reorganizing platforms

I just set up a new WordPress blog here. Over the past few days, I also got an experimental blog up and running at Caspershire. FYI, I’m running Caspershire by using Ghost, on Amazon EC2 platform. Since it is an experiment, I might be migrating Caspershire to somewhere else, as for now I’m thinking about RedHat’s OpenShift PaaS platform to set up a production version of Ghost.

I texted Piqaashi, asking her for advice on what should I do with my (upcoming) Caspershire, and then I came to a conclusion. I want to seperate my pieces into 2 sections: something that can make you think, and another one is technical stuffs (particularly computer and technology). So, it’ll be 2 of them, the Caspershire and NightlyArt.

NightlyArt Revival is hosted on WordPress.com because I don’t want to get into the hassle of deploying a self-hosted WordPress (technical reasons that you might not want to know), but since I’m quite into developer mode right now, I changed my mind and remake a new version of NightlyArt on the webhosting I own. I won’t delete this blog (100+ posts are here, and it really takes time if I want to export them, giving the fact that time is an essence). I keep this alive, and all of you can browse the archive whenever you want but few weeks or at least a month onward, my upcoming pieces won’t be hosted here anymore.

My soon-will-be-set-into-production Caspershire would be fully up and running mid December, and if you wanna be geek, you can head to NightlyArt now.

p/s: It is unlikely I will post a long article on Caspershire. I still have 94fs, remember? On Caspershire, my desire to write limited to something short and simple, and sometimes Caspershire’s pieces are going to be elongated a bit more later on at 94fs. Purrfect.

a doctor with noble intent

I saw a tweet last night. Let’s read that tweet first before I write my thoughts. It’d be deep.

“There was someone who asked me before, why I want to build a hospital with “profit-based” out of the picture as my main agenda?“.

A noble intent, I must say. Then, I replied his tweet like this.

“Sure, if you can stay alive with Honda City while your colleagues have Mercedes and superbike, you have my blessings”.

3 years ago

Still in high school, we adhered to the notion that being a doctor can make a person richer and have more assets compared to one’s friends. Going deeper, we argued what kind of doctor can do more money (we agreed that dentist can make more money than GP). Then, we came to a talk about working in the private sector in order to be richer than other doctors serving in the public sector.

This is madness.

I think Florence Nightingale might cry everyday if she knows this. Even though Florance was a nurse, but she was serving in public healthcare. What about Avicenna and Hippocrates? Both might be terribly disappointed to a point both of them might write new book and rewrite the oath; The Canon of Doctors – How To Be Rich and Hippocratic Oath (Business edition).

Stop this madness. If you are aiming to have boatloads of assets, be a businessman.

Dalvik. It is in the oven, being baked.

Before we delve further, I’d like to announce proudly that I’ve unlocked an achievement: procrastinator, even something I like doing. I’ve been skipping the research part for quite a long time (I swear I wasn’t slacking, in fact after I was assigned this task I immediately bookmarked relevant links and information.. yeah, only bookmarked. You know the how the rest of the story goes. Your surmise is correct if the word DotA 2 popped out).

This is the outline. First draft is on its way. Thanks to @pali7x for the guides. The whole article is broken down into 4 parts. The first part is about the introduction to Dalvik, which might be featuring some analogies (yes, analogies, with s, that indicates plural). I’m writing to a quite broad range of readers, so I think the analogies would be on the noob tier, intermediate tier, and a-bit-above-intermediate-tier.

p/s: I’m eloquent and prowess with my language, so this is the time for me to shine bright like an amethyst (because shine bright like a diamond is too mainstream).

The second part spins around the workflow of the Dalvik VM. I don’t intend to put much effort on this, because the mechanism is extremely simple to be explained once the analogies are well-grasped by the readers.

Or maybe that part might be a bit long, if comparisons between native execution and process virtual machines are accounted. As usual, the nemesis of Android (each and every time) is iOS. To compare about native and vm, the easiest way to tell is Android vs iOS. A legit and geek battle.

p/s: It is Android and iOS. The war between technologies, not how gilded phone can be far superior than a plastic cheap-looking what-they-claim as smartphones. HAHA.

The third part is what does it do, making it unique than other solutions (again, native vs vm). Here I dive into a bit deeper of process virtual machine. The aim of Dalvik VM is to make it universally usable, no matter what kind of hardwares a phone uses.  Again, it explains why Android phones are ubiquitous.

