply it to anything, or why the fuck I even needed to learn it in the first place.

Studying about S_T→infinity = 2 (S equals 2, as Time approaches infinity) makes little sense. Not unless we have some sort of pretext like the Zeno's paradox, it makes the existence of the equation more interesting. Why? Because studying about the electrical discharge graph of a capacitor isn't as interesting as a philosophical question that mind fucks you.


So, what does these 2 examples have in common? They perk my curiosity, they make me want to learn more about the subject on my own. They become more than concepts that I get preached to while I sit in a spot for hours.

I hate the way education is being carried out currently. It gives you the tools you need to make things work as quickly as possible, but it doesn't make you want to make things work. There isn't a sense of wonder when you are taught about concepts that took someone his entire lifetime to work it out.

Of course, being a teacher and teaching the same topics for years isn't the best situation for someone to remain motivated about motivating others. The syllabus is also taught in a "one size fits all" method. I know that there are things that can't be helped, but man I don't see the effort at all. I may well be speaking out of my ass, offending the teachers who are trying their best out there, but again, all these is purely from my own experiences.

What do I think we need?

Stories.

I don't care if it's fake, better if it's real. I think that a story is the best way to interest someone. For example, the concept of levers can be taught by how some farmer in the past wanted to carry more crops and use less energy. You could link a story to everything, it gives a sense of wonder and makes me think, "Wow, that's a freaking smart way of doing it."

Most importantly, it makes me want to learn more.
Because honestly, I'm just so sick of studying. 

Labels: education, featured, FFT, studying, thinking

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Monday, April 01, 2013

Writing about this because I'm right about to fall asleep, and I suddenly remember something that I read a couple while back ago, or maybe it was a video, anyway it was talking about how sleeping is equivalent to dying.

I'm sure there will be a butt ton of argument against it, so for the sake of understanding my point, let's just think about it only based on your experiences and not on science.

When you sleep, you essentially lose consciousness, you have no control over your body. Even if someone were to defecate on your face, you won't be able to do anything about it. In this aspect, you're no different from a corpse. Of course, the pungent smell would wake you up and allow you to tear that bastard a new hole, something that a corpse couldn't do. (and would be really terrifying if it could)

We're done with the physical, now for the mind. When you sleep you don't remember the time when you're sleeping. (can you imagine being able to hear yourself snore, and remember it?*)  So that's 5 hours, or maybe 15 hours of time where you are not aware of your surroundings. (the time varies, from little to you-should-just-die-in-your-sleep)
*video cameras are not counted, it ruins the point

As such, from your own point of view, you're essentially dead during the time you're asleep.

When you think about it this way, it makes you wanna treasure the time you're awake, for you never really know if you're going to wake up again after you close your eyes.

Labels: dead, featured, FFT, food for thought, sleep, thinking

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

This blog has always been my go-to place whenever I have something random that I want to talk about; and it will continue to be so.

However, I'm at an impasse. Couple years ago, I choose the name Lord of Geeks because it's awesome and for another reason I haven't disclosed. As you can tell, the acronym of it is LOG. This is a LOG of my thoughts and life. Thoughts are generally abstract, they bear no specific reference to my personal life. If you didn't know, I am very paranoid. 

Which is why I keep personal stories to a minimum on this space, which has long been a thorn in the butt.

Hence I have created my personal wordpress server. I have also been writing regularly on it, because I could bitch about anyone I want to. It is simply called log.com. However, only people within my home network will be able to access it, so it's as secure/personal as it can be.

But there are questions that arise,
Is there any point in writing anymore personal things here? Should I just keep things "professional"?

I know that there are still bored friends who come here and read from time to time. But they take up less than 20% of the traffic. Maybe I should simply try to write interesting things that has no relation to the events in my life.

I don't know. Any friends who read this, some opinions will be nice.


p.s It's 3AM. I can't sleep though I'm tired as hell, so I'm typing this with my eyes closed.

Labels: featured, life, random, rant, thinking

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Sunday, March 17, 2013

Been pondering about this for awhile. I like to showcase (showoff if you prefer) the geeky things that I do in my free time. I have heard people mentioning that I like to brag, or something similar.

I'm not going to flat-out deny it. But I don't really say things with the intention of telling people, "Hey look, I'm better than you."

"It's not about doing what others haven't
but doing something you've never done before."

That's how I would like to see myself when telling others about my geeky projects. The cold hard truth is that in the tech world, unless you're working on the frontier, it's pretty hard to do something that someone else has never done before. It's pretty much just some sort of personal accomplishment for yourself.

If you see something amusing/amazing, chances are that you will share with someone else, right? (think 9gag/youtube) But what if you, yourself are doing something interesting and want to share with someone else?

Of course, the finger-pointers will tell me, "Sure, it's cool that you're doing all these, but it's not like you have to tell someone about it. Some people just don't care." (real life responses) True as it may be, it's a fucking anal way to look at things and you make me want to hug you, with metal spikes.

Maybe because I'm a geek. We like to showcase our talents. Just browse through forums, you see people comparing custom desktop rigs, computer specs, game scores. And some people just make the most beautiful desktops you'll ever see.


Well, my point of all these is just to say that I think it is fine to brag talk to people about the things you're good in. Just don't rub it in their faces or make them feel bad about it. (un?)Thankfully, most people don't give a crap about the things I do so I probably didn't cause anyone to feel bad. I think. I hope.

Labels: FFT, food for thought, humility, thinking

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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

We don't heed authority.

Labels: authority, FFT, food for thoughts, thinking

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Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Just a really random thought on the way home.

"Crazy murderers are not as scary as the sound minded ones."

It's a phrase I heard some time back, and it made a lot of sense to me. However, instead of indulging in a morbid topic like murder, let's go with stealing instead.

If you're crazy, the reason for stealing a pen is that you do not know that it's wrong to do that. However, if you're sane and stole a pen, the reason is because you believe that it is the right thing to do. Which is why a sane minded murderer is far scarier, they believe that their actions to be righteous. (which obviously isn't)

To put it in a way that is easier to understand,
Give an insane person a gun and order him to shoot a person.
Give a soldier a gun and order him to shoot a person.

The crazy guy would kill the target, but doesn't really care. The soldier would care, but kill anyway because he thinks it's the right thing to do. Whose action is more severe? Based on the action alone, both share the same guilt, but act upon different reasons.

This is when I realize (once again), that your reason for doing anything outweighs the thing you're doing.*
*of course, I still don't fully believe on either side. Reason over Action, or vice versa

I'll leave you with one final piece of thought, which is worse?

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons
or
Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons

Labels: actions, crazy, FFT, reason to do something, thinking

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Saturday, March 02, 2013

"Give and take.
You win some, you lose some."

We hear that rather often. We have been taught, or at least I have been taught to learn to compromise when you face another person with a different opinion. That somehow I have to find a way to make both parties happy. Of course, we all know that it's just a fantasy.

"Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both."
- Tryon Edwards

There are a ton of quotes on compromising over here and here. It goes without saying that I do not agree with all of them, but some struck me as interesting.

I do not believe in the idea of compromising. For a very simple reason.

"make a plan and you will find,
that she has something else in mind,
and so rather than do either you do something else
that neither likes at all"
- My Fair Lady

That's the problem with compromise. It is what happens when neither party is unwilling to take a step back and "lose". They instead choose something that allows neither to win. That's completely idiotic, but understandable.

Humans are selfish, self-centered egoists. Most of the times, I am disgusted by the idea of losing for the sake of someone else to win. Even so, I believe that there's always a time when you should step back and be the bigger, and better man. Not everything has to go your way. The problem with give and take is that we don't give in completely, just in a weird, half-assed way.