The fourth part, a bit trickier part. History time. Everybody sucks at history. What makes an article stands out is how the writer can story-tell the history of a technology.

That’s all for today’s update on Dalvik. Gimme me a bit more time, and let Aizan Fahri be famous again. Haha.

the cobwebs syndrome

I know I know.. I haven’t updated everything (94fs and N/A Revival) for ages. Forgive me. The faults are mine. I got too carried away studying for my placement test, though it wasn’t scary as expected (because the real one didn’t chicken me out). Seriously if you have RM300 (or $90) and you don’t know what to do, take SAT. Later on I’ll write the breakdown of SAT (ambitious! ambitious!).

This cobwebs syndrome.. I don’t plan to let it consume my prowess, so I’ve drafted 4 articles (3 for 94fs, 1 for N/A Revival). Within a week, I want to gauge how many articles I can accomplish, so later on I can be more efficient handling writing task. Oh FYI, right now I’m writing an article for AmanzMY about Dalvik VM. Oh FYI, this is my dirty little secret: haven’t started anything, including researching. I might take up to 2 days for gathering information and sketching skeleton article at the same time, so I guess the article will be submitted to my boss around 14 – 16 October.

Writing about Dalvik VM is a piece of intimidating task: explaining Dalvik to muggles (I prefer to address myself as magician of codes and wizard of snippets) requires a certain degree of creativity. The tricks lie on how I’m gonna visualizing a (near-) technically correct analogy before techies go wild harassing the comment section if I wrote a bad analogy.

… and the interesting part is, the most interesting I assure you is: I have to write in Bahasa.

Kammpaaii ~

p/s: I’m waiting for blog CMS from John O’Nolan, the Ghost.  Since N/A Revival is serving as a site for me to rant and rave non-systematically, I might migrate to my own Ghost (on my webhosting) and then I’ll keep this site intact. Maybe I’ll need to use this again in the near future (read: if Ghost screwed everything.. idk).

period of (writing) inactivity

If I have die-hard fans, I’d receiving postcards (and death wishes) by now. Sadly I got none, but never mind. Few weeks lately (some say few months) I haven’t written pieces as frequent as when I was at college. True, when I’m living within the vicinity of an academic institution, a lot of things happen that spark my prefrontal cortex to write more (and to insult subliminally, too). Now, I’m at home. Too little things happen in my life aside from being gang-banged by Zeus, Shadow Fiend and Chaos Knight altogether (please refer to DotA 2).

Now I’m not writing a death rattle for this blog. Ending NightlyArt had never come across before (now it is.. lol), and please bear with me. I’ll try to post here more frequently. I know there are few people who enjoy reading my rants (and at the same time imagining me as a handsome and smart guy… but I’m taken.. eh). I feel bad, so bad because I can’t write to entertain you and making you think at the same time.

Ok. That’s all. Don’t cry.

stop dancing if you think the floor is creaky

In the previous life, I was a part of the bandwagon spreading the jibes and taunt remarks (as a part of being a loyal naysayer) against the Malaysian education system with words of criticism (.. and insult?).

“Kita takkan kemana-mana dengan sistem pendidikan kita”
“Teruk kot edu system kita. Mesti ubah!”
“Taknak dah belajar kat Malaysia. Nekad nak terbang keluar”

Before we proceed, let’s look at the minorities. The Chinese. I think they are always at disadvantages (consistently being vilified by Malays, economics and academics development models aren’t as sky-high as Malays, etc). But we don’t even fail at recognizing their abilities, in much narrower scope, in regard with their academics and economics achievements.

Let’s get back to my original point.

To my realization, regarding academics, we always have some entities to blame at when we failed to meet certain standard. Failed in SPM? Blame teachers and papers altogether for being too hard, and blame the graph for being too high. Failed in university? Blame lecturers for incompetency in pedagogy, blame PTPTN for.. I don’t know.

We are in favor of blaming others. Maybe because we are the majority here. Rule of thumb: being as a part of majority leads to complacency.

And look.. my second point makes sense now.

Quite funny to think, but this is what happen. Being as a part of the majority, we believe there’s a godlike power to drive our survival.

If you think that’s true, get yourself a mirror.

Is there a godlike power promising your with high-income wage?

If you think the floor is creaky, stop dancing before you get crippled. But if you think you are already crippled, blame the floor if that can make you feel great.

Funny, because blaming the floor won’t give you a thing. Let’s live this life by blaming the floor all the time.