That is why I advocate compromising compromising. There's no way to make everyone happy, you can only make everyone less unhappy. It's a balancing act of someone's fortune, and another's misfortune.

It's pretty straight forward and commonsense up to this point. So why compromise when it is such a bad thing?

Because it's a necessary evil.

eg. Country A has an abundance of oil. It only wants to provide for it's own country, and monopolize the market on every other country based on it. However, it is forced to compromise and sign a pact saying that it would sell to other countries on a globally agreed price point. Why? Because Country B,C,D,F... will wage war on A if they don't do it.

It's a compromise because everyone is still buying from A. But A cannot set a ridiculously high price. In this case, everyone is happy, but not as happy as they theoretically be.

Which is why compromising is a necessary evil. If we don't, everyone will probably die. Imagine this moronic but very plausible situation.

Person A is walking on the same path towards B.
Person B is walking on the same path towards A.
If neither of them is willing to shift their walking line, they would bang, right?
And then they would fight, and kill each other.
(yep, true story)

So the moral of the story is,

We compromise because it's easier for everyone else to kill you, then for you to kill everyone else.

Labels: compromise, compromising, featured, FFT, food for thought, thinking

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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Do you believe in fate?
I don't.

At least not in the traditional sense. The meaning of fate and destiny has changed along the years, so I asked Google to define them for me.



From what I understand, Fate is something determined by a higher power, like a God or any other supernatural being. Destiny on the other hand, is simply the inevitable.

For eg. It's this apple's destiny to be eaten by me.
For eg. I determined this apple's fate by eating it.

Apply this to humans, I would like to think of fate as a power you cannot oppose. Just like how an apple cannot stop me from eating it.

Let me just put this out there first. I absolutely do not believe in a higher power. (in the sense of a god that dictates the future of humans). I am an Atheist after all. Therefore, I don't believe in fate. Knowing that whatever you do, is already determined by someone else, is a fucking boring way to live your life. In other words, it makes life not worth living.

What I believe in, is physics, and the math of probability. A topic I touched on a little on my rant on gambling. Thanks to J who gave me a few examples of fate, I shall break it down using probability.

If you meet the same person on a bus every single weekday, what are the chances of it?

We shall assume very conservatively.
Let's say you only leave house within a plus-minus 20 minutes range.
You live in a neighbourhood with a population of 7140 residents. 15blocks, 17 stories, 8apartment/storey, 3.5residents/apartment.
Bus comes every 3minutes. (peak hour)
Only 3 buses goes to the same destination. (I have 5 in my situation)

40 minutes of total time. Average of 1bus/min since 1 bus/3mins and 3 buses goes to the same destination. So there are 40 possible buses. The calculation goes like this.
1/7140(residents) times 1/40(buses) = 1/285,600
The chance of you meeting a person on a bus is 1 in 285 thousand.

If you meet the same person every weekday, that's 5 days in a row.
(1/285,600)⁵ = 5.26 x 10^-28
That's 28 zeroes in front of 5.26. In comparison, the chances of striking TOTO* is 1.23 x 10^-7
(using system 6, $0.50)

Putting it in English, the chance of you striking TOTO is higher than you meeting the same guy on the bus by more than 20 million trillion. Putting it in a bell-curve, here's what it looks like.

It's on the far end of the spectrum

Now, if this isn't fate, I don't know what is. But of course, my version of Fate is very different from my love sick counterparts. My idea of fate is an event that happens despite of it's infinitesimal probability. Much like how you would think of luck.

Probability is interesting because it is true if you look at it on an infinite scale. For example, rolling a six-sided dice. The chance of you getting a 4 is 1/6. If you roll it 12 times, you might get a 4; ten times out of twelve. Does that mean probability is false? Nope. It just means that if you roll it a thousand times, a million times, a billion times; the graph will flatten out and the chances of you getting a 4, is 1 in 6.

Now, the argument supporting fate scientifically is using Quantum Mechanics and the theory of Multiverse. (multiple universe) In which case,

Everything that can happen, will happen and has already happened.

So technically, it doesn't matter what you do, it has already been done. In a way, you can think of your actions as inevitable. This might be hard to imagine, until you start to visualize time as another dimension, rather than a straight line. Hence, it doesn't matter what you do, you're destined to do that, because you have already done that.

Therefore, I cannot definitively conclude fate/destiny's existence. It's more of how you would like to define it.

For me,
Fate is the things that happens despite the probability of it not happening. 
In which case, it's probably fate that had you reading my blog (:

Labels: destiny, fate, FFT, food for thought, random, thinking

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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Community is back on air, which explains my excessive usage of their gifs

I have really random thoughts right before I sleep, this is one of them.

So when you think about psychology, the first thing that usually comes to your mind is the study of human minds; about how they behave. Then it's probably followed by all the mental disorders you can possibly think of.

schizophrenia
phobias
anorexia
obsessive-compulsive disorder
post-traumatic stress disorder
attention deficit hyperactive disorder
etc.

No matter how hard I try to think about it, I cannot recall a time someone gave a name for something good in the human mind. Like, you would call someone a good good Samaritan if he helps others and is generally being kind to everyone. There isn't a word you could use scientifically to describe that, please, go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong.

Even if there is such a word, it's probably a disorder. As someone who has little self-preservation due to their self-sacrificial behaviour.

What the fuck man?
Why do we only see the bad in people?

Here's a video I highly recommend you watch now.

Description
Is there a definitive line that divides crazy from sane? With a hair-raising delivery, Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, illuminates the gray areas between the two. (With live-mixed sound by Julian Treasure and animation by Evan Grant.)

This video came to my mind while I was lying in bed thinking about how screwed up psychology is. Though technically, my perspective of the world is screwed up so this lines up perfectly with my visions. However, it is precisely because of things like these* that makes me feel that the world is insane.
(* referring to psychology)

As I sank deeper into my thoughts, another video that I watched sometime ago popped into my head.



This in turn reminded me of another video that you could watch at your own time. At your own time because it's 54minutes long. It's a lecture from Harvard University about morals and justice. (there's 19 episodes, I probably watched around 6)

Well, my point is simply this, psychology sees the defect in everyone. 

But it's not necessary it's fault. It's simply trying to fix the broken parts in us. In one way or another, we're all screwed up. Reason being that the reverse cannot be true, that is, we are not perfect. I whole heartedly give my thanks out to the psychologists/scientists out there trying to figure out the problem with us, and making everyone a better person.

The thing is,
Sometimes we're so focused on fixing what's broken, that we lose sight of what's beautiful.



p.s. I really do remember stuffs in terms of videos, and articles, and links and stuffs. Because I'm lazy like that.

Labels: brain, featured, FFT, mind, psychology, psychopaths, thinking

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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

That's how I'll fight zombies

Mini-confession: I'm actually quite scared of zombies.

Thankfully, they don't exist. Though it isn't a scientific impossibility. Either way, you don't see them in the streets, unless you're somehow stuck in a movie/game-world.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
- H. P. Lovecraft

I  completely agree with this. I'm not particularly sure if I'm really that scared of zombies, but because they don't exist, the possibility of them being my worst fear is a fear in itself.

It's similar to horror movies. My balls shrink inwards and disappear when I watch them, because of that unknown element always waiting to fuck your mind up. However, I'm mostly immune to real-life "ghosts" and whatnot. (unless you're talking about a haunted house where people are intentionally trying to scare you, that's a different story). In this case, I'm referring to creepy places, I'm not 100% immune to them, but I don't get as creep out as much as others as I simply do not believe in whatever that cannot exist.