Sir, if you live today at the mercy of the floor without admitting your crippled limbs, get a coffin now. Why? Because we don’t need crippled man as our human capital.

Sir, we need someone capable of fixing the floor.

coordinating efficiency, really?

First thing, I have to ask myself “am I really want to level up my skills in team management?”. If I said no, I’d be a total doofus. If I said “yes”, then I should explain my working schematics.

I’m looking forward to having a life with executive-tier efficiency coordinating a team, making sure things are done the way they should be done. Even if something is screwed, still I’m able and capable of rewriting the story without much hiccups. That sounds magical, near miracle, but I assure you it’s not, if you know what it takes to be such that person.

I believe that my brain is like a pool of ideas, a tank of plans and strategies.. but a stagnant pool might one day become shallower and could evaporated into dry, dirty muddy land. The question here is: how to make sure the pool gonna have some flow.

As for now, I’m using staging planning mechanics to execute my plans orderly and systematically (so far, yeah..) given with specific timeline. Let me show you my Asana account. I have tasks that are going to be peer-reviewed, pending task waiting for completion, back burner task which are situational, and action steps which are the imminent threats.

If you let your ideas jump directly from being a mere idea into action steps without weighing its mass, I’m not sure what will it be but to me it is not a good practice. Some ideas I don’t announce directly after it flied into my mind, rather I keep it with me until the situation is desirable.

I hope this tiny piece could inspire you.

Closing Words

For most of the time, I know I’m lying to myself regarding productivity. Let’s turn the tide.

Ouh, FYI I’m the crew of 94fs. If you think the site is cool, make yourself a space to read the articles. If you think you are hipster enough, consider reading this.

then, what’s the purpose of scholarship?

There were people that asked me “what if I told you scholarship is one hell of masked capitalism?”. I was slightly taken back, trying to get my knees standing still, and of course I felt a bit offended because I’m under MARA’s financial protection. Then I asked “why is that so?”, so the debate continued with the argument “are you blind? Can’t you see most of the scholarship recipients are rich people that can afford cars and bikes without bank loan? Poor people.. if they can go to even third-rated college, that’s their pure luck.. and not really luck if they need to be laden with PTPTN”.

I snapped my finger, ruffling my hair trying to act cool, then I said “there’s a thin and fine line distinguishing between capitalism and meritocracy. Let me give you an analogy. Poor people realize that sea is full of tides, but only what-you-call-rich-people can turn the tides to favor their boats”.

I am an advocate of meritocracy, also I’m fond of open source by embracing the philosophy of “living to educate the uneducated”. Without having a reliable statistics, I dare to say scholarship recipients are mostly the rich people.

And, as what-we-define-as-rich-people-here, do we think how to upgrade the rest of us?

Makes Me Think.

consider it done

The thing I love watching Suits is the efficiency shown by the characters. I remember a dialogue between Harvey and Mike

“Look, you were giving me shit this morning because I come and go when I want to. You know why I can do that? Because when I got here I dominated. They thought I worked 100 hours a day. Now, no matter what time I get it, nobody questions my ability to get the job done.”

Of you course you need to evolve into an angel to finish the job’s flawlessly, but that’s far from the concept I’m introducing right now on getting the job done.

First, know the stretch of your power to get the job done. The easiest evasion if you can tell you aren’t competent by simply saying “I’m not sure but I’ll look into it”.

.. and when the hell collapsed onto you, learn to mitigate it. Mishaps happens, and you need to understand that grave situation is the rarest teacher you’ll ever find.

I’ve been consuming knowledge. hard. really.

Q: Where had you been for the last few days?

A: Going out into the web, deeper. Raking my scythe scraping the knowledge. I did a lot of readings and I couldn’t simply stop because I was really addicted to it. Seemed like my existence was made tangible after reading and analyzing texts. And this explains why this blog (and the other one, Frontier) were shrouded in cobwebs.

Q: Is this a sign that blogging was relegated to lower priority?

A: You could say so, but I promise it is temporary. I love writing, the only skill that I think I’m excel at (given a bar graph, my writing skills graph stands out the most compared to flirting, playing with kittens, sniping heads, playing DotA 2 and eating exotic foods). Here’s a fact: to write, a person must read, and in any circumstances reading comes first before postulation, and postulation comes first before printing ideas in physical form.

Consuming Knowledge. Really?

Yes. I was intrigued by Mike Ross’s statement when he said “what if I told you that I consume knowledge like no one you’ve ever met, and I’ve actually passed the bar?”.

Let’s consume knowledge!