Back to the topic,
I think people are generally afraid of zombies is because they prey on humans. (and all fleshy things)

Think about it for a second, as long as you live in an urban area, you have literally zero predators. There isn't another organism trying to eat you.*
* please ignore all bacteria, viruses, and parasites for the sake of this argument.

If you were to live in Africa, I am pretty sure you'll be scared of a Lion more than a stupid Zombie. The idea of a predator is scary, fortunately, we have evolved far enough to ward away all our natural predators. Hence, we have absolutely zero experience of trying to run away from something that is trying to eat you. However, it's still in our instincts, it's coded in our DNA.

All the movies about Zombies and Alien invasions are all poking at our primate fear of the unknown, and ultimately, getting killed. It's pretty much the fight or flight response that kicks off your adrenaline.

I'm scared of zombies and the idea of it. When I think about a humanoid being chasing after me relentless with full intentions to eat me, it's not a pleasant thought.

But you know, if a Zombie apocalypse ever happens, you'll be happy to know that people have been thinking about it for a long time.
self defense against zombies
How to fight zombies
Britain is well prepared to fight zombies
What is the best way to fight zombies
Army gets how to guide for zombie invasion
Google: How to fight zombies

Labels: FFT, food for thought, random, rant, thinking, zombies

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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Have you ever been faced with a choice, where swallowing your pride/emotions and doing the right thing makes you the bigger man. (or woman, not discrediting you ladies here)

I have been faced with such choices more often then I would prefer. Thankfully, I tend to go towards the side with the bigger heart. That said, there has been numerous occasions where I didn't. The times where I simply go, "You know what? Fuck you, fuck this and everything else."

Naturally, I didn't say that out loud.

But still, it does fill me with shame that I couldn't be the man I want to be. That there's a part of me that's petty, stingy and generally selfish. Being human, I suppose that these degrading qualities are inevitable.

The most annoying part is that I know what is the right thing to do, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Sometimes, doing the right thing* makes me feel like an idiot. Doing something that benefits me in absolutely zero ways for the sake of satisfying my moral compass just makes me feel moronic.
*it's not the clear cut good/evil cases. But like choosing between things like watching a TV show, or help clean the house. Things that are "for the greater good" at the expense of myself. 

It's an all out brawl between my idealistic side and realistic side. So far, neither side is really winning.
Ideally: I would want to help everyone, including strangers.
Realistically: Screw you, I don't even know you that well. Not gonna waste my time doing something for you that you might not even appreciate.

Is this something normal people struggle with? Or do people instinctively help others or push them down the gutter without batting an eyelid?

Well, I strive to be a better person everyday. Not quite sure how that's working out, only time will die.

Labels: featured, FFT, food for thought, thinking

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

I never had any interest in motorbikes. They never really strike me as anything fancy or even safe to ride on. But as I was walking on the streets one day, I saw this dude on a bike. It wasn't even anything fancy, just your run of the mill bike. Just imagine a normal bike and that is exactly what I saw.

He wasn't doing anything crazy or even unusual. He was simply riding his bike with a really bored/peaceful look on his face.

The wind was hitting him square in the face, his jacket was fluttering behind him. I thought to myself: "gosh, that seems like a really relaxing thing to do."

I started to see how riding a bike could be one of the simple pleasures in life. Of course, probably not so much so in Singapore where there isn't any countryside for me to just go on a road trip. However, it could be rather interesting to just cruise down the highway in a little bike and enjoying the breeze. (or get bitch slapped by some bug)

So yeah, getting a bike license might actually be on my radar now. It's the least expensive of motorized transport after all, and it'll probably be pretty cool.

Oh well, I guess we'll see how things go.

Labels: bike, life, motorcycle, random, rant, thinking

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Monday, January 21, 2013

Code. Code and more code every fucking day. True, it's pretty cool to see computers dance to strange words, but it gets really tiring after awhile.

Java: snippet of my project

And another project that requires VBS and SQL

Read more »

Labels: code, featured, geek, life, rant, school, student, thinking

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